Lead Thru Values

“I want our company to be an employer of choice.”

I’ve worked with a number of business owners who’ve said this exact phrase to me.

You can try it by:

- Paying top of market
- Offering a comprehensive benefits package
- Selling great products
- Managing expenses closely
- Crafting clever job descriptions and posts

But...

If you truly want to become an employer of choice, you’ll focus on developing people.

And the most sustainable, most scalable way to do that?

VALUES.

Your organizational values are the most important part of your culture.

Values define what you stand for;
and what you don’t stand for.

They provide a foundation for expectations, how to work, and they eliminate excuses.

I’m working with a manager to integrate their company values into their daily operations.

She’s growing in confidence and her leadership has taken leaps!

Why?

Because the majority of people she’s responsible for helped write the values!

They’re already bought in!

She’s moving from managing people to leading them;

Delegating responsibilities, not just tasks.

Coaching instead of telling.

To be an employer of choice you build a culture around values!

Learn more about business & leadership coaching with James at https://jamesmayhew.com

Most businesses haven’t fully tapped into how their culture actually helps them gain a competitive edge and close more business.

My name is James Mayhew, YOUR chief culture officer, and that’s the topic for this Jam Session.

Make no mistake, your organizational culture drives revenue and profitability for your business.

But very few companies have figured out how culture actually helps them sell better, deliver a better product and experience, and ultimately win more customers.

Good business invest in the resources, tools and equipment to do the job well. 

They’ll work on product and sales training, competitive pricing and driving traffic to their stores or websites.

But often they miss one key ingredient:  creating a culture of excellence and developing people.

Companies that are excelling in 2020 are going all in on coaching up people.

They’re investing in things like essential skills training, 
how to give and receive feedback 

They’re teaching their people to identify emerging leaders and providing ways to mentor them

They’re focused on extracting potential instead of trying to managing people

See your culture is all about performance — it’s the driver of your performance.

It works for you by attracting more great people to your team

Develops those great people into rock stars

your culture becomes your standard for how you approach work, make decisions and share information

And it organically teaches and trains those standards on an ongoing and frequent basis

In business it’s easy and even ordinary to talk about “great customer service”

And as a leader in their industry, they know it’s uncommon — even extraordinary — wen you can consistently deliver an outstanding employee experience. 

And I promise you this, it will drive sales and boost your bottom line.

Ask any leader if they operate by values in their business, and they’ll probably say, “Yes!”

But unless you’ve actually defined them and created a system where they’re part of your daily function, you’re leaving the most critical part of your company culture to chance.

I was invited to speak to a group of financial professionals on the art of giving & receiving feedback.
It was a wonderful group and they contributed a lot to the conversation.

I close that training by emphasizing that you must become skilled at giving feedback based on your organizational values.

Now, The person that invited me to present, asked the question to each person around the table, Do you have established organizational values?  

Each person responded with a “yes!” Our team knows to do the right thing, we always operate within our values. honesty, respect, take care of the customer.

So I asked a follow up question:  if I came to your business today and interviewed 6 people about your company values, would I get consistent answers? 

Their responses were something like “I’d like to think so.”

That tells me that there’s a significant interpretation gap around those shared values.

My clients can respond to that question with, “Absolutely.”

Here’s why your values are so vital to your culture:

Your values determine what you do and how you do it, and that ultimately drives your results.

Don’t leave your values up to interpretation. 

Make your values a part of every meeting, every decision, every communication and your employees, your partners. 

The experience you’re creating for your employees will translate into increased sales, higher retention, and establish your competitive edge.

"Why Are YOU Here?"

Have I got a great story to share with you today about those three words on this edition of JAM Session!

I was leading a training last week for a client and I wanted to do something to engage their minds — and their hearts. 

I opened the training with the question, Why are you here today?

After a few variations of “its my job” I continued to ask the question. 

I placed a lot of emphasis on YOU. Why are YOU here?

Still, I got mostly surface responses. 

I must have asked it a dozen times as I acknowledged their responses but kept pressing.  

I knew exactly what I was going for. 

Finally, the youngest employee — not a manager said — because I belong here?

And I looked her in the eye and said, ok, now we’re getting somewhere. 

Why do you belong here?

And that follow up question to her brave and somewhat confident response opened the flood gates for a great meeting. 

If you lead others, you have to engage their minds — and their hearts. 

When when you want to jump right in and start teaching, start training, the best leaders know that their job is to connect people to your mission. 

By asking a simple question and letting them work through it, we had a phenomenal training session. 

I could have easily told them why they were there; why others weren’t asked to be part of this training...

But I wanted them to identify it. 

I wanted them to take ownership of it and to build some confidence in themselves. 

And when you show your team their value, they’ll believe in you and trust you  even more. 

And that, my friends, is invaluable.

Working with new and emerging leaders requires patience and humility and a healthy dose of self reflection. 

My name is James Mayhew, YOUR chief culture officer, and that’s the topic for this Jam Session.

The other day while working with a small group of new leaders, I was reminded of the importance of our language and communication styles. 

We began our session with a recap of how their week had gone. 

One of the things we’re working on is communicating the company’s core values to their teams as the new standard for what great performance looks like. 

One of them relayed parts of a conversation they had with a particularly challenging employee. “These aren’t going away and ‘they’ are making them a big deal.”

I asked the manager a follow up question:

"What did you mean by 'they?'"

"You are part of the group that created these!"

I smiled. The manager smiled...The message was received. 

It’s not theirs... it’s ours. 

That's why that it's so important to be patient with new leaders. 

To coach them. Encourage them. Support them. Challenge them. Lead them. 

And show them how to take ownership for the culture of their team. 

Do you remember how it was when you were new to leadership?

You were probably confident and had been preparing yourself for a while.

But the first few times you had to have a hard conversation or make a difficult decision, it was awkward. 

And in an effort to make it easier, you positioned yourself below your leadership level to relate to them...

“They want this, so we just have to do it.” (referring to the senior leadership or business owner)

I know that situation because I DID IT. 

And I’m guessing you can relate.

But whatever ground I thought I had gained with the team I later learned was actually a back slide. 

I failed at that part of leadership because I hadn’t taken ownership. 

That’s why it’s imperative to create a culture of coaching within your company. 

Be patient with new leaders, but not passive. 

Have a sense of urgency for their development but without rushing it. 

And instill a sense of confidence that’s covered by humility. 

That’s a winning formula.

Faith-based health coach, Jill Boogerd joins James on episode 17 to talk about the correlation of health and wellness and how you perform at work.

** Upcoming Webinar – Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 11:30am CT **

Register to attend (it's free!) at https://pages.purposedriventeams.com

The overly busy leader will always struggle to be a leader that others want to follow.

I’ve chosen the word ‘follower’ intentionally.

It’s not bad to be a follower.

I’m a follower.

You’re a follower.

We follow those who’ve gone before us. We follow those who’ve been called to a position to lead

As a follower, it’s our responsibility to be all-in

But that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be yes-men or yes-women. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have disagreements or even healthy conflict

It means we respect and trust that authority until there’s reason where that trust is broken.

At that point, it’s our responsibility to speak truth and help hold our leaders accountable.

But, being a leader who wants to create followers is the mark of a broken leader.

A leader who is insecure 

A leader who is unsure

A leader who is uncentered

A leader who lacks humility

The point I want to emphasize is this: The best leaders don’t set out to create followers. The best leaders desire to develop other leaders.

That’s why the topics we’re discussing in this series are so crucial.

Because when you start to slide into any of these negative leadership attributes, you risk losing the respect and trust of your team and colleagues.

The overly busy leader will always struggle to be a leader that others want to follow. 

That’s why the topics we’re discussing in this series are so crucial, because when you start to slide into any of these negative leadership attributes, you risk losing a lot more than time.

You risk losing the respect and trust of your team and colleagues.

Regardless if you’re a small business owner with a few employees, or you oversee a lot of people in a large organization, your behaviors will create a ripple effect. 

And you have to decide if you want that ripple effect to limiting and hurried, or do you want to create an environment that is positive and empowering? 

Busyness is a sign that there’s something not right within your organization… more specifically, that there may be some behaviors that you're doing – consciously or unsconsciously – that are creating bottlenecks with communication, delgating, decision making or essential skills such as giving feedback or having critical conversations. 

So what are some of the behaviors and qualities of the Avoider?

Generally speaking, they’re afraid of conflict and confronting others. So, they tend to put off things like hard conversations and giving constructive feedback because it makes them uncomfortable.

In many cases, the Avoider is more concerned with being liked as a person, than they are being respected as a manager or leader.

And that creates some significant challenges for people who report to them.

We are smack dab in the middle of a series on the 5 undesirable attributes of leadership that any leader can struggle with regardless of position, age, or experience.

This is part 3 of 5, so I’d encourage you to listen to episodes 12 and 13 where we discuss the first two attributes that cause busyness - not just for you - but for your team. 

Regardless if you’re a small business owner with a few employees, or you oversee a lot of people in a large organization, your behaviors will create a ripple effect. 

And you have to decide if you want that ripple effect to limiting and hurried, 

Or do you want to create an environment that is positive and empowering? 

I think you know which way you have to go.

Busyness is a tell. 

It’s a sign that there’s something not right within your organization… more specifically, is there something not right with the way you’re leading your team? 

Are there some behaviors that you're doing – consciously or unsconsciously – that are creating bottlenecks with communication or decision making? 

This content is based on coaching from my Unbusy Leader workshops as well as 1:1 coaching with my clients

In those instances, I’m working closely with them to take a deep dive into the reasons that we feel overly busy, hurried and rushed. 

It’s frustrating when your team is constantly adjusting to 

• Changing deadlines
• Feeling that they have to rush through their work
• And things get overlooked leading to mistakes and re-dos
• Not being able to give it their best or having to cut corners

Those are examples of how costly busyness an be and why I spend so much time teaching leaders to become less busy and more trusting of teams.

That’s a great intro into our topic for the day, the Rescuing leader.

So today we’re going to talk about the 3rd type of negative leadership trait that I’m calling the Rescuer. and like before, we’ll look at it from 2 angles:

1. How to identify a Rescuer
2. How the Rescuer contributes to a culture of busyness and the negative impact it creates

Got questions for James about leadership? Send them to [email protected] and your question may be featured in an upcoming podcast. James will personally respond to your questions even if they aren't featured.

'The Critic' is part 2 in a series of 5 negative leadership behaviors of overly busy leaders.

The Critic has good intentions. They believe that the best way to help someone improve is to show them what they did wrong. But this trait can be very discouraging for team members and actually create insecure followers by:

• feeling compelled to point out what's wrong;
• failing to recognize wins or areas that are going right;
• unintentionally creating a culture of fear where people are constantly second-guessing themselves;

When things go wrong or mistakes occur, the Critic assigns blame. But a strong leader – an Unbusy Leader – will take responsibility for the mistakes and give away praise when things go well.

Negative Aspects of Overly Busy Leader series:

This is a new series that will explore five negative, undesirable attributes of leadership that we all struggle with.

The reality is we all have at least a primary and probably a secondary attribute; but if you’re thinking you don’t struggle with at least one of these, then I’d suggest you may lacking some self awareness and some humility! 

Often, these behaviors are driven out of a sense of pride or fear, perhaps out of a scarcity mindset… or even due to being overwhelmed or stressed by things like our current economic situation.

So over the next 5 episodes we’re going to look at 

• The controller
• The critic
• The rescuer
• The avoider
• The people pleaser

This is content that I’m pulling from my Unbusy Leader masterclass workshops as well as from coaching with clients 1:1 or inside their organizations.