Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

We all know leaders that love using jargon. This doesn't just lead to eye-rolls - recent research demonstrates that jargon damages our ability to lead.

Hello and welcome to episode 68 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore how jargon damages our ability to lead.

We all know leaders that love using jargon. They're always using acronyms and spouting the latest organisational buzz words. But, beyond the usual eye-rolls the jargon junky elicits, is there any other impact? Recent research suggests that the use of jargon hampers our ability to lead others effectively.

One definition of jargon is "special words or expressions that are used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand". Jargon helps those in the know to feel more part of an exclusive group. But that exclusiveness comes, by definition, at the exclusion of others. Jargon can easily create a barrier that reinforces insiders and outsiders.

As a management consultant, I came across a lot of jargon. I learnt quickly to ask what jargon words meant, knowing I had to work them into a report at some point. Once you let the jargon word pass the first time, it just became more difficult to find out what the word meant later.

Sometimes we are so immersed in our environment that we don't even recognise the jargon we're using. It's often highly specific to our group or organisation. Recently I saw a presentation which included 14 acronyms on one PowerPoint slide. While the mostly insider audience nodded along, I was mystified. That's not a big deal in that case as I was just an observer, but I wonder how it felt for those in the audience who were new to the organisation and were potentially reluctant to ask what the sea of TLAs (or Three Letter Acronyms) meant.

And jargon happens across cultures too. On my first business trip to the USA I naively thought it would be pretty similar to Australia given our shared language and cultural heritage. I quickly figured out that a slide deck was code for a PowerPoint presentation - a term that has now made its way around the world. At the local department store it took me a little while longer to work out that the "men's personal furnishings" area was where the underpants were sold, and not a department specialising in replacing pants with credenzas. But then a colleague described a service offering as being "from soup to nuts". Given the context, I correctly assumed this meant from start to finish, but I couldn't picture a meal that started with soup and ended with nuts. When I asked him about the phrase he had no idea where it came from either. It turns out "soup to nuts" is a uniquely United States expression that is rarely used in other parts of the world. In fact it refers to a fairly typical 1800s multiple course meal which did indeed start with soup and end with port and nuts. On a side note, the phrase originally goes back to a similar Latin phrase meaning "from eggs to apples". But the use of the term made me feel like an outsider in a strange land. Saying the service covered everything from start to finish would have been easier on us both. But then again I come from a country that calls traffic cones "witch's hats", so I'm not really one to pass cultural judgement.

In leadership there's always a risk of information being lost in translation and people being made to feel excluded. Using jargon just makes the situation worse.

Research published just last month reconfirms that jargon reduces the ability for people to process information. It's as if jargon makes information harder to hear. That's not overly surprising and replicates previous studies. What's interesting is their finding that the impact on processing information persists even if definitions of terms are included. So even if I explain what the jargon means, I'm still losing my audience in the process.

The research shows that using jargon has three main impacts:

1. People understand less

2. People identify with the message and messenger less

3. People are less interested in finding out more about the topic

I've talked before about the importance of building connections with others through warmth and competence (episode 14 if you want to listen again). People who use jargon in an attempt to demonstrate competence might reduce their ability to build connection.

Leaders play a significant role in helping others to feel like they belong. This research demonstrates that if you want them to belong faster, cut down the jargon.

So how do we reduce the use of jargon in the workplace? One technique I've seen is a jargon jar. You may have come across swear jars in the past, where people add a small amount of money each time they swear. It's a light hearted way of making them more aware of their behaviour. Well, you can do the same for jargon. As a leader, model it yourself and get those coins ready - you may need them.

Okay - I think we've covered the subject of jargon from soup to nuts, or indeed from eggs to apples. Now you just need to figure out what jargon is being used in your workplace and make an effort to reduce it.

A big shout out to those who have provided a rating of the podcast over the past few weeks. That always pushes up the podcast charts and helps new people to find us. Have a great week.

Hillary C. Shulman, Graham N. Dixon, Olivia M. Bullock, Daniel Colón Amill. The Effects of Jargon on Processing Fluency, Self-Perceptions, and Scientific Engagement. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 2020; 0261927X2090217 DOI: 10.1177/0261927X20902177

Self-control is a core part of being an effective leader. And when it comes to self-control, planning beats will power.

Hello and welcome to episode 67 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at planning for self-control versus using will power in the moment.

We are all faced with situations that require self-control. It might be that new diet, avoiding distractions while focusing on some detailed work, or that colleague that drives you crazy. We often find ourselves needing to fight those impulses that take us away from our goals. This management of our emotions and responses is a crucial part of emotional intelligence, allowing us to be individually productive, and also to form effective working relationships with others.

When it comes to self-control we often leave it up to our will power in the moment. With this "in the moment" approach we're hoping that we will demonstrate restraint and control our impulses, but don't really have a strategy to achieve this.

Williamson and Wilkowski from the University of Wyoming recently undertook some research to see if there was a better way. They found that planning ahead for self-control is markedly better than techniques focused on self-control in the moment. We can effectively plan ahead to reduce the will power we need to exert in the moment, leaving our responses less to chance.

Their research looked at five self-control strategies in total - four that involved planning in advance, and one that involved self-control in the moment. They were able to measure the effectiveness of each strategy.

Here are the four techniques that worked well:

1. Situation selection: This is effectively an avoidance strategy. For example, if you're wanting to focus on some work but know you'll be constantly tempted towards distraction working at your desk, then avoid trying to do that focused work at your desk.

2. Situation modification: This involves changing the situation slightly to reduce the amount of will power needed for self-control. If you find yourself checking your phone constantly while carrying it around, leave it in your desk drawer instead. On the technology side there are also settings and apps that can help to reduce the constant pinging for our attention that is built into most applications we use.

3. Distraction: As the name suggests, this involves taking our attention away from the thing that requires self-control. For example, if someone's behaviour in a meeting drives you to distraction, you might instead focus on taking really good notes and asking questions.

4. Reappraisal: This involves thinking about the temptation in a different way. I recall really struggling with a work colleague who had quite different values to me. I found myself really caught up on this difference and found it hard to work constructively with them. I made the mental shift to acknowledge the difference in values and their right to have those values, and this made the working relationship far more positive.

Each of these four techniques reduces our reliance on demonstrating will-power in the moment. As the researchers noted, "People can, indeed, proactively initiate self-control. And those who do so are better able to make progress toward their long-term goals."

This week I encourage you to not just think about planning for your own self-control, but also to share these approaches with others. Why not use an individual or team meeting to discuss how to apply this research. And, while you're at it, suggest they subscribe to the podcast. Have a great week.

Laverl Z. Williamson, Benjamin M. Wilkowski. Nipping Temptation in the Bud: Examining Strategic Self-Control in Daily Life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2019; 014616721988360 DOI: 10.1177/0146167219883606

Aaarrgghhh! This week we look at the leader's role in removing frustrations.

Hello and welcome to episode 66 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at a leader's role in removing frustrations.

When you think about the role of a leader, it's easy to focus primarily on their ability to manage upside potential. That upside potential might include providing meaning and purpose, clarifying roles and expectations, and providing development opportunities. We tend to first focus on the leader's ability to tap into the motivation of their people. Each of these areas are really important, however an equally important and often overlooked part of leadership is reducing the things that get in the way of performance. That includes removing frustrations and other barriers to success for individuals and teams.

Let's take IT as an example. As I work with a broad range of organisations it always amazes me the variety of IT setups people end up using ranging from cutting edge through to museum-grade antiques. Even when things look brilliant to me as an outsider, few people rave about their IT systems. However I've heard plenty of complaints about long boot up times, tricky remote login processes, slow response times, clunky data entry, and systems that don't speak to one another. As the technology we use at home continues to leap forward, people have increasingly high expectations of the technology they interact with at work. And if the technology gets in the way of delivering work, it quickly impacts job satisfaction. In fact a study released just this month shows that workplace IT satisfaction accounts for 38 percent of the variance in job satisfaction. If IT is getting in the way for your people, there's a high chance that it's impacting the way they experience their job and the organisation.

Broader research on frustrations at work beyond just IT demonstrates a clear link to the risk of burnout. This is particularly the case when people see their frustrations impacting clients and customers. Recently I made a simple purchase of one item and watched as a great employee who had been really helpful wrestled with the point of sale system. While they remained professional, the frustration for them was real. What should have taken less than a minute stretched on for several minutes as more customers joined the queue. It's easy to see how working with that system day after day would impact an otherwise motivated and engaged employee, particularly when that person cared about providing a great experience for customers.

And it's not just about that employee - research also shows a link between frustrations and negative work behaviours such as aggression towards coworkers. What frustrates the individual ripples through the organisation. If people aren't being civil to each other in your organisation, I can almost guarantee there are unresolved frustrations.

Research suggests there are three conditions that magnify the impact of frustrations:

1. When they don't feel heard about the frustrations and their impacts

2. When they don't feel a sense of control over the frustrations

3. When they feel isolated - like they're the only ones having a problem

Leaders are the ones best positioned to help with these three conditions.

Here are a few tips when seeking to reduce and remove frustrations for your people:

• Accept that frustrations are normal - there's no such thing as a completely frustration-free work environment.

• Recognise that frustrations can get in the way of both personal and organisational goals - while the frustration may be primarily impacting the person, it's likely to be flowing through to team and organisational performance.

• All frustrations can be reduced - you may not be able to completely remove a frustration, but there are always creative ways of reducing the impact.

• Provide an opportunity for people to discuss frustrations and be heard - start with your own people and simply ask them "What frustrations are getting in the way of you doing your job well?"

• Allow people to connect with others - as you seek to remove frustrations it's helpful to see how others are dealing with and working around the frustrations.

• Equip people to continuously improve - give people the authority to make changes and improvements that will reduce frustrations for themselves and customers.

Hopefully you found this episode helpful - if you did, remember to share it with others. I've listed the three references used in the show notes. Remember to head to the Leadership.Today website for other episodes, to connect via our monthly newsletter, and there's even a link to follow me on the social media equivalent of a sensible family car - LinkedIn. Have a great week.

Lewandowski C. (2003) Organizational Factors Contributing to Worker Frustration: The Precursor to Burnout. 30 J. Soc. & Soc. Welfare 175

Suzy Fox Paul E. Spector (1999) A model of work frustration–aggression. Journal of Organizational Behaviour Volume 20, Issue 6

Wei Wang, Yi Wang, Yi Zhang, Jing Ma (2020) Spillover of workplace IT satisfaction onto job satisfaction: The roles of job fit and professional fit. International Journal of Information Management Volume 50, February 2020, Pages 341-352 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026840121831257X

How effective are you in a crisis? This week we outline the four core skills of leading in a crisis to build the resilience of our people and our organisations.

Hello and welcome to episode 65 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore the four key skills of leading in a crisis.

As we read the news it seems like there is a new crisis every week - fires, floods, earthquakes, financial mismanagement, international tensions. We are often quick to judge leaders solely on what we see them doing publicly. We are very quick to categorise those attempting to lead during a crisis as either a hero or a villain. They either demonstrated and instilled confidence in those they lead, or potentially made the crisis even worse through a lack of leadership

A crisis by its nature is something you don't see coming until you're in the middle of it. The intensity and challenge are often underestimated at the onset of a crisis. Once the crisis is over it's often easy to look back and spot missed opportunities at the point when the crisis wasn't a crisis.

Crisis leadership is obvious on a national stage, particularly when politicians are involved. We can all recall stories of leaders who stepped up during a national crisis. Equally, we remember those who were holidaying, dining, playing golf or getting their hair done while a crisis began to play out. What do we expect from our leaders? Do we want them on the front line fighting the fires, rescuing people, saving the environment from disaster? It's a natural instinct that when people suffer, we look for leaders to hold responsible. Whose fault was this disaster? Who rose to the challenge?

By definition, a crisis is unpredictable, its scale broad, the speed fast, and the threat great. What does this mean for me as a leader? We all have crises that we face. Maybe it's just once a year, or perhaps it's only a few times in our career. But these situations make and break leaders. More importantly, they make and break the lives of those we lead and our organisations.

It could be a series of redundancies and restructures following an economic downturn, or hacking of an IT system, or the impact of a natural disaster or accident. There will be a point when you recognise that this situation isn't business as usual, but rather a crisis that needs to be managed carefully and at speed. Back in the days of paper and pencil psychometric tests, the instructions we would read to candidates included advice to work "quickly and accurately". The same competing principles apply in a crisis.

But what is a crisis for one person may not be a crisis for another. Take paramedics for example. They spend most of their day in situations where people are in crisis. But it's not a crisis for the paramedic. You don't see paramedics running around screaming and panicking. Instead, you will see them walk towards the people in crisis, bringing with them a calm efficiency that instills confidence in others. Paramedics are able to lead others through crisis situations through their extensive training and experience. What might be a crisis for me is entirely expected and routine for the paramedic. Just like paramedics, we can train and prepare ourselves for crises.

Research into crisis management suggests there are four core skills that effective leaders demonstrate - identifying, acting, communicating and reviewing. As we work through each of the four skills I want you to think about your own crisis leadership. Think about a challenging situation when you were the leader and consider how you demonstrated each of these four skills.

1. Skill one - Identifying. Effective leaders identify a crisis early. While others might be continuing as if its business-as-usual, the effective leader recognises that there is a crisis to be managed. They help people to build a shared understanding of the nature of the crisis, including the likely scope and impacts. Organisations can help prepare for a crisis by building their capacity to monitor for opportunities and threats. You then need experienced people and the ability for them to be heard as the crisis emerges.

2. Skill two - Acting. The effective leader in a crisis quickly establishes a framework for making critical decisions. They need to set things up so they can make strategic decisions while not getting caught up in operational issues. A truly effective leader in a crisis doesn't necessarily have all the answers. Instead, they are clear about the kinds of decisions they need to make, and what needs to be passed down to others. The effective leader quickly connects with others in the organisation, and potentially across organisations. They monitor cooperation between these various groups and get involved only where this cooperation breaks down. They quickly isolate the issue from the rest of the organisation's operations - a process called decoupling. This means only the relevant parts of the organisation focus on the crisis, while the remainder can continue operations as normally as possible.

3. Skill three - Communicating. A key role of a leader during a crisis is meaning making - providing people with a way of making sense of what is happening. Researchers describe this as creating "authentic hope and confidence". It's not false optimism - it helps people to interpret the crisis, and provides confidence about how the leader intends to lead through it. The effective leader recognises that communication in a crisis is different in terms of pace and context. People need to understand the crisis, the likely consequences, what's being done, and what, if anything, they need to do.

4. Skill four - Reviewing. Once the crisis is over, a leader needs to explain what was done leading up to and during the crisis. This includes what went well and what didn't work. Often times leaders, particularly political leaders, are keen to avoid the "what went wrong" discussion. Rather than apportioning blame, it's more about preparing the organisation and its people for any future crisis. Every crisis is unique, so leaders need to be comfortable trying new things out and learning on the run. Afterwards it's important to be able to reflect and learn from the experience and lessons. The effective leader uses a review to enhance resilience in themselves, their people, and the organisation.

A crisis is anything but business as usual. But each of us can develop the four core skills of identifying, acting, communicating and reviewing. This helps build strength, agility and resilience in our organisations.

If you want to dive into this topic further, I highly recommend the reference I've provided in the show notes. It picks apart leadership in times of crisis from a public administration perspective.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. It would be great if you could take the time to rate or write a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this, and also recommend it to a friend or work colleague. The podcast is continuing to grow and I always make time to read every review. See you next week.

Boin A, Kuipers S, Overdijk W (2013) Leadership in Times of Crisis: A Framework for Assessment. International Review of Public Administration.

Habits can either help or hinder our leadership. In this episode we explore the two keys to making and breaking habits.

Hello and welcome to episode 64 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore the key to making and breaking habits.

This is our first new episode coming out at the start of February. If you're anything like me and most other people, the goals you set a month ago may be starting to fade. Our great intentions may have run into everyday challenges and circumstances. Or maybe this year was different, and the intentions you started with are beginning to stick. They might even have become part of your everyday routine. What likely made the difference are habits.

A habit is something we do regularly without much conscious thought - something that persists, and that can be difficult to change or give up. A habit is neither good or bad, but it can be helpful or harmful in the context of goals we set for ourselves. Perhaps my habit of laying out exercise gear in the evening is helping me to achieve my goal of getting to the gym in the morning. Maybe my habit of ordering a burger and fries each time I eat out is getting in the way of my goal to lose weight. And it's the same at work. My habit of greeting my colleagues in the morning might be helping to build relationships. But my habit of speaking first and listening second might be getting in the way of truly listening to others.

So what are the keys to making or breaking a habit? To answer this we need to go to the movies.

I want you to picture yourself at a cinema with a bucket of popcorn. Just as the movie starts, you reach in, grab some popcorn and put it in your mouth. Now, this popcorn unfortunately isn't as fresh as you might hope. In fact, it has been made a full week earlier and left out to go stale. Still edible, but not great tasting. Do you keep eating the popcorn? Do you eat as much of the stale popcorn as you would if it was fresh?

Researchers set up exactly this scenario to study the strength of habits. They took a group of people and asked them to watch and rate a series of movie trailers in a cinema, while also providing them with popcorn to eat. They varied the freshness of the popcorn - the fresh popcorn was made an hour earlier, while the stale popcorn was a week old.

After the movie trailers, they asked people to rate the popcorn, and also measured how much popcorn each person ate. As you would expect, people rated the stale popcorn below the fresh popcorn. But it turns out that not all popcorn eaters are equal. Some people have strong associations between going to the cinema and eating popcorn, whereas for others the link is less strong. Those who had a weaker link between going to the cinema and eating popcorn not surprisingly ate less of the stale popcorn. After all, why would you eat stale popcorn? Well, those with a stronger link between going to the cinema and eating popcorn ate about the same amount of stale and fresh popcorn. That's right - they ate as much of the stale popcorn as they did of the fresh popcorn, even though they rated the stale popcorn lower on taste. The habit of eating popcorn meant they didn't seem to care about the freshness of the popcorn - they just stuck with their habit.

So if eating popcorn at the cinema is a habit for you, you're likely to go on eating popcorn independent of its freshness. But what if I want to change this habit? The research found two interesting ways to break the cinema popcorn eating habit, if only in the moment. The first habit breaker was to change the context. When they moved the experiment out of a cinema and into a meeting room, the habitual popcorn eaters ate less of the stale popcorn than the fresh. The change in context seemed to break the habit. The second habit breaker was to make people eat the popcorn with their non-dominant hand while in the cinema. In this second scenario the context is exactly the same, but the eating process requires a little more conscious thought and effort. Once again, in this version the habitual popcorn eaters ate less of the stale popcorn than the fresh.

As leaders, that gives us two ways to think about making and breaking habits for ourselves and others - context and consciousness.

If we're looking to break a habit, we want to change the context and make the behaviour more conscious. It's the equivalent of getting people out of the cinema while also making them use their non-dominant hand.

f we're looking to make a habit the opposite is true. Over time we want to keep the context consistent and we want to reduce the amount of conscious effort required to undertake the behaviour. That's the equivalent of offering fresh popcorn in the cinema and allowing people to use their dominant hand. Over time we will be able to build up a group of habitual popcorn eaters.

When I'm coaching leaders to change, it's much easier to work with them outside their normal context. That's why running a leadership program offsite typically allows people to be more open. They've already had to alter some patterns of behaviour, which makes them more open to varying their views and habits around leadership. If the context is largely similar, like running the leadership development at their office in a familiar meeting room, it's much harder to encourage people to change. Getting people into a new context and just outside of their comfort zone really makes a difference when breaking an old habit and considering a new habit. Perhaps you find sitting at your desk trying to write a report really tedious and often find yourself getting writer's block. Why not vary the context by changing where you write? Maybe you find yourself constantly checking your phone during meetings. Why not leave your phone at your desk instead?

Once we've set up a new behaviour, we then want to make the new habit easy to continue. If my new habit is to meet with each of my team members once a month to discuss their performance and development, it's likely to work best if we schedule all the meetings in for the year, and set them on a day and time that is less prone to interruptions. That way the context is the same - same time of the week, same meeting room, same people and same structure. I don't have to decide each week whether to meet, where to meet and when to meet because that has all been locked in at the start of the year.

When it comes to making and breaking habits, remember the two keys are context and consciousness.

Check out the show notes for a link to the popcorn research from David Neal and the team from the University of California. And you might want to go all the way back to episode one of this podcast to explore leadership habits further.

So what are your leadership habits, both helpful and harmful?

David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, Mengju Wu, and David Kurlander. (2011) The Pull of the Past: When Do Habits Persist Despite Conflict With Motives? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37(11) 1428–1437 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9fbd/0b88b802dc55833796b50f27887b57f74e8f.pdf

Over the holiday/new year period we're replaying some of our most popular episodes. We will be back in February 2020 with brand new episodes. You can find all our episode show notes at the Leadership Today website. Enjoy!

Over the holiday/new year period we're replaying some of our most popular episodes. We will be back in February 2020 with brand new episodes. You can find all our episode show notes at the Leadership Today website. Enjoy!

Over the holiday/new year period we're replaying some of our most popular episodes. We will be back in February 2020 with brand new episodes. You can find all our episode show notes at the Leadership Today website. Enjoy!

Over the holiday/new year period we're replaying some of our most popular episodes. We will be back in February 2020 with brand new episodes. You can find all our episode show notes at the Leadership Today website. Enjoy!

Over the holiday/new year period we're replaying some of our most popular episodes. We will be back in February 2020 with brand new episodes. You can find all our episode show notes at the Leadership Today website. Enjoy!