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Wednesday, April 14. 2010
Reality Based Leadership In this blog, Cy Wakeman, introduces a new approach to leadership entitled "Reality Based Leadership" and its many effective tools and applications. Welcome to a whole new world of leadership - one of accountability, inquiry, new mindsets and results beyond your wildest dreams.
Wednesday, April 14. 2010
In Reality-Based Leadership, personalizing conflict is a luxury we can no longer afford! A great number of leaders put themselves in the position of judge and jury during interpersonal or team conflicts – deciding right and wrong, doling out verdicts and issuing consequences. In times of conflict, what your followers need most from you is not empathy. They need you to get real, step up, and help them see their circumstances differently so that they can create better professional relationships and generate better results. It is extremely easy and tempting for employees to attribute conflict to difficult personalities or the incapabilities of others. It is even easier for leaders to collude with employees in the personalizing of conflict, spending valuable time and energy listening to the stories and mandating that all involved “get along.” What is the reward for an amazing investment of energy, innovation and focus of all involved? Mediocrity, stagnation, and a miserable status quo. Once again, leaders fail their people by mismanaging the energy of all. Why do so many leaders get caught up in a form of helping that actually hurts? They believe that the root cause of all conflict is, in fact, the people – those who don’t get “it” or work consciously against “it.” This belief is simply untrue. The root cause of all conflict is not the people. The root cause of all conflict is ambiguity or lack of clarity. Good news! Clarity is easily attainable with the right techniques. But before you can help others, you need to go first! To depersonalize conflict and find a way forward, try to employ the following techniques, and when you have them mastered, pass them on: Do a Reality Check – A great deal of the conflict we encounter is manufactured in our own minds. When faced with conflict, we tend to quickly move from the bare facts of the situation to create our own mental story that paints ourselves as a victim and helpless, while someone else is the villain. In actuality, it is not the cause of the conflict itself that causes us stress, but the story we devise about the events that causes our stress. Get back to the facts of the situation and put your story to rest. Get Clear About the Motives – Would you rather be right or happy? Too many times, you may abandon the organizational goals in order to achieve your own motives. Pray that you may be released from your need for love, approval and appreciation. Without those motives, you can lead others to achieve the goals at hand. Clearly Model the Role you Would Like to See Others Play – Be the change you wish to see in the world. The only thing missing in a meeting or situation is that which you, yourself, are not offering in the moment. The minute you begin judging others, you stop adding value. Seek instead to understand the views of others, practice those virtues, which you have determined to be lacking in others such as open-mindedness, patience, inclusiveness, tolerance and appreciation. Get rid of your double standards, and stop expecting others to excel where you have not yet mastered. See Others with Great Clarity – When faced with those whose personalities are different from ours, or whose behaviors have reached a stress-induced inappropriateness, work to see through their behaviors in order to identify their actual needs or goals. Ask yourself, “What are they striving for?” Once you identify their goal, ask yourself, “How could I help them achieve their goal?” Move to a Clearer, Higher Perspective – Learn to sense when the conflict is getting personalized and be prepared to move quickly to a professional perspective by asking the group to clarify the overarching goal of their work together. A common goal is one that is big enough to be common for all, such as customer loyalty, increased sales or organizational growth. With the eyes finally on the prize, bring out the best in each team member by asking questions such as, “Given the goal identified, what is the best way to move forward? What it the best that each of you can contribute?” Reveal a Clear Way Forward – With the common goal now clear, go one level deeper and have those involved in the conflict identify their more personal goals of their divisions, or roles. Frame the situation as a box with the overarching goal at the top and the individual goals as sides of the box. Most conflicts involve disparate parties truly believing that their individual goals are mutually exclusive and are thinking in terms of achieving one OR the other – or achieving one at the cost of another. Replace the “OR” in this equation with “AND” and engage the conflicting parties in problem solving. Remember, you rock and Cy rocks! Lead on my friend.
Wednesday, April 14. 2010
If you’ve recently received some feedback from your boss, your co-workers or your client in the form of less-than-desired results, welcome the news! It’s the very next thing to work on to propel your self into the next level of success. Can’t yet get there – to that happy place? First, decide if you’re willing to whole-heartedly learn and grow and address the situation. If not, get out now as it will only get worse. Get out, but know that what we don’t welcome and address head-on in our lives and careers will reappear again until we get the intended lesson. This is a yes or no question: Are you willing to do whatever it takes to regain what you lost and more? If so, then try this. Depersonalize the feedback. It’s not the feedback you just received that will stall your career – it’s the inability to truly hear and absorb feedback that is the definite career staller. Feedback is the main avenue toward growth. When you first hear of a development need, you may go through some predictable stages. In the beginning, you are clueless, not having been aware that you may have had the development need at all. Then you may begin to move into awareness by being able to see that, indeed, another person believes that you have a development need, an issue of their perception. As you move along the path of awareness, you will eventually find the motivation to change. Finally, you work to adapt and then to build the behavior change into your everyday life. Commit to responding to the feedback (from both people and situations) with openness and willingness. Stop arguing with reality. When faced with a setback, we not only argue with the reality of the situation, but many times, begin to create our own story about the reality – a story that features us as the helpless victim and others as the villains. Arguing with reality is a complete waste of time, resources and energy. It’s not the setback that causes us stress, it’s the story we write about the setback that causes us stress. Work instead to conserve your precious energy to use as you fully account for and understand your lesson at hand – and ultimately to respond in ways that will help, rather than hurt. Quickly size up the new reality and move on by asking yourself, “What is the next right action I could take that would rectify my lack of performance or could rebuild my credibility?” Focus on yourself – stay in your lane. In life there are three lanes of traffic: your lane, others’ lane and reality’s lane. You have successfully gotten out of reality’s lane, now get out of other peoples’ lane. Focus on your actions, assumptions, choices, etc., and resist the need to point out how others were involved in the poor outcome. Focusing on others only slows your progress in learning the fullest sense of the lesson at hand! Get the most out of the experience by focusing only on what you can impact – that is your own behavior. Stay in your lane and you will be on the fast track to recovery. Drive for results or learning. When faced with a major setback, many are tempted to stick with their version of reality, digging in their heels and justifying why it was right to do exactly as they did. If you are dug in, ask yourself, “Would I rather be right or happy?” If your choice is that you would rather be right, know that you will be giving up great results and valuable learning for the privilege. When you decide that you are right and someone else is wrong, you immediately become righteous and stop not only learning but taking in any external feedback to the contrary. If you choose happiness, this is great news, as results and learning tend to follow that choice. Begin accounting for how you got here – to this moment, with the current results. By accounting for how you got here, you move from being a victim of circumstance to a professional who can account for the many actions and thoughts that led to the current results. Remember, Cy rocks and you rock. Lead on my friend.
Wednesday, April 14. 2010
Great song for times like these… just like reality…you can check out but you can never leave. I am hearing from quite a few leaders that reality at the figurative hotel is pretty rough these days, quite a few major blows coming your way, morale dropping, hope fading, oversight and micromanaging increasing …leadership vanishing! Yep, that is what I wrote, leadership vanishing. When the going gets tough, those of you who haven’t jumped on the Reality Leadership bandwagon respond in predictable ways, first you quit your jobs as leaders – oh you still come to work and get a paycheck – but you have quit in mind only. Then the BMW driving begins, the Bitching, Moaning and Whining, that is. You spend time and resources driving your BMW’s about how bad economy is, how hard it is to find good dedicated talent, what idiotic decisions are being made at the top, etc. Then comes the list making – documenting all of the things that would need to change in your environment for you to be able to lead again; full staffs, input into decisions, better communication, budgets restored, long term views, upswing in the economy, etc. When the list isn’t fulfilled by the reality Gods, more gas for your BMW’s and more justification to quit your people. With all your focus on your circumstances and how they need to change in order for you to be able to succeed, you begin over managing and under leading. Your people are going through the same viscous process and they are giving you their lists of what you need to do to make their circumstances better so they can give the gift of their talent. You jump in, longing to be needed and begin to act as if you can change their reality – working to manage logistics, resources, reorganizations, budgets, process improvements – all worthy work, just poorly timed. People do not need for you to “fix” their circumstances, you will only disappoint them and furnish more gas for their BMW’s anyway – they need you to “fix” the way they see their circumstances. As Einstein pointed out – a problem cannot be solved with the same mindset that created it! Reality Based Leaders faced with challenging times, Lead First and Manage Second. Leading is helping your people to recreate their mindsets so that they themselves can succeed in the current circumstances, truly solve problems and impact their own realities. Your people need you to help them to become more bullet-proof so they have the freedom to succeed, regardless of their circumstances. Stop helping them try and check out of the Hotel California when so much fun can be had while in residence! The best coaching is that which assists your people to understand their role in the process of co-creation. What one sees is truly what one gets. How? Well, how one perceives another’s actions effects their behavior towards that person which in turn effects the other’s response, usually proving one’s first view of the situation as right. People begin to see themselves as victims, not realizing their impact on the situation and then feeling as if they have been validated in their initial opinion, they become righteous. Here are some quick ways to recreate mindsets: Challenge the way in which your people are currently seeing their circumstances. Rather than seeing an event in a negative light – help them to reframe and see the situation in a more positive light. An example – reframe the viewpoint that my coworker just dumped a ton of work on my plate into, how wonderful that my coworker has such confidence in my ability to get all this done. Does it change your workload? No, but it will definitely change the conversation you initiate about the reality of what you are able to do. Insist that your people to assign positive motive rather than negative motive to the actions of their co-workers. Invite them to give their co-workers the benefit of the doubt. Help them truly understand that it is not the events or actions of others that causes the stress in their lives, it is only the stories that they create about others that causes their stress. Stop the stories, stop the stress. Help them take the energy they are tempted to spend on their stories, assigning motive and planning their next defensive move and expending it on more productive activities such as self-learning, self-mastery, innovation and finding creative ways forward. Challenge your people to find the lesson at hand and identify the teacher at hand. Rather than begrudging the fact that the universe gave them a flighty, ill-prepared and micromanaging supervisor, welcome them to their next lesson in reality which is learning to manage upward, especially when given such a supervisor. Figure out what the lesson is and get them busy mastering the next necessary competency. Outlaw the option of judging a team member. It is not our role to judge a team member, it is our role to do whatever we can to help and add value. When you judge, you quit adding value and quit learning. Encourage teammates to simply ask, “What can I do to help?” rather than using their prescious energy to judge. So, stop longing for a better reality and start capitalizing on the opportunities in this one – especially the opportunities to develop your people from BMW drivers to valuable, successful assets! Remember, Cy Rocks and You Rock, Lead on my friend!
Tuesday, March 30. 2010
Should you be asking for a raise in a down market? That depends, but not on what you may think. The market itself has nothing to do with whether or not you are worthy of a raise. That is simply the answer we give to the 75% of the employees who are undeserving for other reasons – mostly the behavior we have seen from them in challenging times. Your value as an employee is not dependent upon the economic conditions of the time; it is dependent upon the value you bring to the organization, the market value of your services and the return on investment that you deliver both economically and emotionally, today and into the future. All of these factors are within your control, not the economy’s. Even in difficult years, we in HR have a predicted amount of money that we build into the budget for compensation and pay increases. Granted the amount of the budgeted increase may be less in tough times, but is there none the same. We separate out the macro – how we are handling compensation for the entire organization from the micro – how we will use our compensation dollars to turn top talent into top productivity. Individual decisions are made within our realm while organizational decisions are usually made with our consultation by the financial or strategy leadership team and are handed down as budget assumptions. You are attempting to impact the micro level, stay away from editorializing on the macro level or fighting on behalf of employees everywhere – not our realm, don’t need more whining on the topic. When we are deciding how to use our compensation dollars and which requests from your bosses to suggest we fulfill, we look at the following things: • Your current performance – Are we getting are money’s worth for what we are paying you today? If you are just an average performer or have a “what’s in it for me” attitude, probably not. • Your value as a resource on the open market which includes the current demand for you in your current locale and is based upon real data that we collect and update in salary surveys, not your own assessment. • Your potential for future returns for the company - which is your capability to grow and develop, to play a multitude of positions, to succeed the leaders, and willingness to share information and develop others, etc. • Your flight risk – how likely it is that we would lose you and how bad that would hurt the organization. Not because you hoarded knowledge and protected your position (we see that in our HR minds as short-term pain for long term gain) but what we truly couldn’t replace such as your technical skills combined with how great you were in relating to people • Your emotional expense to the organization –beyond your pay and the return on that expense which arises from your skill set – this is how many resources we have to put into your emotional maintenance. How you react to change, do you editorialize on decisions made, do you waste time and energy complaining, do we need to constantly manage your engagement, your buy-in? Bottom line if you are a resilient, personally accountable employee who freely gives their talent to all and is willing to support the organizational direction without drama, you are a great deal. So, when asking for a raise – build your case based on our thinking, not yours, as ultimately your boss will need to get the raise approved through us in HR or through leaders that think in business ROI terms like us. So when thinking about making the ask, remember: • Do not ask for more money to ease your pains during economic tough times and do not base your argument on increased living expenses – cost of living adjustments are so yesterday. Today we pay for return on investment for the value proposition you present to the organization’s income statement and bottom line along with your potential for future returns. You are a resource – albeit a human one. • When thinking of a raise, remember, it is not about the money, it is about the value you provide the organization today and in the future. By the time you are asking for money, your value statement is on the table from your past contributions and their prediction of your future contributions. In the same day with the same shortage of dollars, I have given one employee a 12% raise and denied another employee of any raise at all for both the near and longer term. So don’t even think about consuming the precious resources it will take to get you a raise if your work of building the base of the argument is not done. When making the ask, keep in mind: • It is not about the money and this is not negotiations, or emotional blackmail between two enemies. Take that stance and forget about a raise. No martyrdom approaches about the hard work you have done in the past – we already paid for that on the agreed upon price; no personalizing the conversation – that only proves to us how emotionally expensive you are; no threats to leave us high and dry – we believe that once you threaten no amount of money can truly buy your commitment back and that may just free up some compensation dollars for others more deserving and most importantly, no assigning of motive or character about why we aren’t willing to give you a raise – that just illustrates your lack of personal accountability and ownership of your own results. • Getting a raise is not an event and is not accomplished in a one-time meeting where you make the pitch and wait nervously for a couple of weeks for the answer. Nor is it where you flavor every interaction with your boss with the topic of a raise. Act as a partner, initiating a series of conversations, the first conversations need to be ones in which you are asking sincerely what can you do to add more value or what can you change in your style and approach to be more high impact and low maintenance employee. As you deliver, begin to state your goal of increasing your compensation package and ask how you can help make that possible. If that value proposition is already clearly stated by your performance and potential, then move on to the next set of conversations. • Using the terms compensation package when you ask for a raise leaves options for your employer to tap into multiple budgets with great flexibility, which may get you more disposable income without an actual raise. Examples may include tuition reimbursement, commute dollars, parking reimbursement, car lease, or other reimbursements that can come out of the expense portion of the balance sheet rather than the compensation budget. • If the organization is truly in trouble and dollars are non-existent, suggest some things of value to you that are of little cost to the organization such as more flexibility in your work schedule, the ability to work from home, access to a mentor, greater development opportunities such as attendance at key meetings for learning purposes, or preferred status in being chosen to attend conferences or trade shows on behalf of the company - some way their investment in you and your career. • Make your case compelling and matter of fact, without personalizing the situation. This is a business deal – create a business like plan. Lay out for us your value based upon your current performance and future potential and commitment to the organization. Get creative and help us help you – if you are afraid that the dollars don’t exist today, show them how we can afford it by giving us a menu of great ideas for cost savings, only a portion of which would go to cover your requested raise. Act as a partner by letting them know that you understand the pressures they are facing and are glad to make it easy for them to find the money and compelling for them to keep you happy. • If no money exists and your are in a “turn-around or close” situation, forgo the raise and ask for a signed contract that lays out the future payoff for you in return for your investment in this crucial time for the company. Ask for a percentage of the future growth or a pay-off when some key, measurable performance indicators are met. • Invest in yourself. Don’t wait for your employer to determine your future earning potential or the fate of your career wealth. Don’t ask for your employer to work harder than you are at getting your pay increased. Downtimes are perfect times to upgrade your skill set, volunteer for cross-training, widen your experience by accepting lateral moves within the company, and enhance your value by becoming a great utility player who knows the industry and the business itself. Develop yourself with outside experiences such as key volunteer work, board involvement, continuing education. Be willing to take on additional responsibility, especially when it builds your capabilities and ultimately your resume. When the answer comes down and it isn’t everything you hoped for and nothing at all, watch your attitude! Your ability to accept reality and continue to succeed will make the loudest statement of all regarding your professionalism and emotional cost and whether or not our decision was the correct one. With no raise, you have a choice to leave or stay although it is a choice that you should never bring up in negotiations. If you stay it is your choice and do it joyfully – or leave. It is not an option to stay and pout, whine, or be a sorry loser. The organization gave you an answer for now, it is up to you to maintain your value proposition by maintaining a great attitude up to the very minute you ask again or leave the organization for a better opportunity. Should you ask for that raise? That depends, not on the economy but on you and the value you provide. But if you have been a whiny, resistant, high maintenance, emotionally expensive, woe is me, report the news, not make the news kind of employee? Forget about it! Your employer isn’t even getting their money’s worth currently let alone going to be willing to pay more for the privilege.
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