This is a subject that generally scares people.  FEEDBACK!!!  “How do I tell someone when they are not performing up to my expectations?”  “I hate filling out performance evaluations.”  “I hate annual review discussions”.  The whole subject is fraught with negatives, and it doesn’t need to be.  Feedback must be given…it is so critically important to getting good results.

You achieve better results by giving people positive feedback about what they are doing right than by only giving them feedback about what they are doing wrong, or no feedback whatsoever.

One of the reasons people have trouble giving feedback is because they only focus on discussing the negatives.  Many people assume that giving feedback means telling people when they are doing something wrong; transmitting negative information that people will be upset about receiving.  It shouldn’t be that way!

Someone once said that you get a lot more mileage out of telling people when they are doing something right than only telling them when they are doing something wrong.  Think about it.  There must be a hundred ways to perform a task incorrectly, and only one way, or a few ways, of doing it correctly.  So, if you are only telling people when they are doing it incorrectly, then they are getting little, or no, information about how to do it correctly.  Absent any other feedback they will experiment with many ways, which may be wrong, while hoping to stumble upon that one way which really accomplishes the task.  What an unproductive use of time!!!

There is an activity I once saw conducted along these lines.  It demonstrated the point quite well.  A group was divided into two sub-groups…team A and team B.  The task was for each group to blindfold each member of their team, one at a time, and have that person walk across the room and try to put a sticker on a target which was hanging on the wall.  Each team would blindfold their contestant, spin them around a few times, and aim them in the general direction of the target.  Team A could give NO feedback to their team member who was walking across the room trying to figure out where the target might be.  Team B was to clap when their member was going in the RIGHT direction, and make no noise when they were going in the wrong direction.  As you would expect, the stickers from team B were very close to the target while the stickers from team A were all over the wall.

The point was clear.  You achieve better results by giving people positive feedback about what they are doing right than by only giving them feedback about what they are doing wrong, or no feedback whatsoever.

I have tried to make giving feedback a habit of this in my personal life as well as my professional life.  With my children I find it does a lot of good for their self-esteem to get messages about things that they are doing right, even if it is about things that I imagine to be small things.  With employees, I find that it is not only a way to ensure the results you seek, it is motivating for them.  Feedback, in these cases, is recognition.  Recognition means that they are of value to you.  Being of value satisfies a core need that we all have.

Bottom line is that I try to spend as much time giving positive feedback as I do giving “constructive” feedback…actually, even more.  When you focus on the positives, everyone feels good about it.  It contributes to a positive attitude in the workplace.  It contributes to continued good performance.  Unfortunately, the fact that people are often surprised to get good feedback is a sad commentary on what people have come to expect in the workplace.  It reflects that we have gotten in the habit of focusing on only the negatives in giving feedback and managing performance; that punishment is seen as a primary motivator in leading teams.

Oh well, the next minute is the first minute of the rest of your life.  It may be time to chart a new course.

Heard this one the other day…I thought it showed great poise.

Terry Francona…Manager of the Boston Red Sox was being questioned by the media about the batting slump that David Ortiz was experiencing for the first few weeks of the season.  Is he over the hill?  Has he lost it?  Should he be replaced?  How long will you wait before changing him out for someone else?  How do you plan to react?

He replied, “You can’t react to everything”.  The implication was right on.  As  a leader, you can’t react to everything.  Sometimes you have to let things play themselves out a bit before jumping in and taking action.  Immediately acting on everything raises the level of pressure on the situation, and creates an atmosphere in which everything becomes a crisis.  It creates a level of stress which inhibits everyones ability to perform effectively.

By letting things play out a bit you show poise and calm, which is so needed by your constituents…in this case the other team members, the fans, and the owners.  You demonstrate that the situation may not require intervention at this moment.  You diffuse the pressure.  You make it clear that you are aware of the situation, the implications, and that you have it under control.  It is critical to your constituents that they know you are in control of the situation.

In this situation Terry Francona was absolutely right.  David Ortiz is a pro.  He, like any other professional athlete, will have slumps and hot streaks.  If he were to have gotten all excited about this situation it would have made the situation worse.  It would have put extra pressure on Ortiz to resolve his problems, and it would have demonstrated to the team that they had better not go into a slump, or they would come under the same kind of scrutiny.  That would negatively affect the performance of the team.

What Terry Francona did not only silenced the media and took the pressure off Ortiz, he protected the core of the rest of the team and the organization from the same kind of pressure…a great leadership response on his part. 

The result of Terry Francona’s leadership was exactly as one would expect…Ortiz did come out of his slump in grand fashion and has been on a hot streak for the past several weeks.  Now, one could say that Ortiz would have come out of his slump anyway, which is certainly true.  But, the bigger effect of his actions is in how the rest of the team, the fans, and the ownership respond to his ability to manage the media and public scrutiny of their performance. He minimized the effect that external inluences could have on the performance of the team.

(By the way…I am to be congratulated on my objectivity in this post since I am a die hard Yankee fan.)

I like this quote because it speaks to “how” you get things done as a leader, more so than ”what” you get done.  To me, the “how” has a greater affect on your ability to sustain organizational performance than it does on achieving a short term result because it defines an approach which, if reflective of your style and attitude, is representative of how you will do things in the future.  It is therefore also reflective of the results you will continue to achieve.

The quote goes:

“Being successful as a leader does not mean having all the answers, it means getting them.”

This quote speaks to knowing the strengths of your team and being able to access their knowledge and expertise for the use and benefit of the entire organization.  By doing so you leverage your own strengths and abilities, and you exponentially increase the results your organization can achieve. 

This aspect of leadership requires having the right processes and mechanisms in place…something we discussed in the post on leadership as being a process rather than a set of skills http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=63

It also implies a strong degree of empowerment in your workforce which enables people to draw on their own creativity and motivations to excell in their work and bring all their skills and abilities to performing their daily taks.  This is a big subject and one which I really want to get into.  It has many sub-parts which must work together to be successful.  It combines aspects of several posts I have done recently, and will be a nice assimilation of the thoughts in each…showing how it all ties together.  That has to be a subject for another post.

This is the last segment in the series on Common Mistakes made by leaders, in which I have been summarizing responses from readers.  This issue focuses on the impact of EGO on leadership behavior.  For this issue I interviewed Dr. Timothy Gilmor, a Psychologist in Toronto, Canada, with Gilmor Associates, who focuses on executive assessment and development, website www.gilmorassociates.ca

The comments I received from readers about the role that EGO plays in dysfunctional leadership behavior were focused on a leader’s ambitions for themselves, the effect that those ambitions have on their decision-making, and the de-motivating effect they have on the people in the organization. 

To start, Dr. Gilmor gave me a bit of an education on the subject and pointed out that EGO is not the issue here, it is the maturity of the EGO that must be understood.  He described the mature EGO as an enlightened EGO, one that is grounded in confidence and strong self-esteem.

Surprisingly, those leaders whose motivations are based in self-advancement do not seem to be aware that many people around them recognize their actions as being for their own benefit.

He elaborated by saying that a common trait among leaders is that they are people who are attracted to positions of power.  There is nothing wrong with that; it is part of the make-up of leaders.  A strong EGO is a sign of an individual who is striving and ambitious, and that is an important element of being successful as a leader.  Those individuals with strong EGOs will often rise to the top of organizations.  It is the maturity of their EGO that defines whether that pursuit is intended for exploitation and self-aggrandizement, or for the greater good of all involved.

Unfortunately, I think (and this is ME speaking, not Dr. Gilmor) that the term EGO gets a bad rap and is generally used to describe the behavior of people in hot pursuit of their own advancement.  Conversely, if I understand what Dr. Gilmor is saying, a strong sense of philanthropy is also a reflection of the EGO at work…in this case, an enlightened EGO.

Dr. Gilmor went on to say that today fewer leaders have a value of the greater good as a backdrop for their actions.  The desire to prove “ONESELF” has become strongly rooted in our culture and the desire to do good for all is no longer stressed.   Our society has become more about “ME”.  As a result, decisions are often made with self-advancement as a primary driver. 

Surprisingly, those leaders whose motivations are based in self-advancement do not seem to be aware that many people around them see through their feigned interests of “doing what’s in the best interest of the organization” and recognize their actions as being for their own benefit.

How do you recognize people with a less enlightened ego?  The alienating quality of the less enlightened ego depreciates you and makes you feel badly.  Ask yourself, does this person leave me with good, mixed or bad feelings?  In a hiring situation be attentive to how a person makes you feel.  Be aware of their interests.  Are they focused on what they can get for themselves, or are they more interested in what they can contribute to the organization?

What leads to a less enlightened EGO versus an enlightened EGO?  A less enlightened EGO has suffered from deprivation in life, mistreatment, and a lack of introspection.  Those individuals become fixated on power to enrich themselves.  The need for potency and power trumps all else and results in behavior that is damaging to others and organizations.

An enlightened EGO grows from self-awareness, and learning from experience.  Diverse experiences, both painful and not, influences of childhood, role models, care and security play a role in shaping the degree to which one’s EGO is enlightened. 

Leaders who are motivated by the “good of the many” accept responsibility for their organizations and people rather than finding blame and fault.  They make you feel uplifted, safe, loyal and ready to support.  These are signs of an enlightened ego.  Sounds like the type of leader Jim Collins describes in his book “Good to Great”.

What I often hear, and often think, is that behavior of the less enlightened EGO seems about as obvious as the nose on my face.  We all seem to know the people that behave in this way.  How is it that they seem to continually move up in organizations and stay in positions of power despite the problems that ensue from their actions?

The answer is in adaptive and deceptive behavior.  They learn what needs to be said to their superiors to maintain the veil of “enlightenment”.  They learn how to manage information to protect their turf.  They learn how to avoid responsibility for results.  And, they learn how to “take out” those that stand in the way of them gaining power.  People we often describe as scary!

It sounds to me as if the hardest part of this issue, for those of us with the “good of the many” perspective, is to be able take the responsibility to look at ourselves and our actions, and decide if they are intended for exploitation, or for the good of all.  Having said that, if we are well grounded enough to be able to honestly challenge our own motivations, then we probably don’t need to.

The third most common leadership mistake that survey responders identified was in setting direction.  They identified three sub-sets of that issue:

1. Poorly set goals – incomplete and unrealistic.
2. Constantly moving expectations and targets. 
3. Poor communications about goals – clarity at all levels.

The aspect of goals being INCOMPLETE was covered in the post about involving the right people in accumulating data and drawing conclusions from that data, so I am not going to repeat that.  If you are interested, you can find more information on this link… http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=300

The aspect of plans being unrealistic is an interesting and frustrating one.  I am sure that we have all been in the situation in which we have developed a plan for our business or department only to find that our goals have been arbitrarily increased to some higher level in order to motivate the organization to achieve higher levels of performance.  The assumption seems to be that an organization can always stretch and achieve more.  I have to say that I agree that there is usually some degree of stretch that can be achieved by pushing your organization, and good leaders will push to find that right level.  However, the problem I have also observed is that leaders rarely push to find that RIGHT LEVEL.  They often set a goal and do not challenge and debate with their key team members to see if, in fact, that goal is achievable.  Often, they are not. 

The downsides of setting unachievable goals are significant.  They create expectations among owners/shareholders/Boards that damage your credibility as a leader and the viability of the business when they are not achieved.  Further, they damage your credibility as a leader within your organization because people interpret those goals as meaning that either you do not understand the business, have another agenda that is not necessarily in the overall interest of the business, or do not respect the people that have to deliver on those goals.  Consequently, the people in your organization will be demotivated by unrealistic goals and you will have the opposite effect than that which you intended.  Worse, you will have lost credibility in the process and future efforts to set goals will be received with skepticism.

Second, constantly moving targets is a frequent problem as well.  I am not going to spend a lot of time digging into this problem because I think the uncertainty it creates, and the damage to credibility that ensues, does not require elaboration.

Without clarity, business plans are just words which most people do not really understand and cannot apply.

Finally, a very common failure in setting direction, and one which is so easily corrected, is driving the plan and tactics down to the lowest level in the organization.  It is rare when leaders layout a plan for the organization and then develop the details of that plan down to the lowest level to instruct everyone about THEIR role in helping to execute it.  Therein lies one of the main shortfalls in plan execution.  It seems simple enough, and it is.  Leaders need to make sure that plans are cascaded to all levels in the organization and defined for all levels of employees so that they are clear about what the plan means in terms of their daily activites.  When I do quarterly Town Hall meetings I reiterate the plan every time, and I talk about what that plan means in terms of daily activities for the people who are actually doing the work.  You would not think it necessary to do that.  You would think that people can make that jump themselves.  But, often they cannot. 

Try this sometime.  After communicating your plan to the organization, pull a small sampling of people aside and ask them what they must do to contribute to achieving that plan.  You will likely find a high degree of uncertainty about how to make it happen.  Now, imagine all those people heading back to their workplaces and their day to day activities.  Do you think that they will be contributing to meeting those goals?  Not likely.  Without that clarity, those plans are just words which most people really do not understand and cannot apply.

LACK OF LISTENING (continued)…

As you may recall, the last post on this subject was getting a bit long, so I cut it off.  Continuing then…

The other aspect of listening that readers were referring to was that leaders do not involve the right people in accumulating the information they need to make decisions.   Further, they hear the information given to them through “frames” (perspectives/paradigms) which color their understanding and use of that information.

First, we have to be realistic about the fact that leaders find themselves in “decision mode” most of the time.  The pressure is on them all day long to accumulate relevant information and make decisions.  To complicate things, time is usually of the essence.  The idea of opening up decision processes for outside input is not appealing because (1) it slows the process down, and (2) it tends to open the door for new information which may not be readily understood and which will require time-consuming analyses to understand.  Both of these issues fly in the face of “time being of the essence”.

…effective listening require “openness”; openness to involving other people, and openness to incorporating new information.

It is essential that leaders recognize that good processes yield good results.  They should resist the temptation to come to quick conclusions simply in the interest of making a decision and moving forward.  They must take the time to do a thorough job of accumulating and evaluating all the relevant information.  I go into this in more detail in my post on Organization Failure http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=200

Second, good process means involving the right people.  For every decision that must be made there are stakeholders; people who have a stake in the decision; people who will be affected by the decision.  Involving these people in the decision process increases the likelihood that you will have all the information available to make the decision.  Furthermore, if your process for involving these stakeholders truly incorporates their input, you increase the probability that they will support the decision and assist in executing it.

Finally, I often find that people are not really open to new information.  Leaders often feel that it is their job to have the answers, and anything less is a failure on their part.  New information means something that they have not thought of, and many leaders cannot accept that or let it be known.  It is too bad because they put a lot of unnecessary pressure on themselves.  As Lee Iacocca says in his book “Where Have All The Leaders Gone”, business today is far too complicated and moving too fast for any one individual to have all the answers.  Utilizing processes of involving other people in key decisions not only alleviates that pressure, but it yields better results. 

However, new information means that leaders have to recalibrate their thinking and examine decisions from new perspectives.  Most leaders do not want to do that.  It takes more time and requires more work.  It is not that they are not interested in doing the job well, it is that they feel a sense of urgency in getting to closure and do not want to take a step back.  Their interest in getting to closure makes them move past new information that could be useful.  For me, I have found that my worst decisions happen at times when I fail to control my need for reaching closure.

These aspects of listening require “openness”; openness to involving other people, and openness to incorporating new information. 

These facets, of what is becoming known as “co-creation” in leadership, also deal with elements of managing one’s EGO.  This will be the subject for post #4 on leadership mistakes.  It is a big subject and one which will require expert opinion.  Stay tuned.

LACK OF LISTENING…

Sound familiar?  Yeah!  These comments actually had a couple of different twists.  Most of them were about listening to employees, and that connects to the last post about “taking employees for granted”.  Others talked about listening to customers, and I was happy to see that constituency spoken for.

…when people take the time to talk to you, it is important to them that you hear what they are saying.

Regarding the employees, there were a couple of distinctions even within that group of comments.  The first dealt with what I would call passive listening in which a leader is the recipient of unrequested information.  The leader has not asked a question, has not sought input, and has not solicited feedback at all, but information is being provided and not heard.  These types of situations exist all the time.  You end up in casual discussions, employees make comments, ask questions, or act in a way that sends a message.  The feedback from this survey is that leaders often do not hear those messages.  I suspect that in these types of cases they are not even conscious that messages are out there.  While I don’t know this for a fact, I suspect that if they are not asking for information, they are probably not in a receiving mode for information either, and so they are not hearing it.  Still, a missed opportunity for any leader!

As a leader, how do you get conscious of that?  You have to train yourself.  You have to recognize that when people take the time to talk to you, it is important to them that you hear what they are saying.  You have to train yourself to stop what is going on inside your head and listen.  I have found, though, that there are times when I simply cannot do that.  That’s okay.  A leader’s life is busy and there are urgent issues to which you must attend.  At those times I try to think to tell the person that I have other pressing issues on my mind and simply cannot take the time to listen that I should.  Then I ask if we can talk at a later date.  This is quite an acceptable approach.  People feel that you value their opinion enough to say that you cannot devote the attention right now as you would like, but that you are willing to speak at another time.  They feel heard, but, more importantly, they feel valued.  Unfortunately, I have to admit that there are many times that I do not think to do this, but I am trying to get better at it.

I had an interesting experience last year which might shed some light on this.  I was at the annual reunion for the Doolittle Raiders…the “boys” who flew a suicide mission to bomb Tokyo in April of 1942 in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor.  They knew at the start of the mission that would not have enough fuel to return to the aircraft carriers from which they had taken off, and that they would have to crash land in China and hope that they would be rescued by the Chinese army and not captured by the Japanese army.  

Nine of the original eighty pilots are still alive (in their late 80’s and early 90’s) and four attended the reunion.  They all spoke about what a great leader Jimmy Doolittle was.  I got the chance to speak with each of them, and some of the widows that were there as well.  I asked them what made him such a good leader.  The most frequent answer they gave was that he was a good listener.  They said that “when you spoke with him it was as if you were the only person on the planet.  You could be in the middle of a party and his attention would be totally on you and what you were saying.  He didn’t look at his watch, he didn’t glance around the room, he didn’t nod and walk away.  It was you and him.  What you were saying was all that mattered to him at that moment.  Generally, it was only for a moment…but for that moment he was yours.”

Personally, I think there is an element in this that also speaks to caring about what other people are saying.  That is an element of one of the other subjects people brought up in this survey which will be included in the last post on the question of leadership mistakes…post #4…to come.

As an aside, I think that listening is an element of what people are referring to when they say that a person has charisma.  I wrote a post on charisma a while back…one of my favorites.  Here is the link http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=39

This post is getting a little long and is a lot to think about, so I will stop here and add the rest on another post.

First, I want to thank everyone for their responses to my question about the most common mistakes leaders make.  I cannot say that I got enough responses to make the conclusions statistically significant, however, there were some consistent messages and some interesting points to think about.  There were several themes, so I am going to take them one at a time and do one post on each.

Here is one subject that I found particularly interesting.  There were numerous responses all along the same line.  Leaders tend to take employees opinions for granted.  They do not seem to pay enough attention to how employees interpret and react to their decisions and actions.  Leaders do not seem to realize that employees are watching them all the time and forming opinions about them based on their decisions, actions and attitudes.  And, those opinions have a direct effect on their motivation and performance.

Wow!  How true.  Think about that.  Everything you do, as a leader, is being watched and analyzed far more than you would imagine.  The interpretations people make of what they see has a direct impact on what they think of you and, more importantly, on their motivation.  To make matters worse, many employees will be drawing those conclusions without having complete knowledge of all the issues you are dealing with and the complexities of them.  Their conclusions are likely to be founded on some inaccurate assumptions.  It puts a lot of pressure on you to be aware at all times of how your actions are being perceived and interpreted…and managing that.

The areas identified as those in which employees tend to be most critical are ethics and accountability…and these are fundamental to trust.  If they do not see you taking responsibility for the performance of the organization, they will not trust you.  If they see anything that causes them to question your ethics, they will not trust you.  If they interpret your actions as being motivated by a personal agenda or self-interest, they will not trust you.  Without their trust you will not gain their commitment to you as the leader and to the goals and objectives of the business.  You will not get the best that they have to offer in terms of their performance – not just in the conduct of their daily tasks, but in terms of their creativity, innovation, and initiative.  What a loss!

My conclusion is that this group of comments focuses on trust, and that among the most common mistakes leaders make are: (1) failing to recognize the importance of trust, the fragility of it, and the tenuous nature of it, and (2) failing to take the appropriate steps to build it and maintain it. 

Lots to learn from that.  Put yourself in the shoes of your employees and recall how your commitment, motivation and performance wane when you lose trust.

As an aside…I have spoken to a former professor of mine who spent many years teaching Ethics.  I am going to try to interview him for a more complete perspective on the whole subject.  Another post…

I have been getting a lot of questions from seminar participants about what I think are the most common mistakes that leaders make.  I certainly have an opinion on this, but I would like to be able to give a response which captures the thoughts and ideas of many leaders.

Please take a moment to send me your thoughts.  I will compile the data and do a post on it.

Thanks.

In recent weeks I have been asked the question several times, “How do you take your corporate strategic plan and make it actionable for everyone in the organization?”

Great question.  One that all leaders need to think about.  This is a challenge that many leaders do not even recognize is facing them.  Unfortunately, it is also one at which we fail on a regular basis.  Without motivating and mobilizing everyone in the organization in the same direction, you are unlikely to achieve the results you desire.

First, I have to clarify one thing.  The failure to move plans to action is rarely one which applies across the entire organization.  The plan tends to take hold in one form or another in many places.  The problem is that it is rarely a consistently applied and orchestrated effort.  Our direct reports tend to understand the plans we are making and the direction we are taking because in most cases they have been involved in the discussions which have led to the decisions in question.  However, other employees may not.  This is where leaders often fail.  They fail to recognize that they must drive the effort to understand the direction and take action at all levels in the organization.

…most employees do not understand what strategic plans mean in terms of day-to-day actions for them.

The disconnects emerge and get worse the further the employees are removed from that decision-making level.  Unfortunately, the people who will be most critical in accomplishing the tasks you have defined are often those that are furthest from that decision-making level…the shop floor, if you will.  The cascade of information to all levels is generally not managed and monitored well.  The message received at shop floor level is often muddled at best. 

The problem is that leaders often feel that publishing the vision and a few strategies on the corporate website, announcing them in town hall meetings, or hanging posters of them in the lobby is enough.  It isn’t.  You, as the leader, have to understand that many people just will not get it as you intend.  They are not as familiar with the issues facing the organization as you are.  They do not deal with those issues every day so they do not see how those issues evolve, develop and change.  They do not discuss them with experts and colleagues inside and outside the organization to study, dissect and analyze them as you do. 

What they hear from you is the summation of a lot of thinking and analysis.  They hear the end result of all that analysis; they hear a conclusion and do not see all the steps that went into getting to that conclusion; they have not been involved in all the discussions and cannot make the jump from issue to answer.  They do not understand what those strategic plans mean in terms of day-to-day actions for them. 

In motivating a workforce one of the basic elements is clarity.  People are motivated simply by being clear on what is expected of them.  In this case what they want to know is “What does this mean for me?  What is required of me?  What can I do to help?”  They do not have any idea how to take that vision, strategy or plan and put it into practice every day.

I make it a point to conduct regular town hall meetings at every site in my organization.  At those meetings I remind everyone of the direction in which we are going as an organization, and I explain to them what it means.  I tell them what actions we will take to get there.  Most importantly, I tell them what it means that THEY must do every day to contribute to achieving that goal.  I make it a point to put it in terms that are relevant to the tasks they perform every day.  As I walk around the organization I make it a point to talk with the employees at all levels and ask them how are they applying our strategies in their everyday work.  Those discussions always lead to clarifying questions and a better idea of how they can do their jobs in a way that better supports our strategic direction.

As an example, if we are pushing hard on distinguishing ourselves on customer service, I will tell them that this means that they must look at every type of situation in which they come in contact with the customer, get a clear understanding of what the customer needs from them in that situation, and make it a point to meet that need.  In our business it can be something as simple as having a human being answer the call rather than a machine…ensuring that the reports we send arrive on a timely basis…being polite and helpful on the call.

Finally, to ensure that the plans are completely put into action, the direction must be reinforced regularly.  The daily demands in the workplace make it difficult for any of us to keep those priorities clear and actionable.  The cascade of direction and information from the top has to be accompanied by periodic assessment and feedback on how we are doing with it…Where is it working?…Where is it not working?…How do we keep it on track? 

It requires leadership making it important.