Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
— Aristotle
This is Part 2 of a 2-Part series
It’s interesting… this 2-part series has just ten client lessons learned from 2021. I could double that number with little effort. Helping and watching clients grow, learn and succeed creates an incredible learning environment for me.
In Part 1, I remarked on the following lessons learned:
1. Culture is everything.
2. Intellect, purpose, and leadership are key.
3. Metrics without a system are meaningless.
4. High functioning teams disagree.
5. Low-hanging fruit creates early wins; allow grace with future misses and missteps.
Part two has another five lessons, all picked up as I work with, observe and assist clients. These are a bit more personal, and deal with our actionable behaviors.
Some are simple lessons that just needed reminding, others are breakthrough processes, at least for that particular executive or team. Let’s get started…
6. Before any reaction from a leader, always ask “to what end?” Zig Ziglar once
Our goal in any situation, especially when emotions are starting to become a key part of every conversation, should be to attain the best available result (note I did not say simply “best result) while maintaining our credibility, the mutual respect of all parties and the longer-term relationship. Let’s unpack this a bit…
“The world is watching,” a phrase first used as part of the civil-rights movement in the 1950s, is instructive here. People are watching how we deal with the totality of the situation. It’s not enough to be right; those around us keeping an eyeball on our actions also want us to do right.
Why fire someone when you can let them resign? (There are exceptions to this, but few)
Do I really need that apology?
Am I forcing a decision that doesn’t need forcing?
Do I want to win, or do I want to change someone’s behavior? (Ask yourself this one a lot)
To what end? is a great question to ask as you feel yourself being sucked into the quagmire of tit-for-tat and one-upmanship.
Don’t go there. Stay on the high road. Keep your leadership behavior elevated and maintain your presence and credibility. You can actually win big by allowing someone else to enjoy a small victory of their own.
7. Poor communication can defeat effective leadership. Announcements, follow-ups, rules changes. Messaging is one of the more important parts of leadership, particularly at the senior-team level. It does us no good to do great things and then screw it up with the delivery.
In messaging to teams, large and small, plan, prepare and rehearse. Don’t try to use a simple message to also “remind everyone to sign up for…” or other such nonsense. Keep focused on the issue; short, direct and positive.
Put on your cynic hat and ask yourself how someone could object to the message or messaging and be prepared to adequately address those objections.
We frequently manage to irritate people with little effort on our part. Let’s not add insult to injury by irritating them when making an otherwise-positive announcement.
8. If you are forever saying “I don’t have time,” you’re likely in over your head. The
When an employee sticks their head in your office and says, “I know you’re busy, but do you have a minute?” They are actually telling you that you seem too busy for them, meaning their interruption was all that much more difficult (I’m not talking about jaw-jackin’ John who drops in several times each day just to waste time – that’s for another article on another day).
One of the key behaviors of those demonstrating real executive presence is the appearance that they have ample time to invest whenever necessary. Those with presence don’t seem to be spastic and harried all day, a slave to both their calendar and current raging fires.
They seem calm and in control and are masters of their time. They seldom, if ever, offer “I don’t have the time” as an excuse, nor do they appear too busy to have that discussion.
Did I mention they seem clearly in control?
9. If you’re planning to grow, but not building your bench, you’re planning to fail. Most fast-growth efforts become stymied from lack of leadership, not resources.
The plans… they are a-flyin’.
Capital dollars resourced? Check.
Recruitment plan? Check.
Facility preparations? Check.
Leadership bench availability? Nah, we’ll wing it.
Wait… what??
If you believe your plans – those 3-ring binders represented by endless slide decks – why the hell aren’t you planning for your growing leadership needs? Think you’ll just wish hard, rub the lamp, click your heels together and boom! Leaders everywhere, all ready to get to work and manage your newfound, hard-fought growth?
News flash, Einstein. Not gonna happen.
Plan for growth by building your bench. If we develop existing and potential leaders for potential growth, there’s no downside. Either we need them and promote them, or we have better trained leaders in existing roles.
Hard to see a downside here. Planning includes leadership planning.
10. Grace and accountability can coexist. You may have heard before, but my most successful clients continue to reinforce the concept.
This has turned in to my mantra of sorts.
This whole bit about how holding others (and ourselves) accountable is mean-spirited or somehow offensive needs to go the way of the $1 cup o’joe. It just ain’t so. At least, it doesn’t have to be so.
This is the crux of the matter. Holding ourselves accountable isn’t narcissistic, it’s just pulling our weight.
Expecting accountability from others isn’t aggressive or forward, it’s compassionate, caring and kind. It’s knowing that we all do better when we expect the best from everyone.
Demonstrable empathy is a true example of successful leadership.
Empathy, at its core, is putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they must be feeling; taking it further, empathy includes caring for other people and having a real desire to help them. And one of the best ways to pull that off in leadership is to be clear with expectations, vicious about providing resources and support, then creating the environment where we hold each other accountable for achieving what we set out to do.
Our ultimate goal is to help each other – to steal from Army recruiting – Be all we can
For a leader, it means bringing kindness, empathy, and respect; It means using those as levers to help others succeed, to grow and Improve.
Grace means courteous good will. Sometimes even unmerited assistance.
Accountability means personal ownership of a specific expectation or result.
Grace and accountability can coexist.
