In this and 2 remaining blog entries, I’m expanding on the “5 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” I outlined in a recent article.
This third law is a reminder that development is essential for employee growth, and for your own well-being. In other words, it’s both selfish and generous; making someone else smarter while you do less work. This is a good thing, eh?
Law #3. If you always answer employee’s every question, you’ll forever be answering employees’ every question.
Questions are teaching moments — don’t rob employees of the opportunity.
Sounds trite, and I don’t mean it to (ok, maybe I mean it to be a little trite). If an employee is asking because they’re stupid, get rid of the employee. If they are a decent employee asking because they do not know, then teach them.
Next time, they’ll know how to do it — or at least the thought process behind it — and you won’t have to. How’s that for planned efficiency??
Now, you have time to go do something important. And to answer in advance: No, answering every employee’s every question is not something important you should be doing. If you’re doing that, you may as well just do it yourself…
There’s been a lot of clamor lately about companies wasting their leadership development dollars. Many do, but that doesn’t mean leadership development is a waste of money. The simple truth is: if you’re not getting the bang for your buck, it’s because you’re doing it wrong.
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
You’re wasting your money if it’s a canned training program not integrated with your company’s mission. And developing leaders doesn’t end with an end-of-course survey.
I don’t deny you might be able to learn the what of leadership from a book or a once-and-done training program, but you can’t learn how to be a leader without practice – over time, in real life situations. Let your people try and fail. Let them articulate a vision and try to get people to follow. Encourage them to be vulnerable and more open to feedback. Hold them accountable for doing what they said they’d do.
Let them learn to lead.
You’re wasting your money if your whole senior leadership team isn’t involved. Leaders develop leaders. That’s a critical part of your job.
You should be having regular discussions about leadership with the people going through the program. Not the “how’s it going” type, but real conversations that reinforce what they’re learning and help them see from a different perspective how their actions affect their teams. Coaches can help, but it doesn’t get you out of participating.
Mentoring is key… I’ve never talked to a real leader that didn’t give credit to the person(s) who saw something developable (or salvageable) in them and set them on the leadership path. God knows I needed more than one (I’m forever thankful to Mike, Scott, and Steve for giving me the rope to hang myself but faithfully talking me off the ledge), and your senior leaders probably did, too.
You’re wasting your money and your effort if you’re not evaluating your leaders with regards to how well they’re… well… leading. You can’t know if your program is making an impact if you don’t know if your leaders are leading.
We tend to make people managers and then call them leaders, as if the two are interchangeable. We watch them manage their team, and at the end of the year we evaluate them based on how well they managed stuff. But rarely, as in almost never, do we evaluate their leadership. By the way, their teams don’t want to be managed; they want to be led.
Our government is (in)famous for this. In a recent conversation with a good friend and senior government executive, I asked how he could hold his direct reports accountable for leading their teams if there was nothing in their job descriptions about leading. You know, specific and measurable…
His answer was, sadly, he couldn’t. And didn’t.
Is your company any different?
If you support the idea that leaders can be developed and leadership outcomes can be observed, you should be able to evaluate whether the leaders you’re developing are making a difference in your organization. It’s time to own the return you get on your leadership development dollars.
Ask yourself if there’s a difference in the team’s performance. What evidence do you have? Is there a renewed sense of vision and purpose? How’s the team’s motivation? Has cohesiveness and collaboration improved? Is the leader developing and empowering the team in new ways? Do you see a difference in their interpersonal skills? What about trustworthiness and accountability?
It doesn’t have to be rocket surgery, especially since you already compare leaders using some sort of scale – everyone does (even if it’s a scale known only to them). Start there and have a conversation with your peers, your boss, and your direct reports. Decide how you’re going to evaluate leadership effectiveness and make it part of every feedback discussion you have.
So if you don’t think you’re getting your money’s worth out of your leadership development program, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater; change how you’re doing it! Make sure your program’s integrated with the company’s priorities; get – and keep – your whole leadership team in on the effort; and evaluate how well your leaders are leading.
Human Resources needs to get past this, “Do it for one, must do it for all” mentality. It’s just not true, and a lousy way to help a business succeed.
I regularly tell people this about precedents: “Yes, I’ll likely do the same thing, given the exact same circumstances, in the future.”
For example, if I allow an extra week of protected FMLA for a stellar employee in production with 6 years with the company, I may very well agree to do that same thing for the next “stellar employee in production with 6 years with the company.” Change a single parameter and the precedent doesn’t exist.
But even that isn’t the right answer, since decisions need to be made based on current business needs. I’m not trying to create a social system at work whereby all receive identical treatment. They won’t. I’ll do those things necessary, including making nondiscriminatory employment-related decisions, as the business needs dictate.
There’s all this talk about HR’s “seat at the table.” Want to get “kicked off the table” in a hurry? Adopt the inflexible, “Do for one, do for all” mindset. It has no place in business, in my opinion.
In this and 3 subsequent blog entries, I’m expanding on the “5 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” I outlined in a recent article.
The second law focuses on open communications; too often, usually in the misplaced interest of correctness or conflict-avoidance, we tap-dance around topics, subjects, and even direction. We assume — often incorrectly — that someone “knows what we mean,” though we didn’t come out and say it.
Law #2. If you want something specific done, say so specifically, using clear, plain language. Employees, generally, have some difficulty doing their basic jobs; adding “mind-reading” to their description is just plain unfair.
No hints, implications, or innuendos. Say what you want, and use English! Directness counts.
I was recently doing some coaching with a client executive who was lamenting the poor “listening skills” of his Operations VP. Seems he had told the VP that one of his director-level staffers was not fully competent, and that the VP should “do something about that person.”
3 days later, that VP fired that director. My client executive was shocked — he told me, “I told him to do something with her, you know, like coach, train, or develop. Maybe even warn her of her performance.” He said, “I didn’t tell him to fire her…”
The VP, of course, simply said, “The boss said ‘do something with her, so I did.”
“Problem fixed.”
Not really… I don’t need to tell those of you reading this the difficulty in replacing an experienced mid-level manager in a specific industry. Especially without even making an effort to change her performance or behavior in some way.
Of course, the senior executive felt his comments were sufficient… obviously, they were not. English would have prevented this misunderstanding… simply telling the VP that he should “improve her performance or behavior” would have been sufficient; perhaps even simply asking the VP what he’s done to work with the director would have jogged a reasonable conversation.
Instead, a miscommunication — caused solely by incomplete/indirect language — has created yet another “situation” at the company.
As if we didn’t already have enough to do, we go out creating challenges to deal with.
So, like the doctor when the patient says, “Doc, it hurts when I do ‘this,’ and the Doc says simply, “Stop doing that.”
Seems like I’ve talked to an awful lot of imposters lately.
Run of the mill people, important people, people who used to work for me, and people I’ve worked for. We laughed at “not getting found out” as our careers progressed up the ladder, feeling like we were faking our way through success. Classic imposter syndrome – successful from the outside looking in with a self-perception of barely-concealed incompetence from the inside looking out. (more…)
It’s been 20 years since Daniel Goldman’s book “Emotional Intelligence” was published, and interest in the subject doesn’t seem to be losing steam. There are volumes of research that link social and emotional abilities to personal success and seemingly countless self-help books on improving your EQ. A recent unscientific consultation with The Google quickly returned about 14 million hits on the subject.
Not to sound blasphemous, but emotional intelligence is just not that complicated.
Most people have way more EQ than they give themselves credit for. In fact, I’ve only met two people with really low emotional intelligence: my teenage daughter’s boyfriend and a senior government executive whose entire Johari Window is a blind spot.
Using sophisticated words to describe your EQ may make you sound sagacious at the office cocktail party, but measuring your EQ matters much less than using what you have for good instead of evil…kind of like a super power.
If the answers to any of these questions ring a bell, you probably have a higher EQ than you think:
Is it important to be aware of your emotions and how they influence interpersonal and group dynamics? Absolutely. Can I always control my emotional response because I know what pushes my buttons? Nope.
Does being able to recognize another person’s emotional state help you respond in a way that de-escalates the situation and yields a more positive outcome? Certainly. Do I occasionally pass on the opportunity to de-escalate just for the entertainment of watching a jerk lose his mind? Yep.
Can showing empathy to a frustrated co-worker turn things around and bring them back off the ledge? Almost always. Do I occasionally poke the badger because I’m tired of the whining? Guilty.
See – you don’t need to know your EQ score or fancy vernacular to know whether a response to a given situation is going to make it better or worse. But if you’re looking for the success that comes with more developed social and emotional abilities, you have to be intentional about using your EQ for good.
Look at it this way: If you’re forever finding yourself in emotionally charged or awkward exchanges, you’re either doing it on purpose, or you’re too self-absorbed to realize what’s happening until it’s too late. Either way, it’s YOU. Like my oldest daughter told me the other day, “if everything around you smells like $#!+, you should probably check your shoe.” If you’re doing it on purpose, that’s using your EQ for evil – stop it! Assuming it’s the latter, a little EQ boost is easier than you think.
Begin with some healthy introspection about your interactions with others and how you view your co-workers.
Start appreciating what your teammates are contributing, and treat them like human beings that have good days and bad days.
Look for the good in others (instead of expecting the worst), and don’t just help them because of what they can contribute to your cause, but because helping others is what we’re on the Earth for.
Good leadership creates an environment where using EQ for good comes naturally. It creates a “we” organization with people who have a shared sense of purpose. It develops people who know how to have healthy disagreements without the emotional escalation that stems from a lack of trust. It builds a culture where feedback isn’t a dirty word, and it creates teams that know success isn’t hiding behind a thin veneer of playing nice.
So, you can be content with the EQ you have, or you can read the books, attend training seminars, and take as many self-assessments (notoriously unreliable for those with low EQ) as you can stand to measure your EQ improvement. Just know that regardless of how emotionally intelligent you are, if you’re not using your “super power” for good, your organization is better off without you.
