Leadership
How to avoid inspiring average
Every so often I hear a phrase so well-tuned that I say to myself, “I wish I had thought of that.” That happened a few months ago when I was talking with a leader to get his feedback on someone they previously managed.
The description of the former leader was this: they regularly “inspired his team to underperformance.”
I laughed out loud when he said that and asked him to elaborate on how that happened. The essence of his answer was that the predecessor leader didn’t set high enough expectations for his team and failed to even follow through on the low bar that he did set.
In close to 15 years of individual and group coaching, I’ve seen a lot of well-intentioned leaders who, by setting the bar too low, inspired their teams to underperformance. Either they are so nice that they fail to inspire action with low expectations. Or, they become hyper-focused on accountability and perceive everyone is taking it easy.
After facilitating countless 360 degree leadership assessments, team consulting and as a Judgment Index analyst, I’ve come to some conclusions about how leaders fail to fully leverage their teams.
Based on the patterns I’ve seen, here are three things to do if you want to stop inspiring your team to underperformance:
Connect, but inspire action. – My observation is that leadership behaviors typically fall into one of two broad categories – behaviors that drive results and behaviors that build relationships.
The best leaders, in my experience, exhibit roughly equal amounts of results-driven and relationship-building behaviors. There’s a difference between short-term nice vs. long-term nice. The short-term nice approach is to sugarcoat it for people and let them coast or drift along. The long-term nice move is to be straight up about what’s expected and coach them to get there so they grow as the organization grows.
Let Go of the Work – Another thing that leaders who inspire underperformance do is hold on to work they shouldn’t be holding on to. Some avoid overwhelming a team by holding on to work that they think is going to be too much for their team to handle. That’s almost always the wrong call. Instead of helping their team, they’re hurting them by becoming a bottleneck. The other thing that happens is by holding on to the work, they hold back their team’s development.
I’ve never heard someone say “My boss is giving us too much work.” On the other hand, I regularly see direct report comments along the lines of “My boss is holding on to things she should be giving to us and, by doing so, she’s holding us back.”
Share Perspective and Information – The best leaders inspire their team’s performance by connecting their work with the bigger goals of the organization. In doing so, they focus a lot more on the “Why” and the “What” of the work than the “How.” If you’re the leader of a team, you likely have access to information, people and conversations that your team doesn’t have. All of that shapes your perspective as a leader. That perspective is only valuable to the degree that you share that perspective with your team. I love it when I hear “My manager shares information and perspective with us that my peers on other teams don’t get from their bosses.” The people who make comments like that are on higher performing teams because they have the context and information they need to make smart decisions without having to constantly ask for permission or validation.
See anything here that could inspire and raise the performance of your team? What would you add to the list?
(New Post) Exceptional Things Can Happen with Minimal Talent
Einstein said “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
Exceptional things can happen with minimal talent.
In culture, we idolize talent, titles and temporary fame….confusing what’s exceptional with ego.
However, I’ve seen exceptional people shine when others’ have dismissed or discounted their potential.
Here are ten that have huge impact on our potential and performance:
- Be on time
- Work Ethic
- Effort
- Body Language
- Energy
- Attitude
- Passion
- Being Teachable
- Doing Extra
- Being Prepared
Real influencers are leaders before others recognize them as a “leader.“
You don’t have to have a higher degree or a large “title” to impact those around you.
A Practical Guide to Developing Millenials-Simon Sinek
Simons Sinek’s thoughts here are a great start (see below).
We live in the screen saturated culture which often distracts/or prevents some from building healthy relationships – so limiting cell phone use and teaching how to give and receive feedback are essential.
Today’s generation lacks positive leadership role models, so teaching and demonstrating leadership are huge.
What else would you add?
(New Post) Google’s Discoveries of High-Performance Teams
Google’s Project Oxygen created buzz several years ago when they concluded, after deep research, that the typical success of an individual employed at the tech juggernaut was based on Emotional Intelligence and not the assumed stellar STEM acumen (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math).
Now, its recent discovery about Team High-Performance also upended the team development paradigms through Project Aristotle. The content below was quoted from their research.
First, researchers discovered which variables were not significantly connected with team effectiveness at Google:
- Colocation of teammates (sitting together in the same office)
- Consensus-driven decision making
- Extroversion of team members
- Individual performance of team members
- Workload size
- Seniority
- Team size
- Tenure
So what was the magic sauce for High Team Performance at the Tech Giant?
If these 5 aren’t blooming on your team, first ask yourself if there are politics, egos and drama at play.
But how do you start building these into the culture of your team? They first come from the overflow of the leader- both the immediate team director and their senior leaders. You can even have a dynamic team leader, but the senior leader(s) directly affect the energy, focus and emotional energies of a department.
Do you make safe for your team to disagree? Be autonomous?
Do you model and value excellence?
Do your team members have a clear idea of their roles and goals?
Is their “why” (purpose) fueling their “what” (tasks)?
Do they keep a scoreboard showing impact?
For more info on Google’s Project Aristotle, read it’s Re-Work paper here
https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/
Vince was Right
Leaders aren’t born. They’re made.
Coach Vince Lombardi recognized the trend in high-achievers. That they worked hard, were committed, had vision and led by example. He said it best:
“Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”
But here’s the question: what happens when someone embraces the common belief that leaders are “born”instead?
This way of thinking falsely believes that:
- Leadership is now a mystical “gift” that only charismatic personality types possess
- Therefore people won’t grow to become a more effective leader…they become stuck in a “fixed” mindset
- Companies won’t invest in developing leaders because they don’t believe in it. Instead, they only focus on hiring practices to bolster leadership bench strength. But that becomes just an excuse.
But, if leaders ARE made, then leadership can be learned.
People will grow beyond their own perceived limitations.
Teams grow their own leaders. Turnover lowers. The best and brightest rise from within. And stay.
And someone chooses to become more. Because they can.
Three Words That Energize People
I recently read an interview with Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of a small electric company called General Electric.
He was asked by host Charlie Rose, “What is the most important lesson you have learned in the last ten years as the CEO of GE?”
Without hesitation Jeffrey answered.
He said, “I think it’s humility and the curiosity that comes with it. In other words, the big mistakes you make are when you stop asking questions, but if you’re hungry and humble and you are always digging for that extra piece of knowledge…that’s how the world works.”
While it is somewhat fashionable for CEO’s and thought leaders to list humility in leadership as one of the most desired qualities, I think there is a kernel of truth in it.
Here are the three powerful words that sum up this type of humility : “I Don’t Know”.
Any influencer should seek to balance the “I know” – i.e. confidence in yourself, your team, your vision – with the “I don’t know”.
The “I don’t know principle”, or humility, says this:
- I could be wrong.
- What I know is not from me.
- Where I have arrived is not because of me.
- I have been given so I can give.
- I am not better than any other human being.
- I am not invincible.
- We are all stupid, but in different things.
It’s both scary in it’s authenticity and powerful because of it’s affect on others.
That type of authenticity and humility is magnetic and pulls people together. And it builds HUGE levels of trust with others.
“I don’t know.”
So take the pressure off of yourself. We don’t need to be the the smartest person in the room.
Tap into the genius of others.
A Better You
Last week, I saw an ad for a luxury travel company. The tag line for the vacations they offer is, “Come back new.”
The promise is if you go on one of their trips, you’ll come back new.
Although I think that’s a bit of an overpromise, there’s only one word they got wrong.
The tag line should have said, “Come back you,” because ultimately that’s what we all want.
That’s why we do diets and write books and start businesses. We believe we are capable of more.
We believe that there is more to us than meets the eye. We believe that life or bad decisions have covered up a piece of us that is vital. Even if parents and friends and bosses don’t believe in us, that small voice that says “What if?” persists.
New Year’s Resolutions are often our attempt to uncover what has lain dormant and hidden for far too long. It’s our attempt to dream and do, which is perfect because there’s something you need to know.
We don’t need you to be new, we need you to be you. The world is currently short one you.
(New Post) The #1 Reason To Be a Little Weird
I’m sitting in a hotel room, traveling for some coaching appointments scheduled for tomorrow.
I bet you can’t guess what I did right before writing this?
Is your guess “lifting weights” because I’m huge? I appreciate that, but that’s not what I was doing.
Prior to sitting down to write this short blog post, I was watching clips of the best blind auditions on the show “The Voice.” (Did you know Keith Urban is a judge on the Australian version of the Voice? That felt like he was cheating on American Idol.)
Why was I doing that? Because I needed to get inspired to write.
I spent the day traveling from home to nice southern town in Kentucky…but it was a dreary, grey day and writing is the last thing I wanted to do.
So, I went to one of my standbys for a quick hit of inspiration, Voice auditions.
Is that a little weird? It is.
So is watching the, “How you do you like dem apples” scene in Good Will Hunting.
I do a lot of weird things, but here’s a secret. They work. Getting motivated isn’t a science. It’s an art, a messy art.
On any given day, there are about a billion things that can bring you down.
Quarterly taxes.
Arguing about politics.
Internet trolls.
Your bank account.
That sound your car started making that you pretended was just other cars near you but you can no longer deny it. The list goes on and on. Demotivators, not technically a word which in and of itself bums me out, don’t play fair. Why should we?
So do something weird until you get your hype back.
The truth is, it’s not weird if it works.
(New Post) Burn Out vs. Rusting Out-Either Way You’re Out
I have a friend who is about to walk away from his $100,000+ per year job.
They’re considered a successful leader. They’re team loves them….and they get phenomenal results.
The sense of mission and passion has never waned. There’s no problem being avoided.
Why are they about to call it quits?
He’s burned out. Tired. Completely drained emotionally, mentally – and it’s now affecting his close relationships.
When good people leave, I find that key decision-makers hesitate to ask the hard questions.
Instead, we make excuses vs. making changes that would have sustained good people.
Extracting value from people is often justified because there’s a fear of someone sitting idle, “Rusting Out” so to speak, and not being efficient.
Usually the opposite is the problem….the best and brightest drive themselves so hard they go past the point of no return.
The only cure for sustainability is a restoration of energy: emotionally, mentally and physically.
If you and I truly care, it requires an emphasis on driving health along with driving results.
It’s always about relationships and results. Never “Either/Or” but always “Both/And.”
What can you do to restore your own energy levels?
Chad Pfeifer 