THE 6:8 LEADER GROUP
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Leadership

Four Things You Must Get Right

Close up of men's rowing teamPat MacMillan in his book “The Performance Factor” lays out four skills needed to lead any team.  If you don’t get these right, nothing else really matters.

1. Picking Good People

You work with people the way they are, not the way you wish they were.  So you can bet, if they don’t fit now they won’t fit later.  Building a team takes time, so build in a lot of time into getting the best person fit you can.  Before you start the hiring process, know what you are looking for.  Look at past performance—it is the best predictor of future performance.

2. Setting Clear Expectations

It has been said that less than one-half of all workers claim to know what is expected of them.  ASK: “What do you think you get paid to do?”  And ask it often.

3. Recognizing Excellence and Praising It

Aubrey Daniels in “Bringing Out the Best in People” says every behavior has a consequence.  Some are good and some are bad.  We need to manage consequences.  The following maxim has been attributed to many famous people, “What gets rewarded is what gets done.”  Regardless of it’s origin, most of us know it as the Greatest Management Principle in the World and the number one reason why consequences must be managed.

4. Showing Care for Your People

Research shows that employees who feel cared about are less likely to have accidents, steal, miss work, quit, etc.  Don’t fake caring.  If you don’t care, go someplace where you can.

“The most effective way to invest your time is to identify exactly how each [team member] is different and then, as in chess, figure out how you can best incorporate these differences into your overall plan of action.”  (Marcus Buckingham)

Have Faith in Your Team

What does a real team look like?

Robert Quinn, in his book Deep Change, defines a team as “an enthusiastic set of competent people who have clearly defined roles, associated in common activity, working cohesively in trusting relationships, and exercising personal discipline and making individual sacrifices for the good of the team.”

Sadly, that is not what many of us have seen on our teams.  “What I often encounter,” Quinn continues, “is individual self-interest, anger, insecurity, distrust, little cohesion, and continuous political posturing.”  Quinn’s definition of what a team should be and his sobering reality of what a team often is, should awaken us all.  Defining a team is the easy part. Living it out is the hard part.

Quinn ends his chapter on teams with the following:  “The land of excellence is safely guarded from unworthy intruders.  At the gates stand two fearsome sentries—risk and learning. The keys to entry are faith and courage.”  Be willing to take some risks. Let every mistake be an opportunity to learn.  Have faith in the people you serve.  And have the courage to do your best and let God do the rest.

The Best Teams “Break with Tradition”

7afa8b4020fc80435ee4f959b46c81cbIf you are looking for a new way to define a team read Adhocracy by Robert Waterman, Jr.  Waterman is also the author of The Renewal Factor and is co-author of In Search of Excellence with Tom Peters.

In his book, Waterman argues for the creation of a new organizational form “that challenges the bureaucracy in order to embrace the new.”  Waterman says it can be as simple as a few people getting together to do business over a cup of coffee.  It appears most often, however, in the form of a short-term, multi-disciplinary team that can “break with tradition, cut across old boundaries, and…go after an opportunity.”

It is what Warren Bennis, in Managing the Dream, calls an “adaptive, problem-solving, temporary system of diverse specialists linked together…in an organized flux.”  When done well, these teams of varying sizes and shapes can help make change happen.  Their power comes from their ability to reach across traditional lines or organizational boundaries and bring different disciplines together to solve problems.

Being part of a high-performance team can be one of the greatest experiences you will ever have.  Being part of a floundering team can be one of the worst.  You can help make the difference for your teams through careful selection, targeted training, and appreciative management.  Don’t wait for the next great team to just happen. Help make it happen.

Any Questions?

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image23082102“In a heated argument over whether slaves have souls (the ancient Greeks believed that only smart people would have eternal life), Socrates bet a case of mead (Greek for Bud Light) that he could teach a common slave the Pythagorean theorem (the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides).  He had no overhead projector, handouts, or textbook.  He needed only two tools to teach the slave: (1) the capacity to ask questions and (2) the ability to listen carefully to the meaning behind the answer.  To this day the method behind his bold bet is memorialized as Socratic teaching.” — Chip Bell

The ability to ask good questions is one of your most valuable tools in building your team.  When you ask good questions you allow the other person to define the issue or problem for themselves and then solve the issue or problem by themselves.  Both of which are a win for you and a win for the other person.

Chip Bell offers a great model for asking questions that includes the following:

  1. Start by establishing the context (a setup statement, not a question).
  2. Ask questions that require higher level thinking.  For example, force a comparison or ask the person to “dig deep.”  It’s more than just “open” verses “closed” questions.  It’s asking questions to discover understanding.
  3. Avoid “why” questions, that tend to be seen as judgmental.  We may not know why.  (And if you already know why, then don’t ask the question in the first place.)
  4. Make it fun.  Stimulate their curiosity.

In the end, any question that can only be answered with a story is probably a good question.  Most of us hate questions, but few of us have trouble telling our own story.  After all, when you tell your story there is no wrong answer, and it doesn’t need to be memorized or rehearsed.  So, ask good questions, and then stop talking and start listen.  Your team will be glad you did.

Trust Everyone, But Cut the Cards

A friend once told me he was concerned that his boss, the CEO, was not telling the Board of Directors the truth.  That is a terrible place to be in any organization, and one I would not wish on my worst enemy.

If you are a member of the Board, how do you know your CEO is telling you the truth?

“Well,” you say, “we trust him.”  Or, “We’ve known her for a long time.”  Or, “He’s my wife’s brother.”

Really?

I believe in the power of trust, and think it is the key to great leadership, but as a Director, you are accountable to the moral ownership of the organization, and the CEO is accountable to you.

So, how do you answer the question, “How do you really know your CEO is telling you the truth?”  John Carver in Reinventing Your Board, suggests three ways a Board can acquire accountability data:

(a) by internal reports, in which the CEO discloses compliance information to the Board,

(b) by external reports, in which an external, disinterested third party selected by the Board to assess compliance with board policies, and

(c) by direct board inspection, in which a designated member or members of the Board assess compliance with the appropriate policy criteria.”

The problem with Boards is it is easy to get lazy and only look at the internal reports–a report created by or under the direction of the CEO–and not look at the external reports and direct inspection that are needed to get a true picture of the CEO’s performance in achieving the “Ends” of the organization.

Carver reminds us that the “Board members and CEO are colleagues.”  The relationship is “collegial, not hierarchical.”  However, the Board’s desires must be clear, and the CEO response must be in compliance with those desires.  Both have a job to do and need to be “personally responsible” for the job they do.

They also need to be “cumulatively responsible,” or as Carver puts it, “accountable for the total contribution and compliance of his or her team, however extensive that team might be.”  How will you know if the CEO is accountable? Start using your entire accountability toolkit: internal reports, external reports, and direct inspection.

No Trust. No Team.

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image21017924We trust people when we are comfortable with how they respond to others and how they do their job.  Its is the blending of competence with character.  But it isn’t as simple as trusting and not trusting.  It is also how much we trust.  You see, there are some people we trust a little and only in certain situations.  There are other people we trust a lot, any where and any time.  The goal on a team is to develop a lot of trust not just a little.

Here are four things that contribute to high trust:

1. High trust means we understand one another’s job and potential contribution.  To trust a lot we need to take time to get to know one another.

2. High trust means we accept or approve of someone, even though that person may be very unlike us.  It only comes from shared experiences, a sense of mission, and success.

3. High trust means we respect others and show no partiality for one person’s role over that of another.  It means we show honor and esteem for the contributions of others.

4. High trust means we listen and respond to one another.  Don’t bully and don’t ignore.  Neither will get you what you want.

I’ve adapted the following from “The Performance Factor” by Pat MacMillan to show how everything the leader does is critical to building a trusting team.  Pat identified six keys to building a high performance team.  Each one impacts the amount of trust expressed on a team.  What Pat calls cooperation, I call trust.

1.Common purpose provided the reason for trust.

2.  Clear roles provide the strategy for trust.

3. Accepted leadership provides the structure for trust.

4. Effective processes provides the methods for trust.

5. Solid relationships provide the climate for trust.

6. Excellent communications provided the means for trust.

What you do as a leader, impacts your team.  And it can build the kind of trust others will envy.

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