Ann Tardy, Author at MentorLead

[Flash] Big-Picture Leadership (thanks Thasunda Brown Duckett!)

Leaders often grumble that their people are not making big-picture decisions.

Understandable. Research shows that people make the most efficient decisions when looking at the big picture.

But the brain doesn’t distinguish between big picture and small picture.

It is busy processing the influx of daily data to predict what might happen next and then prepare the body accordingly to keep it alive and well. Safety is a top priority.

Not surprisingly, big-picture decisions are easier when the brain feels safe, ready to wade into unpredictable territory, like contemplating greater impact.

Researchers have noted that safety occurs when people experience psychological distance, for example, exploring a situation from the perspective of a future timeframe or a hypothetical. And in theory, that does sound safe and even amusing.

Practically speaking, however, people often operate in chaos without the luxury of future timeframes and concocted hypotheticals.

But there’s an uplifting alternative: connection.

In an interview with The New York Times, banking executive Thasunda Brown Duckett shared this story.

When Thasunda was named CEO of Chase Auto Finance at JP Morgan, she headed straight to the mailroom.

She said, “Keep doing your job with excellence. If you don’t put that payment in the right chute, and it accidentally goes to mortgage, then the customer doesn’t post on time, they’re upset, and they end up closing their account with us.

“You start this entire process. So, when you hear me talk about our customer experience having improved, brush your shoulders off.” In other words, be proud.

They must have been standing tall when they responded, “You know we got you.”

Thasunda connected the actions of the mailroom employees with Chase’s commitment to customer experience. She didn’t just implore this team to “think big picture!” She figuratively drew a line for them between their job of sorting mail and the satisfaction of Chase customers.

She not only created safety; she created importance. She emboldened the mailroom employees to feel the significance of their seemingly small actions.

That’s big-picture leadership.

[Flash] Get Stronger by Getting Stronger (thanks Tunde!)

Not surprisingly, “resilience” has been a hot webinar topic this past year.

Naturally, people clamor for strategies to survive their hardships and alleviate their frustrations. And the adversity of the pandemic merely exacerbated the conversation.

But resilience is not about survival. Resilience happens when we transform through a situation, not when we endure or avoid it.

Resilience is indifferent to circumstances and distress: it cares only about your next move.

One of my favorite Peloton instructors, Tunde Oyeneyin, announced during a workout yesterday, “The pain you feel right now will show up as strength tomorrow.”

And Buddha taught, “Life is suffering.”

Although they sound despondent, these pronouncements teem with potential! For it’s impossible to stretch, strengthen, and sprout when life is effortless. (How much growth have you experienced on vacation basking in the sun, reading a trashy novel, drinking a margarita by the pool?)

Understandably, great bosses and meaningful mentors are careful not to save their people from suffering. Instead, they intentionally challenge people to explore and progress. Because that’s how muscles grow; that’s how confidence blossoms; that’s how leaders emerge.

Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.” (and that was centuries before social media!)

Again, potential disguised as despair.

Mean people offer us exceptional moments to improve our discernment, our emotional intelligence, our patience, our empathy, our humanity, and our power to be decent in the face of indecency.

Nasty people like nasty circumstances are inevitable.

Instead of trying to temper the dreadful, eagerly embrace the opportunity to augment your skills and grow forward!

You’re going to be a bigger, better, bolder version of yourself… because you evolved through it instead of escaped from it.

Tunde also likes to tease, “You get stronger by getting stronger.”

That’s resilience.

[Flash] Don’t Just Be Happy. Be Useful.

I drafted a midpoint survey for a mentoring program and included this question: “Have you accomplished your goal?”

While reviewing the survey, the program leader asked, “What if they don’t have a goal?”

I replied, “Then, they wouldn’t be in the mentoring program.”

People don’t join mentoring programs because they’re bored or need new friends. They join because they have a goal, an intention, something to accomplish:

strengthening skills
improving leadership
up-leveling impact
closing knowledge gaps
preparing for a transition
expanding connections
contributing wisdom

Goals give direction and meaning to a mentoring partnership, without which many pairs flounder and even fizzle.

But articulating any of these intentions in a specific, measurable, actionable goal is a visible struggle.

Participants become challenged not by time but by clarity in purpose. They question why they are working together and how they can make a difference.

Essentially, they grapple with putting their ambition on a mission.

As a last resort, some Mentees lean on a project their boss assigned; others lean into an aspiration, like “I want to be happier.” Both courses are tenable, but they often lack the passion and mettle that mentoring deserves.

In the end, I’ve observed that people just want to be useful.

Mentors want to contribute wisdom and influence success
Mentees want to become more effective and valuable
Leaders want to make an impact with their people and in their organization
Employees want their work to matter

Let’s curtail the paralyzing pressure of capturing intention in a perfectly articulated, beautifully written goal. And instead, let’s simply explore how we can be more useful to each other in these mentoring programs, at work, and in the world.

The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be useful. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

[Flash] Do You Have an Evolution Problem?

Intrepid leaders like you habitually confess to me their frustrations about the people on their team. Not surprisingly, I now have a massive (and growing) list of these aggravations. To highlight a few:

And yet, I am confident that your people do not start each day eager to be mediocre or maddening.

Nonetheless, many are.

Why? Because people are always seeking:

Safety (from judgment, criticism, blame)
Significance (importance)
Self-Rule (autonomy)

And while appeasing this ego trifecta, they get stonewalled by Chaos, Change, and Crisis.

Feeling unsafe, insignificant, and other-ruled, they resort to aggravating antics in a desperate attempt to return to Safety, Significance, and Self-rule. It becomes a soul-sucking experience for everyone on the team!

Sadly, many people who were once enthusiastic about making a difference become stuck in the valley of despair, counting days until weekends, months until vacations, and years until retirement.

(The plot twist… while you’re managing around their frustrating behaviors, you are fighting for your own Safety, Significance, and Self-Rule. And so is your boss!)

Eventually, when people quit their job to look for Safety, Significance, and Self-Rule in greener pastures, you might feel a sense of relief, distress, or even failure.

But you don’t have a behavioral problem or an attrition problem. You have an evolution problem!

These people are not evolving. They aren’t growing, improving, preparing for, or thriving through change.

If these people were evolving, they wouldn’t:

frantically protect their ego
recklessly prove their importance
childishly demand freedom without taking any responsibility for it

If you want to disrupt the disruption of people’s behaviors, stop focusing on their aggravating antics, and start focusing on their essential evolution.

Build Better Bosses Intensive
This is why I developed the Build Better Bosses Intensive: to help managers evolve and achieve a level of performance that completely transforms the results they are creating because of it.

What that means is that, with managers who want to flourish, they will experience more success, more often, more easily.

When you’re ready to uplevel yourself or your team, find a time on my calendar. Let’s have a conversation and start an evolution: http://www.scheduleyou.in/5WmLJby5B

[Flash] Decency Counts (just ask Jared Leto)

In an interview this week, Academy-Award winning actor Jared Leto shared the following about his approach to working on movie sets:

“I like to stay as focused and committed as possible. My job is to do whatever I can to show up and contribute something meaningful to the actors, the studio, and the crew. Also, it’s my job to be a pleasure to work with. To not be a pain in the [butt]. To be generous and kind to all involved. That to me is as important as the other stuff.”

In other words, he strives to be a decent human being who plays well with others.

When I helped a Chief People Officer identify her company’s key leadership attributes recently, our final list was strikingly similar to Jared Leto’s approach!

The CPO and her team interviewed executives, directors, and employees to curate an inventory of ideal characteristics, actions, behaviors, and expectations for anyone who endeavors to call themselves a leader in the organization.

The list was extensive, but a few essential themes surfaced:

commitment to solving problems
communication that contributes
growth-mindset
big-picture decision making
decency

No one submitted the word “decency” specifically. They proposed qualities like honesty, integrity, goodness, dignity, grace, empathy, compassion, kindness, patience, civility, and positivity.

But we ultimately chose “decency” because of its all-encompassing reminder of our humanity.

Some executives lobbied for the word “collaboration,” but I pushed back on that overused business buzzword. It’s impossible to collaborate if we’re not first committed to solving problems, communicating to contribute, growing and learning, being decisive, and demonstrating decency.

Does “decency” feel too soft? Let’s strengthen it with a few statistics:

50% of people quit their jobs because of their less-than-decent boss
67% of people would take a new boss over a pay raise
82% of people who quit leave for a more empathetic organization

Decency counts…at work, at home, and in the world.

Build Better Bosses and the Circle of Excellence
Need to build better, more decent bosses on your team? Join me for a complimentary mini-workshop on Wed Feb 17, entitled “Build Better Bosses,” where I’ll share more about this approach. I’ll also introduce you to the Circle of Excellence – a mastermind and mentoring program designed to evolve your good managers into great leaders. www.mentorlead.com/webinar/build-bosses

[Flash] Who Admires and Copies You?

In his 2015 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett wrote, “Much of what you become in life depends on whom you choose to admire and copy.”

He then identified his friend and mentor, Tom Murphy, CEO of Capital Cities Communications (which acquired ABC in 1985 and merged with Disney in 1995), as the person he admired and copied.

Buffett describes his friend of 40 years as follows, “Most of what I learned about management I learned from Murph [Tom Murphy]. I kick myself because I should have applied it much earlier.”

Today Murphy’s approach is at the core of Buffett’s management philosophy: decentralization, autonomy, rigorous cost controls.

Who do you admire and copy?

These people are influencing you, either as mentors or as role-models. You admire their success and copy their approach, style, strategies, and behaviors. You observe and replicate their actions in a quest to achieve similar success.

We all need Murphys in our life – they introduce fresh ideas and bigger pictures.

But the more important question is…

Who is admiring and copying you?

Why should you care? Because this demands that we operate and produce results that others want to emulate.

With this question, we acknowledge that we always have an opportunity to influence excellence in others with our actions.

And we concede that, because people watch us, it is reckless to operate as if our actions aren’t influential.

But the goal is not to be admired for egotistical fulfillment.

The goal is to live and work in such an efficacious way that it inevitably inspires others to do the same, especially when we hold a title.

We need Buffetts in our life – they embolden us to stand taller and strive harder.

Circle of Excellence
If you want to help your managers become admired and copied leaders, send them to the Circle of Excellence. Curious? Join me for a complimentary webinar on Wed Feb 17 entitled “Build Better Bosses,” where I’ll share strategies you can use to help your managers become bigger better bolder versions of themselves, and I’ll share with you the promise of the Circle of Excellence.

Click here for the webinar: https://mentorlead.com/webinar/build-bosses/
Click here to learn about the Circle: https://mentorlead.com/circle/

[Flash] How to Mentor Yourself

We talk to ourselves… a lot. Research estimates that we generate between 12,000-70,000 thoughts a day! And of those, 80% are negative while 95% are repetitive from yesterday.

That means we spend only 5% of our day not in emotional despair or ruminating. How can we possibly put our ambition on a mission if we allow the conversations between our ears to derail us?

We must shift our thoughts from self-talk to mentor-talk.

Here’s how…

When faced with a problem, our inner monologue typically includes the word “I.” For example, “I don’t know what to say.” “How am I going to reinvent my career?” “How will I ever fix this mess?”

Based on research, Dr. Noam Shpancer, a professor at Otterbein University, advocates for “distanced self-talk” to separate from our negative emotional reactions – all that distressing and brooding.

With this technique, we replace “I” with “you.” For example, “Ann, what are you going to say?” “Ann, how are you going to reinvent your career?” “Ann, how will you fix this mess?”

It’s a simple but powerful shift with profound implications.

When our self-talk leads with “I,” we reinforce the notion that we are alone battling insurmountable problems. Understandably, we’re going to feel heightened sadness, anger, or misery!

But when our mentor-talk leads with “you,” we step back from the intensity of our emotions, allowing our analytical mind the space to identify a solution. And by detaching, we abate our anger, alleviate our aggressive behavior, restore our calm, resurrect our big-picture perspective, and refresh our empathy. All of which clears the way to cooperate with others in stressful situations.

By shifting from self-talk to mentor-talk, we can create actionable solutions, like a Mentor would embolden us to do.

For when we mentor ourselves, we discover that we cannot be stuck and in action simultaneously.

[Flash] The Secret to Finding a Mentor (Hint: Are You Mentor-Able?)

People are always asking me how to find a mentor.

And while I could direct them to the tactics of getting connected, it’s more valuable to focus on whether the person is mentor-able.

To be mentor-able, you must be vulnerable, authentic, humble, self-reflective, and committed to an actionable goal.

Most importantly, you must be open to mentoring!

Here’s how people operate when they are not “open to mentoring:”

They don’t seek out advice: “I’ve got it handled.”
They overlook people’s perspectives: “I don’t have time.”
They disregard others’ ideas: “No, that won’t work” or “I tried that.”
They dismiss people: “You wouldn’t understand what I’m dealing with.”

Why do people shut down opportunities to learn from others? Fear. Fear of change, fear of judgment, and fear of criticism.

But fear only tells us what not to do. Fear never tells us how to move forward. Mentoring does that.

The secret to finding a Mentor is to stop looking for a Mentor and start looking for mentoring.

Mentoring occurs because someone wants to contribute an idea, a perspective, advice, a make-you-think-differently question, a challenge, a connection, a resource, or some encouragement.

Why wouldn’t we let them?!

It might only result in a quick, perspective-sharing conversation, or it might evolve into a mentoring relationship, partnership, or sponsorship.

But you must be willing to engage! By starting with purpose and presence, you can collect wisdom in any conversation with anybody. Everyone has something to offer!

How to look for mentoring? Ask thoughtful questions from various people, suspend judgment, trust the learning journey, and listen zealously.

And, the next time someone offers you some unsolicited opinion, advice, or perspective, welcome it with intrigue.

Instead of being irritated or offended by their approach, be grateful for the mentoring that found you!