Blog Archives - Page 53 of 55

It’s Not a Team; It’s a Band

Teams win and lose together.

While it’s valiant to declare your collection of people a “team,” they aren’t. In the end, they win and lose their performance reviews, their paychecks, and their jobs as individuals.

You don’t have a team. You have a band.

Every successful band keeps the tempo, achieves harmony, and creates melodious tunes together. And at the same time, each band member can create beautiful music as a solo.

Whether it’s a rock band, an orchestra band, a jazz band, or a high school band, band members make music together, and they solo.

What’s your number one job as the band leader? Make sure their solo performance enhances the melody of the band.

Let’s stop treating these collections of people like an NFL team. And start treating them like a Grammy award-winning band.

Forget WIIFM. Focus on WSIC.

Everyone wants to know What’s In It For Me (WIIFM). But WIIFM is ephemeral. When the “what” is gone, so is your drive.

Shift your focus to Why Should I Care (WSIC) and you’ll transform your impact and your results. WSIC is like the north star – it never disappears. It’s your passion, it’s your purpose, it’s the reason you show up.

Some examples of “why should I care” ….

because your team needs a courageous leader
because your leaders are starved for new ideas
because your clients need better solutions to their problems

When you help others shift their conversation from WIIFM to WSIC, you will trigger their need to make a difference. This results in self-motivation – more powerful and resilient in its impact than any gift card, bonus, pizza party, or company tchotchke.

When people know the purpose, feel the importance of that purpose, and recognize how they can make a difference in fulfilling that purpose, then they care. And when people care, they become unstoppable.

At the core of every remarkable result is a remarkable person, team, or leader who shifted their focus from WIIFM to WSIC.

The Eureka of Participation

People support that which they help create.

In behavioral economics, this is called “Participatory Bias” – people are more inclined to support decisions they help to make and solutions they help to create, even if the end result is not theirs.

Having participated, they are more willing to defend the outcome. Their ego won’t allow them to support the process and oppose it at the same time.

The opposite is also true. When we don’t include people in decisions, projects, or solutions, they are more likely to resist, oppose, and even sabotage the end result.

Knowing this, why wouldn’t we go out of our way to create opportunities for people to participate, even when we don’t need them to?

We cannot ignore the enormous influence participation has on human behavior.

The simple act of including someone…

helps that person feel valued, recognized, and appreciated
increases their engagement and patronage
fosters their effectiveness through understanding, learning, and discovery
encourages their creativity and innovation

Easy ways to create participation:

Solicit suggestions for improving the team, the meeting, a project, or a process
Ask someone new every week for their perspective on an issue
Seek advice on solving a problem from someone not involved with it
Request a your team’s help in generating new ideas or approaches
Nominate people for a task force, a committee, or a development program

If we want to be great leaders, we need to intentionally provide people with the opportunity to participate, contribute, and make a difference.

0 Leverage the Power of Labels

My teacher in 2nd grade wrote the word “enthusiastic” on my report card. My parents beamed with pride. So I continued to be enthusiastic. Teachers continued to write the word on my report card. And my parents continued to beam.

Labels are a powerful influence.

Diagnosis Bias When a person gets labeled by someone they admire, respect, or value, they mold and shape their behaviors to fit that label. This phenomenon is called “diagnosis bias.” Essentially, once someone is diagnosed, their brain looks for evidence to confirm that diagnosis.

The label is so powerful that it literally causes that person to start acting out that label through their behavior and decisions. And once they start acting out a label, they perpetuate it as they continue to reinforce and reaffirm it with more behaviors and decisions. Essentially people confirm the diagnosis they are given through their own actions.

Parents Label Children. A mom says, “Sally is shy.” The more Sally hears that she is shy, the more she acts shy, which then confirms that Sally is, in fact, shy.

Bosses Label Employees. Jane has been identified as an “up-and-coming leader at the company.” Bob, however, has been told he might not be cut out for sales.

The more Jane hears her label, the more Jane acts like an up-and-coming leader, which confirms for her and everyone else that Jane is, in fact, an up-and-coming leader.
Bob’s diagnosis shapes his behavior, and his sales slip, which then confirms the diagnosis that he is, in fact, not cut out for sales.

Brand Your Labels Carefully When someone respects and admires us, we must apply labels carefully. When we brand that person with a label (ex: smart, dumb, strategic, ineffective, leader, follower), they will embrace the behaviors of that label and then mirror the expectations we have for them. Essentially, they adopt the characteristics of that label.

How can we use labels more vigilantly?

Notice the labels you use for people – consider that your label may be perpetuating their behavior
Select labels for people based on the behavior you want, not the behavior you see currently
Employ empowering titles and nicknames for people (ex: Queen of People Success, King of Sales, Client Engagement Specialist, Product Guru, Leader of Leaders)

Pay attention to the labels you use and wield this superpower with diligence and intentionality.

0 The Art of Pulling Relationship Weeds

Like a garden, relationship weeds result from neglect.

Upsets, miscommunications, missed expectations, disappointments, frustrations, altercations, and conflict. All weeds that sprout in our personal and professional relationships.

When relationships are new, weeds are rare. We are too busy making a good impression, establishing trust, creating rapport, being a new boss, or being the new team member. In new relationships, we are intentionally vigilant against weeds.

However, when we get comfortable in our relationships, we tend to get lazy. We forget to update our boss; we make a decision without including our team; we fail to follow up on a commitment; we cancel meetings or show up late; we neglect to set expectations on an assignment; we tolerate emotional outbursts; we inflict snarly or rude comments.

Like gardeners, we must diligently pull weeds to foster those relationships.

Here’s your candid, no B.S., weed-pulling script:

What’s working for you?
What’s not working for you?
Here’s what’s working for me…
Here’s what’s not working for me…

Example:

What’s working for you? I love this new project
What’s not working for you? I’m not getting the support I need from you.
Here’s what’s working for me… I’m excited to see your leadership shine in this new project.
Here’s what’s not working for me…I need you to get better at delegating so other work gets done.

As you embark on pulling weeds, a few pointers:

Start by identifying a topic, a situation, an issue, a relationship weed to address.
Emphasize your commitment to the relationship and to the other person’s success.
Muster your courage. It can be uncomfortable asking for such pointed feedback, but your vulnerability will invite theirs.
Prepare for some defensiveness, especially if the neglect has eroded the trust between you. Reaffirm your commitment.
Focus on the issue, not the person.

When a relationship matters, weed-whacking doesn’t work. You need to intentionally and unabashedly pull the weeds to strengthen the soil that allows the relationship garden to flourish.

Why We Should Listen to Xerox CEO Ursula Burns’ Mom

Where you are is not who you are.

Ursula’s mom preached these words to her daughter while raising her in a tough, drug-infested ghetto in New York City’s Lower East Side. She lectured Ursula about education and hard work being the way up and out of the ghetto.

Today Ursula Burns is CEO of Xerox Corporation, a career she started in 1980 as an intern after completing a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. She became the first female African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

What power did Ursula’s mom give her? The conviction that our circumstances do not define us …unless we let them.

We can apply this wisdom to any circumstance:

What you did is not who you are. A mistake, an error, a bad decision does not define you. You have the power to learn a lesson and act differently going forward.
What you said is not who you are. A misspoken word, a short temper, a negative moment does not define you. You have the power to apologize and speak differently going forward.
What you are called is not who you are. Your title does not define you. You have the power to contribute and make a difference regardless of what your business card says.

Ursula’s mom taught Ursula to write a different story for herself instead of following the one dictated by her circumstances.

Are you and your team allowing circumstances to define you? Maybe it’s time to write a different story.

What Zappos Got Wrong When They Booted Their Managers

In 2012, Zappos got rid of all of their managers.

Why? They decided the company was saddled with too much bureaucracy, which was suffocating its innovative, entrepreneurial spirit. So they eliminated all of their managers in favor of a new structure called “Holocracy” (a self-management operating model in which everyone is autonomous and no one has bosses).

Blaming managers for bureaucracy and suffocated innovation is so trite.

But their solution is equally inane. By eliminating their managers, they eliminated their powerhouse in the middle of the organization.

Managers have two vital and powerful roles in every organization:

to propagate the message from the top
to develop people’s leadership from the bottom

Managers are the gateway to a company’s success, not the barricade.

What Zappos should have done is prepared their managers to be effective. Instead they hurled them off the bus.

What are you doing to prepare your powerhouse of managers?

Are you an Advocate of Job Crafting?

Job Crafting: The act of adding meaning to your work

More than 65% of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs. Why? They’re focused on a fixed list of duties. It’s time to encourage these people to expand the boundaries of their job description…

Coined by researchers at the University of Michigan and Yale, “job crafting” describes people who meet the expectations of their job and then find ways to add something that makes a difference and benefits the team/company/customers.

Examples of job crafting:

People who volunteer to mentor others
Salespeople who solve problems instead of sell products
People who take on a project for an employee resource group or a Diversity Council
My colleague who stayed late to help me prepare for a big presentation
The hotel front desk clerk who walked across the street to get me a first-aid kit
The Xerox employee who turned an error in adhesives into Post-it Notes
The Zappos call center rep who sent flowers to a customer whose husband had just died and who was calling to return a pair of shoes she had purchased for him
The utility workers from around the country who traveled to the East Coast to help neighborhoods get their power back after Hurricane Sandy in 2013

Where to start? Assess and alter any of the following areas in your job:

Tasks – what tasks could you perform differently or more effectively? what new tasks could you take on?
Relationships – what new relationships could you develop and contribute to?
Perceptions – how does your work affect others? how does your work make a difference?

3 essentials for success in job crafting:

Create value for others: find ways to benefit and serve your boss, team, colleagues, and customers
Establish trust: help others see that your actions are in service of them, not in service of you
Start with the yaysayers: focus first on those who support you

Why should leaders advocate for job crafting? It’s a potent way to empower people to increase their own satisfaction, elevate their own achievements, and improve their own resilience.

The result? Employees who are re-energized and re-committed because they found new ways to contribute and make a difference. And who wouldn’t want to work in that kind of culture?

What kind of job crafting have you been up to? Send me an email – I want to cheer you on!