Your Growth Mindset

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Growth Mindset

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the edge having a growth mindset gives.  Research shows it is a better predictor of success than IQ.  A growth mindset embraces challenges, persists in the face of setbacks, believes effort will lead to a level of mastery, and learns from criticism. The problem is, on those days when we need it the most, when we are facing challenges and setbacks and nothing seems to be going right, is when it can be the most difficult to engage with a growth mindset.  After all, in the short run, it’s sometimes easier to just throw up your hands, take the easy route or just walk away.

What question is is how do you feel about that choice tomorrow.  Quite possibly you tell yourself that you could have stuck with it a little longer. You may realize that at least some of the criticism may have been justified.  Or, you may decide that the route for growth really was to walk away. Sometimes the setbacks you’re facing are the very things that are telling you to move on and grow in a different way.  The way to face of the setbacks is to make a left turn and go around it rather than trying to bulldoze through it.  Many people will tell you it’s that growth, the growth that happens when we take a totally different view of the setback and how we can move towards mastery, that creates some of the greatest breakthroughs in your life and your work.

Mindful Leadership

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mindfulness

In a recent Huffington Post article, Harvard’s Bill George discusses the power of mindful leadership.  Mindfulness, according to George, is the practice of self-observation without judgment with a focus on our minds and inner voices. It allows you to center yourself, step away from the distractions of technology, deadlines, daily demands and become more fully present in your daily interactions. Mindful practices include meditation, journaling, jogging alone, and prayer. They are practices that allow you to become focused, more self-aware, and intentional in your actions.

One of my premises in Getting Real is that to be effective in this increasingly more complex world where leadership occurs, you need to be aware of who you are, why you are a leader and to work to understand who your people are and why they are doing what they do. Leaders need to be intentional about their actions and interactions and understand their impact on relationships and results.

About this time last year, I began integrating mindfulness practices into my life. It is an ongoing journey. The biggest challenge I’ve faced is being disciplined and integrating it into my life every day. It’s the same with being a mindful leader. We usually have the best of intentions. We plan on being present. We plan on being intentional with our actions and interactions. Still, we’re not always very good at it. However, if we keep working at it, results are significant. Click here to read about the impact of mindfulness.

The Journey to Excellence

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Tom PetersBack in 1982, Tom Peters went In Search of Excellence and profiled 40+ companies who were examples of excellence.  If we look back at that book some of the companies are gone now or are not what we would hold up as examples of excellence.  That’s because excellence is not an end state.  It’s an organizational state of being that’s characterized by continuous movement in pursuit of ever-higher achievement.  In a culture of excellence, you are never done or…you never quite arrive.

The drive for excellence — for continually improving on even our most outstanding achievement —  when paired with the compelling clarity I spoke about in my last newsletter sets the stage for achieving or even exceeding the goals defined in the strategy.  The question is how do you create a culture of excellence and performance?

Excellence is about self reflection:  Without knowing who and where you are in your journey, it is difficult to continually pursue ever higher levels of personal or organizational achievement.  What values are of core importance to me?  How do I add value? What values are core to the organization?  How do we add value for our customers? Am I clear where I am taking my organization?  Am I communicating a standard of excellence?

Excellence is about continual, personal growth: Without professional growth, our performance, and that of our organization, will not be characterized by excellence.  Leaders need to be a role model for their teams.  They should ask “how can I use my strengths more fully to achieve the results we need to be successful?” It’s equally important to ask yourself and others,  “what do I, as a leader, not know and need to learn?  What skill do I need to develop and how should I apply them?”

Excellence is about setting the expectation for excellence: In environments that achieve excellence, the standard for it is communicated broadly throughout the organization.  The communication isn’t just verbal.  It’s communicated in goals and objectives.  It’s communicated in everyday actions.  It’s communicated in the quality of anything that’s produced, from emails and meeting agendas to products and services. It’s communicated in processes that focus on continual improvement.

Excellence is about creating a culture that looks at behaviors and results: Cultures that only look at results can become toxic.  It can be too easy to turn a blind eye to unacceptable behavior because “hey, he/she gets results.”  Leaders need to be as concerned with how people achieve results as with the results they are achieving. How do we meet our customer’s expectations, meet our business goals and behave ethically and with excellence? What behavior do we hold up as the gold standard in the pursuit of results?  What behaviors are completely unacceptable?

Excellence is about tapping into each person’s drive for excellence: The neuroscience of excellence tells us that higher and higher performance comes from the need to direct our own lives, to create new things and to improve ourselves and our world.  In his book, Drive, Daniel Pink talks about tapping into the third drive — the drive produced from engagement in the task itself when the task allows us to experience autonomy, mastery and purpose. Too many of our organizations are using what Pink calls the second drive – the carrot and the stick – to try to create higher levels of achievement. What we know is that this only takes achievement to the level of what one needs to do to get a reward and to avoid a negative consequence.  It doesn’t lead us to excellence.

Excellence is about improving those around you and managing performance: As the saying goes, the tide lifts all boats.  In order to instill a culture of excellence, leaders need to manage performance and development proactively by praising excellence and having the difficult discussions that are needed to improve performance.  Too often we short circuit the ability to achieve excellence because we are unable to give the difficult feedback that allows others to build their capacity to contribute.  Unfortunately, many of our performance management practices also drive a trend towards mediocrity by relying too much on the carrot and stick.

As Tom Peters did almost 30 years ago, go in search of excellence in your organization.  Model it, practice it, celebrate it and watch the impact on performance

Why Should I Follow The Leader?

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Earlier in my career, I was interviewing with the SVP, the chief people officer, for a senior role in a large organization.  He was still fresh to the company, having been there about 6 months.  I asked him where the firm was going and what made him get up in the morning and go to work.  He looked at me and with a shrug said, “Edith, it’s insurance,” like it was the craziest question in the world.  How silly to expect that a senior leader, six months into his job would be able to articulate a compelling picture of the place he worked.  He had a golden opportunity to communicate his vision of what this organization was about and where it was going and he came up with nothing. There was no second interview.

This story is not meant to reflect badly on the insurance company. I know plenty of executives in insurance companies who would answer that question very differently.

This SVP obviously wasn’t able to communicate a vision. Over the past 18 months, many of our organizations have been lacking in “the vision thing.” We’ve been focused on a lot of things that were important but  that people perceive as negative — cutting costs, losing sales and revenues, reducing headcount.  But as the recovery starts, we need to think about where we want to go from here, because it won’t be where we were before 2008.

Whether you are hiring to rebuild your team, developing employees, or trying to retain or more fully engage your talent, the first step for taking performance to the next level and creating competitive advantage is to develop Compelling Clarity. Compelling Clarity is about creating a vision and expectations that are so clear it is difficult to say ‘where are we going?’ or ‘what should I be doing?’and so compelling no one needs to ask ‘why am I doing this?’ Instead, they say ‘I need to be a part of this.’

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Where does my organization (or division or group or…) need to go?
  • Why are we going in that direction?
  • What will we look like a year from now?
  • What top priorities will get us there?
  • How will we know we’re successful?
  • Why do I want to be a part of this?  Why would someone else want to be a part of this?

If your answer is “I don’t know” to any of these you’re going to be less able to attract or retain top talent as you move forward. You’ll be appealing to people who want a job but not attractive to people who want to make an impact.  Without a sense of where they’re going, you’re people can’t perform at the high levels you need.

Be ready to talk about your vision.  Gauge the reactions to it.  After all, you don’t want to find yourself saying, with a shrug, “Edith it’s…”

 

Create a Sustainable Leadership Pipeline: 7 Core Principles

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Leadership Sustainability

Leadership Sustainability

Sustainability is a word that is heard often these days, usually in regards to the environment or development or cultures. As leaders, part of our mission is to create sustainability within our organizations. The talent of our future leaders is critical to our future success. The question is, “how do I create a sustainable pipeline of leaders and manage talent in an ever-changing business and economic environment?”

The business case for top-tier leadership quality is solid. A Corporate Leadership Council 2003 Succession Management Survey showed that top tier leadership organizations are much more likely to outperform their peers in the marketplace, which translates into substantial financial gains. Market capitalization relative to peers was $384 million higher for top-tier leadership organizations compared with a $232 million lower for bottom-tier leadership organizations.

Creating a sustainable pipeline of top-tier leadership needs an integrated, systemic approach to talent management. Current leaders in the organization need to be accountable for creating a talent management culture. Keeping your eye on the talent will allow you to survive, and even thrive, during times of change and come out stronger on the other side.

To create sustainable leadership pipelines, seven core principles make the difference.

The 7 Core Principles

Core Principle #1: Recognize talent management is a core business process with impact on overall business and financial success for the enterprise. Actively engage leadership throughout the organization on an ongoing basis to assure a nimble, functioning and robust process is in place. Create accountabilities for leaders, just as they are for the financial and operational success of the organization.

Core Principle #2: It starts with the business strategy and talent pipelines are developed to support the strategy. Base the pipelines on where the business is currently and also prepare for future scenarios. As Marshall Goldsmith said, “what got you here, won’t get you there.” Leadership needs will vary based on the strategic needs of the organization. The necessary leadership qualities, the identification, development and review of key talent should be linked to the strategy to assure the bench strength meets the organization needs.

Identify linchpin roles to assure you are developing leadership talent for those roles that have significant impact on the organization’s ability to achieve short and long-term results. Look at the drivers of you business – is it sales? Research and development? Manufacturing? How are you creating a sustained talent pipeline in those parts of the business?

Core Principle #3: Measure it and know if it’s making a difference. Sustainability is created by knowing what will create success now and in the future and focusing resources on those areas. Put measures in place to reflect the goals of talent management and the effectiveness of leadership development. As was stated in principle #1, make it a key accountability for the executive team.

Core Principle #4: Identify, develop and talk about leadership talent throughout the organization. The leadership talent conversation should be ongoing among your senior leadership teams. Until they take root in the culture, overt processes should be put in place to cause these conversations to occur. These topics need to be agenda items or the topics of meetings in their entirety.

Create communication mechanisms to ensure a resilient information-sharing process. Intranet- based tools with the ability to allow varying levels of access to critical information are vital. They allow for the dynamic management of the information.

Core Principle #5: The process clearly differentiates leadership talent. All high performers are not high potential. However, high potentials are high performers. Sustainable talent management systems identify the difference.

High potential performers have the capability to continue to take on larger, more complex levels of responsibility and often do it quickly. High potential employees are often voracious learners. They take on new tasks and are able to master them quickly. What they most often need is the ability to gain wisdom; the ability to integrate what they have learned and to apply it in varied settings.

Core Principle #6: Address gaps between strategic needs and current leadership capabilities through focused internal development or recruitment of external resources. In sustainable talent management processes, development comes from a variety of sources – coaching, programs, experiences, new assignments within the organization, mentoring, etc. With the application of each type of development there is clarity about what the individual is supposed to be developing from each experience or assignment. Measure the progress. Frequent conversations about the development experience provide feedback to the organization about the potential leadership talent and to the individual.

To drive integration of talent management into the culture, integrate it with critical processes like selection, performance management, rewards and compensation. At the individual level, let people know where they stand (e.g., A, B, C talent) and the implications. These components can be facilitated through Human Resources, Leadership Development, or consultants. They need to be owned by the executive team and leaders/managers across the organization.

Core Principle #7: Talent and the needs for talent are re-evaluated regularly. Your business changes. So does the talent. Sustainable systems identify and proactively address the dynamics of change and the impact on talent needs.

Just for a Moment…Listen

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Active ListeningI listened to a TED Talk yesterday while I was on the elliptical (got to keep up with that New Year’s resolution). It was about how we are losing our ability to listen. As leaders or business owners we spend a lot of time talking. We are giving direction or input to our employees. We’re talking with customers. We’re talking with people at networking events. We spend a lot of time working on getting our story out there. This talk reminded me of how critical listening is for those of us who are leading others.

This week try to spend more time listening. Here are some ideas how to do that:

1. Open every conversation by asking the other person a question. This question should not be a perfunctory ‘how are you?”. Make it a question that is really about something. Focus on listening to the answer, not waiting for the other person to be done so you can get on to your real agenda.

2. When you have listened to what someone has to say, reflect or summarize. Anyone who has taken an active listening course knows that this is a technique to show the other person you are listening. I’m not suggesting it for that reason. Rather, by verbally saying what you’ve heard out loud, you are hearing it again and increasing the likelihood that you are actually listening to the words meaning.

3. Institute the ‘no multitasking’ rule during conversations. More and more I attend meetings where people think it is perfectly okay to have a laptop or smartphone in front of them so that they can multitask. This may sound efficient, but in reality it completely undermines the ability to listen and engage in what is going on. The human brain doesn’t work that way. It needs to be focused on what is being said. When you are visually looking at something, the sound becomes background noise. Most of the time, the person sending the text or email can wait for your reply.

4. Create listening posts. Create opportunities for others to have your undivided attention. Establish a regular time when you’ll be available for an individual or group to speak with you when you will give them complete, undivided attention. Make it immutable.

At the end of the week, assess the impact of your listening on your decision making, your relationships with your team and your awareness of what is happening in your organization.

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WHO COULD USE AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT?

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Attitude Adjustment 260x173
I recently contributed to an article on positioning yourself for promotion in which I talk about the importance of attitude when being considered for a promotion.

How many of you have a team member who has asked several times to be promoted and the issue is attitude? I hear it frequently from clients and people are often struggling with getting the message across.

If someone you know needs an attitude adjustment, consider the following:

    • Explain what the poor attitude is. “You need to change your attitude” is not an effective piece of feedback. Before addressing the issue, define exactly what the issue is. What does the person do that demonstrates a bad attitude? Is it the tone of voice they use when dealing with co-workers? Is it the grumbling every time they are asked to help out in the department? Be specific.
    • It’s not just what you do but how you do it. Most people can go through the list of job responsibilities and say “I do that.” However, how he is doing it can be just as, if not more, important. Does he just report the customer data or does he also provide an overview of key findings and their implications? Is she proactively asking how else she can help her client or just doing what’s required? Give examples of how promotion-ready people behave.
    • Is he or she feeling the love? When someone wants something — like a promotion — and keeps being told no, that person’s attitude may slide because he isn’t getting what he wants. If attitude is not the reason the promotion can’t happen, make sure you are letting the person know you see the good work being done and have plan for moving him to the promotion.
    • Do we have a fit issue? Sometimes people are just in the wrong job. That feeling of being in the wrong place can cause attitude to take the deep dive. Have a frank conversation with the person. Bring up the idea that this may be a bad fit for her. Ask her if she feels the same. Create a plan for helping the person get to where she needs to be — inside or outside the company.

First, Find Your Successor

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Richard BransonI was watching TV this weekend when I came across an interview with Sir Richard Branson. As the interview was coming to a close, the interviewer asked him his advice for a new CEO. He said, “Find your successor and teach that person everything you know. That way you can focus on the bigger things.” The interviewer replied that finding and developing your successor is intimidating for some leaders. His reply? They are weak leaders.

Real leaders understand the need for and benefit of identifying a successor. It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO or a first-time manager, identifying and developing someone who can do your job should be a priority. Early in my career, I was a couple of months into a new job when my boss told me to think about who could take over for me in 18 months. I was floored, feeling like I didn’t even know what my job was yet. And, I didn’t identify and develop a successor. Shame on me. It interfered with my ability to move to another role, jeopardized the department’s talent pipeline and kept someone from being developed. Since then, I’ve prioritized developing those around me, informally and formally.

When we surround ourselves with great talent and help that talent become as successful as we are, we demonstrate one of the keys to leadership success — our ability to bring others along on the journey.

Quiet Leadership

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Quiet Leadership

I had the opportunity this weekend to recall a fascinating story I read in The New York Times several years ago, about a leader most of us would never have heard about had they not chosen to write about her. She was about to retire after 25 years of leadership in her role as CEO of a $4.2 billion hospital network, one of the largest Catholic hospital networks in the nation. Formed in 1986, it consolidated the management of 15 hospitals and 2 nursing homes in Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

 

Here are some statistics and facts from her time as CEO:

  • During her 25 year tenure, operating revenues quintupled to $3 billion in 2010.
  • The hospital network produced a net income that year of $247.9 million and provided $115.4 million in uncompensated care.
  • A decade ago, she led a relentless campaign to improve performance resulting in the first Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award given to a health-care company.
  • She pays blue collar workers in the system above scale.
  • She has turned away arrangements with doctors who do not accept Medicaid.
  • She preaches about the dignity of patients.
  • She has made her hospitals smoke-free and banned the use of foam cups and plastic water bottles.
  • She has worked for free.*

Sister Mary Jean, a Franciscan nun, is characterized by those who know her as having iron-willed competence and unblinking compassion.  Her values-driven approach is what makes her health-care system distinct from some of its secular competitors yet does not seem to have detracted from its success. Those who underestimated nuns as managers “made a mistake,” Sister Mary Jean said.  Based on her track record, I think she’s right.

*Because of her vow of poverty Sister Mary Jean accepted no pay for her work but the health-care system compensated her $1.9 million in compensation for the labor of all of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary who worked in the system.

Five Reasons Why Good Leaders Fail

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Why Good Leaders Fail

 

Jessica had been on the high potential list every year since she started with her biotechnology company.  She was moved into a variety of roles, taking on different responsibilities and succeeding each time. She was known as a strong leader because of her ability to get results. When she moved into the Director of Operations role things began to change. Within 6 months of taking the role she wasn’t delivering the results everyone thought she was capable of delivering.  Her team was contentious and morale was wavering.  What was going on?  Had Jessica topped out her potential, a living example of the Peter Principle?  Had she lost her ability to lead?

Of course she didn’t lose her ability to lead.  Her abilities and skills had not just simply vanished but other parts of the situation had changed.

I’ve seen five common reasons why a leader who has been effective in the past is now failing.

1. Some critical skills were overlooked before. Let’s talk about the obvious reason first.  Some leaders have not developed key skills that they need to be successful.  Just like brilliant students who breeze through school, sometimes people climb to positions of leadership because they are brilliant marketers, brilliant scientists, or brilliant (put your profession here). But along the road to success, the people around this leader choose to overlook a key skill (or two or three) until it can’t be overlooked any more and causes huge issues.  For example, if we go back to Jessica, throughout her career it was noted in talent reviews that she could be abrasive and often got things done through force of will rather than by building relationships and coalitions.  She thought of herself as ‘results-focused.’  When she moved into her Operations role, it became imperative for her to build relationship with peers in other parts of the organization to get results.  Interestingly, her ‘results-focus’ is what got in the way.

2. Cultural mismatch. This is a common reason why leaders who have been wildly successful in one environment for a long time, fail miserably in a very short time in another.  The way a person operates and becomes successful in one culture can be very different from another.  For example, a leader may have been very successful in a culture that a valued quick decision making and risk taking.  Put that same leader in an environment driven by consensus and a desire to explore issues from every angle before moving forward and wait for the results.

3. Process and system mismatch. In the 1800’s, some people did very well in the wild, wild west and others went back home to the security of their established communities.  Some leaders are very adept at working in environments with less defined processes and systems.  They either work without them or really enjoy putting them in place.  Others thrive in environments where processes and systems are clearly defined.  Think of the serial entrepreneur who is put into a large, complex organization that has acquired his firm.  Change was a way of life in his entrepreneurial firm but isn’t in this large organization.  Leading change in the former was easy; everyone thrived on it.  In the new organization it takes real work. The processes that exist are meant to maintain the status quo not change it and people in his new organization wonder why he was once perceived as someone who drove change.

4. Lack of management support. Even the most seasoned executive needs people in her corner.  She needs people who support her success.  She may need coaching and mentoring to navigate the new role.  Even the best CEO won’t succeed if the Chairman of the Board decides she is not the person for the job and needs to go.

5. Organization structure. We all have been in situations where roles aren’t clear, responsibilities are redundant, unnecessary internal competition is the norm, resources aren’t available or decision making is lost in layers of management morass.  Leaders can find themselves in the same situations.  I worked for an organization once that routinely pitted leaders against each other by giving them the same issue to address or initiative to lead in different parts of the organization without each leader knowing about the other’s charge.  There could only be one winner in this situation so one of them automatically was going to fail.

Why have you seen leaders fail?