Positions and Interests

“Those two are at it again! We have dozens of toys but they both want to have the same one.” Many parents have said that or something similar. While the situation leaders face are not quite as juvenile or evident, the art and science of mediation and negotiation are critical aspects of leadership success in any setting. 

From inter-department disputes to multi-billion dollar mergers, the consistent winners are those who look beyond narrow positions to uncover the underlying broader interests. Within organizations and interpersonal relationships a mutual interest is inherent but power struggles can develop and evolve into counterproductive entrenched positions. A good leader will help mediate a solution with patience, positive attitude, understanding, listening, and challenging to move the discussion to broader interests and away from narrow positions.

In negotiations there may be multiple opposing interests, however the desire for a completed deal is often an obvious but over looked mutual interest. Fundamental to a successful negotiation is understanding each party’s interests as much as possible and not getting trapped into inflexible positions. A simple classic example is two people who each want a single orange. Rather than getting locked in a win-lose scenario of who gets the orange, exploring interests could reveal that one wants only the juice and the other only the rind and a win-win outcome can be achieved. With complicated issues solutions are, of course, much more elusive but an optimistic belief in additional possibilities can help define interests and isolate positions. Positions are usually narrow, limited, defensive and an ‘either/or’ choice. Interests are usually broad, open to possibilities, optimistic and ‘multiple’ choices. Careers and businesses flourish when the foundation of their mission is to nurture interests of others as well as their own. This ability to effectively deal with paradox is a key competency separating the great leaders from the average.

As always, we welcome your comments and questions.

Appreciating or Depreciating

“They could be used again, we’ll find a use for them or at least somebody will want them sometime, put them in the storage yard.” The owner of the new bait shop and convenience store had a sizeable parcel of land with plenty of room to keep the solid oak doors that were removed from the building when walls were taken down to open up the space. That was probably a practical and conservative decision at the time but over the next several years and decades the open space also received used boats, lawn mowers, cars, trucks and various other pieces of equipment that never seemed to find a new home. Neglected and subjected to the elements the one time assets deteriorated and eventually became a liability that had to be removed at considerable expense when the owner died and heirs prepared to sell the real estate.

Most of us do not have a storage yard for accumulating old cars and mowers. However we may well have other assets, tangible and intangible, that are neglected and allowed to depreciate overtime. With use and care depreciation can be slowed and in some cases, particularly intangibles, they may appreciate in value.

While it is unfortunate to let solid oak antique doors or classic cars weather and rot, the bigger loss is when personal strengths and skills go unused and atrophy. Even more disconcerting is when personal dreams and visions for a better career or life are allowed to dissolve in the elements of daily responsibilities and contrary expectations of other people. A simple act of conscious gratitude for our skills, strengths, relationships, hopes, dreams, and visions will help them grow and develop. Appreciation helps them appreciate! We encourage everyone to take time to regularly and consistently identify and appreciate those intangible assets that are important, then watch them grow and thrive.

Focused Action

“I’m busier than ever with plenty of new opportunities but I’m not getting better results.” This is one of the most common statements we hear from new coaching clients. Whether you are a small business of one or a member of a large team, getting results comes down to individual performance and action.  There is never a lack of something to do but knowing the best thing to be done right now and doing it is the key. Nothing is easier than being busy and nothing is more difficult than being effective.  

 

Gordon Bethune, retired Chairman/CEO of Continental Airline is quoted as saying, “To succeed in the watch business, learn how the expletive watch works!” His point was to get people to think about not just what they were doing but why they were doing it, particularly the impact their action was having on the business results. Having a clear and accurate understanding of your business is necessary to be able to apply any time management system effectively. With that frame work established, we then encourage using the four quadrant segmentation of activities by Urgent & Important as outlined by Stephen R. Covey in First Things First. Quadrant two, Important/Not Urgent is the preferred place to put most your time. With dedicated practice, coaching, and support many people are able to develop focused action and new levels of successful results.  

 

As always we welcome your comments and questions.

 

Building A Winning Team

If you were asked to recruit players for a softball team to play in the neighborhood league, how would you go about it?  Would your approach be different if you were building a major league baseball team and you could get a million dollar bonus if the team won the championship? Of course, with more to gain you will put much more into it. You will consider candidates’ training, experience, past success, the role they play, how they will get along with the manager and other players and many more pertinent details. In short, you will use all of the resources available to make sure you make the best decision possible for each position on the team.

 A recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out the reasons behind the growing trend of more employers using assessments in their hiring process. Fewer are willing to take a chance on anyone who doesn’t fully measure up to their understanding of what it takes to succeed in their organization. With assessment technology available at costs substantially below the cost of hiring just one wrong person, most companies understand it costs more to not use assessments than it does to use them. Savvy hiring professionals know that while the selection process may be longer for the candidate, they can spend their recruiting time with the ones who are best qualified to succeed. When they create a win-win scenario for the company and the employee everyone has a much better chance of long term success.

We have been in the assessment business for over ten years and have seen many clients create winning teams by utilizing the reliable, proven assessments we customize for each particular need. We would be delighted to help you build your winning team – particularly if you have a million dollar bonus riding on it!

 

 

 

 

Characteristics of High Performing Teams

The CEO of the small startup tech company was visibly frustrated and upset. Once again the company had missed the profit targets for the month and the downward trend was getting steeper every month. They had a great technical solution needed by the market and adequate funding to implement their strategies. They had hired very smart people with great compensation and benefits, plus they provided a first class working environment. As she analyzed the data it became clear the issue was the common human element – lack of teamwork.

Personal leadership charisma and skills are indispensable to becoming a successful leader but who the leader leads is even more important. Selection of team members for individual job fit is a familiar topic for regular readers of the Employee Whisperer. When all the team members are assembled and begin performing, the leader, much as an orchestra conductor, needs to develop coherence and harmony among all the individual performers. Strategies, policies and processes provide basic direction. Supplementing those with regular feedback and relentless communication, the team is positioned to succeed but the remaining constant challenge is to produce results and consistently increase performance. The stress of the challenge to keep growing and improving will undo average teams, however high performing teams have characteristics that enable them to excel in similar conditions.

Developing the characteristics of high performing teams was described in detail by Patrick Lencioni in his book Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators. Those five characteristics are quite simply: trust; conflict; commitment; accountability and results. In our work with leaders and their teams we use the analogy of a pyramid with trust as the foundation. If team members do not have trust and confidence in themselves, each other, the leader, their strategy, the organization and its vision the structure will eventually crumble. However with trust firmly established the team can begin to work through inherent conflicts of individual perspectives. Communication skills, personalities, and positive attitudes about collaboration often need to be developed to productively identify and address conflicts. Once the conflicts are resolved the team can advance to the level of commitment and define goals, objectives, mutual expectations, directions and culture. When commitments are made accountability naturally follows. If the team members are not mutually accountable to their commitments performance will erode and falter. The results, the top of the pyramid, is of course why the team exists. Everyone needs to know the score and understand if the team is winning or losing as well as be clear on what they need to do to increase performance and contribute to the teams results.

If a team is not producing the expected results a basic diagnostic process is to drill down through each layer of the pyramid to reveal the defective characteristic. It isn’t easy to drill to the lowest layer so average leaders don’t do it, but solidifying every level of the pyramid is what every great leader does.

Make it a PEAK day!

A Contributing Member on a Winning Team

The most common and critical business relationship is between an employee and their boss. While leadership responsibilities certainly make the boss primarily responsible for that relationship, every employee needs to have ongoing conversations with the boss in five key areas (based on The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins). If the boss isn’t initiating the discussions the employee must take the initiative.

1 – Be clear on the situation. There are vastly different implications whether you are in a start-up situation; turn around; realignment; or sustaining momentum of recent success. Besides knowing where you are at the moment, it helps clarify the contribution you are expected to make to the team.

2 – Articulate and understand expectations. Following naturally out of understanding the situation; defining what is expected, by when, and how will help both parties establish a deeper understanding of what they each will give to and get from their work together. An important element of expectations is defining how performance is evaluated and measured for compensation changes.

3 – Figure out a style of working together. There are many different ways for a boss and employee to work together. Rather than taking a trial and error approach to finding what will work for both parties, it is far better to have a deliberate conversation and agree on a style. Elements of style include communication, feedback, progress updates, questions, and problems. For example, will we meet at planned intervals or as needed; in person or by phone or e-mail; one on one or at team meetings; written reports or verbal updates.

4 – Agree on resources available. Resources include budgets, equipment, time, people and facilities. A clear understanding of what you have or don’t have available to do the job is a critical component to defining and meeting expectations.

5 – Develop a plan for accelerating success and ongoing professional development. Everyone has something more they could learn and skills to add or develop. Beginning a dialog about these at the start establishes development and professional growth an inherent job element and a mutual recognition of current strengths and opportunities.

The best time to have the first round of these conversations is during the interview process. When open discussions in these five areas are ongoing natural interactions between the leader and the employee, success is more likely and both people will feel like contributing players on a winning team.

Execution

The team was really excited about the strategic plan they put together last year. They had analyzed the market, anticipated what the competition would be doing and set several key goals for what they wanted to achieve. 2014 was going to be a record year – but in reality it will barely be ahead of 2013 and that was nothing to brag about. People seem to be taking it in stride without too much disappointment. After all, they knew they had worked hard all year. Also they have seen other strategic plans come and go. Usually ‘reality’ sets in by mid-year and the goals are essentially forgotten.

This is a tale heard often from teams, businesses, non-profits, individuals and families. Plans and resolutions are made in January but by December they often become stories of disappointment rather than the success anticipated. The difference in success and failure is usually not the strategies or the plans but rather the execution of them.

As Stephen Covey explained in The 4 Disciplines of Execution strategies fail for four key reasons: people don’t understand the strategy; if they know what it is, they don’t understand what they can do to help achieve it; they are not sure how well they are doing to know if they are making progress; and there is no timely individual feedback and accountability. 

The secret to successful strategies is to have no more than two to three major goals; focus on lead measures that people know they can control as well as directly influence the goal; make a compelling scoreboard that tracks the lead measures; and have regular accountability and feedback meetings to celebrate progress and adjust to overcome problems. Those disciplines along with people who fit the job and a leader who helps them feel and fare better create an outstanding team.

We hope you had an enjoyable holiday season and have a successful 2015!

Always Do Your Best

In the last posts we have been highlighting The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz as a guideline for improving both life and business results. The first three agreements reviewed were Be Impeccable with Your Word; Don’t Take Anything Personally; and Don’t Make Assumptions.

The final agreement is Always Do Your Best. Having a commitment to this agreement means not cutting corners or just getting by. It is being intentional about putting in full effort to develop and apply your skills and effort to what you have said you would do. It also implies you need to be your best by maintaining physical, mental and spiritual vitality. The author summarizes it this way. “Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.” 

The four practices are at once simple and difficult. Initially they are quite challenging but when learned and fully integrated into your way of being they are powerful and life changing. To review them check our newsletter archive. We appreciate your continuing updates and feedback about your journey on this path from those of you who are following it.

Don’t Make Assumptions

‘She’s just impossible to please’, the young accountant mumbled to himself after he left her office. He had prepared what he thought was a great analysis of the issue she asked him to investigate and yet she was upset because he didn’t do it her way. Meanwhile she sat at her desk wondering if he will ever get it right and if he has any potential to grow and improve. Of course skill and technical matters may be the problem but very often it is a matter of communicating and understanding expectations. It happens in our personal lives as well. “I thought when you said we’d stop in on the way to the lake you meant for a few minutes. I didn’t know we would be with those people all afternoon and most of the evening!”

Assumptions we make are one of the most common obstacles to good communication. We tell ourselves stories about what the other person meant, intended or wants. Then we respond or react to the assumptions as if they are facts. When one or more other people do the same the compound effect can lead to further problems.

Continuing our series highlighting The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz the third Agreement is ‘Don’t make assumptions’. That is done by careful listening, asking good clarifying questions, and not avoiding difficult topics. Also it means being in touch with our own emotions and finding ways to honestly articulate them to ourselves as well as others rather than acting out so the other person knows we’re upset. This one agreement can transform lives and relationships.

On its own not making assumptions would be difficult to do but by adhering to the first two agreements; “Be impeccable with your word’ and ‘Don’t take anything personally’ it can be much more natural. To review those you can check our newsletter archive.

We appreciate your continuing updates and feedback about your journey on this path from those of you who are following it.

Don’t Take Anything Personally

In business and life in general being a self-proclaimed victim is an easy way to explain why things didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to. The economy, weather, government, boss, co-workers, family and other people can seem to have it in for us and are not doing what they ought to do. It may be simpler if others were accountable to us for doing what we need but in reality that is clearly not so.

Continuing our series highlighting The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz the second Agreement is ‘Don’t take anything personally’. It means others are doing what they do, not because of you, but because of their own reality and perceptions of themselves. When you can be completely independent of the good or bad opinions of others you are no longer dependent on them or a victim of them. Consequently you don’t depend on, or suffer from, their actions and words. It’s not personal, it’s just them.

With this and the first Agreement highlighted last month, “Be impeccable with your word”, relationships and communication start to change along with our personal development. We look forward to hearing more about your journey on this path if you are following it.

Be Impeccable with your Word

Developing a high Do/Say ratio starts with being deliberate and very intentional about what you say. That is why this month we begin a brief overview of the key principles in The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz and the first Agreement: ‘Be Impeccable with your Word’.

Being impeccable with your word is not just suggesting you need flawless grammar, although skill in that area as well as a large vocabulary will certainly help. The guidance is to speak with integrity and say only what you mean. Clichés (‘it’s a win –win’ or ‘let’s talk later’) and filler phrases (‘I’ll have it to you soon’) are often spoken with little thought and consequently do not fully convey an accurate meaning or mutual understanding. Gossip or even speaking about others when they are not present takes you away from integrity. Likewise self-deprecating remarks hurt others, as well as yourself, because they are not accurate and diminish perceptions others have of you.

It is not easy to develop the practice of being impeccable with your word but it will have the biggest influence on improving your Do/Say ratio. Keep letting us know how it works for you.

Four Agreements

Last month we introduced the Do/Say ratio to monitor how well you follow through with doing what you say you will do. If you practiced that concept regularly you likely noticed some significant changes. If you started to practice it but then stopped you don’t yet know the difference it can make for you. Making a lasting change is dependent on making a commitment or agreement with yourself. Achieving that kind of permanent change is self-mastery.

A classic book on self-mastery is The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz. The four practices are at once simple and difficult. Initially they are quite challenging but when learned and fully integrated into your way of being they are powerful and life changing. The Four Agreements are:

1 – Be impeccable with your word.

2 – Don’t take anything personally.

3 – Don’t make assumptions.

4 – Always do your best.

We will explore each of these in more detail in the next four editions of Peak Perspectives. If you have personal experience with learning and living these we welcome your comments and contributions.

Do Say

The CEO was upset, she expected to have a meeting with the VP of Sales to review the mid-month report of sales and current opportunities expected to close before month end but he only had the actual sales to date. He explained that the sales managers have all been traveling and could not complete the forecast portion of the report. Regardless of the excuse, she was upset because he said he would have the report yet he didn’t.

How frequently does a scenario similar to this play out in your organization? “I will have it on your desk first thing in the morning.” “I will be there this afternoon at two.” “I’ll give you my input for the newsletter by the end of the week.”

It happens to all of us at one time or another and we also likely fail to do what we said we would at one time or another. Unfortunately some organizational cultures allow this to become a pattern of urgency and excuses of other priorities that get in the way.

To break that pattern personally or as a team, we find it helpful to think of this as the Do/Say Ratio. If I say I will do two things but only do one my ratio is .50. The lower the ratio the worse I am at doing what I say I will do. The higher the ratio the better I am at managing my commitments as well as my performance.

Before tracking others, we suggest first tracking yourself for a few days or a week. As you monitor your do/say ratio you become more aware of what you are saying and begin to be more deliberate about both the commitments made and the actual doing of it. It can make a big difference personally and professionally. When done throughout a team it can be huge.

Please give it a try and let us know about your experience.

Learning to be Happy

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines happy as “feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation, etc.” The implication of that, and common perception, is that we are happy “because” of something. As often happens common knowledge is not correct. Certainly the environment, people and situations around us can make a contribution to our happiness but we control it much more than common knowledge would tell us.

The recent ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference, with the first ever specific track for men, had Shawn Achor as the keynote speaker. His research has documented both how happiness can be developed and that performance in organizations improves when employees are intentionally practicing happiness techniques – happiness fuels success not the other way around. The recommendation is to pick one of the following strategies and try it for 21 days in a row to create a new habit for lasting change and happiness: 

• 3 Gratitudes: Write down 3 new things you are grateful for each day.
• Journaling: For 2 minutes describe a meaningful experience from the past 24 hours.
• Exercise: Add 15 minutes of fun active cardio.
• Meditation: For 2 minutes a day, watch your breath go in and out (calms the mind and undoes the negative effects of multitasking).
• Conscious Acts of Kindness: Send a 2-minute email thanking one person in your social support network. 

Wishing you happiness then success!

Bowling Through a Curtain

At the company picnic the VP of Operations watched the softball game between two groups of employees and she was amazed at how intense the competition was. People were playing hard with a clear determination to be a contributing player on the winning team and actively encouraging their teammates to play well. If only she could get that kind of energy from them on the job, she thought, we would be ahead of our plan instead of behind.

Many leaders have had similar thoughts. Why are people highly engaged in what they do when they are off work yet disengaged at work? A simple answer is most people work at jobs where they are essentially bowling through a curtain. They know what they are supposed do and may even do it quite well, however because of the curtain they have no idea how they are doing let alone how the whole team is doing. They simply do what is asked and once a year or so they get told the score along with some suggestions on how they can improve.

As Stephen Covey explained in The 4 Disciplines of Execution performance falls behind plan because people don’t understand the goal; if they know the goal they don’t understand what they can do to help achieve it; they are not sure how well they are doing; and there is no timely feedback and accountability. The secret to getting things done on time with excellence is to have no more than two to three major goals; focus on lead measures that people know they can control and directly influence the goal; have a compelling scoreboard in a place everyone can see that tracks the lead measures; and have regular accountability and feedback meetings to celebrate progress and adjust to overcome problems. Those disciplines along with people who fit the job and a leader who helps them feel and fare better create an outstanding team. Like a lottery number if you don’t hit all of them you don’t get much.

Response Ability

On a bitter cold and snowy winter day in the Midwest two sales people prepare to start their day. One sees the weather report and decides it is a good day to catch up on paperwork since no one will want to talk to a salesperson on such a terrible day. The other one bundles up eager to get out and start making calls after concluding that most people he wants to call on will be in the office, especially the average sales people.

What gets in the way of success? Common excuses are government, taxes, weather, traffic, relatives, neighbors, economic conditions, illness, bosses, and company policy. The better, but not common, answer is “me”.

We are the difference makers in our journeys. All sorts of things will happen to get in the way of our plans for success but those things generally happen to everyone at one time or another. The difference is in each individual’s ability to respond to those disruptions and detours. Jim Rohn, the famous motivational speaker and network marketer said “It’s not what happens to you that determines the quantity and quality of your life; it’s what you do that changes everything.”

Will 2014 be a ‘wow” year because of your different response to things that happen or will it be like previous years with standard excuses and responses to what happens? 

 

Develop response-ability and make it a “wow” year.

  

FOCUS

In January it is common to be considering possibilities for achieving better results this year than last year.  As we’ve discussed here many times before, results are produced by a combination of skills and action so to get better results either better skills or more actions are necessary.  New skills and behaviors generally require time to develop; however, leveraging existing skills and actions can be accelerated to produce amazing results more quickly.  It is done by focusing actions toward one specific result and eliminating or at least reducing distractions that interfere.  In other words having a goal that is your focus and then to actually focus your attention and effort on it.  Doing that for a day can be difficult; doing it for a year is rare but those who can do it are the ones who achieve success.   If you want more focus in 2014 it may be helpful to keep in mind its definition as both a noun (a main purpose or interest) and a verb (to direct your attention or effort at something specific).

The two keys to being able to maintain your focus are it cannot not be a detriment to other important aspects of work or life but at the same time it is vitally important to you.  Most often people fail to maintain focus because the end result is not significantly energizing and other good ideas, daily routines, or suggestions/requests from other people, become distractions.  Avoiding such disruptions requires another aspect of focus; adjustment or re-focusing.  Other people and the rest of the world will not remain in place while we do our thing.  To achieve the end result of a yearlong goal we will need to repeatedly focus and refocus on our focus.

Whatever your focus is in 2014, we wish you great success!

The Magic Formula for Success

A common question coaches pose to a client is ‘what would you do if you couldn’t fail?’ It helps the client identify dreams and aspirations that are limited by fear of failure. It can be freeing to think of a risk free venture; it opens up new possibilities when confidence is at a high level. However, another way of considering that question is in the context of high risk. If the stakes are so high to have life threatening consequences you would be acutely aware and deliberate to take necessary action.

As we all look forward to a new year and plans for business and personal success it may be helpful to consider ‘what will I do in 2014 if I can’t fail?’  Applying both aspects – high confidence and deliberate actions – is the magic formula for success. We wish you the best for the holidays and the new year!

Will You Reach Your Goals?

We all have goals, dreams and aspirations that we work to achieve. The probability of realizing them is largely dependent on the regularity and frequency of our actions along with our level of skill in performing those actions. However, the right strategies and tactics are also vital to success. If a hammer is your only tool you will be a great success at nailing but not so much at cutting and trimming. When obstacles or challenges interfere with our progress toward our goals we naturally shift tactics and use different tools.

Sometimes however there are opportunities or new tools to help us reach our goal but unlike obstacles and challenges, we may over look these opportunities. Adapting to new possibilities and quickly capturing new opportunities is a big differentiator of great from average. 

In our era of rapid technology advancement deploying the right new technology at the right time can be a huge opportunity requiring – you guessed it – skill and action. To help you know about some of the productivity related technology opportunities available a new series begins with this article.

Average Versus Exceptional

A couple of weeks ago three winning tickets split a $448,400,000 Powerball jackpot. Those three had a very exceptional return on their $2.00 investments!  Millions of others had no return on their ‘investments’.  In games of chance luck is of course the differentiator between average and exceptional results.

In most of life, exceptional results are derived from exceptional actions. Average effort usually produces average outcomes yet many people dream of success far above their average activities. They want the joy and satisfaction of exceptional results but at the same time resist taking exceptional risks and working exceptionally hard.

Results are always derived from a combination of capability and action. High capability coupled with low action will produce low results similar to low capability coupled with high action.   Exceptional results however will be produced when high capability is matched with high levels of action. That may be common knowledge but it is not common practice. Coaching helps change behavior and helps create exceptional action and results. Just ask!