Dirty Word #12 – Honesty
November 26, 2007
How many of these statements have you heard (or thought or said!) in just the last month or two?
- I’m afraid to say what I really think because they (management, colleagues, direct reports, clients) will make my life a living hell?
- Everyone has a right to his opinion. (aka I don’t agree with you and have now stopped listening!)
- I’ll tell you, but I don’t want to say it in front of the group.
- The last thing I want to do is to bring that decision/issue to the group. We’ll never get anywhere on it.
I’m struck by how often I hear these sorts of comments as I work with fabulously talented and highly accomplished leaders. And honestly, since that’s the title of this post, how often I’m tempted to say/think them myself.
What’s that all about? Anyone brave enough to wade in?
Gratitude Revisited
November 19, 2007
In an earlier post, I talked about gratitude as a powerful way to build constructive relationships and motivate people. I’ve been struck over the past weeks about how rarely most of us use gratitude in our everyday interactions, especially with co-workers. (I think it’s ironic that we thank customers – who may or may not be with us in a year – and fail to thank our colleagues, many of whom we’ve had with us for years!)
Off the top of my head, I can think of three different organizations/leaders I’m working with right now who have recently received the feedback that their interactions with others are characterized more by criticism than by gratitude or appreciation. Most acknowledge this to be the case. Some even know about research like John Gottman’s that has shown the necessity of an overwhelmingly positive ratio of positive:negative interactions if you want to sustain constructive relationships. (Most are surprised – some to the jaw-dropping level – that Gottman found a necessary ratio of 5:1 positive:negative interactions.)
With Thanksgiving upon us, I want to bring this back to our minds again. Think of one person who has made a positive difference in your organization, your team, or for a client. Name what she did. Describe it so that someone who wasn’t there could really get it. Link those positive actions to the impact on your organization/team/client. Last, imagine the difference it would make if everyone in your team did this same sort of thing over the coming month.
Now the fun part: go share this with the person in question. Do it in your own style, but with the same vivid detail you just imagined. It will cost you precisely five minutes and will dramatically improve the chances you see that behavior again. Plus it will make you and the other person feel pretty good – and there’s something to be said for that.
Heck, for extra credit why not try this with two people??
What can we learn from managing non-profits?
November 15, 2007
One of the things I love about my work is that I get to interact with leaders from all different spheres of influence: professional services firms, commercial companies, and non-profit organizations. I firmly believe that each has lots to learn from the other, which is why I like connecting smart, well-intentioned people from these different arenas.
David Maister poses an intriguing question on his excellent and widely-read blog about managing professional services firms. The essence of his question is as follows:
What are the differences in managing professionals in non-profit organizations vs. for-profit professional firms?
Quite reasonably, David starts off with a discussion about the difference (positive and negative) that access to cash has in the for-profit and non-profit arenas, especially in reference to how you manage key talent. Access to financial rewards certainly can make a difference – although I’d watch the assumption that non-profits have less money available to them than for-profit firms. Even when that’s true (and I know of some pretty well-funded non-profits), the perceptions of the managers and staff about availability of those funds are not always that different.
I generally agree with Jim Collins’ thinking about the differences and similarities between non-profit and for-profit organizations. Excellence and good management are excellence and good management wherever they’re found. Some tools at the disposal of a for-profit manager (career advancement, financial rewards) are sometimes less available to the non-profit manager. But in either setting, you have to get the people-motivation job done and compensation, to David’s point, is usually a blunt-instrument approach to that motivation.
The tool most obviously available to the non-profit leader that is often left on the shelf by for-profit leaders is the appeal to the Big Cause. Most non-profits have an obvious mission that can rally people and help them connect their personal efforts to the good they are trying to accomplish. Lose sight of this, and the non-profit quickly flounders. This is good news, in a weird way, because that loss of momentum is an early warning sign (long before donations dry up) for non-profit leaders. Get back on mission or risk the future of the organization.
I believe that most for-profits can have similarly noble causes to pursue. To their great disadvantage, they often substitute financial gains (which simply allow them to continue another day/month/year) for the Big Cause they could tap into. By doing so, they unwittingly turn their talent into free agents willing to shop themselves to other organizations who can offer better meaning and compensation.
Who else wants to comment? What’s the Big Cause for your organization, whether its’ for-profit or not?
Why aren’t we cross-selling more?
November 12, 2007
Quick, name the most frequently asked questions among professional services firm leaders these days? Here, I’ll give one to you with a few details changed to protect the guilty:
We have 15 different lines of business but our clients buy, on average, services from 1.7 lines. If we just moved that number to three or four lines per client, it would make a huge difference in our growth numbers.
Yes, we would all love it if our clients bought every service we have on the website (or glossy brochure if you have that kind of firm). And yes, most of our clients would actually benefit from our excellent services. So, assuming our services are high quality, our clients need them, and they know someone from our firm, why doesn’t the cross-selling connection happen more often?
I think it’s probably a more complicated answer than it may appear on the surface, but one thing I hear when I ask firm leaders about this challenge goes like this: Our practitioners are specialists in a certain kind of technical work. They don’t naturally interact with people who buy those other services.
This automatically makes me wonder if our wonderfully talented people are showing up to client sites with a technical specialist mindset instead of a problem-solver mindset. In other words, are they just looking for more nails to hammer instead of stepping back for a minute and asking themselves, “What is my client trying to build?” And of course, the next natural question, “How could my friends and colleagues (i.e. my firm) help them build that besides hammering in these nails?”
Try 
instead of 
Yes, I know individual metrics (tracking only my hours/revenue/credit) and organizational politics get in the way here too. But if we really say that we’re professionals, bound and determined to do right by our clients (partly because we know that doing right by them will eventually be a credit to us), wouldn’t asking these simple questions of ourselves provoke at least occasional improvement in our clients’ cross-buying habits?
Dirty Word #11 – Loyalty
November 8, 2007
When I work with leaders, there is one thing they seem to want more than anything else in their relationships with colleagues and – even more so – members or their own staff: loyalty. It sounds different from different leaders, but it’s essentially the same thing.
“I want to know they have my back.”
“I want to know that they’ll stick up for me and my policies even if I’m not in the room – and even if those policies aren’t popular.”
I’ve thought about this quite a bit. And frankly, it troubles me. If the same standard were applied to these leaders in their dealings with their managers and colleagues, I wonder how “loyal” they would come off. Is “loyalty” the same as never disagreeing – or at least, not openly? And if so, how realistic (and productive) would that really be? Different points of view, when handled constructively, can help us get to better answers.
Where have I landed on this? It’s honestly still a thought in progress, but here goes: what if loyalty meant that you’re fundamentally for me, even if we don’t agree on every thing? And we’ll talk about those areas of disagreement and talk about how we can handle them with minimum damage to both of our interests? And we’ll agree on how we’ll talk about them out in the big, bad world so that we don’t cause unnecessary spin and confusion – or let the political interests of others drive a wedge between us on the larger areas of mutual interest? In other words, we’ll stay loyal to this shared thing we’re working on, which requires both of us to tango and we’ll keep our promises about treating the areas of disagreement with respect and forthrightness.
Anyone brave enough to wade into this one? What does loyalty (in the best sense of the word) mean to you?
Plane reading – New Episode of “Minefields, Allies, and Hidden Agendas”
November 5, 2007
Do you know someone who is stepping into a significant leadership role? Ever wonder what makes some people fly faster in those roles while others fail to launch? Our team did some research on that some months back (click here to view the results) and found that – in the opinion of other leaders across many industries – building constructive relationships with colleagues and team members ranked highest.
I’ve just posted Minefields, Allies, and Hidden Agendas: Episode II, the second in a series of articles that deal with this very topic. They track the progress of Ben Scott, a (fictitious) up and coming executive who just started as Chief Marketing Officer at a professional services firm. He’s trying to figure out how to build relationships, navigate politics, and make his mark in this role.
To read the first episode, click here. Each episode should take about 10 minutes to read – precisely the amount of time most planes take taxiing and taking off before you can crank up the laptop again. And each one gives you practical approaches to apply, share, and practice.
And yes, I have a nice gift waiting for the first person to read, apply/share, and offer feedback on the article.
Coaching Secret: Persistent Practice
November 1, 2007
A former client passed on a blogpost from Rob May’s Businesspundit.com. Rob talks about how he gave up desserts for the past eight months. That would be interesting (or crazy, depending on your point of view), but listen to Rob’s reasoning for his abstention from sweets.
I’m not on a diet. I’ve been right around 170 lbs. for the last 10 years, with the exception of a brief period where a running injury forced me to take 6 weeks off (I gained 12 pounds). I don’t need to lose weight, I am simply trying to become a better entrepreneur.
You may be thinking, “Hold on, what does dessert have to do with entrepreneurial performance?” Athletic performance, yes. But work performance?
Fear not, chocolate lovers, I’m not going to embark on a tirade against sweets (I’m currently partial to chocolate covered cherries from Trader Joe’s). That’s not the point of this post or of Rob’s (click here to see his whole post). Instead, Rob talks about how his self-discipline in eating has slopped over into his self-discipline at work.
This is actually quite a profound point. We tend to slice our lives up into little chunks: career, personal life, diet, exercise, spiritual health, emotional health. Of course, no one really lives their lives that way. Each person lives one life. Period. And different aspects of that life inevitably affect other parts. I have a client trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon right now – I can promise you that his discipline and drive for that goal have positive effects on his performance at work. As he says, “Marathons are like life. Ups and downs, decisions and trade-offs, pain and triumph.” He gets it.
What does this have to do with coaching someone who wants to improve their own performance? My colleague, Dave Wondra, often sings the praises of persistent practice – the selection of one or two activities that – when applied consistently over time – pour gasoline on a strength or neutralize a potential flat side.
The key here appears to be a self-selected, consistent behavioral activity that we commit to over an extended period. The progress from that practice overflows into other areas and help us raise our performance across the board.
So what practices have you tried? What’s worked for you? How can you use persistent practice with people you coach to help them reach new levels of success?