Open the office door

Another good overview (this one by leadership consultant Kate Sweetman) of what it takes to be a leader in challenging times.

The principles of Sweetman’s leadership code are keepers. And her perspective, which I share, is that any time is a challenging time to be a leader. These last 18 months present specific and severe challenges, but it’s never a cakewalk to provide clarity, support, roadmaps and resources to other human beings. You certainly cannot provide these things if you’re hiding in your office.

Managers are leaders too. As you manage and lead through the waves of fear that are swamping everyone right now, remember to stay connected to your people and your goals. Stay focused. Communicate. And open that office door.

See it, be it

As a follow-up to talking about the importance and power of focus, here’s a great article by Srinivasan Pillay on why and how visualization works — what happens in the brain, and in our lives, when we visualize.

Visualizing works. And it’s an enormously important skill for managers. It goes hand in hand with focus. As Pillay points out in the article, feeding your brain a “plan in a thousand words” is less successful than giving it a single, specific image. The real work is getting to that single image.

But that’s all it is — work. We can all do it. It’s a process. Most of us start with a jumble of ideas, feelings and thoughts that don’t really draw together into a coherent set of goals — that’s perfectly normal. Like anything else, it gets easier with regular repetition. We can teach ourselves to visualize focused goals, and we can figure out the right steps to take in pursuit of those goals. And along the way, we’re also fighting the paralysis of fear for ourselves and our teams, making our businesses more successful, and making our brains more healthy and our spirits more resilient.

Part of the science behind visualization that Pillay describes (see his second paragraph) is mirror neurons. You’ll find some exercises to help you and your team understand the power of mirror neurons in Session Two of the Humans At Work program. And at the end of Session One, you’ll find some questions you can ask yourself to begin visualizing the best manager you can be. You can make that a long-term visualization — or you can adapt the questions to consider how your “best manager” self would respond to your specific team or company situation right now.

And finally, here’s one of the article’s most important points for me:

Remember, a failure is not a final statement that you will not succeed. It is information that your vision has to be changed, refined or repeated.

In work, as in life, we do not have to be perfect the first time out in order to be successful. We just need to keep working on it.

All managers are leaders

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that more companies are recognizing the need to continue investing in developing and deepening leadership skills even in hard times.

That’s great, but the news is not all rosy. It’s a hard time for training in general — a hard time for business in general — and it infuriates me to see so much short-term thinking coming out of the back rooms and board rooms of companies whose decisions affect so many human lives. Bob Sutton makes a case for why knee-jerk layoffs are stupid response to economic woe (and I encourage any companies who are considering layoffs to pony up for the Harvard Business Review case study/commentary “The Layoff”). Layoffs are the most egregious kind of panic response, but it’s equally frustrating to see companies emphasizing “leadership” training for “senior” people.

Please. The people who most need whatever skills and tools we can give them are the people on the front lines of business everywhere — people who are making things, building things, fixing things, transporting goods, getting services out, getting payments in, putting groceries on the shelves and checking them out at the register. People who are doing the daily work of business. Yes, strategy and innovation are important, and they may save your company down the road, but today the people who are doing the work need all of us to be the best managers we can be.

All managers are leaders.

Training executives and senior managers at the expense of front-line managers and supervisors is dumb. Because productivity and effectiveness start at the local level — with the individual team. If that team’s manager is ineffective at communicating clearly, providing resources, sharing information, making decisions, managing conflicting priorities and keeping people focused, then it doesn’t matter that the vice president of the division is a great leader. It just doesn’t.

My bias is obvious, of course — my program is all about training managers. But I am not frustrated today because the Wall Street Journal implies that such programs can’t make money right now. I’m frustrated because companies don’t seem to understand that so-called “soft skills” — communicating clearly with co-workers, running effective meetings, agreeing on process — are what keep work flowing through their organizations. Real leadership would be doing whatever it takes to keep that pipeline as wide open as possible.

I believe that things will get better. American business, the business culture I know best, has a long history of being both ingenious and stubborn. We haven’t always been flexible, but we’re learning — we have to. And those much-derided soft skills are at the heart of the flexibility that will save us.

Fight fear with focus

Many thanks to Terry Seamon for inviting me to contribute to his series “Leading in the Crisis” at Here We Are. Now What?

I found myself struggling to decide what to write about — with so much stress on all of us these days, what can I offer that can make a difference right now? I had a thousand ideas, and they all seemed useful in some way — but Terry didn’t ask for a book, he asked for a post. So how to decide which idea would be best?

And then I understood the real lesson. The fact that I couldn’t choose an article topic — that I wanted to write about everything — was a powerful reminder for me of how losing focus makes even everyday decisions difficult. Imagine that lack of focus playing out throughout businesses worldwide… that’s the stuff of nightmares. And it’s very easy to lose focus in times of fear. So now, more than ever, focus matters.

The article begins:

These are hard and frightening times — hard because of the financial crisis, frightening because so many of us feel powerless to do anything except watch the world slide away around us.

If this were simply a question of managing money troubles – cutting costs, revamping strategies, becoming more innovative – we’d know what to do without hesitation. But the real challenge we face today as leaders is helping people manage fear.

I hope you’ll head over and read the rest of the article at Terry’s blog, where you’ll also find the thoughts of others on how we can all keep on course during these difficult times. Let Terry know what you think of these posts, or come back here for more conversation on staying focused and managing fear.

Be tough

Thanks to Jim Cox for pointing me to this article about nice people getting the shaft from bad managers and unscrupulous peers. It’s not a happy story, but it’s an important one.

When I throw down in A Leader’s Manifesto about my conviction that no one should be allowed to manage badly, this is what I’m talking about. This is the kind of chaos that bad managers create. And that chaos is not only the responsibility of the nefarious Doug in the scenario linked above: it’s the spineless Kelly and her boss and his boss, and everyone up the food chain.

And it’s also a cultural construct that we all struggle against, which is that “tough decisions” can only be made by “tough people” — and that anyone who is nice cannot by definition be tough. I used to get this all the time from my bosses at Wizards of the Coast, who were convinced for quite a while that someone with my skills could not make tough decisions: Kelley’s too busy worrying about everyone else’s feelings, or whatever.

Trust me, I can be tough. But for me, “toughness” that creates chaos, rules by fear, allows decisions to be made based on whispered rumors and schoolyard deals, and substitutes yelling for conversation — well, that’s not tough. That’s just a lack of leadership.

There’s not a lot that Stuart could have done by the time he was actually laid off. But I’m willing to bet that Doug didn’t suddenly experience a dramatic personality change that day. My guess is that he’d done that kind of thing before, perhaps even to Stuart or someone on his team, and that he’d been allowed to get away with it.

And that’s where we can all get a little tougher.

My experience is that directly confronting backstabbing behavior — in a way that’s clear and non-aggressive — is often effective. I had a situation in a former job in which Executive A told me of a remark by Executive B that characterized me in an unflattering and weak way. So, right then, I asked A to come with me to B’s office, and then asked B if the report was true. “Because if you believe that”, I said in a neutral voice, “it will certainly affect our working relationship. It will cause you to withhold information and support from me, and that hurts our business. And so if you believe this, you need to help me understand what I can do to alter your perception, so that our work together isn’t jeopardized.”

“Oh, no!” B assured me. “I’m sure I never said that.”

A and B exchanged a look.

“If you did, it’s fine, I just need you to be willing to say it to my face so we can work on it,” I said.

“Oh, no, really….”

I honestly don’t know which of them was telling the truth. It doesn’t matter. I never had that kind of trouble with either one of them ever again.

Sometimes being tough means being right there in the moment, willing to engage with what’s happening, in a way that keeps open the possibility of progress but doesn’t ignore the possibility of bad news. That is a hugely vulnerable thing to be; the best mangers make it look easy and like the only reasonable approach. Find those people in your own organization, and watch how they do it.

Be that kind of tough as often as you can.

No one does it alone

Here’s a great post by Phil Gerbyshak about seeking feedback to be more effective in how you deal with people at work. I particularly like the emphasis on asking direct reports these questions — that can be a vulnerable thing for a manager, but trust me, it’s so much easier to manage people well when you don’t have to read their minds. I also like the specificity of asking “What is one thing I need to know about working with you?” The answer to that question might open a door to a much more effective relationship. Ask it with a smile, be open to the answer, and then use the information — and watch how much richer your interactions become.

Phil posted this article as a guest-blogger on Terry Seamon’s blog (and I’m looking forward to guest-blogging for Terry later this month as part of his series “Leading in the Crisis”).

And there’s a great example of the importance of relationship to business success. Terry and Phil have connected and made the choice to support each other — and in doing so, they’re also making their own work more effective, and opening doors to new relationships as visitors flow back and forth through their blogs. Old-school values tell us to “protect” our resources — our audience, our clients, our secret techniques for making managers better. But most of us don’t go that school anymore because we realize that success comes through sharing and supporting others. That way, we all get stronger.

Have you heard the saying, “Hell is other people”? Well, I think success is other people. That’s certainly where our success as managers begins.

You’ll find more of my ideas about work relationships in the Humans At Work Session 1 curriculum.

You’ll find lots of great ideas, tips and tools for managing at Phil Gerbyshak’s blog Slacker Manager, and a wealth of inspiration and conversation about leadership, courage and spirit at Terry’s blog Here We Are. Now What? I highly recommend both.

100 Best Business Books

I think all of us who are serious about improving our managing skills ought to read when we can. It can be tough to carve out the time, but there is a wealth of information out there — good ideas, practical skills, effective strategies, new ways of thinking that can really help us do our job more effectively, with less stress and more joy.

But there are more than a million business books available right now. So when your time is limited, how do you choose?

Well, you can start with the books in the Humans At Work curriculum, which is my “best of” list for managers looking to establish or improve the core skills of managing people well. I see them as the foundation of a good manager’s library. They are all books that I still read over and over again.

I’ve decided to add two more books to my “essential” list, and will be including them as program materials. They won’t be incorporated into the general curriculum; rather, I will offer them as “graduation gifts” to take managers into the next phase of practicing and expanding their skills.

I’ll talk about the second book in an upcoming post. Today I want to focus on The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten.

This is a great resource for every manager. Covert and Sattersten have identified books of big ideas and practical benefit in a variety of areas — self awareness, leadership, strategy, management, innovation and more. They provide cogent summaries of each book — the central concepts, perspective, and the benefits it can offer. They share their personal experience of, and response to, each book. And they point you to additional books and resources. This isn’t just a “list,” it’s a road map to help you navigate through the jungle of those million-plus books that none of us have time to read. I’m turning to it right now for insights on getting things done more effectively and staying strategic: another time, I’ll probably be diving into case histories or scorekeeping. This is a resource I can turn to in a variety of situations when I want to jumpstart my thinking in a particular area, or when I want to remind myself what smart people have already said on a particular topic.

I’ll talk about the other “graduation” book in a forthcoming post. Today, I encourage you to look through the “100 Best” table of contents, and read an excerpt, at amazon.com.

What is recognition?

Some companies, and some managers, don’t embrace the idea of “recognition” — they find it artificial, or expensive, or it just takes too much time. Some companies treat recognition as if it were a maintenance chore like filling up the copy machine with paper, or changing the bottle at the water dispenser — something you do to keep things working.

Some companies think that a coffee cup or a t-shirt from the company store is “recognition.” Yep, just what your folks need to make them feel valued: a coffee cup that’s all about the company. No, no — recognition is never about the company: it’s about the people and the work they do. And so for recognition to be effective, it has to be real, and it has to be personal. Cookie cutter approaches and company swag do not send a personal message.

What does? A handwritten note that spells out what the person did and why it matters. A gift certificate to their favorite restaurant. A contribution to the charity that they volunteer for on the weekends. Buying them a cup of coffee at the latte stand and staying to chat while you both get caffeinated. The gift of your personal effort, your time, your attention to the details that make them an individual — that make them, in fact, the individual who just went above and beyond for your team and your business.

It’s not always convenient, but it is always worth it.

If you want to see the power of personal recognition in action, read about what it can mean when someone cheers you on at work — even if your work for the day is to throw passes or play defense in a high school football game.

I love this story. It makes me misty every time I read it. The power of human beings to make each other feel special… imagine how these kids felt on that bus trip home. We don’t have to be on the football field to do this for each other. We can do it in our offices and cubicles, on our factory floors, just by taking the time to recognize not only the work, but the humans behind it. You may be responding because of the work someone did — but when you respond, do so as one human being to another. And then imagine how they might feel on their bus trip home.

Want to engage me? Communicate

It’s a new day in the federal government. As this kickoff post of the new White House blog says, change has come.

Regardless of your political beliefs, I hope you’ll see that this post from the White House blog is a model of clarity and transparency. It uses plain language and a personal tone that lets me know someone on the other side sees the audience as human beings, not cookie cutter “citizens.” It’s a great starting point for creating a relationship that balances between individual communication and the need to deliver information to hundreds of millions of diverse people. That’s what companies need to do too. The size of the audience is not important: every organization has its own diversity, whether they are a company of ten or a country of 350 million.

The White House now has to deliver on the communication promises they’ve made — just like any manager. If they do, it will certainly make me feel more involved and connected as a citizen. More engaged.

Behavior is the heart of engagement, and communication is one of the essential behaviors. It’s often the first interaction we have with strangers, and it’s a defining factor in any relationship that lasts more than a minute. This is especially true of our relationship with, and as, managers. It matters that we communicate — there is no relationship without it, and without that relationship it’s mighty hard for people to get work done together. It matters what we communicate — people need complete, clear information to do their jobs. And it matters how we communicate — yelling at me at work simply guarantees that I’ll miss any meaningful content because I’ll be too busy covering my ears, literally or metaphorically.

If you want me to engage me, don’t corporate-speak me, don’t condescend, don’t bully me. Talk to me as if you actually want me to be engaged.

If you’re interested in learning more about communication skills for managers, take a look at the teaching notes for Session 2 and Session 3 of Humans At Work (or start with these descriptions of key session topics).

Start with behavior

In this brief post, Seth Godin neatly distills an essential component of relationship. He’s talking about online relationship, but he might as well be talking about the management relationship (or any other in life).

The component is behavior: the simple and fundamental truth that others’ perceptions of us are based on what we do.

Godin says: “The biggest takeaway for me is this: online interactions are largely expected to be intentional. On purpose. Planned. People assume you did stuff for a reason.”

This is a great statement, and I’m taking the liberty of applying it more widely. If you’re a manager, type this out somewhere and stick it to your wall:

Management actions are largely expected to be intentional. On purpose. Planned. People assume you did stuff for a reason.

Great managers may or may not have talent, incisive intelligence, extensive vocabulary, variety of experience, higher education or the right clothes. What great managers all have is the behavioral skills of great management. If you want to be a great manager, that’s where it starts.

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