Archive for Leadership

I recently had the privilege of facilitating a team-building offsite for a team that had, for the most part, worked together for a long time yet had never been given the time to explore how to work more effectively together.  Like a family that has lived together for years and gets entrenched in bad habits, they were treating each other and themselves in less-than-positive ways, burying hurts and pretending to be okay when, really, they weren’t.

The organization’s objective in bringing me in was to broaden and deepen the scope of work that the team performed, so some things needed to change.

And quickly.

Over two 1/2-day sessions (conducted a week apart), we explored different working styles and how we, as humans, often jump to conclusions and embrace our personal assumptions, sometimes without sufficient data. We learned and tested a model that would give the team members language and motivation to share more responsibility, define accountabilities, and become more self-empowered. The team practiced new methods of communicating, coming up with ways to help and support each other, and began to realize that making a choice about changing the conversation can change the outcome of the relationship.

It’s a simple beginning to a new way of being.

Here are three ways that the team members’ choices began to change the relationships across the team. These choices are important for any team and its members:

• Choose what you see. We’re all familiar with Rorschach images, those inkblots that everyone views differently. By choosing what you see, you’re acknowledging that what you see may not be what someone else sees, that their interpretation may be different than yours, yet equally valid. Covey says, “Seek first to understand; then seek to be understood.” By choosing to view a situation from another’s point of view, there just may be an even better outcome all around.
• Choose who shows up. There were moments in the offsite when the conversation took on a negative tone, focusing how other parts of the company were standing in the way of the team meeting its goals. But we all know that there will always be issues or roadblocks. We can show up as a victim or as a creator. By choosing to show up as creator, to declare what you want rather than what you can’t have or do, you put yourself—and the team—in a position to think creatively. The creator standpoint says that you “can do” rather than that you “can’t do.” Your peers, then, can contribute by creating a new way with you.
• Choose to collaborate. When an issue is important to address and the relationship is important to nurture, choose to work together to create a mutually beneficial outcome. Both sides may need to bend a bit to accommodate the other’s needs or wishes. By entering into a conversation space with an intention of good will and collaboration, you and your teammates will move towards building a more solid working relationship.

These choices—and they are choices—are made by each individual and by the group as a whole. And, once made, they have tremendous impact, again, on each individual and on the group as a whole.

What choices do you and your teams make each day?

Do you remember Kindergarten?  It’s when we learned to share. Sometimes the idea went against our baser instincts–especially when there were only two toy trucks and four kids wanted to play with them. Still, our teachers knew that sharing was important and we, slowly but surely, recognized at some deeper level that we would benefit through these simple bits of cooperation. We shared the rules of games, our emerging ideas of the world, what we wanted to be when we grew up. Sometimes we’d hand our best friend the towel we were using as a cape just to see if they, too, could fly.

Then we left the “K” and proceeded on the “through 8″ part of our elementary education. For a while sharing was still important, but not so much as it had been before.  Now, a lot of the things we wanted to share were things we weren’t allowed to anymore. We had to work alone, think alone, take tests alone. What used to be sharing they now called “cheating.”

And on it went, through middle school and high school where they tested how much we–as individuals–knew. Despite the occasional joint venture, knowledge became a solitary act.  And then came college, where we were not only tested on what we knew, but on what we knew relative to what others didn’t know–and they called it “the curve.” Now it wasn’t just that there was little advantage in sharing with others; in college they promote an actual disadvantage.

And then we got jobs, and the companies who hired us wanted us to share again, to cooperate, to work closely together for everyone’s (and the company’s) mutual benefit.

Many don’t realize how hard that can be, don’t remember that sharing has been largely bred out of us before we finally hit the workforce.

Why all this preface about sharing?  Because even we, as professionals in this industry, sometimes forget how much we can learn from each other by sharing what we know, what we discover. Without question, the people we interact with are some of the most cooperative and sharing we’ve ever met, but we can all always do more.

Here are three things that we at Charney Coaching & Consulting are committed to sharing with our friends in the HR, Executive Coaching, and Leadership industries:

• Our thoughts and ideas. We’re always looking for new ways to approach leadership development and executive coaching. We’ve explored ways to analyze levels of behavior, the kinds of exchanges that happen in what we call “the conversation space,” and new techniques for building trust. As we develop these–and test them with clients–we’ll tell you about them here on our blog and through the groups we participate in on Linked In.
• What’s happening out there. There are–quite literally–thousands of professionals with millions of ideas. There’s no way everyone can keep track of them all.  However, using a new platform called Scoop.It, we’ve begun to aggregate and link to dozens of very interesting articles and blogs, all reviewed and curated by us, and now available as the re-launched version of The Way We Lead.
  
• The conversations we have with others. Each Wednesday, starting next week. we will begin a conversation on our Facebook page and invite others to respond. Some weeks it will be a question, other weeks a link to something we find provocative or interesting. Whatever it is, it will always challenge our thinking.

With these new initiatives we hope to participate in–and contribute to–the sharing of knowledge about what we do.  We hope you will come and see what we have to say and–importantly–tell us what you have to say.

Thanks.  We look forward to our conversations.

Renee and Michael

As some of you know, I’ve taken my first steps into the world of running by joining a beginner’s clinic specifically aimed at training for an upcoming 5K race. Over the weeks that we’ve been training, we’ve increased our running times from a mix of one- and two-minute walk/run cycles to cycles that have us repeatedly running three and four minutes at a time.  We’ve also changed our routes, incorporating varying terrain like hills, turns and gradual slopes. All of these give us an opportunity to exceed our current capacities and reach ones of greater endurance and pace. As I mentioned in my earlier blog, I’m engaging my beginner’s mind as I run. I’m not out to prove anything (even to myself), and I’m not trying to solve any problem.  I’m out to finish, and, along the journey,  to see what I notice about myself as I build up my endurance and capacity to run. My intention is simply to create a new energy for myself.

A webinar that I’m currently taking, The Empowerment Dynamic (or TED), teaches us about shifts in our mindsets when we set our intentions on what we want, on creating something rather than solving a problem or focusing on what we don’t want. When we shift to an intention of creating something we want, we choose – personally choose – an energy and orientation on an outcome of “I Can Do It” rather than “I’m not as fast|able|agile as the gal or guy in front of me.” It may seem small, yet applying this to my running changes everything – my relationship with myself and my running goal, my relationship and conversation with other runners, and my relationship with how I perceive myself. I’m not focused on whether or not I’m the slowest one in the pack; rather my mindset is focused on bringing into being a newly created identity and outcome – I am a runner.

I experienced a breakthrough at our last clinic: I noticed that after the first two cycles of ”run three, walk two”, that I was not as tired or out of breath as I was the week before. Keeping with my slow and deliberate pace, I psyched myself to keep going to the next tree, then to the next crosswalk, and on and on. I wasn’t gasping for breath and my body wasn’t screaming to stop. The pace that I had developed for myself was serving me well.  I was doing it!

My new practice of running and the new habits I’m forming in the process have moved me beyond where I was a month ago. These are clearly baby steps that I’m taking (I’m not signing up for a marathon anytime too soon!) and I am setting my intention on an outcome – to finish the 5K race. My mindset is focused on what I want rather than what I don’t want. This is a subtle and powerful shift and distinction. What I’ve done, simply put, is to empower myself, to act as a leader for myself by focusing on the positive outcomes I want, and creating the intentions and energy to make those outcomes real. I’m realizing, too, that these ideas can strengthen the leaders I work with.  All leaders can benefit from such an approach, one that focuses on a “can do” mindset for yourself and your team members.

Try this over the next week. See how you might shift the language and your outlook on how you engage with your employees and teams. Where might you instill a “can do” mindset in your conversations? Ask them “what do we want” rather than “what don’t we want”, see what you notice, and comment back. I’ll be curious what breakthroughs you might experience!

Thanks this week go to our Guest Blogger, Robin Eichert of PeopleSense Consulting, for this thoughtful and interesting article.

I wish I could tell you that every person I ever hired worked out perfectly. They didn’t.

There were some great hiring decisions I made when I was managing boatloads of people, and also some wonderful outcomes when I’ve been a part of a hiring team. But, unfortunately, there have been a few notable flops as well.

Sometimes I could tell after a few days, other times it took a few months, but in the general scheme of things, it didn’t take long before I knew I had made a mistake.

We all know how critical a decision it is when we bring a new person on to a leadership team. Of course we expect high levels of skill and competence in their area of expertise, but even that can easily be misjudged, especially if we only go by the information they provide about their past experiences. Just because someone has been a CEO at a company before doesn’t necessarily mean they were a good one.

When we hire into a management role, we don’t usually plan for the same generous ramp-up time that we do in entry-level or middle-management roles, either. We expect leaders to hit the ground running, making changes that will turn around big issues that we’ve been struggling with, either because the last person in the role wasn’t successful or our growth demands new expertise.

There is a lot resting on this new person’s shoulders from Day One—and yours, too, if you make the wrong choice.

What makes it so hard to get the hiring decision right?

There are a number of factors, but I believe the most common reason for failure when hiring at the executive level is that the person doesn’t fit the culture of the organization. We move too quickly when we get absorbed in all they say they are capable of doing, or we make a decision because we genuinely like the person sitting across the table. We fail to explore how they achieved their results, what methods or systems they used, and then evaluate if that approach will be effective in our culture.

There are three steps you can take to increase your odds of success. These steps aren’t difficult; it just takes discipline and commitment to the process.

• Slow down. Hold multiple conversations with the candidate, even if on the phone, to explore different topics. Ask about the person’s past experiences, and listen carefully. Be curious about the types of projects they got involved in, understand the process they took to move it along, what results occurred, and what lessons were learned? Listen for realistic situations and honest recollections; be wary of sugar-coated stories where everything went right all the time.
• Use assessments. Getting objective data absolutely helps you understand a candidate more thoroughly. None of us can uncover the nuances in a typical interview that you will learn from using a reliable, valid assessment instrument. There are great tools on the market; explore the ones that you feel comfortable with and that measure the areas that are important to you. Ask for reliability and validity scores from the publisher to ensure that you can trust the data.
• Understand your organization’s culture. If you aren’t clear in your own mind what the important characteristics of your culture are, then you are destined to bring on someone that doesn’t fit it. For example, does your organization make decisions quickly without much involvement or discussion throughout the functional teams, or do changes in policy take time and consideration from multiple groups before moving ahead? Understand how the candidate’s natural style matches to your organization or you will introduce conflict and frustration before anyone gets on solid ground. You may want this hire to effect a change in your current methods, and that can work, too. But you have to know the starting point and where you’re headed.

Want to make the perfect choice every time? I wish I could tell you that you will.

Be thoughtful in your process, be curious about the other person, and understand what you want. Glaring differences will uncover themselves when you focus on the cultural fit between the candidate and your organization. Discovering that will be beneficial to everyone involved.

These are easy steps. Not foolproof. But what do you have to lose?

Robin Eichert is the Owner and Principle of PeopleSense Consulting LLC.  PeopleSense helps business leaders select and retain inspired employees who match the job and fit the culture of their organization. Together, we can create respectful, productive, and rewarding workplaces.

Just recently I decided to pursue a new goal, something that, for me, is both a challenge and an opportunity.

Targeting my first 5K race may not seem like all that much, but I don’t run. Never. Not in high school or college, not for recreation, not for exercise. I have the shoes and some of the clothes, enough to get me through the chilly spring days, but that’s it. Still, I decided to go for it and joined a beginner’s running class that gathers twice-weekly for eight weeks, all in preparation for the race.

Last week was the first class, and we ran a little bit—one minute jogging, then a minute walking, back and forth like that for a few cycles. In subsequent sessions the walking intermezzos would shorten, while the periods of running would lengthen.

Did I mention I’d never run before?

I had forgotten how long a minute could be. I had a quick flash where, in my imagination, I collapsed into a heap and was carted off to the hospital, where someone encouraged my recovery with a whoopie pie and a cup of coffee while I, smiling through my caffeine-and-sugar euphoria, assumed it was all a dream.  That sounded really good after about the fourth run-walk cycle…

But I kept going—encouraged by three excellent, supportive running coaches. They reminded me (and others also just starting out; I wasn’t the only one) that we all came with goals, that we were all different, that we could achieve what we wanted and more. They’d run up next to us and remind us that we each had our own pace, telling us to hold on to that pace while we learned how to stretch our capacity for more from there. They told us to listen to our bodies and to be curious about what it’s telling us. Harder to breathe? Slow down. Sensing a cramp in my calf? Be sure you’re coming down on your feet correctly.

I began to heed their advice and listened in a way that was new for me. Since I’d never run before I became curious about my body’s responses to running: the way my lungs expanded in new ways, the way my legs muscles tensed and relaxed.

I soon turned to self-encouragement, urging a run to (at least) the next sign-post. I pushed, struggled, succeeded.  I realized that, as a beginner, I had a lot to learn about this new thing called “running.” Once I set my intention to learn, to respond to my pace, and to listen to my body’s triggers and cues, I began to enjoy the experience more. It became a lesson in discovery!

When we heard the shout of “FINAL WALK!” we all slowed down and headed back to the running store where we had begun. The coaches checked in with each of us, asked us how we felt and gave us each a “well done!” for finishing that day.  I headed home with a remembered appreciation for the “beginner’s mind,” that place from which we always start something new, something discoverable about ourselves.

As leaders, let’s remind ourselves to queue up our curiosity more and pay attention to our beginner’s mind. Our beginner’s mind may show us new ways of pacing ourselves as well as new ways of leading our teams. Our bodies and minds are intuitive and smart message transmitters, not just when we run, but also when we are in situations that are new or different.  What is yours telling you? What new triggers emerge from your beginner’s mind?

It’s very cold and windy today here in New England.

We’re experiencing a week of March weather, the real kind this time (as opposed to last week when it hit the mid-80s and folks flocked to Hampton Beach to cool off). It’s cold and the budding trees are feeling the shock of hard frost again. This year March has it backwards, perversely deciding to come in like a lamb and go out like a lion.

As I work in my home office, I can feel the house brace itself against the force of the wind, the creaking windows sounding like chattering teeth. The trees surrounding the house sway and bend dramatically, and I’m hoping the limbs won’t snap and once more litter the yard with broken branches. But none of them do; they whip around at the wind’s direction but then pop right back up again. It’s one of Nature’s games, this pressure countered by resiliency.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines resilience as:

• able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.
• able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

This got me thinking about us humans. Much has been researched, written and taught about resiliency – Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, The Three Principles, and Bounce Theory to name three examples. It’s all good stuff, but can sometimes overwhelm someone like me, who likes things simple.

Back to the trees. As I watch them sway, bend and snap back to their natural positions, I think about my experience with pressure and my need for simplicity, and realize that there are three easy tips that work for me when I’m faced with life’s headwinds:

1. Go with the flow. Don’t fight it. You will always experience both windy days and calm days. Deepen your awareness about that, find space and time to breathe and rest in that assurance. It’s often tiring and counterproductive to work against some (most!) pressures.
2. Bend with it. Like the trees outside my window, bend with it and notice what that’s like. You may discover new ways to look at the situation if you ride the wind. It may take you to a place of fresh, creative thinking that you never imagined.
3. Find and accept shelter. Seek out a trusted companion who can provide you with care and support as you work through the pressure. I noticed that the trees that are protected by a circle of other trees are also protected from the force of the wind. Find your inner circle of support.

We have a saying here in New England: If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes. I find the same is often true of the “weather” I’m feeling inside—the pressure changes, even—sometimes—the storms. I follow my three tips and wait for things to change. And they always do.

What do you rely on when the pressure changes for you?

[To our regular readers: Today’s blog is a guest post by Michael Charney, the other half of Charney Coaching & Consulting. We encourage you to comment below.]

Here’s the bad news: the job market is improving.

This morning’s job numbers show that new applications for unemployment benefits have dropped to a four-year low, while last week’s jobs report showed a net increase of 227,000 jobs.  Sherry Leginski of CareerPlace (as reported in the New York Times) said that “we’ve seen a lot less Eeyore,” referring to the hapless sad-sack from the Winnie-the-Pooh books, suggesting instead that people are “turning a little bit more Tigger.”

So why is this bad news? Well, it’s not. Not really. But as employers, leaders and HR professionals we need to be aware that the people who work in our organizations will soon have more opportunities for advancement and, if they’re not happy where they are, if they’re not fully engaged, they may choose to go elsewhere.

Employee engagement once again takes center stage, and here are three things you can do right now to engage your employees:

1. Have Honest Conversations. This sounds simple, but too often we’ve seen leaders err on the side of sharing too little information with their teams rather than too much. Leadership Development Consultant Kristi Hedges recently blogged about a related topic, saying that “authenticity is paramount and palpable.” Engaged employees want to work for leaders who are self-aware, sharing, and trusting. That starts with openness.
   
2. Encourage Risk Taking. David Packard, American philanthropist and a founding half of Hewlett-Packard, said this: “Take risks. Ask big questions. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not reaching far enough.”  How often do we, as leaders, encourage rather than discourage risk taking? Engaged employees want to take chances, want to try new things. Sure, they’ll fall down, and that’s when it’s a leader’s job to help them up. So let them take chances; let them reach “far enough.”
3. Give Trust. Too often in our culture we talk of having to earn trust, as if trust is some currency that can be passed from hand to hand. In our view, trust is something to give, not to earn, and one way to engage effectively with your employees is simply to assume trust.  As often as not, your lack of trust may be merely self-fulfilling. Try it the other way, giving trust rather than forcing it to be earned. You’ll be amazed at how often people will live up to your expectations—and will trust you all the more for trusting them.

“Engage” is one of those buzzwords; we’re all supposed to take it seriously and we know it. But many, we believe, forget that the word has myriad meanings. On the one hand it means to “occupy the attention or efforts of.” If that’s the definition we want to use—if we think that employee engagement is merely about occupying the attention and efforts of our team members—then we will fail. However, if we lean to another meaning—“to pledge one’s word; to assume an obligation”—then we can truly engage with our employees in meaningful ways, and they’ll do the same with us.

What are your thoughts? How have you succeeded in providing instant employee engagement? Please share your ideas for others to read by adding to the comments below, and thank you.

I recently visited my brother, Jeff, to celebrate his birthday, and I chose to stay at a charming Bed & Breakfast near his home in the Stockade section of Schenectady. Normally when I visit, I drive up in time for an early supper, spend the evening catching up with him, and then meet him for breakfast the next morning before sliding behind the wheel for the return four-hour drive.

On this occasion, since my lodging included breakfast, I asked the Innkeeper if my brother could join us for the meal. She graciously invited him; I thanked her and I said I’d let her know that evening whether or not we’d be there. (I mentioned that I would need to check with my brother as he might have planned something else.)

When I asked about bringing my brother, I had some reservations. My brother is not a “morning person.” He wakes up slowly, can be a bit picky about the quality of his coffee, and generally avoids chatting before at least three such cups have worked their way into his system. He also prefers his social settings with people he knows; the “family-like” setting in the B&B’s dining room might not be what he would feel like doing. We couldn’t guarantee who would be joining us at the table—what if we sat there with nothing to talk about?—and he could end up wishing that we were digging into an omelet at the local diner instead.

To my delight, my brother agreed to have breakfast at the B&B.

We sat at a table set for four and started drinking our coffee, waiting for the other couple to join us. In a few minutes, Jim and Cynthia arrived, sat down, and poured coffee for themselves from the communal carafe.

Here’s where it began to get interesting. My brother opened up the conversation (surprising in and of itself) by asking the couple what brought them to the area. Jim replied that they had been coming frequently for over a month in order to be with their 24-year-old son who was in rehabilitation for a head injury sustained in a recent snowboarding accident. They named the rehab facility and described the slow and painful process their son was undertaking, all to get him to a point where he would have enough strength and mobility to go home and be with his family.

What made this interesting—and odd—is that my brother had spent six months in that very same facility.  You see, my brother had sustained a brain injury twelve years earlier: he just woke up one morning unable to move, talk, or swallow, the result of an arteriorvenous malformation (or AVM, a tangled web of blood vessels in the brain) that had suddenly burst. He was taken to the same hospital and then to the same rehabilitation facility, underwent the same kind of therapy and worked through the same painful recovery process that Jim and Cynthia’s son was experiencing.

It turned out that our breakfast was an opportunity for my brother to share his story—and to provide encouragement and hope to the couple sitting across from us. They were fully aware of the severity of their son’s condition and my brother didn’t try to sugar-coat what he went through, but the fact that their conversation centered on a shared experience was truly a blessing, a help and support. It was one of those moments that makes one stop and realize that there was a reason that we were all there at the breakfast table that very morning; the (sacred) space that contained our conversation and connection was one that held special serendipitous timing.

We never really know what’s going on with the people around us and often, in the rush (and self-orientation) of the moment, we make assumptions about how an experience will be or how a conversation will go. Then, suddenly (and often beautifully) it takes a turn in a direction that we didn’t expect.

I know that I walked away from this experience with a deeper appreciation for being curious about what others may be experiencing and where they are in their life’s journey. As leaders, each day, let’s be intentionally curious and interested in those around us. We never really know unless we strike up the conversation.

This past week I learned about a practice called “upcycling,” a word that comes from the green movement and which encourages the reuse and repurposing of existing materials in new and interesting ways.

Sounds like a good practice.

The person who introduced me to the upcycling world was Victoria Tane, a jeweler who takes estate sale and flea market finds and re-purposes them into beautiful, wearable works of art. When I first walked into her studio, I was greeted by displays of both beauty and whimsy: former pastry decorating tips transformed into fashionable necklaces; beads, old buttons and wire glued together into a brooch you could swear you saw on a fashion runway; unique headbands that, with a twist of the wrist, become geometric chokers. And all the items refashioned with new purpose.

Victoria’s work got me thinking. As leaders and as team development specialists, how often do we seek out the shiny and new when, if we stepped back just a bit, we might find exactly what we need right before our eyes—if only we are willing to look in a slightly different way, to look not only with purpose, but with repurpose?

Right now I’m working with a client at a pivotal point in her career. She is an expert in what she does and is well-respected. She believes she might be ready to take the next step in her career. However, if she sought new opportunities, her absence would leave a huge gap in her group, a simple fact that has created an impasse for her. The friction between her wish for promotion and the group’s need for her to stay where she is very much needed has caused a rift in their relationship. Her loyalty is beginning to wane.

The issue I see is one of opportunity: the organization should consider upcycling this leader’s skills, taking what she’s really good at and repurposing those skills somewhere else in the organization.  By rewarding her expertise and refashioning her capabilities, she achieves upward mobility while the organization retains important talent. Employee retention and engagement equals cost savings—and much more—for the company.

What leadership capabilities and talents can be upcycled in your organization? Are there those hidden jewels amongst your teams that can be refashioned and repurposed to address critical business and talent needs? In taking the time to see people and their skills in a slightly different way, you may find just what you are looking for!

I spent some time yesterday staring at my arm and writing down what I saw.

I know that probably sounds strange, so perhaps I’d better explain.  I recently signed up for a virtual writing class, something to keep me sharp and to teach me how to come up with new ideas whenever I feel the specter of writer’s block hovering just behind me. For this particular exercise, we were instructed to look at our arm and write whatever comes to mind. At first I thought, “Huh?? It’s my arm!” My arm, after all, has been attached to me since I was born. It swings into view on a regular basis. What could I possibly see that I hadn’t seen before?

Was I surprised!

The first thoughts that came to me were simple, shallow ones, generating words that I’m sure you would expect:  length, width, markings, color – the words that would describe the surface, what I can easily see when I glance at my arm.  “Hmmm, new freckle,” I thought to myself. “Need to keep a watch on that. And my hand is beginning to show it’s age a bit….” Those types of things.

Then something happened. I began to see my arm in a new way.

This was the limb that held my child as he grew up, that cradles my dog when she’s afraid. It helps me grab onto a tree and pull myself up a steep terrain when I hike and wraps around my husband’s neck to let him know that I care. My arm, over the years, may have changed in the way it looks, but it continues to give back to me in ways that I probably took for granted.

How often do we see our employees that way, the way I initially looked at my arm, as something that’s always been there but never really, deeply seen? Perhaps they’ve been working with us for a long time and we don’t really notice them as they were or as they’ve grown. If you were to really look at your employees – beyond the surface features like their tenure, skill, and ability – what would you see? What largely unseen—but deeply important—qualities do they have that, when you reflect on them, you appreciate and value, perhaps couldn’t or wouldn’t want to live without?

Take a moment and look at your employees with simple appreciation. What do they inspire that you may have overlooked?