John Hersey Leadership Blog

Working harder and longer and demanding more of our people is not always effective leadership. Sometimes Contagious Leaders know to practice doing less to achieve more.

The “Why We Can’t ” Conversation is all around us. We must create a supportive environment to exercise the “How We Will” muscle.

“Why We Can’t” is an attitude that exists in every profession, every organization. Our job as Contagious Leaders is to make ourselves so fit that it does not get through to reduce the effectiveness of our organization. We must stay in the “How We Will” conversation all the time by surrounding ourselves with “How We Will” thinkers, doers, believers. Otherwise, our “How We Will” muscle atrophies, we become weak and we revert to the “Why We Can’t” conversation.

The good news is that with some time the “Why We Can’t” conversation just doesn’t stop by anymore. Defeated and deflated it just goes away leaving us and our teams to achieve greatness.

Be Well and Be Contagious,

John

We have an epidemic of people beginning a conversation with “why they cannot” do or accomplish whatever it is they are being asked to do or accomplish. Contagious Leaders focus conversations on “How We Will” not :Why They Can’t”.  “Why We Can’t” is a deadly attitude that kills creativity, innovation and contribution from the best employees while driving the weakest for cover behind the noble claims “proving it (the task) is impossible is my job and it’s for the good of the company”.

As Leaders our most important job is to stamp our WWC wherever we find it and not allow the WWC conversation. Here are some tips for stamping out the deadly “Why We Can’t” conversation:

• When someone begins a conversation with “Well, why we can’t is ….” we must stop that conversation in its tracks. Tell your team “we are not going down that road. Today, we are going to focus our attention on “HOW WE WILL”, not “Why We Can’t.”

• Watch your own conversations and your tendency to focus on “Why We Can’t”

• Acknowledge that a particular project may be a challenge while encouraging your team to focus its energy on “How We Will”.

• Practice Involved Recognition — acknowledge those on your team who focus on “How We Will”, particularly when they are surrounded with “Why We Can’t.

• We have to believe in our How We Will focus. We worked with one company that so believed in this approach that they rose from a ranking of 22 of 28 regions in their company to #2 in 12 months, just by shifting their conversation from WWC to “How We Will”.

• As for our leaders they must also root out the proponents of WWC and mentor them. If they wont let go of the WWC conversation we must help them find a new home, someplace more suitable for a WWC attitude.

Nothing stops an organizations forward movement faster or more solidly than a “Why We Can’t” attitude. Allowing the conversation to take place is the same as agreeing with it– agreeing with it will ruin your company, your organization — even your town.

Be Well & Be Contagious,

John

Contagious Leaders see their primary role as providing clarity in an increasingly unclear world. These leaders practice being clear in vision, setting expectations and demonstrating desired behaviors.

Twitter is a required course for journalism majors at Griffin University, see http://tinyurl.com/yfkbzj4

For months now we have been advising our speaking and coaching clients to pay attention to their aspiring leaders. Many organizations have pulled back on leadership development programs and really good people are feeling abandoned. Some have confided in us that they are just biding their time until they can leave for another organization that actually values them. Well, now it is not just our opinion.

Today, McKinsey & Company released a study indicating that 64% of middle managers will leave their current organization within two years. To read the entire article go to:
www.johnhersey.com/crisis.htm

Motivation Through Micro-Management

One of the hazards of these challenging times is that we are seeing a significant upswing in micro-management. There are three problems with this.

First, if you absolutely feel you must micro-manage then you really have more of a talent problem than a management problem. Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great, recently said, “The right people don’t need to be managed. If you need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake.” Instead of micro-managing, your time would be much better spent by getting on with the business of either training your people or replacing those that need to be micro-managed.

Second, micro-management is, often, a self-fulfilling prophecy. We think people need to be micro-managed so we do so. By micro-managing we remove all of the fun and creativity from people’s jobs. They settle and stop contributing, giving rise to the need for micro-management. If we would just get out of the way, be specific about expectations and the consequences of not fulfilling on these, people would just do their jobs.

Finally, by micro-managing we create an environment that is simply unattractive to good people. By micro-managing we actually create turnover, costly turnover and not superior results.

Please, share your thoughts on micro-managing by adding a comment below. And, pass this on to a friend.

John

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We are always on the lookout for great companies lead by Contagious Leaders. Steve Farber helped our cause through his recent blog post (www.stevefarber.com/blog ) about ING Direct. It is a worthy read.

ING Directs CEO, Arkadi Kuhlmann, outlines a clear vision for his company, his employees and his customers. Such clarity is rare but more importantly, he outlines a culture that employees and aspiring leaders usually only dream about but rarely experience. Bravo, ING and Double Bravo, Mr. Kuhlmann.