Ever since we published Creating Contagious Leadership, our stand has been that leadership is not nearly as complicated as some so-called “experts” would have us think. This article proves our point. If every executive, every leader, every supervisor practiced the following suggestions many, many businesses would not be in the sorry shape they are in today.
“…winning is about leading your people. And about leading them in four very specific ways.”
FIRST, the leaders of winning teams always—always—let their people know where they stand.
SECOND, winning teams know the game plan.
THIRD, winning teams are honest.
FOURTH, and finally, winning teams celebrate.
Pass this on to every leader on your team and every leader you know. They’ll thank you, as will the companies they work for.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin
Change is coming at us so fast it can be overwhelming.
On a good day most of us have a crummy relationship with change. It has been said that 96% of all change is forced upon us. Is it any wonder that we fight it?
Things are changing so fast and so often that the only thing we can count on for sure is “more change”. Change is affecting our jobs, for sure, but it also affects every other aspect of our lives.
Just consider Social Media as an example. The effect on business has been obvious. We have two choices; 1) we can either fight the changes in social media or , 2) we can embrace the change. You may hate the idea of being tethered to your smartphone or a tablet, like iPad2, or laptop but what are your choices? Today, being out of touch means we are out of business, whether we like it or not.
If you do not know how to use these tools to effectively and persuasively communicate, you will loose customers, perhaps even your job. You could be losing them now and not even know it.
Scott McKain, friend, author and great speaker, recently told us about an online post from a manager at RIM (Research in Motion), the company that makes Blackberry smartphones. He was imploring the top executives to embrace change because their once dominant market position had eroded so that the company was now at risk. Click here to read his letter.
The question is how do we do change so that we can embrace change?
There are 6 Steps we’ll suggest:
Change your conversation about change and risk
Take on something new –
Set goals and set up a schedule for your practice sessions.
Enjoy the Process
Practice Possibility Thinking
Change the way you do your job – be honest, we can all do our jobs better.
You don’t have to make a big deal about these 6 Steps. The intention here is to exercise your embracing change muscles, not produce some extraordinary outcome. Just Take It On, you really don’t have a choice.
“Organizations need people who embrace change, quickly and with a minimum of upset.
Those who can will be viewed as leaders and will be offered new
and exciting opportunities. Those who cannot or will not
will be left behind, ignored or downsized.”
John Hersey
Get your attitude right! Yes, the last couple of years have been rugged! They have been rugged for everyone. So, get over it and start thinking like a leader. Concentrate on what is possible rather than why you can’t accomplish your goals.
Get your team’s attitude right! Identify everyone on your team with an attitude challenge and give them 30 days to make it right (it actually only takes a moment). Sure there are challenges but they are either on the team or not, they are either thinking about solutions or challenges.
Hire the best people for the job! If you are not matching behaviors, competencies and talents for each job you will suffer the consequences later. Stop drooling over resumes and interviews! Benchmark every job. Assess every candidate before falling in love with them during the interview, then match the assessment to the job. This will take all the emotion out of the hiring/promotion process and produce vastly superior results with far less turnover.
Hire slow and fire fast! If someone you hire or promote isn’t cutting it, you’ll know in 90 days or less. Don’t let your mistakes linger. Act on it. Step up and move on.
Get rid of all the micro-managers! Not only are they annoying but they are stifling creativity, motivation, morale, innovation and the development of future leaders. They may produce short-term results but it will be at the expense of the future of your organization.
Apply the Rule of 3! Have every person in your organization outline the top 3 tasks they need to complete in the next 30, 60 and 90 days that will contribute to achieving the organization’s mission and goals. Focus relentlessly on these 3 tasks and monitor, measure and celebrate the successes. Don’t let anything interfere with the accomplishment of these 3 tasks.
Stop doing those time-wasting performance reviews 2X per year! Have a 15 minute conversation with every employee every 30 days to check in on the progress on the Rule of 3. Focus on:What is working?
Why is it working?
What is the ideal?
What is not working?
What is needed?
What is the plan?
Ask your employees how you can help them achieve their 3 tasks, rather than telling them what to do.
Apply generous recognition! An authentic and heart-felt “Thank You” will keep most employees far more engaged for longer than you might think.
Love the employees and customers you have! Just for the next 30 days spend more time loving the employees and customers you have than trying to attract new ones.
Spend some time considering the culture you have created. Is it positive or negative? Do people lead or wait to be lead? Is the focus on solutions or challenges? Are you developing future leaders or mindless followers? Are people excited about the challenges or do they dread going to work?
However you answer these questions, ask yourself the same 6 questions as in #7 above.
What is working?
Why is it working?
What is the ideal?
What is not working?
What is needed?
What is the plan?
Developing a Contagious, high performance culture is not nearly as complicated as you might think. One thing we know for sure is that it can’t be done sporadically. Talking about your ideal culture and leadership once a quarter at the all employee meeting or once a year at the annual conference doesn’t cut it. Leadership development is an ongoing process, every day, every week, every month. Create an ongoing leadership conversation that every employee is allowed to participate in and you’ll build a productive, high energy culture that serves as a strong foundation for your future.
Have you ever thought about the power of the watermelon seed?
This tiny little seed has the power of creating a fruit that is 200,000 times its weight. It draws whatever nutrients it needs from the dirt and sun and colors a unique spherical, almost psychedelic rind by smearing various tones of green, and then creates a white rind inside and within that a crunchy, juicy succulent red center, thickly inlaid with black seeds, each one of which in turn is capable of yet another fruit that’s 200,000 times its weight. If an itsey, bitsey teeney, weeney seed can draw that much power from a handful of dirt, imagine what we can do.
Sometimes we get in the rut of thinking that we need more of something to grow, to be better, to be happier or more successful. We know, from working with people from all over the world, that we have all we need to be 200,000 times more that we are today. We have the power of the watermelon seed to create a magnificently unique and outstanding individual.
Here’s a way to get started. Get a handful of dirt and put it at your desk and know you have everything you need to be truly great!
As part of our ongoing search for Contagious Leaders, we experienced Mr. Boston earlier this week as we were departing the hotel following a speaking engagement the night before. He asked if we wanted a bottle of “wattah”. Having grown up in the Boston area, Bev and I recognized the accent immediately and asked which “paaht” of Boston he was from. He mentioned Ashland and Waltham, both towns we are quite familiar with.
He moved to Las Vegas a couple of years ago to work on the construction of The Cosmopolitan for the Perini Corporation. He had been in construction his entire life and was the “flagman”, standing out on the “strip” to make sure pedestrians and cars were safe. All the while, according to Kevin Glass, Director of Guest Services at the Cosmopolitan, Mr. Boston “chatted up the Cosmopolitan” as much as eight months before the hotel opened. He did this without knowing he’d work for the hotel. Some Contagious Leaders at The Cosmopolitan recognized that this guy had talent. Not a degree in Hospitality from a prestigious school or smooth talent but a genuine love for serving people, taking full responsibility for every aspect of his job and a joy for life that is truly contagious.
We were waiting for transportation to Zappos.com (another amazing story for another post). The van was nearly full but the driver was waiting for another guest. We waited and waited. The driver was getting nervous. Mr. Boston stepped in. He showed some genuine concern for the driver and was worried that the rest of us in the van were being kept waiting. He kept saying that the driver should go and he’d arrange transportation for the other guest. We did just that.
This was a very busy time for the Hotel. People coming and going. Nevertheless, Mr. Boston attended to the driver. He made Bev and I proud of our Boston heritage and envious that The Cosmopolitan had scooped up such a fabulous Contagious Leader.
The Cosmopolitan is a very nice hotel, lots of fun and great rooms. We’ll go back for sure. But, we’ll go back because of Mr. Boston, a true contagious leader.
Congratulations, Mr. Boston, you are our Contagious Leader of the month.
We were standing in a Las Vegas line to get our morning coffee, deep in a conversation with the women behind us when she asked. “So how do I know when someone is a leader? What do they do?” Her forehead was scrunched because her accounting practice for dentist was growing and she needed leaders. She was as stretched as she could be and relief was nowhere in the near future. So I gave her a brief description of what we see in Contagious Leadership from a couple of decades of leadership consulting and thought I would share it with you.
Contagious leaders visibly distinguish themselves and inspire those around them because they:
1. Enthusiastically cultivate other leaders
2. Vibrantly share an unobstructed Vision of leadership
3. Courageously take a chance
4. Collaborate with the greatness of others
Continuously cultivate a possibility mindset
My new friend needs to cultivate a team of contagious leaders to deal with the upturn in business and the new complexities in dental accounting. She needs to hire the right people to handle her situation and they need to be contagious leaders.
For starters, she must change the way she is accustomed to hiring. By that we mean she probably starts with the technical qualifications of candidates then looks at their resume and finally conducts an interview. We suggest she follow the A, B, C, ‘S of Hiring and Promoting.
A = Attitude – hire for that first and foremost. You can train most anything but not attitude. B = Behavior — make sure the behavioral qualities of the candidate match those required to do the job at a high level. Definitely benchmark every job and use an assessment. C = Cultural Computability — make sure the candidate is compatible with the culture. S = Skill and Experience — now consider skill and experience.
Bev & John in the Zappos Royalty Chair
We visited Zappos.com recently and were told a great story. The company hired a senior IT person with great credentials. When he was asked to man the phones and talk to customers he hesitated. “I don’t talk to customers” was either what he said or what he implied. Zappos.com has created a culture where everyone talks with customers. The IT guy was let go. This has everything to do with A (Attitude), B (Behavioral Style), and C (Cultural Compatibility).
Check out the Contagious Leaders Coaching Club, an online leadership development system that cultivates a vibrant and sustainable leadership culture. It promotes a unifying language and crucial leadership habits that maximize performance. Go to http://www.contagiousleaders.com/demo
The emotions with the most potential to cause negative upset in the workplace are anger and fear. When feelings are intense, it’s almost as if the brain is being held hostage by the overpowering emotions. Strong feelings like fear, anger and anxiety impair the ability to think rationally. We get ‘out of sync’ with ourselves. The brain is wired to be on alert for any kind of threat, whether real or imagined. Anger and fear activate that so often heard about “flight or fight or freeze” reaction and it commonly takes as much as four hours for the body to return to normal, for the brain to get engaged again and for the person to be productive once again.
Here’s an illustration. Have you had a police car speeding up behind you with the siren blasting. What happens? I know for me my heart beats hard, my hands get sweaty and fear takes over my thinking. If I were able to logically look at the situation, I would realize that the cop wasn’t after me but that doesn’t happen. My body is taken over by the fear and my thinking ability becomes second fiddle to my emotions.
It is essential to build and emotionally intelligent organization to keep productivity and engagement high. So how do you start?
Leaders have to model emotional awareness – because of their reach and power to influence others, leaders who talk about emotions and practice emotional awareness in the workplace can transform the way teams collaborate. When they provide an environment that supports learning and self-correction, others will follow (it’s contagious) and performance will improve.
Respect privacy- Crucial to the success of raising the emotional intelligence understanding is communicating in a safe and affirming manner. The key is to deliver feedback to employees in an atmosphere that respects their privacy.
Offer training – Team training needs to give work groups a common language and shared understanding of what it takes to create and maintain an emotionally healthy environment
When stress goes down, creativity, productivity and morale goes up. Employees simply appreciate the employer who is committed to creating an environment where everyone can thrive. Read more…..Controlling Emotions in the Workplace.
Check out the Contagious Leaders Coaching Club, an online leadership development system that cultivates a vibrant and sustainable leadership culture. It promotes a unifying language and crucial leadership habits that maximize performance. Go to http://www.contagiousleaders.com/demo
Have you ever had someone stick their head in your office and ask “hey, got a minute?”
How often is it “just a minute?” To stay focused practice the 30 Minute Rule:
1. When the person asks “got a minute” you politely answer “Not really. I am right in the middle of something. I would really love to spend some time with you. Could you come back in 30 minutes?”
** Don’t worry, if the challenge cannot wait the person will tell you so.
** In 85% of the cases the person will say “sure it can. I’ll come back.”
** in 90% of these cases they never return. They wanted you to solve their problem. Usually they find it was not such a big problem after all, or, they handle it themselves.
2. When, and if, they do return listen carefully and then ask “what have you done to handle this?”
3. When they say “well, nothing, I wanted to discuss it with you first” you either have someone who can’t or won’t make a decision or they want you to do their work.
4. In either case, ask them to suggest a solution or two. More often than not they have the correct answer.
Try the 30 Minute Rule and see for yourself just how much more time you have to do the things that really matter to building your business. Also, see how people develop as leaders.
Many employees are feeling ignored, under valued and under appreciated. There is no big surprise here. Over the past three years many executives have systematically pulled in the reins, focused on survival and left themselves precious little time for engaging with our most important asset — our people.
At the end of the day that activity, engaging with employees, may well be the most important leadership activity of all. Yet, in our busyness we just don’t get around to it. Here is a coaching tip for handling our most important job responsibility.
1. Engage with 1 employee every day. Make it a priority. Schedule it. Ron Johnson, Senior Vice President of Apple and the chief architect of Apple’s outrageously successful retail operation makes it a habit to speak with one store manager everyday during his early morning exercise program.
2. Set everything else aside, be present to the conversation and be sure to practice listening.
3. Have a real 2-3 minute conversation.
4. At the end of the conversation recap what you heard the employee say and how much you appreciate them.
At the end of the month notice how great you feel, how happy your employees are and how energized they have become.
Here’s a passage from Today We Are Rich just released by author Tim Sanders on how to use words that will project confidence – a key to leading others.
“Stop using tentative words; they hedge conversation to the point of being meaningless. The unconfident person talks with qualifiers and commits to very little. Tentative words include maybe, perhaps, might, somehow, allegedly, no offense, just saying, should, ……, and so on.
“If you want to project confidence, say what you believe, and say it directly. You’ll find that once the namby-pamby words are gone, confident statements remain.
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