How Leaders Use Feedback to Accurately Understand People

“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know oneself.”

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Improved Almanac (1750)

The decisions we make every day are based on our impressions of our skills, knowledge, talents, values, leadership styles, and so forth. For example, if you volunteer to take on a difficult assignment, you would do so because you believe you have the right stuff to accomplish the mission. You assess your ability and then decide. If your assessment is accurate, you make a good decision. If your self-assessment is flawed, your project may be in trouble. Thus, your evaluation of yourself (and others) is critical to your leadership decision-making.

If self-assessments are so important to decisions, how accurate are they? Not very. (1) When researchers compare self-assessments with objective performance measures, they find a correlation between .2 and .3. That’s weak (0 is no correlation, while 1 is a perfect correlation). For example, there is only a .2 correlation between how well employees expect to perform on a complex task and how well they actually perform it.

There are four primary reasons self-assessments are inaccurate:

1. On average, we all believe we are above average. 94% of college professors say they do above average work. 70% of high school students believe they have above average leadership skills. And 42% of engineers in one high-tech company rated their own performance in the top 5% of all engineers. How many of your direct reports, many of whom may suffer from this self-inflation, shuffle out of performance reviews shaking their heads in disbelief?

2. We overestimate the likelihood of desirable events. I recently estimated that I would lose seven pounds before a biking trip. I lost three. In one large, university lecture class, 83% of the students predicted that they themselves would buy flowers in the annual charity drive for the American Cancer Society, but guessed only 55% of their fellow students would do the same. Four weeks later, the actual percentage of those buying flowers was a mere 43%. What are you overestimating?

3. We underestimate the amount of time tasks take. This is a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy. In one classic study, scientists asked students working on an assignment to indicate the time within which they were 50% certain they could finish the project, as well as the time within which they were 99% certain they could finish. (If the students’ assessments were accurate, about half would have finished by the 50% deadline and 99% would have finished by their very conservative 99% deadline.) Yet only 13% finished by their 50% deadline and only 45% had finished by their 99% deadline. I reminded my project leadership class last week that the planning fallacy is why Microsoft builds a 30 to 50% buffer into most of their projects.

4. We are overconfident in our predictions. This phenomenon is known as the overconfidence effect. We tend to place too much confidence in our ability to make sound predictions. For example, when doctors diagnosed patients as having pneumonia, those who made predictions with an 80% certainty turned out to be right a mere 20% of the time. This is why traders on Wall Street remind each other, "Don't confuse brains with a bull market." Overconfident leaders who base their strategy on their ability to predict future events should take heed.

Here are three practical feedback strategies that can help you overcome the tendency to make flawed assessments of yourself and others, thereby improving your decision-making:

1. Get the facts. Leaders seldom have the knowledge required to assess their competence in a given area. To address this limitation, it's usually best to assume you do not have adequate expertise and ask those who do. One study that compared successful and unsuccessful microbiology labs found that the best labs had more group meetings, where researchers had to answer difficult questions from skeptical peers. Our team employed this strategy when I was a researcher at UC-San Diego. Although seeking negative feedback is rare among leaders, it increases self-awareness, performance and positive perceptions of direct reports, peers, and supervisors. (2) Are you strong enough to ask for criticism?

2. Learn from frequent, candid feedback. Leaders often receive incomplete feedback about their actions, which creates an inflated sense of accomplishment. Performing rapid “after action reviews” can help. Discuss these fundamental questions during quick discussions with trusted, honest individuals: What was the desired outcome? What was the actual outcome? Why the difference? What are the lessons learned? What will I do differently next time? Do I need to adjust my goals?

3. Select the right standard. I was coaching a senior executive yesterday who was disappointed about the ratings his CEO gave him during his annual review. He felt he had outperformed his peers. I suggested that he compare himself to either an objective performance standard (e.g., 360 assessments) or his internal perception of his capabilities, not his peers. Using objective data to evaluate others is also important because research suggests that employees seldom actually achieve the level of expertise they claim. In God we trust, all others must have data.

Benjamin Franklin was right; it is hard to know oneself, but it is not impossible. Moreover, if you want to make better leadership decisions, it is mandatory... because after all, who you are is what has you. How will you adapt these ideas to know yourself better?

Keep on stretching,

Dave

1. David Dunning, Chip Heath, and Jerry Suls; Flawed Self-Assessment, ‘Psychological Sciences in the Public Interest,’ Volume 5 Issue 3, 2004, 69 - 106.

2. Robert Eichinger and colleagues, ‘100 Things You Need to Know.’ Lominger Limited, Inc., Minneapolis, MN, 2006, pages 256 - 258.

Ten Keys to Cultivating Creativity

A company in Connecticut recently hired an outside consulting firm to help them increase efficiency. Employees at all levels of the organization submitted more than 1,000 ideas. When one of the IT leaders finished expressing her enthusiasm for the initiative, I asked her two questions:

I. How can you cultivate a culture that supports idea generation and implementation without the need for separate initiatives?

II. How are you going to avoid killing creativity as you increase efficiency?

She didn't have any answers. However, Harvard Business School does. Their faculty invited business leaders from highly creative companies (e.g., Google, pharmaceutical leader Novartis, design consultancy IDEO…) to a two-day symposium. (1) Their first conclusion: you don't manage creativity, you manage for creativity. Here's how:

1. "Capture every fleeting idea," states Sir Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Airlines (and hundreds of other Virgin companies). He is reminding us that none of us is as smart as all of us. To test this principle, Google's founders tracked the progress of ideas that they, the leaders, had backed versus ideas that were executed in the ranks without support from above. They discovered a higher success rate in the latter category. Creativity is the responsibility of everyone, every day.

2. Foster collaboration. The “lone inventor” is a myth according to Diego Rodriguez, a partner at IDEO. He points to Google, Wikipedia, and Mozilla as illustrations of collaboration both within the organization and with customers outside. Network and social structures that are fluid enable this type of cooperation. An over-emphasis on centralization or top-down management kills creativity faster than you can say "idea."

3. Celebrate diversity. Innovation is more likely when people of different disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of expertise share their thinking. The most innovative companies look outside their organization for people with different perspectives. If you're on the outside of a house, you can only see through your window. Asking those who are peering through different window provides a much clearer picture of what's inside. A single point of view is no way to see.

4. Don't kill ideas with process. Dr. Mark Fishman, President of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research reported that when organizations focus on process improvement too much it hurts long-term innovation. He recommends that leaders focus their efficiency initiatives in the middle and at the end of the creative process. The fuzzy, initial stages of innovation are not places to seek efficiency.

5. Pass the baton carefully. The most passion for an idea resides in its creator. When it comes time to commercialize the idea, the handoff must be handled with care. Some organizations allow the “idea generators” to stay on the team as it goes through the commercializes process. This may keep the enthusiasm for the ideas high, but only if the tension between the creators and those who commercialize the ideas is managed well.

6. Filter the ideas. For every idea that generates revenue, nine generate only expenses. Gardens have weeds. Merck's R&D chief, Peter Kim, rewards stock options to "scientists who bail out on the losing project." Another idea is to let the customer be the filter by bringing products to market rapidly for testing. Be wary of product evaluation committees, they kill creativity.

7. Provide intellectual challenge. A study of 11,000 R&D employees found that early-stage researchers who were motivated by intellectual challenge were more productive. A strong desire for independence and extrinsic motivation (i.e., salary, benefits, job security) were also associated with higher productivity, but not nearly as much as the desire for intellectual challenge.

8. Encourage the pursuit of personal passions. Companies such as Google, 3M, and Novartis encourage their people to spend a significant percent of their time on projects of their own choosing. Some individuals are wired to work on version 10.0; others are always searching for the next big thing. Balancing these different forms of creativity and encouraging both is critical to innovation.

9. Appreciate progress. If you want people to exert Herculean efforts, reward effort. Too often leaders feel they should only reward accomplishments. Not true. If you want people to work hard, especially in activities that don't always pay off such as creativity, reward progress. What you appreciate appreciates. Stopping by to pat someone on the back, say a kind word, or applaud a small accomplishment may be all that's necessary for the next breakthrough.

10. Interpret failure is feedback. Fear of failure is an epidemic in most businesses. Kim Scott, director of online sales and operations for Google, observed that the firms in Silicon Valley that have had the most difficult time managing creativity are those that have been the most successful, because they developed an aversion to failure. Most company cultures reinforce the belief that failure is bad and when it happens, it's best forgotten as quickly as possible. Leaders need to adopt the experiment mentality of the researcher. The essence of experimentation is trial, feedback, learning, next trial. There is no failure, only feedback. Failure is an admission that we didn't learn from the feedback.

These are the top ten keys to cultivating creativity in that Connecticut firm. How can you adapt them to increase creativity and innovation with your team? Let me know how it goes.

See you on the mountain,

Dave

1. Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire; Creativity and the Role of the Leader, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ October 2008, 101 - 109.

How Leaders Apply Ethics Every Day

Would you describe yourself as an ethical leader? If so, what values drive your ethics? How do you apply those values in your everyday decision-making? This article will address these questions in a very practical manner.

Whether you think about values or not, they drive your behavior. As professor Joel Urbany and his colleagues remind us, the Nobel prize-winning research of Daniel Kahneman found that failure to evaluate values trade-offs is one of the major traps in decision-making. (1) For example, Professor Joel Urbany invites you to consider that the athlete's decision to use steroids is really a values-based choice between short-term achievement and honesty or integrity.

Ethics refers to the rules or standards governing how human beings ought to act in various situations. There are several approaches leaders can take when deciding what standards to use when developing their ethical platform. However, the virtue or value approach is what leaders find most useful. It states that there are specific values that, when practice consistently, improve leadership performance. My research has found that the following five values are the ones best linked to leadership success:

- Honesty -- Being truthful, frank, and free from deceit.

- Integrity -- Being whole, undivided, and completeness.

- Humility -- Being modest in your estimate of your importance.

- Equity -- Being fair and impartial.

- Authenticity -- Being genuine, uncorrupted from the original.

How well do you use these values in your day-to-day decision-making? Is there a simple and effective way to make values count in your everyday decisions? Professor Urbany and his colleagues created a decision mapping process to answer these questions. The table below is my variation of his map:

Choice Options. When making a decision involving values, the first step is to assume that you have at least two choices. Our athlete can choose to take steroids or not.

Short-term Consequences. What are the pluses and minuses you might experience immediately from each choice? If our athlete takes steroids, he may experience enhanced performance but he could also be caught cheating. If he doesn't take steroids, he'll probably feel better about himself but he may not make the team.

Long-term Consequences. What are the pluses and minuses you might experience over the long haul from each choice? Leaders have also found it helpful to ask about the long-term, unintended consequences that might be experienced from each choice. The long-term consequences of our athlete using steroids include the prestige of winning. However, there is considerable evidence that the negative side effects of steroid use are severe. The long-term consequences of not taking steroids include better health, but with less money.

Values/Goals. Every decision is a means to the end. The values/goals column asks you to identify the values and goals behind the decision. Notice that the consideration of values occurs at the end your analysis.

The “confirmation bias” is one of the decision-making traps leaders fall into when making the value decisions. This occurs because we have a tendency to focus on the positive consequences of our initially preferred choice and the negative consequences of the other. We see only what we want to see, thus confirming our bias. Apply the value mapping process to help you remove this bias. How surprised will you be when you find you are living your values in your everyday decisions?

Keep stretching,

Dave

1. Joel Urbany and colleagues; How to Make Values Count in Everyday Decisions, ‘MIT Sloan Management Review,’ Summer 2008, 75 - 80.

The Top Ten Tools to Leading Virtual Teams

A virtual team is one that has members in different physical locations (e.g., buildings or countries) or working at different times (e.g., shifts). One of the major trends in business is to get work done, projects accomplished, or goals achieved via virtual teams. Yet studies have shown that only 18% of senior managers consider the performance of these teams as highly successful. (1) How successful is your virtual team?

There are a number of variables that affect team success. Here are the top ten tools research reveals can improve your virtual team's performance:

1. Balance or skew the numbers. In a study of 62 six-person teams, Josh Hyatt reported on how the number of team members at different locations affected overall virtual team performance. (2) Researchers found that having an equal number of team members at each location had the most positive effect. Having two different-sized subgroups triggered negative dynamics. The investigators explained that imbalance breeds instability, except when that imbalance is the most severe. Contrary to what was expected, they also discovered that including one member who was physically isolated from the rest of the team had a positive impact. So if you need to staff a virtual team with an unequal number of team members at various locations, this research advises you to consider placing only one person in the remote locations. It appears that having one individual isolated in one locale produces a positive "novelty effect."

2. Clearly define the scope. When teams are able to meet face-to-face on a regular basis, they're able to work out any ambiguities in the project. Meeting less often, as in the case of virtual teams, mandates that the scope of the project, the expected deliverables and the time frame be clear.

3. Create a core team. The optimal size of a virtual team is the one that has the requisite knowledge and skills to fulfill the team charter. But that can lead to a large, cumbersome team. One option is to create a core group of 10 or fewer team members. Then, if this core team needs additional knowledge or skills, they can choose to bring others in on an ad hoc basis. If the core team needs to be a large, consider breaking it into a subgroups, and assign specific aspects of the project to each sub team based on skills, not personality.

4. Choose an effective team leader. Effective virtual team leaders must be able to manage the organizational, cultural, and physical distance that separates team members, and creates communication barriers. Team leaders should also have credibility based on a proven leadership record, excellent conflict resolution skills, and project management skills.

5. Develop norms. Norms are the often-unwritten rules that dictate how team members behave. Ask the team to brainstorm areas where they need to create norms in order to complete the project successfully. For example, when I help teams create norms, the most common areas identified are communication, respect, trust, conflict, virtual meeting rules, decision-making process... Once you identify these "success factors," ask the team to brainstorm the answer to this question, "Imagine you're on the team that does... (fill in the blank with whatever success factor you're working on) very well, what would that look like, what behaviors would you see, what rules might be in place?

6. Adopt data-driven decisions. Without data, we are all wandering opinions. Contrary opinions without facts often degenerate into personal attacks. Fact-based discussions allowed team members to discuss the data not the opinion.

7. Rotate meeting locations. Rotating the meeting tells everyone that everyone is equally valued and important.

8. Conference call on your own phone. If you have an unequal number of team members at various locales, they will feel isolated during conference calls unless each individual is on their own phone. When the home office has several people gathered around the speakerphone, those in remote locations cannot hear the banter, read the body language, or observe the sidebar conversations.

9. Link rewards to team performance. That which gets rewarded gets repeated. If you are not in a position to be able to reward the overall team, create norms that increase the rewarding nature of your environment during your project. For example, you can ask the team to brainstorm the answers to this question: imagine they're on a project where everybody on the team gives positive feedback and recognition to each other, what might that look like? Their answers become the team’s norms.

10. Make it visible. Set milestones for your project. When team members reach these milestones, celebrate and make their accomplishment visible to others. Put it in your organization’s newsletter, website, bulletin board… Increasing visibility increases ownership and a sense of team, especially for virtual teams.

Applying these tools place virtual teams in the top 18%. How can you adapt them to put you this highly successful group?

See you on the mountain,

Dave

1. Vijay Govindarajan and Anil Gupta; Building an Effective Global Business Team, ‘MIT Sloan Management Review,’ Summer 2001, 63 - 71.

2. Josh Hyatt; A Surprising Truth about Geographically Dispersed Teams, ‘MIT Sloan Management Review,’ Summer 2008, 5 - 6.

Strategies That Keep Profitable Customers Coming Back

Amid the impersonal busyness of the airport, I feel drawn to his warm oasis. My shoes don’t need shining, I think as I take a seat to have my polished shoes shined at Nacho’s shoeshine stand in Terminal 1 at the LA airport. Nacho (his real name) looks up and smiles. I rationalize my decision, Well; my shoes can’t be TOO polished as I fly out to work with the Federal Reserve Bank.

Why would I choose to spend money at Nacho’s getting my shoes shined when they didn’t need it? Because he delivers what scientists tell us are the keys to profitable repeat customers. Do you?

Researcher Timothy Keiningham and collaborators followed 8,000 customers for two years to explore the relationships among survey responses, loyalty behavior, and company growth. (1) They concluded that there is no single metric that links customer loyalty to company growth. However, these investigators did review several strategies that you can customize if you want to draw profitable customers back to you. Many of these compelled me to have my polished shoes shined at Nacho’s stand:

1. Reliability - provide dependable and accurate service.

2. Assurance - convey trust and confidence.

3. Responsiveness - deliver prompt service, especially when customers need help.

4. Empathy - offer personalized experienced with a caring attitude.

5. Delight Customers - investigate and measure what “high level of satisfaction” means to your customers. Then, create systems to consistently deliver that delightFULL experience.

6. Calculate the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS is derived by measuring your customer’s response to this question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?” Those who rate you as a 9 or 10 are classified as “promoters,” those who rate you 6 or lower are your “detractors.” Your NPS score is calculated based on the difference: the percent promoters minus the percent detractors. Although the NPS has been touted as “the one number that you need to grow,” Keiningham’s follow-up study of 15,000 customers from 21 companies revealed the connection modest. (1, 2)

In our search for simplicity, we sometimes see simplistic solutions to complex issues. Yet Einstein warned us to “make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Linking customer loyalty to growth is neither simpler nor easy. Nacho’s secret recipe for success is magical mix of all six of these strategies. For example, in the past year he has changed my shoelaces (without being asked) and given me a new canister of shoe polish (when I merely asked about it) - all without charging me. That’s what keeps us, his profitable customers, coming back, even when our shoes don’t need shinning. Professor Snow at Harvard thinks the American car companies have learned their lesson and are back on track ( http://blogs.bnet.com/harvard/?p=504#comments ) What do you think? How are you going to adapt these ideas to polish your customer loyalty program?

See you at the airport,

Dave

1. Timothy Keiningham and colleagues; Linking Customer Loyalty to Growth, ‘MIT Sloan Management Review,’ Summer 2008, 51 - 57.

2. F. F. Reichheld; The One Number You Need To Grow, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ December 2003, 46 - 54.

The Paradox of Visionary AND Rational Leadership

Based on my interviews, it was clear that this company needed leadership and project management training. I submitted a proposal and a few weeks later, received a call from the vice president. He said that they had decided to use the entire training budget to have a white-water rafting experience on the Snake River. I thanked him for his consideration, hung up, and shook my head at my stupidity. Here I was selling to a group of creative visionaries at an advertising firm, but had used my rational thinking style to generate the proposal. How often do you fail to balance your visionary and rational thinking styles?

Researchers from the business schools at Harvard and the University of Washington studied 60 pioneers involved in the origin of the Internet and modern computing. They found that bridging the gap between the creative and the rational side was critical to business success. (1) Although these investigators explored the importance of managing the conflict between the “creators and stewards” in organizations, it is also imperative that leaders manage this tension within themselves. Otherwise, they end up making poor decisions just as I did.

Visionary thinkers create compelling futures by developing long-term goals and flexible strategies to achieve those goals. Visionaries are the dreamers and creators of an organization. They inspire innovation and change. They often have broad perspectives and wide area of interests. Every organization needs innovative leaders who are not afraid to soar like eagles. And every leader needs to tap into his or her visionary style to create value and stay true to their higher purpose.

Rational thinkers focus on the facts by clarifying objectives and expectations. Rational thinkers manage operations and develop detailed plans. They understand themselves and the people around them. They also find ways to carefully monitor their environment. Every organization needs organizers who have their feet firmly planted on the ground. And every leader needs to tap into his or her rational thinking style to capture value and allocate resources efficiently and responsibly.

Organizations and individuals need both styles. When I worked for Siemens Medical Systems, I saw many talented, visionary engineers leave the organization because our culture emphasized, celebrated and perpetuated rational thinking. We were always behind the innovation curve and our sales suffered because of it. You would've thought that I learned this lesson when I started my own company. However, as the opening story illustrates, I've had to learn this lesson over and over again. The most successful leaders and organizations find a dynamic balance between visionary and rational thinking. Here's how:

1. Keep creators around. Innovative thinkers drive people nuts, especially the bottom-line oriented rational thinkers. But they’re also the ones who create long-term value for the organization. Research tells us that when you fire an out-of-control innovator, two or three other highly talented employees often depart also. So, be slow to let them go.

2. Balance the influence between the rational and visionary thinkers. Many leaders let the next quarter and bottom-line numbers rule the day. This results in the innovator's ideas frequently losing. Their projects are shot down early and they get depressed. Don't let that happen. How can you let them occasionally win?

3. Cultivate bridging personalities. Because I was a technical salesperson at Siemens with a strong creative impulse, I was able to talk freely and rationally to our innovative engineers. This allowed me to help them bridge the gap between their highflying ideas and the bottom-line reality of the market. Who can talk to both sides in your organization?

4. Use peer review to provide accurate evaluations. Peer review was the essence of our existence when I coordinated research at UC-San Diego Medical Center. Before we published any scientific papers, we had to present our data to our colleagues for honest feedback. You should do the same. Too often in business, ideas get shot down because one or two leaders can't see the value in them. A single point of view is no way to review an idea or see the world.

5. Innovate using rapid iterative prototyping. This is the approach that Cisco uses to arrive at how systems function. It is an experimental mind-set: describe it as best you can, build it as fast as you can, let the market test the prototype, and use feedback for the next iteration.

6. Realize that there will always be tension. You will never be able to eliminate conflict among these opposing styles, nor should you try. Harvard Business School professor Dorothy Leonard believes that when this conflict is of the cognitive type (i.e., non-emotional), it creates a “creative abrasion.” This keeps teams pushing for better solutions and prevents unconstructive uniformity.

I encourage you to use these ideas to celebrate visionary and rational thinking in yourself, your leaders, and your organization. How surprised will you be when you see growth flowing from managing the tension between these two interdependent imperatives?

See you on the mountain,

Dave

1. Robert Austin and Richard Nolan; Bridging the Gap between Stewards and Creators, ‘MIT Sloan Management Review,’ Winter 2007, 29 - 36.

The Paradox of Commanding AND Empowering Leadership

My Dad spent 30 years working toward retirement, and he retired with nothing. There are many reasons why his company shut down. Near the top of the list was lack of leadership. Specifically, the inability of company and union leaders to understand that managing the tension between performance and people is the heart of a leader’s job. How well do you manage that tension?

Leaders must hold people accountable for excellent results or there won’t be any profits for the people (i.e., shareholders, raises for employees, my Dad’s retirement…). Leaders must also care for their employees or the employees won’t care about the leaders’ goals (work without caring is compliance). Research by Russell Eisenstat and his colleagues have shown that there are seven strategies you can use to manage the performance/people tension. (1)

1. Earn trust. Without trust, people simply will not believe or follow the leader. To earn trust leaders must be brutally honest, open to feedback, competent, and practice consistent values. For example, when CEO Ed Ludwig took over at Becton, Dickinson, he commissioned a task force of trusted managers to conduct open-ended, frank interviews with executives about their challenges. Ludwig followed through on their recommendations even thou some of their findings spotlighted the failure of one of his pet projects. How can you be more honest, open to feedback, competent, and consistent in practicing your values?

2. Engage the people. High performing leaders who manage the tension between performance and people go to extraordinary lengths to communicate. One regional manager I worked with visited every one of his 100 bank branches at least once a year. He also sent e-mail notices to his team soliciting feedback from them and conducted weekly conferences calls. This leader also demonstrated an authentic concern for his peoples’ concern when he met. He understood that communication is not broadcasting. Do you?

3. Maintain focus. Shifting the focus of employees takes a tremendous amount of energy. People have habits of thinking and behaving. Bringing them around to a new way doing things is like turning a tanker around in the ocean. The leaders who manage the performance/people tension well do not change direction often, nor do they push many initiatives on their team. They focus on the fundamental few, not the meaningless many. What are your key strategic imperatives?

4. Leverage leadership. You can’t manage the tension between profits and people if you think leadership is all about you. The game is no longer “follow the leader,” it’s “unleash the creative energy of the people in a given direction.” That’s the leaders’ primary job. Professor Eisenstat’s interviews with leaders around the world found that high performing leaders used the word “we” more than “I.” They looked to others to complement their skills and style. How does your team make up for your weakness?

5. Communicate a shared purpose. Knowing the “why” behind the “what” motivates employees. They understand the need for performance accountability if they feel the emotional pull of a compelling vision. Leaders at Herman Miller discovered that encouraging employees to share stories about how they and their products serve the community was a great way to communicate their shared purpose.

6. Provide opportunities for growth. “People don’t get excited by cost reduction… People want to go to a job that is fulfilling and that they get excited about,” states Russ Fradin of Hewitt Associates. The best leaders create opportunities for their high-potential employees, conduct strategic people reviews, monitor the progress of their people, and teach leadership classes in their organizations.

7. Maintain perspective. I’ve had three near death experiences. I’m certain in 100 years I’ll be dead. You will be too. Leaders who excel at managing the profit/people tension know it’s critical to keep their job in perspective. They maintain some distance from the personal lives of their team, have outside interest, and keep their sense of humor.

My dad lost everything because the union and company leaders could not manage the tension between meeting the performance demands of the market and the humanistic desires of the employees. How can you adapt these strategies to manage these opposing and interdependent imperatives?

See you on the mountain,

Dave

1. Russell A. Eisenstat, et al; The Uncompromising Leader, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ July-August 2008, 51 - 57.

How Leaders Monitor Feedback

I was biking up my favorite Malibu mountain road a while back, when a white Miata flew around the curve, veered away from hitting me head-on, and plunged down a ravine. As I reach the spot where his tires last clawed the road, I saw that the driver had landed against several thick bushes 30 feet down. The car was banged up, but upright, and the driver was crawling up the embankment towards me.

He reached the road, straightened up, assured me he was fine, and called for a tow truck. He then encouraged me, several times, to continue my bike ride up the steep mountain road. I did. That's when I decided to count the curves on the mountain and started to think about those curves as feedback.

Webster’s Dictionary defines feedback as “the return to the point of origin of evaluative or corrective information.” Feedback is everywhere. A market-based economy works because consumers give continuous feedback to producers. Feedback is also how we survive. The human body incorporates thousands of feedback mechanisms that keep us alive. And failure to pay attention to feedback is what almost killed the driver on that mountain.

I counted 37 curves from the spot where he went over the edge to the top of that mountain. This means he had 37 opportunities to become aware of, learn from, and adjust to the feedback the mountain and his car were giving him as he raced down. He was getting feedback about the road conditions, his car, his ability to negotiate hairpin curves. He was, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, getting the experience but missing the meaning. How about you?

How often do you have an experience, but miss the meaning? I know I'm NOT learning my lesson when the universe keeps sending me (i.e., I keep creating) the same experience over and over again. It's always Groundhog Day for leaders who don't learn from their experience.

Since you receive feedback from customers, team members, executives, family and friends every day, here are a few ideas to help you use feedback to stay on track.

1. Be open to most things, attached to few

If the guy on the mountain had been open to what the hairpin turns were teaching him, he might not have plunged off the road. How often do you go so fast that you miss critical feedback? Sometimes, I become so attached to my way of doing things that I miss the "corrective information" someone or something is telling me.

2. Write for insight

In the book ‘The Artist’s Way,’ author Julia Cameron describes a powerful technique called Morning Pages. She says that if you really want to discover the meaning of something, write three pages by hand, non-stop, and fast, in the morning. Anything that comes to mind, write it down, without editing. Don’t think, don’t hesitate, and don’t stop. You will be amazed at what this "internal feedback" teaches you. Effective leaders know that life is lived, and experience is made meaningful, from the inside out.

3. Ask positive questions

Do you ever get down on yourself or blame circumstances when life throws you a curve? We all mess up. But when you stumble, remember that there is no failure, only feedback. It’s only failure if you don’t learn anything. So, whenever you're hit by unwelcome events, focus on positive feedback by asking questions like:

- What could I learn from this?

- Will this be critical five years from today?

- How can I view this differently?

- How might I use this to serve others in the future?

Leaders receive tons of feedback as they speed through the day. Perhaps if you paid closer attention to this "corrective information" you might make more meaning out of what happens to you. Maybe feedback is about learning for the future. Is feedback really feed forward?

See you on the mountain,

Dave

Leading with Empathy

We had already biked 120 miles through Sequoia National Park in two days. I was shocked that my legs felt strong as we made the final push through 20 miles of hot, dusty, roads to our hotel in Exeter, CA. I took the lead to be the windbreaker for my friend Mike. I heard his labored breathing as I bolted by, my resilient legs urging me to stay up front for a while. But two minutes later, he passed me. I started to move to the front again after about a minute. BUT he growled at me to stay back and let him do the work of breaking the wind. I backed off, wondering why he was so upset. A few miles later, I found out.

We stopped to refill our water bottles and have a “chat.” He explained that although he was dead tired, he needed to spend time in the lead. I told him my legs felt strong and that I didn’t mind doing most of the work at the front. He replied that he didn't feel good about himself unless he was “contributing” by sharing the work. He then apologized for yelling (i.e., not expressing his emotion well) and I apologized for being clueless about his need to be at the front (i.e., not being more empathetic). How about you? How empathetic are you, especially when your team is working hard?

Leading researchers in the field of emotional intelligence have found that social intelligence, especially empathy, is critical to effective leadership. (1) High-level executives, hired for their strong self-discipline, drive, and intellect, often are fired because they lack social skills, especially empathy, under pressure. Empathy is also critical when giving negative feedback to employees. Imagine if you had two groups that needed performance feedback. One group you give negative feedback, but you give positive emotional signals such as smiling and nodding during the session. To the second group, you provide positive feedback but deliver it with negative emotional signals such as frowns, wrinkled brows, and narrowed eyes. Research tells us that the people who received positive feedback with your negative emotional signals would feel worse about their performance than those who received negative feedback with a positive emotional delivery. How can you can be more empathetic when you need to deliver negative messages?

Here are six steps to help develop your social intelligence, such as empathy:

1. Develop a personal vision for change. Write down the clear picture of the person you want to become, especially as it relates to being more empathetic.

2. Undergo a thorough diagnostic assessment. Ask your Human Resource Department or e-mail me for information about assessing your emotional intelligence. A good 360-feedback instrument helps you understand where you need to grow relative to the personal vision you created in step one.

3. Keep a log of your daily successes and failures. Use the log to help you notice when and how you practice new empathy behaviors.

4. Work with a mentor. Identify someone at work who has excellent emotional intelligence skills. Ask them if you could work with them over the next several months to grow your skills. Leaders I coach often have an internal mentor at work also. A coach and mentor is a great one - two punch.

5. Use daily reminders. Identify current habits that you can link to the new behaviors you want to augment. For example, if you take notes during meetings, you might write words at the top of your notepad to help remind you to be empathetic during meetings. Every time you looked down to scratch a note, you'll see your reminders. Old habit + new behavior = new habit.

6. Celebrate small success. Reward yourself whenever you experience small progress using or growing your new skill. When I was an executive at UCLA, I rewarded my progress by walking to the cafeteria for a frozen yogurt, going out for lunch, or taking a mid-afternoon break. That which gets rewarded gets repeated.

My friend and I finished our biking journey yesterday… and we are still friends because we are both committed to growing our emotional intelligence. How are you going to continue growing yours?

See you in Sequoia,

Dave

1. Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis; Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ September 2008, 74 - 81.