Ten Tips To Improve Leadership Learning

"Dave, we need to talk about your responsibilities around here." Jack was the new director.

"Okay, what should I be doing?" My teenage voice cracked as I rubbed my sweating palms.

"I know that under Bob you had a lot of responsibilities. I heard he even gave you the unofficial title of assistant youth director. Well, all that stops as of today. Consider yourself demoted to the front desk."

I was devastated.

Two years earlier, Bob, the youth director at our local YMCA, hired me to work at the front desk in the youth department. I worked hard for Bob and eagerly took on every new responsibility he tossed my way. By the time I turned 19 years old, Bob had entrusted me to lead the YMCA’s youth leadership program, junior high school teen center, and assist in running two, month-long, cross-country camping trips.

But now, it seemed that my professional growth had come to a crashing halt at the tender age of 19 because Bob left.

How about you? What happens when you are dealt a professional setback or encounter a new, challenging situation? Do you go through the experience or grow through it?

In a survey of 6,900 managers from 77 firms, the McKinsey organization reported that only 3% agreed with this statement: "We develop people effectively." (1) I invite you to adapt their question by asking, how effectively do I learn?

If you want to grow through today's turbulent environment, you must take control of your own development. It is not your boss’s job to keep you informed about the numerous changes bombarding your field. Of course he or she should support your learning efforts, but why trust your future in their hands? The latest research tells us that if you want to keep earning you must put agility in your learning.

Learning agility is the ability to deal effectively with new situations and changing conditions. When Jack took Bob’s place at the YMCA, my world was turned upside down. The question became, was I an agile learner who could grow through these tough times? (Read on to find out.) Researchers Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger followed 313 managers for two years after they were promoted. (2) They found that high learning-agility managers performed significantly better in their new jobs than those with lower scores. This study and other research tell us that a key to navigating any whitewater environment is becoming an agile learner. (3) Leaders I coach find the following ideas helpful in growing their learning agility. Pick a few that might work for you.

1. Involve others in learning. One administrator asked members of her team to develop a plan to train everyone on the new office software installed. Another invited the staff to add content to their web site.

2. Make education part of your meetings. When I was Chief Administrative Officer of Molecular Imaging at UCLA, our Friday staff meetings included a 10 – 15 minute educational agenda item. We would teach each other, invite faculty, and ask outside experts to bring us up to speed on technical and medical issues.

3. Volunteer to be on unfamiliar committees. Become more active in your associations. I’ve been on the board of directors of the National Speakers Association (LA Chapter) for the last four years. It keeps me going AND growing!

4. Obtain objective measures of quality. The Radiation Oncology Department at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Penn maintains a very active patient satisfaction survey and regularly reviews results. How active is yours?

5. Become an advocate for change. The top companies are ever mindful of how advanced technology serves their strategy. Are you?

6. Conduct small experiments. Ask your team members to try novel approaches to improve operations. Then conduct after action reviews.

7. Ask more questions. Listen more than you talk during one-on-one and staff meetings. Broadcasting is not communicating.

8. Find a coach or mentor. Be willing to look at issues from multiple perspectives by asking for diverse opinions. When I was conducting research at University of CA –San Diego, I learned a great deal from a few mentors.

9. Actively solicit feedback. Complete a research-based 360 assessment (e.g., http://xlmassessment.com/ ) in order to lead with your strengths and manage your weaknesses.

10. Try something new every day. Drive to work a different way, change the drawers in your dresser, go to the theater or symphony instead of the movies, brush your teeth with your less dominant hand...

Meanwhile, back at my local YMCA… how did I handle my change? After licking my wounds for several days and realizing Jack was not going to change his mind about my responsibilities, I approached Don, the director of physical education at the same YMCA. I asked him if he had any open positions. He said yes and I went to work for Don the next day. I continued my professional growth under Don and his able successor until I left home for graduate school.

Popular speaker and author Zig Ziglar recently told me, “I wasn’t much of a student in school, but I sure became a good one after school.” What kind of a student are you?

I encourage you to improve your leadership learning by developing your learning agility. Which of these ideas will you try?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

P.S. Read a great article about how my research on 171,000 leaders can help you be an eXtraordinary leader; click on the link below (or paste it into your browser)

http://davejensenonleadership.com/XLMHoweXceptionalLeadersAchieveeXtraordinaryResults.html

1. Cited in Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger, The Leadership Machine, 2002, page 165.
2. Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo: Learning Agility as a Prime Indicator of Potential, Human Resource Planning, December 01, 20004, 12 -- 15.
3. Lawrence Clark: Wanted: fully engaged, learning-agile people, People & Strategy, December 1, 2008.

Leadership and Unions

Do we need unions anymore?

I came across an interesting blog with varied opinions... Take a look: http://blogs.bnet.com/ceo/?p=3022&tag=nl.e713

Here's what I think about unions AND management:

The problem with most unions is that they take responsibility for the welfare of the worker, but not their work.

The problem with many leaders is that they take responsibility for the work, but not the worker.

Until both sides realize they are only playing with half the deck, the US will continue its slide from the top.

What do you think?

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

P.S. Read a GREAT ARTICLE about how my research on 171,000 leaders can help you be an eXtraordinary leader AND deal with union; click on the link below (or paste it into your browser)

http://davejensenonleadership.com/XLMHoweXceptionalLeadersAchieveeXtraordinaryResults.html

Leadership Decisions, The Road, The Rocks, and...

As I leaned my Trek into the first hairpin turn, there in the middle of the mountain road, about 20 yards ahead, were two rocks. I gently squeezed my brakes and signaled my biking buddy Jim to watch out for these two loaf-of-bread-sized obstacles. We eased past the rocks and briefly discussed hopping off our bikes to remove them. We decided against it, and continued our descent.

Would you have removed the rocks? (It would have been safe to do so, since the rocks were 20 yards beyond the hairpin turn.) If so, why? If not, why not? More importantly, how would you make your decision?

Information, Knowledge, Wisdom…
When we make a decision, we base it on the information we have and how we think about that information. If the information is accurate, we call them facts. If we think about the connections among the facts within the context of the decision, we call that systems thinking. One way to make better decisions is to consider the relationship between facts and connections, as seen below.

Increasing Facts and Connections
Leads to Wisdom and Better Decisions

This diagram teaches us that wise decisions are a function of seeing the connections among relevant facts. Of course, if we had all the time and money we wanted to make decisions, we could spend it gathering numerous, high-quality facts and then contemplate/assess their connections. We could hire experts, review the latest research, and even conduct our own experiments. However, that's not the way the world usually works. We often need to make split-second decisions with a few facts and little reflection regarding their connection.

Lessons on the Mountain
Jim and I decided not to remove the rocks because we wanted to help those who would follow us down the steep mountain road. That's right; we decided we would actually serve more people by leaving the rocks. We arrived at this seemingly outrageous decision by quickly discussing facts and contemplating their connections:

FACTS:

1. The rocks were near the top of the mountain, 20 yards after a hairpin turn.
2. There are 37 hairpin turns on this specific mountain.
3. Numerous cars and motorcycles race down the mountain every weekend for sport.
4. A car racing down plunged off the mountainside right in front of me a few years ago
5. (Read about it: http://davejensenonleadership.blogspot.com/2008/12/leading-by-monitoring-your-environment.html ).

CONNECTIONS:

1. 20 yards provides ample time for cyclists and motorists to avoid the two rocks.
2. Racing motorists do not know what is beyond each of the 37 hairpin turns.
3. The rocks near the top could serve as a possible warning sign to racing drivers.

DECISION:

Not removing the rocks has a greater chance of helping more people.

Back at Work
Of course, this article is not about the road or the rocks; it's about how to make excellent decisions more consistently. The first step is to gather the facts. This sounds simple, but how often have you seen leaders make decisions based on a biases, opinions, or emotions instead of facts? For example, have you ever:

- Counseled underperformers without knowing the real story?

- Dashed off quick e-mails without verifying the facts?

- Reacted to a colleague or loved one without “seeking first to understand?”

- Pontificated in meetings regardless of the evidence?

- Implemented something new (e.g., policy/procedure, training, change initiative…) based on a popular management book or “flavor-of-the-month” fad, instead of solid facts grounded in research?

Evidence-based management may sound obvious, but as Professors Jeffrey Pfeiffer and Robert Sutton point out, it is not what organizations actually practice. (1) For example, they point out that Hewlett-Packard (HP) conducted extensive internal testing on 13 pay-for-performance programs in the early 90’s. They learned that although pay for performance increased motivation to some, the benefits were not worth the damage done by the programs (lower trust, decreased employee commitment, infighting regarding pay levels…) These facts led them to conclude that pay-for-performance programs were not worth the headache they created at HP. Unfortunately, when CEO Carly Fiorina took over, she let everyone know that she favored pay-for-performance. The boss’s opinion trumped the facts. She implemented the new compensation plans, thus creating the previously proven problems. Perhaps she was not strong enough to doubt herself. Are you? Remember, dogma is dog pooh!

Once we have the facts, it is important to consider how these facts relate to each other within the context of the decision. This involves contemplating the relationship and pattern among the facts in time and space, a process known as systems thinking. Again, this area seldom receives adequate attention from leaders. For example, have you seen:

- New policies or procedures implemented in one area create unintended consequences in another?

- A silo mentality (or a turf war) surface during or after meetings?

- Fragmented approaches to improvement without connecting the dots?

- People spend more time pointing fingers and fixing the blame than fixing the problem?

Like the human body, your organization is a system – “a group of interacting elements forming a complex whole." System thinking is the ability to contemplate these elements (i.e., facts), their patterns, and their interactions with each other. When you think systemically, you realize that 1 + 1 = 3 because of the principle of emergence – “from the interactions of the parts arise characteristics which are not found in the parts.” If you studied hydrogen and oxygen in isolation from each other, you’d never know water. If you observed the behaviors of two partners separately, you wouldn’t understand their marriage. Likewise, making decisions by only looking at the facts in isolation seldom yields insights.

How to Make Better Decisions at Work
To make excellent decisions consistently, I recommend that you conduct your own little experiment. For the next 40 days, write these five fundamental questions on a 3x5-index card every morning (you can use abbreviations):

1. What are the facts?

2. How do these facts relate to each other and the big picture?

3. What might be the long-term, downstream consequences of various options?

4. What would be an eXtraordinary outcome?

5. Who should be involved in answering these questions?

Pull out the index card and answer these questions whenever you need to make a decision that requires some contemplation. Of course, you don’t need them to make simple decisions (where are we going for lunch?). Nevertheless, try them when you need to think about a decision. How surprised will you be when you become a better leader at home and work because you are a wise decision maker?

Let me know how your experiment goes.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

P.S. Read a GREAT ARTICLE about how my research on 171,000 leaders can help you be an eXtraordinary leader and decision-maker; click on the link below (or paste it into your browser)

http://davejensenonleadership.com/XLMHoweXceptionalLeadersAchieveeXtraordinaryResults.html

1. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton; Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2006.

Leadership, Silos and Turf Wars

"Dave, I hear you've been calling engineers in Chicago again." My boss wrinkled his brow.

"Yes Doug, they need to do something about our cardiac software. It's killing our customers." I had done clinical research in the area prior to joining the company and I had a good idea of what they needed to do.

"Dave, they know about the problem. I told you before, stop calling them. They are in engineering, you are in sales."

I didn't want to lose my job, so I stopped calling my engineering friends.

 

How often do people in your organization think in silos or battle over turf? The answer for most organizations: A LOT. Because organizations are structured into departments, divisions, and units, the business responsibilities, goals, objectives of the leaders in these units are usually set independently of each other. The leaders’ financial and emotional incentives are often dependent upon achieving specific goals for their individual units. They therefore focus only on their goals, their silos. (One of the executives I’m coaching recently corrected me, “They’re not silos, they are cylinders of excellence!”)

The segmentation of work arose from the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, where the division of labor was thought to be the best way to achieve efficient operations. However, the nature of today's work often transcends these internal borders. The rapid pace of change, global forces, and hyper-competition… demand that leaders collaborate (co-labor) with those in other units to achieve their objectives and the goal of the whole. If an enterprise is going to survive, leaders must think systemically. (1)

An organization, like the human body, is a system – “a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole." System thinking is the ability to contemplate these elements, their patterns, and their interactions with each other. My manager in the opening story was doing what most leaders do -- his part. He treated his part as a separate element without much thought to the whole. He and most of the managers in the field, as well as the engineers in the home office, were blind to the needs of the system. Unfortunately, this had grave implications for our sales. When the next release of software hit the market, our customers hit the roof. The software did not meet their needs and sales plummeted. I'm convinced it was because the engineers in the home office and the sales organization were guilty of silo thinking, which lead to turf wars. They mismanaged the paradoxical tension between meeting their individual needs and the needs of the organization. They thought only about their trees, not the whole forest. How about you?

When a situation, challenge, or problem arises, how often does focusing on your part blind you to the needs of the whole? Listed below are a few of the symptoms indicating that leaders are not thinking systemically:

⊗ Lack of creativity in dealing with challenges

⊗ Previously applied fixes create negative consequences elsewhere

⊗ After a fix is applied the problem returns in time

⊗ Leaders who were partners for growth become adversaries

⊗ Leaders compete for limited resources to achieve individual goals

⊗ Conversations often contain the words I, me, my, mine...

Do any of these look familiar? How do you deal with them? What tools do you use to manage the tension between the part and the whole? Let me know…

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

P.S. The web-based eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM) Assessment measures paradox in leadership using the “Agility Score.” Within minutes of completing your assessment (which takes less than 20 minutes to fill out), you can download your highly personalized Profile - a comprehensive, 21 + page report and customized action plan in PDF format. Go to: http://xlmassessment.com/ to read about the assessment.

1. Joseph McCann; Organizational Effectiveness: Changing Concepts for Changing Environments, Human Resource Planning, 3/1/2004.

How to Leaders Manage a Paradox Over Time - Part II

In a previous blogs, I discussed how to resist the simplistic slide into either/or thinking when dealing with a paradox (1) Instead of choosing sides, leaders need to manage the paradox over time by placing their attention on the tension. This involves inviting those affected by the paradox to follow the steps outlined below:

 

1. Create a paradoxical vision statement

2. Develop norms that build trust

3. Balance the power

4. Pay equal attention to each issue

5. Identify your smoke signals

1. Create a paradoxical vision statement
This was discussed in the previously cited blog. (1)

2. Build trust
The founding fathers of the United States struggled with the centralized and decentralized paradox when they were writing the U.S. Constitution. While many of the members of the Continental Congress wanted a strong federal government (e.g., Alexander Hamilton), others were leery of giving too much power to the Federalists and wanted to remain independent states (e.g., Thomas Jefferson). Trust in each other and the vision for which they were drawn to Philadelphia enabled them to create the US Constitution, a document that manages the paradoxical tension between federalism (centralize) and states’ rights (decentralize).

Unfortunately, a survey of 12,750 employees found trust to be very low in most organizations. (2) Think of trust as a thick bungee cord that holds the team together as they stretch to manage these conflicting issues of a paradox simultaneously. Without trust, the team won’t hang together as tensions heighten.

To create trust on your paradox team, follow these steps adapted from leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith (3):

a. Ask each team member to write their answers (confidentially) to two questions:

• “On a 1-10 scale (10 is the highest), how much trust do you feel is on this team now?”
• “On a 1-10 scale, how much trust do you feel we need on this team to effectively manage this paradox over time?”

b. Invite a team member to calculate the average score for each question. Discuss the results. If the team believes that the gap between current trust and needed trust must be bridged, continue to the next step.

c. Ask the team, “If every team member could work on two key behaviors that would help us close the gap between current trust and needed trust, which two behaviors should we all try to change or work on?” Have each team member write his or her selected behaviors on flip charts.

d. Combine those that are similar. Then prioritize the behaviors in order to identify the two most important behaviors that every team member needs to work on.

e. During follow-up meetings, ask each team member to identify how they and one of their team members demonstrated these trust behaviors. Each person should also ask the group for suggestions for improvement. The person receiving the ideas must not judge or critique the ideas. He or she should listen and say "thank you." Those providing the suggestion need to focus on the future, not the past. (As my friend Mike says, it’s OK to look at the past, just don’t stare.)

3. Maintain the balance of power.
Ask your team to consider what actions they could take if they perceive one issue is receiving too much attention, focus, or power. Illustrate the importance of maintaining equal power by asking the team to imagine the following scenario: you're in the meeting discussing the allocation of training related to a paradox you mapped two weeks ago. During this meeting, pretend that most of the members of the team become very one-sided and start advocating for only one of the paradox issues.

For example, if you had mapped the commercial banking strategy and retail sales paradox two weeks ago, imagine that the majority of team members become very excited as they discuss the new commercial banking training schedule. As the leader, you realize that there is no balance of power. If the team makes decision as to how much training, who goes to the training, and the dollars allocated for the training right now, those decisions will be lopsided in favor of the commercial banking strategy. As Ben Franklin said: A man in passion rides a mad horse!

To avoid riding your horse off a cliff and experiencing the subsequent collateral damage, ask your team to generate a few practical tactics that would restore the balance of power. Let them brainstorm a number of answers.

4. Pay equal attention to each issue.
It is important that both issues in a paradox receive approximately the same amount of attention. You can quantify the amount of attention that each issue is receiving by observing the amount of time allocated to the issue in meetings. Therefore, ask your team to write a few ideas to help them schedule attention to both issues. After they do so, share these ideas from other executives:

a. Agendas. Mandate that meeting agendas allocate equal time for both issues.

b. Minutes. Review the action items in the minutes of your meetings. Both sides of the paradox should have approximately the same number of action items.

c. Formal dialogue. In a decade long study of 150 employees in one organization, Professor Ann Westenholz found that paradoxical tensions were better managed when there was “a forum for discussion where those with different frames of reference could meet and discuss those differences.” () She also reported more divergent thinking, the willingness to see other point of views, if these meetings included the presence of employees who were capable of paradoxical thinking. How can you adapt this idea to your environment?

5. Identify your smoke signals
Native American’s (and soldiers along the Great Wall of China in ancient China) used smoke signals to communicate information, often an early warning. You also need an early warning system that sends the signal that there is too much emphasis on one issue of a paradox.

For example, imagine your working to manage the “increase sales and improve customer service” paradox. How would you know if people were getting carried away with the sales side of the paradox at the expense of service? What would be an early warning that people were getting carried away with the sales issue? One bank executive said that an early warning signal of too much emphasis on sales would be complaints from one of the supervisors of the customer service representatives (CSRs). The bank executive pointed out that this supervisor had been on a “customer loyalty” committee a year earlier, thus she was very sensitive to people losing focus of customer service. Thus, the CSR supervisor had become such a strong advocate for customer service that she would be the first to notice any negative consequences caused by of an overemphasis on sales.

Who could be the early warner of overemphasizing customer service, the other issue in our paradox example? Another executive I coached told me that her recently hired sales manager would be the first to know if too much attention was being paid to customer service at the expense of sales. She explained that the sales manager receives a daily report on the sales referrals from CSRs. If the CSRs spend too much time on service issues at the expense of sales referrals, the sales manager would see this reflected in this customer service referral metric.

At a recent party, a management professor told me that she believed that a leader's job was to relieve tension for their followers. I disagreed because I believe that a leader's job is to help manage the tension that is inherently in our work these days. Competing priorities, conflicting stakeholder, and contradictory demands is the nature of work today. The tension is already here.

How can you use these blogs to help you lead by managing this tension? Let me know…

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

P.S. The web-based eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM) Assessment measures paradox in leadership using the “Agility Score.” Within minutes of completing your assessment (which takes less than 20 minutes to fill out), you can download your highly personalized Profile - a comprehensive, 21 + page report and customized action plan in PDF format. Go to: http://xlmassessment.com/ to read about the assessment.

1. http://davejensenonleadership.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-leaders-manage-paradox-over-time.html

2. WorkUSA® 2002 - Weathering the Storm: A Study of Employee Attitudes and Opinions, http://www.watsonwyatt.com/research/resrender.asp?id=W-557&page=1

3.http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/goldsmith/2007/10/team_building_without_time_was.html

4. Ann Westenholz; Paradoxical Thinking and Change in the Frames of Reference. A Study of Employees' Thinking Processes, Organization Studies; January 1, 1993.