The eXpansive Leadership Model (XLM) - - - - - - How eXceptional Leaders Achieve eXtraordinary Results Under Pressure

Greg was organized, likable, and communicated well. He was promoted to director of finance after three years as a mid-level manager. When I interviewed his managers, they said that they always knew what to do because Greg excelled at clarifying objectives and expectations. Team meetings ran like a Swiss watch. His managers told me that Greg included them in decision-making and that he delegated well. He also fostered an environment of creativity and openness to change. What a leader! But then…

The economy worsened and the CEO demanded more productivity. That’s when cracks in Greg's leadership armor began to show. Three of his middle managers failed to perform under the increased pressure. They missed project deadlines, were unresponsive to their colleagues service needs, and failed to engage their own team members in dealing with the difficult times. Complaints about poor leadership from their own front-line supervisors escalated to Greg's deaf ears. Employee morale plummeted and turnover skyrocketed. Craig finally counseled his three managers, but they didn’t improve because he failed to hold them accountable for implementing an improvement plan. A year after Greg was promoted... he was fired.

Are You Ever Strong to a Fault?
Greg’s problem was “lopsided leadership” – the tendency to overuse a strength (i.e., to be strong to a fault), especially under stress. Leaders who over-focus on their strongest style(s) are like muscle-bound bodybuilders who don’t stretch. They’re inflexible, rigid, and unable to adapt to the stress of change. How often does this happen to you when you’re under pressure?

In his book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman states, “It’s a world that demands constant adjustment and does not tolerate leaders who are unable or unwilling to build up their weak muscles—or who overuse their strong muscles.”

Based on my review of hundreds of studies that included more than 171, 000 leaders, I discovered that knowing or relying on your strengths is not enough anymore. What got you here won’t get you there. You need to avoid overdoing your strengths (and shore up your weaknesses), especially when you’re feeling stressed.

So, when are you strong to a fault? What leadership skills are you underutilizing these days? How well are you leading under pressure?

Read the rest of this article, and how to apply the XLM to help you eXpand, by clicking this link: http://davejensenonleadership.com/XLMHoweXceptionalLeadersAchieveeXtraordinaryResults.html

Let me know how you're doing. I'd love to hear from you.

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

How Top Leaders Retain Top Performers

A friend told me that she was very disappointed that her employer was giving her less than a 1% raise this year, despite the fact that she is the best worker on the team (as determined by her manager's objective measures). Her manager apologized, but said that my friend had been hired near the high end of the pay scale and there was little room for salary growth.

This Fortune 500 Company doesn't get it! No wonder their turnover is more than 25%. Good people leave even in a down economy. They don't seem to have a process in place to keep good people. Do you?

Here are three keys to keeping good employees. You may not be able to implement all three, but the real question is; How will you adapt at least one of them?

#1 - Increase pay growth, not salaries

What my friend's company doesn't understand is that employees say salary matters, but science says, when it comes to retention, salary growth matters more. In other words, it's often not the absolute salary that motivates people to stay; it's the pay growth over time. So, instead of putting those dollars in base salaries put them into the range.

#2 - Improve career mobility

During my last performance review at a medical equipment company, I asked my manager what I should be doing to prepare me for a management position (at the time, I was the top salesperson and had been at the company almost 5 years). He informed me that it would take a long time to move into the management track. A year later, I was Chief Administrative Officer of an Institute at UCLA. I'm NOT trying to impress you. I'm trying to improve your retention rate. A promotion within the previous year decreases the probability of turnover by about 50%. Even if I couldn’t be promoted right away, my boss should have encouraged me to learn new skills (and/or change jobs). Research tells us that if high performers don't grow, they go. How could you adapt this idea to fit your team?

#3 – Reward what you really want

I presented at an executive retreat a few years ago. During the award ceremony, gifts were given to the top three performers in several categories. After the meeting, the director solicited my feedback. I gave it to him straight. I asked him why he penalized his people for sharing their best practices. He looked at me with the "deer-caught-in-the-headlight-look." I explained that he actually was telling his mangers that if they wanted to receive the gifts next year, they had to beat the competition... who happened to be their colleagues? That's NOT teamwork. I recommended that he reward cooperation by setting targets with his team's involvement, then give awards to all those who hit the targets. He invited me to speak again this year... He had a much better performance and award ceremony.

Next time you give a raise or reward a performance, keep these three keys in mind. They are just a few of the many ways that can motivate and retain your good employees.

Let me know what's working for you.

Dave

www.davejensenonleadership.com

Eleven Tips to Interview and Hire the Best

On average, fifty percent of newly hired employees leave a job within the first seven months. The cost of this turnover is to be between 48 percent and 61 percent of the employee’s salary. How much does this expensive problem cost you?

Here are 11 practical tips that will help you improve your interviewing and hiring practices:

1. Understand the costly implications of poor hiring skills.

2. Update the job description of open positions with input from those who truly know the position.

3. Avoid forming an early opinion of the candidate and subsequently searching to confirm that opinion throughout the interview.

4. Structure your interview using the depth approach.

5. Take notes during the interview.

6. Interview for the few skills that produce results based the job analysis.

7. Train those who conduct the interviews to do it well.

8. Evaluate the interviewees using a behavior-based scoring sheet.

9. Minimize the influence of references.

10. Avoid panel interviewers unless the position requires performing under pressure in front of others.

11. Conduct pre-screening on those competencies that research confirms truly make a difference in performance (e.g., conscientiousness, emotional intelligence, IQ, learning agility...)

These are the keys to interviewing and hiring the best. Use them to increase morale, productivity, and retention.

For additional information or more tips, go to:
(http://davejensenonleadership.com/HowLeadersInterviewandtheBestfortheJob.html )

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

References

1. Patrick J Kiger; When people practices damage market value, Workforce Management, June 3, 2006.

2. Pulakos, Elaine D; Schmitt, Neal; Whitney, David; Smith, Matthew; Individual differences in interviewer ratings: The impact of standardization, consensus discussion, and sampling error on the validity of a structured interview, Personnel Psychology, April 01, 1996.

3. Lombardo, M. M. and Eichinger, R. W. (2000). High potentials as high learners. Human Resource Management, 39, 321-329.

4. George Hollenbeck and Robert Eichinger; Interviewing Right -- How Science Can Sharpen Your Interviewing Accuracy, Lominger international, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2006.

How Leaders Interview and Hire the Best

The cost of turnover for a typical employee is between 48 percent and 61 percent of the employee’s salary, as discussed in a previous blog ( http://davejensenonleadership.blogspot.com/2009/06/six-hiring-mistakes-good-leaders-make.html ). In that blog, I also revealed the six most common mistakes leaders make during the interviewing and hiring process. These errors are why an average of 50% of all new hires leave during the first seven months. Let us now turn our attention to avoiding these mistakes and hiring the best fit for the job.

The eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM) is a tool to help you interview and hire well. As seen below, you can use the XLM to frame your approach to the hiring process. Adapt this process to suit your environment to hire better candidates, improve productivity, lower turnover, and decrease costs. If you’d like to read how to execute each step, click the link below or paste it in to your browser:

http://davejensenonleadership.com/HowLeadersInterviewandtheBestfortheJob.html

Apply the XLM to Interview and Hire the Best

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

The Five Steps Leaders Use to Coach

Bob, the director of the YMCA youth department, called me into his office and said, "Dave, we're going to open a Junior High Team Center next month."

"That's great, where are you going to have it?" I asked.

"YOU are going to have it right here in the youth lobby." He smiled.

"You want me to lead the Junior High Team Center?" I was astonished because I was only a freshman in college.

"Why not? You are already doing a great job with our Leadership Corp Program."

I opened our New Junior High Team Center on Friday night, the next month. It was a big hit for the kids and for me because Bob was an effective coach. How effective is your coaching?

Coaching is strongly associated with employee engagement, retention, and work satisfaction. Yet surveys show that while 79% of organizations report that their leaders coach, only 40% say they hold these leaders accountable with performance coaching measures; and a mere 37% say that their organization has a specific coaching framework or model for their leaders to follow. (1) In other words, leaders have the responsibility to coach but no methodology. Here are five steps to help you implement a consistent and effective coaching framework:

1. Define the vision.

Ask the person you are coaching (coachee) to answer several questions such as, where do they want to be in five years? What type of responsibilities would they like to have? What do they like most about their current job? Do they have any specific goals? Back when I was in my first year of college, I told Bob I wanted to be a director at a YMCA.

2. Assess what is true today.

Use a variety of tools, such as interviews of the coachee's coworkers, 360 feedback, self-assessments... to understand the employee’s strengths and weaknesses. To read a great article about the importance of 360 assessment, click http://davejensenonleadership.com/CrimesWeCommitAssessment.html

3. Agree on a plan.

Discuss the difference between their vision and today's reality. Brainstorm different approaches to minimize the gap. When I coach leaders, I focus on helping them lead with their strengths while managing weaknesses. This means creating a laser-focused plan that builds on their strengths and deals with their weaknesses. Bob and I put together a plan that increased my responsibilities, such as running the new teen center.

4. Experiment and practice.

Encourage them to try new behaviors and test different approaches. This stage also works best if you are able to employ those with whom the coachee interacts on a regular to help reinforce their practice. I just don't do 360 assessments when I coach, I use 360 COACHING to help the coachee put the plan into practice. We learn by doing.

5. Conduct after action reviews.

Meet with your coachee on a regular basis to assess their progress against the plan. It is also helpful to begin building systems that help reinforce the new behaviors. For example, Bob had me create checklists for opening and closing the Junior High Team Center in order to grow my organizational skills.

These are the fundamental steps I use to coach executives and to teach leaders how to coach. I encourage you to adapt them to fit your organization. Let me know what methodology you are using or how you adapt this one to help your leaders coach.

Keep on coaching,

Dave

http://davejensenonleadership.com/

PS These are the steps that Bob used 35 years ago. He continues to be a great friend and wonderful coach today.

1. Annette Fillary-Travis and David Lane; Does Coaching Work or Are We Asking the Wrong Question?, ‘International Coaching Psychology Review,’ Volume 1, Number 1, April 2006, 23-36.

How Leaders Use Stories to Motivate

The audience of 500 senior executives and middle managers listened as the CEO outlined the major change initiative. His grasp of the facts and details was amazing. But after 15 minutes of data, the audience drifted. The CEO lost them because he didn't realize that to reach the mind one must go through the heart. He didn't use the power of story to inspire, motivate, and encourage his leaders to commit to his message. (1, 2)

Do you? Do you employ the key elements of effective storytelling to ‘MOTORvate’ your team? Here are five techniques to help you inspire your team using stories:

1. Be authentic. Sharing who you are involves letting the audience experience your emotion. They will feel the emotion in your story when you do. This requires a degree of vulnerability that many leaders have a hard time exposing. If this is difficult for you, I encourage you to take small steps.

2. Keep them guessing. Professor Peter Gruber tells us “a great story is never fully predictable through foresight, but it is projectable through hindsight." It is how you reveal the nature of your characters, their difficulties, and how they overcome their obstacles that tantalize your audience.

3. Keep them engaged. Involve the audience by asking questions, adding humor, painting vivid pictures, and using the power of you. One of my favorites is to put the audience in my stories. It's as easy as saying "imagine you're walking down the street..." This technique turns an ‘I’ story into a “we’ story. The whole audience experiences the story with you.

4. Tap into your audiences’ prior experience. As one speech coach says, “There are 10 laws for effective speaking, the first seven are know thy audience.” The ability of the audience to connect emotionally to the story is directly related their prior knowledge and life experience. Use what you know about what they know to help them identify with the characters in your story.

5. Practice the paradox of presents. I strongly urge you to wing it when you present, but only after practicing obsessively. That's practicing the paradox of presents. You practice, drill, and rehearse until you know your story inside and out. Then as you start telling the story, you become present with the audience. Only with practice are you able to come across unrehearsed.

These are a few of the keys to telling effective stories. What other tips, tools, or techniques do you find effective in your storytelling?

Keep on stretching,

Dave

1. Jeremy Hsu; The Secrets of Storytelling, Scientific American Mind, August/September 2008, 46 - 51.

2. Peter Guber; The Four Truths of the Storyteller, Harvard Business Review, December 2007, 53 - 59.

Six Hiring Mistakes GOOD Leaders Make

When Abraham Lincoln was asked why he filled his top three Cabinet posts with his opponents from the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, he responded simply "I had looked the party over and concluded these were the very strongest men." (1)

Lincoln understood that his performance was greatly dependent on the team he put together. He also knew that there was a huge cost if he did not hire the “strongest” people for the job.

A survey conducted by Watson Wyatt estimated the total costs of turnover for a typical employee to be between 48 percent and 61 percent. (2.) They point out that hiring costs have three components:

1. Hard dollar costs (e.g., recruiting)

2. Lost productivity (e.g., before leaving, during recruitment, and throughout the on-boarding of the new hire)

3. Other losses (e.g., lower manager and team morale, changing priorities to handle other employees’ work)

For a firm with 10,000 employees, a 15 percent turnover rate (1,500 annually), and an average salary of $50,000 per year (including benefits), the total turnover costs would be $36 million (48%) to $45.75 million (61%) annually. What are your costs?

Another way to look at the financial implications of hiring decisions is to multiply the average number of years employees stay in your organization times their salary. For example, if you're hiring a mid-level manager with a salary of $100,000 per year and your managers stay for an average of ten years, every mid-level manager hiring decision you make is a $1 million decision. It pays to interview and hire well.

How good are leaders at interviewing and hiring the best? Not very. This was demonstrated when the University of Texas Medical School interviewed and scored 800 applicants in an effort to admit only the best, according to Fast Company. (3) The ratings played an important role in the selection of the students, along with grades and the quality of their undergraduate schools. Only those students who ranked high were admitted to the school.

In an unexpected twist however, the Texas legislature required the medical school to admit another 50 students. Because all the other top candidates had been chosen by other schools, University of Texas Medical School was forced to admit 50 poorly ranked medical students.

The good news was that no one at the school knew that there was a high ranking and low ranking group (except a few researchers). The startling news was that after four years there was no performance difference between these two groups. Graduation rates, received honors, and grades were all the same. Both groups also performed equally well during the first year of residency. So much for the interviewing strategies of top medical schools… and most organizations!

Researchers George Hollenbeck and Robert Eichinger of the Lominger group remind us that many leaders commit major mistakes during the interviewing process. (4) The six most common include:

1. Lack of preparation. It is almost impossible to hit a target you do not aim for. That's exactly what some leaders do when they conduct an interview without clearly understanding the nature of the responsibilities and competencies needed to fulfill a specific job.

2. First impression bias. Research shows that many leaders reached their hiring decision within the first three minutes of the interview. They then spend the rest of the interview confirming their initial positive impression.

3. Limited note taking. The failure to take notes during the interview makes it difficult to discuss the candidates with colleagues after everyone has been interviewed.

4. Focusing on relevant behaviors. Spending too much time discussing intriguing, yet irrelevant behaviors decreases the amount of time one can spend on specific behaviors required to perform essential job functions.

5. Leading questions. This often occurs when interviewers spend too much time providing information or asking a question.

6. Unstructured evaluation process. Not having clear evaluation criteria to compare candidates hurts decision-making.

Which of these six mistakes do you commit? What are your strategies for avoiding them? The XLM, seen below, can help you frame the interviewing process. We’ll explain each step in subsequent blogs.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Simon & Schuster paperbacks, New York, New York, 2005, page 319.

2. Patrick J Kiger; When people practices damage market value, Workforce Management, June 3, 2006.

3. Dan Heath and Chip Heath; Hold the Interview, Fast Company, June 2009, 51 -- 52.

4. George Hollenbeck and Robert Eichinger; Interviewing Right -- How Science Can Sharpen Your Interviewing Accuracy, Lominger international, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2006.

20 Tips Leaders Use To Create a Development Culture

Leaders are judged by their team’s performance. This is one of the reasons why coaching for improved performance is critical. Yet, coaching individuals is not enough. The most effective leaders also make development an important aspect of their unit’s culture. They understand that developing all their direct reports is critical to their overall success. Listed below are 20 practical tips to help you create a culture of development on your team.

1. Dedicate a small portion of each meeting to education.

2. Invite key stakeholders from other units to educate your team as part of “brown bag lunches.”

3. Encourage job shadowing.

4. Have a book-of-the-month club.

5. Require those who travel to association meetings to educate those who did not go to the meeting.

6. Reward those who earn educational achievements.

7. Applaud those who join their professional associations publicly.

8. Conduct after-action-reviews after delegating tasks to team members.

9. Create project teams dedicated to continuous improvement.

10. Create project teams dedicated to innovative growth.

11. Rotate team members through key positions in your unit to help them grow key skills.

12. Meet with all your employees individually at least once a week to discuss how you can help them be more efficient and effective on the job.

13. Disseminate articles that highlight relevant issues, trends, and development opportunities.

14. Help team members develop skills by having each individual share the progress they are making on one development need every week.

15. Maintain a development file for each of your employees.

16. Ask team members to brainstorm ways to encourage the development of skills for the team and each other.

17. Confront poor performance privately, immediately, and directly.

18. Groom at least one high-potential employee to replace you.

19. Make time to coach by delegating small portions of your job to others.

20. Communicate monthly regarding how the team's ongoing development relates to the organization's strategy.

The most effective leaders coach individuals and create a culture of development. Which of these 20 tips have you used to create your culture? What others have you found useful?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

How Leaders Avoid the Eight Errors of Poor Decision-Making in Tough Times

The eight errors of poor decision-making (and problem solving) are all related to the mental blinders leaders wear, especially under pressure.

1. Not knowing what to expect

Researchers from Harvard Medical School replicated in a lab the process of screening for weapons at airports. Study participants screened bags for dangerous objects after being told how often these how objects would appear. When they were told that the objects would appear 50% of the time, participants had a 7% error rate. But when they were told that the objects would appear only 1% of the time, the error rate skyrocketed to 30%. (1) We tend to see what we expect. Tell me what a leader believes and I'll tell you what he sees.

2. Refusing to question what you know

Professors at Columbia and New York University tested leaders’ perceptions about their industry. (2) They surveyed 70 managers about sales growth, sales fluctuations, industry trends and so forth. The researchers then compared the leaders’ answers with published market reports and statistics. More than half of the executives made grossly inaccurate statements about sales in their very own business units. About one third of them underestimated sales, while 25% overestimated sales. They thought they monitored their environment closely, they didn’t. To paraphrase Will Rogers, what you don't know may hurt you, but it's what you do know that it isn't so that'll kill you!

3. Not knowing what you are looking for.

When Secret Service agents scan a crowd, they can easily detect an individual reaching into the pocket or moving forward in the crowd because they know what they are looking for. How about you?

4. Failing to solicit outside perspectives.

It's always best to assume you're missing something and to ask questions about it. If you have too many yes-people around you, pay for outside perspectives (and “deselect” a few of the yes-people).

5. Rejecting disconfirming evidence.

When you listen to arguments or read a report without contradicting data, watch out. That should raise a red flag. Invite others to play the devil's advocate and argue contrary positions.

6. Lack of information diversity.

Make considering numerous points of view the norm for your team. One executive I coach makes it a habit to go to the front lines and ask those who are doing the work for their input. Another has made one person responsible for assembling information from multiple sources.

7. Applauding only those with answers.

Many of the meetings I attended as an executive involved people in the meeting trying to look good in front of each other. I can't believe I was caught up in that silly game, but I was. The problem with trying to look good is that people think that admitting you don't know makes you look bad. As a leader, if you start saying “I don't know, let’s find out,” and applauding those who do, others will follow. Cultivate and celebrate truth tellers.

8. Conducting “home on the range” meetings.

I once consulted with an organization that conducted meetings where “seldom was heard a discouraging word.” They were afraid to engage in any conflict. Cognitive conflict actually improves decision-making and results. It's emotional conflict that causes difficulty. Teach your team the difference.

Former CEO of Citicorp, Walter Wriston says that he has driven through his share of rainstorms, listening to some radio announcer in a windowless room telling him that it's a sunny day. He says that the biggest mistake a leader can make is not recognizing the changing economic climate. His advice, never stop looking out the window.

My advice, use this article to help you avoid the deadly sins and let me know if you need help.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Cited in Max Bazerman and Dolly Chugh: Decisions Without Blinders, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ January 2006, 88 - 97.

2. John Mezias and William Starbuck: What Do Managers Know, Anyway? ‘Harvard Business Review,’ May 2003, 16 - 17.