Jan Richards

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Teams and teamwork

12 questions that can keep you from falling into bad management habits

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You want to be a good leader, and manager. 

And you’re trying to do your best.

Yet you wonder how well things are going when situations like these happen:

SCENARIO ONE

You hear laughter at work. Curious, you walk toward it.

There’s lots of work to do (always), but you’re human.

A little levity might help brighten a difficult day, you think as you walk toward the lightheartedness.

Suddenly, as you turn the corner, and the crowd sees you coming, the laughter stops.

Loud silence fills the space.

Everyone freezes…then quickly scatters, amid a variety of mumbled excuses about looming deadlines, contacts they need to make, experiments they need to test…

…anything but continuing to banter when you are present.

SCENARIO TWO

You’re leading a meeting.

The goal: engaging and involving your team in finding ways to meet suddenly more challenging performance targets.

You look out over the group assembled before you.

It’s a sea of bored faces and the tops of people’s heads.

They’re doing their best to be anywhere but here as they daydream, text, tweet, and scan the internet.

SCENARIO THREE 

Performance evaluations are due. You dread this time of year (and members of your team do, too).

Even so, you try to provide good, meaningful feedback to each employee who reports to you.

Your fellow managers tease you, saying that your good intentions and all the time you take on the evaluations are poorly-invested.

“You know that all your employees want to know is, ‘How much? And why not MORE?'” your peers explain, with an amused and cynical smile, entertained by what they think is your naivete.

You get back to work, wondering if they’re right, but continue to work hard to provide the best feedback you can, anyway.

As these scenarios show, the management role, and road, is sometimes a lonely and frustrating one.

When you get right down to it: 

– It’s hard to get people on the same page.

– Then it’s hard to get them moving forward as a well-functioning team.

– And then there is the constant need to keep individuals and the team positive and forging ahead through the many challenges, chores, and circumstances you face…many of which you may not be able to predict or fully be prepared to address.

In the midst of all that, bad management practices can slip in and quickly become entrenched, like it or not.

If you want to avoid (or get out of) the trap of bad management habits, start by thinking of your work as a game. 

Make sure you help your team to:

  • See and understand the game and goals
  • Understand how you customers measure success, and as a result, how you measure success, and progress toward it
  • Learn and practice the skills they need, individually and collectively, to win the game you’re all engaged in
  • Manage their work to desired quality outcomes, deadlines and budgets…and feel safe asking for help when they need it
  • Work well as a group, bringing out everyone’s best efforts and results

Begin by asking yourself these important questions:

1. What “game” is our company or team playing?

2. What’s a win for our customers? What’s a win for us?

3. Who are the main players in this game?

4. What are their roles?

5. What are the rules we play by now? What are better rules for us to use?

6. How do we keep score now? Is that the best way?

7. What’s the reward for playing well?

8. What are the penalties for playing poorly?

9. How are we doing, overall? How do we know?

10. Are we playing better all the time, and achieving ever-better results?

11. If so, why? If not, why not? What can we do to improve?

12. How do we keep ourselves inspired, motivated, and continually moving forward?

Strategic planning: Mine your imagination with scenario planning

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Have you ever been blindsided, whether by difficult circumstances or by opportunity?

Many people around the world would answer “Yes!” to that question, given recent events, who might previously have said, “Hmmm, let me try to think of an example…”

Consider a big surprise in your career or personal life, whether positive or negative.

If you had anticipated and been ready for it, would that have affected the decisions or actions you took when the surprise occurred?

Be better prepared the next time changes are sharp and sudden.

Scenario analysis, a simple planning tool, can help you.

It may sound complicated, but it’s not.

In its simplest possible form, scenario analysis is a brainstorming tool.

It works because it loosens your grip on the future you expect.

It opens your eyes to many possible futures, and helps you prepare for seemingly far-fetched circumstances that can, in fact, become real.

The process of building scenarios increases the quality of your planning, and improves your responsiveness.

It helps your team consider, and work through many different possibilities. It also heightens awareness of cues and data you can monitor to anticipate, notice important changes that are occurring, and then to be prepared for whatever happens.

As you envision each scenario, you’re essentially beginning to rehearse how you’d handle each circumstance.

Here’s a simple approach to use scenario planning:

Prepare

1. Define the problem.

What’s your challenge, in one sentence?

2. List the primary forces that could drive change in the situation.

For example, is availability of qualified employees critical to your team or company?

Are economic trends, regulatory issues, industry or technology trends important to you – or could they be?

What other major forces must you monitor and be ready to respond to quickly, and well, as changes occur in each of them?

3. Create a matrix.

You’ll need at least six columns. You’ll also need enough rows for each of the primary forces you identified that could drive significant change in this situation.

In the first column, list each of the primary forces, one per row, that you identified.

Across the top of the matrix, write these column headers: “Even better case,” “Best case,” “Most likely case,” “Worst case,” “Even worse case” in columns two through six.

Be there

4. Imagine, one by one, that you’re in the middle of three different scenarios,  “Best case,” “Most likely case,” and “Worst case.”

As you consider each scenario, write a few details in the appropriate boxes for what you expect would be happening with each driving force in that circumstance.

For example, let’s say you’re planning for rapid growth at your company. One force you would need to consider in that case is the availability of qualified candidates for jobs at your company.

Let’s say, then, that you anticipate the best case is that there will always be as many highly-qualified candidates as you need.

As a worst case, perhaps you fear that major demographic changes could reduce or even eliminate future job candidates for the jobs you anticipate having available.

And as a most likely case, perhaps you think there will be little change in the number, and quality, of job candidates available to you.

5. Stretch even further.

Now, having considered the “Best case,” “Most likely case,” and “Worst case,” expand your thinking.

What circumstance would be EVEN BETTER than what you imagined for each driving force?

And what would be EVEN WORSE than what you already dared to picture?

Working through these extreme outcomes inevitably leads you to new insights. Many companies find that creating these stress scenarios…both good and bad…accelerate and improve their preparation, teamwork, trust, and resilience.

6. Build the most likely scenario.

Having considered the extreme examples, what now seems to be the most likely scenario?

Is it the same “Most likely” scenario you originally envisioned?

The odds are very high that, having stretched your thinking, you see some new areas of caution and, also, opportunity.

And that the “Most likely” scenario now looks different.

Save and compare

By this point, you may have accomplished as much as you want to with this simple version of scenario analysis.

You can do further work, if desired, such as by gathering data and doing detailed analysis to help you understand which scenario you envision is most likely…or if there are forces, or scenarios you also need to consider.

7. Save your work.

Whether you’re ready to complete the scenario analysis, or you’re doing more research, save the work you’ve done for later use.

8. Express key scenarios in a way that makes them easy to use.

You can capture the scenarios in some way that makes them easy to use and refer to in the future, such as through simple graphics or drawings. You can select a metaphor, or write a phrase that expresses the anticipated circumstance succinctly.

9. Later, when time has passed and change has occurred, compare what actually happened with the scenarios you imagined…and what you thought might happen.

You might be surprised at the quality of the crystal ball you create with this simple exercise, and how well-prepared you are, as a result, for what actually occurs.

Considering many different possibilities prepares you to some degree to be ready for them…and makes you more attentive to the key forces that may be constantly changing.

One client, an investment management firm, discovered after we used scenario planning there, that they were far better prepared for volatile financial markets than some of their competitors were.

However you plan and prepare for the future, rest assured that it won’t be a simple extension of the past.

Scenario analysis can help you be much better prepared for the future, and more resilient.

How to lead successfully through uncertainty

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“I think we’re lost. Yeah, we’re lost. I KNOW we’re lost!”

Does that sound like the worried buzz at the company where you once worked – or the one where you work now?

Did the path forward once seem SO clear, so destined to be successful during the cool logic of business or project planning?

And now, does that plan seem to be pure fiction, or a dream, perhaps?

These “we’re lost” quotes were not from an employee sometime, somewhere.

These were the fears of our then-12-year-old son, Matt, as his 20-year-old sister, Anne, tried to lead us back to our hotel in Paris when we were trying to find our way to home base on the last night of a family trip there.

Anne was our leader in this case because she was, effectively, the only French-speaking member of the family.

She’d been nervous about taking on the communications and navigation leadership role at the beginning of the French portion of this family trip. She grew into the role beautifully, though.

Her skills were really being tested this final evening. And she did get us safely back to the hotel, despite the doubts of some of her followers.

What worked in this situation can help you, too, to succeed when you must adapt best-made plans quickly in order to lead successfully through uncertainty.

Try these approaches to help you be successful:

Make yourself easy to follow

Be clear about your vision, plan and directions. Use simple language and descriptions that everyone can understand. Speak in specific, concrete terms. Help your team understand what’s different in this situation from the original plan.

Be clear about your assumptions

We all know stories about teams that made incorrect assumptions in planning and then never adjusted them, despite the facts. In many of these cases great difficulties, even tragedies, occurred which might have been prevented. Be attentive to whether your assumptions are solid…or need to be revised…as you play your plan. Use good data. Know what it’s telling you. Adjust both your plan and actions if facts make it clear you must.

Trust your instincts, but check the facts

One of the primary strengths of the way Anne led us back to the hotel that evening was that she started with a vision of success that held up in spite of the nervousness around her. She also paid close attention to her intuition, combined with the facts and feedback she could gather from the team (her family, in this case) and the environment. Finally, she held it all together with a healthy spirit of adventure that made the team successful, and the experience memorable, in a positive way.

Show confidence, courage

This is often a major key to tipping the balance of a team’s focus from fear and anticipation of failure – particularly when plans must change rapidly – to confidence and conviction. Armed with a vision, a revised or flexible plan, and guided by facts gathered along the way, you and your team can move with assurance in whatever circumstances you find.

Make simple agreements – and keep them

Agree with your team on the milestones at which you’ll check your progress, and the data or metrics you’ll use to evaluate whether you’re on- or off-course. Then keep those agreements. You’ll build a strong experience of being a team – and improve your outcome – as you face uncertainty together.

Keep communication flowing

Success requires strength, confidence and everyone’s willingness to stay fully involved. Keep lines of communication open, free-flowing. As a team leader, be clear about how you’ll make decisions. Ask for information or feedback you need. Listen fully. Acknowledge, sort, synthesize and incorporate essential information you receive (if you don’t, people may stop bringing it to you). Keep communication moving. It can be the difference between success and failure.

Follow through

This one can’t be said enough. Confidence grows when teams see a growing trail of small victories, one success leading to another. Follow up. Follow through. Complete each task and keep moving.

Encourage others

If you’re discouraged in the unexpected situation in which you find yourself, others on your team are probably even more so. They’re watching you very, very closely, and your mood shows more than you know. As the leader, it’s your job to get the group successfully and safely to their destination, despite the circumstances you find yourselves in. Your job will be easier if you help to lighten the team’s load, even by letting them know that you see how much they’re carrying. Show appreciation for their efforts and their flexibility.

When you’re right, no gloating, no showboating

Finally, congratulate and thank each member of the team, whatever role they played in the team’s success. Remember – you got to your final destination together, not alone.

Six ways to grow your leadership strength

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Like any skill or ability, leadership strength, one of the top ten characteristics of great leaders, can increase with learning, experimentation, practice, and experience.

As you develop this, or any leadership skill, you stretch the boundaries of your leadership comfort zone and proficiency.

If you’re ready to become a stronger leader, here are six ways to start:

1. Select a leader you admire and emulate his or her strengths

Keep this person in mind as a guide to emulate, learn about, and learn from as you experiment, build and refine your strength as a leader.

2. Get feedback on your leadership

Seek information about your strengths and areas for improvement from peers and direct reports, in addition to seeking and using your manager’s feedback.

The information, if honestly provided and viewed, may be eye-opening and humbling, in complimentary as well as instructive ways.

3. Know where you’re going

Create a vision to keep your attention, intention, and actions aligned with the long-term goals for your team.

In addition to creating a compelling vision, use simple but consistent and effective follow-up practices to keep you on track.

4. Listen and observe

You may or may not like what you hear and see when you check in to see how things are going, but you need to know what’s really going on.

Regular, honest assessment is essential to know how you and your team are really doing, and to be able to respond and adjust effectively to actual conditions, rather than what you hope to find.

5. Improve the ways you get your work done

Make your work life easier, and your results more predictable through effective process management.

Simplify and improve the processes, measures, feedback and follow-up practices you and your team use.

6. Build bench strength

This gives you greater capacity and adaptability, as a team.

It also extends your leadership reach and effectiveness. You can’t be everywhere, all the time, after all.

You’re more effective as a leader if you create processes, measurements, and good practices for your team to be able to self-monitor, self-manage and self-correct, as much as possible, in addition to seeking and using feedback you provide them.

A big part of your job as a leader is to create more, and better leaders, in your company.

As Tom Peters notes, “Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.”

Inspirational leadership: This you can’t pretend

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Admiration. Emulation. Stories told about great challenge, well-met.

Does your leadership inspire this type of respect?

It can.

Leadership that inspires respect is one of the top ten characteristics of great leaders.

Not everyone wants the pressure and responsibility of a high-profile leadership role.

Leadership of all types – some more than others – brings with it a very bright spotlight.

If you’re in a leadership position, people watch you very closely to see if you mean what you say, and and if you hold yourself to the same standards that you hold others to.

What your employees or team members discover about your honesty and integrity has a lot to do with their decision about whether or not to throw their full effort and loyalty your way.

For example, imagine a leader who says he values customer input.

He gets a vigorous complaint from a frustrated customer about the failure of his company’s flagship product or service (and perhaps, as a “bonus,” feedback about his leadership, as the head of the company that created the failed product or service).

What’s his next action? Does he:

1. Use the complaint for positive action, perhaps leading to process improvements that make the product better, reduce rework and the need for customer relationship repair, ultimately improving profitability?

If this leader views customer complaints as valuable – customer research he didn’t seek but now has, and can use to good effect – this response is a winning one.

2. Or does he ignore it, laugh it off, or in other ways try to get rid of the feedback? Or worse, does he belittle the customer who made the complaint, especially in front of employees?

That action, however fleeting, speaks volumes in a very negative sense. And it emboldens others in the company to act in an equally disrespectful way toward customers, and perhaps each other, as well.

Sooner or later, this insidious behavior is likely to drive customers away.

Leaders who inspire respect do these things, among others:

1. Make tough calls with an eye to the future, as well to the demands of the moment.

2. Know their values – what they stand for and what they are against.

They make decisions and take actions based on their values and those of their company or team.

3. Set high standards and lead by meeting those standards themselves.

Leaders who inspire others don’t just assert or expect certain actions from others. They also act in ways that create positive examples for others to follow.

4. Set clear boundaries for what’s acceptable behavior and what’s out of bounds.

5. Treat others, both inside and outside the company, with respect.

6. Incite positive, powerful action. Especially during difficult times, they shine in this aspect of leadership. Top leaders can shift a team’s focus from “We can’t,” “I’m afraid,” or “This isn’t really important,” to “We can, we will, here’s why it’s important,” and “Here’s how we’ll get things done. Let’s get moving.”

7. Expect success, and create the work systems and support that make it possible, no matter what they’re faced with at the moment.

8. Communicate well. They seek, process, and provide information effectively.

Integrity, and being an inspiration to others cannot be “faked,” dictated, or added at the last minute, like a fresh coat of paint.

I’ll provide ideas in future posts about things you can do to increase your skills as an inspirational leader.

Great communication is the lifeblood of great leadership

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Great leaders are great communicators.

Leaders’ effectiveness depends on their ability to inspire, engage, and activate many people to reach for and work for a shared vision, meet common goals, and create significant results together.

Being a great communicator is one of top ten characteristics of great leaders.

Powerful, effective leaders know when and how to communicate, no matter what’s going on with their teams or organizations.

Leaders may face many different emotions at different times in the teams that they lead (and, by the way, in themselves). Some people are excited and energetic, others feel fear, pressure, confusion, and at times, weariness or boredom on the long path to a major goal.

Great leaders know when to observe, when to listen, when to talk, when to show.

And they use all the vital communication skills of leadership effectively.

They also know that the most powerful communication of all is their attitude and their actions – far more than what they say in any circumstance.

Imagine any of the world’s great leaders and what might have been different, had they been an average communicator, at best.

For example, think of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or any of many other world leaders without their powerful oratorical and other communication skills.

Leaders face different communication needs and challenges, depending on the circumstances in which they’re leading their organizations. Here are a few of the main ones:

1. Normal, predictable cycles of operations

These circumstances involve vision-setting, planning, regular action, follow-up, problem-solving and process improvements.

During these times, great communication focuses a team or organization on goals, the path and processes to reach them, roles, consistent check-in points, the ways that progress is evaluated and ensured.

2. Major change or improvement efforts

These circumstances may involve reorganizations or mergers and acquisitions, very rapid growth, major improvements and other types of significant change.

During these times, great communication focuses on what is or will be different, how the change will be achieved, ways of evaluating and communicating progress, as well as how to sustain momentum as change proceeds.

It is essential that leadership communications and processes at these times keep people focused, energized, engaged and encouraged as they go through the often very difficult work of change.

3. High-stress or emergency communications

These include natural disasters, such as earthquakes or hurricanes, and man-made disasters, such as on 9/11/01 in the US, and during stressful times when US and world financial markets lurched wildly in 2008, and the recovery period afterwards.

During these times, great communication is focused on providing clear directions so people can try to meet their immediate and then longer-term health, safety, security and other needs.

In addition, there’s often a strong need for community in high stress times, with ways for people to share, express and process their often-frightening, yet memorable, shared experiences. (These are the conversations that begin with questions such as, “Where were you when you heard the news?” or “Where were you when it happened?”).

No matter what type of circumstance leaders and their organizations are in, most of the same stages of communication must be successfully addressed:

Focus

Earn and hold the attention of their audience.

Connect

Reach people in a personally significant way so that they can relate to what is being communicated, “enroll,” and take appropriate action.

Direct

Create a clear path for the many individual actions needed to achieve shared or individual goals.

Persist

Inspire people to draw on – and continue to draw on – persistence, if it is necessary to see a difficult effort through to completion.

Check/correct

Ensure that actions are moving along as needed in order to reach goals and significant milestones.

Achieve

Coordinate efforts and information so that people can reach goals, solve problems, and create success, hopefully, in the easiest, clearest, most effective way.

Celebrate/Complete

Acknowledge that major goals have been achieved, and create closure in a valued, positive way.

Resilience: The difference maker when pressure is on

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What’s the key to turning high potential into high performance and results when the heat and pressure are highest?

It’s resilience, and it’s one of the top ten characteristics of great leaders.

Consider how resilience has played a significant part in your life and career.

First, think about the stark contrast in how high pressure situations might have worked out compared to how they did when you were resilient.

On the one hand, you can have:

  • Success
  • Innovation
  • Responsiveness
  • Resilience
  • Influencing and inspiring others in a way that brings out the best in a full team

Now contrast that with these possibilities:

  • Failure
  • Freezing in place
  • Rigidity, inflexibility
  • Fully flourishing fear
  • Expecting the worst and bringing it out in yourself and others

Which experience do you want?

(I won’t wait for your answer. I’m pretty sure I know what it is)

Resilience is the ability to perform at your best. When you’re resilient you’re highly responsive to the situation you actually have rather than the situation you assumed you would experience.

Resilience is most likely, and most effective when you’ve done the learning, preparation and practice required to make great performance and results a realistic possibility in whatever circumstance you encounter.

There are many other examples we could use. Let’s consider one memorable experience from the 2012 Olympics in London.

This example of “Get out of your own way to let your best performance through” occurred in the men’s 10-meter platform diving competition.

First, U.S. diver David Boudia barely made it out of the qualifying rounds.

His early performance earned him the 18th and final spot in the medal round.

Next, the slate was wiped clean of prior scores. Competitors started fresh in the final stretch of the medal round.

Finally, when the pressure was highest, Boudia produced a series of nearly-perfect dives, besting the seemingly unflappable, unbeatable Chinese divers in that particular competition.

The Chinese competitors seemed unable to understand, accept and adapt to having their assumed supremacy (and their expected gold and silver medals) challenged in the final round.

So when they, and other competitors, could not adjust to Boudia’s barrage of near-perfection, they lost the gold medal to him…the man who had almost missed the medal round.

This getting out of your own way business sounds simple enough, right?

But for most people and teams, it’s not.

Why? These are the primary reasons:

1. Fear

This can be a fear of failure, or a fear of success. Or it can be a fear of both.

Either way, fear can be immobilizing.

2. Bad habits or a poor process

Whether because of bad habits or a bad design or implementation, inefficient and unfocused ways of getting things done stack the odds of success against you.

3. Disabling and limit-setting beliefs

You or your team may WANT success.

You may diligently WORK TOWARD success.

But if you don’t BELIEVE you can produce and maintain success, or don’t feel that you “deserve” it, you’re far less likely to achieve it.

It’s like trying to run a race with a 100 lb. weight strapped to your back. That weight…actual or imagined…is a burden your competitors may not be carrying.

4. Expectations that turn out to be wrong

You can plan and prepare for a circumstance that does not come to pass.

And when the situation is different from what you expect, you may not be able to see it, accept it, and adapt rapidly, or enough.

If fear, bad habits, disabling beliefs and incorrect expectations are some of the causes, what are some of the cures for the problem?

  • Benchmark and learn from the best.
  • Observe others in competition. See how they handle the pressure when the pressure’s highest.
  • Get a mentor. Learn from someone who has been where you’re going.
  • Plan for and practice in all sorts of circumstances…best and worst…to build resilience, muscle-memory and relative fearlessness in your ability to handle many types of situations.

When the pressure is on, your ability to read a situation quickly and accurately, then to choose the right moves, take them, and ultimately succeed in unexpected situations may be one of your most important success skills of all.

Get out of your own way.

Let your best, and the best of your team, come through clearly and completely.

Don’t trap or bury your talent.

Tap it.

Turn your full potential into full success.

Focused action produces results

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A strong orientation to action is one of the top ten characteristics of great leaders.

Action orientation is not as common a characteristic as you might think.

“Making an idea work is more difficult and more important than having the idea in the first place,” notes author and consultant Edward de Bono.

At many companies, there’s great eagerness and competition for being involved in new and intellectually engaging assignments. These may include deciding and designing how something will be done, such new products and services, or an entirely new division of a company.

When it comes time, though, for some of the every day, nitty-gritty aspects of turning the great potential of those possibilities into consistently bankable results…and ensuring that they continue to perform…enthusiasm may be harder to round up.

And yet, if you’re an action-oriented leader or a member of a team whose focused efforts yielded great results, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of that collective achievement.

That’s when the responsibility of leadership and the accountability for action is clearly worth the risk that the leadership role – and its need for sustained commitment to positive action – brings.

What works to move good ideas, great intentions and high potential into focused action that eventually produces tangible results?

“The most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment,” note authors Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.

Here’s the bottom line on those with an action orientation: they focus not on the ways things might go wrong, or the risks of the pursuit, or the blame they’ll lay if things go wrong.

They focus on the possibilities, the multiple ways they can get the job done. And then…sooner or later…they do.

They make their way persistently and creatively over, around or through any barrier they find.

That may involve creatively moving forward in ways they did not expect. It may involve changing the timing of their efforts. Or it may mean going back to square one, getting more information, and adjusting, adapting, refining the goal, and they way they hope to achieve it.