Jan Richards

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Teams and teamwork

Leadership excellence: Courage is power

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cour·age, noun

The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, or pain without, or in spite of fear; bravery.

We admire courage when exhibited by others.

Yet do we want to be in situations where our own courage is called for?

In a word, no – or most people don’t.

Such times center around high-risk circumstances that could so easily go wrong. But for so many reasons…and because they may affect many people…situations that call for courage really must go right, somehow.

Not surprisingly, great courage is one of the top characteristics of great leaders.

What does courage really involve?

Courage is the ability to look beyond one’s own fear, to find and draw on one’s strongest reserves to get a critical job done, no matter what stands in the way.

It is the ability to assess risks and reduce them however possible, and yet to carry on with integrity in the face of the risks that still remain.

Courage, as a leader, is also the ability to incite a group to move forward and to continue to work toward a goal in spite of what may be their natural desire in a risky situation to freeze in place, or retreat.

When you hear the word, “courage,” what people and situations come to mind?

Is it Captain Sullenberger and his co-pilot, who brought US Airways 1549 down safely in the Hudson River, and the team of many people on land and in rescue boats who rapidly coalesced, moved into action, and ensured that everyone from the downed plane was saved?

Is it Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men to walk on the moon, and the achievements of many other people, over many years, that led to those first lunar steps?

Is it Marie Curie and other scientific explorers who forge on despite uncertainty, doubt and resistance, making discoveries that benefit many people in countless ways?

Perhaps the courageous people and circumstances you think of involve world leaders, whether elected or personally inspired to act based on the strength of their beliefs.

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and many other leaders in history led people they inspired through sometimes dark and difficult days.

Of course, there are many other courageous leaders who may inspire you. And more will emerge through the course of history.

We can also see courage in people around us, in our daily lives. These may be people who are not widely known so their acts of great courage may be quiet, even subtle, but still significant, and deeply inspiring.

You, too, have surely exhibited courage at times.

Think back to times when you had to press on – and did – even though you might have wished to give up and admit defeat.

In those circumstances:

  • What were your beliefs – before the danger or difficulty arose – about what you were capable of handling?
  • When pressed by circumstances, what did you discover that you could, in fact, handle?
  • Did tapping your courage strengthen it, and enable you to be courageous again in the future, when needed?

Here are guidelines to help you increase your comfort and preparation for uncertainty…and to prepare you to be courageous when needed:

1. Anticipate and prevent problems from occurring in the first place.

That’s easy to say, and not so easy to do, but it works much of the time. It requires good foresight, planning and follow-through.

It also calls for, among other things, strong risk assessment, problem analysis and prevention skills.

2. When, despite your best efforts, danger arises, do your best to size up the risks, and quickly control the things you can control.

This may also enable you to reduce, as much as possible, the impact of factors that you are less able to control.

3. Also, set up systems to monitor key aspects of the situation you are facing to help you decide as early as possible what actions to take.

In circumstances requiring courage, conditions are likely to be changing rapidly.

Create an early warning system of some type, if you can, and do so ahead of time if you can anticipate that a situation is volatile, unpredictable.

Know, however, that you won’t have perfect information at times such as these.

Just get the best information you can, as quickly as possible. Then use that information to guide the best decisions and actions, moving forward.

4. Check in with your team in simple but effective ways.

You need to stay in close touch with others on your team. However, keep the information exchange simple, and focus on the most important decisions and details.

5. Stay the course, as long as you can tell that it is working.

Don’t be blind to what you find. At the same time, this isn’t a popularity contest. There’s a risky, and possibly even a physically dangerous circumstance to be fought.

Pay attention to the information you have, as well as your own intuition, and prior experience if you or others on your team have experience that’s relevant. And, of course, as always, use your good common sense.

At times when courage is called for, your quiet inner strength and wisdom is an invaluable asset.

Leadership excellence: How to use clarity to cut confusion

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Clarity is one of the top characteristics of leaders who excel.

These are the leaders about whom inspiring stories are told for years, long after they’ve led their organizations through extreme circumstances or uncertainty, and met great challenges honorably.

Why is leadership clarity so important? It’s because people can’t follow what they don’t understand.

And because circumstances are constantly changing, ensuring clarity, as a leader, is a never-ending job.

Think of leadership clarity this way. Trying to follow a person who’s not clear about where he or she is leading a group is like trying to follow someone while driving in thick fog.

People on a team, in such a case, don’t know where the road is, or if there’s one at all. They don’t know where the dangers are, or how to handle them. They don’t know if, in that fog, they’re still traveling as a team, or eventually, on their own.

Teams immersed in uncertainty proceed nervously, slowly, trying to move as safely as they can. Or, metaphorically speaking, they may pull over to the side of the road, waiting for the fog to lift, the way to become clear, safety to be ensured.

In the meantime, time and opportunities are lost. Costs increase. Profits fall. Team cohesion falls apart.

Being clear, as a leader, may sound easy to achieve. It’s not.

It requires clear thinking in every circumstance – when the best way forward is apparent, as well as when the best path is not yet known and must be created, as you and the team move forward.

To reach this level of clarity, a leader and his or her team need good information, effective collaboration, clear and effective processes for prioritizing and decision-making. They also need a strong and accurate sense of who their customers are, and what those customers need and want.

Great leaders build strong organizations, which may include many people.

The work of everyone involved must be integrated and coordinated in some way. That may be done loosely, organically, or it may be accomplished in much more formal, structured ways.

The net effect, however it’s done, is that with the right direction, information, and other signposts along the way, individual employees can make the right decisions and choose the right actions in their daily flow of their work to create progress on shared company goals.

Combined with the other top characteristics of great leaders, leadership clarity turns good intentions, and precious limited resources into the best results possible for customers, and all company stakeholders.

How to immediately make your team more effective

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A problem-solving comment on Twitter one day gave me pause.

The writer said how much easier problem-solving is when people don’t “switch sides.”

“‘Taking sides’ on problem-solving teams. Interesting…and ripe for many problems,” I thought.

The primary cause for teams that are split into “sides” is, in all likelihood, the fact that they do not have a real, driving purpose and clear goals to unify them.

If they did, opposing sides would be unlikely to crop up, or it would be hard for the different “sides” to be sustained within the team.

A team’s shared and overriding purpose for existing – if strongly held by all – can be powerful  enough to drive them over, around, or through any barriers or adversarial inclinations that threaten to split them, and prevent them from reaching their goal.

It brought back recollections of another dilemma that dogs many problem-solving teams.

It’s the me vs. we conflict and it can also block team progress, completely.

Here’s just one example of the me vs. we malady:

A few years ago I was working with a client to lead a team of about 45 people through a full-company self-assessment and improvement process. The team was comprised of seven subteams, each one focused on a specific part of the assessment.

After the initial training and team launch, six of the subteams were clipping along, getting their work done well, and enjoying (yes…it is possible!) the challenging, invigorating assessment experience and process.

The seventh subteam, however, was lagging, and clearly dragging.

I listened closely in their status meetings, trying to size up what was blocking their progress, and how we could get them caught up, and working as well as the other teams.

I realized one person in the troubled team never used the word, “we” in any circumstance relating to their shared goals, or the team.

Her focus was always on “me,” “I,” and “mine.”

At a subteam meeting one day, I decided to learn more about her way of thinking to see if I could turn things around for her and her group.

“What would it take for you to use the word ‘we?’” I asked her at some point in the discussion.

She stopped suddenly, surprised, even dazed, in a way.

The question was very simple, yet the discussion it led to turned out to be extremely valuable to her, and to the team she was on.

She hadn’t realized how much her participation on the team was half-hearted, uncommitted, in name only. It was as if she were standing on the edge of a pool, dressed for competition as part of the team, but she’d never jumped in…and maybe never intended to.

Or that her me vs. we perspective was hurting her work, that of her subteam, and of the full assessment team, too.

She’d thought she’d been playing her part, fulfilling her role, by getting her name on the team roster immediately, always being on time to team meetings, and consistently warming a seat. But that was about all.

The “What would it take for you to use the word ‘we?’” question led to some other realizations and breakthroughs for her and the team.

Soon, with a bit of reworking and commitment to their shared goals and team process, the once-troubled team started to develop traction, positive action, and to produce steady, solid results.

They ultimately finished their work very effectively…as I knew they could and would, eventually.

The full assessment team’s work was very successful…beyond their expectations…and up to mine.

They had to do the work to discover that they could.

Taking sides within a team, and a me/I/mine frame of mind show that a “team” is not yet a team…until they are united and driven by a common purpose and vision, as well as clear goals and team process.

The adversary you’re up against is, after all, often not so much another group, or point of view.

The real adversary? It’s the great consequences you share if you don’t figure out how to work together well to meet your shared purpose and goals.

And in any case, the most effective solution, when there are differences of opinion, often resides somewhere between the extremes that the two “sides” advocate.

So…again…find we, not just me, I and mine. 

Review or refine and recommit to your shared purpose and goals. 

By the way, if you’re wrestling now with a we vs. me challenge, or with different sides staring each other down on a team that’s not actually a team yet, know that you’re not alone.

Internal battles and ineffective processes affect many teams in business, government, sports, education and more.

If you know someone who may benefit from this story as they struggle with their own “my team is not really a team” challenge, please share this post with them.

Visioning: How to create a powerful team vision

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Discover, express and focus on a future for your team that’s clear, positive, compelling. To do that, capture your team’s vision.

Visionary leadership is one of the top characteristics of great leaders.

A vision that works for you is one that’s honest, customer-focused, and inspires and empowers your group. It enables them to take action cohesively and creatively to make the vision come true, no matter what obstacles they find ahead.

A vision this powerful will be one that appeals to your team’s emotions, as well as their intellect.

When you think about creating the vision together, think of it as a way to “pre-experience” success, in detail. The final product of your visioning work is, in a way, a snapshot and preview of the future you are creating.

Here are ways you can capture or create your team’s powerful, positive action-inciting and guiding vision:

1. Create the time and space for it.

Your team needs time to relax and let their ideas flow. That requires time and space away from the pressures of the regular workday. Schedule the time in advance with your team.

Create an environment for the visioning work that’s free of interruptions and enables the team to think expansively, clearly, honestly, creatively.

Engage a good facilitator, if the support of someone experienced in managing group processes would help. The facilitator can also help you create the final vision product you’ll post.

If you’re working on your own, make sure you have the space to stretch out. That includes plenty of wall-space to post butcher paper or easels and flip charts on which the team can record their ideas.

2. Envision a compelling future.

Start by setting a target date by which you hope your vision will have become real. Perhaps that’s 5, 10 or more years away. Whatever it is, make it a specific date.

Next, imagine what you will have achieved, as a team, by this time. Imagine it in detail, as if you were living in, and enjoying the benefits of that future situation. “Be there now.”

Imagine what your customers, collaborators, and competitors are saying at this future time about your results and how you created them:

– When you imagine seeing and hearing their reactions to your results and the way you got there, what do you like?

– What do you want to change about what you imagine they are saying about you, your work, and how you achieved it?

Now, as you imagine being in this future, imagine how you feel about what you have achieved by this time:

– What do you like best?

– What do you want to add or change about the results you imagine, and how you created them?

3. Capture and sort the group’s input to create the shared vision.

Capture the group’s work on your vision in writing or graphics. That way they can see and share the experience of having their ideas emerge, and their shared vision coalesce, and ultimately be expressed in a compelling way.

There will be a lot of information you’re producing, and processing as you create the vision. Capture it as you work in some way that’s easy for you to stay true to the ideas being expressed, and yet find it easy to work with. You can use mindmaps, clustering techniques, or structured brainstorming exercises.

You can also create a graphic template ahead of time, using a visual metaphor to catch and organize the team’s ideas. For example, some teams use a visual metaphor of taking a journey together, mountain climbing, surfing, or building a city. There are also many others you can use for a graphic template, depending on what metaphors resonate best with your team.

A variety of useful tools are available in good facilitation books and resources. In addition, an effective facilitator will have her, or his, own visioning process and tools to suggest to you.

If you’d like my help with this, of course, let me know.

4. Refine and post the vision. Then follow up.

Take the visioning work you’ve done, and distill it, as a group.

Produce a simple final vision statement or a graphic of it.

Post the vision in a prominent place where your team works, or will somehow see it regularly. That may be a physical space, or if you have a virtual or dispersed team, post it on an online space you share.

You can also create an individual version of the shared vision that employees post at their desks, or on their computers. Some teams use these like worksheets so team members can keep their eye on the “big picture,” and capture their own notes, as the year unfolds.

Ultimately, your vision will turn out to be more powerful for your team than you – or they – might guess (Visions are always powerful, whether they’re positive or negative).

When you’re vision-led, you’ll find it easier to stay on track, and find your way back if you’re pulled off course for some reason.

 

Visioning: See and create the future together

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Visionary leadership is one of the top characteristics of great leaders.

Leaders who have this ability can see a better future for their teams and organizations. They’re very successful at engaging others in the process of creating that future together.

A shared, positive vision is far more powerful than many people would guess. In the absence of such a vision, individual members of a team – any team – are pulled toward their own visions of the future. Often these visions are poorly aligned. At worst, they directly conflict.

For example, some people are driven by great fear of the things they’re trying to avoid. They’re filled to the brim by graphic visions of the very things they dread. They may not realize how powerful these visions are, perhaps even leading them closer to the very things they wish to avoid. They need a compelling, positive vision to replace their fear.

Others, in their fervent desire to try to manage change, are motivated by visions of protecting the status quo, no matter what it costs. These visions can be helpful in the short-term, but in the long-term, they’re likely to freeze people, and organizations, in place – if that is even possible – as customers and competitors continue to move far ahead.

What happens if people in your company, or on your team, are drawn to, and working to implement, visions that conflict?

The result will be wasted effort, time, money and opportunities, as well as extreme distraction, and, in all likelihood, great conflict. 

It will be anything but a focus on customers, and the productive, shared effort that ensures that customers’ needs are well-met. Ultimately, of course, dissatisfied customers take their business to competitors, or decide to quit buying products and services like yours altogether.

Great leaders can gather and direct the full range of their team’s resources – time, talent, attention, energy, and budget – to create a strong and positive future for their companies, customers and team.

Top ten characteristics of great leaders

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When you think of great leaders, who’s the first person who comes to mind?

And what characteristics make (or made) them a great leader?

These are the top ten characteristics of great leaders identified by a group of colleagues and clients I surveyed. See how this list compares to what you believe is most important for a person to excel as a leader:

Vision

Great leaders see things as they can be, not just as they are. They work toward a clear and powerful picture of the future they’re trying to create, no matter what circumstances they find themselves, and the people they’re leading, in now.

Clarity

A clear understanding of present conditions is also part of the great leader’s repertoire. These leaders can face the facts, whatever they are. What’s more, they insist on finding and using the facts in order to see what the organization’s challenges really are – not just what they’d like to believe, or have the people they lead believe – are the challenges ahead.

Courage

Fearlessness without brashness, foolishness or rashness is a hallmark of the excellent leader. He or she is not afraid of the gap they must close, leading an often fearful group across it. In fact, highly effective leaders are very motivated by the disparity between “what is” and “what can be, what will be.” They convey a sense of mission powerfully to the people who must close the gap with them.

Strategic

Of the many paths open to the organization – if many paths are available – great leaders can see and choose the actions that are most likely to succeed. They can envision and anticipate what is likely to happen in the future, often as a result of the course of action they choose now.

Decisive when the time is right

Great leaders ensure that they have the best information possible to guide them through the decisions they must make. Their decision-making processes are well-tuned, and highly effective, the result of continuous improvement of the decision-making process, itself.

Action-oriented

Highly effective leaders have a bias for action. They work in a focused, purposeful way, changing the organization, step by step, leading it steadily to far better circumstances and results in times ahead.

Strong

Plans are an organization’s intended path of action, its desired use of available resources directed toward reaching a goal. But if circumstances require change while the work is underway, effective leaders have the strength to move their organization to a better course of action instead.

Resilient

Great leaders are driven by their vision, yet it is their ability to rise above great uncertainty and to lead in the face of uncertainty, that creates legendary tales of leadership. Their greatness may not always be fully appreciated until long after the work is done, and the battles are fully won.

Inspires respect

Excellent leaders lead with integrity, and lead by example, as well as by inspiration. They expect the same of themselves as they do of their followers.  They’re not “above the law” just because they create the rules and work structures in the organization. The rules they advocate for others also apply to them – and everyone sees and knows it.

Great communicator

Powerful, effective leaders know when and how to communicate, no matter what’s going on with their followers, and what pressure they are under. Such leaders know when to observe, when to listen, when to talk. They use all the vital communication skills of leadership well. They also know that the most powerful communication of all is their attitude and their action – far more than what they say in any circumstance.

Seven ways to delegate well

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I’ll explain this photo in a moment.

Before I do, consider this common burden for many managers:

“What’s the hardest thing for me, at work? Delegation, definitely!”

Does that sound familiar?

I’ve heard this same frustration from entrepreneurs and managers at many companies during my career as a business consultant. It came up again at lunch with a couple of friends this past week.

How about you? Do you need to improve your ability – and comfort – with delegation, too?

Start with these ideas:

1. Be clear about the goal

Often, when you ask people what their goal is for a particular piece of work, or a project, they’re not exactly sure.

What they usually know with great certainty, however, is what they DON’T want.

You’ll improve the quality of work you delegate when you provide clear goals to the person who’s doing the work.

Make sure you know, too, whether you plan to delegate this work temporarily or permanently.

This may affect how you hand off the task.

For example, if you’re delegating the work permanently, you may need to do more training and followup than if you’re delegating the work for a one-time project.

2. Be selective about who you delegate the work to 

The friend who was frustrated by recent attempts to delegate, even though she’s very experienced with delegation, believes she’s been trying to give them work that they don’t have the right skills to do.

She’s leading a team hired by a prior manager for jobs that have since changed.

“I give up! I’ve tried EVERYTHING!” she said as she described the situation.

Her team’s customers now require financial advice on business decisions they’re trying to make, in addition to the solid accounting support the team has always provided.

My friend has been trying to train and coach her employees to fill the expanded roles.

Coaching simply hasn’t worked.

If she were hiring now, she would screen for the skills her team currently needs, and skills they’re likely to need as their customers’ needs continue to change.

3. Set measures that focus attention and action

Decide how you’ll monitor the quality of the work you’re delegating. Then be ready to communicate those measures, and how you’ll use them, to the people doing the work.

In a simple, low-risk example of why this is important, our daughter, now a young adult, was about ten when she was helping organize the many colors of paper I needed for gift notepads I was creating for clients.

Anne normally works very carefully, and takes pride in doing very high quality work. I understood that she wanted to do the (frankly) boring task while she watched a TV show she liked.

When I checked the quality of her work soon after she started, I was surprised. Somehow, she was accidentally creasing some of the paper.

Before I corrected her approach, I asked myself if I’d given her the right instructions, resources, time and space to do the job right?

I had.

The one thing I had not done, I realized, was to let her know the quality standards for the work.

My customers, used to high quality work, would expect the same quality in gifts I gave them. That meant the paper…and soon, the notepads…needed to be crisp, the paper unbent, the work of gift quality.

And that meant that Anne needed to work more attentively.

She wasn’t happy, of course, that I needed her to start again, and to do the work more attentively. But we’d caught it early, and that was good.

Once she knew the quality standards and paid more attention, her work improved, as did her speed.

And, yes, it all worked with TV.

4. Communicate clearly

Communicating clearly is easy to advise, but can be deceptively hard to do.

Provide the following information, at a minimum, to the people doing the work for you:

  • Goals for the work (deadline, budget, and any other constraints)
  • Customers for the work
  • What successful completion of the work looks like to these customers
  • How you’ll monitor and assess the quality of the work
  • Instructions for doing the work, as necessary
  • Where people can get more information, if needed, while they work

Clarity and focus upfront helps prevent wasted time and rework – incorrect work that has to be done again – and hard feelings about it later.

5. Train as needed

If the person, or people, who will be doing the work have prior experience with it, they may need little training or supervision from you.

If they’re inexperienced, however, they may need detailed instructions, as well as regular feedback and coaching as they learn to do the work well, and build confidence with it.

And this leads me to the story about the photo I included with this post.

The photographer in this case was our son, Matt (who does photography and film work as part of his job and career). Now a young adult, he was about about four when he took this picture.

I’m the person who’s stretching and trying to reach Matt…and the camera. I was laughing as I tried to catch him, but also nervous that he might fall off the wall where he was running, snapping pictures as he ran.

(Anne and my husband, Gary, watch in the background with amusement and curiosity as they wait to see how this interaction will play out).

The picture makes me laugh now when I recall the moment.

Matt didn’t fall. He didn’t drop the camera. He got this amusing shot.

And in fact, letting him use my camera in the future…with training, and AFTER asking permission to do so…and then encouraging him to learn more through experiments and projects with a camera we bought for him when he was ready for it, turned out to be a good move.

It was a gradual process of delegated and self-directed learning and growth. We encouraged both our kids to learn by doing, and through experimentation and projects, in their own areas of interest.

It can be a very successful way to delegate work, as well.

Learning by doing, and through self-directed experiments, can be very successful, if the work you’re delegating is compatible with that approach.

6. Keep your team focused on your customers’ needs

In case there’s uncertainty or a debate about the quality standards for work you’ve delegated, use your customers’ requirements to find the answer.

In the example of my friend’s frustration with recent delegation attempts, her employees are proficient with what their customers used to need: timely and accurate accounting.

Their customers’ business requires more of them now, so the quality standards for their work continue to change, too.

7. Check in, follow up

Make time to check in periodically to see how the work you’ve delegated is going.

Be prepared to check in more frequently than you expect will be necessary, at least initially.

You may find that the people to whom you’ve delegated work have questions you did not expect.

Or there may be skills, knowledge, or confidence that they do not have yet, and which you need to help them grow.

That’s enough delegation advice for now.

These seven ideas give you plenty to work with if you’re trying to improve your delegation skills and confidence.

Practice, pay attention to what you’re learning, continue to improve.

You’ll find that delegation, once mastered, is an invaluable skill.