BCA

By David Tighe

As managers become more senior, they start to run out of peers and superiors  on which to rely for effective coaching. Mentors still abound, but mentors do  not truly “coach” you, as Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan notes  in a recent leadership article published by McKinsey and Co. Mentors usually  serve as sounding boards for advice, and rely on input from you, the manager,  about the situation that is challenging you.

That information naturally comes  through your mindset filters, which limits the mentor’s ability to spot and  correct your flaws or errors. Coaches truly observe you in action, and critique  you from their own perspective, offering more “tough love” than a mentor  can.

When third party coaching feedback gets scarce

So, as middle managers rise up into the senior hierarchy, true third-party  coaching feedback on their performance gets scarce. The issues:

• Fewer superiors above them actively observe how they go about their  business.
• Fewer peers around them are willing to act collegially and provide useful  criticism that could help make them better.
• This is both because there are: too many like-minded people among their peers, with similar habits and  mindsets, which drains the senior management pool of perspective.
• Too many competitors for a narrowing funnel of promotional opportunities.  Helping a colleague can hinder a manager’s own chances, naturally reducing the  incentive to help unless top management sets a strong collegial example (a rare  occurrence.)

 As you rise in the organization, people become less connected to you

Plus, by the time you become a senior executive, you have a set of  experiences from your own successful career that form your leadership mindset.  Earlier in your career, you probably set up coaching and mentoring relationships  using people senior to you which helped you climb those career rungs. As you  rise, those people become less connected to you. Perhaps they are now  subordinate to you. Perhaps they lost out to you for a new position, and moved  to another company.

As Kaplan notes, “many executives find that as they become  more senior, they receive less coaching and become more confused about their  performance and developmental needs. They may also become increasingly isolated  from constructive criticism-subordinates do not want to offend the boss and may  believe that constructive suggestions are unwelcome and unwise.”

Here is the paradox: To rise up the ranks, you naturally focus sideways and  upwards, adopting and adapting the vision coming from the top, running friendly  competitions with peers, and managing staff to meet your career goals. Now that  you have made it up the ladder, you need to change that heretofore successful  mindset of looking up for counsel and direction. With fewer “up” options, you  need to start focusing down for advice and ideas.

This concept sounds a bit nuts  to newly senior managers, but it is the key to their long-term success.

Don’t overlook developing mutually trusting subordinate relationships

Kaplan states: “At this stage of their careers, they may not have focused  sufficiently on developing mutually trusting subordinate relationships that  would make getting feedback and advice a lot easier.”

Too frequently, when these executives ultimately do receive feedback in their  year-end reviews (as part of a 360-degree-feedback program, say) they are  surprised to receive a lot of criticism about leadership, communication and  interpersonal skills. “These leaders may even learn, often too late, that the  various criticisms and concerns have been widely discussed among their  subordinates for an extended period of time without them being aware,” notes  Kaplan, a comment I strongly agree with based on my own coaching  experiences.

Frankly, when working with senior executives I spend a lot of time getting  this upward-looking mindset uninstalled and replacing it with a more productive  approach that embeds the spirit of the 360 Review into their daily leadership  routines.

360 Reviews are very successful

Here is what I mean by the 360-Review Spirit:

When you run a 360-degree review, everyone above, at your level and below you  get to offer frank assessments of how you have been performing. These reviews  are predicated on the idea that the formally structured environment encourages  people to be frank, while remaining constructive in their input. The underlying  assumption is that people (subordinates especially) will not share feedback that  is ‘negative’ without clear institutional protection against retribution and  need this special artificial construct to let their guard down.

So, once a year a lot of managers find out that while they may be managing  tasks and projects well, they are failing as leaders. This creates all kinds of  angst and hurt feelings. People react negatively to the whole process, and hurry  back to the culture they feel more comfortable in, whether or not it is  productive.

If 360-degree reviews are so effective, it strikes me as a great idea for  senior management to move heaven and earth to embed such an open, sharing  environment directly into the corporate culture. It’s hard work to establish  full employee engagement into the mindsets of employees and their managers, but  the 360-Review Spirit would have huge organizational advantages in  fostering a proper leadership culture.

Goals to shoot for include:

• Signal strongly that true feedback is valued and desired, as long as it is  forward-thinking and action-oriented. No snipping. sniping and  blame-laying.
• Eliminate the mindset that seeking help from subordinates signals weakness  as a leader. Replace it with one that admits a leader doesn’t know everything,  and relies on trusted lieutenants to inform him or her of the true nature of  events, and the full range of options for moving forward.
• Assume that everyone wants the best for the organization, and will  contribute at a high level if the organization finds a way to publicly value  that contribution consistently.
• Break the mindset that senior managers know more than subordinates. They  don’t. Perhaps they did at one time, but that time is gone.

A great leader knows that his or her subordinates know far more about the  current state of customer mindsets and potential than senior managers (and  perhaps even all of them put together!) They should not wait for formal review  processes to gather input on job performance and goal-setting.

The ongoing goal for every senior manager must be to create subordinate  relationships based on the three core tenets that we focus on in embedding a  full-engagement mindset:

Unshakable Trust:

• Encourage full and open truth in meetings.
• Expect the best of everyone. Everyone you hire is talented. Challenge them  to make full use of their skill sets.
• “Tuesday is Tuesday” (Stick to your commitments.)
• Take true accountability for your own results, good and bad.

The Pursuit of Truth:

• Take genuine interest in the truth at all levels.
• Center conversations on how to be “the best we can be,” not just meeting our  targets and beating our competition.
• Look way beyond the metrics and never settle for “good enough.” Pre-set  goals are pretty arbitrary, and may blind you to potential lying beyond those  limits.
• Encourage authentic, transparent and complete two-way communication from  bottom to top, by celebrating the truth whether good news or bad.

Communication that Counts:

• Keep communication “next action” focused. No dwelling or looking  backwards!
• End all communications with mutual commitment to action.
• Check up on commitments, see that delegations are fulfilled, and run  meetings with a forward focus on decisions that help to complete the  commitments. No updates that could be sent by e-mail!
• Instill a belief in everyone that every communication improves the  relationship.

Focusing on embedding these three habits as a day-to-day mindset will  generate better feedback, particularly from subordinates, that will help you to  materially improve your personal performance, often in 90 days or less. This, in  turn, should support your future career ambitions, because you will be basing  future decisions more on the truth than on the hunches that may come from your  own past experiences. And your team will be 100% behind you, pushing you up the  ladder.

Here is a link to Robert Kaplan’s article. Registration is  required, but it’s free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Tighe

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How your employees can make—or break—a brand relationship

By Roland Smith

With today’s stale job market limiting employees’ mobility, executives have a unique opportunity to boost the motivation and productivity of their top talent without spending lots of money. Unfortunately, many companies are missing the mark – especially when it comes to managing their emerging leaders, or “high potentials.” Here are the five biggest mistakes companies are making with high-potential talent:

.1. Ignoring the view from the pipeline. This is the first big mistake – and it fuels the others. Talent managers and executives tend to discuss the leadership pipeline as if it is theirs to define and control. But talented people inside the leadership pipeline bring their perspectives and experiences to the process. Do you know what they think? Have you asked what they want? Are expectations on both sides understood? Is your relationship with your talent transactional or a mutual and reciprocal relationship?

High-potential talent can always go somewhere else. Center for Creative Leadership research shows that even though 95 percent of high potentials say they are committed to their organizations, 21 percent are still actively looking for another job. In a down economy, they are weighing trade-offs. On the plus side: staying in their current role means greater responsibility, highly visible assignments, good money in a recession. On the negative side: brutal hours, no support from senior team, uncertainty as to what’s next. If you could move “senior team support” to the pro column, for example, you’ve boosted your chances of retaining a valued employee.

2. Treating all high potentials the same. If you aren’t considering the view from the pipeline, chances are you have a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with top talent. High potentials expect (and usually get) greater visibility and access to senior managers, special assignments and training, and greater responsibility. But they also want some say in how these perks and assignments play out. If relocating every few years is the primary way for high potentials to increase their value, you automatically lose when a manager needs to stay put for a spouse’s career or family commitments. Don’t wait to find this out during an exit interview. Have “stay conversations” with your top talent before it’s too late.

3. Leaving high-potentials on their own. It’s a mistake to give high potentials free rein to direct their careers. While they want to influence their direction, they are also more committed and engaged when they have a clear career path. High potentials want to know what the next steps are in terms of development, experience and movement. Plus, companies need to be sure the talent they have is the talent they need and that it’s deployed well. You need to intervene, redirect or coach if a high potential is staying in a position too long, not building needed skills, or is in danger of derailing (and yes, high potentials can derail).

4. Not using high-potentials to develop others. While high potentials receive increased opportunities and investment, they are also powerful talent developers in the organization. They have insight and experience needed for developing the next layer of high potentials as well as the larger talent pool. To multiply the impact of your top talent, train them to coach others and have effective developmental conversations. You should not only hold them accountable for doing it, you should reward them as well.

5. Being unclear about high-potential status. Using your high potentials well means knowing who they are – and ensuring they know it, too. Organizations that do not formally identify their top talent (or keep it under wraps) are undermining their performance – and run the risk of losing valuable people. CCL research found that formal identification as a high potential is important to 77 percent of managers. Not being formally identified as a high potential keeps the door open for doubt, lessens engagement and weakens commitment. Only 14 percent of formally identified high potentials are seeking other employment. That figure jumps to 33 percent for employees who are informally identified as high potentials.

Loyalty may be dead – for both employers and employees. The best strategy for growing and maintaining top talent in today’s workplace is to understand it’s all about mutuality and reciprocity. When you think about your talent from their point of view, the relationship becomes less transactional – and organizations and high potentials will benefit.

Printed with permission of Center for Creative Leadership

About the Author
Roland Smith is a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership, a Greensboro, N.C.-based provider of leadership education to companies, government agencies, nonprofits and educational institutions.

From Leading Effectively; an Interview with Chris Musselwhite

Change may be good or bad. It might be viewed as much needed or to be avoided at all costs. Sometimes small changes cause strong negative reactions; other times big change is welcomed. Christopher Musselwhite — consultant and creator of the Change Style Indicator — says our collective confusion about the value of change is tied to three individual perspectives: preference, process and proximity.

He explained about the 3 P’s and change preferences in a recent interview with the Center for Creative Leadership..

Why do people respond so differently to change?

A large part of your response is driven by preference for change. In my research, I’ve found there really are cognitive differences in how people view change. People frame it differently, analyze it differently and have different emotional responses. A lot of that is personality and preference.

But other factors have a say in your reactions as well. If you have been through the process of change many times and had life experiences (even if very difficult) that gave you a positive view of change, facing change may not be particularly scary or worrisome to you. But if change in your life is consistently tied to negative things, it is understandably more difficult to embrace change.

The factor of proximity will also magnify or diminish your change response. The closer you are to the epicenter of change — if you will be directly affected — the more your identity is connected to the change.

Explain about the preferences people have.

How people deal with change – both creating it and responding to it – is a function of identifiable individual preferences. It’s helpful to think of our preferences on a continuum of conservers to originators, with the pragmatists holding the large middle ground.

Conservers are people who view change primarily as a danger. In times of change they appear deliberate, disciplined and focused. They are good at defining and clarifying current reality and prefer a well-defined structure. To create improvements, conservers prefer to make gradual changes and work within existing systems.

On the opposite end, the originators like to challenge current structures and systems. They enjoy taking risks and tend to focus on new possibilities, vision and direction. They are action-minded but may not be effective implementers.

Pragmatists tend to focus on getting the job done. They often see merit in the perspectives of both conservers and originators and are motivated to find solutions.

Using the Change Style Indicator, I’ve been able to gather data on more than 100,000 people. With two-thirds of the results analyzed, I’ve found that about 25 percent of the general population are conservers and another 25 percent are originators; the rest are pragmatists.

How is this information about change style most helpful to individuals? How can it be helpful in organizations?

Understanding your own preferences is very helpful just in understanding your own feelings and behaviors in times of change. Then you are able to create routines or seek support that allows you to process the change and adapt.

It’s also important for building teams. For example, if I’m really a strong originator, I need some strong pragmatists and conservers to work with — and I need to know not to ignore or marginalize them.

When teams come together, use the Change Style Indicator tool and talk about their preferences, it can also open up everyone’s eyes to why the team functions the way it does. Often conflict in teams can be connected to tension between the three change styles. But the differences that you struggle with can become assets if you know how to manage them.

How do effective leaders manage these differences?

First, be careful not to throw the labels around unless you’re taking time to understand change styles as a group. It’s helpful to have the concept in your head, to use for your own thinking. You can ask questions of yourself such as: How am I responding? Might Joe be reacting to me from a conserver mindset? I wonder if we can get an originator perspective in here?

When you better understand people you have on your team, or the people you work with, you can orchestrate change processes with more finesse. For example, if you manage a project team, early on you have to have good originators. You want to consider all possibilities. Over time, you’ll rely more on the pragmatists and the conservers. Throughout the process, all perspectives are represented; it’s just a question of where to put the emphasis.

Preference for Change
When facing change …

Conservers	Pragmatists	Originators
Generally appear deliberate, disciplined, focused Prefer clearly defined structure Start with traditional ideas when problem solving Don’t like surprises and uncertainty May appear cautious and inflexible Focus on details and implementation Value tradition and best practices Are convergent thinkers	Generally appear practical, agreeable, flexible Value change that produces readily visible benefits More interested in functionality than tradition or novelty Operate as mediators and catalysts for understanding Are open to both sides of an argument Take more of a middle-of-the-road approach Appear more team oriented to their co-workers	May appear unorganized, undisciplined, unconventional Challenge existing structure Dismiss traditional ideas when problem solving Enjoy risk and uncertainty May appear impractical and miss important details Appear systemic in their thinking Can dismiss established practices with little regard Are divergent thinkers

By John Riley

 These days, it is not surprising to find someone who has a boss that does her job for her.  Most people would call that micro-managing  and attribute it to insecurity brought about by a fear of making a mistake or having one’s subordinate make a mistake during these uncertain times.  I think it’s more complex than that.

While insecurity is certainly one factor at play here, there is a professional element as well. I’m talking about the person who is a perfectionist and feels that their subordinates do not share the same attitude toward their work. As result, the fear comes from concern a subordinate might make a mistake and the lack of professionalism would reflect on the supervisor.

 Another possibility that fosters micro-managers is a greater feeling of power.  It probably stems from their feeling that what got them promoted was what they should do as a supervisor except to a greater degree.  That produces a doer rather than a manager and has its own set of problems.

 Unfortunately, whatever the reason, employees resent micro-managing bosses.  And why not?  It shows little respect for the subordinate, prevents their professional development and provides no chance for recognition.  Yet, management seems to tolerate such behavior because the work gets done.

 A common management  justification is, “we’ll deal with it after we get through this difficult period”, but that never seems to happen.   A micro-manager response is, “if I don’t control everything, something bad will happen because my people aren’t up to speed yet”.

 Most observers offer advice to the suffering employees when it is the supervisor that should be dealt with.  Specifically, management should add a remedial action item to the supervisor’s job goals after discussing it with him, the supervisor should be sent to a Manager training program, and he should be scheduled for a performance review in six months.  If, after these three steps, the supervisor’s behavior has not changed, management should find a non-managerial position for him.

 Does your boss like to do your job?   If so, leave a copy of this article near the copy machine.