Hello all,

I've been blogging over at Leadership in View

What does my staff need from me - Intentional Presence

What does the staff need from me as their boss?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the staff I lead lately. I see the stresses they find themselves under due to being short staffed, or the challenges they have in leading and following each other well, and the simple reality that we are, or more accurately, must work together in spite of our differences to accomplish great things. Those differences include our unique strengths but also our personal limitations where they have the potential of negatively affect those we work alongside.

So I asked myself today what my staff need from me to do things well here at CrossRoads. While I can site all kinds of books and lists for what it takes to be a great boss, I think I even have a book on my shelf with that title, I would rather talk about those things that I personally am aware of and I urgently need to change and do different tomorrow.

I’ve identified seven.

First up, they need my intentional presence.

This doesn’t mean that I think I am so full of my own importance that I think they all need my personal autograph and I better check often to see if they need it upgraded. The simple fact is this; most employees are experts at generating and tracking to their own perceptions of how the organization is lead and what the motivating factors are that internally drive the person at the helm. As long as a leader makes his or her self scarce to those they lead, those misguided perceptions will be the most predominate driving force in the working habits of the staff.

This also doesn’t mean that I need to make a nice tidy little schedule of when I shall spend time with individuals or teams on the staff.

What I am talking about here is that I need to make sure I find myself rubbing shoulders with my staff often, engaging in conversation with them regardless of the topic at hand. I’m so wired to say what I need to say and then leave, or finish a meeting and head to my office, or work through my lunch to maximize my alone time that I completely miss the opportunities of knowing and hearing the staff and understanding who they are and what they are passionate about.

While I’ve known and thought about this in the past and have made some half hearted attempts to correct my approach, this much change.

The health of my staff cannot afford me walking down a hall, past an open office, an occupied cubical, through a meeting room, without acknowledging the person(s) I am being presented with. They are far too valuable ignore.

This is a hard one to correct. Its habit is based on a belief that a leader has more important things to accomplish than conversation, and that if they are done immediately, the greater good will win the day. The correct belief would be that opportunities to slow down and engage with a staff member will better serve the greater good and win at the end of the day. I’m sure there is a balance to this, or at least my mind tells me this. But I’m going to take this new belief out for a spin on the staff and see how it works.

Are you wired to task and in a position of leadership. What will you do different tomorrow? Are you willing to try and have 3-5 more conversations a day with your staff?

Second up . . . perhaps tomorrow.

The Results Are In - D'oh!

This is probably rehashing something that you great leaders are already acutely aware of, but I’ve just been reflecting on it for the past couple of days, attempting to “test” my own leadership skills. So I'll spew.

Jack Lowe Jr. (TD) said once that the role of leadership is to serve, and the test is whether people grow. So I’ve been running through my grid over the past couple of days all of the great people that I get to serve, wondering if I have had any impact on them, wondering if in any way they have grown in their ability to lead themselves and others. Are they well able to lead themselves and to serve others as a direct result of how I led and served them.

. . .

Since being in this role for that past 6 years, I’ve “subjectively” (ha!) concluded the following.

That I’ve significantly screwed up about 13 people, and significantly impacted about 20 people. Everyone else fits somewhere between those two points (somewhere around 120, including the key volunteer leaders within my reach).

. . .

They’re coming for me! !

(Meaning those I’m accountable to, and meaning that my record sucks!)

I know this is highly subjective and I’m having a little fun here, but it’s a great thing for me to think about. It drives me towards my staff in new ways every time I reflect on my ability to serve them well. For the past two years I have begun to dream big dreams for the individuals on my staff. Not for the purpose of imposing those dreams on them, but to help me see high value in every person, and to further fuel me in finding creative ways to serve and develop them as individuals.

How about your leadership "test" results?

Leading Change - The Stuff of Leaders

I just finished reading a book called The Extraordinary Leadership by John H. Zenger and Joseph R. Folkman. I found this book challenging on a single front for myself. It caused me to reflect on my past leadership wins and losses. So very many of them were around the issue of change. Leading people in value development, cultural change, exposing and couching teams and individuals in their move from one paradigm to another.


Perhaps the greatest test of a leader is how they lead a team through change. Greatest test or maybe the better word is "indicator" as to a leader's capacity to lead at different levels.

So a great question that the authors through out at me was to ask myself what change lay in front of me that I was working on. Do I have a running list of things that I wish were different in my organization? So I sat down and started writing. I ended up with a very long list! So a quick prioritization helped me focus on a couple of key things I need to lead my teams through. Should be fun!

So how about you? What is the change in front of you that you are working on?

Leadership Patterns have Roots

I read a great quote the other day from Parker Palmer. He said, “A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him or herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.”

When I spend time thinking about this quote I quickly concur that the act of leading oneself is far more demanding than leading an organization or any group of people. If I fail to look inward, evaluating my own habits and ways, I will have moments of uncontrolled outburst in front of those I lead that are rarely rooted in the present, but in the past, in some recess of my sub-conscience.

Ruth Haley Barton puts it well in her book called Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership. She says, “Part of the reason that leadership is crucible is that if we stick with it past the initial euphoria, the demands of long-term leadership usually push us to a place where our patterns are clearly revealed. The demands of leading an organization keeps our face pressed up against the mirror until we are able to acknowledge the hidden dynamics that are driving us.”

What has been your experience in connecting the dots between your leadership behaviors today and your past experiences that helped form you, be that good and bad?

jp

Decisions Decisions

Just finished a book that I started a few months ago and had a couple of chapters to complete. It’s called How We Decide by Johan Lehrer. I really enjoyed reading this book and thinking about how our brain works when it comes to decision making activities.


I enjoyed figuring out my own patterns on decision making and thinking about those of the people that I lead. The other day I was sharing with a colleague about my decision making habits and it brought to mind this book and that I had not completed it yet.

The way my particular brain works is that I am quite analytical about things. I am always for more details, more information so that I can make the right choice. This is just fine for those of us analytical types, but the book talks about when landing on the decision, your best decision will usually be from the gut and not from the raw data. After reading and evaluating the way I come to decisions, it’s not too far off what the book is talking about. While I drive those crazy around me looking for all the inputs to a problem, I still respond to the solution with my gut instinct.

The book is telling me that this is actually the best way to go! It doesn’t mean I ignore all of the inputs, on the contrary, I take them all into consideration. What I have learned from reading this book is that most of our intuitions are based on sub-conscious knowledge. So if you and I perform due diligence on fact finding, then follow our gut instinct, we will find more often than not that we choose right.

How do you make decisions? Fast, slow, never? What is the biggest thing you wrestle with when making decisions? The aftermath of second guessing?

jp

Leadership In View

I’ve called this blog Leadership in View because I am amazed that every time I think about my leadership skills and experiences, I realize just how much I have yet to learn. Looking back is a good thing, and we will do that most of the time because that’s where the lessons are found. But the main reason we look back and is so that we can see the way forward. The next leadership challenge for a leader is just lurking around the corner waiting to pounce. I know! Gets the adrenalin going doesn’t it!

Enjoy. Enter into the conversations often so that we can all navigate the way forward from each other’s experiences and learned ways.

jp