Friday, January 26, 2007

Connecting Shared Values and Every Day Behaviors

In an earlier post I have mentioned The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. Great book!!! If you want to know why check out my earlier post about this great resouce.

Kouzes and Posner identify five key practices that great leaders share. They are
  1. Personally modeling the way,
  2. Inspiring a shared vision,
  3. Challenging the process,
  4. Enabling others to act,
  5. And encouraging the heart.
Each of these five key practices are linked to Commitments leaders make. Their second chapter "Set an Example" calls for leaders to commit to "set the Example by Aligning Actions with Shared Values" this is one of those important "your actions speak louder than words" reminders.

According to Kouzes and Posner there are "5 essential aspects" to a leader's behavior/actions that leaders "need to be conscious about in their efforts to align shared values through the example of the actions they take:"

  1. Calendars: "How you spend your time is the single clearest indicator, especially to others, about what's important to you." (pg.85)
  2. Critical Incidents present opportunities for leaders to teach important lessons about appropriate norms of behavior (pg.86)
  3. Stories, analogies, and metaphors: They are engaging (even if you are not) and help others understand what is important (purpose and values) and how things are done. (pg.88)
  4. Language: Choose your words and questions deliberately, they communicate what we hope for and what we expect of others (pg.90)
  5. Recognize that what gets measured gets done (pg.92)
So pause for a moment and look at your day, your context, your relationships, your imagination, your words and the results you monitor. Are you experiencing a connection between your values and your actions? Others will have already decided if the connection is there.

Monday, January 08, 2007

How Leaders See - an interveiw excerpt from Ronald Heifetz

Q. There is so much hunger for leadership in business today. Everyone wants better leaders. What do great leaders do?

The real heroism of leadership involves having the courage to face reality -- and helping the people around you to face reality. It's no accident that the word "vision" refers to our capacity to see. Of course, in business, vision has come to mean something abstract or even inspirational. But the quality of any vision depends on its accuracy, not just on its appeal or on how imaginative it is.

Mustering the courage to interrogate reality is a central function of a leader. And that requires the courage to face three realities at once. First, what values do we stand for -- and are there gaps between those values and how we actually behave? Second, what are the skills and talents of our company -- and are there gaps between those resources and what the market demands? Third, what opportunities does the future hold -- and are there gaps between those opportunities and our ability to capitalize on them?

Now, don't get the wrong idea. Leaders don't answer those questions themselves. That's the old definition of leadership: The leader has the answers -- the vision -- and everything else is a sales job to persuade people to sign up for it. Leaders certainly provide direction. But that often means posing well-structured questions, rather than offering definitive answers. Imagine the differences in behavior between leaders who operate with the idea that "leadership means influencing the organization to follow the leader's vision" and those who operate with the idea that "leadership means influencing the organization to face its problems and to live into its opportunities." That second idea -- mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges -- is what defines the new job of the leader.

Read the full interview in Fast Company

Better leaders are better listeners

In a recent conversation I became keenly aware of what it was to not be heard, and to talk with someone who didn’t listen (or was is couldn’t or wouldn’t listen). They say that confession is good for the soul, so here it goes… I confess that my listening skills need an bit of work too.

Jim Collins underlines this talking listening tension when he tells the story of a mentor of his who stung him with the remark "it occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting, Why don't you invest more time being interested?"

Being interested, or listening, is an important skill in life and an essential skill in leadership. But the sad truth is that most make little effort to develop our ability to really listen. We will practice endlessly our verbal and written skills. We want to talk, we want to say what we think, we like the sound of our own voices, words and ideas more than we are interested in true communication – something that requires really good listening.

I believe we can all practice the art of listening and develop it into a skill. The best communicators I know are also the best listeners. Below are some tips for developing better listening skills.

steps to improve your listening
  1. Attention and focus Give your full attention to the speaker. When you are on the phone, just listen (don’t catch up on email). Focus on the speaker and what he or she is saying. Do not plan what you will say next. By planning what you’ll say next, you’re not listening.
  2. Let other person finish. Do not begin talking until the other person is finished. It’s okay to ask them if they are done.
  3. Pause. Don’t start talking immediately. Digest what other person has just said and then think about what you want to say. You don’t need to fill the silence.
  4. Summarize important points. Review the important points of the speaker. Make sure you heard them correctly. This also gives them the chance to clarify and even change what they want you to understand.
  5. Ask questions. People love to have others ask them questions. Questions value and validate a person. Questions assume that someone has something to contribute.
  6. Give feedback. Let the other person know what you think about their comments and ideas. Feedback can be focused on the content (words) of the persons communication or about the messages and meaning (this requires more careful listening and more artful summarizing)
  7. Other centered. Focus on others. What are their strengths? What can they contribute? And how can I allow them to be the center of the conversation?
Much more can be learned about listening. I strongly encourage leaders to become students of the art of listening. It makes a world of difference

Work is part of life, isn’t it?

Work/life balance is an odd and variously employed idea. I bet you think you know what it means. I certainly do. One problem - I bet you and I have different ideas about "work/life balance" maybe even opposite ideas.

Placing the words, "work" "life" and "balance" in the same phrase assumes that there is the potential for these two things to be out of whack, even in opposition to one another. Isn't work a part of life? or are you only alive after hours? We live in a dualistic world and the notion of work/life balance is one contemporary manifestation of this either/or way of living.

So time for a wake up call: If your life only begins when work ends you have a problem. Work is an essential part of life - expressing our creativity, our generativity, our productivity is part of the Creator's intent for us. We are not designed to for a chez lounge life. We are designed for a fulfilling life with work and integral part of what we do and who we are. This may be more a theological concept (stewardship) as it is a management/leadership concept.

So the next time I hear about work/life balance I think I am going to puke. Yes, I think we need balance, but balance is not an end in itself, it is a means. We need to ask 'what larger ends require us to balance?' Let me suggest setting priorities and boundaries. These of course require that we practice our ability to balance. But they are ends worth a real conversation.