High performing team members demonstrate the top 4 characteristics that we look for in our colleagues. Do you?

Yesterday’s Leadership Insights’ post was about collaborative leadership behaviour and its key to success as organisational structures are becoming increasingly flat.

And the most effective collaboration requires the collaborator to balance his or her personal agenda with that of the organisation. That means being a team player, defined by a search on google as a person who plays or works well as a member of a team or group.

But what does that mean exactly? In their book Credibility leadership experts Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner conducted detailed research and list the top 20 most desirable characteristics that we look for in our colleagues – those we whom we collaborate. The top 4 characteristics by a considerable margin are:

• Honesty
• Cooperativeness
• Dependability
• Competence

While high on the list,  it’s interesting that technical competence is less important than how we conduct ourselves with our colleagues and that means how we behave. So what does that mean in our daily interactions with those we collaborate? To get clarity, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Are you sincere and truthful?
• Do you consistently do what you say you will do when you say you will do it, thereby honouring your commitments?
• Do you demonstrate a willingness and a track-record to share control, power and credit?
• Are you willing to listen – really listen – and that means without judgement and interruption?
• Are you reliable?

Be honest. Give yourself a score out of 10 for each of these behaviours. Or better still, if you have the appetite and the courage, seek feedback from your colleagues and be willing to act on what you learn. After all, your future and that of your organisation may depend on it.

What do you think? Post a reply. Or alternatively, send me an email with your thoughts at mark@roadmapconsultants.com

It will be great to hear from you.

 

High performing leaders are collaborative. Are you?

With increasingly flatter structures in the workplace, the need to collaborate with colleagues across functions has accelerated: organisations where decisions or roadblocks with others are commonly referred up the line for resolution are likely to fall further and further behind their competitors and ultimately die. Agility through collaboration is a key for individuals and organisations to survive and thrive. A recent coaching session illustrates the point… 

John had recently received his 360 feedback and focused – as many of us do – on what he saw were the negatives, in the process overlooking his many strengths.

He was seen as resistant and controlling by his peers and more senior colleagues and could be ‘difficult’, even resistant and obstructive – particularly on inter-departmental projects and activities – while his direct reports saw him as inspirational and supportive.

While John found this feedback uncomfortable and at first difficult to accept, he soon acknowledged that in order to develop himself and achieve the organisation’s goals, he needed to make improvements in these areas and contacted me to help him.

So to get started, I encouraged John to look at three aspects:

• Defining collaboration in a leadership context
• Identifying what this collaborative behaviour might look like
• Identifying the benefits of collaboration

So starting with a definition:

While there are many dictionary definitions of collaboration that refer to working together to achieve goals or outcomes, these seemed too woolly and sketchy to John. He did uncover on Wikipedia a piece on collaborative leadership and this particular gem from a list of ten characteristics resonated with him:

The successful collaborative leader actively manages the tension between focusing on delivery and on building relationships.

John recognised that he was focusing on delivery at the expense of relationships and that in time that could be damaging and isolating for him, his department and the business.

We then moved onto what collaborative behaviour looks. The same Wikipedia piece provided five qualities of collaborative leadership behaviour that again resonated with John:

• A willingness to take risks
• A willingness to listen, without judgement and interruption
• A passion for the cause
• Optimistic about the future
• Able to share knowledge, power and credit

Finally, the benefits of collaborative behaviour:

John explained that by reading the Wikipedia piece and reflecting on it, he had become aware that collaboration and control are mutually exclusive and would neither serve him, his colleagues or the organisation.  John found a related piece on Jesse Lyn Stoner’s blog – 8 Things Collaborative Leaders Know – that helped him in coming to this realisation.

Not only that, it took pressure off of him by accepting that he didn’t have all the answers; and in fact nobody does. And that by sharing knowledge and power with others, it would more likely result in a win-win-win situation: for him, his colleagues and the organisation, through increased engagement, greater trust in him and them,  more innovation and ideas and more effective business performance.

While it is early days, John is optimistic about working more collaboratively with his colleagues.  He knows he will have a tendency to default to delivery over relationships, though now he has that awareness, he can check himself before things go too far.

What do you think about collaborative leadership behaviour? What’s your experience? Post a reply. It will be great to hear from you.

Humility is a key characteristic of effective leaders like David Brailsford. What about you?

Richard Moore’s book ‘Sky’s the limit. Wiggins and Cavendish: the quest to conquer the Tour de France’ provides fascinating insights into the vision, values, ethos, plan and execution of Team Principal David Brailsford, who is also Performance Director for Team GB Cyling. Among the many lessons is one that resonates deeply with me and I’ll explain why, later in this piece.

In the quest to win the Tour de France ‘clean’ with a British team, Richard Moore describes Brailford’s ethos on several occasions in his book – that the team is there to support the cyclists. Team Sky’s coaches, psychologists, sports scientists, therapists, doctors, mechanics, nutritionists, chefs and administrators have one aim – to serve their needs:

“Our philosophy has always been about everybody trying to support the riders to be the best they can be.”  

“We – the coaching and support staff – are the minions. We’re there to help the riders. It’s all about the riders. They’re the kings and queens of their world.”

Brailsford is consistent with this message. In a BBC report in 2008, while talking about track cycling as opposed to road racing, he says:

“We put the riders in the middle; we’re just the minions around them giving them expert advice.” 

“We know our place in the whole team and that’s really important and everybody buys into that.” 

Now it’s one thing to say it. It’s another to actually do it. And to do it consistently, day in and day out requires humility – to take a modest or low view of one’s importance. It requires everyone to leave their ego at the door, so pay attention please, Premiership and England footballers. It’s interesting to note that FA Chairman David Bernstein is to bring in a code of conduct for England players. Perhaps humility will be one of the tenets of the code. We can but hope.

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that David Brailsford’s humility and ‘minion’ approach resonates with me. When I joined Marks & Spencer as a management trainee in 1973, I was sent on a three week (yes three weeks!) induction programme with 35 other trainees. On the first morning, the Head of Training used an overhead projector to support his presentation. He drew out on a transparency – beamed onto a screen – a simplified structure of the business, starting with the Board of Directors, down through the executive and management layers to the shop floor sales staff. As he drew, he outlined the headcount for each layer and his diagram took the shape of a triangle – with a few people at the top, and many at the bottom. And then he did something that really surprised me. He turned the transparency round, so that it was an inverted triangle instead and said:

“We all exist to support the sales floor staff – we are all here to serve them, because they serve the customer. And without the customer, we don’t exist. Remember that.”

I’ve never forgotten it and carry that thought to this day. And some 35-40 years later, David Brailsford and his team who support the cyclists – whether on the track or the road – are achieving astonishing success following the same principle of humility.

Now compare that with your business or organisation. If you’re in a leadership position, who needs are you serving? Yours or those of the organisation?  If it works for Cycling, could it work for you?

In his book ‘Good to Great’, Jim Collins describes his model: the 5 levels of leadership, with one being the lowest and five the highest level. He describes level 5 leaders as having a curious combination of humility and iron-will determination. Doesn’t that describe David Brailsford? Now take a look in the mirror: does it describe you?

Post a reply and let me know what you think. It will be great to hear from you.

Being an exemplary leader means being an exemplary role model for your followers. Are you?

According to leadership experts Kouzes & Posner, one of the key tenets of exemplary leadership is to ‘model the way’. That means consistently demonstrating a set of behaviours and skills that set an example for others to follow. As Gandhi put it:

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him … We need not wait to see what others do.”

So as leaders, when we aren’t getting the behaviours and actions we desire, particularly when we have a set of written values to guide those behaviours and actions, then it’s time to look in the mirror and hold ourselves accountable.

Sir James Porter’s ‘Observations on the religion, law, government, and manners of the Turks’ (1768), includes this:

‘The Turks have a homely proverb applied on such occasions: they say “the fish stinks first at the head”, meaning, that if the servant is disorderly, it is because the master is so.’

Recent events at Barclays Bank and News International seem to support this belief, even though there is no evidence of complicity or involvement by either Bob Diamond, former Group CEO of Barclays Bank plc or Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corporation.

So here are 10 questions to assess your situation and run a quick health-check:

• In your organisation, do you turn a blind eye?
• Do you have favourites?
• Do you foster a culture of collaboration or confrontation?
• Do you let your ego get in the way or do you act with humility?
• Is the organisation/team there to serve you or is your role to serve the organisation/team?
• Do you behave in alignment with the values of your organisation, consistently – that means every single day?
• Do you do what you say you will do, when and how you say you will do it?
• Nobody can see 360 degrees of themselves – do you have blind spots that may be a contributing factor and what are they?
• Do you seek honest feedback on your behaviour and then act on it?
• Is your performance/behaviour formally reviewed or is the appraisal process there for everyone else except you/your leadership team?

So, if you’ve been honest with yourself:

• What insights has this quick health-check given you?
• What 2-3 actions will you take as a result?
• What will be the benefit for you/your team/your organisation?
• Who will hold you accountable for the changes you’re committing to?

Post a reply and let me know what you think. It will be great to hear from you.

High performing leaders and their teams know this secret formula for high performance. Do you?

With flatter organisational structures and the breaking down of silos, collaborative working across functions to achieve organisational objectives is widely accepted as the most effective route to high performance. Having technical competence alone is no longer sufficient – no man is an island.

Team members and their leaders need a broader set of skills if they are to interact effectively with each other, often in pressure situations to produce great results. And so how we behave towards each other and how we feel about those interactions with our colleagues are just as important as our technical abilities in the pursuit of business objectives.

Here’s a simple formula to illustrate:

Technical Competence + Emotional Intelligence + Values Alignment  = High Performance

Looking at each element:

Technical Competence: This is self-explanatory. It’s our knowledge of our subject or function – it’s ‘what’ we do and how well we do it.

 Emotional Intelligence: This is our awareness of our thoughts and feelings and our ability to connect with others. It includes attributes such as self-confidence, self-control, assertiveness and very importantly, relationship skills and empathy. In some models, how well we interact with others is called social intelligence. Here, we have wrapped them both together as emotional intelligence.

Values Alignment: Our values are the things we hold dear and could include attributes such as honesty, inclusiveness and respect for others. The more our personal values are aligned with the organisational values and the visible/practised behaviours around us, the more likely we are to feel relaxed and stress-free. If the fit is less aligned, we are likely to feel more anxious and that can affect our thoughts and feelings as well as our behaviours and performance.

So, give yourself a score. On a scale of 1-10, where would you rate your competence, your emotional intelligence and your values alignment? Add them together.  The maximum score is 30. What’s your total? What’s this telling you? Where is there head-room? Where will you put your focus? What one or two things will you action as a result? And what will be the benefit to you, your team and your organisation as a result?

What’s your experience of high performance? Post a reply. It will be great to hear from you.

Effective leaders treat others the way they would like to be treated. Do you?

How often have you heard someone say: “treat others the way you would want to be treated yourself”? This one expression crosses cultures and is as old as antiquity. Yet high impact, effective leaders do the complete opposite. Instead, they treat others the way the way they would like to be treated…

What does this mean exactly?  Say you have a task that needs to get done – putting together a presentation for a meeting with a prospective client – and you decide to involve a member of your team. Would you

•  Tell them exactly what to do and how to do it?
•  Discuss the task with them and then work together on it?
•  Ask them what they’ll do and then be available if they need them?
•  Let them just get on with it?

What will get the best results depends on how competent and committed they are and is situational. That means treating your team member the way they need to be treated, depending on each task: they may be highly competent and confident executing one task and not another.

 Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard’s ‘Situational Leadership’ model broadly recommends the following…

‘Telling’ is more appropriate in situations when:

• Someone’s competence is unproven (they’re brand new or unfamiliar with the task) and time may also be of the essence.

 ‘Selling’ is more appropriate in situations when:

• Someone has some of the competence yet lacks the desire and/or the confidence to execute the task.

 ‘Sharing’ is appropriate in situations when:

• Someone has the competence, yet lacks the confidence/self-belief to execute the task

‘Delegating‘ is appropriate in situations when:

• Someone has the competence and the confidence/desire to execute the task.

The other factor is how confident and competent you are in each situation to tell, sell, share or delegate.  Choosing the less appropriate options mean you are more likely to be seen as either a control freak or a laissez-faire leader. Is that in your best interests? The team’s? The organisation’s?

What do you think? Please post a reply.

2 Minute Leadership Tune- Up: What to do when you move at a slower pace than your colleagues.

Have you ever had someone in your team that just seemed to move at a slower pace than you/their colleagues? What’s that like…

• For you?
• For them?
• For their peers?
• Their direct reports?

This was the topic of conversation in a recent meeting with a client, Andrew, who runs a management consultancy serving blue-chip companies. He talked about Jon, his head of design and Mel, head of client services. Andrew explained that Jon made decisions and took action much more cautiously and slowly than Mel. When I asked Andrew how he felt, he said he was frustrated. I asked him how Jon and Mel felt and he said they were frustrated too – it was beginning to cause friction in the team.

We talked about what could be done and Andrew came up with several options…

• Do nothing
• Talk to Jon and Mel individually
• Talk to them together
• Ask them to resolve the situation together

After a short discussion, Andrew decided to talk to Jon and Mel together and asked them what was working well and what could work better. The outcome has been positive. Each of them has a better understanding of where the other is coming from. In particular Andrew and Mel appreciate the anxiety that Jon feels when situations move too fast for comfort. He’s a perfectionist – he wants to produce the best possible work and he doesn’t like to make mistakes or do things ‘wrong’. He finds delegation more difficult as his team members don’t have his level of technical expertise.

Andrew is now coaching and mentoring Jon and in turn Jon is coaching and mentoring his team to help them step up and improve performance. Mel is providing support for Jon too and collaborating more fully where she can. Is the situation resolved? Not fully, it’s a work in progress and the frustration levels have eased considerably. The business is running more efficiently too and at a faster overall pace than before.

Now contrast this with a slightly different scenario – when the person moving at the slower pace is ‘the boss’ – YOU! 

• What does that mean for you?
• For your team?
• For your organisation?

The bottom line is it’s likely you’re missing business opportunities and that your team is frustrated with you and likely to become disengaged and perform less well.

If this is the case, here are some suggestions to consider…

1. Do you have the appetite/see the benefits in making changes?
2. How does this ‘slower pace’ manifest itself? It’s likely to be in the way you think about issues and respond to situations.
3. If it is, write down some examples of the most recent challenges you’ve faced. Alternatively, discuss your list with your most trusted colleague; someone who will be honest with you.
4. Use scaling to help you. On on a scale of 1-10, how quickly (1=slow 10=fast)  did you came to a decision about each challenge?
5. Now consider each challenge on your list: how quickly did you act? Use the same scaling.
6. What does this tell you – what pattern is there?
7. Do you decide more slowly than you act? Is it the same? Or do you act faster than you decide?
8. What would be the benefits to you/your team/company of moving your scores up a couple of notches?
9. What would be the risks?
10. And lastly, specifically what one or two actions will you take as a result?

It’s likely that the actions you decide to take involve behavioural change and  greater delegation to your team. And if that’s the case, understanding and practising the simple ideas of Situational Leadership will go a long way in helping you embed these changes.

For more, check out ‘Leadership and the one minute manager’. Written by  Ken Blanchard. This is an excellent and easily digestible book.

Of course it could be that you’re getting in the way, that you believe you have to be involved in every decision. That’s about ego.

To quote Theodore Roosevelt: ‘The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.’

If this piece has helped you, please pass it on to your colleagues…

Perhaps there’s a ‘Jon’ in your company who would benefit from reading it.

3 minute leadership tune-up: what makes your team willingly follow you?

Do you know the top four characteristics* your followers look for to willingly follow you? Here are four questions to tune-up your leadership…

1. How honest are you?

That means do you consistently do what you say you will do, when you say you will do it?  Or is there an absence of trust. For example do you…

• call your colleagues back when you say you will
• atttend meetings with them on time
• honour your commitment to 1-2-1’s/appraisals without cancelling/cutting them short.

2. How forward-looking are you?

Do you have a sense of direction? That means having a credible and achievable vision of the future for your company. Or do you dwell on the past -‘driving through life, looking through the rear-view mirror?’

3. How inspiring are you?

Do you communicate your vision with energy, enthusiasm and passion? How encouraged do your team members feel and are they bought into you and your vision?

4. How competent are you?

Do you demonstrate with confidence that you know what to do and how to do it to lead the team in the pursuit of the vision?

How did you respond? Is everthing hunky-dory or have you got things to work on? What actions will you take and when?

Post a reply. It will be great to hear from you.

*source: Kouzes & Posner: The Leadership Challenge.

What can we learn from England at Euro 2012 about high performing teams?

Watching the UEFA Euro 2012 football match last night between England v Ukraine, it was fascinating to see how the England team reacted to intense pressure. Their Ukranian opponents dominated the match for prolonged periods with the added advantage of playing on home soil in front of their vocal supporters. England won 1-0 snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

Marshalled by their introverted captain Steven Gerrard, the England team defended staunchly, making rare forays into their opponent’s half of the field. They took the lead, arguably against the run of play and nursed their 1-0 advantage for almost all of the second half.

Was their play ‘pretty’? Was there rhythm to it? Did they consistently string more than 2 or 3 passes together? Did they have more possession than their opponents? Did they have more scoring opportunities than Ukraine? The answer was NO! They were outplayed and still they still won.

So what are the lessons from such a seemingly lack-lustre display producing a winning result?

• They had a plan – defend, defend, defend and counter attack when opportunities arose.
• They focused and stuck to their plan – they didn’t deviate OR give up, even when the cause appeared lost.
• They put the team’s needs/the task at hand (concentrating on the present) before themselves (witness Scott Parker taking a ball in the face from almost point blank range).
• They seem collectively immune to the media, their critics, their fans in the stadium and millions more watching on tv thought to the way they played, even if at a personal level it’s not the way they would choose.
• They took their scant opportunities when they arose.

Now think about your organisation or company…

• Do you have a clear plan?
• Do you stick to it or get thrown off-course too easily?
• Are you/your team members fully aligned to the goal, acting collaboratively?
• Do you/your team pay undue attention to others and dilute your efforts in order to ‘please others’?
• Are you/your team fleet of foot? Do you capitalise on opportunities when they arise? Or do you procrastinate/deliberate for too long and miss them?
• Are you/your team members focusing too much on the future and the past, derailing your current efforts?

Will England win the tournament? Will they even progress beyond the quarter final against Italy? Will they start to play attractive football? What we do know from the evidence so far is that they will be a  hard team to beat. They will formulate a plan, collectively stick to it, focus on the task at hand and give 100%.

Post a reply with your experience and thoughts. It will be great to hear from you.

High performing Leaders avoid the damaging effects of the Peter Principle in their company. Do you?

At your next board or management meeting take a look at your colleagues and as soon as you can, take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror too.  Then ask yourself if you or any of your colleagues is a living embodiment of the Peter Principle?

In their satirical book published in 1969 “The Peter Principle: why things always go wrong” Dr Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull explain the Peter Principle. Its main tenets are:

• employees rise in the organisation to their level of incompetence
• they tend to be promoted or given more authority until they are no longer capable of working competently
• productive work is typically carried out by those who have not been promoted to their level of incompetence
• competent employees ‘manage upwards’ to limit the impact of those who have reached their level of incompetence.

So take another look at your colleagues and then yourself. What behaviours should you be on the look out for to guard against the Peter Principle taking hold and damaging your company?

One example would be a colleague or you showing signs of ‘Hypercaninophobia Complex’. Dr. Peter explains this complex as a fear evident in a ‘superior’ when a ‘subordinate’ demonstrates strong leadership potential! Think Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby in BBC’s Yes, Minister/Yes Prime Minister. A second example would be not taking responsibility and blaming others, particularly more junior members of the team. This will give you an idea of what to look for.

While there is a humorous angle to the Peter Principle, there is of course a more serious point here and that is prior to promoting a colleague, ensure that they have sufficiently demonstrated the behaviour or skill required to be promoted to the next level. For instance, avoid promoting your top sales person to sales manager until they have demonstrated the management potential, otherwise you’ll have lost your best sales person and you’ll have a manager who can’t manage others. Find some other way to reward and acknowledge your top sales person’s performance in their current role. You’ll be saving yourself and your company time and money in the long run, not to mention keeping your employees as productive and as engaged as possible.

What’s your experience of the Peter Principle? Post a reply. It will be great to hear from you.