How well are you performing as a Leader? 20 statements to help you find out.

How often do you check the road-worthiness of your car? I know people who take better care of their vehicle than they do themselves – whether that be their health, work-life blend and leadership performance – and I expect you know someone like that too.

So for a 3-minute tune-up to assess your leadership performance, check out the following statements and see how many you say can honestly say yes to…

1. I have written SMART goals in my personal life. (Not sure? Click here to check out what SMART goals are).
2. I have written SMART goals in my work life.
3. I revisit my goals on a regular basis.
4. I have written down my top 5 personal values.
5. My personal values are aligned to my organisation’s values.
6. I behave in alignment with my personal and organisation’s values, consistently.
7. I am a level 5 Leader. (Not sure? Click here for Jim Collins’s leadership model).
8. I do what I say I will do, when I say I will do it, consistently
9. I know what emotional intelligence is and have completed an assessment.
10. I know what my drivers are. (Not sure? Click here for Kahler’s drivers).
11. I coach and mentor my team members.
12. I have regular 1-2-1 meetings with my team members.
13. My colleagues complete an annual 360 appraisal on my performance.
14. I invest time in personal development/continual professional development (CPD).
15. When I let down a colleague, I apologise and do what’s needed to put it right.
16. I listen to what others say, without interruption.
17. I practice situational management (Not sure? Click here for Blanchard’s model).
18. I encourage v constructively critique colleagues in a 3:1 ratio
19. I embody the top 4 leadership characteristics (Not sure? Click here for Kouzes & Posner’s top 4 checklist).
20. I believe my leadership role is to serve others, not myself.

How did you get on? What did you learn? Are you taking better care of your car’s road-worthiness than your own as a Leader? What will this encourage you to do and when?

If you would like to discuss any of these points, or would like help, post a reply or email me at markgrant1@me.com  Either way, it will be great to hear from you.

 

 

Are you making the transition from ‘technician’ to ‘manager’? Read on for help…

A coaching engagement five weeks ago with Jack, a manager leading a team of four colleagues within in a rapidly expanding marketing consultancy highlights some of the challenges that newly promoted technicians face in their first management role.

Articulate, intelligent and ambitious, Jack had built his reputation within the company on his technical knowledge. When we met he was facing a steep learning curve in his new role. When I asked him to clarify his main concerns, he identified three challenges…

1. How to delegate to his team colleagues without losing control
2. How to reposition the relationship with his team colleagues – formerly his peers.
3. How to control his mood and in particular his anxiety in relation to the first two concerns.

In discussing his challenges, Jack became aware that his mood was the cause and the result of his first two concerns. He felt that to break this repeating pattern of anxiety he wanted to  start with repositioning his relationship with his team and then focus on practicing delegation.

After two coaching sessions, Jack took the following actions…

1. He met with each team member on a 1-2-1 basis and clarified their expectations of him and his expectations of them.
2. He helped set and agree objectives/SMART goals with each member.
3. Jack also asked each team member how they would like him to manage them to achieve their goals as well as get the best out of them. In turn, he explained how they could get the best out of him and what his expectations of them were.
4. He agreed to discuss on a needs basis whether a task should be delegated or not.
5. He also agreed that that when tasks were delegated, to set milestones for review to ensure that the risk of failure and extended time-lines would be minimized.
6. He agreed to provide 1-2-1 feedback on their performance on a regular and on-going basis.
7. He also agreed that they could provide him with feedback to him on his performance as their manager.
8. Finally, he set a date to review with the team as a whole how they were performing in a month’s time.

A month on and Jack reports improvements in individual and team performance in accomplishing tasks. The relationship between him and his team members is more harmonious and has shifted. Jack feels less anxious. Does Jack feel everything is ‘fixed’? The answer is no – he feels he is adjusting well to his new role and so are his colleagues. It’s a work in progress, with a plan and review process.

Jack is referring to the excellent – yet short book – ‘Leadership and the One Minute Manager’, by Ken Blanchard to help him speed up his transition from technician to manager and practice delegation (or not, as the case may be).

If you have successfully made the transition from ‘technician’ to ‘manager’ what did you do to ease your journey? What have you learned on the way? If you’re making the transition right now, what will you do as a result of reading this post?

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.