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#Leadership : #WorkPlace Evolution- Your #TeamMembers Need To Disagree More. Here’s How To Help Them…You Do Want Everyone to Get on Board with Whatever Decision they Ultimately Reach Together. You just Don’t Want that to Happen Right Away.

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The most effective teams have regular, intense debates. The ability to disagree without causing offense is a crucial precondition for good communication and problem-solving. Yet whenever we ask the managers we speak with what they’d prefer–a team that’s almost always harmonious or one that has conflicts and arguments–the vast majority vote for the latter.

Not only is harmony overrated, but it undermines innovative thinking, particularly the kind that diverse work cultures are supposed to generate. Rather than encourage your team members to come to agreements quickly, effective managers do the reverse: They help their teams disagree–productively.

GROUND RULES FOR HEALTHY DEBATE

Teammates want the opportunity to challenge each other. As long as discussions are respectful and everyone gets a chance to contribute equally, most people thrive on this kind of debate, finding it not only intellectually stimulating but also helpful for unearthing the best solutions.

What’s more, teams typically feel more bonded and more effective when they have challenging discussions regularly, trading a wide range of ideas and perspectives. That’s even true when those debates get a little heated. After all, this is the whole point of diversity and inclusion–it’s about bringing in people whose points of view differ in order to spark new ideas and ways of looking at things. But facilitating these conversations takes some ground rules, like these:

  • Treat each other with respect, and challenge the position, not the person.
  • Listen to one another carefully before responding, and ask for clarification if needed. Gather facts; don’t jump to conclusions.
  • Come to the debate ready to present facts and data, not suppositions.
  • Do not compete to “win.” Debates are a chance to find and test the best ideas and to learn, not to score points.
  • After the team makes a decision collaboratively, everyone needs to respect and support it, even if they have their own reservations.

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SIX QUESTIONS FOR FACILITATING SMART DEBATES

Mark Beck is the CEO of JELD-WEN, a global window and door manufacturer with 20,000 employees. He believes it’s leaders’ jobs to step in and protect people when things get heated–which they sometimes still do, even after laying down solid guidelines.

In some cases, Beck says, he might take the side of a person whose view is under assault, even if he personally doesn’t necessarily agree with it. This isn’t gamesmanship, it’s to show that the person is offering up a reasonable way of thinking that should be respected. “The attacker usually steps back a little and softens their tone when a leader does that,” he told us.

And, Beck adds, managers must take the lead in getting everyone to participate by posing the right questions. Here are six great questions we’ve heard effective team leaders like Beck throw out in debates:

  1. That’s a good thought. Could you walk us through the process you went through to reach that conclusion?
  2. What rules should we be breaking here?
  3. What’s our biggest risk in this, and what’s our fallback position?’
  4. What if we did nothing at all–what would happen then?
  5. Are we missing or forgetting anything?
  6. Aside from earning us a profit, how would this decision change lives and make the world a better place?

Beck said that smart questions can encourage active debate when a team has plateaued or is stuck in a safe zone. At times of such inertia, he’ll tell his direct reports, “The only way you can get your topic on the management-team agenda is to frame it out as a question, and collectively we have to come up with an answer.”

CHANGING THE QUESTION

These six questions aren’t the end-all-be-all, though. Sometimes you need to reframe a question you’ve already asked and revisit it from a new angle.

The Best Team Wins: The New Science Of High Performance by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

When Beck arrived at JELD-WEN, the company’s focus was on getting ready to issue an initial public offering (IPO). He changed the question to, “How do we get ready to become a Fortune 500 company?” JELD-WEN did wind up issuing a very successful IPO in 2017, “but,” says Beck, “that’s been because we were focused on building a Fortune 500 company,” he said. “If we had just focused on the IPO and seen that as the finish line, I don’t think our story would have resonated with investors in the same way.”

And ironically enough, because his teams stick to respectful ground rules while they disagree, Beck estimates that they’re able to come to a consensus about 99% of the time. “If it’s done right, there’s usually no need for a leader to have to make a decision–it’s become obvious to everyone.”

And from there, Beck says, his job is actually pretty easy: “I might just say, ‘Let me summarize what I think we are all saying’.”

This article is adapted from The Best Team Wins: The New Science of High Performance by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. Copyright © 2018 by Gostick & Elton, IP, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

 

FastCompany.com | March 5, 2018 | BY ADRIAN GOSTICK AND CHESTER ELTON 4 MINUTE READ

 

 

#Leadership : What My Son With Autism Taught Me About #ManagingPeople …Recognizing & Working with Colleagues’ Different Cognitive Styles Helps Get the Most Out of Everyone.

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I like to think I was a considerate colleague when I worked in an office. I paid attention to cultural and gender differences. I made an effort to run inclusive meetings and write inclusive articles.

But for all my attention to diversity, I didn’t pay attention to one crucial form of difference: the way people think.

It took my autistic son to wake me up to the truth. For many years, I struggled with my son, who had been variously labeled “oppositional,” “difficult” or…well, there are words that we can’t put in a newspaper. We had hourly conflicts, and he had near-daily meltdowns.

It wasn’t until he received his first formal diagnosis—initially for ADHD, rather than autism—that I realized his brain was just wired differently from mine. I was able to recognize how often I was asking him to do something he couldn’t do, rather than something he wouldn’tdo. Even more important, I started to see the connection between his wiring and his talents, like his mathematical ability and his extraordinary vocabulary.

Once I recognized those distinctions as a mom, I started seeing them in my professional relationships, too. Just as my son had a learning and communications style of his own—and strengths that came along with it—my colleagues and I each had our own distinctive wiring that shaped how we approached the world. Recognizing that, and learning to deal with each other’s ways of thinking, makes for stronger understanding and smoother communication. And better business.

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Around the table

These different styles of thinking showed themselves most clearly in meetings. After my son’s diagnosis, I started to pay attention to how different members of the team did or didn’t participate in our regular sit-downs.

For instance, my own wiring pushes me to jump in, get as many of my ideas on the table as possible, and then push toward a decision. But one smart young man, who was absolutely brimming with ideas, wasn’t apt to speak during meetings. He once explained to me, “I need time to reflect before I’m ready to share my ideas.”

After that, I started breaking our meetings into two parts: part one to lay out our goals and any relevant background, plus invite ideas from people whose wiring was set up to present ideas the way I did. In part two, I’d invite input from those who needed time. Our meetings became much tighter and more effective, and we started to tap into the wisdom of our whole team.

Then there were those people—kinetic learners—who I realized aren’t built to sit still. To think or learn to their full ability, they need to move around, such as pacing or jiggling their knee or leaving the office at lunch to do a thousand-calorie workout.

I used to treat those colleagues like caged border collies who could wait until the weekend to run off all their energy. You could say I wasn’t the most understanding colleague, and sometimes manager.

Looked at Differently

About one-quarter of adults surveyed said they had at least one neurodiverse condition. Among those, the percentage saying that at their most recent employer they experienced:

*Multiple responses allowed.

Source: Wilder Research online survey of 437 adults, 2016

But with my new mind-set, I started to schedule walking meetings whenever I was huddling one-on-one and didn’t need to take a lot of notes; I used voice dictation on my phone to capture key takeaways as we walked.

Getting outside and moving around not only helped my kinetic colleagues think more clearly and creatively, but also helped me discover that moving around gets me thinking differently, too.

Another area helped by my new way of thinking involves nonverbal cues. It never dawned on me that many people’s wiring isn’t set up to read throat clearing or glances at a phone as signs that it’s time to wrap up a chat, so they need more direct signals. But now if I find someone isn’t picking up on my cues, I say explicitly, for instance, “I need to end our conversation now so that I can get back to work.”

Such a simple thing—but I was totally blind to it before my son opened my eyes.

Making things concrete

Turning this new lens on others inevitably led to turning it back on myself. In what ways was my wiring getting in the way? How was my way of thinking and relating to people keeping me from being as creative and productive as I could be?

I have always been someone who remembers ideas and theories more than facts and anecdotes, but I had never thought about how that affects my professional relationships. I just noticed that I often had to repeat an idea three or four times before my colleagues finally understood or retained it. “Why can’t they understand the idea of aggregating and tagging social-media content?” I might fret.

Once I started peppering my conversations with specific, concrete examples for each of my abstract ideas, I found my colleagues were much faster to embrace my ideas on everything from software projects to marketing campaigns.

Soon, it took fewer repetitions for me to get my ideas across—but I also became more patient with the repetition, because I realized that I wasn’t speaking their language.

As I became more conscientious about working with my colleagues’ diverse thinking styles, I also learned to acknowledge and ask for help with my own style—even when that help involved admitting a weakness. I have long realized that I have challenges with what psychologists call “executive function”—namely, the ability to break a project apart into component tasks and organize those tasks so that they can be completed on time. I’m the kind of person who has a messy desk and can easily miss deadlines, so I’ve gradually built up a set of digital tools and habits that mostly compensate for my state of mental disorganization.

Remind me

Once I embraced my new perspective, however, I stopped feeling like my executive-function issues were something to apologize for—just as I no longer expect my colleagues to apologize because they don’t speak quickly at meetings or prefer to walk and meet. I’m just wired differently. I still make an effort to keep myself organized by paying careful attention to my digital tool kit, but I supplement that with an additional strategy: openly acknowledging my limitations. When I start working with someone new, I let them know that I am not great at keeping track of tasks and details, so I invite them to remind me if anything slips.

Recognizing all these variations hasn’t crowded out my concern for other kinds of diversity in the workplace. I don’t have a whole lot of patience for using differences in thinking as an excuse for gender bias or cultural insensitivity.

If anything, noticing different thinking styles has helped me become more effective in working across a wide range of differences within the workplace. The more I acknowledge and embrace my colleagues’ quirks—not to mention my own—the more I’m able to tap into their unique strengths.

Ms. Samuel is a technology researcher and the author of “Work Smarter With Social Media.” Email her at reports@wsj.com.

WSJ.com |  By Alexandra Samuel  

#Leadership : The Secret To #Teamwork Isn’t Managing Personalities Stop Trying to Turn Everyone into “Team Players.”…Here’s How to Set a Baseline that Everybody can Commit To–No Matter How Different they Are.

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When I started out as an illustrator and designer, I focused way too much on myself. I thought I was only expected to do the work I was skilled at, figuring that the task of getting everyone on my team to pull together was our boss’s job, not mine.

That assumption wound up hurting me. I didn’t understand how to communicate. I followed my own agenda, unwittingly adding to team drama with unhelpful gossip. And when one of my first performance reviews included a critique from my supervisor that I wasn’t a “team player,” I actually took it as a compliment: “Team players” were losers, and I was a uniquely gifted winner. I quit soon afterward.

It took me a while to shake that egotism–and learn not only that teamwork makes everybody’s work better, but also that you don’t have to surrender your personality to be a team player. As a manager, I’ve since learned how to ask employees to focus more on their team without having to downplay their individual strengths and quirks. The secret is simple: It all comes down to the norms you set.

Related: 6 Leadership Styles And When You Should Use Them

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR NORMS

Norms, for starters, are expected shared behavior. No matter what they consist of, they’re the known but mostly unspoken “way we do things around here.”

Teams can have strikingly different social behaviors and still produce exceptional work. I’ve seen teams with an informal brainstorming process–they always went off track during team meetings–be just as successful as extremely formal teams that were totally goal-focused. What matters isn’t the style of behavior, but that all team members feel good about that style.

This also leaves room for individuals to improvise and do their own thing. If one team member’s approach to a certain task differs from her coworkers but they’re similar in style (if not substance), chances are they’ll still be able to collaborate. The norms govern a certain set of behaviors that bind the team members together. As long as everyone’s broadly in sync with them, you won’t need to spell out a best practice for every single task or activity. In general, norms must accomplish these five things:

  1. Guide how much personal sharing is part of team meetings.
  2. Determine how critical feedback is shared and how praise is used.
  3. Keep the group from splitting into cliques and factions.
  4. Be inclusive and serve as a binding agent that holds everyone together, even when opinions differ significantly.
  5. Prove strong enough to ensure that even divisive opinions are respected and encouraged (since they’re often where the best solutions come from).

If a team member or leader breaks with these norms, they do so at the risk of diverting the team’s attention away from the shared goal. Best of all? Encouraging and enforcing your team norms frees managers from having to do the impossible and “manage” their team members’ personalities.

Related: How To Manage Somebody You Just Don’t Like

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EMBODYING YOUR TEAM’S NORMS

Once you’ve identified your norms, it’s easy to draw up more specific guidelines that reflect them. Here are a few that I’ve found are especially helpful for managing teams of creative people whose personalities may be more likely to clash:

Manners matter. Civility provides a feeling of safety. Once civility becomes the norm, it’s easier for team members to do work that challenges each other as well as conventional wisdom. As long as you can be civil in the way you disagree with each other, you can put forward radically different ideas in pursuit of a shared goal.

Inclusion. If civility helps everyone feel respected by their coworkers, inclusion is what lets everybody feel equally valued and empowered. In meetings, for example, this norm might dictate that all team members speak for roughly an equal amount of time. Those who really listen to each other feel respected, included, and at ease sharing decision-making power evenly.

Dependability. For the team to succeed, each member must not only commit to doing their share of the work, they must also complete it on time. The simple tenet of always doing your part and honoring your commitments is fundamental to any cohesive team.

Role clarity. Each team member has to know their own role, be completely committed to it, and understand how it supports the roles of the others. This is what gives team members confidence in their value to the group and in their colleagues’ contributions.

Related: How To Communicate With The Five Most Common Personality Types In Your Office

Higher purpose. Everybody needs to grasp why we’re doing what we’re doing and believe that it matters. That underlying sense of purpose is (ideally, anyway) what motivates everyone to make an earnest effort individually.

Honest critique. This one is sometimes under-appreciated, but effective teamwork depends on being able to step back and question how the work is progressing and whether it’s serving the goals. Effective critiques challenge and examine different approaches, thinking, and methods, sometimes leading to a change in direction. This type of feedback needs to focus on the work, not the person who did it; done wrong, criticism can stir up vulnerable feelings of not being good enough rather than strengthen everybody’s stake in the process.

Healthy controversy. Seemingly risky or silly ideas are essential to collaboration. Encourage your team members to ask challenging questions and look for unusual solutions. A committed, supportive team creates an emotional environment where controversy can flourish and be positively channeled.

No bad behavior. Damaging interpersonal behavior is off-limits. That means no personal gossip, no back-channeling, no undermining, and no shaming or blaming.

You’ll notice that these norms and guidelines don’t have much to say on the question of personality type–and that’s by design. Rather than managers or team members adapting their approach to the personality of whoever they’re working with at a given moment, norms set a common baseline. This way, everyone knows how to behave to be a “team player”–even though they may be a proud individualist at the same time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ted Leonhardt is a designer and illustrator, and former global creative director of FITCH Worldwide. He is the publisher of NAIL, a magazine for creative professionals.

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FastCompany.com | January 9, 2017

Your #Career : How to Build a Positive Relationship With Your Boss and Colleagues…Mutual Respect Makes the Office Much More Pleasant.

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In the past, an employee’s relationship with their direct supervisor was found to be one of the most influential factors on whether or not the employee enjoyed their job. Over time, this dynamic has somewhat changed.

Angle view of a business team discussing the future of their company on the foreground

In recent years, relationships with colleagues have become increasingly influential in the perception of job satisfaction. Part of this has to do with younger generational workers highly valuing collegial relationships — as demonstrated by their desire to work together on tasks more than Gen X or Boomers do.

Another aspect is that, in many settings, there is a greater amount of cross-departmental collaboration that creates more than one reporting relationship. For example, a team member in customer service may work with marketing to give input on how to market to existing clients, and the marketing supervisor oversees the project.

 

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Related: Building Healthy Relationship Requires Collaboration and Mutual Appreciation

Another factor that may reduce the importance of the relationship with one’s direct supervisor or boss is the myriad of ways an employee is assessed in today’s workplaces — including 360 degree feedbacks and other objective measures of work. A few thoughts about how to build a positive reporting relationship, even in shifting times:

  1. Be appreciative. Bosses and supervisors don’t hear thanks very often. They hear a lot of complaining and problems they are expected to solve. Occasionally thanking someone — and being specific as to why you are thanking them — can go a long way to start to build a positive relationship.
  2. Be respectful. One of the most common complaints I hear from supervisors, especially in cross-generational relationships, is that they feel disrespected. Most of us aren’t sure what makes us feel respected, but we clearly know when we feel it. Having a general conversation with your boss about actions that lead them to feel respected or disrespected would be wise.
  3. If you are going to raise a concern, make sure it is specific, not vague and general, and that it is a behavior or issue your boss can address. Don’t whine about management or a colleague in another department, where your supervisor has no influence.
  4. Do your job well, and be willing to go above and beyond. Remember, you are there to accomplish tasks and do them well. When you do quality work and, at least occasionally, do more than is required, you make your boss look good to his or her colleagues and supervisor.

Related: 9 Habits That Destroy Workplace Relationships

The goal of building a positive relationship with your boss isn’t try to suck up to them and win undue favoritism. The purpose is to develop a healthy, positive relationship of mutual respect, which will lead to better communication, the ability to work through disagreements and can build a partnership where you can support one another through difficult times.

Entrepreneur.com | December 9, 2016 | Paul White

#Leadership : How Successful Leaders Communicate With Their Teams…Choosing your Medium — Text or In-Person? — and Keeping your Message Decisive and Focused are Just Two of the Key Strategies.

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One of the most critical factors for your success as a leader will be how you communicate with your team. On a primary level, communication is all about exchanging information, whether that means brainstorming as a group, delegating responsibilities, setting expectations or alerting others to a problem.

It might be awkward to call out an employee, but it will make the team stronger

Related: 5 Ways to Effectively Communicate With Employees

The completeness, accuracy, timing and form of your messages will directly affect how your plans are carried out.

Beyond that, how you communicate can play a massive role in the morale of your team — how you treat your employees will have a direct impact in how they respect you, respect one another and ultimately perform on the job.

So, what is it that makes successful leaders so good at communication? What strategies are they using?

 

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Strategies for success 

Take a look at some of the most successful communicators around you (and those in a bigger spotlight), and you’ll see the following traits:

Choose your mediums carefully. First, make sure you’re considering your medium(s) carefully. Being able to send out a mass text or voice message to your employees is important. These channels are appropriate for notifying your team of a last-minute meeting change but wouldn’t be for sending out the scope of a new project.

In the same way, email isn’t the best way to start a long back-and-forth conversation — especially if it concerns a sensitive subject. Learn to read the situation and decide on the appropriate medium; in the right form, your message’s effectiveness will spread.

Consider your tone and direction. This is especially important when speaking to someone face-to-face. When delivering messages, remember what you’re trying to accomplish and how you may come across. For example, if an employee has done subpar work or missed a deadline, you want that person to improve so the problem doesn’t happen again; you don’t want this employee to merely feel guilty about the error.

Frame your wording to achieve this goal; instead of scolding or reprimanding, use a friendlier tone with a corrective direction. You’ll accomplish far more, make your intentions clear and preserve morale this way.

Related: 4 Strategies to Connect With Millennials

Be as concise as possible. Good leaders strive to remain as concise as possible. Speaking and writing concisely is all about conveying as much information as possible in the smallest possible space, which saves time and maximizes the effectiveness of your writing. Grammarly has a fantastic article worth the read if you’re interested in digging into how to become a more concise communicator.

Keep your messaging decisive and focused. When writing or giving a message, you need to be decisive and focused, which means avoiding rambling, or working through a problem out loud. Speak only when you have something meaningful to say, and make sure your point is clear to whomever you’re speaking with. You can use a service like Evernote to better organize your thoughts, tasks and goals, and work on defining your thoughts in firmer frameworks this way.

Be proactive. Telling someone about a new project requirement isn’t effective if that someone is already halfway through the job. Try to be as proactive as possible by telling your employees early on what you expect from them. Set your expectations long before any actions are taken; and when something comes up, let your team know about it as soon as possible.

One easy way to put this into practice is to set more alerts on your phone and make use of calendar apps; this will force you to consider the timing of your messages, especially for things like follow-ups.

Always be available for conversation. This is important for building morale within your team. You can’t possibly be available for conversation 100 percent of the time, but you need to make your team feel comfortable communicating with you. Show patience and appreciation for their thoughts and opinions, and they’ll be more willing to share with you when they have a problem, when they need help or when they see something that can be improved.

Listen actively to every team member. Finally, listen actively to every member of your team. All team members are valuable, and their diverse range of opinions will open you up to new ideas and help you see flaws and inconsistencies you were previously blind to. Do this early and often to build trust within your team.

Executing the model

If these actions look intimidating to you, or you don’t have a track record of successful communication, don’t worry. Nobody is born an effective communicator; just as it takes us time to develop our understanding and use of language, it takes time to refine our skills as efficient communicators.

Related: Why ‘CEO’ Really Means Chief Communication Officer

With practice and dedication to improving your abilities, you can become a communicative and respectable leader in your environment.

 

Entrepreneur.com | November 30, 2016 | Larry Alton

 

#Leadership : Three Ways To Turn Around A Team In Turmoil…At times of Crisis, Leaders have a Tendency to Batten Down the Hatches, Bark Orders, and Assign Blame. Those are All Bad Moves.

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When your team is in trouble, it may seem like any way out is a good way out. It often isn’t. Taking a team in the right direction is crucial at any time, but when the pressure is high and things aren’t going well, getting everyone back on track is especially difficult.

top view, group of students together at school table working homework and have fun

Here are a few ways to do that, without falling prey to the common mistakes managers often make when trying to set things aright.

1. LOOK AT PROCESS, NOT JUST PEOPLE

When something goes wrong, too many leaders seek to blame others—it’s an understandable instinct. First reactions in crisis situations are often about sorting out what went wrong and assigning fault. And to be sure, sometimes it really is a person or group of people who screwed up. But often it’s the systems or processes they work within that’s enabled their missteps.

It helps to zoom out a bit before pointing fingers. Take these steps right away:

  1. Closely examine your current strategy. How well was your team executing it before things went awry? What changed? Consider those execution methods from the perspective of your current situation to determine whether changing circumstances have made them less effective.
  2. Next, analyze the impact of the work of your team, partners, and customers. Where did the results start slipping or sales begin to fall off?
  3. Finally, evaluate your present capabilities. Despite the bad turn, what’s your current capacity to execute? What assets and resources do you still have at your command to try something new?

This assessment of your processes should make it easier to take a fresh look at your team’s or company’s strategy, so you can make decisions about how to move forward that aren’t based on personalities or office politics. Usually if there’s turmoil, it means that there’s a part of your process that hasn’t worked as intended for longer than you’d realized. But you need to pin that down before making rash choices. When decisions are made in haste without understanding their full impact, even the most effective leaders fail to get their teams back on track.

In 2009, Ed Whitacre was appointed as the chairman of General Motors when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. He immediately combined GM’s sales and marketing organization under one leader—a hasty decision that turned out to be wrong. A few months later, GM had to split up sales and marketing again.

As Bloomberg reported, “Whitacre realized that all of the change had rattled the workforce, so he sent a companywide email: ‘A smart company changes and adapts to the needs of the business. So, while there will always be individual moves within GM, I want to reassure you that the major leadership changes are behind us.'” It took a lot more than his email to reassure Whitacre’s team, but ultimately, under his direction, the company went on to an enormous, $20-billion IPO under his direction.

 

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2. REVISIT YOUR SHARED PURPOSE—AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO CHANGE IT

When we find some common reasons to be optimistic, we’re often able to channel that positive energy into finding a solution. Morale sinks when things go wrong, so it’s essential to reinvest in a shared purpose before moving ahead. Many leaders already know they need to emphasize their team’s shared vision in times of turmoil, but few do it the right way. You need to explain in concrete, practical terms how the changes underway tie into your company’s redefined objectives—what new steps need to be taken, and how those steps should be executed.

After all, sometimes your sense of purpose does need redefining. It may be that a pivot is exactly what the doctor ordered. It might actually be a bad idea to return to underscoring your core vision if that vision has steered you wrong. In the rush to blame “bad apples,” this is something struggling companies tend to miss.

Instead, effective leaders re-instill self-worth in their teams by making them feel good about the urgency that the task at hand requires of them. Get comfortable with the reality that in the face of crisis, the future is often hazy—then ask your team to embrace that uncertainty, too, showing how confident you are that they can pull it off. Leaders don’t necessarily need to singlehandedly push their organizations in a new direction, just keep a steady ship as the crew does the steering together.

3. START EXPERIMENTING AND DELEGATING RESPONSIBILITIES

Change may or may not be woven into the fabric of your company culture, but sometimes circumstances require it. Whatever the case, it can be a good thing. People often learn more about each other when they have to change together. And a crisis is arguably the best time to instill this team-building attitude. This way, when turmoil hits next time, your organization will be better equipped to carry itself through.

To do that, leaders may need to do theopposite of what they’re used to doing during tough times; instead of buckling down, handing out directives, and showing “strong” leadership, it may be better to start experimenting and giving others more responsibility, not less.

After all, the worst thing you can do is fall back on the old ways of working—the ones that got you into this pickle in the first place. It’s often at the edge of a crisis where the most innovative solutions are found. When things are going well, innovation tends to offer incremental benefits, but when we need to make wholesale changes fast, the ability to experiment can sometimes transform even the most dire situations.

But in those situations, leadership usually doesn’t come from just one person. Leaders and managers may not be in best positions to see the disruptive parts of the puzzle themselves. If every team member is encouraged to speak up and has the authority to take on their own portion of problem-solving themselves, the solution can be all the more robust.

When a team owns the route out of the quagmire, they’ll be better experienced at climbing out of the next one they stumble into.

Serial entrepreneur Faisal Hoque is the founder of Shadoka, which enables entrepreneurship, growth, and social impact. He is the author of Everything Connects: How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation, and Sustainability (McGraw-Hill) and other books. Use the Everything Connects leadership app for free.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Faisal Hoque. All rights reserved.

 

FastCompany.com |  FAISAL HOQUE  |  10.14.16 5:00 AM

 

#Leadership : 3 Things Leaders Must Consider For The Sharing Economy…A Constantly Changing Landscape Needs People who are Willing and Able to Constantly Change with It —People who can Adapt Not Only as Individuals, But also as Teams. They Must be Adaptable, Resilient and Curious Enough to Learn So as to Embrace Change Quickly and Continue On.

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With teams on the rise in business today according to research by this article, people must be able to coordinate disparate interests, communicate across silos and do so without the added advantage of a stable team environment. After all, the business environment of today is anything but steady—it’s fast moving, constantly changing and a bit chaotic.

Clockwork

If, for example, you work in a hospital where your team changes every shift, then every time it disbands and re-bands there are new interpersonal dynamics to learn, new skills and competencies, new mindsets and fears that you must re-familiarize yourself with every time.

The problem is, in such fast moving environments, there’s no time to learn about each other’s backstory or practice working together. You must be able to work together before called upon because otherwise the patient (client) suffers.

A constantly changing landscape needs people who are willing and able to constantly change with it —people who can adapt not only as individuals, but also as teams. They must be adaptable, resilient and curious enough to learn so as to embrace change quickly and continue on.

However, it’s not simply up to each and every individual to “get there” but rather organizational leaders to set the right environment for such behaviors to occur. Here are three considerations for doing so:

Knowledge feeds knowledge. When you know more, you more you want to know. In a study conducted by psychologist George Loewenstein, subjects were divided into two groups. In the first group, each participant was placed in front of a computer whose screen was segmented into 50 different squares. Behind each square was a different animal, so every time a participant clicked on a square, a new animal was revealed. After a few clickthroughs the participants stopped clicking because they knew what to expect.

Now, compare this with the second group who faced similar computers with 50 squares on the screen again. Except this time, behind each square was a picture of the same animal. What happened? Every participant clicked through because their curiosity was heightened the more information they received. Information enabledprogress, just as it does for people in your team. That’s why…

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Knowledge is not power. Yes, you read that correctly–knowledge is not power. The old adage that knowledge is power is no longer relevant in a world of interconnectivity and global dispersion . If you’re holding onto information because you think it’ll protect your own interests, think again. Knowledge enables. Knowledge arms. Knowledge feeds knowledge , just as we saw above. It builds the capacity for others to build theirs. Unless you want to be bogged down with information overwhelm anddecision fatigue, you must share what you know with others to:

  1. Avoid duplicated tasks
  2. Maximize time and reduce wasted costs
  3. Stay sane

The increased rate of technology today beckons more subject matter experts to be able to “diagnose” technology, but the global dispersion of information warrants generalists who can assimilate those unique pieces of information and fit them into a larger puzzle. What this means is that people must learn how to team, how to share information and fill each other’s knowledge gaps.

Teaming is a skill. There’s a realization taking place in business today. Companies are realizing that the hierarchy in which they’re structured isn’t how work actually get things done. Instead, work is accomplished through clusters of relationships; through teams of people—it always has and most likely always will. This has profound impacts for competitive advantage because if these clusters aren’t leveraged for their scalability then that means the tacit knowledge held amongst these networks can’t be shared. Relationships are sources of intimate knowledge, which is a challenge for any leader to set a psychologically safe environment for people to share what’s on their minds with the team rather than at the bar, I mean, water cooler.

The ability to team is a learned skill–one that starts by sharing information and trusting each other to share.

Jeff is the author of Navigating Chaos: How To Find Certainty in Uncertain Situations and former Navy SEAL who helps business teams find clarity.

Forbes.com | September 12, 2016 | Jeff Boss

#Leadership : Leadership Lessons From The Man Who Runs The U.S. Olympic Track Team….CEO Max Siegel Shares his Strategies for Managing a Team on a High-Stakes Project: the Olympics.

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At this moment, 129 American track and field athletes are settling into their living quarters in Rio de Janeiro as part of the 555-person strong Team U.S.A. They are getting acclimated to the weather and training daily, using every last minute to prepare physically and mentally for one of the most important events of their lives. But behind the scenes, Max Siegel has been planning this moment for years.

Olympics 2016

Siegel is the CEO of U.S.A. Track and Field (USATF), the governing body for runners in the U.S. The nonprofit organization serves 41 million people who love to run—from amateurs to professionals—providing them with opportunities to compete in marathons and races. Siegel has been instrumental in helping the organization take on a more entrepreneurial outlook, building the sport into a brand and helping lock down sponsorship deals. On top of that, Siegel must also help discover the nation’s Olympians and give them the support that they need to thrive at the Games.

Max Siegel

The final list of qualifying athletes is decided right before the Olympics begin. These individuals represent a wide range of disciplines, including marathon runners, sprinters, high jumpers, pole vaulters, shot-putters, and more. “There’s literally a month between the time that people qualify and we go to the Games,” Siegel says. “The very last race in our Olympic trials ends, and they go directly to Olympic training camp.”

Once the team is selected, Siegel and his staff spin into action, managing the elaborate logistics of bringing the team to the host country. Though Siegel’s tips for leading a group of runners to success might seem specific to the sports world’s greatest show on earth, we think they can be useful to any professionals who manage projects that are short but intense, with many moving parts (think organizing a conference or overseeing a quarterly earnings report).

ALWAYS LOOK FOR TALENT

While the Olympic Games happen once every four years, Siegel says his team is constantly preparing for it. Finding the highest-caliber athletes for the Games means being on the lookout for elite runners, recruiting them, and preparing them to compete in the Olympic trials when the time comes. This means tracking students as young as middle- and high-school age who show serious promise. “There’s a pretty robust and thorough analysis of the talent,” he says, explaining that he has experts on staff who are single-handedly focused on assessing every aspect of an athlete’s capabilities.

Siegel says that USATF is extremely judicious about only reaching out to people they really believe will have a successful career in sports because of the sacrifices demanded. Teens may postpone higher education, and those who do go to college will struggle to balance their studies and the rigors of training. Of course, not all athletes are young. The U.S. is sending runners in their forties to Rio, including Bernard Lagat, who qualified for his fifth Olympics at the age of 41. These more seasoned athletes also have to give things up, including time at their jobs or with their families.

Chaunté Lowe in 2016

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EQUIP YOUR TEAM

Once the team is chosen, Siegel needs to make sure that they have every resource at their disposal to succeed. Since the team comes together right before the Olympic Games, USATF must equip itself in advance with tools. “When they matriculate into our program, we give them support,” he says. “This means coaching, training, medical attention, and biomechanical sports-science help.”

But tools aren’t just physical. To prepare teams to go overseas for events, USATF also helps with language and cultural training. Since the athletes will be ambassadors for their country, it is important that they understand the nuances of local culture. This is particularly useful to athletes who are young or not particularly well-traveled.

Since Olympic athletes are not paid by the International Olympic Committee to appear at the games, they need to generate their own funds to attend. Many runners rely on prize money from other races or seek out sponsorship or endorsement deals. In his time as CEO, Siegel has made it a priority to make USAFT more attractive to companies. “It’s been about creating a brand that’s connected to the idea of excellence,” he says. “This has allowed us to partner with best-in-class companies like Visa, Rosetta Stone, and Hershey.”

Nike has always been one of the USATF’s biggest sponsors. But over the last five years, Siegel has helped negotiate a contract with the brand that has been called one of the most lucrative deals in Olympic history: It ensures that every qualifying athlete will receive a sum of money. (He declined to tell me exactly how much.) “Athletes that make our World Championship or Olympic teams get pretty significant compensation,” Siegel says. In return, Nike will outfit Team U.S.A. for the Olympic Games.

In addition to snagging funds for individual athletes, Siegel also pushed through a separate contract for USATF with Nike that’s worth a reported $500 million and will be in effect from 2017 to 2040. This has improved his organization’s ability to support its entire constituency of runners.

Justin Gatlin

ON GAME DAY, ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS

Finally, the team heads to the Olympics. Once on site, the USATF’s main goal is to ensure that athletes focus on their event. This means cutting out any possible worry or distraction.

One of the competitors’ biggest sources of concern is their families. While spouses, parents, and siblings often come to show their support and participate in the historic moment, Olympians can lose focus by imagining what their loved ones might be up to, or worrying that they might not be enjoying themselves. So in 2012, Siegel launched a new program in which one group of USATF staff is entirely devoted to making sure families are comfortable and occupied. Staff members take these relatives sightseeing, for instance, and shuttle them to events.”The athletes have grandma and grandpa there, whom they love,” Siegel explains. “They’re worried about them and whether they will be able to get from point A to point B. They feel an emotional obligation to them.”

Siegel has also had to manage some of the crises surrounding the Rio Games, including the Zika virus. His strategy has been to keep all the athletes informed of the latest health information from the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health. “We don’t want them to be distracted by the media,” he says.

USE THE MOMENTUM TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD

Because the USATF’s Olympic team comes together so late, the organization doesn’t have much time to promote them before the Games begin and get the public excited about them like they are for, say, swimmers and gymnasts. New elite runners come to the world’s attention as their events unfold, so Siegel’s responsibility is to keep enthusiasm (and sponsorship interest) high after the Games. “Stars are born, and you need to ride that momentum afterwards,” he says.

Over the course of the Games, Siegel and his staff familiarize themselves with the athletes’ personal stories so they can keep these narratives alive when they return to the U.S. The USATF pitches these individuals hard to television, social media, newspapers, and magazines. “They might have a unique backstory or an interesting way that they train,” he says. “We don’t want to waste the moment.”

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FastCompany.com | August 2, 2016 | ELIZABETH SEGRAN

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#Leadership : 5 Things That Scare the Hell Out of Your Manager…You’re Expected to Produce Results and On Top of All That, Don’t Forget you Need to Make Sure your Employees are Happy, Productive, and Making Your Boss Happy.

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Being in charge can be scary. When you’re thrust into the position of manager, boss, CEO, etc., you’re suddenly not just punching the clock when you come into work — you’re expected to produce results and keep the whole operation from imploding. Leadership positions, though typically coveted for their prestige and higher pay, can be extremely stressful for those reasons. To put it simply, being the boss isn’t always the cakewalk you may have assumed it is.

Free- Women walking on Narrow Bridge

But there are some very specific fears that your manager or boss has related to their job. When you’re at the apex of an organization — or even a specific part of an organization — there are threats coming at you from all sides. You may have enemies among the ranks, sniping for your job. Something unexpected can happen, making you appear totally incompetent. Or, you might even sabotage yourself by believing you’re not good enough for the role.

 

On top of all that, don’t forget you need to make sure your employees are happy, productive, and making your boss happy.

But for the things that managers and those in leadership positions fear the most, we can look to a 2014 survey of 116 executives by Roger Jones, CEO of London-based consulting company Vantage Hill Partners. His findings, which he wrote about for the Harvard Business Review, revealed a handful of specific, key fears that many leaders had in common. Here are those five fears.

1. “Imposter syndrome”

If you’re not familiar with Imposter Syndrome, it refers to the feeling or idea that you’re not actually qualified for the job you have, or possess any kind of authority. You feel like an imposter — a fraud. And this is a big problem for many executives, according to Jones’s survey. In fact, it was the biggest and most prevalent fear among his respondents. “This fear diminishes their confidence and undermines relationships with other executives,” Jones wrote.

 

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2. Underachieving

When you’re in charge, you have more skin in the game. No longer can you show up to work, clock in, screw around for hours, and then feign effort to skate by. No, as a member of management and the leadership team, you’re now more invested in the organization, and that means seeing it grow and prosper. The biggest fear related to that? Coming up short, or underachieving. Many people who make it into management are overachievers to begin with, and to get a big promotion and then fail? It can be crushing.

3. Mutiny

Every workplace has its internal politics, and when you’re at the head of the table, many other people are going to be gunning for you. They might want to take your place, or simply see you fail. Perhaps it’s a jealousy issue, or some sort of personal vendetta. Either way, there’s going to be uneasiness among the ranks, and if it isn’t quickly snuffed out, you can end up with a mutiny on your hands. That is a real fear for many managers and bosses.

4. Looking stupid

Shame — or the avoidance of shame — is one of the primary factors that motivates our behavior. Nobody wants to look stupid or feel embarrassed, and we’ll do almost anything we can to avoid it. You probably lay awake at night, replaying some humiliating thing that happened to you as a child. Well, imagine something similar happening to you as the head of a workplace, or as the guy or gal in charge. You’ll never live it down.

Everyone’s afraid of looking stupid or incompetent.

5. Looking weak

Looking stupid in front of your employees is scary. But so is looking or feeling weak and powerless. Have you ever served under a boss or manager who wasn’t respected? You could walk all over them, and so could everyone else. That can be emasculating, deflating, and make you feel toothless — which makes it a very real, and very frightening fear for the people in charge.

Follow Sam on Facebook and Twitter @SliceOfGinger

CheatSheet.com | August 2, 2016 | Sam Becker

#Leadership : 7 Telltale Signs That You Have a Leader’s Mindset…Being a Great Leader is about Setting your Ego Aside and Putting your Team First. It’s About being Present in your Interactions. Most of All, It’s about Looking for Ways to Help your Employees Become the Best Versions of Themselves they can Possibly Be.

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Great performers don’t always make great leaders. Need proof? Just look to the sports world. Wayne Gretzky, Isaiah Thomas and Kevin McHale — all legendary athletes whose on-the-field success didn’t translate to storied coaching careers.

Free- Pull Tab on Can

Leadership, it turns out, is its own distinct set of skills — skills that can be cultivated and developed, just like any other. To paraphrase the great Vince Lombardi, leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And it all starts with the right mindset.

More than anything, leadership is just that — a state of mind. It’s the lens through which you see the world and the beliefs you bring to all your interactions with your team.

So how do you know if you have the leader’s mindset? Here are the seven telltale signs that you have the right frame of mind to be the leader your team needs.

1. You stop craving credit.
I’m not saying you defer it. I’m saying you literally stop craving it altogether. For leaders, credit becomes increasingly unimportant over time. In its stead, a desire to do the work you were meant to do, to the very best of your ability.

To a large degree, great leaders separate outcomes from their activity entirely and derive satisfaction from the work itself.

 

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2. You become more cheerleader/coach than player.
You realize it’s not about the work you do, but rather it’s about the quality of the work that others around you do.

This means you’re not focused on building presentations, creating systems documentation or making sales calls. Instead, you’re focused on creating the best culture and environment for your people to thrive. You’re inspiring and setting a vision that rallies people to become the best version of themselves. You’re removing obstacles from your team so they can do in the most unobstructed manner possible.

Great leaders focus less on doing and more on getting others to do their best.

3. You care about how you make others feel.
You understand that people like you primarily as a result of how you make them feel, and not how you look or how smart or cool you appear to be. It’s fine to have an edge, and it’s good to be bold, but good leaders are keenly aware of how people feel in their presence.

4. You begin to crave criticism.
Leaders are curious about criticism rather than defensive towards it. In fact, the best leaders actively seek it out because they know that criticism means there is likely an opportunity for growth and improvement. Remember, in every critical interaction, there is the potential for growth by the critic, the person being critiqued (aka, you) — or both!

The common thread….By now you’ve probably noticed a through line — it’s not about you.

5. You lead with curiosity.
This is especially relevant when dealing with people. Good leaders always give people the unreasonable benefit of the doubt. You should never lead with assumptions, unless they are positive ones.

Curiosity is a state of mind that not only makes you playful and interested, it ensures you’re always present. Many leaders feel a certain pressure to be perfect. They feel the company looking up to them and like they have to be on their A-game all the time.

But as my recent podcast guest Marcia Reynolds says in her latest book The Discomfort Zone, your team wants you to be present more than they need you to be perfect. Approaching everything with curiosity ensures that this is always the case.

6. Helping your team find their unique abilities is a top priority.
You realize one of your most important objectives is to help people find what energizes them the most, and then effectively aligning resources so they can spend most of their time doing those things (or more likely, that one thing).

This will not only give your team the greatest gift you can give them — the opportunity to do what they were put on Earth to do — it will also have wide ranging impact on your organization. When people are focused on their unique abilities, and not wasting their precious energy on things they don’t like or aren’t good at, magic happens.

7. You think about the long-term significance of your actions.
Good leaders are obsessed with timescale and the significance of their activities in the long run. If you’re keenly aware of the impact your actions of today will have on the future, you’re on the right track. You don’t sweat those actions that don’t create any future impact — like most emails.

You understand that as a leader, it’s most important for you to spend the majority of your time on what will matter three, six and twelve months from now. You hire people to worry about the hours, days, weeks and months. The significance and timescale of your activities will define your impact as a leader.

Extra credit –– You understand that your people want to see you live a rich life.
That is, they want to see that you’re not just a great professional, but someone who lives a full, rich life — someone who has a great and loving marriage/relationship, someone who is peaceful and tranquil throughout the day (showing mental and emotional health), and someone who takes care of themselves by eating properly and working out.

Why is this important? Because consciously or not, your employees follow your example, and focusing on having a well-rounded life gives them permission to have a well-rounded life as well.

Gone are the days when your employees are cool with their leader being really good at work, but terrible at everything else. That inspires very few. Great leaders take care of their people and themselves. Part of what we provide at SnackNation is the ability to demonstrate to your team that it’s not all about work; things like health, nutrition and well-being not only support performance, but are just as valuable, if not more so.

The common thread….By now you’ve probably noticed a through line — it’s not about you.

Being a great leader is about setting your ego aside and putting your team first. It’s about being present in your interactions. Most of all, it’s about looking for ways to help your employees become the best versions of themselves they can possibly be.

 

Entrepreneur.com | August 2, 2016 | Sean Kelly