Articles on leadership

We have written several articles on leadership topics that we are particularly interested in. We also discuss our current interests and focus points on our leadership blog.

Our articles include:

Leadership for Women: Essential Female Leadership Traits vs. Female Socialization

Tenacity vs. compliance
Women have been taught to be compliant rather than to persist and persevere for what we believe. Tenacity is essential for women to get comfortable with in order to be seen as credible. This goes hand-in-hand with a wilingness to really compete.

Communicate from a place of certainty about yourself vs. "Don’t brag”
Leadership for women feels like foreign ground for some women when they need to highlight  their accomplishments. Being willing to report out their accomplishments needs to become as normal as breathing.

Asking vs. attaining by merit only - Assignments, promotions or salary. “I shouldn't have to ask. My boss should realize I deserve this.”
Women need to get past the idea that they can earn what they deserve through merit alone. Women need to get comfortable being able to ask for deserved promotions etc. in order to not be regularly overlooked

Lead vs. help
Men are very conscious of hierarchy. Women tend to ignore hierarchy and believe that it is unimportant. Men see women’s reluctance to grasp for the upper hand as a sign of weakness. We need to understand this as we strive to excel in a hierarchy.

Setting direction vs. "Be cooperative and build consensus with everyone."
Building consensus with everyone, while great in theory, is not always time effective and looks indecisive from the male viewpoint. When men see a woman gather people together for every decision they conclude that this is a person who cannot make a decision.

Setting limits vs. "It's not nice to say 'no'.  people won't like you."
Often women find themselves having to say “no” or set limits/boundaries in leadership roles. With all of the socialization around being nice many women find it difficult to keep the best interest of the company at hand and to say no, firmly, when necessary.

Taking risks vs. "If you’re making unpopular decisions or you have unpopular opinions, you'll be unpopular."
Especially in meetings and other large forums, women need to be willing to have their voice and speak out with an unpopular opinion. To be seen as a leader a woman must not be seen as a person who waits for the popular opinion and then agrees.

Dealing with conflict vs. "Being nice"
Women need to be willing to walk right toward conflict. period.

Being direct/having the tough conversations vs. communicating indirectly so as not to offend anyone.
While women have often been taught well to cloak a difficult message, not clearly stating issues in a tough conversation appears weak and deferential. It also leaves people unclear about what you were needing or requiring.

Leadership for women cannot be discussed without mentioning The power Dead-Even Rule which is well described in the book, “In the Company of Women” by pat Heim and Susan A. Murphy. It is an unspoken rule that women can witness and accidentally participate in, over and over if they are unaware of it. Many women, at heart, don’t really relate to hierarchy. They often believe that we are all in this together and all more or less at the same level. This creates particularly difficult dynamics on female teams when an internal woman is elevated. If not handled well, there is often indignation throughout the team, if not out and out rebellion, regarding why she got promoted. In order to successfully promote women it is critical that we understand this dynamic.

Executive coaching for women is a powerful tool in navigating organizational dynamics, and accelerating her won leadership strengths. In LDI’s programs we discuss successful strategies in dealing with all issues regarding women and leadership. We believe that developing women is essential to creating great organizations.

Read more about our women in leadership programs and classes.

Best Practices: Enhancing the Manager/Direct Report Relationship

We have noticed a trending in the last 5 years between managers and their direct reports that concerns us a great deal. Managers have become less accessible, conduct fewer staff meetings, schedule infrequent one-on-ones and communicate downward less and less. We believe this growing trend is being driven by three particular things: managers being asked to manage and be individual contributors, more matrixed organizations that require significant cross functional collaboration and thus a greater time allotment and managers not being acknowledged or rewarded enough for developing their people.

This is not an attempt to bash managers but rather an explanation for what has distracted them away from best practices for the manager/direct report relationship. Managers are literally in the middle between the demands being placed on them by their leaders and the responsibility of managing a team.

So what outcomes do we see due to this dilemma? In our coaching and team development work we see less “bench strength” being developed in organizations, fewer career path discussions taking place and diminishing morale as people begin to feel more like worker bees than employees who are making a contribution that has an impact on the organization.
The only way managers can get back to enhancing their relationships with their team members is too make a greater commitment to making development a priority.

Carve out the time on your calendar and don’t cancel time with your people/ team unless the building is burning down or you have a million dollar deal on the table! The ultimate “you are not important’ message gets sent to your reports when you cancel meetings with them on a regular basis or don’t schedule them at all.  While it may seem harmless at the moment that you decide to cancel a one-on-one when you certainly have other important things you need to accomplish, the consequences are further reaching than it might appear at first glance.

Our list below of best practices, while not comprehensive, is certainly a good start back on the road to building that very important manager/direct report relationship.

Mentoring

  • Carve out time on a weekly basis 30-60 minutes, to meet for coaching/mentoring.  This is your highest priority.  Don’t ever cancel unless someone is sick.
  • Together, with your employee, identify strengths and skill gaps.
  • Together create a development plan.
  • Encourage, navigate, help them win.
  • provide constructive feedback on a regular basis.
  • Ask questions.  (“Tell me what motivates you?” “How can we make our team meetings more effective?”)

Motivating

  • Tell them what they’re doing well.
  • provide them with challenges and responsibility in line with their ability.
  • Give recognition for initiative and personal responsibilities taken on.
  • provide learning opportunities.
  • Create opportunities for the employee to provide leadership by helping others overcome a challenge.

Communication

  • Find out what they need from you to be successful.
  • Let people know what you expect from them.
  • Tell people when they’ve hit a home run and when they missed.
  • Keep your people informed of the big picture.
  • Err on the side of over-communicating.
  • Be a truth teller who communicates with compassion.

Clarifying roles and responsibilities

  • Let people know what they are responsible for.
  • Be clear about what their role is in the organization.
  • Communicate what you see as their highest priorities.
  • Identify the business results they need to generate to be successful.

Recognition

  • Acknowledging effort beyond normal day to day responsibilities.
  • Recognizing team collaboration over individual effort.
  • Finding out how your people like to be recognized.

Our experience demonstrates that with a little time and effort spent developing your employees, employee retention will be at an all-time high, morale will increase and you will develop a loyal following as your people learn that you are invested in their success.

The Successful Collaborator

Each and every day managers and leaders are told, directed and implored to collaborate with their peers, cross functional peers, internal customers, cross functional organizations, and just about every one under the corporate roof! It is an old mantra, it is a new mantra and it won’t go away.

Being able to cross functionally collaborate seems to have become the make or break skill set for people’s careers in this new millennium.
Then why are most people not very good at it and need to be told time and time again that they have to master this skill to be successful?

Our notion is that collaboration for many of us is an un-natural act that involves among other things, listening more, going slower, putting aside self-interest to some degree and trusting other people’s intentions. Now that’s a tall task. None of us really like the aforementioned behaviors that are the antithesis to our “I’m in a hurry and here’s what my organization needs to be successful” world we live and work in.

Collaboration requires us to wear many different “hats” none of which are called “driver”--- although being a driver comes in handy once you’ve done all the pre-work. The pre-work involves wearing the hats of facilitator, business partner and influencer, meeting after meeting moving the process forward and taking almost everybody with you on this journey.

We have identified below the roles a good collaborator must play in order to have any chance of being successful. Keep in mind that while there is a general progression from facilitator to business partner to influencer this is not intended to be done in a strictly linear fashion.

Different meetings, people and circumstances require the good collaborator to be agile and pick the right behaviors and the right time.

The mistake most people make is they jump right into selling and telling and rarely if ever utilize the “facilitator”, “business partner” or “influencer” behaviors. The effect this has on people is that they feel like they are being sold to and closed on.

As you go through this list, challenge yourself with these questions:

  1. Do I demonstrate any of these collaboration behaviors on a consistent basis?
  2. Which of the 3 collaboration roles identified could I utilize more effectively in a meeting that I currently lead or attend?
  3. In what relationships could I implement more of these behaviors as a way of bringing about more collaboration?

Stage #1 – Facilitator

  • Generates sharing of ideas
  • Facilitates the sharing of information
  • Acts as a clarifier of communications
  • Checks for understanding
  • Asks questions
  • proactively invites people to contribute/participate
  • Identifies what parties have in common and where they may differ
  • Creates a sense of safety in the room/meeting
  • listens to learn others point of view

Mind-Set – Setting the table for mutual respect, trusting each other’s intentions and a level playing field.

Stage #2 - Business partner

  • Models putting self in other people’s shoes
  • Goes out of his way to understand his business partner’s needs and interests
  • Does not dismiss or diminish his business partner’s needs or desired outcome
  • Uses “partner language” “we, together, partners, etc.”
  • Demonstrates a willingness to make all parties successful
  • Begins to facilitate and generate “both gain” solutions”

Mind - Set – Investing in each other’s success.

Stage #3 - Influencer

  • Insures that all data and information has been shared
  • Calls for interpretation of data presented
  • ”Calls out” selling and telling behavior
  • pushes group to generate “both gain” solutions
  • Calls on content experts to influence possible decisions
  • Calls on “group know-how” to come up with a solution in the best interest of the company
  • Generates lessons learned from previous projects
  • Blocks any attempts at dismissing perspectives, continuous convincing or pointing out why others are wrong

Mind-Set – Drive the team towards a “both gain” solution and maintain a partner attitude without adversarial relationships forming.