Welcome to the third issue of CEE News!Once upon a time, the world was a more predictable, slower moving place. Most companies could operate effectively using the same structure created over 100 years ago to best suit our manufacturing economy. Employees were placed under managers, and managers under executives. Decisions came down from the top and action lived at the bottom—taking days, or sometimes years, to implement.
We’re on the verge of a demographic tsunami. By 2020, Millennials will make up 50% of the workforce, and 75% of the workforce by 2025.
Last year, Baby Boomers were retiring at the rate of 11,000 per day. This year, it’s 14,000 per day. We’re facing a huge gap in the passing on of knowledge and skills from generation to generation.
Technology is giving us more information faster than ever before, and giving us instant global connectivity. The rate of connectivity is increasing exponentially.
In response to these trends, companies are focused on workforce recruitment, retention, and management. Many are also emphasizing their social and environmental responsibility practices. While these responses are a good start, there is a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed. That problem is in the shape of a pyramid.
When we picture an organizational structure, typically a pyramid comes to mind. Under the pyramid model, power and privilege are concentrated at the top. It then trickles down through the ranks, leaving those at the bottom with the heaviest workload and the least privilege.
For centuries, the pyramid structure kept monarchies stable, dictated the rank-and-file system of the military, and enabled factories to manufacture highly reproducible goods from assembly lines. The model served America’s manufacturing economy well, helping it surge for most of the 20th century.
In the 21st century, information economy, however, leaders must remove the layers, get rid of the bottlenecks, and create a culture where their organizations can transform at the speed of change. Not only do they need to help their organizations transform, but they must be willing to be transformed themselves.
How to we do this? Where do we start? These are questions I addressed in a webcast on the subject last week.
Check out the webcast or join me next month at the Future of Work Conference in Boston to:
If you don’t like change, you’re going to hate extinction. Leaders who successfully navigate the 21st century will be transformative role models who ditch the pyramid mindset.
Join me as I present on Transformative Leadership at the Future of Work event in Boston! Register here
Question: Are there functional groups or levels in your organization where information gets blocked? How does that impact performance?
Question: My manager told me to let my team fail. I am reluctant to let that happen. I don’t want to disappoint our customers or demotivate my team. Do you have any suggestions for me?
Answer: When your manager tells you to “let people fail,” it’s likely meant to encourage you to empower your people, let go of the details, take a step back, and be willing to let your people mess up from time to time. If team members never get a chance to risk failure, you may be too protective of them. Failure can be a powerful teacher.
We’ve all come across them. Those leaders who people naturally gravitate toward. Though it seems counterintuitive, the magnetic effect these leaders have on people is not because of how people feel about the leader. It’s because of how the leader makes people feel about themselves.
These leaders have mastered two basic facts about people.
Fact 1: Every person matters.
Fact 2: Every person wants to feel valued.
As Thanksgiving approaches, this is an excellent time to review the skills necessary to express meaningful gratitude to your team.
Here are three skills that will yield the highest return:
1. Write a Note. Do not. I repeat. Do not mistake a thank you email for the real thing. Handwritten thank you notes are about relationships. Emails are about transactions. When you take a little extra time to write a personal message to team members to acknowledge your gratitude, you are also acknowledging that they are more than just tools. They are human beings who matter and are valued. If your note writing skills are rusty, here’s a quick primer to get you started.
2. Make It a Habit. When it comes to business, we fall into the trap of not seeing people when we work with them. This is especially true of the people who come in, get the job done, and don’t require constant attention. We take these employees for granted and just assume they don’t need a show of gratitude. To turn your attention to those who don’t ask for it, take a few minutes each morning to make a list of three team members you appreciate and why. Over time, you’ll begin to cultivate of habit of putting yourself in a gratitude mindset.
3. Give People Sincere Appreciation. People who don’t feel appreciated are often the first to burn out or jump ship. It only takes a minute to recognize a team member for making a positive contribution. But, doing it right requires more than the occasional “Attagirl!” Give timely and specific praise to show your team members how you value their contribution. Here’s a quick demo to show you how.
One final secret to mastering leadership gratitude – you can’t fake it. Leaders who genuinely care about their team members will invest the time to help each one feel valued. Make it a habit to sincerely recognize their efforts. Every day is an opportunity to help people see the best in themselves and feel like a valued contributor to the team.
Question: Have you had a leader who gave you a handwritten note of thanks? What did you learn from that experience? Please leave your comment below.
Join me on November 18th from 9-10 am PT for my FREE leadership webcast. I will talk more about what it means to be a transformative leader in the 21st century, one that makes their teams better, stronger, and more agile in the face of change.
Sitting in the queue for takeoff from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, a father spoke softly to his son who was gripping the armrests in white-knuckled terror. Though I could not hear their exchange, I recognized the look on the boy’s face. It’s the same one I often see on my clients’ faces when they are getting ready to make a significant change.
My clients get excited when talking about the goals they want to achieve. But, in order to reach those goals, they must strap themselves in and, like the boy, face the fear of G-force acceleration and climbing 2,000 feet per minute through bumpy air pockets in order to reach cruising altitude.
Resistance. It’s the invisible force that you feel any time you try to make an improvement in your personal or professional life. Want to write a book? Start a business? Innovate? Be prepared for resistance. As soon as you declare your goal, you can be sure that fear, uncertainly and doubt will not be far behind. They will come from you, from your friends, from your colleagues, from the world.
The next time you face resistance, recognize that it is a natural part of the process required to reach new heights. In keeping with the flight theme, consider these three lessons from The Wright Brothers as documented by Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough.
1. Don’t focus on what you lack. The Wrights grew up in a house with no electricity, no running water, and no indoor plumbing. Yet, they did not feel disadvantaged because their house was filled with books. They were encouraged and stimulated to read and to write by their father. They took advantage of what they had to feed their curiosity.
2. You can’t take off unless you face the wind. The brothers tested their aircrafts at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They chose Kitty Hawk for two critical elements. First, soft sand dunes made for softer landings. Second, the constant wind added the lift needed for their craft to take flight. To quote Wilbur Wright, “No bird soars in the calm.” If you want to take off, you must harness the power of the wind.
3. A setback is a setup for a comeback. They never gave up. They crashed, they got sick, and they were ridiculed. They had every single thing you can imagine go wrong on their way to achieve their goal, but they would not quit. Orville was nearly killed and was crippled — they thought for life — but he came back and was still flying well into his forties. How we handle failure and setbacks is directly correlated to our success.
Our goals are too important to let the resistance stop us. The resistance is real. But when we recognize that it is a natural part of the process, we can overcome it, instead of letting it overcome us.
Question: If you could recognize resistance as part of natural process of climbing to new heights, what could you make happen?
Join me on November 18th at 9am PT for my free leadership webcast. I will talk about what you can do when challenged with bottlenecked communication, idea stagnation, or growing silos.
