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Leadership
Are you a member of this club? The one where you spend 2-3 mind-numbing days in an over air-conditioned conference room with no natural light trying to creatively solve your organization’s most challenging problems?
By the end of the last day, your brain is fried from wading through your corporate muck. You have nothing to show for your collective effort but 18 flip chart pages covered in mostly illegible scrawl. You walk out of the room blinking against the late afternoon sunlight as someone collects and folds the flip chart pages that you know may never be unfolded again.
Leadership retreats like these are not only exhausting for the participants. They can also be frustrating for the team that holds down the fort while you’re away. Leadership coach Paul Batz noted, “A mid-level employee recently told me, “There must be a big vault somewhere that holds all of the flip charts from fancy leadership retreats because we never see any change when the big shots come back from Florida.”
When my firm started offering retreats to help our clients work on their leadership and culture issues, we resolved to change the game. We’ve distilled some best practices from our experience that help our clients make the most of their leadership retreats.
1. Send mixed signals. In the seminal book Frames of Mind, Harvard Professor Howard Gardner proposed that people possess not one but several varieties of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Unfortunately, most meeting facilitators use only two or three learning modalities that connect with less than half of the room. Don’t limit your material to lecture, read, and discuss. Instead, share the key lessons through a variety of delivery methods such as simulations, illustrations, and small group discussions. Want to know which learning styles suit you best? Take this short assessment.
2. Get mixed messages. Thinking creatively in real time is hard. If the senior leader in the room shares his or her thoughts first, creative thinking usually grinds to a halt. No one wants to challenge or embarrass the leader. The group silently watches their opportunity for real change meet death by HiPPO (highest paid person in the office). Instead, break the room into small groups and challenge each group to work on the same problem. Then, ask each small group to present their results to the larger group. The group with the HiPPO goes neither first nor last. This creates space for divergence of thought, and a safe space for people to challenge the leader’s perspective.
3. Be pushy. Don’t let your retreat wrap without pushing for insights and breakthroughs. Listen for openings to challenge assumptions and hidden questions in what people are saying. If it’s not obvious which idea is ripe for dissection, look to the whiteboard or clusters of sticky notes posted. Is there a root-level assumption that could be challenged? Or if not challenged, clarified? Asking “How do we know that?” or “What if it weren’t that way?” will do one of two things: crack open more space for new ideas, or confirm and deepen the group’s understanding of the idea in question. Either way, you’ve gained something much more valuable than a collection of folded flipchart pages.
If your leadership team spends three days a year rafting down rivers together, you’ll eventually get good at rafting down rivers. Instead, spend three days a year working from well-designed material that offers each person a voice and guides the team toward shared growth. Your mid-level managers will gladly hold down the fort.
Question: What tips have you learned to help your team advance from a retreat?
Our team enjoys creating an environment where leadership development meets strategy execution. Allow one of our skilled facilitators to lead your team on a culture refresh: https://execexcellence.wpengine.com/corporate-retreats-and-workshops
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People
Culture. What does that word actually mean? Though many have tried, no one has ever landed on a fixed, universal definition for organizational culture. The subject has been vigorously debated from the pages of the Harvard Business Review to the halls of MIT Sloan. What is not debated is that culture is part of the DNA of every organization. Whether your organizational culture is empowering or toxic depends greatly on two factors: shared experience and modeled leadership.
Consider this. When new employees join your organization, they step in on Day 1 with a set of preconceived beliefs based on past experience. They may believe that markets are finite and there is only so much business to go around. They may believe that success happens only when we beat our competitors. That in order to for us to win business, others must lose. Some have been taught that ethics and morals can be bent. Others have relied on the strict dictates of policies and procedures. That makes up the experience half of the equation.
The other half comes directly from modeled leadership. If the leaders of the organization are fixated on business development, channel expansion, and market domination, they are not likely spending any time intentionally trying to shape the culture. Unintentionally, however, they are sending very clear signals about what is important to them. They are the cultural architects of your organization and contribute these three very important things to the culture equation:
1. What is measured. Let’s face it. Culture can be hard to measure. Senior executives tend to shy away from anything with a fuzzy ROI. Yet, whether you measure it or not, your culture is showing up in your bottom line. Skilfully managed cultures can be a performance multiplier. Recent research by the Great Place to Work© Institute found that companies that actively invest in workplace culture yield nearly 2x the return over their competitors. They also typically report 65% less voluntary turnover, saving an average of $3,500 per employee in recruiting and training costs. If culture isn’t part of your KPI mix, you’re sending the signal that it’s unimportant.
2. What is rewarded. A recent study by O.C. Tanner found that employees report being recognized for their work as their most important motivator, over 20 times more than salary. Employees study what behaviors and achievements get rewarded, and naturally modify their work accordingly. Leaders who understand this connection create recognition programs that go beyond passing out paychecks. WD-40 CEO Garry Ridge proudly hosts the company’s annual People Choice Awards. Each year, heartfelt speeches are given by winners of coveted awards like “Best Mentor Coach” and “Best Team Player.” Leaders like Ridge know that coin-operated employees have no passion.
3. What is ignored. Leaders are bombarded with data, hold back-to-back meetings, and field urgent requests on a daily basis. When we need to respond to fast-moving competitive situations, it is tempting to tap only our direct reports for feedback. In his Harvard Business Review article “The Focused Leader,” New York Times bestselling author Daniel Goleman warns that this temptation is dangerous. He recommends that leaders practice expanding their focus of awareness. “A failure to focus on others leaves you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided,” Goleman writes. What’s worse, leaders who ignore input from those outside their immediate circle are signaling to the rest of the organization that their input is irrelevant.
Leaders are the cultural architects of your organization. The key metrics they pay attention to, the contributions they reward, and range of their awareness directly impact both your organizational culture and your bottom line.
Question: What do you measure, reward and ignore? How is that impacting your organizational culture?
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Leadership
Taking you from what is to what is possible. That has been our core purpose since Center for Executive Excellence was founded on this day in 2013.
Since launching our firm five years ago, we have served more than 300 clients, built a social media following of over 20,400, posted 155 blogs, and published 30 articles in Forbes and Huffington Post. If you’ve been part of our journey over the years, thank you. We have been honored to provide you with information and insights along the way to help you grow yourself and your team.
While our firm’s numbers are impressive, it’s the numbers that I have logged in the role as CEO of Center for Executive Excellence that I want to share. As I reflect over the past five years, here are some nuggets that I have collected in my role:
1. Partner with an accelerator. You can hang your shingle out and go completely solo, or partner with someone who’s built a reputation as a trusted consultant in your industry. I chose the latter. I have been honored to know our Co-Founder, Dr. Tony Baron, for over ten years. With a double doctorate in psychology and theology and decades of executive coaching experience with Fortune 100 companies, Tony has been my mentor, trusted advisor, door opener, accountability partner and friend. The first two clients we signed were a direct result of Tony’s stellar reputation in the field. Liftoff.
2. Upgrade your operating system. If I teach what I knew about leadership and culture from 2013, I would be working from an outdated playbook. I do two things to upgrade my professional operating system every day. The first thing I do is read. Before I open my Inbox, I scan Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Atlantic, and The Economist for trends, research, case studies, and theories about leadership, culture, and organizational purpose. I share an article that I find most interesting with my online community. The second thing I do is work closely with our Director of Marketing, Danielle Aguas — nearly 25 years my junior — to learn about trends, technologies, and perspectives from her generation. Working by her side helps me upgrade my operating system in real time as she discretely mentions things like, “Indeed is the preferred job search site over Monster.” Check. Thanks for the update.
3. Know what you don’t know (and find someone who does). In one of my favorite TED Talks of all time, ”If you want to help someone, shut up and listen”, Ernesto Sirolli suggested that he has never met an entrepreneur in the world who could “make it, sell it, and look after the money.” In Year 3, we realized that we knew how to “make it” and how to “look after the money”, but we didn’t know how to “sell it” at a scalable level. We brought in a consultant, Pat Valentino, who believed in what we were doing and who could help us define and capture a target market. Thanks to Pat’s expertise, we built a process to attract and retain clients that have resulted in exponential growth. Even coaches need coaches.
4. Take your own medicine. One of our core beliefs as a leadership consultancy and culture alignment firm is that we don’t ask our clients to go through something that we have not gone through ourselves. We recommend that our clients get clear about their organizational purpose because we know that purpose is a performance multiplier. We are inspired every day because of ours: Taking you from what is to what is possible. When our clients ask if we can help with strategic planning, we say, “yes and no.” We can help with strategic planning only if we can help with strategy execution. We use a balanced scorecard every year to determine our organizational goals, then align employee goals and track them quarterly to ensure that we know how what we do each day impacts our strategic goals. These are just two examples that help us directly relate to what we ask our clients to go through in their own leadership and culture alignment process. We’ve been there. We do that.
5. Celebrate your wins. Part of the work we do with clients includes StrengthsFinder training and coaching. Gallup’s strengths-based science is based on 5 decades of research and development. They’ve studied more than 1 million work teams, conducted tens of thousands of individual interviews, and coached more than 12 million people to discover their strengths and leverage what they do best. One of my top five strengths is Achiever. People with Achiever in their top five feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day, we must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about ourselves. And by “every day” we mean every single day — workdays, weekends, vacations. While being an Achiever has certainly helped me lead the growth of our firm, it can be overapplied to the point of burnout for myself and my team. “Celebrate our victories” is actually written into our balance scorecard to remind us to stop, reflect, and appreciate our accomplishments as a team.
We can look ahead tomorrow. Today, we celebrate.
Question: What have you learned in the last five years that has helped you grow as a leader?
TODAY ONLY – To celebrate 5 years, we’re extending a promotional Re:Imagine Leadership Summit rate of $500! (that’s $185 off the regular rate). To register, click here or on the image below. Learn more about this one-day leadership event of the year.
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CEE News is designed to help you with the challenges you face every day by sharing infographics, white papers, best practices, and spotlighting businesses that are getting it right. I hope you’ll subscribe to CEE News and it becomes a resource that continually adds value to your walk as a leader. If I can be of assistance in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
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People
If you’re one of the estimated 103 million people who tuned in to watch Super Bowl LII on Sunday, you may have seen the MVP award handed out to Eagles’ backup quarterback, Nick Foles. While Foles showed strength under pressure against the favored New England Patriots, recognizing quarterbacks of the winning team as Super Bowl MVP has become the norm over the 52-year history of the game.
Former NFL coach and New York Times bestselling author, Tony Dungy, offers a perspective on the MVP award for leaders who want to build successful teams both on and off the field. In The One Year Uncommon Daily Life Challenge, published in 2011 following Super Bowl XLV (45), Dungy wrote:
“Since the first Super Bowl was held in 1967, forty-six Most Valuable Player awards have been handed out, one for each of the forty-five Super Bowls and one with two.
In the first four Super Bowls, the quarterback from the winning team was selected as the Most Valuable Player. Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr was selected in both 1967 and 1968 as the MVP, and in 1969 Joe Namath was selected following the New York Jets’ historic win over the Baltimore Colts. In 1970 Len Dawson of the Kansas City Chiefs was selected after leading his team to victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Every year since, the award has been handed out to a member of the winning team, except in 1971, when Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker Chuck Howley won the award in the game against the winner, the Baltimore Colts.
During the course of the forty-five-year span of Super Bowl Sunday games, the breakdown by position of the Most Valuable Player selected is kick returner-1; running backs-7; wide receivers-6; defensive players-8; quarterbacks-24.
In the forty-five-year history of the Super Bowl, not one offensive lineman has won the award. Yet try to play the game without them. Try to win a Super Bowl without a stellar offensive line. And as to quarterbacks – how many Super Bowl MVP awards do you think they would have won if they had been consistently hurried, hit, or sacked during a game, watching the game from the vantage point of their backsides?
I know of one in particular – Peyton Manning, the MVP quarterback in Super Bowl XLI – who couldn’t have won it without his offensive line. Or his running backs, receivers, and tight ends. Or his defense. Peyton’s a great player, but he needed the rest of the supporting cast.”
Whether or not you’re a football fan, Dungy’s thoughts about recognizing team effort applies to leaders of all winning teams. Yet, not all team members need a to hold a trophy over their heads to feel recognized. In an article written for Harvard Business Review titled What Great Managers Do, leadership author Marcus Buckingham noted that the best managers know what triggers each team member. They know that by far, the most powerful trigger is recognition, and that each employee’s standard of recognition is nuanced.
To excel as a leader, you must be able to match the team member to the recognition he values most. One employee might prefer peer recognition. The best way to praise him would be to point him out in front of his coworkers and give kudos for his achievement.
Another employee’s favorite audience might be you. The most powerful recognition would be a one-on-one conversation where you tell her quietly and precisely how you value her on the team. Still another employee might define himself by his specialized skills. He would most prize being recognized with a professional or technical award.
Great leaders understand that success requires recognition of a Most Valuable Team. Find the right recognition method, and you’ll unlock an inherent desire for continued high performance.
Question: Who are the unsung heroes on your team?
Interested in getting more content like this? Subscribe to CEE News!
CEE News is designed to help you with the challenges you face every day by sharing infographics, white papers, best practices, and spotlighting businesses that are getting it right. I hope you’ll subscribe to CEE News and it becomes a resource that continually adds value to your walk as a leader.
Letter from the Founder
Welcome to the thirtieth issue of CEE News!
Last week, we worked with executives at two credit unions on leadership and culture transformation. One of the credit unions has been on the culture transformation journey for over five years. The other is just starting out. In both cases, we’re using the 4-stage roadmap to culture transformation developed by our Co-Founder, Dr. Tony Baron to help them achieve success. The four stages are: Instruct, Invest, Integrate, and Incarnate.
The credit union that has been on the culture transformation journey for over five years has achieved many successes. They’ve partially completed the Instruct, Invest, and Integrate stages. When we asked them to walk us through that journey, we looked for inflection points and what we refer to as flags.
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