Leadership, Leadership Development
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 the embodiment of two basic facts:
Fact 1: Every person matters.
Fact 2: Every person wants to feel valued.
By keeping these facts in mind, you can master the skills necessary to achieve leadership excellence. Here are three skills that will have the highest impact:
1. Help People Connect the Dots. In my post, “A Pharaoh Walks Into a Bar,” I illustrate why team members need to understand how their daily jobs fit into the big picture. It is your responsibility as a leader to help your team connect the dots. You may use formal tools like strategy maps, or pull up to your nearest whiteboard. Regardless of your delivery method, take the time to sit with your team members to help them visualize their role in the success of the organization.
2. Help People Grow. I know a CEO who likes to joke that, “The only thing worse than training your people and then they leave is not training your people and they stay!” All joking aside, one of the main reasons people give for leaving companies is that they stop growing. Growth brings energy, vitality, life, and challenge. Without growth, we’re just going through the motions. Create a culture of learning and growth to maximize the collective talent of your team.
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 an occasional “thanks”. 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 excellence – you can’t fake it. Leaders who genuinely care about their team members will invest the time to help each one feel valued. Be committed to helping them connect the dots, helping them grow, and giving them sincere appreciation. Every day is an opportunity to help people see the best in themselves and achieve their highest potential.
Question: What is one thing you can do today to help someone else feel valued?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Book lists
Looking for some titles to catch up on your reading this summer? From brand new bestsellers, to stories that reveal new insights about historical events, here are eight titles that are well worth packing.
1. Unchartered: How to Navigate the Future by Margaret Heffernan
What it’s about: We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won’t provide that; experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn’t repeat itself and even genetics won’t tell you everything you want to know. Tomorrow remains uncharted territory, but Heffernan demonstrates how we can forge ahead with agility. In her bold and invigorating new book, Margaret Heffernan explores the people and organizations who aren’t daunted by uncertainty.
Why pick it up: From former CEO and popular TED speaker Margaret Heffernan comes a timely and enlightening book that equips you with the tools you need to face the future with confidence and courage. Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to friendships, this refreshing book challenges us to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.
2. How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman
What it’s about: Award-winning Wharton Professor and Choiceology podcast host Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behavior change. In this ground-breaking book, Milkman reveals a proven path that can take you from where you are to where you want to be. Drawing on Milkman’s original research and the work of her world-renowned scientific collaborators, How to Change shares strategic methods for identifying and overcoming common barriers to change, such as impulsivity, procrastination, and forgetfulness.
Why pick it up: Whether you’re a manager, coach, or teacher aiming to help others change for the better or are struggling to kick-start change yourself, How to Change offers an invaluable, science-based blueprint for achieving your goals, once and for all.
3. Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books by Jess McHugh
What it’s about: The true, fascinating, and remarkable history of thirteen books that defined a nation. Surprising and delightfully engrossing, Americanon explores the true history of thirteen of the nation’s most popular books, like Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Webster’s Dictionary, and Emily Post’s Etiquette. Overlooked for centuries, our simple dictionaries, spellers, almanacs, and how-to manuals are the unexamined touchstones for American culture and customs. These books sold tens of millions of copies and set out specific archetypes for the ideal American, from the self-made entrepreneur to the humble farmer.
Why pick it up: What better way to understand a people than to look at the books they consumed most, the ones they returned to repeatedly, with questions about everything from spelling to social mobility to sex? This fresh and engaging book is American history as you’ve never encountered it before.
4. Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots by James Suzman
What it’s about: A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work by leading anthropologist James Suzman. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, Suzman shows that while we have evolved to find joy, meaning, and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same.
Why pick it up: Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.
5. Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire by Hans Greimel and William Sposato
What it’s about: In Japan it’s called the “Ghosn Shock”—the stunning arrest of Carlos Ghosn, the jet-setting CEO who saved Nissan and made it part of a global automotive empire. Even more shocking was his daring escape from Japan, packed into a box and put on a private jet to Lebanon after months spent in a Japanese detention center, subsisting on rice gruel.
This is the saga of what led to the Ghosn Shock and what was left in its wake. Ghosn spent two decades building a colossal partnership between Nissan and Renault that looked like a new model for a global business, but the alliance’s shiny image fronted an unsteady, tense operation. Culture clashes, infighting among executives and engineers, dueling corporate traditions, and government maneuvering constantly threatened the venture.
Why pick it up: This gripping, unforgettable narrative, full of fascinating characters, serves as part cautionary tale, part object lesson, and part forewarning of the increasing complexity of doing global business in a nationalistic world.
6. Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy by Jeffrey E. Garten
What it’s about: The former dean of the Yale School of Management and Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard—breaking the link between gold and the dollar. Over the course of three days—from August 13 to 15, 1971—at a secret meeting at Camp David, President Richard Nixon and his brain trust changed the course of history. Before that weekend, all national currencies were valued to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold at a fixed rate. That system, established by the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of World War II, was the foundation of the international monetary system that helped fuel the greatest expansion of middle-class prosperity the world has ever seen.
Why pick it up: Based on extensive historical research and interviews with several participants at Camp David, and informed by Garten’s own insights from positions in four presidential administrations and on Wall Street, Three Days at Camp David chronicles this critical turning point, analyzes its impact on the American economy and world markets, and explores its ramifications now and for the future.
7. Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy by Anne Sebba
What it’s about: On June 19, 1953, Ethel Rosenberg became the first woman in the U.S. to be executed for a crime other than murder. She was thirty-seven years old and the mother of two small children. This is an important moment to recount not simply what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the ‘trial of the century’, but also a timeless human story of a supportive wife, loving mother and courageous idealist who grew up during the Depression with aspirations to become an opera singer. Instead, she found herself battling the social mores of the 1950s and had her life barbarically cut short on the basis of tainted evidence for a crime she almost certainly did not commit.
Why pick it up: Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel’s story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.
8. Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America by Scott Borchert
What it’s about: An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression―and employed some of the biggest names in American letters. The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious―and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states―along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns―while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.
Why pick it up: By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation’s very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book’s lessons are urgent and strong.
Question: What books are on your reading list this summer?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
High Performing Teams, Leadership
Does your team trust each other? If not, what impact do you think that’s having on the bottom line?
This is a question that we have explored with teams ranging from publicly-traded companies to nonprofits. Regardless of the size of your team or the industry you work in, “trust is the foundation of real teamwork,” writes Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
In the mid-1990s, Lencioni observed a business climate that was maniacally focused on growth with little attention paid to the fundamentals of team alignment and organizational effectiveness. As a result, Lencioni and his colleagues developed a simple online assessment that measures team effectiveness in five key areas.
1. Trust
Think about a time when you worked with a team member who you trusted. What was that experience like? Did you freely share information with her? Did you ask her for help? Admit mistakes? Now, think about a time when you worked with a team member who you didn’t trust. What was that experience like? Did you ask him for more data? Did you talk to others about his reliability? Did you try avoiding him altogether? Now multiply the results of these interactions by all of the possible team member combinations in your organization. You can quickly see how trust impacts speed, and how speed impacts results. We’re living in the age of Airbnb, Kickstarter, Etsy, and Uber – where trust is the fundamental economic driver. Yet, trusting our colleagues as much as we do total strangers is something that we have yet to master.
2. Conflict
Teams that do not trust one another will be reluctant to have open, constructive conflict. You’ve seen this in action in the form of passive-aggressive behavior, circular conversations, veiled discussions, and guarded arguments. You’ve witnessed people nodding their head ‘yes’ in the room but shaking their head ‘no’ in the hall. Teams that trust one another freely engage in debate so that they can assess reality correctly before making a common commitment. Teams that lack trust also lack the ability to effectively uncover the root causes of issues that impact performance. Instead, they spend their time dealing with symptoms and side issues.
3. Commitment
A team that can accurately assess reality will have a better chance of making clear commitments. A note of clarity here. Team commitment is not the same as consensus. When you are encouraged and inspired to share your ideas and know that you’ve been heard, you’re more likely to agree to the final decision even if it differs from your original input. As a result, you walk away motivated and feeling valued rather than resentful. Commitment requires weigh in before buy in.
4. Accountability
If you manage a team of people, you understand that part of your role is to hold them accountable for delivering results. Holding your peer team members accountable, however, is harder. This is especially true when you haven’t built trust, participated in constructive debate about root causes, or felt that your opinions about what to do to move forward haven’t been heard. You’re much more likely to call your peers out when you’ve bought into the agreed upon direction to deliver results.
5. Results
“What gets measured, gets done,” is a familiar maxim. If you are measured and incentivized based on individual effort, human nature follows that you are more likely to put your individual results over collective results. High-performing teams, however, understand that if the team loses, everyone loses. When you’re held accountable for team results, you’re much more likely to make the extra effort to help team members when they need support.
Teamwork isn’t easy. But high performing teams understand that team alignment is a competitive advantage.
Question: Are you achieving results or experiencing regrets toward team goals so far this year?
Whether your team is brand new, choking from lack of trust, or is long overdue for a team building event, CEE can help you measure, map, and move the dial in five key areas necessary for high performance: Trust, Healthy Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results. Learn more about how we can partner with you here.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Following the murder of George Floyd last May, a tragedy that touched off months of protests and civil unrest, a credit union CEO near Minneapolis found himself in a place similar to thousands of corporate leaders. He knew he wanted to reach out to employees in a personal, companywide email letting everyone know he took this seriously and that the credit union was looking at its own diversity practices to determine what additional measures could be taken.
But as he sat down to write, he recalls, “there was a level of anxiety for me about the right words to pick. Am I going to offend someone? Am I pushing my own agenda? How is this going to land on people? How are they going to absorb it?”
In the end, he found the words, sent the email, and prepared himself for the fallout. Within hours, he picked up a voicemail message from a White, male manager who expressed anger that the CEO would weigh in on the subject. “We don’t need to be lectured to about race at work. We’re here to do a job and not walk on eggshells because we might hurt someone’s feelings. People are getting overly sensitive, and we need leaders who stay strong and focused.”
The CEO wondered if he’d gone too far. Maybe the manager was right. Maybe opening up on the subject of diversity was a slippery slope that would bring up more problems than he was prepared to lead his team through.
Later that afternoon, a Black, female employee showed up at the CEO’s office and asked to speak with him. Immediately, she told him how grateful she was to read his email. Through tears and tissues, she expressed how much she needed to know that the CEO understood that what was happening outside of the credit union impacted her ability to focus on work. Employees needed space to process what was happening in the community, not to bury their feelings and ignore the pain.
The CEO told me later that he was pleased that he’d stepped out of his comfort zone and used his platform to speak out on the subject. Since sending his companywide email, he’s invited employees to work on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, incorporated unconscious bias curricula into their management training, and invited speakers to inspire and motivate the credit union to do more to meet the needs of its diverse employees and members.
Creating a diverse and inclusive workforce can be challenging, time-consuming—and, let’s face it—deeply uncomfortable for many CEOs. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. CEOs I’ve spoken to about their journey since penning their own employee emails on the subject acknowledged the difficulty, particularly given how politicized the conversation around inclusion has become.
But they also affirmed that CEOs, statistically majority White and male, can’t wait to start talking about race and gender until they feel comfortable—because they likely won’t. It’s not easy to step out of your comfort zone. But, leaders who excel are those who create space for conversations that enable their organizational cultures to evolve and become more resilient in the process.
Question: Where do you need to step out of your comfort zone to help your culture evolve and excel?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
