Leadership Move #19: Teach Others to Enjoy a Good Challenge

Leadership Move #3: Articulate Success Enablers

Beyond the obvious, does your staff know what you consider to be the essential enablers of their success? No matter what level you're at, or what organization you work for, the more clearly you can communicate your thoughts on the topic, the greater the likelihood that your staff will incorporate them into their routine behaviors.

That could benefit both you and them at review time, you know!

What, then, are Success Enablers? Simply put, they are what help really good performers become really excellent ones. Here are some examples to consider:

from a Supervisor to his Clerical Support Team

• that you consistently use what you know to make existing processes and procedures more efficient
• that you be so good at what you do that they can't help but respect you
• that you never, ever, underestimate your capacity to learn and master new things

from a Manager to his Sales and Marketing Personnel

• that you know more about your prospects than they think you do
• that the details of your proposals make good business sense to both your prospect's company - and ours
• that you share Best Practices and Lessons Learned with your coworkers regularly and freely

from a Director to her Project Managers

• that you have an abiding respect the due date
• that you update me on good news and bad with equal speed and clarity
• that you consistently provide thorough information to those who can benefit from it, before they ask

from a VP to her Technology Services Personnel

• that you insist that any request you receive to bypass company policy includes a cogent business justification that you can agree with and support
• that you consistently anticipate how systems may fail and work proactively to prevent them from happening
• that you quickly and efficiently resolve whatever does go wrong

Do you see how an employee's performance would be meaningfully stronger if these enablers were in place on a regular basis? What, then, will enable the really good performers in your organization to be really great? Do you know? Have you told them?

What are you waiting for?!

Leadership Move #26: Always be Able to Explain the Business Justification

Who hasn't heard this conversation between a boss and employee:

"Do this."
"Why?"
"Because I say so."

No wonder employee morale and engagement is so often in the toilet. Sure, there are times when a crisis or tight deadline require compliance, but they are supposed to be the exceptions not the rule.

Playing the "shut up and comply" card can be pretty appealing, though. It saves time. It eliminates the need to explain oneself. It keeps things moving. Or does it?

Does "shut up and comply" really save time? Initially, maybe yes. But whose time? And for how long? Don't think for a moment that just because you're done commanding that they're done taking up everybody's time grousing about you behind your back.

Does it really eliminate the need to explain oneself? Maybe in this moment, but if your staff can't figure out the rationale for your request, then they're not going to be able to surprise and delight you with their results. Chances are better that they'll dumb-down to only do what you ask, if that, and rarely do what you hope.

Does it really keep things moving? In times of crisis, yes. In more routine interactions, it's more likely to create a bottleneck as everyone simply waits for you to tell them what to do.

Besides, it's just wrong for a boss to be that disrespectful.

So any time you have a task or assignment to delegate to someone, spend an extra 15 seconds and give the business justification for it.

• The database needs to be scrubbed? Yes, because inaccurate records delay our ability to respond to client concerns in a expeditious manner.
• The report is due tomorrow? Yes, because some important decisions need to be made and the report will provide the essential information we need to make them.
• The stakeholders need to approve our project plan? Yes, because while we can certainly wreck this project all by ourselves, the only way for it to succeed is with the support and involvement of our key business partners.

Getting clear on what the business justifications actually are for anything you delegate isn't always easy. But it is important. And it makes it much easier for you to talk about things in in a far more compelling way. Which makes buy-in that much easier. Which moves things forward that much faster. Which gives you more time to work on other things done, too.

Too, when your staff understand why it makes sense to be doing what they're doing, it's that much easier for them to do a better job.

Can't figure out the business justification for your request? Then maybe you don't really need to get it done. Hmm, not assigning unnecessary work? See how that plays with employee morale and engagement!

Leadership Move # 23: Ask Probing Follow-up Questions

Sometimes it takes a little digging to get to the root of things. And asking questions is a great way to do it.

But not all questions are created equal. Consider:

• Some questions are easy to answer but their answers provide little, if any, new insights. Example: "Why'd ya do that?" is a great example of this. The problem with asking 'why?' is that you'll always get an answer, but it rarely helps you to decide what to do next.
• Some questions are easy to ask, but too hard to answer succinctly or meaningfully to make the effort worthwhile. Example: "What did you do, on a minute-by-minute basis that caused this?"
• Some questions make it too easy to get only part of the story - especially if you're curiosity quotient is a bit low.

It's best to assume that the first few questions you ask will provide you with some, but definitely not all of the answer. That's why probing follow-up questions are so important. It's in their answers that the real insight and understanding reside.

Not sure what probing follow-up question to ask next? Try any one of these:

• "What else do you want to add to what you've told me so far?"
• "What other questions would it make sense for me to ask you?"
• "What else would be helpful for me to know at this point?"

See what it does to improve the breadth and depth of the information you receive.

Leadership Move #29: Establish S-T-R-E-T-C-H Goals

The thing about personal/professional development goals is this: if they're too easy, people get bored by them; if they're too difficult, people get unnerved by them. And either extreme fails to motivate. So the key in establishing quality goals is to have them sufficiently stretch the person, but not overwhelm them Here are three ways to do that with your staff:

1. Trial-and-Error - Try a few things, see what works, what doesn't, and modify the goals accordingly over time.
2. Report Back - The idea here is for them to create their own goals and then tell you about them. Note that there tends to be an inherent bias in the process, though - some people will under-estimate what they can achieve (sandbagging) ; others will over-estimate (wishful thinking).
3. Collaborate - Engage the individual to jointly create their goals. Using the best of Ways 1 and 2, identify meaningful, relevant, and sufficiently challenging goals together.

Whatever way you choose, be sure to remind people that you're watching them work on their goals (or not) ... and noticing their progress (or not). In other words, help them keep their stretch goals top-of-mind. And, of course, the things we pay attention to are typically the things that get done.

Leadership Move #14: Know How You'll Mop Up

Delegation is an essential leadership skill. But even more important than that is knowing how you'll clean up should something you delegate go terribly, terribly wrong. That way, you won't have to figure it out in-the-moment (read: under significantly more stress) and can smoothly, and cleanly patch things up.

• What will you do if that difficult customer is even more unsatisfied because of how poorly his issue was handled by your delagatee?
• How will you respond if a peer who was counting on you to deliver something important is left holding the bag by your delagatee?
• What steps will you take to unwind your boss from an assignment botched by your delagatee?
• How will you react if one of your own key deadlines is missed by a delegatee?

Whenever you delegate something, be sure to spend a few moments - before you delegate it - considering what you'll do (and how you'll do it) if things don't turn out as planned. Not only will it give you some peace-of-mind, but it will also allow you to quickly defuse the situation with whoever is negatively affected, and turn in into a meaningful learning experience for the delegatee, should it be necessary.

(This is another in a series of 32 Leadership Moves that is being randomly posted over time at GottaGettaBlog! Stay tuned for more.)

Leadership Move #7 - Manage the Message

How we 'position' (read: spin) things can make a world of difference. Witness how two different newspapers covered Michael Jackson's performance at the World Music Awards in London, last week:

• USA TODAY - Spotlight on Jackson at World Music Awards - LONDON — With a few thrilling bars of We Are the World, Michael Jackson made a triumphant return to the spotlight at the World Music Awards Wednesday.
• Chicago Tribune - Jackson's performance didn't leave fans thrilled - Angry Michael Jackson fans are seeking refunds for their tickets to the World Music Awards in London, the BBC reported Thursday.

Imagine if two of your managers shared a message from you with such disparity. No doubt there would be all sorts of follow-up meetings to clarify and reiterate what you did and did not say - and what you did and did not mean.

The leadership lesson here is that whenever you have a message to communicate to people through other people, make sure that message is told in a consistent - and accurate - manner ... regardless of who happens to be communicating it. Spending a little extra time on the front-end to "manage the message" will likely save you mucho tiempo - and aggravation - on the back-end.

Leadership Move #17: Start Before You Begin (And Finish After You End)

How you start a conversation - and how you finish it - is often more important than what you say during the conversation.

• Don't assume that someone is ready to have a particular conversation with you just because you're ready to have the conversation with them.
• Don't assume that anyone knows where you're coming from if you don't tell them.
• Don't assume you know what someone's going to say next.
• Don't assume that everyone knows what you want to happen next if you don't tell them - or at least ask them to tell you.
• Don't assume that just because a conversation was easy for you to have that it was easy for someone to have that conversation with you (and vice versa).
• Don't assume that your message won't need any reinforcement or clarification afterwards.

A little extra preparation on the front end - and a little extra continuity on the back end - will likely yield stronger results from what is discussed in the middle.

Leadership Move #4: The way to get things done is by NOT working on them

Back in September 2005, I posted a blog entry titled, Capable of Doing versus Paid to Do. The idea behind is is that there's while there's probably a lot of things you're able to do at work, there are some things that only you can do. Your time - and talent - is much better served by served by working on those things. To do that, though, you need to be able to effectively delegate all of the other things.

Now learning the in's and out's of effective delegationcan be quite challenging. The learning curve is admittedly steep. You have to know, as example, how to:

• accurately determine if something can - or should be - delegated
• appropriately determine who to delegate to
• effectively articulate precisely what it is that you're delegating
• sufficiently monitor progress so that you know if thing's are going wrong before it's too late
• ably mop-up should they go wrong anyway
• meaningfully debrief with the delegatee afterwards, good or bad

These are no small shakes. But, once you learn, you'll have positioned yourself to dramatically increase the capability, throughput, productivity, and morale of your workgroup - and freed yourself from being an organizational bottleneck. Delegation is a Silver Bullet. As in really!!

This is the power of effective delegation: More gets done by you (plural) than you (singular) ever could. Indeed, the way to get things done is by NOT working on them.

Leadership Move #1: Be Sure that Everyone Knows the Goal

Make no mistake about this: A leader's Number One job is to make sure that everyone knows - and can state with total clarity - the goal for each and every new assignment, initiative, project, task, and/or strategy you involve in. You can't just assume that your staff already knows, or can figure it out. Why? Because:

• Sometimes it looks like the goal is about reducing costs when you mean it to be more about improving profitability.
• Sometimes it looks like the goal is to increase sales when you mean it to be more about increasing market penetration.
• Sometimes it looks like the goal is about solving a customer complaint when you mean it to be more about reworking an internal workflow.
• Sometimes it looks like the goal is about avoiding conflict when you mean it to be more about building inter-department relationships.

And pursuing the 'looks like' goal instead of the actual one is a waste of time, money, and resources - not to mention what it does to morale, productivity, and your credibility.

Sure, there's a training and development aspect of having them figure things out on their own, but when it comes to understanding the Conditions for Success, there's no real upside to making them guess.

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(This is another in a series of 32 Leadership Moves that is being randomly posted over time at GottaGettaBlog! Stay tuned for more.)

Leadership Move #9: Anticipate Reactions

A large part of leadership is clearly and consistently articulating the strategy and vision for moving forward. But it's also about effectively communicating more tactical matters, as well.

The problem is that many leaders consider only how their words will 'land' for their constituency - that is, the people who already agree with their views. Leaders do not have the luxury of preaching only to the choir, though. Therefore, it is incumbent upon them to consider - in advance - how their words will be received by those who don't already buy in.

Consider: A new boss has been hired from the outside to help affect an internal culture change. Yet it the process of explaining his mandate, he routinely scoffs at how poorly things are currently done.

Now he may, in fact, be right, but that is not the point. The point is that he quite possibly just insulted all the good people who have been working their tales off since before he even arrived.

Consider: A boss who crows to her department that she's just solved another problem for one of her workgroups - the same workgroup that she tends to always help out.

Now she may, in fact, have done some very fine work, but that is not the point. The point is that she just possibly insulted staff in her other workgroups by so blatantly playing favorites.

These reactions could easily be anticipated, if only the boss took a moment to do so. And that would have been a good thing to do.
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(This is another in a series of 32 Leadership Moves that is being randomly posted over time at GottaGettaBlog! Stay tuned for more.)

Leadership Move #2: Get "in front of" Meetings

What does it mean to get in front of a meeting? Simply this - having certain conversations with key players - in advance of the 'formal' meeting on a particular topic - so that when the formal meeting actually does occur, the probability of things going 'your way' dramatically increases.

Get clear on:

1. who you need to have these pre-meeting conversations with
2. what you need to have these pre-meeting conversations be about
3. why it'd be an excellent idea to have these pre-meeting conversations.

You'll be surprised at how much more influential you'll be at the meetings you attend.

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(This is another in a series of 32 Leadership Moves that is being randomly posted over time at GottaGettaBlog! Stay tuned for more.)

Leadership Move #32: Actually BE Interested

Here's something to ask everyone - individually - at your next staff meeting: "What's on your radar that's probably not yet on mine?" Then listen thoughtfully to their answers.

Resist the temptation to immediately go into problem-solving mode. Resist the temptation to say that that's not really news to you. Simply get interested in what they have to say. BE interested in what they are saying. Ask probing questions to learn why they feel this is something important for you to know. Understand what they understand to be the difference between this matter and other ones similar to it.

Chances are good you'll learn a few things you might not have known otherwise. And that's a good thing.
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(This is the first in a series of 32 Leadership Moves that is being randomly posted over time at GottaGettaBlog! Stay tuned for more.)