Bill Treasurer's Blog, page 19

Mid-career Leadership Is Harder Than You Ever Expected

My work with leaders has convinced me how immensely difficult is to get leadership right. Leading other people is really, really hard. Indeed, the sheer glut of leadership books may be the best evidence of how hard leadership truly is. If it were easy, budding leaders wouldn’t be so thirsty for leadership advice. Rather than try to glamorize the topic, I tend to strip it down so you can have a more grounded, authentic, and reality-based view of what it takes to lead at all stages in your career.

As a leader, your development is well underway, but nowhere near complete; you are formed but not finished.

Leading from the Middle Place.

People forget about the middle. It’s overlooked because it’s not flashy, there’s typically no fanfare after your promotion there. Instead, it’s where leaders grind it out five days a week often without too much appreciation. This is the point in your leadership career where nothing is certain, and everything is up for grabs. As a leader, your development is well underway, but nowhere near complete; you are formed but not finished.

Much of what makes mid-career so challenging is that everyone wants a piece of you. Your employees want your time, guidance, and recognition. Your boss wants your loyalty, diligence, and competence. Both groups want your leadership, but each toward different aims.

Your employees want your leadership devoted to giving them opportunities to grow and excel. For them, your influence as a leader should be aimed at making their jobs more fulfilling, stable, and secure. How you treat them—emotionally, developmentally, and financially—will have a direct impact on how hard they work, and how loyal they are to you and the organization. It’s in your best interest to meet their needs. After all, where would you be as a leader without their hard work and loyalty?

Advancement as a mid-career leader requires minimizing, mitigating, and controlling risk.

Your bosses’ needs are different. First, it’s important to be clear about what they don’t want: surprises. Nothing will get your boss more steamed than bringing her a problem well after the time she actually could have helped resolve it. Handing her the ticking problem precisely at the time when it is set to explode is the surest way to damage your relationship with your boss and, it follows, your career. Advancement as a mid-career leader requires minimizing, mitigating, and controlling risk. When it comes to pleasing the people above you, heed these words: no surprises!

Give ‘em What They Want.

What else do your bosses want? Results. How you care for your employees, generally, means less to them than how you care for the organization and its goals. If taking care of your employees furthers the organization’s, have at it. But if doing so slows down progress or harms results, they prefer that you direct your attention elsewhere.

It’s hard to argue with the logic; without sustainable results, people don’t have jobs. As a good leader you:

Want to care for your people
Ensure they have stable jobs
Help them make more money

Put getting results first.

Sounds easier than it really is, but such is the life of a leader in the middle. You must walk the delicate line of satisfying your direct reports and satisfying those to whom YOU report. Ain’t leading grand?

Leaders Use Opportunity, Not Fear, to Motivate

Using fear to motivate people is cheap leadership. Any two-bit dictator can use fear to get things done. It takes no finesse or intelligence and ultimately works against the leader. The temporary spike in motivation from stoking people’s fears is offset by the long-term impacts of deep resentment, performance-draining anxiety, and ill-will. More evolved and thoughtful leaders choose to pull people toward the behaviors they want, instead of pushing them away from the behaviors they don’t want.

Fear vs. Excitement

Fear and excitement prompt the same neurological responses. Think for a moment about what happens to you, physiologically, when you are really, really afraid. Your heart races, your palms sweat, your breath gets faster and shorter, and your stomach teems with butterflies. Fear and excitement are both high-arousal states.

More evolved and thoughtful leaders choose to pull people toward the behaviors they want, instead of pushing them away from the behaviors they don’t want.

Although there are almost no neurological or physiological differences, there is one critical distinction between the conditions of fear and excitement—you experience fear as displeasure and excitement as pleasure. Thus, you move towards situations that provide pleasure and avoid situations that provoke displeasure. By viewing and explaining situations as opportunities, you create a field of excitement where employees are more apt to face challenges then shirk them.

Focusing on opportunity instead of problems is not just a matter of semantics. The following are some specific impacts of keeping an opportunity focus.

Opportunity pulls.

Leading by stoking people’s fears provokes anxiety and negative thoughts of impending painful consequences. Opportunities, on the other hand, are hopeful situations that evoke positive thoughts of pleasurable rewards. Leadership is most effective when it moves people toward a desired outcome, rather than getting them to run away from a bad outcome. Opportunity attracts; fear repels.

Opportunity points in the right direction.

When you are talking about opportunities, you are talking about the conditions you want, instead of the conditions you want to prevent from happening. Because outcomes often follow the direction of our thoughts, it’s best to focus on what you want. Saying, “Our opportunity is to keep the ball in the air,” is better than, “Whatever you do, don’t drop that ball!”

Opportunity activates imagination.

We “take advantage of” or “capitalize on” opportunities. They are conditions that don’t yet exist and require people’s hard work and imagination to be fully exploited.

Opportunity inspires courage.

Opportunities are not “sure things” and the positive outcome you hope to create is not guaranteed. Thus, opportunities come with potential risks. The risk is what infuses the pursuit of opportunities with excitement.

Opportunity begets opportunity.

Wouldn’t you rather have your employees coming to you with new ideas and opportunities they want you to support, instead of problems they want you to resolve? When you model opportunistic thinking, you increase the likelihood of building a self-sufficient, “can-do” spirit among employees.

By viewing and explaining situations as opportunities, you create a field of excitement where employees are more apt to face challenges then shirk them.

If you want workers to act like adults, you have to lead like an adult. Instead of constantly drawing their attention to the bad things that will happen if they mess up, work with them to identify the actions and priorities that will increase their likelihood of succeeding. Remind them that taking on challenges is how leaders earn their merit badges at work. Be sure to specify what rewards they can expect if they succeed—including the chance to be involved in more opportunities. Pulling people toward good behavior instead of threatening them out of bad behavior is a healthier and more mature way of leading.

Like what you’ve read? Check out my book, Leaders Open Doors .

Simplifying Leadership—Seriously!

Last month I wrote about how hard leadership is. Here’s a quick recap on why:

Total accountability. A leader can’t delegate accountability and/or responsibility to someone else.
When you’re in charge, you are on the hook 24/7/365.
The boss is the focal point for everything good/bad in your organization.

Now, this month, my goal is to offer some suggestions on how to simplify leadership. Sure, Coach, a piece of cake! Or as Bill would say, “Easy peasy”!

When you lead from the front and with integrity, your co-workers will follow accordingly.

The truth is that you can’t really simplify leadership, the only thing you can do, in my opinion, is to make it more manageable.

Coach’s tip(s) of the month: If you want to simplify (manage) leadership, try these:

Provide clear and concise guidance. For your organization’s mission statement, answer the five Ws (who, what, where, when, why). Ensure it clearly tells everyone where you want the organization to be now! For your organization’s vision statement, make sure your goals are realistic and achievable, and clearly tells everyone where you want the organization to be in the future. Confused direction from the top leads to lost productivity on the deck plates.
Lead by example. When you lead from the front and with integrity, your co-workers will follow accordingly.
Communicate …..effectively and often! Your workers will respond more proactively if you take the time to keep them in the loop of what’s going on in your organization, where you want it to go, and how they play into that big picture. Keeping your vision to yourself does no one any good!
Delegate some of your daily requirements, thus making your job a lot easier. Remember, you can’t do everything by yourself!

That’s it for this month. See how simple that was! Until April, lead effectively and with accountability. 

Leaders See Opportunities Not Problems

Real leaders view challenging situations as opportunities, not problems. Instead of injecting people with fear, they navigate them towards opportunities, inspiring them with excitement and hope. Finding opportunities for others means letting go of your own ego so others can find theirs.

Leadership is often defined as a set of behaviors by which one person influences others toward the achievement of goals. Put more simply, leadership is about momentum and results. While these definitions are true, they somehow fall short. What mechanism should a leader use, for example, to “influence” strong performance?

Has leadership evolved beyond carrots and sticks?

And what about the people being led?

Besides a paycheck, what do they get out of getting results for the leader? What’s in it for them?

After all, the leader’s success depends on them, right?

Finding opportunities for others means letting go of your own ego so others can find theirs.

What’s missing is opportunity. In exchange for advancing the leader’s goals, the people being led expect work opportunities that provide for:

Growth and personal developmentCareer fulfillment and enrichmentAcquisition of new skillsFinancial gain and other rewardsGreater access to leadership roles

People and organizations grow and develop to the extent that they capitalize on opportunities to do so. Opportunities are important to leaders because they’re important to the people they lead. At its core, open-door leadership is about noticing, identifying, and creating opportunities for those being led.

Think for a moment about a leader you greatly admire.

What do you admire about him or her? Did he open a door to an opportunity where you could grow your skills or improve yourself, such as asking you to lead a high-profile project? Did she help illuminate a blind spot by giving you candid feedback that caused you to see yourself in a different and more honest way? Did he build your confidence by asking for your perspective, input, and ideas?Did she openly advocate for your promotion, showing you how much she valued you?

Presumably, the leaders you most admire are the ones who left you better off than they found you by creating opportunities that helped you grow. How? By…

Valuing your input and perspective.Being open with telling you the truth even, if the truth is difficult to hear.Helping you be receptive to new possibilities and experiencing new ways of perceiving and thinking.

At its core, open-door leadership is about noticing, identifying, and creating opportunities for those being led.

Being a valuable leader involves creating or assigning opportunities in order to promote growth. In doing so, leaders increase the likelihood of their own success and advancement. They also increase the likelihood of creating other leaders, which is essential to building a lasting leadership legacy.

Leaders create leaders by opening doors of opportunity so that they have a positive and lasting impact on the behavior of those they lead.

Are you creating opportunities for others? Why or why not?

Leadership and the Art of Performance

Leadership is a role, a part you play in front of many audiences. It’s a part that comes with many expected and unexpected demands. Finding the balance, what you are truly responsible for versus what you assume responsibility for, is the difference between whether or not you succumb to the Leadership Killer.

In the classical (and stereotypical) view of leadership, you’re expected to carry yourself with a commanding presence so that people know you’re “in charge.” You’re expected to have more experience and knowledge than those you’re leading and to have timely and accurate answers to their many questions. You are presumed to be strong to the point of being unshakeable and invulnerable. When things get dicey, you’re supposed to push interference out of the way and say, “I got this!”

During a conversation about the pressures of leading others, an executive vice president of an electrical company commented, “What makes leadership so hard is that everyone needs you to play a different part. Some employees respond best when you treat them as equals. But with others, if you do that you’ll lose their respect. They work best following a chain of command, and they respond better when you give them explicit directives. Some want you to be an authority figure, some want you to be a coach, some want you to be a friend. And you may not even actually be any of those things, but to keep them motivated, you try to play the part they expect.”

In the classical (and stereotypical) view of leadership, you’re expected to carry yourself with a commanding presence so that people know you’re “in charge.”

As he suggests, the leadership role requires versatility. Sometimes it calls for you to be tough, direct, and blatantly honest. Other times it requires you to be compassionate, caring, and friendly. It makes no difference that you’re authentic disposition is; the role of leadership sometimes demands that you act against who you actually are. This is not unlike being an actor when some parts require that you “play against type.”

The danger of over-attending to the role of leader is that you may start to lose sight of your true self. Some leaders get so wrapped up in the performance that they don’t know how to step out of it. They stay in a constant state of theatrics, pretending to be invulnerable, strong, and in control. All the while their true self goes unnourished, and, before long, they become the proverbial man in the gray flannel suit, a shell of a human being, all work and no soul.

The danger of over-attending to the role of leader is that you may start to lose sight of your true self. Some leaders get so wrapped up in the performance that they don’t know how to step out of it.

This is what the Killer wants. Hubris’s work will be much easier if you have no sense of self, no depth and dimension, and no sense of identity beyond your leadership role. Hubris will be in a much better position to shape and define you when you have no earthly idea who you are outside of your role of leader.

Check your performance level. As a leader, put your role in perspective by considering:

Who are your stakeholders?Which people are relying upon YOU?Who can’t do a good job unless YOU do a good job? Who do YOU depend on to do your job effectively?How are your relationships with the people who have a stake in your being an effective leader?Which connections deserve more attention?

Coach Havlik says, “Leadership IS Hard!”

I can’t imagine anyone who has ever been in a supervisory role arguing against that statement. The expectations that come with being the boss are huge! Some people excel when they’re in charge, many others fail. And why do they fail? Mainly because they can’t handle the associated demands that come with being the chief!

There are a lot of perks and benefits that come with being in charge. Some of those include:

Bigger salary/benefits.Better parking space.Bigger, better office (usually on higher floors with more windows).Bigger staff to cater to all your whims.You get to set the organizational climate. Your individual motivation and drive inspire all that work for you.You get to set organizational policy. Your “vision” and “mission” set the standards for all to emulate.Access to more information. More information usually means more power.

BUT being in charge also comes with a lot of cons. Some of those include:

Total accountability. In the Navy, I quickly learned that command was absolute.  The Commanding Officer (CO) was responsible for everything and anything in his/her command. Naval history is full of examples of COs being relieved because their ship/submarine ran aground, collided with another vessel, crashed, etc., even when they were asleep in the cabin trying to get some well-deserved rest.There’s more pressure and more demands on you. When you’re in charge, you are on the hook 24/7/365. Never a break, never a respite, and never can you delegate accountability and/or responsibility to someone else. The best leaders I saw in the Navy were the ones who quickly learned to how to manage the many demands into their tight, daily schedule. The better a leader can juggle, the better the chance for organizational success.And finally, it’s lonely at the top . You are the focal point for everything good/bad in your organization. If you can’t handle always being “in the spotlight,” you probably should not seek positions of increased responsibility, and clearly, you shouldn’t be in a position of setting organizational guidance. Stick with being a follower…it’s safer and a whole lot easier!

Coach’s tip(s) of the month: You asked for everything that comes with filling a leader’s seat.

Like the quarterback of a football team, you must accept both the good and the bad associated with being the leader. If you can’t, step aside and let someone else take the reins. Your ego and/or fear of failure should never stand in the way of organizational success.Adhere to the leadership adage of putting the “best qualified” person and not your “best friend” into positions of authority. If you do, your organization will never go wrong.

That’s it for this month! See you in March!

These Are Leadership’s Heaviest Burdens

When you’re a leader, your primary responsibility is to leave people and the organization better off than when you found them. But the pressures of your other nonwork responsibilities also compete for your attention. You’re responsible for being a good spouse, parent, son or daughter, friend, and churchgoer, for example. Sometimes it can feel like everyone and everything wants a piece of you, and that on some level you’re leaving everyone a little disappointed.

Sometimes it can feel like everyone and everything wants a piece of you, and that on some level you’re leaving everyone a little disappointed.

Oftentimes, the people nearest the leader get rooked. One prominent leader I spoke with recalled the greatest regret of his life was failing to be at his wife’s bedside the evening before she died of cancer. Instead, he was on the other side of town speaking at an event. Being a good leader at work does not always equate to being an attentive spouse or parent at home.

Faced with mounting responsibility, many leaders push their own health to the bottom of the priority list and become self-neglectful. Workaholism is commonplace for those in leadership roles, who justify it as having a good “work ethic.” Self-care becomes virtually nonexistent, and diet and exercise fall down on the priority list. According to research cited in CEO Magazine, 82% of CEOs are overweight, 69% were found to be in “hopelessly poor physical condition,” and almost 60% were unable to even touch their toes.

Such a leader, hubris knows, is vulnerable to making impulsive choices that give him temporary escape or relief from carrying responsibility’s heavy burdens.

Being a responsible, hardworking leader is a good thing, until it mutates into unhealthy self-neglect. Research also shows that 100% of CEOs suffer some form of stress ailment, most commonly backaches and headaches. Even for CEOs who are in good physical condition, the impact of sustained stress, combined with a perpetual lack of sleep, take a physical toll. Heart disease, which is hastened by stress and poor sleep, is the leading cause of death among leaders.

In my book, The Leadership Killer: Reclaiming Humility in an Age of Arrogance, I introduce the idea that The Killer (aka hubris) is on the lookout for the self-neglectful leader who is weighed down with the burden of responsibility. It knows that the more responsibilities the leader is carrying, the more the coiled spring of irresponsibility wants to burst forth the non-leaderlike expression. Such a leader, hubris knows, is vulnerable to making impulsive choices that give him temporary escape or relief from carrying responsibility’s heavy burdens. It knows that the more exhausted a leader is, the more susceptible he’ll be to the character erosion, where principles can soften to the point of being compromised. The Killer will implore the leader to take a bigger bite of the rosy apple of responsibility, knowing that the more he takes on, the more control it will soon have over the leader.

So what is the remedy? Recognizing the burden of leadership is in itself a lesson in humility. It’s a display of your own humanness and a sign that your ego remains stable and in check. The Killer sees no use for the leader who stays mindful and grounded in their humanity.
But that’s not enough. It takes a demonstration of your leadership skills and determination to transform your burdens, to reprioritize your values, and to change your goals. These are the actions of a leader who will not succumb to the Killer. Instead, he will rise to the occasion and embolden those he leads and advance the organization that allowed him the opportunity to do so.

Strategic Planning Requires Courageous Leadership

Strategic planning isn’t something that gets done in a vacuum and it most definitely isn’t something that just anyone offers to do. It’s an arduous process. It’s a bit messy. It requires significant commitment. But more than anything, it demands courage. Only real leaders, new and experienced, see the need for organizational strategic planning and take the initiative to accomplish it.

Strategic Planning Is A Mile Marker.

In order for a business to achieve its goals, it FIRST needs to know what those goals are. It sounds simple enough, but you’d be surprised by the number of companies that don’t bother to closely and courageously examine themselves. SECOND, they must take these intentions and align them to their overall mission. Otherwise, what sense to the goals make in the scheme of your company’s purpose? THIRD, you must COMMUNICATE everything to your stakeholders. If your people don’t know what the goals are, you’ll never meet them.

This duty calls for a truly courageous leader!
Courage Comes In Three Ways.

In my experience, courage is a behavior that manifests in three distinct ways. I refer to these as the Three Buckets of Courage. When it comes to strategic planning, the bucket most often pulled from is Try Courage.

Try Courage requires stepping up to the plate – even when the task is daunting. And to be sure, strategic planning is a foreboding task (especially for someone early in their leadership career!) Initiative and action are the hallmarks of Try Courage, notably when you see someone attempting a new project for the first time. When someone stretches beyond their comfort zone and takes a risk to do something they’ve never tried before, it is courageous. Situations like these season leaders and demonstrate their mettle to others and themselves.

Only real leaders, new and experienced, see the need for organizational strategic planning and take the initiative to accomplish it.

Getting The Plan Done.

Don’t fall into the trap that you must have your plan done by a certain time. If you meant to have your plan in place prior to the New Year, that doesn’t mean you can’t start one now. Courageous leaders don’t give up and they don’t give in to other’s notions of appropriate deadlines. It’s not too late to start your planning whenever you want to. Use your inspiration, drive, and courage to take a risk and do it NOW. After all, leaders know what rules are meant to be broken and when to break them.

Initiative and action are the hallmarks of Try Courage, notably when you see someone attempting a new project for the first time.

Get The Best Support.

Whether you want to know more about courage, strategic planning, or both, Giant Leap Consulting stands ready to help. We have led courage-building workshops for thousands of executives across the globe and we provide high-quality, tailored strategic planning services that have been used in corporate, non-profit, and even academic research settings.

“In my career, it was one of the most inclusive processes I’ve been part of, and you can see this in the result: a clear vision of what we need to do to work towards the expansion of our services in the long term, while continuing to provide critical services in the short term.” – Beth Maczka, CEO of the Asheville YWCA

Our proven strategic planning process will bring each member of your team into clear alignment with your purpose, direction, and desired impact. However you define success, Giant Leap will teach you exactly how to achieve your courageous vision for a future that is worthy of your collective efforts and ambitions.

Ready for Change? The New Year is Up to You!

Hey GLC readers! 2019 starts with lots of unknowns and questions. Are you…

Going to do the same things and follow the same strategies as last year, or…
Going to take some chances and try some things out of the box?  

Kinda scary huh, especially if your organization did well and/or exceeded expectations last year? Why change a proven strategy if it worked before? Great question.

I remember attending the Naval War College (NWC) after spending almost 15 months as XO of the Bahrain based SEAL unit post-9/11, where we were involved in a myriad of combat operations throughout Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, plus “prepared the battlefield” for Operation Iraqi Freedom operations that commenced in March 2003. It was a crazy time, and we learned that getting the job done required us to think outside the box of existing military protocol/doctrine.

I vividly remember many a class where the students and faculty would engage in heated discussions between how real-world operations were being executed and the currently taught course of instruction.

When I got to NWC, I (and many of my fellow students) saw a culture that was lagging behind what was happening overseas, and very reluctant to change their existing course curriculum. I vividly remember many a class where the students and faculty would engage in heated discussions between how real-world operations were being executed and the currently taught course of instruction. This included one well-known NWC professor publicly calling out a senior officer as “wrong” because that officer did not follow that professor’s book on how to conduct combat operations, even though that same officer had just successfully managed approximately 6 months of combat operations in Afghanistan.

It took some time, but eventually, the NWC realized that a curriculum change was needed, and in close coordination with the students, developed a syllabus that better matched current military operations on the ground.

Coach’s tip(s) for this month:

The question of whether to stay the course or change can only be answered by you. But remember this definition as you attack the new year.

Insanity = doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Ultimately, the current “situation and terrain” of your business/organization will dictate how you do things this year. Good luck!

As an added bonus this month, please check out the attached YouTube link I recently did with an old SEAL teammate, Don Shipley. He’s retired now like me but doing great things for vets and their families. On the side, he also exposes individuals claiming to be SEALs and puts the videos on YouTube for everyone’s enjoyment.

For this video, he changed gears, and we share some funny sea stories about our platoon days together, my meteoric career in the SEALs, and a nice review of the book that I co-authored with Bill Treasurer, The Leadership Killer: Reclaiming Humility in an Age of Arrogance. The video lasts a little over an hour, but it’s good, funny, and informative. The last 2 minutes are amazing!  Please enjoy!

Start the Year by Communicating Your Goals

Strategic planning is a necessary activity if you want your company to communicate its goals externally and internally. For instance, if your objective is to make 2019 your company’s best year ever, but you don’t tell everyone at the company, how do you expect to achieve the goal? If your mission is to outproduce last year’s widgets by 10%, but you haven’t informed the widget department, how will that happen? And, by the way, if your intention is to earn the award for the best boss of 2019 but you haven’t written a strategic plan that outlines all your ambitious goals and key objectives, well, Houston, we have a problem.

If your goals leave people feeling uninspired, stressed out, or over-worked, then they will lack the motivation to complete them.

With courageous leadership comes tremendous responsibility. One of your many jobs is to set the aims for the company and the team, but it doesn’t end there. Those ambitions have to MOTIVATE them to action. If your goals leave people feeling uninspired, stressed out, or over-worked, then they will lack the motivation to complete them.

Goals that motivate have common characteristics worthy of consideration as you plan ahead:

Clarity. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound (SMART). When a goal is clear and specific, people know what needs to be done and what is expected.
Challenge. We are motivated by achievement, so we’ll judge a goal by how difficult we perceive it to be. If it is too easy, we won’t give it as much attention and energy. However, if it demands us to stretch ourselves in order to achieve the recognition of a job well done, we are more likely to be motivated to excel.
Commitment. For goal-setting to be effective, the goals must be agreed upon and understood. While this doesn’t mean you negotiate with every employee, there is value in engaging the people working towards the goal.
Complexity. For highly-complex goals, provide people sufficient time to learn the skills to be successful.
Feedback. Incorporating feedback into the goal-setting process allows for expectation clarification, necessary adjustment, and personal recognition. In particular, when a goal is long-term in nature, it’s important to set benchmarks that help people gauge their success and see their achievement.

Now you can get to work on that plan!    

Once the goals are defined, you need to determine objectives and ways to measure them. Otherwise, you did a lot of work for no reason. The true purpose of creating a strategic plan, communicating your goals, involving your people, setting objectives, and measuring them, is so that in the end, you will have RESULTS. Hopefully, they will amount to the tangibles you set out to achieve.

A strategic plan only happens with exceptional communication and clear goal-setting. Challenging your leadership skills with activities like this is how you grow into your position and how you help your organization grow.

Have you made a plan for 2019? How will you hold people accountable?

How will you hold YOURSELF accountable?