Susan Scott's Blog, page 114

Celebrate the Power of Conversations

“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” ― Howard Zinn

Today America honors the Fourth of July. A holiday that focuses on celebrating the sovereignty of our nation and the power we hold to have open and free conversations.

Weaved in between the barbeques, parades, and fireworks are opportunities to take advantage of the liberties our democracy gives us and engage in dialogue. To celebrate the effect the collective voice can have.

We must also ask ourselves: what needs to be accomplished to continue advancing?

Whether it is political, social, or economic change, small acts, such as having conversations, can be transformative. America’s birthday is a time to celebrate both the leadership of this country and the extraordinary actions of the populous.

From the original founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to Henrietta Tubman and Martin Luther King to Harvey Milk, our history has seen great leadership in its short time. However, the power of all these leaders came from their ability to harness the energy of the masses.

While enjoying your barbeque and time with family and friends, you might find yourself avoiding “hot button” issues that get people fired up and debating. I encourage you to do the opposite.

Remember that our democracy is most successful when each of us harnesses our power by sharing our opinions and debating openly in a free thinking society.

It is risky. You might offend someone. You might be offended. You might also have your own opinion transformed. You might participate in transforming someone else.

The fourth of July can be more than a day to enjoy off of work and be with friends and family. It’s also the perfect time to celebrate what makes America strong and have conversations about your country, your rights, and your future.

Fierce Tip of the Week: Tackle a Tough Challenge

Summer is upon us and there can be definite desire to pull back and move into more auto-pilot mode. Blame it on the lingering memories of summer vacations away from school or the warmer weather; it can be hard to stay motivated over the next couple of months.

That’s why this week, it is important to engage your mind and heart. Tackle a tough challenge instead of procrastinating.

Perhaps it’s a responsibility you’ve been putting off that weighs on your mind or a topic with someone you’ve been avoiding. Whatever the challenge is, think of how much more enjoyable these summer months will be, knowing it’s taken care of and you’re free to relax and enjoy life.  Travel more lightly.

If that’s not reason enough, take a moment and add up in your mind how much energy you’ve spent avoiding your challenge. That time is now lost, and that pattern can stop this week.

Think of all the other productive things you could do now that time spent avoiding that challenge is freed up.

Fierce Resources: 8 Nations Leading the Way in Online Education

This week’s featured piece first appeared on the OnlineUniversities.com website. We found this blog compelling because Fierce is passionate about being on the forefront of online training. We recognize that many companies are transitioning to a more virtual world and the need for thoughtful, authentic communication is greater than ever.

Last year, we launched our O2 Fierce Conversations workshop. It is a virtual instructor-led training that is hosted in a virtual classroom. This delivery allows global organizations to broaden their learning audience with greater ease.

8 Nations Leading the Way in Online Education, focuses on the top countries leveraging online technology to educate a growing audience.

“Online education is quickly becoming a major phenomenon around the world. The ease and convenience it offers learners appeal to people just about everywhere, especially those who are trying to balance work, family, and other obligations with completing a degree or certification program.”

To read the full blog click here.

Why it’s Important as a Leader to Create a Development-Rich Zone

“Employees aren’t interested in being treated as cogs in the machine. Employees want to have their hands on the steering wheel and have a clear understanding of their role in the big picture.” -Fierce CEO, Halley Bock

We’ve all heard the horror stories. The tales of employees who go to work each day, who log their time, keep their heads down, and are expected to be happy because at least they have a job.

I wish I could say that this scenario is something that is in the past. Unfortunately, even today, there are still leaders who choose to run their organizations based on this archaic leadership mindset.

In our most recent Fierce white paper, What Employees Really Think About Best Practices: Survey Uncovers 3 Things Employees Crave,  we discovered that nearly 50% of those surveyed identified the most beneficial practices as ones that encourage accountability, development, and individual empowerment within the organization.

What does this mean for you as a leader?

If you are willing to create a culture that is centered on the development of your employees, your employees will rise to the occasion. Feedback, recognition and collaboration are major components in helping shift your culture away from a faceless, nameless employee mentality.

Leadership can utilize these components to build a development-rich zone by providing the opportunity for individuals to have conversations focusing on where and how they would like to grow within the company.

Leaders who have regular conversations with their direct reports and encourage them to take ownership in their own development can help retain top performing employees, and not miss out on chances to promote internally and match individuals’ interests with needs of the organization.

As a leader, are you having these conversations? How do you create a development-rich zone?

 

Fierce Tip of the Week: Provide Feedback

This week in your conversations focus your attention outwards and take advantage of opportunities to provide constructive feedback.

The ability to thoughtfully articulate and explain areas where a project, a peer, or direct report could improve is extremely valuable. There can be hesitancy to provide feedback because of a fear that it can be misinterpreted or taken the wrong way.

What holds you back from sharing your views? Explore how you’ve received and given feedback in the past. Let this week be a new chance to share your opinions in a positive way with others!

Moving forward, when you want to provide your point of view on a project or how someone could develop themselves further.

Keep in mind the four objectives of a Fierce Conversation: Interrogate Reality, Tackle a Though Challenge, Provoke Learning, and Enrich the Relationship. Think about how you would want to receive feedback, and that the point of sharing this information is to move both their professional development and the relationship forward.

On the flip side, if you receive feedback this week, welcome it with open arms. If it’s not given in the most constructive way possible, share that feedback with the person who gave it to you.

Think of the growth that could happen!

How Staff Agreements Can Set an Organization’s Standards

In partnership with Fierce in the Schools, the Learning Forward Blog will be publishing an exclusive article for our Fierce blog. Our guest writer is Stephanie Hirsh, the Executive Director of Learning Forward, Please visit the Learning Forward Blog, hosted by Education Week, to read more of their blog posts.

Like most education organizations, it’s the end of our fiscal year and the time for us to conduct our staff evaluations. As part of this process, we evaluate each staff member’s adherence to Learning Forward’s staff agreements.

Our staff agreements were developed in a collaborative manner several years ago and are periodically reviewed to ensure that we remain comfortable with the expectations we hold for each other. Our staff agreements are key to ensuring a productive, effective, and safe working culture.

I often hear about “water cooler” talk from friends who work in other environments and wonder to what degree their concerns would be mitigated if their organizations adopted their own staff agreements that everyone was expected to adhere to.

We use our staff agreements in many ways. We ask prospective employees to review the agreements and to address those that would be most easy to follow and those that might present a problem. We build them into our mid-year self-reflections and end-of-year evaluations, where employees report on how well they performed according to our agreements.

They provide the basis for the feedback we give colleagues, supervisors, and direct reports.

Take a minute and read our staff agreements as well as some explanations for each and think about how you might answer that question:

Keep your commitments.

If you know you are unable to keep a promise, renegotiate the promise before rather than after the deadline.
An excuse, good or bad, does not equal a kept agreement. Be on time to meetings, phone calls, etc.

Take responsibility for your mistakes and fix your breakdowns.

Figure out how the mistake occurred, assume responsibility, and determine the procedures that will prevent future breakdown.
Avoid blame, and be forgiving to colleagues when they admit mistakes.

Speak to people rather than about them.

Honor people who are not present, and do not say something about someone who is not present unless you intend to share it with them.
Speaking directly to individuals means face-to-face or telephone, not email.

Be open to new ideas.

Try to love any idea the first time you hear it.
Use complaints as well as input as possibilities for finding ways to improve our efforts.

Trust the competency of your colleagues.

Assume your colleagues are working as hard as you are, and that they are as thorough as you are with their areas of responsibilities.
When problems are brought to your attention from a client, members, vendors, etc., respond with respect for your colleague’s decisions.

Celebrate contributions; demonstrate appreciation.

Take time to show appreciation for what others do for you and for others.
Say thank you frequently and genuinely.

Use email for communicating information.

Avoid reading “tone” in email.
Never write an email when you are angry.

In my own case I reported that I performed well in celebrating and appreciating my colleagues’ work. It is not only a staff agreement for me, but also a value I hold about life. Owning mistakes and making things right is also very high value I carry.

Probably like many of you, I work very hard to keep commitments. There are times when I get overwhelmed and miss the opportunity to renegotiate deadlines and then all I can do is own the mistake and recognize the potential impact the broken promise may have on my relationship with a colleague.It’s an area where I struggle and where I will focus this coming year.

I invite you to consider that among the staff agreements that you would find valuable in your own workplace.

Where might you find your next opportunity for growth?

Fierce Tip of the Week: Provoke Learning in Your Conversations

Think about a conversation you had recently that was very rewarding for you. What about that conversation made it satisfying?

When I think back recently on a conversation I had that left me feeling effective, the conversation spurred a huge desire to learn.

This week, when you engage in conversations try to think about how you can provoke learning for yourself and those you’re communicating with.

For example, I was speaking with a friend about a sensitive subject I thought I had a very firm position on. My friend held the exact opposite opinion about the same subject. The topic was emotionally charged for both of us, and yet, we approached the conversation as a chance to provoke each other’s learning by mutually agreeing to not shy away from our differences and instead embrace the chance to see another side.

We did this by asking each other a lot of questions and really exploring the other’s perspective. We focused on not getting defensive when our viewpoint was cross-examined, and we shared with one another what we learned, and where and how our own opinions were formed.

The conversation was 15 – 20 minutes long, and in that short amount of time, I deepened a relationship that I had always thought of as more surface-level.

Conversations are the lifeblood of expanding your learning…and your relationships.

Think of the possibilities!

Fierce Resources: How to Ask Questions Like Socrates

Fierce is excited to announce the new series, Fierce Resources, that will be featured on our blog. We will be sharing an article or blog that we find interesting and think our readers will enjoy!

This week’s featured piece was found on the Smart Brief’s website located in their SmartBlog on Leadership section.

We found it timely since last week, on the Fierce blog, we explored coaching versus advice giving in leadership, and how using questions is core to the Coaching Model.

How To Ask Questions Like Socrates, written by Daniel Dworkin and Holly Newman, focuses on how critical it is for managers to have the skillset necessary to ask poignant questions in order to develop their teams and organizations further.

“In embracing their role as “the great answer provider,” managers are doling out fish, not creating a team of fishermen. As a result, employees learn that having a recommendation is often preferred over exploratory dialogue. As employees advance in their career, they become adept at solving problems. Their ability to apply a question-asking approach, however, wanes”

To read the full article click here!

As a leader, how do you use questions to develop your team?

As a Leader, Choose Coaching Over Advice Giving

Imagine a direct report comes to you and needs to discuss a problem they’ve wanted to solve for months, and they ask you for your help.

How do you move forward with the conversation?

First, be aware as a leader that this is a great opportunity to engage in a coaching conversation that could develop your direct report.

Second, realize that there are some pitfalls to keep in mind when moving forward with the conversation. A major one being that there may be a temptation to immediately jump in and start giving advice.

Moving straight to giving advice can be very appealing. For one, from your outside position, the path forward seems so obvious. The inclination is to tell your direct report next steps, which allows you to get back to your own task at hand.

One of the issues with sharing how to solve their problems is that you are not helping to foster that person’s problem solving skills.

In the Fierce Coaching Model, we discuss Princeton psychologist and Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman’s research that shows people react emotionally first and rationally second. Meaning, if you impose advice on a coachee, and that person is not emotionally connected to it, more than likely that person will be back in your office looking for help on the same issue sooner rather than later.

Truly successful coaching conversations provide epiphanies by engaging both the heads and the hearts of the coachee.

To do this, the coach must listen more and talk less. The conversation allows the coachee space to dive deeper into the issue, and the coach is there to ask specific and poignant questions that inspire the coachee to identify the issue, determine impact, and work out next steps.

A successful coaching conversation helps the person generate insight to both intellectually and emotionally connect to their resolution.

Does this mean you shouldn’t give advice?

Absolutely not.

As a leader, it means being emotionally aware and transparent about what you are doing. If someone asks for your help, allow them to work through that issue and help facilitate the conversation with thoughtful questions. If they then directly ask for your advice, give it to them! The power comes from knowing the difference between the two.

Fierce Tip of the Week: Hold Each Other Able

In Fierce Accountability, we talk about the difference between holding someone accountable and holding someone able.

Often we talk about accountability in a legislative matter. Something we can impose on others. Many of us associate accountability with blame.

At Fierce, we prefer to view accountability not as a process or a tool, and instead view it as a context that makes every tool and process more effective.

When you hold someone able, you choose to recognize the capacity each person you are connecting with has to achieve the goals you agree upon. It is a bias towards action: an attitude, a personal, private, non-negotiable choice about how to live your life. The reality is, as much as you may want to, you can’t hold someone accountable.

Shifting the mentality away from holding others accountable to holding each other able builds a culture of engagement, trust, and creativity versus disengagement, fear, and disillusionment.

This change in mind-set is not about word-smithing or being clever. It’s about creating a stronger context that empowers yourself and those around you.

In your conversations this week go forward and trust that each person will make the choice to move the relationship and objectives set in the conversation onward.