Susan Scott's Blog, page 17

3 Tips to Becoming a Successful Change Leader

Moving an organization into the future is the job of the leader. With vision and execution comes change. Unfortunately, most leaders are not prepared with the skills that change demands. How will you become a successful change leader?

When employees across various industries were surveyed on leadership readiness, 71% felt that if change was needed, their leaders were not prepared or skilled to guide them into the future. This statistic rippled across businesses around world. Many organizations have been forced to reevaluate leadership training and systems to assist with change management. 

At Fierce, we’ve seen organizations enter this crisis point where change is needed but the tools to lead and manage change are outside their grasp. As we have worked with both small and large organizations, the initial starting point must begin with the leadership. Organizational culture always flows from leadership where, oftentimes, culture creation is unconscious on the part of leaders and their intentions are not expressed clearly enough to direct the culture they intend. 

To begin the process of effective change:

These 3 Tips will begin to build the process of aligning your team and effectively communicating your vision.

1. Increase Transparency

Transparency builds trust, but it can be demanding as you work with your team. Many leaders feel that being too transparent about their decision-making, will show cracks in their ability to lead. You may know where the organization needs to go but not always have the answers to understand how to get there. 

Open communication with leadership, begins with being honest about what you see about the future therefore being open to feedback needed to accomplish that vision. As important conversations develop, transparency can spread outward into the organization building consensus and execution. 

Susan Scott, Fierce Founder, and CEO discussed trust and radical transparency in a podcast interview with TalentGrow. She explained that “trust is built one conversation at a time, and it’s also lost one conversation at a time. Trust requires persistent identity, [which] means me showing up as myself completely, consistently, all the time, every day so that I’m not different depending on who I’m with.”

Articulating this poorly can actually lose trust — a leader’s worst nightmare is that they are seen by their team and clients as inept. Being transparent isn’t a display of incompetence, it is being vulnerable enough to look strategically at the help you need from others. As a leader, it is impossible to see all the differing viewpoints and potential solutions. You can rest in this fact and be open to the potential insight you can gain when being transparent about the direction and your limitations for crafting the strategies to move forward. 

Transparency isn’t solely about putting what you don’t know on display to your team. Transparency makes intentions known, so your team understands, exactly, what must be accomplished to move into the future.The most successful leaders we’ve seen realize that learning to be transparent is a skill that can be gained. 

Successful leaders communicate the “what” and the “why” of change. Explaining the purpose of change and connecting it to the values of the organization along with the future benefits creates stronger adoption and urgency for change to be implemented. 

2. Learn to Confront Unproductive Behavior

One of the greatest barriers to change management inside an organization is a toxic culture. A culture of backbiting, gossip, and complaint is contagious and can spread quickly throughout the ranks. Many times leaders are blind to what is under the surface of their employee’s attitudes about work. 

Toxic culture often manifests in unproductive behavior. Here are several markers to look for inside your organization to examine whether toxic culture must be mitigated before moving forward successfully into the future.

Markers of Toxic Culture:

High rates of absenteeismNot meeting deadlinesCriticism of othersUnhealthy competitionAggression to leadership and their team

To get everyone’s best in the organization, as a leader you must make it clear that unproductive and undermining behaviors will not be tolerated. 

Sound uncomfortable or daunting? Yes, but like any leadership skill, confrontation skills can be learned using successful models and templates leading to positive behavior. One of the best places to begin is looking into your feedback culture. Implementing effective feedback systems for employees will reduce the need for difficult confrontation conversations by 70% or more. 

When managers engage in regular feedback to employees, engagement increases mitigating the seeds of toxic culture. Gallup’s Global Workplace reports that 98% of employees will fail to be engaged when managers give little or no feedback. 69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognized.

3. Foster a Culture of Collaboration

To move forward into change, you need the ideas and intentions of your people. A large startup clinical research firm was committed to tripling in size in 10 years. Emerging as a startup, the leadership within the organization was full of independent lone wolves comfortable with acting quickly without input from other colleagues. This worked early in the growth of the business, subsequently they needed to scale to meet growth challenges in their next decade they were forced to collaborate.

As the leadership team gathered in a meeting to discuss strategy for future action, it was apparent there was little consensus on the way forward however, many opinions were in direct conflict. To solve this stalemate, collaboration was needed. Each leader put forward their ideas among the group who were committed to fully understanding each person’s point of view. Clarity around terms and language began to emerge until they had a common language that could be used to describe what needed to be done.

The vision born from collaboration allowed them to communicate a shared strategy allowing each team to accomplish as they grew into the future. 

Your organization has the seeds of collaboration built in. You only need to harness them.

The more diverse your workplace, the more innovative your organization can be. Different perspectives and backgrounds provide different ways of approaching problems therefore creating solutions. Open discussion allows solutions to be weighed and evaluated so the best options rise to the top.

Effective leaders build collaboration and encourage feedback among their team members and colleagues by keeping lines of communication open.  Embrace differing and conflicting opinions because that is where the best ideas and innovation can take place.

Significant change rarely involves individual accomplishments. It requires synergy, for example, new ideas, new processes, and greater efficiencies are needed for growth, and that demands collaboration.  As a leader, it is your job to bring key knowledge holders to the table and keep the idea funnel flowing until positive change happens.

The Bonus Tip

Did you notice a common thread among all the top 3 skills? Each one is reliant on the ability to clearly communicate your ideas. The words you say are important however the images and emotions you build in the minds of the listener are critical.

As a leader, identify the conversations needed to take place in your organization. You don’t need to fear transparency, confronting toxic culture, and building structures for shared ideas. Not only will the organization grow but individuals will thrive both personally and professionally through change.

The post 3 Tips to Becoming a Successful Change Leader appeared first on Fierce.

How to Lead a Team Through Change

You’ve probably been part of an organization where you were blindsided by change. One day you entered the office, an email hit your inbox and work life suddenly became very different. You immediately saw co-workers begin to grumble and question the wisdom of leadership. Some may have begun brushing up their resume to find different employment. Toxic culture began breeding. 

Even if the ultimate change was positive, the emotions surrounding the change damaged the organization. Had events been handled differently even difficult change could have had a more positive effect on the organization.

Change is part of life, and in today’s fast paced global environment, it can take one news story to impact your organization. When an organization plans for growth, it is impossible for life to stay at status quo. While we may expect change, actually leading your organization during these times can be hard.

Basic Structure of Change

When change is necessary, there are 3 basic stages where leaders must lead: 

The Need for ChangeThe Implementation of ChangeThe Evaluation of Change

Leaders must communicate through each step. Once the need for change is recognized, this is the time to communicate clearly, build consensus, and create plans. Eventually, you move into change implementation. Even though the focus is on action, communication is still critical. Plans must adapt as you continually monitor progress and pull feedback from your team. Even though it may feel change never ends (and it doesn’t), your current iteration of change will settle out. During this time, you should take time to debrief and see what you learned for the next change on the horizon.

Change is rarely mechanical with sequential steps leading to utopian outcomes. There is struggle and development and usually the unexpected happens when leading a team. In spite of these facts, we have learned several principles that help organizations and leaders manage themselves and people through both external and internal change.

Principles for Effective Change1. Have conversations

We are Fierce. Of course we are going to mention conversation as an important element for leading a team through change. Honest conversations using structured systems allow both transparency and honesty providing feedback on needed change. New innovation may arise. Blind spots in new directions can be spotted. Motivation and enthusiasm are more likely to occur when deep conversation is allowed.  

2. Provide outlets for discussion

Not only must leadership communicate, but space must be allowed for teams to discuss during times of change. Open, honest discussion among contributors can alert leaders to potential problems, but also signal areas where they need to communicate differently. Communication can be hard, and you need tools to be understood. Don’t forget the context where the message is being heard. Allowing outlets for team discussion will help understand how your direction is being framed.

3. Don’t forget the metrics

Change is about people, but metrics keep you on track. Have metrics in place to determine how change is progressing. Share those metrics throughout the organization as guideposts to where you are going. Explain how those metrics will not only impact the company but each individual contributor.

4. Stay Transparent

Especially in times of difficult decision making, being transparent builds trust. Share as much as possible and explain what is happening externally and internally that elicited change. Leaders will lower the anxiety level of the organization as they listen and make room for questions.

5. Paint images of a positive future

Consider the frame of change. Continually paint the picture of the ultimate future state where the organization is heading at the end of change. Focusing on the end goal creates hope inside of teams and pulls them through the hard days.

6. Lead with confidence

As a leader, you often need to make hard decisions. Even with feedback from other leaders, eventually you have to drive the change. Do so with confidence, knowing you listened and considered every option. Leading with confidence will build confidence in your team members

7. Provide a clear plan

When communicating changes inside an organization or team, deliver a clear roadmap of not only where you are heading but what the steps along the way look like. Your people need to know how to navigate the challenges ahead, and not providing clear plans and direction through the process will only build anxiety and decrease confidence in the organization.

8. Mitigate conflict

In times of change, conflict will arise. You can’t bury your head in the sand and expect each decision to be embraced by everyone. Stress may be high at times. Brush off your conflict resolution skills and have the tools ready to move people through difficult decision making. Conflict may occur between team members and managers or even between individual contributors. Train your people to work through conflict and come to resolution through open conversations.

9. Applaud and praise

Take time throughout the process to find people doing good work. Praise and applaud those moving the company toward its desired end. Positive reinforcement will breed more positive action. You demonstrate actions and attitudes that others can emulate to keep morale high and work productive.

10. Build a future game plan

Each day throughout a change, look at what went well, what you learned, and where you need to take action. Keeping track of these events will not only help you manage change among your team, but provide a clear game plan for future scenarios. Don’t lose the wisdom you gained as you move your people through transition. 

Change can be difficult, but you can prepare your people for change and prime them for success. Knowing how to communicate clearly and listen well, make the job of change much easier. Not only will reaching the goal become smoother, but your team will have new skills and resilience for a productive future.

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How To Tackle Stress The Fierce Way

Hey, how are your stress levels these days? You know, I think for all of us more than two years into a worldwide pandemic, we’d be excused for having a certain amount of stress, you know. Add that on top of all of the normal, day to day living, that we do at work and at home with those around us.

There’s stress, I pick up on it, when I have conversations with people all the time, there’s a certain amount of stress. You know, years ago, my wife actually said to me, I feel like I have to stress twice as much because you don’t stress enough. So, I’ve learned how to better deal with my stress and name it and work on it so that she doesn’t feel like she needs to carry all the load.

So, we woke up this morning, and I was feeling a little bit of stress, if I’m being honest, you know, there was some, some unease, you know, a disturbance in the force, if you will, for those of you to Star Wars fans. I decided to go for a run as I do and as I was running, I tried to clear my thoughts get to the source of, this tension, this stress that I was feeling. As I ran, I started to recognize that it has to do with the relationship that I have, and that I realized that there’s probably a conversation that I need to have to address this, situation, this issue.

So rather than play that out with all of you here, what I will share is the way that we help others, here at Fierce Inc., to get to the source of their stress, and then find a path forward to break through and to be successful with those around them, the ones that matter to them most. What we recognize in these kinds of situations where there’s a bit of tension, and there’s something going on between a couple of people, there’s some emotions here. And oftentimes people will not have these conversations for fear of how it might go. And then we always tell ourselves, or often tell ourselves that this isn’t going to go well.

So we’ll give ourselves excuses for not having the conversation. And then we’ll just store it up and store it up and save it and collect some more data until finally we can’t handle it anymore. Our emotions overcome us and we just explode all over the other person and it doesn’t go well. It probably does make things worse than than before. And so what we recognize is there’s a need to prepare to really skillfully have this conversation to free up your stress and enrich the relationship with the other person.

If we don’t prepare, we sometimes find ourselves tiptoeing into the conversation will ask an innocuous question like, so how’s it going? And if you listen to that question, you’ll realize it’s pretty disingenuous, right? We know how it’s going. That’s why we’re having this conversation. It also, by the way, opens up the conversation for the other person to take control and steer in the direction that they’d like to carry it. So really prepare for this conversation.

There’s a model that we share with our clients, you know, and it’s really straightforward, consider what’s the situation, can you name the situation of what’s going on? What’s the, the behavior, the performance, the thing that’s going on? And then share an example of that, so that when you’re sharing it with your partner, they can get an image of what you’re talking about?

Certainly name your emotion, how is it impacting you, rather than acting your emotions out? Let them know that you’re impacted that you’re affected that you’re human, after all, and you have some emotions around this? Let them know what’s at stake, given this situation, what’s at stake in your ability to work together effectively, perhaps what’s at stake for them in their continued success in the organization, maybe it’s not just with you, it’s others. And you’re giving them some insight to be more successful?

Certainly explore for yourself and discover what have you done to contribute to this situation with this other person? What, have you done to achieve the current results that you’re experiencing, as it relates to working with this other person? Showing that you have some accountability, opens them up to share their accountability, going forward. And then you want to show your positive intent. This isn’t a blaming or shaming conversation, this is really about you wanting to move to a better place with them. And so you would let them know. That’s what it looks like, from my perspective, I’d really like to understand what it looks like from your perspective. Please talk with me, help me help me see what you’re seeing as it relates to the situation.

So once you’ve done that you’ve shared your perspective, and it happens in a minute or less. That is enough time for somebody to really stay present in the conversation without having their amygdala get tweaked; and they can go off into some some rabbit trails. Then you turn it over to them, you go into full curiosity mode, and make sure that they feel really heard and understood as they’re sharing what that situation looks like from their perspective. Once that happens, they’re empty and feeling really heard. Then, it’s time to turn the corner, at this point, you’ve been focusing in the past and the rearview mirror.

Now it’s time to look towards the future, through the windshield of this vehicle, you’re traveling down the road with this person with metaphorically, and then start to focus on what do you need to do to move forward you know, ask each other these questions. What have I learned? Here’s what I learned. What have you learned? What do we need to move forward? Is there anything else that needs to be said that we haven’t said yet.

Then you’ve performed some commitment, you say this is what I’ll do to move forward successfully. And your partner, what will they do to move forward and you hold each other able and capable as adults to behave in this way to really enrich your relationship to be successful, going forward, really focus on all the best qualities that enrich the relationship between you and them. Reduce your stress, travel through life lightly. Life is short, and at the very least, get a really good night’s sleep.

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How to Handle Confrontation in the Workplace Like a Pro

Life in the workplace has become complicated. Rapidly changing economic challenges force quicker decision-making to remain productive. Couple this with the rise of workplace flexibility for employees, leaders struggle to create positive culture leading to desirable outcomes. Learn how to handle confrontation in the workplace like a pro.

Unprecedented, is the way of the future and companies need leaders who can lead and thrive during times of change. Successful leaders are transparent about opportunities and challenges during rapid change. They address the stress of change with productive conversations, so the culture doesn’t get toxic. But there is a problem:

Conflict Avoidance

Most leaders are not prepared to have this level of conversation. Rarely are these soft people skills taught in management training. Hard skills, such as operations, project planning, and finance are much easier to teach. Business schools hope that these soft skills are absorbed during a career.

But most leaders lack the skill and emotional intelligence to have productive conversations about tough topics. Transparency makes most people uncomfortable. When you are placed in a leadership position, displaying transparency feels like a threat to competency.

Many leaders will develop a victim mindset themselves versus an accountable one. A victim mindset often leads to conflict avoidance because of fears of inadequacy. They hope that needed change and the potential conflict it can bring will magically disappear. Unfortunately, this avoidance of problems causes toxicity in an organization to fester. Good employees sense the negative environment and leave, creating a deeper negative environment.

Misplaced Solutions

Organizations recognize this problem of change management and will invest in costly change management frameworks and communications strategies. Yet, these are often band-aid solutions, because they don’t address the critical skill of leaders working on a 1:1 or team interpersonal level.

A report written by Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken at McKinsey & Company suggests that 80 percent of what leaders care about when trying to enlist support for change does not matter to 80 percent of the workforce.

The top-down approach to organizational change frustrates employees leading to a simmering state of disconnect. Without instilling these interpersonal skills and learning to listen to the ideas of their teams, employees begin to view leadership as distant and out of touch. They aren’t addressing the right conversations that are taking place among teams and individual contributors.

One only needs to listen in on conversations among employees after large meetings where leadership speaks to see this play out. A quiet grumble emerges in side conversations among participants demonstrating that leadership didn’t address real concerns about needed change.

If companies do not build skills among leadership to lead difficult conversations during change the impact can be detrimental to the future of their organizations. Productivity and engagement decline. Stress and anxiety build resulting in toxic cultures. Toxic cultures ultimately produce poor business outcomes with a loss of revenue and profits.

The picture doesn’t have to continue to be bleak. There are several steps an organization can take to positively handle confrontation and change management.

Tips for Positive Confrontation

1. Identify Toughest Challenges – Leadership often has insight into the metrics that create the biggest challenges to a business. However, they might not understand all the internal root causes or know the perspectives of contributors that might lead to the solution.

Open conversations about the challenges and opportunities an organization faces are necessary to reveal where the biggest pain points are located. Only when issues are named and agreed upon can true change begin to take place.

2. Tackle the Issue Through Conversation – Once an issue has been named, you can move forward through conversation with your teams. This process may be painful because honesty and openness require vulnerability. It’s at this step many leaders will back away. They don’t have the tools to have difficult conversations. One key to successful conversations when dealing with challenges is to remember you aren’t confronting people but issues. Reframing the problem as something objective lowers the emotion in conversations and allows for innovation and true solutions to emerge.

3. Increase Transparency and Reduce Toxicity – The reason transparency is so important is that it goes hand in hand with trust. You can’t have one without the other. And without them, your workplace culture and relationships will suffer. Lies and secrets break trust, while honesty and transparency build trust. And when trust is created, it leads to a heightened sense of security and better employee performance.

When someone is honest with us and willing to overcome the discomfort of confronting the issue, we learn to trust that they’ll tell us the truth. When leaders and employees know how to confront skillfully, it influences not only the one-on-one relationship but the health of the company culture as well. Keep each other’s best interest at heart while also addressing and resolving the issue at hand.

Case Study in Confrontation

Christus Health came to Fierce because they were feeling the stress of rapid change and needed the skills to transform while maintaining a positive culture.

Like many organizations, Christus defined itself as having a Culture of Nice. Unfortunately, this tends to be passive and surface-level behavior while discontent lies beneath. There were no real open conversations taking place leading to a lack of engagement and frustrated manager effectiveness.

Lisa Reynolds, VP of Talent Management said, “We needed Fierce in our organization because we needed to be better at all types of conversations, especially those awkward conversations that were important, yet they were about difficult issues.”

After understanding the challenges Christus faced, the Fierce team designed a program using our Coaching, Team, Delegation, and Confrontation conversations trainings.

Through the ongoing training, Christus instilled tools in their leadership to have difficult conversations about the challenges they were facing while also giving constructive feedback leading to greater productivity.

What were the results?

Christus saw a 36% promotion rate among employees and 81% retention rate in an industry that is continually facing staffing challenges. 

Previously, direct reports made requests to management to be coached by someone other than their direct manager. This was an indication that communication with teams was not ideal. After the training, these requests were reduced by 80%. Engagement among employees also increased from the third quartile to the top quartile.

Today, over 1500 associates at Christus have completed Fierce training. They were also awarded the North Texas Prism Award for internal training and leadership programming. 

Beyond workplace improvements, participants saw the training impact life beyond work. One participant commented: “This transformed my life, not just at work but at home.”

Handling the tough challenges in today’s work climate can be overcome by learning to be transparent with teams and addressing hard issues without fear.

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The Positive Side To Confrontation

Yeah, I know, I lost a lot of you just with the title, but for those of you who are still with me, let’s briefly dive into what this means and what it can, and does, look like.

To start, we need to get the negative context associated with Confrontation out of our heads. For most people, when they hear the word “Confrontation” they immediately think of going “head-to-head” or “toe-to-toe”. Armed and armored, ready for what they are certain will be an immense battle of wills. How about we stop there and try on a different context?

Take, for example, the Boy Scout handshake. For those of you familiar with this, it is done with the left hand, not the right. There are two main reasons for this. First, the left hand is closer to the heart, which indicates the warmth and friendship between all Scouts. Second – and this is what I really want to drive home – in shaking hands with their left hand, it would require a warrior to first put down their shield. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, engaged with Ashanti warriors in West Africa this way. It showed the bravery, and I would add the authenticity, in the conversation since you were dropping your shields and protection.

THIS is where we need to be as it relates to confrontation. It’s not a battle, it’s a collaboration. In fact, it is “THE” definition of:

The 4 Objectives of a Fierce Conversation

1. Interrogate Reality – We have said it time and time again. Competing realities, can, and do, exist within literally everything under the sun. Look no further than the political commentary you see and hear every day. The same topic, yet vastly different realities being presented. We need to enter into these conversations full of curiosity, not condemnation.

2. Provoke Learning – OUR learning. Rather than standing there wagging a finger at the other person, why not get curious? and ask yourself, “might there be something that I haven’t considered?” If we head into these conversations certain we have ALL of the information and know exactly why and what the other person was doing, there is very little learning going on. In fact, it tends to fall into “versation” territory. You know, when someone is being talked “to” without the benefit of any back and forth. Let’s make this a true conversation, where each side participates and each side is curious to understand all of the realities at play.

3.Tackle Tough Challenges – Together, as in collaboratively, you AND the other person. At this point, we are facing, what is now, a very tough challenge and likely to have some ownership over where things stand. Think about it, were there not opportunities for this to be a far easier conversation, had it been held the first time you suspected something was not quite right? Really, take the time to ask yourself this.

4. Enrich Relationships – This is the main goal and reason we put down the shield. We want to work with the other person to gain an understanding of what we can do, together, to resolve this and enrich and improve our relationship.

Not head-to-head, not toe-to-toe. Collaboratively, side-by-side

Taking the time to be curious and truly understand all the realities, so each of us can come away with something learned, an issue resolved, and a relationship enriched. Like I said at the beginning, the positive side to confrontation!

Thanks for sticking with me!

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Feedback vs Confrontation – There is a Difference

Organizations often ask us to help them improve Confrontation Conversations in the workplace. While we certainly can help, our first question is: What’s your “feedback culture” like?

Although leaders admit to struggling when it comes to confrontation, they usually, ardently believe they excel with giving feedback. Why? Because, managers complete unilateral performance reviews a couple of times per year. It’s an understandable assumption since the biannual performance review has been the gold standard for organizational feedback for decades. 

In reality, this example signifies a weak feedback culture, an is the most common reason leaders think they need help with confrontation. In this context, confrontation, serves as a band-aid and not the cure. Too often, we speak with leaders who believe confrontation must be an integral part of giving feedback. In fact, many people use these two terms interchangeably. 

For example, consider what receiving this “feedback” feels like to an employee, it can be taken as purely negative. For them, the old saying, “no news is good news,” becomes truer than ever. We know that millennials and younger generations, crave genuine, constructive feedback. The problem isn’t feedback itself; it’s how you handle it. 

According to Gallup’s Global Workforce Report, 68% of employees admitted, they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognized. Translation: without feedback, employees are disengaging and this leads to voluntary turnover. Again, employees want feedback, perhaps not the kind you’ve been offering.

To gain a clearer picture of what effective feedback looks like, we need to first, identify the key differences between effective feedback and how most leaders handle confrontation.

Confrontation Gone Wrong

Most leaders see confrontation as a necessary evil. They use it as a means of redirecting wayward employees, not unlike cracking a whip to keep a horse moving at the desired pace and on the right path. This kind of so-called confrontation comes at a cost. It demonstrates a lack of trust in employees’ abilities and decision making, and it paints a picture of an insecure leader.

Think about it, as a leader, if you don’t trust your employees, you could, ever-so-subtly, suggest that you don’t trust your own abilities, when it comes to hiring, placement, training or general leadership. In other words, when leaders feel the need to incessantly “confront” employees, they inadvertently communicate self-doubt. And let’s be honest, who wants to follow an insecure leader?

Confrontation is sometimes necessary but when it is necessary, it is often handled poorly, and often mistaken for feedback. This is a cardinal error, that you must correct, in order to improve your office culture and re-engage your employees. 

Here are three major red flags, that suggest, your poorly handled “confrontation” conversations are masquerading as “feedback.”

Your conversations are reactive. Waiting until something is wrong to offer “feedback” is a huge red flag. It shows a lack of foresight and neglects the relationship-building component that is crucial for a highly functioning team. Additionally, reactive conversations not only create employee discomfort, but they frequently backfire by causing your team to put up a protective barrier against you.Your conversations incorporate overt or implied criticism. When a conversation is reactive, it’s almost impossible to avoid layering criticism into the mix. Sometimes, the criticism is obvious: “You never turn these reports in on time.” Sometimes it’s not so obvious: a frustrated sigh or avoiding eye contact. Whatever the case, the knee-jerk reaction most people have is defensiveness. And when people become defensive, they’re anything but receptive.Your conversations are combative. As your criticism shuts down your team’s receptiveness, a common response is to escalate. When this happens, leaders often resort to making threats (e.g., no chance of promotion or a bonus, a write-up, or even termination) to force their team members to get in line. While this tactic might appear to work in the short term, it ultimately severs any ties that might exist between a leader and their team.

Understanding confrontation and conducting those conversations the right way is an invaluable skill. But those conversations frequently don’t go so well (see the list above), and they can usually be avoided with a more productive feedback culture.

Feedback Conversations

Let’s just dispel the myth now; chalking your feedback up to performance reviews and calling it a day, doesn’t work. This is the central reason why so many leaders think they need to ramp up confrontation. But in reality, they’d fair better if they invested more time and energy in nurturing their feedback culture. Why? Because it strengthens and enriches relationships on your teams, improves performance and helps solidify employers as competent and secure leaders. Bottom line, your organization benefits from the rise in employee engagement that this kind of culture breeds. 

If you’re wondering whether or not your feedback culture is operating at peak performance, here are some clear indicators you’re doing things right.

You’re checking in with your people regularly. We’re not talking about twice a year when review time comes rolling around. We’re talking daily, face-to-face conversations. In other words, you’re focused on developing relationships with your team members, which as we all know, take time and consistent effort.Your feedback conversations are open, honest and clear. When it comes to openness and honesty, it has to flow in both directions. But you, as the leader, are the one to establish this as a standard practice. If you want your team to remain open to your feedback, model it for them and demonstrate your openness to theirs. Alongside honesty, comes clarity. It seems like a no-brainer, but it’s sometimes challenging to execute in the moment. Nevertheless, your communication cannot be cryptic if you expect it to get results.Your feedback mostly focuses on the positive. So often we see leaders equating feedback with identifying problems. While identifying problems is an important aspect of feedback, it shouldn’t be the only thing–or even the primary thing–you focus on. In fact, you’ll have greater chances of encouraging employee engagement if you give greater attention to what’s working well.

Understanding the differences between confrontation and feedback paves the way for you to really begin developing and maintaining an effective feedback culture. Without a doubt, this work, is the number one way to improve confrontation conversations. More than that, it helps you create a highly functioning team and organization as well as improve overall performance.

Do you need support to enhance your feedback culture or tackle confrontation? Find out more in our Fierce Feedback program and our Fierce Confrontation program. 

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The Power of Sleep on Your Daily Performance

 

Hello Everyone,

I just read an article that is a great reminder for the power of sleep on your daily performance. A cross-survey of 500 CEOs, 48% say they get less than 6 hours where recommended is 7-8.

Not getting proper sleep has such an impact on you:

Increased blood pressure, weight, blood sugar leading to heart diseaseImpacts on your moods and cognitive abilities which can impede your performance at work.

They prove some tips such as shutting own screen time a few hours before bed, eliminating coffee and alcohol 4 hours before sleep, and using white noise.

I recognize how impactful sleep is to get in a 30-40 mile ride at 5am, to then be on my “A” game during work and after for my family. I started using a Fitbit to study my sleep.

What I found was staggering. I could be in bed for what I thought was 8 hours of sleep only to find out it was actually around 6 hours with even less categorized as quality sleep. This allowed me optimize my sleep as well as gave me confidence when I would wake up, not feeling my best to know that I did in fact get the necessary sleep to perform.

This leads me to the innovation we have launched called Pulse. It helps you identify stress bio-metrically from Fitbit and other wearables to become self-aware when matched with calendar events and GPS.

Instead of just managing stress with better sleep, exercise, diet, and so on, we take it a step further with a coach or our propriety AI bot to tackle your stressors head-on through tried and true conversation techniques that we have been teaching for over 20 years.

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Feedback Reduces The Need For Confrontation Conversations

Oftentimes, I meet with a perspective client asking me if we can help them with a confrontation problem. When this happens my first question to them is what’s your feedback culture like here?

And inevitably, I get a response that sounds something like this: “Oh, it’s very good, twice a year Performance Management time, all of our leaders give feedback to their people.” Really? They’re calling that feedback? And they wonder why they need help with confrontation.

Now, in the end, yes, we can and yes, we have, helped many organizations with confrontation and that’s not what I’m here to talk with you about today. I’m talking about that wonderful tool that will reduce the need for confrontation conversations by 70% or more. And that’s real, actual, consistent ,feedback. How about we solve for all of this, with one rather simple thought?

Check in with your people! How many of you are familiar with the phrase: “No news is good news.” Well, throw it out, because it’s a lie, and that’s what’s hurting people, in teams, in almost every industry.

Sure, if you’re a baby boomer, this saying makes sense, yet, baby boomers are quickly phasing out of the workplace. Millennials and those even younger, are dying for your feedback. Let’s bring some psychology into it, when there’s a gap in information. How do people normally fill that gap, with the best case scenario or the worst case scenario?

It’s the worst case, and it’s not a chosen response. It’s simply how we’re wired. That gap of information, is the result of a lack of feedback and there are extremely large costs associated with this.

From Gallup’s Global Workplace report 98% of employees will fail to be engaged when managers give little or no feedback. 69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were being better recognized.

From a Cigna report 65% of workers say they feel less connected to their co-workers. Employee disconnection is one of the main drivers of voluntary turnover, costing employers upwards of $406 billion a year. The numbers are right there, staring us in the face.

Feedback is what we need, and not just once or twice a year at performance review time…all the time, or how we put it, open honest face-to-face…or at the very least, screen to screen, conversations 365 days a year with the people central to your success and happiness; whether you report to them, they report to you or nobody reports to anybody.

Now, I could go a lot deeper into this but wanted to keep it short. It’s summer now people’s attention spans are shorter than normal.

Ask us how you can use feedback to improve your culture, engage your people and greatly reduce the need for those dreaded confrontation conversations, and if you do need those, we can (Fierce Inc.) help there, too!

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The Benefit of Train-the-Trainer Programs

In today’s fast-paced business culture, an engaged workforce is the key differentiator of what enables a company to thrive. More and more employees are looking to join companies for reasons beyond a paycheck. Employees want to join an organization where they have the opportunity to grow personally and professionally as well as receive leadership training and development, contributing their knowledge and expertise. 

According to a LinkedIn Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees say that they would stay at their company longer if, it simply invested in learning and development. Organizations that value an ongoing investment in employees, have the competitive advantage when it comes to recruitment and retention.  

High performing organizations champion, robust internal training and development teams to ensure employees are learning, acquiring knowledge and skills, needed to successfully deliver results throughout their career.

At Fierce, Inc., we consult with companies to understand the employee workforce and uncover organizational trends. One trend, is the gap in leadership training and resources for newly promoted leaders. Oftentimes, companies promote employees into leadership roles without properly equipping them with the skills needed to succeed. We all know what happens next – poorly developed teams, low morale and high turnover.   

So, what can we do? We can ensure our learning departments have skilled trainers that keep the learning going. One of the best ways to do that is to send learning professionals through train-the-trainer programs. These programs are designed to enable participants to become subject matter experts in specific topics and deliver training content to internal employees. 

Top 3 benefit of investing in a Train-the-Trainer Program

1. Customized Learning Connections – Your internal facilitators have a direct line to important cultural aspects that allow them to connect the training content of the current company environment. This includes: understanding the ‘company lingo’, aligning the training with organizational mission and values, and applying training to real world examples that employees are experiencing. Additionally, the internal trainers often have gained a level of trust that external trainers have not. This can speed up the willingness to try new tools and accelerate the learning curve. 

2. Flexible and Cost-Effective Approach – When your leaders become your internal trainer(s) they can deliver content according to the needs of the company. Logistics, such as scheduling, location, and cohort dynamics, that limit the planning workshops, where external facilitators may not be available. The costs of external facilitators,  travel fees can quickly add up for multiple events scheduled throughout the year. Certified internal trainers enable your organization to deliver more training for a fraction of the cost.   

3. Sustainability and Measurement – An impactful benefit of internal training team is the continuous tracking of  progress and learning of employees. Facilitators can offer refreshers, practice sessions, and community groups that focus on specific learning content throughout the year. Valuable insights, from focus groups and surveys intakes can help understand how the “learners” are utilizing (or not utilizing), this new knowledge, skills, and tools. Feedback loops, like this will enable strategic planning for program improvements for future workshops.

At Fierce, Inc. we offer a world-class Train-the-Trainer (TTT) program that provides certifications for learning and development professionals, delivering our award-winning leadership training. Our Master Facilitators, take a cohort of TTT participants through our core training content.

Over the course of 3 four-hour workshops, once a week, participants learn:  

advanced facilitation techniques,  the theory and design of our workshops and its impact on learning, and  how to bring the content to life with their own personal examples.  

In the fourth week, learners ‘teach-back’ portions of the content to demonstrate their growth in facilitating the Fierce content. During this week, learners receive meaningful coaching from their peers and the Master Facilitator on their delivery of the content. Successful TTT participants will receive a complete evaluation and certification as a Fierce Conversations Facilitator.  

Here’s what our TTT participants are saying about the Fierce Train-the Trainer program:

“As a CEO who has implemented Fierce concepts with our foundation’s team, the Train the Trainer course was a valuable opportunity to develop my facilitation skills, internalize the course material, and learn innovative ideas from master facilitators. I highly recommend Fierce, Inc.’s courses for leaders to grow in their ability to communicate more effectively and build stronger teams and companies.” (Anonymous) 

We know that we have to prepare our employees to handle the multitude of complex problems that are and will impact the citizens of British Columbia.  None of these problems are going to be addressed by any singe organization. The essential skill is going to be the ability to foster and strengthen trust-based relationships. Fierce Conversations provides a framework to have these conversations. – Mark T. Johnson – Learning Consultant with the British Columbia Public Service.      

If you are even remotely considering attending a TTT session, please do!! I am encouraged to take 10 days of training per year as part of Finit’s overall training program. This Fierce Conversations TTT program was one of the best training investments I’ve requested for myself. The content was extremely beneficial for our organization and the content/tools provided were extremely helpful. I was even able to learn from my fellow participants as well! Don’t delay – sign up for you and for your organization! – Nicole Emerson, Director of People & Culture at Finit 

The Fierce TTT experience was so collaborative, insightful and authentic. Each day I left the conversations feeling empowered by the connection and the safe space that was created. I feel honored to have the ability to take these teachings and influence others at such a deep level. – Tim Erickson, Personnel Development Manager at KHS&S Contractors 

Knowing the Fierce material is extremely valuable, not just in my organization, but in my personal life as well.  We’ve really gained not only insight, but actual strategies on approaching different situations that will definitely be brought to my daily life. – Danielle Cordes, Talent Development & Culture Consultant at Christus Health 

 “We brought Fierce to our organization after becoming a remote-first organization. The Fierce Conversations [trainings] have allowed our managers to further develop their relationships with each other and their teams.” – Paige Lutz, Senior Training & Content Coordinator at Chow Now 

 

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Top Three Negative Communication Patterns That Could Be Destroying Your Teams

Maintaining a healthy and happy team environment is essential to progress in any organization and often easier said than done.

Communication breakdowns in the workplace, form a foundation of struggling, dissatisfied and disconnected teams. It’s imperative to acknowledge and address these roadblocks that frustrate your employees and stall workflow. When people aren’t communicating effectively; deeper thinking and problem solving get sidelined, causing employees to go into self-preservation mode. This heightened state of stress can’t last forever. As a result, it destroys teams over time.

Find out what is driving your teams apart and discover:

The Top 3 Communication Patterns That Will Help You Understand Why Teams Might Be Struggling to Function Properly

 

1. Criticism and Defensiveness. With all relationships, when critique becomes commonplace it essentially issues a death sentence to a company’s culture. Criticism, takes the facts of a situation to implicitly or explicitly attack someone’s character or personality. It often manifests as sarcasm, eye rolls, cutting people off in conversation, or outright personal digs. Although it is not always obvious. so-called “constructive” criticism often cloaks this attack. Why? Because the core building block of criticism is the idea that “something is fundamentally wrong” with the receiving party.

Let’s examine how the seemingly benign statement, “I wish you’d start turning your status reports in on time” is really a complaint that subtly suggests the ongoing expectation that the receiver will never change–or cannot change. This is the equivalent of stating that their chronic lateness is a character flaw, so deeply seated that they are bound to go on irritating the complainer forever.

The receiver hears implied negative feedback, what recourse do they have, except, to go on defense. This act of deflecting often feels like the only way out. After all, there could very well be a legitimate reason why the report is always late. Although, it doesn’t matter because all the complainer hears confirms that the receiver will never really be open to change or growth. They aren’t open to taking “slight criticism.”

Whatever the justification is for “criticism-defensiveness” cycle, it’s clear, until the pattern is abandoned, relationships in the workplace are bound to deteriorate.

2. Micromanaging is ‘demanding’ on steroids. Believe it or not, some leaders unconsciously do it. When their mistrust of employees goes so deep it becomes second nature. Micromanaging, communicates, in no uncertain terms, that team members can’t perform up to standard and might become defensive for a short time, resulting in disengagement or withdrawal. The receiver senses their work will never measure up and loses incentive to perform well.

As a result of this under performance, leaders frequently dig their heels and ramp up their micromanaging efforts, making matter worse. This pattern of ‘micromanaging-disengagement’ creates retention problems; and employees taken to their limit could withdraw permanently (i.e., they look elsewhere for more fulfilling work).

3. Listening to respond rather than listening to understand. Let’s face it; listening is hard, especially amid conflict. One person speaks, perhaps airing a complaint (see point #1 above), but is the other person really listening? You’re probably laughing right now because the obvious answer is: no. They are too busy working out their side of the argument in their head. Anything they happen to hear, is more ammo to aim back at the other person

The desire to WIN completely overshadows the need for understanding. If both parties are stuck in this mindset, the conversation is guaranteed to spiral out of control, widening the chasm between the two. Why? Because no one feels truly heard, and we mean no one. A breakdown of “idea exchange” usually occurs. Honesty and vulnerability then become too risky, eventually, if it goes on long enough, people simply stop talking out of frustration. Put another way, communication, is replaced with contempt.

This is a shame because conflict actually affords us the opportunity to forge deeper connections if we handle it with care. Turning off the script running in our heads while others speak is the first step in the right direction. This practice helps us tune into the other person and really begin to see the sense they’re making, even when we disagree.

These top 3 communication patterns can leave your teams disconnected, dissatisfied and disengaged, we have to replace this negative behavior by learning how to offer feedback effectively. Leaders and team members must begin to ask themselves: ‘How do we give feedback that moves us in a positive direction when all I want to do is complain, micromanage or win an argument?

Learn more about how to give Fierce Feedback, and transform your conversations to bring your team members together.

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