Susan Scott's Blog, page 48

Nature vs. Nurture: Are Leaders Born or Developed?

The question of whether leaders are born or developed is a hot button issue. Nature versus nurture?

This pesky question manifests in two scenarios.

Scenario A: If your organization thinks leaders are born, then they believe there are ready-made leaders waiting to rise through the appropriate ranks and land themselves in leadership positions.

Scenario B: If your organization thinks leaders are developed, then they believe they need to offer leadership development and training programs so those who wish to become leaders can obtain the skills necessary to grow into leadership roles.

Culturally these are two very different companies. Which culture do you have?

At Fierce, we are not neutral. We believe that leaders are developed. We focus on the conversations that every leader needs to master. We teach that conversation skill set, and every day we hear stories about how people have “upped” their leadership game.

What do you believe? Are leaders born or made?

Last updated September 14, 2016

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Fierce Tip of the Week: Nurture Positive Thinking

Tomorrow is Positive Thinking Day. At Fierce, we talk about context – the lens in which you view the world. Your context is formed by your beliefs, experiences, and truths. It is how you see the world and how you interpret what happens to you while living in it.

What we fundamentally know is that our context determines how we experience the content of our lives. It is the difference in believing in scarcity or abundance. In fear or hope. In loneliness or being loved.

Some researchers, like Martin Seligman, frame positive thinking in terms of an explanatory style. People with optimistic explanatory styles will often give themselves credit when good things happen as well as think negative events are temporary and not normal. Negative explanatory styles are the opposite. Which category do you fall into?

This week’s tip is to focus on positive thinking. Give yourself credit when credit is due. Be kind with others. Assume the best. Walk into your conversations with more light and less assumptions.

Knowing your mission this week, I want to leave you with a Walt Whitman excerpt from his Song of Myself:

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.  

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

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Friday Resource: All Successful Leaders Need This Quality: Self-Awareness

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published by Forbes and discusses the quality all successful leaders should possess – self-awareness.

According to a study conducted by Green Peak Partners, one of the most important and also undervalued leadership qualities is self-awareness. This has long been regarded as a “soft” skill, however leaders that have developed strong soft skills are performing much better than their peers.

This is such a sought after quality amongst leaders because those who continually make time for self-reflection are able to diagnose areas of personal weakness and surround themselves with employees who excel where they lack.

Although self-reflection is not discussed as much as communication, charisma and other hard leadership skills, it is just as important.

 “The most effective executives I knew had, I believe, realistic assessments of their own abilities – their strengths and weaknesses, their effect on others, the gaps that needed to be filled.”

Read the article.

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Be Awake. Be intentional.

On a scale from one to ten, how awake do you feel in your life? Are you paying attention to the most important things right now? As summer comes to an end, think about these questions during this transitional time.

I was recently talking with a retail executive, and she shared with me that her team stepped away from their phones and computers for a whole strategy session. Everyone noted that they were present with one another in a new way. One of the comments was: I actually felt like I was paying attention to what I needed to, instead of the 10 distractions that come up every hour.

I am sure you can relate to the feeling of distractions running your life. And every day, whether we want to admit it or not, we pay a price for not being awake to this. Our actions and inactions have impact.

When I hear the phrase, “be awake”, I always think of a stanza in William Stafford’s poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”.

For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give- yes or no, or maybe – should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

We have too much at stake to be in multiple places at once. Don’t look at Facebook or check your emails during a call. Don’t text someone else when someone is talking to you. These actions may seem trivial, yet they are signals.

And we are all guilty of doing them from time to time.

Focus on an area of your life that you can be more awake and use this transitional time of the year to make real progress. What parts of your life are you sleeping through?

There’s no better time than now.

Last updated on September 7, 2016

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Fierce Tip of the Week: Kick the Post-Summer Blues through Reflecting

With the seasons changing and school starting, many workers can have the “post-summer blues.” You yourself may be mourning the end of the hot, sunny days. And if thoughts of the Greek isles or a summer camping trip are often coming to mind, it can be hard to focus on what is ahead.

The one thing you should do to focus? Reflect.

Reflecting sounds counterproductive when we have a lot to do, because our inclination may be to focus and grind away, to push past the feelings and thoughts. However, Master Facilitator, Beth Wagner, mentioned in a Fierce webinar at the beginning of the year, reflection is a very important and often overlooked activity for leaders. Many studies have shown the critical role that reflection plays in performance and learning. Leaders and employees alike who take time to reflect on their successes and their mistakes at work, perform 20-25% better than those who do not.

This week’s tip is to kick your post-summer blues by reflecting on what you want to accomplish transitioning into the last months of the year.

Answer the questions:

How am I tracking to my goals now and for the rest of the year?

What has worked this year for me so far that I should keep doing?

What shouldn’t I do?

What will most likely get in my way? And how will I mitigate that?

In our fast-paced world, we often feel that we don’t have enough time to do what’s needed. And pausing and reflecting feels too time-consuming.

So I urge you – try it this one time. And report back.

 

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Friday Resource: 6 Rules for Building and Scaling Company Culture

This week’s Friday Resource was originally published by Harvard Business Review  and provides six rules for building and scaling company culture.

A rich company culture is one of the most sought after qualities in today’s workforce. It attracts and retains the top talent across all industries and is the driving force behind the work of a company.

“Great performance can never come without great people and culture, and the opposite is also true – great people and culture are affiliated most with high-performing organizations.”

Although organizations understand the value of company culture, not all of them are getting it right. It needs to start with mission of the company. Do your employees identify with it? Are their personal goals in close alignment with the company’s?

Once the purpose or “inspiration” is defined, a few tips for building and scaling the culture according to Anthony Tjan, CEO and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball, are:

Lead by example. Leaders must continually embody the company’s morals and ethics. This is not exclusive to the top of the organizational charts. Everyone that shows up to work reflects and is the company culture.Embrace your frontline cultural ambassadors. Every company has people that truly live the “brand” and exemplify the core values central to their culture. It can be at any level of the organization from the top down. Seek these people out and thank them, they are the pulse of your culture and continue to evolve it every day through their actions and conversations.

Remember that you are the company culture. Everyone is responsible for what they bring (or don’t bring) to the table every time they show up for work. Make it meaningful and become inspired by those around you and the work you create together.

Read the article. 

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Build an Intentional Culture: 3 Tips to Tie Behavior to Values

Intention is defined as a determination to act in a certain way.  Let’s highlight the word “act” here. While many organizations have values that create intention, oftentimes the values are not being tied to desired leader and employee actions. In other words, there is a need to define how your employees behave in everyday situations to demonstrate the organization’s most critical values. It sounds so simple, yet it is often overlooked.

Take “respect” as a value example. Many of our clients have this as a value. However, to one employee, respect can mean telling someone the absolute hard facts that come to mind for a particular strategy. AKA tell them how it is – be a straight shooter – it is to their benefit. On the other hand, to another employee, respect means allowing someone the space and ability to figure it out for themselves. AKA don’t be overbearing – be a supporter, coach more – it is to their benefit.

Both interpretations are “right.” So the real question is: What does your culture expect? You must answer that question. And now we will dig into four critical pieces to tie behaviors with values and create more intention with your culture.

Survey Your Employees

The first step is to specifically ask how employees demonstrate your company’s values. Whether you insert questions into a current employee engagement survey or create a new survey for this purpose, it is very critical to take the pulse on the current definitions and actions. For instance, with Fierce, we would ask: How do you as an employee innovate with intention? What specific behaviors are shown? Why?

After collecting responses, do an analysis to see whether the behaviors demonstrated are serving the organization’s goals and objectives. These survey results can be shared with the executive team and other champions in the organization.

While this may feel like a very “soft” exercise, it is important to establish a “behavior baseline” and really assess what training and engagement are needed. The leadership engagement is critical in ensuring that everyone has the same expectations for how people should act.

Train the Specific Skills  

Effective training creates complete clarity around how one should behave or act in a situation. To tie behaviors to values, the training should have a “common language” component where everyone in the organization can use the same basic skill sets and frameworks, regardless of levels. If the values need to be exhibited throughout every level of the organization, the behaviors trained need to be as well.

Whether you hire a vendor who specializes in training or you build training from within, there are two common pitfalls to avoid: too much theory and not connecting with people’s emotions.

Firstly, the main goal is to remove the mystery of how values look and show up in your organization. Steer clear of highly theorized content that is not immediately actionable. Realize that training is an opportunity to make your values come to life in a manner that is accessible for everyone and improves every employee’s ability to do their job and connect to their company culture.

Secondly, it is important to connect with people’s emotions. It is one of the only ways that real behavior change happens. In Harvard Business Review’s How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation, after surveying 20,000 workers around the world and conducting experiments, they found that why people work determines how well they work. Training MUST connect to people’s why. Self-generated insights should be created in the training, and oftentimes, that piece is not as strong as it could be when organizations roll-out their training.

Build Feedback Capacity 

The skills to give, receive, and ask for feedback are some of the most sought after leadership skills in today’s business world. The skill is tied to new performance management, employee engagement, manager effectiveness, and the list goes on and on and on. In order for your values to continually align and stay on course, employees at every level must be able to share feedback.

In our Fierce feedback model, we talk about waypoints. A waypoint is typically used for purposes of navigation and acts as a reference point to help know where we are and where we are going. Whether we are driving, or flying, waypoints help us get there. The point is, we rarely get to a destination in a completely straight line. We need to go through continuous course corrections to arrive at our destination. Feedback can be seen as a series of waypoints to keep us headed in the right direction – for our careers and for our companies.

Ensure that your managers and leaders have the skill to use feedback as a critical tool, so they can share when fellow employees and the organization are swaying. As an organization, do not make this exercise a one-time endeavor – continually take a pulse to learn and stay in tune with any shifts that may be happening in your culture.

While building culture may feel like an ethereal task, there are tactics to bring the company culture you desire to life. It takes hard work and perseverance. And it’s worth it.

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Fierce Tip of the Week: Stop Your Excuses. You are the Culture.

Having a positive culture has real impact on business and your happiness at work. In fact, a Columbia University study shows that the likelihood of job turnover at an organization with rich company culture is a mere 13.9 percent, whereas the probability of job turnover in poor company cultures is 48.4 percent. That makes a huge difference…not just for the employer, but also for the fellow employees.

Although people cerebrally understand culture’s importance, people tend to talk about culture as something external. For instance, a statement I often encounter when we are discussing fierce is: “My culture doesn’t encourage transparent, direct communication, so I can’t have those kinds of conversations with my executive team right now.” Sometimes that also sounds like, “If my company’s culture was different, I would be different.” Or “If other people modeled those behaviors, I could do them too.” What I hear is “Look at those other people over there – no, not me, not here.”

Newsflash: Culture doesn’t live outside of you. That’s not how it works. You are the culture. You choose what it looks like every day. You choose it in the conversations you have. And even more so if you lead people, you model and reinforce those choices each time you interact with others.

This week’s fierce tip is to take responsibility for your impact on your organization’s culture. Ask yourself: What kind of culture do I want to be a part of? What does that require of me?

Yes, there will be issues that are legitimately outside of your control or purview. However, you have as much responsibility as everyone else to steer the culture.

So as seducing as pointing the finger can be at times, when you are unhappy with the culture, make sure you throw some of that blame your   way.

Last updated August 29, 2016

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Friday Resource: Your Employees’ Emotions Are Clues to What Motivates Them

This week’s Friday Resource was originally published by Harvard Business Review  and explains why employees’ emotions are clues to what motivates them.   

Emotional intelligence is one of the most important leadership characteristics. One of the reasons this is such a desired trait is that emotional intelligence helps us understand what motivates the people around us – even if they are not completely aware.

In his article, Art Markman asserts that companies focusing solely on producing optimistic emotions within are hurting the productivity of their organization.

“The more satisfied people are with their current state, the less motivated they are to move forward and achieve new things. A little negative emotion reflects that people have goals that they have not yet achieved.”

It is important for leaders to understand and pick up on these emotions. Negative emotions should be seen as an opportunity to connect with an employee and help them achieve a goal or milestone they are currently struggling with. Starting this dialogue can also allow employees to voice issues in their personal lives that may be hindering their performance on the job.

Employees want to feel they are supported both inside and outside of the office, and it is important to pay attention to the signals, both positive and negative.

Read the article.

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A Podcast with Susan Scott: Fierce Leadership, Radical Transparency, & Deeper Human Connectivity

Halelly Azulay is an author and leadership development strategist, and she recently hosted Susan on her TalentGrow podcast.

In this session, Susan Scott explains what fierce conversations are, why it’s important that we have them, and a common obstacle we all face and how to overcome it when having these types of conversations – both at work and in your personal lives. In their conversation, Susan also talks about how to be open and more transparent and invite this kind of openness from others. They also explore why she thinks careful conversations are almost always failed conversations.

A few key takeaways include:

How being more transparent can actually help you raise the bar in all your contexts.What’s a mistake we make about radical transparency?How is trust built and lost? What does it require?

And in the end, Susan shares one actionable suggestion that will help you upgrade your leadership and will make a HUGE difference in the quality of your conversations and your relationships.

Listen to the podcast here.

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