Leading Virtually When People are Confused and Afraid

By Stephanie Reynolds

For those of us in the Puget Sound, the last few weeks have been confusing and trying. I have gone through my own fears, worrying about my loved ones, and then of course my business and the businesses of those I support and the people in them. I found myself triaging like crazy, trying to hang on to the way things were, hoping that “life and business as usual” would continue. But life as usual is on pause for now.

There was another side effect, as a small business owner and a mega people person, many of my meetings were being postponed for good reasons.  I noticed that I began to feel a bit unfocused and even lonely.

A realization dawned on me in the last couple of days. 

First and foremost, when I was engaged with others moving forward toward creative solutions and connection (virtually or not), I felt the best.  My worries took a back seat, and my body was relieved. I felt like myself again! 

Secondly, once I stopped worrying about the future, and started offering my time to those in need, I felt my heart and sense of purpose again. My purpose has always been to help people and organizations move through growth, challenge, and change, and I realized that I needed to apply that to the present situation.

The job of leading always requires that we deal with our own concerns, recalibrate, and then communicate to others in ways that help them do the same.

I offer the following suggestions to help you lead others during these difficult times:

1.    Take care of yourself first. Find your balance, purpose, and connection to yourself. Move from fear to appropriate concern. Acknowledging our fear, can allow us to move past it so it’s not chasing us unconsciously, causing us to suffer and make poor decisions. Find ways to connect to what’s important to you, things that support your values and purpose. What do you deeply care about and how can you offer it to others in the current environment?

2.    Communicate and collaborate as frequently as possible with those who can support you. That will give you energy. Then communicate with your employees, clients and other stakeholders. Remember, we don’t just need information, we as human beings thrive on connection. Morale, productivity, and anxiety can all feed on one another in a negative cycle. The more connection, and opportunitity we experience to generate solutions and ideas with others, the more morale and productivity go up, and the better we feel.

3.    Be creative around communication. If your workforce is working virtually now, suggest that people always turn on their cameras for virtual meetings. Encourage that they do “hallway conversations” virtually, even for 5 minutes or less. Do short pre-recorded or virtual video updates every day or so. This is a time when they need to hear your voice and see your face. Share good news, ideas, progress, challenges in short spurts and encourage others to do so as well.

4.    Get others involved in finding solutions to bolster connection. Hold a contest to get great ideas for enhancing connection and collaboration. Highlight best practices. Reward good ideas and share them.  Make sure you utilize all the features of your remote meeting software to get feedback and contribution in meetings. Poll your employees and other leaders you know for best practices too.

5.    Hold remote group meetings often, as if you were working in the same location. Try not to default to email to be expedient. Those conversations we have with one other can have a major beneficial effect on ideation and productivity, which leads to connection and well-being.

In summary, the more we connect, the better we feel. Connection during these times of physical isolation and turmoil, will help you and those you support thrive.

5 Characteristics of Those That “Have a Seat at the Table”

By Stephanie Reynolds

How often are strategic decisions affecting your business being made without you? Why are some in the “inner circle” and some are not, who may be at the same or even a lower level than you?

An example: Jan is a really smart Senior Director, works incredible hours, delivers projects on time and under budget with crazy deadlines and scarce resources. She fulfills her commitments, always surpasses expectations and has done so for years. She thinks she should be a VP by now, and wonders why others are passing her by. Why are they in the confidence of key decision makers when she is not? Her boss keeps telling her she is great on delivering, but needs her to think more strategically and show up with more “executive presence” in meetings. It’s a very familiar story. Can you relate?

Here are the 5 big differentiators for getting and keeping a “Seat”:

1. Do Your Job as a Leader by Generating Bigger Bets: As a leader you’ve got to be finding, developing, and delivering on Bigger Bets for your business, and the broader business. Bigger Bets are new ideas that others have not introduced that go beyond your current commitments and improve the business. You have to make a visible effort to find those projects that differentiate you and your organization as being “forward focused” and really making a difference across the business.

1. Articulate and Align Others to Your Bigger Bets: You must be able to articulate those Bigger Bet ideas publicly in clear, inclusive ways so that others want to help you succeed (or at least not be obstacles). Then you must be able to work with the inevitable bumps in the road and politics that come along whenever change is underway. Show versatility and resilience!

1. Demonstrate Executive Presence: You need to have the personal presence to be strong, clear, and not back down from objections. Showing that you are listening deeply to the concerns of others is also critical. Echo concerns back to those that express them in empathetic ways. That doesn’t mean you have to back down. Hold your ground for what you think is right in ways that don’t exclude others. This will support the perception that you are the “across the business” team player that senior leaders need to be.

1. Ask Insightful Questions: Ask high level questions in meetings that speak to the broadest business context, always keeping the most senior leader’s strategies and goals in mind.

1. Draw Insightful Conclusions: Draw insightful conclusions and make recommendations about what you are learning from others and your own work. SPEAK UP! Many talented leaders stay quiet in meetings far too long for fear of making a mistake aloud. You don’t need to have an idea fully baked before speaking. Show you are intelligently thinking about the problem, share your ideas and ask for input from others. This is one of the more overlooked areas in meetings. Everyone is spending too much time protecting their turf instead of trying to solve the problems in front of you. Focus on what actually has to be solved.

These are the critical behaviors C-Level Executives always cite as most wanted in their direct reports. Try them out and practice them — your senior leaders will appreciate it!

How do leaders know the difference between being authentic and “not bringing their problems to work”?

By Stephanie Reynolds

When you are stressed or concerned, you don’t have to pretend you are OK and just “muster on”.  Common beliefs are that leaders must not show their negative feelings and be the one with a smile on their face and a positive attitude. This is actually not helpful.

Others around often will sense your discomfort, not know what’s it’s about, and may think you are not happy with them personally, or upset about something they are doing. They then can over-react in non-productive ways. Examples of this can be over analyzing data, asking you questions about something you weren’t happy with before, avoiding telling you about something else that is going wrong, or running off randomly to start a project you might have mentioned.

Here’s a thought

Let folks know you are not feeling terrific that day (not sick), and it’s not about them. That will give you leeway to be yourself, without having to disclose personal issues.

Practice paying attention to how you feel, and then notice how others respond to you.

It could be quite revealing. We’ve worked with so many Executives that were literally “clueless” about how their moods affected their direct reports.

One leader had a stiff neck one day and didn’t turn to look at an employee in a meeting for an hour due to it. When the employee did his exit interview a year later, he cited that day as a turning point in their relationship. He felt the leader wasn’t interested in what he had to say, and from that moment on, assumed that was true and acted from that belief, reading into every communication between them henceforth.

Giving  folks a “heads up” that you’ve got something on your mind that is not about them, and not about promoting someone else, can help them relax and keep them engaged in what you need them to be doing. They will appreciate your disclosure, no matter how much information you share.

Leaders who hold steady when others are losing their heads: Staying true to yourself during times of change

By Stephanie Reynolds

One of the most difficult challenges to deal with is ambiguity; the unknown of what might happen next.

I see it constantly in the organizations and individuals that I support every day. Leaders can get thrown off relatively easily when the potential for significant change is introduced. Typical examples include:

• an intention to reorganize is announced

• a new leader will head up your group

• your biggest client decides not to use your org’s services anymore

• there is talk of selling off your division

• you are concerned you might get fired…

The list goes on and on.

Our tendencies to run “what if” scenarios go wild.  Just witness the constant conjecture circling around what our new President Elect’s impact will be. When given the opportunity to look deeper into the reasons for the anxiety, it’s interesting that it’s not the fear of what the new rules or consequences will be, that trips us up, it’s actually not believing or remembering that we will be able to cope with the consequences of the change adequately.

Don’t get me wrong; some changes can be huge, and even in some cases life-altering in disturbing ways. I am not trying to minimize the struggle.  But history is filled with countless stories of great leaders having faced huge life threatening situations for themselves and their followers, with clarity and courage. One that springs to mind is Nelson Mandela who led South Africa through its transition from Apartheid toward a racially integrated society.

What are the key components for getting back on track?

1. First acknowledge you are thrown off. Evidence of this may be obsessive thoughts or conversations about what might happen, coping by using defensive behaviors like micromanaging, perfectionism, and even disengaging from others can show up. We cope by trying to avoid the concern by compensating with activities that dull the emotions.

2. Give yourself a moment of compassion. Change can be scary. You may have had a history that wasn’t great around the consequences of change, that creates fear in your mind now. It’s important to accept that your anxiety is understandable given your experience.

3. Break the cycle. Remind yourself that you have weathered tough times before, and most importantly reconnect with your sense of self and what has driven you forward in the past during times of adversity.

4. Find your inner compass. Remember or revisit your values. What you believe in and who you really are. Consider how you want to feel and lead during this ambiguous time, and behave in ways that emulate that.

What do others need from you?

1. Be present. Once you are being present with yourself (as stated above), it makes it much easier to be present for others. Give them your full attention, it always is experienced as a gift. Listen to them if you can, without interrupting or correcting, and help them find their inner compasses too.

2. Share a vision of what’s possible, to help others recognize you believe you will all make it through together. Help them with what to focus on. If appropriate, help them prepare. Most important is expressing confidence that despite challenges, we will all make it through this together.

3. Communicate often. During times of ambiguity, we need more contact than during normal times. Get people together to discuss concerns and steer the group towards remembering team and personal resilience. Share updates whenever you can. Be as transparent as you can, as early as possible.

We have a tremendous capacity for change, though our first response may be fight or flight, ultimately we can weather any storm if we remember who we are and what we stand for.

The Uncomfortable Attributes of Leading

By Stephanie Reynolds

So often I hear from executive clients that they want their direct reports to step up in the way they can depend on. It’s amazing how many times senior leaders say their “directs just don’t get it”.

What they need:

• Someone they can send to a critical meeting.

• Someone that thinks beyond current deliverables and is trying to find ways to improve the business.

• Someone who holds for the larger vision and translates that vision downward in ways that get traction within their own team.

• Someone that can hold their leader’s over-arching goals in the face of other agendas.

• Someone they know can handle push-back and while advocating for their position without alienating others.

• Someone who can get good “intel” and bring it back to them for planning or changing course.

• Someone who “scans” the environment for clues to what is trending next. Or which way the wind may be blowing.

After coaching many leaders who report up to senior leaders, I have learned an interesting fact; many leaders don’t realize it is their job to do the activities listed above. They don’t realize it’s actually important for them to be proactive and do much more than just deliver on their stated goals to be successful leaders.

What stops them from doing it? Leaders can get too focused on execution and staying in the comfort zone of doing, doing, doing. They love the short term reinforcement that accomplishing difficult tasks brings them. Some are too worried about breaking the rules and potentially “stepping outside of the lines” and maybe getting in some kind of trouble. Again we have a comfort zone issue, not being comfortable pushing the limits. Some leaders don’t slow down long enough to consider what would significantly improve the business, due to moving too fast to not have to pay attention to the bigger picture. Others get stuck in taking care of their directs and making sure they deliver and develop. All laudable efforts, but again comfort zone activities that could be missing the bigger opportunity for where the business needs or could potentially go.

What you need (to succeed):

It’s your job to make things better, to look out past the visible horizon, to bring directs, peers and other leaders along with you in a vision for what is possible. It really is your job, and that is what is so hugely missing in so many leaders, and that is what executives are looking for in succession planning. To really take a chance and push out to greater possibilities! It takes courage to let go of what is familiar and comfortable, but if you really want to lead, comfort is a luxury that lasts for fleeting moments at best.

The next time you want a promotion or feel you need more challenge, ask yourself:

1. What could really make a difference in our business?

2. What opportunities are there that we haven’t tapped? What other parts of the business might want or need this?

3. Who do I need to help me refine this idea and bring along others to align to it?

4. What worries do I have about stepping out of my comfort zone?

5. How can I stay true to myself and take a risk that may bring me the next step in my career?

What Makes Strategic Initiatives Fail?

By Stephanie Reynolds

Your job as a leader is to make things better, think beyond the status quo, and move people towards that new reality.  That means you need your innovative strategic initiatives to succeed.

Often critically needed initiatives fail for the same avoidable reasons.

Here’s an example:

Jim knows that his company needs to adopt a new customer centric program in order to be competitive.  The company had been a leader in their field by launching a huge innovative product 8 years ago. There was no competition at the time, and for at least 5 years they held a huge percentage of the market share. Now they are getting their lunch eaten by competitors that constantly adapt and release products consistent with the drumbeat of their customers. Jim’s company has been losing market share year over year for the last three years.

Jim is VP of Product Development.  He has been charged by his CEO with developing the company’s future roadmap of products.

He knows that in order to develop customer-centric products, his company needs to change their antiquated and well-worn ways of gathering customer feedback and user data.  This requires a full on entry into the world of social media and business intelligence tracking that would be brand new to their way of doing business.  The need for the change seems so obvious to Jim as the CEO has been pushing for customer centric products for 3 years. He researches a multi-tiered solution, runs his plans past his CEO and gets buy-in, but doesn’t get critical support from the stakeholders most impacted by the change: Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, and even Finance would all be hugely impacted.

Jim’s initiative gets surface buy-in and support at the Senior Team level due to political correctness.  In reality, the changes required of his major stakeholders are too vast for them to reach their year-end objectives.  They end up giving “lip service” agreement in front of the CEO, but end up sabotaging Jim’s initiative by stalling, not providing resources, rejecting vendors, and so on…

His initiative stalls out and dies at a critical time for the company, never seeing the light of day. Business suffers and the reputation of the company continues to decline. He had the right idea, but didn’t realize who his real stakeholders were and how much work needed to be done to support and align them.

5 ways to help your initiatives get the adoption they deserve

1. CONSIDER THE TIMING.

What is going on in the company, industry and the current business climate to ensure that the timing is right? What other initiatives have succeeded or failed recently that might help or hinder yours being adopted?

2. KNOW WHO YOUR TRUE STAKEHOLDERS ARE.

Many leaders feel having CEO buy-in is enough. But all CEO’s have constituencies they must satisfy, and those same CEOs are constantly challenging their organizations with competing priorities. Who has the most to lose? Who has the most to gain? Who will have to make the biggest changes to adopt the initiative?  What challenges will they face in order to be able to make them? Those that have the most to lose should be listened to most closely.

3. ONCE YOU KNOW YOUR STAKEHOLDERS, SPEND TIME CULTIVATING EACH OF THEM.

Ask questions about their true challenges, and get a wish list from them about what their highest level goals and aspirations might be. You may find some great shared intentions you can tie your initiative to.

4. THINK ABOUT YOUR INFLUENCE STRATEGY FROM A CREATIVE STANDPOINT.

You may need to vary your “business as usual” influence mindset, and think creatively about who or what might influence them if it isn’t you directly. Think about ways to engage unconventional supporters to do the influencing for you.

5. COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE.

Frequently, initiatives get off to a great start with a lot of fanfare but lose momentum due to under-communication. There are always fits and starts for any project, keep your stakeholders and especially potential nay-sayers engaged with lots of updates and check-ins. Momentum building and maintaining are equally important.

Lack of stakeholder alignment and on-going support is always the biggest “deal killer” for initiatives. If you put as much time into aligning your stakeholders as you would a sales or marketing campaign for a new product, the chance that your initiatives will succeed goes up exponentially!

Why So Many Great Ideas Get Lost

By Stephanie Reynolds

Jason has many breakthrough ideas for streamlining processes within his company, but often doesn’t share them. He prefers to think things through thoroughly before he speaks. When challenged, he needs time to prepare his responses. It’s not because he isn’t bright. Quite the contrary, he is actually brilliant, and may be the most talented person for process implementation in his entire multi-national organization.

He grew up in a family that was highly critical whenever the kids said the wrong thing, or even sometimes the right things. In that environment he learned the hard way not to talk back to authority, or worse, prove them wrong. This lesson was reinforced  in prior companies where he has worked. The senior leadership team, that includes his boss at his current company, is composed of highly verbal, jousting types who love to debate and take turns humbling or even humiliating lower level managers presenting to them. They like to compete to see who can find the most flaws or mistakes.

Sound familiar?

How many great ideas have you or others had, that have never seen the light of day in your organization? There is so much emphasis on innovation and creativity today, and yet over 50% of the innovation potential may be right in your own backyard. This information is based on the research of William Miller, author, inventor of the Innovation Styles Assessment® and Co-Founder of Values Centered Innovation.

Our business cultures have evolved into highly verbal, think fast, speak fast, environments that often leave half of companies’ employees out of the conversation. Contrary to popular belief, faster is not always smarter. How many times have companies barreled forward on bad ideas? Too many.

Making the rush to conclusion worse, is the common occurrence of awarding the glory to the one who thinks up an idea first, regardless of whether or not it is the best idea.

In fact, the greatest leaders learn to leverage the brilliance of others, ultimately getting the best results and promotions along the way. We need to get over ourselves a bit, and let the light shine on others too.

Here are some suggestions for surfacing the best ideas within your own organization:

1. Help Them Think Ahead. Send problem statements out to your team, and yes, other teams within your company, asking for their ideas. It’s ok to be transparent around problems that need solving outside your group. Actually, it models great cross-group collaboration.

1. Give Them Time To Prepare. Give people enough time to think through and possibly write out their responses before having to present.

1. Invest Your Time. Invest the time to actually read and think about their responses before asking them to present to you or others.

1. Gauge the Landscape for Sharing. Carefully choose the environment for sharing ideas. Maybe a one-on-one for some is much more effective. For others you might create an idea forum on a quarterly basis, and conduct it as a think tank approach, highlighting some of the ideas that were written about, and encouraging open minded discussion around possibilities. Include more than just the usual suspects.

1. Encourage Best Practices At Higher Levels. Start a conversation with your fellow leaders about how you all may be squelching great ideas that could improve your bottom line significantly. See if you can make agreements around how to treat presenters, without interrupting and fault finding. Make agreements about enforcement of those agreements when you backslide.

Mine your environment for the most productive idea generating, and you will solve complex problems, create breakthrough ideas, while engaging employees in very gratifying and self-perpetuating ways.

Not Mapping the Political Landscape can be a Colossal Mistake

By Stephanie Reynolds

A common scenario:

You have been assigned a major project by your Vice President. It will potentially change the way your company does business and will impact many departments. You are jazzed because it will be great for the company, and you’ve been advocating this type of change for some time. It will be a complex, high profile change effort that could really catapult your career to the next level.

You start down the comfortable and well-worn road of researching and benchmarking best practices, recruiting staff, outlining the project plan, talking with your boss and other key supporters. It’s known territory, hence predictable and safe. You get ready to present the plan at the next Executive Team meeting.

The Meeting Goes South

In the meeting are the usual suspects, the CEO and his Vice Presidents, with a few key general managers. You think a few leaders may mildly object to the project, but you feel tight on your presentation and business case. You also feel you have the support from your boss and other executive team leaders, so you are very confident at the start of the meeting.

The CEO starts outlining the meeting agenda which has not been shared ahead of time. When one of his inner circle VPs sees your project on the list, you hear an audible groan. It’s time for your presentation. You get to your second slide and the questions start flying from the groaner. Then it seems like a pile-on from other powerhouses in the room. The timeline and workflow you are suggesting has many very concerned. The CEO is starting to agree. Your boss tries feebly to defend you and looks to the other supporters for help, but in the wake of upset, your support has seemingly dried up. The groaner suggests tabling the project for revisiting next year. The majority agrees, and suddenly it’s all over. But it was so good for the company…

Map Your Landscape

Understanding and effectively working your political landscape ahead of time could have saved your project. Painstakingly listing all the key players, their influence and power over the decision, and what their objections and personal/business goals might be is a critical step. The most effective leaders spend dedicated time on this. Get input from those closer to them if you don’t know the answers.

Spend Time with Objectors

To build the support you need, you may now have to pursue the unknown road—discovering people’s political agendas, even in what could be uncomfortable conversations where you cannot predict the outcome. We usually spend time (most of our time) “preaching to the choir”. It feels so good and fun to talk with those that agree with us. We need to spend at least as much time with those that feel they have the most to lose. Learn what you can upfront, and then meet with each of them ahead of your presentation to learn about their concerns and goals creating win/win situations for both their interests and yours. If you can’t get them to agree, at least you’ll know the level of objection you will be facing, and can possibly neutralize it with other key stakeholders prior to the meeting.

Do the hard work of creating supporters ahead of time, it will save critical projects and definitely benefit your career.

What are the biggest mistakes made when leading in times of change?

By Stephanie Reynolds

Leaders often think they have to have all the answers when leading in times of change, and delay communicating. This is a colossal mistake because people will “fill in the blanks” with their own stories and beliefs and often these are not positive! We’ve seen employees lose faith, drift, get focused on the wrong things, worry, panic and ultimately spend time gossiping about what “might” happen.

Over communicating, until you are “blue in the face” is critical. Letting folks know you don’t know now, you have a way to find out, or how they can help you find out, make a huge difference. Keeping folks updated reduces the “rumor mill” and actually creates confidence.

The biggest factor for impacting real change in the environment, are direct manager comments. Direct managers have the greatest “touch points” with employees, and don’t realize they are the real shapers of behavior and culture.

There may be countless email updates, announcements, visions, plans etc.; coming from command central,  but the real “in the moment” catching of behavior, commenting on it, and linking it to the larger purpose of the change is where the “rubber meets the road”.

As you see an employee doing something right or wrong in connection with the changes you want to see, don’t hesitate to notice verbally, reinforce the behavior or what new behavior would be better, and then link it to the bigger picture. As leaders, we think folks just have to hear it once and they “get” it. Actually, that could not be further from the truth, most employees will greatly appreciate and learn from your “connecting the dots”.

Which of These 10 Influence Tactics Work Best?

By Stephanie Reynolds

Influencing successfully on a daily basis is one of those must do, challenging, and sometimes dreaded “job description” items for leaders. What’s the best approach to take when we are trying to influence someone?

We tend to knee-jerk into our tried and true patterns around influence style which can be ultimately ineffective.

Here’s an example:  Jim is a senior leader that has many years of success influencing through his warm, engaging personality.  He just made “friends” so easily that his ideas were listened and agreed to often. Then he met “Godzilla Pete”. The tough senior exec that joined the company who no one could cozy up to. This was a “no nonsense” bottom-liner that was only interested in results, had no time for small talk, and was on a mission to build his empire. Jim tried unsuccessfully multiple times to engage Pete through personal appeals, but never met Pete on his own turf. Ultimately Pete succeeded in winning parts of Jim’s organization over to his control.

The lesson: we must amend our influence tactics to reflect the preferred tactics of those we need to influence. If Jim would have met Pete “head to head” he might have had a better chance of influencing him, and retained control of his organization.

Below are the ten most common influence tactics. Rate yourself high or low for usage of each, and ask yourself why you shy away from some and not others. In particular, look at the ones you summarily reject, those may be a great key to opening up your repertoire. Next time you need to influence someone ask yourself which tactic might work best for them?

Why Good People Leave: Concerns Can Backfire on You

By Stephanie Reynolds

Here’s a description of why good people leave and the negative consequences that can follow.

The Situation:

Things Look Good So Far

You are a year into a stretch leadership role. You feel good about your focus, you’ve set the vision, set a high bar for your team, keep pushing them to improve and have more clarity about what they are doing. You are trying to break some old patterns of looking at the business in old ways and are helping others see how to do things differently. Those above you seem happy.  You’ve set aggressive targets, created profitability where there was none before and things are looking good. You feel comfortable.

Some Grumbling

Some of your folks are grumbling about not having the choice projects, some want more of your time, but you are so busy with getting the office on track that you know you’ll get to them later, and soon they will appreciate what you’ve done for them. You also heard before you got there that this office was filled with a bunch of complainers, so you don’t take it that seriously.

You are not crazy about all your inherited personalities, but you tell yourself that they are high producers. You’d just prefer not to spend that much time hearing them complaining or bragging. You spend more time with newer reports you think you can get the most growth out of…bringing them along and supporting them. Besides they are open to your feedback and seem to really want it. That feels good for a change. It also beats dealing with the stress of not knowing how the others will react when you try to raise their performance bar.

When office conflicts occur you turn them back over to those involved, saying they should work it out themselves. You feel that is the respectful, adult way to handle it. You lose a couple of key producers to competition, but that’s the way it always goes in your industry…

Trouble Starts Brewing

Suddenly a rash of your folks are having skip level meetings with your boss and your boss’s boss, saying you are not listening to them, and never available. They cite that you don’t care about them or respect their business acumen. They say you favor the few folks that you do spend a lot of time with, giving them the choice projects that are available. They say you are not contributing to their success or the success of the office.

Management gives you leeway, doesn’t take action, and says they know you can solve it. You have a few staff meetings with everyone and talk about wanting to listen and support them.  You know now things will be better. Six months goes by, and there is still grumbling and upset, but you know that eventually people will understand your focus and intentions.  It’s just not that comfortable for you to talk to people about their emotions and upsets, and you believe in time things will smooth out.

All (blank) Breaks Loose

You lose two more of your top producers, and your boss gets a new boss who visits your office to introduce himself and see what’s going on; three of your top producers sequester him in the conference room to complain about you. Your boss contacts soon afterward saying there is a problem.  She needs a plan from you to deal with it that she can send back to her new boss. You have a vacation planned, so you think you’ll use it to figure out your strategy.

Ten days later you return to find a meeting with your boss and the HR VP on your calendar.  You’ve lost another key player…you know what’s coming.  Yes, you do lose your job.

What You Can Learn From This Situation:

Listen and Learn Early on

Spending a lot of time listening and learning about each of your directs is a critical first step when moving into a new role. Find out what’s most important to them, what they feel they’ve done well and why, and what their needs and interests are. Learn how they make decisions and what concerns they’ve had in the past. Learn about the history of the team and where “the bodies have been buried”. Ask them about their goals, and past successes. Then try and meet them where they are and bridge their needs to helping your craft the strategy for their success.

When Complaints are Raised Stay Open

You may or may not be the cause of a problem, but not listening to other’s point of view on how strongly they feel about needing a solution can really be trouble later. The intensity they may be feeling may be exponentially greater than yours. Not learning about what is upsetting them, and helping them solve the problem from their point of view, not just yours, is a missed opportunity.

Work on Your Conflict Avoidance

Dealing with employees who are new to you, upset, or otherwise not in alignment with your views can be very stressful.  You never know for sure how they will react.  However, that goes with the territory of working with people.  Work first on clarifying on what you need from a situation.   Know your negotiable and non-negotiable positions.  Then practice initiating potentially difficult conversations and staying with them until the issues are resolved, regardless of how uncomfortable those conversations might become.  Your reward can be better understanding and trust.

Become More Visible, Not Less, When Folks are Unhappy

Though no one likes hanging out with unhappy people, staying more connected is crucial at these times. Cancel meetings or trips outside the office that are not critical and set up 1:1s with everyone to check in on how they are doing. Have staff meetings and let others site their concerns–remember you don’t have to agree with them, just listening to their point of view in front of others without being defensive goes a long way with people, it shows true courage and maturity. This process will enable you to come up with group supported decisions and turn the tide of an unhappy, discontented environment. You can really help folks learn that you are in their corner, and build the loyalty and the trust to take them into new terrain you know they need. Without that trust it’s only a matter of time…

Leaders and Conflict Resolution: What’s guts got to do with it?

By Stephanie Reynolds

Nobody loves the process of conflict resolution. If you are really going for it, it means being clear about your needs, getting in touch with your anger or frustration, communicating appropriately, and worst of all, listening to the needs, concerns and feelings of others. Yuck!! Talk about uncomfortable!

This is not typically fun stuff for leaders, or anyone else for that matter. It’s messy, and you are never quite sure how things might turn out for you, or for the relationship. Also, why do we feel so unreasonably uncomfortable during the process?

Fight or Flight

There are biological reasons for this: Helping us fight or flee, is what our brain stem is wired to do when we feel threatened. It floods us with cortisol, adrenaline and clouds our thinking. Its goal is to have us win, or get the heck out of there quickly. We have to, (and science shows we can), retrain our brains to realize that when we talk it out, speak the truth, and listen to the other’s experience and needs, good or better outcomes will follow. That’s why it takes guts; we are literally working against our primitive brain. But we can do it, with determination, practice and patience with ourselves and others.

Have the Guts to Stay Put

It’s one thing to go in there and “duke it out” or “run for the hills”, the two most common scenarios we are most familiar with in resolving conflict. It’s quite another, to go against the grain for you, and hang in there, to truly listen to the other person’s reality, try and explain yours, without defending yourself or attacking others. This takes real guts and skill, and it’s tough going for all of us. Some leaders have the willingness to go there, most do not. Most people opt out, and take what seems like the easier way, but in truth, it’s rarely the easy way, because the conflict comes around again and again, causing us long term problems and productivity issues. It can cost you discomfort and a small amount of time upfront, or lots of aggravation and tons of time later.

So next time you feel that desire to fight or flee, take a moment to ask yourself if you really have the willingness to do what will ultimately get you the better outcome. It’s tough going, but then again, you’re tough aren’t you?

How to be more like Teflon® when it’s really not your fault

By Stephanie Reynolds

Here’s a typical scenario:

Your team is working nights under a killer deadline, with scarce resources, but still kicking butt and you deliver complex results on time.

Then you send your work downstream to the next part of the organization. They are late (again), the work product is not up to standard, and the company misses a key deadline. You know what comes next, someone’s “head on a platter.”

The next day, you get an email thread from your boss copying you and other key execs, which has a list of issues cited by the downstream leader, pointing the finger at your group for the problems. Your boss is upset, and says in his email “how could you let this happen?” You feel like not only were you and your group unjustly accused, your boss abandoned you, and then blamed you in front of the other leaders. Yikes! Now what do you do?

Flying Blame

Unfortunately blame flies around organizations all the time; you just don’t want it to stick to you when it’s not really your responsibility. If it is, well, that’s another story for another blog.

The truth is, scarce resources are typical, as are unrealistic deadlines and rushed decisions that often lead to poor outcomes. So blame is somewhat inevitable unfortunately, because there are many leaders that don’t take the time to plan for shortfalls, mistakes, and the re-work necessary to get many projects done correctly. They feel they don’t have the luxury, or they don’t apply the discipline, or both. And so it goes…

Cool Your Head

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve seen your boss over-react and blame in front of others. Also, it’s probably not the first time you’ve seen the downstream leader blame you when things go wrong. You feel really badly each time, and wonder “why me?”

Unhook from the negative emotions

The most important first step is to be in your own “corner”. You feel terrible, you may be screaming mad, or freaked out, so talk to yourself for a minute or two and tell yourself that it makes sense that you would be feeling this way, and give yourself a few minutes to just acknowledge it. This will help the adrenaline in your system to dissipate, making it easier to get blood flow back to your brain where you need it.

We tend to skip the step of centering ourselves first, and calming ourselves down before we act, running the risk of over-reacting and looking unprofessional. Take a walk, or think out loud with someone whose problem solving skills and judgment you trust, to get some of the initial upset out of your system, and help you brainstorm solutions. Realize it feels personal, but in actuality, it may not be at all. Ask yourself what outcomes would be ideal for you and your group, and plan from there.

Once you are calm, then you should respond:

The calmer you are, the easier it will be for you to pick the right course of action.

One series of steps could be:

1. Talk with your boss, to help him/her understand what really happened and ask what prompted him/her to assume you guys were to blame (this may provide insight into their thinking).

2. Do some research to justify what you know to be true.

3. Pick the time and the place to share that information with all the key leaders, for the maximum impact and recovery.

The calmer you are, the more you will garner respect, credibility, and in fact, may grow in the eyes of the other leaders as someone who can “take it and respond professionally”. Sometimes things that look really bad on the surface can end up being a breakthrough moment in a career.