Experience

Why don’t we ask?

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  The same holds true for receiving what you need.  You will not receive what you don’t persistently ask for.

What is stopping us from obtaining the very things that will make us successful? 

We might get advice that will be different than what we want to hear. “There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.” – Joseph Addison

We believe we already know all we need to know. “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Og Mandino

There are many ways to ask. The most obvious is literally just asking someone who you believe has what you need.  But have you considered that if the goal of asking is to obtain what you need, then we could define asking in much broader terms.  If you need information then asking is reading a book.  If you need experience then asking is trying something new.  If you need to be more physically fit then asking is starting an exercise regimen. The act of asking is merely that which will bring you what you need.    

Don’t skimp – Ask for everything. You might as well ask for it all.  What is the ultimate you would like to receive? Ask for that.  You may not get everything you ask for, but why start with anything less than everything? Define all you need, then using our new definition of asking, find an action that can potentially deliver it.  Read books written by the best in the industry. Take on roles that will stretch you to your maximum.  Plan an exercise program that becomes part of your daily life, not just a short-term effort.

“Asking is the beginning of receiving.  Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a spoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.” – Jim Rohn

Be persistent – keep asking.  You may not receive everything you need.  In fact, you may not receive anything you need – when you first ask.  That doesn’t matter.  If what you need is important to you, then ask again.  Ask differently.  But don’t give up.

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal.  My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” – Louis Pasteur

Dig deep enough before making decisions

decisionsDon’t make decisions based only on where you are; make decisions based on where you want to be. Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is quoted as saying, “We are not a product of our circumstances, we are a product of our decisions.”

Your circumstances do play a part in your future, but only to ground you as you decide what to do next.

Jonathan Schaeffer, the creator of computer chess programs, calculated that there are 197,742 different ways that the players in a chess match could play their first two moves. When you expand that to the first three moves the possible outcomes becomes 121 million. In chess, as in life, your decisions don’t end when you first decide, but continue through each step as you evaluate what’s next.

When faced with choices, before you decide, commit to settle for nothing less than knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Today we have the ability to receive more information than at any time in history. Take care to evaluate what you know before deciding where to go.

“It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within – not without.” – Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot

Invest the time it takes to be the best. How long should you think and evaluate options before you decide? It depends on the potential impact of the decision and the level of experience you have in the area. A greater chance of impact and a lesser degree of experience require more time. Stay with it until you feel that you have the ability to make the best decision possible.

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”– Albert Einstein

Pay attention to how the facts fit together. The first step in decision making is a knowledge of the facts. Next comes an understanding of why the facts are what they are. Most important is to obtain the wisdom to apply what you now know and understand to make the best decision possible. This comes from broadening your view through other people and other similar decisions that have been made.

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” Marilyn vos Savant

Profit from your analysis. You will never have all the answers needed to make a perfect decision. Don’t let that stop you from asking as many questions as reasonable to make the best decision possible.

“I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.” – Arthur C. Clarke

How are you doing? Read the signs.

read the signsDo you have to wait for someone to tell you how you’re doing to know how you are doing? Not if you read the signs along the way.

“Elaine, kudos for a job…done.” Seinfeld television show fans know that this is what the character Elaine heard from her boss when he returned from sabbatical to find his company in disarray after leaving her in charge. He said this right before he demoted her. Should she have seen the signs? Of course, this was a sitcom where the setup to this punchline was obvious – and funny.

Are the signs in real life as obvious as the signs in a sitcom? They are if you know how to read them. Here are three areas where leaders need to be successful and the signs that you should look for along the way.

Is your growth working? The world is constantly changing. Customer needs and methods to deliver these needs evolve at a rapid pace. How can you and your team be part of a changing organization in a changing world if you are not changing with it? If the only activities you participate in are those that you already know how to do well, then you are not growing.

The signs that you should look for to know if your growth is working are 1) The openness to consider new ideas before the final idea is settled on 2) The opportunity to pilot new processes before the final process is put into place and 3) The willingness to claim success when you learn what not to do because you tried something new.

“If you aren’t making any mistakes, it’s a sure sign you are playing it too safe.” – John Maxwell

Is your leadership working? We know that leaders deliver results through the people they lead. The success of the team depends on the success of everyone you lead. Personal and business success are both important and must be achieved together.

The signs that you should look for to know if your leadership is working are 1) The results that your team delivers on a consistent basis 2) The ability of each member of your team to do their best and 3) The desire for people to want to be on your team.

“Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily even if you had no title or position.” – Brian Tracy

Is your teaching working? The best leaders have teams that can execute on the vision without anyone telling them how to do it. The most important measure of success of leadership is the success of your team when you are not involved.

The signs that you should look for to know if your teaching is working are 1) The plans that are designed that are not just a repeat of your ideas 2) How often you are genuinely impressed by the ability of your team to accomplish things you couldn’t do 3) The pride you feel when your team goes further than you have

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher…is to be able to say, the children are now working as if I did not exist.” – Maria Montessori

 

 

How to help your team believe in themselves

i-believe-in-youYou are a leader with experience. You’ve accomplished a lot in your career and want to give back and help encourage your team to achieve the success that you have. You can see their potential and believe in them – you know they can do it.

Just because you can do it, and believe they can do it, that doesn’t lead to your team’s belief in themselves. For your team to believe in themselves, your belief needs to lead to their belief. They won’t believe until they learn it, know it and experience it. Your part is to teach them, develop them, then let them.

In The Last Lecture, Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch talked about believing in yourself (he called it self-esteem). He said you can’t give it to someone; it has to be developed. His process for developing belief is this, “You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it.”

Here is that process laid out in three steps. Follow these and your team will believe in themselves.

Individuals learn when leaders teach them.

What am I supposed to do to be successful? In order to believe in yourself you have to know what is expected so you understand the definition of success. The only way that this happens is when the individual listens to what is being taught by the leader.

“I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.” – Ernest Hemingway

Individuals know when leaders develop them.

How do I do what I am supposed to do to be successful? Knowing what is expected doesn’t mean you know how to achieve it. This is where leaders show the individuals through side-by-side coaching and mentoring.

“A man only learns in two ways, one is by reading, and the other by associating with smarter people.” – Will Rogers

Individuals experience, when leaders let them.

What does it feel like when I do what I am supposed to do to be successful? Knowing what to do and how to do it is cemented in when you actually do it. Leaders let their team do it on their own so they work through their mistakes and get it right.

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Leaders as Greeters

greetingI remember when Walmart had official greeters in their stores. It was their job to say hello, give you a shopping cart, and if you had young children with you they would give them a smiley face sticker.

I always thought that was a unique way to welcome you to a store. Walmart just isn’t the same without the official greeters.

There are still businesses that have greeters, although they are called something else, and their job description includes more than just saying hello. Think of hotel porters, employees who stand at the front entrance of the mall stores, and with the advent of online shopping the website has become the ultimate greeter.

Why are greeters so important to business? Because the customer experience begins and ends at the front door. Leaders should see themselves as greeters for the very same reason. Part of their responsibility is to provide the same three customer (employee) experiences: Connection, Direction, and Reflection.

Connection

Greeters are the first to welcome you to the hotel, store, or website. They make you feel part of a larger group, you know you are not alone in your quest. Leader Greeters do the same thing. Employees need to feel that they are part of the team. Everything from the basic introductions to ongoing communication fosters a connection.

Think of your role as the Leader Greeter like CEO Jeff Bezos sees Amazon, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

Direction

Greeters help customers find what they want on the inside: the hotel room, the store aisle, or which button to press on the website. Leader Greeters do the same thing. Employees need direction to the right opportunities, training, and coaching. Businesses that want a good customer experience don’t let customers wander around until they are frustrated. Employees want to know they are headed in the right direction as well.

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu

Reflection

When customers leave the hotel, store, or website, businesses want them to remember a good experience and have the desire to return. Hotel porters are the best at giving restaurant recommendations. Store employees showing appreciation by saying thank you goes a long way. Websites that keep you informed about your order keep you coming back for more. Leader Greeters do the same thing. When it’s time for employees to go home for the day, or take a vacation, they need to feel like they accomplished enough on the job and were successful. Help your employee’s work-life balance by prioritizing and delegating the right work load.

“The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.” – Wayne Dyer

What is the importance of diversity in leadership?

diversity choicesInformation, knowledge, wisdom – while they all have a slightly different meaning, the overarching theme is it’s good to learn and good to understand different options when you make choices – especially in leadership.  Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you are likely to perceive every problem as a nail.” What he meant by that oft-used phrase is that an individual is limited by their talents and experience in their ability to offer ideas to solve problems.

Talents

There is a great book titled Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham.  The theme of this book is that each of us is born with natural talent, or strengths.  Now this doesn’t say what job or career you can or cannot undertake, but it does identify how you will be naturally good at what you do if you use your strengths.

The book discusses the thirty-four possible strengths that people have.  When you take the online assessment offered in the book your top five strengths are identified in order from one to five.   Here is where the idea of diversity really stands out.  The number of possible combinations of top five strengths in order from one to five out of a possible thirty-four strengths is amazingly high.  There are over thirty three million combinations – 33,390,720 to be exact. 

Imagine, the people who work with you have a very high probability of having a completely different set of strengths – or talents.  It would be a waste to just pick the hammer you know when you have so many other available talents to draw on. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Hide not your talents.  They for use were made.  What’s a sundial in the shade?”

Experience

Now you know that your team has a broad set of talents to bring to the forefront in decision making.  Added to their talent is their experience.  While talent is the foundation of what someone is naturally good at, experience gives people a front row seat at what has worked, and likely more important, what hasn’t worked before.  In other words, when you have experience you have made mistakes and seen other people make mistakes. 

As a leader you want every person on your team to share their experience when evaluating options.  Not that you would reject every possible solution just because it didn’t work before, but knowing this information might give you an edge if you decide to try it again.

“Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.” Franklin P. Jones

Ideas

Diverse talents combined with diverse experiences will lead to diverse ideas – that is what every leader needs.  Remember, your job as a leader is not to have all the good ideas, but to find all the good ideas.  As former Yale University President Alfred Whitney Griswold once said, “The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”

Finally, I really like the way Michael Abrashoff, the former commander of the USS Benfold describes diversity by asking this question, “In what way can someone be a superstar?”

How many managers does a company really need?

too many managers not enough workersIs there an ideal percentage of managers in a company? Yes, but it depends on the situation.

“The organization chart will initially reflect the first system design, which is almost surely not the right one.  As one learns, the design changes.  Management structure also needs to be changed as the system changes.” – Fred Brooks

So how many managers does a company really need?  In the Human Resource arena this is called analyzing the Span of Control; this means the number of employees that directly report to a single manager.  On one end you can have a narrow span where each manager has few employees – this results in very close supervision and allows for greater coaching and mentoring one on one.  This is useful in situations where either the employees or the team is new, or where the tasks are highly specialized and require frequent interactions.  On the opposite end is a broad span where each manager has many employees – this model has less direct oversight from the manager and is usually used when managing simple repetitive tasks and/or an experienced team.

The trick to picking the right span of control model, is to fit the model to the task and the people performing the task. Which means there is no one right answer. 

Situational Leadership

In the 1970’s Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey developed what they called the Situational Leadership Model.   This is a four box model that matches the leadership style and span of control needs with the task and competence level of the people performing the task.

“Effective leaders need to be flexible, and must adapt themselves according to the situation.” – Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey

situational leadership chart 1Leadership Style

S1: Telling – Is the most basic of leadership styles. It is used when managing a new and often repetitive task where the employees are likely to be novices.  In this quadrant the manager can handle many employees as their role is simply telling the team what, how, when to perform the tasks.  The manager can oversee the entire group at once.

S2: Selling – In this quadrant, the manager is still working with employees that are on the more junior experience side.  But now, the role has changed from just getting the work done, to training the employees to become more proficient, learning why the work is done the way it is, and gaining their buy-in to the process.  The manager will have a smaller team so they can invest time coaching, mentoring and selling the process.

S3: Participating – The manager now moves from directing how the work is done as in the prior two quadrants, to partnering with the employees to develop the best methods.  These managers will have smaller teams as they invest significant time discussing methods and drawing out ideas from their employees.

S4: Delegating – In this final quadrant, the manager can once again can handle a larger team as the highly experienced team has been delegated responsibility and authority to perform the tasks and make decisions about the best methods to accomplish the tasks.  The manager’s role is once again to monitor the entire team’s results.

Keep in mind that employees can move amongst the quadrants as they take on new opportunities where they have less experience.  That is why this is called situational leadership – the right style and right span of control depends on the situation.

 

Your Experience Is Required

own your own experiencesYou are new to this job of leadership and have much less experience than the people you are supposed to lead.  Maybe you have recently just graduated from college. Or maybe have worked for a while but this is your first role leading others who have been with the company for years.  I am probably not the first one to tell you that experience does matter.

Your experience may be limited, but rest assured, education and experience go hand in hand.

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.” – Immanual Kent

In coaching new leaders I find a common misperception: experience that isn’t directly related to the type of job you have now isn’t relevant, you can’t rely on what you’ve done before in this leadership role.  Well that is just wrong.  

Every new role you are seeking will have some element of responsibility that you have not done before. Some part of your background may match the requirements of your new role exactly, but even more important is the diverse experiences you do have in adapting to new environments and taking on new challenges, or in organizational design, or social media strategies, or any number of areas. You do bring something to the table that can add value, but there is more for you to learn. 

Here are a couple of ways for you to add to your experience:

First the obvious, do more yourself. As Harold Geneen said, “In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.” Take the lateral job move, volunteer for new assignments. Do the work now and when the opportunities come you will be ready.

Second, surround yourself with people who have been where you want to go and ask questions. As Voltaire said, “Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?” You don’t have to make all the mistakes yourself on the way. Fast track to successful experience by having mentors.

Don’t short change yourself or the importance of your personal experience.  But don’t forget to learn from the experiences of others as well.

 

How do you lead colleagues with more experience?

Listen-to-your-elders-adviceFirst, people with experience don’t always knows what is right. But if they are successful now, they have likely experienced being wrong – and learned from it.

Second, everyone has more experience on their job than you – after all they do it every day. 

Third, your experience in life is different than your colleagues.  Your background and education will be different than others.  Together, you can make your combined experience work to be mutually beneficial.

Finally, as a leader your job is not to do your colleagues job, or tell them how do to their job.  The leader’s job is to set the stage so that people of all experience levels can excel at their job.

Here are four areas for every leader to focus on, regardless of their level of experience:

Engage in relationship building with your colleagues.  All work takes place with people.  Even the most automated business has people running the automated processes.  The foundation of all leadership is the relationship between the leader and the team.

“If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.” – Scott Stratten

Enlighten yourself and your colleagues on the strengths of each individual.  You have strengths and each person on your team has strengths.  It is through the joining of these strengths that success comes.

“The strength of the team is each individual member.  The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

Equip your colleagues with the tools and support they need to perform their role to the fullest.  Invest your time in providing opportunities for them to succeed. Make sure they have the best training, technology, and time management (priorities) you can provide.

“We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

 Empower your colleagues to succeed.  When you have engaged, enlightened and equipped your team, the best thing you can do is get out of the way. 

 “Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” – John Maxwell

 

Diverse ideas: All of us are smarter than one of us.

diverse peopleFor a leadership team to be successful you have to all be focused on the same goal – but there are multiple paths to each mountain.  Some leaders surround themselves with other leaders who could be mistaken for their mirror images and don’t get the benefit of diverse perspectives.  When this happens, every new challenge has only one solution: the ones we already know.

Each individual is limited by their own knowledge and experience in their ability to offer solutions to problems.  But each person has a diverse set of strengths formed by their abilities, knowledge, and experience.  When people with diverse strengths are brought together, the ability to offer multiple solutions to problems becomes possible.

In my book, The Leadership GPS, we follow Brian Alden as he fills his team with leaders who have diverse perspectives and he finds that success comes much easier. Brian learns that he doesn’t have to be the one with the best answer; he just needs to find the right answer.

An ancient Japanese proverb sums this up well: “All of us are smarter than one of us.”

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