The Recovering Leader

Monday LeaderTip: Applying High Standards Responsibly

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:48:30 PST

Applying high standards to your own performance as a leader is appropriate. Yet taken too far, they can lead to being overly self-critical, and can adversely affect the way you treat others too. Over time, the high cost of this approach drags down performance—and despite what you may think, your achievements are not, even in part, due to your critical behavior, but despite it. If you are prone to be too hard on yourself (or others) it’s highly worthwhile to reassess and ratchet back the severity with which you apply your good high standards. This can help you treat yourself and your people with greater care and respect, enhancing your ability to thrive, and to lead.

Self-coaching

Reflect on whether you have set reasonable standards for yourself, meaning that about 80 percent of the time, you meet or exceed them.

Reflect on whether you have set reasonable standards for others, as above.

Do you tend to beat yourself up about failures or mistakes?

Ask for feedback from others about how critical you tend to be, and compare the results of your self-reflection to the input you receive.

What do these findings suggest you may change about applying your standards differently from now on?

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

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Based on client experiences / lessons learned, our weekly LeaderTips have been offering self-coaching themes and topics of interest to leaders since 2004. They are often published in BusinessWeek Online, sent weekly to our clients, and hundreds of other corporate leaders worldwide. I invite you to forward them to others, who are also welcome to subscribe using the link below. Note that over 100 of these tips appear in my book, Beyond Effective: Practices in Self-aware Leadership. Click here to subscribe to LeaderTips via email.

Monday LeaderTip: Approachability

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:34:45 PST

Approachability is critical for leadership, as it fosters healthy and necessary communication between you and your team. You may see yourself as easy to approach—yet when you are frequently preoccupied, stressed, or driven, they come to perceive you as off limits. It’s as if your people are trying to call you, but the line is busy. Make an extra effort to be poised, invite dialogue, and be willing to turn off your internal chatter long enough to hear them out. Doing so allows others to access your leadership, coaching, and advice, and in return, volunteer critical information you need to set strategy and make good decisions.

Self-coaching:

What are the risks in NOT being approachable? That is, if people are reluctant to come to you with something important, what might be at stake?

What can you do to engage your people more frequently, inviting their ideas, opinions, updates, and feedback?

What feedback have you received about your level of approachability?

What can you do to quiet your internal chatter when listening to others?

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

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Monday LeaderTip: Delegate the "What," Not the "How"

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:12:53 PDT

Great delegation habits make leaders and organizations more effective. First and foremost, it’s important to trust your people to do the job their own way. Yet, if you’re telling them what you want done AND how to do it, you’re hindering their efforts and your own. Delegate the "what" and leave the "how" it gets done to the person doing the work. Trusting your people in this way helps them be more engaged, autonomous, and creative—three key ingredients for maximizing your human capital through delegation.

Self-coaching:

Consider the three elements of delegation: 1) trusting people to do the job well, 2) verifying progress, and 3) applying consequences. Which of these areas are stronger for you, and which could use work?

If the first element, trusting your people to do the job well, is weaker, then is issue one of your own delegation approach, or one of having people you trust in key roles?

If it’s the former, then practice delegating the “what” and not the “how.” What do you notice?

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

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Leadership Delegation:Trust, Verify, Consequences

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:58:54 PDT

Just a few thoughts today on elements of delegation.

1. TRUST

Give someone a task, project, or “to do” that fits them (role, responsibilities, capabilities) and you think they can and will do it well.

Give them clarity: WHAT you want and WHAT success looks like, WHEN you want it done by, WHY you want it – how does it fit in to your priorities and why do you need it?, and any STAKES (positive and/or negative) or consequences (positive and/or negative.)

2. VERIFY

Verify progress face-to-face or voice-to-voice at reasonable interval(s) between when you delegate it and the agreed upon due date. Ask "how" and "what" questions. Ask barriers question. Offer help / support.

CONSEQUENCES

If it's done at the due date, offer feedback, express gratitude (as appropriate.)

If it’s not done at the due date, offer feedback, express concerns, reassess relevance, decide whether you need / want to offer a second chance, or reassign it.

Apply consequences accordingly.

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

Health Care Reform Leadership: Rise

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:38:50 PDT

Yes, our elected officials have been paid for by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Yes, there's dis- and misinformation flooding the media. Yes, people are confused, overwhelmed, scared, and apathetic. Yes, there are going to be problems and unknowns with anything that passes. Yes, Olympia may vote against it.

But now is the time. It's time we find the strength within ourselves to be at our best and most ingenious. Now is America's opportunity to show how capitalism and caring can coexist in harmony.

People are dying for health care coverage that works. That must include an option that says "We've got your back" to the medically / financially challenged, to the small business leader or worker, to the unemployed, to the doctors and hospitals, and to those who must make an excruciating choice each day between food, shelter or life-giving treatment. An option that drives the health industry to control costs and be at its most competitive and healthy. It's time for capitalism to roll up its sleeves and show the world how its done. To offer great options for all, even as it cares for the least able among us. It's in our Bill of Rights: Democracy at its best means striking a majestic balance between freedom and the inalienable human right to a healthy life.

Rise up, be heard, and be a leader. Reach into your heart--and your experience with friends and family--for the passion to do something, and then do what you can, even if it seems small. It won't be. We all know it's the right time to create the right thing--health care that works for everyone.

David Peck

Monday LeaderTip: Approval-Seeking

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:40:27 PDT

Leaders respond to requests for approval every day. Yet we all know people who need a little too much approval or reassurance. To them your opinions and decisions seem to impact their sense of security or self-worth, and they may strike you as clingy, needy, or fawning—something that may be in their blind spot. You can coach them to greater effectiveness by explaining how they are coming across to you, and how your decisions are neither an endorsement nor indictment of them as a person or a professional. Taking the lead on alleviating this burden helps you and the other person achieve greater results together.

Coaching Questions:

Is there anyone on your team who seems to need more reassurance and/or approval than others?

Would there be something to gain by explaining to them privately, candidly, and kindly how they are coming across to you?

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

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Layoffs and Human Capital Accounting

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:45:42 PDT

Lessons from the Great Recession of 08-09.

Many organizations like to say that their people are their most valuable asset. Yet in the real world, and from an accounting perspective, people are viewed as expenses rather than assets. This drives bust and boom cycles of hiring freezes, layoffs, unemployment, and then wasteful rehiring. The truth: you’re my most valuable asset until times are tough, and then you’re an expense to be shed.

Beyond being shortsighted, wasteful, and callous, simply getting rid of people when times are tough does little more than shifts costs from the corporations to all of us. While a big contributor to the current economic mess, it provides a great opportunity to practice what corporations preach about valuing their human capital.

Putting aside the corporate-speak of “employees-as-assets,” the accounting profession is the true guardian of how people are viewed. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) considers employees to be operating expenses that share the same accounting treatment as travel and entertainment spending, leases, and telephone bills. And when the Dow dips below 8,000, all of the above go on the chopping block.

GAAP beware: the rules need to change.

As my executive coaching colleague Frank Ball said to me recently, “As long as organizations stay in survival mode, thinking of their people not as their most valuable asset, but rather as an expense control item, we’ll end up in the same hole we’re in today.” The most recent bloodletting of layoffs, followed by the “expense” of paying unemployment, and then reversing it all during the next uptick, tells a tale of waste in the public and private sector. Let’s fix the accounting, and let it reflect the true value and contributions of our human resources.

What if we put employees and the expenses that go with them on the Balance Sheet—go ahead, just rip them from operating expense, and determine their value as assets?

Making the Case

Let’s look at the nature of what typically lands on a balance sheet. Items can be:

•    An asset or a liability
•    Thought to have a financial value to the organization
•    Increased in value if “improved”
•    Revalued over time to impact the company’s net worth

Hence, Jack the head of sales, who isn’t doing any selling in this grim market, is an asset whose value has declined, while Suzanne, who’s running three call centers with high customer satisfaction, is a strongly-performing asset. And, if you “improve” her (with training, coaching, good leadership, and other support) she can “appreciate,” as measured by her ability to run five call centers for roughly the same cost of her salary and benefits. As any other asset, Suzanne is clearly subject to capital improvement.

I challenge organizations to ask themselves a fundamental question: are Jack and Suzanne more like a phone charge, or a building that has value and relevance to the needs of the organization? Do they really belong with revenue and expenses on an Income Statement, or paired with capital assets on the Balance Sheet?

Believe me, working with organizations day in and day out, I see how people are assigned an implicit value by each other. Looking at employees as expenses is therefore an anomaly of accounting, one better left in the rear view mirror of lessons learned from the Great Recession of 08-09.

So let’s evolve this people-as-expenses paradigm into new rules and thinking that maximizes, rather than marginalizes our human capital.

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

Special thanks to Frank Ball, Ray J. Kelly, and Amy Schilling for contributing to this article! -DP

Monday LeaderTip: Prioritizing Leadership Development

david@leadershipunleashed.com — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:19:52 PDT

During challenging times many organizations cut investments in leadership development for being “discretionary,” as if they were headcount freezes or travel restrictions. However, unlike expenses, leaders actually appreciate in value and improve your bottom line, with reasonable investments in their ongoing learning and development. Investing in leaders is only discretionary for organizations more concerned about short term appearances than sustainable advantage—for all others, it’s a necessity.

Coaching Questions

To what extent do our executives and managers operate at peak effectiveness? Do we measure this?

Given their responsibilities, if our leaders were 20% to 30% more effective, what revenue and expense savings would that generate, and what leadership development spending would that suggest?

Given that potential return on investment, do our current investments (or lack thereof) in learning, coaching, and support for our leaders warrant any adjustments?

David Peck
Executive Coach and President
Leadership Unleashed

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