How You Might Be Undermining Your Team’s Drive for Results

I was recently asked, “How do I get my team to run with the ball instead of relying on me so much to tell them what to do? They should know how to and when to move things forward!”

Every leader wants a highly competent and motivated team who, with some planning and reflection, can move their areas of responsibility in the right direction, based on company vision, values, and goals.

When this doesn’t happen, you must look at yourself first. After all, you control the conditions employees work within. So it’s a safe bet that you might be encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors – in this case, an over-reliance on you and your opinion.

In general, I assume you have the right people in the right roles, but that is something to take a look at. Maybe a team member isn’t competent or is in the wrong role. Well, that at least tells you something about your hiring process and criteria. Maybe you need to look at that. But assuming you have capable individuals in place, here are some things to consider:

1. You could be sending mixed messages.

That is, your actions say one thing and your words say another. For example, you might tell a direct report to “run with” an idea, but if you believe that you are the smartest person in the company or that no one does as good a job as you do, you might criticize decisions your direct report makes or grill him on how things are being done, even when his judgment calls are perfectly acceptable. You might say you trust him to move forward, but you end up breathing over his shoulder for every move or even wrest back control by inserting yourself into decisions or conversations with others. In effect, your actions end up cancelling out your words.

2. You may not have set a clear path.

If your team does not know where they are going with an aligned vision, goals and priorities, they will be lost. Having a clear path forward empowers them to know what to do, when, and how to work together. That means that they won’t need to check with you so frequently about what to do next.

3. You may not have put in place supportive work structures.

If you don’t build supportive work structures, your team won’t work together the way you want, such as being interdependent, cooperative, and accountable to each others. These structures include fair compensation that is internally equitable and externally competitive, bonuses that don’t get in the way of taking appropriate risks, and recognition for things like creativity, innovation, surpassing customer expectations, etc.

4. You may not have created a culture of responsibility and accountability.

This means behavioral expectations are lacking for handling conflict, working across “silos”, taking risks, etc. Hey, we would like to think that adults do this automatically, but they don’t. You have to make sure there are clear behavioral norms in place, so your team knows how to act. And of course, you need to enforce them, too.

Assuming you have the right people on your team but are disappointed that they don’t seem to take responsibility, you are probably doing something or have failed to do something to be clear about your expectations. It all starts with you.

Coordinating Action Through Communication

Coordinating Action Through Communication I haven’t known a company yet where employees didn’t complain about a lack of communication. It isn’t that there is silence going on. To the contrary. People talk to each other all the time at work. The words are floating out there, but we don’t truly connect to each other’s meaning.

So many words are wasted at work because you assume that everyone else shares your assumptions about what you said. Really communicating – at work or at home – involves aligning your own expectations and assumptions with the assumptions of others. Based on our assumptions, Judith Glaser in her work, identified three types or levels of conversations:

Transactional – These tell/ask conversations are the most superficial of all conversations. They are an exchange of simply factual information. You share what you know and seek to bring your facts into alignment with facts that others have. For example, “I have a dentist appointment today at 2:00 and will leave the office early.”

Positional – This type of conversation is about advocating/inquiring and happens when you inform others of where you stand on an issue and seek to persuade them to seeing things your way. Problems occur when we cling to our own perspective, needing to be right, instead of showing a willingness to adjust our information based on what we hear from others.

Co-Creative – In these conversations, you and others explore a topic through sharing/discovering and remain connected to each other as you move through the topic together. The point of these conversations is to be open to information you don’t know and to be open to the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know.

“We live in historical conversations . . .
and live our assumptions as though they were true.”
– Julio Garreaud, Human Architect

Within these conversations, you make statements and ask questions using the following linguistic distinctions:

Assessment – an opinion based on your perspective, beliefs, and assumptions.
Assertion – a statement based on your expertise in a certain subject matter
Request – a stated desire that includes what you want, by when (date/time)
Promise – a YES/NO/MAYBE response to a request, indicating whether or not you will fulfill the request as stated, renegotiate the terms of the request, or revoke an earlier promise due to changing circumstances
Declaration – a statement based on authority/power
Offer – an unsolicited promise made without getting a specific request in advance.

Of all the linguistic distinctions, requests and promises are critical for coordinating action because they drive results. The trick is to ensure you make your request explicit enough so that someone else knows what you want and how they can successfully give it to you.

In meetings, for example, the key is to share enough information about a situation, so the people involved can make specific requests about what they need, and others can make informed promises to fill those needs. When you request “an executive summary on the ABC issues by Thursday at 3:00 p.m.”, others know whether or not they are capable of promising to do so.

When you are skilled at knowing which type of conversation to have to serve your purpose along with the specific linguistic distinctions you can use to craft your conversations, your company or work group can become a symphony of communication that results in harmonious action.

8 Dysfunctions That Undermine Company Culture

corporate culture, dysfunction

Do you recognize any of these archetypal energies in your workplace culture?

Business Dysfunction #1 – Shortsightedness

Inside shortsighted companies, leaders lack a clear vision, and employees are confused about the general direction in which the company is heading. With an emphasis on short-comings and deficits, these companies lack an inspired purpose. Consequently, they are problem-focused and often lose sight of the big picture.

The leadership style driving the dysfunction of shortsightedness is the Aloof Expert who spends most of the time in her head in the land of theories, ideas, abstractions.

Business Dysfunction #2 – Fear & Panic

These companies play it safe. They are risk-adverse and avoid failure at all costs, focusing on avoiding the worst case scenario, favoring comfort over growth and innovation at a cost of obsolescence.

The leadership type behind these companies are Worry Warts, who are very loyal, stable individuals. Unfortunately, they tend to be hyper-vigilant of potential threats and skeptical of almost all information.

Business Dysfunction #3 – Busy Distraction

In contrast to Fear and Panic companies, Busy Distraction companies find it hard to get in a groove. These companies want to be creative and innovative but don’t have the disciplined processes that foster focus and follow through. “Squirrel!”

The Disorganized Dreamer heads these companies as very inspirational and undisciplined: they can inspire others with magnificent ideas but don’t finish what they start.

Business Dysfunction #4 – Control & Micromanagement

In these workplaces, employees feel tightly controlled and micromanaged. It’s not necessarily that the policies and procedures are tightly monitored (although that could be the case); rather, employees can never seem to do anything right. Either their work is criticized as not good enough or their bosses take over their projects and tasks because “if they want it done, they’ll do it themselves”. These companies are short on employee appreciation and long on cracking the whip.

There are two types of leadership styles that can contribute to the Control & Micromanagement dysfunction: the Persnickety Perfectionist and the Pushy Power-Grabber. The Persnickety Perfectionist is a “black and white” thinker who focuses on flaws, criticizing and rarely praising because nothing is ever good enough. The Pushy Power-Grabber is demanding, blunt, angry, intimidating and subject to angry outbursts who desires control.

Dysfunction #5 – Disconnection & Withdrawal

With this dysfunction, things move slowly or not at all because being non-confrontational is valued. Being “nice” is rewarded with less concern for getting results. Goals might be set, but there is no penalty for failing to achieve them. Decisions are delayed or not made at all. Policies mean nothing as exceptions become the rule to keep the peace.

The leader in this company type is a Peacemaker at all costs, who avoids ruffling feathers by appeasing whoever cries the loudest. Consequently, leaders in this company don’t stand firm on anything.

Dysfunction #6 – Over-care with Lack of Accountability

This dysfunction emphasizes being helpful to others. Sounds good until you see the downsides. Leaders fail to delegate appropriately because they rescue employees by making excuses for them and/or picking up employees’ slack instead of holding them accountable. Out of the blue, the leader blows her stack because she suddenly feels taken advantage in spite of creating the situation with poor boundaries in the first place.

The corresponding leader type for the Over-care dysfunction is the Martyr. This is the person who gives and gives and gives until realizing they are not getting reciprocity, at which time they can give you a piece of her mind!

Dysfunction # 7 – Workaholic Culture

This workplace often sets huge goals and pushes its employees to get there no matter what. Failure is not an option, and peer pressure enforces showing that you’re working harder and longer than anyone else. There is nothing wrong with stretch goals and achieving great things. However, here it is all-consuming without an emphasis on guiding principles.

The leadership style that tends to drive the Workaholic Culture is the Overachieving & Ambitious Chameleon, who outwardly displays all the trappings of success – the house, the car, cool vacations – while feeling like a failure on the inside — always driven to prove herself.

Dysfunction #8 – Irresponsibility

In these companies, no one accepts accountability, responsibility, or ownership or displays integrity. It’s everyone else’s fault.

The leadership type is the Misunderstood Misanthrope, a “tortured soul” who wants to be unique and edgy but accepted by the mainstream at the same time.

2 Signs You’re a Leader Who Kills With Kindness

You see yourself as one of the most caring leaders on the planet. You really listen to your employees and their complaints. You work hard to create good relationships with your direct reports, seeking to be a special type of boss to them.

You do what you can to make things better for a distressed employee, whether that is:

disregarding policy to give someone extra leave;
loaning money to an employee who can’t make ends meet;
frequently adjusting someone’s work schedule to accommodate their busy personal life even if it doesn’t make sense for the business; or
allowing an employee to miss a deadline because you didn’t want to be the bad guy.

The current research points to “likeability” (meaning treating others with respect) as a valuable leadership trait. Yet, you routinely go beyond seeking respect when you:

Focus Excessively on the Relationship.

You see self as caring and take pride in that. You consider leaders who are “task-focused” to be uncaring louts. However, you take kindness and caring to extremes. To let employees know you are “on their side”, you might find yourself gossiping or leaking bits of confidential information to them. You might even bad-mouth other leaders in the company to curry favor with direct reports. You flatter employees or do nice things for them with a hidden agenda of getting loyalty, recognition or a compliment back. You have a hard time saying “no”.

Consequently, you placate an employee by ignoring applicable policies or work expectations when an individual exception isn’t warranted. You often choose to do a favor for one direct report over the long-term cohesiveness or “good” of the group. However, when others don’t reciprocate your kindness in ways you expect, you feel resentful.

Have Poor Boundaries.

Your intent focus on creating a special relationship with others leads to poor boundaries. This shows up as giving unsolicited advice or sharing too much about your personal life in hopes that others will trust you with their secrets, which you believe validates you as a caring boss.

An indication of poor physical boundaries includes putting your arm around someone’s shoulder to show understanding or hugging others when a handshake is customary. Beyond the physical boundaries, you stay too involved your direct reports’ work assignments and jump into to rescue them by doing the work or solving problems for them when they run into snags.

It feels so good to be the person others go to for help and advice. Ah, the exhilaration of being needed! Except that when you do for your employees what they can do for themselves, you’ve made it about your competence instead of about their personal and professional growth. Give them permission to fail and to learn from experience. Support their evolution as individuals who are resilient, resourceful and strong.

What Top Leaders Know about Eliminating Frustration at Work

beliefs Did you know that most of the drama going on in your workplace started with a thought that probably isn’t even true?

When you accept your thoughts as true, they become beliefs, even if they are untested, inaccurate, and flat-out false. You make up a lot of stuff about what’s going on in the world based on your beliefs.

When beliefs are connected to an emotion, you act on them whether they are objectively true or false. An employee who believes her manager is out to get her might feel fear and behave disrespectfully toward her supervisor or refuse to meet with her. A manager who believes she is not knowledgeable or is unprepared may feel threatened and behave in a manner that is overly aggressive or perhaps dismissive of others. If employees believe senior management is clueless, they might feel insecure and find other jobs, resulting in higher than average turnover for a company or contributing to a culture of passive aggressiveness where employees pretend to go along but actually subvert company goals.

Thus, although you like to think of yourself as a rational, logical being, you are closer to the “dumb, panicky dangerous animal” described by the character Kay in the 1997 film Men in Black. You allow your emotions (based on your beliefs) to dictate your behavior without investigating the degree to which your beliefs are supported by factual data.

“People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” Men in Black

In the end, you may end up manipulated by your beliefs and act like someone you don’t necessarily want to be.

To test your beliefs, a process like that pioneered by Byron Katie is a good place to start when examining issues or people that really frustrate you. Use these steps to start unpacking and eliminating these frustrations:

Describe the Frustration as Judgmentally as Possible. For example, “I’m frustrated with my team because they are so incompetent that I need to babysit them all the time or else nothing will get done.”
Take Stock of Your Behavior. What do you do or say when you believe this thought? Maybe you micromanage your team. Maybe you talk down to them or berate them.
What’s the Payoff? How is this thought serving you, your team, or your company? What are the positives that come from having this thought?
What are the Facts? What data supports the truth of your thought? Is there any data to suggest your belief is false regarding this frustration?
Other Possibilities. How would you act if you believed the opposite of your current frustrating thought?
Alternate Feeling or Emotion: Instead of frustration, what feeling would you rather have regarding this situation?
It’s Your Choice: Who do you want to be in this situation – the person who believes the thought or the person who doesn’t believe this thought? Is there a productive reason to keep believing this thought?

How to Be a Credible Leader

Previously, I wrote about four areas for leadership focus. In this post, I’m focusing on establishing your credibility.

Over the past century or two, the expectations of what a leader is and does has shifted and that applies to how leaders established credibility. Used to be that a leader was credible if he was “large and in charge” as set forth in the Great Man Theory. To establish credibility in previous centuries, an individual (usually male) needed to dynamically leave his mark on the world through personal power, charisma, intelligence, and wisdom. From the top, down, he directed, commanded, provided answers, intimidated, kicked butt and took names, and was always deferred to by everyone else. In short, the leader sat atop the pyramid in a hierarchical paradigm borrowed from the military.

Today, a shift has and is still occurring that is questioning the heavy reliance not only on top-down hierarchy but also the traditional tough-guy leadership traits that formerly formed the basis of a leader’s credibility. Sure. In a crisis, expediency and taking charge can pay off. You absolutely want a leader who can take control of the situation and go into command-and-control mode to alleviate a big threat quickly. Yet on a day-to-day, non-crisis basis, the credible leader of the 21st century is one who enlists others to follow through competence, transparency, inspiration, and being forward-looking.

How are you reflecting these 21st century aspects of credibility?

Competence.

In the past and for today’s leader, a large component of credibility comes from being competent. Competence is being qualified for the job. It comes from knowing your stuff and being intelligent enough to ask the right questions if you don’t. Increasingly, the competent 21st century leader is also emotionally competent, meaning he is aware of his emotions, can regulate them, and is aware of how others are feeling.

Being competent does not mean the individual is an expert in all things related to the business or of managing his emotions; rather, it means the individual is adequately knowledgeable and skilled and has a basic knowledge and ability with most things that come his way. Competence is often an issue when someone is hired or promoted through political wrangling, nepotism, or favoritism.

Transparency.

People don’t like being manipulated or lied to. That’s why leaders who are open and honest with their employees earn high marks. Openness and honesty keeps everyone together as a unit, sharing the same experience. It also, provides the leader an opportunity to teach employees about his thought process, including underlying assumptions. In addition to being instructive, transparency can invite the sharing of alternate viewpoints. The back and forth exchange of ideas that comes from such openness helps forge a stronger bond amongst the group and furthers the leader’s believability and credibility.

Inspiration.

To be inspiring, you don’t have to be Martin Luther King, Jr. It does, however, mean that you can help others see that they are part of something bigger and can accomplish great things in concert with others. This is about helping employees see the “big picture” and their place in helping the grand plan come to fruition. Neurologically, by way of mirror neurons, followers’ brains light up in many different areas when they interact with a leader who can enthusiastically connect them with the big picture. This increases the chance that employees will be open to new ideas and new emotions as they scan the business environment for options to attain a corporate goal or vision. And that is exactly what a leader wants to inspire employees to do.

Forward-looking.

Finally, today’s leader must have the ability to scan for future trends, opportunities, and threats. The marketplace changes so quickly that leaders must have an eye on what is coming down the pike – good, bad, different and indifferent. This gives the organization advanced notice allowing it to adapt and stay relevant and in business. The leader who is uncomfortable with change or unaware of trends will react slowly if at all, failing to catch the next wave that will keep the business afloat. Because followers rely on the continuation of the organization, the credible leader is in tune with what’s happening now as well as with what is likely coming in the future to ensure the longevity of the organization.

What do you need to do differently to be credible enough to lead?

backbend, bend over backwards, take advantage of

Does Your Back Ache From Bending Over Backwards for Your Employees?

Being the boss is tough. With all the information available on how to motivate and engage employees, without being a micro-manager or a bully, it can be a bit confusing trying to determine what exactly an effective boss is like today. A big part of becoming a good boss is understanding and creating healthy boundaries.

What is a boundary? A boundary is an imaginary line that exists between you and your employees. It marks the difference between your organizational role, authority, responsibility and status, etc. and theirs. And by virtue of this, it defines acceptable behaviors in a given situation, and it gives you permission to tell others what to do and what to expect of them as they do it.

How do you know if you have unhealthy boundaries with employees? If your boundaries at work are non-existent or too loose, you’re probably the type who is very concerned about whether your employees like you. That is, your primary desire, motivation, and basis for your decision-making centers on making your employees like you. And because you want them to like you, you believe if you take care of them and even protect them, they will like you more and work that much harder. After all, it’s all about relationships, right?

Yes, it is about relationships – healthy ones – with good boundaries. Boundaries that recognize and communicate that you are not your employees’ equal at work and that it’s your job to tell them what to do and to provide them information about why they need to do it and how well they did it. If you are overly concerned with being liked, you’re focusing on you and not on the company’s goals and interests (which is the job of management). (This is called co-dependence or “letting the tail wag the dog”.) In short, you are not fulfilling your role as boss and are bending over backwards too far.

If you find yourself walking on eggshells around employees in the pursuit of their happiness and at the expense of the company’s and other employees’ interests . . . . If you balk at requiring/asking your employees to do the not so fun parts of their jobs . . . . If you are avoiding a conversation about performance or conduct issues because you’re afraid you might upset an employee. . . . here are 4 things you can do to create healthier boss/employee boundaries:

First, consciously step into your role as boss with no apologies. This means, you are the “decider”. It’s your job to set expectations and sometimes to have difficult conversations: that’s what you’re paid to do. You don’t need to be a jerk about it. Just be as clear as possible. Your employees already expect this by virtue of your role as the boss. The authority and permission to tell others what to do is built into the boss/employee relationship. (Repeat: you don’t need to be a jerk about it.) They’re waiting for it because even they know when they are pushing boundaries. They are probably surprised you haven’t already addressed certain issues with them.

Second, strive to be respected instead of liked. You might be able to do both, but garnering respect first and foremost forms the basis of a healthy boss/employee relationship. To gain respect, you must be firm, fair, and consistent, so your employees know what to expect of you on a regular basis. And yes, your employees won’t like everything you hold them accountable to, but they’ll understand it and expect it.

Third, don’t actively seek to be friends with your employees. They might be great people, but to maintain a healthy boss/employee boundary, you shouldn’t see each other tipsy at happy hour or know minute details of your current or past relationships. Concentrate on the work with occasional superficial chit chat.

Fourth, get better at handling conflict and hard conversations. Being the boss means you will deal with situations where most people don’t want to change the way they do things. Conflict abounds. When you shy away from conflict, you’re trading the possibility of something new and full of potential, for staying stuck in the present situation that you may think is safe but which reflects your inability to adapt and your lack of faith in others to do the same.

To better cope with the discomfort of being the boss, find peers – other managers, business owners, CEOs – to commiserate and celebrate with. It can be lonely being in charge, and these peers can relate to the trials and tribulations of being a boss and offer advice and support.

Your employees were hired to accomplish work in your company. They don’t mind doing the job – they applied for it. And healthy, defined boundaries will create clarity, making your work together easier and more productive.

Firebrand Consulting

Leadership & Executive Coaching | Systemic Team Coaching