It’s very easy to go along, get along, with the fear that if you really showed others who you are and what you really believed about your company’s current strategy and tactics, others would question your loyalty or competence. To be grounded and sure of yourself, however, you need to be authentic about who you are. Here are six behaviors that will move you from being an inauthentic “pretender” to a true leader:
Know Your Motives for Leading. There are many reasons for taking on a leadership position. What are yours? Reflect on the underlying fears and/or aspirations that drove you to accept a leadership role. Look at how these underlying (and even hidden) motivations have shaped the difference you strive to make as a leader. Being aware of your personal leadership “why” will serve as a compass to guide you when the going gets tough.
Give Constructive Feedback. Without being a jerk, a true leader is expected to give feedback that serves the good of the company by providing opportunities to improve. At times, however, you might find yourself withholding constructive feedback from a colleague or direct report simply to avoid an uncomfortable situation. Remember: there is no movement without friction. Go back to your leadership “why” and see whether remaining silent serves the company and everyone else involved.
Engage in Disagreement. As with giving feedback, you may be able to help resolve an issue but are avoiding it. If you find yourself avoiding a situation, examine your reasons for steering clear of the potential conflict. If you determine the avoidance isn’t serving you or the company in the long run, determine the most appropriate and respectful way to address it. Also help co-workers and team members who don’t work well together move through past issues or conflicts.
Share an Alternate Opinion. A true leader speaks up when concerned about the direction the company is going. When you think it’s heading in the wrong direction, you must express your point of view as effectively as possible. Whether or not, the company alters its path based on your opinion is not the point. It’s the fact that you didn’t act like a sheep and spoke up when you believed it was warranted.
Bolster Professional Relationships with Authenticity. The higher up the corporate ladder you are, the more important building and maintaining relationships becomes. Often relationships are weak because you have not been open and honest about the way the relationship is working (more conflict avoidance). Find ways to strengthen those relationships by revealing your real assumptions and beliefs about important issues that come up.
Amplify Misaligned Mission and Company Action. When your company doesn’t walk its collective talk about its mission and values, weigh the cost of going along, rather than highlighting the disconnects. Determine what you can do to encourage your company to bring its “walk” and “talk” into alignment.
You’re a “leader” not an “avoider”. Stop pretending to agree and step forward into the uncomfortable space where motives, thoughts, and opinions differ. Lead out to acknowledge and resolve issues for the good of your company.
What to Do When Someone Speaks Their Truth to Your Power
Speaking truth to power is something Americans believe in wholeheartedly. We love historical examples of the Founding Fathers sending a message to King George and of reformers like Martin Luther King, Jr. Americans revel in the stories of investigative journalists and whistle blowers who call out the hidden misdeeds of corporations and governments.
However, what do you do when you are the person in power on the receiving end of someone else’s truth? It’s not easy to hear a customer, employee or board member’s negative opinion of a decision you made or an action you took. However, you are not an absolute ruler. With leadership comes the responsibility to account for your decisions and actions and to deepen relationships by being trustworthy.
With that, here are some things to keep in mind for times when someone speaks their truth to your power:
1. Put your ego aside.
Most of your actions and decisions aren’t about you personally anyway; they are or should be done for the good of your organization. For this reason avoid getting defensive because you took criticism personally. Sometimes, another’s critique is more about himself than it is about the action you took. One way to avoid getting defensive is to . . .
2. Listen for commitment
Be respectful, humble and vulnerable enough to hold the space for the other person to say what they have to say. And as they speak, give them the benefit of the doubt by listening for what positive principles or values they are committed to in the end. By focusing intently for the core idea the other is communicating to you, it’s very possible you will be able to identify common ground.
3. Consider creating the position of “fool” or “devil’s advocate”
Your direct reports and other employees know where their bread is buttered.This can create a situation where they don’t speak up for fear of losing your favor or their jobs. Take a cue from indigenous cultures that have the role of the sacred clown and medieval monarchs who had court jesters or fools. It was their job to entertain and to enforce the rules of the group by highlighting what was proper and what was not, even by sometimes poking fun at others, including a King or Queen.
Alternatively, you can invite an outside observer, like a coach or consultant, to get a bead on the inconsistencies others notice but don’t voice aloud.
4. Create a bottom-up process for input and observations
Front line employees are often the first to see the disconnect between the company’s “walk” and its “talk”. A process that allows issues and opinions to bubble up and to be addressed could be as general as a survey, or it could include periodic forums where employees interface with leadership to discuss the impact leadership decisions make in practical terms.
Hearing the “truth” that someone else is living need not feel like an attack. Instead, it can be a great opportunity to find out how your intentions are translating into others’ reality.
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.
5 Reasons Your “Team” is Not a Team
Although there are countless books about creating better teams, participating on and leading teams remains a top frustration in most companies. Here are 5 reasons your “team” might not actually be one:
1. There are no shared goals or values.
Your “team” may believe it is working together and headed in the same direction, but when push comes to shove, each of you pursue activities that serve your individual interests and behave without accountability to each other. In other words, your oars are rowing in different directions.
In contrast, you know you are a team when you are a group that shares a few core values and pursues a measurable goal that will define the team’s success. Once a measurable team goal is set and values identified, each of you ensure every person on the team understands how to behave according to those values and is held accountable to do so. Further, you understand how each person contributes to achieving the team goal through individual competencies (e.g., ability to build consensus, drive for results, etc.) or technical expertise.
“Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.” — Casey Stengel
2. There is low trust or no trust.
With little or no trust, members of your so-called “team” withhold their best and secretly look for ways to “win” at someone else’s expense without regard to a common goal.
Team trust is strongly correlated with team commitment and follow-through on promises made to each other. To work together effectively as a team, each or you must believe the others have your back. Also, when setbacks occur (and they almost always occur), you have to believe/trust everyone else is doing his best. This helps your team avoid the blame game and to get back on track quickly.
3. There is not a clear path to achieve the team goal.
When you only have a destination but no map to get there, a group of individuals will spend precious time wasting uncoordinated effort in different directions.
Mapping the route to achieve the common team goal assists your teammates in understanding how and when all team members’ contributions come together to achieve success. A clear path often includes quick wins to gain momentum and milestones to mark the way.
4. Communication is not open, honest, and transparent.
If people on your “team” are more concerned with withholding information and opinions while masking what they really see happening, team accountability and effectiveness are severely hampered.
To behave as a team, you must communicate in a forthright manner to get on the same page, to stay on the same page, to coordinate action, and to hold each other accountable to team commitments and values.
5. “Team” members are overly focused on their own contributions, wins, and reputations.
Ever seen a scoring basketball player point to the teammate who passed him the ball? Acknowledging contributions by teammates reinforces the notion that each person’s success is dependent on the contributions of others, no matter how small or behind-the-scenes. No one does it alone. Recognizing each other’s contribution to the team fosters better relationships and, in turn, more trust.
5 Steps to Masterful Confrontation
Handled appropriately, confrontation done well allows you and your team to consider differing opinions, ideas, and assumptions with passive aggressive or victim-y behavior less likely to come into play. This, in turn, leads to greater buy-in and accountability.
Still, you are so trained to avoid confrontation that you probably haven’t taken many chances to practice it. If you’re rusty on your confrontation skills, here’s how to confront issues and assert yourself without completely alienating everyone:
1. Be humble enough to know that you only have part of the story.
When you decide to confront an issue, realize you may not have all the information and that you will learn more as you talk to the other person(s). While the information you have may be troubling or disappointing, remember that you have interpreted the information you gathered and created a narrative in your head that is consistent with the way only you see the world. There may be missing pieces that add a completely different spin on the issue.
If the information you have initially makes your blood boil, take at least a day to cool off and focus on the actual facts you have with the idea that the purpose for confronting this issue is to make sure you are seeing the issue from angles other than your perspective to round out the story.
2. Open with the facts.
As you start the confrontation, and after the usual “thanks for meeting with me today”, open with the facts. These facts may come from your own observations, collected data, or from others’ reports or complaints.
Facts are different from your interpretation and include who, what, when, where, and how. Starting with facts will help you set forth the context the issue surrounding the issue, the words and deeds of those involved, and the resulting impact those words and deeds had on the company, the team, customers, or others.
When you open with the facts, you need only recite what has transpired. This simple starting point helps you get over the awkward speed bump of what to say first and is grounded in concrete information that isn’t merely your opinion or hyperbole. Also, the facts focus the other party’s attention on exactly the issue at hand, which tends to cut off his/her options for deflecting blame.
3. Test the facts.
After putting forth the facts you have, turn over the conversation to the other person with a question, like “Do I have this right?” or “What was going on?” or “Did this situation go as planned?” This allows the other person to agree with the facts you have, add more, or tell you they experienced the situation differently.
4. Listen for others’ reactions.
As the other person talks, instead of listening for how you can argue back, listen for what’s at stake for him or her or any commitment that comes through. You may find that what you thought was a big issue, isn’t. Or if there is indeed an issue to address, you can then use the information provided to help paint a bigger picture for the other person, so you can both get on the same page. From here you can renew or establish commitments to each other.
5. Agree on a plan of action and follow up.
Before you leave the confrontation, schedule a future meeting to follow up on the issue and any commitments you made to each other.
Confrontation does not need to be an angry exchange. Healthy confrontation helps clear up misunderstandings or misinterpretations and get those involved back on track. When you master confrontation, you increase understanding among co-workers, which increases the ability to work together productively.
Why Confrontation is the Secret Ingredient of Success
You dream of working easily and seamlessly with colleagues with little or no contention. Who really wants to work in a contentious environment? Surprisingly, little or no disagreement/conflict is a sign that your group is not as good as you think. When there is little if any open disagreement about matters of importance (mission, values, projects, and goals), your nice and easy culture is in trouble of complacency and of becoming irrelevant. The group becomes vulnerable to “group think” without the ability to thoroughly vet ideas and does not adapt quickly and strategically to changing conditions nor does it evolve rapidly enough to face handled new challenges. And you know without little outward disagreement your colleagues are expressing disagreement and discontent out of the light of day among themselves.
“Easy” working relationships and interactions tend to be superficial, Stepford-type communications that present a good face while hiding what you and your colleagues really think and feel. When you don’t express your real thoughts and concerns, interactions in the workplace are coated with the waxy build-up of unvoiced concerns, resentments, passive-aggressive behavior, disengaged employees, gossip, and scapegoating others. This sets you up for poor decisions based on untested beliefs and untried assumptions, which in turn increases stress, smothers innovation, derails growth, and allows incompetence to go unaddressed.
The result is a toxic culture with low trust even though you and your colleagues are outwardly nice to each other while putting down each other behind your backs.
The secret to turning this around? Confrontation.
Whoa! You have been raised to be non-confrontational. How can confrontation be good? Confrontation can be done in a respectful way where the emphasis is on really digging into the content of what others are proposing rather than attacking others personally.
Confrontation doesn’t need to be loud and forceful. It isn’t about making someone else wrong while you are right nor is it about winning. Instead, confrontation done right is about using the data that is known to question a process, a decision, an opinion, performance or behavior. Confrontation done right highlights other possible perspectives or interpretations without demeaning others. By confronting the completeness and interpretation of existing data, you stand a greater chance of having deeper, more meaningful discussions while de-personalizing the issue at hand.
Disagreement is natural when interacting with others because we don’t all think, believe, or act the same. Sadly, whether you’re trying to be PC or whether boat-rocking in general makes you queasy, the idea of confrontation gets a bad rap, mostly because you have seen it done badly for so long. The typical scene that pops into your head when hearing the word “confrontation” probably involves someone losing her cool by yelling, pounding a fist on a table, and/or even throwing something. That’s not the type of confrontation that is productive.
Handled appropriately, confrontation done right allows a department, work group, business unit, or team to vet differing opinions, ideas, and assumptions, which leads to greater clarity before a course of action is chosen. The result? A collegial climate in which you feel you can be transparent and vulnerable because the focus is on the good of the group rather than on protecting your ego by looking like a hero. Healthy confrontation creates an atmosphere where people are willing to forego the short-term relief of staying in a familiar rut in favor of long-term, meaningful impacts that will enable your company to adapt and thrive.
And that is why confrontation is the secret to your success.
What to Do When Your “Open Door” Becomes the Gateway to Drama
A well-intentioned “Open Door” policy can become its most problematic policy. The purpose of these policies is to foster communication between rank and file employees and management in order to share ideas and to address issues of concern such as safety, productivity, pay, etc. So far, so good. (Most companies have separate policies and procedures distinct from the Open Door policy, which allow employees to lodge formal complaints about safety violations or discrimination and harassment issues for formal investigation.)
As with most issues inside organizations, it’s not the Open Door policy itself that’s the problem – it’s the implementation. Sadly, most organizations are unaware that their desire to foster open communication between employees and management actually fuels drama and a lack of accountability. This occurs because most Open Door policies are mismanaged by overly-helpful supervisors and used by unhappy employees who didn’t get what they wanted. The result is a lot of unproductive conversation and reinforcing the notion that complaining employees simply need to dump their unhappiness at a supervisor’s feet in hopes that the supervisor will charge off and give a co-worker or a lower level supervisor “what for”.
Common issues that come through the “open door” sound like,
• “My co-worker (or supervisor) is mean to me.”
• “My supervisor won’t let me take vacation.”
• “Sally doesn’t pull her weight, and I’m tired of doing her job.”
In my experience, the most common misuse of the Open Door policy occurs when an employee disagrees with something that’s going on and believes his perspective is the right perspective, while everyone else is to blame. This could involve anything from disagreements with a co-worker to disagreeing with decisions made by a supervisor, receiving negative feedback, disliking an assigned task, or being denied time off. In these situations, no policy has been violated, and there is no inappropriate supervisory behavior (although the employee might intimate there is). The employee simply doesn’t like what a co-worker or supervisor communicated, decided, or assigned. So the unhappy employee goes shopping for a sympathetic ear and someone to solve the problem.
This is highly problematic as it usually sucks everyone into a drama triangle. The employee, playing the role of Victim, complains of a co-worker or supervisor, who is (often unwittingly) cast in the role of Persecutor because he interfered with something the employee wanted. The unhappy employee walks through the “open door” as Victim to visit a supervisor, seeking a Rescuer, who will heroically step in to save the day, magically solve the employee’s problem, and right the alleged “wrong”. And most supervisors take the bait and are easily sucked into this.
Meanwhile, work has been interrupted and productivity declines.
With a little boundary setting and just-in-time employee coaching, these types of situations can be diffused and turned around relatively quickly with the employee retaining the responsibility for accounting for their own behavior and solving their own problems. Here are some tips to avoid drama, empower employees, reinforce accountability, and avoid being dumped on, triangulated, or manipulated into Rescuer mode:
1. Stop Interpreting the Term “Open Door” Literally.
An Open Door policy does NOT require managers to keep their doors open 100 % of the time and be 100% available to 100% of everyone who stops by. This is highly inefficient and not helpful.
Instead, an “open door” signifies an open attitude to discussing issues of concern with employees. This may mean that an employee schedules a time to talk, or that the employee meets with the manager during specified “Open Office Hours” when employees are indeed free to drop by without appointment.
Making oneself so accessible only trains employees to reactively run to managers to have their problems solved for them. In fact, it’s likely that managers who make themselves so available have a need to be needed. Having to wait even an hour to meet with a manager can sometimes calm an employee enough that he decides the issue isn’t worth involving someone else.
2. Inform Your Team of Your Availability.
Let your employees know when you hold “open office hours” with no appointment needed or that they should schedule a time to talk if necessary. It’s also good to make sure every understands the signs for when you are not available, such as a closed door, closed blinds, etc.
3. Ban Your Inner Rescuer and Learn to Act as a Coach.
Need to be needed? It does feel good to be the one to save someone in distress, but that’s not the job of a leader. Instead, as a leader, you are charged with building the capacity of everyone you work with, and capacity is not built by solving issues for others or saving them from uncomfortable circumstances that they can work through on their own.
Rather, you build capacity by assisting others to examine the situation, list options, and choose something they can do to address the situation. For example, instead of getting mad at a co-worker for something that didn’t happen or went wrong, the employee might be better off asking the co-worker what she can do to help, so that situation doesn’t happen again. Alternatively, guided by a supervisor’s questions, the employee may decide the issue is more appropriately raised in a team meeting.
The worst thing a leader can do is to intervene on behalf of an employee and inadvertently send the message that the employee is not capable of solving most of her own issues.
4. Train Supervisors.
Make sure your supervisors understand all workplace rules, policies, and procedures, so they are less likely to run afoul of them to the detriment of their direct reports. Also, train supervisors to coach employees through issues so they do what they can within their control. This builds even more capacity within the organization.
5. Require Both Parties to Take Issues Up the Line of Report Together.
Under an Open Door policy, the vast majority of issues will go away if you require the employee (and supervisor) to be accountable for what she can do within her control under the circumstances. Unfortunately, many companies unwittingly reinforce the notion of employees as victims by allowing and even encouraging a complaining employee to circumvent the immediate supervisor and to meet with the boss’s boss (or higher) to complain under an Open Door policy. This simply reinforces the drama triangle dynamic.
In fact, I have never seen an issue come up through an Open Door policy that couldn’t be solved by having the parties examine their own capability and accountability.
For the sake of argument, if an issue appropriately escalates up the chain of command, require the parties to shepherd the issue to the next level together. This reinforces the assumption of trust between employees and management and avoids the triangulation that can occur when only one side of the story is presented in isolation. To reiterate, the overarching theme should always be to put the accountability squarely back on the shoulders of each person involved.
No one wants to see anyone in the workplace treated unfairly or to have unaddressed issues negatively affect the work. Mechanisms, like Open Door policies, that encourage raising issues for resolution are necessary. However, when the way in which we implement such policies reinforces notions of disempowered victimhood and allow for unproductive drama to get in the way of priorities and focus, it’s time to step back and determine how all employees can be encouraged to be accountable, especially when things don’t go as planned.
