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What Leadership Story Do You Want To Live?

March 19, 2012 By 4 Comments

If I asked you to tell me about the story you are living right now, what would you tell me? Would your story engage me like five-star movie or lose me to a lackluster plot?

Even if the story you tell is leading to a better future, are you conscious of the characters and scenes that you are creating every day?

When I teach leadership classes, I ask participants to consider the Leadership Story they want to live. I tell them the class will be a journey where they will overcome obstacles, take on new challenges and begin to see their role as leader in a new way. By the end of class, they all have a new Leadership Story they wanted to live.

I got this idea after reading Donald Miller’s book,A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Miller wrote a memoir but it wasn’t until he was asked to turn his memoir into a movie that he was forced to focus in on what was most meaningful and memorable about his life. This realization launched him to take his current life, which had become stale, and write risk, uncertainty, loss, meaning, connection and love into the pages he was living.

What is the Leadership Story you want to live? How does it play out this year? This decade?

Noah Blumenthal in his book, Be the Hero, asks this question of all leaders. He believes that everyone, even in the most difficult times, can change their stories to act with a hero’s resolve. Be the Hero asks you to define your story by living up to the hero in you.

Take a moment to ask yourself about the story you are living right now. Is this the best story for you? For your work team? For your family?

Next, start your new story by asking yourself, “What am I longing to experience? What doesn’t want to play by the rules? What would I do “if only…?”

When choosing your plot line, consider these questions. In the story you want to live, are you…

  1. Creating something that would affect many people’s lives or are you doing something that makes you feel the incredible depth of your knowledge, skill or art?
  2. Able to glimpse and share something important about the future giving people hope or direction or are you fixing something or improving something that wasn’t working before?
  3. Getting your sense of joy from helping other people or are you achieving great things that make you and your family feel proud?
  4. Giving people hope or laughter or are you working to create a life that has more time to let nature nourish your soul?

You might find your plot line by answering one of the questions or you might find your story in a hybrid of answers to two or three questions. There are no correct answers. It is your story.

The easy story is boring. Consider the ending, the plot that leads to the ending, the chapters you want to include, and the characters you want to be most active with including their motivations for being in your story. Consider the surprises you might have to deal with or you would embrace if they showed up. Twists and turns will happen in your story. The unexpected situations keep your story moving.

This means you will be changing your story on a regular basis if you want to keep it interesting. Tension helps you discover what you stand for. Conflict, if you take it on, moves your life forward. “You can either get bitter or better,” says Miller.

Remember, like most memorable movies, it’s not how you end your stories that counts, but what you become on the way to the end.

Write your story and then muster the courage to share it with others. Miller says, “A good storyteller doesn’t just tell a better story, though. He invites other people into the story with him, giving them a better story too.” How about trying this out at work?

If you consciously choose your leadership story and invite others to help the story unfold, you will all enjoy telling your stories over and over. One good story leads to another.

Business blog

Filed Under: Happiness and Wellness, Leadership, Self-Awareness

Make Life Easier by Knowing Your Brand

October 1, 2011 By

You should never be told to quiet your voice, limit your creativity or suppress your spirit because, “The Company says you have to do it this way.” The company or corporation does not have a mouth. Yet the company was built on values and a brand. To be successful, there has to be a match between your personal brand and the one that represents the team, alliance or organization you work with.

First, let me clear up what a company or corporation is. Underneath this explanation are clues to why you will either flourish or fade under your frustration at work. This definition can be applied to how you work with any group of people, including teams, communities and families.

In spite of what some politicians would like you to believe, a corporation is not a person. It is a piece of paper. It’s a series of agreements made by people. It does not have a thinking brain and beating heart. Although we can use metaphors to make the corporation appear to be a living being, a corporation survives on money, not food and affection. And when a corporation dies, there is nothing to bury or burn but the original paper that created it.

However, any work you do with someone else, whether it’s a partnership, alliance, small business or multi-national corporation, is regulated by specific beliefs that the partners or founders—the people—infused into the agreement when it was conceived. This gives the company the sense that it is alive in the form of its values, culture and living brand.

In other words, the team, company or corporation does not have a face but it has a soul, mirroring what is important to the people who came together to create something they couldn’t do alone.

To succeed and even to stand out at work, what you stand for has to align with what the company stands for in the form of the values and the brand that it lives every day. In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras explains that these values guide behavior in daily life across all levels of the organization. Whereas a person’s work values may shift based on their position of leadership, company values and what the organization stands for—the brand—are stable over time.

The core values stay stable even if someone changes the posters and business cards. The values and brand are present in how meetings are run, how people feel when they are at work and what someone tells you when you ask them how they like their job.

Therefore, no matter how good your work is, your success depends on how well you align with the values and brand—the soul—of the company.

I have left companies where it was clear my brand did not align with theirs. If I would have known this before I started the work, I would have moved on in spite of the money offered. Now that I work for myself, I have to be conscious of this alignment when I chose to work with partners and clients. If there is no match, I can’t do my best work.

However, when I was a company employee, my greatest success came when I realized how my best contribution—creating a workplace that is both fun and inspiring for all—aligned with the company’s core values of innovation, experimentation and team spirit. There were other values that didn’t match up to mine very well such as the value for crushing the competition, but when I focused on the match, I was a star.

This process of discovering how you can align what you stand for to what the organization stands for at its core is defined in Suzanne Bates’ new book, Discover Your CEO Brand: Secrets to Embracing and Maximizing Your Unique Value as a Leader (McGraw Hill).

The book is not just for CEOs. It’s for anyone who wants to institute change in a company that benefits both the bottom line and the people who achieve this. It’s about discovering your own values, brand and leadership style, and then determining how this will align with what your organization stands for so you can harness the two to work in concert. Or you can discover when your path needs to start somewhere else where the alignment is clear.

Suzanne says, “The brand begins with the story of you—the experiences that defined you, the lessons you learned, and the ways those lessons shaped your values and beliefs. Once you understand the essence of your brand, you will be able to communicate it to the world. It will become a powerful force, creating positive results. You will be able to leverage that brand of yours to drive tremendous value into your company.”

Personal branding isn’t just about marketing. It’s about your happiness. Know your values and brand and then have the courage to only align with people where you can stand by your brand. If you do this, you will flourish. Otherwise, you will flounder under the conflict with your partners, leaders and your own heart.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Happiness and Wellness, Leadership, Professional Development, Self-Awareness Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Best Kept Secret of Leadership: Do Less, Focus More

August 13, 2011 By

As you wade through the stress of a turbulent and uncertain world, do you find yourself demanding more from yourself and your employees? This often happens when your brain is trapped in protection mode. According to a blog post published by the Harvard Business Review, “...research has shown that the more executives have to do, the less their company earns.”

Add technology to the equation and stressed-out leaders and employees are spending more time at home checking emails as well as working on and thinking about work. According to a survey by Right Management, one out of three employees in North America said they often get emails they must reply to from their bosses during weekends.  “It’s now taken for granted that everyone has to check their work email during the weekend,” says Douglas J. Matthews, Right Management’s president.

As a result, our “work brain” never stops whirring. These intrusions cut out down time unless you go on a real vacation, something few Americans take these days.

Has all this extra work paid off? No. In fact, the never-ending work cycle is detrimental to productivity.

I was teaching a class for a group of managers who worked for a French bank in Moscow. One woman told me that she started her career working for an American bank. She had great aspirations of success. As her manager demanded more and more of her time, insisting she work harder and faster on so many “priorities” that she had to take work home, she found herself overwhelmed, exhausted, and always on the brink of tears. She knew her work suffered as well.

The story has a happy ending. She quit and went to work for a French bank. Her managers helped her discern top priorities from less-important tasks and encouraged her to maintain a healthy lifestyle. She followed the “do less and focus more” rule. She is not only happier, she is more productive. Her good work has earned her two promotions in three years. The French-based bank is currently more successful than the American bank she worked for.

Leaders who chase every opportunity and feel their teams must excel at every objective on their list are running resources too thin. Focus is then scattered, killing any chance that the leader and the organization will stand out as superior in one particular area which is critical to be a competitive success.

The question is, “What is your mission as a Leader?”

Are you supposed to focus on getting many results or getting an extraordinary result or two?

To get extraordinary results, you have to be aware of the impact your requests have both on yourself and on your employees. As my colleague, executive coach Val Williams says,

“When leaders follow this ‘more, better and faster’ strategy they’re often surprised that instead of achieving confidence in their success, they feel ore burned out and insecure. When you employ this strategy of ‘do more, faster’ over the long-term, then you actually become more reactive, less strategic and frankly, more replaceable.”

If instead you focus on your highest priorities and inspire others to do their best on the tasks that give them both good results and a feeling of pride, then you are giving everyone a chance to apply their best selves to their jobs. This includes making sure people have time to rest their bodies and brains so they can create and produce top quality work.

The more complex a situation, the more there is a chance to overload your cognitive resources. When you instead sleep on it, or distract yourself with something mindless, you give your unconscious a chance to sort through possible solutions which is more effective than consciously trying to sift through pros and cons.

TIP #1: Taking a nap or letting your mind wander gives your brain a chance to process complex decisions. Set an alarm for 20 or 30 minutes. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Even if you don’t fall asleep, this relaxation will ensure you rest. If you can’t sit still, play a computer game or read a mindless magazine to keep from thinking about work. This enables your brain mind to relax and open up, leading to both higher concentration as well as productivity when you return your focus to your work.

TIP #2: Lindsey Paho, writing on behalf of Colorado Technical University suggests you determine your own sense of balance. What can you accomplish without feeling stressed and overwhelmed? What tips you over the edge? When you are aware of your own limits, you can design a schedule that keeps you sane.

TIP #3: Lindsey also suggests you get over yourself and ask for help when you need it. As a leader, you don’t have to be the superstar lone ranger. Modeling rationality for your employees is better than demonstrating stressed-out self-reliance.

Do you want your organization to win? Re-evaluate your mission. Are you pushing for expected results or are you creating the space for extraordinary results? The latter requires you do less with more focus.

In the end, you and your employees will have better ideas, make more sales, complete more projects, better answer critical emails and collaborate in a way that is needed for amazing results.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Organizational Culture

The ROI of Your Mother Relates to Results

June 9, 2011 By

ROI of your Mother? Blogger Chris Brogan saw the author of Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk, grilled on the return on investment of social media. When he finally had enough, Gary responded, “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

I think the same answer applies to the question, “What is the ROI of soft skills leadership training?” When you think of what a good mother provides – someone who cares about what you want, who helps and encourages you to grow and who inspires your greatness – these are critical attributes for today’s effective leaders. Even when well developed, the direct effect of these abilities, though profound, is difficult to measure.

Lauren Klein shared some thoughts with me from Kenneth W. Thomas, author of Intrinsic Motivation at Work, when he presented to the Executive Networks Global Talent Leadership forum. Thomas says work engagement requires intrinsic rewards, the positive feelings that energize people to do good work. Leaders need to focus on what makes people want to do their best work and stay with an organization, from the inside out. Discretionary effort is fueled by the heart.

According to the Corporate Leadership Council, emotional engagement is four times more powerful than rational engagement from external rewards in inspiring employee effort. They surveyed over 50,000 employees at 59 global corporations. By increasing employees’ engagement levels, they found organizations see increase in performance of up to 20 percentile points and an 87% reduction in employees’ probability of departure. Their study demonstrates a clear ROI of soft skills.

Thomas calls actions that ignite internal motivation “firing up the talent engine.” Keeping the talent engine burning is critical to creating business success in today’s competitive and consistently changing marketplace. Daniel Pink in his book, Drive, says it is critical that a company’s mission and strategic objectives also fire up this energy. People need to feel that the work they are doing is important, even if it is helping other businesses be successful.

Yet all too often corporate executives still focus on using the hard skills of process improvement, increasing efficiency, and creating new business models to try to increase bottom line results. Focusing on old methodologies keeps them hitting their heads on the ceiling of short-term and marginal solutions.

The generations entering the workplace and moving into leadership positions today are used to instantly connecting, collaborating and voicing opinions on the Internet. They expect to have work environments that provide the same atmosphere. The good performers want to have fun, feel challenged and express their creativity. They want leaders who care about what they want, who help and encourage them to grow and who inspire their greatness. I repeat Gary Vaynerchuk’s questions, “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

On the flip side, the younger generations despise workplaces rife with fear and negative emotions. They won’t put up with this nonsense for long, especially when the economy stabilizes and jobs open up.

It’s time to quit giving lip service to the soft skills and truly make them important strategic directives. It’s time for leaders to truly support the development of skills such as coaching, collaborative visioning, emotional intelligence, and team motivation in their young leaders. It’s time to make the workplace a place where people look forward to going to.

Soft skills focused on enriching human interaction get solid, hard results. Do you value caring for, listening to, developing and inspiring others? Then translate this value into reality by putting time and money into ensuring your leaders excel at connecting with human beings.

Filed Under: Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Team Building Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

So You Want Someone to Change…

May 14, 2011 By

People don’t change because you want them to. They might not even change if they want to.  Three conditions must be present for a person to whole-heartedly commit to changing their behavior.

  • Willingness
  • Desire
  • Courage

If …

  1. The person is willing to take the first step,
  2. The change provides a payoff they desire, and
  3. They have the courage to let go of old habits, to make mistakes and feel awkward or fearful while trying, and to admit to others that they needed to change,

…they may make the changes you request.

 

WILLINGNESS

Unfortunately, it often takes a crisis or a bad situation before people willingly accept they need to change.  Instead, they spend their energy rationalizing and justifying their current behavior.

If you ask someone to change their behavior, you need to be equipped with the “why.” You need to precisely identify the negative impact their current behavior is creating. This is not the consequence, the “if you don’t stop, you will be sorry” declaration. This is the description of how the person’s behavior is affecting the feelings of others and hurting the end result. If the impact is evident, the person might be willing to try on new ideas and actions. This is step one.

 

DESIRE

A person may be willing to work on new solutions, take a risk, or listen to a different point of view. Unless there is a payoff based on something they want, their willingness will not last long.

Real changes occur only if the person has a strong personal desire to make them happen. People say things like, “I’ll try to quit smoking,” “I’ll try to stay calm and listen,” “I’ll try to do read the instructions” knowing they don’t really want to. Desire is based on a payoff.

Most long-term changes don’t happen because it is the right thing to do or it will please someone else. Logic may initiate change but it cannot sustain it without the emotional support of desire. Too many failures happen because, “my heart wasn’t in it.”

Therefore, when asking someone to change, you need to find the emotional payoff that will fuel the commitment to practicing the change until it sticks.

Payoffs that inspire change are usually related to something the person values such as being seen as a leader, being respected by their peers, developing skills that will help them meet their goals, earning the chance to be given challenging projects and adventures, more time with their family, more fun at work or peace of mind.

Be careful about promising money because the joy from a bonus or raise is short-lived. Tying the change to someone’s personal values and career dreams is more likely to result in long-term results.

Always ask the person what they want. Do not assume that what you value will match those of your colleagues or even your spouse.

Additionally, desire can change over time. Life circumstances and wisdom often change our perspective on what we hold dear. Never assume you know someone too well to ask them what they want.

 

COURAGE

Iyanla Vanzant, wrote in One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, “I was not willing to make people angry or hurt their feelings…I was not willing to sound weird or stupid or like a know-it-all. I was not willing to run the risk of being wrong. I was not willing to defend myself if I were challenged…I knew what needed to be done, but I was not willing to do it.”

Courage is a word rarely used at work but keeps people frustrated and stuck in old behaviors. Once faced with a conflict or the possibility of looking stupid, good intentions fly out the window.

They might be willing to try and they desire better results. As soon as negative emotions rush in, they lose the gumption to sustain the change.

The good news is that helping people to acknowledge what they fear can break down these blocks. Fear of disapproval can be vanquished when we admit someone might not be happy with what we do or say. Fear of making a mistake is surmountable when we admit we are less than perfect.

Declaring a fear out loud takes the air out of the emotion. When a person says they worry about what others will think, they are taking the first step toward doing it anyway.

Helping someone muster the courage to say, “Yes!” in the face of possible embarrassment or loss is one of the greatest gifts you can give them.

You must create a safe space for people to reveal their fears. If you sense the source of their fear, you might share a story where you felt the same thing, making it okay for the fear to exist. Then remind the person that courage is not the absence of fear, but acting in the face of the urge to flee. This is the stuff of heroes.

BRAIN TIPS:

1. When working with someone who you think needs to make a change but doesn’t seem to be moving in the right direction, determine if they:

  • Have expressed a willingness to change.
  • See a payoff for getting the better result.
  • Have the courage to sustain the pain of change or to act differently in front of their co-workers and friends.

2. What support does the person need from you? Do they need advice? Do they need encouragement? Do they need to know they aren’t weak or incompetent, but merely human?

Hold people to their commitments and adjust your expectations if the change is slower than you hoped for. Changing behavior isn’t a decision; it’s a process that needs support.

Adapted from Outsmart Your Brain: How to Make Decisions Feel Easy by Marcia Reynolds

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership

Quit Looking for Your Authentic Self

April 23, 2011 By

I do not believe in the concept of having one authentic self. I believe you are made up of many selves that you draw on in various situations. The more successful you are, the better you are at drawing out the parts of yourself that will help you achieve your goals. Instead, if you only define yourself as “a fighter” or “a leader” in every situation, you win some and you lose some.

If instead, you cultivate your “selves concept,” you accept a bigger reality of yourself. You may have a core seed of self that doesn’t change, but then you modify aspects of who you are in order to handle the situation you are facing. Through dialogue, reflection and persistence you can increase your ability to adapt to circumstances by intentionally bringing forth different aspects of yourself for better results.

The process of expanding your sense of self — which includes the many selves you call forth — requires you to let go of who you think you are to allow the many faces of you to emerge. This can be scary. You rely on a strong sense of self to succeed. Yet that strength can hold you back. The more open you are to considering new ways of thinking and acting, the faster you will succeed. You will also be happier and healthier.

Look at who you are being today and then you imagine a broader sense of self that will better serve your aspirations. You mentally see who you want to be first. Then you create a plan for making this new expanded version of you a reality.

One way of making this process more tangible is to work with archetypes. According to the work of Caroline Myss, archetypes are patterns of energy that you carry as you go about your life. Some patterns are innate, wired into your brain when you are born. Other patterns take shape as you learn how to deal with difficulties and you are rewarded for specific behaviors. You develop these patterns throughout your life. Therefore, you can consciously call on specific aspects of yourself when you need them if you are aware of the various archetypes naturally available to you.

The names given to the archetypes, such as Queen, Martyr, and Inspirer, are designed to help you identify a set of behaviors that might serve you or hurt you in a situation. For example, calling on your Queen archetype can be useful to you if you need to stand your ground when you are negotiating for resources for your team. These same behaviors can be harmful if you play your Queen card when arguing with your spouse.

Sometimes we naturally shift our patterns with maturity. For example, I called on Warrior energy early in my career to help me fight my way up the ladder in two male-dominated corporations. Now I gain better results when I call on Connector and Inspirer energies. All three are still aspects of who I am but the balance has changed.

If you can identify the dominant and secondary archetypes present in your life right now, you will better understand the motivations for your actions and then choose new responses instead of acting habitually in various contexts. When you are running a meeting and it is not going well, you can call forth another archetype that might be more useful to you than the one that usually dominates.

This process of identifying, focusing on some, and decreasing other behavioral patterns is how you expand who you think you are. The speed of personal growth depends on you living in a state of curiosity instead of certainty. Open your mind to possibilities and you will find you will fight less with other people without having to surrender what is most important to you.

The following archetypes are the most common in the high-achieving women I have coached, but represent only some of the patterns you may express. If you are interested in a more comprehensive list with descriptions, I recommend Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss or my book, Wander Woman.

Exercise: When you look at the narrative of your life, what characters do you see yourself playing?

Step 1. Circle your six dominant selves. If you struggle choosing, ask someone who knows you well to help you limit your list to six.

Driver; Pioneer; Queen; Warrior; Revolutionary; Rebel; Thinker; Adventurer; Storyteller; Commander; Collaborator ; Visionary; Inspirer; Heroine; Wanderer; Martyr; Advocate; Superstar; Taskmaster; Coach; Healer; Entertainer; Mentor; Mother; Comedian; Magician; Teacher; Detective; Connector; Gambler; Scholar; Companion; Fixer; Idealist; Artist; Femme Fatale

Step 2. Add two or three archetypes that you feel you own but haven’t yet developed (come up with your own names too). Add these to your dominant six and you have the board of directors making your life decisions. When you are struggling with a relationship or life decision, ask your board, one by one, what to do.

Use your “selves” to find new more successful ways to be with others.

Adapted from Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction by Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, leadership coach.

Filed Under: Effective Communication Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Self-Awareness, Women in Leadership

Fear Regret More Than Failure

April 16, 2011 By

Your ability to do things well could keep you from taking risks.

High-achievers may appear bold but they are not necessarily courageous. While they love success and recognition, they have little experience with failure. What looks like bold moves to others are in truth, calculated steps to avoid making mistakes to achievers. This fear of falling off the ladder creates a psychological barrier where they may talk themselves out of taking risks and use their intelligence to rationalize their limiting choices.

The truth is that the barriers you create for yourself are the obstacles you have the most control over. Rarely is a decision or risk an “all or nothing” venture. More likely, the move you are contemplating is just a step that can be adjusted or fixed. Or it is the step that leads to the next, probably better step in your career or project.

Risk-avoidance behavior affects more than career choices. If you are a leader, you are promoting mediocrity when you don’t support making mistakes in the pursuit of innovation and improvement. You silence ideas. You kill imagination. You restrain passion as you force people into a narrow band of behavior.

Selena Rezvani, author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders, suggests we “Fear regret more than failure.” She interviewed 30 female executives across industries to discover what habits and behaviors took them to the top. A consistent message she heard was, “I regret the things I did not do more than the things I did.”

Fear that you will be sorry for not making the choice your gut said was the right thing to do, for not jumping on the opportunity, or for letting someone else take the position that should have been yours.  Fear these regrets before you make them real.

To increase your courage and comfort with risk:

Trust yourself more. Identify your talents and recount your lists of achievements to date. Then when faced with an opportunity that could be risky, review your list. Give yourself the evidence you need to prove to yourself you will succeed even if mistakes are made.

Identify your resources. Determine how you can access the resources you will need to facilitate your success. Can you find a coach or mentor to help you work through new problems and decisions you might face? Can you research best practices or case studies that will provide you with fresh ideas? With the Internet, real time learning is eminently accessible.

Choose to misbehave. Most thought leaders are not well-behaved men and women. If you are courageous enough to speak up and move forward without knowing if you will succeed, you have the chance to experience the extreme joy of success. And yes, you might experience disappointment, embarrassment and frustration if you stumble, but you can bounce back with the wisdom and perspective that will take you further in your career. Commit to bringing your whole self to work which includes experiencing all your emotions in pursuit of ultimate success.

Develop an optimistic viewpoint. Don’t focus on the worst that can happen. Stay focused on what is possible. Rezvani quotes Mei Xu, CEO of Chesapeake Bay Candle, “Optimism isn’t about blind faith. It’s about overcoming obstacles.” Instead of asking, “How can I be successful?” ask, “How can I move mountains so I can see beyond what is known now?” This is how you both increase your tolerance for risk and cultivate a competitive advantage.

The world is changing anyway, why not step out and take risks? Why not encourage, even celebrate, when the people who work for you excitedly share new ideas? Go beyond bold to being courageous. Even if you lose this round, you win in the long run.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Leadership, Problem-solving, Self-Awareness

Dancing with the Stars? Four Ways to Give Your Team Some Groove

March 18, 2011 By

Hiring good people is only a starting point.  Then culture takes over. Put good people in a toxic environment and their qualities seem to fade.

Culture isn’t created by values posters and mission statements. Culture can be seen by observing how people interact in meetings and sensing what moods are driving their behavior. Are they openly sharing their thoughts, building on each others ideas and able to laugh with each other? OR are they cautious, orderly and emotionally disconnected? Behavior defines the culture.

For decades, researchers have been looking at how moods affect the dynamics of a work area. Where employees talk openly and informally with each other and laugh a lot, they take fewer sick days, quarrel less and stay longer with the company. On the flip side, negative group moods correlated with more stress causing more days off and decreased productivity, more conflicts and higher turnover.

What emotions define your culture?

Here are clues that the people in your group, team or organization are dancing to the same tune by choice (happily aligned):

Open, tolerant, flexible, imaginative, curious, expressive, creative, innovative, enthusiastic, open-minded, open to new experiences, honors diversity in the group.

Dominant emotions: excitement, passion, hope, and enjoyment.

Here are clues that they are nonaligned, each moving to a beat of a different drummer (disjointed):

Stubborn, close-minded, rebellious, rigid, intolerant, annoyed, calculating, decisive, aggressive or restrained depending on their view of who holds the power in the moment.

Dominant emotions: worried, belligerent, angry, suspicious, protective, wary, restless, and resolute.

Here are clues that they are dancing to someone else’s tune other than their own (conforming):

Indifferent, reliable, orderly, faithful, consistent, conventional, obedient, organized, careful, practical, methodical, reserved, concerned about the rules.

Dominant emotions: fear, confusion, apathy, cautious, and numb.

The good news is that you can change the way people dance together if you are the leader of the team. There are skills you can master such as coaching and collaborative decision-making, yet applying new skills can be a hit or miss proposition with a group that has been together for a while. It is better to first focus on changing the mood of the group instead of trying to fix them with new skills.

To build organizational coherence:

Brain Tip #1: Remember that as the leader, you set the emotional tone. Even if you are a bit stressed over thoughts of the future or a change being made, you must model the emotions you want from others.

Brain Tip #2: Weed out toxic people who bring the group down. Even if they are top performers, their effect on others hurts the overall outcome. Their good work isn’t worth the loss.

Brain Tip #3:Find out from the group what it will take to uplift their spirit. Ask them what they  need to feel good about their work and the organization. Ask them to recall situations in the past that stirred positive emotions. Discover what led to them feeling:

  • Enthusiastic about the future
  • Delight in discovering something new with others
  • Triumph when overcoming a setback
  • Pride for the group and the mission
  • Gratitude for their situation
  • Care about the people they work with
  • Excited about getting up and going to work

Can you use this information to create successful, productive environment?

Brain Tip #4: Create new music and use many channels to deliver it. Robert Jones wrote about how Laura Miller of Coca-Cola made sure this happened during a recent corporate merger. She helped to orchestrate a strategy that would inspire optimism and promote happiness internally during the massive change process. First, the senior leaders committed to sharing their vision locally and broadly with road shows, daily huddles, leadership blogs that included comments, employee portals for interaction, mobile messaging and digital signage from every plant. Second, they ramped up training and development to show they still cared no matter what was going on. Third, they increased rewards and recognition, including widespread “sharing happiness” celebrations. Fourth, they maintained their corporate citizenship programs to sustain community pride in the workforce. Six months after the merger, the quarterly earnings reflected a huge success.

John F. Kennedy said, “I’m certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we too will be remembered not by our victories and defeats, but by our contribution to the human spirit.” How are you uplifting the spirit of your organization? Play the right music and the dance will be joyful as well as harmonious.

Contact Marcia to help get your team dancing to the same upbeat music as soon as possible.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Team Building

“Fixing” Women Hurts More Than Helps

March 10, 2011 By

Many people eagerly sent me the Wall Street Journal article, Coaching Urged for Women. The article heralded the McKinsey April, 2011 report claiming “inadequate career development holds back female executives.” As a result of their research, they surmised that the lack of women in top management positions is due to insufficient coaching, leadership training and rotation through various management roles.

Although it is probable that companies provide more development opportunities for men than women and the report does include a suggestion for leaders to work on the limiting mindsets that create the barriers for women, the recommendations focus primarily on “fixing the women” instead of on fixing the system that created the problem.

I love that I have a cadre of amazing female leaders that I coach. Yet it would make their lives easier if the male leaders they had to deal with were coached as well.

In January, the head of North American HR of one of the largest software companies in the world told me they were doing well with developing their women even though the top management team was still made up of men. He said, “I coach many of the women myself. I help them see how they can best work in this male-dominated company.”

I asked him, “Are you also developing programs for the men so they can best work with women in your company?” He quickly said that would not be possible with their German management team.

Pattie Sellers, Editor at Large for Fortune magazine, made a sobering statement at this year’s ICAN Women’s Leadership conference, “There will not be parity for women.” She said that parity will not happen in our lifetime. Parity will not happen with the power structures in place today. She claimed that there is a narrow band of acceptable female behaviors making it extremely hard for women to authentically lead. These limitations and stereotypes will keep the imbalance in place.

Selena Rezvani, author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders, says, “Women are often not seen as intellectually or emotionally equipped as their male counterparts. Stereotypes of women as too passive, too emotional or too ambitious to lead are simply not based in reality.” She describes how our social conditioning has entrenched the nuanced barriers that women face. You might think discrimination is fading, but Rezvani sites countless studies and examples that demonstrate this ongoing force in the workplace.

In addition to the negative judgments around female emotions and behaviors, the determination that they lack skills is also not based in reality. Rezvani cites a study done by Lawrence A. Pfaff in 2001 that included 2, 482 managers from 400 companies across 19 states that found female managers scored higher than their male counterparts on 20 different leadership skills. The measurements extended beyond “soft skills” like communication and empowerment to include skills typically attributed to men such as decisiveness, planning, and setting standards.

A study published in 2008 compared the scores on standardized math tests of 7 million boys and girls across 10 states found no difference in their math proficiency. Many of these girls are entering fields of engineering, accounting, and finance. The fact that few make it into leadership positions can’t be blamed on a lack of skills or knowledge.

On the bright side, Sellers also said that more and more women are starting businesses to create the companies they want to work for. I suggest we support these companies by buying their goods and services and suggesting others do the same. This may be the only way of decreasing the female leadership gap.

In spite of these bleak reports, I am optimistic that some of our leaders, especially the younger ones, will “get it.” There will be enlightened leaders who see that the answer is not to fix women but to change the mindsets of both men and women that keep women in an inferior light.

Dr. Rachel Remen, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes, “When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life whole.” When leaders stop trying to fix the female problem and instead promote women being valued in the workplace for who they are, then we might start seeing the numbers of female leaders rise.

Women don’t give up their ambition as the McKinsey report suggests. The system gives up on them when they paint women as inadequate.

Yes, there should be equal opportunities for development for women and men. In addition, all leadership training should have a day focused on men and women dialoguing about their needs, desires and challenges so they can all move forward together.

I once heard a story about an African village that sees every problem as a result of their “system.” When a child commits a crime, the elders are gathered. They do not ask, “What is wrong with the child?” They ask, “What have we done that this act has occurred?”

Can we turn this conversation from being a “they should” declaration to a “we should” conversation? I urge coaching for BOTH men and women to maximize the full potential of all people seeking to be leaders.

Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D., is president of Covisioning, a leadership coaching and training organization working with a variety of people and organizations around the world to increase emotional intelligence and collaboration. Can she help you and your organization move forward?

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Women in Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From Where Do You Lead? A New Leadership Skill is Emerging

February 14, 2011 By

We may agree on what leaderships styles aren’t working, but defining what does work in today’s environment is more difficult. The creativity and innovation needed to build a long-lasting competitive advantage require more collaborative and inspiring approaches.

Does this mean organizations should be flatter or more interconnected? Maybe, but the shift in leadership requires something more than trying to restructure the org chart. The change in the nature of leadership requires a shift in emotions.

Although work is an economic system where people are paid for their efforts and acknowledged for good results, the brain experiences the workplace first and continually as a social system. In this system, the leader sets the emotional tone. Every aspect of the leader’s presence has social meaning.

Even if unintended, if employees feel unsure, unrecognized, or betrayed, they are not capable of giving their best effort even if they “suck it up” without complaint.

On the flip side, leaders who know both when and how to connect, reassure, care about, encourage and invigorate individuals and teams are likely to see profitable growth if the products and services meet a recognized market need. Additionally, they will gain a long-lasting competitive advantage if they focus their engaged employees on creativity and innovation.

This competency I am describing here goes beyond emotional intelligence (EI). Yes, leaders should be aware of the impact they have on others so they can better choose their words, actions and emotions in any given situation. They also need to know how to both feel and shift emotions, a competency that goes deeper and takes more courage than basic EI skills.

Leaders who can activate the emotions of others first establish a deep emotional connection, a competency called “coherence.” Leaders who know how to lead from this place–their middle brain not their tactical, logical brain–will be forerunners of organizational transformation and success in coming years.

Interpersonal Coherence

If you could determine the rising source of the mental inefficiencies that result in poor problem-solving and missed opportunities, wouldn’t you take action to reverse the trend? Science has proven negative emotions such as anger, fear, frustration, disappointment and pressured impair sound decision-making and decrease the ability to creatively see options and perform at one’s best.¹

Conversely, when people feel both safe and energized, they waste fewer inefficient thoughts and reactions and they don’t have to strain to stay focused and productive.

Therefore, leaders need to manage internal states. First they need to quiet their internal noise and release the pressure, which they can do with foundational emotional intelligence skills. From this point, they can create coherence. Once they clear their own minds, they can more clearly understand and act on what is causing stress, resistance, and malaise in the workplace.  They can:

  1. Identify the source of negative emotions and what part leadership had in creating these states,
  2. Publicly acknowledge the sources of these emotions,
  3. Ask what it will take to shift the emotional tide at work,
  4. Set plans in motion to engage their employees differently, and
  5. Intentionally shift their own emotions to pride, optimism, excitement, caring and humor while working to uplift the environment.

The key factors for this process to succeed are emotionally-based. Leaders first allow themselves to feel what their employees are feeling. The employees then feel a sense of coherence with their leader. This doesn’t mean the leader gets lost in the negative emotions. Instead, the leader gains a true sense of what is occurring and demonstrates authentic empathy. Then while taking action, leaders shift their emotions to the state they want those in their organization to feel such as passion, excitement and hope.

In short, leaders connect and then uplift. They align with their employees then reset the emotional tone.

Emotions drive sustained behavior. No strategic plan or terms of engagement will fully succeed without considering the emotional aspect along with the actions.

Organizational Coherence

Emotional viruses are quick to spread in organizations. Leaders can strengthen the immunity of the system by being intentional about how they identify, acknowledge and shift emotional states. They can counter attacks by creating positive viruses spreading from the top down. This is how leaders keep the social system they operate in vibrant and alive.

From where do you lead? Consider leading from the inside out. The ability to create interpersonal and organizational coherence could be your competitive edge.

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¹ Extensive research has been done and reports collected by The HeartMath Research Center at the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California. The occurrence of coherence between people is adeptly described in their paper, The Energetic Heart: Biolectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People. You can purchase this report and learn more about HeartMath at www.Heartmath.org.

Marcia Reynolds is an organizational psychologist and master certified coach. She can help you think through and implement the steps to strengthen your relationships and emotionally uplift your organization. Contact her at Marcia@outsmartyourbrain.com.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Coherence, Leadership, Organizational Culture
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