I was doing a team-building session for a group of system-types in a large organization. We had claimed our space in the corporate conference center and made it ours for the two days of our session. By the afternoon of the first day, it was a mess. Flipcharts covered the walls, candy wrappers littered the floor, and colored makers were everywhere. Subgroups were taking the challenge of designing and producing a race-winning paper airplane seriously. The groups had decided to put some distance between each other to avoid industrial espionage and left the room to work outside in the warm spring sunshine. I was alone in the meeting room.
The door opened and a three-piece-suit type stuck his head in the room, looked the space over and said, with a touch of disapproval, “What’s going on in here?”
“A session on team building,” I calmly replied. “Oh,” he said as he backed out of the room, “You’re not doing real work then.”
I no longer react to such ignorance; I just feel pity. All those people who haven’t figured out that learning can be fun, work can be fun, and fun can be work, just don’t get it. Organizations thrive when people have fun as they work together. Leaders are the ones that make having fun at work a legitimate behavior.
Fun. Ah, you remember fun, don’t you? What do you do just for fun? Think about the last time you grinned from ear to ear, giggled, or laughed out loud. That was a hint, you were having fun. Hopefully it’s not taking you too long to think of an example. The more confusing, demanding, and complicated our lives become, the more we need fun as a counterbalance. On really stressful days in our office, we’ve been known to go outside to make snow angels, have a Koosh ball battle, or dissolve into fits of tear-producing laughter over really stupid jokes. What happens during stressful times in your office?
How do you feel about fun? Is it an integral part of your work and personal life? Do you believe it has a place in your off-duty life, but not in the workplace? Is fun a word that’s lost its place in your vocabulary? Think about it. You never know when someone might ask!
I’d like you to try a little experiment. Remember the first day of your first real job. What happened that caused you to hide the expression on your face so no one else could see the silly grin that spread from ear to ear? Remember what triggered the response and what the response felt like.
Cynicism is a disease that is pervasive in our society and, like a cancer, it holds the possibility of our death. Listen to people in your workplace talking about a new hire. “Did you see the new kid in accounting? Grinning from ear to ear, filled with new ways to fix all our problems.” “Yeah, what a hoot! Don’t worry, just give him a month, and this place will wipe that grin off his face.”
Variations of that conversation get repeated over coffee in organizations from coast to coast and I’ve never heard of one incident of a leader who has walked over and said, “Excuse me, but don’t ever let me hear something like that again! In our organization we want people to join us all fired-up about the possibilities and to stay that way for their entire career. And, by the way, if you don’t feel excitement about what you do here on a daily basis, maybe your résumé needs dusting off!” Can you see yourself delivering that message? I hope so. In order to deliver that message convincingly, you need to be enthusiastic about your job and show it. Not necessarily in big ways, but in small, consistent ways. Body language, tone of voice, expressions of glee, and expressions of concern are all ways people make judgments about how you’re feeling about your job. Leaders who are excited about what they’re doing on a daily basis create environments where cynicism has a hard time taking root.
As a leader, you are not, however, expected to be up all the time; you do get to be human. Discouraged, tired, and frustrated happen to all of us. You do need to have strategies to make your own attitude adjustments and, upon occasion, do them publicly. A lot to ask of a leader, isn’t it? Just remember, it’s why they pay you the big bucks.
In a recent interview on the Today show, the musician Jon Bon Jovi told Matt Lauer how much he enjoyed working as an actor with Matthew McConaughey on the movie U-571. As an inexperienced actor, Bon Jovi looked to McConaughey as a leader and wasn’t disappointed. Bon Jovi said that it wasn’t what McConaughey said but what he did that helped him. Leaders teach by example whether they know they’re doing it or not. Do you remember the first time an adult said to you, “Do as I say, not as I do”? Did it strike you as ridiculous at the time? If it didn’t then, it certainly should now. Your development as a leader won’t go very far if you don’t learn this lesson. People inside and outside of your organization will learn more from you about leadership, for good or ill, from what you do than from what you say.
Learning about learning is a hot topic in many workplaces. Businesses in general have reached the conclusion that if they’re not learning about their customers, themselves, and their future on a daily basis they’re losing the race. I’ve observed many management team meetings where leaders have discussed learning strategies and opportunities for their people to get smarter. I haven’t listened in on conversations where they’ve challenged each other and reported on their personal earning goals. And that’s a problem. People will believe that learning is part of their job in your organization by watching whether or not you’re learning.
So, let’s talk about what you’re learning. I hope you can answer this question with two things in mind. First is that you’d be excited to share the skill you’re learning that will make you better at doing your job. It would be great if you could also share how you’re learning. Is it a formal process or a self-study situation? You would tell how you were taking what you’ve learned and practiced and applied it in a real-life situation. You would be willing to share how you might have failed as you tried new skills and how you appreciated the feedback you got from others as you practiced. You would look and sound excited as you described how this learning was making your work easier, more efficient, and more fun.
Then, you would move on to telling us about what you were learning in your personal life. Your face would light up as you described your movement into uncharted waters. Who your teacher was. How often you got to practice what you were learning. How you realized that this personal learning was giving you insights about your business situation—an unexpected bonus. How something could be frustrating and fun at the same time.
After a conversation like this, I’d know you were a lifelong learner and I’d be challenged. Way to go, leader!
Recently, four of us gathered around a table to play cards. Of the four, one knew all the rules, two knew some of the rules, and the fourth thought she’d played the game once in her life. We played a practice hand to give everyone the opportunity to get a feel for the rules, and then we began playing the game for real. Several rounds into the game, our expert played a winning card. We looked at her with blank stares, and she said, “Oh, I guess I forget to tell you about this move.” You can imagine our indignation and the discussion that followed about her winning hand. We’ve all felt that way at one time or another. We wanted to win, we were playing by the rules, and then someone told us that we really didn’t know the whole story. Success wasn’t an illusion; it was just a little different from what we were led to believe. (Just in case you’re wondering, she won the hand but didn’t win the game.)
Success can be a very elusive commodity, especially when you don’t know what success is. One would think that if an organization has a set of values, it would be pretty easy to figure out what the rules of success are. If your values say the customer is number one, you’ll want to consider the customer’s needs and wants in everything you do. If respect for people is high on your organization’s values list, you’ll want to work on relationships as you get your job done. And if your organization lives their stated values, you’ll be right. But not all organizations do what they say.
Leaders have three choices when they want to answer this question. They can review the organization’s values with the questioner and help clarify the specific behaviors that match the stated values. They can apologize that they haven’t done their job as a leader and get to work on a set of values that are meaningful for their situation. Or they can change either their existing values or their behavior if the two don’t currently match. No matter which of these three options fits your situation, you’ve got to get the message out to everyone: “This is how we play the game.” No fair slipping in a rule or two later.
Have you ever listened to the radio station WIIFM? I’m surprised if you haven’t. It has the power to broadcast all over the world, and my experience, both personal and professional, leads me to believe that everyone tunes in to this station—sooner rather than later. WIIFM stands for What’s In It For Me. Get it?
Face it, we all run ideas, decisions, and problems through the filter that answers the question How will this affect me? When we can estimate the effect, even if it’s not positive, we can move into action. When we can’t figure out what’s going on, we often find ourselves paralyzed by the fear of the unknown. This question is an attempt to understand an important workplace process.
Promotions within an organization are often quite mysterious. It appears that some people rise quickly based on who they know with little regard to what they know. Some talented, smart people appear to be overlooked, and sometimes a good guy wins the promotional lottery. It’s hard to figure out if promotions are based on skills, personality, or hat size. Jobs are posted and filled on the same day. No wonder people are confused. You need to help clear up the confusion by talking about the answer to this question.
First of all, do your homework. How are people chosen for promotion? Does your organization use their values as a primary screening tool for advancement, or does job-specific competency supersede all other considerations? Are your policies administered uniformly, or are they bent on a regular basis? Does who you know matter more than what you know? Once you have a clear picture of your current reality and implement any changes that you may decide are necessary, start composing your response to this question. I believe that there are three parts to a promotion decision. Your answer should cover all three.
1. What skills does this person bring to the job? Every position needs technical competencies in both the hard and soft skill areas. People must understand that they need to take charge of their own skill development if they want promotional opportunities within the organization. You need to help them discover what skill sets the organization expects for a successful future.
2. What behaviors does this person exhibit in their current position? Jobs are not just about getting the task done; they’re about how you go about getting the job done, too. People need to understand that their ability to work effectively on a team, offer creative ideas, and learn continuously will affect their promotional opportunities within the organization. You need to help them match their behaviors with the organization’s values.
3. What attitudes does this person bring to work every day? Organizational attitudes are the composite of the attitudes of all people who work there. People need to understand that most often, attitudes are an initial screening device for promotion. You need to ensure that all employees are given feedback regularly, not just once a year at review time, about how their attitudes are perceived throughout the organization.
I’m often hired to do skill-building workshops for frontline employees. The particular skill doesn’t seem to matter; the same question is asked by participants, “Are you doing this program for our managers/leaders?” Usually the answer is no, but I’ve come to believe that their question isn’t grounded in a concern about the skill set of the leadership team. It’s grounded in the concern of many people that their leaders are clueless about what they do on a daily basis. They believe that the people who make decisions that affect their daily lives have no idea what their daily lives are all about.
Let’s face it. Leaders have access to (almost) unlimited support possibilities. They control budgets and assignments. They get the latest technology, the best bathrooms, and preferred parking. Now, don’t get defensive—these statements might not apply to you, but I bet there are people in your organization who believe they’re true. Perception becomes reality, remember? In all fairness, it’s important to say that most people in your organization don’t have the foggiest notion of what you do every day either.
What’s a leader to do? Here’s an idea—and a challenge. (Some of it may seem familiar from the last question, but read carefully. There are some subtle differences.)
Look at your organization chart and identify twelve areas where you haven’t had, or don’t have, much occasion to interact with employees, and make it your plan to spend time with a person in each of those areas each month for the next twelve months. Spend the day with an installer. Listen in with a customer services representative. Make some sales calls, clean bathrooms with a janitor, and review financials with an accountant. Listen to their customer interactions. See your policies and procedures in action and the effect they have on workflow, the quality of work life, and productivity. Experience one of their days. Ask questions to determine how many of your experiences that day are typical. Experience for yourself the needs and concerns of your employees. Get smart about them.
Don’t stop there. Pick another area each month, and invite someone in your organization to spend the day with you. Ask them to shadow you through meetings, phone calls, and lunch. Encourage them to ask questions and answer them honestly. Help them get smart about leadership.
Several years ago, one of the airlines aired a TV commercial that told the story of a leader who gathered his team around a table to announce that one of their oldest clients had just called and fired them. As he handed out plane tickets, he told the team that they were going to visit their customers face-to-face and reconnect with them. “What about you, boss?” asked one of the team members. “Me,” he said pulling a ticket out of his back pocket, “I’m going to visit that old client who just fired us.” It was a powerful commercial. I think of it often.
Some leaders wouldn’t recognize a customer if they bumped into one. Pity. There is a contradiction if you ask the people in your organization about your customers without having any firsthand experiences to add to the conversation. Hearing stories secondhand isn’t the same as talking to a real live customer who’s frustrated by the failure of one of your products. It isn’t the same as seeing how your services enable another entire organization’s processes. It doesn’t match the relationships developed with customers over time. There are leaders, of course, who do work to create opportunities to interact with their customers. Unfortunately, those relationships are often limited to the largest customers or those customers who have complained loudly enough or demanded emphatically enough to get an audience with a leader. These contacts, desirable as they are, do not provide a clear enough picture. What’s a leader to do? Here’s an idea—and a challenge.
Pull out your organization chart and identify twelve areas where you haven’t had, or don’t have, much occasion to interact with customers, and make it your plan to spend time with a person in one of those areas each month for the next twelve months. Spend the day with an installer. Listen in with a customer services representative. Make some sales calls, clean bathrooms with a janitor, and review financials with an accountant. Listen to their customer interactions. See your policies and procedures in action. Ask questions to determine how many of your experiences that day are typical. Experience for yourself the needs and concerns of your customers. Get smart. The next time you sit in a leadership team meeting, think of all you’ll have to say!
It’s the vision thing. In my favorite leadership book, The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, the authors remind leaders that it is their job to imagine things for their organizations that are beyond the ordinary. That’s why people ask this kind of question. It is their attempt to understand, clarify, and get excited about their future. If they can’t get an answer from their leaders, they feel lost, adrift, and frightened.
I’ve sat in more leadership team meetings than I care to remember during which the leaders asserted how impossible it was for them to answer this question. Their excuses were many. “The things that are happening are confidential.” “Once we get things turned around, we’ll have time for this philosophy stuff.” “The competition is killing us; we may not have a future.” “We don’t have a clue.” These are the responses of leaders who are using their titles under false pretenses. Even with the constraints of confidentiality, can’t you say something? How will you turn things around if you don’t know what direction you’re facing? Why shouldn’t we engage our entire team in dialogue to help us understand and beat the competition? How can you not have a clue? Leaders have to talk about the future. All the time. At every opportunity.
What happens during your leadership team meetings? Maybe it’s time for you to discuss this question together. Whether you’re the team leader or a member, bring it up for conversation. If you lead from the middle of the organization, gather your peers and talk. Too often, everyone assumes that these issues are the responsibility of the organization’s real leader. Nothing is further from the truth. Real leaders exist at all levels of the organization, and the visions they have need to be part of the ongoing dialogue about the future.
After you have become known as a leader who thinks, talks, and cares about the future, start turning this question back to the people who ask it of you. Help them understand that they help the organization and themselves when they share what they know from their unique perspective.
It will not undermine your credibility as a leader if you talk about your vision for the future based on what you know today and revise your view when circumstances change—as long as you include the changing circumstances along with your revised vision for the future. It will enhance your credibility as a leader if you identify the unshakable values that will guide your own and the organization’s behavior, no matter what the future brings. It will focus and uplift your organization if you talk about things beyond the ordinary each time this question is asked.
Why would you ask this question? Why do you ask any question? Questions are asked in order to learn. This question goes to the heart of the philosophy that believes that people aren’t born to be great leaders; they’re great leaders because they’ve learned to lead.
(A note of caution for this and the next question. Don’t ask these questions if you and your organization don’t have the intention or the systems in place to provide learning and support activities for newly promoted leaders. It just isn’t fair.)
If I had to guess, I’d predict you’re going to hear answers that range from “I don’t know” to “Here’s my list.” Think about your responses to answers that fill that spectrum as I share a few of my ideas.
The person who responds with a list of leadership behaviors they want or need to learn about needs help with prioritizing. If you don’t help them focus their leadership learning objectives, they will quickly become overwhelmed by the scope of all they believe they don’t know. They need your guidance so they can pick one behavior or skill to work on first. Based on your understanding of the group this person is about to lead and their current leadership skill set, make a few suggestions about places to start as well as what resources are available. Be prepared to follow up with them in fairly short order to make sure they’ve kept focused and not fallen into the “I’m so overwhelmed I can’t do anything” trap.
A response of “I’m not sure yet” requires more questions. You need to help this new leader explore the scope of good leadership skills and find a way to discover where they should start their leadership learning plan. If you’ve asked, What did the best leader you ever had do?, you have some insight into this person’s view of good leadership, and you can use that answer as a starting place.
A straight-on “I don’t know” response to this question means you’ve got some work on your hands. My first concern would be to see if this new leader is taking their new role seriously enough. I’d hope that anyone who was stepping into their first leadership position would have spent some time thinking about what they needed to learn in order to become an effective leader. Trying not to let my obvious negative judgment show (that’s probably something you wouldn’t have to deal with, would you?), I’d indicate that we need to continue this conversation for a while until the right follow-up steps become obvious.
An aside. If you have influence over your organization’s training programs, this question should make you curious about how you prepare leaders in your organization. This would be a perfect time to find out.
Asking a question that requires self-evaluation is valuable for both the asker and the answerer. The answerer gets the immediate challenge of doing the self-evaluation and the reward of the insights they gain.
This question will provide you, the asker, with information on how promotions are viewed within your organization. The reasons individuals ascribe to other people’s promotions are often interesting. The reasons they share for their own promotions are even more fascinating. You’ll get responses that are naive, cynical, and out of left field. You’ll get some answers that are insightful, well-thought-out, and accurate. You’ll find people who are embarrassed you asked and those who can’t wait to talk about it—at length and in great detail. Given this diversity of responses, why ask this question at all? You ask it to determine how well your leadership promotion process is working.
An answer that accurately reflects the balance you strive for between the leadership behaviors your organization desires and the skill set of the person who’s been promoted can give you confidence. The right leadership messages are being sent by the process itself as well as the individuals who are being promoted. This is good news for you and your organization. Any time that this match doesn’t happen during the answer to this question, you’ve got some work to do.
Unfortunately, in many organizations, promotions to leadership positions aren’t made on identifiable future leadership potential but rather on past technical performance. Don’t misunderstand. I’m well aware of the need for high standards when it comes to technical expertise and of the fact that it’s often a challenge to find a person who is both technology savvy and people savvy. But, just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Just because the technical part of our work is considered the hard side and the people part of our work is referred to as the soft side, doesn’t mean that the hard-side stuff is more important. In fact, one could argue (and many have) that leadership is all about soft-side stuff.
Any omission of the soft-side issues in a new leader’s response to this question should raise a red flag that requires your attention. People can’t know what they don’t know, and a person who’s been named a leader may not realize the new scope of their responsibilities. You may need to mentor this person closely as they begin their journey as a leader.
