Tag: postaday2011

Coaching the boss

Lots of my time with leaders is spent not on leading others who report to them, but rather dealing with the board or the group CEO or similar.

Ambiguity of expectations, lack of clarity on results, conversations that leave the leader wondering at best, confused at worst.

Yes we need to get clarity and ensure that the board or our boss make their expectations clear, as best can be for senior people.

But it’s also an opportunity to coach the boss. Working closely with someone gives you a unique opportunity to observe. Knowing when and how to give the feedback and not to, is vital of course for everyone, but especially so for your boss.

So here’s the first of my daily tips – this one adapted from Amy Gallo “How to give your boss feedback”:

  • Wait or ask permission: ask if they’re open to feedback, rather than launching.
  • Focus on helping him or her: Not what you would do, but what would be best to grow your boss.
  • If you’re not sure, don’t say it: No point in damaging the relationship if the feedback is not going to be well received. Use other methods, such as a 360 feedback process.

Stephen

Fight

I’ve just seen the movie “The Fighter”. It’s a true story about two brother boxers, one of whom once fought Sugar Ray Leonard and has been a crack addict ever since. I found the family intensely irritating – seven awful sisters lead by an equally unappealing mother. One thing the director sure got right was that no-one seemed to listen. Just talking out a whole pile of rubbish when the younger brother, played by Mark Wahlberg, tried to speak. He reminded me of many, often young people, who aren’t heard and give up trying to be, as those with supposedly superior wisdom and insights are the only ones heard.

What if – the mother in this case – was really full of garbage? Using her power and position to extrovert above all others, pushing everything her way, without regard to what could or couldn’t work.

Without even trying to understand.

Being understood is worth fighting for. But it’s not something you can always fight for. It can be incredibly tiring. If you’re in a team, or a family, or even a group of friends (great practice place) notice: do others hear you? do you hear others? do you take the time to enquire? or is your stuff always more important? why do you need to get your stuff out all the time?

Leadership is about hearing others, ensuring all the team is heard and they hear each other. Like properly. Not pretending to do it while you have your bit poised on the end of your tongue.

If you’re present, mindful and pro-active, you’ll know what I mean. Pro-active: my new world. I meant to write word and it came out as world and I realised it was perfect.

A pro-active world of mindful and present people. I’ll fight for that.

Stephen

Speechless

Can the leader be less than perfect? Yes you say, but what if they have a major impediment, like a stammer. King George VI did as you’ll see (if you didn’t know already) if you see the movie The King’s Speech. Sometimes you can’t “get another job” as suggested by his speech therapist before he knew what his job actually was.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie and it made me think. When you look through the leadership development businesses and blogs the author is typically portrayed as healthy, positive and portraying all the characteristics one might expect of a leader.  Expect?  What if the first thing that was brought to your attention was a stammer, say?

Could that work?  We talk about tolerance, diversity, empathy in leadership.

So could you lead up and be lead by someone you needed to help in a significant way? Maybe you do.

Are we truly tolerant of diversity? If leaders think they’re showing courage and vulnerability try being speechless with a stammer.  That’s a leader to follow.  If they can lead with that, what else could they do?

Stephen

Honour what’s right, not what someone else made up

I had finished an appointment in town and instead of a stressful drive on the Southern Motorway to my office in Manukau, decided to cruise down Sandringham Road to Highway 20, which always seems more relaxing (I wonder: has the Queen ever been driven to the intersection of St Lukes and Sandringham Roads where the sign directs you left to Balmoral and straight-ahead to Sandringham?!). At the Wesley Community centre I came across a colourful and bustling market, prompting me to stop, grab the camera and have a look around.

A terrible tragedy has struck in the heart of Moscow. A suicide bomber declaring “I will kill you all”, detonated a large bomb, killing, well not all but 35 and maiming scores. In the weekend, a woman’s body was found burning on the side of the road near Huntly, after what appears to have been a so-called “honour-killing”. It may or may not be the case here, but whatever the circumstances are, such a terrible thing, does exist. Last week a couple in their sixties were subject to a cruel and cowardly attack in small-town New Zealand, because of their sexual preference. Like something from the small-church USA who picket gay funerals.

In our leadership work much of the growth in leaders comes form understanding, challenging and seeking to change leaders’ mental models. Compared to a suicide bomber or “honour” killer, the subject matter can seem pretty insignificant. But what happens during our life’s experiences will shape us and cause us to interpret things in a certain, blinkered way. It’s our way of making sense of the world. And we put up with some of it because “that’s the way they are” or “you need to be careful that you approach her this way” or whatever.

As I walked to the market a polynesian church service was underway inside the community hall. A chinese man, struggling to do his sales pitch to a couple who’s mother-tongue was something else too, was selling tools, gas cookers and an assortment of bathroom fittings. So reasonably priced, I soon found myself the proud owner of a trademan’s filler gun. Just had to have it. Fruit for Africa –  in fact some of the locals may have originally been from Africa – second-hand clothes and cheap DVD players. It was a colourful and vibrant scene. And the sense was of tolerance of culture and perhaps belief.

We can delude ourselves with tolerance though. Some things are just not right and we should never forget it and how that they came to be. Our species has only been around for 100,000 years. If the existence of planet earth was a 24-hour clock then our time on it is only a few seconds. So what? I reckon this can put into perspective a claim of “culture”, “ancient belief” that justifies behaviours, some that are tragic. That is, some other guys (mainly) and girls came up with these ideas in quite recent history. Like everything to do with man. Recent, really.

I hope that you are as offended as I am by the examples of behaviours that are driven from some part of human culture. If we want to make it to 200,000 years we need to keep demanding of ourselves that any behaviour that causes harm to another because of some belief held as true, be stomped out. And this might include less dramatic behaviours than murder of course.

Otherwise, are we any better than those sick men in my culture that murdered the women as witches in the not too distant past?

Be tolerant, but not of deluded beliefs that fuel tragedy. Ever.

Stephen