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Archive for the ‘Self Awareness’ Category

Consistently Credible

I was recently appointed as a referee at a nationwide junior football tournament. Two hard days running, with 16 games and 750 kids between the age of 10 and 14 but it was good fun. At these events you have volunteer mums and dads acting as your assistant referee (linesmen in old language) and you get varying degrees of capability as you would expect, often meaning you are coaching them in the signals you need and want throughout the game.

In one of my later games I had a ‘Dad’ who did not keep up with play, was often talking to people or players and at one occasion wasn’t even in the right half of the field. As such his flagging was inconsistent and often inaccurate. As a referee at such events you get used to that and knowing that in the end the call is yours you decide how far you can trust the signals you do get.

Most parents go along with that, but at the end of the game this Dad came over and said to me ‘what is the use of me being there if you don’t agree with my flag. I definitely saw a foul and you did not blow for it’. So I told him what I observed in his positioning and attention and said to him that as a referee I have to use those observations to decide how far I trust the signals that he did give.

It occurred to me that this is not dissimilar to workplace situations for many managers and leaders. Your credibility is a function of how attentive you are to the business of your business.

As a leader of others, do you ensure that they know what signals are important to you and what is expected of them? Do you give them feedback when they miss something or their attention wanders from the main objective of their role? Do you recognise them when they do give sound advice and do bring important things to the table? Do you give them airtime so that they can build up credibility with you? Do you ensure that they know how far you trust them? And what it takes to grow that trust?

And what about you?

Do you see issues coming in advance because you are keeping an eye out for them and are positioned to see the trends in your game? Do you pay attention to what you should or can you get distracted by other things and take your eye off the game at times? Do you let your leader know what they need to know in a timely way so that important calls can be made? When you do speak up, have you built up a reputation that means what you say is listened to? When you speak do you make sure it is worth listening to? Have you built up rapport and a relationship with your manager so that you are listened to when it matters? Or do you have a reputation for some bad habits to come out in certain situations, under stress or with certain people?

Credibility is a cornerstone of your reputation. What are you doing to maintain that?

 

Time for Time out?

This might sound like a weird title for someone who blogs about change and is always writing about doing more, getting results, being pro-active, but thats my question for you;

Do you know when its time to take time out?

I don’t necessarily mean not working at the weekend, not working at night, taking your lunch-breaks or having a coffee (but if you do any or all of these on a regular basis you might need to pay attention here).

Every manager that I know is very busy. I don’t even bother asking that when I meet them any more. Its just a fact of life in our modern, high pace world. You throw in a period of change and all of a sudden you are juggling a few extra balls along with the many things that you were working on all ready. Its no surprise that many change initiatives fall down as a result of managers de-prioritising their change actions. Business as usual throws new challenges, new deadlines, urgent reports, urgent requests and those all need done now, and by the time you get to the end of the day, thats all your day has been.

But I didn’t ask whether you were busy, I asked if you knew when to take time out.

  • Do you regroup your busy managers when you see that initiatives are falling to one side?
  • Do you take a bit of time out to check whats not happening and why?
  • Before you leap in to a new initiative do you take the time to consider whether your team can handle it on their own or whether you need an extra set of hands to help you?
  • Do you recognise the symptoms of your business reaching breaking point and know when to call a time out, time to take a break, re-energise, breath?

And what about you?

  • Do you recognise your own need to take a time out?
  • Do you know the signs that you are feeling the pressure of deadlines, to much to do, feeling out of control, or things not going your way?
  • Do you know when you are not in the best frame of mind for a meeting?
  • Do you know when to go for a walk, take an afternoon to play golf or even do something that is not that urgent or important but it makes you feel good or clears your mind? (thats where I and the time-management gurus disagree by the way. I think we all need the odd moment of doing a task because you like it, just to build your feel good factor or let your brain wander).

 
When you get on an airplane, the flight attendants run you through a safety briefing. Part of that briefing is to put your own mask on before anyone else’s.
You figured out why? Apply that principle at work yet?
If you are a leader, you are a leader of change. Change brings extra pressure for leaders and teams.

Your people take their cue from you. You are the one that they look to say ‘time out’, ‘lets reflect’, ‘lets kick back and think about this another way’, ‘lets prioritise’

Your people take their cue from you. If you aren’t at your best, what does that say to them?  If you have a bad mood, bad moment what is the impact on the culture?

If you don’t put on the oxygen mask yourself then who’s going to make sure that the rest of the organisation does?

Is it time to take a time-out?


A Wise King

‘A king with no advisors is king of ignorance.
A king with one advisor is king of bias.
A king who believes all-comers is king of confusion.’

Years ago I worked for a very experienced Manager. He had a reputation for being strong willed and not suffering fools, and if you let him down or exposed him to trouble, you knew about it. He had many years of experience in the industry and you could pretty much say that he’d seen it all.

With all the experience and knowledge he still had an interesting habit. Every Wednesday, at the end of the day, he would sit down with the HR Manager and say ‘What do I need to know?’ and he would sit and listen. He listened to things that were not his favourite topic. He was not a fluffy kind of guy, he didn’t do the people stuff easily. But he listened and found out what was going on and sought the HR Manager’s counsel.

Over the many years since I have helped organisations re-structure and have seen many of the trends in that field. Outsourcing and insourcing come and go, the arrival of the COO and what that means for structure.
I’ve seen the trend to pull all your ‘service functions under one division with one manager looking after HR, Legal, Finance, Public Affairs etc to and its that one that I’ve been thinking about recently after a number of chats with CEO’s and MD’s. Many of these organisations are finding that the ‘Senior Team’ or ‘Executive’ is largely made up of the Business Unit or Operation Leaders, with the one head of ‘Shared Services’ and the CEO/MD themselves.
Any organisation is only going to be as good as the conversation that happens around that table. And whilst alignment is good, over-alignment caused by lack of balance is a risk for business.

I’ve always thought that one of the key roles of HR, Legal, Public affairs, Finance etc was to provide council and be the voice of conscience for their area of expertise. Not just a shared service function delivering functional transactional activity. So keeping these voices away from the executive table means the CEO might not be hearing everything that he or she needs to hear. Expecting the head of the shared function to do this is a risk too as there is no way that they can be an expert in all areas (and didn’t you set up their role to create synergies and cost effectiveness, not to become an quasi expert in everything?)

I’m not suggesting that you restructure to create an executive of 12 so that you have all the subject matter experts at the table all the time. But a wise CEO finds ways of getting the guidance that is needed in balance and gives his/her councillors time to give counsel.

Just like my old boss, you might not like what you hear but what he knew was that not hearing it would mean that a problem would arise that you would like to hear even less.

A Question of Time

Does it sometimes feel as if being a leader means you have no time to yourself? That sometimes you don’t get anything done in a day because your staff are forever knocking at your door to ask questions? Do you find yourself working at home just because you didn’t get everything done during the day?

If so, you are not alone. When you stepped up to leadership nobody told you that you would be in such demand did they?

Being a leader requires you to value your time differently and more importantly it requires you to value yourself differently. But lets start with time first as that is often the biggest challenge that leaders face at every level.

In the last twenty years or so the phrase ‘open door policy’ has become the norm. You’ve heard of that? I bet you use the phrase too. In fact many leaders feel that they are obliged to say that their ‘door is always open’. Its the right thing to do isn’t it? Its what you should do as a leader!

In principle the idea of an open door policy is right. As a leader you are there for your team (the word lead implies others of course) and to be there for your team when they need you.

So the principle is sound, but does the delivery match the principle? Does having your door open at all times so that anyone can come in when they need you, actually work?

Lets look at you, the leader first. Do you know your working style? Are you the kind of person that needs to complete a task before you can break your thinking from it? If you get interrupted do you often need to go back to the beginning? Do you struggle to concentrate without perfect peace? Are there some detail tasks that are not your natural style and you need to really concentrate or you make a mistake?

I have found that many thinking styles need to focus on what they are doing in order to get the best result, and that when we are doing something that is not our preferred style we need to focus even more. So interruptions might not work for you. You may need long periods of concentration or you may need short. You may need time to draft before you finalise. You may be a reflective kind of person that needs quiet thinking time. You may be a talk it out or a try it out kind of person. How you work best will be unique to you though…do you know yourself well enough to know what that is?

Lets look at your team now. How often do they need time with you? Every decision?Emergencies only? Hourly? Daily? Weekly?
How often do they need you to be immediately available? You know; ‘I have a problem and it needs sorted now’ type availability. Do they need that? or have they got used to that? Have you trained your people to think that you can be available at the drop of a hat? Does your open door policy mean ‘Always open’?

Lets put the two perspctives, of you and your team, together in to a formulae for you to think about if you have difficulty managing the time demands of your team;

How I work best + What my people need=How I organise my availability.

The outcome statement there is critical. Its good old time management. If you need thinking time, then book it in to your diary. If you need a solid two hour block to work on something then book that in too. Book time in your diary to match the way you work best and that meets the first part of the formulae.

Now you need to apply the same approach to the second part of the formulae. Take a look at what your people need from you. If you have got a good delegating habit, you will know that you need follow up to the act of delegation (to check if its done, to listen to problems, to coach for learning etc.). You might schedule regular sit down time with your staff to go through work in progress or to coach etc. You might schedule regular walk about time just to listen to your people’s problems, understand the mood in the workplace and give yourself time to see and be seen. And if you need blocks of time to work quietly yourself, you may also plan the opposite. Time that your team know they can interrupt you if they need to. Time when you are working on easy stuff, like reading e-mails or going through your own to-do list etc.

The key is to educate your people in how you work best and therefore how you can work best with them. If they are interrupting you all the time then its you that’s created the habit (by not planning time with them or not having a planned diary or by making yourself indispensable!)

Re-training yours staff means talking to them about what you are trying to do and what it means for them. They know you are busy and will be understanding of your need for some closed door time in a day, as long as its not 7.5hrs of closed door time and 0.5hrs of access time of course. You left that behind when you became a leader.

So its not really a question of time; its a question of organising your time.


Negotiating to what?

 

A client recently asked me for ideas on negotiating to win. My thoughts turned to this clients natural style and the strengths & also challenges that this would bring her in a negotiating situation. The client is a ‘high I’ in DISC terms and if you’ve been on our  ’communication in style’ programme you will know that high I’s tend to influence through charm, charisma and persuasion. But I’s don’t tend to do detail and I thought “how do I talk to her about one of the keys to negotiation?

 

I like to tell stories and share real examples so I was going to tell her about another client of mine and her recent success in contract negotiation. That client is a D/C in DISC terms and her high drive is coupled with a high need to get things right. So she is really big on preparation, putting a lot of time in to it to make sure she has all the facts, knows all the data and really understands the levers to pull (and when I say all I do mean all). She had to go in to a negotiation with a client who had been a little difficult the year before (a combination of sexism, power games and some rudeness thrown in; I am sure you’ve met the type). This year she dealt with all that by knowing exactly what she wanted from the negotiation and what she wasn’t prepared to negotiate on. She fully analysed the contract, the clients needs and past requirements and had all the facts and data at her fingertips. Needless to say, she got everything she wanted and there was no room for any games because of all her prep.

 

But before I launched in to this tale, I realised that my client had used words that you don’t seem to hear so often any more; “Negotiate to win”. Over the last decade or so we have got used to the concept of “win-win” so much that I wonder if it affects how sales people think before they go in to a sale. Do we bother too much about ensuring that the customer wins that we sometimes dilute our win?

 

Let me say now that I am a firm believer that if you want a long term relationship with a customer you cant have a win-lose or win at all costs mindset. The term relationship implies mutuality and you cant have that if anyone loses. So if your market is relationship based then win-win is a necessity. But does this mean you have to go in to sale to give the customer a win? How do you know what a win is for your client before you go in to the negotiation? If this is your first meet or you’ve not exchanged much information beforehand or spent a lot of non negotiating time with client to get to know what drives them, then you wont know until you get there. If you are in a wholesale commodity market and volume is king then you are unlikely to have all that information to hand (unless the previous sales-person kept notes!)

 

So if you cant know what the client wants as a win, then there is only one side of the equation that you will know and that’s yours.

 

So do you spend time being sure of what a win means for you and your business? After all not all sales are good sales! Are you a margin driven or volume driven business? Where are your breakpoints and advantages in your supply chain? Do you reward your sales people the right way to match the levers in the business? Do you give them enough slack to conduct a negotiation the way your customers will be looking for?

 

So we come back round to where I started. To good old fashioned prep. Do you know what you want from the sale? What would constitute a win for you? What do you have to negotiate with? Know your facts! and then the bits that I think really give the sales-person their advantage. Do you know yourself? Your style; your good and bad behaviours and your motivation? so that you can manage yourself in the sale.

 

Maybe I should give my ‘High I’ client a call and tell her that story after all!

 

p.s I look forward to comments from my sales focused clients. What would you add to these thoughts? Lets grow this topic!