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Pain, or discomfort, is a normal and expected part of leadership. Pain is all around you as you lead, every day, in some form. For example, it’s painful and uncomfortable to deal with:

• Revenue challenges
• Sales issues
• Execution problems
• Team dysfunctions
• The demand of your people
• Motivation challenges in your people

The list can go on. But the best leaders are those who have discovered the secret of understanding, and dealing with, the two types of pain. Once this becomes part of your skill set, things go much better and more productively. I have contextualized these ideas for leaders from my new book The Entitlement Cure. Here they are:

Symptom Pain: This is the sort of discomfort that alerts the leader to a challenge that must be addressed. It is a symptom with a cause underneath it, just the way a fever is the symptom of an infection, and the way a lit-up oil gauge is the symptom of an engine problem. The function of symptom pain is simply to let you know it’s time to dig into what’s really going on. The items at the list above are symptoms. They bother us and take our attention, but they are driven by something deeper. And that deeper issue requires understanding the second kind of pain:

Success Pain: Success pain is the discomfort that comes from doing what is necessary to root out the cause of the symptom. It is uncomfortable to take your antibiotics, to take time off from work when they need you at the office, and to modify your food intake and activities. But that resolves the fever. And it is uncomfortable to take your car to the mechanic, get a rental for the day, and pay for the cost of repairing the engine. But that is the only way the light will go off, and for you to know that your car is healthy.

Marginally successful leaders are those who focus only on the symptom, and don’t look below it. For example, a sales manager whose team is not landing the sales might say, “You guys need to make more phone calls. Here’s your new goal: make 20% more phone calls. Go for it!” There are a few times where this might be the solution, but in my experience with organizations, that’s the right thing to do about 5% of the time. Great leaders know there can be a number of things that are driving the poor sales, and they will delve into these, for example:

• Lack of role clarity
• Products that have little market value
• Lack of goal clarity
• Lack of resourcing
• Focusing on the wrong drivers
• A culture of entitlement
• A culture of fear

It is painful to do the work to figure out what the real cause it. It is also uncomfortable, and takes significant energy, to then solve the real problem. But that sort of investment will pay off in time.

So the secret is this: use the symptom pain to ask “why” and find the success pain. That is how you can solve challenges once and for all, and move on in your organization. Ultimately, the resolution of the symptom will mean that your company is healthier and better. Best to your leadership.

Leaders who get great results over a sustainable time period have a secret sauce: they are good listeners. They know how to “get into the head” of their people.

It used to be that listening was perceived as something reserved for human resources, shrinks and spiritual directors. But tons of research shows that CEO’s, executives and owners must have competency here as well. Your employees can be well trained, well resourced and have clarity of their roles. But if they don’t feel you understand them, performance simply drops over time.

Your people need for you take initiative to enter their point of view. That is the essence of good listening, and it is a form of empathy. It’s just a basic human need, like air or water. It is the art of understanding how they experience reality, not how you experience reality. You have to get out of your opinion, and into theirs, temporarily. This is hard work for a leader, because you also have to be the visionary who sees a future reality that others don’t. But you have to wear both hats. These tips will help you be a great listening leader:

• Take initiative to ask them how things are going. Don’t wait for them to come up and tell you what’s going on. This “walk-around management is a great use of your time.

• Ask open ended questions, not yes-no questions. For example, “So how’s it going?” is better than, “Things are good, right?” You’ll get more needed data and more loyalty that way.

• Ask a few times. Most of the time, when they are asked “How’s it going”, that the answer should be, “Fine.” And that’s what they will say. But after the “Fine,” just ask, “So how are things with the Green account?” or “How are things going in the role we have for you?” That conveys you really want to hear their experience, and they are much more likely to tell you what’s really going on.

• When you get the info, find how they feel before providing a solution. Instead of, “OK, the Green account is having problems, try this”, say, “That must be frustrating” or “I’d be overwhelmed myself” or “That would bug me too.” You have just entered a place inside their heads where few people go, and you have now become a significant person for them.

• Don’t worry that listening means agreement. Many leaders hesitate from listening, because they are concerned that the person will think Great, you agree with me. If that is true, you need to deal with that person’s entitlement attitude. But most of the time, people don’t assume that. You can say “That’s a tough situation” and later in the same conversation say, “I think you dropped the ball” and both are true.

• Don’t give advice until you know they need it. Leaders tend to “fragilize” their people, thinking that their employees just can’t think for themselves and solve problems. Sometimes they do need your advice. But my experience is that over half the time, if you listen well and support, they are smart enough to solve their own challenges, and your “being there” was all they needed. If that isn’t enough, they will tell you.

Be a listener. Be a challenger too, but that’s for a future blog. Best to your leadership!

Commitments are critical to leaders. When your people follow through with commitments, things go well. When they don’t, systems, processes and relationships suffer. And ultimately, the customer suffers as well. Unfortunately, there are cultural forces that minimize the importance of commitments, and can damage a company’s performance. In my new book The Entitlement Cure, I explain this problem and its solutions. If you lead, this will help you.

The world is built on commitments. They are the glue that holds everything together, and keep people and organizations in a state of trust. Here are some examples:
• Treaties: how companies stay in a state of peace with each other. When treaties are kept, they are good neighbors. When they are broken, chaos ensues.
• Vows: the commitments people make when they marry: for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, for better or worse.
• Contracts: how organizations structure their deliverable and payments to customers and clients.
• Agreements: how individuals promise to treat each other mutually.

In leadership, contracts and agreements are critical. Simply stated, someone promises to deliver W with X parameters for Y price by Z date. But when an entitlement attitude is present, this is dismissed. The person may think, “I’ve got a lot to do, I can be excused from doing this as promised” or “Why be so anal-retentive? It’s approximately what was promised, if not exactly.” I do a lot of manufacturing consulting, and I can tell you with their requirements for precision, that doesn’t fly!

If you see this attitude in your staff, your leaders, your employees or yourself, you need to change things asap. Take these steps:

• Talk about making inconvenient commitments. Promises are inconvenient for a reason: that’s why they are commitments! To show up on time at a concert by your favorite band isn’t hard. But getting a needed report in, that the team is waiting on, while not fun, is critical.
• Up the ante to “beyond.” Help your organization think about not just keeping commitments, but going above and beyond. Being early. Getting reports in ahead of time. Going the extra mile for your team. Surprising the customer with great deliverables. This makes a difference in the company’s performance.
• Let people know their impact. I mentioned in an earlier article about the value of impact statements. People need to hear how it felt when they cancel a lunch at the last meeting because they were busy, as well as how it felt when they went to some trouble to follow through. We are relational beings, and our impact matters to one another.

Make and keep commitments. Model it, and expect it. Best to your leadership.

When you want to get the best out of your key people, or simply to correct a problem, use what I call an impact statement. This is simply a few sentences letting people know how their actions affect the performance and the culture of your organization.

The great majority of us care deeply about how we affect those around us. We want to know that people see us as adding value, supporting others authentically, and pulling our own weight. An impact statement is designed to draw on this need, as it can drive home how we affect those we are around. There are four types of statements that I train leaders and teams to use with each other:

A positive impact on performance. People need to know that you see and appreciate how they contribute to the organization’s success. You have no idea how much of a difference a brief specific and authentic statement makes: “Traci, I just wanted you to know that I saw your results on the Green account. You knocked it out of the park. Congratulations!”

A positive impact on culture. Research has shown, time and time again, that culture eats strategy for breakfast. A statement to a person about how they are driving relationships and teams well helps guarantee that they will repeat what they are doing: “When I was at your team meeting, I was impressed by how you handled negative attitudes and moved toward them without getting defensive, and then you eventually won them over. Great job!”

A negative impact on performance. People get busy, and they often don’t stop to consider how their actions affect others. The leader has a responsibility to bring that to light, and it helps everyone: “Tom, when you were late again on the report, it derailed all of us and slowed the process down quite a bit. We really need you to make punctuality a high priority, because we’re all depending on you. Is there anything I can do to help?”

A negative impact on culture. Humans matter to other humans, in all sorts of subtle ways: the words we use, our body language and our attitudes toward each other. Leaders often shy away from this one as it isn’t very metric, but you have to do it for yourself and the organization: “My impression is that you’re working in a silo and don’t want to be disturbed. While I appreciate your work ethic, it makes me hesitate about coming to talk with you briefly, as I am concerned you don’t want to be disturbed. If I feel that way, my guess is that your team does too. This slows down the team trust we are trying to develop. How can I help you with this?”

An impact statement does just that: it makes an impact. I have had people tell me years after I mentioned one of these to them, that it made a positive difference in their careers and lives. Use the leadership chair you sit in to employ this valuable tool.

Everyone has faced entitlement issues in his or her relationships, family and workplace. It emerges in poor attitudes, a lack of empathy for one’s impact on others, and irresponsible behaviors. In my new book, “The Entitlement Cure”, which will be on bookshelves and available online this Tuesday, October 6, I define entitlement as two beliefs:
(1) I am exempt from responsibility; and (2) I am owed special treatment. These beliefs cause alienation and frustration and are ultimately destructive to the future of the entitled person.

In my consulting practice, I have seen the cost of entitlement in companies, families and churches, and it is a high one. And God’s path is just the opposite from entitlement. He never takes short cuts and he does things the hard way, for our benefit: “I have set my face like a flint” (Isa. 50:7). The cure for entitlement is what I call the Hard Way, which I define as the habit of doing what is best, rather than what is comfortable, to achieve a worthwhile outcome. And there are specific actions you can take to help things move to a healthier place in your relationships. Here are a few of them, based on the content from my book:

1. Call it when you see it. Entitlement does not resolve itself by silence or infinite patience. While everyone needs grace and respect, the entitled person often also is unaware of the impact of the attitude on family members, friends and work colleagues. If this person is important to you, go to him and in a vulnerable way, say “I’d like to talk about an attitude I see with you that is affecting me and us, and I’d like things to improve.” I have many skills in the book you can recruit the person so.
2. Help the person change his wording from “I deserve” to “I am responsible.” We live in a culture of “I deserve”: anything from deserving a great marriage, to a great home to a great career. The problem is that “I deserve” is a disempowering phrase. It places the power of our success in the hands of others, in the hope that they will do something to provide that marriage, home and career. But when you change your wording to “I am responsible”, you are empowered. You are responsible to do what it takes to be well-married, to live in the right home and to find the career that works for you. You are in charge, and you are the agent of success, not others.
3. Do the next hard thing. I study very successful people to learn how they accomplish what they accomplish. And one trait I always find is that they don’t avoid difficult choices, such as tough conversations, projects that feel like drudgery and administrative tasks that are boring. Instead, they get to those early in the day and nip them in the bud. And they have great energy and mojo for the rest of the day. Good moms never say “Eat your ice cream and I’ll give you broccoli.” That would be a prescription for counseling for that mom! Instead, they reverse it. Do the next hard thing and life gets easier.

You will never regret doing tough things, nor helping others in your life to do that, as well. I hope you enjoy the book. Let me hear from you!

One of the most resource-draining problems in organizations I deal with is the confusion of tactics with strategy. It causes chaos, cultural problems and creates a need for way too many restarts. Simply put, your strategy should be the path to success, and your tactics are the steps to the path. For example, your company may have a strategic plan to increase market share by 15% by the end of year. You might employ many tactics to support that, such as analyzing the competition, marketing plans and targeted sales training.

The confusion comes when we fall in love with a tactic so much that we elevate it to strategy status. You see this when an organization has a different great idea every month or two, and everyone gets excited, but at the end of the year, there has been no substantial progress. It’s an A.D.D.ish way of running a company, and doesn’t work. Here is the key question to ask when a new bright shiny idea is posed: Show us how this will accelerate the strategy. If that can be evidenced, go for it. But if it diverts, put it in the parking lot for another day. Once in a great while, a tactic is so powerful that it deserves to change the nature of the strategy. But lots of people need to be on board to support that shift. So remember: tactics must always serve the strategy. Your company will solve lots of problems before they happen.