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.

Leaders must always be monitoring their metrics to keep the ship steered in the right direction and continuing to make adjustments. These metrics, or KPI’s, are critical to the company’s health, and can be anything from net profit to EBIDTA to market share. However, just knowing how the dashboard is working is not enough, any more than having a fever and taking your temperature every day to monitor it, without taking the meds or resting. Knowing the metrics is simply a way of keeping score.

Reverse engineering leadership is a phrase I came up with to describe how the leader can use the metrics in a way that is useful and adds value to the organization. The term “reverse engineering” historically describes the process of improving something, say, a computer, by investigating its present functioning, in order to understand its inner structure, and thus make it better. I had a fan in my house break and the handyman simply took the whole thing apart, with pieces all over the place. Then he figured out what was wrong and made it better. He was a “reverse engineer.”

In the same way, use your metrics to go deeper into the DNA of your organization, and you’ll learn a great deal about its innards. Then you are on the way to permanent improvements, not just band aid fixes. For example, a low month in sales could point to any of the following:

• A leadership problem in your sales management staff
• A lack of clarity for your sales staff, in the areas of pricing, market issues and sales tactics
• A cultural issue, for example, a sales staff who are not being engaged with personally, only given quotas
• Another cultural issue, for example, no clear motivational expectation system of what is required
• A market shift
• A competition issue
• A product that is not as relevant as it once was, requiring more research into future trends

Here is the point: a red flag metric can point to more than one cause. Don’t get stuck in the traps of either trying to make the numbers get better by simply working harder, which is usually not the answer; or trying to have “one size fits all” in the answer. There is an old Buddhist proverb that says, “Beware the person whose only tool is a hammer, for he sees every problem as a nail.” You see leaders make this mistake with their one hammer, for example the hammer of:

• Efficiencies
• Comp package
• Random tactical answers to deep cultural problems (“maybe if we have a barbecue once a month that will fix the culture of fear”
• Positive thinking without dealing with negative reality
• Getting frustrated and having tirades which then cause the staff to lose respect

The advice I always give my consulting clients is this: Dig into several things and ask “Why” about them. Now you are reverse engineering:

• How aligned are our people with our mission, vision and values?
• Do we have the right people on the right bus?
• Is our culture healthy?
• Are our systems and processes adequate?
• Do our teams work and play well together?

95% of the time you’ll find your answer. Reverse engineering leadership works.

As a rule, leaders simply talk too much!!! We have lots of great ideas, want to impart vision, and want to challenge the troops. But I promise you, leaders deliver way too many words per conversation and it gets in the way of what you want to do. In fact, neuroscience has discovered what happens to the brain when it is being lectured to. It goes to sleep!!! Your brain can only receive so many words from another person before it checks out and takes a nap.

Why do leaders talk so much? Lots of reasons. The good: We are excited about a new initiative. We want to explain a process or a challenge. We have seen great speakers catalyze audiences. And the not-so-good: We like to hear ourselves. We have little clue about the impact on our verbiage on others. We talk more when we are anxious, to feel more in control and less insecure. We think the more words we use, the more clear the explanation. Actually, it doesn’t matter whether the intent is good or not-so-good. The outcome is the same. People check out and while they are looking at us, nodding, saying “Wow, that’s so true, yes, that’s exciting, thanks Boss.” They forget what you said, so their behavior doesn’t change. And most importantly, they are less likely to pay attention to you the next time you start talking.

Here are some tips that will help:

Cut it by 2/3. I think leaders can have great organizational performance and only use 33% of their words. Just use the right words and think “less is more.”

Listen well before you speak. Make sure you aren’t answering a question that has already been answered. When I have the chance before speaking to a group, I have a query session so that I really know what’s going on with the team.

Allow silences. The space between sentences will work for you. The best speakers in the world have meaningful pauses at the right time. You are allowing their brains to think about and digest your last point. The fire hydrant approach simply doesn’t get the job done.

Settle for less information. You don’t have to recreate the world, whether it is a point you are making at a party, or a keynote at an association meeting. Just make a couple of points that matter, give a story or two, and stop. As a writer, I have the same problem. Yesterday I had a talk with my publisher’s executives about a proposal for a leadership book I want to write. They said, “We love the content, but you do what you always do. It’s too much, probably 3 books’ worth here. Just write one of those books here first.”

Get honest honest honest feedback. Ask someone who is truthful in your life, “Do I talk too much? You can’t hurt my feelings.” Actually, they can, but it will be worth it. Listen to what they say, and ask “When am I especially verbose: team meetings, social gatherings, conferences?” It will help.

You can help your people by talking less and saying more!