Category Archives: leadership

How To Be A Generous Listener

Posted on May 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill

The biggest influencing skill is the skill of listening. You cannot hope to be heard until you’ve listened. Your influence will only reach to the extent you’ve payed and attention – and have been seen to pay attention.

As a listener, most of what we think of as listening happens inside our head. Let’s set the table and invite our speaker to sit with us:

Be a Generous Listener

Generous listening is the assumption of favourable intent. It means if somebody says something that can be taken in more than one way, they meant the good way. Or they are, in their own way, trying to help you. Or maybe you misunderstood?

I told a close friend of mine once that she “had to own her own shit.” I meant that she had to take responsibility for her own emotions and actions. She thought I had said “had to eat her own shit.” A subtle but important difference. Hilarity ensued.

Be a Respectful Listener

Is it safe to tell you bad news or give unfavourable feedback? Can you handle the truth? Listening means being vulnerable sometimes. Putting yourself out there. Exposing yourself to things that are hard to hear and maybe even hurtful.

Can you be compassionate and understand that the person telling you the bad news might be feeling vulnerable too? That if they’re telling you something unfavourable that it might actually be happening?

Be a Calm Listener

Your silence is not mean you agree with what is being said. Not interrupting, however, shows respect. Not interrupting is listening.

Sometimes people take a while to get to their point. They need to feel safe before they can get to what they really want. Personally this drives me nuts, but my therapist was really good at it.

President Lyndon Johnson was especially good at this. He could actively listen for hours, and spent much time on the telephone, waiting patiently to pounce when the speaker got to what they really wanted. [On listening to Johnson's private phone calls]

Your Actions

Can you think of a conversation you’ve had in the past that might have gone differently with using any one of these techniques? What upcoming conversation can you apply these techniques too?

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Posted in communications, conflict, conversation, engagement, influencing, leadership, listening, relationships

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Outstanding Entrepreneurs Do This Well

Posted on May 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

Are you getting sucked back into the daily drama, details, and problem solving that you (supposedly) hired others to take care of? Are you unable to pull your head out of the minutia of running a business to think about where that business needs to go next? Are you reacting to daily and hourly crises instead of being “proactive”?

Sprinter and Rabbits

If you’re a successful entrepreneur, you probably have a strong bias towards action. You’re a doer, a decider, the action gal. It’s a big part of why you’re successful. Like a fast running sprinter, or the hard to catch rabbit, you move fast..

A sprinter runs so fast and so hard they leave everybody else behind in the parking lot. That’s good if you’re ahead of your competition. If you’re leading a business it may be a problem.

If everybody else is still trying to figure out where the finish line is when you’ve already crossed it, then you’re not really being a leader. The idea of leadership is to get everybody across the finish line as quickly as possible. Not just you.

The rabbit is also fast. A rabbit who is trying to evade a coyote will zig-zag and change direction quickly. Also not a bad thing if you’re taking advantage of opportunities and can change direction quickly to stay ahead of your competitors.

This doesn’t mean your staff knows which way you’re going next, or if they’ll be able to keep up. It may seem to them that they’re chasing a crazy rabbit who keeps changing its mind.

If Nobody Else Can Keep Up, Maybe They Aren’t the Problem

Your bias to action comes with a blind spot, sometimes. Making sure the team understands where you’re going next as a company. This helps them make decisions that line up with the company strategy (so you don’t have to), or anticipate where they need to be next. You may be frustrated that people don’t seem to get it, or keep up, or have the same excitement or energy or engagement as you. But they’re frustrated with you too.

They’re frustrated because you’ve left them behind, or they’re tired of chasing your zig-zagging rabbit backside. They can’t see the stuff you, the leader, can see.  And you’ve taken off without sharing what’s happening in your brain. So what are they supposed to do next? You could hire mind-readers, but my wife isn’t available.

You’ve lost your staff. As an entrepreneur or leader you can’t do it all yourself, and you’ve learned (hopefully) how to delegate and supervise. This frees you up to do what you do best: Create and discover new opportunities, get out in front of emerging markets, anticipate changes, hire the right people.

You may keep getting sucked back into the daily drama, details, and problem solving that you hired others to take care of because you keep running away without telling them where the finish line is.

You Need Them, They Need You

You do have to recognize that people can’t read your mind. People don’t know what you know, and they certainly don’t know what you’re thinking. Changes in speed and direction need energy, especially for the non-rabbits.

Those  detail guys and gals sometimes drive you nuts, but they keep you out of trouble. Worker bees get the mundane but important things done every day. The ones that are effective and efficient and complete because they take their time and think things through. And drive you crazy because they can never decide anything without you.

Maybe you can’t slow down to their speed, and maybe they can’t accelerate to yours. But you can meet them halfway.

What You Can Do

* Think a little more

Sit on your new ideas before throwing them out, and expecting people to understand what they’re supposed to do next. Not every idea you have is a good one, so don’t overwhelm the detail guys and gals with stuff that’s not going to happen because you change your mind tomorrow

* Over-communicate.

Keep your message simple and repeat it constantly. If you can’t explain what your company does and who its customers are in a way an eighth grader can understand, then it’s not simple enough.

* Listen more than you talk

Close the loop and listen as intently to your internal staff as you do your customers. You listen to your customers, right? This will tell you if your message is getting through, and having the desired effect. Adjust as necessary.

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Posted in coaching, communications, conflict, delegation, developing staff, engagement, execution, leadership, listening, mentoring, motivating, self-awareness, teamwork

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Stay Calm and Carry On

Posted on May 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

Photo by Shayne Kaye. Used under the Creative Common Attribution license.

Sometimes things happen you can’t plan for. Like riding your bike up the back of a bear. My trainer says she didn’t see the bear until she was on top of it. Literally, with her mountain bike.

She came around the corner, peddling furiously, looking over her shoulder and trying to stay ahead of the Scout troop following her. Scouting in Calgary has many advantages. Access to the mountains and wildlife are some of them.

The bear was sitting in the middle of the single track, facing uphill. The way she told us the story at the training workshop, she didn’t understand what had happened until the bear turned to look over its shoulder at her. It’s one of those “no sh*t, there I was” stories that’s funny only later when you’re telling it around the campfire.

She backed down slowly, keeping herself between the mother bear and cubs and the Scouts. By hand signals and whispering they got back to the last branch in the trail and took a different route.

That’s the kind of leadership I prefer. Calm, competent, cool. There are many things that could have gone wrong with this scenario, and any drama on the leader’s part wouldn’t have helped.

What do I mean by drama? In an already emotionally laden and potentially dangerous scenario adding more emotion is drama. If she’d screamed, or panicked, or froze, or attacked, things could have gone very horribly wrong.

Worst places to work? One sign is when your day depends on the boss’s mood. “Better keep your head down. Ian is in a foul mood because the budget is due.” Managers and executives need to control and manage their emotions instead of letting their emotions manage them.

Be enthusiastic, be positive, have fun. All good. But if you’re angry, or yelling, or throwing things, or even quietly calling people names now you’re either out of control or you’re a bully. Now you’re a “boss-hole”. Not inspirational nor effective in the long run.

It’s a simple thing outstanding managers do well – keep calm, be consistent.

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Posted in behaviour, conflict, emotional intelligence, influencing, leadership, outstanding managers, relationships, self-awareness

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Improv Rules Applied to Business and Life

Posted on January 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

So my buddy Karl and I finally recorded another podcast on the topic of Improv Lessons for the Corporate World. Give a listen and let us know what you think.

You can also find some previous resources at:

Karl’s guest blog on Give Feedback
Rules of Thumb for Improv in Life and Business: Embrace Failure, Reject Fear 

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Posted in behaviour, communications, creativity, focus, leadership, listening, teamwork

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Stop Risking Your Company on Good Ideas

Posted on November 7, 2011 | 1 Comment

When I took my Scouts out on camps, there was always a higher purpose. There were the big ones, of course. Like the 9-day jamboree, the 4-day mountain hike, or the 5-day canoe trip. But not every trip was the trip of a lifetime. In fact, I’ve left kids behind because they weren’t ready for it.

How did I know if they weren’t ready?

Build the Right Skills, Tools, and Experience

Firstly, we’d always had a series of smaller camps throughout the entire year to learn, practice, and try-out the skills and tools they’d need. For example, for our five-day canoe trip, we’d start in a local pool, where everybody had to practice recovering from a tipped canoe. Then we moved on to still water, where they learned basic strokes, working together as a team, and controlling the canoe on water.

Then we’d have them move in and out of a real river – which is probably the riskiest part of river canoeing. Along the way they learned hand-signals, whistle signals, how to throw a rescue line, and other river skills.

Us leaders took an extra level of training, actually practicing the skills of rescuing somebody from the river. We all got a chance to put on a wet suit and be rescued, which was both fun and scary. During the trip we had the Scouts throw us lines in the river while we floated by, and they had so much fun they got into the river too.

We didn’t’ just put the kids in a canoe, with a paddle, and said “see you later, we’ll pick you up in five days.” That’s not leadership, and that’s no way to learn leadership. We planned for the best, made ready for the worst, and had a great time. Along the way I’ve used at least two fire extinguishers, one throw-line, and many, many band-aids in earnest. But we never lost a kids or any of their parts.

Build the Right Team

The second thing we did besides training and planning was evaluating. We wanted to see which kids were ready, which were ready to take on even more, and which ones either weren’t taking it seriously or weren’t mentally or emotionally mature enough to be safe in the wilderness. I’ve learned and truly believe that adding or taking away just one person from any team changes the team in unpredictable, non-linear ways. As adults we’re just better at hiding it.

Which is why it amazes me when companies have a good idea, put so much effort into executing it, and then wonder why it failed. They didn’t try things out to see if their good idea would work before putting all their effort and energy behind it.

They didn’t build up skills and experience needed to give it the best chance of success. They didn’t explain and get buy-in from everybody involved about what it would mean to the company. They didn’t build and test the right team. They just put a bunch of people in canoes with paddles and life-jackets, pushed them into the river, and watched them aimlessly float away.

Even worse is when everybody in the company gets into the same boat and drowns. I hope you remembered to hand out the life-jackets.

Be Skeptical of Good Ideas

Try new things in small doses. Don’t stop having good ideas. Just be skeptical of good ideas – try them in small ways first. Build up your capabilities and give your team or company the best chance of success.

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Posted in continuous improvement, developing staff, execution, leadership, life-long learning, setting goals, teamwork

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The Best Way to Learn “Leadership”

Posted on October 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m reading General Hillier’s auto-biography, and I tripped across a little gem buried in the middle of the book: if you want to learn about leadership, put down the leadership books. Instead, read biographies of leaders.

Nothing substitutes for a good mentor and first-hand experience of course. Reading books written about leadership as a scholastic topic should be at the botton of your “sharpening the saw” list. Reading books about first-hand accounts of leadership (good and bad) should be at the top.

. . . and if you want to buy General Hillier’s biography from Amazon, just click the link. A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War. It’s well worth the read. Especially if you think you work in a complex, international context.

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Posted in book reviews, leadership, self improvement

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Who Are Your Best Employees?

Posted on May 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

I got an e-mail from a former colleague of mine, a wonderful if quiet lady who was instrumental in supporting a major bid I was the proposal manager on several years ago. She wrote to ask me some career questions:

Hi Bernie,

I have been reading your articles from your company pages on LinkedIn. Good articles by the way! I quite enjoyed them. I have a question that comes from your article on employees being treated “fairly”. By the way, I totally agree with the philosophy — each person has to be recognized for their contributions, or punished for messing up, in an appropriate manner. The “how” they are praised or punished has to be appropriate for each individual. What I still don’t see is how the person who harasses someone in an office gets the promotion while the person who was harassed got fired. I also wondered at how one person, who works hard all day and has excellent quality, doesn’t get recognized for their work while the person who is exceptional at politics (and doesn’t work all day, less output –with the same quality level) gets kudos for their work. Is this where the interpretation of “unfairness” comes in? This is also where the following question comes in.

Have you done any research on how managers might help people who are not outgoing, i.e., extroverts versus introverts? Another subject that comes to mind are those people who suffer from anxiety and panic disorders. They are so different in how they are (or not) able to interact that they must be handled differently also. How do managers help build up confidence in these people? This question comes to mind because I read some statistics the other day about how 4-5 people out of 10 have physical disabilities whereas 7-8 out of 10 have mental (anxiety/panic, bipolar/schizophrenia and depression) disabilities. This was quite a surprise to me and yet we still don’t address it or recognize it as being a major part of our society and how we function.

I feel managers have a major part in recognizing these employees and should have strategies to help them. After all, extroverts may be the ones to come up with all the ideas but it’s the introverts who are able to carry through and get the work done.

X.

She’s absolutely right. It is the job of managers to get the best out of the people working for them. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. Managers get the best out of their staff by recognizing those strengths and weaknesses and adjusting the work-load, training, and coaching to get that best.

The Effect of Poor Promotion Decisions

I see this often in my current consulting work. People have been promoted as a reward for doing good, or because they are good at convincing their boss they’ve done good. You might say their strength is managing the relationship.

This isn’t always what’s best for the company. Especially when the newly minted manager doesn’t realize that their rôle and the skills required have fundamentally shifted. At best they are only mildly effective.

At worst, they are actively holding back the company, wasting time and resources, demoralizing others, and blocking advancement to more deserving employees. Plus the job they used to do so well is being left un-done or done poorly.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: Managers Manage People.

Managers Manage People

They don’t manage departments, or projects, or work product, scope, quality, schedule, or cost. They manage people, and everything else is managed by proxy through those people. Once you’ve gone beyond the level of individual contributor, the tools and techniques will fundamentally change. You now lead the collaboration.

Collaboration, team-work, relationship building- they’re all especially important in intellectual, knowledge-based, and innovative workplaces. It’s only going to get more collaborative as the Chinese and other formerly third-world economies come on line. Everything eventually becomes commoditized and sub-contracted.

One of my clients is currently in India talking to his drafting department. Don’t think he isn’t trying to figure out other ways to reduce his costs, work internationally, and grow his business. They have a low-bid Chinese competitor working on the building next to theirs spurring him on every day. The Chinese product’s installation may suck right now, but their people will get better at it.

Once you’ve gone beyond the level of turning a wrench, running the cash register, or writing that report, you’re effectiveness depends on “using” your people most effectively.

Let the Facts Speak For Themselves

Recognize and develop the people that actually do the work, based on facts and measures. Don’t get suckered into favoring the ones that have the skill to build a relationship with you. You will lose credibility.

I’m not saying that staff shouldn’t have the ability to build relationships. Certainly it’s a strength and a skill. I’m saying they shouldn’t be promoted based solely on the strength of their relationship with you.

As managers we shouldn’t have to judge the people that work for us. The facts, presented fairly, will do that for us. That’s why properly performed performance reviews are not just an annual event. They’re a process. One that you need to pay attention to every day.

Managing Your Relationship With Your Boss

My first response to Lady X (sounds mysterious doesn’t it?) was:

. . . . there’s a podcast I’d like to recommend to you called “Career Tools”. It can be found at http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/career-tools , and also on iTunes if you listen to podcast on your iPod or other technology. Of particular interest to you I think would be the “Professional Updates” episode: http://www.manager-tools.com/2008/11/boss-one-on-ones-professional-updates .

I’ll be writing more next week about how employees can help themselves, and about dealing with different behaviors and personalities most effectively.

In the meantime consider this:

How Should We Judge Managers?

Imagine you’re a manager. The CEO has decided your promotion and bonuses are now based on the fit and performance of the people you hired in the past. In other words, every year you will be evaluated by how well the people you hired into your company are doing, whether they still work for you directly or not.

You’re being evaluated on how well you pick and develop talent. How would that change how you whom you hire and how you lead them?

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Posted in coaching, coaching, developing staff, engagement, influencing, leadership, mentoring, productivity, promotion, relationships, selecting talent, teamwork

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Bears in Camp: Using Culture to Overcome Fear

Posted on May 8, 2011 | Leave a comment


I was at a Scout Jamboree in Southern Alberta two summer ago, in the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Beautiful country with lots of wildlife.

Including bears.

Being Scouts we were prepared. Everybody received instruction on food storage, garbage disposal, and cooking protocols. Young men and women were on stand-by with ATVs and walkie-talkies to respond to any bears that might wander into camp. Rally points and head-counts were established. Think of a fire drill except with bears.

About the fifth day just before supper we go those bears. Right in the heart of 1500 campers. On the siren’s signal we rallied at the sub-camps (large groups of people being a deterrent to bears), and after they proved difficult to dislodge we more at various larger collection points in the facility. Away from our supper and closer to the few hard-sided buildings in camp. Everything was going according to plan.

Scaring Off The Bears

Except for one thing. These kids were tired after a long day of running around in the woods and playing on the water. They were hungry. They could hear the ATVs driving up and down the trails chasing the bears and not having much success. Some of them were starting to get scared. It was time for some leadership!

I leapt on the nearest rock and started singing the silliest, most juvenile “action” song I could think of called “I Found a Bug”. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but let’s just say that bugs get eaten. At first people thought I was crazy. This happens a bit so I’ve learned to ignore it. It didn’t take long for the 200 kids at our rally point to start singing along. When I was done two of the Scouts wanted to lead a song themselves. My plan was working. The kids were taking over.

One after the other Scouts got up on the rock and led a song, story, or skit to keep themselves entertained while the bears were chased through the woods. I think my singing have even helped scare them off! Half an hour later the all clear was sounded, and we returned to our campsites prepared our supper, lighter of step and smiles on our faces.

Values are Culture, Culture is Brand

I believe that the stories we tell ourselves, the songs we sing, and the ritual we indulge in is what makes us human. Other animals can use tools, some animals may even use language. We don’t know. But as far as we can tell we’re the only ones that pass knowledge on from generation to generation verbally.
This is a powerful force in our lives, one that we sometimes hesitate to indulge in. We’re suspicious of being manipulated, and rightly so. We don’t have to reach too far back into history to find examples of these forces being used for evil or personal gain.

Yet this is the essence of leadership, good or bad: to nurture and leverage the group consciousness to execute a goal or task that one person cannot accomplish alone. Many business leaders force success by dint of personality, intellect, or sheer stick-to-it-ivness. Yet in the end how effective are they really? How long do their accomplishments last after they’re gone?

If all you want or need is to make money, then there are many ways to do that. If you want to have a real effect on the world you’re going to have to work through others. The others that believe the same things you do, value the same things you do, and will continue having an effect long after your presence has faded.

What is Your Company’s Culture?

Values are culture, culture is brand. What stories does your company tell about itself? What is the real brand that emerges in times of stress?

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Posted in behaviour, developing staff, engagement, influencing, leadership, values

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Working in Small Teams

Posted on April 24, 2011 | 1 Comment

What is the right size for your team? Is your organization too flat and the team too big? Can your company become too big?

Vladimir Lenin once said

“Quantity has a quality all its own.”

He was talking about guns and tanks, of course, but it holds true for people too. Adding somebody to a team doesn’t just increment the complexity  and communication within that team by 1, it increases it by the size of the team plus one. For example, if there are two people working together, there is 1 path for communication. Three people, 3 paths (an increase of 2). Four people, 6 ways to communicate (and mis-communicate). Five people, 10 ways and so on.

One More Makes All the Difference

By adding one more person, pretty soon the number of relationships to keep track of becomes very crowded. One of the principle of Scouting laid down by it’s founder was “working in small groups”. He knew from his previous experience that both adults and youth work best in groups of about eight or so.

Years later research came up with the “seven plus or minus two rule“*, which tells us that our brains can hold about seven pieces of information, or deal with seven people (give or take) at the same time. More than that, and we start to lose track of what’s going on.

In Real Life

As a Scout leader I had the unique opportunity to observe the affect of adding or removing and individual Scout to or from a patrol. Just by changing one person the dynamic of the group changed entirely. An energetic, disruptive kid would make the patrol energetic too. Not always a bad thing mind you.

Now, in my work as a consultant I work with many executive teams that come in different sizes and configurations. I’ve noticed that when there are three or fewer people in the room the interaction, conversation, challenging ideas just don’t take off with any energy. At nine or more it starts to break down again. People don’t get heard, one or two people  dominate the conversation, there’s just too much going on to capture it all in a meaningful way. The ideal number of thinking, contributing, energetic people in a room has an upper and a lower limit.

Your Actions

Are your teams the “right” size for your organization? Are you trying to get too much done by stuffing as many people into the room as possible, and therefore slowing things down and falling into the trap of a false economy? Or are you trying to “keep people focused” by making your team too small, and then losing out by excluding people them instead of getting them engaged and switched on?

*Later research showed that short-term memory capacity is probably closer to four “chunks” rather than seven.

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Posted in communications, engagement, influencing, leadership, productivity, relationships

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Learning By Doing

Posted on April 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Tommy trips over a guy lineI was doing some strategic planning with a long-term client last week. They’re doing well, expanding their business in tough times, making the hard decisions about staff, and being leaders. They’re the kind of business I love working with because they run with what they decide. Which has translated into some fantastic cultural and business changes for them in the last year.

We landed priorities for the next quarter, and it came time to assign champions for each one. First pass: the CEO ended up as the champion for all three. So I asked her:

“Are the best person to do all of these, or are you absolutely the only person that can do these?”

Often the leader is the best person to be accountable for any strategic given initiative. They’ve got the experience, the training, the track record. That’s why they’re the leader. They could do the best job. It doesn’t mean they’re they should.

Mine Mine Mine

I’ve seen this often enough now: the leader takes all the important initiatives, leaving nothing for anybody else to do (strategically leastways). The consequences?

  • They’ve just sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Why aren’t my managers engaged? Because you won’t let them be.
  • They’ve just become the bottleneck, and will often fail at everything instead of giving themselves the chance to be successful at one thing
  • They’ve not focused on the most important thing a CEO has influence over: the values and culture of the business.
  • They’ve lost an opportunity to identify and mentor possible successors

Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, had several very simple principles of developing leadership in young men and women. One of them was:

Learning by Doing

He believed that the best way for young men and women to learn leadership was to lead a small group of their peers. That’s why the patrol system (6-8 boys or girls organized as a small team that do their planning, camping, cooking, etc. together) is so powerful. They can learn all the things they need to in a mostly safe environment, where feedback is immediate and honest, and mistakes are easily forgiven.

The fastest way to squash the enthusiasm of a patrol of Scouts is to start micro-managing them. Adults, especially if they have their own children in the program, get in there and start “fixing” things before they even go wrong. The kids don’t learn anything, the adult becomes over-whelmed and frustrated trying to keep up, and Scouts start drifting away to other troops or even out of the program.

Adults do the same thing. They’re just a little more subtle about it. Sometimes.

So here’s my recommendation:

Delegate Like Crazy

Delegation is hard, because we’re often prone to believe we’re the best person to do any particular task or lead a specific initiative. We might even be right, we are the person that could do that job the best. But we’re not the only one who could.

Stick to the jobs that only you can do, and delegate everything else. It’s a huge opportunity to develop your staff and the culture of your team / division / group / company. Which is your single biggest responsibility (after turning a profit).

You are now the leader of leaders. It doesn’t matter if it’s a snotty twelve-year-old boy who hasn’t changed his underwear in three days, or an executive vice-president. Develop them!

Don’t know how to delegate? Learn. In the age of the internet, business and executive coaching, and self-help books there’s no excuse! Never done it before? Start small and work your way up.

There’s no way to get the most out of your team or get to the top of your profession without delegating. You may be very good at your job, but that’s the only thing you’ll ever be doing if you don’t learn to develop relationships and leadership in the people who work for you.

Learn delegating by doing it.

More Learning:

Manager Tools – The Art of Delegation (podcast)
Delegation on Amazon
Why I Suck and Delegating (and Why You Might Too) (blog)

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Posted in delegation, developing staff, emotional intelligence, engagement, execution, leadership

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