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Management

REPOST: Performance vs Trust

by Ron Potter April 27, 2023

A Note From the Editor:

As we recently mentioned, we are reposting popular blog posts while Ron is recovering from some health issues.

Those are not my words. Those were spoken by Simon Sinek. If you have not discovered Mr. Sinek, look up his website. I read him and Share Parrish more than any other blog writers out there.

Navy Seals

Simon talks about working with Navy Seals. Navy Seals are probably the highest-performing teams on the planet. In his work with Seals, he asked, “How do you choose the guys that make it to Seal Team 6?” Seal Team 6 is the best of the best. The Seals drew the following graph:

Leader or Teammate

Nobody wanted someone from the lower left: Low Performer and Low Trust.

Everyone wanted someone from the upper right: High Performer and High Trust.

When Simon asked them which type of person they want as a leader or teammate, they all said they would prefer someone on the right side of the chart than the best performer who had low trust.

Keep in mind that these are the highest-performing teams in the world. But they would select Trust over Performance when it came to a leader or a teammate.

Corporations Have it Backward

In my thirty-plus years dealing with corporations and corporate reviews, they have all been heavily weighted toward the left side of the chart. They graded and promoted people based on their performance rather than the trust they exhibited or expected. It’s interesting to note that the Navy Seals termed that upper-left leader or teammate as toxic! Regardless of high performance, if the person wasn’t trustworthy, they were toxic.

Performance Reviews

Why do corporate reviews focus so much on high performance rather than high trust? I’m sure there are many reasons but the two that I see as most prevalent are:

Corporations often want high performance (get the job done now) over anything else. Part of the reason is that public corporations have bowed to quarterly reporting. If the return isn’t better that quarter, the leadership is often called on the carpet by Wall Street and the Investors. They don’t want to be in that position. Therefore, they promote people who produce high results, regardless of the internal costs. Remember that the Navy Seals labeled them as toxic.
It’s easier to measure performance than trust. With performance, it’s easy to check the box. Was the goal met or exceeded? Was it done on or ahead of schedule? Easy to measure and identify.
Does the person generate trust within their team? Hard to predict. The results may not show up for a long time. Corporate leaders want results this quarter, not three years from now.

Trust Builds Long-Term Performance

I’ve worked with a few leaders who ranked high on the trust scale. There are more stories, but two that come to mind include one leader who I worked with about a decade ago. Three members of his team are now CEOs of three different companies. He built trust!

Another CEO I worked with started two companies and built leadership teams that now run or are high-ranking leaders in several corporations.

Both of these leaders (and there are a few more) built leadership teams based on trust. That doesn’t mean they ignored performance, but trust ranked higher when it came to evaluations.

Visit Simon Sinek’s youtube talking about Performance vs Trust. Then evaluate what kind of leader or teammate you happen to be. Then think about the type of leader or team you want to be a part of. If you don’t like the answer to either of those questions, make a change! If you’re the kind of person that believes outperforming everyone is what will make a difference in your life, you’re in for a shock. You’ll end up very lonely.

If you’re the kind of person who exudes and promotes trust, you’ll find yourself much loved!

Lonely or loved. You make the choice.

This post was originally posted here on May 7, 2020.

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Management of the Absurd

by Ron Potter May 5, 2022

As I continue the review of some of the books I’ve read through the years, next up is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson.

Management of the Absurd

A dictionary definition of the word absurd calls it “wildly unreasonable or illogical.” I consider myself both highly reasonable and logical so this definition didn’t make sense to me. Which may be why I read it. My notes alone for the book totaled up to 15 pages so I guess it caught my interest.

This book is written by Richard Farson. In the book, he lays out eight parts.

A Different Way of Thinking
The “Technology of” Human Relations
The Paradoxes of Communication
The Politics of Management
Organizational Predicaments
Dilemmas of Change
The Aesthetics of Leadership
Avoiding the Future

I’ll quickly touch on each of the eight parts but I think you’ll notice the absurdity in the titles themselves.

A Different Way of Thinking

The most important discoveries come from taking a fresh look at what people take for granted. They cannot see it because it is too “obvious” or is what they expect to see or not seen. Farson calls this the invisible obvious. I’ve often seen when the “expert” doesn’t pay any attention to the new person on the team or someone who doesn’t have the same “expertise” they do on a particular topic. The absurdity comes from the fact that the best new creative ideas come from the person who is taking a fresh look at a topic. This can come from the new person or, if you train yourself well, you can provide that fresh look no matter how much of an “expert” you are on a topic.

The “Technology of” Human Relations

Farson says that “The more important a relationship, the less skill matters.” In both parenthood and management, it’s not so much what we do as what we are that counts. It is the ability to meet each situation armed not with a battery of techniques but with an openness that permits a genuine response.

Effective leaders and managers do not regard control as the main concern. Instead, they approach situations as learners or teachers or sometimes both.

My take from this section is the openness and genuine response that people respect and will be motivated by. Trying to control or dictate situations will not motivate people.

The Paradoxes of Communication

Paradox is another one of those interesting words. Webster says that it is “a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.”

Listening can also be a disturbing experience. All of us have strong needs to see the world in certain ways, and when we really listen, so that we understand the other person’s perspective, we risk being changed ourselves.

The best kind of listening comes not from technique but from being genuinely interested in what really matters to the other person.

This is what I have come to think of as listening to understand rather than listening to respond. Often when we’re listening to the other person, we’re building a list in our head about how were are going to respond. That’s easier and takes less energy than listening to truly understand what the other person is saying and the belief system they are basing their statement upon. Listening to understand creates a different set of questions, often forcing the other person to expose their own belief system.

The Politics of Management

Fighting for the rights of special groups has contributed to an erosion of civility. When people are treated as representatives of special groups, society is fragmented. The achievement and preservation of the community must become our top priority. Otherwise, the concept of rights has no meaning.

Organizational Predicaments

Organizations that need help most will benefit from it least.

I experienced this with one client I worked with many years ago. The head of HR knew that the team needed help and convinced them to employ my services. After talking with the head of HR, I decided to highly discount my services because I didn’t believe that would have been willing to pay my going fee. In their mind, they just weren’t in that bad of shape. After working with the team for almost a year I believed we had learned a lot and gotten much better. If we were climbing a ten-step ladder, we had just successfully made it up to step one. However, to the team this was seen as such great strides—they felt like they had reached the top of the ladder. Because they were so much better than they had been a year ago they no longer had a need for my services. In their mind, they had achieved everything they could have.

Dilemmas of Change

I’ve talked about the word “dilemma” before. The foundation is “dilaminent” which meant horns. Being on the horns of a bull put you in a dilemma. You’re going to get gored either way.

Our author Farson makes the point that creative ideas are relatively easy to elicit. Implementing them is a much tougher task.

Farson says that it’s important that we fail. We need to fail ofter. If we don’t, it means we’re not testing our limits.

The Aesthetics of Leadership

Farson says, “There are no leaders, there is only leadership.”

One of the great enemies of organizational effectiveness is our stereotypical image of a leader. We imagine a commanding figure perhaps standing in front of an audience, talking, not listening. The real strength of a leader is the ability to elicit the strength of the group. Leadership is less the property of a person than the property of a group.

Avoiding the Future

Farson closes with “If absurdity is ubiquitous, if the most important goals are lost causes, why do we keep playing this absurd game? We play it because it is the only game in town. Of course, it is absurd. Of course, it is only a game. But it is a game well worth playing and worth playing well.”

Management of the Absurd is a long thought-provoking book. I have not done it justice in the blog so I suggest you find a copy, read it, and underline it so that you come away with the greatest learnings for you.

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Blog Culture

Noise Is Overrunning Us

by Ron Potter September 30, 2021

We recently remembered the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

I was in New York City working with a client on 9/10. Trying to get home that evening from La Guardia, we left the gate three times only to return each time for various reasons. On the last return to the gate, the pilot came over the speaker and said that anyone who wanted to get off the plane was welcome to but he was going to try to take off one more time. If I stayed on the plane and this take off didn’t work, I was unlikely to find a hotel room anywhere. I would have to spend the night in the terminal. If I stuck with it and the plane was able to take off, great. It would be late but I would get home.

We finally did take off and I arrived home about 1:30 am on 9/11. After a few hours of sleep, I awoke and watched the events of that horrible day on my TV. But I was home.

For the next several days there was not a plane in the sky. There was no noise from the jets flying overhead. It was a bit unnerving. I realized that we had become so accustomed to the noise of jets flying overhead that we just didn’t hear it anymore. Until it stopped!

That was 20 years ago. The noise in our lives has gone much beyond jets flying overhead.

Noise has Increased

The sound of jets in the sky has returned (although diminished during Covid). And once again we barely hear it anymore. But it’s a little frightening to me how much other noises have increased in our lives.

One that I find particularly annoying (although it may simply be my age) is the sound in restaurants. When I go to dinner with someone I enjoy the conversation as much as the food. However, as the noise levels of talking and laughing increase, for some reason the restaurant feels compelled to turn up the background music. If you look around, no one is listening to the music, they’re trying to talk. But because of the sound, they need to talk louder. It’s a vicious cycle and renders quiet conversations impossible. I’ve given up.

Invisible Noise

The noise that I’m worried about even more is technically not noise at all. It’s the constant distraction and overwhelming presence of email, texts, and social media, etc. Even in open-air restaurants where a conversation is possible, I see couples and families all setting together, all on their own devices. This “noise” has diminished human contact.

I’m Not A Luddite

I’m not opposed to technology. In fact, I purchased my first Blackberry in early 2000, just months after it had been introduced in late 1999. Back then I even had to search for a nationwide network for the Blackberry to run on because the phone companies had not discovered that it could be a great revenue stream for their own networks.

Overworked and Increased Stress

It was soon after that I began to hear from clients and colleagues about how overworked they were and the increase of stress in their lives. I tried to observe what was causing this feeling of being overworked and I really couldn’t see that people were working more than they always had.

What I did observe however was that they got no relief from their workload.

Prior to the availability of smartphones, people would close up shop at the end of the day (even long days), and head home for time with the family, rest, and relaxation. That wasn’t happening anymore. They felt they were suddenly on call twenty-four hours per day.

It’s not that they were working harder, it’s just that it never shut off. If they received an email from their boss late in the evening, they felt it was important (maybe even required) to respond as-soon-as-possible. This pattern interrupted their time of rest and recuperation, got them thinking and responding, and turning their work brain back on with no opportunity to recover. This “noise” of being in contact 24/7 has overrun and disrupted our lives.

The Boss is Often Not Aware

One leader I was working with had a reputation of being a demanding tyrant. I was surprised to find a very pleasant and caring person when I met her. As I began to ask those who had labeled her a tyrant about the behavior that caused that reputation, they began to talk about her 24/7 demands through email and texts. In their opinion, it never let up and was destroying their health and family life.

When I asked her about the behavior, her first response was that she had tried to make it clear that she wasn’t expecting an immediate response. However, if you’re a direct report, it’s always hard not to respond to your boss.

I encouraged her to write her thoughts as an email draft whenever she wanted to but not to hit send until either late Sunday night or early Monday morning. She was very happy to do that.

Within a week her direct reports asked what I had done because their stress levels had gone down and they didn’t feel obligated to think about work all weekend. Simple things can make big differences.

Take Control of your Life

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about not allowing technology to take over our lives. It requires personal discipline.

When you go on vacation but dedicate late night or early morning to “getting your work done” you completely override your body and mind’s need for rest and to just be unplugged. Let your boss and colleagues know that you’re going on vacation and will be unplugged for a while. For the most part, they’ll understand.

When you get back to work, delete those emails that have filled your inbox while you were gone. The really important ones will resurface.

Take control. You’re not a victim unless you choose to be. You’ll be a stronger, healthier, happier person in the end.

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Blog Leadership

The Decisions You Make Determine the Kind of Team You Are.

by Ron Potter September 16, 2021

This is oversimplified, but you can boil the purpose of most teams down to:

Leadership Teams
Management Teams

Leadership teams provide vision and mission and deal with the difficult issue of dilemmas. Management teams make the tough choices of executing the vision and mission in the most cost-effective manner.

If you’re not dealing with dilemmas, you’re not a leadership team

Most management teams are dealing with right vs wrong issues. The answers may be difficult and the team may be divided, but in the end, they can be categorized as right vs wrong.

Dilemma issues are very different. They deal with right vs right issues. For instance, almost all leadership teams deal with short-term vs long-term. Should they deal with both? Yes. But often, the resources needed to give both fronts adequate support are not available. So they now face a dilemma.

Should they apply the available resources to deal with their short-term issues? Yes!
Should they invest in the long-term success of the company? Yes!
Are there enough resources to do both? No!

They are now faced with a dilemma. Both answers are yes; they just don’t have the resources to do both. Which option do they invest in?

Horns of a Dilemma

The origin of the word dilemma is delaminated. This refers to the horns of a bull that are laminated. Thus, when you’re in a dilemma, you’re being forced to pick one horn or the other, knowing that you’re still going to get gored by the opposite horn.

If you decide to put your available resources toward fixing and supporting the short-term, the long-term issues are going to gore you. Or visa versa.

The issue for leadership teams is to be transparent about their decisions and document, document, document. It’s all too easy for someone to second guess the team’s decision when the other option is goring them.

When dilemmas are not being handled in a completely transparent way or there is inadequate documentation, someone will be thinking or saying, “The Leadership Team should have seen this coming and given it the adequate resources to prevent this mess (being gored).” The truth is that they did, but they were faced with right vs right choices and those issues are much more challenging than right vs wrong issues.

If your leadership team is not dealing with right vs right issues, they’re a management team!

Personal Dilemma

I am currently facing a genuine personal dilemma. I have a liver disease called NASH. The first two letters stand for non-alcoholic. My liver scars over as if I’ve been a heavy drinker all my life and begins to shut down even though I don’t drink any alcohol.

Trying to understand the issues I face as my liver continues to fail, I’ve spoken with two heart transplant surgeons that I know. Even though they are separated by geography, they both gave me the same answer. I’ll have to choose between a liver transplant or continue to treat and deal with the symptoms of a failing liver. But they both said there is no right answer. Either way will produce difficult issues that I’ll have to face and deal with the best I can. But while there is no right answer, they both advised me that I must come to peace with the direction I choose.

At that point, it hit me. I’m dealing with a very real, very impactful, very difficult decision. I’m facing a dilemma. And the only advice the surgeons could offer me was to be at peace with the decision that I make.

Leadership Teams

Leadership Teams face the same issue. They must reach a certain level of peace with their decision, knowing full well that at some point they’re going to get gored by the other option.

This is a very difficult task. It’s difficult to deal with it on a personal level. It’s maybe even more difficult to deal with it on a team level. Getting the entire team to be at peace with the decision takes a great deal of patience, openness, confidence, and trust.

It’s hard work! But it’s the only way that Leadership Teams fulfill their mission of guiding the company through dilemmas.

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Blog Leadership

Three Time Frames

by Ron Potter March 4, 2021

Raymund Chua was a client of mine many years ago. We built a good relationship and have stayed in touch with each other through the years. Raymund, living in Singapore, is doing some great work in Southeast Asia.

He posted something on LinkedIn the other day that I found very powerful because it was profound and simple at the same time.

Leadership Story

The chart is titled “The Three Timeframes” as part of a series called, A Leadership Story.

State of the Leaders Focus

Current – Next – Future

I’ve not only seen these states in various leaders, I’m aware that I also get “stuck” in one of the three states.

Possible Symptoms

This list is very interesting in that it shows the possible symptoms of each state.

Future Focus – Full of new ideas. Often not quite sure how to get there. Very Start-Up in its nature
Next Focus – Great initiatives but really never takes into account where the organization is or what they’re cable of doing.
Current State – Focused on doing well today with no thought of the future.

Which State is Best?

OK, trick question. While there may be moments in time when one state will serve better than the others, long-term all the states must be blended into the leadership thought. Let’s take a deeper look at each one of them.

Future Focus

This is an extremely valuable focus. Where is the future headed? What insights will prepare us for a future that is mostly unknown today? In the pandemic we’ve been experiencing which has caused tectonic shifts in our culture and way of doing business, this is a valuable focus.

What happens when the majority of people begin working from home?

Commercial real estate loses a great deal of its value.
Building teams becomes even harder when people are not able to be close to each other, shake hands, or put an arm around someone’s shoulder to offer some comfort.
It doesn’t matter where you’re located. Areas like New York City, Silicon Valley, Boston Rte 128, and others are no longer required living locations to be a contributing member of a high tech team.

I”m sure there are many other aspects of our future that we can’t even see yet.

But having a future focus will tune you into issues and moments that others may miss and could be extremely valuable.

However, being future focused comes with its drawbacks as well. I mentioned earlier that I get stuck in one of these states. This is the one that has been my nemesis and has added stress to my life through the years. Because I tend to be future focused, I look forward to what might be coming or what I may be able to experience in the year ahead. However, it is usually late February or March when I feel like the year is well underway and I’m bogged down in the ordinary and won’t be able to experience the fabulous future I had imagined. And by July or August, my sense is that the year is over and I might as well start focusing on the next one. Unfortunately, I’ve missed many wonderful things that happen “in the moment” because I’m so focused on the future.

You need all three.

Next Focus

I would probably call this “near” focus. These are the people who are focused on the near term —the next year if they are working in the business world.

They aren’t really thinking about the immediate or today’s problems and issues. They also are not thinking much beyond the year. There’s not much of what you would call future vision in their thinking.

There are two issues that these types face but don’t seem to grasp. One is immediate problems. They may have the year thought out but seem to be unaware that something is about to blow up or go terribly wrong in the next couple of weeks. By next month they may be trying to recover from or get on top of an issue that essentially keeps them from accomplishing the year as they envisioned.

The second issue is they are not visionary. High-performance teams always have a future destination they are excited about and committed to achieving. Because the next focus leader doesn’t think or have a vision for the future, it’s hard for them to build high-performance. They can be good at what we might think of as operational teams, ones that are efficient and get the near term tasks completed, but they are not good at having the right team or building the right skills for the future.

Current State Focus

These people are very short-term focused. They’re good at solving the immediate problem. In the business world, they are often called “firefighters.” Firefighters are important. There can always be a fire to put out and it must be done as quickly as possible. The problem I began to see over the years was that firefighters were sometimes arsonists. They either started fires or fanned small fires so they could put their skill set to use solving bigger fires.

They also don’t really do anything to prepare the organization or team for any longevity. They don’t really think beyond putting out the immediate fire. They don’t prepare the team for bigger or longer-term issues. And they certainly don’t offer up a future to work towards. They’re needed but they’re needed in the moment and not beyond.

There are two other categories that are also important.

No, No, No

The first (top of the chart) one talks about a leader that is neither current state, next, nor future focused. My apologies to those people who are trying to do a good job and make things better but I often think of government offices when I think of the No, No, No environment. In the “Unintended Team Culture” apart of the chart, it lists:

Good talents would have left. What’s left is a culture that is very contented (and at times) protective of the status quo.

In the corporate world, I’ve actually seen a couple of cases where the leadership had decided to no longer be in a part of the business or spend resources on doing a certain piece of the business. But as I looked around the corporation I would see people showing up for work, getting to their office, and continuing to do the work they had done for years just the way they had always done it. The CEO would be floored. He would wonder why they were spending resources on something they had decided to kill off months or maybe even years ago. It didn’t take much looking to find a No, No, No leader.

Yes, Yes, Yes

This category at the bottom of the chart talks about the leader who is focused on all three states, current, next, and future. If you read the “Possible Symptoms” and “Unintended Team Cultures”, I hope you resonate positively and want to belong in that atmosphere.

Possible Symptoms: A leader who knows the organization’s current capability, knows precisely what to do next, and has a roadmap to the future.

Unintended Team Culture: a culture that has a crystal clear understanding of their current situation, has a shared vision, and knows what to do to close the gap. I would actually title this as the Intended Team Culture.

Be a triple yes type of leader. It’s the only type that builds high-performance teams and has a shot of conquering the uncertain future.

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Blog Leadership

Oxygen – Part III

by Ron Potter October 29, 2020

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve looked at the Project Oxygen findings at Google related to high-performing teams.

This list is from the book Work Rules by Laszlo Bock who is the person at Google that has helped shepherd the project.

The eight findings that help teams perform at their peak include:

A good coach
Empowers the team and does not micromanage
Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
Is productive and results-oriented
A good communicator – listens and shares information
Helps with career development
Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
Has key technical skills that help advise the team

In this week’s blog, we’ll cover the last three findings.

6. Helps with career development

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs on this topic, it’s difficult for me to distinguish between Leadership issues and Team issues. This has mainly to do with my Mental Model of Team, Leadership, Culture.

This is not to say that Laszlo’s approach is incorrect, it’s just that I come at it from a different perspective.

In my mind, it’s difficult for a team to help a member in their career development. Teams can certainly contribute but it is often the leader who is in the best position to help with career development. What comes to mind is the lack of career development. I have often been hired as a consultant to work with an individual who has “gone off the rails” in the mind of their leader. The leader will tell me that unless this person deals with the issue, they will no longer have a position at the company. In every case, the individual has held a senior position in the company, often they have been Vice-Presidents.

Shocking News

When possible, I have looked back over several years of performance reviews. It’s always been amazing to me that if the person has worked for the company for any length of time, their annual performance reviews mention the issue I’ve been hired to help them deal with. And yet, when I mention to the individual that unless they correct this issue they will no longer have a position with the company, they’re shocked. They’ll say to me something to the effect that “no one has ever mentioned to me that my continued employment depends on me fixing this problem.”

People Pleasing

Why is there such a disconnect? The person dealing with the issue says “no one” has ever told me it could cost me my job. The person hiring me to tell the person will say, “I’ve put this issue in every performance review for the last several years.” Why the disconnect? I believe it’s because almost everyone wants to be a people pleaser and believe that giving people bad news counters that desire. Managers will say to an employee “you must fix this issue.” They might even say “unless this issue is fixed I can no longer keep you in this job.” But, because people don’t like to give bad news, they’ll almost immediately shift their conversation to tell the person all the things they do well. The bad news never sinks in or is dealt with. Think about that for a minute. My boss says to me: you must fix this issue. It can’t go on like this.

Yet almost immediately they will say: but I love how you handled such and such or you’re great at dealing with certain kinds of problems. What does the employee hear? Blah, blah, blah, but I love how you handle this or how you deal with these issues. You’re doing great!

If there is an issue that must be dealt with

state the issue
don’t accept excuses
don’t move on until the is a plan in place
make sure there are milestones to fix the issue
make sure the consequences are clear if the issue is not fixed

People Caring

The way to be people-pleasing is to be people caring. If people feel they are being held accountable with caring and support, they’ll be the happiest.

7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team

Once again this sounds more like a leader issue than it is a team issue. However, while a leader should have a clear vision and strategy for the team, it should never be used to dictate to the team a course of action.

Team members need to be bought into the strategy/vision

If team members don’t have a shared strategy or vision, the team will never grow and develop together. I’ve worked with too many teams through the years that didn’t take the time or make the effort to develop a shared strategy/vision. In every case, competition develops as managers try to implement their own vision at the expense of others. It becomes a tremendous waste of resources.

Leaders must have a strategy/vision but leaders must also be humble enough to see beyond their own vision and they must have enough grit to bring the team together around a joint vision.

8. Has key technical skills that help advise the team

This final “Oxygen” is true at both the leader and the team member levels. Trustworthy teams and members must have both character and competence. It never works to have one or the other, there must be both.

Information Technology

From a leadership standpoint, I believe the Information Technology (IT) area of the business is the most vulnerable. The IT portion of the business is:

Complicated
Fast-moving/changing
Many faceted

I’ve seen too many IT leaders that fall short on one or all of these issues. When that happens, the IT department can buffalo the leader.

Tyranny of Competence

With team members, I have more often seen what Robert Quinn calls the “Tyranny of Competence” in his book, Deep Change. This happens when an individual has so much competence in a given area that it is felt the competency must be protected at all costs and therefore, the individual may have a lack of character and there are no consequences.

Character and Competence must be present for teams to thrive.

Project Oxygen

This covers the eight elements found to be meaningful in building great teams. Think about them. Incorporate them. Discuss them. The more you can build these into your own makeup or a team’s makeup, the more success and satisfaction you’ll experience in life.

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Blog Leadership

Increasing Skills Doesn’t Make a Good Leader

by Ron Potter July 30, 2020

The thought behind this blog was from an article on Entrepreneur.com. Here is the list they developed as they talked about increasing leadership skills. I agree with the list but the short paragraph after each one is based on my learning and experiences.

Trust is not automatic

Many leaders believe they are leaders because of their position or accomplishments. Neither one makes you a good leader. In fact, many people in the position of power on the corporate ladder are there because of their accomplishments. For the most part, corporations aren’t very good at measuring leadership skills, but they’re very good at measuring accomplishments. Accomplishments are seen and identified and can be checked off on a spreadsheet. Leadership is a long-term game. The rewards of great leadership may be seen in the short term, but will really happen over the long-term.

Kindness is underrated

The article identifies this as conscious kindness. It shows or demonstrates how members of the team should treat each other. I would also suggest that it goes beyond team members. This can make a huge difference with customer-facing people. Kindness sets a cultural standard that can be seen and experienced throughout the corporation.

I was playing golf with a group of friends and we were visiting a new course for the first time. Our experience can be summed up as rudeness. The clerk behind the counter was rude. The starter was rude. The rangers were rude. We found out later that the course had been built by a wealthy person who considered it his private course and outside players were considered as intrusions. The course is no longer in existence.

A word of caution. Many people view kindness as never saying a “disparaging” word. There is an old song titled Home on the Range recorded by many artists including John Denver, the muppets, and others. Two lines of the lyrics are

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Having uncloudy skies all day can be wonderful but will also create many long term problems. Rain is often needed. Seldom hearing a discouraging word can also be wonderful but will also create long-term problems. Honest criticism is often needed. The interesting part is that criticism can be done in a very kind way with some practice.

I once worked with a leader who was certainly the “non-discouraging” type. He was one of the kindest people I had ever met. But his team would say to me, “I just wish I knew where I stand!” When I asked for an explanation, they would say, “Our leader is so nice that I never hear one word of criticism. That can’t be realistic. “I just wish I knew where I stand.”

Be kind in your honesty.

Words are meaningless

Over the last several years I’ve been asked what I think of one President or another. After figuring how to answer that question with kind honesty, I settled on the following approach.

I always say: Watch what he does rather than listen to what he says. This is another way of stating the old adage, “Action speaks louder than words.”

Again, some personal experience with another leader. She would always say what she thought the recipient wanted to hear, regardless of what actions she would later take. She thought it was kindness. The people who worked for her saw it as a reason not to trust what she said.

Status quo is safe

IBM has lost much of the luster that it once had. But during the years when I was dealing with IT departments, there was a saying that “Purchasing IBM equipment is always safe.” Meaning that they could tell their leader that they had purchased IBM and the leaders would assume the best decision had been made. Or at the very minimum, they would not criticize or fire the IT person for making the IBM decision. It was safe! It just wasn’t very innovative.

Power trips happen

As a father, I never wanted to resort to the words “Because I said so!” with my children. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how many times I violated that goal. Power trips do happen, but in my book “Trust Me” the number one trait of trusted leaders is humility. People know if it was a momentary power trip or a built-in trait. Avoid power trips if you can. Honestly apologize if they do happen.

Not everyone stays

One CEO I worked with said, “So you’ll show me who to fire from my current team?” My answer was NO. If you turn into a trustworthy leader, change the team and culture to match, people will self-select out. People who don’t want to make the effort to follow the guidelines identified above, won’t stay. They will seek an environment that allows them to ignore the guidelines above.

Look at each of the guidelines above. How are you doing? Each one takes discipline, growth, and a true belief that these traits will make a wonderful leader.

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Blog Team

Overused Teamwork

by Ron Potter July 9, 2020

Team Leadership Culture: Teams first. I’m a big fan of teamwork. However, when it creates an overcommitted organization and conflicting priorities it is counterproductive.

The foundation of this post was inspired by a Harvard Business Review article, The OverCommitted Organization, written by Heidi K. Gardner and Mark Mortensen.

The Overcommitted Organization

In the article, they talk about the dysfunction that can happen when people are assigned to too many teams at the same time. They break it down to the following pros and cons:

PROS: By assigning people to multiple teams at once, organizations make efficient use of time and brainpower. They also do a better job of solving complex problems and sharing knowledge across groups.

CONS: Competing priorities and other conflicts can make it hard for teams with overlapping membership to stay on track. Group cohesion often suffers. And people who belong to many teams at once may experience burnout, which hurts engagement and performance.

Increased Pros or decreased Cons

So now we face the question: Is it worth increasing the PROS at the expense of decreasing the CONS?

My answer is a clear NO! Look in more detail at the expense of the CONS.

Difficult to stay on track.
We have looked at the cost of distraction many times in this blog. Our social media and instant communication can and will negatively affect productivity.
In fact, we can become so distracted on a regular basis that it reduces the brain’s ability to concentrate and think deeply. These are two features that we need more today than ever!
Group cohesion often suffers.
Without group cohesion, there is no team! Teams that tell each other the truth with respect and fully commit to team goals (regardless of personal or department goals) is at the core of great organizations. Group cohesion is essential!
Burnout.
People who experience burnout experience reduced energy, brainpower, commitment, drive, and many other aspects that make them top performers and good team members. Avoid burnout!

PROS

In my mind and experience, the list of pros is actually cons.

Efficient use of time
It’s been proven that the only people capable of multi-tasking are highly trained fighter pilots. And even these highly trained individuals are not capable of transferring the multi-tasking beyond the cockpit when their life depends upon it.
Brainpower
It’s also been proven that teams function better when multiple brains are open about a problem or situation. However, using “one” brain across multiple teams does not increase multiple team’s “brainpower.”
Solving Complex Problems
Complex problems are solved with deep thinking and moving in and out of team subgroups. Complex problems are not solved by having one brain on many teams. In fact that leads to burnout and reduces the ability to solve complex problems.

The Overcommitted Organization

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not opposing what Gardner and Mortensen are stating in their article. In fact, they use experience and solid research to prove their points. And, they reach the same conclusion that I did.

One paragraph right near the middle of their article says

Launch the team well to establish trust and familiarity. When fully dedicated to one team, people learn about their teammates’ outside lives—family, hobbies, life events, and the like. More important, it forges strong bonds and interpersonal trust, which team members need in order to seek and offer constructive feedback, introduces one another to valuable network connections, and rely on one another’s technical expertise. (Italics are mine)

This is a powerful conclusion that reinforces everything I have learned and experienced. Teams that establish trust and have an environment of constructive feedback are the most beneficial.

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Blog Culture

Manage people like Money?

by Ron Potter June 11, 2020

An Harvard Business Review article was titled “What If Companies Managed People as Carefully as They Manage Money?”

I like the idea because most companies focus a lot of their effort on how they manage money, projects, profitability, and skillsets.

I don’t like the idea because I don’t think we should manage people (It puts them in the same category as the money, projects, profitability, etc.) We should be leading people, not managing them.

IPO Preparation

One of my consulting clients was a high-tech firm that had decided to do an Initial Public Offering (IPO). This means they were moving from a privately held firm to a publicly held firm with shareholders.

They needed to convince investors to put some of their hard-earned money into the new firm, assuming it would generate a reasonable return.

Investment Bankers

There is a sub-set of the banking industry (Investment Bankers) that is solely focused on IPO’s. Once the Investment Bankers were chosen, the company put themselves in the banker’s hands in an effort to generate early and adequate investment.

So what did these bankers focus on?

The finances? No!
The quality of the leadership? No!
The competition? No!

These Investment Bankers focused on the “story.” What was the story of the company? What did the story tell the potential investor about the future? Was the story compelling enough that people would actually depart with their money and invest with the company?

IPO Preparation

The Investment Bankers sent in a team of presenting coaches to help the CEO and CFO prepare to meet potential investors.

For weeks they concentrated on the story. Was it complete? Was it compelling? Did it explain all the required changes and growth for the company? Would people be willing to invest in this company?

Roadshow

All of this was to prepare these two top officers for the “roadshow.” Over the next several weeks they would move from city to city, meet with a small group of investors and hopefully, capture their hearts and minds enough that the Investment Bankers were able to obtain commitments to invest.

Then the Investment Bankers made a statement that made me sit up and take notice.

You have 30 minutes

They told the CEO and CFO that if they didn’t capture the hearts and minds of the potential investors in 30 minutes, they were lost for forever.

30 minutes! They had 30 minutes to get people to invest their money. If it wasn’t compelling enough in the first 30 minutes, they didn’t have a second chance. They would be lost forever.

Invest more than Dollars

Then I began to think about the employees. What are we asking them to invest?

Money? In a sense yes.
Time? Yes. Be here on a regular basis. Be willing to cover any shift. Be willing to work overtime when necessary.
Effort? Be the best. Go the extra mile. Work hard and harder.
Brain? Be quick. Be innovative. Be smarter than the competition.

Invest More

In short, invest more than just dollars. Much more!

If we were willing to build a complete and compelling story about the future of the company for someone who will invest just their dollars, why are we not willing to generate even a better message for those willing to invest a lot more than just their dollars?

Investor not Asset

We often hear CEO’s and other top executives speak of employees as their most valuable asset.

I have assets. My computer is an asset. I’m willing to upgrade it, add more memory or space, install a new operating system. But at some point I say enough-is-enough and I purchase a new computer.

Do we really want to think of employees as an asset?

But, if you think about them as an investor, then you need to be willing to give them your best. You must have a compelling explanation of the future and how you’re going the get there. If you can’t express that clear, well thought out future, why would employees be willing to invest their time, effort, and intellect?

Think of your employees as investors, not assets!

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Blog Leadership

Performance vs Trust

by Ron Potter May 7, 2020

Those are not my words. Those were spoken by Simon Sinek. If you have not discovered Mr. Sinek, look up his website. I read him and Share Parrish more than any other blog writers out there.

Navy Seals

Leader or Teammate

Nobody wanted someone from the lower left: Low Performer and Low Trust.

Everyone wanted someone from the upper right: High Performer and High Trust.

When Simon asked them which type of person they want as a leader or teammate, they all said they would prefer someone on the right side of the chart than the best performer who had low trust.

Keep in mind that these are the highest-performing teams in the world. But they would select Trust over Performance when it came to a leader or a teammate.

Corporations Have it Backward

Performance Reviews

Why do corporate reviews focus so much on high performance rather than high trust? I’m sure there are many reasons but the two that I see as most prevalent are:

Corporations often want high performance (get the job done now) over anything else. Part of the reason is that public corporations have bowed to quarterly reporting. If the return isn’t better that quarter, the leadership is often called on the carpet by Wall Street and the Investors. They don’t want to be in that position. Therefore, they promote people who produce high results, regardless of the internal costs. Remember that the Navy Seals labeled them as toxic.
It’s easier to measure performance than trust. With performance, it’s easy to check the box. Was the goal met or exceeded? Was it done on or ahead of schedule? Easy to measure and identify.
Does the person generate trust within their team? Hard to predict. The results may not show up for a long time. Corporate leaders want results this quarter, not three years from now.

Trust Builds Long-Term Performance

Another CEO I worked with started two companies and built leadership teams that now run or are high-ranking leaders in several corporations.

Both of these leaders (and there are a few more) built leadership teams based on trust. That doesn’t mean they ignored performance, but trust ranked higher when it came to evaluations.

If you’re the kind of person who exudes and promotes trust, you’ll find yourself much loved!

Lonely or loved. You make the choice.

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Blog Leadership

“Soft” Skills Win

by Ron Potter April 2, 2020

Start with skills

An article in the Wall Street Journal was written with and about Bob Funk, founder of Express Employment Professionals and former chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. Mr. Funk makes his living by matching people who want jobs with employers who need good employees.

When Mr. Fund talks about the interview process he starts with what most employees think of as the Hard Skills.

Hard skills and experience, he says, are only half the equation, and not the important half. “So many people do not realize how important the soft skills are to unlocking job opportunity,”

Mr. Funk offers a quote from a boss he had over 50 years ago. “There’s a person for every job and a job for every person. That’s still true.”

Try before you buy

Most of the companies he works for are small and medium-size companies with fewer than 250 employees and he places most of his workers in part-time positions. But over 60% of them go on to be full-time employees.

Hard skills and experience are only half of the equation and not the important half. (Italics are mine). Soft skills are the important part of unlocking job opportunities!

Soft skills rule

Mr. Funk found that the top five skills that employers look for are:

While Mr. Funk concedes that education is vital, the most important thing for most people is the ability to be trained. And while I agree with Mr. Funk on this issue I don’t believe he gives enough credit to that ability to be trained with people of education.

Higher Education

So many of today’s graduates from major universities have been convinced that their degree from that particular institute has taught them everything they need to know to be successful. I’m a graduate of the University of Michigan Engineering school and for a period of time recruited new hires from that institute. What I discovered was that it didn’t make any difference which university the candidate graduated from. What made the difference was number 5 on the list above, the ability to think critically that made the biggest difference between potential employees.

Learning is what’s important

As a consultant, I once ran an old exercise that didn’t produce any results. When I asked my client why the effort fell flat they said they got the most out of sessions where I was sharing what I was learning. My own learning produced the best results for my clients. I believe that a college education gives you the opportunity to start learning. Showing up to work every day assuming you’re there to share what you already know will get you nowhere. Showing up to work every day ready to learn will show an eagerness to learn, which will carry you a long way.

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Blog Trust Me

Learning in Chaos

by Ron Potter April 15, 2019

As Peter Senge defines it, a learning organization is an organizational structure in which “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”

In this sense, a learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its ability to create and re-create the very patterns and structures by which it operates.

At least that is the goal.

Quick-Deciding Creates Chaos, Learning Order

Unfortunately, what I have found in my work is that quick decision making has won. In many cases, leaders have abandoned the learning organization in favor of the quick-deciding organization.

In times of chaos, confusion, and change, peacemaking leaders need to focus attention on making sure their organizations are quick learning rather than quick deciding.

The fast-paced environment of product development, competition, and shareholder expectations has forced many organizations to adopt a quick-deciding mentality. In this model, a team (much like a football team needing to score before time expires in the fourth quarter) is in a hurry-up offense. The goal is to make decisions. But as Tom Peters correctly observes, “As competition around the world boils over as never before, firms caught with bloated staffs and dissipating strengths—from Silicon Valley to the Ruhr Valley in Germany—are looking for quick fixes. There are none.”

Leading Toward Learning

So how would a two-pillar, peacemaking leader respond?

The goal of the quick-learning team is to seek out and develop opinion rather than steamrolling over it or quickly mustering forces against it. Feedback is highly desired rather than feared.

In contrast, feedback is offensive when you are a quick-deciding team. You develop “sides” on all issues. The competition heats up. Winning at all costs is what counts.

Members of a quick-learning team are all on the same side of the fence, looking at an issue with differing opinions, experiences, and ideas.

Meeting Agendas

Meeting agendas are often a surprising enemy. Leaders, staring at an agenda, feel compelled to make decisions within the time allotted. In most cases, true discussion of the issues and everyone’s opinions (the rooting-out process) is bypassed in favor of table talk that centers on implementation.

We suggest a meeting agenda that maps out what the team wants to learn about an issue. Learning should be the goal with good decisions the result. Remember that the goal is learning quickly and then making good decisions, not just deciding quickly.

Patience is Key

“Patience,” said Saint Augustine, “is the companion of wisdom.” Problems and day-to-day crises test our wisdom and our ability to make decisions under pressure. Great leaders are people of patience and constant learning.

It is the leader’s job to pull everything together into a quick-learning rather than a quick-deciding environment. The leader holds the dialogue together and asks questions that are designed to help team members clearly communicate their information and thoughts about the agenda item. In this way, the meeting’s goal is met: quick learning—rather than quick deciding—for the purpose of making good decisions.

The leader needs to develop not only an inclusive mind-set but also one that honors people for who they are and what they bring to the process. Each person brings unique strengths and outlooks to the table.

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