~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LEADERSHIP WIRED John C. Maxwell's FREE Semimonthly Newsletter Designed To Maximize Your Leadership Potential. July 2005 - Volume 8, Issue 13 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In This Issue: * Maxwell Moment – Emotion Plus Logic * Leadership@Large – Surveying the Leadership Landscape * Interview – Tough Management * Quick Quotes – Proper Praise ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Maxwell Moment ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EMOTION PLUS LOGIC By Dr. John C. Maxwell As a referee in the National Football League for 31 years, Jim Tunney had myriad opportunities to witness great teams in action. He officiated at no less than 29 postseason games (an NFL record), including 10 Championships and three Super Bowls. Now a respected motivational speaker, Tunney uses what he observed on the football field to help organizations and corporations build winning teams. For example, he believes that clearly defined goals are a key component to team success—both on and off the field. "If employees don't understand their company's goals and its game plan, these goals won't be achieved," he says. "Football doesn't make this mistake. Its goals are always clearly defined. At the end of the field is a goal line. Why do we call it a goal line? Because 11 people on the offensive team huddle for a single purpose—to move the ball across it." From a business perspective, not all goals are quite so obvious— or so clear-cut in attainability. But whether you're talking about players in uniform or team members at the office, one thing is certain: Vision determines the direction of the team. When it comes to casting a compelling vision, I believe that there are two critical elements: emotional and logical transference. This is where many leaders go wrong. Some are great at explaining their vision logically, but they lack the emotion necessary to carry it forward. Others are very emotional when casting a vision, but they lack the logic to sustain it. If you want to cast a vision that will send your team in the right direction for the long haul, you must do it with logic and emotion. It's not an either/or situation. You must have both. To transfer a vision emotionally, five elements are needed: 1. Credibility. This is the most important ingredient for successful emotional transference. The person casting the vision absolutely must have integrity. His team must know—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that he walks the walk and talks the talk. 2. Passion. It's very difficult to pass a vision on to someone else if you don't believe in it yourself. Half-hearted vision- casting simply doesn't work. 3. Relationships. The closer a leader is to the members of her team, the quicker they'll buy in to her vision. 4. Timing. There's a right time and a wrong time to cast a vision. A good vision presented at the wrong time will fail. 5. Felt need. It's hard for people to catch a vision when they don't feel the goal is necessary. On the other hand, to transfer a vision logically, these seven components are necessary: 1. A realistic understanding of the situation today. If you're not realistic about where you are today, people will know that you don't have a clue about tomorrow. Leaders often make the mistake of trying to cast a vision for the future because they're struggling now. In other words, they use the vision to cover up their existing problems. But when you cast a vision, your people must know that you understand your current situation. Otherwise, they'll simply roll their eyes and think, "If he isn't realistic about where we are right now, how can he ever be realistic about where we want to go?" 2. An experienced team. It's tough to keep a vision alive without seasoned players who comprehend why it's important to the success of your organization. 3. A sound strategy. The step-by-step process of how you're going to achieve your vision must be well-reasoned and watertight; otherwise it will fall apart. 4. Acceptance of responsibility by the leaders. The success of a vision nearly always is based upon the buy-in of the leaders who are willing to sign their names to the bottom-line number, whatever it is. Don't even attempt to cast a vision until your leaders are ready to put their names by the bottom line. 5. The celebration and communication of each victory. Such recognition provides an infusion of enthusiasm and gives your people something concrete to hold on to as they continue to move toward the ultimate goal of fulfilling the vision. 6. Evaluation and communication for each defeat. Be as open about explaining the defeats as you are about celebrating the victories. After each setback, tell your team, "Here's what we did wrong; here's why we did not accomplish what we need to." 7. Time. This is interesting, isn't it? To emotionally transfer a vision, you need proper timing. To logically transfer it, you just need time. What happens when emotion joins logic in the transference of a vision? People unite around the goal and start working to achieve it because they believe in what they're doing and they understand why they're doing it. That's how teams win—both on and off the field. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Leadership@Large ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE VALUE OF CANDOR During his publicity spree to promote his new book, "Winning", Jack Welch stopped by the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School for a fireside chat with a packed auditorium of students. According to a recap of the event on "Knowledge@Wharton", the business school's online research and business analysis journal, General Electric's former chairman and chief executive spoke with his customary frankness about, among other things, the value of candor as a leadership tool. In "Winning", he calls a lack of candor "the biggest dirty little secret in business" because it "basically blocks smart ideas, fast action and good people contributing all the stuff they've got." In short, he writes, "It's a killer." A lack of candor is particularly bad when it keeps managers from giving honest input to employees in an effort to be kind to them, he told his Wharton audience. "A recession comes," he said. "People get laid off and ask, ‘Why me?' They find out their boss wasn't happy with them and they say, ‘I have been here 20 years. Why haven't you told me that before?' " One way to combat this scenario involves the "rank-and-yank" approach Welch implemented at GE—a process by which GE managers were required to rank all their employees every year and fire the bottom 10 percent. This type of system isn't without its critics, of course, but Welch said it is fair when it's built on candor— with regular employee reviews that are comprehensive and frank. To read more, see: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1209.cfm ________________________________________________________________ ENCOURAGING DISSENT If the most common answer you get from your people is "yes," you may not be getting all the information you need to assess business ideas accurately and make critical decisions, according to Michael Roberto, Harvard Business School professor and author of "Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer: Managing Conflict and Consensus". "Leaders need to recognize that expressing dissent can be very difficult and uncomfortable for lower-level managers and employees," Roberto explained in a recent e-mail interview with HBS's "Working Knowledge" e-newsletter. "Therefore, leaders cannot wait for dissent to come to them; they must actively go seek it out in their organizations. In short, they must search for people willing to say no to them. The mere existence of passive leadership constitutes a substantial barrier to candid dialogue and debate within organizations." Meetings are a good venue for encouraging constructive conflict, as long as a leader doesn't try to cover too much in too short of a time. "Agenda overload, coupled with the quest for efficiency, often works against a leader's best efforts to stimulate debate," Roberto said. "Why does efficiency crowd out debate? For some dissenters, it takes some time to gather the courage to express their views or to determine precisely how they would like to articulate their point," he added. "For others, they may want to listen to others and gain a better understanding of the issue before offering their views. The rapid pace of the discussion may become discouraging to those who aren't comfortable ‘shooting from the hip' as soon as a new topic opens." To keep meetings flowing smoothly, leaders need to "develop and employ a variety of forums for encouraging people to express their views," Roberto said. E-mail, for example, "provides a wide range of employees with access to the leader," although it's also easier for people to be misunderstood when communicating through e-mail instead of in person. To learn more about fostering constructive conflict in your organization, see: http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4833&t=leadership ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Interview ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TOUGH MANAGEMENT—PART ONE Chuck Martin has his finger on the pulse of the worldwide business economy. As chairman and CEO of NFI Research, a global idea exchange and research engine with a membership of more than 2,000 senior executives, Martin has real-time access to trends and attitudes in business, organizational management and information technology. In addition to sharing this information with members of the idea exchange, he also uses it in his work as an author, nationally syndicated columnist, speaker and business strategist. Martin has written six books, including "Tough Management: The 7 Ways to Make Tough Decisions Easier, Deliver the Numbers, and Grow Business in Good Times and Bad" and the business fable "Coffee at Luna's". We spoke with him recently about trends NFI Research has tracked lately that are especially relevant for leaders at all levels. Here is the first half of our two-part interview. Leadership Wired: Let's talk about NFI Research—why did you start it and what is its purpose today? Chuck Martin: We started it seven years ago. I was doing a lecture to a group of CEOs and it dawned on me in the middle of the lecture that I was going to see these CEOs one time and then never see them again. I thought, "What a waste of all this knowledge." So I asked if they wanted to start a group where we would simply share information for free. I had this rush of people with business cards to the stage after—I was just astounded. So now, every time I've done a lecture anywhere in the world, presuming it's a good demographic audience, I invite the members of the audience to join the institute. What we do is we survey them every other week. It's a 30- to 40-second survey so it's very quick by e-mail, and it's totally anonymous. On the off week, we send them—for free—the results. As a result, we've had thousands of people participating in this for years now. We simply share the information, and then the knowledge that we glean goes into my books as primary research. LW: What are some of the things that you survey about? Martin: We survey everything to do with management, leadership, workplace issues, what is going on in the business world today and the future of the business economy. What's interesting is we're always ahead of the mainstream media in terms of projecting or predicting what's going to be happening because we have only senior executives and managers as members. Half the Fortune 100 companies have a member in the institute. As a result, we have really a bird's eye view of what the business people are planning as they are planning it. We ask questions such as: What are the strengths and weaknesses of accounting? Are there questionable accounting practices in the future that you see? What are your biggest challenges in recruitment and retention? What are the top executive skills that the leader of the future will need? What's your employment outlook the next 12 months—are you going to be hiring more or staying the same? And we do regular benchmark surveys on an annual basis so we can now track this over a period of time. LW: What are some recent trends and/or attitudes in the area of leadership that have surprised you? Martin: The fundamental thing we've seen over the last two years is that work is different than it ever was in the past. Eighty percent of executives and managers say they've had an increase in workload—80 percent! And there's been no significant increase in compensation for 90 percent of them. Eighty percent of executives and managers are stressed; a third of them are highly stressed. There are many more demands on the workforce as a result. Consequently, leading today requires different sorts of focus and skill sets. We know, for example, that communication in organizations is not good. What's interesting is executives believe they communicate well, but when you ask the managers, "How well do your superiors communicate to you?" it's the exact opposite. When we ask our members, "What would make your organization more productive?" the No. 1 answer is communication—by miles. (After that, it's focus, collaboration, teamwork, time and understanding.) The kind of communication people want is more personal discussion. Over 60 percent say, "I want more personal discussion." Nobody wants cell phone messages. They don't want meetings. They don't want instant messages. They want discussion. That's very difficult because it takes much more time, when the reality today is people working don't have any more time. We know also from our research that the eight-hour or nine-hour workday is gone. We're in a 10-, 11-, 12-hour workday, and that's very common across the board. Executives and managers have less than 90 minutes of free time in the course of a day; most have less than an hour. We're taking all the time that there is. So leading in this environment is really challenging. You have all this time being spent at work and people start to work even more—they think that's the solution—while other people who want to be led are saying, "I need more personal discussion to understand what's going on," but there is no more time for personal discussion. It's sort of a breaking point. LW: And it was surprising to discover that? Martin: What was surprising is how extreme it was. When you deal with the number of deadlines, the pressures of Wall Street, the accounting scandals and just the sheer workload, everyone is under the gun on a regular basis and everyone has all the same information at the same time. As a result, it's just sort of an open book of what's going on. Executives get a quarter, and if they succeed, they get another quarter to see if they can succeed again. The expectations are very high. The demands are very high. That's where we came up with the concept of tough management. It's about how to deal in this environment, what you actually do. One of the things we recommend is that people need to stop doing something. A lot of books deal with what you should do; we argue that there's no more time in the day, so leaders need to step back and say, "OK, what is it we're doing that we should not be doing? Let's get rid of some things that we're doing because we have to do other things." What's happening is, you have a lot of people who don't want to make the hard decisions. So these tough decisions aren't getting made. As a result, things are sort of stalling. And the leaders don't necessarily see this right away because it's happening at so many levels of an organization. Ultimately, things do bubble up to crisis stage, and then we end up with leaders having to deal with things that are urgent vs. important. LW: Tell me about some emerging trends/attitudes that people in leadership positions should be aware of. Martin: The first thing they need to understand is that, even though they are communicating, and they honestly believe they are communicating well, the message is not necessarily getting through. We know there's a disconnect between what is said and what is heard. As a result, leaders today need to listen more. We have what we call the 51 percent rule, which is that more than 50 percent of communication from leaders should be listening, not talking or sending the message out. What is it that people think we are doing? How well did people hear the message? I can't stress communication highly enough—it is so critical because the more communication occurs, the more aligned execution will be with vision and direction. There's a huge disconnect now because for the most part, the leaders truly know where they want to go, they know where the organization should go and they honestly believe they've communicated how to get there or where they want to go. But the reality is as you go further away from that leader, the less clear is the message of where the organization should go and how it's going to get there. I call this the difference between corporate truth and street truth. Corporate truth is what the executives pronounce they're going to do, and street truth is what the person who is dealing with the customer level is saying: "Wait, our customers don't want that—this isn't going to work, I'm not going to do that." That gap has to be closed. So communication alignment is a critical factor for the leader of the future. Another one is leaders need to force the hard decisions. It's very easy to put off the tough call, and people tend to defer. They don't want to make it; they want the committee to make it. It has to be drilled throughout the organization that the tough calls need to get made as soon as possible, which means eliminating office politics, looking at the data, looking at the numbers and quantifying everything. Then make the tough call and then move on. Don't keep going back. You don't have time anymore. Time is critical these days. LW: What's keeping people from making those decisions? Martin: It's very interesting—they don't want to. They defer them. Everybody wants to defer the tough decisions. If you ask executives what the toughest calls are, over their careers, the toughest calls are hiring and firing and changing jobs. These are big decisions. When you're dealing with things like laying off others, nobody likes to deliver bad news. It's just the way it is. So they tend to defer it. It's human nature. So that's happening on a regular basis—they put it off. There are two kinds of people in an organization. There are the ducks who follow the lead duck—they will simply line up and follow, and they keep the engines running. Every organization requires many, many of those. Then there are the eagles. Those are the people who take the risk. They will make the tough call. Those are the people who everyone turns to when they can't figure out what to do—they have both sides and they have the whole argument, but they're at odds. And it's the eagles who make the decisions because they are less risk averse. Typically the eagles are in the leadership ranks. And they don't always understand that everybody doesn't think like they do. Many people really want to be told, "Here's what we're going to do." The problem with that is what I call the "law of the last third." When a leader communicates something, the first third gets it and buys in right away. The second third will, over time, be convinced. Then there's the last third, and the last third will never buy in. There's a last third on everything. That is a huge challenge. It doesn't cause an organization to fail because the two-thirds do in fact buy in, but it causes them to not perform to their optimal level. And that requires major effort because in some cases, you do have to fire some people. LW: And that's one of those hard decisions people don't want to do? Martin: Absolutely. Everyone agrees on who the obstacle is, and then they leave the obstacle to stay because the obstacle may perform some other thing in the organization that's a positive. So there's always an argument to be made for putting off the tough call. -- Interview by Lois Flowers, INJOY consulting editor Editor's Note: Watch for the second half of our interview with Chuck Martin in the next issue of "Leadership Wired". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quick Quotes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PROPER PRAISE "Consider carefully before you say a hard word to a man, but never let a chance to say a good one go by. Praise judiciously bestowed is money invested." — George Horace Lorimer "I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing with an exception." — Richard Steele "I have yet to find a man, whatever his situation in life, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he ever would do under a spirit of criticism." — Charles M. Schwab _________________________________________________________________ Leadership Wired is written by Dr. John C. Maxwell and is available via e-mail on a free subscription basis. You can subscribe at: http://www.INJOY.com/Newsletters. Questions about document transmission or editorial comments? Contact mailto:feedback@INJOY.com. Visitors may use the information contained in this e-newsletter by placing the following credit line: "This article is used by permission from Dr. John C. Maxwell's free monthly e-newsletter 'Leadership Wired' available at www.INJOY.com." This information cannot be used for resale in any manner. Copyright (c) 2005, INJOY, Inc.