Managing Stress Through Chaos

Perhaps every leader around the world has dealt with a huge amount of stress in 2020. And 2021 has not brought any relief thus far. Even those companies who are thriving during the pandemic had a different kind of stress.

I found that leaders who took the time to think through their actions and get feedback from other stakeholders did much better than those who did not.  Yes, we have to cut costs and make tough decisions, but the way you go about it can make a big difference.  A big difference to your company, your employees, and your customers.

Sometimes in the midst of a situation we do not realize how stressful it is.  We need to be more self-aware and acknowledge that this situation is different, more complex, and perhaps with higher stakes than normal.

Once you know that your situation is more stressful than normal, it is important to remember that denial is not a good strategy. Simply saying we will be fine will not work.  You do not have to be super-hero.  It is ok to acknowledge that you are stressed and that it is having an impact.  In fact, when you can name and acknowledge the stress you are feeling you are taking a positive step in dealing with it. Additionally, your recognition of the stress will help you lead by example – your denial could lead to the team’s denial as well.

You know how you respond when stressed. You can make that list, and please do.  Whether you get agitated more easily, talk too quickly, yell too often, or become reclusive, know your “signs”.  When you see yourself acting in those ways more frequently take that as a sign that you need to apply some approaches to reduce your stress. If you have a trusted advisor who can point these behaviors out to you, please ask for their help.

Decision making is an important part of our leadership role – and something that is often impacted by our stress level. Once you know you are feeling the stress of a situation, consider the following:

• Am I involving the right people in and getting the right perspectives on my decisions? Often in stressful times people make quick decisions and do not benefit from the insights of others.
• Is this the right decision? Stop and take a deep breath (which will help with your stress to start with), and look at your decision again – have you considered the right factors, and will this decision be successful?

Don’t stop after your decision is made and your action taken.  Keep the team involved and communicate as much as you can with your employees.  Now is not the time to stay in your office.  If you have remote workers, keep them informed.  Allow for questions.  In the end your entire company will benefit from the way you handled an extremely stressful time.

How Nice Leaders Can Destroy Your Company

In my business I see this a lot, people in leadership positions who’s desire to be liked overrides their ability to be competent leaders. Although the boss-employee relationship is of critical importance, when relationships become misaligned with organizational goals, team problems shortly follow. A pattern that’s easy to miss: A faltering team that belongs to a likeable leader.

Overly “nice” leaders often create unintended and unnecessary team drama because their overriding priority is to be liked and to avoid conflict.  There are three styles that nice leaders often use to unintentionally create team drama.

The Best friend

New leaders often have not developed the leadership identity they need to set boundaries, initiate difficult conversations and separate their feelings from the facts of their job. They often thrive at first during the honey-moon period when everyone gets along, but falter when reality sets in. Reality begins when Jane complains about Tom. The best friend leader is more invested in making sure no one gets their feelings hurt than giving honest feedback and guidance. Instead of coaching Jane and Tom to work out their differences, the best friend listens, offers explanations and short-term tactics to create harmony. If push comes to shove, the best friend leader takes sides to protect his own turf, thus creating trust violations.

Here is a list of some best-friend behaviors to look out for:

• Gossiping with employees about other employees
• Avoiding difficult conversations
• Being inauthentic about the real problems
• Blaming upper management for decisions
• Listening to hear-say

The best friend leader cares more about being liked and making employees feel good than he/she does about aligning with the mission of the organization.

The hero

The hero  is the boss who loves to help. The hero does well at first with a new team that lacks skills or confidence. The problem is that heroes never seem to shove the baby birds out of the nest. These leaders create unhealthy codependence and do not understand the difference between helping and rescuing. Helping is teaching a man to fish, while rescuing is giving the man a fish — over and over. 

The hero leader has certain qualities that can be identified:

• Inability to ask for what he/she wants
• Taking credit instead of giving credit
• An addictive desire to fix everyone else’s problems
• The open door has become a revolving door
• Overly dependent employees

When a leader tells you he/she has had to compensate for a brilliant yet somewhat incompetent employee, don’t look at the employee as incompetent, but instead to look at the leader as one who needs to be the hero. The reason the incompetence exists is because it has been allowed in the first place. There is always a secondary gain the hero gets from other people’s incompetency.

The hands-off leader

It sounds great at first to hear that the leader is “hands-off.”  You’ll hear statements like, “I trust everyone to do their job,” “I provide a lot of autonomy,” “I’m a “hands-off delegator,” or “I’m always here if people need me, otherwise I just stay out of their way.” This method works until it doesn’t. If the team is having trouble don’t look first at team dynamics, look to see if there’s a hands-off leader who is avoiding. Look for signs of a hands-off philosophy when you find complaints that have not been addressed, or if team squabbles and turf wars are hampering productivity.

Some signs of hands-off leadership include:

• Brushing complaints under the carpet
• Changing the structure before talking to the individuals
• Failure to assist lower-level leaders when problems occur
• Not seeing the drama until it has gotten out of control
• Inability to see the role leaders play in the team’s drama

Sometimes a hands-off leader helps create autonomy and more responsibility and sometimes “Hands off” translates to disengaged leader. Use wisdom to discern that distinction.

The paradox of likability is this: The very qualities that makes a leader likeable can also become the obstacle to growth and the root cause of costly mistakes. When you notice team drama, the natural response is to look at personalities, but when you dig deeper you find a hidden root: A leader that is simply too nice. While likeability can be an advantage, the disadvantage of unbalanced likeability is unintended team-drama and lowered productivity.

 

 

Improving your effectiveness in todays complex world.

It takes courage to be a leader in today’s workplace. Leaders live in an ever-changing world made more complex by the quantity data, social media, consumerism, workforce diversity and enhanced technology.

Gone are the days when the leader was an all-knowing manager with unwavering confidence, a resolute sense of direction and a keen ability to determine the right solutions.

These huge shifts have created a more complex workplace for leaders than in the past. This complexity poses land mines for leaders, particularly because:

• Root causes to problems might be unknown or not easily discernible
• A single solution might not exist
• No one person has the solution to the problem

In these circumstances, leaders are far less effective when they address symptoms of the

problem, assert only their opinion or point of view, fail to capture multiple perspectives to solve the problem or focus on only one solution.

Leading successfully through the never-ending maze of complexity requires a bold, new approach to identify, implement and sustain effective solutions:

• Begin with listening, versus acting. Identify compelling questions that spark dialogue among diverse stakeholders who are closest to the problem or situation. For example: What key events led up to this situation? What does the data suggest? What are the problems, barriers and/or challenges that the team is experiencing? How do these challenges affect the team’s or organization’s ability to produce intended outcomes?
• Demonstrate curiosity.  Explore themes and patterns that begin to emerge from dialogue with stakeholders. For example, what factors seem to contribute most to the situation: failed processes, inadequate technology, human error, etc.? Are there critical intersections in the work process where problems seem to form, grow, and mature? From these themes, seek ideas from stakeholders on interventions that could resolve the situation, whether in whole or in part.
• Take a paced, thoughtful approach toward the solution. Even if a clear solution hasn’t emerged, consider tests of change to study the effects of different interventions. Ensure that each test of change has an objective and baseline data. Once the test has been shown, determine whether the objective was met and if improvement was both measured and experienced.
• Champion learning. From the tests of change, determine what was learned and which solutions should be implemented on a fuller scale to address the situation.

To evolve their leadership approach in complex situations, leaders can advance their self-awareness by asking;

• How do I foster a safe environment where diverse, honest perspectives and recommendations can be shared?
• Do I tend to listen and learn, or tell and act?
• How do I encourage opposing views and creative deviance from the norm?
• How will I make the time to experiment, potentially fail, and extract lessons learned when pursuing the right solution to a complex situation?
• How can I cultivate a work environment where solutions emerge and failure is a natural occurrence on the road to success?

 

If you’re not helping people develop, you’re not management material

Skilled managers have never been more critical to a company’s success as they are today.  Not because employees can’t function without direction, but because managers play a vital role in talent management. Gone are the comprehensive career management systems and expectations of long-term employment that once functioned as the glue in the employer-employee relationship.  In their place, the manager-employee dyad is the new building block of learning and development in many organizations.

Good managers attract candidates, drive performance, engagement and retention, and play a key role in maximizing employees’ contribution to the company. Poor managers, by contrast, are a drag on all of the above.  They cost your company a ton of money in turnover costs and missed opportunities for employee contributions, and they do more damage than you realize.

Job seekers from entry-level to executives are more concerned with opportunities for learning and development than any other aspect of a prospective job.  This makes perfect sense, since continuous learning is a key strategy for crafting a sustainable career.  The vast majority (some sources say as much as 90%) of learning and development takes place not in formal training programs, but rather on the job—through new challenges and developmental assignments, developmental feedback, conversations and mentoring.  Thus, employees’ direct managers are often their most important developers.  Consequently, job candidates’ top criterion is to work with people they respect and can learn from. From the candidate’s viewpoint, his or her prospective boss is the single most important individual in the company.

Managers also have a big impact on turnover and retention. The number one reason employees quit their jobs is because of a poor quality relationship with their direct manager.  No one wants to work for a boss who doesn’t take an interest in their development, doesn’t help them deepen their skills and learn new ones, and doesn’t validate their contributions.

This isn’t what departing employees tell HR during their exit interviews, of course.  After all, who wants to burn a bridge to a previous employer?

Instead, they say they’re leaving because of a better opportunity elsewhere.  And so what happens is that organizations remain in the dark regarding how much damage their inept managers are doing.

Regardless of what else you expect from your managers, facilitating employee learning and development should be a non-negotiable competency.  Becoming a great developer of employees requires managers to expand their focus from “How can I get excellent performance out of my team members?” to “How can I get excellent performance out of my team members while helping them grow?”  Savvy managers know that doing well on the second part of the last question helps to answer the first.

The best managers ask, “How can we harness employee strengths, interests and passions to create greater value for the firm?”  Systematically linking organizational performance and individual development goals in the search for learning opportunities and better ways to work is a hallmark of organizations where sustainable careers flourish.

 

Succession Planning

Succession planning shouldn’t be used just for executive positions.

Organizations should be developing replacements for anyone whose sudden departure could disrupt the business, a former executive turned consultant told HR professionals on Wednesday at a concurrent session at the SHRM 2018 Annual Conference & Exposition.

Those employees could include sales account managers for top clients or operations managers.

Unfilled and unplanned vacancies cost companies about 50 percent more in lost revenue than the salary for the vacated job itself, according to a 2013 Mercer study.

“Succession planning protects the business from unexpected changes that could potentially hurt the business,” she said. It can also increase retention of top performers and drive deeper engagement of managers by “owning” talent development, she said.

Renz offered the following tips:

Start small and build up. Create a proposal including supporting data to show executives how the succession plan will work and how it will benefit the organization. Establish a pilot program; that will allow you to refine the program before it is rolled out to the whole organization, she said.

Make it an organization program, not an HR program. Your action plan should be visible, measurable and shared. Define the goal and the data that will be used in your talent program. Refresh formal data at least once a year. Share progress and challenges with leadership quarterly, she advised.

Assess employees’ competencies. These are the abilities and characteristics that the company identifies as key success factors of roles across the organization. Assess employees also for core values. Assessment tools can help measure competencies and behaviors, not just personality.

Identify “high-potential” employees. Some employers prefer to call those employees being developed for leadership positions the “acceleration pool,” because the term “high potential” can make other employees feel inferior, she said. She recommends labeling them “early career,” “mid-career” and “senior career” so you can plan development that better fits their specific needs.

Develop an action plan using the data collected. The information can help identify gaps and growth needs in your workforce so training programs can better support the development of the acceleration pool.

Create an individual-development action plan for each person in the acceleration pool. You might use a rotational program to help employees meet others in different departments. Pair them with a mentor to encourage knowledge sharing.

The succession plan will not only help you create a plan for recruiting and development, but it should increase retention of top performers with action plans and individual learning opportunities, she said. The action plan should be the foundation to help you decide where and how to spend your time and money.

A simple thank you

Think of the last time someone really thanked you for doing something. Especially if that something was normal to you and you certainly didn’t go out of your way. You felt good and probably wanted to do it better next time. You cannot underestimate the power of a simple thank you. A long and sometimes grueling workday can melt away when staff members know their efforts were appreciated. It’s amazing how the last interaction of the day can become the last thought and make employees look forward to coming in the next day, knowing that their contributions were noticed.

The most effective leaders I know work diligently to thank their people. The validation can come from end of day departures and acknowledging extra effort on the fly, to even just thanking them for doing their normal work, giving input, or being positive throughout the day. These leaders know the value of their people and their basic need of feeling important, the feeling that their top three needs on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (belonging, esteem, and self-actualization) are being met.

Take every opportunity to find reason to thank as often as you can. That presentation didn’t go quite well? Thank them for the time and effort they put in to it anyway. The account dropped out to do business with a competitor? “You did a great job meeting their needs Marcie!” The 2nd shift comes in when your first shift leaves; thank them for working strong during the evening hours. Simple and genuine acknowledgement yields committed people and sustained performance.

Thanking your people for their everyday efforts is a simple and easy way to make a powerful lasting impression in your organization. Make every connection a reason to find and give thanks to your people.

 

Transforming fear in to Empowerment

Do you ever allow fearful thoughts to erode your confidence and diminish your sense of empowerment? It’s a common trend for many people, and when you’re stuck in the midst of fear and uncertainty it can seem like an impossible task to pull yourself out of it.

However, fear and empowerment are actually like two opposite sides of the same coin. On one side is the belief that you are not strong or capable enough to handle challenges or life in general; while on the other side is the certainty that you are fully in control of your own life and have the power to triumph over adversity.

Transforming fear in to empowerment is as simple as flipping the coin so it lands on the other side! The “coin” in this example is a little thing called “perspective.”

In order to release fearful thoughts and become empowered, you need to be willing to see yourself and your life circumstances in a different light.

Many people believe that in order to empower themselves they need to have massive amounts of courage and inner strength, but that usually comes later. Instead, be willing to start small and empower yourself more gradually. Start with one small action that makes you feel nervous and push yourself to move forward and do it. As you face your fear and master one small challenge, you’ll begin to feel stronger and be willing to take on more, which will continue to build your strength and empower you.

Fearful thoughts often cause you to doubt yourself, which creates more fearful thoughts! To reverse this, begin affirming that you’re strong and capable as often as possible – and most especially when you begin to feel disempowered. Affirm not only your strength and capability, but your flexibility, resiliency and resourcefulness to handle anything that comes your way. The more you affirm it, the more you’ll begin to believe it.

See the unknown as a good thing. I know, not always easy.  Fear of the unknown is one major factor in feeling disempowered. You’ve likely gotten used to seeing the “unknown” (anything you have not encountered before) as a bad thing, with dangers and pitfalls waiting around every corner. Most often you don’t even know why you feel fearful, you just believe there is reason to feel that way! However, if you instead shift that perception to one of optimism and enthusiasm for the unknown, you’ll feel less threatened and develop the willingness to do and dare more.

When it comes right down to it, empowerment is usually nothing more than a choice; being willing to believe that you are stronger than any challenge or difficulty that arises. The more you focus on releasing fearful thoughts and strengthening your belief in yourself, the less intimidated you’ll feel by outer influences.

Serious Kindness

The best advice I can give to a new manager is to be kind and caring and make the world a better place for your employees. This does not mean that you should be a pushover or a patsy. You still need to get your work done, be a star performer, etc. but serious kindness gets you serious results.

It’s not always easy to be kind. It’s hard when you have to tell people with no talent for what they are doing that they are in the wrong field or when you have to terminate someone and tell them this will help them find what they are good at. Equally hard is when you have to tell a person who has lots of talent and skill that their co-workers really don’t like them because of their communication style, sarcasm, negativity, oh and let’s not forget “body odor” and that if they don’t improve (correct) they may not succeed in their role.  This is difficult news to pass on, and managers who don’t care ignore the problem or shuffle the person off to a new, unsuspecting manager. A kind boss helps a person find a new path, and sometimes that means termination.

Many times in my role I have to help people see why their current job is not a good fit for them. As a manager, you are a counselor, helping people to see their highest potential be it with you or at another type of position or another type of company.

As a manager you are in a position to make peoples’ lives better. You can give them more interesting work, better coaching, more flexibility, as well as other things that you have always wanted in a job, and you should do that.

But, don’t go overboard. The company comes first. And your job is to be the best for your company. Which is everyone’s job. You get an opportunity to manage people because you are going to make things better for the company. The company wants happy workers, but not at the expense of effective workers.

So here’s another piece of advice for new managers: Success is about balance. A good manager balances the needs of his/her company and the needs of his/her employees, and after that, a good manager uses his/her power over peoples’ lives to make the world a better place.

The cynics of the world will say, “That’s not realistic. I never got that.” But don’t ask yourself if you ever got that. Ask yourself if you ever gave it. It is possible to go through your life doing good deeds and just trusting that they’ll come back to you, in some way. Management is the power to make a difference. Do that, without wondering what you’ll get in return.

One of the hardest things for leaders (and all people, for that matter) to deal with is criticism. We all want to be right, do right and have others consistently agree with and admire us. But every leader who has been around for even a short while knows that criticism is part and parcel of the experience. There is simply no way of avoiding it.

Consider all of history’s greatest leaders. Regardless of their era and role, every person that we would associate with positively changing the course of history was censured during his or her lifetime, often in scathing, relentless terms. It makes no difference whether they were people of great character or not. Nor did it matter if they were on the winning side of the argument or struggle. If they stood for a cause, led a nation or advanced a noteworthy agenda, then they were at times discouraged, condemned and perhaps even physically impeded from achieving their goals and aspirations.

If fact, why would anyone want to assume a leadership position when the potential for constant critique and pushback looms large? Why would anyone want to risk affecting their relationships with friends, colleagues, co-workers and other associates in order to assume a leadership post?

The answer, of course, is that leaders want to make a difference. They recognize that change is not easy for people and that any efforts that demand of others will invariably draw criticism. But they push forward anyway as they deem appropriate, knowing that criticism is simply society’s way of saying that what you’re doing matters and deserves attention.

Of course, there are many things that leaders could and should do to gain support and buy-in, such as building equity, developing a values system, and communicating (and listening) well. Still, there is no leader worth his or her weight in salt that can expect to adequately fulfill their responsibilities without experiencing meaningful criticism and backlash at times.  Change initiatives are in many ways similar. They can be painful at present, affecting staffing levels, roles, reporting, workloads, work processes or similar things. But often these changes are necessary to ensure the long-term health of the organization.  Sure, leaders need to account for what they do, how they do it, and the impact that it may have on their constituents. But they must also possess the courage and drive to advance change that they believe is proper and necessary. The backlash that they will invariably receive is not necessarily the result of anything bad that they did. Quite the contrary — it may, in fact, be the best indicator that they are on the right path and are doing what is necessary to genuinely fulfill their leadership duties.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” ~ Winston S. Churchill

As companies grow, they may outgrow some key employees

So you have an employee or a few employees who have been with you for a long time. He or she has proven to be a great performer over the years. You’ve probably built significant rapport and loyalty with this person or person’s. Unfortunately employees don’t always grow with entrepreneurial companies.  This is one of the hardest lessons to learn as an entrepreneur or new executive.

As companies grow, they tend to outgrow some of their employees. That’s not surprising: it’s hard for fast-growing organizations to provide enough time and development for employees to keep up with ever evolving needs of the organization.

I’ve seen many examples of owners, entrepreneur’s, CEOs starting small businesses or division with 3 to 5 people. One or two people outshines everyone with their commitment, knowledge and execution.  The owner begins trusting an individual because they know the person can be relied upon to get things done.  And typically their strengths are very different from the owner’s core strengths, so the value to the owner is tremendous in growing the business.

As the business begins to grow, however, a different reality sets in.  Expanding into a company with 20, then 30, and then 40 employees may require a different skill set.  The company may need a different type of leader.  The employee who’s great with your 20, 30, or 40-employee Company will not necessarily be the person to run and operate a business with 300 employees.

Often, I think we can recognize this in our gut, but because of the loyalty we’ve built up, we have a hard time determining and actually deciding to take action.  We let the issue fester, then it only gets worse.

The best way to deal with this situation is by addressing it head-on.

As soon as you notice the issue, or have a gut feeling that you might have one, address it with the employee.  Talk with them about how roles change rapidly in a growing company and ask them how they are feeling about how they are keeping up.

You may find the conversation alone heads off the issue.  Perhaps the person simply hasn’t realized that what is required of them has changed.  This will call it out to them.

Perhaps they are truly struggling and don’t know how to deal with the issue themselves.  This will open up the dialogue necessary to help them get past it.

Perhaps they believe they can make the jump.  This will give you the opportunity to discuss expectations and put them squarely on the table.

In most cases, employees who are struggling with this issue are more uncomfortable than you are.  Putting the possibility on the table (in the right way) communicates your respect for them as a person and gives them the opportunity to dispel the myth or be part of the solution.

Discuss alternatives.

After your initial conversation, your hunch should be either quickly dispelled or rapidly confirmed.  Once it is confirmed, it’s time to discuss alternatives.  If the individual recognizes the issue, discuss alternatives.

Perhaps the role has grown large enough that it should be split into two.  Perhaps there is a new role that is more aligned with their skill-set.

Because you have addressed the issue proactively, you do not have a performance issue.  Instead, you have an organizational optimization issue.  Work together to overcome it.

Part ways, respectfully.

Unfortunately, in many cases an employee is unable to recognize that the company has grown beyond their capabilities in a certain role.  Still others recognize it but are unwilling to embrace change.  They want to hold on to the role that they feel is rightfully theirs.

In both of these situations, it is important that you part ways, respectfully.

I have found over and over again that dragging this process out is painful and detrimental to both the individual and the employee.  It is most often a relief to both your organization and the employee if you take swift action.  When you do, remember, this was your go-to employee.  Take care of them.  Offer them a nice package and celebrate their success as they move on to their next challenge.