lawrenceandco

Get Your Team Making Decisions on Their Own

How skilled are you at helping people become strong, independent leaders?

Are you bombarded by people asking questions, or have a long list of unresolved issues? Learn how to develop strong, independent leaders, and to free your time for your best work.

The funny thing about becoming a leader is that you usually get there because of lots of experience and capability. And when you're in that position, it becomes very common for people to want to ask you questions and for your opinion. And our egos love it. "Hey Kevin, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? What do you think about this? What should I do? What's your advice?" They are music to our ears. Those kinds of questions make us feel great and valued and important.

Unfortunately, as a leader, if you fall into the trap of actually answering them, you're doing a bad job. Our job, as leaders, is to teach people to make their own decisions, to make themselves independent, not dependent; and to help them get stronger on their own without us. If we keep answering their questions, we're keeping them from learning on their own and mastering things themselves.

There's a proverb that you've probably heard a 1000 times in your life, "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." This is what we're talking about with leadership: teaching people how to think for themselves, how to decide for themselves, how to take on responsibility for themselves.

Key point - Require your team to make 90% of the decisions, in their area, on their own.

When you stop being chief problem solver, train people to solve things on their own, sooner or later, they don't need you. And either your ego will love that, or it'll terrify you. Either way, just know this is what helps you to grow, and it's extremely rewarding to watch others grow as well.

You need to work on this:

• If you are bombarded, every day, with people asking your opinion, even though you might like it.
• People ask you the same types of questions over and over again
• You're involved in many small to medium-sized decisions because your team won't make a move without you
• You have a long list of unresolved issues and open debates
• You regularly get stuck handling other people's problems
• The hot potato gets passed to you, and for some reason you think you're supposed to manage it versus handing it back.

One of the key techniques in this chapter is teaching people how to break through the "I don't knows". When someone comes to you with a challenge and you ask them, "Well, what do you think we should do in this case?" or, "How would you solve this on your own?", the most common response is, "I don't know." Interesting, but I found that's actually not the truth. What they're really saying to you is, "I can't come up with a good answer at the moment."

Breaking Through The "I Don't Knows"

So, here's a technique called breaking through the I don't knows that works really well:

Team member: "Hey, I'm not sure what to do here. What do you think?

YOU: "Well, what do you think you should do?"

Team member: "I don't know."

YOU: "Well, take a guess."

Team member: "I don't know."

YOU: "Well, take a wild guess. What is something you could do?"

Team member: "I don't know."

YOU: "Well, what would you do if I wasn't here to help you and you had to decide?"

 

By now, they should be coming up with something. Even if they don't, your response would be, "Well, if your life depended on it, what would you do?" If they still don't know, "Well, if your children's lives depended on it, what would you do?"

And it's starting to get a little bit silly, but you get the point. People almost always know. People are innately intelligent, they're innately creative. Our job is to drag it out of them.

If you go through this sequence it just pushes back and forces them to think, and 95% of the time something great comes out of their mouth.

The truth is they do know. They're either just having a problem accessing it, or they're afraid to say.

Summary

Make people think for themselves, and they'll actually get better at it. If you want to grow, your people have to grow. And unfortunately, often our people don't grow because we're not putting enough of the onus of the thinking on them.

You can stop being Chief Problem Solver quite easily, and train your people to make most of the decisions on their own. If you're worried about them making bad decisions, get them to come to you with recommendations, and run that by you first. No matter what, if you're continually answering trivial, low level questions, there's no way you're going to move ahead to a higher level and odds are, you're holding your people back.

by lawrenceandco

Leverage Business Advisors to Quadruple Your IQ

How effective are you at gaining insights & opinions from true experts in business and in life - and leveraging the value of trusted business advisors to support your strategic and life decisions?

These advisors are people who have done what you are trying to do many times before, in both business and in life.

"Surround yourself only with people who are going to lift you higher." - Oprah Winfrey

I'm really passionate about this because, all too often, I see people take advice from people that they just shouldn't listen to. And if the person isn't a master of the situation that you're trying to solve, or hasn't solved a situation like this many times before, there's likely risk in getting this person's advice. Whether it's a lawyer, an accountant, a personal trainer, a videographer, a coach, a speaker, a consultant, a therapist, it doesn't matter. You don't want to be people's guinea pig.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how mastery comes once you get 10,000 hours of practice. So, when we're looking for advisors, that's who we're looking for: people who already have their 10,000 hours, have made the mistakes, have had the lessons, are beyond the conventional wisdom, are beyond the theoretical learning - who have true wisdom based on their own experiences.

Key point: Have a team of 24 amazing experts literally a text away.

You want to have a whole bunch of amazing people that you can rely on in work, self, and life that you can get hold of right away, to help you solve your most important challenges or leverage your biggest opportunities.

You need to work on this if:

• The full weight of every decision rests solely on your shoulders
• You have doubts about major upcoming strategic decisions
• When you review the list of work, self, and life advisors in the chapter, it's clear you have important missing links
• When you get stuck on a decision, you often don't know whom to call, or it doesn't even occur to you to reach out to someone
• You dislike, don't trust, or hesitate to call your current advisors. That's a pretty bad sign.

If you're a CEO, it's a CEO who's already been there and done that. If you're an executive, it's someone who is already much farther down the journey than you are currently.

No matter what, you want to find someone who is already where you want to be in five or 10 years. These are people that have already climbed the mountain that you're going to climb or built the business that you want to build. These business advisors, who have already been there and done that, are often willing to reach out a helping hand, and give you advice or direction that will accelerate your ability to get there too.

Worksheet

Download the Expert Scorecard and start by listing your current advisors in column one. Notice the areas where you lack experts. These are items for your to-do list.

Find the 14Xers

Who are the people you know that are 14Xers? These are the people in your network who are 14 times ahead of you, or have done what you want to do 14 times. Connecting with these business advisors will make your journey much easier, and ideally more fulfilling too.

by lawrenceandco

Team Building: Developing an "A" Team That Delivers Better Results Than You, Without You

How good are you at team building - developing a team so strong there’s not much you need to do? Learn how to build an A team that delivers better results than you, without you.

It's the dream of most leaders and entrepreneurs to no longer be required by their business. But unfortunately, as things grow, they get so used to being at the center of everything, and always buried, that they get stuck here.

So the question is, "How good are you at building a team so strong there's not much you need to do?"

Here's a quote from Harvey Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire Company, "The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." And I couldn't agree more. Our job as leaders is to lead people to greatness, to lead them in a way where they grow stronger and get better - and better, and better.

And truly, a leader in a Fortune 500 company is not that different than a school teacher of seven-year-old children. It's the same principle: Taking people who have an existing skillset, and trying to have them acquire, at the end of the year, a higher skill set.

As leaders, that's all we're supposed to do – although, sometimes, we get so caught up in the work, we forget we're supposed to grow people.

Key point: Build a team that delivers better results than you, without you.

Better results without your assistance - that is the ultimate success of a leader. You can tell that because, when the leader steps away, the team continues to thrive.

You need to work on this if:

• Your team isn't chock-full of A players.
• You cling to one or more "Toxic A's" because you think the results that they give you are worth the havoc
• Anyone on your team, or anyone on your direct report team is a C player.
• Your interview process consists of a series of 60 to 90-minute interviews with some clever or interesting questions.
• You hire people without test-driving their talents. People are wonderful at telling you how good they are, you need to see them in action first before you hire them.

Team Assessment Exercise

Download the Chapter 10 Team Building Worksheets for exercises that will help you understand and plot your existing team. If you're a CEO, you want to plot your direct reports, as well as their direct reports. Initially, we'll just talk about your direct reports (but generally, as a leader, you should be always focused two layers down.)

Worksheet notes:

• Performance - Low on the left, high on the right.
• Culture Fit - High and low.
• Box A - These are the amazing people that we dream of having on our teams. They absolutely deliver the results, and naturally fit the culture. You trust them, they're easy to work with.
• Box B - These are also wonderful people who you naturally work really well with - they just don't always deliver the goods. You often have to follow up, or hold their hand to get things done. They are great fit, not always great deliverers.
• Box C - These are the people who don’t fit the culture of the company. They're awkward, don't fit well, aren't normally trusted, and don't deliver the results. These people need to find a job in a different company because they're not a culture fit, they shouldn't even be there.
• Toxic A's - These are high performers. They deliver the results, but they're just generally jerks. They don't fit the culture. They are irritating to other people. They drive people nuts. You cringe when you talk to them, or you cringe when you get an email from them. If you're going to be a high-performing leader, the secret is to have a high performing team. And in my mind, there's no room for anyone below the line, and you've got to be an A to stay. So, we're focused on the top right box only.

Now, if you're okay with being mediocre, have lots of people in the different areas, kind of have a well-rounded team. We don't want that. We want high performers, top right box only, maybe a couple of B's. In the companies that I work with, we do not allow people to stay below the line. If they are, we give them chances and opportunities to step up, but they’ll create so much havoc, they've got to go sooner or later. They've just chosen the wrong company to work at.

For more resources, check out Chapter 10 in Your Oxygen Mask First - we get into details about what to do with the A's, the B's, the C's and, of course, the Toxic A's. We've also got some information we share with you about the methodology of Topgrading (a phenomenal approach to hiring), and a few other tools to help you improve the people part of your business.

Summary

Building a team that is so strong that you're almost useless, is an absolutely achievable goal. It might take three to five years. You need to make some really tough people decisions, and/or you may need to invest a whole bunch of time helping your existing team get stronger, or maybe modifying their roles to put them into a place where they can win.

by lawrenceandco

Getting Tough Constructive Feedback

How do you rate at getting honest opinions about your performance as a leader? Learn how to get the truth about your performance, and how you need to improve.

This is kind of counterintuitive because lots of people truly want to hear praise in what they're doing well, but if you talk to high performers - the highest performers - they actually want tough feedback to help them improve.

Unfortunately, their leaders sometimes are uncomfortable giving that feedback, which essentially takes away the opportunities they need to grow and get better.

"I prefer an ugly truth to a pretty lie." - Shakira

And there are many people in the world that would rather have you just tell them pretty lies. I've just found for high performing leaders, that's not the case. Of course, people want to know what they're doing well, but high performers are more interested in how they can improve. And I'm sure that's the case for you.

You know you really need to work on getting constructive feedback if:

• You wonder how effective you are as a leader – you actually don't know, you're unsure.
• You can't name four people who regularly give you uncomfortable but valuable feedback. These people are invaluable.
• You haven't sought opinions on your performance through something formal, like a 360 review in the past two years.
• You wonder what your board, or reports, really thinks of you.
• You haven't received uncomfortable feedback from somebody that works with you, or you work for, in the past six months.

Key point: Tough constructive feedback gives us the data and insights to help us to grow and get better; and often the people around us don't want to tell us what we need to know, because they're trying to be nice. Unfortunately, they're holding us back.

In the chapter, we talk about lots of different things - including 360's and the right way to do them. I believe it's a team event, and there are other techniques you can use to get excellent feedback to help you grow.

One of my favorite tools, and one of the simplest you can use, is called the After Action Review, or Project Review. This is where you sit down with a team at the end of any given project, and just talk about what went well, what didn't, and how you will improve next time.

And amazingly, because the feedback is not about a person - it's about a process or a project - you can see where the leaders involved in the project could be more effective, and it gives you tons of ideas of how to improve in a very nonjudgmental way.

So here are three specific questions that you ask at the end of a project. Part of the process is to ask your team to think about these questions, come prepared to the meeting, and then you discuss;

1. What went well?
2. What did not go well?
3. What did you learn?

And then list three things you do differently next time to improve the process and the outcome of the project.

It's a very simple tool. And because it's done in an open, non-judgmental way, it's easy for everyone to put the truth on the table without formal mechanisms. And as a leader, all you have to do is sit back, listen, and wonder how you could prevent or better manage these situations.

If this is something that you think you need to do, I'd recommend that you make it one of your goals for the Quarter. And if you don't have the tools yet, you can download the Quarterly Planner and other resources here.

Summary

Getting great feedback, although awkward, is the fuel we need to get stronger and grow. You just need to make sure you're getting enough of it.

And don't worry: the people around you, whether at work or in your life, have ideas about how you could be a more effective person. It's just your job to make sure you ask for the feedback.

by lawrenceandco