Breathing Room & Thinking Time
“Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.”
“An admirable exercise, my friend. Continue it.”
- Agatha Christie, Peril at End House
Most leaders become leaders because they are high-performing doers.
But it’s a trap. If you want to make the shift to becoming a high-performing leader, you need to become a high-performing thinker.
The most important goal for any leader is to have a team strong enough to manage themselves - so that you have time to breathe, to think, to look up at other possibilities, to explore new opportunities and challenges - to think about the future moves of your company.
If you’re in fire-fighting mode all the time, and solving problems you’re going to be very busy. And while that’s good for the business today, you’re not really doing strategic leadership.
The challenge is to find a way to carve out, ideally, one or two hours a day – or at least a couple of hours a week – to think about the true future of the business, and move it forward.
When I talked to 50 successful CEOs around the world for a recent book project, one of the things we talked about was strategic thinking time.
One CEO did his greatest thinking while walking the dog, another when he had his weekly strategic planning breakfast with his executive team. Others found thinking time while running or biking with a partner, or swimming laps, or smoking a cigar alone at night.
I do my thinking on airplanes, after working out, when collaborating with others (particularly my coach) and journaling. It feels like my IQ doubles when I sit with a pen and paper to work through a situation.
So, it doesn’t matter where or how - by yourself or with others. You just need more thinking than doing, in a planned fashion.
Delegate Tasks - Including Your Strengths
“But because our organization has grown so much and in so many different ways, the delegation process places responsibility and authority on the shoulders of people you can watch grow, and watch the way they treat others.” - Vince McMahon, Chair and CEO, World Wrestling Entertainment
One of the leaders I worked with recently shared a big epiphany.
Their company had already delegated most of their weaknesses - the things they weren’t good at. But he realized that if they wanted to continue to grow they had to switch gears and delegate tasks that included their strengths.
Think about it. If they are already strong at something, they know what great looks like.
They can quickly, and more easily, understand what’s going on – and know what has to happen next.
And, they can be a great coach or advisor.
CEOs hold on to too much, for too long. At a certain point, they need to delegate everything.
CEOs should have zero operational responsibilities. They need to strengthen their executive team, and focus on strategic opportunities that take the company to greater success in the future.
Joy & Tension Creates a Winning Work Environment
What is great leadership?
- Smarts?
- Charisma?
- Strategic thinking?
- Financial accomplishment?
- Enthusiasm?
Those things can contribute to someone being a great leader, but alone are not enough.
There are many good books on leadership, but my greatest insights about leadership come from the successful CEOs that I get to witness in action – they all have things in common: They create a winning work environment where people grow because they feel good and bad.
Simple isn’t it? Grow talent by making them feel good (winning) and bad (tough lessons).
The best way I can think of this is “Joy and Tension”.
Joy best captures the feeling someone has when they win and/or get recognized for doing something well. Tension is the feeling that some person gets inside when they fail to deliver as expected or believe they disappointed their leader or colleagues.
The highest performing people I see thrive on the combination of joy & tension – they get better & more resilient because the best leaders that I’ve seen have mastered this and it shows in the growth of their team & business.
Let’s break this down…
What if a leader only creates joy & no tension? Well, their people will feel comfortable in their roles and overtime their performance becomes mediocre. It’s not that they are bad people, the environment did not create enough tension to challenge them & fire them up to keep upgrading their abilities. Just think of a race horse that always competes against slower horses…it can slow down & still win…overtime that horse will run more slowly.
On the other side of the equation, imagine a leader that did not create any joy (feeling good) but all tension.
There are some very rare “A” players that can thrive in this kind of environment but not many.
Usually in this situation, performance will wane over time as well because the team will emotionally disengage and say things like “They’re never happy no matter what I do…why bother?”
The problem here is there is nothing on the relational bank account to connect the team to the leader. The idea of the relational bank account is that you make deposits when you create feelings of joy & withdrawals when you create tension.
Just like with a bank account, you can’t withdraw cash that isn’t there! And, if you have a line of credit on that account, you can draw on it but still have to pay interest (joy). If you keep withdrawing without making any payments/deposits, sooner or later the bank will send you to collections – the employee will end the relationship.
The best leaders understand these dynamics & manage their accounts very well.
To be crystal clear, there are many ways of creating joy & tension and the best ones are not always words coming from the CEO or leader’s mouth. The ideal environment is a combination of:
- Communication from the CEO/leader
- Transparency of performance with the team (visible KPIs, Rocks & financial performance as in the Rockefeller Habits)
- Internally knowing when you have performed or not
- 3600 feedback from peers, direct reports & your managers
- Being give more challenging projects & the opportunity to sink or swim
The key here is that high performing people continue to thrive in a work environment where there is joy and tension…they fade where there is not.
Shiny Object Syndrome - A CEOs Friend or Foe?
Let’s talk about shiny objects…those sparkling, distracting, potentially earth-shattering ideas that the idea guru in your company is always having.
CEOs tend to handle these in one of two ways:
- Allow the idea guru to run rampant through the company, corralling resources whenever an idea sparks. This leads to confusion and detours. On the plus side it definitely makes life exciting.
- Contain the idea guru. Keep faithfully to plan, and politely appease (aka relentlessly frustrate) your idea guru by not taking shiny penny ideas seriously.
Neither of these paths will lead you to your greatest success.
I recently met Matt Kuttler at a conference and this is a man who knows how to handle shiny objects syndrome. He’s founded and sold two successful companies and now advises leadership teams.
Matt had a business partner, Dave, who was a consummate idea guy…shiny objects flew left, right and centre. Matt, a pragmatic finance and operations mind, needed a way to capture his partner’s visionary sparks while keeping their team on task.
And so The Shiny Objects List was born. Matt created an Excel spreadsheet specifically for Dave’s new ideas. Whenever lightning struck, Dave added a thought to the list.
Every month the company had a Shiny Objects meeting. The team would review every idea and decide if it would be assigned to someone to replace an existing project.
Matt solved an age-old problem with his Shiny Objects List. He figured out how to keep his team focused without stifling the company visionary.
Bravo.
In my mind, every CEO needs a Shiny Objects List pronto. Just make sure you also commit to the meetings as well, or it’s all for naught.
Is Your Hiring Process More Like a Quick Coffee or Sharing a 7-Day Adventure Together?
The presence of a huge training budget is not evidence that you’re investing in your people. It’s evidence that you failed to hire the right people to begin with.” - Laszlo Bock, SVP, People Operations at Google*
One of the most interesting books I’ve read in the last few months is “Work Rules” by Laszlo Bock. It’s about how Google hires and develops amazing talent.
As you know, it’s extremely hard to get into Harvard University. Statistically, it’s even harder to work at Google. They scrutinize new hires unbelievably because in order to create the best products, they have to hire the best people. In the book, Bock walks through everything Google does to find the best talent, based on data about what works, rather than theories of how to get the best out of people.
Many companies put a moderate amount of time, energy and cost into hiring - and then a lot of money into training to get the best out of them.
While that sounds logical, Google flips the model: they over-invest in hiring, and under-invest in training. When you hire the best of the best, they don’t need a lot of training! A+ players can define ways to grow themselves, and don’t need company programs to make that happen.
It makes a lot of sense.
You’d think talented people are easy to spot, but they are not. Hiring is one of the biggest challenges in business, and many are tricked into hiring those who are not that great. We don’t get to know the person well. We don’t scrutinize enough – and are often fooled and disappointed. If you have typical hiring practices you’ll hire typical people.
But if your hiring practices are phenomenal, you’ll hire phenomenal people.
The root of hiring good people is to really understand their character, and their ability to deliver outstanding results. You can’t tell that from how someone looks, talks, or from reading their resume.
A good way to get to know someone is to talk over lunch (which is what most people do).
A better way is to spend 3-4 hours together - drive somewhere, do an activity, sit on a plane.
The best way? Spend 24 hours together for 7 days. Get in a small car, share meals and spend every waking hour in each other’s company.
Now, this is not a recommended hiring practice: it’s about the need to understand a person more than you normally do.
The impression you get after a 7-day adventure is dramatically different than the one over lunch. Remember, you’ll be spending more than 7 days with them if you hire them – and would want you do that after learning about their soul? About their quirks? Their strengths?
Would you want to do it again?
Now you’re not going to spend 24 hours/7 days a week together, but if you want to understand a person, here are some suggestions I’ve seen work:
- Use a method like Top Grading - it’s like the 7-day approach to understand character and patterns
- Get perspective by speaking to all managers in the candidate’s work history – even if this means reaching back 20 years or talking to their professors
- Give candidates a real project – a real, on-the-job assignment to see how they produce the kind of work they will be doing if they’re hired
- Do personality profiles. A favourite is DISC, which gives you a sense of a person’s natural communications styles and insights.
PS - If you want to learn more about how to get better at hiring the best talent let me know…we have experts who can help you.
*The author of "WORK RULES! Insights from Inside Google to Transform How You Live and Lead", Laszlo Bock leads Google's people function, responsible for attracting, developing, retaining, and delighting "Googlers." During Bock's tenure, Google has been named the Best Company to Work For more than 30 times around the world, and received over 100 awards as an employer of choice.
360 Feedback in the Florida Keys
360 | Circle n.
- A group of people sharing an interest, activity, upbringing, etc.
- A domain or area of activity, interest, or influence
- A circuit
- A process or chain of events or parts that forms a connected whole.
“If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum.” - Peter Maxwell Davies, English composer
Recently, I had a great meeting with a client company, in the Florida Keys (somewhere I’d never been before), at the southern most point of the US – literally about 90 miles away from Cuba.
The really interesting part was the work we did was on the dynamics of the executive team. This is a very successful, fast-growing company not only rapidly growing revenue, but in gross margin and cash as well – which is the ideal way to grow.
As part of the commitment to make the company stronger, we put a lot of energy into continually making the executive team stronger – and this meeting was our annual 360 ritual. Like traditional 360s the team gets feedback from their boss, their peers, and their direct reports. But we do it in a way that is not only simpler, but actually more powerful: we treat 360s as a team activity.
360 feedback as a team exercise
Here’s how it works:
A few weeks in advance of the meeting we gather feedback through seven questions sent to each of the executives: questions about they how live their core values, about their strengths, and ways they can grow stronger as leaders.
At the meeting, we gathered outside in the warm Florida evening after dinner. Each executive received the results of everyone’s feedback, and then were given 30 minutes to go and read it, and come back to the group with three things:
- Any questions or clarification they need, based on the feedback
- What they are going to keep doing - or do more of - to leverage their existing strengths
- What they will start - or stop doing - to grow stronger as a leader.
We then posted the 360 results on the screen, person by person, for everyone to see, to comment on, and to ask questions - and then we talked.
Sometimes the conversations were easy - and sometimes difficult - depending on the feedback, and the person’s comfort level.
It was a very, very long night but incredibly productive because everyone got very good feedback, and everyone committed to what they would - or wouldn’t do - to become stronger as a leader. More than that, people knew and understood what every person was committed to - and how they could be part of helping them get there.
This approach may seem uncomfortable or shocking – and truly, if you don’t have a fairly high level of trust on the team, it can be a terrifying and destructive process. But if you have a reasonable amount of trust on the team, it’s by far the most powerful way to do it.
Let’s face it: our strengths and weaknesses are not that secret – and usually they are fairly obvious – so this process brings them to the forefront, and ultimately creates even more trust, as people are in a better position to help each other win.
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” - Ken Blanchard, Author of The One-Minute Manager
Difficult conversations
Here's an example of a sensitive issue we discussed:
There was a new, highly capable member on the team, who hadn’t gelled well with a number of the team members. When people invited him to events or social activities after work, he always declined because he was dedicated to his family.
What the person hadn’t realized was that these invitations weren’t really social – or optional. They were about creating personal bonds. Without them, he couldn’t be a real part of the team because in this particular company, if you’re not in, you’re out.
A number of comments in this person’s feedback said they wanted him to be a part of their team – but every time he didn’t join them, it came across as if he didn’t want to be part of the family.
Because of the 360 feedback process, the issue got on the table - and he understood how important those invitations are. From that moment, the change was immediate - and lasting.
***
In a perfect world every person would transparently share with their peers, bosses and direct reports about their strengths, and how they might improve. But we’re not always good at it - and that’s why a mechanism like the 360 is critical. Sometimes the tiniest bit of feedback can make a massive difference in helping people to perform better. But if an issue is left too long without being addressed, it can be explosive and leave a lot of damage.
By the way, if you are going to do a 360 session, you need an expert to facilitate the process, or it can be destructive. Please call us if we can help you.