http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ en-us 2008-12-11T16:52:21-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/12/open_communications_and_confli.html 4072@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-12-11T16:52:21-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/10/obama_and_mccain_a_study_in_co.html We get it. Presidential debates are organized for the specific purpose of showcasing the differences between the candidates. And it's a great idea. Our system is built on the premise that voters decide who gets elected. (OK, we know how the electoral college works… but just bear with us on this.) Having the candidates speak openly in a forum designed to highlight their differences is a great way to enable voters to gather information and make their judgments. At the same time, aren't you just a little dismayed at some of the antics and behaviors of our candidates? There is no question that John McCain and Barack Obama have conflicting views. Each wants to convince us that his views are better than the other's. The winner becomes arguably the most powerful person on the face of the earth for goodness sake. What won't they do to win? There are many ways to handle conflicts, even between candidates for office. Essentially, there are two broad categories of conflict: constructive and destructive. Constructive conflict enables an examination of differences and disagreements in ways that focus on exploration, dialogue, and curiosity. Most often, constructive conflict results in new ideas and satisfying solutions. Destructive conflict is characterized by blame and criticism. The result is often frayed emotions, indecision, and diminished commitment to outcomes. With these concepts in mind, here are just a few observations from the town hall style debate of Oct. 7. Both candidates spoke frequently about trust. Unfortunately, in their zeal to win, the issue of trust was reduced to a game of showing why you can't trust the other guy. It doesn't matter much who said what. "He voted 24 times to raise your taxes and now he says he's going to reduce taxes." "He supported the failed policies of the current administration for the past eight years and now he wants you to believe he's going to change those policies." The blame game only serves to demonstrate that there is little trust between these two obviously powerful men and their respective parties. At the root of most destructive kinds of conflict lies trust issues. Wouldn't it be amazing for our country if the two candidates could share their differences without criticizing and blaming one another? Is it possible that the two candidates for president could model constructive conflict behavior? Might such behavior actually encourage more trust of our leaders? Open discussion of differences, without blame, provides an opportunity for constructive conflict. That seems like something our country could use these days. Both candidates also seemed to enjoy pointing out their "fundamental differences." If only they could stay focused on the differences rather than each other! Every time we heard the phrase "fundamental difference," we yearned for a true examination of those differences. Unfortunately, the candidates quickly stooped to characterizations of one another as "inexperienced," "rash," "unpredictable," and "irresponsible." We'd rather they have laid out their perspectives clearly and left the analysis, judgment, and any criticisms up to the voters. Constructive conflict focuses on content issues. Destructive conflict focuses on personal issues. Don't we, the voters, deserve more focus on content? One question from the audience provided a glimmer of hope. A woman inquired about the heavy economic burden of taxes and health care. Both Obama, then McCain, addressed the woman with empathy. They used phrases such as, "It's easy to see your frustration," and "I can sense your cynicism." Constructive conflict behavior includes the ability to empathize and understand the perspectives of others. Both candidates demonstrated empathy in their responses. We hope whoever wins the election uses empathy and perspective taking as they maneuver through the many conflicts facing our nation. As the debate ended, Obama and McCain strode to the center of the stage to shake hands (which interestingly never happened as Obama offered his hand but McCain apparently didn't notice), blocking moderator Tom Brokaw's view of the teleprompter. As Brokaw struggled to read his concluding remarks he laughed and motioned for the candidates to move. Obama and McCain, realizing their error, quickly and in perfect synchrony, pivoted away and apologized. Order was restored. In this moment of genuine, human, unintentional misunderstanding and subsequent resolution, we all smiled. Perhaps there is hope. We'll see on Wednesday night. 3872@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-10-15T14:15:32-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/10/isnt_business_ethics_an_oxymor.html 3821@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-10-08T15:56:19-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/09/lazy_teammates_compromise_team_1.html Conflict is a challenge everywhere, in every business. But rarely is it this public. A recent headline in the St. Petersburg Times blared, "Effort issues incite angst." Our hometown team, the Tampa Bay Rays, this year's "Cinderella club" in Major League baseball, has a problem. It's a problem not unlike one of the most common issues faced in workplaces across the country and around the world. One of the key players on the team appears, no check that, is demonstrating, a lack of commitment to the team. In short, rising star centerfielder B.J. Upton has been guilty of one of the cardinal sins in any level of sports: a lack of hustle. He failed to run hard to first base in a recent game. After the game, Ray's manager Joe Maddon met with Upton, discussed the situation, and gained assurances that this would never happen again. About a week later, Upton again failed to run full speed after hitting a ground ball that turned into an inning-ending double play. Maddon pulled Upton from the game, met with him again, and did not allow Upton to play in the next game. Once again, all parties, including Upton, agreed this type of effort was unacceptable. Several games later, Upton hit a line drive off the left field wall. As Upton jogged toward second base, the throw from the outfielder reached the first baseman who tagged Upton from behind for the out. The crowd booed. Upton walked off the field in embarrassment while Maddon and the Rays wondered how they could continue to count on him. The conflict here is not just between Upton and his boss. Upton's behavior has had an impact on the entire team. The climate has been damaged and emotions are running high. What makes this situation so interesting is that the offending behavior was addressed immediately. And not just by the manager. Recent reports from the Rays indicate that several teammates have discussed the situation at length with Upton. And the team met as a whole with Upton apologizing and committing to be there for them as the Rays make their stretch run. We're typically cautious about using too many sports examples and analogies. In this case, however, I believe there is a great lesson to be learned. When conflict arises because of the unsatisfactory work habits of a teammate, the behavior must be addressed swiftly. The integrity of team norms and climate is critical to the motivation of team members and ultimately the performance of the team itself. Handled well, events like this can be a galvanizing force for any team. Handled poorly or ignored, even the best of teams will suffer. Here's hoping the clear, quick steps taken by the Rays will pay off with a championship season. 3634@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-09-10T10:18:00-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/08/managing_your_hot_buttons_1.html Conflict is an inevitable part of most leaders experiences. It can be at the root of some of their best ideas -– or their worst failures. Whether they get good or bad outcomes out of conflict comes mainly from how they respond to it, both emotionally and behaviorally. Numerous books talk about how to handle conflict from a behavioral standpoint. They encourage people to listen carefully to the other person in order to understand his or her perspective. They suggest transforming conflict from an adversarial process to one that involves collaborative problem-solving. When things go wrong, they recommend reaching out to the other person to try to get communications restarted. These are all tools that any of us can use. They’re good ideas which can help people resolve conflicts that result from their different interests, needs, and values. But it’s not that easy to be calm and rational -- or even to remember these rules -- when you are in the midst of exploding. The best approach? Learn how to cool down and slow down when you are faced with conflict and feel your emotions rising. The best news? We can help you do just that. We use an assessment instrument that, among other things, measures people’s hot buttons -- the behaviors in others that tend to upset us and cause us to get angry or otherwise emotionally off balance. (You can try a free version of part of the hot buttons portion of the assessment here. Knowing more about what causes you to get upset when you are faced with conflict can help you figure out why these behaviors upset you and help you adjust your reaction to them. In addition to knowing what triggers your emotions in the first place, there are techniques that can help you cool down when you feel your emotions rising. Traditional approaches include taking deep breaths and thinking about something more pleasant to distract yourself. More refined techniques involve observing or reflecting on your thoughts and feelings. This enables you to detach your sense of self from the negative emotions and thoughts, which effectively causes the emotions to become less intense and then to subside. In spite of our best efforts to cool down, sometimes things begin to spin out of control. If we keep going, we’ll likely react negatively and do something that will escalate the conflict. It’s time to STOP and begin to SLOW things down before taking next steps. Taking a time out will enable you to slow down physiologically and mentally. It effectively gives you another chance at practicing cooling techniques. Once you are able to reach a more balanced emotional state, you will be ready to practice the constructive types of communication behaviors that can help lead to satisfying results to conflict. Some people feel that if they can just keep their feelings inside and use logic in conflict contexts, everything will be all right. Our experience suggests otherwise. Feelings that are suppressed tend to fester and eventually they will leak out in some more destructive manner. This has led us to recommend to our clients that they need to deal with their emotions around conflict or their emotions will eventually deal with them. The choice is yours. Choose wisely. 3544@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ Got Conflict? 2008-08-13T11:54:52-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/08/being_a_leader_means_being_abl_1.html 3480@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-08-06T18:14:44-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/07/why_leaders_should_take_confli_1.html 3364@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ Got Conflict? 2008-07-09T17:39:08-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/06/ethics_can_be_taught_1.html Ethics scandals create a sense of urgency that business must do a better job of promoting ethical behavior. There is a growing suspicion that legal compliance alone is not sufficient to promote responsible practices and to maintain the public trust. In an earlier post, I wrote of the need to develop the moral imagination of entrepreneurs who are our best hope for insightful, innovative solutions to the ethics challenges of today and tomorrow. But how is it possible to develop moral imagination? Some say that ethics can't be taught, at least not past early childhood. Either you have ethics or you don't, goes this line of thinking. Trying to teach ethics is like trying to teach someone how to carry a tune: If a person is tone-deaf, no amount of instruction will help. This view that ethics cannot be taught is refuted by developmental psychology, which shows that people do acquire more sophisticated forms of ethical reasoning as they mature. Learning ethics might be like learning a language: It's easier to learn when young, but everyone can improve their foreign language skills, even later in life. There's a certain kind of wisdom that comes only from experience and ethical reasoning improves with instruction and practice. Compliance training is all about learning rules that prevent business from doing harm. It deals less with the grey area of ethical quandaries and more with basic boundaries that should not be crossed. By comparison, it can be harder to determine the limits of our obligations when we seek to do more than simply stay out of trouble. We are required to do deeper thinking when we are asking how much good we should do in a particular business situation. 3316@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-06-24T13:18:30-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/05/what_you_can_learn_from_barack.html Whether or not you consider yourself to be politically inclined, a smart business leader can learn a lot from the campaign rhetoric being tossed around during election season. What McCain, Obama, and Clinton understand -- or at least their campaign managers understand -- is that policies and procedures, regardless of how sound they might be, do not win over the hearts and minds of voters. People follow those who engage them and connect with them on an emotional level. To do that, candidates are always searching for that special story or photo opportunity that will help them tap into the cultural zeitgeist. But this column is about business leadership and since your employees aren’t voting for management, what does this have to do with you? Everything. The failure of most leadership training is that it is focused on policy -- and policy is dry, sterile, and boring. Many leadership gurus publish works that are so dull they are virtually unreadable. Leadership isn’t a series of steps on how to implement 360-degree feedback or how to create a new mission statement. Leadership is about making employees care. And while your employees may not be voting for you in a literal sense, nobody can lead anyone who isn’t willing to follow. 3196@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-05-20T15:49:54-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/04/the_challenge_of_social_entrep.html Lessons in creative capitalism from the people at Google. Recently Google announced it is setting aside one percent of its profit and equity -- up to $175 million over the next three years -- to “make the world a better place.” At about the same time, Bill Gates gave a highly publicized speech to the World Economic Forum that called for a “creative capitalism” that uses market forces to fight global poverty. These are but two of the most visible examples of a new business strategy called social entrepreneurialism. It is a strategy that every business needs to consider to be relevant to today's complex world. Social entrepreneurs use cutting-edge, innovative business methods to promote positive social change. While profit is still the primary yardstick for assessing business, social entrepreneurs also measure the extent to which business makes a positive impact on society. Traditional nonprofits and citizen groups have been mainly distinguished by their benevolent intent. In contrast, social entrepreneurs stand out by their pragmatic emphasis on getting results. Perhaps once it was enough to want to do good. Now it is necessary to do good in the most effective ways possible. Social entrepreneurs make a difference by applying original business strategies to doing good. 3116@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-04-11T17:00:38-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/01/without_confidence_there_is_no.html Self-confidence is the fundamental basis from which leadership grows. Do you have it? If you've read my column for any length of time, you know that I've covered many varied aspects of leadership -- and hopefully I've helped you get a bigger picture of what it means to be an effective manager. But I've made an egregious omission. There is one particular component of leadership that is so important, so necessary, that without it, leadership cannot exist. That component is confidence. Self-confidence is the fundamental basis from which leadership grows. Trying to teach leadership without first building confidence is like building a house on a foundation of sand. It may have a nice coat of paint, but it is ultimately shaky at best. While the leadership community has focused on passion, communication, and empowerment, they've ignored this most basic element and in the process they have planted these other components of leadership in a bed of quicksand. At the end of the day, leadership is about having the confidence to make decisions. If someone is afraid to make and commit to decisions, all of the communication and empowerment in the world won't make a squat of difference. For example, one former client of mine was so averse to making commitments that she would not give a straight answer without a qualifier. Every attempt to hold her to her word was met with, "well, maybe but I'm not really sure." It wasn't lack of passion or communication that held her back. It was her lack of confidence to commit to her decisions and goals. 3115@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-01-27T16:57:22-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/01/the_moral_imagination_of_entre.html To deal effectively and responsibly with both ongoing and emerging ethics issues, business needs to shift its perspective from reactive compliance to proactive moral imagination. Recent business ethics scandals have created a moral minefield of shifting expectations and growing uncertainty about the responsibilities of business. These scandals have triggered a backlash of stringent laws and standards, most notably the Sarbanes Oxley Act. While we should not minimize the importance of a fair and consistent regulatory framework, the solution to our most important, emerging ethics issues in 2008 will not come from laws alone. What we need from business is a renewed moral imagination that helps us frame the issues in innovative, more helpful ways. What critical issues lie ahead? In 2008 we will continue to see the unfolding of major concerns such as the subprime mortgage financial crisis. Business will step up its response to global warming. Issues of globalization will become even more pressing than before. These issues are as obvious as they are important. And yet, it could well be that the most important issue facing us in 2008 has not yet been anticipated by even the most thoughtful forecasters. When the rate of change is accelerating, it is not surprising that some of the most serious challenges to business ethics seem to come from nowhere. 3114@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-01-24T16:45:50-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2008/01/can_you_admit_you_were_wrong.html When you've lost your credibility, sometimes the only way to get it back is to admit you were wrong. Many leaders believe resolve is an indicator of strength, and so vehemently resist change that they will accuse those who suggest considering alternatives as weak-willed wafflers. In most cases they're right -- leaders do need to show commitment and consistency. Employees value a leader who can stick to his guns. But self-justification and blind faith in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary can quickly push those leaders over the line into arrogance. As much as leaders worry about appearing strong and resolute, it is much more likely that they will err in the direction of looking delusional in their consistency. If you've crossed this line then you are at serious risk of losing all credibility and there is only one way to get it back: Admit you were wrong. While admitting our mistakes may sound simple, our psychological wiring works against us. Cognitive dissonance explains that our minds actively seek out confirming evidence to support our decisions and self-image. For most people, this confirmation bias is so strong that we often end up convincing ourselves of things that sound preposterous to more objective observers. What this means from a practical standpoint is that since you were the one who made the decision, your employees never reach your level of commitment. Therefore if the decision was wrong, your employees will almost always see the folly of your ways before you will. If the gap between when they see it and when you see it is too long, you will lose their faith and confidence. 3113@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2008-01-22T16:36:47-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2007/12/when_doing_nothing_is_the_righ.html Take time out to learn from every experience and apply that learning in the future -- and in your business. The practice of reflection, like many skills that make a leader more effective, doesn't always come naturally. Some people never stop doing long enough to reflect while others spend so much time reflecting, they never start doing. The key is to find balance between these two extremes and put reflection to work for you. While it may sound like some New Age practice, reflection is basically just structuring time to stop what you're doing long enough to assess what's working, what's not and why so that you can adjust future actions in order to achieve a better outcome. In other words, reflection is taking time out to learn from every experience so that you can apply that learning in the future. Look before you leap Human beings are natural problem solvers. We start looking for things to change as soon as we identify a problem. Often labeled as “drive” or “initiative,” this tendency is applauded in many cultures. It's exactly this tendency that makes taking time to reflect so necessary. Without taking this time out, we often find ourselves elbow-deep in solutions before we realize we're working on the wrong problem. Taking time out to reflect first can help to ensure that time, effort and money aren't wasted in the long run. 3112@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2007-12-17T16:29:04-05:00 http://blog.inc.com/leadership/2007/11/growing_sales_through_leadersh.html Instill a natural passion in your sales team to see your profits rise. Can better leadership contribute as much to the bottom line as good sales training? One of the biggest challenges of teaching leadership is how to directly and immediately increase sales and profits. I'm often told, "These leadership ideas sound great in a perfect world, but changing culture seems like a long, tough process. What can I do right now to improve my business?" Since increasing sales is the first and most obvious thing that most business owners look at when they want to grow the bottom line, I looked into what sales trainers were doing and found a gaping hole in conventional teachings. A hole that a good leader can immediately fill that will grow a company's sales and build infinitely more trust with customers. In my work with companies and individuals, the one consistent trait in top- performing salespeople is a strong belief in the product or service that they are selling. If you want to increase your sales without resorting to high-pressure tactics or high stress incentives, simply ask your sales team if they believe they are selling the best product in your industry. If they don't believe that they are selling the best, it is extremely unlikely that they are performing at their highest potential. People naturally sell what they believe in, and while a slick salesman might be able to sell a product that he dislikes, it is extremely difficult to fake enthusiasm for extended periods of time without appearing transparent to clients. Think about it. Could you sell a product that you thought was inferior? Could you sell it well? Or perhaps more importantly, would you want to sell it at all? Many people assume salespeople are motivated by money, and while this is largely true, it's absurd to think they are motivated only by money. Salespeople are still human and while commission bonuses and sales spiffs will probably remain an important part of most sales compensation plans, studies consistently show that financial incentives never have the same lasting impact as an employee who is passionate about his work and it is a simply not possible to be passionate about something that you think is inferior. 2317@http://blog.inc.com/leadership/ 2007-11-23T11:52:50-05:00