Yearly Archives: 2017

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Your direct reports will represent a bell curve. At one tail end of the curve are the people who struggle. Your job is to help them improve. It’s up to you to figure out what is wrong and help them fix it. The solution will be dependent on that individual and their specific needs. Remember that the process of how you try to solve the problem is as important as the work you’re trying to produce. People have to feel good about both, or your plan will fail. The majority of your people will rest under the apex of the bell curve. They will form the backbone of your team. They won’t struggle, but they aren’t superstars either. These folks needs to be treated well with minimal intervention from you. Let them work. They are a self-motivated lot with a good work ethic and you can count on them for the long haul. You rarely see behavior problems in this subset of people, because they are simply too busy doing the job to be bothered with much nonsense.

As the other tail end of the curve are the high performers. These people are a gem and need to be managed differently than any other group. They approach work as a collaborative venture. They take tremendous ownership of their job and their contribution to accomplishing the mission. They generally have a lot of executive level skills, although their actual position in the company may be at a different level. They will treat you more as a business partner than a traditional boss. Cherish that. They are your quintessential team players, who make up for the deficits of the low performers, help stabilize the middle of the pack, and attend to culture just as much as they do to productivity. They are thoughtful observers of people and processes. When they think something can be improved, they will let you know. Cherish that too. Their ability to speak truth to power is invaluable to you. They need you to support what they are trying to accomplish, and then they need you to get out of their way and let them shine. Don’t ever suppress the talents of a high performer. Doing so would be like benching the star quarterback on a football team so that the backup doesn’t feel bad. Do you want to win the game or not? Let people excel when, where, and how they can. You want to keep your high performers happy. Without these people, your personal results will tank. Your middle-of-the-pack performers will not be able to raise the low performer’s results enough to prevent a lot of negative attention from being directed your way for failing to meet organizational objectives.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for your insight as you study your people to determine where they fall under the bell curve. I believe in you!

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As a leader, your goal is to treat people equitably, not equally. For example, if someone is able to produce 20 widgets a day, and someone else is only able to produce 10, and your company’s minimum per day is 10, then both of your workers are meeting the goal. And that’s good enough. If you try to force the 10 widget person to do 20, you’ll overwhelm them to the point of non-functioning. If you restrict the 20 widget person to only 10, you will frustrate and demotivate them. The point is to maximize the abilities of each individual person, while still holding them accountable to minimally acceptable productivity standards. Not everyone can be a superstar. There is no one size fits all approach to people. Every person is unique. One of the most refreshing and endlessly fascinating aspects of leadership is that it doesn’t matter what has worked with anyone else in the past. Each time you gain a new direct report, you have to start all over again and learn how to lead that particular person. That’s why leadership can never truly be mastered. It can definitely be made easier with some of the software that’s out there, like the OKR software you can get from Profit.co, but on a general level leadership is an interpersonal skill.

This is a good time to pause and reflect on why you became a leader. Was it because you have a heart to lead people, teams, and organizations? Or was it just for a bigger paycheck, more prestigious title, and a fancier office? These trappings of leadership are just that: traps. Keep your ego in check and realize that awesome leaders do their best work alongside their team, not perched on some lofty pedestal above them. This can never be said enough: you are not God. So don’t allow the seductive siren call of “having arrived” lead you down a path where as the Bible says, pride indeed goeth before your fall. Even if you got in the leadership business for the wrong reasons, it’s never too late to start a fresh new chapter filled with health, joy, peace, and great results. The choice is entirely up to you.

Until next time, I’ll be praying that you’ll candidly examine your own heart and if necessary, do what’s necessary to clean it up and move forward in a positive direction. You got this!

Welcome back!

As a leader you can make a tremendous impact in a way that no one else can. Bear this responsibility wisely! The joy of leadership is learning about your people, what matters to them, what upsets them, what motivates them, what optimizes their abilities, where their growth needs are, and then guiding them accordingly. You should know those basics about every single one of your direct reports. Every. Single. One. Yep, it’s a lot. That’s the job. Make it fun. Talk to your people and learn what their personal and professional dreams are, and what their life outside the office is like. You’re not looking to pry, you just want to know enough to understand where they are coming from, and why they do (or don’t!) show up for work on a daily basis. You want to know what struggles they may be facing, and what they hope to accomplish with their life as a whole. Remember, you hold the privileged position as one leader, at one point in time, in one chapter in their life. Never hold anyone back. Help them look towards the future, make a plan, and then set them free to run towards it with your support.

Each day you need to recalibrate expectations and interactions with each person. No one gives exactly the same level of performance 100% of the time. You will maximize each person’s contribution to the organization when you help them deliver their best on any given day. If they’re going through a rough time, show some mercy. If they’re on fire with enthusiasm, give them the ball and let them run with it. Most days will be ordinary and in between, so help them establish a steady baseline of performance that allows them to be and give their best.

As the leader, it is part of your job to help your people grow personally and professionally. You are there to serve them, they are not there to serve you. Together, all of you are in the service of the mission of the organization, regardless of whether or not the bottom line is about profits, service, or good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. To serve together effectively, it’s the leader’s responsibility to help people develop lifeskills that are crucial to have in the work environment, if they missed out on learning those skills as a kid or at anytime before they land on your team. For example, if someone didn’t learn how to handle their emotions well in childhood for whatever reason, it is now your job to help them learn how to handle emotions in the work environment. Holding people accountable for making healthy choices at work is a big part of the job. Make it a challenging game rather than an indictment that diminishes them as a person. Growth can be fun, so strive to make it so as much as possible.

It is your responsibility to care enough about the team and protect the work environment by holding people accountable to acceptable standards of behavior. Don’t make or accept excuses. Most people are capable of change. If they don’t have organic issues interfering with their ability to understand and choose new behavior, then they will almost certainly be highly motivated to make the required adjustments in order to keep their job. Leaders do a massive disservice to people when they allow bad behavior to continue. What is unacceptable now will only get worse as it goes uncorrected, and the consequences will get increasingly severe. You never, ever want to be the leader who condoned, facilitated, or allowed wrongdoing that later costs that person their job or worse. When a leader allows someone to think acting up is ok, funny, or cool, they are actually harming that person’s future. As they get away with their nonsense, that person will continue acting up in increasingly emboldened ways, until one day they are out of control and someone else steps in and takes control of the situation. The errant leader will be corrected at that point too, for letting the situation gain a foothold and flourish. Ultimately however, in addition to the professional consequences wayward leaders set their employees up to face, they are also spiritually responsible for the years they delay or hinder someone’s growth as a person by allowing bad behavior to go unchecked. You really don’t want to be the leader sowing those seeds that you will reap later as a harvest of massive regret.

Until next time, I’m praying you’ll examine your own backbone and make the life-changing decision to strengthen it in a healthy way. Love you guys and believe in you!

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There is one more aspect to the importance of trust in the work environment. It is impossible to emphasize this point enough: maintain your objectivity.

Some of the biggest scandals we’ve heard about on the news happened in no small part because a leader trusted someone they shouldn’t have. Otherwise outstanding leaders can unwittingly make the life-altering mistake of trusting someone who is manipulating them for their own purposes. That doesn’t mean that a leader should suspect every seemingly trustworthy person of a malicious intent. What it does mean is fully facing the reality that some people do have ulterior motives or hidden agendas, and they prey on the leader’s general good heartedness to further their own aims. The key to figuring out which person is bringing which motivation to the table, is to use discernment. This brings us back to the key point throughout the awesome leader series: you will never be as powerful and as protected as when you turn over the reins of your life and leadership to the Lord. God will grace you with the spirit of discernment, and as you develop that skill you’ll readily be able to see all but the most elaborate schemes and eventually even those will come to light. Inevitably, no matter the dark corners of someone’s heart or actions, the light will break through and illuminate the truth.

Even if you don’t believe in God, at least don’t be intellectually or emotionally lazy by failing to keep an open mind about what is going on. If you really want to go it alone and figure everything out for yourself because you and God haven’t been on speaking terms for awhile, then do yourself a favor and sharpen your powers of observation and analysis of what is really going on in the work environment you are responsible for. You’ll have some measure of success figuring people out. Resolve not to have any undercurrents of dysfunction, manipulation, or exploitation on your team. Develop the ability to trust your gut instinct about people and situations, especially when it comes to safety issues. As the leader, it is your responsibility to protect the flock – including and especially – from the wolves in sheep’s clothing within.

Blindly trusting anyone is asking to be lied to, manipulated, or exploited. If you hear yourself saying the words “They would never…” you know it’s time to stop and think! What if the unpleasant information you’re hearing is true? Reestablishing your emotional comfort at the expense of the truth reveals you as a weak, ineffective leader with serious issues of your own. Never put your good name on the line by defending someone without first ascertaining the facts for yourself. Depending on the situation, that could be a career ending move. And in today’s litigious climate, you could also bear personal liability or face criminal charges for not properly handling the situation. No friendship is worth the loss of your own livelihood or freedom.

Also keep in mind that just because you worked with someone years ago doesn’t mean you know them now. Unless you have either lived with or spent significant time behind closed doors in a work setting with someone, there are bound to be parts of them that you have never seen. Keep in mind that we’re all human, we all struggle with various things, and unless we’re working intentionally towards becoming better, our weaknesses will inevitably show themselves in the environments in which we spend the most time. It’s easy for people to manufacture an image if the only time it’s tested is on a brief, occasional basis. That is how abusive family members and bosses get away with their nonsense for so long. When in public they pretend to be one way. But the family and the team behind the closed doors knows the real truth. Decide right now that as a leader, you are going to face the ugly fact that sometimes people are not who they pretend to be, sometimes they are mean-spirited (or worse) and  intend harm, and you’ll do whatever it takes to get over any squeamishness you have about conflict, deal with the problems effectively, and protect the team. That. Is. Your. Job.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for God to bless you with discernment so you can see the truth all around you. Love you guys, and believe in you too!!

Welcome back!

Foundational to your success as a leader is your willingness and ability to build trust with your people. First, you must value trust as a fickle commodity that takes diligent effort to earn and is easily shattered by carelessness or ill will. In fact, trust is the only currency that matters. If your people don’t trust you, they won’t talk to you. If they don’t talk to you, you won’t know what’s really going on. A day will come when one of your people makes a mistake, or something bad happens, and you will need to know about it in real time. Your people will not come to you with the news unless you already invested the time and made the effort to build trust with them. If they don’t trust you, you will miss out on important knowledge that can massively blow up in your face later on. Set a goal to build trust with every interaction. This means really listening to your people, especially if they are upset. Don’t take the upset personally. We all have different frustration tolerances and stress thresholds. Don’t get offended, or insulted, or have a weak ego by being too fragile to listen. Don’t retaliate. Hear them out. Work with them to discuss a solution. Don’t try to hurry up and get the conversation over with, or cram your rigid opinion down their throat. They feel how they feel. They think what they think. It is absolutely your job as the leader to be the bigger person and demonstrate respect and caring. It is your job to model problem solving skills, especially under pressure. You’re the one with the authority and the power to solve problems, so man up and get to it!

Your team will be a reflection of you. Do you want them to learn great skills that make the workplace better for everyone, or poor skills that make any tough situation that arises even worse? Remember, your behavior sets the tone and then you get to live with the consequences of that. Why wouldn’t you want good outcomes in every situation you face? You are 100% responsible for being legitimately trustworthy as a person and as a leader.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for you to have fruitful introspection about where you are on the spectrum of trustworthiness.

Welcome back! Good leadership is an active choice. Awesome leadership takes total commitment. Anyone can suck at leadership, and many people do. Don’t be the whiny tyrant who perches on their leadership chair and bellows about how magnificent they are. That reduces you to a caricature of yourself. A version of who you are that can be taken about as seriously as a cartoon. You have not ascended to some lofty station that makes you better than anyone else. You haven’t arrived. You hold one position in one organization for one period of time. Your “leadership” might well be considered a joke in a different organization. The nonsense you are allowed to get away with at one place would get you fired at another. So before you coronate yourself ruler of the universe, remember that a vast legion of leaders has come before you, and even more will come after. This is just a moment in time, so it would be wise for you to keep the magnitude of your self-appointed grandeur in perspective. Make the choice to be a leader who serves rather than trying to force others to serve you. That one decision alone puts you on the path to greatness.

So how do we go about making the commitment to awesomeness? We ground ourselves in the most fundamental bedrock possible: we embrace that we are not God and stop trying to play Him in other people’s lives. Everything else after that is just details and skills we can learn.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for your growth and wisdom!

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