Grown-Up Leadership blog

I have spent this past winter in the middle of an important life and career transition. So far, it’s an incredible experience.

In my previous career, I had been on a treadmill at full throttle, traveling, attached to my blackberry, working long hours. Then one day, I jumped off the treadmill and just stopped.  It took my body and mind a bit to catch on—for weeks afterward, I was still reaching for my blackberry and thinking about airline schedules.

Although I didn’t realize it, one of the first things I needed to do was rest and be still. This was not an easy step for me. In many ways, it felt easier to jump back on the treadmill.  Instead I found more time to spend on my yoga mat in a quiet, reflective manner. In that space, I became clearer about what I wanted the next stage of my career to look like.

The quiet of the yoga mat helped me let go of knowing what was going to happen and trusted that once I knew what I wanted, it would present itself.   This clarity helped me recognize the right opportunity when it appeared and from that point, everything aligned quickly.  I am grateful for this opportunity for reflection, and thrilled to begin an exciting journey at The Bailey Consulting Group.

And my weekly exercise routine now includes a balance of the treadmill (at a reasonable pace) as well my yoga mat. How could it get any better than that?  AR

Note: Ann joined The Bailey Group as a consultant earlier this month.

I just got back from an agility event with Solar, my four-year-old Aussie Shepherd. We have been doing agility training together since she was 10 weeks old. Participating in agility training and competitions with Solar is one of my favorite things to do.

 
(1st photo courtesy of Great Dane Photos)

As we were driving back from the event in Illinois, I was thinking about how lessons in agility training align so well with lessons of employee engagement. Maybe it’s not fair to compare engaging Solar to engaging employees in the workplace, but here’s where it’s similar:

Agility training isn’t obedience training. It’s not my job as Solar’s trainer to get her to do what I want all the time, but rather to motivate her to WANT to excel when she runs. When she has enthusiasm and drive, she’s going to do well. That’s not about teaching her to respond to my commands, but more about finding out what motivates her and making it a part of her training.

That’s the lesson about employee engagement. Training should be about more than how to follow the rules—it should help employees build a connection to their job, organization or boss. The good news is that we can ASK employees what helps motivate them. For Solar, I had to figure it out, which took awhile.  

Anyone who is engaged in their work is more likely to put forth that extra effort to succeed. You don’t get that without noticing what they want and rewarding them in ways that are meaningful to them. Take the extra time to figure out what motivates those around you. It worked with Solar and me.  BKT

Being a senior executive is a highly stressful, highly visible role that requires being accountable to many different people and groups. The best executives are the ones who can set a strong vision and gain the commitment of others to follow them. This is no small task.

Leading from the top takes a special kind of person with self-confidence, courage, self-knowledge, tremendous energy and the resilience to face and work through challenges and setbacks. It takes exceptional relationship skills, too. You don’t see these characteristics in most job descriptions, or even on a resume, so they don’t get considered often enough when filling these leadership positions.

I encourage those seeking the right people to fill roles in the C-Suite to take a different perspective. (Caution: baseball reference coming in honor of the start of the new season!) In Moneyball, author Michael Lewis writes that maverick Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane succeeded in part because he promoted an alternative to the common scouting practice of looking for players who “looked good in a uniform.” I’ve seen corporate boards with the same problem: they look for good resumes, and give recruiters guidance that focuses on superficial qualities.

As a result, boards and hiring committees end up with candidates who get easily sidetracked from focusing on their vision. These executives run into a variety of predictable challenges:

• They are unable to create effective relationships with other executives and key board  members.
• They face difficulty in building effective leadership teams. Either they don’t truly value teamwork, or they lack the ability to balance the forcefulness required to build a new team with awareness of when to share leadership and give the team opportunities to take ownership of the outcomes.
• They aren’t able to inspire or guide the people who work for them because they don’t have the skills to coach or mentor their individual team members effectively, or perhaps they don’t value their role as coach.

In our work as executive coaches, we work with clients to help them develop the personal maturity, versatility and relationship skills they need to be successful in their roles. I’d be happy to share more information with you on this topic.  LB

While preparing for a recent speaking engagement on “Grown-Up Leadership,” I asked my favorite focus group of one – my son, Stephen, who is five – what he thought it meant to be a grown-up leader.  He looked at me funny and said “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

 So I broke it down for him – what’s a grown-up?  “A grown-up is a fire fighter,” Stephen said.  And what’s a leader?  “A leader is someone who helps people….and they get to be first in line on their birthday.” 

Stephen’s definition is a fairly accurate representation of how many grown-up leaders function.  As grown-ups, we are often in fire-fighting mode, whether in response to an opportunity or crisis situation at work or in reaction to a challenge in other aspects of our lives.  And yet, even at our fire-fighting best, we need to remember that there is also a need to be in fire-prevention mode – to think and act strategically and balance this with tactical execution.

As leaders, we are accountable to achieve results with and through others - - and to help others realize their individual potential and succeed in their endeavors.  So helping people is indeed a significant component of the role of a leader.  In some circumstances I’ve coached leaders who confuse this “helping” role with a “doing it for them” role.  The temptation to do it yourself vs. take the time to guide and coach can be overwhelming, particularly when you are in fire-fighting mode and everything is urgent AND important.  While this may work in the short run, it isn’t sustainable and often leads to burn-out. 

So, I’ll temper Stephen’s definition somewhat – a grown-up leader prevents fires (and fights them when necessary) and helps other people realize their potential in ways that achieve sustainable results.  You can decide if you want to be first in line on your birthday! 

MC

I’ve been in offices where someone introduces me to an administrative assistant saying “He/She’s the one in charge of everything.” They usually aren’t joking!

Leadership is different from management, because anyone in any role can be a leader. Leadership is not about holding a specific position, but about developing self-awareness, adding skills and building relationships with others. The reality is that you can lead from any job title, whether you’re a consultant, intern or president.

People assume that if you have a high enough position you’ll be able to make people do things. But how many of us know managers from our past (or present) who so frustrate those who work for them that they literally hurt productivity? In my book, REAL leaders–people who are dependable, relational, assertive when necessary, and who know how to collaborate with others–can dramatically enhance productivity.

Any employee who brings their full talent and passion to their job, is willing to learn about themselves and try new things, who builds trusting relationships both with people above and below them in the company hierarchy, and believes in their own talents, is developing leadership skills that will serve them well in any position they hold in their career.

So, for example, I can wholeheartedly predict that the administrative assistant with self-belief and self-respect who carries his/herself in a professional manner and seeks such growth will have career successes. Contrast that behavior to the person who says “I’m just an assistant,” doesn’t do more than follow orders, and sometimes is willing to tolerate abuse—it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At The Bailey Consulting Group, we believe that outstanding leaders are mature, versatile, and relational. There are many in ivory towers or C-Suites of companies who have none of those characteristics, and it affects their capacity to lead. But you’ll also find employees on the front line who DO have those characteristics. They will become leaders in life, no matter what positions they hold.  BKT

Welcome to the Grown-Up Leadership Blog. All of us at The Bailey Consulting Group are excited to have this new forum to share our thoughts and insights about leadership, talent management, employee engagement and other workplace issues. We invite you to keep coming back, and always welcome your feedback.

On our part, we pledge to update this space regularly with perspectives on current events, recommended readings, real world issues that come up in our work, and information you can use in your own workplace.

I’ll start with a few thoughts on a highly visible legislative issue here in Minnesota—just last week, our legislature voted to override our governor’s veto of the Transportation bill, which included a gas tax to raise funds for road and bridge construction. (Those of you who are non-Minnesotans no doubt remember last summer’s bridge collapse, which provided much of the urgency for this bill.) By way of background, the override required six Republican legislators to cross the aisle in support for the bill that our Republican Governor Pawlenty opposed.

The aftermath of this veto override has become messy, and runs counter to leadership trends in business. According to the Star Tribune the six “Republicans who voted for the override February 25 were scolded and stripped of leadership jobs in the House of Representatives by their caucus, and are now facing varying degrees of resistance in efforts to get party endorsement for reelection.”

When we address effective leadership development in business, we help our clients create environments that encourage leaders to be themselves, take risks, challenge authority, and articulate their values in order to be creative and solve problems. While everyone must recognize and respect a decision-making process, the command/control approach in the political world is, in this sense, dramatically out of step with the business community.

I read that one dissenting Republican legislator, in clarifying his vote, said “I’m not down here to represent a party. I’m here to represent my people.” Of course he is. Any system that punishes—a strong yet accurate word in this instance—people for sticking to their principles is going to discourage the kind of leadership that makes organizations successful.

- LHB