Sherri's Blog
Over past three years, I have rarely posted a blog without having my daughter read it first. She often points out places where my ideas aren’t clear or where I need additional details – things that seemed obvious to me but weren’t to another reader.
She’s very smart and a very good writer, but there’s more going on here. She’s been working for 7 years; I’ve been working for many times that. She still has “beginner’s mind,” and I don’t.
There is no doubt that wisdom and experience are powerful, but they must be sparked and enlivened by fresh perspectives. Otherwise, we can get stuck in our beliefs and our ways of doing things well beyond their “use by” date.
In the New Year, ask yourself if you are willing to expose your hard-earned beliefs and patterns to scrutiny. If you are:
– Who in your life can provide a different perspective?
– Who can ask you questions that create new thinking?
Beyond this, are you willing to try something completely new, something in which you have little or no experience? Are you willing to risk failing or looking foolish for the upside reward of learning, growing, and, as research has shown, happiness?
As Shunryu Suzuki said in ZEN MIND, BEGINNER’S MIND, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” Wishing you a New Year filled with possibilities!
I work with a manager who believes wholeheartedly in developing her people. She regularly talks with them about their careers and their short- and long-term goals. She provides on-the-job opportunities for them to grow and learn. She’s got a very loyal and happy bunch of employees, but recently she hit a snag. A Software Engineer said he wanted to be a manager. She was surprised for two reasons. First, he’d never mentioned this before, and second, she honestly didn’t think he’d be great manager or enjoy it. She wondered how to handle this skill and aspiration mismatch.
Here are some options we came up with.
• Ask him why he wants to be a manager. What’s his motivation? If it’s money or advancement, is there another path for these?
• Explain the strengths he’ll need and the responsibilities of a manager. Ask him to talk about where he’s demonstrated these strengths and if he’s really interested in these types of responsibilities. Tell him honestly that she hasn’t seen him demonstrate the strengths and suggest that she get informal feedback from people he thinks might have seen it.
• Offer to have him coach a new hire to see how he likes the development side of management.
• Let him shadow her (when it’s appropriate) so he can more fully experience the role.
The manager agreed to try a few of these and then reassess the situation. Above all she wanted to be sure her direct report felt heard, taken seriously, and given the chance to try – all of which is at the heart of successful employee development!
I’m always curious about what experiences have the most impact on leaders – which ones teach them lessons they use for a lifetime. Recently I asked a VP of Sales this question. He didn’t hesitate for a moment. Here’s the story he told me:
When he started with his current company, they gave him a territory to manage that was off the beaten path – one that was small and nowhere near headquarters or a major metropolitan area. It was his first management position, and he was excited. It was his chance to jump in and try all the things he’d learned. Top of his list? Motivating people based on their needs, not his. Being available to listen to their concerns and their ideas. Delegating as much as possible, but keeping in mind their skills and interests.
It was hard work, but it turned out well. By the end of the first year, his territory was among the top 5 in the company.
At that point the CEO took him aside and congratulated him. Then she added, “Frankly, I’m astonished at your success.”
He was more than a little concerned. “I hope it wasn’t because you didn’t think I had it in me.”
“No,” she replied. “Nothing personal. But that territory? It was the dumping ground for sales people who’d failed elsewhere.”
He was shocked. But here’s the lesson he took away. No one told him they were failures so he didn’t treat them that way. And they rose to the occasion.
After sharing this story, he told me “From that point on, I’ve tried to avoid listening to other people’s opinions about my folks. I assume the best, and then I watch the results. I admit it’s not easy doing this, but I certainly try! My motto: Take a fresh perspective. And I encourage those around me to do it too. For me, it’s the path to success!”
My best friend is a wealth of aphorisms – those pithy, perfect phrases that say it all. One of her favorites? “We each need to take our piece of the blame pie.”
In my field, we refer to this as acknowledging your contribution – or part – in a conflict, and, in doing so, moving toward resolution.
The power of this acknowledgement came up recently with a manager I work with. She could not get one of her colleagues, Jim, to collect relevant data on a project in a timely manner. She had shown, described, and explained the rationale for what she needed – over and over with no change! She was getting angry.
I asked her, “So, what’s your contribution to this impasse?”
“Nothing. He just isn’t listening to me!”
When I asked again, she admitted that maybe, in her increasing frustration, she’d stopped listening too and hadn’t asked what was at the root of Jim’s problem.
In this case, as in so many others, once the manager acknowledged her part – pushing her solution without any give and take – and asked what she could do differently, Jim relaxed and shared his real problem. He understood and agreed with what was needed. However, he was having difficulty getting some of the required data from his own boss. He was stymied by how to influence him, and, quite frankly, he didn’t want to admit his failure so he stalled for time. Once this was out in the open, Jim and the manager were able to work together to figure out a solution to the data bottleneck.
Blame shuts down communication. Acknowledging your part in a conflict re-establishes the connection. In my experience, it is one of the most powerful things you can do to move toward resolution.
Recently I was re-reading a chapter of Ram Charan’s “Leadership Pipeline,” and I found this description of coaching:
In a very real sense, coaching is the hands-on art of caring
Around the same time, I came across a study on coaching done a few years back by a well-respected consulting firm. They reported these statistics:
91% of managers either like or love to coach BUT only 43% of employees say they receive an adequate amount of coaching
One implication of this is that more managers say they enjoy coaching than actually do it. I’m sure there are many reasons for this, but one jumps out at me. Maybe managers really do like coaching, but think that “doing it right” takes more time than they have to spend so they don’t do it often enough.
But what if we did just think about coaching as caring? No more. No less. Would this change that 43%?
Take a moment and think about how you express caring to the people in your life. When you care you:
– Listen attentively
– Ask questions with genuine curiosity about what they like and dislike and what’s working and what’s not working in their life.
– Focus totally on them when they need you
– Look out for things they might enjoy and share them
– Watch them in action and tell them what you appreciate
– Seek to understand why something has gone wrong and what would make it better.
I’m sure each of you can add your own ideas to this list. I encourage you to do this and then put these ideas into action. In doing so, you’ll help increase that percentage of employees who feel they get enough coaching. And more importantly, you’ll build a stronger bond between you, your employees, and the organization.