A Surprising Gratitude List For Leaders

If you will be celebrating Thanksgiving this week, there will be a moment when you look around the room, or look around the table, and the list of things you are thankful for will be obvious and apparent. The food, the family and friends around you, and perhaps the football on the TV may all make the list.
In fact those things will make most people's lists, mine included.

Those things are obvious and easy to be grateful for, and while I don't mean to discount that list (at all), I want to offer a different, surprising, and perhaps at first even a controversial list of things that I believe we as leaders might need to be thankful for.
Resistance. I ask groups all the time what they think of when they think of resistance. Their answers are the same - we all think of resistance in a negative light. And yet, what is resistance, but energy, and caring for the subject. After all would you rather have someone be resistant to your idea or change, or apathetic about it? Resistance is energy, and when there is energy there is the chance to learn from and channel that energy in new and productive ways.

I'm grateful for resistance.
Problems. If you are leader you have problems. People problems, process problems, quality problems, delivery problems... you don't want me to go on. My Dad used to say, the problems are why you have a job (and he was right). So at that basic level it might make sense to be grateful for problems, but the deeper meaning matters more here. Problems give us opportunities to improve - they startle our senses and shake us from the status quo. Without problems, the road to improvement would be much harder.
For these reasons and more, I'm grateful for problems.

Mistakes. We've all learned from mistakes. In fact, one of the most powerful ways to learn is through the personal discovery that comes from trial and error. Think about it - someone can tell us about a mistake they made, and we can shake our head, but the learning is more powerful when we felt the burn on our fingers after we touched the hot stove. Why would we worry about mistakes, as long as people are making them in pursuit of a worthy goal? As a leader we must celebrate mistakes, as they are a great way to learn.
I (really am) grateful for mistakes.

"Difficult" People. Wouldn't life be easier if everyone was like me? I mean, I'd never have to try to figure out behaviors I don't understand and things would be smooth as glass. Except this would be a very boring existence. And then I would have to do tasks I don't like and am not very good at. Difficult people aren't really difficult, it is their behaviors that may be difficult. Having people around me who are different than me makes life frustrating at times, but also richer, fuller and much less boring.

I am grateful for the people I can interact with and learn from, even if they might be "difficult" sometimes.
Feedback. It is easy to be grateful for accolades and positive feedback, and I believe as leaders (and humans) we should be grateful for that, and we need to be grateful for the other kind of feedback too. The challenging, critical, stinging feedback may not be what we want to hear, but it may be exactly what we need to hear. It might be hard to be grateful for it in the moment, but you won't have to search your memory very long to find some feedback you resisted or hated at the time, that made a real difference in your life later. Why not reduce the delay and be more grateful for it sooner?
I'm grateful to get feedback that helps me improve.

Perspective. This one might be least surprising or controversial, and with this one, you will be better able to see the rest on this list as blessings in disguise. The older I get and the longer I lead, the more I believe perspective is one of the gifts that helps us succeed as a leader and in life. And I am so grateful that I have that perspective and have lots of opportunities to gain more of it.

Now that I have given you a short list, I urge you to add to it for yourself. Allow yourself a chance to reflect on things that you see as challenges, and look for the value and blessing inside. That change in perspective might be the best gift you could give yourself today, or any day.

Join leaders from around the world as a member of the Remarkable Leadership Learning System. This system includes two complimentary months of that unique system as part of Kevin Eikenberry's Most Remarkable Free Leadership Gift Ever today at http://MostRemarkableFreeLeadershipGiftEver.com.
Kevin Eikenberry is a leadership expert and the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. You can learn more about him and a special offer on his newest book, Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill at a time, at http://RemarkableLeadershipBook.com/bonuses.asp.

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Emotional Intelligence for Today's Leaders Part II: Self-Management

Once you have developed better self-awareness, there is a second skill in developing personal competence: self-management.
Self-management is the ability to express the appropriate emotions at the appropriate time. Self-management is about slowing yourself down so that you can check any inappropriate behaviors and formulate the most appropriate response to the challenging situation.
Self-management strategies fall into two categories: actions to take in the moment so that you do not act on your emotions inappropriately and long-term actions that help you to improve your response to emotionally charged situations.
Let's continue with our example of the email from a collaborator with whom you have been working closely. This individual makes a lot of demands about how a performance is supposed to run and her latest email lays out yet another requirement just when you thought that everything had been agreed upon.
If your first thought in receiving this email is to send back a nasty email or pick up the phone to yell at your collaborator, here are some alternatives that can help to slow you down and manage your emotions more effectively.
EQ Skill #2: Emotional Self-Management: Actions in the Moment
1. Take a deep breath
One of the quickest way to reset your emotions is to pause and take 3 deep breaths. Often, this strategy can clear your mind and get you back on track.
2. Take a break before you react
If you are tempted to send an explosive email, write a draft and save it. If possible, sleep on it and then revise the email. If you do not have 24 hours, take a short break. Leave your workspace or office, take a walk, get a cup of tea or do something else that takes you out of your explosive environment.
3. Focus on what is working, rather than what is broken
When faced with emotionally challenging situations, we are often tempted to focus on what is not working. Change your perspective to focus on the positive aspects of your situation. Look for what is working. Take a moment to reframe your emotional challenge in terms of the opportunities for growth and learning. In addition, focus on what you CAN do instead of what you CAN'T do.
Changing your perspective can help to calm you down and frame the appropriate response.
4. Visualize yourself at success
Visualization is another powerful way to change your thinking and get you in a positive mindset. Visualize yourself being at your best and then imagine how you would handle the situation if you were in fact your best self. Zero in on one characteristic that will power you through this emotionally charged situation and then act accordingly.
5. Change your negative self-talk
Emotionally charged situations can sometimes cause you to doubt yourself and your ability to manage the situation and give rise to negative self-talk. If you have practiced becoming aware of your strong emotions and any corresponding negative thoughts as part of your self-awareness, you will become aware of those thoughts. Make a choice to replace the negative thought with a more empowering thought.
Finally, take responsibility for your part of the situation, instead of blaming others. This too will help to reduce negative self-talk about yourself and others.
6. Talk to someone objective
Instead of reacting right away, make it a point to talk to someone who is not emotionally invested in the situation. This can help you to gain perspective, as well as brainstorm possible solutions.
EQ Skill #2: Emotional Self-Management: Long-term Strategies
To build up your self-management mojo, invest in some long-term strategies that will help you manage your emotions more effectively:
7. Make time every day for problem solving
A great way to clear your mind and practice self-management is to spend 15 minutes day thinking about your decisions and how satisfied you are with the results. Observe situations that you handled well and figure out your process so that you can rely on it the next time a challenge arises. Learn from the situations where you did not feel on top of your game and think about what you would do the next time.
8. Check in with a skilled self-manager
You can also seek out someone who is skilled at managing his or her emotions and see what you can learn from this person. Ask this person for feedback on how well you manage your emotions. Solicit his or her advice on how you can do better.
9. Practice visualizing
Another way to use visualization is to think through the challenge and focus on what in particular seems difficult whether it is the personalities, the lack of resources, the skill level and/or the behaviors. Then, work your way through the difficulties and think about how you would like the situation to run. How do you feel? What are you doing?
You can practice running the difficult scenario in your mind and then use your ideas to turn your situation around the next time it comes up (which in fact is a way to change the situation!)
10. Recharge your body
A long-term strategy that can help you manage strong emotions is to relieve stress by engaging in exercise or other recharging activities like yoga, meditation or a massage. By making it a practice to take time out for physical and mental renewal, you will feel a lot better about emotionally charged situations.
Next time, we will take a look at how to increase the other two elements of EQ: social awareness and relationship management. For now, pick a few of these strategies and start to build your EQ!

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Emotional Intelligence for Today's Leaders Part I: Self-Awareness

Lately, there has been a lot of press about the importance of emotional intelligence for successful entrepreneurs and leaders.

• Recent reports indicate that applicants to Yale's School of Management will be tested on their emotional intelligence.
• An entrepreneur and investor with a Harvard MBA published an article in Forbes magazine about the importance of getting an "emotional education" in addition to a traditional education.
• Daniel Goleman, author of the groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence, posted an article on LinkedIn with 9 different questions to help you evaluate your own emotional intelligence.

So what is emotional intelligence and why should leaders cultivate this skill?
Emotional Intelligence (know as "EQ", as opposed to "IQ") is the ability to recognize and control your emotions and then pick up on the emotions of those with whom you are interacting in order to influence and work effectively with them. It's the ability to express the appropriate emotions at the appropriate time.
This psychological model was introduced in 1990 by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer and popularized by science writer Daniel Goleman in his groundbreaking work, Emotional Intelligence (1995). Emotional Intelligence has been called " a revolutionary, paradigm-shattering idea" (Harvard Business Review) since it is strongly correlated with success.
Having high EQ is the way to get buy-in from the people with whom you are dealing and get them to listen, be engaged and inspired to follow your lead. Research has shown that having high EQ is a better indicator of success than having a high IQ. That is why it is such an important leadership skill The great thing about EQ is that it is a skill set that you can develop to make you a more effective leader. Let's take a closer look.
EQ involves four underlying sets of skills, two having to do with your own emotions and two having to do with the emotions of those around you:
YOU or Personal Competence:
1. SELF-AWARENESS: You are aware of your own emotions; and
2. SELF-MANAGEMENT: you effectively manage your emotions.
OTHERS or Social Competence:
3. SOCIAL AWARENESS: You are able to sense the emotions of and empathize with those around you; and
4. RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT; you know how to interact with, influence and work effectively with other people.
EQ in Practice
Here is how EQ works.
Suppose that you are working closely with a collaborator who makes a lot of demands about how a performance or a presentation is supposed to run. You have just received an email from this person in which she has yet another requirement when you thought that everything had been agreed upon.
What would your first impulse be upon receiving this email?
Rather than stewing over this email and sending an explosive response, people with high EQ slow down before reacting. So let's learn some concrete strategies that will enable you to develop high EQ so that you can be on top of your game and know how to use and express your emotions in order to elicit the best possible results.
It starts with the first of two elements of EQ involving you: Self-Awareness.
EQ Skill #1: Emotional Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is your ability to perceive your own emotions accurately in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations. Self-awareness also means that you are able to assess the impact of your emotions on those around you. Self-awareness is the first step in developing high EQ because it helps to make sense of your emotions in the moment so that you can formulate the appropriate response.
4 Strategies to Improve Your Self-Awareness
Here are some strategies that you can use to improve your self-awareness.
1. Notice Your Feelings
In order to become aware of your feelings, it helps to be able to label those emotions. One simple model involves 5 core emotions, with a range of intensity from high to medium to low:

• Happiness (elation to cheerfulness to feeling mellow and content)
• Sadness (depressed, somber, disappointed)
• Anger (furious, agitated, irritated)
• Fear (terrified, upset, worried)
• Shame (remorseful, guilty, bashful)

How do you feel about the email from your collaborator?
A good way to develop self-awareness is to notice yourself when you are under stress since this is when you are likely to experience strong emotions. Start labeling those feelings. Notice any uncomfortable body symptoms. Pay attention to your behavior under stress. And keep track of the negative thoughts that accompany these strong emotions.
In order to develop self-awareness, keep track of your emotions and thoughts, as well as the situations or people that trigger strong emotions. You can do this by sending yourself a text message or an email, writing a post-it note or writing things down in a journal.
2. Accept your feelings
If this email has evoked strong emotions on your part, how do you feel about that?
A lot of people judge their feelings as good or bad. People with high EQ accept their emotions because your emotions give you important clues as to what is going on. For example, if you are angry, something has triggered you. If you are sad, something important may be missing. And of course, if you are happy, pay attention to what is working.
Moreover, by refraining from labeling your emotions and by allowing your emotions to surface, they will run their course and you can move on.
3. Be aware of the impact of your emotions on others
What do you feel like doing in the situation when you receive an email that might cause you to lose it?
Self-awareness also involves observing how your emotions affect others. For example, if you blow up at your fellow collaborator, that behavior will have an effect on the other person as well as everyone else who is present and those people will also be affected, perhaps with a pit their stomachs waiting for you to lash out at them. Over the long run, this will make it harder for people to trust you.
So spend some time reflecting on how your behavior is affecting others. Journaling about such experiences can help you to spot an unhelpful behavior and learn how to control it.
4. Check in with trusted mentor or friends
A great way to gain self-awareness is to solicit feedback from trusted friends, family members, colleagues or mentors about your behavior. This is especially helpful since we may have a hard time assessing the impact of our behavior on others. Ask for specific examples and situations and be sure to look for patterns. Yes this takes a lot of courage and by doing so, you are showing yourself and those around you that you are committed to being a trusted colleague and a valuable contributor and leader.

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Leadership Development Skills: 3 Keys to Giving Constructive Feedback That Empowers

One day as I was doing some industry reading on leadership development, I came across a couple of statistics that stuck out to me about how ineffective many managers were when communicating with their team members, ie:

According to one Hay Group survey, approximately one-third of employees report that their managers don't effectively communicate the organization's overall goals and objectives to them. And, more than 40% said that they don't receive "clear" and regular feedback from their managers on how well they perform their duties.

These stats stuck out to me, mainly because one of the main traits of an effective leader is that they empower people. But if you're not giving constructive, clear feedback, how can you build the skills and confidence of your team members?
Following are three things you should do to ensure that not only is the feedback you give constructive and empowering for your team members, but that it's insightful for you.
1. Turn the floor over to the employee. Oftentimes, when managers evaluate team members, it turns out to be a mostly one-way conversation. The manager will give their insights on the employee's performance, with very little input from the employee.
To turn this around, make your role as a manager a secondary one and do less of the talking and more of the listening. To facilitate this, ask open-ended questions - not ones that require a simple yes or no answer. This will go a long way towards encouraging the employee to open up.
2. Make them comfortable. Sometimes, subordinates don't open up to managers because they don't feel comfortable doing so. They may fear reprisal on some level and/or are just uncomfortable being open with higher-ups.
One of the traits of effective leaders is that they foster an environment where team members feel free to be open and honest. So make the employee comfortable. Ensure them that you're there to help them learn and grow professionally and that it's impossible to do this without honesty.
Just FYI, making an employee comfortable happens long before they ever step into your office for an "employee evaluation;" it should be an ongoing part of your management style.
3. Gain insight into how effective your communication skills are. One of the things that stood out to me about this study is just how many employees (33%) reported that their managers don't effectively communicate with them.
I thought, "Surely if a manager was aware of this, they'd want to change it."
One of the best ways to improve your communication skills as a leader/manager is to find out where you may be going wrong. And, who better to ask than those you are supposed to be communicating with?
So ask your team members if they're clear about the goals and objectives they're supposed to be working towards. Seek input on what they may be unclear about, and constantly check in (ie, give/get regular feedback) on how things can be improved.
Conclusion
As you can probably deduce, giving constructive feedback to employees is a two-way street. This happens to be true in every harmonious relationship - business is no different.

About the Author: Shari Strong is a success coach and self-development expert. Her program, Success in 4D! Define it, Decide It, Design It, Do, It!(TM), helps corporate professionals combine their strengths with their talents to become super achievers. This is accomplished via her Leveraged Success System, which participants are introduced to during Shari's corporate leadership skills training class. To contact Shari and/or receive a free copy of her first two ebooks on leadership development, go to StrongFreeBook.com.

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Leadership and the Secrets of Motivation

I'm often asked how leaders can better motivate their employees. This simple question covers lots of situations and is often a request for strategies to change another adult's workplace behavior while assuming he/she is resistant or indifferent to making the change.
There can be a lot going on behind employee under performance or disinterest that a manger may interpret as unmotivated performance. Let's go past tips and tricks for motivating employees and look at the role of conflict, standards and accountability, and goals and talent all play a role in enhancing or inhibiting employee motivation.
Control and Conflict: Imagine a group of professionals who regularly put out sloppy, incorrect, misspelled and poorly punctuated documents. A snap judgment could easily conclude that they are unmotivated. Let's take a closer look into this case study and uncover the dynamics behind this symptom of unmotivated performance.
In a CPA firm I worked with, the owner was very meticulous - good for accounting accuracy - bad for motivated, self-directed employees. For example, each month his firm would send out payroll tax letters to client companies that his employees would draft. He insisted on reviewing these for accuracy. Once he was happy with accounting accuracy, he would then review each letter for grammatical and stylistic elements. He'd correct/modify these in red and send them back for revisions. When corrected by his accountants, he'd review them again, make modifications and send them back again, etc. Ironically, the more he sent back letters for improvement the worse the quality got. They regularly sent him incomplete letters with glaring errors causing him to bring out bigger and bigger red pens. This dumbfounded and aggravated him tremendously.
We had to address the conflict between his need for preferential perfection and his employees' need for feelings of autonomy and ownership in their work. We designed a company meeting to bring out both sides of this conflict on the table. We identified the benefit both employees and management got from keeping the conflict going: the employees could absolve themselves of responsibility and enjoy the game of complaining about the boss as the bad guy, while the owner got to feel that he knew more than his employees did justifying his position and authority. Once acknowledged, neither side wanted to keep this game going. We built a new procedure for handling these letters and all written correspondence in the future.
Control was an issue we continued to work on with the owner through coaching sessions in order to expand and sustain this change toward more employee autonomy and internal motivation. Issues quickly faded because the root cause was not one where motivation was lacking - management control resulting in conflict and employee passive aggressive behavior was.
Standards and Accountability: Often when leaders ask about motivation, what they are really saying is, "How do I get someone who doesn't want to do something to do it?" So, let's take a look at the bottom line of accountability. Motivation or not, there are job elements that are not optional. Routine nonperformance deserves exploration before declaration - the conclusion that the employee is unmotivated. This behavior should actually be described as underperformance, which is measurable, rather than as unmotivated, which is an opinion describing the personal dynamic behind the under-performance.
The employee must be alerted to his inadequate performance and be given a chance to correct it with the support of agreed upon action plans built with his manager. Follow up meetings will support either positive recognition if employee changes are being made according to the action plan or progressive consequences if they are not. Consequences will motivate behavior change where disapproving, blaming or generally hostile lectures will not. Use minor consequences early and consistently so both of you can avoid the more severe ones. If despite this, the employee continues to under-perform, he will behave his way out of his job. And while it is never easy to terminate, with the evidence of his broken commitments to manager supported change, a leader will not lose sleep wondering if it's the right decision.
I was working with Marilyn, the Chief Operating Officer of a manufacturing firm of about 75 employees. Her two, second shift supervisors Frankie and John, regularly came to work late, obviously setting a poor example for the rest of their crew. Casual feedback about the need for timeliness had a minor temporary effect but after two or three days they both would return to their routine tardiness. Next came the lectures about the impact of their behavior on the rest of the crew via the example they were setting, same result. Next came Marilyn's emotional outbursts the two endured remorsefully but again, without permanent change.
If you've raised teenagers this progression will sound familiar. Indifference on the part of the offending party escalates the emotional reactivity and loss of control in the authority figure undermining their credibility. Because no effective change occurs and no real consequences are implemented, the guilty party learns their leader is ineffective and all they need do is endure the lecture and nothing much will happen after that. No need to change.
The solution? Apply the 80/20 rule with a calm demeanor and align consequences. Instead of lecturing (her 80), we worked with Marilyn to get the supervisors to describe the problem that gets in the way of their timeliness (their 80). Once identified, she led them to design a solution and then followed up on their implementation of it. Additionally, she let them know that the success of their plan was important because the first step of their progressive discipline system would be implemented if they failed to use it successfully. This increased Frankie and Johnny's ownership of the problem and its solution.
Regular follow-up sessions to positively reinforce Frankie and John's typical early success were used with the dates for subsequent follow-up meetings established at each one. This reinforced that this time the change wasn't optional or would fall off Marilyn's radar screen. Add the follow-up meetings and the minor but real consequences that would be applied if they came in late again and a successful performance change occurred immediately.
Aligning Talent and Goals: Now let's look at motivation from another perspective. Consider that you don't have to motivate a child to eat ice cream. In other words, if the activity is enjoyable, beneficial, or meaningful, there is internal motivation to act. And this internal motivation, once activated, generally becomes self-sustaining. So let's look more carefully at the circumstances on the employees' side that might look like a lack of motivation to the manager. Do we know what the employee enjoys doing (a good indication of talent and therefore, internal motivation and employee success)? Talents are by definition the source of intrinsic motivation. We enjoy working in our talent areas because in them we are naturally good at what we do, find the work to be easy and regularly successful. Is the employee in the right position for his talents to be used and create internal motivation? Does the employee know how his work benefits others in the company, customers, and how it helps the company accomplish its mission and goals?
Gallup research tells us that the ability to link one's individual work to a greater purpose/benefit of the organization produces a happier and smarter employee who will make a better contribution to his organization. Do we know what is meaningful to the employee? In other words do we know why he works beyond putting food on the table? If we can link his/her work to the fulfillment of his dreams, we motivate. Stimulus-Response psychology implies that this is not necessary: all we need do is provide the effective positive and negative reinforcers and we can get anyone to behave as we wish. The difference here is between manipulation/coercion and true motivation, which creates self-sustaining behavior with minimal supervision.
Bill worked in a printing shop of about 100 employees. He was a very successful stripper, no, not that kind. His job in the old days was to physically cut and paste the copy to be printed onto plates that would then be burned and used in the printing process. As technology progressed the company went "computer to plate" eliminating the job of the stripper. Bill's boss Peter was loyal to his employees and so refused to let him go. Bill was given a job at the same pay for sweeping up the shop. Neither was very happy. Peter began to experiment with other positions for Bill and when he said he liked computers, Peter moved him into the graphic design area where he was trained to create the artwork customers needed. Another bomb. Peter asked us to assess Bill's talents and we discovered his like for computers had to do with building them, not using them. So we challenged Peter's loyalty as to its boundaries. Would he be willing to help Bill get his next job outside of the company? Peter was immediately intrigued. He paid for some training for Bill in building computers and then used his contacts to help him get his first job. Bill came back two months later just to thank Peter for helping him find a job he loved. The other employees were of course impressed with the company's commitment to its workers and the work culture of the organization was hugely strengthened.
Summary: A good manager builds relationships that are positive and trustworthy. With these in place, employees are free to give direct feedback if the manager is creating conflicts. Managers are free to clearly state expectations while ensuring employees have a set up for success. Supporting employee success also supports managers holding them accountable to their goals. Finally, positive relationships allow managers to discover their employees' talents and dreams and do what they can to align their work with them. Motivation then, is not a technique that special leaders use to magically transform employee performance. It is the natural result of thoughtful, caring, and committed leadership, which strives to create a win for both the organization and the employee.
Copyright 2008 Rick Piraino

Rick Piraino: Principal, True North Consulting. For thirty years Rick has served as an educator, psychotherapist, and organizational consultant. As an entrepreneur, Rick has built three successful businesses since 1985 including one of Wisconsin's largest complimentary medicine clinics in the '90s. Rick holds both a Bachelors and a Masters Degree in Education and is a certified Covey trainer.
Since 1996 he has been working with organizations from coast to coast to support them in building cultures of excellence through leadership development, supervisor/manager training, work climate assessment, internal customer/supplier cultures, and team building.
He has been published nationally and is the author of Responsibility-based Performance Management (RPM), a performance management training and organizational system. Over the last seven years, RPM has been implemented in education, sales, manufacturing, printing, publishing, financial, and various other service industries.
In all his work, Rick integrates immediately practical skills with the opportunity for leaders to grow as people. He creates those pivotal moments where leaders can integrate skills with self-awareness and integrity.
He brings this principle to all his work: Who we are is how we lead.
Visit his website at http://culturesofexcellence.com

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