Two Key Concepts For Success as a Middle Manager

When seeking to become a better middle manager or to coach someone into becoming a better middle manager, there are two key concepts to review.

The first is to understand the difference between leadership and management. The best way to do this is to review the following key material by Marcus Buckingham in his delightful book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005. As he writes, “To excel as a manager you must never forget that each of your direct reports is unique and that your chief responsibility is not to eradicate this uniqueness, but rather to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it. The more you perfect this skill, the more effectively you will turn talents into performance.

To excel as a leader requires the opposite skill. You must become adept at calling upon those needs we all share. Our common needs include the need for security, for community, for authority, and for respect, but for you, the leader, the most powerful universal need is our need for clarity. To transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future, you must discipline yourself to describe our joint future vividly and precisely. As your skill at this grows, so will our confidence in you.”

In order to become a better middle manager, the first step is to clarify roles, responsibilities and expectations.  While this sounds easy, it is most often forgotten in the daily rush to just get stuff done. A good executive coach can make a profound difference in helping this process take place. They can ask questions and share insights which build awareness and understanding. So, in review, to understand the difference between management and leadership is vital to long term success in management positions. When we manage well and lead well, we create capacity within the organization at a whole new level.

The other key concept is to recognize the power of building on strengths. As Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Gallup Press, February 2007), noted, “If your manager primarily ignores you, your chances of being actively disengaged are 40%. If your manager primarily focuses on your weaknesses, your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%.  If your manager primarily focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged are 1%.” 

The above numbers related to engagement are stunning. Yet, we as managers and leaders have to recognize that we often get stuck focusing on what is wrong and trying to fix it, rather than building on people’s strengths. While building on strengths takes time, it also results in longer term commitment and success.

Putting the two concepts together is the key to being a successful middle manager. In the beginning, you must recognize the unique talent in each of your direct reports and then to build on these strengths. When we do this, then we will achieve a greater level of engagement and performance by all involved.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

There Is A Difference

Over the decades that I have done this work, I have met many people with many different titles. Some have been goofy and some have been most interesting. As their executive coach and/or consultant, I have had to remind people that a title does not make the person a good leader. A title simply conveys where you sit on the organizational chart and it can imply that you have some positional power.

In the world of leadership, you will learn that you are only a leader if someone is willing to follow you. Once they are willing to place their trust in you, then something very magical happens. And, you have some important choices to make.

The first choice is to consciously choose when to manage and when to lead. For some who are experienced, this is a very unconscious act but for many right now given this economy, they need to wake up and be more conscious of when they are managing and when they are leading.

Now some will argue that there is no difference between management and leadership. It is all an academic exercise. But more experienced people will remind you that there is a huge difference between these two actions. Marcus Buckingham in his excellent book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005, gives the best description about the difference between management and leadership. As he writes:

“To excel as a manager you must never forget that each of your direct reports is unique and that your chief responsibility is not to eradicate this uniqueness, but rather to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it. The more you perfect this skill, the more effectively you will turn talents into performance.

To excel as a leader requires the opposite skill. You must become adept at calling upon those needs we all share. Our common needs include the need for security, for community, for authority, and for respect, but for you, the leader, the most powerful universal need is our need for clarity. To transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future, you must discipline yourself to describe our joint future vividly and precisely. As your skill at this grows, so will our confidence in you.”

Over the last two years, I have spent more and more time during executive coaching sessions sharing these two paragraphs with young leaders and asking them to explore with me what each one means. For those of you who are coaching young leaders, this is an excellent exercise and it always results in a wonderful and in-depth strategic dialogue about key concepts. For those of you who are not being well coached, sit down with someone who you trust and hold this conversation. If you can not find someone who you feel will be helpful, consider investing in some executive coaching outside the organization. I am more than willing to be of assistance.

This week realize there is a difference between management and leadership. Remember that awareness is the first step to improved performance.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

Positioning For the Future Growth - Part #2

Picking up where we left off last Monday, 5-2-11, there are more key steps to positioning an organization for future growth.

First, evaluate your key people and deal with your problem ones. To this day, it continues to surprise me how many leaders are not willing to deal with their problem people. They love to complain about them, but few have the fortitude to actually deal with their problem people.

When they ask me what to do about these people, I always ask them the same questions: Do you have confidence in them? Do you have confidence in the way they make decisions? Do you have confidence in the way they role model? The answer is either “yes” or “no.” A “maybe” is always a “no.” Dion Williams, Executive Director of Systems Unlimited told me he asks one additional question: Do you have confidence in the way they learn? Key people must make decisions, role model and learn. If there is any question in these three areas, then it is time to sit down with an HR professional and discuss how to proceed.

Second, implement more rigorous coaching. Too many times, coaching sessions end up being a waste of time and mostly focused on random gossip or a place where problems are managed up to be fixed. As I politely reminded a CEO earlier this winter, during coaching sessions you need to remember to ask yourself this question: “Who owns the monkey?” A coaching session is not a time for a direct report to transfer ownership of issues or challenges and put it on your back.

Third, better define your cascading messages. At the end of every meeting, ask the simple but powerful question: “What do we want people to remember and share with others after this meeting?” Remember: everything you say will be corrupted when it is cascaded. Therefore, make sure you clearly define the essence of your core message so others share it in a timely and accurate manner.

There are days we get so busy that we forget that people need to be lead and they need to be managed. Right now so many executives are under leading their organizations. They do not describe the future vividly and precisely, and they do create enough clarity about what should be cascaded and when.

Furthermore, we also are experiencing very poor management in many organizations. Let us remember that all leadership without healthy management is a disaster in the making. Successful organizations have both great strategic leadership and exceptional operational management.

This week, if you want to position your organization for the future, consider firing yourself on Friday and then rehiring yourself on Monday. Then, look at everything with fresh eyes. You may be surprised by what you discover.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

The Four Leadership Mistakes We Keep Making - part #1

I have been thinking this morning about a retreat I did recently. When the senior team gathered, we explored three key questions. The first one was “How do we grow the number of people who use our services given the current economy?” Those gathered felt they needed a better tag line. I pointed out how their current strategic plan had encountered entropy, the degradation of motion to non-motion. I also explained that they were not structured for growth, just the maintenance of day to day operations.

The second question was “Where do we want to end up?” While this is an interesting question, I explained to them that a better one given the first questions was the following: “What is our definition of success?” What intrigued me was that none of the senior people around the table had a common definition or understanding of success. By now the CEO was bewildered.

The third question was “How do we start changing our culture to not resist change?” Before I let us dive into this subject, I asked those gathered “What was their culture?” and “What should not change when they grow?” As they explored these interesting questions, not one of the senior team referenced their mission statement. I thought the CEO was going to stroke out because in the pre-meeting to the retreat he told me that the current mission was very important to his team and his company.

There are four mistakes leaders keep making when wanting to initiate change. We will explore two this Monday and two next Monday.

First, many leaders forget that communicating a vision is not teaching people new behaviors. When communicating a vision, we need to review Marcus Buckingham’s insights in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005. As he wrote, “To excel as a leader .... You must become adept at calling upon those needs we all share. Our common needs include the need for security, for community, for authority, and for respect, but for you, the leader, the most powerful universal need is our need for clarity. To transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future, you must discipline yourself to describe our joint future vividly and precisely. As your skill at this grows, so will our confidence in you.”

The key when communicating a vision is to recognize that we must communicate for buy-in and understanding. We are speaking to anxieties, confusion, anger and distrust. We are not speaking as though we are only transferring information. John Kotter in his book, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, Harvard Business School Press, 2002, offers wonderful insights about how to do this important leadership action. Nevertheless, leaders do need to teach people new behaviors and we will explore this in more depth next Monday.

Second, many leaders forget that strategy and short term wins are two very different things. First, strategy is an extensively premeditated, carefully built, long term plan designed to achieve a particular goal. Next, strategy needs to be adaptable by nature due to unforeseen variables rather than presenting a rigid set of instructions or tactics which has the potential to create organizational vulnerability. Finally, the best strategy serves an important function in promoting ongoing evolutionary success.

On the other hand, short term wins, not win, are designed to energize change agents, enlighten the pessimists, defuse the cynics, under mine self-serving resistors, and build momentum. The key is to recognize that short term wins must come early and fast, and, at times, can be cheap and easy. They are visible and meaningful, penetrating emotional defenses by being unambiguous. They also speak to powerful players whose support you need and do not have. For more information, I suggest you read the aforementioned book by John Kotter.

While we develop strategy over time and through robust in-depth dialogue, we also must always create short term wins. We do this through careful planning. Kotter’s on-going research notes that effective short term wins take place between 6-18 months after change has been initiated and meets the above criteria. Kotter’s research results also point out that companies “that experience significant short term wins by 14 - 26 months after the change initiative begins are much more likely to complete the transformation.”

The other key to creating short term wins is the presence of better management. As we know, generating short term wins takes great effort. The problem in achieving them often falls into two categories, either “insufficient management expertise” or “lack of commitment by managers.” Both of these can be improved through in-depth training and effective and regular coaching.

This spring do not think that communicating a vision is teaching new behaviors and that strategy and short term wins are the same thing.

P.S. For those of you who came to the Spring 2011From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable, thank-you so very much for your participation.

For those of you who missed it, you missed a great opportunity to meet and network with wonderful people who did some very in-depth, creative and thoughtful thinking about the challenges before us all.

For those of you who are planning ahead, the Fall 2011 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable will be on September 22 - 23 at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, Coralville, Iowa. Mark the date on your calendars and e-mail me if you are coming. Given what we all experienced last week, I am sure this is going to be a fabulous event.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

The One-Two Punch

Successful organizations have a one-two punch. Others have a one punch. In the world of boxing, having a one-two punch means that the boxer has a combination of two quick blows in rapid succession, e.g. a left jab followed at once by hard blow with the right hand.

In the world of business having a one-two punch means having great leaders and great managers. Many companies have forgotten they need both. From my perspective, we need managers who understand leadership and leaders who understand the importance of management.

Marcus Buckingham in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, Free Press, 2005, explains the difference between managers and leaders in the following manner. “To excel as a manager you must never forget that each of your direct reports is unique and that your chief responsibility is not to eradicate this uniqueness, but rather to arrange roles, responsibilities, and expectations so that you can capitalize upon it. The more you perfect this skill, the more effectively you will turn talents into performance.

To excel as a leader requires the opposite skill. You must become adept at calling upon those needs we all share. Our common needs include the need for security, for community, for authority, and for respect, but for you, the leader, the most powerful universal need is our need for clarity. To transform our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future, you must discipline yourself to describe our joint future vividly and precisely. As your skill at this grows, so will our confidence in you.”

As we turn our sights to 2011 and all of the new challenges and opportunities that it brings, please remember that registration for the 2011 From Vision to Action Leadership Training is this Friday, December 10.

For more information about dates, costs and location, please click on the following link: http://www.chartyourpath.com/VTA-Leadership-Training.html. If you are wanting a strong one-two punch in 2011, then now is the time to sign up your key people and help them to become better managers and leaders.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

Work Your Plan: Implementation vs. Entropy, Order and Complacency - Part # 2

THEME: Fall 2010 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable Report

Monday morning: October 18, 2010

Dear friends,

Some days we get so busy that we forget there is a difference between management and leadership. John Kotter notes that management makes systems, people and technology work well day after day, week after week, and year after year. This includes planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, and problem solving, plus taking complex systems of people and technology and making sure they run efficiently and effectively.

Leadership, on the other hand, notes Kotter, creates the systems that managers manage and changes them in fundamental ways to take advantage of opportunities and to avoid hazards. This includes creating vision and strategy, communicating and setting direction, motivating action, aligning people, plus creating systems that managers can manage and transforming them when needed to allow for growth, evolution, opportunities and hazard avoidance.

When I reflect on what John Kotter wrote, it is clear that mangers maintain systems that work well on a day to day basis. They are trained in order and execution. Yet, we must remember that systems that are working well over time tend toward entropy or the lack of forward momentum plus complacency or the lack of urgency. Therefore, we have to accept the fact that managers are trained to maintain something that will ultimately not work well over time. Furthermore, they are not trained, encouraged or rewarded in any way to constantly improve or change things. Thus, many times we are setting managers up to fail and be frustrated on a regular basis due to the natural tendency of systems to move toward entropy and complacency.

So, what happens when organizations have different amounts of management and leadership? When organizations have high competencies in management and leadership, they’re able to meet challenges today as well as tomorrow. However, most organizations are usually lacking in one or the other. When management exists without leadership, the company is often unable to change. And when leadership exists without management, the company is only as strong as its charismatic leader. Most of the time, organizations are overstaffed with managers, but lack enough leadership to help them deal with constant change. It reminds me of some farm wisdom that I learned many years ago when I first came to Iowa: if you keep doing what you are currently doing, you keep getting what you currently got. To avoid constantly ending up at the place of entropy and complacency, we as leaders and managers need to do some things differently.

First, when building a new system, define the results you are seeking and define the outcomes you will measure that show whether or not you are achieving the desired results. Sounds simple but 9 times out of 10, people do not do take this action. Still, in the process of doing this, watch out for the tyranny of measurement. The standard perspective is that what gets measured, gets done. However, the measurements in some companies are now becoming more important than the results.

Second, it is common for organizational goals and systems to be in conflict. Therefore, it is important to better define your goals and make sure your systems are in alignment with those goals. Be careful along the way and watch out for the tyranny of goals. In this place, having goals is more important than completely them in a thorough manner.

Next, routinely do a system analysis as part of your strategic reviews. Often during this process, we discover that there is no one who is clearly in charge of managing a system. If this is the case, then define who you will hold accountable to meeting expectations related to this system, e.g. quality assurance, but also clarify how he or she can or can not improve the system if entropy and complacency sets in.

This week, recognize that poor leadership or management can cause major problems when dealing with the challenges of entropy and complacency.

Have a fantastic week,

Geery

P.S. Routinely, we, as executives and leaders, have to stand up in front of large and small groups to present new ideas. Some days it is a new vision for the future and other days it is a new strategic plan. Whatever the case, the goal is to develop clarity and ultimately ownership and buy-in across the organization.

However, when leaders present, they also encounter confusing questions, off the wall comments and at times verbal bullets or attacks from people who do not want to change. John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead in their new book, Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea From Getting Shot Down, Harvard Business Review Press, 2010, notes that these attack strategies by naysayers, nitpickers, and handwringers fall into four categories:

- death by delay: endlessly putting off or diverting discussion of an idea until all momentum is lost.

- confusion: presenting so much distracting information that confidence in a proposal dies.

- fear mongering: stirring up irrational anxieties about an idea.

- character assassination: undermining the reputation and credibility of the presenter.

In their new book which opens with a short fictional story, very much like the work of Ken Blanchard and the current, more popular form of Patrick Lencioni, Kotter and Whitehead outline how to respectfully engage with adversaries and how to stand your ground with simple, convincing responses to common questions. Their method outlined in the second half of the book focuses on how to save a new idea and how to rebut twenty-four common attacks.

Overall, this is a good resource for leaders and managers to read and then review before any major presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed the section in the appendix called “how the method helps large-scale change” which is a quick and delightful summary of the Kotter 8 step organizational change model. For those of you who are familiar with the model, this book is critical to step four, communicating for buy-in. Recognizing that “the single biggest mistake that people make when trying to communicate a new vision of change, and strategies for achieving that vision is under-communicating by a great deal,” this book outlines how to avoid that problem and deal with those who want to shut down change at the point of presentation.

If your time is limited and reading a 190 page book is not possible, then I suggest you read an interview of John Kotter by Jeff Kehoe called “How to Save Good Ideas”in the October 2010 Harvard Business Review. It will not give you the depth of the book, but you will get a nice high level overview of some of the key material about why well intentioned and talented people with good ideas often fail when presenting them to large and small groups. Personally, I enjoyed reading the book and the article because I could really get a more complete sense of what Kotter was trying to do in the book and a better understanding of the key points. I particularly enjoyed some of his thoughts in the later part of the article about writing books, story telling and what motivates him to keep studying leadership and change. In short, the book, Buy-in, will be a good addition to your leadership library.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257