Dear Madeleine,

I thought you might weigh in on an ongoing debate I have with a friend. We met in college, have been working at different companies, and were promoted to management at about the same time.

He believes his direct reports are lazy and will do the bare minimum if he isn’t constantly breathing down their necks. He (a millennial) frequently complains about how entitled Gen Z’ers are. I am having a totally different experience. I see the people on my team as amazingly smart. They go the extra mile and sometimes they work even harder than they need to.

My company provides a lot of training to managers and unlimited access to tons of resources on management and leadership. My buddy’s company provides no training at all. I am pretty sure there is a connection here.

I don’t want to lord it over my friend, but I do think learning basic leadership techniques has helped me to get things off on the right foot and get the best from my people. I am convinced my friend’s negative attitude is part of the problem, but I hesitate to point that out to him. I am finding him less and less fun to hang out with and am getting tired of biting my tongue. I don’t want to become just one more thing he complains about.

He wasn’t always so doom and gloom. Maybe his direct reports really are awful. I just can’t help thinking he at least partially to blame for his predicament. But what do you think?

Biting My Tongue

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Dear Biting My Tongue,

I think I hear a couple of different topics in your letter. The least direct one is “how does this happen?”, another is “do leaders affect workers motivation” and finally, “should I try to influence my friend?”

So—how does this happen? I think your friend’s attitude is the result of a combination of personal outlook, lack of curiosity, and working in an impoverished company culture. Research supports two arguments: a company that invests in its leadership will end up with better leaders, which results in an empowered, motivated workforce; and a company that promotes people because they are solid individual contributors (a standard, if misguided, norm)—without training them to be at least technically proficient managers—is going to end up with, well, people like your friend.

A culture in which people adopt a growth mindset and thrive doesn’t happen by accident. It takes a great deal of intention and relentless work. So the lack of training isn’t your friend’s fault—but neither is there anything keeping him from taking responsibility and seeking help on his own. I would submit that he has been ground down enough to invest in being a victim of circumstances, which, in turn, has contributed to the reality he is experiencing.

Which brings us to your friend’s general outlook. Most likely, your attitude about workers was fairly optimistic to begin with and has been further developed by good training. It is entirely possible that your friend might stick to his original attitude regardless of training opportunities. This difference in your attitudes is beautifully described in the work called Theory X and Theory Y. These contrasting theories, postulated by Douglas McGregor, represent different assumptions about employee motivation. 

Theory X holds that employees dislike work and need strict supervision, while Theory Y assumes that employees are intrinsically motivated and seek responsibility, preferring a more participative approach. Anyone who takes on the responsibility of managing people will either consciously or unconsciously subscribe to one of these theories or the other and will treat their direct reports accordingly.

This is an old pair of theories, and many others have refuted or built on them since this work was first published. I only mention it because you seem to be a student of leadership, and it appears that you and your friend are operating on these exact diametrically opposed theories. You can enjoy a deep dive on this topic here.

You asked my opinion, so here it is: I don’t think anything involving human beings is ever that black or white, because each individual is different and will be motivated by vastly different things. I also know—because research shows it and I have observed evidence over 35 years of managing people—that a leader’s attitude toward their people 100% affects employee engagement.

So is your friend part of the problem? You know it. Is it common sense that if you believe people are untrustworthy, and treat them as if they are, they will know it and won’t even bother trying to prove you wrong? I think so. Your friend has produced a self-fulfilling prophecy and suffers from confirmation bias, which is when humans seek evidence for what they already think is true.

One theory I have been testing for over twenty years is one of Ken Blanchard’s most enduring ideas: everything will go better if we catch each other doing things right. Not that as the person in charge we shouldn’t re-direct when something isn’t right, but that the more we focus on what is working, the greater the chance people will be inclined to repeat the winning behavior. This is true of animals and people. The more we focus on the positive and expect the best from people, the more positive things will come to our attention. I am sure you have been seeing this as you continue to have success with your folks.

Should you try to influence your friend? I appreciate that you are tempted to show your friend the error of his ways, but also that (so far) you have the wisdom not to. My experience is that most people are not willing to change a mindset they have committed to—at least not until the misery they are causing themselves becomes unbearable. And, even then, many aren’t willing.

The more salient point may be hard to hear: you are going to have to either influence your friend or stop hanging out with him. Fond as you may be of your friend, being around him has become a bummer. You can suffer his company or you can tell him the truth: he is no fun, all he does is complain, and you don’t enjoy being around him. He will no doubt be insulted to the core and maybe won’t speak to you again. If, however, he trusts you and has the wherewithal to listen, you can ask him some questions:

• What if there were a way to shift things so that work weren’t such a misery for you?
• Do you really think your people are so different from you? Are you lazy, unmotivated, and entitled?
• Do you remember how much the boomers complained about the millennials? How is Gen Z so different from us, and how might we capitalize on their strengths?

Maybe asking some decent questions—in essence, planting seeds for him to consider—will be just the ticket to get your friend to shift. Maybe not. Not all friendships last forever, and that’s okay.

I hope this provides food for thought.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services as well as a key facilitator of Blanchard’s Leadership Coach Certification course. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I’m a tech founder and have developed a tool called “burnout tracker,” which is embedded into our 1:1 tool. Without going into too much detail, the tracker is able to predict when a support conversation between manager and employee is needed.

Here’s my challenge: What is common sense to me seems to be a foreign language to many of the managers using our tool; for example, that during a support conversation, the leader listens to the direct report and provides help where they can.

Yes, the phrase “support conversation” is a bit vague. But to me, that’s where the gold is. By simply asking “How can I best support you at the moment?” the leader can get the team member to provide insights into what they need. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening.

I think the managers feel ill-equipped to have support conversations. It feels strange to them—they mistakenly believe they need to play the role of therapist. 

So, if the employee says they are burned out, what should the manager do next? My natural response would be to first ask the employee more questions. Sort their answers into two buckets: (1) things I can help with; and (2) things I can’t. Then help with the things I can, empathize with the things I can’t, and find resources that may be able to assist. 

Is there a framework or model I can share that would help managers feel more confident going into a support conversation?

With gratitude,

Burnout Support

P.S. Thank you for your blog. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a huge fan of your work and am a better leader because of you and your insights.

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Dear Burnout Support,

First, thanks for your kind words. They mean the world to me!

Now, to your question. I love the idea of a burnout tracker. If only we humans had a handy gauge on our forearm—like a gas gauge—that could alert us to an empty tank while we still have time to do something about it.

This is a big can of worms, partially because you are right—managers are terrified of conversations about the complexities of being people. It is sad that smart people think they need an advanced degree and a credential to do that. When I taught coaching skills to managers and leaders, I heard the question “Wait, are you telling us we need to be therapists?” a million times.

So the first order of business is to train all of your managers in simply being a human being who can have conversations with other human beings about being a human being. To be fair, this is a big ask in the tech industry, since many who end up working in it would much prefer to not have to interact with humans. Am I biased? Maybe. But this is what being a manager means, so it would be good if managers understand that from the get-go. I know you can’t go back in time, but it’s never too late.

The average manager doesn’t receive manager training until they have been managing for ten years. So you are not alone. Here is a white paper—Core Skills Every Manager Should Master—that outlines the core skills every manager needs as well as the elements that help, or prevent, the building of trust.

Trying to track burnout is also a can of worms because, in my opinion, once symptoms of burnout appear, things are already so far gone that it’s hard to turn them around. It’s best to catch the problem early before it causes real trouble.

Christina Maslach, coauthor of the book The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationship with Their Jobs, says helping people cope with stressors is a good step. But it is far preferable to address the origin of the stressors that cause burnout in the first place. You might check out how she recommends your managers do that.

Finally, I propose that individuals who are feeling chronically overwhelmed, cynical, and hostile about the organization, and also losing faith in their own effectiveness, are probably not going to be willing to make themselves vulnerable to their manager. The manager can ask questions all day long, but if they are hoping their people will spill the beans about what is really going on, that will only happen if the relationship was properly set up at the beginning.

You have to remember that many employees, no matter where they were raised, internalize the story that work is a contact sport. It is a Darwinian fight to the death out there, and only the strong will survive. The age of managers being the agent of a harsh organization is not that far behind us. People need to have evidence that their managers see them, hear them, and have their backs. Managers need to nip the “Hunger Games” story in the bud by seeking to understand their employees’ strengths, development areas, and dreams. They need to do their utmost to tailor the job to the best of each employee and monitor each person carefully to make sure that the job is actually doable for each person.

So, the question “What do you need?” should be asked at every 1:1 meeting. Having a manager ask questions and identify how they can help is best done weekly. Address the small obstacles and blockers early and often, and escalate the large organizational ones before they get out of hand.

Burnout is just a modern word for the despair experienced by humans who are stuck doing jobs that can’t be done. The condition is universal and ancient. The best way to avoid it is to build support into the manager/employee relationship early, and weave in support every step of the way. That way, when people need it the most, they will be much more likely to avail themselves of it.

Your instincts are right on. It is inspiring to know that at least one tech founder out there cares enough to create a tool and ask the question. Keep going!!!

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

You have answered many questions about being a mentor—but as a young person in my first job, I wonder how I can find a mentor. How do I go about it? How do I know if someone is the right mentor for me? Once I find someone willing to mentor me, how do I go about being a good mentee?

Seeking a Mentor

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Dear Seeking a Mentor,

Everyone I know who has a mentor or has had multiple mentors shares a few traits. They are ambitious and goal oriented, are curious about others, can be gregarious, and are comfortable asking for help. The fact that you are asking these questions now is a sign that you are on the right track.

Before you go searching for the right mentor, you will want to be clear on your career goals. They may change, and that’s okay. But in order to enlist support, you need to be able to articulate what you want support for. Whatever your goal is will inform the steps you need to take to reach it—and it is those steps that others can potentially help you with.

Maybe, say, you need to research the kinds of jobs that interest you. Reach out to people who have those jobs. Ask them to share what they like about the job, what they don’t like, and what they wish they had known when they were just starting out. This takes guts, and some people will turn you down. But you may be surprised at how many are eager to share their wisdom with you.

Maybe you need to build a specific skill set. You can ask around to see who is respected and admired for having that skill set. Then you can approach those folks to ask them how they got so good at those specific skills.

Almost everyone loves to be asked for advice—and they really love talking about themselves. Almost everyone will be delighted to spend some time with you answering smart questions. Listen carefully to what they say to ascertain what is important and interesting to them, then shape your questions along those lines.

Make sure you thank anyone who takes the time to speak with you. Take note of what they are interested in and stay in touch by sharing news tidbits, blogs, books, or websites that you think will appeal to them.

As you have conversations with more experienced people, you will eventually find one or two with whom you feel a genuine connection. These are the people you can ask to mentor you. Not everyone you ask will bite—it might not be a good time for them, or they may feel they are mentoring too many people. They will either decline or leave the door open for you to ask again in the future. Eventually, though, someone will be flattered and excited by the idea.

Once you do find someone who is willing to mentor you, you can co-create how you want the relationship to look. Perhaps your new mentor has had successful mentoring relationships and has strong ideas about what works well. Perhaps not. You can agree to start with a design and then tweak as you go. The key is for you to take 100% responsibility for driving the relationship, and for the two of you to have clear agreement. Pay special attention to these areas:

• Agree on a time frame: It is good to commit to a finite period of time. You may both agree to continue once you reach the end of it, but it gives you both an out if one is needed.
• Set specific goals for the time period: They may change, but having goals will give both of you a sense of the impact the mentoring is having.
• Have regular meetings: Start with some kind of regular framework for getting together, either over the phone or in person. You won’t both be able to make every meeting; that’s fine. But if you don’t have a schedule, months can whiz by with no input.
• Review progress: Every month or so, check in on how the partnership is going. Are you getting value? Is the mentor feeling good about everything? I was once completely ghosted by a mentee, and to this day have no idea why. It didn’t feel great.
• Make clear requests: It is okay to ask for what you want, and it is okay for your mentor to say no. They may offer something else or even something better that is easy for them. Be clear, flexible, and patient.
• Prepare: Be ready for your meetings by outlining actions you have taken, results you have produced, obstacles you need help to overcome, and questions that have cropped up since your last meeting. The more you prepare, the more value you will get out of whatever time you are granted. As a bonus, your mentor will feel that you are taking their time seriously and that their investment in you is wise.
• Express gratitude: Find ways to say thank you. A handwritten note or fun card is never bad, antiquated as that idea might be. A small gift of chocolate, a book, gourmet tea, flowers, or bourbon—depending on the tastes of your mentor—is always welcome. Gifts don’t need to be fancy or expensive, they just need to show that you are paying attention and that you have given it a little thought. You might also find ways to acknowledge your mentor to others when appropriate. If you do something your mentor suggested or helped you with and it gets attention from others, you can always give credit where credit is due.

Ken Blanchard wrote a book on this topic with Claire Diaz-Ortiz that will help you: check out One Minute Mentoring.

Best of luck to you.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

My organization instituted a mentoring program a few years ago. We have a cool online system so that prospective mentees can review bios and request people who have signed up to be mentors. I have been chosen by a few people and have really enjoyed being a mentor. 

Our system provides some guidelines to mentors but it isn’t a lot of information, and I have some questions. Our HR person didn’t have many answers for me so I thought I should ask you. 

I notice that you are a coach and I am wondering: what do you think the difference is between coaching and mentoring? What is my responsibility as a mentor? How do I know how much is enough? What is too much? What if I hear something that I think should be reported to my mentee’s boss? That hasn’t happened yet, but I find that it can get pretty personal. What else do I need to know?

Wondering

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Dear Wondering,

What a fun question! Thanks! First, you are a good egg to sign up to mentor. It can be great fun, and you can certainly learn a lot, but it is a service you are providing.

Although I am told that nobody buys or reads books anymore, I still must recommend the one that Ken Blanchard wrote with Claire Diaz-Ortiz (who is staggeringly cool, look her up). It’s called One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work with a Mentor—And Why You’ll Benefit from Being One.

The book is an easy and fun read and will fill in some gaps for you.

A couple of pointers though:

• Establish desired outcomes. The first thing you will want to establish in a mentoring relationship is what the mentee hopes to accomplish by working with a mentor. This will help you to build a road map for the relationship, and to know if you have done a good job at the end.
• Designate a timeline. You will want to establish a time limit for the mentoring relationship as well, not that you can’t choose to carry on when you have reached the finish line, if both parties agree.  But designating a timeline eliminates any discomfort around calling it quits if the goals have been accomplished, or if either party wants to move on.
• Create a partnership agreement. How will you work together? How will you give each other feedback if the need arises? How will you deal with it if you disagree about a course of action?
• Design a structure. You can tweak the agreement as you go but putting form to the function is important. Will you meet in person, on the phone, or on Zoom? How often and for how long? Maybe agree on a midpoint check-in to assess if things are going as well as you’d both like.
• Track progress. It should be the mentee’s job to create a written record of the goals, commitments, accomplishments, and insights gained over the course of the mentoring relationship. It will help you both to recognize the value of your time spent together.
• Let the mentee drive the relationship. This is my opinion, but being a mentor is a service and I don’t think it is up to you to chase after your mentee. If the mentee is not taking the work seriously, you can certainly make that observation. If the mentee is not showing up for meetings, you can ask what is going on. You can also ask if there is anything you have done or said that has turned off the mentee. That is keeping up your end of the bargain, and you can leave it at that.
• Determine the confidentiality parameters. To answer your question, “What if I hear something?”—I am a fan of the “cone of silence,” so that mentees can feel safe to be themselves and share things they aren’t comfortable sharing with anyone else. This demands your commitment to never, ever reveal anything you learn about your mentee unless you have a legal obligation to do so. I am hoping that your organization has provided some guidelines on this; maybe it is buried in the fine print. You may have a duty to escalate anything you hear about:
  • Serious mental health issues like suicidal ideation.
  • Anything that might become a lawsuit. For example, suppose your mentee is suffering from what sounds like a form of harassment. Because you are an agent of the organization, if your mentee can show that he spoke to someone in the organization about the problem and nothing was done—even if he asked you not to do anything—it could blow up in your face.
  • Illegal activity. For example, if your mentee suspects that her boss or a colleague is stealing, sharing trade secrets, or is engaging in other nefarious behaviors.  

I know that these parameters apply to our professional coaches. Of course, your first line of defense will always be to encourage your mentee to escalate to HR or a mental health professional. They may just need your help to distinguish fact from speculation or, worst case, to find the courage to escalate if that is appropriate.

Traditionally, the mentor’s job includes:

• Being a role model: Engaging in distinct activities and displaying behaviors that are role specific.
• Consulting: Sharing information or expertise about the industry, company, or business unit that the mentor believes is relevant to the mentee.
• Brokering: Making introductions to powerful, influential, and otherwise useful individuals in the industry or organization.
• Advocating: Promoting the mentee’s work assignments or career development to help the mentee’s growth and development.
• Championing: Listening to the mentee’s interests, passions, and strengths, and encouraging them to ask for what they need to grow.

Mentors will often find themselves in a coaching conversation. This can happen when a goal is not crystal clear, or when a problem is overwhelmingly complex. In these situations, coaching can be used to create clarity. Coaching is a great tool when the mentor does not have enough expertise to add the most value or give advice. Coaching conversations promote discovery, generate insights, and clarify purposeful action for another. When this kind of thing crops up, listen carefully, reflect back what you are hearing, and ask open ended questions. Here are some classic coaching questions that you might deploy, depending on the situation:

• What is most important right now?
• What is working well/not working the way you’d like?
• What is getting in your way/stopping you?
• What is driving you/sustaining you?
• What are you assuming here?
• What belief might not be serving you?
• What are you resisting?
• What are you allowing/tolerating?
• How have you contributed to this situation?
• How might you change the narrative?
• How are you going to make this decision?
• What question should we be asking right now?

As one recent webinar participant pithily noted, a mentor will answer your questions while a coach will question your answers. Often, it is true that the mentor would rather be the brilliant one with all the answers, while the coach is dedicated to the mentee being the brilliant one. And if the match is made in heaven, you will both be brilliant.

Do these conversations tend to blend together and overlap?  Sure, they do. Ultimately, if you accept that your number one job is to advocate for the mentee’s best self and best interest, you will have to trust yourself and use your good judgment.

I hope your mentoring experience continues to be a positive experience!

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I have had uncanny success in my company. I am extremely competitive and incredibly focused, and I work really hard because I live in fear of disappointing my boss or my customers.

Now my boss wants to put me in charge of a whole region—to open an office with about 75 people reporting to me. I have never managed people before, and my boss is asking me to lead all of these people. I am paralyzed with terror. I don’t even know much about the job. I keep asking my boss for some direction and he seems to expect me to just do it.

What is leadership, really? I generally don’t take things on if I don’t see how I can win, but I either have to step up to this challenge or start looking for another job.

Help!

Paralyzed

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Dear Paralyzed,

Generally, I think there are two kinds of people: people who work their way up to being leaders and people who unwittingly become leaders without thinking much of it. You, clearly, are neither. You are being thrown into the deep end with your eyes wide open. The good news is that you are smart enough to be scared, which is entirely appropriate.

Speaking from experience, I can attest that leading and managing people is thankless, impossible, exhausting, and the most worthwhile challenge there is. It is a little like being a parent in that there is no one who can tell you how to do it. You kind of have to figure it out as you go. Being great at it will depend on your leveraging your superpowers and your strengths and finding ways to manage your weaknesses and human frailties.

Your boss is making a commonplace assumption. He is assuming that because you are a rock star individual contributor, you will be a rock star manager and leader. That is almost never true—and is, frankly, why our company has a thriving business. Anything that isn’t going well in a company is because of leadership. That is one of the few things I know for sure.

Your biggest initial challenge, I suspect, will be shifting from being a star performer to creating, developing and supporting star performers. Until now, your work has been all about you: your drive to compete, ability to focus, and work ethic. You will have to withstand a fair amount of discomfort and practice as you shift to making your work all about others. Who am I kidding? It will be a lot of discomfort. Just getting your head wrapped around that shift will be monumental.

The most important thing you can do right now is, first, breathe and slow down. Then put on your beginner’s mind, adopt a growth mindset, and make a commitment to becoming a student of leadership. This will help you to be patient and kind with yourself and it will keep you engaged over the long haul. And it will be a long haul, my friend, because in rising to this challenge, you are signing up for a lifelong quest.

I looked on Amazon and there are 60,000 books available on leadership and 10,000 on management. My father-in-law, Ken Blanchard, coauthored 65 of them. So I can’t exactly recommend the #1 book you need, but here is what I can do: I can point you to some eBooks and book summaries to get you started.

•  A book summary of Ken’s newest: The Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust
• A book summary of Leading at a Higher Level; Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations
• An Ebook: Taking a Situational Approach to Management
• A white paper: The Leadership-Profit Chain

Once you get into our resources site, you will find a treasure trove of simple—but not simplistic— guidance.

One of the most valuable insights in the Leadership-Profit Chain white paper is the distinction between strategic leadership and operational leadership. This is critical because it gives you a way to think about this massive topic in small bites, so it doesn’t feel like a tidal wave coming at you. It also helps (me, at least) break down the differences between leadership and management; terms most people use interchangeably. Some definitions that might be helpful:

• Strategic Leadership defines the imperatives for everyone in the organization. It is the what that provides the key relationships and metrics needed to ensure all units follow the same strategy. Strategies must then identify the criteria that are the key determinants of behavior. Examples of strategic leadership include vision, culture, and the declaration of strategic imperatives.
• Operational Leadership practices provide the how in the organization. They enable departments and employees to understand how they specifically contribute to organizational success. They are the procedures and policies that clarify how each unit will achieve the overall strategy.

So the act of simply breaking down the job at hand to the what and the how is a good place to start.

People can be both great leaders and poor managers—I’m sure you have seen this. You might even see this in your own boss, who has given you the what with no how. Managers can be very good at creating processes and systems and tracking accountability and compliance without being great leaders. In the end, I think your goal must be to be decent at both leading and managing, because that is what will win you hearts and minds.

Ultimately, leaders are people whom others choose to follow. They are people whom others look to for setting the direction, the stage, and the tone, and for keeping the train on the track and running on time. They have a compelling vision for what is possible that inspires people. They are role models for the behaviors they are looking for in their people—“do as I do,” which is much more motivating than “do as I say.” This is what’s meant by building culture.

Managers make sure their people understand what is expected of them and also have what they need to do a good job: role clarity, time, equipment, access, and opportunity to use their strengths.

When an individual is competent at both leadership and management, it vastly increases the chances their people will have a positive experience at work and will bring their best selves to the task at hand.

Great leaders and managers understand that their job is getting things done with and through others. Consultant Stan Slap, who is brilliant and notoriously irreverent, once said “Most visionary leaders have no patience for bringing people alongside them. If they could get where they need to go by themselves, they absolutely would, and send post card saying, ‘wish you were here.’” It is true. It takes an astonishing amount of care, patience, generosity, and repetition to bring people along with you.

My recommendation is that you do some research and create a scorecard for yourself of all the things you think you can do now, leaving some space to add things as you go along. For someone who is competitive and has a strong drive to win, a scorecard can be comforting.

You may decide you hate leadership. But you may find you were born for it. Either way, you’ll never know until you try, right? And the good news for someone competitive is that there is always room for growth and improvement; always something to work on. I guarantee you will never be bored.

I am excited for you, and wish you well.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I have a couple of questions about networking that I was hoping you could help me with. I am pretty good at walking up to people and networking with them these days. I also message people on LinkedIn asking for chats.

But I struggle to turn network connections into something deeper and more long lasting. For example, how do I ask someone out for lunch so that we can get to know more about each other? How do I turn a professional connection that I just made into a more personal connection?

I read Bob Iger’s book The Ride of a Lifetime and I am a huge fan of the relationship between him and Steve Jobs. Do you have suggestions on how to make network connections like that?

Thanks,

Networking Newbie

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Dear Networking Newbie,

I love this question so much. Thank you! You are asking about something that seems to be a great mystery to most people. Certainly, my own connections on LinkedIn need to hear the answer.

I had to immediately get Bob Iger’s book and read it, so thanks for that, too!

The very short answer is that to develop relationships you have to get extremely interested in people. And it wouldn’t hurt to be interesting yourself. This isn’t as hard as it sounds—all it means is knowing what your interests are and being serious about pursuing them.

Let me explain. Bob Iger and Steve Jobs ended up with an amazing relationship because they respected each other and were interested in a lot of the same things. They ended up finding ways to work together that mutually benefitted both parties, and they helped each other achieve their goals.

Each individual knew who he was, what was important to him, and what was his goals were. So your first step is to decide those things for yourself. Who are you? What do you love? What is important to you? What are your goals? What do you have to share that can benefit others? These are huge questions that will probably take you a little while to answer. Okay—a lifetime, probably. But you can make a good start.

Let’s start with the easiest one, maybe—your goals. When you know what your goals are, you can make an action plan by creating milestones and action steps. Then you can ask people for advice or for specific help.

People love to give advice. (Hello! I love it so much that I write an advice column!) But seriously, they do. Find people who do jobs you want to do, ask them for 15 minutes on the phone, and send them questions you want them to answer. Make the questions interesting and fun, such as: How did you know you wanted to be ______ (fill in the blank)? What is the biggest obstacle you have ever had to overcome? What one thing do wish you had known when you started out? My son did this with heavy hitters in his industry and got tons of takers for calls and three coffee dates.

People also love to help people but they often don’t have a clear way to do so. Having clear goals gives you an opportunity to ask for very specific kinds of help. You may recall in Bob Iger’s book that his dad asked his roommate in the hospital, who was bragging about what a big deal he was at a TV network, if he could get his son a job interview. He sensed that the guy saw himself as a big shot and was eager to show off how true that was. Bob got a job interview, and it was the start of his career in network TV.

Who do you need to meet? Ask your network if anyone knows that person and can make an introduction. What do you want to know more about?  Find people in your network who can teach you something. I was recently at a family reunion and one of my husband’s cousins tracked me down and asked for my salad dressing recipe. I couldn’t have been happier to share, and now we have a bond.

Back when I was an actress, I learned about the power of having a clear goal. I was a member of a great organization called The Actors Information Project, which taught actors to act more like responsible business people. They made us set clear goals beyond just please, God, help me get a job. My goal was to be in a Sondheim musical on Broadway. I told everyone I met that that was my goal. Sure enough, a total stranger I met at a party was a friend of a woman who was casting A Little Night Music. When I said I would die and go to heaven to have a shot at the role of Petra the maid, he agreed it would be a great role for me and said he would be willing to pass on my picture and resume. If I had just said I was an actress looking for work, it wouldn’t have been compelling and he wouldn’t have known how to help me. My agent had also submitted me—but when the casting director got my resume from her friend, I did get an audition (and a call back, not to brag). The whole production was scrapped and I can’t remember why, but you get my point. Also, I kept the guy who helped me in the loop and sent him a thank-you note.

You don’t just want success, you want specific success. That’s how people find a handle on how they can help you. Don’t worry about missing out by being too specific. The specificity gets things going, and then opportunities come that might not be exactly what you wanted—often they are even better.

What do you care about? For example, I connect with people about food and novels, both things I am passionate about. I have buddies online with whom I discuss recipes and the latest book by Geraldine Brooks or Isabel Allende. Whatever it is, find small points of connection on which you can build. On LinkedIn, post questions people are going to want to respond to because they are interested in the topic, such as What is the best book on networking? (I can answer that one—I highly recommend you read everything by the expert on the topic: Keith Ferrazzi. His biggest hit was Never Eat Alone. He will expand on everything I am saying here.) Or What is the worst thing a boss can do to an employee? Or What is your favorite app? Or What is the absolute best hiking boot? Or Does anyone know anyone who works at Patagonia?

I am just throwing out ideas here; you will, of course, have to tailor your questions to your interests. This will help you find people with common interests. You can start conversations online and then maybe move to a phone or Zoom call.

This brings me to more straightforward ideas like either finding Meetup groups of people who love what you love, or starting one yourself. And most cities have actual networking groups where they only accept one person in a given industry or business. The deal is that they all send each other business. That might be more appropriate for someone who is an entrepreneur. There are also lots of Mastermind groups for people who share professional interests—always a great source of real connection.

As you review your connections online, do some research on the people who interest you so it appears that you care about them. Think about what you know that is worth sharing with others, and answer other people’s questions. This will help you find people who might be able to add value to you, as you do the same for them. I find that people who locate me on social media don’t bother doing any research at all and try to sell me things I am not remotely interested in. For example, my job title is Chief Coaching Officer, I have been in the coaching industry for 33 years, and people try to sell me coach training. That is just lazy. But if someone sent me a compelling question about coaching, I might be inclined to respond. (Maybe not, because I just don’t spend enough time on social media, but I suspect that is generational.)

The other thing to think about is staying in close touch with anyone you do meet with whom you have some kind of connection. Send funny memes you think they might like, share book recommendations, or ask for their opinion on the latest Netflix series. Anything that makes sense. I interview high school kids who are applying to my alma mater and I am always a little surprised that none of them bother to stay in touch. They fail to realize that I might be able to make an introduction for them when they are looking for their first job.

A bit of a firehose, I know. But, I did say I loved the question, and I hope this gives you a place to start.

Let me know how it goes!

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

In our new book Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, my coauthor, Randy Conley, and I cover a lot of topics—fifty-two, to be exact. As the subtitle suggests, a primary focus of the book is the area of trust in leadership.

To be truly trustworthy, a leader must first possess a strong sense of self-awareness. Why? Because effective leadership starts on the inside. Before you can hope to lead anyone else, you must know yourself and what you need to be successful.

Self-awareness gives you a special kind of perspective as a leader. When you are grounded in knowledge about yourself, you are mindful of the people, experiences, and values that have made you who you are as a person and as a leader. You are aware of your thoughts, feelings, temperament, and what motivates you. You know how your behavior affects others around you and how to model trusting servant leadership for your team.

Self awareness and trustworthiness go hand in hand. It’s all about leading at a higher level.

We found the best way to describe trustworthiness in leadership was to break it into four qualities leaders can use to define and discuss trust with their people. These four characteristics make up the ABCD Trust Model.

Leaders who are Able demonstrate competence. They know how to produce results and they have the leadership skills necessary to empower and encourage their people to get the job done.

Leaders who are Believable act with integrity. They are honest, fair, ethical, and treat their people with equity. Their values-driven behavior builds trust and creates an environment of psychological safety.

Leaders who are Connected demonstrate care for others. Their focus is on their people’s needs and development. They are good listeners who share information about themselves and seek feedback. 

Leaders who are Dependable honor their commitments and keep their promises. They are accountable for their actions, responsive to others, organized, and consistent.

Along with the ABCD Trust Model, we developed an assessment leaders can use to gauge their own trustworthiness in all four areas. (Find the free assessment here.) Then, to help leaders gain even more self-awareness, we encourage them to have their team members fill out the same assessment to rate the leader’s trustworthiness. What a concept—leaders vulnerable enough to ask their people to assess them as a trustworthy leader!

I liked that idea so much, I asked my work team to fill out the trust assessment with me as the subject. When the responses were tallied, we learned that my ratings on the Able, Believable, and Connected behaviors were excellent! However, my ratings on the Dependable behaviors needed work. The reason? I’ve never heard an idea I didn’t like! In other words, I say “yes” too easily. Despite my good intentions to please people, I often found myself overcommitted—which put pressure on both my team and myself. The strategy we worked out to help my Dependable score was simple. My assistant at the time, Margery Allen, suggested that when I went on business trips and got in conversations with people, I should give them Margery’s business card instead of my own. That way she could screen callers and talk with me about what was realistic for me to say “yes” to. This process worked better for all of us and helped me become more Dependable. Looking back, I now see how that process also helped me with my self-awareness about my strengths and weaknesses in the area of trustworthiness.

It’s never a bad thing when you learn something new about yourself as a leader. You can take a tip from the One Minute Manager: If you find out you are doing something right, give yourself a One Minute Praising. And if you discover you are off track in an area (like I was on Dependable behaviors), give yourself a One Minute Redirect and get back on the right track.

The more self-aware you are, the better you will be able to serve, care for, and lead your people. When people believe their leader has their best interests at heart and is there to support them in achieving their goals, trust grows by leaps and bounds. Today more than ever, people long to follow a trustworthy leader. When they find one, they will offer that leader 100 percent of their energy and engagement. And when a leader has the trust of their team, all things are possible.

I’ve been talking about servant leadership for years, so I was happy to see that the topic is now trending in business. Maybe people are finally understanding that servant leadership is not a lax situation where the inmates are running the prison. Instead, it’s a two-part process: the leadership part, where the leader plays a visionary/strategic role, and the servant part, where the leader serves others as they help implement the agreed-upon vision.

But what does it look like in real life when a leader turns the hierarchical pyramid upside down and serves others as they work toward their goals? I’ll give you two great examples.

My first example comes from Shirley Bullard, who served as our company’s chief administrative officer and vice president of HR until her recent retirement. In Servant Leadership in Action, Shirley writes:

“In October of 2007, wildfires of epic proportions were racing through San Diego County. People’s lives were upended as they were awakened in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke and a reverse 911 call with a recorded voice telling them to evacuate their home and move to a safer location. For some people in those early hours, a safer location meant our offices at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“The first call I received was from my assistant, who had stayed up all night watching the deadly paths of the fires and was letting me know that a major freeway had been closed down. In fast succession, call number two came from our facilities manager, reporting that some of our people and their loved ones and pets had taken refuge in one of our buildings. I did not need to wait for a third call. I was up, dressed, and speeding to the office. The first person I met was our facilities manager, who had secured the campus and now wanted to know what to do about those who had taken shelter in our offices. I corrected him instantly—we needed to think about what to do for those people.

“I knew I needed to go to be with them, because I had not experienced the trauma this group had been through that morning: being uprooted by the sound of law enforcement telling them to get out of their homes and get out now. As I remember, there were about fifteen people, including children with tears in their eyes. Some had brought along pets, who were panting and confused. I gave hugs to everyone I knew and got introduced to the others. My next task was to get them food and anything else they needed to be more comfortable. My continuing mission was to put others first—to let them know what we knew, to give them some sense of what to do next, and to give them hope.”

Margie and I lost our home in that fire, yet the tremendous outpouring of love and support from our friends, family, and associates proved to us that it’s people who really matter.

My second example features Southwest Airlines’ cofounder and CEO, my late friend Herb Kelleher. Herb certainly had a big leadership role in setting the company’s vision “to be the world’s most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.” Yet he didn’t hesitate to humble himself and serve his people to make that vision come alive. In Lead with LUV, Colleen Barrett, president emerita of Southwest, writes:

“One of the most influential things that ever happened to me … occurred when I was a young secretary working with Herb. We had a mailer that had to get out, and everything that could go wrong with it went wrong. It had to be in the mail the next day. Well, the day before, the copy machine broke down and the postage was somehow wrong. So all of these envelopes that had been stuffed had to be retyped, and this was not when you could just push a button and it would happen. You did it all yourself, manually. So, it was about eight o’clock at night, the night they had to be postmarked, and we had to start all over again.

“Herb sat right there with me until four o’clock in the morning, on the floor, licking envelopes and putting stamps on envelopes, because we didn’t have a postage machine. I’ll never forget it. My gosh. And he could have even thought that it was my fault that the mailing had gone wrong. But he didn’t. He just jumped right in there with me. That was a really valuable lesson for me, so I’ve always tried to remember it and emulate it.”

The important part of Colleen’s story is that Herb demonstrated through his actions that he put the needs of others before his own ego to help Colleen and the company perform as highly as possible.

I’m glad that the business world is finally figuring out that when leaders practice “the power of love rather than the love of power,” they unleash people’s loyalty, motivation, and potential.

If you’d like to know more about the practical application of servant leadership, take a look at my webinar with Randy Conley—coauthor of our recent book, Simple Truths of Leadership—by clicking here: Servant Leadership for a Next Generation Workforce. It’s never too late to become a servant leader!

In my new book Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust—cowritten with my colleague, trust expert Randy Conley—we take a look at some practical, day-to-day leadership principles leaders can apply in their organizations.

Simple Truths of Leadership is broken down into 52 concepts/quotes, half on the topic of servant leadership and half on trust. Each concept has descriptions and activities that will result in increased trust, collaboration, innovation, and engagement in relationships involving leaders and their team members.

A focus on both servant leadership and trust is an important consideration in today’s work environment. It’s a one-two combination that Randy and I believe will bring renewed focus to the importance of empathy and the human touch in workplace relationships.

Here’s a sample of the first three Simple Truths we cover in the first half of the book.

SIMPLE TRUTH #1: Servant leadership is the best way to achieve both great results and great relationships.

Organizational leaders often have an either/or attitude toward results and people. For example, leaders who focus only on results may have trouble creating great relationships with their people and leaders who focus mainly on relationships may have trouble getting desired results.

Yet you can get both great results and great relationships if you understand the two parts of servant leadership:

• The leadership aspect focuses on vision, direction, and results—where you as a leader hope to take your people. Leaders should involve others in setting direction and determining desired results, but if people don’t know where they’re headed or what they’re meant to accomplish, the fault lies with the leader.
• The servant aspect focuses on working side by side in relationship with your people. Once the vision and direction are clear, the leader’s role shifts to service— helping people accomplish the agreed-upon goals.

MAKING COMMON SENSE COMMON PRACTICE

This one-two punch of the aspects of servant leadership enables you to create both great results and great relationships:

1. Let your people know what they’re being asked to do by setting the vision and direction with their help. In other words, vision and direction, while the responsibility of the leader, is not a top-down process.
2. During implementation, assure your people you are there to serve, not to be served. Your responsibility is to help them accomplish their goals through training, feedback, listening, and communication.

It’s important for servant leaders to establish this both/and mindset toward results and relationships.

SIMPLE TRUTH #2: Every great organization has a compelling vision.

When I explain what a compelling vision is to some leaders in organizations, they either give me a blank look or say something like “I’m sure we have one on the wall somewhere.” So what is a compelling vision?

According to my book with Jesse Stoner, Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Work and Your Life, a compelling vision includes three elements: your purpose (what business you are in), your picture of the future (where you are going) and your values (what will guide your journey).

A compelling vision is alive and well in companies that are leaders in their field, such as Disney, Southwest Airlines, Nordstrom, Wegmans, and Starbucks.

MAKING COMMON SENSE COMMON PRACTICE

Here’s how you can incorporate the three elements of a compelling vision in your organization:

• Make sure the people in your organization know what business they are in. For example, when Walt Disney started his theme parks, he said, “We are in the happiness business.”
• Confirm that your people know where they are going—what good results would look like. At Disney, the picture of the future is that all guests of the parks would have the same smile on their faces when leaving as when they entered.
• Find out if the people in your organization are clear on what values will guide their journey. Disney’s first value is safety. Its next values are courtesy and “the show,” which is about everyone playing their parts perfectly, whether they are a ticket taker or Mickey Mouse. Disney’s final value is efficiency—having a well-run, profitable organization.

If you can share your compelling vision as clearly as Disney does, congratulations! You have just made common sense common practice.

SIMPLE TRUTH #3: Servant leaders turn the traditional pyramid upside down.

Most organizations and leaders get into trouble during the implementation phase of servant leadership if the traditional hierarchical pyramid is used. When that happens, whom do people think they work for? The people above them.

The minute you think you work for the person above you, you assume that person—your boss—is responsible and your job is to be responsive to your boss’s whims or wishes. “Boss watching” can become a popular sport where people get promoted based on their upward-influencing skills. As a result, all the energy of the organization moves up the hierarchy, away from customers and the frontline folks who are closest to the action.

Servant leaders know how to correct this situation by philosophically turning the pyramid upside down when it comes to implementation. Now the customer contact people and the customers are at the top of the organization, and everyone in the leadership hierarchy works for them. This one change makes a major difference in who is responsible and who is responsive.

MAKING COMMON SENSE COMMON PRACTICE

To make servant leadership come alive, implementation is key:

• Communicate to your people that you work for them, not the other way around. Your job is to serve, not to evaluate.
• Empower your people by letting them bring their brains to work. In this way, they become responsible— able to respond—to their internal and external customers. Your job is to be responsive to them, helping them accomplish their goals.

This creates a very different environment for implementation and makes it clear to everyone who is responsible, and to whom.

I hope I’ve piqued your interest in learning about how you can introduce our commonsense leadership practices into your organization. If I have, check out the free eBook we’ve put together that shares a little more information about Simple Truths of Leadership—and check out what others are saying about the book through retail booksellers such as Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com.

The world is in desperate need of a new leadership model—one that focuses on results and people. Trusted servant leadership is the approach Randy and I believe in. Let us know what you think!

Dear Madeleine

I am fairly new director in a large global organisation. We are a liaison team designed to work in tandem with product development and marketing.

I have a great team—all inherited and all very skilled and experienced. Their former boss (who was let go) was very rigid and very focused on process and details. He was not able to accomplish what the organization needed his team to accomplish.

I appreciate that the department runs like a well-oiled machine but I have been tasked with getting this team to innovate, try new things, and experiment. How can I get them to loosen the reigns and stop being so wedded to “the way we do things”? They were all initially hired because of their creativity, but it seems to have been beaten out them. How can I bring them back to life and help them get their spark back?

Catalyst

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Dear Catalyst,

My first thought is that it has to be easier to get people to loosen up than try to corral a bunch of creatives to stay in their lanes. But I guess we’ll see if that’s true. Somehow the former director managed to create order and compliance, but he left the critical deliverable for the team on the cutting room floor. He probably used fear and intimidation to do it. So the first thing you need to do is make sure your people feel safe. They spent years trying to figure out how to make their last boss happy and therefore retain their jobs, and now here you are telling them that none of that matters anymore. It is bound to fill them with fear. So remember to tell them that you know the transition will be messy, you are committed to helping, and no one is at risk. Be ready to repeat it. A Lot. Don’t assume they will remember, because they won’t. Once the adrenaline and cortisol released in the face of big change stops pumping through their systems, they will calm down.

You might want to start with context. Explain where things went off the rails and what all of you, as a team, need to do to get yourselves back on track. Simply tell the truth without criticizing anyone or badmouthing the former boss. Just state the facts and clarify your mandate.

Then, so you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, ask the group what they think works really well about their current processes. Managing the chaos that innovation and creativity invariably causes will be easier if you can maintain some of the well-oiled-machine aspects of the team.

Take some time to meet one on one with each member of the team so you can ascertain what each person’s strengths are and what they love to do most. You will be able to use your insights to put small groups together to work on projects.

From our research, we know a team leader’s role is to:

• set clear goals for the team;
• ensure the team’s purpose is clear;
• communicate how the team’s purpose is aligned with the organization’s vision, values, and strategies;
• track progress on deliverables; and
• hold team members accountable for their commitments.

For more detail on this, click here.

You might think about working as a team to create a team charter. This is defined as a set of agreements, developed through a collaborative team effort, that provides a framework for what the team wants to accomplish and how the team will work together to achieve results. A charter will help establish the team purpose, the team’s goals, who plays what roles, and the agreed upon behavioral norms. If you create the charter together, you will have a lot of buy-in from the team as they try on new ways of operating.

This covers all the basics—but I know you also want to find a way to encourage everyone to find their way back to their creative selves. Consider leading your team through a twelve-week program laid out in the book The Artist’s Way at Work. It is based on Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, now almost 30 years old and, honestly, as fresh as ever. I have been using concepts from these books with clients for decades. I’ve also used them myself when I have lost my mojo, so I can attest that they always make a difference and provide powerful results. Working through the program as a team will help everyone to bond—but, more important, it will help your square pegs find their way back to who they were before they were jammed into round holes. If it feels like too much to do the whole program, maybe choose a couple of chapters to work through. Or do the whole program over a longer period of time. It can only help—and will definitely get the wheels turning!

Tell the truth. Be crystal clear about how the expectations have changed. Keep the stuff that works. Help your people reconnect with themselves.

It is a lot—and it sounds like there is a lot riding on your being successful. Your team is vulnerable, but if you can earn their trust and make them feel safe, they will blow you away.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Effective leadership is an influence process where leaders implement everyday, commonsense approaches that help people and organizations thrive. Yet somehow, many of these fundamental principles are still missing from most workplaces.

In their new book, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, legendary servant leadership expert Ken Blanchard, whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and his colleague Randy Conley, known and recognized for his many years of thought leadership and expertise in the field of trust, share fifty-two Simple Truths about leadership that will help leaders everywhere make commonsense leadership common practice.

The book covers a wide-ranging list of leadership skills certain to bring out the best in people. One of the things that make Blanchard and Conley’s approach different is the down-to-earth practicality of what they recommend. Instead of outcome or trait statements, the authors share leadership behaviors that get results.

How about you? What day-to-day leadership behaviors have made a big difference in your effectiveness as a leader?

Below are five examples from Blanchard and Conley. Are any of these on your list of simple leadership truths? Which of these have been powerful in your life as a leader? Which do you wish you would have learned earlier? What else would you include?

1. See Feedback as a Gift

Giving feedback to the boss doesn’t come naturally to most people, so getting honest feedback from your team members may be difficult. They may fear being the messenger bearing bad news, so they hesitate to be candid.

If you are lucky enough to receive feedback from one of your team members, remember—they’re giving you a gift. Limit yourself to three responses. Make sure the first thing you say is “Thank you!” Then follow up with “This is so helpful,” and “Is there anything else you think I should know?”

2. Help People Win

It’s hard for people to feel good about themselves if they are constantly falling short of their goals. That’s why it’s so important for you as a leader to do everything you can to help people win—accomplish their goals—by ensuring the following:

• Make sure your people’s goals are clear, observable, and measurable.
• As their leader, work together with your people to track progress.
• When performance is going well or falling short of expectations, give them appropriate praising, redirecting, or coaching—or reexamine whether your leadership style matches the person’s development level on a specific goal.

3. Admit Your Mistakes

If you make a mistake, own it. Admit what you did, apologize if necessary, and then put a plan in place to not repeat the mistake. Here are some best practices you can follow:

• Be prompt. Address the mistake as soon as possible. Delay can make it appear you’re trying to avoid or cover up the issue.
• Accept responsibility. Own your behavior and any damage it caused.
• Highlight the learning. Let your team know what you’ve learned and what you’ll do differently next time.
• Be brief. Don’t over-apologize or beat yourself up. Mistakes happen.

4. Extend Trust

Many leaders are afraid to give up too much control for fear that something will come back to bite them. They think it isn’t worth the risk to give up control. Are you willing to give up control and trust others? If you struggle to relinquish control and trust others, start with baby steps:

• Identify low-risk situations where you feel comfortable extending trust.
• Assess a person’s trustworthiness by gauging their competence to handle the task, integrity to do the right thing, and commitment to follow through.
• As you become more comfortable giving up control and learn that others can be trusted, extend more trust as situations allow.

5. Rebuild Trust When Broken

Leaders inevitably do something to erode trust—and when that happens, it’s good to have a process to follow to rebuild it. Trust can usually be restored if both parties are willing to work at it. If you have eroded trust in a relationship, follow this process to begin restoring it:

• Acknowledge. The first step in restoring trust is to acknowledge there is a problem. Identify the cause of low trust and what behaviors you need to change.
• Apologize. Take ownership of your role in eroding trust and express remorse for the harm it has caused.
• Act. Commit to not repeating the behavior and act in a more trustworthy way in the future.

Blanchard and Conley’s new book is being released on February 1. Would you like a sneak peek? Download this eBook summary of Simple Truths of Leadership.

Interested in learning more? Join Blanchard and Conley for a special webinar on January 26 where the authors will be highlighting key concepts from their book. The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies. Use this link to register.

I recently announced the February 1 publication of my new book with longtime colleague and trust expert Randy Conley, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust. Now I’d like people to know what inspired the book and why I’m so excited about it.

The beginning of my mission statement is “I am a loving teacher and an example of simple truths.” From the time I was a young college professor, I have always looked for simple truths that reflect commonsense practices people can use to make their work and life—as well as the lives of the people they care about—happier and more satisfying.

Simple truths are not complicated but they are powerful. An example would be “All good performance starts with clear goals” or “Praise progress!” When I talk to audiences about these simple truths, I often add, “Duh!” because what I’m saying is so obvious. The audience always laughs because it’s common sense. The trouble is, too many people aren’t applying commonsense leadership principles in the workplace. When was the last time your leader took the time to review your goals with you? When was the last time your leader praised you, in specific detail, for a job well done? If it was recently, you’re one of the lucky ones.

Effective leadership is about implementing everyday, commonsense practices that will help your organization thrive. Yet so many leaders get caught up in the next urgent task that they forget to “walk the talk” and apply these basic good principles. That’s why we organized our book into 52 simple truths—one for each week of the year—which leaders can implement on the job. Each simple truth is described on a single page and can be read in about a minute. That’s brief enough for even the busiest leader!

The book also includes a discussion guide with twenty-four questions that touch on topics related to the 52 simple truths. You can use these questions to prompt discussions in a group setting or use them for independent study. Either way, the guide is intended to stimulate your thinking and help you become a wise and trusted servant leader.

When commonsense leadership is put into practice, everybody wins—leaders, their people, their organizations, and their stakeholders. If you’d like to know more, my coauthor Randy Conley and I will be talking about these common-sense practices in a webinar on Wednesday, January 26 at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time. To sign up, click here: Simple Truths of Leadership: Becoming a Trusted Servant Leader. You won’t want to miss it!

Trust is the foundation of success, and the pandemic is putting enormous pressure on it.

COVID has created a historic amount of stress and anxiety, which is testing the bonds of trust we have with each other. Making things more difficult is how seldom leaders and team members meet face to face these days, combined with how often the nature of technology causes us to misinterpret each other’s intentions. All this makes us liable to arrive at incorrect conclusions about trustworthiness.

Trusted leaders who have quality relationships with their team members are thriving. But leaders who have a trust deficit with their people are having a rough ride—and any chinks in their armor are being magnified.

Trust Comes from Behaviors

The challenge with trust is that most of us don’t think about it until it’s been broken. Trust is based on experiences—our interactions with individuals and leaders in an organization. It’s personal and fluid. We have to pay attention to it.

As a leader, consider whether you could be inspiring trust or eroding it. Now, take into account how the pandemic has made trust even more essential—and more fragile.

Four Ways to Build and Restore Trust

How can leaders diagnose their relationships and improve them? We teach the four elements of trust: Able, Believable, Connected, and Dependable (ABCD).

• Able: Can you do what you say you can do? Do you demonstrate competence? Do you have the skills, knowledge, and expertise to be good at what you do? Do you have a track record of success? Does your performance inspire trust in others?

• Believable: Do you act with integrity? Do you walk your talk? Do your behaviors align with your values? Do your values mirror your organization’s values?

• Connected: Do you really care about your people? How much care do you demonstrate in your relationships? Do you have your people’s best interests in mind? Or do you have a hidden agenda? One of the simple truths of leadership Ken Blanchard and I discuss in our new book, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, speaks to the importance of connection in building trust: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Our level of interpersonal connection with others is what fans the flames of trust in those relationships.

• Dependable: Do you honor your commitments? Are you reliable? Will you do what you say you’re going to do?

Leaders who study these four elements are able to build and restore trust. It’s common sense, but not common practice.

Here’s what I tell leaders when I give talks and run workshops: Keep it simple. Start with the basics. Demonstrate behaviors that align with the ABCDs. You’ll build trust and be viewed as trustworthy. It’s not complicated.

Trust, Psychological Safety, and the Extraordinary

Trust and psychological safety go hand in hand. Psychological safety is feeling safe enough to speak up, take a risk, or share ideas without fear of the consequences. And psychological safety translates into improved employee engagement, increased productivity, more collaboration, and behaviors that are required for corporate success.

The ABCDs of trust create an environment where people feel comfortable being vulnerable. That’s essentially what psychological safety is. Do you feel safe enough to be vulnerable in expressing ideas, sharing information, and speaking your truth without fear of punishment?

When people feel trusted and safe, the extraordinary can happen.

Look at it this way. There’s no need for trust if there’s no risk involved. We’re certain the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. That’s a sure thing; a guarantee. Trust isn’t required. 

But what if I’m in a group meeting with my boss, who says something that I know is wrong? It might be risky for me to speak up and tell the boss that they’re incorrect. Do I trust my boss to hear the feedback dispassionately? Are contrary opinions welcome? Or even encouraged?

Trust and psychological safety create a virtuous cycle. They foster safe environments, which allow people to flourish and accomplish the remarkable.

The ABCDs: Guideposts for a Tumultuous Time

The pandemic is a great trust experiment. It is forcing organizations and leaders to extend massive amounts of trust in new and different ways.

Just think back to March 2020, when organizations were rushing to get their people set up to work remotely and were scrambling to keep the lights on. Literally overnight, organizations extended massive amounts of trust to their employees to do whatever it took to keep the business afloat. In 2021 we started to settle into a weird new normal of hybrid work as some organizations started bringing people back to the office. The new COVID variants in 2022 are the latest gut-punch to trust between leaders and their people. But no matter what the pandemic throws at us, we have to continue building and restoring trust.

The pandemic is running its chaotic course and the great trust experiment continues. But there is good news in the midst of the tumult. The ABCDs of trust are lampposts that light the way to a brighter tomorrow. Use them and you’ll be better prepared to meet any challenges in your path.

Editor’s Note: Interested in learning more? Join Randy Conley and Ken Blanchard for a free webinar on January 26. Randy and Ken will be sharing key concepts from their new book, Simple Truths of Leadership. Use this link to register!

A few weeks ago, my colleague Doug Glener wrote a blog regarding the results from our company’s recent survey that involved more than 800 L&D executives, managers, and specialists. We asked them about the biggest challenges they face in designing training for hybrid workers in 2022. We were able to break down their answers into three main themes:

• People are overloaded, tired, and “too busy to learn.”
• It’s getting more difficult to maintain interpersonal connections.
• Virtual/digital designs need to be more effective and engaging.

We know learning and development professionals everywhere have been working hard to address each of these challenges. Thousands of other folks continue the struggle of trying to help their organization recover in different ways from the damage caused by the pandemic. It can be tough to keep a positive attitude.

I was fortunate to work with the late, great Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, author of the mega-bestselling book The Power of Positive Thinking, when he was my coauthor on The Power of Ethical Management. In the book, we introduced five core principles of power that can be easily applied by anyone struggling to cope with today’s world.

Review Your Purpose

The best way to keep yourself on track when facing a problem or challenge is to review your purpose. A person’s life purpose is not the same as a goal—goals have a beginning and an end. Your purpose is ongoing. It keeps you motivated because it’s the life ideal you strive for—your “why.” As an example, my personal life purpose is: “To be a loving teacher and example of simple truths who helps and motivates myself and others to awaken to the presence of God in our lives, so we realize we are here to serve rather than to be served.”

An organization’s purpose is its vision, which is communicated from executive leadership. As I often say, leadership is about going somewhere. Organizations that have a clear and compelling vision know where they are going and how to get there. And people who know their life’s purpose have a reason for staying the course when things get tough. 

(By the way, if you don’t have a life purpose and want to create one, check out my blog post Writing Your Personal Life Purpose.)

Take Pride in Your Accomplishments

My definition of pride isn’t about having a big ego. It’s about believing in yourself and your abilities. It’s the sense of satisfaction you get from a job well done. It’s also the healthy self-esteem you feel when you aim high but are still aware that things may not always go the way you expect. When you believe in yourself, you have the strength to get up and get going again after you fall. And you can help your colleagues develop better feelings about themselves by catching them doing things right and praising their progress.

Cultivate Patience

Since the onset of the pandemic, I’m pretty sure we all know what patience feels like! It’s important to develop the capacity to accept, or at least tolerate, negative and unforeseen aspects of life and work. It’s about trusting that your values and beliefs will prevail in the long term—and that when you give your best effort and do the right thing, even if things are difficult right now, your struggles will pay off in the long run.

Be Persistent

Patience and persistence go hand in hand. Patience can help you get through difficult times, but persistence is essential if you want to keep moving forward toward goal accomplishment. Persistence also keeps you focused on your purpose no matter what is happening around you. It’s about having faith in yourself, honoring commitments, staying the course, keeping your eye on the finish line, and knowing things will get better.

Gaining Some Perspective

Perspective is the most significant of the five principles. It’s the ability to see what is truly important in any given situation. When you lack perspective, you can start feeling and believing that your problems are far more serious than they really are. On the other hand, people who have a good perspective on life can maintain a healthy balance about what is important and what is not.

Gaining perspective can be as simple as taking time every day to assess and reflect on what’s going on in your life and work. You can do it when you first get up, just before going to sleep, or any other time that works for you. Some people pray, others meditate, some write in a journal, some read inspirational quotes. Others practice yoga, listen to classical music, or go for a walk. You can even do a combination of several of these things. There’s no one best way—whatever works for you to quiet your mind and bring you into a reflective state.

I would never attempt to downplay the challenges everyone is facing these days. All I can offer is hope and a few strategies to help you maintain a positive outlook as we all move forward together through this strange time in our lives. So give yourself the gift of reviewing your purpose, taking pride in your accomplishments, cultivating patience, being persistent, and gaining some perspective. It can’t hurt—and I hope it helps!

“The most successful leaders have a clear understanding of what leadership means to them. They are able to articulate this viewpoint to colleagues and direct reports for the purposes of building stronger relationships,” says Pat Zigarmi, a founding associate of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Zigarmi recently sat down with Chad Gordon of the Blanchard LeaderChat podcast to share a three step process from Leading at A Higher Level the bestselling business book coauthored by the founding associates and consulting partners of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

1. Identify key people and events that have shaped and influenced your thoughts about leadership.
2. Describe your leadership values by explaining specific behaviors.
3. Share your expectations of yourself and of others.

“The process is purposefully thoughtful and requires time to complete,” says Zigarmi. “The first step is to spend some time thinking about people who have influenced your life, such as parents, grandparents, coaches, or bosses. Also, think about key events that might have been turning points for you. Then describe what you learned about leadership from these people and events.”

Next, Zigarmi suggests you identify your core values.

“But don’t just create a list of words. Create a narrative that defines your core beliefs and how they influence your behaviors as a leader.”

“The last step focuses on describing what you expect of yourself as a leader, what you expect of others, and what the people you lead can expect from you. When people know the expectations, you have for yourself and for them, all goals are easier to reach.”

“Sharing your leadership point of view with your direct reports is the ultimate indication that leadership is a partnership—something you do with people, not to people.”

To hear more from Zigarmi’s interview, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today.

If you’re frustrated that change efforts in your organization are taking too long, are too difficult, or are too often ineffective, this book is for you. Leading change expert Jake Jacobs shares eight failsafe ways to make any change initiative successful in his latest book, Leverage Change: 8 Ways to Achieve Faster, Easier, Better Results.

Jacobs explains that leverage is about getting more done with fewer hassles, headaches, and problems. It is important to leverage change instead of just managing it. He defines the eight levers as:

• Pay Attention to Continuity—Don’t focus solely on the change; remind people what will stay the same so they have something to build on.
• Think and Act as if the Future Were Now—Make a plan but don’t get stuck in the planning phase. Move to implementation quickly.
• Design it Yourself—Don’t rely on what worked for another company; chart your own course of action to meet your unique challenges.
• Create a Common Database—Share information widely so people at all levels have enough data to make wise decisions that will positively impact change.
• Start with Impact, Follow the Energy—Start your work where you will have the biggest positive impact, then share that success to build energy for the entire initiative.
• Develop a Future People Want to Call Their Own—Make sure every individual, team, and department understands specifically what the change means to them so they can be committed to the change.
• Find Opportunities for People to Make a Meaningful Difference—Encourage people to look beyond what has always been done in the past to explore new, different, and better ways to get the job done.
• Make Change Work Part of Daily Work—Change is constant, so don’t think of it as something to do in addition to your job. Make it part of the daily routine.

Jacobs explains how to apply each of these levers and includes a list of success criteria to consider as well. The book includes 44 case studies to show how companies put these levers into action. It’s truly a guidebook for making change an easier process for everyone.

For more information about Jake Jacobs, visit www.jakejacobsconsulting.com

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Jake Jacobs, listen to the Leaderchat podcast and subscribe today.

Engagement expert Heather Younger understands the positive impact a caring leader can have on both individuals and entire organizations. In her latest book, The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organizations, she shares nine behaviors that leaders need to practice to truly care for their people.

Younger’s research has proven that people who know that their leader truly cares about them and their success will go above and beyond to perform. This leads to increased productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement. Although many leaders believe they are caring leaders, many are not. Employees will judge this for themselves, not based on their leader’s intentions but on their actions—actions that are easily cultivated and put into practice.

Younger interviewed more than 80 leaders to identify the nine daily actions required for someone to become a caring leader. In each chapter she defines one action in detail, offers a tip for putting the action into practice, and includes a personal story from a leader who has implemented their learning. The Art of Caring Leadership is an inspiring guidebook for leaders who wish to immediately start their journey toward becoming a caring leader.

Younger takes an often nebulous, subjective concept and makes it concrete and actionable. Leaders have the power to literally change the lives of those they lead by demonstrating how much they care. They shouldn’t just want to care; they should see the act of caring as imperative to the success of their employees and their organization.

For more information about Heather Younger, go to theartofcaringleadership.com or follow her on LinkedIn.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Heather Younger, listen to the Leaderchat podcast and subscribe today.

Robert “Bo” Brabo learned early in his military career that values drive results. Committing fully to admirable organizational values up, down, and across the organization, every day and in every way, is a powerful formula for success. In his latest book, From the Battlefield to the White House to the Boardroom, Brabo shares examples of how values-based leadership in the military, government, for-profit, and not-for-profit sectors has led to success.  

The book is full of practical lessons and inspiring case studies to help leaders and aspiring leaders develop, embrace, and strengthen a values-based approach to leading people, projects, and organizations. The keys are to make sure your behaviors are in alignment with your values and to focus on your team members and colleagues. Brabo believes when you help people tackle their problems as if they were your own, you form a partnership that creates a culture of trust and leads to success. This level of commitment to helping people reach their goals is the ultimate example of servant leadership.

Brabo challenges you to have the courage it takes to be a values-based leader—and introduces steps you can follow to make values-based leadership a reality.

For more information about Robert “Bo” Brabo, visit www.robertbrabo.com

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Bo Brabo, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today.

First released in 2015, Under the Hood: Fire Up and Fine-Tune Your Employee Culture by Stan Slap offers a message to leaders that is even more important in today’s work environment. Slap indicates that if you really want your business to operate at maximum performance, you need to understand the critical difference between your employees and your employee culture.

Unfortunately, employee culture is one of the least understood concepts for leaders to embrace. Slap’s comprehensive research shows that leaders who do understand it are able to energize their workforce and build loyalty even through difficult times. He provides specific steps managers and leaders can put into practice immediately to improve employee culture.

The first part is to recognize that employee culture is a viable living organism with its own purpose, beliefs, and rules. It has the power to make or break any plans management wants to put into place. Leaders who learn to serve that organism service the organization as a whole. Part of that is treating people with the honor and respect they are entitled to, regardless of their position in the hierarchy.

As Slap says, “Be human first and a manager second.”

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Stan Slap, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today.

To hear Stan Slap and Blanchard thought leaders talk about employee culture and the currently changing work environment, join us for a complimentary, five-part webinar series on Returning to the Workplace: Exploring a Hybrid Model. Register for any single event—or all five—using this link: https://www.kenblanchard.com/Events-Workshops/Returning-to-Workplace-Series.

As one of the first female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilots in the US Navy, Carey Lohrenz knows all about pressure. During her intense training, she learned critical lessons about navigating in the most demanding, high-pressure environment imaginable—the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. The genius of her latest book, Span of Control, is how she applies those lessons to everyday life and shows you how to do the same.

Lohrenz shares a process for managing uncertainty, stress, anxiety, and pressure to not only survive, but to thrive. The first step is to define the signs of crisis in your life so you can begin to take control. Once you are aware of what is causing the most stress, Lohrenz explains how to shift your mindset to focus on the most important things, define what you can and can’t control, and make better decisions. The last step is to create a personal action plan for moving forward that is based on a simple yet profound framework:

• Focus on what matters most by identifying your top three priorities and removing distractions.
• Formulate a flight plan for success by preparing, performing, prevailing, and never leaving success to chance.
• Communicate what’s possible and make sure it is concise, clear, and consistent.

Lohrenz offers powerful coaching throughout the book. One of her most impactful quotes tells us where to begin: “I gave up feeling like I had to be able to do everything right. I had to give up right for right for the moment.”

Span of Control is not only a great read filled with research and personal stories, it is a guidebook complete with step-by-step activities to help you take charge of your life. Be prepared to use the tools in this book to harness opportunities you might be missing and to take action. Give yourself the time to do the work Lohrenz presents, and you’ll navigate fear, ambiguity, and uncertainty to succeed in a difficult—or even chaotic—work environment.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Carey Lohrenz, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today.

For more information about Carey Lohrenz, visit www.careylohrenz.com.
To pre-order Span of Control by Carey Lohrenz, click here.

Aloha Madeleine,

I’m currently a Human Resources director in the hospitality industry. I believe right now, more than ever, our industry needs strong coaches.

What resources can you share to help me strengthen these skills through self-learning? Any suggestions you have would be most welcome! Mahalo!

Want to Be a Better Coach

________________________________________________________________

Dear Want to Be a Better Coach,

Well, thanks for asking. What a fun question. Where to begin? Why not with your greeting? I looked up the meaning of Aloha, because I had always heard that it meant so much more than hello or goodbye, and I found this:

“Aloha is an essence of being: love, peace, compassion, and a mutual understanding of respect. Aloha means living in harmony with the people and land around you with mercy, sympathy, grace and kindness. When greeting another person with aloha, there is mutual regard and affection. This extends with warmth in caring for the other, with no obligation to receive anything in return. The direct translation from Hawaiian to English is the presence of divine breath. The Hawaiian word alo is presence, front, and face, and ha is breath.

Choosing to step into the spirit of Aloha would be a very good place to start because it is so close to what I think of as the Coaching Mindset. The Coaching Mindset is the willingness to put yourself at service to someone else. As a discipline, coaching requires us to be aware of and manage our natural tendencies and to self-regulate to create an environment in which another can stay totally focused on their own thought process, enjoy new insights, and feel galvanized to take action.

So many people think that coaching is about giving advice or telling others what to do. What we know is that the best use of coaching is to develop people by evoking their own brilliance, connecting to their own motivation, and empowering them to take the action that will most likely help them achieve their goals.

If you ask 10 people, you will get 10 different definitions of coaching. Here is how we define it:

Coaching is a deliberate process that uses focused conversations that create an environment in which an individual will experience accelerated performance and development. It is a relationship between an individual, small group, or team and a coach, driven by specific objectives and expected outcomes. Coaching helps people identify and focus on what they can do to achieve their goals. It supports deep insights and promotes clear thinking and thoughtful, targeted action.

I highly recommend that even as you say you want to be a better coach, you define exactly what that means to you. Ask yourself:

• Who do you want to be a better coach for?
• For what purpose?
• What will you offer people as a coach?
• How will they know what to ask for and how to ask for it?
• How will you know you are successful as you improve?

We break down the journey to coaching competence as understanding and developing a coaching mindset, refining some key skills, and learning a solid, replicable coaching process.

• Mindset. What is your purpose as a coach? What are your natural tendencies, opinions, agendas/judgments, or core needs that will get in your way; for example: your need to be right, your need to show you have the answers, your opinions about the person or the organization, your tendency to interrupt? Are there any other habits that might get in your way?
• Skill Set. Much has been written about coaching skills, so I am not going to belabor that topic here. What I will say (that no one else really seems to be saying) is that the number one skill to work on is self-regulation. Until you master your natural tendencies to have the answer, tell people what to do, interrupt, and ask questions to satisfy your own curiosity instead of sparking insight for the other person, none of the other skills matter. The traditional skills are listening, asking questions, goal setting, challenging, and creating accountability. The ICF website has an exhaustive list of competencies.
• Process. There are many versions of coaching processes out there and most of them are fine. Don’t be fooled by any process that promises you a clean, linear path, because it will fail you. Humans process thoughts and feelings more like pinballs than arrows—you need whatever process you use to accommodate that reality.

Resources I can point you to? Yikes. The field is crowded and attracting new entrants every day.

I can’t honestly pretend that I don’t think our one-day Coaching Essentials training isn’t tops. (Hello? I am one of the authors.) I have been teaching coaching skills in organizations since 1995. I also wrote a book with Linda Miller called Coaching in Organizations. It is an oldie but it has a bunch of good, timeless info on process, skills, and all the different ways coaching can be leveraged in organizations.

There is a crazy amazing resource I love: The Library of Professional Coaching. It is a beautifully organized treasure trove for coaches at all levels.

Another organization to check out is WBECS—The World Business and Executive Coaching Summit. They host a coaching summit every year that offers extraordinary value to coaches at all levels. They invite the who’s who of the coaching world to present and share the latest topics of interest and it is very high quality stuff.

There are a bunch of different associations for coaches, and I am familiar with only one: The International Coaching Federation. It is the biggest and oldest, and it has the greatest reach. If you decide to do a full coach training program (which I recommend long term if you love it), make sure you do one that is accredited by the ICF.

I am buried in books on coaching. There are so darn many, but my current faves are:

• Coach the Person; Not the Problem by Marcia Reynolds
• Michael Bungay Stanier’s two books, The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap. Those two books are so good I wish I had written them. That is about the highest praise I can think of.
• An oldie that I just took off the dusty shelf and am still impressed by is Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills by Tony Stoltzfus.
• One of my blogs from 2017 has more info on books, including some recommendations from our Blanchard coaches: 9 Books on Coaching that Coaches Need to Know About

And that’s just to get you started, heh heh.

In short, start with the spirit of Aloha. Then shut up, listen, and inquire to spark insight (theirs, not yours). You will be amazed at the magic those few steps can create.

So “Noʻu ka hauʻoli”—Google tells me that means “the pleasure is mine.” You are most welcome. And Aloha to you!

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Have you ever thought about how elite performers achieve their level of accomplishment? Steven Kotler has—and in his latest book, The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer, he shares what he has learned from decades of research into the exploration of human possibility.

Kotler believes everyone is capable of achieving the extraordinary, and he shares how to do just that in this inspirational book. He defines impossible in two ways. Capital I Impossible stands for paradigm-shifting breakthroughs, such as breaking the four-minute mile, moonshots, and the more recent Mars landing. Lowercase i impossible stands for the limitations we place on ourselves, such as thinking we can’t get that dream job, can’t change a living situation, or can’t overcome a challenge.

The fascinating truth is that both capital I and lowercase i impossibilities are quite possible to achieve by following the blueprint described in Kotler’s book. Devoting our time and efforts to achieving the lowercase i impossibilities can sometimes lead to accomplishing the capital I Impossibilities.

Kotler covers in detail the four skills that guide performance. He explains that motivation is the skill that gets us into the game, learning is what helps us continue to play; creativity is how we steer; and flow is how we turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations. The Art of Impossible is filled with tips, techniques, tactics, and strategies along with a framework for tying everything together. Kotler even provides a checklist for daily and weekly activities.

So if you are committed to improving your performance, Kotler provides the playbook to guide your efforts. All you need to do is to follow his instructions and be ready and willing to do the work!

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Steven Kotler, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. 

For more information about Steven Kotler, go to www.stevenkotler.com, or www.flowresearchcollective.com.

What started as a book to help an author’s college grad daughter navigate the business world turned into a guide for employers everywhere who want to build a high-performing workforce. In her new book Winning the Talent Shift: Three Steps to Unleashing the New Higher Performance Workplace, Berta Aldrich explains why companies struggle to hire and retain talent—and what they need to do to change that paradigm.

The first step is to take a hard look at reality to understand why things need to change. Technology and the global economy were able to quickly revolutionize the business world. On the other hand, people have been talking about diversity and inclusion for more than 30 years, yet we’ve made little progress on that front. True growth requires transformational changes starting at the top of the organization—and much of that involves removing barriers.

The book is filled with “dirty little secrets” that Aldrich calls barriers, along with suggestions for overcoming these situations. Barriers can be anything from aggression, inequity, and bad bosses to bullying and even abuse. It is sad to admit how prevalent these things are in business today. Some of Aldrich’s stories are difficult to read; some may hit a little too close to home. However, the author offers techniques that can be applied easily in real life.

Real progress can’t be made until those barriers are removed. Ultimately, this means redesigning your workplace to support the hiring and retention of high performers. Aldrich acknowledges this is a big job that involves a strong commitment from HR, leadership teams, and board members. She outlines a five-year plan and a communication strategy for sharing success.

The marketplace has changed but the workplace has failed to follow suit, which puts organizations at risk. The old ways of command and control leaders just won’t work anymore. The companies that will lead the marketplace of tomorrow are the companies that redesign their workplaces, policies, and procedures to support their greatest asset: their people.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Berta Aldrich, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. 

To learn more about Berta Aldrich, go to www.bertaaldrich.com, or LinkedIn “Winning the Talent Shift” by Berta Aldrich.

When my colleagues Vicki Halsey and Kathy Cuff and I were creating the Legendary Service customer service training program, we asked people in organizations two questions:

1. Why is creating a positive customer experience important? 
2. How do you want your customers to feel when working with your organization?

We always got the same answers:

1. If customers are happy, they will come back and also will tell others about their positive experience.
2. We want our customers to feel that we care about them and will help them be successful.

Even though that was years ago, and today’s world is different in many ways, these two tenets of service haven’t changed. Customers notice great service and appreciate being treated well by someone they are doing business with. And organizations want customers to know they value them and have their best interests in mind.

Now think in terms of when you are the customer. You probably have favorite places where you like to do business, whether you are online or face to face with a service provider. Think about why you return, over and over again, to a favorite company, store, or website. Hint: it’s not just about product quality. Research shows that customers return because of the way the people or organization providing the product or service make them feel—before, during, and after the transaction. Welcome. Comfortable. Cared for. Special.

Sounds simple enough, right? Let the customer know you care. So why doesn’t every company and salesperson follow this simple philosophy? We all know it’s more cost effective to keep existing customers than to continuously try to recruit new customers to replace the old. Why, then, do most of us have more stories about being on the wrong side of bad customer service than about being treated well? It’s puzzling, to say the least.

My cousin Liz Bone is a successful real estate professional who has a fabulous track record with clients. When she told me 75% of her business consists of referrals and repeat customers, that sounded to me like she must be doing something right—so I asked her to elaborate.

“Working with a client is a very personal experience, because you are tapping into someone’s true feelings,” Liz says. “It’s not only about the sale, though—sometimes you just have to spend time with a client and really listen to them.”

Liz told me that showing care for clients is a vital part of her day-to-day work. “If you focus on relationships, the sales will take care of themselves. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on what I find to be the most enjoyable part of my job—working with people and problem solving. It’s satisfying.”

Liz is a great example of what our company calls the “CARE approach” to customer service. These elements of our Legendary Service model are easy to remember and can be put to use immediately.

C – Committed: Living your customer service vision. You perform your tasks with the customer in mind and you act on your belief that service is important.

A – Attentive: Listening to identify needs and wants. You pay attention to verbal and nonverbal cues to better understand the customer’s frame of mind. You ask open-ended questions and repeat back so that the customer knows they are being heard.

R – Responsive: Taking action that shows you care. You are available to the customer. You acknowledge and validate their feelings, address concerns, offer solutions, and gain specific agreements. And you express appreciation for their business.

E – Empowered: Unleashing the full extent of your power. You are aware of all company policies and practices. You continuously increase your knowledge about your job. You are aware of the power you have to create a loyal customer with every interaction. You are empowered to handle all customer situations.

Each connection between a service provider and a customer is unique. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing business as an individual, a small startup, or a large, established organization. When you create a relationship with a client—when you show them you care about them and are looking after their interests—you create a memorable experience. That customer will refer their friends to you and will want to do business with you again. Why? Because they will remember the way you made them feel. You have established a culture of service with them.

If you’re an independent salesperson, you may wonder if it’s possible to establish your own culture of service. The best way to start is to create a personal service vision you can believe in. Here’s how:

1. List five to six positive characteristics that describe you. Circle the two characteristics that you value the most about yourself. (Example: enthusiastic, creative.)
2. List three to six ways in which you successfully interact with people. Circle the two behaviors that you feel are the most important. (Example: educate, encourage.)
3. Complete this sentence: Through my service, I hope my clients will… (Example: use my services to make their life easier and feel happy and secure.)
4. Now put those characteristics, behaviors, and desired outcome together as you fill in your service vision statement: “My service vision is to use my enthusiasm and creativity to educate and encourage my clients so they will use my services to simplify their life and bring happiness and security to their world.”

You will differentiate yourself from others by focusing on outstanding customer service—Legendary Service. Does this approach work? You bet it does! As Liz explains, “To me, the CARE model represents the best way to do day-to-day business. I don’t have to chase customers around. I can be my authentic self. I want my clients to understand that I will give them my full attention and my highest level of service regardless of how much they spend—because I will.”

In this day and age, sales is a tough business—but customer service doesn’t have to be. I hope I’ve been able to introduce you to a fresh way of thinking about the way you serve your customers. Now go out and make a positive difference in somebody’s life. And don’t forget: The key is to care!

Editor’s Note: For a deeper discussion about legendary customer service and how you and your organization can ensure your clients feel cared for and appreciated, read Legendary Service: The Key Is to Care by Ken Blanchard, Vicki Halsey, and Kathy Cuff.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a manager at a fairly new and fast growing software-as-a-service company. I have been managing people forever and nothing like this has ever happened to me.

I recently gave some feedback to a new employee I’ll call LK. Despite having received step-by-step directions on a certain task, she had done it completely wrong. The feedback was standard and simple—specifics on how to do the task: “Do it this way, not that way, for these reasons.”  She seemed to take it fine.

The next day I received a call from HR saying LK had complained that I am micromanaging and mean. It was like she had been part of a completely different conversation. I am a big user of SLII®, so after she was hired I let her know I would be giving her lots of specific direction and re-direction over the first few months until she got the hang of the job. Also, I made it clear if she ever has an issue she should come to me right away.

I am just blown away that instead of coming to me to talk about it, she went straight to HR. Is this a generational thing? I have always received good feedback from my people and have never had a complaint. I feel like she must be nuts, or maybe she has some kind of vendetta against me. What should I do now? If I try to talk to her, who knows what she might do? This has left me shaken.

Thrown for a Loop

_____________________________________________________________________________

(Note: For the uninitiated, SLII® is my company’s flagship management model that helps managers figure out what combination of direction and support an employee needs to competently achieve a specific goal or task.)

Dear Thrown for a Loop,

Wow. I can see how this would be upsetting. I am not going to give you a primer on giving feedback—it sounds like you know what you are doing. But somehow, things have gone sideways.

It is always my job to ask what part you might have played in creating this situation. It is easy to think someone might be “nuts” when they experience a shared event differently from the way we do. And I guess that is possible—there are, in fact, people with mental health problems who wreak havoc in the workplace. I have had a front row seat to some spectacular wreckage myself. But that isn’t going to be helpful as a starting place for you. Assumptions can be such a trap. You might assume that you look and sound like LK’s Mean Aunt Mabel and she got triggered. Or maybe she’s having issues at home, wasn’t sleeping well, and the conversation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or maybe she was just having a spectacularly bad day. It happens. Is it possible that you missed some signs? Did you, in fact, ask “Hey LK, is now a good time to go over the process for …”? I know sometimes I get so task focused that I blow right by the signs that now is not the moment to offer a re-direction.

It is also true that some people simply have a really hard time receiving feedback. People who are perfectionists and expect themselves to do everything perfectly right out of the gate can really suffer when getting feedback. Younger people who are entering the workplace and are used to getting straight As in school may experience any feedback as a personal attack. Be sure when you do re-direct, the critique is of the actions, not the person; for example, “This way of doing it can cause inaccuracies” vs. “You are causing inaccuracies.”

Before you do anything, you probably need to loop back with HR to find out exactly what LK’s complaint was and what they think you should do about it. But, in the long run, if you are going to salvage the working relationship, you are going to have to have the hard conversation. I am a fan of our Conversational Capacity program, and you can also check out this book by Craig Weber. The whole idea is that you have to balance candor with curiosity. And remember, the person who has the power (you) has to create the safe environment.

Prepare for the conversation by parking your defensiveness and assumptions. Make sure you have privacy and enough time for the conversation. Get grounded however you can: take a walk, do some deep breathing, pray. Prepare to listen—and by listen, I mean NO TALKING. You can say your initial piece to set up the conversation, ask a few questions, and then just listen.

Start with candor:

My job is to do everything possible to help you be terrific at your new job. That’s what is important here.

• I am sorry you were so upset.
• I am sorry you didn’t feel comfortable coming to me to tell me you were upset.
• I really care about you and your success.

And then move to curiosity:

• Help me understand what I did that made you so upset.
• Please tell me what would make it easier for you to accept necessary direction from me in the future.
• What can I do to make it easier for you to trust me?

Make sure to share what you hear LK saying—not only so that she knows you are really listening, but also to make sure you are getting it right. Hopefully, you can both commit to some shared practices moving forward.

If you don’t feel safe, if she doesn’t feel safe, or if you believe there may be some underlying issue, you can certainly ask someone from HR to sit in on the meeting. You will need to take the high road at every possible choice point. If she truly is unbalanced and emotionally unable to function at work, it will reveal itself. Or—best case scenario—if it is all a big misunderstanding, you and LK could end up with a great working relationship and laugh about this someday.

Don’t you just love being a manager? Just when you think you know what you are doing—BAM, it turns out there are new adventures to learn from.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

It’s a timeless truth that bears repeating: Good leadership starts with a vision. Why? Because leadership is about going somewhere. If you don’t know where you’re going, your leadership doesn’t matter. Great leaders understand this and mobilize others by coalescing them around a shared vision.

A compelling vision will help you and your team get focused, stay energized, and achieve results. Your vision will also keep everyone going during times of adversity.

Can a Team or Department Create a Vision When a Company Doesn’t Have One?

Yes! Vision can start anywhere. You don’t have to wait for the rest of the organization.

Creating Your Team Vision

There are three aspects to a compelling vision: your purpose, your picture of the future, and your values. If you are a team leader, help your team create a team vision by working together to define and establish these three elements.

Purpose.  To begin, start by asking, “What is our team’s reason for existence?” Your team’s purpose will answer this question.

When writing your team’s purpose, don’t simply describe your roles and activities. For example, if you’re in the automobile business, don’t say, “Our team exists to sell cars.” That purpose is hardly inspiring. Take a cue from Tesla, whose purpose isn’t simply to sell cars; it’s “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Notice how those words inspire excitement and commitment? An inspiring purpose makes work meaningful and fun. It also helps everyone stay the course when things get tough.

Picture of the Future. What is your team’s picture of the future? What do you want to be true in the future that is not true today? Picture the end result of your efforts.

Your team’s picture of the future should be something you can actually see when you close your eyes. Don’t define your picture of the future in vague terms, such as “being great.” Use precise words that bring an image to mind. Walt Disney’s picture of the future for his theme parks was to “keep the same smile on people’s faces when they leave the park as when they enter.”

As you and your team work together on your picture of the future, keep it positive. Focus on what you want to create, not what you want to get rid of.

Finally, don’t get bogged down in describing the process for getting to your envisioned future. Just focus on a visual image of the end result.

Values. Values are deeply held beliefs that certain qualities are desirable. They define what is right or fundamentally important to your team. They provide guidelines for decisions and actions.

What will be the core values by which your team operates? Here is a small sampling of some values you might consider: integrity, knowledge/expertise, accountability, success, relationships, kindness, humor, creativity, innovation, dependability, service to others. There are countless others.

To determine your team’s values, answer the question, “How will we behave on a day-to-day basis?” Then describe the behaviors that demonstrate what that value looks like when it is being lived.

Be careful not to select too many values. Zero in on a maximum of six. Also, your values must be rank ordered to be effective. Why? Because life is about value conflicts. When conflicts arise, people need to know which value gets the highest priority.

Once your team has agreed on the shared values, it’s up to you as the team leader to model these values in your behavior and to encourage the other team members to do the same.

A Worthwhile Investment

Teams with a shared vision work in harmony and generate positive energy that creates extraordinary results.  These are the teams that others notice, admire, and emulate. If your team is working without a vision, take the time to create one. It’s an investment you won’t regret.

Editor’s Note: For a deeper discussion of vision and how it can focus and energize your team, read Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Work and Your Life by Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stoner.

If you are a member of the L&D community, undoubtedly you’ve been delivering virtual training this year—and you are probably looking for ways to improve the experience for yourself and your learners. Cindy Huggett’s book Virtual Training Tools and Templates: An Action Guide to Live Online Learning is filled with resources that you can use immediately.

A virtual training pioneer, Huggett wrote the book based on her own experiences creating virtual training over the past 20 years. In each chapter she presents an aspect of virtual learning and shares real-world examples and a series of worksheets, checklists, templates, and tips to help you prepare for every phase of designing and delivering your training.

Chapter 1 helps you define what virtual training means to your organization by guiding you through a four-step process she identifies as:

1. Get started
2. Get ready
3. Get buy-in
4. Get going

Remaining chapters guide you through selecting technology, designing content, developing activities, working with facilitators and producers, preparing participants for a successful learning experience, and evaluating results. Huggett has created an invaluable resource that will save time and provide the confidence you need to create virtual training that exceeds expectations.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Cindy Huggett, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. For more information about Cindy Huggett, go to www.cindyhuggett.com, or find her on Twitter: @cindyhugg.

Trying to land your first job or find your dream job? #ENTRYLEVELBOSS—part memoir, part playbook—lays out an easy-to-follow plan that will get you on the right path quickly. Based on her personal experience, Alexa Shoen has developed a nine-step process for approaching your job search that will set you apart from all others.

Shoen begins by identifying 14 incorrect beliefs about how employment works, then challenges you to reconsider your assumptions. The world is changing rapidly—and traditional techniques for job hunting just don’t work anymore. Shoen provides the information you need to create a new mindset about finding a job. She then explains her proven methodology with step-by-step instructions, task lists, and examples that worked in real life—her life.

Before you start the job search process, you must answer these three questions:

1. What kind of role do you want?
2. Where are you physically going to get hired?
3. Which industry do you want to work in?

Sounds like common sense, right? But we all know that common sense isn’t commonly practiced. Shoen warns that if you don’t start with the answers to these questions as the foundation for your effort, you will easily be sidetracked, distracted, and tempted into the old trap of blanketing the market with your resume and hoping for the best. That isn’t a strategy—it’s a waste of time.

This book is a fun read, and it delivers a carefully considered system to follow. If you use it, you’ll feel like you have a coach by your side throughout the process!

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Alexa Shoen, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. For more information about Alexa Shoen, go to www.entrylevelboss.com.

Over the years, I’ve talked with thousands of people about servant leadership. Every so often somebody will come up to me after a speech and say to me, “You know, Ken, the style of leadership you just talked about is exactly the way I’ve been leading people for years—I just didn’t know there was a name for it! I’m a servant leader!”

Are you one of those people who think they might be a servant leader but aren’t sure? Let’s find out.

What Is Servant Leadership?

Robert Greenleaf first coined the term servant leadership in 1970 and published widely on the concept for the next twenty years. Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela are examples of great leaders who practiced this philosophy. If you think you couldn’t be in that kind of company, read on!

When some people hear the phrase servant leadership, they are confused. They think it means managers should be working for their people, who would make all the decisions. If that’s what servant leadership is all about, it doesn’t sound like leadership to them at all. It sounds more like the inmates running the prison, or trying to please everyone.

The problem is that these folks don’t think you can lead and serve at the same time. But you can, if you understand that servant leadership has two parts: vision/direction and implementation. In the visionary role, the traditional hierarchical pyramid is in place. Leaders are responsible for communicating what the organization stands for and what it wants to accomplish. While these leaders should involve experienced people in shaping direction, the ultimate responsibility cannot be delegated to others. This visionary role is the leadership aspect of servant leadership.

Implementation is where the servant aspect of servant leadership comes into play. Once people are clear on where they are going, the role of an organizational leader shifts to a service mindset for implementation. If you are a servant leader, you now philosophically turn the traditional pyramid upside-down and you work for your people. Your purpose is to help them accomplish established goals, solve problems, and live according to the vision.

Sound familiar yet?

Two Examples of Servant Leadership

To me, servant leadership is the only way to guarantee great relationships and great results. That became even more clear when I realized that the two leadership approaches I am best known for around the world—The One Minute Manager^® and SLII^®—are both examples of servant leadership in action.

If you’re familiar with the book The One Minute Manager, you may remember that his First Secret is One Minute Goals. All good performance starts with clear goals—part of the leadership aspect of servant leadership. Once people are clear on goals, an effective One Minute Manager wanders around, trying to catch people doing something right and deliver the Second Secret: One Minute Praisings. If someone is not performing as well as agreed upon, a One Minute Re-Direct—the Third Secret—is appropriate. When an effective One Minute Manager delivers praisings and re-directs, they are engaging in the servant aspect of servant leadership—working for their people to help them accomplish their goals.

SLII^® also has three keys that lead to great relationships and great results: goal setting, diagnosis, and matching. Once clear goals are set, an effective SLII^® leader works situationally with each direct report to diagnose that person’s development level (competence and commitment) on each specific task or goal. Then the two work together to determine the leadership style (amount of directive and supportive behavior) that matches the direct report’s development level so that the person can accomplish their goals. The key here is for managers to remember they must use different strokes for different folks and also different strokes for the same folks, depending on the goal and the person’s development level.

Why are the concepts of The One Minute Manager and SLII^® so widely used around the world? Because they exemplify servant leadership in action. Both concepts recognize that the leadership aspect of servant leadership—vision/direction—is the responsibility of the traditional hierarchy, and the servant aspect of servant leadership—implementation—is all about turning the hierarchy upside down and helping people achieve their goals. If you think about how many people have learned and put into practice the leadership lessons from The One Minute Manager or from SLII^® training, it’s easy to envision innumerable servant leaders serving people all over the world—and many of them still unfamiliar with the term.

Are You a Servant Leader?

If you’re still on the fence about your status, here’s a quick and fun way to determine whether you have been unconsciously practicing some of a servant leader’s qualities and behaviors.

You might be a servant leader—IF you…

• listen more than you talk
• think more about other people’s success than your own
• know all the brains aren’t in your office
• ask others for feedback on a regular basis
• empower others to make decisions without you
• love to catch people doing things right
• share information about yourself with others
• love to celebrate success
• empathize when things get tough
• consider mistakes to be learning opportunities
• wouldn’t ask your people to do something you wouldn’t do yourself

If you had a few “aha” moments while reading this blog post, it’s likely you are already a servant leader or well on your way to becoming one. Welcome! As you can see, servant leadership is not just another management technique. I call it an “inside-out job” because it is a way of life for people with servant hearts. In organizations run by servant leaders, servant leadership becomes a mandate, not a choice—and the byproducts are better leadership, engaged employees, raving fan customers, and a high performing organization. In other words, servant leadership is the best way to get both great relationships and great results.

Want to learn more about our people-centered approach to leadership? Download a free 60-page summary of Leading at a Higher Level. It’s available for free on The Ken Blanchard Companies’ website and it contains the best thinking from the founding associates and consulting partners of our company.

Use this link to access the summary.

The quest for high performance may be at an all-time high. With the COVID-19 pandemic turning things upside down, some people are struggling to get through the day—but others continue to thrive. How do they do it?

Brendon Burchard’s best-selling book High Performance Habits offers many answers to that question. Through extensive original research and learnings from more than ten years of being the world’s leading performance coach, Burchard has identified the six most important habits for improving performance at home, at work, and in your community.

The habits Burchard encourages everyone to build include:

1. Seek clarity. Have a clear vision, consistently set intentions for who you want to be each day, and focus on what is meaningful.
2. Generate energy. Learn to release tension while setting intention. Bring joy to your daily activities and stay physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy.
3. Raise necessity. Understand what you need to do for yourself and others to remain motivated. Build a network of peers who will support you.
4. Increase productivity. Determine the outputs that matter most to your success. Develop the skills that will help you perform at a higher level.
5. Developing influence. Ask others to challenge themselves to perform differently. Be a role model for that behavior.
6. Demonstrate courage. Learn and grow from your struggles, share your truth, and fight a noble cause for others.

Burchard describes specific practices you can begin immediately for each habit. He stresses that although these practices may be common sense, they are not commonly practiced—so it is critical to make a commitment to using these tips and techniques to start your journey to long-term success and fulfillment. He suggests people focus on one practice at a time to recognize how significant each change can be.

Each chapter is filled with thought-provoking exercises to help you integrate the six habits into your routine, and encouragement to focus on the things that will make a big difference right away. Putting it simply, this is a guidebook for people who want to get control of their lives and experience true joy. The real-life examples of people who have overcome struggles by using the practices are evidence of how powerful this work can be. They offer proof that you, too, will be able to positively impact every aspect of your life.

Burchard shares a beautiful mixture of science-backed data and heart-centered strategies to help others live a better quality life. After applying just a few of his suggestions, you’ll notice a difference—and understand how extraordinary people become that way.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Brendon Burchard, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. For more information about Brendon Burchard, go to www.brendon.com.

The quality of a company’s customer service affects its reputation as well as its bottom line. Customer service done well raises an organization’s image in the public eye and attracts new revenue. Customer service done poorly does the opposite.

When an organization delivers with such excellence and consistency that its service reputation becomes a competitive edge, that’s Legendary Service. It starts with leaders serving their people at the highest level, so that people on the front line can in turn serve their customers at the highest level.

We call these types of leaders service champions, because they create passion and momentum in others to better serve their customers. These champions follow up their inspiring words with actions, creating systems and processes that support their belief that service is vitally important.

Creating a culture of service requires a focus on four basic elements. In our book, Legendary Service: The Key is to CARE, Kathy Cuff, Vicki Halsey and I describe this as a CARE model, which is fitting, because great customer service hits people at an emotional level and creates a connection.

With a caring mindset in place, you can turn that mindset into action. In our book, Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service, Sheldon Bowles and I share three steps for turning your customers into raving fans—people who are so blown away by their service experience that they brag about you to others.

Decide what you want your customer experience to be. If you want Legendary Service, you don’t just announce it. You must plan for it. You must decide what you want to do. What kind of experience do you want your customers to have as they interact with every aspect of your organization? Understanding what your customers really want helps you determine what you should offer them.

Discover what your customers want. After you decide what you want to have happen, it’s important to discover any suggestions your customers may have that will improve their experience with your organization. What would make their experience with you better? Ask them!

Deliver your ideal customer service experience. Now you must help people deliver the ideal customer service experience, plus a little bit more.

When leaders empower and train people to deliver Legendary Service, customers become raving fans—leading to reputable, profitable, high performing organizations. I hope this helps as you look for ways to continue serving your people and your customers. For more ideas on how to create an organization where service is the norm, be sure to check out the 60-page summary of Leading at a Higher Level we’ve posted on our website. It’s available for free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Dave McKeown’s new book The Self-Evolved Leader is, at its essence, a roadmap to leadership excellence. Presented in four sections, this practical handbook guides leaders along the journey, covering everything from building a foundation of effective leadership to sustaining their newfound skills.

McKeown believes leaders are caught in a cycle of mediocrity—and he says it’s time to break that cycle by stepping up to lead with authenticity and purpose.

In the book’s first section, the author says leaders need to stop trying to be heroes who step in and take care of everything. He encourages them instead to equip and empower their people to manage day-to-day projects. This allows time for self-evolved leaders to focus on long-term strategies for their teams and organizations. Leaders must spend less time taking care of little details and more time developing, inspiring, and encouraging their staff.

In section two, McKeown introduces three key actions that aspiring self-evolved leaders must take:

• They must create a compelling team vision that aligns with the corporate vision. This provides alignment and purpose for the team.
• They must develop an implementation plan that brings the team vision to life. This plan must be clear to everyone and must come with a design—a pulse—to proactively track the team’s progress. This pulse provides focus so that the team can stay on track as it advances toward the goal.
• They must develop a discipline for focusing on their own tasks while empowering team members to perform at their highest levels.

Learning how to master leadership discipline is the focus of section three. McKeown offers specific guidelines that show leaders how to facilitate the workflow of their team while still concentrating on their own goals and tasks. He recognizes that leaders sometimes take on tasks they should delegate to direct reports because it is faster to do the task themselves. But self-evolved leaders understand that time invested in delegating and teaching is worth it. It not only adds to the skill set of the direct report, it also allows the leader to remain focused on leadership strengths they bring to the overall team effort.

Section four offers leaders advice for sustaining their new skills and continuing to make improvements in their leadership practices. Ultimately, McKeown advises leaders to take control of the things they can control—and not fall victim to the things they can’t.

The Self-Evolved Leader is a guidebook for changing the way you lead. It is rooted in decades of experience and filled with wisdom and simple techniques that will help any leader become a self-evolved leader.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Dave McKeown, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. For more information about Dave McKeown, go to www.selfevolvedleader.com or www.davemckeown.com.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a 31-year-old female attorney who was recently promoted to manager of an in-house legal team for a giant global not-for-profit organization. One of my direct reports is a man who came to us after having been a partner at a highly respected firm. This is to be his last job, as he is nearing retirement.

We all thought he would bring enormous expertise to the job and add value; but, in fact, he has caused nothing but trouble. His work is shoddy on his best days—I spend far too much time reviewing and correcting it before it goes out. He makes errors that make no sense in light of his experience. He is clearly not paying attention. He leaves work early on a regular basis, which would be OK if his work was done; but he misses deadlines, which ends up as a crisis on my desk at the end of the day.

All of this would be simply annoying, but it is compounded by the fact that he is downright rude to me. He makes no effort to disguise his contempt for my age and gender.

I have made tremendous efforts to be a good manager, making tasks and standards clear, providing ample time for one-on-one meetings to review workload, etc. I would fire him—I have an entire page of documented incidents in which he failed at his task or was disrespectful or hostile to me personally—but, because of the economic squeeze of the pandemic, we are in a hiring freeze. We just don’t have the manpower to cover his work, cruddy as it is. I have gone to HR, but they are overwhelmed with layoffs and furloughs in other parts of the organization. I am at my wits’ end with this situation.

Shoddy Work Making Me Nuts

Dear SWMMN,

This sounds tough. I definitely used to be automatically dismissed by older men—it is a consolation of age that that kind of thing tends to fade. But that doesn’t help you right now. Right now you have a couple of separate issues, so it might help to tease them out and address them one at a time.

The first thing to tackle is the idea that, because of a hiring freeze, you are not allowed to replace an employee who can’t—or won’t—perform. That just makes no sense at all. You might think about taking the case to both your boss and HR. This is serious and will affect your team’s ability to generate required results—so I can’t believe that with enough evidence and a well-prepared argument, you wouldn’t be able to get some support to make a change.

If you absolutely cannot make that happen, you will have to get ready for a hard conversation—probably a couple of them. Start by laying out all three issues at once and setting up times to work through all three separately. My new favorite tool for hard conversations comes from Craig Weber’s work on Conversational Capacity. Craig says that to find the sweet spot in a conversation, you have to start with candor—be ready to state your position and the thinking behind it. Then, you need to practice curiosity by testing your thinking and asking questions.

You will have to decide which issue is most important and start with that. I might suggest the order of priority as competence, commitment, and attitude. The thinking behind this order is the general principle that when people do not feel equipped to do their job, they tend to lose motivation and start lashing out at others. You may see a change if you can help your employee be more successful at his job.

Competence. It seems your supposed experienced expert might be out of practice. It is fairly normal that, as people rise to executive positions, they can forget the myriad details of the job or not stay abreast of changes. That might be the case here. However, that doesn’t excuse the lack of attention to detail he is demonstrating.

Be prepared to point out several examples of errors, and then ask some questions like:

• What is your perspective on this?
• Can you help me understand what might be going on?
• How do you think this situation might be addressed?
• Is there something I can do to help?

(Questions adapted from the book Conversational Capacity by Craig Weber, pg. 97)

Be prepared to continue being curious if your employee takes a position that is different from yours. You can say something like: “I admit my perspective is different from yours; perhaps you can share what you have seen or heard that leads you to see things this way.” The more you are curious and keep him talking, the more likely you are to get to a place where he might be interested in hearing your viewpoint. But you may not be able to get a dialogue going. And if you just can’t, that’s OK. You can always default to making a simple request, such as: “please catch up on proper legal terms and double-check your documents before submitting them.”

Commitment. You can observe to your employee that he often stops work before the agreed-upon time. Make sure you have a couple of examples. If you decide to go the way of curiosity, you can ask: “is there anything in particular that is undermining your motivation or ability to hit agreed-upon deadlines?” It will be interesting to hear what he has to say. At least from that jumping off point, you might be able to renegotiate deadlines moving forward. You can also share how critical it is that he follow through with his commitments—because you also have commitments and need to be able to plan your time. The more you can stay curious and neutral, the better off you will be. Which brings us to the third issue …

Attitude. This one is tricky—and it will color the other two issues. The more you feel attacked, the harder it will be for you to stay curious and open. So anything you can do to not take your employee’s behavior personally will strengthen your position. Remember: this is not about you, no matter how cruddy it may make you feel. I suggest you ask yourself if it is truly personal. There is a good chance he is a jerk to everyone. If you find it is only you, or only women in your office, it is an example of harassment or bullying against a specific class and you really do need to take it to HR. If you are forced to keep an employee who is creating a hostile work environment, you could actually sue the organization.

Obviously you don’t want it to come to that—so start again with your observations. Then ask: “Is there something I am doing that is causing you to treat me with such contempt?” He may claim that he isn’t doing it; he may claim to be unaware of it; or he may actually be unaware of it. You can continue to practice curiosity: “Clearly we don’t agree. Let’s see what our different perspectives have to teach us about this. Can you explain in more detail how you are seeing this?”

Ultimately, if he continues to be rude and hostile, it is your right to set a boundary. But that means you have to give him specific direction on how he needs to address you. You may want to create a list of never and always statements. For example (I am making these up based on my own experience):

• Never: smirk at me, mimic my voice, swear under your breath, or roll your eyes when I speak in meetings.
• Always: keep to commitments you have made, be civil toward me, and tell me when I do or say something you disagree with.

In the future, you will know to start with tight supervision with new people, point out errors or inappropriate behavior the first time you see it, and then, as the new person settles in, you can loosen up. It is almost impossible to go the other direction.

It can be hard to stand up for yourself, but no one can do it for you. There is a good chance your employee is just waiting for you to draw the line and will continue to push to see just how much nonsense you are willing to put up with. Once you call him out on his bad behavior he may straighten up.

This won’t be your last problem employee. Get ready for many more to come. It gets easier. Not much easier, because you will always expect people to do their best and strive to get along with others, in other words, to be like you. Don’t let it make you bitter or cynical that many people aren’t at all like you. But do get comfortable with drawing the line.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a department in a large manufacturing organization. Some parts of our business are going gangbusters, but my area is suffering from a slowdown due to the restrictions and economic impact of Covid-19.

We were able to redeploy some of my people to the busier parts of the business, but still ended up furloughing about 25% of them. The net loss is about 45% when you add up the people who were furloughed or redeployed.

Even though our workload is still reduced, and things should be balanced, my remaining people are telling me how overly busy they are. I am still trying to figure out why that is so. I am madly trying to balance workloads and hoping you have some thoughts.

Failing at Furlough

Dear Failing at Furlough,

This seems to be situation normal these days—but that doesn’t make it easier, does it? I can certainly relate. We are in the same boat and I’m getting a crash course in posting on our Instagram account—which is, frankly, hilarious. It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks, but it’s a little painful.

It’s hard to think straight with all the high emotion, so that’s probably affecting you and your people. I would advise, first, to be kind with yourself and everyone else. Take the time to listen to everyone—the folks who moved, the ones who’ve been furloughed, and the ones in your department who are left with the work. Just listen. Breathe and listen. Reflect back what you hear, empathize, or cry with your people if that’s what makes sense.

You might feel like a therapist, but listening skills and empathizing are simply refined human skills. Using them does not make you a mental health professional. It just makes you a better human. People are sad, people are mad, and everyone is exhausted. Max Dupree, in Leadership is An Art, said “Leaders don’t inflict pain, they bear pain.” Maybe if people are allowed to express themselves honestly they will be able to think (a little more) clearly.

Once you have listened and everyone is on a more even keel, your next job (also according to Dupree) is to “define reality.” Sit down with your team, probably on Zoom, and take stock. Identify every task that each individual employee owned before, as well as all of the outstanding orphan tasks.

Make a whole list or whiteboard a mind map. Get it all down. Then, as a group, prioritize: what is absolutely, positively mission critical?

Now begin the big discussion, which goes like this:

• What must we absolutely do now—or maybe even do more of?
• What can we do less of?
• What can we stop doing, at least for now?
• What can we stop doing that we should have stopped doing it before this crisis anyway, but were in the habit of doing—because it isn’t working any more, producing a result, or adding value?
• How can we change up the systems, processes, and workflows to simplify or streamline for the non-negotiables?

Duke it out. Argue. Hold on to your top priorities. But now is not the time to focus on B-list activities. Be prepared to go to your boss with a new list of what’s possible with your new team. Don’t be bullied into trying to deliver on goals you were once going after with your full team. That is simply unreasonable. It is fine to ask people to be heroic for a week, maybe two. But we are now 100 days in—with no end in sight—so come on.

You are the boss and your people are looking to you for direction. First, listen. A lot. Then, act. If you need to take the heat from above, so be it. That is why, Failing at Furlough, I say that being a manager is hard, and being a manager who cares is even harder. And you so clearly do care.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Ken Blanchard says it is difficult for leaders to plan for the future while they are also managing the day-to-day. For that reason, he suggests organizations have two groups of leaders: one that focuses on the present and a second that looks toward the future. In their new book Lead from the Future, Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz recognize this same challenge and provide a playbook to help leaders envision the breakthrough opportunities that will drive long-term growth.

We often look at visionaries like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos as having extraordinary talents that can’t be duplicated. But Johnson and Suskewicz believe developing and deploying an inspiring and actionable vision of the future is a skill that can be learned. Many leaders use present-forward thinking, which focuses on extending the life of their existing business by way of continuous improvements. But Lead from the Future illustrates the idea of future-back thinking—a method of achieving breakthrough growth through anticipating and shaping the market of the future. Rather than approach business with a mindset of describing what is and how to sustain it, the authors ask readers to think about what could be and then transform processes and systems to support that vision.

Johnson and Suskewicz’s research indicates that 75 percent of organizations base their strategic plan no more than five years into the future. Organizations that extend their five-year plan to ten years, however, give themselves a competitive advantage. Planning for three to five years keeps a company in the same competitive market, while planning ten years into the future creates a new market where that company can be the leader that others want to emulate.

Future-back thinking consists of three major phases.

• In phase one, leaders develop a vision. This includes exploring what the future is likely to hold, understanding what customer needs will be, identifying threats and opportunities, and creating a point of view to serve that future.
• Phase two is where leaders translate the vision into a clear strategy by walking back in stages to create initiatives that need to be in place to achieve the vision, including explicit benchmarks and goals.
• In phase three, leaders implement the strategy. The authors emphasize the importance of creating new structures, processes, and norms to drive the new initiative rather than trying to roll out a significant change using conventional methods.

Ultimately, leaders who embrace future-back thinking must be able to deal with ambiguity while giving themselves time to explore, envision, and discover. According to the authors, they need to be “comfortable being uncomfortable.” And when these leaders develop a narrative that supports the company’s future, the passion and opportunity that now lie dormant will be unleashed throughout the organization.

An easy-to-read and engaging book, Lead from the Future is filled with examples of leaders who have successfully practiced the future-back thinking method.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Mark Johnson, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. For more information on Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz, visit www.innosight.com.

A common coaching objective for executive clients is to exude greater executive presence while also being authentic. Many successful leaders are known for having exceptional executive presence. When you see this quality, you just know. However, when you don’t see it—you also know.

The path to executive presence can be challenging due to the following factors:

• The workplace is constantly changing. It is difficult to develop a style that feels right and suits the organization’s changing needs. Leaders want to stick with what feels comfortable.
• People evolve through their careers. Leaders change and grow. There isn’t always one true self.
• Social media demands that we share thoughts and feelings. Leaders may feel this is risky and unrealistic.
• Radical changes are happening in work styles. Leaders want to improve and learn using a sense of self, but extreme change can rattle a rigid self-concept.
• The difference in cultural norms is being addressed now more than ever before in the workplace.
• Selling ideas and self takes leaders out of their comfort zone.

In his article for TrainingIndustry.com, Executive Presence: What It Is and 4 Steps to Develop It, performance psychologist Dr. Stephen Long challenges us to consider that authenticity and executive presence are linked. Leaders set the direction with their heads and then engage their employees and colleagues with their hearts. Executive presence is a result of the head and heart working together to their maximum capabilities.

Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and author of the book True North: Develop Your Authentic Leadership, shares a similar message:

“Just as a compass points toward a magnetic field, your True North pulls you toward the purpose of your leadership. When you follow your internal compass, your leadership will be authentic, and people will naturally want to associate with you. Although others may guide or influence you, your truth is derived from your life story and only you can determine what it should be.”

George’s Authenticity Model focuses on the different qualities an authentic leader has or can develop. There are five dimensions: Purpose, Values, Relationships, Self-Discipline, and Heart.

• Purpose—authentic leaders know who they are and where they are going. Passion shines through all that they do.
• Values—authentic leaders know their values and examine them frequently. Their actions align with espoused values.
• Relationships—authentic leaders build solid relationships and make heart connections. They share their personal experiences and listen actively.
• Self-Discipline—authentic leaders remain focused and cool even under pressure. They possess a great deal of self-awareness such as managing their emotions; knowing personal triggers; showing empathy.
• Heart—authentic leaders are sensitive to the needs of others and are willing to help.

Our true authentic self is not hiding under a burning bush waiting for us to find it. It already exists within each of us. If we stray too far from our internal compass, our authenticity quotient diminishes.

Here are a few suggestions for leaders who wish to acquire leadership presence.

• Build a strong foundation throughout your career. Develop experiences that point to your areas of strength and passion.
• Be mindful that presence develops gradually throughout a career.
• Establish trust. Be consistent and fair to all. This takes time to develop.
• Manage self. Create awareness about personal emotions and skill levels, and build resilience.
• Establish meaningful relationships. Display an attitude of caring and willingness to share personal experiences.
• Do the right thing in an authentic manner.

Executive presence and authenticity are intertwined. No cutting of corners, no looking away from values. Presence is knowing who you are, what you stand for, and what you want to be known for. In other words, it is having absolute clarity about your brand and never wavering.

About the Author

Patricia Sauer is a coaching solutions partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team. Contact Blanchard Coaching Services to learn more about developing your authentic executive presence. Blanchard’s 250 coaches have worked with over 16,000 executives to develop the skills they need to succeed in a changing work environment.

Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

In this age of fast-moving markets, fickle consumers, and unprecedented risks, we need leaders who think and act like entrepreneurs. In his latest book, Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others, and Running Stuff, Joel Peterson explains the important difference between an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial leader: Entrepreneurs can launch new ventures but can’t necessarily run them at scale. Entrepreneurial leaders act nimbly to launch new initiatives, inspire others, and champion innovative approaches.

We’ve witnessed the extreme success of entrepreneurial leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. The days of leaders who focus on keeping results consistent with past performance and balancing a budget are over. Peterson introduces a new set of skills that aspiring entrepreneurial leaders need to develop.

In the book’s introduction, Peterson describes a painful personal memory of the night his wife temporarily went missing on a mountain hike. He then uses the metaphor of mountain climbing to present a series of maps organized around four skills needed to navigate the path to the summit of entrepreneurial leadership.

1. Build Trust: Trust is “base camp” for any leader, but is especially important for the entrepreneurial leader. They must determine and live by their core values in order to behave predictably, which is a requisite for building trust. Being transparent, respectful, and consistently delivering on promises builds a personal brand that creates a trusting work environment.
2. Create a Mission: Creating and sharing a clear mission is similar to providing a map to the summit. It gives meaning, clarity, and priority to a collective set of actions. A team without a mission lacks focus and direction and will most likely fail. A team that is aligned on a mission understands exactly where it is going and what it will take to get there. The mission serves as the inspiration for the endeavor by clarifying specific goals so that everyone is aligned.
3. Secure a Team: Leadership is a team sport—and nothing is more important than ensuring the right people are in the right positions. Entrepreneurial leaders know how to recruit, onboard, coach, assign, and reassign—or when necessary, remove—people on the team. They hire people who share the same values and work ethic, then empower them to perform at their highest levels.
4. Deliver Results: With a foundation of trust, an inspiring mission, and a team in place, it is time to deliver results. Entrepreneurial leaders establish standards for decision making, negotiating, and communicating while they meet the challenges of driving change, overcoming adversity, and more. Peterson presents a series of maps to help leaders be prepared to meet challenges and juggle the competing claims of customers, shareholders, and team members.

Entrepreneurial Leadership is filled with compelling stories that support the valuable information provided in Peterson’s maps. In many ways, the book is a how-to guide that will help you make a quantum leap in your own success. If you want to effectively lead others and help them achieve their best, launch new initiatives, drive innovation, or create a legacy, this book will inspire you to start your journey.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Joel Peterson, listen to the LeaderChat Podcast and subscribe today. Order Entrepreneurial Leadership on Amazon.com.

For more information on Joel Peterson, go to www.joelcpeterson.com.

Marcus Buckingham believes some basic assumptions about work are simply no longer true in today’s business environment. He shares his insights in his latest book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, coauthored with Ashley Goodall.

Lie #1: People care which company they work for.

Many companies use their corporate culture as a recruitment tool. Although it is true that people will join a company for their projected culture, people will stay—or leave—because of the team they work with every day. Team members who truly care about one another and have each other’s backs create their own culture. Leaders who observe and understand what makes teams perform well, and then encourage that behavior in other teams, will create a stronger organization.

Lie #2: The best plan wins.

Executives spend months developing a strategic plan, getting it approved by the board, and then disseminating it through the entire organization. The more rigorous and detailed the plan, the longer it takes to develop—and during that extended amount of time, reality probably changes. Planning is a good way to scope a problem, but what leaders really need is intelligence. Smart leaders empower their frontline people to deal with situations immediately and then check in regularly to see how they can help. Buckingham’s research indicates that this method lowers turnover and improves productivity while it builds an intelligence system that outperforms a complicated planning system.

Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals.

It has been common practice for a CEO to have annual goals that are cascaded first to the executive team, then through each department structure, to the individual level. The problem? Things can change over a year—but fewer than 5 percent of people go back to look at the goals or recalibrate their need. Truth be told, goals work only if you set them yourself. Freethinking leaders know what they need to accomplish, take the responsibility to explain it to team members, and then set goals they can achieve. The best practice is to cascade meaning—not goals.

Lie #4: The best people are well rounded.

Companies spend time defining competencies they want employees to develop—and then spend more time trying to improve people’s weakest competencies. This practice creates employees with just-average performance. Freethinking leaders look for the skills that people do well and leverage those skills. High performers usually do something a little differently than others—and that difference, when used intelligently, can be a competitive advantage.

Lie #5: People need feedback.

Feedback is a tricky subject. On one hand, if you don’t give any feedback and ignore someone, it destroys them. On the other hand, if you approach someone saying you want to give them feedback, their brain pattern looks almost exactly like fight-or-flight brain waves. The person feels like they are being attacked. Many times, feedback isn’t helpful because it isn’t delivered in a way that helps the person learn how to change a behavior. When freethinking leaders see someone doing something that works, they ask the person what they think worked well and why. This line of questioning as a method of feedback serves as the learning moment. The interrogation of the action—good or bad—is the most important conversation.

Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people.

Forty years of research shows that ratings of the performance of others is more a reflection of the person doing the rating than the person being rated. We simply can’t rate other humans on things like strategic thinking, creativity, business knowledge, or overall performance. Accurate rating of other people’s performance takes a much deeper conversation based on observations—it’s not about selecting a number on a scale.

Lie #7: People have potential.

Of course people have potential. The danger comes in identifying certain people as high potential, because doing it presupposes that others are low potential. By creating these designations, we are deliberately not seeing 85 percent of our people. The truth is that everyone has potential—but we have never found a way to measure just how much potential they have.

Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most.

Work-life balance is a great aspiration, but it is important to remember that balance is stationary. So, if you feel like you are totally in balance, you are probably stagnant. The trick is to find activities that give you strength in work and in life, and then spend as much time as possible on those things. Of course, none of us can spend 100 percent of our time being happy. But if we are deliberate about spending time doing things that invigorate us, it lessens the chance of us burning out and increases the chance of us being happier and more productive.

Lie #9: Leadership is a thing.

The main thing Buckingham wants leaders to know about the power of human nature is that each human’s nature is unique. If we see this as a problem that needs to be fixed, that’s a shame. But if we make a home for the unique individuals, we can build work environments where people are seen and challenged to become a better version of themselves.

You may completely agree with what Buckingham has to say in this book, or you may question some of it. Either way, once again, he’ll give you something to think deeply about.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Marcus Buckingham, listen to the LeaderChat Podcast, and subscribe today. Order Nine Lies About Work on Amazon.com.

For more information on Marcus Buckingham, go to www.freethinkingleader.org

After surveying more than one million employees from a wide range of organizations, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton have found that leading with gratitude is the easiest, fastest, least expensive way for managers to boost both performance and engagement in employees.

Unfortunately, it is also one of the most misunderstood and misapplied skills in business today.

During their research, Gostick and Elton heard over and over that people feel not only underappreciated at work, but sometimes even under attack. The authors call this the “gratitude gap.” In their latest book, Leading with Gratitude, they dispel common myths about leaders expressing gratitude and offer eight simple ways to show employees they are valued.

The myths Gostick and Elton identify may sound familiar:

• Fear is the best motivator.
• People want too much praise these days.
• There just isn’t enough time!
• It’s all about money.

Leading with Gratitude is filled with compelling stories featuring respected leaders such as Alan Mullaly of Ford Motor Company and retired American Express chairman Ken Chenault. The stories illustrate that these myths are simply excuses that can keep managers from building an honorable work environment by expressing their appreciation for a job well done.

The authors explain that gratitude isn’t about showering employees with thank-yous and high fives. They offer eight practical examples that demonstrate how leaders can first gain clarity about how people contribute and then show gratitude in specific ways that will be meaningful to individuals.

Practicing the act of gratitude can be as simple as letting people know their suggestions are valued by soliciting their ideas and acting on them. Another way is by assuming positive intent, especially when errors happen. Instead of getting upset or blaming someone for making a mistake, assume the person was doing their best and then use the situation to learn what you could be doing differently as a leader.

One of the most useful tips is to walk in your employees’ shoes. Getting a better understanding of what it takes for people to do their jobs will uncover ways you can collaborate to solve problems, improve processes, and enhance the customer experience as you build relationships by showing empathy. The best way to start is to look for small wins that will lead to bigger wins.

Perhaps my favorite suggestion in the book is to practice gratitude at home. Gostick and Elton remind readers not to get caught in the trap of putting our best face on at work and leaving it there when we go home. Showing appreciation and empathy for loved ones should be a common practice—and I think a gentle reminder is a good thing.

So remember to express gratitude often, tailor it to the individual, and ensure it reinforces corporate values. And don’t forget to praise your peers as well. Leading with gratitude creates engaged, high performing employees, a stronger organization, and better results.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Adrian Gostick, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. Order your copy of Leading with Gratitude on Amazon.com.

Do you ever wonder why you reach some goals easily and struggle with others? In her latest book, Master Your Motivation, Susan Fowler explains the three scientific truths behind motivation that will help you achieve your goals. Distilling many years of research, Fowler fashioned a condensed description of three basic needs we must create in our lives in order to master our motivation: choice, connection, and competence.

Choice

Creating the basic need of choice can be as simple as recognizing you have a choice and you are in control of your actions. Fowler suggests you ask yourself these questions to help create choice:

• What choices have I made? Consider which of your past choices made you happy and which did not.
• What different choices could I make going forward? Consider how you feel about those choices—or if you feel you don’t have any choices.
• Do I feel goals or situations have been imposed on me? Consider where pressures may be originating and whether your behaviors could have a positive impact on outcomes.

Connection

The need for connection is tied closely to values and is created through authentic relationships and a sense of belonging. When it comes to a goal or situation, ask yourself these questions to create connection:

• Can this give me a greater sense of belonging or a genuine connection to others involved? Consider why this goal or situation might give you a greater sense of belonging and whether it potentially could lead to a bigger purpose.
• Is this meaningful to me? Consider how the goal or situation aligns to your values and purpose, and what would happen if you didn’t get involved.
• Do I feel what is being asked of me is fair and just? Analyze your answer to this question to determine the true importance of the goal or situation to you.

Competence

Creating competence is not only about mastery, but also about learning, growing, and gaining wisdom from our experiences. Fowler suggests asking yourself these questions to help create competence:

• What skills or experience do I have that might prove helpful to achieving my goal? Consider your core competencies and whether they are important to this situation.
• What new skills could I develop? Consider new skills you may want to develop and why they are important.
• What insights have I gained—or might I gain—that could help me moving forward? Consider why moving forward is important to you and what you can learn from your mistakes.

Motivation is at the heart of everything you do—as well as everything you don’t do yet, but want to do. The most important thing to understand is that you can control the quality of your life by controlling the quality of your motivation. Fowler’s motivation philosophies are proven through her research and real-world examples of people who have experienced breakthroughs by putting her tips into practice.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Susan Fowler, listen to the LeaderChat podcast and subscribe today. Order her book, Master Your Motivation, on Amazon.com.

Constant change is a way of life in organizations today. How do managers and leaders cope with the barrage of changes that confront them daily as they attempt to keep their organizations adaptive and viable?

Leaders often feel trapped in a lose-lose situation when they try to launch a change effort. On one hand, they risk unleashing all kinds of pent-up negative feels in people. On the other hand, if they don’t drive change, their organizations will be displaced by those that are committed to innovation.

To lead a successful change, leaders must listen in on the conversations in the organization and surface and resolve people’s concerns about the change.

Five Change Leadership Strategies

The following five change leadership strategies and their outcomes describe an effective process for leading change.

Strategy 1: Expand Involvement and Influence
(Outcome: Buy-In) By involving people in decision making about the change, leaders significantly increase the probability that the change will be successfully implemented. People are less likely to resist the change when they have been involved in creating the change.

Strategy 2: Explain Why the Change Is Needed
(Outcome: Compelling Case for Change) This strategy addresses information concerns. When leaders present and explain a rational reason for the change, the outcome is a compelling case that helps people understand the change being proposed, the rationale for the change, and the reason the status quo is no longer a viable option.

Strategy 3: Collaborate on Implementation
(Outcome: The Right Resources and Infrastructure) When leaders engage others in planning and piloting the change, they encourage collaboration in identifying the right resources and building the infrastructure needed to support the change.

Strategy 4: Make the Change Sustainable
(Outcome: Sustainable Results) Rather than simply announcing the change, leaders must make the change sustainable by providing people with the new skills, tools, and resources required to support the change. By modeling the behavior they expect of others, measuring performance, and praising progress, leaders create conditions for accountability and good results.

Strategy 5: Explore Possibilities
(Outcome: Options)Possibilities and options should be explored before a specific change is decided upon. By involving others in exploring possibilities, you immediately lower information concerns when a new change is announced, because people are “in the loop” about deciding what needs to change.

To summarize, here’s a good rule of thumb:

Organizations should spend ten times more energy reinforcing the change they just made than looking for the next great change to try.

Use these strategies to lead change in a way that leverages everyone’s creativity and commitment.

Want to learn more about a people-centered approach to change and leadership? Download a free 60-page summary of Leading at a Higher Level. It’s available for free on The Ken Blanchard Companies’ website and it contains the best thinking from the founding associates and consulting partners of our company. Use this link to access the summary.

Dear Madeleine,

I am trying to make something of myself. I am in Nigeria and have little access to opportunity.

I struggle with not having a role model to look up to because of my environs and the kind of people within my sphere. I have a desire to stand out as a woman, but I feel trapped like one going in a circle.

I love teaching and making an impact with people I come in contact with. But in my case, circumstances have kept me from getting the necessary education and skills for my dreams. I want to polish what I have and grow in it, but I need someone I can look up to who can help me be a better leader.

Any advice you have for me would be appreciated.

Looking for a Role Model

Dear Looking for a Role Model,

I have thought a lot about your situation, and I keep coming back to the same thoughts. I understand that your circumstances have prevented you from getting the education you need to pursue your dreams, but it does seem that you are in a decent situation now. It is natural to want to find someone to look up to, but if you can’t, you are just going to have to invent your own special brand of being a successful you.

I think it will serve you well to look within for your polish and to grow yourself as a leader. You have to decide what you think is important in a leader and then assess whether or not you have those qualities. If you do, you can build on them. If you don’t you can begin to cultivate them. Try to look at yourself through others’ eyes and ask yourself: Where do I have rough edges? Where might I shift my behaviors to be the leader I wish to be? In terms of finding role models, it might be hard to find one person who is everything that you hope to be. But you can identify one trait or skill that you find appealing in a person and emulate just that one thing.

I have always relied on books for the knowledge I lacked, and it has served me well. Of course, there are a million leadership books, so where to start? Naturally, I am going to recommend you start with two of my favorites by my father-in-law, the great leadership guru Ken Blanchard: Leading at a Higher Level and Servant Leadership in Action. You might also think about taking the Values in Action Character Strengths assessment. It is free online and can be accessed here. This assessment will help you to see yourself and what is already wonderful about you.

It sounds like you are on your own, my dear, so you get to make it up by yourself. No one is going to tell you what to do or how to do it. This is lonely, yes—but also liberating. Trust yourself, trust your instincts, and keep moving toward your goals and what interests you. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. And don’t give up.

Love,

Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I have a long-time employee who is very smart, understands his job, and gets things done. He manages a small but powerful team of individual contributors and his people really like and respect him.

We recently invited him to join an elite group in the company to do visioning and strategy work. It was believed his experience would give him valuable perspective.

He is not doing well. He starts talking and we can’t shut him up—and worse, no one can follow what he is saying half the time. He does not seem to notice when people’s eyes glaze over. He talks in circles and repeats himself. It’s almost like once he gets the floor, he is afraid to give it up.

I have never seen this side of him. He is not impressing anyone and I am worried that this opportunity will backfire for him. I am not quite sure how to help him without shutting him down completely.

Stymied

_______________________________________________________________________

Dear Stymied,

I am so sorry that your protégé is not rising to the occasion. It is amazing that a person can be so good at so many things and then—well, not at all good at others.

My guess is that he is nervous and inexperienced with these kinds of meetings. As his manager, it is your job to intervene, unfortunately; but better to shut him down completely now than to let him continue to alienate people and possibly do irreparable damage to his reputation.

I think you need to just tell him. Be brief and to the point. You can open the conversation with a warning that you need to share an observation that might be hard to hear. Then tell him exactly what you told me. “You are talking in circles, you are repeating yourself, your points are unclear, and you are not adding value to these meetings. I need you to take a step back and stop speaking in the meetings until you can do it effectively.”

Yes, this is harsh—but you aren’t doing him any favors by letting him ramble on. Ask him to hold off on speaking until he can develop some self-awareness and restraint. That will be the first step. Next, he will have to experiment with participating appropriately.

Most of us are not born being able to do this—it takes experience and lots of practice. I spend literally days in meetings like the ones you describe, and I am often at a loss for how to make points I think will matter, when to make them, and how to be concise and impactful. It is fiendishly difficult. Writing is so much easier because you can back up and delete the ten sentences it took to get you to a clear thought! But it will be a big favor to your rambler if you give him an alternative to try. Perhaps you can work on a signal to share with him when he goes off track?

I recently learned a model that is part of our new Teams program—it’s called Conversational Capacity and it has rocked my world a little bit. I’ve been using it and it’s making a big difference in my own confidence and, I hope, my effectiveness.

The idea behind the Conversational Capacity model (which is nicely laid out by Craig Weber, a contributor to the program, in his book Conversational Capacity) is that when communicating, there is a sweet spot between candor and curiosity.

When using candor, one must:

• State a clear position
• Be direct and to the point
• Explain the thinking that supports your position
• Use a relaxed tone and body language

In my experience, even excellent communicators have a hard time stating a clear position—most people need to speak their ideas aloud to even have a clue about what they are thinking. I use note taking and mind mapping to try to figure out what my position is so I can be clear. Stating a clear position briefly and then explaining the two or three points that show how you got to the position will hold and keep people’s attention and move the conversation forward.

When practicing curiosity, one must:

• Ask thoughtful questions
• Listen attentively
• Consider other perspectives openly
• Have an attentive, non-defensive body posture

People can be big contributors to meetings simply by listening well and asking questions that reveal more insights. We don’t all have to have strong positions all the time to add value.

Contributing effectively in big meetings where abstract ideas are being discussed is a skill that can be developed. Self-awareness is the first step—and, uncomfortable as it may be, you will be doing your employee a real favor by helping him take that first step.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Drawing a page from his newly released third edition of Leading at a Higher Level, bestselling business author Ken Blanchard asks senior leaders, “Have you set up your organization to be high performing?”

Blanchard identifies seven focus areas to make sure that a company is positioned to be the employer of choice, provider of choice, investment of choice, and corporate citizen of choice.

1. Information and Open Communication—people have easy access to the information they need to do their job effectively. Plans and decisions are communicated so that they are clearly understood.
   
2. Compelling Vision: Purpose and Values—leadership is aligned around a shared vision and values. People have passion around a shared purpose and values.
   
3. Ongoing Learning—people are actively supported in the development of new skills and competencies. The organization continually incorporates new learning into standard ways of doing business.
   
4. Relentless Focus on Customer Results—everyone maintains the highest standards of quality and service. All work processes are designed to make it easier for customers.
   
5. Energizing Systems and Structures—systems and structures, are integrated and aligned. Formal and informal practices make it easy for people to get their jobs done.
   
6. Shared Power and High Involvement—people have an opportunity to influence decisions that affect them. Teams are used as a vehicle for accomplishing work and influencing decisions.
   
7. Leadership—leaders think that leading is about serving, not being served. Leaders remove barriers to help people focus on their work and their customers.

Blanchard also offers a quick 14-question quiz and a link to a 60-page Leading at a Higher Level eBook summarizing the key points.

You can access both here at Blanchard’s recent blog post.

Dear Madeleine,

I am an entrepreneur trying to grow my business while trying to also have a life. I know I have some bad habits that I should probably correct and I want to develop good habits moving forward. What are your thoughts on this?

Want to Get it Right

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dear Want to Get it Right,

You are smart to be thinking about this. And you are right that habits can really make the difference between success and anything less than success.

First, the basics: A lot of research has been done on habits. There is strong support for establishing regular routines that add up to small wins over the day. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, calls these keystone habits. They help us to exert more self control over our emotional states, act less impulsively, and stay focused on what we think is most important.

Getting up at the same time, eating a healthy breakfast, and making the bed are examples. Habits like these tend to build on themselves and create a virtuous circle. You can start by looking back at times that you have been at your best and see if you had any habits then that seemed to keep you in the zone. If that doesn’t yield anything worthwhile, experiment with small things you think would make you feel great—then slowly keep what works and weed out what doesn’t. If, as you mention, you have habits you know for sure are not serving you, Duhigg has some very good ideas on how to stop them.

Some tips:

• Don’t try to do everything at once—tackle one bad habit at a time.
• Get support—a buddy, a group, a way to track success. Any and all positive reinforcement is good.
• Substitute a bad habit with something good. For example, instead of going outside for a smoke, go outside for a walk around the block.

Research also shows that people who exercise are more likely to follow through with other habits that contribute to success. Exercise is one of the hardest things to fit in to a 24/7 work scenario, but cracking that code will absolutely serve your highest and best good.

My regular readers will roll their eyes at me, because I am a broken record on this: developing a habit of counting your blessings contributes to better brain chemistry as well as more creativity, resilience, and happiness. All it means is for you to regularly list the things you are grateful for. The great thing is that you can do it while you are walking around the block, waiting at a stop light, or standing in line at the market.

Now the work stuff.

When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, the book that rocked my world was The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Clearly, I am not alone because Gerber has made himself the guru for small business and has a ton of wisdom to offer. I have used these concepts from Gerber again and again for myself and with clients:

• Anything that gets done regularly needs a clearly articulated and written process. Regular processes help a business run smoothly. This sounds obvious—but I’ll bet if you look around, there are some areas where you don’t have one.
• Don’t spend time on anything that someone else could be doing. As the head of your business, you are a finite resource. You have to drive down tasks and problems that some one else can take care of. By doing this, you free yourself and empower others.
• Many entrepreneurs move fast and find explaining things over and over again to be boring.  So, be clear about the vision for the business, and the values you use to make decisions and then repeat.  Repeat long after you are bored silly, and then keep repeating.

As a lifelong student of success, I have experimented with lots of other ideas from Hyrum Smith, Steven Covey, David Allen, and others. Some habits that have made a difference for me are these:

• Put yourself first—because if you go down, the whole house of cards goes down. To go the distance you will need to practice radical self-care: sleep, good food, lots of water, exercise, some fun, and rest. (Rest does not mean watching TV, although that can count as fun. Rest means prayer, meditation, staring at the horizon, reading for fun, cooking for fun.)
• Decide what, after your own health, is most important to you and say no to everything else. Just say no. If you can’t, start with maybe and then say no. Be brutal. Get used to disappointing people. It is hard at first, but it gets easier.
• Do the hard stuff first: visioning, strategy, emotional conversations, creative problem solving, etc. I tend to not be great at that kind of stuff at the end of the day. Neuroscience research supports this as well.
• Look at the calendar every day for the crazy makers—in-person meetings that have no transportation time between them. Phone or web meetings with no call-in numbers or link. Meetings you need to prepare for that have no prep time already carved out. No breaks for food. Hour-long meetings that should be 15 minutes. Meetings that you shouldn’t be in at all. Eliminate time wasters, surprises, and stuff that will make you late. I guarantee this: the minute you take your eye off of it, your calendar will be the bane of your existence. (Of course, if you don’t keep a calendar, this would be a good time to start.)
• Write everything down, even if you think you will remember it. Maybe you will, at this point in your journey. You probably have a great memory now, but as life gets more complicated (hyper growth! Lawsuits! Kids! Dogs! Aging parents!) you just won’t be able to keep track of it all. And your memory will decline inevitably as you age, much as I hate to say it, so having good systems to keep track of all the stuff you need to do and think about will be a habit you are grateful for.
• Automate and/or delegate anything you can. With the online services available today, it is amazing what errands you can eliminate.
• Keep your eye on your social media habits – anything that isn’t helping you be successful is quite literally a waste of your most valuable resource.  Don’t forget the job of the news people is to keep you paying attention to the news, don’t let yourself get sucked in.  Stay off of social media-  unless you are looking at puppies on Instagram, that is actually good for your brain.

Good luck to you.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

In his seminal 1973 book, The Nature of Managerial Work, Henry Mintzberg proposed ten roles that define the day-to-day activities of a manager. They are: Figurehead, Leader, Liaison, Monitor, Disseminator, Spokesperson, Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, and Negotiator. These roles are still referenced in modern articles about management and in training courses for managers.

The world today is unimaginably different from a 1973 perspective. Workplace diversity, distributed workforces, globalism, technology, and previously unknown industries make for a landscape as different from 1973 as post-industrial revolution farming was from its predecessor.

In reviewing the managerial roles espoused by Mintzberg, we wonder: Are they the same today? As a manager do your responsibilities incorporate them or are things different for you?

Special Offer to Participate in Research Project

The Ken Blanchard Companies is looking for two dozen managers to interview regarding their modern managerial activities and roles. Candidates who take part in interviews can choose from selected online courses offered by the company for their participation. Interested managers should contact Jim Diehl and the product development research team at The Ken Blanchard Companies for additional details.

Use this email to request information on participation: jim.diehl@kenblanchard.com

As we wrap up season one of the LeaderChat Podcast, Ken Blanchard and Chad Gordon revisit some of their favorite episodes. They share new thoughts about the important messages from our guests and invite you to send questions you would like Ken to answer in future episodes. Just send your questions to podcast@kenblanchard.com.

Enjoy this episode of Chad Gordon interviewing Dr. Travis Bradberry, researcher and author of the best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0—which has sold over one million copies!

Bradberry shares how emotional maturity is absolutely critical for success as a leader, and how emotional intelligence is a capacity that can be learned and developed. He explains that increasing your emotional intelligence begins with self-awareness.

Bradberry discusses how to integrate EQ training into a leadership development curriculum—and how the emotional intelligence displayed by top leaders can set the example for all levels of leadership in an organization. Bradberry also shares strategies for dealing with stress, procrastination, and toxic people.

Emotions are a primary driver of behaviors and emotional intelligence is a foundational skill of all good leaders.  Learn how to be a master of your emotions in a way that increases your effectiveness as a leader.

And be sure to listen to the very end of this 30-minute interview to hear Ken Blanchard share his thoughts and personal takeaways on Dr. Bradberry’s ideas.

Dear Madeleine,

What is your opinion about New Year’s resolutions? I have a list of goals as long as my arm for the New Year, and I realize I am probably overdoing it. How do I know how much is enough, and how much is too much?

Feeling Ambitious

________________________________________________________________________

Dear Feeling Ambitious,

There is something so inspiring about the feeling of a fresh start, isn’t there? But we know good intentions alone aren’t going to get us where we want to go. A ton of research has been done on the topic of goal setting and achievement. The newest entry to the field is from Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit. His most recent book, Smarter, Faster, Better, is a fairly standard take on the topic but fresh for today. To be fair, though, he stands on the shoulders of Steven Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) and Hyrum Smith (The 10 Natural Laws of Time and Life Management). These two books caused me to radically change my life twenty-five years ago. Both Covey and Smith insist that every choice you make must be rooted in your deepest values in order for you to be successful. For example, losing weight won’t work if you are doing it to please someone else. A goal must be important to you or you are not likely to accomplish it.  

Here are a few quick tips if you aren’t up for a stack of books—although a little Googling will uncover many good summaries!

• Pick one big thing. Probably the main reason people don’t achieve their goals—other
  than lack of deep personal commitment—is that they have set too many. So your angst
  that you may be loading up on goals is probably spot on. As you swing back to
  normal after a big holiday season, you are already behind, so you must manage
  your own expectations. Choose one big thing and let the rest go.
• Get Support. Lots of it. Change is hard, no matter what it is—and if you’re
  trying to break an addiction like nicotine or sugar, it is doubly hard. The
  brain craves anything that causes a predictable release of dopamine, so you’ll
  need more support than you think you do. Tapering off can help, as can support
  groups, a buddy, keeping a journal, daily acknowledgment, or asking for help
  from your guardian angel or whatever you know to be your higher power.
• Break it Down. You have one big goal. Break it down into small sub-goals or daily
  commitments. Ask yourself: What can I do,
  every day, to keep myself on track? Make a chart and check off something every
  day. (I’m sure there’s an app for this, but I’m committed to reducing my screen
  time, so I go with paper.)
• Be Clear.
  You may have heard of the SMART model—it’s been around for years and still offers
  good guidelines for goal setting. Here’s the way I learned it: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timebound. Other interpretations for the model exist but I won’t go into a long analysis here, because so many have done it so well. Again, Google can shed more light on this if you’re interested.

I mention the SMART model because I have observed in myself and in my coaching clients that specificity has tremendous power, and so does a timeline. It’s fairly easy to set a SMART goal with something like losing weight, because we can use numbers. With other things, it can get foggy. So specificity and clarity are key. For example, “I want to get better at my job” is not going to help you. “I am going to achieve ‘Exceeds Expectations’ on the following three competencies at my job” will take you much further.

Note: before you start, you must ask yourself: How will I know I am successful in the end? You can only really celebrate your success if you have answered this question in the beginning.

• Make it Compelling: Now let’s loop back to my first point, which is that you really
  have to care about doing the work to
  achieve your goal. You can’t do it for your spouse, your kids, your dad, or
  anyone else, no matter how much you care about them. So, choose something you really, really want. It doesn’t matter
  if it isn’t a big deal to anyone else, or if it isn’t going to make you a
  better person. If you really care, there is a chance you will succeed.

I will leave you now so that I can decide how to be nicer, more productive, a more patient mom, a more inspiring boss, thinner, healthier, and a more committed recycler. I only wish I were kidding.

Here’s to miracles for all of us in the New Year!

Love, Madeleine

PS. I was kidding. Kind of. But seriously, my big goal in 2019 is for this “Ask Madeleine” column to be more widely read. So I am asking for your support. If you like my column, please share it every week with three (3) other people whom you think would like it. Thank you so much!

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I have a good relationship with my boss. We communicate well and I admire him a lot. Over the last two years, he’s the one who has helped me learn the job and tackle problems.

This great connection has caused all kinds of issues I hadn’t anticipated, however. My coworkers seem to think that he supports me in every situation. People say my success is due exclusively to my relationship with the boss, and no one recognizes my hard work.

To add to my troubles, I am a little bit brash. I tend to be loud and probably a little too direct. I speak out when I feel something isn’t right.

I have resigned from my current employer and am moving on to a new opportunity. I don’t want to leave on a bad note and I definitely don’t want to recreate the same situation in my next job.

Teacher’s Pet

Dear Teacher’s Pet,

Congratulations for being able to build such a great relationship with your boss. That is a useful skill. The trick, of course, is to have a great relationship with your boss, your peers, and—as you eventually get promoted—your own direct reports.

The concept that will be helpful for you right now is Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence refers to the extent to which you are aware of yourself, aware of others, and able to regulate your own behavior to work more effectively with others. Some wonderful books have been written on the topic, including Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, and Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves.

Here is a great video summary of the main concepts that essentially lays out the importance of possessing these five personal qualities:

• Self-awareness
• Managing emotions
• Self-motivation
• Empathy for others
• Handling relationships

You will benefit a great deal from applying your ambition and desire toward successfully increasing all the above. Otherwise, you are going to continue to crash around and turn people off, which will hurt you professionally.

I can totally relate, by the way—having spent most of my life being described as a bull in a china shop. Brash, loud, direct, and straightforward describes me to a T. I have worked relentlessly to learn to self-regulate. After forty years in the workforce, I still have to put a lot of attention into moderating my natural way of being. It is difficult and sometimes tiring but my efforts have paid off.

Take it from me—honing your Emotional Intelligence is worth it, primarily because you really won’t be able to make a true impact all by yourself. To make a difference in the world you need to be able to work with others and inspire others to do their best. All the research on successful people shows that the ability to build and nurture relationships with people at all levels of the organization is the key to success.

This notion is often challenged by examples of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk—not exactly Emotional Intelligence role models. If you are as big a genius as those guys, then go ahead and ignore me. But if you are just a regular, smart, hardworking, fundamentally decent person who wants a great career, your Emotional Intelligence will matter as much as your intellectual intelligence.

I know you are already on your way—you at least noticed that your way of being hasn’t been working. So as your start your new gig, keep your ears open and your mouth shut until you get to know people a little bit.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Does training really work?

“If we as leadership, learning, and development professionals can’t answer that question with an enthusiastic yes, we’re all in trouble,” says Dr. Paul Leone, ROI expert at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results.

“The truth is, HR people don’t always know if training is working,” says Leone. “Often we ask for budget at the beginning of the year, but at the end of the year we aren’t able to show the training has had an impact on the bottom line. That’s not a good position to be in.

“Imagine how much better you would feel if you could go into meetings with senior leaders and stakeholders saying, ‘This time I have some data—and I can show that we are impacting the bottom line by X amount of dollars.’ I think that’s where we all want to be in the industry.”

The good news, according to Leone, is that you can demonstrate the impact of training if you know where to look, how to set up your initiative, and how to present your data.

“Begin with the end in mind,” says Leone. “What are the leadership behaviors you want to impact and what is the benefit in terms of increased sales or productivity, decreased costs from better alignment or efficiencies, or improvements to the customer experience?

“Senior leaders want to know that the money they are spending on training is generating a good return on investment. If you don’t clearly identify the benefits along with the costs of training, it creates some pretty lopsided equations and makes it difficult to talk about ROI—because training is seen only as a cost. That’s a vulnerable position.”

Start Small and Be Conservative in Your Approach

For L&D professionals just getting started with measuring ROI, Leone suggests focusing on a small, manageable test case, such as a pilot study with a group of managers who have direct reports with easily quantifiable key performance indicators (KPI).

“Two things are important here,” says Leone. “First, remember that you are measuring the benefit of better leader behaviors by looking at the improvement in performance of that leader’s direct reports—that’s where the bottom-line impact will show up. For example, better leader behaviors from a call center manager will translate into better performance from that manager’s frontline associates. Better goal-setting and coaching skills from a sales manager will translate into better sales performance from that manager’s individual salespeople.”

“Second, choose managers whose direct reports have KPIs that are easier to convert into bottom line impact. Don’t try to quantify the impact of better research and development performance among a group of engineers as your first project. Choose a group where you can measure shorter-term impact and easily convert improved performance into dollars and cents.”

Use a Proven Model and Process

Leone also recommends using a proven approach such as the Phillips ROI model and the Kirkpatrick levels of change. He suggests focusing on levels 3, 4, and 5 in the Kirkpatrick model which cover leader behavior changes and bottom-line impact.

Leone uses a survey administered 90 days after training to measure perceived changes in manager behavior. To corroborate answers and provide a more airtight case when presenting evidence of changed behaviors to senior executives, Leone surveys both the managers who participated in the class and their direct reports.

“It’s important to not only ask the managers if they have changed their behavior, but also ask the direct reports if they have experienced changed behavior from their manager. This provides a corroborating data point.”

To isolate the impact of the changed behaviors on business performance, Leone recommends comparing the financial performance of the treatment group (the managers who went through the training) with a control group (similar managers in an identical business unit who have not yet gone through the training).

“Comparing the treatment group with a control group allows you to isolate the benefits of the training. When senior leaders know that everything else between the two groups is identical, they are more at ease attributing the improved performance to the training initiative.”

Keep the Presentation Simple for Best Results

Leone also has a tip for how to present the data to senior leaders: keep it simple!

“When I first began presenting data after graduate school, I thought it was necessary to show things like multiple regressions and multivariate analysis in my presentations. But in reality, it had the opposite effect. When I made my presentations more understandable, they started to go higher and higher in the organization.

“If you want to squash your story, throw in a lot of numbers and tables,” says Leone with a smile. “But if you want to push that story up the hierarchy to the highest levels, make it simple and it will get up there.”

Establish Credibility that Lasts and Builds Confidence

“The goal with your ROI presentations is to create credibility within the organization—where you can say, ‘If we are going to keep a program, we are going to run a pilot and we’ll measure it. If it’s great, we’ll scale it across the organization. If it’s not so great, we won’t.’ I can guarantee you that at some point in the very near future, someone is going to ask if a training worked. You will want a study and some data to show that it did.

“Remember, you don’t need to measure everything at first,” says Leone. “Go in and measure one or two programs and do it right. Once you get your foot in the door as a credible evaluator, you’ll have a much easier time securing budget in the future.”

Would you like to learn more about calculating ROI and measuring the impact of training? Join us for a free webinar!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Making the Business Case

Thursday, November 29, 2018, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Improving leadership skills is one of the best ways to impact your organization’s bottom line. Still, many leadership, learning, and talent development professionals struggle with both identifying the expected return on investment for training expenditures and measuring impact after an initiative.

In this webinar, David Witt, program director at The Ken Blanchard Companies, teams up with Dr. Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results to show you how to identify anticipated fiscal impact of a leadership training initiative and how to measure it in a cost-effective manner after the class has been conducted.

You’ll learn:

• How to calculate the ROI for your leadership training initiative using Blanchard’s Leadership Training ROI Worksheet. (Worksheet provided to all registrants.)
• How to measure the impact of training using the methodology outlined in Leone’s book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact.
• How to improve the adoption of new leadership practices from the classroom to the work environment.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to quantify the impact of leadership training in proposals—and how to set up your training to deliver on expectations.

Register today using this link!

Dear Madeleine,

I work for the tax collector’s office at my local county tax agency. The bulk of my efforts go to facilitating change into that environment. I am a career-driven person and I am finding it very difficult to influence others.

My job is under the umbrella of a state agency and I recently have been voted to be on a leadership board for my county. This organization has been plagued with old traditions and scandals of misuse of power. I’m optimistic and believe that I can change the environment—but at times it exhausts me.

When the HR department selected me for a grievance board committee recently, my boss asked me “Why don’t you let someone else win for a change?” I don’t know how to interpret that. What should I do differently?

Trying to Make Change

Dear Trying to Make Change,

The good news here is that it sounds like you are having quite a bit of success—but it also sounds like you are stepping on some toes to achieve it. Although a little toe stepping is probably inevitable, there might be some ways to soften your approach and make more friends than enemies.

Forgive me for generalizing, but in my experience people who have worked in local government a long time don’t love change. Government work tends to attract folks who seek predictability and stability. Even if they start out with the best of intentions—and of course, many do—if a system is in place that protects their job and benefits them in specific ways, they are loath to give that up.

You have stepped into the role of change agent, which will immediately cause others to suspect you if not outright hate you. You must realize that the role of change agent requires some advanced skills. If your boss is experiencing you as wanting to win at all costs, causing others to lose, somehow it appears that you are engineering things as win/lose.

To ease your path, you are going to have to develop more diplomacy. You’ll need to have conversations that will help people see the changes as a win/win. It is relentless, hard, and, yes, exhausting work. You sound like a logical person, so it is probably difficult for you to see why someone wouldn’t automatically understand why a change might be needed. Because it is so obvious to you, there is a good chance you may not be sharing all of the detail that might help others see things the way you do.

It wouldn’t hurt for you to be aware of Blanchard’s change model. At its core, it breaks down the kinds of concerns people have when change is needed and imminent, and it helps leaders understand the approach they need to use with each individual affected by change. In this recent blog post are ideas for some steps you might consider.

You also might be interested in Angeles Arrien’s work on change agents. In her book The Four-Fold Way; Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary, Arrien researched leaders and change agents in indigenous cultures. She found that, despite radical differences in culture and customs, they all did four things in common.

1. Show up and choose to be present
2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning
3. Tell the truth without blame or judgment
4. Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome

This alone is worth the price of the book. However, Arrien also provides some excellent ideas on how to develop oneself if one identifies with any of the roles in the title. I would say you probably at the very least are a warrior and a visionary. These are extremely difficult roles to play in the world, and you will need to create a long-term personal development program to sustain your efforts.

In the meantime, work on developing and deepening your relationships, gathering input from stakeholders, listening, overcommunicating, and being kind. I am sure you are right about the old traditions and the bad behavior, but no one likes to feel judged. The past is the past. You represent the new. Let the new be characterized by drawing on what is best in people and what people are doing right.

And, I am sorry to say it, you’ll need to develop a thick skin because no matter how hard you try, some people are still going to hate you. It just goes with the job.

Fight on, change warrior!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I started a business with my best friend about ten years ago after the real estate bubble burst and we were both laid off from our financial services business. 

Against considerable odds, we have been very successful.  We decided when we started to grow that he would be CEO and I would CFO/COO.  The roles made sense in terms of our strengths and skill sets. 

In the past two years or so, my partner has let the title go to his head and has begun acting as if he is the sole head of the business.  He has been making decisions on his own, without consulting me, and treating me as if I am his employee, not his equal partner. 

We have identical financial stakes in the business and have been working side by side the whole time—so we are, in fact, business equals. It would bother me less if he weren’t making some poor decisions.  What do you think I should do?

Concerned

Dear Concerned,

This situation should bother you a lot, even if he were making all good decisions.  Somehow you have given away your power to your partner and you need to cut it out.  Make a date to have a good chat. If he won’t commit to a time, sit in his office until he walks in.  You may have to force the issue because at this point he is probably avoiding you.  You must absolutely stop this situation before things spiral out of control.

Business partnerships are like marriages.  They both require a baseline of mutual affection and respect and a contract or code for behavior—but most important, they need wide open communication.  I wonder if you have set values for the business.  If so, you might be able to call on those.  Either way, something has shifted and you must address it now.

Prepare for the conversation by being clear about what behaviors are out of character and not working.  Do not attack him personally.  Formulate your requests for change and be prepared to make them.  Also be prepared to hear from him what you’ve been doing that is not working for him, as I am sure there are things that are going unsaid.

Somehow, something went sideways between the two of you—and you probably know what it was.  You need to get it all out on the table.  It wouldn’t hurt to work with a professional who can help the two of you communicate and set up rules of the road for moving forward. But that is in the future. I am a big fan of a technique from Paul and Layne Cutright called the “Heart to Heart Talk.” It’s a way of getting all the stuff that needs to be said between two people out on the table so that it can be discussed and they can move on. Randy Conley wrote about it in another Blanchard blog, which you can read here.  This technique could be step two. It’s very effective—but it requires the two participants to behave themselves and really act like grownups.

Please don’t let this go on much longer. The more you let your partner run amok, the more normal it will seem to everyone and the harder it will be to stop.  The longer you don’t stand up for yourself as an equal, the more he will treat you as if you’re not one.

Good luck, Concerned.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Do’s and Don’ts When Creating a Servant Leadership Curriculum

You have to resist the temptation to treat a servant leadership initiative as just a training intervention, says Blanchard senior consulting partner Bob Freytag. “Instead see it, ideally, as a gradual way of being.”

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Editor’s Note: This guest post is by Hunter Young.

Think about this past week. Did you go to a business where you received below average customer service? Did it make you feel unwanted? Did you feel like leaving right then? If you answered “yes” to these questions, you’re not alone. Thousands if not millions of customers receive poor customer service every day.

Customers should always be the top priority for every business. Whether you are selling cheeseburgers or Louis Vuitton purses, your main focus should be your customer. Why? Because customers fuel your business—in fact, without them, there is no business.

In her webinar Taking a Top-Down, Bottom-Up Approach to Service in Your Organization, Vicki Halsey explains the importance of Legendary Service®—the title of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ customer service training program as well as the book coauthored by Halsey, Kathy Cuff, and Ken Blanchard. The focus of the webinar is the importance of caring for your customers. Halsey and Cuff use the acronym CARE for qualities needed in a service provider: Committed, Attentive, Responsive, and Empowered. These four elements of Legendary Service® are the core values everyone should follow when dealing with customers—whether you are a manager behind the scenes or a customer-facing service provider on the front lines.

First, you must have a clear goal in mind, Halsey explains. “All good performance starts with clear goals.” Your goals give you a service vision that sets the stage for how you will treat your customers. And remember: you must Commit to serving both your internal and external customers.

Although it is extremely important to give your external customer the best experience possible, serving your internal customers—your peers and direct reports—is just as crucial. Because as a manager, if you don’t demonstrate a sense of caring for your employees, how can you expect your employees to care about your customers? “You have to treat your people the way you want them to treat your customers,” says Halsey. It starts with the top leaders and goes all the way to the front line.

Attentive is the next element in the Legendary Service® model. Once you have clear goals in mind for your service vision, you must identify your customers’ wants and needs. Attentive service providers ask questions, actively listen, and then confirm that they understand.

The next step is to be Responsive. Actions speak louder than words. Doing what you say you’ll do will exceed a customer’s expectations and increase the chance they will return. And don’t forget to express your appreciation to the customer. After all, they could have easily gone to one of your competitors instead of to your business.

The last element in the Legendary Service® CARE model is Empowerment. As a manager, you should empower people to take initiative, ask for the help they need to succeed, and share innovative ideas. You will unleash the full extent of your power when you empower others. Even when it seems impossible, turn that “I can’t” into “How can I…?”

Halsey explains that the best leaders are situational. The Situational Leadership® II model can help a manager identify the amount of direction and support an employee needs at their current development level on a particular task or goal.

Here are some takeaways from Halsey’s webinar:

• The most effective leadership is a partnership.
• Work together with your employees to set a service vision.
• Teaching is very different from telling.
• Set goals, stay connected, and give feedback.
• If your employee does not know the most effective way to complete a task, first work with them to find the best way to do it effectively and then build a platform for them to be able to work through the task in the future.

Following these simple guidelines with your employees will go a long way for individuals, customers, and the business as a whole. Providing Legendary Service will have a more positive impact than you can imagine.

If you would like to learn more about Legendary Service® and Situational Leadership® II, follow this link to view Halsey’s webinar presentation.

Halsey points to some natural connections between The Ken Blanchard Companies’ flagship training program, Situational Leadership® II (SLII®), and the newly released Legendary Service® training program:

Set clear goals. “Goal setting is a key component of both our Legendary Service and SLII program offerings,” explains Halsey. “We are firm believers that, at both the organizational and individual level, all good performance begins with clear goals. In Legendary Service training, we teach the importance of having clear organizational and individual service visions. This spells out who you serve, how you do it, and what the benefit is to the customer. In our SLII training, managers learn how to take organizational goals—such as a customer service vision—and turn them into meaningful individual goals and tasks that inspire direct reports.

“With both programs, managers need to be as clear as possible about what a good job looks like. This can be a little more difficult than it seems on the surface—for example, when there are conflicting priorities. Managers are often asked to hit output quotas at a high-quality level and under a certain budget. In a call center, this might translate into solving each customer’s problem the first time, with current staff who must maintain a call volume of more than 20 calls answered per hour. That can be a challenge. The best organizations get clear on what is most important and set specific, trackable, and attainable goals while maintaining motivation and avoiding burnout.”

Once goals are set, be attentive. In Legendary Service training, Halsey teaches the importance of attentiveness—focusing your attention on the needs and wants of the customer. In SLII, the focus is on the needs of the direct report who is working with the customer.

“You have to treat your people the way you want them to treat your customers. In Legendary Service, we teach people how to uncover the spoken and unspoken needs customers bring to the interaction. We teach service personnel how to ask questions, actively listen, and confirm that they understand what the customer is looking for. In SLII, we teach managers how to be attentive to their employees’ needs by diagnosing their development level on a specific goal or task. From there, the manager can offer different levels of direction or support.”

Halsey explains that most organizations don’t give managers the time to properly diagnose an employee’s level on a given task. Instead, they use a tell-and-do approach. “Managers simply assign tasks such as, ‘Be sure to ask each customer if they’d like to sign up for a credit card, you must maintain a certain call volume, or process a certain amount of claim forms.’

“What’s missing is the manager taking the time to assess each employee’s development level on each task. Is it new to them? Have they done it before? Are they committed to it? Or are they just going through the motions?”

Be situationally responsive. “Every new task requires an assessment of an individual’s competence and commitment to carry it out successfully. If the person is new to the task, you have to respond by providing direction. If their commitment isn’t there, you have to focus on providing support and rationale.

“In Legendary Service, this is taught as being responsive to customers by acknowledging feelings, offering solutions, and gaining agreement. The goal here is to treat the customer the way they would like to be treated—the Platinum Rule,” says Halsey. “When working with direct reports using SLII, this means identifying the amount of direction and support the direct report needs on that task and then gaining agreement on providing it.”

“This part is critical,” explains Halsey. “If we don’t diagnose and we don’t use the right leadership behaviors, we are not giving people what they need to serve customers at the highest level. As managers, we are not modeling a serving mindset.”

Be empowering. Empowerment is the final element in the Legendary Service model—and it is all about teaching people to take initiative, ask for the help they need to succeed, or to share innovative ideas.

“You want to help people step into their power,” says Halsey. “A big part of that is taking a look at the policies, processes, and procedures being used in your organization. Are they helping your people serve your customers or getting in the way?”

Managers must take a measured approach, says Halsey. “Empowering isn’t about delegating the responsibility for service to others. Instead, it is working together to set a service vision, providing training on being attentive and responsive to customers, and then consistently asking for ideas on how to improve the process.

“There is a big difference between telling someone what to do versus teaching them how to do it. It’s taking the time to identify what needs to done and then taking the time to diagnose development level of both internal and external customers and provide the direction and support people need to succeed.

“As a manager, you have to make a conscious decision to slow down and discover where your people are through skillful questions and listening. Then you have to show you care by adjusting your style to respond in a way that provides what they need.”

“It all adds up to showing people you CARE—you are Committed to service, Attentive, Responsive, and Empowered,” says Halsey.  “It’s a great model for creating a service culture internally with your direct reports—as well as externally with the people who purchase your products and services.”

Would you like to learn more about combining Legendary Service and Situational Leadership® II to create a culture of service inside your organization? Join us for a free webinar on May 23!

Taking a Top-Down, Bottom-Up Approach to Service in Your Organization

Wednesday, May 23, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

In this webinar, Dr. Vicki Halsey, coauthor of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Legendary Service program, will show you how to take a top-down, bottom-up approach to customer service that will engage everyone in your organization.

Vicki will show participants how to apply Legendary Service concepts to create a customer mindset for all associates in the company, and then layer on an additional level of training for managers with SLII to bring the learning full circle.

Participants will learn:

• How to apply Blanchard’s 4-step CARE model (Committed, Attentive, Responsive, Empowered) to interactions with internal and external customers in a way that improves teamwork, collaboration, and performance
• How leaders can supercharge performance by improving their goal setting, day-to-day coaching, and performance management skills using SLII principles
• How to turn the organizational hierarchy upside-down so that everyone is focused on serving customers first

Don’t miss this opportunity to create an organizational culture that is aligned, integrated, and focused on the customer!

Register Today!

An increasingly complex business environment requires an engaging and easy-to-understand service vision says Vicki Halsey, co-author of Legendary Service: The Key Is to Care.

In a short, one-minute video featuring key concepts from The Ken Blanchard Companies new Legendary Service training program, Halsey shares a great story about how one major league baseball stadium engaged all employees in creating “major league memories.”

Take an Inside-Out Approach to Improving Customer Service Scores

Customer service expert Kathy Cuff believes that organizations need to take a look at how their culture impacts service. That starts by recognizing that everyone has internal customers. “It’s about looking at the relationships and mindset within the organization.”

You can check out the entire April issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

Dear Madeleine,

Soon I will be joining a large HR consulting firm as a consultant. My new job is focused on organization design and transformation.

I have three years of work experience as an HR business partner but consulting is an altogether different world for me.

I am excited but scared about how I should I put my previous experience to use in my new job and what I should prepare for as I join the consulting world. Any words of advice?

I hope you can help,

Scared New Consultant

Dear Scared New Consultant,

Congratulations on your new job! I understand that you are nervous and scared—that is to be expected when starting something totally new. The good news is that consulting firms are notoriously picky, so the fact that you actually got hired means you probably have the stuff to succeed.

I have some general rules of thumb for you, and then some HR-specific ones—some of which I have learned the hard way.

First, general:

• Pay attention to who’s who in your new organization and notice which people others listen to. The power structure is often informal and you need to know who is respected.
• Get your boss to express as clearly as possible what a good job looks like. Make sure you know what your boss’s priorities are, and to the extent possible find something you can do that will give you an early win.
• Notice what you like to do and are good at, and make sure you don’t over-focus on these at the expense of the stuff you don’t like as much. Get help with things you aren’t naturally good at.
• If your boss doesn’t pay much attention to you, you need to provide them with a weekly checklist of everything you are focused on. Ask to be sure there is nothing missing and that you are focused on the right things. Once you get comfortable, you can check in less frequently.
• If you are coming into the organization with a cohort or class, as is common in consulting, make friends with everyone (or at least don’t make enemies) and spend more time with the people who have a good attitude, don’t complain, and work the hardest.
• Turn in impeccable work. Proof obsessively. If possible, get someone to proof for you. I have known consultants who started together who were each other’s proofing buddies because it is so much easier to catch other people’s errors than our own. For Power Point presentations, always (always, always) review the slides in presentation mode, because the errors leap off the screen that way.
• I am a big fan of the book The First 90 Days – Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.

Now, HR consulting specific:

• Try to get examples of slide decks and cases where things seem to have gone particularly well. This will help you understand what is valued by the clients as well as the organization.
• Clients often have no idea what they want or need, but will act as if they do. Don’t be fooled – listen deeply to what they say the problem is and ask good, open-ended questions until they get to the truth. Never ask why questions—they make people defensive. Instead, ask, “How did you get to that conclusion?” The best way to get people talking is to say “Tell me more.”
• Many clients will say they want culture change without understanding how much work it is. Changing the culture in an organization is similar to helping an individual manage a personality disorder. That sounds terrible, but I am serious. Most clients think they are ready for some big change but they really aren’t. Be aware that most clients will get excited and bite off more than they can chew—and then blame you when the whole project dies of its own weight.
• Again, a book. Don’t be thrown by how old it is as its value has stood the test of time: The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline is so erudite it is almost unreadable, but the Fieldbook is chock full of practical tools and models and will be a valuable resource for you.

Good luck to you. Remember that you will have some really rough days when you will think the job is much harder than you expected. You will wonder what you were thinking when you took it. You will despair about ever getting the hang of it. You will think you made a terrible mistake and that you will never succeed.

Remember that this is normal and it will pass. Patience and persistence will be your best friends—and one day you will wake up and realize you know what you are doing.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Of course, I am a fan of Leading at A Higher Level, which outlines a lot of The Ken Blanchard Companies content. And then of course there is the brand new Servant Leadership in Action.  I love both of these books and recommend them highly.

My son also got me thinking about some of the attributes a great manager should either have or be working on.  Here is a list of 15 attributes that serves as a good starting point—these suggestions are taken from notes our Blanchard coaches have made about what they focus on during coaching calls.

Attributes/Practices of Great Managers

1. Be interested and curious
2. Do no harm (or don’t be a big jerk)
3. Admit when you are wrong and apologize when appropriate
4. Keep your eye on the ball – don’t waste time on what doesn’t matter
5. Surround yourself with the best people you can
6. Be a role model from the behaviors you are holding your people accountable for
7. Have at least one bright person you trust who challenges you even if it is annoying
8. Exercise iron clad personal discipline when it comes to self-care
9. Practice self-control so that you can respond instead of react
10. Do the hard things first
11. Mean what you say, say what you mean
12. Do what you say you are going to do
13. Be crystal clear about your expectations
14. Listen more than you talk
15. Keep learning and growing

What am I missing?  Please do add your thoughts!

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Servant Leadership: 20 Tips & Strategies from Today’s Top Leaders

In a recent Servant Leadership in Action Livecast, over 3,200 leadership, learning, and talent development professionals had an opportunity to hear from 20 of the contributing authors in a new book co-edited by Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell. The book, Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results features 44 short articles that take a fresh look at servant leadership principles and how they can be applied in today’s organizations.

You can check out the entire March issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

The book, Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results features 44 short articles that take a fresh look at servant leadership principles and how they can be applied in today’s organizations.

The recent Livecast explored five of the six main sections of the book. In section one, Fundamentals of Servant Leadership, viewers heard from Mark Sanborn, Jon Gordon, Jim Kouzes, and Holly Culhane on the origins of servant leadership, how to apply it at work and home and what the role of a leader is in today’s work environment.

In section two, Elements of Servant Leadership, viewers watched short videos from Jim Dittmar, Stephen M. R. Covey, Neal Nybo, and Mark Miller on the key behavior traits of servant leaders, the role of trust, personality challenges, and how to get started.

In section three, Lessons in Servant Leadership, viewers saw Tom Mullins, Shirley Bullard, Art Barter, and Margie Blanchard describe how servant leadership principles have played a role in their work lives and what they took away from the experience.

In section four, Putting Servant Leadership to Work, viewers watched videos from current and former CEOs Garry Ridge of WD-40, James Blanchard of Synovus Financial, and Cheryl Bachelder of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen as they describe how they used servant leadership principles in their organizations. Viewers also heard retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Jeff Foley describe how servant leadership principles guide mission and values in the military.

In section five, Exemplars of Servant Leadership, viewers watched four contributing authors sing the praises of others who have impacted their lives through examples of servant leadership in action. Rico Moranto, Guardian of the Culture at Waste Connections, shares an example about a colleague at work who modeled a serving heart focused on others. Richard Blackaby, President of Blackaby Ministries International talks about his father, Henry Blackaby, and the work he did turning around troubled churches. John Hope Bryant, founder & CEO of Operation HOPE, shares a story about his hero and mentor, Ambassador Andrew Young, and his relationship as a friend and colleague to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And Marshall Goldsmith, best-selling author and the world’s leading executive coach, finishes with a wonderful story about former Girl Scout CEO Frances Hesselbein.

Throughout the broadcast, Ken Blanchard shares personal stories about the people described in the videos along with takeaways and action steps. It’s a wonderful, encouraging two-hour event that will help you explore servant leadership principles and how they can be applied to create an organization focused on both results and people.

The best news is that the two-hour event was recorded and is available to view for free, courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Use this Servant Leadership in Action Livecast link to access the recording.

Interested in attending an upcoming free live event on the topic of servant leadership? Join Ken Blanchard on April 3 for a one-hour webinar on Creating a Culture of Service. Blanchard will be sharing how to take a servant leadership mindset and turn it into a servant leadership skill set throughout your organization. You can register using this link.

PS: To learn more about the new book Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results, visit Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. The book features chapters from all the thought leaders mentioned in this article and more than twenty others including Brene Brown, Dave Ramsey, Henry Cloud, Patrick Lencioni, and Simon Sinek, to name a few.

That’s a lot of people!

I think the event is popular because people recognize we are in desperate need of a new leadership model—one that recognizes that people lead best when they serve first.

(For more information about the Livecast, keep reading.)

We have all seen the negative impact of self-serving leader behaviors. So why does this type of leadership continue to be so prevalent in today’s organizations?

In my experience, self-focused leadership is always caused by an overactive ego—one that is driven by comparative feelings of being either more than or less than others. Once you fall into one of these traps, you spend your time trying to either prove how smart you are or win the favor and approval of others.

One of my favorite books on this topic is Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith. They identify four warning signs of an overactive ego that could undermine an executive’s career.

Seeking acceptance: These leaders become overly concerned with what others think, which keeps them from being true to themselves. They tend to play it safe, swim with the current, and restate others’ ideas instead of coming up with their own.

Showcasing brilliance: These leaders go beyond sharing their thoughts—they want their intellect to be the center of attention. When showcasing is allowed or encouraged, the casualty is collective wisdom. Paradoxically, the more leaders show off their brilliance, the less likely people are to listen.

Being comparative: Instead of focusing on their own personal best, these leaders feel a need to compare themselves with others. Excessive comparison turns colleagues into competitors—and competitors are not effective collaborators. Comparing strengths to weaknesses leads to either excessive self-confidence or feelings of inadequacy.

Being defensive: Instead of defending an idea, these leaders behave as if they are defending themselves personally. They focus on proving their case and deflecting alternative points of view. These leaders resist feedback and brush off mistakes to the degree that conversations with them become superficial.

The goal is not to remove ego from the equation completely—it is to keep it in balance. Marcum and Smith recommend that leaders develop their humility, curiosity, and veracity. The objective is to achieve and maintain an intelligent self-respect and genuine confidence.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins identifies another way leaders can keep their ego in check: focus on something bigger than themselves. Collins suggests a special type of leader who builds enduring greatness through a combination of personal humility and professional will. He describes this type of leader as a Level 5. Of special note is the underlying principle Collins sets forward—leaders at all levels need to put organizational, department, and team goals ahead of their personal agenda.

Don’t let your ego get in the way of your good intentions. Practice humility and self-acceptance. When you are able to love and accept yourself with all of your imperfections, you can do the same for others. You’ll be surprised at how well people will respond when you get your ego out of the way. People already know you’re not perfect—it’s when you become vulnerable enough to admit it that the magic will happen in both your personal and professional relationships. As Colleen Barrett, former president of Southwest Airlines and servant leader extraordinaire, says, “People will admire your strengths, but they will respect your honesty regarding your vulnerability.”

PS: Interested in learning more about servant leadership? Join us for the Servant Leadership in Action Livecast on February 28. The event is free courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Twenty servant leadership experts—authors, CEOs, and thought leaders—will share how servant leadership concepts work in their organizations and how you can be a servant leader in your workplace. You can learn more here!

Basically, skill acquisition of the new and the better is expected by the sponsoring organization.

But what executive coaches have always known is what Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell zero in on in their new book, Servant Leadership in Action: leaders need support to look at what they need to eliminate from their behavior. This radical assessment is a critical first thing to address on the path to effective leadership.

In examining the impediments to true leadership, Blanchard states that the essential problem is the leader’s ego, and a preoccupation with how one is perceived. Specifically, he identifies the leadership-limiting implications for leaders as either over-promoting or over-protecting themselves.

Executive coaches resoundingly agree with you, Ken Blanchard!

Truly effective leaders are focused on the needs of those they are leading, which is what Ken calls servant leadership. Working with a coach can expand a leader’s focus from narrow and self-centered to include and, in fact, prioritize a focus on the needs of others. This requires a priority step in the coaching process of the leader’s honest assessment of the extent to which they are over-promoting or over-protecting themselves.

A great coach will “hold the mirror” for the leader, and ask them to honestly answer questions such as:

• What have you learned about yourself recently that was surprising?
• What other surprises could be waiting for you?
• What do you do when you hear something new about yourself that you do not like?
• What do you most fear people will discover about you?
• What do you most want people to know about you?
• What does it cost you when you behave in ways that you do not understand and cannot control?
• What is the significance of a leader in the life of an employee?
• If you were exactly the leader you wanted to be, what would be the difference between that image and who you are right now?

Coaching questions like this ask executives to consider the role of ego in their behaviors. With honest self-assessment, the leader can see where false pride or self-doubt have derailed their effectiveness.

With increased knowledge of self, the mirror can be replaced by a window and the gaze of the leader can confidently focus on the needs of others. Expanding skills and leveraging underused strengths is possible now, as the leader’s focus is off of their ego maintenance and on to meeting the needs of their followers and the organization.

Editor’s Note: Would you like to learn more about implementing a servant leadership mindset and skill set in your organization? Join Ken Blanchard for a free online Servant Leadership in Action Livecast on February 28!

Blanchard will host 20 authors, CEOs, and thought leaders from all walks of life as they discuss strategies and offer encouragement for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals interested in discovering more about servant leadership concepts.

The event is free, courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Learn more here! 

About the Author

Mary Ellen Sailer, Ed.D., is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 120 coaches have worked with over 15,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

“The mindset is to recognize that there are two parts of servant leadership, says Blanchard. “There is the vision, direction, and goals—that’s the leadership part. Everybody needs to know where you’re going and what you’re trying to accomplish.

“The servant leadership skill set is turning that vision into action. Now you are looking at the day-today management behaviors people need from their leader to succeed.”

Blanchard shares some examples:

Developing Others: “Servant leaders are always preparing people to be their own boss by helping them own their job and be in charge. This means identifying a direct report’s development level and providing the direction and support they need to grow and develop.”

Delegating: “Servant leaders first make sure that people know what the goals are. Then they turn the organizational pyramid and the reporting relationships upside down. They ask questions like How can I help? and What can I do to make a difference to help you accomplish your goals?

Directing Others: “It’s not really about directing them,” says Blanchard. “It’s about helping them. Sometimes when people are new they need clear direction—it is a temporary leadership behavior to help someone take ownership of their job and get to where they want to go.”

Servant leadership is a journey, says Blanchard. It’s both a mindset and a skill set. Once you get it right on the inside you can begin to develop the skills related to goal setting and performance management. Blanchard points to two of his company’s flagship programs as examples of how servant leadership principles can be taught as a part of a larger leadership development curriculum.

“In many ways, servant leadership is the overarching theme that covers the concepts of two of our most popular programs: Situational Leadership® II and First-time Manager.

“For example, Situational Leadership® II has three skills that generate both great relationships and results: goal setting, diagnosis, and matching. Notice that the first skill is goal setting. All good performance starts with clear goals—which, for a manager, are clearly part of the leadership aspect of servant leadership.

“Once clear goals are set, an effective situational leader works with their direct report to diagnose the direct report’s development level—competence and commitment—on each specific goal. Then together they determine the appropriate leadership style—the amount of directive and supportive behavior—that will match the person’s development level on each goal. That way the manager can help them accomplish their goals—the servant aspect of servant leadership. The key here is for managers to remember they must use different strokes for different folks but also different strokes for the same folks, depending on the goal and the person’s development level.

“In our First-time Manager program we teach the concepts of One Minute Management. The First Secret of The One Minute Manager is setting One Minute Goals—which for a manager is part of the leadership aspect of servant leadership. Once employees are clear on goals, an effective One Minute Manager tries to catch people doing something right so that they can deliver a One Minute Praising—the Second Secret. If the person is doing something wrong or not performing as well as agreed upon, a One Minute Re-Direct is appropriate—the Third Secret. When effective One Minute Managers are praising or redirecting their employees, they are engaging in the servant aspect of servant leadership—working for their employees to help them win.

“Why are the concepts of Situational Leadership® II and The One Minute Manager so widely used around the world? I think it’s because they are clear examples of servant leadership in action. Both concepts recognize that vision and direction—the leadership aspect of servant leadership—are the responsibility of the traditional hierarchy. People need to be clear on their goals. Implementation—the servant aspect of servant leadership—is all about turning the hierarchy upside down and helping employees accomplish their agreed-upon goals.”

Mindset and Skill Set

“Saying you’re a servant leader is a good start, but it is your behavior that makes it real for people,” says Blanchard. “Servant leadership is a combination of mindset and skill set that focuses on serving others first so that organizations develop great relationships, achieve great results, and delight their customers.”

Would you like to learn more about implementing a servant leadership mindset and skill set in your organization? Join Ken Blanchard for a free online Servant Leadership in Action Livecast on February 28!

Blanchard will host 20 authors, CEOs, and thought leaders from all walks of life as they discuss strategies and offer encouragement for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals interested in discovering more about servant leadership concepts.

The event is free, courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies. Learn more here!

David Marshall at Berrett-Koehler Publishers recently posted a Reading List for Servant Leaders. It’s a great mix of titles beginning with Robert Greenleaf’s The Servant as Leader (the book that started the modern servant leadership movement) and then continues with books by authors, CEOs, and thought leaders from all walks of life explaining how to use servant leadership concepts in today’s work environment.

Here’s the complete list:

1. The Servant as Leader by Robert K. Greenleaf
2. Servant Leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf
3. The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse
4. The Secret by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller
5. Dare to Serve by Cheryl Bachelder
6. The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner
7. The Serving Leader by Kenneth R. Jennings and John Stahl-Wert
8. Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
9. The Servant Leader by James A. Autry
10. Give and Take by Adam Grant

I’d like to add two more books to this list that I’ve found to be helpful.  Number 11 will help aspiring leaders get it right on the inside by examining beliefs and behaviors that might be getting in their way.  Number 12 will help people get it right on the outside by sharing practical strategies leaders can use in their day-to-day management practices.

11. Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts–Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith is the #1 executive coach in the world and his client list reads like a Who’s Who of the Fortune 500.  In this book, Goldsmith shares six engaging questions he uses with his clients. The questions provide a daily touchpoint to keep leaders on track with their intentions.

12. Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge

Ken Blanchard is the best-selling business author of 21 million books and Garry Ridge is the CEO of WD-40 Company.  In this book, Blanchard and Ridge teach leaders how to focus less on performance review (akin to grading people’s papers) and spend more time on providing the direction and support they need to succeed (helping people get an “A”.)

Those are my suggestions. How about yours?  What books would you add to a recommended reading list for aspiring servant leaders?  Use the comments section to add your recommendations.

PS: Interested in learning more about servant leadership and how an others-focused approach could work in your organization?  Join Ken Blanchard and 20 other authors, CEOs, and thought leaders for a complimentary online conference February 28. The Servant Leadership in Action Livecast is free and open to leadership, learning, and talent development professionals wanting to explore servant leadership and how it is used in today’s organizations. The event is free courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Learn more here!

When leaders allow their ego to go unchecked it can erode their effectiveness, says Ken Blanchard, co-editor of the new book, Servant Leadership in Action. “When that happens, leaders see themselves as the center of the universe and they put their own agenda, safety, status, and gratification ahead of people who are affected by their thoughts and actions.

Blanchard explains that when a leader’s sense of self-worth is tied up in their achievements and the perceptions of others, “their self-worth is up for grabs on a daily basis.”

“It becomes increasingly difficult for a leader with this mindset to maintain a healthy and centered self-determined image. Since their performance varies from day to day, they shift back and forth between feelings of fear and false pride.

“Leaders dominated by false pride are often seen as controlling. Even when they don’t know what they are doing, they have a high need for power and control. They tend to insist they are right even when it’s clear to everyone else they are wrong.

“Fear-driven leaders are often characterized as do-nothing bosses. Their people say they are seldom around, always avoiding conflict and not very helpful. Their fear of making a mistake and feelings of inadequacy keep them from taking action when they should.”

Practice Shining a Light on Others

For better ego balance, Blanchard recommends keeping things in perspective and looking for opportunities to catch people doing things right.

“The best leaders know it’s not about you—it’s about the people you serve. You finally become an adult when you realize that life is about what you give rather than what you get. Don’t let an overactive ego keep you from being your best self or bringing out the best in others.”

PS: You can learn more from Blanchard and 20 other authors, CEOs, and thought leaders who have contributed to the Servant Leadership in Action book at a free online webcast on February 28.  Blanchard is hosting the event to help spread the word about an others-focused approach to leadership.

Register for this event at the Servant Leadership in Action Livecast registration page.  The event is free, courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Dear Madeleine,

I know you have heard it before, but I just don’t know what to do about the amount of email I get. I cannot possibly attend to it all.

I am constantly showing up at meetings and facing the question “Did you read my email?”

The answer is almost always no, but people expect me to be up to speed and I am embarrassed. I am pretty sure that if I really spent the time I need to deal with email, it would take another 3 hours—and I am already working 10- to 12-hour days.

My team feels the same way, yet we continue to drown.

Drowning

Dear Drowning,

I have heard it—a lot—and I am right there with you. Just when I think I have it figured out, I am once again way behind. And god forbid you come down with the flu and are out of commission for a few days. I don’t know about you, but more business messages are now coming via social media and text, adding to the pileup.

You don’t say what level you are in your organization, so it is hard to tell how much power you might have to affect organizational email policy. You can certainly raise the issue with the powers that be to make that happen, as many organizations have. But you do have immediate control over your team, so I highly recommend you start there. Get together and brainstorm some team protocols to help you manage the onslaught. Examples are:

• Make sure that all email communication is somehow connected to team’s goals and outcomes.
• Use interoffice IM for quick questions.
• When possible, use the subject line to get the message across; e.g., Blue Team not required at Thursday staff meeting; details upon request.
• Use the subject line to indicate level of urgency; e.g., ACTION NEEDED for Friday’s presentation; or FYI only; or URGENT: 12-hour deadline.
• Only send email to the people who really need it. Step away from the cc and the reply all.
• Use your Out of Office when you have a day of back-to-back meetings to manage expectations.
• Find ways to shorten emails to get salient points across efficiently. At Blanchard, we use “ABC” and it works really well: Action Needed, Background, Conclusion. Do not send an email unless you can boil down your thoughts into 3 lines.

There are a lot of great ideas in The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before it Manages You, and of course there are other excellent books. The thing is that we are all in this mess together and we can agree on some ways to cope that will serve all of us. As the leader of your team, you can take a stand.

You can make your own rules, too, and share them with your team. I work with someone who has made it clear that he will not read anything on which he is cc’d. His staff expected him to stay abreast of all their dealings by reading everything he was cc’d on, and finally he asked everyone to compile a quick list of everything they think he needed to know and send it along once a week.

So put some method to madness. You can do it. In the meantime, stop blaming yourself and being embarrassed. If you haven’t read an email, the answer is, “Nope, haven’t gotten to it, sorry.” I guarantee you aren’t the only one.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

“It begins by asking yourself a tough question: ‘Am I here to serve or be served?’” he says. According to Blanchard, the answer to this question will reveal your fundamental approach to leadership.

“If you believe leadership is all about you, where you want to go, and what you want to attain, then your leadership by default will be more self-focused and self-centered. On the other hand, if your leadership revolves around meeting the needs of the organization and the people working for it, you will make different choices that will reveal a more others-focused approach.”

Blanchard believes the best leaders have a servant leadership philosophy. He explains that servant leadership requires a two-pronged approach that combines strategic leadership—vision and direction—with operational leadership—strong day-to-day management practices.

“At its core, servant leadership means that once vision and direction are set, the organizational pyramid is turned upside-down and leaders work for their people.”

There are two huge challenges to being a successful servant leader, according to Blanchard.

“One is false pride—when you think more of yourself than you should. When this occurs, leaders spend most of their time looking for ways to promote themselves. The other is fear and self-doubt—when you think less of yourself than you should. These leaders spend their time constantly trying to protect themselves.”

Surprisingly, the root cause of both behaviors is the same, explains Blanchard: “The ego. It’s just part of the human condition. Any time I hear someone say that their ego has never gotten in their way, that they are never prideful and never experience self-doubt, I usually say, half-jokingly, ‘I’ll bet you lie about other things, too.’ We all have times when we get off track.”

To help executives identify ways that ego may impact their leadership, Blanchard often incorporates an “Egos Anonymous” exercise into some of his work with clients.

“The Egos Anonymous session begins with each person standing up and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Ken, and I’m an egomaniac. The last time my ego got in the way was …’ And then they share a false pride or self-doubt moment or example.”

Egos Anonymous sessions have become so popular with executives that some use the technique to kick off meetings back at their workplace.

“They find it really helps their teams operate more freely,” says Blanchard. “It’s very powerful when people can share their vulnerability and be more authentic and transparent with one another.”

For leaders looking to get started with an inside-out approach to addressing and improving their leadership abilities, Blanchard has one final question: “What are you doing on a daily basis to recalibrate who you want to be in the world?

“Most people don’t think about that. This could include how you enter your day, what you read, what you study—everything that contributes in a positive sense to who you are.

“Consider your daily habits and their impact on your life. Take time to explore who you are, who you want to be, and what steps you can take on a daily basis to get closer to becoming your best self. Your leadership journey begins on the inside—but, ultimately, it will have a tremendous impact on the people around you.”

PS: Would you like to learn more about servant leadership principles and how to apply them in your organization?  Join Ken Blanchard for a free online event February 28.  The Servant Leadership in Action Livecast will feature more than 20 thought leaders and business executives sharing how they have successfully implemented servant leadership principles in their organizations.  The event is free, courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Learn more here!

That surprises some people who might expect him to point to his company’s flagship leadership program, Situational Leadership® II, or his best-selling business book, The One Minute Manager®.

Blanchard explains he is proud of the concepts within those products and how they have been widely accepted around the world. But over the last decade, he’s realized that the reason the concepts are well recognized is that they are examples of servant leadership in action—which he believes is the only way to achieve great relationships and great results.

“The world is in desperate need of a new leadership model,” explains Blanchard. “Too many leaders have been conditioned to think of leadership only in terms of power and control. But there is a better way to lead—one that combines equal parts serving and leading.”

In a new book, Servant Leadership in Action, coming out in March, Blanchard has invited more than 40 leaders from diverse backgrounds and industries to share their experiences with servant leadership. Here are a few of their stories.

Southwest Airlines

Colleen Barrett, president emeritus, Southwest Airlines, explains how servant leadership has been a key principle of success since the airline’s founding.

“For more than 40 years all of the leaders at Southwest Airlines have tried to model servant leadership. Herb Kelleher, our founder, led the way clearly—although I don’t think he knew what the expression servant leadership meant until we told him. Herb and I have always said that our purpose in life as senior leaders with Southwest Airlines was to support our people. At Southwest, our entire philosophy of leadership is still quite simple: treat your people right and good things will happen.

“We try in every way to let our employees know they are important and empowered to make a positive difference on a daily basis. Servant leadership isn’t soft management—it’s simply the right thing to do.”

That level of support manifests itself in many different ways at Southwest.  Barrett tells a heartwarming story of servant leadership in action that happened at Southwest a few years ago when a grandfather had to make last-minute reservations to be with a dying grandchild.

“The man was away from home in an unfamiliar city when he learned his grandson was dying and had only a couple of hours to live. The grandfather was desperately trying to get to him.

“Without any managerial intervention, our reservation agent directed the grandfather to head to the airport while she started working to clear obstacles from her end,” Barrett said. “She called the ground ops station at the airport, got hold of a ticket agent, and explained what the situation was. The ticket agent bought the grandfather a ticket with her own money, then went to the TSA checkpoint and told them she would be escorting a passenger who needed to make a flight. She then contacted the gate and explained the situation. The gate attendant, in turn, notified the captain on the flight.

“When it was time to push back, the pilot asked the ticket agent how close the grandfather was to arriving and learned the man was still about ten minutes away. The captain thought about it for a moment, then walked out of the cockpit to the front of the airplane and explained the situation to the passengers. He said, ‘We are going to wait for this gentleman. I think it’s the right thing to do.’ After listening to the captain’s explanation for the delay, the passengers broke into applause. When the grandfather arrived ten minutes later, he couldn’t believe the captain had held the plane for him. The captain’s response was, ‘Sir, this airplane wasn’t going anyplace without me—and I wasn’t going anyplace without you.’”

Synovus Financial

James Blanchard (no relation to Ken Blanchard) is the former CEO of Synovus Financial—a company whose servant leadership culture goes all the way back to 1888 when the founders of Columbus Bank and Trust Company were in the cotton mill business.

One day when a woman was working on a loom in the mill, her skirt got caught on the machine. The hem ripped and her life savings came spilling out on the floor. The hem of her skirt was the safest place she knew to keep her money. That day, the founders decided they could do better for their employees—so they started a bank that would serve as a trusted place for their workers’ life savings. The Synovus culture of service began the moment that woman’s savings spilled onto the floor.

“Over the years our name changed and we grew,” says Blanchard, “but our servant leadership culture endured and became even stronger. A few criticized us, saying the approach was too soft and permissive. So we had to prove it was the exact opposite—that people who were loved, respected, and prepared would perform better. Servant leadership led to higher performance and there was nothing permissive about it. We loved our people and we expected high performance. I believe when you truly care about someone, you not only love them but also expect the best from them and hold them to it.”

That approach has paid off for Synovus. In 1999, the company was named Fortune’s No. 1 Best Place to Work in America. They were on the list so often, in fact, the magazine asked them to stop entering and made them the first inductee into the Best Places to Work Hall of Fame.

“It was a great validation of our aspirations and our actions,” says CEO Blanchard. “I have been retired from Synovus for years but the pursuit of a servant leadership culture at Synovus was my greatest and most favorite satisfaction.”

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

When Cheryl Bachelder accepted the role of Popeyes CEO in November 2007, the company had been struggling.  Relationships with franchisees were not at the level they needed to be. Even so, a comment from a veteran franchisee caught her by surprise: “Don’t expect us to trust you anytime soon.”

Bachelder and her team decided to focus on servant leadership principles for turning around business performance.

“We began calling the franchisees our ‘number one customer.’ More important, as servant leaders, we began treating them that way. Our first principle was to respect and admire our owners’ passion for their work. Next, we listened to their needs and we accepted our roles and responsibilities in making things right. Finally, we put our owners’ interests above our own.”

The approach was a huge success. Relationships and business outcomes flourished. During the period from 2007 to 2016, under Bachelder’s leadership, Popeyes became a prosperous enterprise again. Franchise owners were served well: 95 percent rated their satisfaction with the Popeyes system at good or very good and 90 percent said they would recommend Popeyes to another franchisee.

“When we started, we didn’t know servant leadership would drive our success. We didn’t have a plaque in the office that stated our purpose and principles. What we did have was a team of leaders who were willing to put the success of the people and the enterprise before their own interests.”

The Power of Love, Not the Love of Power

A few years ago, Ken Blanchard received a letter from a man in New Zealand with a line that he believes sums up his leadership philosophy. The man said, “Ken, you are in the business of teaching people the power of love rather than the love of power.”

Servant leaders are constantly trying to find out what their people need to perform well and to live according to their organization’s vision. Rather than wanting employees to please their bosses, servant leaders want to make a difference in their employees’ lives and in their organizations. In top organizations, leaders believe if they do a good job serving their employees and show they truly care about them, the employees will, in turn, practice that same philosophy with customers.

Blanchard says, “We need servant leadership advocates and I nominate you. Go forth and spread the word to everyone who will listen. And remember: your job is to teach people the power of love rather than the love of power. After all, servant leadership is love in action.”

Would you like to learn more about servant leadership principles and how to apply them in your own organization?  Then join us for a free livecast on February 28!

Servant Leadership in Action Livecast

February 28, 2018 from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Join best-selling business author Ken Blanchard and 20 other successful leaders for an in-depth look into the concept of servant leadership and how it can transform the culture and performance of your organization.  You’ll explore:

• What is servant leadership?
• How does it work in today’s organizations?
• The role leaders play
• How to get started
• How to keep it growing

You’ll hear personal and powerful stories from 20 of today’s most inspiring servant leaders. You’ll be motivated to act after seeing how others have achieved great relationships and results in their organizations through servant leadership.

Attend this online event to:

• Gain a clear understanding of this proven leadership model
• Learn the fundamentals of servant leadership
• Discover how other companies have achieved results
• Acquire ideas of how servant leadership could look in your organization

People lead best when they serve first.  Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how servant leadership principles can take your organization’s performance to the next level.

The event is free courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies. To learn more, visit the Servant Leadership in Action Livecast registration page.

Leadership Training—3 Challenges When Making the Business Case

Senior executives instinctively know that the quality of leadership in an organization impacts that organization’s performance. But leadership, learning, and talent development professionals still have to make the business case if they expect their training initiatives to make it through the budgeting process.

ON-DEMAND WEBINAR!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

ROI expert Dr. Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact joins David Witt of The Ken Blanchard Companies with help on budgeting and proposals. Includes link to interactive Leadership Training ROI Worksheet!

You can check out the entire December issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

Below are a few key skills and techniques that coaches use when working with others. Each of these skills will help your managers adopt more of a coaching approach in their interactions. If you are interested in a more extensive and detailed look, check out Coaching in Organizations – Best Coaching Practices by Madeleine Homan and Linda Miller. Also, the International Coach Federation’s list of Core Competencies for coaches are listed on the federation’s website: www.coachfederation.org

• Take a service-partnership approach. It’s not about you. The focus is on helping leaders be effective and develop.
• Be fully present. This can be a challenge even for experienced coaches—there are so many distractions in today’s world. Constantly reengage yourself. During the coaching session, nothing else matters other than the person you are working with.
• Be a sounding board. Practice active listening. Many people just need a neutral partner to listen to them so they can work it out for themselves vocally.
• Inquire for insight: Ask open-ended questions. Clarifying questions help get to the heart of the topic. Focus questions set the direction for the coaching session. Discovery questions lead to increased awareness. Challenging questions lead to new insight and action.

This list is only a highlight of what is needed to have a productive, valuable, and rewarding coaching session from the client and coach perspective. Give it a try. I’m sure that even with this exploratory approach, your managers will experience the thrill of hearing and watching their people have aha moments as they come up with their own solutions.

About the Author

Terry Watkins is a coaching solutions partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Here are the three biggest challenges L&D professionals face—along with some resources to successfully address each challenge.

Adding Credible Numbers to Your Proposal. The first challenge is how to quantify the bottom-line impact of improved leadership behaviors. There are three areas to focus on, says Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact. “Key in on performance indicators that produce revenue, cut costs, or avoid future costs.”

When measuring programs designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders, Leone reminds practitioners to focus on improvements made by the direct reports of the leader in question.

“A leader’s productivity is really an accumulation of their direct reports’ productivity. I measure the impact of leadership training performance by looking at increases in direct reports’ performance and productivity.”

Leone shares more in his interview and webinar on Measuring the Impact of Training.

Convincing Others. Once you have your numbers together, you need to practice your financial presentation skills. “It shouldn’t be an adversarial meeting,” says Craig Spitz, chief financial officer at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “It’s about connecting the dots. Anytime learning and development professionals come prepared with models, numbers, and rationale that help make the case for training, they make the CFO’s job easier. If a training professional can show the impact of training, everyone is going to be interested in that.”

Spitz shares more in his interview and webinar on Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO.

Getting Out of Your Own Way. Finally, it’s important to recognize that there is a certain amount of guesswork when making assumptions about the impact of training. L&D professionals are often their own toughest critics, says Leone.  “Maybe it’s because we come from the social sciences or a more academic background. Maybe we tend to be harder on ourselves or hold ourselves to a higher standard—almost as if we think we need to write a thesis or a dissertation. That’s not the case. We just need to show value.”

But as CFO Spitz reminds L&D professionals, “Even the most thorough proposals are based on assumptions. Present your proposals confidently.”

Are you getting ready to submit a leadership training proposal? Don’t let these three challenges hold you back. For more on calculating impact, refining your presentation, and making the business case, check out these free resources available at the Blanchard website.

Blog Posts

Measuring the Impact of Training

Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO

Getting Buy-in for Leadership Development Training

Webinar Recordings

Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to a CFO

Leadership Training: Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

Making the Business Case for Leadership Training

Measuring the Impact of Training

“Productivity is the best and most immediate indicator of training impact. If you send someone to training, increased productivity can happen as fast as the next week or the next month. That’s where your business case should focus,” says Paul Leone, senior ROI consultant at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact.

FREE WEBINAR!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact
November 29, 2017

ROI expert Dr. Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact joins David Witt of The Ken Blanchard Companies for this free online event!

You can check out the entire November issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

But this isn’t true, says Paul Leone, senior ROI consultant at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results. In Leone’s experience, financial executives are receptive when anyone in an organization shows that money being spent is producing a return.

“Senior executives just want to make sure money is well spent. They are not necessarily looking to reject the proposal. If it will generate results, it’s in everybody’s interest for the organization to do it.”

It’s important for HR and L&D professionals to realize that they are not the only ones coming in with proposals based on assumptions, says Leone. Even the most tangible projects are based on best-guess scenarios.

“Let’s suppose marketing is proposing spending budget making a commercial. They have to ask for budget just like any other department. So they do some predictive analytics and some research, but in the end they are making an educated guess that the commercial will produce an uptick in sales.”

L&D professionals shouldn’t feel that everyone else is going in with rock-solid assumptions and metrics, says Leone. Everyone is in the same boat more than they realize.

“Maybe it’s because we come from the social sciences or a more academic background. Maybe we tend to be harder on ourselves or hold ourselves to a higher standard—almost as if we think we need to write a thesis or a dissertation. That’s not the case. We just need to show value.

“I can honestly say that I think it’s safer to bet on a training experience to improve performance than to take a chance on a commercial. We are adding bottom-line value with training—it’s just that we never measure it.”

When Leone looks at the typical measurements organizations can use to measure the impact of leadership training—employee retention, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity—he recommends a rank order on how to use each of these common measures to make the case for training.

“Productivity is the best and most immediate indicator of training impact. If you send someone to training, increased productivity can happen as fast as the next week or the next month. That’s where your business case should focus. Key in on performance indicators that produce revenue, cut costs, or avoid future costs.

“Customer satisfaction is also good to show, but it’s second down from productivity. In many organizations, there’s not a dollar value assigned to customer satisfaction.

“Employee retention is number three because it is long-term. By the time you show that your training had a positive effect on employee retention, so many other things over the same period of time could’ve happened in the business that could take credit for that.”

When measuring programs designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders, Leone reminds practitioners to focus on improvements made by the direct reports of the leader in question.

“A leader’s productivity is really an accumulation of their direct reports’ productivity. I’m not talking about the leader’s ability to make better presentations, better speeches, or better contributions to teams—even though those things could be counted as gains in productivity. I measure the impact of leadership training performance by looking at increases in direct reports’ performance and productivity. I look to see how these leaders are impacting their frontline people who have the tangible Key Performance Indicators we are tracking every day—sales, repeat calls, phone-ins, customer satisfaction, and the like.”

Leone is also passionate about what he calls Level Six measurement—identifying factors that lead to high levels of ROI.

“After a training event, certain factors in a training participant’s immediate work environment can make or break your training initiative’s overall impact. These factors have nothing to do with your training content, or your trainers, or with how well you planned out your delivery. This is about the manager that the training participant is returning to in the workplace.

“We conducted a recent training where the overall return on investment was about 6 percent—a modest positive return.  But when we focused on a subgroup of 50 people who reported to one specific manager, we found that group had an 1800 percent return on investment! This was directly attributable to what the manager was doing with participants after the training—things like bursts, boosts, contests, and sit-downs, with the manager shadowing people to see if they were handling the calls in the way they had been trained.”

For leadership, learning, and talent development professionals still on the fence about including projected impact numbers in their training proposals, Leone offers encouragement.

“You always get the biggest bang for your buck with leadership training, because you’re sending one person through and influencing the ten people who report to that person. You’re paying for one person and influencing so many others.

“Don’t be afraid to measure the impact of your training. If you don’t, people will never know the value you bring to the organization. Speak up and show your value!”

Would you like to learn more about calculating ROI and measuring the impact of training?  Then join us for a free webinar!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

November 29, 2017, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Improving leadership skills is one of the best ways to impact your organization’s bottom line. Still, many leadership, learning, and talent development professionals struggle to identify the expected return on investment for training expenditures and to measure impact after an initiative.

In this webinar, David Witt, program director at The Ken Blanchard Companies, teams up with Dr. Paul Leone, author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results to show you how to identify anticipated fiscal impact of a leadership training initiative and how to measure it in a cost-effective manner after the training is finished.

You’ll learn:

• How to calculate the return on investment for your leadership training initiative using Blanchard’s Leadership Training ROI Worksheet. (The worksheet will be provided to all registrants.)
• How to measure the impact of training using the methodology outlined in the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact
• How to improve the adoption of new leadership practices from the classroom to the work environment

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to quantify the impact of leadership training in proposals—and how to set up your training to deliver on expectations.

Register today!

Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO

Leadership, learning, and talent development professionals are sometimes a little nervous talking with chief financial officers. CFOs ask hard questions and want to see demonstrable bottom-line impact for training initiatives being proposed. It doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, says Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

FREE WEBINAR
Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to a CFO

Get coaching on how to build a sound financial rationale to go along with a proposed training agenda. Join Craig Spitz, CFO of The Ken Blanchard Companies for this special hands-on webinar!

In this episode of the Blanchard LeaderChat podcast we speak with Susan Fowler, coauthor ofSelf Leadership and The One Minute Manager^®. Fowler shares key points beginning with challenging assumed constraints and recognizing your points of power.

You can check out the entire October issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

I share this because I’ve been reading some interesting articles lately from the field of metaphysics. The research suggests we create our own reality by what we think. We conceptualize those thoughts in language. It’s the language I want to explore with you today.

In their book Crunch Time, Judd Hoekstra and Rick Peterson explore the concept of reframing. They tell an amazing baseball story about a critical moment where reframing made all the difference. In metaphysical terms, it’s simple: change your thoughts to change your world.

A few years ago, one of our Blanchard coaches was working with a client who was about to present in front of her board of directors for a high stakes project. She was terrified that she’d throw up, stammer, blunder, and maybe even lose funding for the whole project. Her internal language was squarely focused on fear.

The coach helped her client shift that internal language to create a new reality—one in which she was the most qualified expert to share with interested and caring people how a bit more funding would have a far-reaching effect. The coach encouraged her to envision herself after the meeting, chatting easily with board members, smiling, laughing, and happily answering questions.  As a result, her inner voice went from a screaming demon to an encouraging counselor.

It’s not easy to create a whole new universe. In fact, it can be a lifelong effort to shift the language of our inner voice and thereby shift what we believe to be possible.

So think about this: what might you ponder on, say to yourself, or ask of yourself to shift your universe and build your new and improved reality? Then practice, practice, practice!

About the Author

Patricia Overland is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

I can’t get what I need. My boss doesn’t understand me. My organization’s systems don’t work. I don’t have the resources I need. My job doesn’t take advantage of my strengths. No one appreciates me. My boss micromanages me. There’s no room for me to grow. They don’t understand how much I could be contributing if only they’d give me a chance.

If you’re human, I imagine you’ve thought or invoked one of these statements. I know I have.

Even though we may be able to justify these types of statements, they often reflect our own assumed constraints: beliefs that allow us to escape personal accountability and fall victim to circumstances or the actions of others. In the new Self Leadership program I co-created with Ken Blanchard and Laurence Hawkins, we teach that self leadership is about having the mindset and skillset to accept responsibility and take initiative.

While it is wonderful to learn how to ask for the direction and support you need to be successful in your role, it’s also important to remember that when something goes wrong, there’s no one else to blame.

The Hard Truths about Self Leadership

• Sometimes you misdiagnose your competence. Not knowing what you don’t know can be dangerous. Enthusiasm and high commitment are blessings, but don’t mistake them for high competence. Self leaders are able to appreciate where they are on the learning curve, diagnose their development level on a goal, and recognize the times and tasks where they need direction. Self leaders also have the wisdom to ask how to do something they’ve never done before.
• You have to ask for feedback. One of the most important habits of a self leader is proactively asking for feedback every day instead of waiting to get it. Recent research suggests people are more likely to listen to feedback when they have asked for it. And neuroscience shows the brain is more ready to integrate feedback when it’s asked for and received at a time that is most relevant to the learner.
• The best person to solve your problems is you. Nobody knows your problems better than you do. With experience, the best person to solve a problem is the person who identifies it. Self leaders go beyond problem spotting to proactive problem solving, which has been shown to reduce workplace stress and result in higher energy at the end of the day.
• You must stop blaming others. Even if your manager is ineffective, dismissive, or a micromanager, you need to build on the positive direction and support you do get from them—and manage up or around to get what you still need to succeed. When you take the lead in regular one-on-one meetings with your boss and ask for what you need, you may discover they simply weren’t aware of those needs.

Who Benefits from Self Leadership?

At an organizational level, recent research shows that the most important key to successful initiatives in organizations is the proactive behavior of individual contributors—self leaders who have the ability to accept responsibility and take the initiative to make change happen.

At an individual level, self leadership helps you liberate yourself from the perceived tyranny of organizational life, which frees you from assumed constraints that can limit the quality of your work experience. Being able to respond effectively to everyday challenges can be personally and professionally rewarding.

The responsibility for your success at work falls to you. The good news is that you have a choice. Is developing the mindset and skillset required to be a self leader worth your effort? Yes! A not-so-hard truth: the benefits of self leadership are as good for you as they are for your organization.

About the Author

Susan Fowler is the co-author of the newly revised Self Leadership and The One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard and Laurence Hawkins and lead developer of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Self Leadership product line. She is also the author of the bestseller, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work… and What Does. Susan is a Senior Consulting Partner at The Ken Blanchard Companies and a professor in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership Program at the University of San Diego.

This new capability has given learning, leadership, and talent development professionals added insight into ways to bring out the best in people by identifying what lights up different areas of the brain.

Ready to take the plunge and learn more about this fascinating new field? Here’s a short list of books that will help you get up to speed.

The Owner’s Manual for the Brain by Pierce J. Howard

This book provides a great overview and is an encyclopedia on all things having to do with your brain. It is very well organized, super clear, and chock full of resources including additional reading and websites. Content includes nice coverage of brain basics, human development, wellness, learning, creativity, and more. If you only have one book on the brain, this should be the one.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky

More than just a charming cover with cavorting zebras, this book focuses on the toll that modern-day stressors are taking on our brains and our bodies. We all know about the fight-or-flight response—but what we don’t know is that our brains can’t tell the difference between a grizzly bear charging toward us and a cranky boss. As a result, many people in today’s organizations are in a constant state of alarm. Sapolsky is down to earth, funny, and gifted at helping the layperson understand the ins and outs of managing our own brains under stress.

The Mind and The Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley

An early entrant into the neuroscience fray, this book is a valiant attempt to help us understand how we can harness the power of our brains to improve our quality of life. Schwartz, a UCLA psychiatrist, and Begley, a Wall Street Journal science columnist, look at new treatments being developed for brain trauma and dysfunctions and what it teaches us about the brain’s ability to adapt.

Your Brain and Business by Srinivasan Pillay

I had the great good fortune to meet Dr. Pillay, and there simply isn’t a more interesting or kinder person. He has about 90 irons in the fire at any given moment but has somehow found time to write several books. This one, focused on leadership and workplace issues, explains how brain processes affect behavior and how knowing this is helpful to leaders. Dr. Pillay is often—if not always—able to express complex concepts in a way that a person with a normal IQ can get them.

Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney

I stumbled over Baumeister and Tierney’s writing in The New York Times Sunday magazine and it rocked my world. They explore and explain the notion of decision fatigue, which is extremely important to know about because when our ability to think properly is exhausted, we are unaware of it. When our muscles give out, it is obvious to us—but when our brains give out, it is less apparent. When that happens, we can unwittingly make terrible decisions, lose self-control, and do things we regret simply because we are tired. This book will help you understand the fundamentals of self-management.

Your Brain at Work by David Rock

Rock is a pioneer in the area of putting neuroscience discoveries together with leadership research. He claims the coining of the term neuroleadership and has a training and coaching organization devoted to same. His book is a fun read if not an entirely easy one—he uses a theatre metaphor with different parts of the brain represented by The Director or Actors. This metaphor is especially relatable to some (like me, a former actor) and not so much to others. Rock’s most notable contribution to the field is his acronym SCARF, which represents dimensions that the brain is particularly sensitive to: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.

Social by Matthew Lieberman

Lieberman is extremely accessible in person. His book is somewhat less so. Written by and for people with advanced degrees, it can be a slog—but his research is important. He and his wife, Naomi Eisenberger, have focused on the science of why humans are so dependent on each other for their well-being. The two have proposed the scientific underpinnings for the truth that “no man is an island.” For a quick taste of their critical work on why rejection hurts so much, click here. Lieberman’s book is for the nitty gritty reader.

That’s my list—what would you add? What have been your favorites? Please do share in the comments section below.

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a young entrepreneur just getting off the ground with my own startup.  I have been told by several people that I should have an advisory board. 

Can you tell me what that is, what would it do for me, and how I should go about creating one?

Advice Needed

Dear Advice Needed,

Is it too obvious for me to tell you to ask the same questions of these several people who are telling you to get a board?  There is a good chance that they will have an interesting point of view.  But of course, I have one too.

There is what I consider to be a universal law that informs my response to this.  I learned this from one of my mentors, Thomas Leonard, and 25 years of experience have proven him right: “Anything worth doing is worth getting help with.”

So.  Yeah.  Get yourself an advisory board.  Choose the smartest people you know who have a wide variety of business and professional experience and your best interests at heart, and rope them into helping you.  Be clear about what the commitment is (how many hours a year, for example) so people know what they are getting into. Successful people love to help young up and comers—some do it because they are genuinely kind, and others do it so that when you are crushing it they can boast that they had a hand in your success. Some people will say no, and that’s OK.

But here’s the thing:  once you get them, use them.  I have been asked at least three times to be on someone’s board, had my name appear on their websites or stationery (back in the day when we used to put actual letters in the mail to communicate), and then was never asked to attend a single meeting or review a single business plan.  Zip.  Nada.  Nothing.  Here I was, all dressed up and ready to help, and I heard not a peep.

So you will want to brainstorm, possibly with your folks, how to structure your interactions to get the most out of your support crew.  Advisory boards can be used to:

• give professional advice (or direct you to someone who can)
• provide insight
• engage in creative problem solving
• play devil’s advocate
• challenge you
• celebrate your success
• and—maybe most important—keep you from making mistakes they have made. Pragmatic people take a special kind of pleasure in helping others avoid mistakes that have cost them dearly.

Maybe the biggest advantage of an advisory board is that a regular meeting, with commitments around deliverables for discussion, is an extremely powerful form of accountability. I highly recommend that you set up quarterly or bi-annual conference calls far in advance. (Use a platform like Zoom so everyone can see each other—it is way more fun.)  And please note: it’s important that you prepare for these calls.  There is nothing quite as motivating as telling a group of people you respect that you will have a copy of your business plan or your latest financials in their inbox 48 hours before the next meeting.  You are much more likely to get the job done, even if you have to pull an all-nighter, if the alternative is showing up unprepared and making excuses. The more you treat your board like a group of professionals for whom time is the most valuable resource, the more likely they are to show up and add value.  And the more your board shows up and adds value, the more professional and accountable you will be.

There are a hundred ways to go about this, so you need more expertise than I can provide. The book you want to get is Game Changing Advisory Boards by Hawfield and Zaepfel.  It provides detailed checklists of everything to think about and excellent examples of ways different companies have built and leveraged boards.

I also recommend that you look into Michael Gerber’s work.  He has spent a lifetime understanding entrepreneurship and has a bunch of books and a website devoted to helping entrepreneurs. http://michaelegerbercompanies.com

Good luck.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Because I am always refining my list, I asked a select group of coaches their picks for the best books for coaches—books not only about coaching but also about leadership and coaching in organizations.

Below is the first group of nine recommended books in no particular order.

You’ll see my comments along with those of each coach who submitted a suggested title. We would like you to add to the conversation by including your recommended additions to this list in the comments. I’m hoping that this will be the first in a series of posts on the topic.

The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey, recommended by Suzi Pomerantz MT, MCC, executive coach, author, and CEO of Innovative Leadership International LLC. Suzi is also the co-steward and curator of the Library for Professional Coaching, an extraordinary free resource for coaches.

Suzi says, “This book does a great job of speaking about the mindsets and mental shifts that a good coach helps clients achieve. I don’t play tennis, but coaching mastery is all about the inner game.”

I heard Tim speak at the first International Coach Federation Conference in Switzerland and he really was one of the original coaches in terms of helping people get out of their own way.

Next, Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore, suggested by Tony Klingmeyer, MCC, executive coach and past president of the International Coach Federation, Georgia.

Tony says, “This is an oldie but a goodie.  Almost all of my coaching income has been earned using the GROW model. It’s the basic structure of a coaching dialogue—a catalyst for helping others grow, expand, and tap into and express their depth and greatness.”

I agree that the GROW model is the best problem solving model I have ever encountered. It’s especially useful for new coaches who don’t have enough experience to build their own sense of how best to structure coaching conversations.

Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others by James Flaherty is the pick of Renée Freedman, PCC executive leadership, cultural change, and social impact coach and cultivator, former director of the SupporTED Coaching Program.

Renee says: “I am not a graduate of New Ventures West, but this book helped me pull all of my training together and truly understand the big picture and process of coaching.”

New Ventures West is highly regarded among the proliferating coach training schools and I can personally attest that some of the best coaches we have hired at The Ken Blanchard Companies have received their training at New Ventures West.

Joanne Maynard, PCC, The Ken Blanchard Companies, recommends Co-Active Coaching by Henry and Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, and Laura Whitworth.

Joanne says, “First off, the descriptive writing in this book is wonderful. Every time I crack it open I read gems that are helpful. The concept of the Designed Alliance—where power is granted to the coaching relationship, not the coach—is always a great reminder. The Coach’s Toolkit in the back is helpful as well.”

Whitworth and the Kimsey-Houses were the original founders of the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), another of the well established and respected coach training institutions. CTI is especially good for coaches coming from the corporate world who understand business and organizational dynamics but might need to deepen their intuition and ability to be fully present.

The recommendation from Greta Cowan, PCC, leadership coach, is On Becoming a Leadership Coach: A Holistic Approach to Coaching Excellence by Christine Wahl, Clarice Scriber, and Beth Bloomfield.

Greta says: “This book has a lot of different and helpful perspectives. My favorite is the chapter on the Thinking Path—I use that model all the time.”

This book focuses on coaching leaders in the context of the organizational systems within which they lead, drawing on the curriculum of the Georgetown University Leadership Coaching Certificate Program.

My personal choices are next. I have purchased and loaned out more copies of these books than I can count!

Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart: A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges by Mary Beth O’Neill. This book is not for novices, but is excellent for coaches who are ready to up their game and coach at the highest levels. Ms. O’Neill is no nonsense and her ideas are utterly usable.

Masterful Coaching by Robert Hargrove. Hargrove was an early entry and key thinker in the coaching revolution. His focus is on teaching business owners, managers, and leaders to coach, but the techniques are applicable to anyone. The book also has a companion field book which is superb as well.

The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching by Leni Wildflower and Diane Brennan. This book is an encyclopedia of everything you need to know as coach—but didn’t know you didn’t know. Wildflower has been the coaching program expert with the Fielding Graduate School and has written extensively on the topic of coaching. Both authors have made valuable contributions to the coaching profession.

Coach U’s Essential Coaching Tools by Coach Inc. Coach University was the brainchild of Thomas Leonard and this massive doorstop of a book is the contents of his extraordinary brain. To be fair, it is also the contribution of the early teachers at Coach U who collected and cataloged what worked in coaching. Any form, checklist, or possible approach for a coach to work with anyone is in this book, as well as extensive support for those who are building a coaching practice. Leonard also wrote The Portable Coach, which is sadly out of print but still a terrific resource.

That’s a good starting list—what would you add? What books have influenced you along your journey as a coach? Please leave your book suggestions in the Comment section.

About the Author

Madeleine Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

However, encouragement and recognition shouldn’t be a once-a-year event—it ought to be a leader’s constant mindset, according to Ken Blanchard, management expert and coauthor of The New One Minute Manager® and Leading at a Higher Level. In Blanchard’s opinion, the most effective leaders focus on serving the needs of their people all year long.

Blanchard’s belief is that organizations run best when leaders at all levels see themselves as servant leaders. As he explains, “The best leaders turn the organizational pyramid upside down so that they are at the bottom of the structure, serving their people who are at the top. The leaders provide support, remove obstacles, and act as cheerleaders. They are there to serve their people—so that their people can better serve their customers.”

The good news is that leaders at all levels can serve their direct reports at an individual, team, or department level. Blanchard explains a step-by step process.

Get clear on goals. “All good performance begins with clear goals. Make sure that individual, team, department, and organizational goals are clear and written down so that they can be seen, communicated, and referred to frequently. Goals are too often unclear, poorly communicated, not written down, or never referred to until performance review. “

Discuss competence and commitment. “Managers must sit down with their teams to discuss what’s required to achieve each goal. In Situational Leadership® II we teach that people approach each new task or goal from one of four development levels: the Enthusiastic Beginner, where an individual is excited but inexperienced at the task; the Disillusioned Learner, where an individual becomes discouraged; the Capable but Cautious Performer, where an individual has some experience but still needs occasional support; or the Self-Reliant Achiever, where an individual has a track record of success. It takes time to make this diagnosis at the beginning of a task or when setting a goal, but it will save time in the long run by avoiding misunderstandings, motivation issues, and rework.”

Match your leadership style. “Depending on a person’s development level on a specific task or goal, the leader provides a matching leadership style—either by Directing, Coaching, Supporting, or Delegating. The objective is to provide the direct report with the correct amount of direction and support to get the job done while avoiding over-supervision or under-supervision. This is the essence of servant leadership. The focus is on helping direct reports achieve their goals.”

Blanchard encourages leaders to practice a servant leadership mindset with direct reports every day, not just at year end. “Your job as a leader is to help your people succeed. Set clear goals with them, diagnose their development level on each goal, and then provide them with the direction and support they need to achieve those goals. It’s the best way to serve your people—not just now, but throughout the year.”

You can read more about Blanchard’s approach in the December issue of Ignite!  Also check out stories on two companies putting these concepts into practice with great results—CHG Healthcare Services and WD-40 Company.

Dear Madeleine,

I am the manager of a large group of service professionals. Earlier this year, I was inspired by a management book to set goals with my people and then give them the autonomy to decide how to achieve them.

It sounded good on paper, but here we are at the end of the year and not a single one of them has done well on their goals. As a result, I have given them all less than stellar ratings on their performance reviews. They are all surprised and upset with me.  —Confused

Dear Confused,

Managing people is complex, and managing high level professionals is maybe even more so.  So I checked out the book you shared and I think I know what went wrong.  You gave people goals and the autonomy to figure out how to achieve them—but you seem to have missed the rest of the steps outlined in the book, which go something like this:

• Work with each employee to identify actions that will be most likely to move them toward achieving their goal.
• Create a visible scorecard that shows both you and the employee how they are tracking to their goal.
• Meet weekly to review progress, brainstorm obstacles, and inspire the employee to stick with the plan.

In other words, you should give people enough autonomy that they feel like they own the goal—but not so much that the goal falls off the to-do list without anyone noticing.

There a lot of reasons people don’t achieve their goals. The most common ones are shockingly simple:

• They didn’t really know what to do or how to do it
• They didn’t really want to do it
• They didn’t think it was a good goal
• They didn’t think it was that important and prioritized other things above it
• They had too many other things to do
• They simply forgot

That last one is my personal favorite because it has happened to me.  I sat down with my manager to review the year and he asked how things went with a project we had discussed some months back.  I was appalled to realize that I had forgotten all about it and had done absolutely nothing.  I was lucky to have an understanding manager who also took some responsibility for the fact that we hadn’t talked about it since that first discussion.

Just think, for a moment, about what competes for our brain space on any given day.  Anything that actually gets done only does so because of relentless attention and focus to ensure that it does.  Otherwise, the goal might as well not exist.

I am sorry you are now in the position of feeling like the bad guy.  I recommend that you not give your people a bad rating on this part of their review—and that you take responsibility for essentially setting them up to fail.  Try the same approach this year, but include the part about working with each person to identify action steps, build the scorecard, and have regular reviews to check progress and offer support.

I’m certain that when you incorporate the additional steps, your people will come through with flying colors.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Hi Madeleine,

I am a hotel manager for a high end property in a large metropolitan city.

I am trying to create a program where department heads and midlevel managers at the hotel can come together to chat candidly about their career goals and how to achieve them. I have a vision to devote 30 to 60 minutes each week to this new program. 

Any suggestions on what sort of things I should focus on in that time duration?

I’d also appreciate your suggestions on what to call these meetings so it sends a good message. Thanks for any feedback. 

Developer

Dear Developer,

Well, isn’t your team lucky to have you! I applaud your desire to develop people; it’s not as common an idea as you might think—despite our best efforts to spread the word.

With the amount of time you are devoting, it will be important to generate consistent value that hits your goals. I have some thoughts about how to do that:

• First, get input. Ask the folks you’re inviting a couple of questions, such as: “What would make you attend?” “What would you want to get out of it?” “What would you want to give?”
• Second, you might want to think about starting with a small cohort of your very best people. Meet someplace nice, make it visible, and spread the word that the group is by invitation only. This way when people are invited to join, they feel singled out for something positive. The group is seen as a reward—an elevation of status.
• Don’t be surprised if people are a little skittish at first about sharing their aspirations. It may make them feel exposed and vulnerable. They need to feel safe before they open up. Starting with something relatively broad like discussing current goals. Ask each person for one goal they would want to share with the group to get accountability and support. By choosing what to reveal, they feel a sense of control.
• Consider discussing higher level management topics like servant leadership, building trust, managing change, leading teams, personal development, or time management, to name a few. Invest in a couple of good leadership books—I’d suggest you start with the greats (Drucker, Bennis, Maxwell, Dupree, Blanchard, Collins, or Goldsmith, for example) and discuss concepts from them.
• For those who don’t consider reading that much fun, excellent lists are available of current top management thinkers. Provide links to short blog posts for ideas that spark discussion.
• Alternatively, each session could be driven by a question such as: What makes a good leader? How should a leader deal with someone who is late all the time? What do you know you should be doing as a manager but don’t quite know how?

In terms of what you might call your group, consider tying the name of the group to one of the stated values of your organization. For example, a value at Zappos is to “Deliver Wow with service.” They might call a group like yours The Wow Club.

Here are some other idea starters: Future Focus Conversations, Career Maps, Plan A Club , Brainstormers, Opportunity League, Look Ahead Club, Onward and Upward, Growth Guild, Career Club, Career Alliance, Rising Stars, or Talent Incubator.

There is always the possibility of a clever acronym—maybe something like LEAD—Leadership Exploration And Development, or MILE—Maximum Impact Leadership Effectiveness.

(You might get more ideas in the comments.)

Do let me know how this works out!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Every interaction we have with a service provider leaves us with some sort of emotional response, from neutral and bland to deep anger and frustration at one extreme, joy and delight at the other.

We’ve all felt the stress associated with a provider whose customer experience is unresponsive and sometimes downright antagonistic—and the health effects of stress are well documented.

So are you killing your customers with stress and hostility? What are some straightforward steps you can take to nurture their long-term well-being? And why should you care?

Much has been written on the profit impact of customer service. Ken Blanchard sometimes describes profit as “the applause you get for delivering Legendary Service to your customers.” But there is a more simple, subtle, and powerful aspect to customer care. Customers will naturally move toward experiences that meet their needs and align with their values (see Susan Fowler’s book Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work—and What Does for more on this). Consistently creating these experiences—and building a reputation for service so good that it’s legendary—is just a matter of a little CARE:

Culture of Service

Your customers and their needs should be at the heart of your organisation’s values, rituals, stories, and celebrations. Ensure that your people are focused on customer well-being first and foremost and eliminate processes that don’t serve your customers. Celebrate and reward behavior that is service oriented and redirect any behaviour that detracts from it.

Attentiveness

Listen to your customers. Take the time and interest to really get to know them, what they need, how they prefer to communicate, and so on. But more than this—you can help build their competence by asking yourself What do I know that would be valuable if I shared it? And remember that in order to be able to serve your customers, you must be in good physical and mental shape—your customers are depending on it!

Responsiveness

Once you understand your customers’ needs, you need to respond to them in a way that demonstrates a consistent, genuine interest in serving them. This is best demonstrated when a situation arises that has the potential to disappoint the customer—if you keep a positive attitude, you will have a better chance of resolving the issue. When necessary, apologise sincerely for the problem. Remember, from the customer’s perspective you are the company. Listen to their concerns and work with them to develop a resolution strategy. Most customers will return if a challenge can be addressed promptly.

Empowerment

If you are in a service delivery role—and nearly everyone is—you probably have more control over the customer service experience than you realise! Blanchard’s EDGE assessment instrument, which compares individuals’ perceptions of their level of empowerment with the perceptions of their supervisor, routinely reports that people could be taking far more initiative and ownership than they do currently. Stay true to your organisation’s vision, mission, and values, and you can do a lot to build customer loyalty by delighting your customers just a little more with each interaction.

In their book Legendary Service: The Key is to CARE, coauthors Ken Blanchard, Kathy Cuff, and Vicki Halsey write, “Legendary Service means consistently delivering ideal service that keeps customers coming back and results in a competitive edge for your organization.” We experience amazing turnarounds when we help clients implement these practices in their companies.

Try it yourself—add a little more CARE for your customers today and see the difference it can make!

About the Author

Ian Beeson is the managing director of Blanchard International, Australia. He can be reached at ian.beeson@blanchardinternational.com.au

But that’s not true. In fact, that kind of misinterpretation of the research can lead to assumptions that actually perpetuate disengagement, such as the concept of organizations needing to use incentives, rewards, promotions, praising, perks, status building, pay raises, games, competition, or prizes to get anything accomplished.

Knowing the truth behind the nature of human motivation will not only help you reframe the research and rethink your basic beliefs, it will also allow you to embrace new practices that result in employee engagement and work passion. Let me explain.

People’s Basic Nature is to Thrive

In the 2014 movie Gravity, Sandra Bullock’s character goes into space because she has no reason to live on planet Earth. When circumstances spell certain death, she contemplates giving up. But then we witness her remarkable resilience and creativity as she fights to return to Earth.

As we learn watching the plot unfold in the movie, our true human nature is to thrive by making choices, finding meaning, and developing skills to cope with what the world throws at us. But is that a struggle we have to take on alone? I don’t think so.  In fact, I think leaders can greatly accelerate the process by developing strategies to help people experience what every human being needs to thrive: the three psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

For example:

• Define boundaries people need to know and then help them explore the choices they have within those boundaries.
• Demonstrate you care about people through proactive listening.
• Encourage people to develop new skills on a regular basis. Even mundane work is brought to life when people identify transferable skills they can develop such as learning how to focus, improving people skills, practicing different communication styles, etc.

Nobody Wants to be Bored and Disengaged

People want to make worthwhile contributions. People appreciate meaningful challenges. Two of the world’s leading researchers on motivation, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, wrote a beautiful explanation of human nature*:

“The fullest representations of humanity show people to be curious, vital, and self-motivated. At their best, they are agentic and inspired, striving to learn; extend themselves; master new skills; and apply their talents responsibly. That most people show considerable effort, agency, and commitment in their lives appears, in fact, to be more normative than exceptional, suggesting some very positive and persistent features of human nature. Yet, it is also clear that the human spirit can be diminished or crushed… “

What does this mean for leaders? That it’s important to engage in one-on-one conversations to help people explore their inherent interests, align tasks with their deepest values, and connect their work to a sense of purpose.

Promote Human Thriving

If you believe the high number of disengaged employees reflects a natural state of being, you probably tend to depend on traditional means to fix disengagement—like the incentives, rewards, promotions, etc., I mentioned earlier.

But as you run out of resources and find your workforce is still disengaged, you may need to stop looking for different ways of motivating people and rethink your basic beliefs about human nature and disengagement. Only then will you spark the innovation to develop strategies that promote human thriving—and true engagement—in the workplace.

About the Author

Susan Fowler is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, co-creator of the company’s Optimal Motivation and Situational Self Leadership training programs, and the author of the bestselling book, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … And What Does: The New Science of Leading, Engaging, and Energizing.

*Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being, https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2000_RyanDeci_SDT.pdf

In their book Coaching in Organizations, master certified coaches Madeleine Homan Blanchard and Linda Miller devote a chapter to tips that help ensure a productive coaching relationship and also create a nurturing environment for the person being coached.

In addition to making sure the potential coachee has a clear understanding of what to expect from the coach as well as the coaching process, the authors recommend that anyone pursuing a coaching relationship have seven additional qualities.

Ever wonder if you would be a good candidate for coaching?  How would you score yourself in these seven areas?

1. I am enthusiastic about the concept of continuous professional development and learning.
2. I am willing and able to identify at least one key area in which I can commit to change.
3. I am open to finding a minimum of one hour of company time per week to speak to my coach.
4. I am willing to share openly about myself and my perceptions with someone outside the company.
5. I am an early adopter of new ideas and behaviors.
6. I see myself as a trailblazer, risk taker, or leader.
7. I am fundamentally proud of working at my organization.

A successful coaching relationship is not something that should be entered into lightly.  A person being coached not only must have a clear sense of what is to be gained from the investment of time, but also must be prepared to enter into a full partnership with their coach.

So—are you coachable?  Would you add any other characteristics/statements to this list? Use the comments section below!

A new book by Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, just might be the solution every well-meaning manager has been looking for. I finished the book during my recent vacation. (I can hear the groans—Reading a business book on vacation; really?—but it was definitely worth it.) Stanier, an acclaimed executive coach and former coach of the year in his native Canada, shares seven questions any manager can use to increase their leadership effectiveness—especially during One on Ones.

I don’t want to give it all away here—you really need to read the book to appreciate the nuance and genius of what Stanier shares, but in a nutshell the seven questions are

1. What’s on your mind? A brilliantly simple way to open up a one-on-one conversation, invite people to share, and get at what is most important in the moment
2. And what else? Three little words that open up possibilities, insights, and increased self-awareness
3. What’s the real challenge here for you? The question that slows down the rush to find the first answer instead of solving the real problem
4. What do you want? Taking the time to discover the need and the desired outcome that makes charting the journey easier
5. How can I help? Insisting on a clear direct request that you as a leader can respond to
6. What will you say no to if you’re truly saying yes to this? Life is about choices. This question identifies the tough trade-offs.
7. What was most useful for you? Gathering feedback and extracting value from the conversation

If you are a well-meaning manager who wants to have more-productive conversations with your people, try these questions. Bonus: They also work great for those work-related conversations at home—you know, right after you ask, “How was your day?” You’ll see the power of these questions immediately.

For those interested in learning more about the method behind the magic, be sure to check out all the praise and positive reviews on Amazon. See why Dan Pink, Brené Brown, and Dave Ulrich, along with 300 other positive reviewers, are so excited—including me!

Conducting successful One on Ones are a key leadership competency. Learn how asking these seven questions can help you be the manager you want to be.

About the Author

David Witt is the Program Director for The Ken Blanchard Companies. A business-focused writer, researcher, and speaker, David is the editor and lead columnist for The Ken Blanchard Companies Ignite! online newsletter, moderator of the company’s LeaderChat blog, and host of the company’s monthly webinar programming.

Continuing this theme, another primary dance we may find our clients in is between someone who may be the middle person in a situation who is torn between two end people—for example, a manager who is in the middle between someone on their team and a senior leader.

This challenging relationship can be made even more complex when there happen to be multiple people at each end.  Individuals or parties at the ends have their own agenda and will look to a common party—the middle person—to help support their cause by influencing the other end or ends.

If you are a coach, this scenario may sound quite familiar.  Managers often find themselves in the middle between a person or people on their team and a senior leader.  It’s important for us to know these patterns that emerge in relationships—especially when they aren’t helpful.

Here is a little more information relating to this second “Dance”:

People at the ends who feel unsupported may see themselves as victims. They can become inflexible and put their faith in the middle person to be a liaison who they think can get the best deal for them and their cause.

People in the middle often feel burdened. Interestingly, for some, this role may actually become somewhat addictive. Someone in the middle role may enjoy being needed by both end parties and may relish the trust and insight gained from both sides.  The potential danger is in not pleasing or helping either side, or even encouraging the toxic relationship, if the person in the middle is unaware of the dance they are doing.

As a coach, do you ever go into rescue mode before taking a step back to look at any game the client may unconsciously be playing?  Commonly, coaches feel the urge to take on an executive’s burden—sometimes working even harder than the client is working. The coach goes into rescue mode, creating a brand new end-middle-end pattern.  But the role of coach should be that of a human mirror. In this case, we may need to figuratively hold our clients’ feet to the fire to help them recognize the relational game they are playing. In doing so, we help them move toward healthier relationships.

Here are three tips to consider as coaches:

• Use your coach position in the middle to help the executive at one end uncover information about the other end—whether it be a team member, their boss, or someone else.
• Hold the executive accountable for owning the solutions and decisions.
• Remember that our role as coach is secondary. The primary focus needs to be the relationship between the middle person and the people on both ends.

When we can perceive the existence of these relationship “dances,” we can move to healthier interactions where trust and creativity are fostered for both the people we serve and ourselves.

About the Author

Judith Donin is a Senior Consulting Partner and Professional Services Mentor for North America with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Judith’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Consider this story shared by a woman in a workshop I was teaching on motivation.

While taking her normal elevator ride up to her office she found herself alone with the CEO of her company, whom she had never met. As she explained, “My heart raced. Should I introduce myself? When will I ever have another chance like this? But what if I make a bad impression?”

By the time the woman could gather her thoughts and decide what to do, the elevator stopped, the CEO stepped out, and the moment was lost. As she rode up the final few floors she was flooded with emotion.

“I was shaking. I was sad—disappointed—mad—frustrated—angry. I couldn’t believe how one person entering the elevator and not saying a word could generate so much negative emotion in me.” The woman said it had been a horrible way to start the day.

What caused all of the mental anguish? Real and perceived power. Without the woman’s perception of the CEO’s power, the dynamic in the elevator would have been far less tense for the woman. Research bears this out.

Dr. Drea Zigarmi, Dr. Taylor Peyton Roberts, and I recently completed research on how a leader’s power affects people’s motivation. We found that leaders at all levels need to be mindful and clear about the types of power they have and use. Our findings showed that the use—or the perceived use—of leader power usually results in people experiencing suboptimal motivation. Let’s take a closer look.

In 1959, social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven described five bases of power that are typically in play in the workplace.

• Reward power: A leader’s power to promise monetary or nonmonetary compensation or incentives.
• Coercive power: A leader’s power to use threats and punishment.
• Referent power: A leader’s power that causes followers to want to identify with, be associated with, or to believe in the leader.
• Legitimate power: A leader’s power of position or title that gives the leader the right to request compliance from another individual.
• Expert power: A leader’s power that comes through depth and breadth of knowledge.

Why are perceptions of power so important to understand? Because of their impact on motivation. A leader’s use of power can undermine people’s need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC)—the three psychological needs required for people to thrive, produce, and sustain high performance. Because people can potentially perceive their leader as having power over them in any of these five areas, you could be undermining people’s motivation and not realize it.

Here are insights on how to use your five bases of power more wisely:

• There are two types of reward power—impersonal and personal. Consider how you are using impersonal reward power to grant special benefits, promotions, or favorable considerations. Think about how you might be using personal reward power to influence employees’ feelings of being accepted, valued, and liked by you. Misuse of either leads to suboptimal motivation.
• Understandably, the use of coercive power usually results in a negative relationship—and suboptimal motivation in those you lead. Coercive power creates a workplace where people waste emotional energy to avoid suboptimal motivation.
• If referent power becomes too important, it can result in people who are afraid to disagree with you. It might surprise you to discover that when employees report managers exhibiting referent power, they also report experiencing suboptimal motivation because of their dependence on that leader for their internal state of well-being.
• Even legitimate power—often referred to as position power—can be misused when it is perceived as “Do this because I tell you to.”
• Finally, while expert power won’t necessarily result in people’s optimal motivation, withholding it can put them into suboptimal motivation.

As my colleague Dr. Drea Zigarmi so aptly puts it: “Power is very precious stuff. It entices the leader into flights of self-delusion and separateness from those they lead.”

Over 125 years ago, Lord Acton wrote the famous line, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and the less famous line, “The sole advantage of power is the ability to do more good.” Based on our research, we might follow with this advice: Let go of your dependence on power to get work done. Instead, consider your power as an opportunity to do more good by developing ARC-supportive skills to understand, appreciate, and respond to people’s psychological needs. You will create a workplace where people are optimally motivated to achieve results and have the energy, vitality, and well-being needed to sustain those results. Powerful!

About the Author

Susan Fowler is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, co-creator of the company’s Optimal Motivation and Situational Self Leadership training programs, and the author of the bestselling book, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … And What Does: The New Science of Leading, Engaging, and Energizing.

And while it’s good that we’ve made progress, we still need to keep moving if we truly want to leverage what the new science of motivation is teaching us.

In the June issue of Ignite, Susan Fowler, best-selling business author of Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work…And What Does, explains that individuals bring one of six motivational outlooks to any goal or task they face.Three of the outlooks correlate to positive, long-lasting, and consistent energy for getting a job done—and three don’t.

The three positive optimal motivational outlooks are

• Aligned. This is where an individual derives a sense of meaning from the goal or task, is able to align the task with important personal values, and is making a conscious and deliberate choice to do the right thing.
• Integrated. This is where an individual is motivated because the goal or task fulfills a deeply felt sense of purpose or is regarded as a self-defining activity.
• Inherent. This is where an individual perceives the goal or task as pure fun and enjoyment.

The three suboptimal motivation outlooks are

• Disinterested. This is where an individual feels overwhelmed, cannot find value in the task, or doesn’t have the energy to manage what’s required.
• External. This is where an individual is primarily motivated by the promise of a tangible reward or incentive, or the expectation of increased power, status, or respect.
• Imposed. This is where an individual is motivated by pressure to perform by either self-expectations or the expectations of others. Their actions are an attempt to avoid feelings of guilt, shame, or disappointment.

Fowler explains that looking beyond a simple extrinsic/intrinsic model of motivation creates additional choices and gives leaders more options to help facilitate a shift to a better outlook. Her approach is to teach leaders how to have conversations that help others identify the reasons for their motivation. The result is higher quality motivation that is based on meaningful values and a noble purpose.

Fowler is quick to point out that this kind of shift is more than a theoretical idea—it is a practical enhancement that makes the application of other leadership skills more effective.

“A strong foundation in motivation science elevates traditional leadership skills,” explains Fowler. “For example, consider the benefit when you combine traditional goal setting with a motivational outlook conversation about achieving the goal. These conversations give managers an opportunity to help people find relevance, meaning, and deeper connection to their goals. Skipping over the motivational outlook conversation or jumping to a problem solving or action planning conversation with people when they are suboptimally motivated on the goal, problem, or plan usually leads to suboptimal results down the road.

“People work best when they are pursuing goals for high quality reasons. Ask people questions that help them connect their goals to their values and sense of purpose. People who make this connection don’t just perform at a high level and achieve their goals—they flourish.”

You can read more about Fowler’s approach to workplace motivation in the June issue of Ignite.  Also, be sure to check the information about Fowler’s upcoming webinar on Leadership Skills: Applying the New Science of Motivation.  The event is free, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

It’s a phenomenon that is quite common in many organizations—one that business author Barry Oshry describes as the “Dance of the Blind Reflex” in his book Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life.

Oshry’s contention is that leaders and direct reports can become locked into a dysfunctional, self-sustaining cycle when each group has behavior patterns that are the result of unconscious behaviors in the other group. For example, leaders complain about the burdens of extensive responsibility but cling to that power for fear that a planned system or change initiative will fail. And frontline workers complain about non-involvement, oppression, and lack of responsibility while they cling to the same things.

Might this dysfunctional dance be occurring in your organization? Here are some of the telltale signs.

At the senior leader level:

Leaders worry about losing control during change—that their team won’t feel as responsible, skilled, or passionate as the leader does. As the leader’s fears and responsibilities increase, they worry about letting their people down and compensate by taking even more responsibility away from direct reports. Signs leaders must watch for in themselves include:

• Checking up, not checking in, on team members
• Frustration in thinking that the team doesn’t care

As a result, these leaders lie awake at night thinking about what they still have to accomplish on a never ending to-do list.

At the frontline level:

The perceived lack of trust, respect, sensitivity, and insight from their leader frustrates team members and they yield responsibility quickly. They feel they have no role in the change and have lost their autonomy and their value. When this occurs, they begin to withdraw, self-preservation kicks in, and they simply keep their heads down and do what leaders say. Typical behaviors include:

• Increased scrutiny on what leaders are doing and not doing
• Anger and resentment at having things done to them—instead of with them

If these underlying beliefs are not surfaced and acknowledged, organizational culture can remain stuck in this cycle. But it doesn’t have to go that way. Here are some strategies to help interrupt this dance.

1. When a one-on-one relationship feels inequitable, each person needs to notice their language and thoughts as they converse and ask themselves: What is my intent and how might my words be misinterpreted?
2. Leaders need to think about how they are dragging the responsibility upward rather than across their team.
3. Direct reports need to think about how to repackage their message so that the leader recognizes their honorable intentions and willingness to accept responsibility.
4. Finally, both sides need to understand that these behaviors are often subtle and hard to self-diagnose and consider enlisting a qualified coach to help identify patterns and develop an action plan.

Note to coaches: Remember—you are not immune to the Dance of the Blind Reflex and can actually become an unwitting dance partner. Are you working harder in your sessions than your client is? Are you taking on their burdens? If so, you may want to consider changing the record and dancing to a different tune.

About the Author

Judith Donin is a Senior Consulting Partner and Professional Services Mentor for North America with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Judith’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

– Our basic human nature is to thrive. No one wants to be bored and disengaged. People want to contribute. People appreciate meaningful challenges.

– We all have three psychological needs—autonomy, relatedness, and competence—that contribute to our well-being.

– Leaders can’t motivate anyone. What they can do is shape a workplace where it is more likely that people will experience optimal motivation through proven best practices.

If you are serious about improving people’s productivity, sustainable performance, creativity, resilience, risk-taking, mental health, emotional well-being, and positive physical energy, I urge you to consider elevating your current leadership practices.  Here are three ways to get started.

1. Encourage Autonomy: Set SMARTer goals where the M stands for motivating and the reasons for achieving the goal are tied to developed values, a noble purpose, or inherent joy. Illuminate freedom within boundaries to shift focus from what can’t be done to what can be done. Present timelines as useful information rather than as a form of pressure.
2. Deepen Relatedness: Discuss individual values in light of the organization’s values so that workplace goals can be linked to reasons individuals find meaningful. Reframe metrics with individuals so that they can personally relate to outcomes with purpose and meaning. Provide pure feedback that leaves out your personal opinion, statements of your pride or pleasure, and rah-rah comments. Allow individuals to reflect on and determine how they feel about their own efforts, rather than becoming dependent on your approval—an unhealthy reason for their actions.
3. Build Competence: Facilitate Motivational Outlook Conversations to help ensure individuals are optimally motivated to follow through on solutions and action plans—otherwise, your coaching results are as castles built on sand. Concentrate on learning orientation by asking each day/week/month: What did you learn that will help you tomorrow? and What do you still need to learn to achieve your goals? Celebrate learning moments by going beyond fixing mistakes to taking advantage of them.

One More Thing: Leader, Heal Thyself

The new science of motivation builds a compelling case for updating traditional leadership practices. But before you can encourage autonomy, deepen relatedness, or build competence with those you lead, you need to reflect on your own motivation to lead.

Consider this story:

The hard-driving sales manager hoping to inspire his new sales rep took the young man to the top of a hill overlooking a posh part of the city. “Look at that place,” said the manager, pointing to a magnificent property. “I bet the house is 6000 square feet, plus the horse stable and tennis court.” He pointed to another home, “Can you imagine the party you could throw around that pool?” Then, the manager put his arm around the wide-eyed young rep’s shoulders and told him, “Son, if you keep working as hard as you’re working, some day all this could be mine!”

If your people sense—or even wrongly interpret—that your motivation to lead is self-serving, it undermines their psychological need for relatedness. Their positive energy is diminished as you chip away at their autonomy by pushing them to make their numbers or by pressuring them to be number one. They feel manipulated by your suggestions when your intention was to build their competence. Worse, feelings of alienation and pressure can fuel negative energy, leading some to sabotage the system by falsifying reports, making bad deals, or engaging in unethical behavior. They justify their own self-serving actions by comparing them to what they perceive as your self-serving motives.

To take advantage of the compelling new leadership practices, ignite your own motivation to lead through meaningful values and a noble purpose. When it comes to being an inspiring and effective leader, the reasons for your motivation matter.

About the Author

Susan Fowler is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, co-creator of the company’s Optimal Motivation and Situational Self Leadership training programs, and the author of the bestselling book, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … And What Does: The New Science of Leading, Engaging, and Energizing.

Editor’s Note: Are you attending this year’s ATD International Conference & Exposition in Denver?  Don’t miss Susan Fowler’s presentation on Sunday, May 22, at 1:30 pm.  You can learn more about all the Blanchard activities at this year’s event by visiting http://www.kenblanchard.com/events/atd-2016

The company will be sharing the results of the research as a part of the rollout of its new First-time Manager program, but some of the initial top level statistics are ready for sharing now (see infographic).

These experiences, reported by the managers, paint a picture of the challenges new leaders face and help explain why 60 percent of new managers underperform—or even fail—in their first two years.

With over two million people stepping into leadership roles for the first time, it is essential for organizations to put together a structured program that prepares these new managers for the challenges they will face when they become responsible for the work of others in addition to their own.

Blanchard recommends that new managers focus on four performance-related conversations—Goal Setting, Praising, Redirecting, and Wrapping Up, as well as four essential communication skills—Listening, Inquiring, Telling Your Truth, and Expressing Confidence.

Three of the four conversations are drawn from the three key principles in Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson’s best-selling book The New One Minute Manager®—and they are joined by a new, fourth conversation, Wrapping Up, which is about bringing closure to goals and tasks. The four communication skills come from Blanchard’s coaching services practice and represent the listening skills most needed by managers.

In a recent webinar, Master Certified Coach Linda Miller, who serves as Blanchard’s global liaison for coaching, asked participants which of the four conversations and which of the four skills they thought were most difficult for new managers.  The number one most difficult conversation identified was Redirecting—getting somebody back on track when performance wasn’t where it should be.  The second conversation identified as difficult was Goal Setting. Among communication skills, Listening and Telling Your Truth ended up in a tie as most difficult.

How does the information in the infographic match up with your experience?  Does your organization have a structured program in place to get new managers off to a good start?  Don’t let your new people sink.  Provide them with the support they need to succeed.

I remember the first time my coach shared the problem of the why question with me. My eyes opened wide and I felt as if I had just been let in on a big leadership secret. I knew this new knowledge would help catapult my communication effectiveness to the next level.

I spent several months eradicating the word why from my language, and it did help. Challenging conversations were, well, less challenging.

Yet in certain situations, something was missing. I didn’t feel as though I was getting to the root of the difficulties some clients were facing. It wasn’t until I read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, Edward Deci’s, Why We Do What We Do and, finally, Susan Fowler’s Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work—and What Does that I realized what the problem was.

The very reason we refrain from asking why questions is also the reason they can be so powerful: they engage both emotional and cognitive levels in a way that other questions don’t. Used carefully and appropriately, why questions can help clients get unstuck and cause a shift by identifying basic psychological needs of Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence.

When appropriate, here are five ways to mindfully use a why question:

1. When a person is stuck and helplessly procrastinating or placing obstacles in the way, ask a question such as Why do you think you’re holding on to the status quo? Use a caring, nonjudgmental tone.
2. Be prepared to ask a question starting with why up to five times. This is known as the Power of Why technique, which is helpfully described in Fowler’s book.
3. Listen for ways to connect values to the desired end state. Ask clients how they can reframe the situation so values remain intact.
4. Listen for psychological needs being undermined. Ask clients how they could be reconnected in a different way. For example, if the quarterly sales meeting has been canceled due to cost saving and your client is complaining about that lack of connection, ask how else they might get that relatedness with colleagues.
5. Finally, ask permission to use the Power of Why. This helps take out any feeling of being judged the client might have.

I don’t often use why in my everyday language—but when I do, I use it thoughtfully and mindfully to open up new possibilities.  As a coach, consider whether a why question might open up new possibilities for you as well.

 About the Author

Judith Donin is a Senior Consulting Partner and Professional Services Mentor for North America with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Judith’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Pretty heady stuff.

He realized he couldn’t drive people to be more just, client focused, and service oriented. The only way a radically different culture would emerge was through employees working together and making their own decisions to find new approaches for managing people’s wealth.

This powerful executive recognized that only through the power of tapping people’s honest and authentic need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC) would he be able to achieve the results he was looking for—a high functioning, self-motivated organization.  He realized that any driving for adherence to new policies and procedures would undermine people’s sense of ARC—and his firm’s cultural evolution.

It was a great bit of insight on his part. And it’s something we can all learn from as we endeavor to build highly motivated work environments.

• When you pressure people to perform, the pressure you create has the opposite result of what you intended. Pressuring people erodes their sense of autonomy.
• When you focus on metrics as priorities, people fail to find meaning in the metrics for themselves. When people feel used as a means to your end, it diminishes their sense of relatedness.
• When you drive for results and declare you are holding people accountable for those results, you are also sending the message that you don’t trust people to perform or achieve their goals. You undermine their sense of competence.

Here are four alternatives.

1. Encourage autonomy by helping people appreciate the freedom they have within boundaries. What is within a person’s control? What options do they have? Identify areas for creativity and innovation.

2. Deepen relatedness by engaging people in conversations about their values and aligning their values with the company’s goals. For example, help an employee who has a value for service explore how his service might improve through the company’s new approach.

3. Build competence by providing opportunities for training, clarifying expectations, and illuminating the unknowns. Don’t assume people know how to cope with change. Don’t try to sell change by sharing how the organization will benefit. Focus instead on helping people deal with the personal concerns they have for how the change directly affects them.

4. Teach leaders the skill of conducting motivational conversations. If leaders don’t know how to facilitate people’s shift to optimal motivation, they will default to what they know: driving for results. Leaders also need to practice optimal motivation for themselves. Leaders with suboptimal motivation tend to drive for results from others.

If you want real, sustainable, high quality results, stop driving yourself crazy trying to hold people accountable for outcomes that are not connected to individual needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC.)  Instead, help people satisfy those needs. When people experience ARC, they thrive—and you don’t need to drive.

About the Author

Susan Fowler is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who heads up Blanchard’s motivation and self leadership practices.  Susan is also the author of the business best-seller, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work… And What Does.

“I’ve always talked about helping people get As. Early in my career as a university professor, I was often in trouble because I would give my students the final exam on the first day of class. Then I would spend the semester teaching them the answers so that they could pass the exam. I didn’t see why I should spend time trying to sort people out. It makes even less sense in a business organization where leaders should want everyone to succeed.

“For example, a manager who wants a direct report to get an A wouldn’t say to the person, ‘One of your goals is to set up a major client conference by the end of the year’ and then just wait around to see if it happens. Instead, the manager would say, ‘This is January and the client conference needs to occur in October. So within the next month, I’d like you to identify clients we should invite and maybe get a start on organizing the publicity.’ The manager would work with the direct report to identify all the different pieces that need to come together for a successful conference.

“There’s no value in seeing where everybody falls on a standard distribution curve. Organizations focused on that usually don’t have their eyes on the goals they are trying to achieve. Why would you want a certain percentage of your people to accomplish their goals and not the rest? Why wouldn’t you want everybody to get an A?”

Helping people get an A begins by setting clear goals for them at the beginning.  In the latest issue of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Ignite newsletter, Blanchard explains that, “The best organizations hire high potential people, set clear goals with them, and help them achieve success. All good performance starts with clear goals. If people don’t know what you want them to accomplish, what are the chances they will be successful? Not very good.

“It’s very important to have work goals that are observable and measurable,” explains Blanchard. “Peter Drucker used to say, ‘If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.’ Measurements are important to give both managers and direct reports more clarity when assessing performance.”

The difficult part of goal setting is that it takes real focus and time, says Blanchard. “You have to think it through. You can’t do it by yourself.  It works best when it is a continuing dialogue with your boss and coworkers.”

Blanchard points to leaders like Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company, who coauthored the book Helping People Win at Work. “At WD-40, everyone sees the organizational goals, which are observable and measurable. Then the managers and direct reports work together to examine the individual’s job responsibilities and identify three to five observable and measurable individual goals that will contribute to the organizational goals.

“We want individuals to focus on the 20 percent that will give them the 80 percent. That doesn’t mean they don’t do some activities that aren’t on the goals, but you want to make sure goals are set on the key activities that will help the person become a high performer.”

Blanchard encourages all organizations to take the time to make goal setting a priority.

“Whatever you do with people, it has to start with clear goals. Identify what are you working on and what good behavior looks like. If you take the time up front to do it right, it really makes all the difference down the road.”

You can read the complete article with Ken Blanchard in the January issue of Ignite.  Also, be sure to check out the free goal-setting webinar Ken Blanchard is conducting on January 27.  Blanchard will be personally helping over 500 individuals and teams from around the world complete their 2016 goal setting during the online session.  The event is free courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

I manage the creative design department for my company and have for years. We have a reputation for offering inspired and visually arresting products—because of me, basically. My boss is a great guy; I actually followed him here from another company. In fact, that may be the problem—my boss is just too nice.

I have the kind of job that requires my team and me to deliver on tight, time-sensitive deadlines. Everyone who works with me knows that sometimes we will have to work late or come in early, and that we can’t take undue time off during crunch periods. I am also extremely rigorous about the work we produce—after all, our reputation depends on it! I often give direct reports hard feedback to help them bring their work up to standard.

Sometimes when one of my people wants to take time off and I have told them no, they go running to my boss. The next thing I know, he calls me on the carpet for being too tough. What’s worse is when he tells a person they can take the time off they want, even when they are working on a big fat deadline. Of course, he doesn’t talk to me about how I am supposed to meet the deadline! I recently was admonished by HR when a direct report exceeded their PTO and it was because my boss told the person they could!

It is impossible to get things done when my boss doesn’t support my decisions. He wants everyone to love him, but it is at my expense.

Overridden

Dear Overridden,

So many middle managers are busy protecting their people from the slings and arrows of the folks upstairs—but you seem to have the opposite problem. This is definitely a tough one. Your boss wouldn’t be the first leader to be undone by their own need to be liked.

I hear the anger and resentment you are feeling and it is probably getting in the way of what really needs to happen—you need to sit down with your boss and hash out some boundaries.

Here is something I have tested with both myself and clients. It is a 7-step process for a conversation, taken from the book Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. This approach is a good way to call out natural, forgivable human behaviors that everybody engages in at one time or another.

1. Name the issue (g., your people go running to your boss when they don’t like what you’ve said).
2. Select 2 or 3 specific examples of the behavior or situation you want to change.
3. Describe your emotion about this issue (e.g., it makes you feel unsupported by him).
4. Clarify what is at stake—and be very clear about this. Is this a problem because you can’t get your job done or because you are losing credibility?
5. Identify your contribution to the problem. Is it possible that you are too tough on your people? Be honest.
6. Indicate your wish to resolve the issue, being specific about what resolved looks like to you. This is critical and will provide you both with a measure so that you will know if the fix is successful.
7. Invite your partner/boss to respond.

The thing I like most about this process is that it forces you to prepare for a conversation about one problem and one only. You can’t pile on with everything your boss does that drives you crazy—but maybe you can get him to change one thing he does that is hindering your success.

Good luck to you.

Love Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

I recently saw Casnocha speak at The Ken Blanchard Companies’ 2015 Summit. He explained that a tour of duty was a modern day approach to engaging top talent who will innovate and take an organization to new heights. This approach goes hand in hand with an organization’s need to innovate—to embrace employees’ entrepreneurial instincts to do things differently and stretch beyond current thinking. Not only did this approach resonate with me personally, it also got me thinking about the coaching we do with our client leaders. In coaching, leaders often work with their coach on stretching for their next promotion; essentially, their next tour of duty.

Coaching and tour of duty concepts are both catalysts for growth—growth that catapults both employee and employer to new heights. It’s about lifetime employability versus lifetime employment.

Wondering if you could use some growth in your career? Start by answering these questions:

• Are you stuck in the doldrums at work?
• Do you have the right amount of demanding work that pushes you to stretch and learn?
• Have you mastered the role you are currently serving and want more?

If you answered yes to any of these, you likely don’t need to do much additional analyzing—you know when it is time.

Now, move from acknowledgement to planning and discovery. Begin by having a conversation with your manager. You must position with your manager that you have a desire to discover your next role—it’s not going to come looking for you, so you need to take responsibility. A few things to consider:

• Make a list of your strengths. What is your value contribution to the organization? What have you accomplished to be leveraged elsewhere in the company?
• Get clarity on your passion. If you are not clear about what excites you in the field of work, spend time figuring it out. Look back over the last year and make a list of times when you were firing on all cylinders and loving the work you were doing. What was it?
• Create options. Do you want to do the same job in a different area, or to be with different people? Is there a part of the organization that has a need not currently being served where you could add value? Should you look outside of the organization? Of course, organizations don’t want to see their top contributors leave. But it shouldn’t be a surprise when it happens if those contributors are not enabled to learn and grow.

What else would you recommend a leader do in discovering and finding their next tour of duty? What other resources or advice do you have for people who want to learn and grow?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

About the Author

Joni Wickline is Vice President, Professional Services with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Wickline’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

In his new book, The Optimistic Workplace: Creating An Environment That Energizes Everyone, Shawn Murphy, my friend and fellow advocate of human worth in the workplace, offers six straightforward strategies leaders can employ to develop a sense of community and belonging in workplaces that builds trust and collaboration.

1. Send employees to learn other parts of the business — Early in my career I worked in the funeral service business. Yes, I said funeral service, as in cemeteries and funeral homes. I worked in the corporate headquarters of the cemetery division, far removed from those on the “front lines.” In order to help everyone learn the business and build collaborative relationships with those who worked in the field, all new employees were sent to work at a cemetery or funeral home for three days. It was an experience that transformed me. I came away from it with greater understanding of the business, more appreciation for colleagues working with our customers, and an increased connection to the important service we were providing.

2. Inquire regularly into the team’s effectiveness — Peter Drucker said that nothing good ever happens in organizations by accident. It takes intentional planning and effort and that’s especially true when it comes to staying in touch with how your team members are feeling and performing. It’s easy to fall into the practice of “no news is good news.” An important way to foster trust is to have regular check-in meetings with your team members. We advocate 15-30 minute one-on-one meetings every 1-2 weeks. The agenda is driven by the team member and it can be anything on their mind: how they’re feeling, discussing how things are going at home, direction or support they need on a particular task, or just sharing an update with you about their recent accomplishments. Knowing what’s going on with your team members removes barriers that often derail collaboration.

3. Hire people with collaborative tendencies — In his book, Murphy shares an example of how Menlo Innovations tests job candidates for collaborative tendencies. Candidates are put into pairs, given a challenge to solve, and told that their goal is to make their partner look good. People with a tendency to collaborate make it to the next stage in the hiring process. Instead of asking your job candidates if they like to collaborate, devise some sort of exercise that allows them to demonstrate their skills. Murphy points out that collaboration is not merely an action, it’s also a mindset.

4. Develop routines that reinforce collaboration — You know those committees that get formed to plan holiday parties, team BBQ’s, or other group activities? They can be really frustrating, can’t they? But they serve an important purpose: they reinforce social and team norms that allow people to collaborate and bond with each other. Many of these practices seem out of date in today’s technology-enabled world. Who needs a committee when you can just create a Facebook event and invite everyone, right? Wrong. Leaders who foster high-trust and collaborative environments look for opportunities to bring people together.

5. Create spaces for random collisions — I love this recommendation! We all know that many times the most important decisions or creative breakthroughs happen in the hallway or lunch room conversations after the formal meeting. Murphy recommends we look for ways to structure our work environment that allow people to naturally and routinely “collide” with each other. When people collide in these natural ways, they feed off each others’ energy. It leads to deeper engagement between team members which results in more creative exploration of ideas and concepts. For some organizations the open work space concept works well, while for others it doesn’t fit their culture or business needs. Whatever approach you use, look for ways to help people interact in positive ways.

6. Make time for face to face meetings — Knowledge workers are increasingly isolated as we move to more people working virtually. It’s no longer necessary for everyone to congregate in the same location to get work done. Work is not a place you go; it’s something you do. In this environment it’s even more important to foster human connections. Webcams, Instant Messenger, and other technologies are good starts, but nothing replaces face to face interaction. It’s critically important to bring your team members together at regular intervals so they can deepen their relationships with one another. Trust and commitment to each other is built during these times and it’s the lubrication that keeps relationships working smoothly.

The climate of our organizations set the tone for how people “show up” on the job. Unfortunately, too many leaders are thermometers, reflecting the poor climate of their teams, rather than being thermostats, the climate controllers. Murphy’s book offers a wealth of tips on how leaders can take a proactive approach to being those “thermostats” that create more optimistic workplaces where people flourish.

Using the acronym UNITE, the authors explained that the creation of a collaborative work environment rests on five foundational principles.

Utilize differences. Organizations need to appreciate and be open to people and ideas that may seem at first to be outside of the mainstream. The best companies seek out creative thinking from all corners of the organization. The focus for leaders is to make sure that all ideas are surfaced for consideration.

Nurture safety and trust. New ideas will flourish when people feel safe to share them freely without fear of judgment. Leaders need to give people space to experiment and innovate, view mistakes as learning opportunities, and encourage risk taking. Trust is also generated through transparency—when leaders share knowledge about themselves and are clear about expectations.

Involve others in crafting a clear purpose, values, and goals. Instead of seeing purpose, values, and goals as something always originated by senior leaders, the authors recommend that everyone be involved in the process. Doing it this way encourages a sense of camaraderie and ownership in the group. Leaders follow through by reinforcing what was agreed upon, demonstrating supportive behaviors, and walking the talk.

Talk openly. Underlining the importance of utilizing differences and creating an environment of safety and trust, the authors shared the benefits of people talking openly without worrying about upsetting the status quo. There are benefits to creative conflict—but only when people can vigorously debate ideas without getting personal.

Empower yourself and others. Some leaders need to learn how to let go. True collaboration can never exist if people constantly look to the leader to solve problems. So don’t wait for someone else to decide it’s time to collaborate—everyone is responsible for creating a collaborative environment.

When people are busy, it’s normal to want to focus on getting individual work done. To combat this urge, the authors remind us of an old adage: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster shows the way. The book is now available online and in bookstores. You can learn more on the book’s website—or, if you’d like to listen to the author webinar I attended, be sure to access the full recording.

Interested in getting your team together for a live event? The authors will be conducting a second live webinar on October 21 as a part of the monthly webinar series from The Ken Blanchard Companies. The event is free. You can learn more or register using this link.