Author Archives: Larry Janis

The Five Cs of Trust

 

 

 

 

 

By Ali Grovue and Mike Watson

Creating a high-trust environment isn’t easy but applying these five principles on a day-to-day basis will get you there—and closer to real resiliency.

 

 

 

There are the five Cs to live by when it comes to establishing and building trust:

 

1. Care

While a leader must be above average on each of the five Cs to be effective, growing evidence suggests that care matters more than the others.

Many leaders engage in unconscious acts of self-destruction in their first days in a new job. They do this by making change too quickly, by telling versus asking, and by not engaging the hearts and minds of the people around them. All of this can lead one to be seen as uncaring, and if you are seen as such, you will not build trust. If you don’t build trust, you will not engage hearts and minds. If you don’t engage hearts and minds, your results will be suboptimal.
Here is some practical advice for leaders:
1. Embrace care as a personal value. Accept that it is the foundation of trust. Model it and recruit people who demonstrate it.
2. Establish a personal accountability to get to know the people who report to you.
3. Learn what is important to the people who report to you.
4. Work with them to draw links between what is important to them and their careers.
2. Communication
It is one thing to care. It is quite another to communicate with care. Telling is not communicating. Communication requires active listening and understanding. It requires engaging at the level of personal pursuits.
Through years of watching how leaders communicate and the results that follow, we have identified a small number of best practices:
1. Tell the truth.
2. Be direct. Better to say the right thing the wrong way than to say nothing at all.
3. Always start a difficult conversation with the mindset that you care about the individual you are speaking with.
4. Link your communication to your organizational vision wherever possible. Never let your team lose sight of the defining purpose of your organization.
3. Character
The things we do today will be on record decades from now. Like it or not, we must accept it. This is our reality.
But more important than how people we don’t know view us is how we are seen by those who do know us—our families, our friends, and our colleagues. They see what we do. And their trust in us will be a function of the integrity that we display.
A common challenge we see is the leader who has more than one persona. These leaders often display a “work face” at the office and a “friend or family face” with others. At its core, this demonstrates a lack of authenticity, and in these situations we encourage our clients to go back and reflect on their motivation and purpose. The reason they cannot be their authentic self in all interactions likely rests here. If their motivation or purpose is hollow and they are unwilling to do the deep searching within that is required of a resilient leader, it will be almost impossible for that leader to create deep trust.
4. Consistency
The temperament of a leader permeates their organization and influences cultural norms. We likely have all seen examples of leaders who have reacted negatively (emotionally or behaviorally) to stress. The very best leaders can channel stress into positive responses such as increased mental focus, healthy urgency, and decisiveness. But when a leader exhibits negative stress responses, it imperils enterprise resilience. A leader with a widely vacillating temperament sends a signal to the organization that such a temperament is acceptable if not even endorsed. And as the behavior takes hold, it becomes part of the culture.Our advice is this: Establish a band in which you will operate. Keep your emotions in check within this band. Establish protections for yourself so that you can recognize how you are showing up. The consequence of getting this wrong can be dire. If you are prone to mood swings, your people might be reluctant to bring you information for fear of which leader will be greeting them in that moment. This stifles the creativity necessary to be adaptable in these disruptive times. Again, this is easier said than done. Start by keeping it top of mind that operating within a clear emotional band matters. Mindset is a powerful driver of behavior.
5. Competence
We have discussed many of the soft skills needed for building trust. However, regardless of how caring, communicative, and consistent a leader may be, they will not establish trust if they are not competent. You must build the knowledge to master your craft. You can’t fake competence.
You must be competent if you are to earn the trust of those around you. The message to all aspiring leaders is to take the time necessary to build your skill. Opportunities will come. And, when they do, be ready for them, having built your résumé through experiential learning.
Creating a high-trust environment is not easy. However, the components are clear: care, communication, character, consistency and competence. Applying these on a day-to-day basis requires powerful commitment. Resiliency depends on it.

 

 

Source: ChiefExecuitive 

Marshall Goldsmith On The Lost Art Of Asking For Help

 

 

 

By Marshall Goldsmith
We’re all flawed human beings. We all should be asking for help. Reminding yourself and your company’s leadership of this eternal truth is one of the essential tasks for anyone in—or outside—of business today. A guide.

In his coaching practice, Marshall Goldsmith has advised more than 200 major CEOs and their management teams.On July 19, join Goldsmith for an exclusive master class based on his brand new book, The Earned Life. He’ll dive deep into his new, practical framework for decreasing regret and increasing fulfilment, helping you become more productive—and more present in your life. Register here.

During nearly four decades of coaching 200-plus CEOs and their management teams, Marshall Goldsmith has learned a few things about the obstacles that even the most successful people face in creating more fulfilling careers and lives—and how to overcome them. He’s also adept at distilling lessons gleaned from working with a broad array of leaders across industries into universally applicable advice, insights and tools in best-selling books like Triggers, Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

This excerpt from Goldsmith’s new book, The Earned Life (Currency, May 2022), explores one of the faultiest premises plaguing corporate America: the idea that acknowledging the need for help is a weakness rather than a strength. It’s something every business leader—and every company—would do well to understand and address. Here’s how. 

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Among Peter Drucker’s many uncanny management predictions is this: “The leader of the past knew how to tell; the leader of the future will know how to ask.” 

The myth of the self-made individual is one of the more sacred fictions of modern life. It endures because it promises us a just and happy reward that is equal to our persistence, resourcefulness and hard work. Like most irresistible promises, it deserves our skepticism. 

It’s not impossible to achieve success on your own to the point where it could be accurately described as self-made. The more salient question is: Why would you want to when you could surely achieve a better result by enlisting help along the way? An earned life is not more “earned” or glorious or gratifying—or even more likely—because you tried to achieve it all by yourself. (more…)

Three ways to prevent hybrid work from breaking your company culture

 

by Earl Simpkins and Varun Bhatnagar

It’s tough to maintain a cohesive culture when half of your employees—or more—regularly work from home. Specific steps can help.

Here’s a situation you might have experienced at your latest team huddle. Half of the group gathers in the conference room as the meeting is about to kick off. But your remote colleagues are busy trying to get connected, and several miss the first few minutes. The discussion gets repeatedly halted by echoes or silenced when remote employees are reminded to take themselves off mute. The conference room doesn’t have a video screen—or a functioning screen that anyone can figure out—so some people in the room dial in on their own laptops, defeating the purpose of an in-person meeting.

Many employees love hybrid work models. But this new approach to work can have a profound impact on their sense of community and connection. A Harvard Business Review study of more than 1,000 employees found that many who worked at least partially remotely felt more excluded from workplace affairs than their in-office counterparts. PwC’s Global Culture Survey 2021 found that among employees who worked from home during the pandemic, 44% found it more difficult to maintain a sense of community with their peers.

And the challenge is not going away. In PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022, 62% of respondents said they prefer some mix of in-person and remote work, and 63% said they expect their company to offer that kind of approach in the next 12 months.

Overcoming these issues and creating a cohesive culture in which employees can participate in meaningful ways regardless of whether they’re at home or in the office takes more than setting new policies. It requires that leaders take specific steps to create an environment that is connected, inclusive, and productive.

Understand your culture, and link it to explicit behaviors (more…)

The surprising upside to provocative conversations at work

 

 

 

by Bhushan Sethi and Peter Brown

Contrary to conventional wisdom, workplace conversations about societal issues aren’t a distraction—they’re a way for employees to understand one another better.

As the world becomes increasingly polarized around a range of hot-button topics, companies often try to keep these issues from becoming a distraction in the workplace. After all, employee conversations about societal topics like climate, immigration, race, and gender equity may seem like a potential source of discord—and HR headaches. But here’s one counterintuitive approach: help your employees talk it out. According to PwC’s latest workforce survey, a majority of employees are already having these conversations. What’s more, they’re benefiting from the experience.

We surveyed more than 52,000 workers in 44 territories—one of the biggest global workforce surveys ever conducted. The questions covered a range of topics, from hybrid work to technology to factors that will push people to ask for a raise or look for another job. But some of the most surprising findings had to do with discussions about sensitive topics in the workplace.

Most leaders treat these conversations as a possible minefield, with the potential to distract employees from work (at best) and—more likely—lead to disputes if employees feel outnumbered or out-argued. But among respondents, 65% said they have these kinds of conversations sometimes or frequently. The numbers were even higher among younger employees.

Moreover, people were asked about the overall impact of these conversations, and they were far more likely to cite positive outcomes than negatives (by a difference of 34 percentage points). The most popular of those positives? Some 37% said that conversations about societal issues helped them better understand their colleagues and increased their empathy for people with different viewpoints. Notably, people also said that these conversations helped create a more open and inclusive work environment—a key goal of most organizations these days. (more…)

Leading under pressure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Theodore Kinni

To control the anxiety produced by moments of intense pressure, first step back and analyze the stakes.

Pressure is a goad. Whether it arrives in the guise of a burning platform or a project deadline, a strategic goal or a performance target, a high-stakes deal or an aggressive competitor, pressure can help leaders attain new heights of performance and achievement. You know the adage: no pressure, no diamonds.

The problem with this pithy observation, attributed to 19th-century Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle, is that it is both true and false. Though pressure can drive outsized results, it can also become an insurmountable obstacle to performance and achievement. It can overwhelm a leader and result in missteps that torpedo companies and careers.

The powerful effects—and vagaries—of pressure were dramatically illustrated during the Tokyo Olympics when gymnast Simone Biles unexpectedly withdrew from the women’s team finals. The extraordinarily talented and seemingly unshakable Biles, who was considered a shoo-in to repeat her 2016 gold medal win in the all-around gymnastics competition, cited her mental health. Later, she said that she had been suffering from the “twisties,” a condition that leaves gymnasts disoriented in midair and can lead to serious injury. The twisties are thought to be caused by performance pressure and stress, both of which were surely running higher than usual in an Olympics held during a pandemic. (more…)