Putting Together the Pieces of Leadership

Concept Schools

AGENDAOBJECTIVES FOR TODAY INCLUDE:

Win as much as you can Mastering both listening and speaking Giving feedback Developing tomorrow’s leaders Changing bad behavior

Win As Much As You Can

fortyninepercent

Less than half of all employees understand the steps their organizations are taking to reach new business goals.

Source: Watson Wyatt

Sixty percent of surveyed managers

listed getting people to work together as the biggest hurdle they currently face.

American Management Association

information agemis

Mistakes are inevitable.

“Norma Adams-Wadeʼs June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a

socialite.”

Retraction in the Dallas Morning News:

The information your employees have is only as good as the information you give them.

Give them information that is confusing,

and theyʼll likely misinterpret your message.

and they’ll spread it.

Give them wrong information,

Fail to give them any information, and theyʼll make it up, or get it

from somewhere else.

In times of ambiguity, people seek stability, even if that means inventing their own explanations.

Nitin NohriaHarvard Business School

Communication is the real work of leadership.“ ”

On average, effective leaders spend approximately 70 percent of

their time communicating, of which 45 percent is spent listening.

are you a good listener?

CAUTION:Contrary to prevailing attitudes, being a good listener requires a tremendous amount of mental effort.

4Listening Illusions

Leaders believe that, in every instance, they understand their listening role. Leaders believe speaking and listening are separate activities.

Leaders believe they have uncommon gifts for completing several other tasks while they listen.

Leaders believe they can expedite the listening process.

List

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twolisteningroles

Advisor

Expert

Diagnose

Recommend a Solution

Best for Technical Problems

Differences in Knowledge

Emergencies

One Right Answer

May Cause Over-Dependence

Sounding Board

Good Listener

Absorb

Attend to Feelings

Best for Relationship Issues

Differences in Philosophy

Long-Term Challenges

No Answer Needed

Promotes Independence

Which role?

“Seek First to Understand,Then to Be Understood”

Stephen Covey

“Many administrators have blundered into trouble by speaking when they should have been listening.”

James T. Scarnati

Wait your turn

“Silence and listening are the antibodies that protect us from the germ of ignorance.”

James T. Scarnati

Leaders believe that, in every instance, they understand their listening role. Leaders believe speaking and listening are separate activities.

Leaders believe they have uncommon gifts for completing several other tasks while they listen.

Leaders believe they can expedite the listening process.

List

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“Grandmother, what big eyes you have!”

“All the better to hear with, my child.”

EngagedLeaning forward, body

and arms open; appears ready and

eager.

CombativeBody forward, but closed in defiant posture; tapping fingers or toes.

ThoughtfulBody open, but

leaning back; appears attentive, is nodding or

chewing on pen.

AbsentStaring into space,

doodling, or checking email; looking to flee.

Opened

Closed

Forward Back

The Four Quadrants of “Body Listening”

EngagedBest time to make your point, assign

tasks, and sell your ideas.

CombativeListener is paying

attention, but disagrees; steer

toward thoughtful mode.

ThoughtfulNo time to force the issue; provide more

information and allow listener to digest.

AbsentListener has stopped

paying attention and is trying to escape;

change the subject.

Opened

Closed

The Four Quadrants of “Body Listening”

Forward Back

Nonverbals

Words account for only 7 percent of communication between two people. Body language and voice tone comprise the rest.Source: Fatt, J. P. T. (1998). Nonverbal communication and business success. Management Research News, 21(4-5), 1-10.

Leaders believe that, in every instance, they understand their listening role. Listeners believe speaking and listening are separate activities.

Leaders believe they have uncommon gifts for completing several other tasks while they listen. Leaders believe they can expedite the listening process.

List

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“You can multi-task with ‘stuff,’ but you need to ‘be there’ for people.”

Stephen Lundin, John Christensen, and Harry Paul,

Fish! Tales

What style of listener

Leaders believe that, in every instance, they understand their listening role. Listeners believe speaking and listening are separate activities.

Leaders believe they have uncommon gifts for completing several other tasks while they listen. Leaders believe they can expedite the listening process.

List

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125 vs. 1000

distractionzone

Demonstrate patience. Some people have more difficulty expressing their ideas than others.

Without conversation,

leadership would give way to

bureaucracy.

The ultimate judge of your listening behavior is the person who is doing

the talking.

“Listening is a complex skill that must be given constant attention if we are to master the skill and assume the label of leader.”

–James T. Scarnati, “Beyond technical competence: Learning to listen,” Career Development International, 3(2), 1998.

“The successful leader will have not the loudest voice, but the

readiest ear.”

Warren Bennis

Receiving the message is the easy part. Decoding and understanding the speaker’s meaning are the challenges.

Asked subjects to tap out the rhythm of a familiar tune for another person and assess the probability that the listener

would identify the song correctly.

Elizabeth Newton

Tappers predicted that

listeners would be able to recognize the songs

50 percent of the time.

3PERCENT

Listeners were lucky if

they could identify the tunes at all.

The difference, of course, is that the tappers could hear the music

in their heads as they tapped, whereas listeners heard only a

series of intermittent taps.

When measuring our expectations for others, we

use ourselves as the yardstick.

egocentrism

—Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland, The Leader’s Voice

“”

The biggest problem with leadership communication is

the that it has occurred.illusion

“Yeah-uhhh! Yo, yo dude. What’s up dawg? How you feelin’? You feelin’ alright?

Listen, man. I’ve got to give you props. You’re doin’ your thing and it was dope. I ain’t mad.”

“Let’s talk offline after the lateral-thinking quality circle.”

“At the end of the day, we must tee up a seamless solution to

our disconnect, per se.”

“Our on-boarding approach is a linked process that ensures our

high-pots remain at the top of our talent review.”

“Does that hold water with you?”

“What the…?”

A specialized vocabulary coined by, and intended for, a particular profession or discipline.

J A R G O N

JARGON often includes euphemisms

used to substitute inoffensive expressions for those considered offensive.

These actions will “align our resources

with market needs and adjust the size of our

infrastructure.” –Chad Holliday, DuPont CEO

announcing the elimination of 3,500 jobs

why jargon?Speakers sometimes invoke workplace jargon to impress others, or to establish their membership in an elite faction. Some use jargon to exclude or confuse others, or to mask their own inexperience or lack of knowledge.

“Market-leading provider of technology-enabled process-

optimization tools seeks position in which I can apply my

experience reducing cycle time across supply chains.”

4COL

Out of Pocket. We used to just say, “I will be unavailable.”

Escalate. To tell someone more important than you that something very bad is about to happen.

“I’ll Reach Out to You.” I’ll telephone, e-mail, text, or otherwise communicate with you later.

“You Loop Back to Me.” You telephone, e-mail, text, or otherwise communicate with me later. Taking a bottomless sabbatical. Getting laid off.

Opening the Kimono. Exposing the truth—revealing what you’ve been hiding all this time.

Why Didn’t You Just Say So?

20 percentof employees are regularly confused about what their

colleagues are saying, but are too embarrassed to ask for clarification

More than a thirdadmitted using jargon deliberately—as a means

of either demonstrating control or gaining credibility

40 percent found the use of jargon in office meetings both irritating and distracting

One out of ten

dismissed speakers using jargon as both pretentious and untrustworthy

Source: Office Angels

A single voice.

A candid voice.

A genuine voice.

Your voice.

Communication is most effective when you speak to both the emotional

and intellectual areas of your

listeners’ minds.

Storiescreate the emotional

perspective listeners needto connect with your

message.

“The day Rachel defined the meaning of customer service.”

“It is impossible even to think without a mental picture.”

Aristotle On Memory and Recollection

358 B.C.

To lead effectively, you must stimulate the behavior you

are seeking.

I N S P I R E

Have a Vision

Good leaders have a vision.

They hold in their minds pictures of

what is possible.

ConvinceOthers to

Share It

Great leaders convince others to share their vision by articulating it in memorable and inspirational ways.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise

up and live out the true meaning of its creed:

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all

men are created equal.’” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial inWashington D.C. on August 28, 1963

If you think that conveying ideas effectively is an innate ability—a talent reserved for naturally gifted orators—then you are probably neglecting your

role as a communicator.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect

wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather…”

“…teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Sophie Vandebrock Xerox Corporation

IF YOU CAN ARTICULATE A VISION THAT MAKES PEOPLE PASSIONATE, THERE ARE SO MANY AMAZING THINGS YOU CAN DO.

“quote”

“The times they are a-changin’.”Bob Dylan

Four Generations at WorkSilent Generation 1925 - 1945

Baby Boomers 1946 - 1964

Generation X 1965 - 1980

Generation Y 1981 - 2000

thx for the iview! i wud to work 4 u!! :)

How people share information has changed.

2002The last time I sent a fax.

The popularity of e-mail has increased the chances that messages will be misunderstood.

“The ease with which we can fire things back

and forth...makes text-based communication seem more informal and more like face-to-face communication than it really is.” –Nicholas Epley, PhD,

University of Chicago

Senders are not always to blame. We tend to

our ability to interpret the messages we receive.overrate

“E-mail is fine if you just want to communicate content, but not any emotional material.”

Nicholas Epley

pick up the phone!

e-mailworthy

Other things to consider:

Social Media

Blogs

Podcasts

Forums

Text Messaging

Intranet Chats

Speaking Up

74 percentManagers who say their organizations persuade

workers to report bad news upward. Source: Sirota Survey Intelligence

One in three employees believes that senior management actually discourages workers from passing information up the chain of command, even—or especially—when it’s bad news.

Source: Sirota Survey Intelligence

”“In some companies,

a fear of retribution may be at work.

Jeffrey Saltzman, Sirota CEO

“Employees who learned about improper corporate

adjustments appear to have feared senior management’s criticism or even

the loss of their jobs. It was common for employees to be denigrated

in public about their work.”Source: “Report of Investigation by the Special Investigative

Committee of the Board of Directors of WorldCom”

Improving communication requires creating an environment that encourages straight talk.

Along a food chain, there is a sequential order in which organisms consume each other.

TROPHIC LEVELS

Only 10 percent of available energy passes from

one trophic level to the next; the remainder is lost as heat.

Nothing saps the energy out of an

organization faster than poor communication.

Too often, our messages lose their meanings as each level of the corporate chain consumes the information.

The rest, like forgone energy, is just hot air.

It’s likely that only 10 percent of

a message makes it through each level of

communication.

Endeavor for humility, not perfection.

FEEDBACK FOCUSES ON THE PAST

Reinforces personal stereotyping based on giver’s history with recipient (“Do you

know what your problem is?”).

“feed-forward”

Future-oriented

Seen as positive because it focuses on solutions

Can come from anyone who knows about the topic

Cannot be taken personally, since it focuses on things that have yet to happen

Less confrontational way of offering advice

Turning Students Into Leaders

Are leaders born or made?

QUESTION:

10the top

skillsFuture Leaders (Your Current Students) Will

Need To Possess

10. Taking risks.

“Leadership is going first in a new direction—and being followed.”

Robert Galvin

“Why won’t my employees take any initiative?”

Common Issue

Helicopter Parents

Why are manhole covers round?

9. Failing

If you are not failing, you are probably not taking enough risks.

Individuals who take failures personally

have an exaggerated sense of their own

incompetence. They view taking initiative as futile since they expect to fail.

ySol e f∅r wh√

In 1968, 18 percent of American college freshman had achieved an A average in high school.

By 2004, that figure was 48 percent.

During that same period, SAT scores decreased.

SOURCE: Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before. New York: Free Press.

Self-Esteem First.

Learning Second.

celebratefailures

“Do what?”

Celebrations provide people with a safe forum for them to acknowledge their failures, making the analysis of what went wrong less threatening.

“We have a culture that allows people to say, ‘It was my fault and here’s what I’ll do differently next time.’” Michelle Peluso, CEO of Travelocity

8. B E AT I N G S T R E S S

Stress is not a state of mind. It’s a physical state.

Our survival requires avoiding deadly outcomes; ignoring a potential danger could be fatal.

“fight or flee”

psychological

“Hardy” individuals are more likely to approach stressful events as

opportunities from which to learn, rather than as threats to

fear or avoid.

hardiness

Non-Hardy to Hardy

2:1

Commitment: the belief that stressful

events are not threatening, but interesting and

meaningful.

Control: the conviction that individuals can

actively influence life’s events.

Challenge: the perception that change is both expected and stimulating.

the three attitudes of hardiness

Source: Suzanne Kobasa and Salvatore Maddi, The Hardy Executive: Health Under Stress

CommitmentPeople who are committed to and

involved in their work are more apt to perceive chaos as interesting.

ControlPeople adapt to change best when they understand the control they

have over their environments.

ChallengeWhen chaos is welcomed, we can perceive it as stimulating, if not a hidden opportunity for personal

development.

Be hardy!

7) Working in spurts

workfragmentation

11min. 4 sec.

The average length of time

we work on a task before being interrupted

SOURCE: Gloria Mark, Victor M. Gonzalez, & Justin Harris “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work”

On average, it takes more than 25 minutes to resume what we were doing before being interrupted.

SOURCE: Gloria Mark, Victor M. Gonzalez, & Justin Harris “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work”

“Engaging in multiple activities appears to be

related to the scope of work; as the scope increases so

does multi-tasking.”

Mark, Gonzalez, and Harris

Managers experience 50 percent more external

interruptions than their employees do.

Mark, Gonzalez, and Harris

6. Sharing knowledge.

Wally who?

Giving away our authority is a personal challenge. It involves

sharing influence, prestige, and applause, while forcing us to deal with our personal

insecurities.

“”

A basic function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more

followers.

Ralph Nader

5. Pursuing mastery.

“The class of 2007 is the first in Ohio which must pass

all five Ohio Graduation Test sections to receive a diploma.”The Blade, May 22, 2007

achieve greatness in the

When we force people to strive for proficiency in everything, we miss the opportunity for them to

one area where they may, indeed, achieve just that.

strivingforimprovement, most of us do the same thing: we take our strengths for granted, and concentrate all our efforts on conquering our weaknesses

Not surprisingly,

the vast majority of organizations appear to believe that the best way for individuals to grow is to

eliminate their weaknesses.

Identifying each person’s strongest talents permits everyone the opportunity

to contribute what they do

BEST.

FOUR: embrace interdependency

TEAMWORKT h e o r i g i n s o f

( b l a m e N o r m a n T r i p l e t t )

Social FACILITATION

Social facilitation is the tendency for people to be aroused into performing better in

the presence of others than they perform when they are alone.

simple tasks

or tasks in which we are experts

Just having other people around increases an individual’s drive

and motivation levels.Robert Zajonc

MERE PRESENCE theory

So, how’s that working for you?

The presence of others actually

creates a conflict between attending to the task at hand and

navigating through the group process.

distractionconflicttheory

Potential Productivity- Loss Resulting from Group Process Actual Productivity

Steiner’s Model

Suzy Wetlaufer“The Team That Wasn’t”

Harvard Business Review (Nov/Dec 1994)

“”

Team after team can be sunk by ‘team destroyers’…people whose

brilliance in individual tasks is matched by their incapacity for

collaborative work.

3. Keeping hope alive.

BEEN THERE.DONE THAT.

Defy the verdict!

“The illiterate of the 21st century

will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and

relearn.”

Alvin Toffler

“The biggest men and womenwith the biggest ideas can be

shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest

minds. Think big anyway.”Dr. Kent M. Keith

Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments

We often describe children as having wild or active imaginations. The best leaders never outgrow their imaginative gift.

TWO:Resolving conflict.

con.flict (kón flikt) a disagreement in which those involved perceive a threat to their needs, interests, or happiness.

Conflicts are natural occurrences within the workplace, so clashes and disagreements

are predictable.

Eric and Rhonda are in the kitchen. There is only one

orange left and both of them

want it.

What’s the best solution?

“Working with others and managing conflict are inseparable.”

Dean Tjosvold

#1Proving credibility.

PERCENT

Less than half of all U.S.

employees trust their senior

leaders.

49

Source: Watson Wyatt

“In corporate America, crime pays. Handsomely. Grotesquely, even.”

Arianna Huffington Pigs at the Trough

“KOUZES & POSNER The Leadership Challenge

WHAT WE FOUND IN OUR INVESTIGATION OF ADMIRED LEADERSHIP QUALITIES IS THAT MORE THAN ANYTHING, PEOPLE WANT TO FOLLOW LEADERS WHO ARE CREDIBLE.”

“Credibility is the foundation on which leaders and constituents will build the grand dreams of the future.”Kouzes & Posner

DWYSYWD

“Leaders grow; they are not made.” Peter Drucker

Grow some of your own!

“A change in behavior begins with a change

in the heart.”– Scripture posted on the outside message

board at Smitty’s Automotive Service

Which tactic should you use?

Hit the brakes

Honk the horn

Flash the headlights

Swerve off the road

Hope for the best

Experts suggest turning off your headlights.* *Disclaimer: I have never tested this!

We may not be able to change a person, but we can influence a person’s behavior by creating the

proper environment.

B=f(PE)Lewin’s Equation

B=f(PE)BEHAVIOR is a FUNCTION of PEOPLE

and their ENVIRONMENTS

The behavior you’re witnessing is behavior

someone (maybe you!) has taught. Therefore, you might

need to re-teach it.

attributiontheory

Why?(the answer determines my future behavior)

Dictionary: attribute (uh-trib-yoot)

-verb (used with object)

1. to think of something as caused by a particular circumstance.2. to consider as a quality or characteristic of the person.

Origin: 1350-1400; Latin attribūtus

external versus internal

We have a propensity to overestimate internal factors—

and underestimate external factors—when explaining the

bad behavior of others...

…and to underestimate internal factors and overestimate external factors when explaining

our own bad behavior.

AND VICE VERSA

External Attributed to outside

agent or force

I’m late because my alarm clock didn’t go off.

I’m in trouble for being late because my boss is a jerk.

She only got her promotion because they needed to fill a quota.

I’m the type of person who always likes to

be on time.

I earned my promotion by working harder than

everyone else did.

He’s behind in that project because he’s an idiot.

Internal Attributed to

personality factors

ATTRIBUTIONfundamental

error

learned helplessness

“If we can control the attributions people make, then we can influence their

future behavior.” –Steve Booth-Butterfield, Steve’s Primer

of Practical Persuasion

“This is the neatest classroom. You must be very neat students who really care about their room.”

ATTRIBUTION TRAINING: “You work hard and seem to know your math assignments very well.”

PERSUASION TRAINING: “Try harder. You should be getting better grades in math.”

REINFORCEMENT TRAINING: “I’m proud of you and pleased with your progress.”

Students who received attribution training scored one to two points higher (out of twenty) than those receiving persuasion and reinforcement.

Rewards and punishments are external factors and, as such, they prevent workers from forming the internal attributions that bring about those behaviors that you’re attempting to encourage.

attributionretraining

{You seem like ahard worker quality stickler question asker team player }who…

Putting Together the Pieces of Leadership

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