The Leadership Achilles’ Heel

The achilles’ heel is a metaphor for vulnerability.  As leaders, our vulnerabilities can bring us down.  Unfortunately, we can bring our team and organization down with us.  It can also be tough to get a handle on just what our achilles’ heel is because people are so apt to tell us what they think we want to hear.  Why don’t we take some time to reflect on this and think about what our achilles’ heel or vulnerabilities are as leaders?  In my next post, I will talk about my personal reflections on this question and share some of the most common leadership achilles’ heels.  As always, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much for all the emails about my recent posts.  Your support inspires me!

P.S. Remember, we are all leaders of something, whether it be an organization, a team, a functional area or ourselves!

Does Your Team Know You Value Them?

It was great to get so many emails about my blog post yesterday. Thanks for letting me know that you are out there and interested in my random thoughts on life and leadership.  Today, let’s talk about leadership.  I think the single most important skill a leader can possess is (drum roll here):

The ability to convey genuine regard and value for their team.

Are you surprised?  Do you agree?  It is okay for me to say that I was surprised? I was especially surprised 14 years ago; I thought leadership was all about getting things done.  My natural approach to getting things done was to tell people what needed to be done.  Can you believe it?  

Interestingly enough, I found the “tell them what to do approach” worked in a crisis.  It seems many people relish someone telling them what to do when swift action is needed.  Yet, slow down and low and behold, they want to express their opinion.  They want you to include them in the conversation.  They (being your team) most often want to know not only what needs to be done, but why.  People have ideas, many ideas, about the what and how, once they know the why.  Will you be a leader that listens?

Interesting things happen when you’re not.  The energy and passion gets sucked out of your team members, almost as if by magic.  If we don’t include and value our team members, there is often a corresponding decrease in their connection and commitment to the tasks at hand.  

Yet, include, value, listen, learn and allow your team the freedom to try out their ideas and make some mistakes (yes, mistakes) and you often get a corresponding increase in their connection and commitment to the tasks at hand, the team and the organization. 

What do yo think? Agree? Disagree? Advice on how to show your team you truly regard and value their contributions? I want to hear what you think. You can comment here or email zohreh@piurek.com.  Have a great day!

President Obama needs our support

I was talking with a colleague yesterday, and they mentioned that President Obama is visiting Arizona today. I wanted to learn more about the purpose of his visit, and so I did what I always do when I want to learn about something, I Googled. I came upon an article discussing Senator McCain’s disappointment in President Obama’s handling of the stimulus package.  As I read the article further, I become increasing disappointed myself.  Why?

It saddened me to learn that our leadership is publicly chastising each other as the American people wait expectantly for them to work together to bring real and immediate solutions to our current financial crisis.  Ironically, the major criticism was that President Obama had taken a partisan approach, thereby failing to bring consensus among the parties.  Now, I am no politician.  I am not even an avid follower of our political process.  Yet, I am a passionate student of all things related to leadership, and in reading about McCain’s reported disappointment of Obama right before his visit to Arizona, I knew we were in trouble.  I know that the Country is watching with great hope and expectation.  I know that when our political leaders publicly report their displeasure with their peers, they undermine this country’s faith in their abilities to work together for our greater good.  I saw a lead this morning on the Arizona Capital News homepage stating “At a Feb. 17 news conference, GOP. Sens. Jon Kyl (left) and John McCain faulted Democrats for the mortgage crisis that led to the economic meltdown. Kyl and McCain spoke to reporters at Arizona State University West in Glendale.” 

This further supported my opinion that our leaders need to “collaborate, not alienate” each other.  I think the lead quoted above is good old fashioned mudslinging.  It is the Democrats fault that we are in a mortgage crisis.  Well, as an American citizen, I can say with all confidence that I don’t care whose fault it is, I care about how we are going to fix it.  Yes, I realize that we need to learn from our past mistakes.  However, I haven’t found public mudslinging to be an effective learning tool.  What is helpful?  I believe it is collaborating together to come up with real solutions. 

If we are going to paint a house, we might sit together for hours deciding what color to paint it.  If we have different opinions, we may look at all the options and meet on repeated occasions before we decide what color to use.   However, if the house is burning down around us, we are going to RUN to put it out.  We are going to work together, rapidly and with a singular focus on solving the problem. 

How does this all relate to leadership and President Obama needing our support?  Leaders always need our support to be successful.  However, when they are managing a crisis, they especially need it.  Conflict over party lines or any other line is not helpful.  It erodes our team’s confidence in us.  Somewhere in your life, there is a leader who needs your support.  As we come together and collaborate for solutions that are bigger than ourselves, we create success. 

So, I say, let’s support our leaders and let’s start with President Obama.  Let’s hold onto hope and belief that positive change is not only possible, but it is happening.  We all need to be a part of it.  Today, there is something that each of us can do to create positive change in our life and the lives of those around us.  Maybe it is calling someone recently laid off to check in on them, writing a political leader to convey support, or saying an encouraging word to someone who is in despair about our economy.   There is something that each of us can do to make this day a brighter one.  For me, I say that I am proud and grateful to have a President that is doing everything he can to bring positive change.  You have my support.

Leading in times of adversity

We are waiting.  We are waiting for times to get better.  We watch updates on the news about the stimulus package, and we hope.  We hope that our leaders will have wisdom.  We hope that they will act quickly.  We hope that when they act, it works. 

Your team is waiting on you.  They are waiting for you to notice the work they do.  They are waiting for you to ask their opinion.  They are waiting for you to reassure them that they will have a job next month, and they wonder.  They wonder if you will have your job next month.  They wonder if they will have their job.  There was a time, not too long ago, where they may have asked themselves if they wanted their job.  Yet, those days are temporarily forgotten.  Now, they are most likely grateful to have a job.

How do we lead in times of adversity?  I learned my biggest lessons related to this when managing what seemed to be a sinking ship (metaphorically speaking).  I was brought into manage a failing operation.  After being there a short time, it became apparent that the operation may be shut down.  There was a period of several months where the staff was unsure as to whether they would have jobs in the near future.  The operation was in the press regularly.  There was much “talk” in the community about the contract and whether it would continue to be funded. 

In the midst of all this, we needed to perform.  We still had a job to do, even if we weren’t sure for how long.   What did I do?  What did I learn?

Well, I let them wear blue jeans.  Yep, that is my big tip for leading in times of adversity – find out what you can do to support your team and do it.  Now this involves a few underlying principles:

1) Talk to your team.  Tell them everything you can.  Each organization has a culture and approach about sharing information.  You will need to act within yours.  However, share as much information as you can.

2) Be honest about what you can control and what you can’t.  Your staff needs to know that they can trust you.  If you are going down the rapids with someone, you want to know they can handle a boat.  As you are open with them about what you can impact, their trust in you increases.

3) Find out what matters to them.  Small stuff makes a big difference.  In fact, during times of adversity, the small stuff can be even more important.   When staff are unsure of the future, knowing that you care and are doing what you can to support them makes a BIG difference.  

4) Act.  Your team wants to know that you can take swift and competent action.   If you are at sea, in a storm, who do you want at the helm?  During the tough times, your staff needs to have confidence in your ability to take whatever action is needed to bring success. 

So, why blue jeans?  I talked to my team each week, the entire team.  I told them everything I knew about what we were facing.  I shared what I knew, didn’t know, what we were doing and what we were trying to figure out.  I thanked them for their support during these tough times.  I reassured them that I would continue to share everything I knew with them, and I did.  I asked them how I could support them, and you guessed it – blue jeans.  They wanted casual Friday everyday.  Working for wise leaders myself, upon hearing the request, they approved it. 

I wish I could tell you that the contract didn’t end and the operation didn’t have to close.  Yet, it did.  Unfortunately, the cycle of organizational life has its sad endings as well.  However, what I can tell you is that the team was supported during adversity, that we worked together, and that together we did what needed to be done.  

I wish you and your team great success in weathering the economic storm upon us.  Things will change. Things will get better.  Together, we can all navigate through these stormy waters.

How is a great leader made?

We talk a lot about leading these days.  I do anyway.  I am not sure how much everyone else thinks about it.  I think about it everyday.  I wonder how I can be a better leader.  I wonder what makes a great leader.  Can Harvard professors and others dissect it into a formula that anyone can follow?  These days, I mainly think about how I can help leaders succeed and how I can help aspiring leaders be just that — leaders.  Of course, that takes me to the age old question of whether leaders are born or made.  I have come to believe that while many a leader is born, that they can be and often are made.  Now, does this mean that every person can become a leader?  Yes!

After all, think about what “lead” means:

To show the way to by going in advance. (www.answer.com)

 While a “leader” is:

One that leads or guides. (www.answer.com)

It is my hope that we can all lead and guide ourselves and others to a better place.  The body of literature and research on leadership attests to its importance in our lives.  I thought that if I learned enough about leadership that I would find THE ANSWER.  The question being, “How do we become great leaders?”  Two things happened when I tried: 1) I learned that there are more books on leadership than I can read in a lifetime; 2) As I read, I learned that I am not going to find THE ANSWER, but rather multiple views on what people THINK the answer is, meaning lots of people have lots of ideas on what makes a leader great.

The books are written by really smart people; they seem really smart to me when I read what they have to say.  A lot of them are backed up by what seems like solid research.  So, why have we not found and agreed upon THE ANSWER? 

Well, I am playing around with the idea that one answer does not exist.  What if there are many paths to becoming a leader?  There must be, right?

I think the most important component for becoming a great leader is this: The desire to be a great leader.  It is our desire for leading others well that takes us to the starting point of our journey.  From that starting point, I think we find the information and approach that best suits us.  So in the end, it isn’t about one size fits all.  It is about the lifetime leadership journey.  That’s right – lifetime.  We continue to grow and master leading for as long as we chose to stay on the learning path.  To me, that is how a great leader is made – one self aware step at a time.