Authenticity is Core to Effective Business Dynamics

By on April 28, 2012 in Breakaway Success, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Trust

Why, I often ask, is the human resource function shuffled off to the Human Resource department as if the hands don’t need the head for full functionality?   People are the source of results, they manage the systems, they pull the levers, they produce the results. What is more important? People are the JUICE, the GLUE, the SOURCE.

Transparency is core to trust, which has been covered in prior blogs.  So is authenticity.   Here is what the foremost author on emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Primal Leadership:  Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence says about authenticity and leadership.

“The triad of self-awareness, self-management, and empathy all come together in the final Emotional Intelligence ability: relationship management.  Here we find the most visible tools of leadership — persuasion, conflict management, and collaboration among them.  Managing relationships skillfully boils down to handing other people’s emotions.  This, in turn, means that leaders be aware of their own emotions and attuned with empathy to the people they lead.

“If a leader acts disingenuously or manipulatively, for instance, the emotional radar of followers will sense a note of falseness and they will instinctively distrust that leader.  The art of handling relationships well, then, begins with authenticity: acting from one’s genuine feelings.”

 

In building the biotechnology company Amgen, that “over the next 20 years went from a struggling entrepreneurial enterprise into a $3.2 billion company with 6,400 employees, they delivered consistent profitability and growth.”  How did CEO George Rathman avoid what is called by Jim Collins the “entrepreneurial death spiral?”  Amgen was a culture of discipline. Rathman “understood that the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline — a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.”  Jim Collins, Good to Great.

If you have been following my blogs you know Jim Collins sings my favorite song.   Get the right people paired with discipline and business grows, authentic dialog and transparency are natural expressions in the organization.  Get the wrong people and it is impossible to get great results from poor performers with excuses in lieu of results. Before dismissing these people, however, some authentic mirror work is required to determine if it is their ineptitude, or your lack of leadership that is the source of poor performance in results.  Last week’s blog invited the possibility that you are accountable for everything.  Certainly you are accountable for choosing to fire, tolerate, or educate poor performers.  Before choosing, are you measuring what matters?

In a fully functional, authentic business environment, your key executive team will have authentic conversations making it popular to take responsibility, to seek failures sooner, to be completely transparent.  And Daniel Goleman points out that fully functional leaders have conversations that include real feelings, not posturing and not pretending.

Is this your daily experience?

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Accountability is Access to Vitality. Really?

By on April 20, 2012 in Culture, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Trust, Uncategorized, Values

How do you have conversations for accountability inside your organization?

Personally, I got appointed the babysitter when I was the oldest of 4 children.  It has taken me YEARS of committed introspection into the topic of accountability and what is available out of being accountable, to bring any lightness to this topic.  I did name my company “Accountability Pays,” so I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. Unless we want to suffer the consequences, we are accountable at work and at home, however we define it.

What if we could bring fun, play and ease to the conversations we have about being accountable?  The conversations I’ve usually had were focused on making someone wrong.  And if you’ve gotten to adulthood, you already know how that plays out!  It is not pretty for either party, when being made wrong or making another wrong.  It is the blame game, sound and fury signifying nothing, some version of “If you were different, if you were responsible, if you did things like I do them then all would be fine.”  That conversation does not usually go well UNLESS you are committed to coming out the other side with both people whole and complete, no kidding.  One of my fellow thinkers on this topic said it this way;  “The relationship is committed to workability for everyone.”

If being accountable — all of us being accountable — were fun, playful, easy what would be available?

Some of you think I’ve been smoking some illegal substance.  No, I have not.  What I know from my own experience, and sharing experiences with others, is that when everyone is accountable (clear, focused, results oriented) then the entity (relationship, organization) exudes vitality.

Think about a time when everyone did what they were supposed to do and you experienced what some call “flow.”  Stuff just got done!  People supported the whole with whatever was required, without being asked, even if it didn’t fit neatly into their job description.  Almost every one can think of one experience like that, and it was memorable, but seemingly not repeatable.  Why is that?  What I just described is the experience of being accountable with fun, play, and ease.

Here are a few quick rules that I’ve found work to bring fun, play, ease — and therefore vitality — to conversations for accountability.

  1. Don’t make people feel that they are wrong for doing it the way they are currently doing things, even if you don’t think they are right.
  2. Engage them in a discussion of what is possible if all pull on the oars of the boat headed in the same direction.
  3. ASK for their impression of what could be done, and LISTEN.
  4. Assume that if they do not understand you, it is because you did not communicate fully, not because they were stupid/not listening/whatever you made up about them.
  5. Remind them of how great it will be when celebration time comes around.
  6. Make them feel part of something bigger than themselves, something that is important.
  7. Watch them come alive.  Watch them dip into their inner reserves.  Watch them perform beyond your expectations, as a valued and valuable team member.
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Clarity. When Missing, all Hell Breaks Loose. When Present, Results Occur.

By on April 13, 2012 in Business, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Uncategorized

Why do I say all hell breaks loose?  Because any organization cannot move together in syncopation without clarity of a common future view, and people cannot do their jobs if there isn’t clarity of their required contribution.

When clarity is present, people have the freedom that is created by clear boundaries.  Employees are freed up to do their work, not protect themselves from attacks by others with different expectations.

Clarity is influenced by the amount of confidence one has in one’s opinion, which is all we really have regarding our view of the world.  Research into successful people in the workplace by Dr. Dan Harrison* showed a paradoxical relationship between two independent variables:  confidence in one’s opinions (certainty), and the tendency to reflect on many different viewpoints (open/reflective).

As a leader desiring to provide a clear vision of the future, or clear boundaries around the responsibilities of a particular role you would want enough certainty to have clarity.  Caveat:  an excess of certainty is dogmatic, when others hear the underlying message, “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right, and I am not changing my opinion.  Ever.”

Conversely, too much open/reflective is inconclusive.  The line outside the door of an inconclusive decision maker who is taking input on a decision favors the last guy in line!  Those in between will hear, “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea too!”

The optimal relationship between these paradoxical positions is high certainty AND high open/reflective; the tendency to explore different viewpoints and formulate conclusions without becoming fixed in one’s opinions.

My friend Mary Lore wrote a book called Managing Thought.  In addition to selling the book, she delivers it for free one page a day.  http://www.managingthought.com.

Managing our thoughts and clarity go hand in hand.  Can you see this connection?  Your thinking clearly precedes providing clarity for anyone else?  Clear thinking comes from managing thoughts by asking the right questions, by engaging in thinking deeply and long-term about the impact of your words, your actions, and the potential responses from others.  For instance, being reactive (what Mary calls the “faithful-dog brain” and our reticular activation system) will focus on making us right.  The problem is, when stuck in that thinking, you risk becoming dogmatic.

*Evaluation of the impact of paradoxical relationships is unique to the Harrison Assessment which is a hiring assessment.  Dr. Harrison is coming to San Diego June 29th and will present a workshop in the morning on this topic.

If you would like to know more about this event, let me know!

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