Next Level Blog

Getting the Outside-In Perspective

When you’re moving up in your leadership career, it’s a sad but true phenomenon that it’s easy to think that it’s all about you.  This really isn’t that surprising since most high potential leaders get a lot of responsibility and positive reinforcement at a relatively early age.  If you get rewarded for pushing your agenda through, it’s natural that you’d keep doing that.  The long term result, however, can be an inside-out view of the world that starts with the idea that it’s all about you and whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish.  (If it sounds like I’m speaking from personal experience, it’s because I am.)

As I discussed in The Next Level, leaders learn to take an outside-in perspective or they quit progressing.  This is probably even more true in the current economic environment.  You have to shift mindsets from what do “I” want to what are “we" trying to accomplish.  Then you need to shift again from what are “we” trying to accomplish to what are “they” doing.  The “they” is any external actor that has an impact on your organization (e.g. customers, competitors, governments, foreign countries, etc.)  So, the outside-in perspective is about a double shift – from I to We to They.

The Financial Times recently reported on a new way that organizations are encouraging the outside-in approach.  A non-profit group called Leaders Quest stages trips to developing parts of the world for high potential leaders in the West.  One man who went to China with the program said, “I got to see my own lack of knowledge as contrasted with their broader knowledge in a wealth of areas, so it demonstrated how backward I was in terms of my worldly understanding.  Being American, sometimes we think the world revolves around us.”  A woman who went to India for a month on a similar program in which she assisted a local business while on a sabbatical from her employer Ernst & Young said, “That feeling of being the one who is different made me think about the people we try to support in our own organization from different parts of the world.”

This article challenged me to look for ways to broaden my own outside-in perspective.  What have you done to broaden yours that you could share with this blog’s community?

Blackberry 1(01)

How many times a day do you check your Blackberry or smart phone?  If you’re Barack Obama, you’ll probably be checking it less.  As you may have heard, the President gets to keep his Blackberry but, for security reasons, his e-mail list is restricted to a very select few.  Still, with the Obama Blackberry story as inspiration, David Shipley, author of Send: Why People E-mail So Badly and How to Do It Better, offered this bit of Blackberry etiquette to the President on NPR’s All Things Considered.  It’s 3 minutes long and worth a listen.

Click to connect to the NPR audio.

While Shipley has his tongue slightly in cheek, he has some good advice for any leader using a Blackberry.  The misuse of these devices can have an enormous negative impact on your personal, team and organizational presence.  Constant Blackberry use can get you so far down into the weeds that you don’t give yourself the space to think about the bigger picture.  The Blackberry is the ultimate tool for micromanaging your team because it allows you to stay in constant contact with them.  It can be a real image killer as well when people start talking about your propensity to send e-mails at 4 in the morning.

What’s your biggest Blackberry pet peeve?  What, if anything, have you done to address it?  What’s your favorite piece of advice that David Shipley is offering the President?

Avoid the Loop of Doom

This morning, I’m on my way to Chicago to kick off a new cohort of our group coaching program, Next Level Leadership™.   One of the things we do in the first session is review a case study of a newly promoted executive named Amy.  While she’s got a great track record, Amy pretty quickly runs into a number of problems after she’s promoted to vice president.   One of them is her relationship with Brian, a former peer and high performer himself, who is apparently acting out because Amy got the promotion instead of him.

It’s always interesting to me to hear the range of strategies that our group coaching clients come up with about how Amy should handle her relationship with Brian.  They range from “fire him immediately” to “ask him for his help.”  One thing I can count on is that our clients always relate to the Brian part of the case study because just about every newly promoted executive has to deal with quickly sizing up the members of their team and developing strategies for leading them.

In a recent article for the Harvard Management Update, IMD professors Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux, share some really useful lessons learned from research they’ve conducted on the best and worst practices that newly promoted leaders demonstrate when evaluating their teams.

The worst practices can basically be summed up as creating self fulfilling prophecies.  New leaders typically come to initial conclusions about whether their team members “get it” or “don’t get it” within five days of working with them.  These initial impressions are frequently wrong but the labels tend to stick.  Not surprisingly, those being labeled can intuitively sense  how they’ve been evaluated by the way the new leader behaves toward them.  The “get its” respond accordingly and live up to and frequently exceed expectations while the “don’t get it’s” lose their confidence and start doing things that people do when they feel threatened or unsure of themselves. The result  on both sides of the “get it” equation are self-reinforcing loops.  On the “don’t get it” side, you can easily end up with the loop of doom.

Fortunately, Manzoni and Barsoux provide some excellent advice for new leaders who want to make sure they give themselves and their teams the greatest opportunity for wide ranging success. You can boil it down to communicate, communicate, communicate.  What follows are the essence of four of their ideas with some editorial liberties taken by me:

1.  Clarify Expectations:  New leaders need to be intentional about quickly providing their team with background on how they operate.  Cover topics like management and communication styles, what they like and what drives them crazy.

2.  Get to Know Them:  Invest time on the front end to get to know your team members on a personal basis.  In doing so, you demonstrate that you recognize them as individuals and not just functions of production.

3.  Fight Your Biases:  It’s natural to come up with first impression labels.  Work to be aware of the labels your creating about your team members and look for behavior and actions that work against the labels.  One of my favorite questions for doing this is to ask yourself, “What else could it be?”

4.  Deal with It Sooner Rather Than Later:  If you see performance that troubles you, call it out early.  Focus on the issue rather than the person by asking, “What were you trying to accomplish in this case?”  More often than that, you’ll find that the disconnect is around unclear expectations than incompetence or malicious intent.

What about you?  What have you learned in establishing yourself with a new team?  What lessons learned would you add to this list?

Instant Karma’s Gonna’ Get You

When I read the news of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain’s sudden “resignation” from the top ranks of Bank of America, my first thought was,  “Wow, what a great example of instant karma.”  Here’s a guy, who, a couple of years ago, was perceived as a straight arrow, buttoned down hero of Wall Street.  From a top job at Goldman Sachs to chairman of the New York Stock Exchange (following the whole Dick Grasso controversy) to savior of “Mother Merrill,”  Thain was viewed a few months ago as a potential CEO of Bank of America, the company that acquired Merrill last fall.  Now, he is out on his butt.  What in the heck happened?

John Lennon summed it up pretty well in his song, Instant Karma:

Instant karma’s gonna’ get you
Gonna’ knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you’re gonna’ be dead.

Dictionary.com defines karma as an “action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad… “  That seems to do a pretty good job of summing up what happened to Thain.  Since the B of A deal was announced, Thain lobbied the Merrill board for a $40 million bonus (he was turned down), went skiing in Vail as Merrill’s losses piled up in December, spent over $1 million redecorating his office and rushed through $4 billion in bonuses before the B of A deal closed.  Last week, B of A had to go back to the Feds for an additional $20 billion in TARP funds to cover unexpected losses at Merrill.   As the New York Times reports this morning,  all of that caused Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to question Thain’s  judgment.  (Gee, you think?)  Yesterday, Lewis flew up to New York and, in a 15 minute meeting, fired Thain.

 How did this guy run off the rails so quickly?  Again, I turn to the wisdom of John Lennon:

Who in the hell do you think you are?
A super star?
Well, right you are.

That’s pretty much it, isn’t it?  Coming off like an entitled superstar in an era when the zeitgeist has shifted from superstardom to survival is not the best strategy for enhancing your long term leadership prospects.  I’m an aficionado of examples of how karma plays out in the business world.   One of my favorite examples for the past few years has been Jeff Skilling, the jailed CEO of Enron, who was well known for telling smart people how stupid they were.

But, let’s end on a positive note.  I take great comfort from the karmic idea that action brings on oneself inevitable results, good or bad.  Leaders take heed.  To quote the title of a more recent tune by the New Radicals, “You Get What You Give.”

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President (and, wow, does it feel good to call you that) -

Congratulations and Godspeed on this, your first full day in office.  There are many reasons why I’m excited about your presidency.  One of them stems from my work as an executive coach.  Your predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, called the presidency a bully pulpit.  With that idea in mind, my hope is that you will continue to fill the office in the way that you have started – as a role model to leaders in organizations around the world.

As a coach, I frequently ask colleagues of my clients for feedback on behaviors and actions they should keep doing. These are the strengths from which they can build their leadership platform.  With that in mind, I’m offering these observations as encouragement to you and with the hope that leaders everywhere will be inspired by the example you set.  So, here are some leadership behaviors I hope you keep showing us:

Speaking the Truth:  In your inaugural address yesterday, you called it the way it is.  By saying that “the challenges we face are real,” you leveled with us and didn’t sugarcoat it.  That helps us define the work we have to do.

Offering Hope:  You showed confidence that, as you put it, “the challenges facing us will be met.”  You painted a hopeful picture of the future when you concluded by saying, “Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

Challenging and Engaging Us:  By admonishing us that “the time has come to set aside childish things,” you issued a call for focusing on the big things and not the petty things.  Your consistent reminders over the past weeks and months that this is not about you, but about what the American people need to do together make the point that a leader’s job is to help the group define the work that needs to be done and to mobilize them to do it.

Seeking Dissenting Opinions:  When you took time the night before the inauguration to attend a dinner honoring  John McCain you demonstrated that you intend to work with those that hold different points of view and sent a signal that you intend to listen to those points of view.

Showing Respect:  In the midst of the pomp and circumstance of your lunch in the U.S. Capitol yesterday, you took time in your remarks to acknowledge and thank the wait staff for their work and to apologize for whatever disruption you caused them while you worked the tables.  That kind of connection with the front line goes a long way in building good will for a leader.

Showing Affection:  You clearly gain strength and energy from your family and friends and you are not shy about showing how much you care for them.  That’s a wonderful reminder for all of us to keep our jobs in perspective and to take care of the people that matter most to us.

Keeping It Real:  You come across as a real person.  When you spotted  Al Roker while walking the parade route, you, to his great delight, shouted out, “It’s warm!” in the 15 degree wind chill.   By showing your sense of humor, you make it easy for people to connect with you.

In conclusion, Mr. President, I’m reminded that when you’re a leader, you’re always on stage.  You, of course, are on the biggest stage in the world.  We’ll be watching you on your good days and bad days and taking our cues from the example you set.  We wish you well and safe travels on the journey.