| Lorne Rubis - Part 2

Taking It and Giving It!

201115 Nov
Comments
Posted inBe Accountable

Key Point: strong leaders take the heat when things are bad, and share the praise when things are good.

“…For the 36 companies we studied, …higher-ambition CEOs assume personal responsibility when things are bad and they give collective credit when things are good. These companies exemplify elements of both strong collective and individual leadership. Both — when used in the right situations — are essential for creating economic as well as social value.”

The above quote is from a recent Harvard Business blog which captured learning from research conducted by Tobias Fredberg and Flemming Norrgren. Most of us know from personal experience how demotivating it is when you work for someone who tries to squash your head in a vice when things go wrong. And then when the reverse happens there is no collective acknowledgment or recognition; the boss takes prime responsibility for the great result. In the long run this often builds simmering resentment amongst team members. Over time they leave and bring their talents elsewhere.

Character Move:

Don’t be that “guy.” Have the courage to take the heat and protect your team when things go wrong (attack the process and fix things …develop the person).
Be generous in praise when things go well. Share it. It will come back in many ways.

Taking and giving in the Triangle,

Lorne

Do You Have the Courage & Skills to TALK to each other?

201111 Nov
Comments2
Posted inBe Accountable

Do you “chicken out” with texts or emails? We need more live conversations… …period!

Most of us have seen and even participated in the strings of unproductive emails that lead nowhere. In their wake they have left a carnage of wasted time and bruised egos. This increasing trend to using digital media for conflict resolution is a lousy use of digital tools. These tools are better suited for conversation, clarity, and confirmation but usually NOT for conflict resolution or problem solving. Emailing and texting may be easier and less stressful (initially), but become convenient vehicles of issue and conflict avoidance. Having disagreements and the ability to constructively resolve them are necessary for the progression of any group. We need to embrace the idea of positive conflict, and NOT get slicker at avoiding it, with the right context and medium. And that usually means us talking to each other. Yes, good ole fashioned face to face, “kitchen table” dialogue.

A recent Harvard Business Review blog noted the following difficulties with digital media for conflict resolution and decision making:

It is hard to get the EQ (emotional intelligence) right in email. The biggest drawback and danger with email is that the tone and context are easy to misread. In a live conversation, how one says something, with modulations and intonations, is as important as what they are saying. With email it is hard to get the feelings behind the words.
Email and text often promote reactive responses, as opposed to progress and action to move forward. Going back to the zero latency expectation in digital communications, it is hard for people to pause and think about what they should say. One of my colleagues suggests not reacting to any incendiary message until you have at least had a night to sleep on it, and always trying to take the higher ground in email. While by definition reactive responses occur in live discourse, they are usually more productive. The irony is that while email, as an asynchronous channel, has the potential to be more thoughtful, it often promotes the opposite tendency to be immediately reactive. Why? Because the bark is almost always bigger than the bite behind remote digital shields.
Email prolongs debate. Because of the two reasons above, I have seen too many debates continue well beyond the point of usefulness. Worse, I have experienced situations which start relatively benignly over email, only to escalate because intentions and interests are easily misunderstood online. When I ask people if they have called or asked to meet the counterpart to try and reach a resolution, there is usually a pause, then a sad answer of “no.”

Character Move:

Develop your own framework for determining when to use email/ text or to have a live conversation. Have the courage to make personal, authentic, live contact. Be timely! Don’t avoid it and let it stew.
Decide to become a MASTER communicator by consciously building a dialogue tool set. It will be one of the most important things you can do for bettering your personal and professional life. If you cannot describe the communication tools and skills you practice then I think you’re kidding yourself about how effective you are (e.g. the STP tool for listening and problem solving in the “free resources” section of www.lornerubis.com.
Stop that next unproductive email string, and talk live to your counterpart(s). Keep consciously practicing your “crucial conversation” skills. Embrace the opportunity.

Talking Live and Real in the Triangle,

Lorne

Be Good to Yourself by Making Your Boss Look Good

20118 Nov
Comments3
Posted inBe Abundant

This is a hard lesson many of us have to learn a few times in our careers. Here it is – the better you make your boss look good, the better things will go for you. If you get in negative competition with your boss, 99% of the time you will lose.

I’ve noticed that often inexperienced employees have difficulty seeing their bosses get credit for work they’ve done. Of course strong, confident bosses share credit and recognition for superb work and are usually very generous in this regard. But not all bosses are great. Some are just lousy. And most of us bosses are evolving combinations of strengths and shortcomings.

Former Apple genius and techno leader extraordinaire Guy Kawasaki, reinforces this concept of making your boss look good in his terrific book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions” He emphasizes doing the following Big 7 things for the Boss:

Drop everything and do what your boss asks. Your boss’s agenda is your agenda if she/he asks. You may think it’s not too important or relative to what you’re doing, but trust me, it is. Your boss may not even be able to explain the reason it is important. Just do it.
Under promise and over deliver. I learned this painfully over the years. I liked to communicate my enthusiastic intent to do assignments and therefore I risked making great work appear just good when completed. Be skillful at outlining the challenges with the assignment AND THEN hit a “home run.”
Prototype your work. Test progress on your assignment early with your boss. She will be pleased that you “jumped on it” and also give you a steering correction if necessary.
Show and broadcast your progress. Don’t pump and dump your work. Show milestones and accomplishments along the way. Keep your boss informed. Be your own PR firm. Don’t confuse modesty with naivety. Show your stuff.
Form friendships. When you have lots of friends and supporters at work you increase your boss’s sphere of influence and by extension your relationship with him/her. Plus no one likes to mess with someone who has a large network of friends and fans.
Ask for mentoring. Every boss has something to teach you and we all have egos. Bosses like to share their knowledge with genuinely interested people. Be sincere though, take the mentoring seriously or your relationship will deteriorate.
Deliver bad news early. Again, this is something I’ve learned the hard way. Regardless of how bad the news is, telling it early gives you an opportunity to address it and do damage control. Don’t wait it; it will hurt more later. Trust me on this one.

Character Move:

Make a decision to give to yourself by making your boss look great. This is NOT “brown nosing” (a horrible phrase actually). It is being generous of spirit and just plain smart.
Check where you are on the Big Boss 7, as I’ve named them above. Be honest. Even if you think you’re better than your boss, this is the right thing to do (unless your boss is doing something illegal and/or immoral of course).
Consciously practice all of the above. Do it. Make your boss look good.

Applying the Big Boss 7 in the Triangle,

Lorne

Respect at Work Pays & Everyone Wins

20114 Nov
Comments5
Posted inBe Respectful

I get ticked off when executives get all weak at the knees when talking about values like the three elements of the Character Triangle: Accountability, Respect, and Abundance. “Real business men and women” talk about margin, cash flow, EBITDA , etc. But talk about personal values and the board room blushes. Why?

Real leaders know that business effectiveness is about balance and that getting great financial results ultimately depends on what PEOPLE do and how they do it. However, to make those more attracted to just the financial metrics, note the following.

Jack Wiley is the founder and Executive Director of the Kenexa High Performance Institute. Last year his team surveyed more than 30,000 people who work in the biggest economies—including Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. and learned that workers across job types, cultures, industries, and pay scales don’t want to just be paid. While a quarter of employees rate pay as their highest priority, 75 percent of what employees most want has nothing to do with taking home a bigger paycheck—they want RESPECT: recognition, exciting work, security, pay, education, conditions, and truth.

RESPECT Makes Financial Sense

Wiley’s group contrasted companies that have high and low ratings for all of the RESPECT items defined above and found that high-RESPECT companies outperform low-RESPECT companies. The following is an excerpt from Wiley’s article in the October issue of Leadership Excellence magazine:

• Employee Engagement. Employees who get what they want from their organizations are more engaged than their unfulfilled counterparts. Their scores are 40 percentage points higher when it comes to workplace pride, satisfaction, advocacy, and commitment.

• Operation Performance. High-RESPECT employees outscore their low-RESPECT counterparts by more than 25 percentage points when asked about their companies’ product quality, customer satisfaction, and competitiveness.

• Customer Satisfaction. High- RESPECT companies achieve excellent scores, and greatly out perform their low-RESPECT competitors on the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

• Financial Performance. By correlating RESPECT scores against Diluted Earnings per Share, Return on Assets, and Total Shareholder Return, we found the high-RESPECT companies outperformed their low-RESPECT competitors across all three financial metrics.

Character Move:

Recognize that most elements of RESPECT don’t cost much to improve. BUT it takes conscious and focused action. You need to be aware where you stand on the RESPECT continuum.
Read Wiley’s work and the Respect chapter in The Character Triangle to better understand the behavior that supports building respect.
Take action yourself. If you’re a manager, determine what action you can take in your area to drive reinforce it. Measure for it. If you are an individual contributor, lead by your action.
Remember that RESPECT pays!

Respect as a dividend in The Triangle,

Lorne

Character Triangle

Our character is exclusively ours. We define it by how we think and what we do. I believe that acting with Character is driven by what I call the Character Triangle.

What, exactly, is the Character Triangle (CT)?

The CT describes and emphasizes three distinct but interdependent values:

Be Accountable: first person action to make things better, avoiding blame.
Be Respectful: being present, listening, looking again, focusing on the process.
Be Abundant: generous in spirit, moving forward, minimizing the lack of.