Reflections on Leadership

1. You can change how you feel anytime you want. Choose to be awesome.
2. Listen to upbeat music, inspirational speeches, sermons, podcasts or books.
   
3. Hang out with happy people.
4. Write down the things that make you happy.
   
5. Figure out how to spend more time with the things and people that lift your spirits.
6. First, pay attention to what you regularly complain about, then shut up and fix it or just shut up. Your complaining is annoying.
7. Identify five positive people and spend more time with each of them.
8. Ask someone, “What one thing can I do for you that will most help you make a positive difference?” and then help them.
9. Ask yourself, “Why am I still working here?” Is it for personal development, because of enriching experiences with others or to work on leaving a legacy? If it’s not clear, go someplace where it is.
10. Fix what’s wrong. Just fix it, without fanfare, bragging or expectation.
11. Write down or draw your picture of success.
12. Ask for help, you probably need it and people like to be asked.
13. Find the upside to your biggest challenge. Do that, and you’ve nearly conquered the thing.
14. Do something that moves your mind, body and heart every day.
15. What did you want to be when you grew up? Why? And now?
16. List your ten best excuses for not pursuing your dreams. Let them stare back at you and mock you. Then cross them off as you work to eliminate your barriers.
17. What are your top three accomplishments?
18. Have a repeatable compelling vision and sense of purpose.
19. Have a sense of overwhelming optimism.
20. Ignore or crush any apathy or negativism you encounter.
21. Recognize people for the good things they do.
22. Believe in yourself and get to work.

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This series on change has addressed ways of planning and implementing a change in a way that assumes something gradual and within your control, but change doesn’t always work that way. Every day, people deal with the sudden and unexpected. It could be the loss of a loved one, being laid off, losing an important relationship or enduring another tantrum from an ignorant boss when he doesn’t get his way.

The grief cycle has stages you must pass through to successfully cope with a loss. There is a similar process for managing sudden change. Steering through it successfully helps you regain control of your life. Although uncomfortable, it can help you transform even the most painful change into something positive.

Here’s how to navigate the jarring feelings, thoughts and behaviors associated with a sudden change into something positive.

1. Identify the biggest change that you are currently experiencing or are most concerned over.
2. List several losses that you believe this would create for you.
3. From that list, pick the one loss that is most uncomfortable for you and explore why you believe that. This uncovers the real concern that you need to address.
4. Determine where you fall in the following paradigm and make an action to move to the next phase. Your goal is to spend more time feeling anticipation, productive and satisfied.

Paralyzed Phase – When you act paralyzed it’s because you have feelings of fear. You’re cautious because you feel a loss of safety. Whether you perceive the change to be good or bad, there is still a sense of loss of what was.

Resistant Phase – If you are resistant to this change it’s because you feel resentment. You’re skeptical because you’re choosing to doubt the reality of the situation. Since you doubt the validity of facts and second guess yourself, blame begins to cloud your thinking.

Unproductive Phase – If you are unproductive and feel anxious, it’s because the reality of the change has become clearer to you, even though you may still not like it. You are confused, frustrated, and your motivation is lethargic. This is a crucial place to either make a decision or continue to stagnate. Continuing to be fearful forms a spiral of resentment and anxiety which becomes harder and harder to break free from. However, if you decide to be open to discovering the possibilities that the change could represent you will replace anxiety with anticipation.

Anticipation Phase – Feeling anticipation energizes you and helps you become creative in your thinking. By making decisions, you regain some control and build hope and optimism, because you’re reminded that you have choices.

Productive Phase - Productivity grows your confidence. Pragmatic, you understand the change, are actively involved in it and can acknowledge some of the benefits of it.

Satisfaction Phase - Generous with a feeling of satisfaction because you’ve regained focused thinking and the ability and willingness to be flexible. The change is no longer something different, because it’s integrated into your routine.

Change has always been a part of the human experience. Today, it’s an accelerant. Most things are not slowing down. The ability to effectively manage change, both from a leadership and followership position will determine if you enjoy the ride of your life, or stay perpetually curled up in a ball with motion sickness.

Miss any in this series?
Vision and Anticipation
Testing and Building Support
5 Elements of Successful Change

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Many times change is accompanied by feelings of confusion, anxiety, resistance and frustration. If you’re leading a change movement and you see any of these attributes, make the time to reverse engineer the problem and fix it. Use the 5 Elements of Successful Change below to strengthen your cause.

Vision
If you aren’t clear where you’re going, you lack a clear vision. When you try to follow someone who doesn’t have a clear vision you’re bound to be confused. You don’t want confused people on your team. Go back to your vision and make it simpler, preferably one sentence, clearer and easily repeatable.

Skills
By definition, change involves doing something different. It may be to stop doing something just as easily as it could mean to start doing something new. Both require brushing up on, or learning new skills. This often causes anxiety. That’s because there is a fear related to the perceived skill level required. People don’t like not knowing what they need to know. Worse, most don’t easily acknowledge what they don’t know. As a leader of the change you must help people identify and acquire the skills they needed to make the change happen.

Incentive
“What’s in it for me?” is a common question that is either implicitly or explicitly asked by people who are being told to change. Yes, there are good spirits and altruistically motivated people, but everyone needs an incentive to take action. Sometimes it’s based on fear and hate, sometimes it’s love and devotion. A change without an incentive is going to meet resistance. Eliminate the resistance by increasing the incentive for the change.

Resources
In my opinion there is nothing more frustratingly stupid then the stereotypical, “You need to do more with less” command some people make. Resources are often time, treasure or talent. An effective leader gathers resources and deploys them where they make sense. Excellent leaders of change, focus on talent and make the time to create confidence, foster ingenuity and build a unifying esprit de corps that finds resources where the lazy leader never bothers to look.

Action Plan
Wishing is a beautiful thing, but wishing for successful change does not bring it about. It takes a disciplined plan of action to move forward and measure ongoing progress. Teams without an action plan move, but it’s generally in circles and with whim. Whim does not ensure lasting change.

Set a clear vision, acquire the necessary skills, offer the appropriate incentive, gather the necessary resources and act on your plan and you will be better equipped to move forward with any change.

Next time: Managing unexpected and sudden change.

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Last time we talked about change, and focusing your vision on what you can control. Although, that’s not always possible, it is easier than many think. Today we’ll discuss why testing change is crucial, and how proactively building support in those most affected will make your efforts palatable to others.

Testing Change
If you are one of the estimated 6 million people who watch Smash on television, you may be getting a rudimentary education on how a musical is created. Drama aside, putting together a production entails a process that is similar to creating change.

It begins with an idea and then gathering the resources to bring that idea to life. Resources can be time, talent or treasure. Change often consumes one of those in a disproportionate amount for the short term in the belief that over time it will work out profitably. Securing resources often runs parallel to running a workshop. A workshop is equivalent to piloting a change. It’s a way of floating the idea, finding what works and what doesn’t and improving any shortcomings. In theater there are auditions, rehearsals and then the preview. All these steps have to occur before opening night, otherwise there’s no show.

One of the failings of change is trying to get through it too quickly. Following the musical model, it would be akin to a writer getting a new idea on Sunday and having opening night scheduled for Monday. That’s a recipe for disaster. It’s the same with your change plan. If there is something that you want different in your team, organization, or even family, then it behooves you to act systematically and help prepare others.

As an example, if you’re going to finally write that book that is burning inside of you, something in your routine is going to have to be different to make room for your writing time. It’s smart to start out small first. For example, rather than no longer cooking dinner at night, the fledgling book writer might offer to cook four nights a week, but not the other three because they want to use that time to write. Perhaps they could stay up an hour later or get up an hour earlier once a week to start, and if that works they could expand it to two or three times a week.

The book writer would keep their family or friends engaged by soliciting their ideas on finding more writing time and keeping them informed of their progress. If you engage others, their support will grow, and that’s key for success.

Building Support
A great way of helping people buy into a change is to anticipate the concerns of those who will be affected, and to address them immediately. This takes work, however getting the support of those who are closest to the change is vital for a satisfying success.

Be prepared to respond to those affected by having answers to questions like; What’s the change? Why is it needed? What’s wrong with the way things are now? How will this impact us personally? What’s in it for us? How will we find the time? Will we have to learn a new skill?

Once people gather information and feel their personal concerns have been heard, they inevitably begin to wonder how to start the change. Help them out by answering questions like; What do we do first? How do we manage all the details? What happens if it doesn’t work as planned? Where do we go for help? Is this normal? How will other things change?

After facing some of the ‘pain’ of change, people will question why they can’t return to how things were before and you’ll hear questions like; Is this worth the effort? Is this making a difference? Are we making progress? Are things getting better?

As people recognize that the change is occurring and working, they wonder things like; Who else should be involved? How can we get others involved in what we’re doing? How do we spread the word?

Finally, as you reach the end of your project and it becomes the new normal, some people will grow concerned about the sustainability of all the change with questions like; What’s next? How can we make this even better? Can we improve on our original idea?

It’s unlikely you’ll need to address all the above concerns, however if you are forthcoming with honest answers as similar questions arise, your change will be successful.

Next time we’ll discuss the 5 elements of successful change and a way to audit your progress to ensure there aren’t any holes in your plan.

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Change is one of those things people want when they don’t have it, and dread when they’re in the middle of it. How did you react to moving your clocks forward one hour? Are you excited for Spring? Are you dreading the end of the month?

Some people say they despise change. They take comfort in dependable routines, like the sun rising and setting, (which, when you think about it, is actually daily change on a cosmic level.)

Some people say they thrive under the excitement of constant change, but throw up an unexpected detour on the way to work or move their coffee cup every day and they go ballistic.

Change is the one constant in your life. It surrounds you every day. It is also largely predictable. Like any life cycle, it has a beginning, middle, end and a new beginning. The complexity, speed and success of any change is influenced in large part by how well the change is managed.

When you can anticipate the change you’ll feel in greater control. Change is moving from what was, to what will be. Success in a new job, moving to a new city, starting a new relationship, all take vision from where you are to where you want to be.

Most people want to rush through change. They are either excited, or they just want to get it done and out of the way. That’s shortsighted. If you plant some tomato seeds in the morning it doesn’t matter how much passion you have, you won’t be making fresh marinara sauce for your spaghetti dinner that night. Sometimes change is sudden. Although that can be unexpected and alarming, there is a way to successfully navigate through the uncertainty. I’ll address that later. For now, focus your vision and what you can control. What has to change and why? Share your thoughts with a few people. Supporters will give you confidence, and detractors will unwittingly give you valuable information you can use to make your change more effective. Next we’ll discuss how to test the change and how to prepare others for it.

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If you love what you’re doing, do you know why? It’s probably because of; the people you work with, you’re working on something bigger than yourself, you’re learning something you want to learn, or a combination of all three.

Think about that and then evaluate the tactical skills you bring to the work environment by rating your demonstration of the skills listed below. Is your use of each skill: rare, seldom, frequent or consistent?

1. Planning / Scheduling / Budgeting – Setting goals and targets, preparing and justifying budgets, forecasting trends and activity levels.
2. Organizing – Organizing your own time and commitments, laying out of workflow and equipment, coordinating multiple diverse activities, coordinating resources.
3. Leading / Staffing – Resolving work plans of direct reports, maximizing their commitments, training and coaching, initiating changes and improvements effectively, delegating responsibility and authority.
4. Controlling – Setting performance standards, setting up strategic control points and requesting feedback on results, defining and enforcing policy and practice, controlling costs.
5. Problem Analysis and Decision Making – Diagnosing problems, stimulating new ideas, obtaining and verifying information, identifying alternatives and trade-offs, taking appropriate risks, making decisions with little guidance.
6. Communicating – Making presentations, leading meetings, contributing effectively to discussions, preparing written reports, keeping groups informed, providing feedback, probing and questioning techniques, reading skills
7. Relating to Others – Dealing with management, cooperating with other groups, being persuasive under opposition, sensitive to needs of others.
8. Functional and Administrative Know How – Know-How related to your job, understanding of programs and groups impacting your work, knowledge of your field.

Examine your work skills and assess your present and potential strengths and weaknesses.

• What specific aspects of your job do you like?
• In which three areas do you think you need to acquire additional skills?

Self analysis helps you identify your attitudes and the effect on your goal setting and performance. How you think and feel about people and things, greatly influences how you act. This is called your attitude. An analysis of your attitude helps you determine what you like and dislike and helps you understand why. Your attitude is influenced by your personal satisfaction.

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Career Planning Step Two
Here’s the second step of the Career Guidance Process I use with clients. Remember, career planning is a continuous process. You are the one who decides in advance how, when, and where to take specific actions that will lead you closer to where you want to go. The following questions will help you organize your thoughts around your career planning objectives, strengths, areas of opportunity and personal development.

1. What positions or fields of work interest you?
2. Do you want to specialize or generalize?
3. Where do you want to be in two years? In five years?
4. Are these realistic given your current abilities?
5. What do you do well?
6. What do you not do so well?
7. What do you enjoy doing?
8. What specific work situations help or hinder your productivity?
9. Do you consider yourself reasonably qualified for the type of work you’re interested in?
10. What training or development do you feel you need to be better prepared?
11. What are you currently doing to develop yourself? (i.e. Education, Reading, Professional Associations.)
12. What additional knowledge, experience or skills do you need to acquire in order to perform better in your current job and meet your career objectives?
13. What can you do to acquire the additional knowledge, experience and skills and is it worth the sacrifice of time and effort?
14. Are you willing to move laterally to gather additional experience?
15. How could your current manager help in your growth and development?
16. How do you feel about moving to another location?
17. How much traveling are you willing to do if required?

Are you heading the the direction you’ve intended?

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Are you planning your career or have you decided to just go with the flow? Career planning is a continuous process where you decide in advance how, when, and where to take specific actions that lead you closer to your desired destination.

Here’s the first step of the Career Guidance Process I use with clients. The intent is to explore your career goals, strengths, and areas of opportunity.

Step One:
Begin with what I call CareerScaping. Dream about the contributions and accomplishments you wish to achieve while simultaneously fulfilling your purpose in life. Look to what you enjoy doing for important clues and give thought to the following questions:

1. When you daydream, what do you see yourself doing?
2. If you had unlimited time and resources, what would you choose to do?
3. Which work life activities do you consider to be the most valuable?
4. Which personal life activities do you consider to be the most valuable?
5. What talents do you have?
6. Are there particular things you feel you should do even though you haven’t yet? What are they?
7. What functional areas interest you (i.e. sales, operations, finance, technical, management)?
8. Do you have a specific job in mind? What is it?
9. What skills, training or additional education will you need for that job?
10. Who can help you find out more information?

Remember, career planning is a continuous process so whether you’re 18 or 80, the previous questions still apply. The answers shape your future. Where do you want to go?

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In 2008 I published a book, How To Stay When You Want to Quit; Re-scripting your life from Whiner to Winner. I wrote it a few years before that but it sat in a drawer for a while. Before that it was a speech I gave to a few people who were feeling beaten down by work and before that … well, I lived most of it.

The story is about two friends who are pressing hard at their careers. One is fortunate to be working with a great boss who has mentored and challenged her to be her best.  Unfortunately the other has had the opposite experience. He has been through a heavy rotation of managers, many of whom spoke a good game but never really showed up to play.

It’s a non-traditional business book in that it’s half screenplay and half workbook. I wrote it in the hopes that others would pick up a few tips they could use to help bring positive action to themselves or others who were disillusioned in their jobs.

Naturally I was thrilled to be asked to participate in Ken Blanchard’s LeadershipLiveCast, “Quit and Stayed” on January 25, 2012. As a recovering quitter I know how tempting it is to whine and blame everything on burnout even if you’re acting like an arsonist. For me, I knew I had to learn how to stay, even though I wanted to quit. So I began to re-script my life from whiner to winner.

I started with my attitude; I began to look at things as challenges aching to be solved, not insurmountable problems. Next I began to question what it was I really wanted? The answer didn’t come right away because I was so entrenched by all the things I didn’t want. So I tried a different tactic and asked myself, “Why are you still here?”  After all, when people want to quit, they quit. When they don’t, it’s because some secondary benefit is being met and usually it’s for one of three reasons.

1. To work on your personal development.
2. To work with enriching people.
3. To work on something bigger than yourself.

Figuring that out helped me stay during a rough patch, It helped me to continue to provide for my family and as a manager helped me to reengage with my coworkers.

As a leader it put me in a better frame of mind and I used the same questions to help those who I saw were mentally quitting.

• What’s going right?
• What do you really want?
• What’s keeping you here?
• What will you do in the meantime?

Most people aren’t going to stay in the same position let alone same industry for their whole career. As a leader, if you can help them get to the next place faster, you’ll both be more engaged and productive.

I hope you’ll be able to join the webinar this week or pick up my book. I’ve learned a few things about people, business and publishing in the time that’s passed since it came out, so I’d love to hear your stories and feedback that I may include in a new edition later in the year.

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When I was in my early twenties, friends and I used to start the year optimistically with some mantra or pithy phrase for the New Year.

In my thirties, I learned more about goal setting and how to achieve them faster. I also created elaborate documents filled with metrics and dashboards with pictures of success. My success rate was good, but I often became enslaved to numbers, not intent or purpose. As a result, any celebration felt lackluster, if I bothered to have one at all.

In recent years I’ve been getting back to basics and using words as a theme and compass for the year ahead. This year my focusing words are Create, Prosper and Confidence.

You can bet behind each of them I have a specific vision, strategy, tactics and measures of success, but I’ve become far less uptight about the bottom-line numbers.

I’m a believer in broadcasting a piece of your goals so people can help hold you accountable to them, but sometimes a public declaration can take the steam out of it. Once you declared something and people hold you accountable it can begin to feel like an obligation and people helping you feel like nags. This can be positive and powerful for some. I wouldn’t have built a business around being an accountability partner if it wasn’t. However, some goals should remain private.

They may not be for public consumption but they are no less grand, or inspiriting or noble. These are the secret goals that paint a smirk across your face when you work on them. There’s a thrill and deep satisfaction knowing that you’re accomplishing something grand unbeknownst to others. This is the place where the overnight success is born. Away from the spotlight, in the shadows where no one is looking.

Private goals achieved is often far more satisfying because you did it yourself, without outside intervention. You could have quit at anytime and no one would have known or cared. Except you, and you cared, and you don’t quit. These ones are too important.

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