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A friend once asked me what I have learned since venturing out on this leg of my career and life with my leadership development programs. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about this conversation.

Right off the bat, two things come to mind:

1. The desire and the need for developing leaders are HUGE!
2. Time is the only finite stumbling block for advancing leadership development. Resources and commitment are only excuses for not doing it.

It also got me thinking about other people developing leadership programs in their organizations, and how I could help them.

In doing so, I realised there are several obstacles to creating these programs that often need to be addressed before any leadership can be developed. 

Tips for leaders determined to overcome obstacles to leadership development programs

Generally, there are three primary obstacles to leadership development programs: time, size/money, and lack of commitment.

Let’s break down each of these obstacles with specific steps for overcoming them.

If time is the issue

• Add personal and organizational development objectives to the annual performance goals.
• Be deliberate about reviewing the progress of up-and-coming leaders by adding conversations to your calendar.
• Make time to coach and counsel those who are struggling to develop their staff
• Add talent-development goals to the leadership meeting agendas

(Speaking of timing, this post discusses whether you’re spending your time investment on the right people)

If money is the primary obstacle

• Ask whether leadership development has been considered when assignments are handed out and resources are allocated.
• Explicitly factor leadership development objectives into work assignments sends a powerful message.
• On-the-job learning is a powerful driver of leadership development

(Read more about your high-performance people in this post and why they’re not the same as high-potential employees)

If lack of commitment from the top is the primary obstacle

• Put leadership development on the front burner when senior leaders meet.
• Senior Leaders who persistently raise the issue and link leadership development to long-term strategy signal their engagement and should be the ones to set priorities for the team.
• Add leadership development to the board agenda at least once a year.

(You’ll also want to take a look at this post where we discuss if your organization has a culture that expects reports or results)

I know that commitment isn’t the issue with you. So, if I can take money and time off of the table for you, would you say yes to a leadership development program for your people?

Do you want to talk more about organizational coaching and building better teams? Click here to read about the consulting services I offer or get in touch to book a call.

Before I sign off, I’d also like to share two of my favourite quotes with you:

‘Time is the only finite resource.’ – Simon Sinek (https://www.startwithwhy.com/)

‘Many people are silently begging to be led.’ – Jay Abraham (http://www.abraham.com/)

Did you learn a lot from this post about leadership development programs?

Here are three more to read next:

• The Biggest Management Lie Ever Told — Micromanagement Is Bad
• 5 Steps You Can Use To Build a “First Team’ Mindset
• How to Motivate People When Pay is Off the Table

This post about leadership development programs was first published in 2014 and updated in 2021 just for you.

I have seen a theme across clients and potential clients with whom I speak.

It is the same problem regardless if they are a team of 100, 1,000 or 10,000 people.

As they have grown, their Leaders and leadership competencies have not kept pace with the organization’s growth, and they ask:

I don’t think my organization has the leaders required to be successful?

Why am I not getting an ROI on investments in leadership development?

My direct reports hit their objectives, but the whole organization is not seeing improvements?

Gartner Inc (an international HR consultancy) surveyed HR leaders worldwide, and the results are stunning. They found that:

75% of organizations do not have the right Leaders for the future

32% of HR Leaders would replace members of their Senior Leadership Team if given the opportunity

Stunning?

Not to me, as this is what clients tell me. One client sheepishly confessed that they believe that 60% of their supervisors and managers do not have the competencies needed to do their jobs.

What Is Going On?

Most leaders are effective at ‘traditional leadership’ competencies of problem-solving, agility, collaboration, talent management and innovation.

But they are woefully ill-prepared to lead in an enterprise setting or in the leadership environment we have as we close in on the year 2020.

• Personal Relationships have become more complicated:
  • More Stakeholders to Consult – Most agree that the number of people they need to consult with to make a decision has increased
  • Shifting Job Requirements – 80% of leaders feel their job is more diverse and has more responsibilities than before

• Team Dynamics Are Moe Complicated
  • Remote Teams – Over 50% of leaders have direct reports in different locations.
  • Less Time to Spend With their people – most leaders spend less than 3-hours per week with their direct reports

Read this to learn what your employees think of you

The Results:

According to Gartner:

68% of Leaders feel they do not have the control they need to lead their teams successfully

63% of Leaders understand how to contribute to the success of the whole organization

65% of Leaders do not believe they will not get recognition for contributing to the success of the whole organization

Of course, we need to focus on individual objectives, but we desperately need to work together so that the whole organization can be successful.

We need to shift from strong individual leadership to strong network leadership to:

1. Connect Strategies – Leaders need to have performance objectives that incorporate their strategic needs beyond their business unit.

2. Prioritize Cross-Functional Coordination – Leaders need to be encouraged to seek out cross-functional partnerships.

3. Strategically Align Resources – Leaders must prioritize resources to business unit objectives that align with organizational goals.

4. View Talent as a Corporate Asset – – Leaders need to be encouraged to share opportunities to leverage their team’s expertise elsewhere in the organization.

Read how to Lead through rapid growth.

Three Changes You Can Make to Leadership Investments

• Change 1 – Invest in Changing Leadership Skills and Mind-Sets

The current generation of leaders honed their skills by watching the most executives, seemingly, achieve great outcomes on their own.

Organizations need to invest in developing enterprise leadership skills and behaviours proven to drive organizational results.

• Change 2 – Make it Easier to Collaborate.

Enterprise leaders know who they can get help from and who they can help.

Unfortunately, most leaders don’t have all the information they need to understand when to take or help the organization because gathering this information takes time.

Organizations must increase the transparency into leaders’ relative strengths and needs to explain better how those capabilities align with the organization’s strategic objectives.

• Change 3 – Recognize and Reward Enterprise Leadership

Organizational contributions are hidden, go unrewarded, and often are silently punished.

Barely one-third of these leaders say their contributions to others’ work are rewarded or recognized. Often enterprise-level objectives are not specific enough to galvanize action or accurate enough to capture the ways leaders can meet these objectives.

We often talk about whether someone is a team player. In interviews, performance reviews, or while sharing feedback, everyone agrees that being a team player is extremely desirable in an employee (or a potential hire). Despite widespread usage of the phrase and agreement on its importance, great team players are rather rare.

Why is that so?

Credit to The Table Group

Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that although we all have our own notions of what team players are like, we lack a formal, practical framework to define the qualities ideal team players should possess.

In this post, I want to share what I learned about the virtues that real team players must possess and how leaders can identify, hire for and cultivate those qualities in teams.

In this book, Patrick Lencioni’s central thesis is that an ideal team player possesses a potent combination of three virtues — humble, hungry, and smart.

Further, Lencioni states, when a team member significantly lacks one or more of these virtues, the process of building a cohesive team becomes hard, and in some cases, impossible. So leaders should ensure that they hire people who demonstrate these attributes and actively develop these qualities in the people already in their team.

The three virtues:

Humble: This is by far the most obvious and easiest to understand. Humility in a team member shows up as a lack of excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to share credit, praise others freely, and sometimes even forego credit due to them in the interest of celebrating the team’s collective win. They demonstrate strong alignment towards the team’s goals and prioritize collective wins over individual ones. Humble team players are self-confident but not arrogant. A memorable quote that summarizes this indispensable attribute is: “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.”

Hungry: Hungry people are always looking for more. They are intrinsically motivated, diligent, and have a strong desire to do more by going above and beyond. Hungry people do not have to be pushed by their managers to perform; they constantly look for more responsibility and think about the next step and the next opportunity (for the team).

Smart: By ‘smart,’ the author here refers to emotional intelligence and interpersonal awareness: The capability to conduct oneself in a group situation and deal with others in the most effective way. Emotionally intelligent people ask good questions, listen to what others are saying, and engage in conversations intently. Smart people exercise great judgment and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and are fully aware of the effect their words will have on the team.

To be a real team player, one must embody all these qualities. Being deficient in any one of them will lead to undesirable effects on the cohesion of the team.

The lack of one or more of these virtues leads to some interesting personas. See if you can relate to having dealt with any of these:

The accidental mess-maker:  This person is Humble and Hungry, but not Smart!

The skillful politician:  Meet the skillful politician, who is Hungry and Smart, but not Humble!

The lovable slacker:  Say hello to the lovable slacker, who is Humble and Smart but not Hungry!

The bulldozer:  You’ve got a bulldozer who’s Hungry, but neither Humble nor Smart.

How do you use this framework as a leader?

In hiring the right people: Nothing beats bootstrapping a team with team players and keeping a culture of solid teamwork. To do this, change the way you hire. The traditional one-dimensional approach of over-indexing technical skills and aptitude won’t give you insights into whether your potential hire is a good team player.

Click here to download the Humble, Hungry & Smart Interview Question and Insights Guide.

Why is all this ultimately important?

Having great team players is a prerequisite for effective teamwork, and it is solid teamwork that unlocks the true and full potential of teams.

People who are humble, hungry and smart demonstrate behaviours such as vulnerability-based trust, healthy conflict, active commitment, peer-to-peer accountability, and a focus on results — and these, in turn, will lead to incredibly successful teams.

This article was originally published on October 12, 2017, and has been updated.

Odds are, you will never know there is a predator in your midst…I didn’t.

One of my direct reports was a bully, and I completely missed what was going on.

As a leader, it was my responsibility to create a work culture where employees felt they could come forward so harassment could be dealt with immediately.

I felt awful, because the team he led was made up of some of my longest serving employees, many of whom I considered friends. Yet they didn’t feel comfortable coming to me.

Why?

Leaders can allow and permit a culture where bullying, physical abuse and sexual harassment can take place.

I hear your blood-pressure alarm going off.

You’re indignant because you have a policy: ZERO tolerance for harassment.

You’re probably writing an email now to tell me the one harassment complaint you received was investigated and dealt with, and the predator was disciplined or fired.

But here’s the thing:

The news is full of organizations like yours, that pride themselves on strong leadership values.

These same organizations have binders full of policies that are replete with accusations of harassment and predatory activities—Canadian and American armed forces, the RCMP, and municipal police forces, to name a few.

So please save the energy you are about to spend on indignation, and invest that into action.

The Facts About Workplace Harassment

If someone is reporting harassment or bullying, I can assure you it has been going on for a very long time.

The statistics agree:

• 52% of women report they have been harassed at work (CNBC)
• 25% of all workers report some level of harassment or bullying (Queens University)
• 33% of civil servants report they have been bullied or harassed (The National Post)

Canadian Business Magazine found that most people are victimized five times on average before they report or quit.

Most employees suffer in silence or move on to a new job.

Even in the most egregious form of harassment—sexual—a Huffington Post survey found that 70 percent of women who have been sexually harassed do not report.

Maybe I am too old and cynical, but I don’t think the human race will ever eliminate predators from the gene pool.

While I have my own thoughts on why these people exist, I’ll leave that up to psychologists.

What I do know and understand better than most is leadership.

What’s my point?

Predators exist, and they harass, abuse, assault, bully, and worse.

Are you really SO sure that it isn’t happening in your organization?

There are two interconnected reasons why you may never know what is going on:

1. the victims do not trust the “system” to look after them; and
2. the chain of command is seldom held accountable for the actions of the perpetrator.

Predators are persistent and ubiquitous and are currently—or will eventually be—in your organization.

It is bound to happen, but what you do about it is not preordained.

That’s what we’ll cover in Part 2 and 3 of dealing with a culture of harassment at work:

You need to build faith in the system so people will tell you (Part 2) and you need to hold your leaders accountable for what is happening on their watch (Part 3).

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check these out, too:

5 Tools That Helped Me Survive a Workplace Bully (Guest post)

80% Of Projects Fail Because Of ‘People’ Issues … Here Are 6 Things You Can Do To Reduce That Risk

People Pleasing Leaders & Soup Sandwiches – 5 Messes You Make When You Try to Make Everyone Happy

When I was leading a large team inside a large organization, I could easily have been overwhelmed by 100’s of emails every day.

100’s!

Emails from Bosses, Peers & Subordinates.

Messages from stakeholders and partners.

And then I was saved by my, now, good friend Hugh Culver. My boss brought in Hugh to speak with us about time management. I didn’t know Hugh at the time, and I was looking forward to another ‘time management seminar’ like it was a root canal.

Are You Spending 80% of Your Time on the Wrong 20%?

First, I was blown away by Hugh’s energy and style. Then he taught us a couple of tips that I use to this day. Then I added a lesson I learned in the Army called BLUF (best articulated by Gen Stanley McCrystal).

These simple things have saved me countless hours and made life immeasurably easier.

Turn alerts off

As Hugh says, “just seeing, or hearing, an alert on your smartphone, tablet, or computer pulls you away from what you’re working on and forces you to think about that email. Remember this: the mind won’t ignore something unfinished. An alert pulls your valuable cognitive resources away from what you are trying to finish and says, “Hey, look over here—I want your attention!”

Create rules

Rules can quickly remove email from your In-box and give you a filing cabinet-type organization system. Here are good descriptions of how to set these up for Outlook, Gmail (called “filters”). The two must-adopted rules are:

1. 1. Create a folder called ‘CC’ and set up a rule that will automatically redirect any email that you are a copy addressee out of your inbox and into the ‘CC’ folder.

This will clear out your inbox of all but the email that is most important. And you can always visit the ‘CC’ folder and review messages any time later.

1. 2. Create a rule that will flag or highlight emails from those who are most important to your work. This could be your boss or your direct reports.

Obviously, this will allow you to focus on the truly highest priority messages.

 BLUF

The McCrystal Group has recently written about BLUF’ing your in-box. One simple but highly effective way to focus attention on what matters most is by using BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front). The method is straightforward: start an email by writing “BLUF” in bold and include a 1-2 sentence summary statement, including any necessary actions.

Below are two example emails. See how long it takes you to extract the relevant information in Sample 1 compared to Sample 2.

SAMPLE 1 Traditionally formatted email message body

From:

To:

Subj:

Sue, We will be presenting our proposal to the Board of Directors on February 3rd. You were instrumental in September during the early-stage development, and we could use your help now that we are working on the presentation. We’ve received some intel that the Board will be specifically looking for justification for why we want to go with Vendor B despite being 20% higher than Vendor A. You have the best technical background to articulate a compelling argument for our recommendation. Would you be able to review the presentation as a whole and then provide any relevant input for section 2? Specifically, we could use your thoughts on Slides 7-9. Ideally, we’d like to get your edits by January 31st. Please let me know if you think that will work for your schedule.

SAMPLE 2 BLUF formatted email message body

From:

To:

Subj:

BLUF: Requesting input on the justification for the selection of Vendor B (Slides 7-9 of BoD presentation). Input needed by Jan 31st.

Sue, We will be presenting our proposal to the Board of Directors on February 3rd. You were instrumental in September during the early-stage development, and we could use your help now that we are working on the presentation. We’ve received some intel that the Board will be specifically looking for justification for why we want to go with Vendor B despite being 20% higher than Vendor A. You have the best technical background to articulate a compelling argument for our recommendation. Would you be able to review the presentation as a whole and then provide any relevant input for section 2? Specifically, we could use your thoughts on Slides 7-9. Ideally, we’d like to get your edits by January 31st. Please let me know if you think that will work for your schedule.

Both e-mails have the same text, but the message and request are far clearer in Sample 2 than Sample 1.

Save your teams the time, and confusion, of digging through longwinded texts by offering a “BLUF” at the start of your messages.

Read the secret habits to make you a better leader

Finally

Implement any or all of these three, and the ROI on your time will increase by about approximately 1 Gazillion percent!

Canadians’ have an image of politeness and don’t usually like words like ‘conflict.

In fact, we can be pretty smug about our politeness. Along with maple syrup, hockey and wood, smugness is our #1 export.

For so many people, the idea of conflict seems to imply something negative, even harsh. “Why not ‘discussion’ or ‘debate’ or ‘disagreement’?” Or even worse, ‘Consensus.’

Read about Consensus

But I like the honesty and forthrightness of the word ‘conflict.’ I suppose that’s why I think it’s the right word.

In the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni wrote that there is no way to avoid being uncomfortable when it comes to building a truly cohesive team.

And yet, it is so tempting to try. “Let’s just agree to disagree.” “Let’s take that off-line.” “I think we agree more than we disagree.” It is astounding to me the lengths many leaders will go to avoid that awkward moment when two people realize that they “passionately disagree” (a.k.a. engage in conflict) about something vital.

No matter how well those people know one another and how many times they have had those moments, it will ALWAYS be uncomfortable.

I use the word conflict intentionally to prepare people for the full challenge that it presents. Calling it discussion or debate or simple disagreement tempts them to strive to avoid the raw and challenging reality that conflict entails.

So, the next time you’re in a meeting, and you find yourself trying to avoid one of those uncomfortable moments, stop and let everyone know that you’re going to overcome your fears and engage in actual conflict and that you’re doing so for the good of the team.

It will diffuse the inevitable tension that tempts everyone to back off and permit them to acknowledge their fears.

Read about holding your team accountable

The Case for Conflict

 If you follow Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, they have a completely different view on the importance of workplace conflict — they actively advocate for it. For many, the confusion may lie in interpreting the actual word ‘conflict’ rather than the intent or action.

Essentially, great teams have ‘healthy ideological conflict’ that requires productive debate around ideas and concepts, not people. Great teams do not hold back. They pursue difficult conversations by getting all the facts on the table for the sake of making informed, better decisions.

High Stakes

What exactly is at stake when a team does not engage in healthy conflict? Here are four reasons:

1. Wasted Time: Revisiting unresolved conversations meeting after meeting not only drives people crazy, it wastes time. Healthy teams roll up their sleeves, get uncomfortable, attack issues head-on, and ultimately make informed decisions.

Are you all day busy or busy all-day

1. Poor Decision Making: If all the facts are not on the table and team members have not weighed in on a topic, critical information could be missing resulting in poor decisions.

1. Wasted Money: Wasted resources that result from uninformed decisions are commonplace. Spending time up-front debating an issue will ultimately translate to the bottom line.

1. Lack of Buy-In: Team members are less likely to buy into a decision if their opinion was not considered and factored into the process; thereby, affecting employee commitment.

Conflict Norms

To effectively make conflict a core part of a team’s culture, establish “conflict norms.” These are the expectations the team establishes and commits to engage in healthy conflict during team discussions.

Here are several conflict norms that work:

• Silence Equals Disagreement — One of the goals should be full participation. When team members withhold their opinion, it ultimately hurts the outcome of the discussion. We often mistake silence as support. That’s not appropriate. Often, people are silent because they disagree but are too uncomfortable to share openly. A team that embraces the conflict norm of Silence Equals Disagreement does not allow team members to sit in silence at team meetings.

• Do You Support? — At the end of a discussion, ask the team, “Do you support this direction?” Asks each team member where they specifically stand on the topic. Each team member gives their opinion regardless of their standing. Then listen and consider each opinion before moving forward with a decision.

• End the ‘Meeting-After-The-Meeting’ — Teams need to stop the post-meeting that is commonly referred to as the ‘meeting-after-the-meeting.’ I would encourage the team leader to repeat the following at the end of a team meeting: “If anyone is thinking of coming to me or anyone else on the team to rehash today’s topics, it’s not an option, so state it now.” After the shock wears off, your team will understand their only outlet is when the entire team is together.

• Debate Trumps Agenda — Teams should not consider a meeting agenda set in stone. While agendas are an important guidance tool, take the time to have a good debate about critical issues rather than moving on for the sake of covering all the agenda items. Allowing this helps generate healthy conflict on a team because team members will be assured that crucial topics will be thoroughly discussed.

• Offline Alert — During a team meeting, a substantial red flag occurs when someone says, “Let’s take that off-line.” This typically occurs because the leader doesn’t want the conversation to unfold before the entire team. In the majority of situations, it is perfectly appropriate to air the issue among the whole team. Confronting a difficult topic in the group removes ambiguity about the situation, and everyone understands its resolution.

Visit the Building Better Leaders Magazine

Smugness may be fine when it comes to National Pride and politeness, but it has no place in leadership.

But leaders need to embrace the power of conflict and set the stage for engaging in healthy debate.

Teams that use conflict effectively will drive toward better decisions, develop strong team commitment, and ultimately results.