Do You Want to Improve Your Leadership Experience? STOP Solving Problems!

An emergency requires quick decisions and clear instructions.

There may be a little time for a discussion with your team.

However, a vast majority of cases do not require an immediate decision.

There is almost always time for the team to consider the situation and develop solutions.

A thoughtful Leader needs to take time to let others react to the situation.

You have to create space for open decision-making for the entire team, even if that space is only a few minutes long.

This is harder in strict top-down leadership structures because leaders must solely anticipate decisions and alert their teams of upcoming decisions. In a top-down hierarchy, subordinates do not need to think ahead because the boss will decide when necessary.

How many times do issues that require decisions come up on short notice?

If this regularly happens, you have a reactive organization in a downward spiral. When problems aren’t foreseen, the team doesn’t get time to think about them, a quick decision is required from the boss, which doesn’t train the team, etc.

It would be best if you changed the cycle.

Here are a few ways to get your team thinking for themselves:

– If the decision needs to be made urgently, make it. Then explain why later, when there is time, and then have the team ‘Red Team’ decide to evaluate it.

Read about ‘Red Teamin’

– If the decision needs to be made on short notice, ask your team for input, even briefly, then make the decision.

– If the decisions can be delayed, push it back to your team to provide input. Do not force the team to come to a consensus. Consensus is a lazy leadership style that silences differences and those in dissent. Cherish dissent. Remember, if everyone thinks as you do, you don’t need them.

What Is Heck Is Organizational Health? 10 Questions Answered by Steve

Question: What is organizational health?

Organizational health is essentially about making a company function effectively by building a cohesive leadership team, establishing real clarity among those leaders, communicating that clarity to everyone within the organization, and putting in place just enough structure to reinforce that clarity going forward. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave.

Read about the ‘First Team’ Model

Question: Why does organizational health offer a company its greatest opportunity for competitive advantage?

Addressing organizational health provides an incredible advantage to companies because, ultimately, health becomes the multiplier of intelligence. The healthier an organization is, the more its intelligence it can tap into and actually use. Most organizations only exploit a fraction of the knowledge, experience and intellectual capital available to them. The healthy ones tap into all of it. Addressing health helps companies to make smarter decisions faster, without politics and confusion.

How healthy is your organization? take the free survey!

Question: Why are so many of today’s smartest companies losing to underdogs?

I have found that some of the underdogs are more apt to shed their preconceived notions about running a business and allow themselves to gain an advantage around a different set of principles. The key ingredient for improvement and success is not access to knowledge; it is really about the environment’s health.

I have worked with many great, healthy companies led by men and women who attended relatively modest colleges, people who would admit to being just a little above average in intellectual capacity. When those companies made wise decisions that set them apart from their competition, journalists and industry analysts incorrectly attributed their intellectual prowess’s success. The truth of the matter was that the underdogs weren’t smarter than their competitors; they simply tapped into the adequate intelligence they had and didn’t allow dysfunction, ego, and politics to get in the way. Conversely, smart organizations don’t seem to have any greater chance of getting healthier by virtue of their intelligence. In fact, the reverse may actually be true because leaders who pride themselves on expertise and knowledge often struggle to acknowledge their flaws and learn from their peers. They typically aren’t as easily open and transparent with one another, which delays recovery from mistakes and fuels politics and confusion.

Question: Having worked with companies for so many years, is there anything that still surprises you?

Yes, I still get surprised by what I see in companies I work with, even after all these years. Some of that surprise is just a function because no two people, and thus, no two organizations are exactly alike. The nuances are interesting and keep me on my toes. But ironically, the biggest surprise I get is being reminded repeatedly that even the most sophisticated companies struggle with the simplest things. I guess it’s hard for me to believe that the concepts I write and speak about are universal. I don’t know that I’ll ever come to terms with that completely.

Question: Why are so few companies skilled at overcoming dysfunction?

Leaders often complain about worker productivity, politics, turnover and other signs of dysfunction but feel addressing the problem is either a hopeless endeavour or too touchy-feely. Even if the leader understands the need to address dysfunction, more often than not, they tend to naturally gravitate right back to the parts of the business they feel most comfortable with (usually in areas like strategy, finance, marketing, etc.).

Question: What’s “the wuss factor,” and how do you overcome it?

The “wuss factor” happens when a team member or leader constantly balks when it’s time to call someone out on their behaviour or performance. Many leaders who struggle with this will try to convince themselves that their reluctance is a product of their kindness; they just don’t want to make their employees feel bad. But an honest reassessment of their motivation will allow them to admit that they are the ones who don’t want to feel bad and that failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness. After all, there is nothing noble about withholding information that can help an employee improve. Eventually, that employee’s lack of improvement will come back to haunt him in a performance review or when he is let go.

How healthy is your organization? take the free survey!

Question: What’s the best way to run an effective meeting?

To answer that question fairly, it is important to be clear about what kind of meeting you are in. I find that all too often, leaders have one meeting a week where they put all issues into one big discussion, usually called the staff meeting. They combine administrative issues and tactical decisions, creative brainstorming and strategic analysis, and personal discussions into one exhausting meeting. The fact is the human brain isn’t meant to process so many disparate topics in one sitting. This exhausts people. For a meeting to be effective, there needs to be greater clarity and focus, which means there needs to be different kinds of meetings for different kinds of focus. So, being clear about what kind of meeting you are in helps everyone understand the purpose and what they can expect for outcomes. The four meetings include:

  • Daily Check-ins – administrative information exchange
  • Weekly Staff – tactical issues and goal-related activities
  • Ad hoc Strategic- strategic meeting that takes on one single big topic
  • Quarterly Off-site Review – developmental meeting and review of business fundamentals

Question: How can someone who’s not in the upper levels of their organization make an impact on its health?

While it’s true that no one can influence an organization like the leader and that without a leader’s commitment and involvement, organizational health cannot become a reality, there are many things that employees deeper in an organization can do to make health more likely. First, they have to speak truth upward in the organization. Most leaders, even the struggling ones, want to get better. When an employee is courageous and wise enough to come to them with respect, kindness and honesty, most leaders will be grateful. Without honest upward feedback, a leader cannot get better. Beyond that, people deeper in an organization can focus on making their own departments healthier and not getting too distracted or discouraged by their inability to change things outside of their “circle of influence,” as Stephen Covey says. By focusing on their own departments and their own areas of influence, they provide others with an example to follow.

Question: What’s something I can do tomorrow morning to get started?

The first thing anyone can do immediately to begin the process of making their organizations healthier is, to begin with, themselves and their team. A leader has to understand and embrace the concept of being vulnerable, which inspires trust in the leadership team. That trust is the foundation for teamwork, which is one of the cornerstones of organizational health. If a leader cannot be vulnerable, cannot admit his or her mistakes, shortcomings or weaknesses, others will not be vulnerable and organizational health becomes impossible.

Question: What’s the first step any company can take to start achieving organizational health?

The first step in becoming healthy is to get the leadership team together, offsite, for a couple of days of focused, rigorous, honest discussion. Nothing touchy-feely, but rather a practical session around everything from how the team behaves to how it will succeed to what its most important priority needs to be. That first session will provide the momentum a team needs to lead the organization to health.

How healthy is your organization? take the free survey!

Why I think Mental Health Initiatives are missing an important point

You may have seen memes of a lion or battle-hardened soldier with the words ‘The Problem With Being Strong Is That Nobody Bothers to Ask.’

I’ve asked

I’ve talked.

I’ve tried.

But it seemed that nobody listened.

It seemed that nobody wanted to hear.

I am a big man; I’ve lived a great life and come across as hard and strong.

I’ve led soldiers and emergency responders and been hugely successful.

Yet I have failed.

I failed in relationships, struggled in business and made moral mistakes that sit heavy on my heart.

I was a functioning drunk who drank Rye like it was a cure for alcoholism.

I am pretty sure I have been depressed, and I know I have struggled with my mental health.

I grew up in an environment and served in the Army when you were not sick unless a bone was sticking out of your body. I understood that mental health issues were a sign of weakness. Motivational posters surrounded me saying: ‘Big boys don’t cry,’ ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body,’ and visiting the Chaplain or a Counsellor was a black mark on your career.

Such initiatives like ‘#SickNotWeak’ and ‘#BellLetsTalk’ are excellent in destigmatizing mental health issues.

For a child of the ‘60s, it is remarkable that mental health problems are now considered normal and asking for help is the right thing to do.

But where ‘#BellLetsTalk’ fails is that we need a complementary imitative called ‘#LetsListen.’

But for many, bringing up an emotional problem is complex.

I have spoken about my last few years at the Red Cross in many blog posts. I was struggling in a shifting and changing workplace. I had made a bad hire and was trying to manage an asshole. Years of working in high-tension environments were catching up with me. I was leading a giant disaster and working on my Master’s degree.

In short, a lot was going on.

One day, I was rushing to a meeting in another city.

While driving, I witnessed a small car get T-boned by a pickup. The vehicle was flipped end to end several times. I stopped to help and saw the driver, a young mother, was dying, and the passenger, a Grandmother, was dead.

As bad as the scene was, the worst part was finding a toddler in a car seat, not moving and trapped in the back seat. Other good Samaritans and I fought to get into the back seat to help the baby. It seemed to take forever, but we got a door open and the car seat out, and to our great relief, the baby started crying and seemed unharmed.

The police, Fire, and EMS arrived on time and took over the scene, and I carried on as if I were completely normal.

But I wasn’t.

Something switched deep inside me, and I struggled even more with work.

One day, I told my boss what had happened, which bothered me. All I received for my vulnerability was an unblinking stare.

I never felt so exposed or let down.

That one incident changed my entire relationship with her. She was once a trusted friend and confidant; now, she was someone in authority with whom I had lost trust.

The outcome was preordained the moment that trust was lost.

Eventually, I left or maybe was pushed out of a job I loved and left people I cared for.

There were many times that I reached out when I struggled with emotions and mental health.

I made myself vulnerable by trying to “#BellLetsTalk,” but no one listened.

A relative who told me that everyone hates their job, so quit complaining, A boss who betrayed my vulnerability, or a Pastor who didn’t ask that one more question.

And all that accomplished was a guarded fear of opening up again.

So this year, as part of “#BellLetsTalk,” let us try harder to ‘#LetsListen.’

How One Word Can Damage Workplace Culture

They say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But words do hurt—and all too often, what they hurt is workplace culture. 

I have come to realize how important words are not only in everyday life, but in our workplace interactions as well.

And I don’t just mean poetry and prose. Simple one or two-word phrases can stop a conversation dead in its tracks. This can lead to mistrust and a toxic work environment.

I wouldn’t call myself a word nerd. But I understand words are significant so I try my best to use them as precisely as I can. 

Before I get to examples of words and phrases that can damage workplace culture, let’s look at some common terms that are often used incorrectly or made up entirely.  

Words that are commonly used incorrectly.

  • Adverse and averse
  • Affect and effect
  • Led and lead
  • I.e. and e.g.

Made up words and phrases:

  • “All intents and purposes,” not “all intensive purposes”
  • Enunciate, not annunciate
  • Espresso, not expresso
  • Cabinet, not cabnit
  • Nuclear, not nucular

If the words or behaviour used at work lead to a culture of harassment, here are some ways to stop it dead in its tracks. 

Words that lead to an unhealthy workplace culture.

Now that we know some of the words and phrases that are often misused or made up, let’s get more specific. 

If you’ve noticed a dip in morale or in overall performance at work, it might be time to ask yourself about the words you use or the words you hear your team use with one another.

Here are some other questions you can ask to check up on your team. 

The following are some words and phrases that can kill trust and lead to a toxic work environment: 

  • “Yeah, but.” This tells the listener that you don’t care about what they’re saying.
  • “You don’t understand.” This causes the listener to feel like they are being disdained.
  • “With a bit more experience…” This dismisses youth and enthusiasm. 
  • “I appreciate your comments.” This tells the listener thanks, but you think he is an idiot.
  • “It’s not in the budget,” or “That’s not according to policy.” This means you’re blowing the person off because you haven’t even thought about what they’re proposing.
  • “Five-year strategic plan.” Usually, this just means blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

While we’re on the topic, here are 2 phrases a boss must learn to demonstrate their trust in their team. 

Words cut to the core faster than a knife. They can cause wounds that take forever to heal.

As a leader, our people are watching and listening to everything we say, ergo (and I use that word correctly), leaders must be very precise with the words we choose. Words must be applied judiciously and thoughtfully—or we risk contributing to or creating a toxic work environment.

In World War II they said ‘loose lips sink ships.’ In today’s world, loose lips can sink workplace culture.

If you’re interested in going deeper on improving the culture at work or moving your career to the next level, you’ll also want to have a look at my 1-on-1 coaching services.

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