Archives 2021

Before you read the article below, I wanted to frame the post with this personal note:

Many know I served as an infantryman in the Canadian Army. Years ago, on a training exercise, we had soldiers from another unit attached to us, one of which was an Inuit from Nunavik (Northern Quebec).

His section commander seemed like a good soldier and appeared to be very good at his job, but to be clear, he was a terrible human being and a racist.

Why?

Several times I overheard him call the Inuit soldier a ‘Tundra N-Word.’

But I stepped back and didn’t say anything.

I out-ranked the commander by several grades, I was the senior person in every sense of the word, and quite frankly I was an equal participant in racism at work because I didn’t say anything.

I failed that young man and set a poor example for every other soldier who saw what was going on.

I put my head down and failed to lead with Moral Courage.

Now is not the time for you to put your head down.

Now is the time to approach issues like Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racism protest with humility and hard truths delivered kindly.

When you see systematic and blatant racism, find the moral courage to face and address it with Moral Courage.

How?

• • • Read the article on Moral Courage below.

• • • Share the survey with your full team.

• • • Be courageous and hold small group conversations about times when your people have seen times when your organization has not lived with Moral Courage when it comes to fairness and systemic racism.

• • • Now do the hardest thing you will ever do … shut up, sit there and listen.

• • • Then commit to improving.

Now is not the time to put your head down.

Take care, be well and be safe.

“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.  —  Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), A Farewell to Arms

Most military training is the epitome, the living embodiment, of the first line of Hemingway’s quote. It is the underpinning of the regimental system: an undying fidelity to your Regiment, your colleagues and comrades. Add in great leadership, and this fidelity is what allows a body of soldiers to accomplish great things.

Why? Because anyone cold, wet, hungry or afraid may well be tempted to give up; because you are only letting yourself down. But, that same cold, wet and frightened person would rather a slow painful death than let down friends, colleagues and comrades.

But when something is going wrong, that fidelity can become a terrible hurdle to scale when you are standing up for your ethical beliefs. When you stand up, there are perceived or actual risks of stress, anxiety, isolation from colleagues, or threats to employment. This moral conflict can make you feel powerless to improper behaviour.

“You can live with pain. You can live with embarrassment. Remorse is an awful companion.” – Senator John McCain

Often organizational cultures and constraints make doing the right thing difficult or impossible. How are you, or your organization, doing at removing the barriers to morally courageous behaviour? Try this simple exercise: Rank your thoughts from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) for these questions:

• I/We encourage dialogue around ethical behaviour and actions every day.

1————-2————3————4————5

• My colleagues have the moral courage to take action when called on.

1————-2————3————4————5

• ‘Whistleblowing’ may be seen as the equivalent of being a ‘rat,’ a ‘tattle-tail’ or that you are letting down your friends & colleagues.

1————-2————3————4————5

• I/We face issues and problems face on every day.

1————-2————3————4————5

What would do to improve any one of those scores by 1 point?

How do you encourage moral courage in your actions and the actions of those around you? www.americannursetoday.com developed the mne­monic CODE to help to remember what steps to take when you face a moral dilemma:

C: Courage

The first step is to critically evaluate the situation to determine whether moral courage is needed to address it. Morally courageous people know how to use valid and objective information to determine whether a situation warrants further exploration.

O: Obligations to honour

When caught in a moral dilemma, you should self-impose a purposeful time-out for reflection to help determine what moral values and ethical principles are at risk or are being compromised. And to consider: What’s the right thing to do? What principles need to be expressed and defended in this situation?

D: Danger management

What do you need to do to manage your fear of being morally courageous? This step requires the use of cognitive approaches for emotional control and risk-aversion management. During this step, explore possible actions and consider adverse consequences associated with those actions. To avoid becoming overwhelmed when deciding how to act, focus on one or two critical values.

E: Expression

The “E” in CODE stands for expression and action through assertiveness and negotiation skills. Knowing one’s obligations and demonstrating specific behaviours can enable you to move past your fear and serve as an active patient advocate,

Three things you can do to supporting moral courage:

1. Share the CODE mnemonic with your peers and team,
2. Host a lunch & learn or use a staff meeting to talk through hypothetical situations,
3. Demonstrate Moral Courage in each of your actions. Click here to read more about Walking the Walk.

The fact that you are a leader will create complex moral and ethical dilemmas, and you will inevitably have to demonstrate moral courage.

As a leader, YOU are accountable for providing the best possible leadership – so you better get used to the fact that it is not always easy or fun.

John Wayne once said: “Courage is being scared to death—and saddling up anyway.”

Do you want to go deeper and learn more?  Contact me Steve@StevenArmstrong.ca, and we can begin the conversation.

Robert Hartley is the Head Coach of the Calgary Flames. A rookie member of the Flames had a great game and scored his first NHL goal. Asked by a reporter if he was happy for that player’s big night, I recall him responding: Of course I am happy for all of my players when they have a good game, but I am never satisfied!

Do you know when I feel satisfied?

When I am all fat & full and sleepy after a huge turkey dinner.

I was always happy for my team members when they closed a big deal, nailed a project, or just had a great day. I drew great energy from their enthusiasm and loved to see them grow & bloom. But I was never 100% satisfied because I knew they could always do more and do better.

I knew that the seeds of complacency would be sown by allowing myself to be satisfied with their accomplishments. That is the path to becoming the ultimate mediocrity.

If a person or department seems to be running on autopilot, then a curse of satisfaction & complacency has set in. As every aspect of business is a work in progress, you and your team should be continually looking to improve performance, learn, find self-improvement, do things better, and improve skills and abilities.

Great leaders embrace the process of discovery by never giving up the quest for information. They control their destiny so that no one else controls it for them. They are never 100% satisfied as there is always room for improvement.

Here are seven indicators to show you when You shouldn’t be satisfied with your leadership:

1. Nothing is being changed. Leadership is about something new. It’s about change. If nothing is changing — you can do that without a leader.

2. No paradigms are being challenged. Many times the best change is a change of mindset — a way we think. Leaders are constantly learning so they can challenge the thinking “inside the box.”

3. You’re not asking questions. A leader only knows what they know, and many times, the leader in the last to know. A significant part of leadership is about discovery, and you only get answers if you ask questions.

4. There are competing visions. Leaders point people to a vision. To a crystal clear & singular vision. One of the surest ways to derail progress is to have multiple visions, as this divides energy & people and confuses instead of bringing clarity.

5. No one is complaining. You can’t lead anything involving worthwhile change where everyone agrees. A sure-fire measure if people are being led if there is if people are complaining. We knew there was a problem in the Army when the soldiers went quiet and weren’t griping.

6. People aren’t being stretched. Understand well; a leader should strive for clarity. But, when things are changing and challenging, there will always be times of confusion. That’s when good leaders get even better at communicating and listening.

7. People being “happy” has become the goal. Everyone likes to be liked. But, the end goal of leadership should be accomplishing a vision — not making sure everyone loves the leader. Progress hopefully makes most people happy, but when the goal begins with happiness, in my experience, no one is ever really made happy.

Keeping a laser-like focus, all the time, on your objectives and never drifting from the big picture is key to extraordinary leadership …, not satisfaction.

Whether you are hiring a new leader, implementing a new hybrid workplace model, merging, or executing a new strategy, managing change is critical to the success of any organization.

Read why hiring a new leader is ‘Change Management

In my experience, leaders spend too much time communicating the vision and the benefits of the change and not enough time talking about the ‘how’.

I have worked with dozens of clients to help identify the risks and craft a strategy to address them – to arrive at the organization’s new end state faster.

From my experience, here are the most common barriers to transformational change.

1. Lack of a Communication Strategy That People Pay Attention to

When I asked middle managers and individual contributors whether they believed their organizations’ strategies were achievable, they scored 30% lower than executives due to poor communications.

When it comes to your communication strategy, an organization-wide email and prerecorded message won’t cut it. A recent Microsoft study on email open rates showed that only 40% of employees would read more than 30% of any internal email. Simply increasing the frequency of communications can further desensitize employees and thus doesn’t provide a solution.

Another critical factor in driving buy-in and engagement to organizational strategy changes is ensuring individual teams understand how their goals contribute to organizational success.

Big ideas need to be talked about and not read.

Read about being the Chief Reminder Officer

2. Excluding Informal Leaders

Ensuring that your organization’s leaders are aligned and bought into the organizational change is critical to successful change management – but what about informal leaders not listed on your organizational chart? Informal Leaders can be found at all levels of an organization and frequently fly under the radar of executive leadership in large organizations. Informal Leaders often act as information brokers and influence how others perceive the organization, so they should be identified and carefully considered in your change management efforts.

Once you have identified your Informal Leaders, you can incorporate them into your change management strategy by creating a liaison and a change champions network and reaching out to them for bottom-up feedback. By combining their feedback early on, your organization can benefit from fine-tuning the tactical execution while also building buy-in and credibility for the efforts.

Read about the client who was 90% sure they would be on time & on budget

3. Failing to Establish and Clarify New Working Relationships

Failing to establish new working relationships, ownership, and cultural norms often presents one of the largest sources of frustration in organizational change. Depending on the nature of the transformation, teams can experience massive changes in processes and working relationships that are difficult to predict and coordinate.

From a risk perspective, changed lines of communication and expectations create an environment where mistakes can happen due to a lack of coordination. Over the long term, poor coordination can lead to frustration, damaged relationships, and ultimately mistrust in leadership.

To prevent your organization from being blind-sided by operational risks and missed handoffs, consider running exercises about the impact of the change with the people undergoing change.

4. Not Collecting Bottom-Up Feedback

In all large organizations, frontline employees have valuable insights that are frequently overlooked. During times of transformational change, your frontline can serve as real-time resources and feedback mechanisms to monitor the progress of your new initiatives or efforts.

From a risk perspective, failing to consider what is happening to your frontline will slow down your reaction time to new threats, lead to overestimating your company’s ability and lull you into a sense of false security.

In the long term, the risk is that your people will lose trust in leadership. Organizations with low trust in leadership frequently experience lower productivity, low psychological safety, high turnover, and stifled innovation.

Read about Trust

An organization undergoing transformation, by definition, changes over time – being vigilant in monitoring risk should go hand-in-hand.

Team dynamics are an important predictor of organizational culture.

Teams that work well together perform better (and they are more fun to be a part of).

To achieve this advantage, teams must master five specific behaviours.

1. Focusing on Achieving Collective Results

Teams can accomplish things that individuals could never do on their own can’t.

So the ultimate measure of success for any team is the results it produces.

2. Holding One Another Accountable

A team can only reach its goals only when everyone does his or her job. Therefore, our ability to achieve collective results is reliant not only on our individual efforts but also on the combined efforts of every team member.

It naturally follows that it is the responsibility of every member of the team to push every other member of the team to do his or her best.

3. Committing to Decisions

There is one simple concept that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to holding another person accountable for something…did the parties commit to the decision in the first place?

If we have not established clarity around our shared expectations and gained agreement on our respective roles and responsibilities, then the idea that we would be willing to hold each other accountable is absurd.

4. Engaging in Conflict Around Ideas

There is a saying that people must “weigh in to buy in.” If we are going to ask all members of a team to truly commit to a shared vision, then we need to be darn sure we get all the ideas (and emotions) out on the table.

And the only way to make sure that all voices are heard is by having the team be collectively willing to engage in healthy and respectful conflict around ideas. 

5. Building Trust With One Another

Putting your own ideas out there, especially when they go against “bolder” personalities or the whole group, can be difficult. When team members are fearful of attacks or uncertain about how others will respond, there’s a natural tendency to hold back and just stay quiet and not show vulnerability.

But there is one key element that enables teams to push past the typical discomfort of associated with conflict: it’s called “trust.”

Trust in that my teammates are good, honest and have the best of intentions.

RESULTS!

When teams dedicate focused effort on learning to be vulnerable with each other, the result is a domino effect that enables the team to….

Build Trust with One Another, which enables the team to … 

Engage in Conflict Around Ideas, which enables the team to … 

Commit to Decisions, which enables the team to … 

Hold One Another Accountable, which enables the team to … 

Focus on Collective Results, which enables the team to…

ACHIEVE COLLECTIVE RESULTS!

What is the condition of your Organization’s Culture?

Take the Organizational Culture Survey

Imagine taking over a company that was losing $17 Billion each and every year.

That is SEVENTEEN BILLION DOLLARS. Each year. And, every year.

Billions with a “B.”

This was the situation Alan Mulally faced when he was recruited away from Boeing to lead the failing Ford Motor Company.

While chairing a worldwide leadership meeting, Mr. Mulally looked at a dashboard that showed ‘green-lights’ on every department, division and product. He asked himself and then the attendees, “if everything is going so well, why are we losing $17B.’

Mr. Mulally spoke at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he discussed the turnaround efforts at Ford, which took the automaker from an annual loss of $17 billion in 2006 to its most profitable period in more than a decade.

Mulally explains that leadership takes courage, has a point of view about the future, and pursues it in the face of resistance and doubt in service of something great.

The entire video is excellent and well worth your time to watch

But if time is short, skip ahead to the 24:11 mark and watch the segment on building accountability (approx 9 minutes)

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Leadership Nirvana … What the heck is that? More importantly, what skills are needed for reaching leadership nirvana?

Let’s find out.

What Skills are Needed for Leadership Nirvana?

There have been times in my career when I have experienced what can only be described as leadership nirvana. 

When I have been part of teams that achieved leadership nirvana, we seemed invincible. Teams that were much more than the whole being more than the sum of its parts: We were exponentially greater!

I am even writing this – recalling those times when the team pulsed and hummed with potential – I feel my pulse quicken, the adrenaline courses and I still get an endorphin rush.

During the early years of the Bosnia/Croatia war, I was the Sergeant Major of a company of infantry soldiers who were rated the most combat-ready in our division. We were skilled, efficient, driven, hungry and proud! (Get to know more about me here)

We were proud of our accomplishments and so loyal to each other that we would rather die than let someone down. And we were in the highest level of service to each other.

Servant leadership might be the antithesis of your thoughts on Army or, possibly, business leadership. Nonetheless, this was the ultimate example of Servant leadership—focusing first on the needs of soldiers to achieve results.

3 Actions for Leadership Nirvana

What is the underlying methodology for performing this remarkable accomplishment?

• STEP #1 ACT
• STEP #2 BE
• and finally: STEP #3 DO

THAT’S IT. 

Wonderfully Simple. Yet, Infinitely Complex

STEP #1: ACT

Commit to ACTing in the manner that you want to see more of and being engaged, regardless of the circumstances.

Think about what it is you would like to see from your team and model it, try:

• More enthusiasm. Less cynicism.
• More results. Less business. 
• More objectivity. Less wishing and guessing.
• More focus. Less distraction.
• More approachable. Fewer eggshells.
• More patience and kindness. Less grumpiness.
• More encouragement. Less withholding encouragement.
• More appreciation. Less entitlement and neglect.
• More listening. Less telling.
• More truth. Fewer half-truths, omissions, and exaggerations.
• More creativity. Less mediocracy. 
• More pursuit. Less passivity.
• More humility. Less ego and politics. 
• More time, effort, and care. 

This also includes acting with a “team-first” mindset. Here’s how to do just that. 

STEP #2: BE

Commit to BEing connected by talking, listening, and showing and sharing.

This looks like…

• Having more frequent, intimate and meaningful conversations about what it is you and your team do and the value you and your team bring to the world.
• Showing people the big picture more often.
• Sharing any external feedback – good and bad – you get from the people you serve.
• Sharing it as much as possible to help your people be more connected to that big picture.
• Letting people know you have their back and appreciate them.
• Sharing your purpose, your mission.
• Telling them. Showing them. Encouraging them. Thanking them.
• Doing it in person and doing it in writing.
• Consider a quick daily meeting that allows everyone to share what they are working on and any challenges they are facing to help people feel more connected to each other and each other’s work.

When we are more connected to each other, we feel better about each other, more accountable to each other, and have an easier time supporting each other.

(When you ask what skills are needed for leadership, moral courage is always on the list. Click here to read why it might even be the most important leadership characteristic)

STEP #3: DO

Want stronger people and to work on developing future leaders?

Do these things: 

• DO involve them in solving the challenges you face.
• Whenever possible, let your people lead the effort to make something happen.
• Let them see things from your point of view, so they are better informed and have a better chance of solving problems with you. And, eventually without you.
• Ask people often to give you their thoughts – good and bad.
• Ask them how they would change things if they were in charge.
• Then, really and sincerely listen.
• When we are more involved in something and more accountable for something, we are more engaged.
• Do whatever you can to help people be personally responsible for results and serve the people you serve.
• Let them know that you involve them because you are interested in their development and in them becoming more valuable to the organization.

If you have created that high-trust environment and high-trust relationships, let them know you are helping them practise and perfect their abilities so they are valuable no matter where they work.

What happens in your place of work?

It may be obvious to find leadership euphoria when the goal is honourable. But trust me, it isn’t a given. All organizations struggle with developing the leadership culture required to achieve nirvana. But when you know what skills are needed for leadership development and reaching leadership nirvana, you’ve got a leg up on the process. 

That said, I felt close in less dramatic settings, like nailing a project or closing a big deal.

It doesn’t happen every day, and you may never reach it, but it is to Act, Be and Do your job as the leader to clear the path to leadership nirvana!  

Did you enjoy reading “ACT, BE, DO: What Skills are Needed for Leadership Nirvana?”

Here are three more posts to read next:

• How One Word Can Damage Workplace Culture
• 9 Stupid Management Practices (and what to do instead)
• The 6T’s To Know What To Delegate

This post about what skills are needed for leadership was first published in 2019. It was updated in 2021 just for you.