Sal's Blog

The thing about leadership is that its impact is often overlooked. In many organizations it’s written off as “fluffy” or “soft.” And, it’s even less valued in companies where there is a heavy emphasis on engineering and technology. Boulder Denver

The problem with this perspective is that there is a real cost to organizations. The unaware leader who has no idea on how his or her style impacts team members is hurting employee productivity, engagement, and retention more than any other factor.

You can put into place time management techniques. You can improve processes. You can implement collaboration tools. Those are all good things.

But if you want to make a significant shift in engagement, productivity, and retention - start with your leaders. Develop and coach them. Help them lead more effectively.

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed the impact that senior leadership teams have on employee engagement, productivity, and retention. And, I made it very clear that the behaviors that originate at the executive team level ripple through the organization. Just like a wave that gets larger as it nears the shore, those behaviors get magnified and repeated - regardless of whether they have a positive or negative impact.

I also discussed the first “Costly Mistake” that senior leadership teams make - The Lack of Focus. The challenge in many organizations is that senior leadership teams get so busy spending time IN the business, instead of ON the business. And when senior leadership teams aren’t focused, it often results in communication breakdowns that perpetuate barriers between individuals and departments, leading to the second mistake of…Protecting and Hoarding Resources.

Costly Mistake #2: Protecting and Hoarding Resources

One of the challenges that leads to this costly mistake is a dynamic that is often found only on senior leadership teams. This dynamic stems from the fact that senior leaders are often rewarded based on the performance of the functional teams they lead and not on the shared goals of the leadership team itself. Additionally, the only way for senior leaders to move their career “up” is by replacing the CEO or leaving to take on a more senior role in another organization.

These two factors often result in competition among senior leadership team members instead of collaboration. It encourages individuals to focus on their own agenda, egos, and careers instead of team goals. And this eventually ripples through departments, resulting in the inevitable silos, politics and dropped hand-offs that are so costly and wasteful.

Here are some symptoms you might see in your organization if hoarding and protecting resources is an issue.

• Sales blames Operations for late delivery in front of customers.
• People fight over resources without consideration for the larger goals.
• Meetings are boring  because people are too afraid to share differences of opinions and ideas.

People-First™ Factor #2: Collaboration

To overcome this second costly mistake, senior leadership teams have to recognize that it is not good enough to just get people working on the right things (alignment). Team members have to work on the right things…together.

In order to do that, people must be able to appreciate and value the differences that everyone brings to the team. General George S. Patton once said, “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking at all.”  But, in order to value those differences, the team culture has to be based on respect and trust. Without respect, you can’t have trust. And without trust, you can’t effectively work on things together.

So essentially, respect and trust become the cornerstone for efficiency.

How do you build a senior leadership team culture based on respect and trust? Here are they keys.

1. Get clear on organizational values and model those values. This drives alignment down to the behavioral level.
2. Create a climate of open communication,  where people can share differences of opinion, engage in constructive conflict, and get involved in problem solving and decision making. (Nothing can be more important on an executive team)
3. Create team norms and ground rules. These provide guidelines on how the team will engage in conflict, what their team time will look like, how decisions will be made, and other behaviors that will drive team success. The best teams review their ground rules prior to starting regularly scheduled meetings, and team members hold each other accountable to the ground rules.
4. Learn about personality styles to build vulnerability based trust. This takes trust to a whole new level. Patrick Lencioni talks a lot about this in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

All of these suggestions have to do with “behaviors” that drive collaboration on a senior leadership team. Remember, the behaviors that originate with the CEO and senior leaders will ripple through the organization – and be repeated and magnified.

Change your behaviors. Change your organization. It’s as simple as that.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this article where we’ll discuss the third costly mistake senior leadership teams make. This one’s a biggy, because it impacts team member commitment.

Well, I am back after taking a few weeks off from my normal blogging routine. I hope you have enjoyed the summer as much as I have.

So, I thought I would jump back in with a concept I introduced in a webinar I conducted last week on The 4 Costliest Mistakes Senior Leadership Teams Make. It’s a concept I call “getting stuck in always having to be right.”

Actually, it’s not a concept. It is a communication breakdown that is common on teams who do not have a strong foundation of trust and with individuals who have a low sense of self-awareness and a huge focus on their own ego and agenda.

Getting struck in always having to be right is dangerous because ultimately it dampers creativity and innovation. It limits constructive conflict and debate, and it devalues others’ opinions. When teams shoot down ideas that don’t mesh with the norm, it is hard for them to make corrections to their current course of action.

Are your team members stuck in always having to be right?

If so, your team is on a slippery slope to nowhere.

“The conduct of a company’s leadership team is directly correlated with the organization’s long-term performance.”

In her article Lessons from Team Fumbles, Susan Lucia Annunzio goes on to say “Once-venerable institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland paid the ultimate price for the behaviors of their leadership teams.”

Some of the behaviors Annunzio is referring to includes:

• Merrill Lynch and Company CEO was widely reported to thwart debate, ignore feedback from other firm leaders and fire people whose views didn’t mesh with his own.
• The single biggest mistake the Bear Stearns leadership team made was its refusal to face harsh realities. The leadership was presented with multiple opportunities to cut losses and change course. For years, executives cautioned of coming problems.
• A similar situation played out at HBOS, a U.K. banking and insurance group taken over by Lloyd’s Banking Group in January after a near collapse. Paul Moore, the former head of group regulatory risk for HBOS, was fired in 2005 after warning the bank’s board about the danger of lending money “to people who have no jobs, no provable income and no assets.”

Senior leadership teams have the most significant impact on organizational culture than any other factor. The way that senior leadership teams behave sends shock waves throughout an organization and impacts the way more junior leaders and employees behave.

Eventually, the things that senior leadership teams reward and criticize will be the same things that the organization rewards and criticizes.

If you are on a senior leadership team, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Yet why is it that so many organizations fail to recognize this?

I think the answer is pretty simple. It’s easy to appear to be a cohesive team when the economy is good, the organization is profitable, and the new business pipeline is strong. It’s much more difficult, however, when times are challenging.

And, when times are challenging cohesion on senior leadership teams is most important.

But, today’s senior leadership teams are dealing with the most challenging environment in history. Business is moving at a tireless pace of change and organizations are constantly being called upon to do more with less.  The workforce is undergoing an unprecedented demographic shift that will soon impact the ability to attract and retain top talent. And with ongoing business uncertainty come restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and other changes that have a significant impact on employee engagement and productivity.

As senior leadership teams deal with these challenges, they all too often look for solutions on how to be more competitive and efficient while forgetting to consider the people side of the equation. They look for technology and systems improvements to solve people-related problems that often result in what I call  The Four Costliest Mistakes Senior Leadership Teams Make.

Costly Mistake #1: The Lack of Focus

Ultimately this mistake impacts a team’s ability to be effective. You might remember Steven Covey’s definition of effectiveness – the ability to get results in such a way that you can get the results over and over.

Without focus, effectiveness goes out the window.

The challenge in many organizations is that senior leadership teams get so busy spending time IN the business, focusing on the urgent day-to-day issues and minutia, instead of ON the business, focusing on creating alignment, coaching their people, and a nurturing a healthy culture.

Instead of being able to rapidly respond to new opportunities, unnecessary conflict, stress, and ambiguity of roles and accountabilities emerge on the senior leadership team.

Here are some symptoms you might see in your organization if there is a lack of focus on the senior leadership team:

• The product road map isn’t clear beyond the next 90-120 days
• Performance reviews are a “once a year” thing
• The organization flip-flops between key strategies
• Employees don’t understand how they fit into the strategic direction

People-First™ Factor #1: Alignment

To overcome the lack of focus, senior leadership teams have to be clear about the strategic direction for the organization. That becomes the foundation for everything else. Departmental goals should be created from strategic goals, and individual performance goals should be driven by departmental goals.

Secondly, senior leadership teams have to be clear about their individual roles and responsibilities.

According to Ruth Wageman, a visiting scholar in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and director of research for the Hay Group, “The work of a truly effective executive team should be focused on key strategic and tactical issues that affect the enterprise. Certainly the team must occasionally dip into
the mundane, but for the most part it should focus on broader, more significant organizational issues that directly advance the team’s purpose.”

To stay focused on the strategic issues, senior leadership teams need a structured approach to spending time together and staying focused during that time. At a minimum, senior leadership teams should meet weekly, have longer monthly team meetings, and quarterly offsites focused on organizational strategy and team cohesion.

While many senior leadership teams want a “silver bullet” in response to the challenges they face, I believe the answers are more practical. In Part 2 of this article, we’ll discuss two additional senior leadership team mistakes and focus on how to build cohesion to overcome those mistakes.

What is the purpose of this complimentary webinar on August 11th?

In just 57 minutes your senior leaders will learn specific ways to avoid or address some common, costly mistakes, and help them achieve a major shift in how their teams perform.

Senior leadership teams are the single most influential factor that impacts employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

But with so many challenges facing organizations today, senior leadership teams all too often look for solutions on how to be more competitive and efficient while forgetting to consider the people side of the equation. They look for technology and systems improvements to solve people-related problems that often result in common and costly mistakes.

What insights can you expect to gain?

During this program, we will explore the following 4 challenges impacting senior leadership teams.

1. Lack of Focus: The challenge in many organizations is that leaders get so busy spending time IN the business, focusing on the urgent day-to-day issues, instead of ON the business, focusing on creating alignment and a nurturing a healthy culture. Instead of being able to rapidly respond to new opportunities, unnecessary conflict, stress, and ambiguity of roles emerge.

2. Protecting and Hoarding Resources: Senior leaders often look to time management techniques and cost cutting initiatives to save time and money, but forget that improving efficiency might just be about getting people to work together better. The result - a focus on individual agendas and egos instead of on organizational objectives.

3. A Focus on Compliance instead of Commitment: With the economy beginning its recovery, top performers are increasingly at risk of being swept away by the competition. But, leaders that created a work culture based on compliance won’t lose everyone - their poor and mid-level performers will stay (because no one wants to hire them anyway). The way people are treated in the workplace matters and senior leaders set the tone.

4. A Patch-work Approach To Hiring: The challenge in many organizations is that they (1) do not have a clear and consistent hiring process, (2) people do not have the skills to properly conduct interviews and evaluate candidates, and (3) organizational values aren’t clear. All three of these factors are a perfect storm for hiring the wrong people.

Think about how much more productive the leadership teams in your organization could be. But, often times, they limit their productivity and effectiveness because they are making costly mistakes they may not know about.

We will also:

• Provide an overview of our Executive Team Development Program
• Share a copy of our article on The 5 Costliest Mistakes Teams Make

Who is this program for?

This informal, but fast moving program is for Directors and above and is based on Sal Silvester’s work over the past 9 years with teams who have been serious about being more productive and effective.

Your organization qualifies for this complimentary program if:

• You are a mid-sized to large organization - 150+ people, $50 million+ revenues
• You have an intact senior leadership team
• Improved team productivity and effectiveness is important

We are limiting this program to 50 people, so go here for more details and to register while seats last.

(Can’t make the date/time? No problem, sign up anyway and we’ll send you a link to the recorded version shortly after the webinar.)

Have you ever watched a 400-meter relay team work?
On a good team, their hand-offs are impeccable.

In fact, given two teams of equal quality runners, the team with the more efficient
hand-offs always wins. The same holds true in the work place.

Like many organizations, you probably have good people, products, and services. The differentiator, though, between you and your competitors, is often the hand-offs between teams - like Sales, Engineering, and Operations (or whatever departmental silos exist in your organization).

There’s another interesting thing about the 400-meter relay. According to Wikipedia, the world record is 37.10 seconds. The world record for the individual 400-meter race is 43.18 seconds. That’s over a six second difference!

Given the same quality of runners, a team that works well together is
always better than a “John Wayne” who works alone.

The challenge in many organizations is that individuals and departments get so focused on their own egos, agendas, and goals, and they lose sight of the larger organizational goals and put them second to their own priorities. As a result, individuals, departments, and business units end of hoarding resources without regard for the bigger picture.

So, given two organizations with equal capabilities, the competitive advantage is in the hand-offs.

What are the three keys to stop dropping the baton?

1. Get clear on the common purpose. At the end of the day, whether you work in Engineering, Sales, or Operations, you should all be working toward the same goals, and those goals supercede individual egos, agendas, and priorites.  Get clear on your common purpose and make sure it is over-communicated between departments. The common purpose is the glue that links the hand-offs together.

2. Get clear on roles and responsibilities. According to Wikipedia, transferring of the baton in the 400-meter relay is typically blind. The outgoing runner does not look backwards, and it is the responsibility of the incoming runner to thrust the baton into the outstretched hand, and not let go until the outgoing runner takes hold of it.

In the workplace, too often the baton is dropped because there are gaps in what people think they should be doing and what others think they should be doing. Close those gaps by clarifying (a) key task responsibility, (b) decision making authority, and (c) expectations between departments.

3. Get clear on team member strengths. Some people excel at project start-up while others thrive in project execution. Learn more about where the talents of your team members lie and share responsibilities accordingly.

In the 400-meter relay, perfect hand-offs often compensate for slower runners. In the workplace, perfect hand-offs result in better product quality, faster delivery times, reduced engineering defects, and ultimately higher levels of customer engagement and retention.

The People-first Bottom Line: If you want to gain a competitive advantage, don’t forget the people side of the equation - smooth out the hand-offs in your organization.

Inscape Publishing just launched the Everything DiSC 363 for Leaders, and my clients love it.

They love it for three reasons.

(1) It combines the best of a 360 degree assessment and the power of DiSC.

(2) It does away with the often useless, open-ended responses raters can give, and instead gives raters a set of choices to select for open-ended questions - making the feedback behavioral based and more valuable for the leader.

(3) It provides the leader with not only feedback on their leadership behaviors, but also three strategies for improving effectiveness.

Interested in a test run?

Schedule a DiSC Strategy Session with me. During this complimentary 45 minute discussion, we’ll discuss your business objectives and challenges, talk about your organization’s leadership capabilities, and see if the Everything DiSC 363 for Leaders is a fit in your organization.

Email me with three dates/times when you are available.

In my previous blog post, I talked about the 4 reasons why team building fails and how it is important to be aware of those common pitfalls so that you can design a program that makes a positive impact on your team.

Team building can have a profound effect on the way teams collaborate, but to achieve that level of success you must incorporate The 4 P’s of Strategic Team Building.

1. Personalization: The program must be based on clear objectives and desired outcomes. Information should be gathered through a “needs analysis” process, and you should have a clear answer to the question - “why do we have a need for this?”

2. Programming: The team building should be integrated into a broader professional development plan and should include follow-up to reinforce the desired behavioral changes. You should also clearly understand the level of impact your event may have. Programs that are 1-2 hours in duration may be fun and break down some barriers, but are only “energizers.”  Programs 3-8 hours in duration may enable “discovery” if well facilitated. Programs 1+ day may actually generate skill development and behavioral change.

3. Participation: For the program to be successful, key leaders must actively support the program, participate in the program, and provide coaching after the program.

4. Practicality: The best team building programs provide tools that team members can bring back into the workplace and use to be more effective as they collaborate and communicate with each other. A day on the challenge course generally doesn’t provide this. Rich content with easy to use tools (minimize the fluff and theory) is essential.

So there you have it. It’s pretty simple really. Avoid the pitfalls and follow the 4 Ps and you’ll have a program that helps, not hinders, your team.

The concept of “team building” means different things to different people. Over the past 9 years I have spent a ton of time with hundreds of clients and thousands of people creating successful team building programs. Our shorter programs may span only four to eight hours in duration, and our programs focused on helping teams make a significant shift in how they collaborate may last over 9 months.

Regardless of how long the program is, I have always defined team building in three ways:

1. It is a tool to help accelerate team formation.

2. It is strategic in nature.

3. It is focused on skill development and behavioral change.

If you want to create a team building program that will have a positive impact on your team, it is important to pay attention to the pitfalls you may encounter.

Here are 4 common reasons why team building fails.

1. It is irrelevant.

- there are no clear objectives
- the facilitator never spoke to the “decision maker” prior to the event

2. It is ambiguous.

- there are no clear “tools” to take back to the workplace to help team members be more effective

3. There is a lack of commitment

- the program isn’t linked to broader professional development efforts
- there is no follow-up scheduled as part of the program

4. Inexperience

- the facilitator has no real business experience and never spent time in the boardroom
- the facilitator has limited knowledge about business or your industry

If you see symptoms such as these within your team building programs, it is likely you won’t see a change in how your team collaborates.

So, what are the keys to making team building effective?

Stay tuned for this Thursday’s blog post and I will share with you the 4 P’s of Strategic Team Building.

I have written quite a bit in the past about the importance of providing feedback to team members. In fact, in a recent blog post, I termed feedback as “the glue that holds alignment together.”

But what happens when feedback just doesn’t work?

When performance isn’t meeting expectations, and a team member has been provided with consistent and transparent feedback, the next step in trying to help a team member make behavioral change is constructive discipline.

Like feedback, discipline is intended to help a team member change so that they can turn performance problems into performance positives. There are a few key principles to constructively disciplining a team member.

1. Conduct the process in a way that doesn’t embarrass or undermine the team member.

2. Involve the team member in the process.

3. Follow organizational policies.

But how should a discipline interaction be handled between a manager/supervisor and team member?

Here is a simple 6-step process to follow. This process is covered in detail in our Vital Learning workshop on Effective Discipline.

Step 1: State the performance problem.

Step 2: Ask the team member for his/her view of the situation.

Step 3: Ask the team member for a solution to the performance problem.

Step 4: Agree on a plan.

Step 5: Give the team member a verbal or written warning (depending on organizational policy).

Step 6: Setup a time for review.

Don’t ignore Step 6 in the process. This structured reinforcement is the key to making behavioral change stick.

The People-first Bottom Line: Having the difficult conversations is never easy, but avoiding them does a disservice to the team member, your team, and the organization as a whole. Use the simple process above and plan the interaction ahead of time.