My father-in-law, Bob Rogers, has told the story of when, as a young boy growing up in Detroit, Michigan, he was sitting around the dinner table with family. They all grew quiet when Bob’s dad, a factory machine-operator, said he had some news. He then told how the boss of the entire factory came to his station that day and had a conversation with him. Bob recalls how much it meant to his dad and how they were all so impressed.

This simple act of conversation was transformative. For Bob’s dad, the routine of working at his machine each day for 20 plus years, was suddenly imbued with importance.  He felt his own value.

How meaningful it is that when Bob grew up, he became a plant manager. And guess what he did. He made it a practice to walk through the factory every day and talk to the people who operated the machines.  

Bob describes these conversations as very informal. He said, “I would allow the men to guide the conversation.” By getting out of his office and talking with these men, on their turf, Bob was communicating with more than words. His action said: 

• I’m interested in what you have to say and what I can learn from you.
• I value you and want to know you as a person.
• I am available if you need anything.
• We are in this together, if it wasn’t for the work you do, I wouldn’t have a job.

If having informal conversations is truly valuable, are there more intentional conversations leaders could be having with their direct reports?

The coaching style of leadership is one of many

Mary Parker Follett, one of the most influential experts in the early days of classical management theory, said a leader’s challenge is to get work done through others. Easier said than done. Therefore, many styles of leadership have developed over the years. i.e. Authoritative, Transactional, Delegative, Participative, etc.

Which leadership style is the best? I explore the answer to this question in my blog on personality types and their influence on leadership styles. But one could generally answer by saying the style that is needed in the moment. Why? Because all styles have a particular situation or environment where they work the best.

That said, for an everyday approach to leadership, the coaching style of leadership is being utilized more and more for its focus on making every player on the team better and stronger.

The coaching style of leadership focuses on every employees development

Many traditional leadership styles, characterized by command and control, do not focus on employee development.

It is just the opposite with the coaching style of leadership. Sir John Whitmore is a leading voice in the field of coaching. He said that skilled coaching involves “unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.”  

When perfectly executed, the manager-as-coach invests in the growth of their employees. They provide a balance of support and challenge, without ever judging them.

When perfectly received, employees are genuinely interested in the feedback they receive. It’s a culture of give-and-take where all staff are open to honest and constructive critique, including those in positions of authority.

Asking questions is what releases self-discovery

The supervisor is in charge because they typically have the knowledge and experience. So, aren’t they supposed to impart that knowledge to their direct reports? Yes, but that’s not all.

Supervisors with a coaching style of leadership spend as much time, if not more, creating an environment where employees can make their own discoveries. So how does a supervisor go about helping others make discoveries for themselves? They must learn to stop telling people how to do it all the time and start asking more questions.

Specifically, it is the art of asking a sequence of open-ended questions. When a person participates in finding the answers, it generates self-responsibility and self-belief, a deeper level of learning.     

3 High Value conversations supervisors can have with their direct reports

So much of how a supervisor gets work done through others is through the medium of communication. Supervisors who practice the coaching leadership style can implement 3 types of conversations that foster feedback and self-discovery that is characteristic of the coaching culture.

The first type is what I will call feedback. Supervisors must give feedback so that their employees are equipped to keep the promises made to customers. It is also important for keeping employees interested in wanting to work for you.

It is within this conversation where the coaching style of leadership, less telling and more asking of questions, can really be practiced. Using the GROW model developed by Sir John Whitmore, employees can achieve more lasting performance improvement.  

The second conversation type is what I call retention talks. This is a scheduled one-on-one conversation that a supervisor has with each one of their direct reports, one to two times per year. This is where much of the discovery, development, feedback, and support, characteristic of the coaching style of leadership can take place.  

In this high value conversation, the supervisor is mainly asking questions and actively listening. Questions like how am I doing as your supervisor? Is there anything I or the company can do to make your job work better for you? The skill comes from listening intently and knowing how to ask meaningful follow-up questions.

The third conversation type is what I will call Team Huddles. Some people take too limited a view of this opportunity and only report information related to the task at hand.

This is an opportunity to inspire and to encourage the ideal behaviors you desire to see in your team members. The GROW model can be applied in this setting also where the supervisor asks meaningful questions that improves team performance as they come up with their answers,

coaching takes more time up front but pays off in the end

Some leaders and organizations may feel they don’t have the time to practice the coaching style of leadership. Sometimes it is all we can do just to get the work done that we have promised our clients and customers. It is quicker just to tell employees what to do rather than ask questions.

But one would do well to track time across the whole equation. The coaching style of leadership will require more time up front, but it will equate to more equipped, satisfied, and productive employees; employees who will stay with you longer.

That means less time finding, hiring, and training new employees to take the place of the ones who left.

Does this hypothetical sound at all familiar?

Thrilling news has just graced Linda’s ears. She has been asking for leadership development training for her first-line managers and today she was given the green light. Most of their managers were promoted from within because they were standout individual performers. But leading a team of others requires a completely different skillset than leading yourself, and many of their shortcomings have been on display for all to see.

Immediately, Linda begins an online search for an outside trainer, and it doesn’t take long to find and make her choice. In making her selection, she discussed with the prospective trainer the challenges the managers are having and the content that would address those behaviors. Now all that remains is to schedule the training.

Fast forward…It is now the closing minutes of a full day of off-site leadership development training. Linda is very satisfied as she listens to the participants share with the trainer their biggest takeaways. The trainer delivered the content in a compelling manner, and all the managers were very engaged.

Six months later she is sitting in her office coaching one of the first-line managers on the importance of setting clear expectations for his team members, something he is not doing. Linda thinks, he should know this, it was covered thoroughly in the leadership development training.

In fact, Linda has been saying “He/she should know this” about many of the managers lately. That is when she realizes there isn’t much to show for the leadership development training that took place six short months ago. All that time and money…ugh!

Emotional Intelligence, the essential leadership ingredient.

Daniel Goleman, in his Harvard Business Review article, What Makes a Leader? identifies emotional intelligence as the sine qua non of leadership, i.e., the essential ingredient. The ability to understand and manage personal emotions while being able to influence the emotions of others counts twice as much as IQ and technical skills in determining which leaders will be successful.

Goleman goes on to say that emotional intelligence is born largely in the limbic system of the brain, the part of the brain that governs feelings, impulses, and drives. He contrasts that with the neocortex, the analytical part of the brain where logic and comprehension take place. It is the part of the brain that learns how to do something by reading a book for example.

And here is the thing, most leadership development training programs, in their quest to develop emotional intelligence, are targeting the neocortex where emotional intelligence does not live. In other words, they are targeting the wrong part of the brain.

This helps explain why Linda from our opening story, and countless others like her, are left bewildered and frustrated when they don’t see the fruit from their leadership development training.

Leadership Development involves a change in behavior

Leadership development will always involve a change of behavior. Maybe a leader changes the way they communicate with their direct reports. For example, a leader that used to only talk about the job and the task at hand now asks the team member how the overall job is going for them. They spend time finding out what their career goals might be and how they can help.

But it isn’t always adding a new leadership behavior. Marshall Goldsmith, in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, has identified 20 bad habits that show up again and again in the many leaders he has coached. The premise of his book is that leadership development often involves removing a bad habit, period.   

One of the 20 bad habits is withholding information. When a leader withholds information, he/she is typically using it to gain an advantage over others. Marshall would coach them to stop doing this, making the case that this is preventing them from reaching the next level of leadership. But he said they often resist because they mistakenly believe withholding information has contributed to their success.

In countless leadership talks that I have given over the years, I have shared Marshall’s 20 bad habits. I do that to shine light on potential blind spots. But awareness alone rarely creates change, it requires something else.

The Power of Habits

In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg provides powerful insights for removing negative habits by explaining what he calls habit loops. A habit loop involves a cue that triggers a habitual behavior which results in a perceived reward or payoff. To remove bad habits, you create a new way of behaving in response to the same cue.

Let’s say there is a guy named Matt who has a bad habit of interrupting people in meetings at work. It has been brought to his attention and he agrees, realizing it is negatively affecting how he is perceived. Through self-reflection, he sees that the cue is when others in the meeting start commenting on anything about his department. The cue triggers a defensive posture that manifests itself in physical tension; Matt literally feels himself tighten up. He can only sit like this for a short time before he must speak. The reward is the tension goes away. 

To stop interrupting people, he was given a new way to behave. When people start talking about his department, and his body tightens up, Matt slips the tip of his tongue between his upper and lower teeth and gently bites down, occasionally nodding his head up and down as he listens. He continues to do this until the person has finished their thought. If applicable, he briefly summarizes what the other person has said. Only then does he respond.

Leadership development training requires time and an individualized approach

To increase emotional intelligence, trainers should target the limbic system. This happens best through motivation, extended practice, and feedback. Breaking old habits while establishing new ones, requires what one concentrated session of training cannot provide, time and a more individualized approach. This is what our company, Retention Architects, seeks to do in the different trainings that we provide.

Leadership is not rocket science; the concepts are simple to understand. The hard part is having the discipline to change. In Matt’s case, the concept is simple, stop interrupting people. The behavior change is hard, stop interrupting people.

Leadership development training that is spread out over time with multiple touch points, that provides support, that gives guys like Matt an opportunity to report on their progress and receive feedback, this is what creates transformation.  

We don’t come to the world as unbiased reporters; we see it through a lens of our own making. 

Ken Keyes Jr. said, “A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.” In other words, your attitude about others is really a reflection of yourself.

If true, this presents a kind of chicken and egg situation. Does a person love because they were first loved by another? Or do they love despite a world that has treated them harshly. The question is not a useless one; people often experience transformation only after they identify conditions that influenced their thinking in the first place. Seeing it truthfully, they can make a more positive choice.  

Each one of us has a lifetime of experiences and decisions that have shaped who we are, which then determine what we see in others. That said, we are notorious for spotting the faults of others while ignoring our own. Our challenge has always been to see ourselves and others honestly. 

If we remove from our consideration, the hopelessly and helplessly bad, and consider the imperfect people who remain, I believe this: there is plenty of good and plenty of less-than-good to see in every person. The question is one of lens and focus, do you want to live in a hostile world or a loving world?

tHE lEADERSHIP SKILL OF EMPATHY

Theodore Roosevelt is credited for saying, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Many desires that employees have about their job can be satisfied by a supervisor who genuinely cares for them. Caring for another person is not possible without empathy.

Empathy is the ability to appreciate the needs of another person and be mindful of their feelings, thoughts, and day-to-day challenges. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with them; it just means making an honest effort to understand what they are experiencing.

I was on a coaching call with a sales manager when he started to express frustration with his supervisor. She was making decisions that were negatively affecting the performance of his team. What was a great working relationship had morphed into a loss of trust.  

With each question I asked, we peeled back the onion. He eventually identified a previous misunderstanding between the two of them where she had incorrectly assumed he was responsible for a mishap. When she confronted him, he was able to show that was not the case. Yet he thought she was still holding him responsible.

I encouraged him, for the sake of the relationship and the company, to get outside of his own interpretation of events, and try to understand what his supervisor might be thinking and feeling. His assumptions, potentially false, were affecting how he now thought of his boss, something I write about in my blog, A Collaborative Mindset: The Key to Preventing and Resolving Conflict. To his credit, he was able to see that everything his supervisor was doing to supposedly hold him back, had a more positive explanation to consider and not rule out.   

organizational benefits of empathetic leadership

John Maxwell says “people quit people, not companies.” When leaders demonstrate empathy, their direct reports are more satisfied with their job and more likely to stay. This helps the bottom line. But empathetic leaders benefit organizations and the bottom line in other ways also. 

• At the end of the day, supervisors are expected to get results. The pressure to produce in a highly competitive marketplace can create a very results driven culture. The leadership skill of empathy allows supervisors to not lose sight of employee needs as they push for results.     

• Empathetic leaders can expect empathy in return. Reasonable people are ready to reciprocate with an expression of generosity when it has first been expressed to them. 

• Empathetic leaders are good listeners. This allows them to discover issues that otherwise might have gone undetected.  

• Empathetic leaders can put the thoughts and feelings of their employees on an equal footing with their own. The result is employees who feel more valued and appreciated. 

• Empathy equips the supervisor with more patience to deal with the struggles certain employees might experience. This increases the overall performance of their team as no one gets left behind.  

• When the employee realizes they have a supervisor who is willing to understand and appreciate all they go through to perform their job, it builds trust. On the flipside, a lack of trust will mute every leadership skill, including empathy.

One final thought

To understand how others are feeling we might just study ourselves. We are all made of the same stuff.  We might be put together a little differently, but our essential ingredients are the same.  Many of our experiences and deepest longings we have in common. Therefore, look to your own wants and needs to better understand others. And treat them the way you would want to be treated.

I wasted so much energy wondering why this guy didn’t like me. DISC showed it wasn’t me, it was his personality.  It was liberating!

In the short time that Retention Architects has been training organizations in the DISC Model of Human Behavior, that statement is typical of what we hear. 

Retention isn’t just another issue; it is the issue.  If you are going to be a company employees never want to leave, something we call a Career Company, people are going to have to work well together.  DISC helps make that more possible. 

Personalities aren’t so random after all, there are established patterns of predictable behaviors.

Patterns exist all around us, in popular songs, the weather, stock market charts, pass receiving routes in football, we could go on.  And the person that can see the patterns, stands to benefit. 

Most people intuitively know there are parts of their personality they didn’t choose.  What they might not know is that personalities are not so random after all; there are established patterns of predictable behaviors.

In a 2012 article, a BBC reporter wrote that in the U.S. alone there are 2500 different personality assessments on the market.  DISC, the choice of Retention Architects, is used by organizations all over the world for its accuracy and ease of application.   

With a simple assessment, in 15 to 20 minutes anyone can learn their unique DISC personality style.

A sense of self-acceptance occurs when you realize you don’t have to change your personality, it is perfect just the way it is.

Where other personality assessments may have 16 or more character types, DISC identifies 4 personality types, D – I – S and C, and the patterns of behavior that come along with them.  Every person is a blend of all 4 personalities in different degrees, with one being their dominant, most natural way of being.

The D personality is the Dominant Determined Doer.  They are motivated by challenge, choice, and control.  Every situation is one to conquer. 

The I personality is the Inspiring Interactive Influencer.  Motivated by popularity, approval and recognition, they thrive in positions where they can verbalize their ideas to inspire and influence the people around them. 

The S personality is the Steady Sentimental Supporter.  Security, assurance and appreciation is what they need.  Their focus is on building relationships and helping others carry out their plans.

The C personality is the Cautious Calculating Contemplator.  They are motivated by quality, value and excellence.  How well policies and procedures are followed is a big deal to these precise people.  

Each personality brings something unique and equally important to the table.  A sense of self-acceptance occurs when you realize you don’t have to change your personality, it is perfect just the way it is. 

Emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of exceptional leadership, the essential ingredient.    

IQ (intelligence quotient) is a measure of a person’s reasoning abilities. i.e., the ability to use logic to solve problems and predict events.  It also includes the extent of one’s memory. 

Crystallized intelligence is knowledge rooted in facts that comes from past learning and experiences. 

Any mention of intelligence should include emotional intelligence.  It is the area of cognitive ability that facilitates interpersonal behavior.  Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, describes it as understanding and managing your own emotions and influencing the emotions of others.  

Surveys support Goleman when he says emotional intelligence is the largest single predictor of success in the workplace.

At Retention Architects, we help companies move ever closer to being a Career Company by developing their supervisors to be leaders employees want to follow.  In doing so, we teach that emotional intelligence is the sine qua no of exceptional leadership, the essential ingredient,  

People often ask what the best style of leadership is.  The answer is the one needed at the moment. 

With an appetite for results, it comes very natural for the leader with a D style personality to drive themselves and their team.  

With a desire to inspire, it is very easy for the leader with an I style personality to speak in uplifting tones to their team.

Motivated to support others, the leader with the S style personality is fluent in words and actions that encourage and care for their team. 

With a cautious eye, the C style leader is adept at spotting what can go wrong and upholding standards.    

Regardless of whether their dominant personality style is D – I – S or C, the exceptional leaders have developed the ability to express all four leadership styles.  People often ask what the best style of leadership is.  The answer is the one needed at the moment.