The Single Most Important Leadership Habit for Generating Innovative Solutions

"What people think as the moment of discovery is the discovery of the question." 
                                                                                                  --Linus Pauling
Questions are the best way to gain deeper insights and develop more innovative solutions. So why do so few people use them or use them well?

Children learn by asking questions. Students learn by asking questions. New recruits learn by asking questions. Innovators understand client needs by asking questions. It is the simplest and most effective way of learning. People who think that they know it all no longer ask questions – why should they? Innovative thinkers never stop asking questions because they know that this is the best way to gain deeper insights.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said, “We run this company on questions, not answers.” He knows that if you keep asking questions you can keep finding better answers.

When Greg Dyke became Director-General of the BBC in 2000 he went to every major location and assembled the staff. They came expecting a long presentation. He simply sat down with them and asked a question, “What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?” Then he listened. He followed this with another question, “What is the one thing I should do to make things better for our viewers and listeners?” He knew that at that early stage he could learn more from his employees than they could from him. The workers at the BBC had many wonderful ideas that they were keen to share. The fact that the new boss took time to question and then listen earned him enormous respect.

Colombo solves his mysteries by asking many questions; as do all the great detectives – in real life as well as fiction. All the great inventors and scientists asked questions. Isaac Newton asked, “Why does an apple fall from a tree?” and, “Why does the moon not fall into the Earth?” Charles Darwin asked, “Why do the Galapagos islands have so many species not found elsewhere?” Albert Einstein asked, “What would the universe look like if I rode through it on a beam of light?” By asking these kinds of fundamental questions they were able to start the process that lead to their tremendous breakthroughs.

The great philosophers spend their whole lives asking deep questions about the meaning of life, morality, truth and so on. We do not have to be quite so contemplative but we should nonetheless ask the deep questions about the situations we face. It is the best way to get the information we need to make informed decisions and for sales people as an example, it's the single most important skill they need to succeed.

Why don’t we ask questions (Or good ones)?
If it is obvious that asking questions is such a powerful way of learning why do we stop asking questions? For some people the reason is that they are lazy. They assume they know all the main things they need to know and they do not bother to ask more. They cling to their beliefs and remain certain in their assumptions – yet they often end up looking foolish.

Other people are afraid that by asking questions they will look weak, ignorant or unsure. They like to give the impression that they are decisive and in command of the relevant issues. They fear that asking questions might introduce uncertainty or show them in a poor light. In fact asking questions is a sign of strength and intelligence – not a sign of weakness or uncertainty. Great leaders constantly ask questions and are well aware that they do not have all the answers.

Intelligent questions stimulate, provoke, inform and inspire.

Finally some people are in such a hurry to get with things that they do not stop to ask questions because it might slow them down. They risk rushing headlong into the wrong actions.

With prospects, with clients, at school, at home, in business, with our friends, family, colleagues or managers we can check assumptions and gain a better appreciation of the issues by first asking questions. Start with very basic, broad questions then move to more specific areas to clarify your understanding. Open questions are excellent – they give the other person or people chance to give broad answers and they open up matters. Examples of open questions are:

• What business are we really in, what is our added value?
• Why do you think this has happened?
• What are all the things that might have caused this problem?
• How can we reduce customer complaints?
• Why do you think he feels that way?
• What other possibilities should we consider?

As we listen carefully to the answers we formulate further questions. When someone gives an answer we can often ask, “Why?” The temptation is to plunge in with our opinions, responses, conclusions or proposals. The better approach is keep asking questions to deepen our comprehension of the issues before making up our mind. Once we have mapped out the main points we can use closed questions to get specific information. Closed questions give the respondent a limited choice of responses – often just yes or no. Examples of closed questions are:

• When did this happen?
• Was he angry?
• Where is the shipment right now?
• Did you authorize the payment?
• Would you like to go to the cinema with me on Saturday evening?
• By giving the other person a limited choice of responses we get specific information and deliberately move the conversation forward in a particular direction.

Asking many questions is very effective but it can make you appear to be inquisitorial and intrusive. So it is important to ask questions in a friendly and nonthreatening way. Do not ask accusing questions. “What do you think happened?” will probably get a better response than, “Are you responsible for this disaster?” Try to pose each question in an way and ensure that your body language is relaxed and amicable. Do not jab your finger or lean forward as you as put your requests.

Practice asking more questions in your everyday conversations. Instead of telling someone something, ask them a question. Intelligent questions stimulate, provoke, inform and inspire. Questions help us to teach as well as to learn.

Check out a related post: How Leaders Who Ask More Leverage the Power of the Brain

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

What A Leader Must Focus On

As a leader, you have a myriad of things that vie for your attention; many things that you feel, or others suggest, you need to focus on. Here is a short list:

• Budgets
• Revenue
  
• Projects
• Process improvements
• New product/service development
• Culture
• Engagement
• Safety
  
• Customer/stakeholder experience
• Margins
• Headcount
• Funding
• Org. politics

I bet at least part of this list resonates with you, and I bet you could add a bunch more to this list.

And . . .

It is pretty hard to “focus” on multiple things at once, isn’t it? In reality, when we have a list of things, we aren’t focusing, we are (constantly) shifting our focus.

So how do we overcome the conundrum of lots of important things and not knowing what to focus on?

We focus on something different than anything on the list above (or likely, your list). We put our focus on others.

Leaders that multiply their impact put their focus on others. Here are seven reasons why:

• We can’t do it alone anyway. Let’s start with the most obvious of all – we can’t do all the stuff that needs to be done alone; even if we tried. And if we can, we don’t need a team, so we aren’t a leader. Leadership is about the outcomes, but those must be reached through others.

• We win when they win. If you are going to focus on others, you must fundamentally believe this. You must believe that when you serve others, your needs will be met, your goals will be reached and you will recognized appropriately. True and lasting victory comes from helping others win too.

• We build trust when we focus on others. Trust is a powerful lever for team and organization success. When trust is higher, job satisfaction, productivity, and much more is improved. If you want to build trust with others, focus on them and trust them first.

• We build relationships when we focus on others. There is a direct correlation between the strength of a relationship and the amount of trust that exists in that relationship. As we build trust, we build relationships. Solid working relationships create better results. How do you build a relationship? You are interested in, listen to, and care about them. Sounds like other-focus to me.

• We are more influential when we focus on others. As leaders, we can’t force or compel people to take any action, or if we can, it is for a limited time and there will likely be other unforeseen consequences. We can’t control people, we can only influence them. Who is most successful in influencing you? Someone who you know understands your needs and situation. Someone who wants the best for you. someone who is on your side of the table. How can we do those things unless we are focused on others?

• We reap engaged team members when we focus on others. This is profoundly true. People want to work with and for people that they know believe and care about them and have their best interests at heart. Not only can we do those and still lead successfully, when we do them we have the chance to lead at the highest level.

• We succeed at everything on “the list” when we focus on others. Look back at the list of things you “need to focus on” that I mentioned at the start of this article. If you intentionally and purposefully focus on those around you, will those things all go better? While I’m not saying you should ignore or completely delegate those things, what I am saying is that if you focus on others first, the rest will be more successful, more of the time.

We all could make a longer list of reasons why placing your focus on others is the right choice, but any one of the above is reason enough. Our role as a leader is to aid, support, coach, direct, guide and help others reach valuable goals and outcomes. When we remember that and focus on them and their needs, we’ll get better results for the organization, the team, and yes, ourselves.

What must a leader focus on?

Check out a related post: How to Leverage the Power of Leader's Math To Multiply Results

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Sales Win Rates Matter

Your win rate is one of your two most important personal sales metrics.

What percentage of your most qualified prospects do you convert into paying customers?

Win rates are not a terribly useful team metric because there is no collective activity you can undertake to improve it.

A team win rate is just an average. And averages are not reliable measures of performance across a diverse group of sellers.

Individual contributors have win rates. Improvement has to come at the IC level.

Recently, some sales pundits have tried to make the argument that win rates don’t matter. That the only thing that matters is the size of your commission.

Which is just nonsense.

First, every one of you has a win rate. You should know what it is at all times.

It's a relevant indicator of how effective you are at each step of personal sales process.

Second, your win rate is the buyer’s ultimate referendum on your ability to add value to their buying journey.

In general, customers won't buy from a channel that adds cost but no value.

Third, and most importantly, if you’re hitting 100% of your on-target earnings, and your win rate is 35% or less, then you’re leaving a ton of commission dollars on the table. (And, if you’re not at 100% OTE, then win rate is everything.)

Want to make more money? Do the hard work to improve your win rate.

You can be satisfied with your low win rate if you think you’re earning enough commission.

However, sellers who aren’t satisfied will be out there winning your deals and kicking your butt around the block.

Improving your win rate takes hard work.

You have to analyze each step of your personal selling process to identify areas for improvement.

You have to identify the particular behaviors and skills that you need to amplify.

This requires some straight forward coaching and mentoring.

And it requires new perspectives and instruction on ways to develop and master new selling habits that fundamentally change the value you deliver to your buyers.

If you’re an individual contributor, a seller with account responsibility, then you can try on your own to piece together all of these resources you need to improve your win rate.

Or you can leverage our sales coaching program to help improve your and your rep's win rates.

To your greater success,

Peter C. Mclees, Principal
Smart Development

We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales. 

Feedback is not enough. What else employees need from leaders to be their best

The six most dreaded words for any employee: "Can I give you some feedback?"

The Gallup organization has found that only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive helps them do better work.

Clearly, feedback isn't working the way it should.

Today, as leaders know, the workplace is radically different. Modern organizations are more decentralized, matrixed and agile. Employees have greater autonomy and are required to be creative in how work gets done.

This means leaders can't just give employees feedback about what they did "right" or "wrong." They must listen, ask questions, gain context and create a two-way dialogue in order to heighten self-awareness leading to better choices and outcomes.

The practice of management is far too complex for a simple rubric to transform how employees perform and develop. And there has never been a one-page checklist that can turn a bad manager into a good one.

Effective leadership requires managers to help employees prioritize multiple projects, shift deadlines, remove barriers and manage interpersonal challenges. There's hardly ever a single "perfect answer" to modern business problems.

In many professional situations, a successful outcome is based on emotional factors:

• how a customer feels after interacting with you
• how a team feels about a new initiative
• how a vendor feels about partnering with you

"Feedback" rarely makes sense in these situations. What you really want is an open, honest, two-way dialogue that strengthens relationships rather than one-way instruction and criticism.

To put it simply, traditional feedback is one direction (leader to follower), episodic (i.e., infrequent and isolated) and focused on past mistakes that can't be fixed.

Coaching conversations, on the other hand, are about now and what's next. Coaching conversations put the employee's potential at the center, in an ongoing, middle-of-the-action dialogue.

Effective leadership requires managers to help employees prioritize multiple projects, shift deadlines, remove barriers and manage interpersonal challenges. There's hardly ever a single perfect answer to modern business problems.

Great Managers Lead Great Conversations
Imagine the best manager you've ever had. More than likely, they were great at having meaningful conversations -- where you felt like you were heard and understood.

They may have delivered difficult messages or pushed you harder than you were used to, but somehow it didn't feel bad. They didn't always follow a script or a rubric. They adapted their approach to what you needed in the moment (Thank you Ken Blanchard for the blessing that is Situational Leadership!).

That's the power of individualized conversations. An employee feels known, understood, heard and appreciated -- even when the topic of discussion isn't pleasant. Great leaders build performance conversations around an employee's unique strengths while addressing weaknesses, so that the dialogue is naturally positive and constructive.

Leaders need to understand that these skills don't come naturally to most managers. They need to be taught, ideally in a role-play or real-life environment, and developed over time.

Feedback Focuses on the Past; Coaching Conversations Focus on the Future
Business today moves fast. Employees need to be adaptable in an environment where every aspect of a business can be ripe for disruption.

Like a good coach, great managers are always thinking about the next play, the next game and the next win.

They keep conversations focused on the future. What can we do to improve our chances of success next time? What would it look like to exceed our expectations? How can we prepare for the future?

Great managers are achievement-oriented and focused on developing their teams.
That's not to say managers should stop giving feedback all together. There's no doubt that reflecting on past performance and discussing how it went is important -- it facilitates learning.

The problem is employees typically experience feedback as criticism that is delivered far too long after the fact. Feedback is helpful when it's immediate and constructive. And even then, feedback alone does not translate to great coaching.

Improving feedback -- how you tell people about your observations and opinions -- is a low bar. It captures a small sliver of the picture.

Often, managers don't adequately observe performance or have enough expertise to tell employees how work should actually be done. Great managers take their coaching to the next level by observing, listening and proactively anticipating topics that will be useful to employees in the future.

They paint a vision for the future -- a portrait of success -- and establish ongoing dialogue with employees that helps them comfortably discuss issues they encounter along the way.

Like a good coach, great managers are always thinking about the next play, the next game and the next win. They keep conversations focused on the future.

Great Coaching Conversations Are a Busy, Two-Way Street
Employees often feel like feedback "happens" to them. While well-intended, it's an event that tends to feel critical and condemning. And worse, research shows that it only improves performance about one-third of the time, while actually making it worse one-third of the time.

Great coaching conversations are a two-way street. Employees should feel encouraged to share their perspective, ask questions and bring issues to their manager. And it should be a busy two-way street. Frequent, meaningful conversations are key to fostering collaboration and engaged performance.

Great coaches inspire you to achieve more than you thought you could. They do exponentially more than just tell you what to do. They teach you to own your performance, do what's best for the organization and be a great partner.

By opening the door to great conversations, difficult conversations become easier, too. Important issues are no longer a surprise -- you can see them coming and hopefully do something about them before they become a problem.

Imagine trying to have a really tough conversation before that busy, two-way street has been established. Addressing sensitive topics like diversity and inclusion, pay, promotion, or under-performance are all going to feel scary if you haven't already built up some understanding and trust with your teammate.

Learn From the Best Manager You've Ever Had (or Wish You Had)
Great managers inspire independence and ownership in pursuit of high performance. That only comes through frequent, open-ended conversations where people feel like their honest opinions will be valued and respected.

Managers today may not be the experts in every situation, but they can shape conversations and deliver support in a way that leads to continual improvement.

Leaders can take the initiative here. They can change the expectations for how collaboration happens and how work gets done in their organizations. They can set up learning and development programs that teach these coaching skills to their managers.

And leaders can model these behaviors themselves:

• Learn more about your employees.
• Ask questions.
• Listen.
• Encourage them to bring their best ideas.
• Help them play to their strengths while addressing their weaknesses
• Do this consistently and you'll become the great partner they want to talk to.

Check out a related post: Is Your Feedback Invisible to Your Direct Reports?

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.