How To Prioritize When Everything Feels Important

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prioritization is the art of sacrifice. How to prioritize is not easy, especially when you must choose between two good alternatives.

Leadership is the art of making decisions. Saying “yes” is easy and comfortable, but what we say “no” to defines our success. Great leaders know when to make sacrifices in order to stay focused.

Imagine taking over a tech company that’s hemorrhaging money because sales are down. Will you choose to launch more products or cut the innovation pipeline by 70%?

That’s the dilemma Steve Jobs was faced with when he returned to Apple in 1997. The company’s sales plummeted by 30% during the final quarter of 1996––Apple was on the brink of failure.

Steve Jobs would eventually turn the company he founded around, but only after he had made some tough choices first. Jobs reduced the number of Apple products by 70%. Among the casualties was the Newton — a favorite of former CEO John Sculley.

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” Jobs famously said. “It’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”

Jobs understood that prioritization is all about making tough calls, especially when it requires favoring one good thing over another good thing.

The Dangers of Not Prioritizing

"I'm too busy" has become a socially acceptable excuse for any request – from declining meeting invitations to refusing to take on more work. Being busy is a badge of honor that makes us look and feel important. However, chronic busyness maybe a sign that we're bad at prioritizing.

Prioritization is not just essential for productivity. It also ensures that the right things get done at the right time. The prioritization process lets you and your team make informed decisions about what to focus on and when.

When we prioritize our work, we don't just focus on what matters the most – we also regain control of our lives.

The benefits of effective prioritization are easy to observe. However, failing to do so can be detrimental. Not establishing clears priorities can be dangerous for you and your team.

Here's why:

Everything feels important

If you and your team don't prioritize effectively, someone else – a manager or customer – will do it for you. When you don't have clear priorities, you end up saying "yes" to everybody. Saying “yes” to everybody is not a superpower—it’s a recipe for exhaustion and for making everyone a little confused about what matters. 

Pleasing others does more damage than good. That something is a priority for a third party doesn't mean it should also become a priority for your team. Just because someone tells you their project is urgent doesn’t mean your team should drop everything and start building a spaceship.

When you let others define your priorities, everything feels important.
Your team is stretching too thin

Teams face a constant burden. They have too many problems to solve and not enough time or resources to deal with everything on their plate. It's important to know what amount of work you can take on or everyone in your team will end up stressed out.

You sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term wins

Trading long-term gains for instant gratification might feel good, but remember: eating the whole box of donuts is thrilling for about three minutes. Don’t let short deadlines or loud voices lure you away from what really matters. Prioritization is an investment, so consider which projects will generate a superior long-term return.

Stop pursuing problems that don't have the most significant value for your team.  

The wrong task will suck your energy 

Ever spent hours on a task and realized afterwards you just climbed the wrong mountain? It’s like realizing you’ve been binge-watching a show for a week and the plot still doesn’t make sense.

A toxic customer, a project going nowhere, or irrelevant tasks steal more than you and your team's time – they suck your energy. Research shows that a gap in priorities between an ideal and real life increases the risk of burnout. Eliminate problematic projects to protect your team's energy and drive.

Saying "no" to toxic tasks will pay huge dividends to you and your team.

You'll never solve the right problem

Prioritization means choosing not only what problems to solve but also which not to solve. If your team says "yes" to every problem, they're saying "no" to the right ones. You can't focus on what really matters when you're too busy.

Remove distractions so your team can focus on the right problem – encourage colleagues to say "no" more often.

“If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.” – Jack Ma, Co-Founder, Alibaba Group

Most organizations aren't great at prioritizing – they try to catch all the rabbits. Unless you’re a magician (or just really fast), chasing all the rabbits at once is just cardio.

Most leaders aren't good at prioritizing, either. They make choices in the dark, failing to understand how conflicting priorities affect their teams' capacities. That's why most organizations suffer from "everything is important" syndrome – they fail to separate what's essential from what's not.

Building a culture of effective prioritizing doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and effort. Most importantly, it requires structural changes and a huge mindset shift. 

5 Ways to Become Better at Prioritizing

# 1 Work smarter, not harder

If working harder was the solution, we’d all be millionaires with six-pack abs. Instead, try working smarter—the kind of smart where you avoid replying to emails at 2:00 AM and stop overusing sticky notes as your memory bank.

The always-on culture is harming you and your team. There are many reasons why it has to go. Hard work often disguises team inefficiencies. People have to work more and more hours to compensate for ineffective prioritization.

Often team members overwork themselves for the wrong reasons. Either they want to achieve too many things or are trying to meet others' expectations. Take virtual presenteeism as an example: the average worker spends an additional 67 minutes online daily to be perceived as a hard worker.

Shifting our relationship with the idea of incompleteness is liberating. Realizing that we're never done working releases a lot of pressure and unnecessary anxiety.  

Working smarter, not harder, is about prioritizing quality over quantity – or outcome over effort. With my consulting clients, I see a lot of people that just care about velocity but never pause to reflect on their priorities. Moving fast in the wrong direction will get you nowhere.

Why not work smarter instead of harder?

Working smarter is about being more intentional about how you work. It seems obvious, yet it requires reframing our relationship with productivity – to shift our focus from input to outcome. From focusing on high-impact tasks and cutting down your to-do list to concentrating on deep work and tackling tasks in chunks (rather than one by one).

Start by rejecting the notion that everything is urgent, critical, and important.

# 2 Separate essential work from non-essential 

Not all tasks are created equal. Some are like that one sock that always disappears in the laundry—no one really misses it. Focus on what truly matters, and let the rest vanish like socks in the dryer. When everything is a priority, it's harder to separate what matters from what doesn't.

Marcus Aurelius said, "If you seek tranquility, do less." The Roman emperor and philosopher didn't promote laziness. On the contrary, he advocated for focusing on what's essential. Aurelius called it the double satisfaction: "to do less, better."

In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown advocated a similar approach: get only the right things done. Rather than the typical productivity approach (get more done in less time), McKeown challenges the assumption that "we can have it all" or that "we have to do everything." He invites us to focus on "the right thing, in the right way, in the right time."

Effective prioritizing is the realization that not all hours and not all work is created equal. Effective prioritizing is the realization that not all hours and not all work is created equal. It liberates your and your team from a busyness mindset (reactive) so they can regain control (proactive) of how they work.

Essentialism is the relentless pursuit of less but better. It's not about getting more things done, but getting the right things done. It is about making the wisest possible investment of everyone's time and energy so teams can operate at their highest point of contribution.

Effective prioritization is a zero-sum game. If a new task becomes a priority for your team, something else must become less important. You can't prioritize without deprioritizing.

One company helps their employee deprioritize by asking second-order questions – to inquire about the importance of the task, not just what's needed:

• How important is this?

• When is it due?

• What would you like me to deprioritize?

# 3 Prioritize how you prioritize using 'even over' statements

Effective prioritization requires establishing what's the criteria before conflicts arise. Often companies wait until it's too late. They discuss what's most important once they're dealing with conflicting priorities.

Crafting 'even over' statements will help you define those criteria ahead of the game. It will make it easier for your team to determine what to say "yes" to.

For example, Amazon prioritizes:

•     Long-term value creation even over short-term results
•     Speed even over perfection
•     High performance even over harmony
  

Even over statements help you define the trade-off your team is willing to make when choosing between two good things. You can't be both "customer-centric" and "people-first." Both are important and good things. However, when push comes to shove, which will really come first?

Even over statements anticipate potential conflicts, clarifying which way to go. They force the team to choose one good thing even over a not When Netflix prioritizes "performance even over effort," it doesn't mean that the streaming giant doesn't care about the employees giving all they've got. It means that Netflix cares more about the end result than the effort itself.

When it comes to choosing between two good things, what's your real priority?

# 4 Evaluate priorities considering both the impact and effort required. 

Before you commit, ask: Will this task change the world, or is it just another spreadsheet? If it takes hours and no one notices, maybe it belongs in the “nice to have” pile—right next to your collection of unused gym memberships.

Use the powerful Eisenhower Matrix to determine the effort and impact of each task or project. Get rid of Not urgent/Not important activities. Urgent/Important things need immediate action. However, the Important/Not urgent are usually the ones that will help you achieve your long-term goals – this quadrant is the "sweet spot, according to author Steven Covey. To put the matrix into practice start time blocking your important/not urgent activities.

Time blocking is a time management method that asks you to divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to accomplishing a specific activity and only those specific activities. Instead of keeping an open-ended to-do list of things you’ll get to as you’re able, you’ll start each day with a concrete schedule that lays out what you’ll work on and when.

The key to this method is prioritizing your task list in advance — a dedicated weekly review is a must. Take stock of what’s coming up for the week ahead and make a rough sketch of your time blocks for each day. At the end of every workday, review any tasks you didn’t finish — as well as any new tasks that have come in — and adjust your time blocks for the rest of the week accordingly.

 "A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure."   — Cal Newport, Author of Deep Work

# 5 Make it a daily practice of asking yourself and your team the 'strategic question.'

The strategic question: If You’re Saying Yes to this, What Must You Say No To? is more complex that it sounds, which accounts for its potential. To begin with, you’re asking people to be clear and committed to their Yes. Too often, we kinda sorta half-heartedly agree to something, or more likely, there’s a complete misunderstanding in the room as to what’s been agreed to. So, to ask, “Let’s be clear: What exactly are you saying Yes to?” brings the commitment out of the shadows. If you ask, “What could being fully committed to this idea look like?” it bring things into sharper, bolder focus.

But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.  If you say yes to this meeting, you’re saying No to something else that’s happening at the same time at the meeting. Understanding this kind of No helps you understand the implication of the decision. 

So, when someone asks you to do something, try to pause and yourself: If I say “yes” to this, what will I be saying ‘no’ to doing? Once you answer that question, you're in a better position to evaluate whether you should say “yes” or “no” or “yes, but with these conditions. 

Your team and company culture is defined, but what you say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to. Prioritization requires making sacrifices, especially when you have to choose between two good things.

Prioritizing work is worth the effort. You can increase productivity and impact while you lower unnecessary stress. Make time for effective prioritization.

Check out a related post: The Problem With An Always Urgent Work Culture

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 leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees or a SMART Development consultant 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, energy storage and facilities management, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.

 

 

What Are Your Core Sales Values?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How are your core sales values reflected in how you sell?

As head coach of the Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr has built a team that has achieved great success, including winning four NBA championships.

Kerr has built his teams on four core values: mindfulness, compassion, competition and joy.

The Warriors are known for playing a brand of basketball that is remarkable for its teamwork, selflessness, ruthless efficiency and flat out exuberance.

Kerr and his players believe that their team's success, and compulsively watchable style of play, is largely a factor of the degree to which they all have embraced and bought into the culture defined by Kerr's four core values.

Have you thought about how you could incorporate these values into your sales culture to improve your results?

It would be quite a change from the traditional sales rep focused, "what have you done for me lately" sales cultures favored by many sales managers.

Let’s take a quick look at how Kerr’s four values apply to sales.

Mindfulness. It’s about being present for the customer.
It’s about eliminating distractions and being completely focused on the customer. 

It’s about being mindful of your obligations to continuously learn in order to increase the value you can deliver to your buyers.

Competition. Sales is all about competition.
You have to love battling tooth and nail with competitors (and inertia) for the right to serve your customers. 

Sales is also a competition against yourself. Every day you have to compete against your fears that cause you to shrink from doing the hard, but necessary, things like picking up the phone and calling a prospect.

Compassion. Compassion starts with empathy for your customers.
This is the ability to put yourself in their shoes and examine their questions, problems and goals from their point of view. 

It also requires that you have empathy for your colleagues. What are they struggling with and how could they use your help? How can you help them meet their goals?

Joy. Joy is fun.
Actually it’s one step above fun. Joy is what you experience when you are in total command of yourself, your knowledge, your products and your customers. 

Joy is the pleasure that comes from the confidence, competence and purpose you display in how you help your buyers.

It’s up to sales managers to cultivate these values in their team. 

It starts with modeling these behaviors with your salespeople.  Are you completely mindful and distraction free when you meet with a sales rep? 

Have you invested the time to really learn about the individuals on your team and their goals, motivations and aspirations? 

Do you give your people the freedom to express themselves, to let them decide how to utilize their skills to best serve your customers?

As Steve Kerr said, "A lot of teams have talent, and obviously we have great talent. But when that talent is committed to the greater good and to each other and they actually genuinely care about each other and enjoy each other, that takes you over the top."

Good selling,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can help you create a high performance culture and drive results? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business imperatives. 

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, title companies, wealth management firms, design and build companies, third-party maintenance companies, 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 Geese Can Tell Us About Leadership and Teamwork

 

I feel fortunate to live in the Pacific Northwest. It's an outdoor person's paradise. One of the many delights of the Fall season is hearing the beautiful call of the Canadian geese which alerts you to look up in the sky. The first image of the skein (or flock) of geese reminds me of a floating black ribbon or the tail of a kite. 

The Autumnal airspace is alive with ribbons of geese gracefully swooping and looping sometimes bearing left and sometimes right. These maneuvers seem to give the stray birds time to catch up to the throng. 

When you watch the flock closely you realize that the geese are all leaders and followers each taking a turn. Alternately leading and following creates a perfect rhythm which enables them to get to their faraway winter destination. 

I believe there are several lessons in shared leadership and teamwork that we can learn from the goose. Geese are intriguing creatures and while considered pests in certain situations, they also have an incredibly strong sense of family and group loyalty. Probably one of the most phenomenal geese facts is that their desire to return to their birth place every year is so strong that they will often fly up to 3,000 miles to get there. 

Lesson #1: Empowering Others to Lead

When the lead goose in the front gets tired, it rotates back into the formation and allows another goose to take the leadership position. 
  
The lesson here is to empower others to also lead. It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. 

As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities, and unique arrangement of gifts, talents, or resources.

Lesson #2: Staying Committed to Core Values and Purpose

The geese migration routes never vary. They use the same route year after year. Even when the flock members change, the young learn the route from their parents. In the spring they will go back to the spot where they were born. 
  
The lesson to learn here is to stay true to our core values and purpose. 
  
Strategies, tactics may change in order remain agile, but great organizations always stick to their core purpose and values, and preserve them with vigor

Lesson #3: Offering Support in Challenging Times

When a goose gets sick or wounded, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. 

They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock. 

The lesson here is to stand by each other in difficult times. It’s easy to always be part of winning teams, but when things get difficult and people are facing challenges, that’s when your teammates need you the most. 

Lesson #4 Encouraging and Recognizing Other’s Contribution

The geese honk to recognize each other and encourage those up front to keep up their speed. The lesson here is to make sure we praise people and give them the recognition they deserve. 
  
Lack of recognition is one of the main reasons employees are unsatisfied at work and quit. 
  
We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. 

In groups where there is encouragement, the production is greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one's heart or core values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek. 

Lesson #5 Sharing a Common Goal

As each goose flaps its wings it creates “uplift”, an aerodynamics orientation that reduces air friction, for the birds that follow. By flying in a V-formation, the whole flock achieves a 70% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone. 



The lesson we can learn here is that people who share a common direction and goal can get where they are going quicker and with less effort because they benefit from the momentum of the group moving around them. 
  
Make sure your team is aligned towards a common goal. 

Lesson #6 Having Humility to Seek Help

When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the friction of flying alone. 
  
It then quickly adjusts its mistake and moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it. 

The lesson we can learn here is to be humble to admit the challenges we face and to seek help as soon as we get stuck. 
  
This humility will enable you, your team, to move faster and achieve more. 

 

A Story About Geese 

A flock of wild geese had settled to rest on a pond. 
  
One of the flock had been captured by a gardener, who had clipped its wings before releasing it. 

When the geese started to resume their flight, this one tried frantically, but vainly, to lift itself into the air. The others, observing his struggles, flew about in obvious efforts to encourage him; but it was no use. 

Thereupon, the entire flock settled back on the pond and waited, even though the urge to go on was strong within them. For several days they waited until the damaged feathers had grown sufficiently to permit the goose to fly. 

Meanwhile, the unethical gardener, having been converted by the ethical geese, gladly watched them as they finally rose together and all resumed their long flight. 

--Albert Schweitzer 

 

To your greater success and happiness,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can help you create a high performance culture and drive results? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business imperatives. 

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, title companies, wealth management firms, design and build companies, third-party maintenance companies, 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.

Six Essential Skills that Leaders Must Master

 

 

 

 

 

These six leadership skills matter in every industry. Every culture. And, at every level. They are foundational leadership tools for all the other ones.

It's impossible to learn every leadership skill you might need in any situation. But if you master these foundational leadership competencies, you’ll be off to an impressive start for whatever challenges come your way. Employ the 1% Better Rule (AKA kaizen) when working to master these leadership touchstones.

#1 Show Up with Confidence and Humility

"You can't always control what you show up to, but you CAN control how YOU show up." --Bill Thompson

To be a good leader at any level requires the delicate balance of showing up with both confidence and humility in every situation.

Jim Collins, author of the classic business book "Good to Great," calls this “land in the AND.“

Confident, successful leaders have a powerful vision of what’s possible. They own their strengths and leverage them well. They’re also able to stand up for what matters and speak the truth.

Leaders with humility have an accurate self-image. They’re willing to be vulnerable. They invite people to challenge them. And, admit their mistakes.

Why it matters:
When you can show up with both confidence and humility, you build deeper trust and connection. Your team sees you as an influential leader worth following. People want to follow a confident leader who helps them stretch to accomplish more than they ever thought possible. But, they also want to work for a human being who has the humility to know they don’t have all the answers and are open to suggestions and learning more.

#2 Focus on Results and Relationships

"Manage things. Lead people." --Stephen Covey

Most of us have a natural bent toward results or relationships (See the DiSC Workstyle assessment). But, great leaders know how to “land in the and” in this arena too.

Results-focused leaders set clear expectations. Have a solid plan to accomplish those expectations and hold people accountable for achieving them.

Relationship-focused leaders connect at a deep human level. Invest in developing their people, build on their strengths and recognize contributions, and foster collaboration up, down, and sideways. 

Why it matters:
Focusing on results alone may improve outcomes for a time while, but also burn out employees, increase apathy, and kill morale. I've seen too many managers end up isolated, frustrated, and working harder just to keep results from getting worse because they’re caught in this vicious circle. With just a little more focus on relationships, though, you can inspire people to commit more deeply to their goals.

You might also know managers who focus exclusively on relationships, showing up with a positive attitude, creating caring and supportive environments but with little to no accountability for results. The A-players inevitably flee because the best talent want to work on a winning team, and if you don’t care enough to build one, they’ll find one somewhere else.

#3 Mind the M.I.T. (Most Important Thing)

"Things that matter most should never be at the mercy of things that matter least." --Wolfgang Goethe

I've never met a manager who said, “you know, I just have too much time on my hands.” I call this dilemma, “infinite need, finite me.” The answer to the dilemma is to “Mind the MIT.”

Time management is a real challenge, even for the most successful leaders.

Great leaders who “Mind the MIT” focus their team on what matters most and paint a successful picture of what success looks like. And, equally importantly, translate this vision into tactical behaviors.

Why it matters:
When you can align your entire team around the most important strategic priorities with a shared vision of success, you lay the foundation for breakthrough results. And, by focusing on what’s most important you reduce that stressful feeling of overwhelm.

Check out a related post: The Problem With An Always Urgent Work Culture (9 min read)

#4 Communicate Consistently (5 x 5 Communication)

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”  

― George Bernard Shaw

When it comes to communication, great leaders work like the drummer of a band. You would never see a drummer kick off the cadence, set down the sticks, then sit back and watch the team play. They’re constantly keeping the beat for the team.

Good communication means consistently communicating what matters most and why. A cornerstone of sending effective messages is 5 x 5 communication. Anything that is truly important should be communicated five times, five different ways.

Why it matters:
People have a lot going on, and it’s easy to get distracted. When you prioritize communication about what matters most, you cut through the noise and help your team accomplish their MIT.

#5 Check for Understanding

"Message sent doesn't always equal message received. (But we usually assume it does.)"

-- P. McLees

Of course, setting clear expectations about what matters most and communicating what’s important five times, five different ways is not enough. You need to check to ensure your team gets it.

A  check for understanding is a simple check to see if your team is picking up what you’re putting down.

You want to check for understanding in two areas: actions and emotions.

Check for Understanding #1: Actions

The action-focused check for understanding ensures a mutually shared understanding of the activity. It looks like this:

 “Let’s do a quick check for understanding—what’s the first thing we’re going to do as we leave this meeting?”

The idea is to have your team tell you what they think they’ve heard so everyone is confident that they understand what happens next.

Check for Understanding #2: Emotions

The emotion-focused check for understanding gives your team a chance to process what’s happening and surface any issues that might arise. It looks like this:

 Leader: “Great meeting. I’m super excited about this strategy. Before we end, I’d like to ask, ‘How are you feeling?’”

Team member 1: “Well, I’m excited about it too, but I’m also worried about how we will do this considering our other priorities.”

Team member 2: “I’m feeling overwhelmed. These are wonderful ideas and I really want to do them, but I don’t know where to begin.”

Why it matters:

If people have concerns like this, it’s better to know before they leave the meeting so you can help your team move through them, adjust expectations, or remove roadblocks.

#6 Schedule the Finish

"It's not what you start in life, it's what you finish." --Katherine Hepburn

Life is crazy and your team has more to do than time to do it. Their interruptions will get interrupted. If you don’t have an intentional, focused way to finish what you start, it won’t happen.

Successful leaders don’t leave the finish to chance or a heroic act of willpower.

That’s where “scheduling the finish” comes in. Scheduling the finish means you and your team don’t leave the completion of critical items to chance, good intentions, or willpower.

Why it matters:
Good intentions and talented people aren’t enough to make sure the most important priorities happen. Especially when your people have a thousand things hitting their windshield plus the challenges of home and social concerns.

These essential leadership competencies work across any leadership situation you may encounter. For example, if you have a difficult conversation with an employee coming up? Ask yourself: How do I show up with both confidence and humility? 

Confidence: Own your strengths that you can handle this conversation with poise. Stand up for what matters and speaking the truth. AND Humility: Invite dialogue. Ask questions to understand their point of view. And really listen.

How can I reinforce the MIT? Communicate clearly (and follow-up in a different way) and Check for Understanding to ensure we’re all on the same page.

 

And of course, Schedule the Finish with a time to revisit the conversation again.

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 leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? 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, wealth management services, third-party maintenance providers, real estate services, 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.

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.

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.

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 leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? 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, wealth management services, third-party maintenance providers, real estate services, 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.

Curiosity: An Essential Attitude of Leaders During Rapid Change

 

 

If you’re a leader, a business owner, an investor, a manager, a salesperson, or a problem-solver, one of the greatest assets you can have for thriving during rapid change is your thirst for answers—your curiosity.

The Curious Thing About Curiosity

All of us have untold potential. Yet it’s easy to fall into behaviors that prevent us from reaching what we are capable of. These behaviors are almost always the result of self-limiting beliefs. There are millions of them:

I can’t lose control because the world will spin apart.
I can’t love because I’ll be hurt.
I can’t speak up because I’ll be put down.
I can’t challenge the status quo because I’ll be punished.
I can’t try because I’ll fail.

Although none of these things may be true, many people act as though they are. And limit themselves as a result.

Each of these beliefs is personal. It’s easy to see how they might affect a person's behavior, happiness, or chances for success. But underlying them all is another limiting belief—one that is more insidious and in many ways harder to deal with than any of the others. It is the belief that the way things ‘are’ is permanent.

“It is what it is” may be true.
“It will always be what it is” couldn’t be further from the truth.

Nothing is permanent. Your body and your mind change from moment to moment. Eventually, those changes (we call them aging) become so profound that you wear out: you cease to exist.

Even though we see the impermanence of life almost daily, we often cling to the belief that certain other things are permanent. Knowledge, for example, is permanent, isn't it?

Not at all. The history of science is the story of human beings converting what we know into what we thought we knew. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy thought the earth was the center of the universe with the sun and stars revolving around it. Today we know that our earth is a small planet on the outer edge of a remote galaxy billions of lightyears from the center of the universe.

And some time in the future even this sophisticated concept of the way things are will prove to be faulty. It will become as obsolete as Ptolemy’s.

Many people find the idea of impermanence unsettling. But there’s another way to look at it. Impermanence can actually be empowering.

If we can accept that everything is changing, and that even what we ‘know’ is not stable, we can actually exercise enormous influence over our lives. Far from making us helpless, this belief actually gives us leverage.

If Nothing Is Permanent, Curiosity Becomes A Source Of Power

Think of it this way: If what you ‘know’ to be true has become no longer true, and you act as though it still is true, you are probably limiting your options.

Here’s a story that illustrates this point: In traditional South Asian societies, elephants were trained as beasts of burden. If you owned an elephant, you were wealthy. But you had to invest in your asset. Not only did you have to feed and care for it, you also had to make sure it didn’t wander off, get into your neighbor’s garden, or accidentally knock over the outhouse.

How do you keep an elephant in place? If you don’t have easy access to metals and forges with which to make chains, it’s not easy. Elephants are strong.

But Indian mahouts discovered a simple and reliable method. Soon after a calf was born, it was tethered by a heavy rope to a tree or stake pounded into the ground. The rope was tied around the animal’s leg with a slip knot. If the calf pulled, the rope tightened painfully. Over time, even the slightest pressure from the rope would warn the baby elephant to back off.

Adult elephants are kept in place with a much lighter rope. They can easily break it. But they don’t. Because they assume things haven’t changed and the rope will still cause them pain. As smart as they are, the elephants aren’t curious enough to question whether what they once knew to be true still is.

Most of us have elephant’s tethers of our own. We repeat the same behaviors over and over, simply because “that’s the way things are”.

One simple way out of this mess is to be curious. Pull at the rope. See what happens. You never know, you might find there’s a whole world out there waiting for you to explore.

Curiosity To The Rescue

Curiosity—combined with courage—is the root of every major advance human beings have ever made. So how can leaders, managers, salespeople, and problem-solvers use curiosity to their advantage?

By harnessing the power of questions. From simple, informational questions to complex, probing ones, questions are the key. There’s nothing new in this. Socrates discovered the power of questions 2,500 years ago, and the world’s most successful leaders, thinkers, humanitarians, inventors, investors, and artists have been using it ever since.

The most basic questions are informational: who, what, where, when, how long, how much, and so on. When you meet a new person, you can use these basic questions to open up areas for mutual discovery. You can find commonalities and connections, you can give yourself the chance learn another person's perspectives.

The next level is the complex, often difficult question that relentlessly probes for causes, reasons, and speculations. This is where you begin to discover what’s working for other people—and what isn’t. What they hope for and what they fear. These questions open worlds of problems and opportunities and challenges and solutions.

Finally, there are the questions that have no answer. These are the ones that create the new—that move us both individually and as a species to the next level.

Questions—the basic tool of curiosity—activate a very different part of the brain than mere statements. Questions literally energize the brain.

A Simple Experiment

See for yourself. Here’s a quick thought experiment. Look at the following sentence and notice what happens in your mind when you read it:

New technologies will change the way we live.

Now look at the next sentence. Notice what goes on in your mind as you read it:

How might new technologies change the way we live?

If you’re like most people, you didn’t react much to the first sentence—the statement. It probably just sat there.

But the second sentence—the question—activated your mind. You may have imagined possible futures, or thought about how technology has already changed the way you live or do business. In other words, something happened when your curiosity was triggered. It’s almost as though you can’t help yourself. Once you encounter a question, your mind jumps to try to answer it.

Curiosity Generates Energy!

Curiosity is the way we build both knowledge about the world and connection with the people around us. It’s also how we discover the new.

Mutual curiosity is a kind of two-way street that carries the traffic of human thought, feeling, commerce, connection, and possibility. 

Be humble, stay hungry.

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement? 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, wealth management services, third-party maintenance providers, real estate services, 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.