Developing Your Future Leaders Part 6... More Traits that describe Leadership

More Traits that describe Leadership

Today we have part 2 of 3 for the list of traits that describe Leadership qualities. We will look to find these in our team members, and then know which team members have these Leadership qualities within them.  Then it’s our job to help them recognize and develop these qualities.  We help them find, develop, and play to their strengths for their good, and the good of the team and company.  So, let’s get at it.

Emotional intelligence:  defined as awareness, control, and expression of ones emotions, the ability to monitor ones own emotions.  This was not on John C. Maxwell’s list, and I think it’s important enough to add it.  These people are relatively easy to find.  And… this quality cannot be taught.  It only comes through personal work, so when you find someone with emotional intelligence, take the time to see what other Leadership qualities they have.  The people you are looking for will not hesitate to volunteer how they are feeling when communicating with others.  They are able to recognize their emotional state, and therefore are not controlled by their emotions.  People who experience emotional outbursts are not generally emotionally intelligent.  Emotionally intelligent people do get upset on occasion, and they will immediately know why.

These people will be aware of their strengths and weaknesses.  They are the ones who get along with just about everyone.  They will be empathetic, and so will be able to recognize the emotional state of others.  Money will not be the main motivating factor for these people, and they will generally be very self-aware.

Focus:  defined as concentrating on one thing, pay particular attention to.  At work, we are looking for people who stay on task.  They find ways to avoid interruptions and distractions.  They do not get involved with gossip, side conversations, or phone checking.  These are the people who are always done on time, or early, and who have time to help others.

These people plan ahead.  They keep their work area clean and organized.  They may take many short breaks, which can help our brains stay on topic.  People who are focused know that multi-tasking is not really possible… we cannot concentrate on two things at once.  So… they will work on one thing with all of their attention and energy, and then when needed, they will move all of their attention and energy to the next thing.  You may see them using notes, or checklists to keep themselves on task.

Generosity:  defined as the quality of being kind and giving, willingness to give.  At work, people who are generous will often put your agenda before their own, helping you look good instead of looking for credit for themselves.  They will be the ones who share credit with their coworkers, and also share information with them.  The people you are looking for will ask if you have time to talk, instead of demanding your attention when it suits them.  They will train and mentor other workers, even when they are not asked to do so. 

Generous people will show gratitude when given something, including credit.  They will be literally generous when someone at work is collecting for charity, or someone in need.  They will be the ones who give of their time by offering to come in early or stay late when the need arises.  They will work cooperatively with other towards a common goal.  Generosity is a very difficult quality to teach, so if you find this in a team member with other Leadership qualities, help them find their way.

Initiative:  defined as the ability to follow through on a plan, the ability to assess and initiate things independently.  The people you are looking for here will be the ones who go the extra mile to get the job done.  They will volunteer for extra work, or the new task.  They also jump right to work when they get there, rather than talking to all of their coworkers before getting to work.   These people will make sure you are caught up with where they are in their project, and they will make suggestions to save money or energy.

At my work, I watch for team members who pick up trash when they see it, straighten out or fix other people’s work, hustle even though no one seems to be watching, ask if they can change or add to a routine to improve it, and keep me in the loop.  Listen for the people who ask “what if…”.  They are persistent, they intelligently as why they have to do something, and they praise others without expecting anything in return.

Collaboration:  defined as working with someone or a group to achieve something, working together in a joint effort.   People who collaborate will ask for clear expectations.  They will share credit and ideas with other team members.  They will receive from peers, and give feedback appropriately.  They state their opinions tactfully, without attacking the other people involved.  They will be careful to define problems without placing blame.  These are the people who will support group decisions, even when they are not in total agreement. 

In meetings, you might see them checking for agreement, and attempting to gain commitment from other group members.  They will check for understanding, and be sure everyone is on board as they move forward.  They will invite contributions from each and every member of the group, and do it without judgment.  You will see them happy when others get the win, and glad to be part of the group.  I find that in order to be good collaborators, people must have many of the qualities of Leadership within them, just waiting to be developed.  Being good at this takes many qualities and skills, so when you find someone who is a very good collaborator, start working with them as soon as you can.

Positive attitude:  defined as approaching life with optimism and confidence, believing that our attitude can affect the outcome.  These people are not very difficult to spot.  They see the glass as half full, they show gratitude, and they are appreciative.  They will often be very hard workers, and usually see the best in people.  They don’t often criticize others, they don’t usually get involved in gossip, and they don’t tend to complain.

The people you are looking for will accept what is, without complaint.  They will be happy to be on the team, win lose or draw.  They will often compliment others, even strangers.  They are happy for the success of those around them, and they are usually good at building relationships.  You can probably think of many more ways to spot someone who has a positive attitude.  This is one quality that is very hard, if not impossible to train… it has to come from within.  Someone who wants a positive attitude will have some personal work to do in order to achieve that goal.  This is also a very difficult, if not impossible quality for us, as Leaders, to teach.  Make an effort to find and develop other Leadership qualities in these people.

Well these posts are getting way too long.  I was going to post a 2600 word post, and I thought better of it.  This is the first half… last part tomorrow.

Oh… and if you like my blog, please ‘like’ my Facebook page.  The button is just up there at the top right.  I dare you to click it!  

Building Our Leadership Team Part 4… How to Identify Leadership Qualities, and Choose Your New Apprentice

So… I was starting this post when I got sidetracked by our talk about difficult conversations, setting intentions, and why fire fast… sorry.  I’m usually working on several posts at once, and as you know I keep getting myself off on a tangent.

Let’s get back to it.  We were talking about not throwing our new supervisor to the wolves, working with them, and teaching them how to have the kinds of conversations they were going to have in order to run their shift.  Actually teaching them… having some of those conversations together, allowing the new supervisor to watch, listen, and learn from you as you have a conversation with team members about behaviors that need to change.  Then we allow them to conduct the conversation while we play moderator… we want to allow them to be able to make mistakes, and we don’t allow things to get out of hand.  You will have to make the call about how and when to step in, and remember… you must allow them to make mistakes.  It’s the only way they will really learn.  They have to see the reaction in the face of the person they are talking to.  They have to try to fix it themselves… Only jump in when you must, and even then try to guide them back on track, rather than simply taking over for them.  They will learn a whole lot more if you help them fix it, rather than fixing it yourself.

Now… let’s talk about how we chose that person to be our new supervisor in the first place.  How have you chosen the people you promoted, or gave supervisory responsibility in the past?  See… this is where you write your answer in the comments box, and we can get a discussion going.   Anyway… we’re really just doing more hiring, aren’t we?

Whether you hired them or not, I’ll bet you can see the qualities in some of your team members that would make them good supervisors, even good leaders.  I can usually see those qualities before I can even name them precisely, and I bet you can too.  These are the people on your team who take extra pride in their work, and they do the jobs that others leave undone.  They come to you with suggestions about how to save money, time, and make the workplace safer and more efficient.  They are not perfect, and they don’t make excuses… they do the best they can pretty much all of the time.  The will volunteer to do the jobs that not pleasant, or that are outside of the normal scope of their job.  They are the people we want to clone.  OK… stop right there.

Here is where we have to be very careful.  Just because someone is very good, even great at their current job, even at most any job you can imagine, does not mean they will make a good leader.  They may… and it is not necessarily so.  We have to separate the skill at tasks from the qualities of a Leader.  Remember, we talked about some of them in Building our Leadership Skills part 3… difficult conversations.  Now it’s time to look into them much more closely.

Just as we want to hire people whose default level of customer service is at least as high as our standards, we also want the people we hire or promote into supervisory or Leadership positions to innately have the qualities of a Leader.  Like the rest of us, they will have some qualities that are very well developed, and others that might need some work.  We can help them with this process, however we can only help with some of the qualities.  We can help someone develop better listening skills, communication skills, competence, focus, problem solving, relationship building, and perhaps a couple of others to some extent.  We probably wouldn’t be looking at someone who we thought lacked commitment, courage, initiative, a positive attitude, responsibility, humility, or self-discipline, and we can talk about some of these as long as we’re here.

We cannot instill character.  If there is any indication that this person lacks personal integrity we cannot move them into a leadership position.  Not only will we be hurting the team members who answer to them, and our own integrity and reputation, but also we cannot in good faith put someone into a position when we believe they lack the skills to be successful.

We have to be careful with commitment too.  There is a difference between a general lack of commitment, and a perceived lack of commitment to a specific job or task.  When I took over the grocery department at a Whole Foods Market my predecessor moved into a regional position and was responsible for our merchandising.  He was a grocery guy and loved merchandising, so it was not surprising that he felt I lacked a commitment to merchandising.  We had to work with each other for a while before I could verbalize, and he could understand, that I was much more committed to building my team than I was to merchandising.  We agreed on standards we could both be happy with, and he taught me a lot about running a grocery department and merchandising.  He stated later that I taught him more about Leadership than he could possibly have taught me about merchandising.  I felt good about how we worked together to find a win win.

We would not choose someone we thought lacked humility, and I have to advise you to look carefully at your candidate when it comes to this quality.  There are far too many arrogant people in Leadership positions, and I bet they showed some humility in earlier roles.  You will be able to tell by looking carefully at the relationships the candidate has with his or her peers.  If the candidate is the natural Leader in the group, and has the respect of pretty much every team member they work with, you can probably rest easy.  If, however, you have more than one or two team members who do not respect your candidate you need to dig as deep as needed to find out why.  There are plenty of people out there who are skilled at many tasks, and know how to look good in the eyes of the boss.  Those people will rarely have the respect of the rest of the team as a whole, as they will act differently when the boss, or the boss’s boss is around.  Team members will absolutely recognize that and will not like it.  They may not tell you outright, and they will not show admiration for the candidate.  Again, I have come to believe that humility, or the ability to hear feedback and then take some action to change our behavior because of that feedback, is the most reliable predictor of success, especially in a Leadership role.

The question to ask your team members is:  Would you be happy to have this candidate as your next supervisor?  Ask this in private, and individually.  If you have a high level of trust from the team, you will get your answer.  Anything other than a resounding yes from most of the team is a clear sign that you should not promote this person.  They have more work to do.

Servanthood and generosity are qualities that you may not see a lot of in the role where the team member currently works.  We can and should however look to see if the candidate does for others, like peers, just because they want to, or do they do for others to get recognition?  Does the candidate sing their own song or toot their own horn (so to speak), or do you hear about their good deeds in a roundabout way from others?  Generosity might be hard to judge in someone in an hourly worker role, and it is something you should put on your radar to watch for in every team member.  We are hiring the best people, so we don’t know when one of them will come into their own and start growing into our next Leader.  It’s important that we keep connected to our team members and stay on top of how they are growing, and changing, in addition to how their needs and goals might change.

So these are the standards by which we will judge any team member’s readiness for a supervisory or Leadership role.

There is a key here…  We do not wait until we need a supervisor or entry-level leader to start developing these qualities in our team members.  Developing the Leadership skills of each person on our team must be a part of their normal training.  We indoctrinate our new hires as we welcome them onto the team, and we don’t stop there.  We continue to talk with them as we train them to do the tasks of the job the way WE want them done.  We talk with them on a regular basis to encourage them and get them to ask any questions they have.  We talk with them about their mistakes, we help them find solutions, and we encourage them to keep working outside of their comfort zone.  We make sure they know that we want them to make mistakes, and we want to hear about those mistakes from them.  We watch how they are doing, and ask our apprentices, including our best team members, how our new hire is doing.  We want to know that they are efficient at the tasks of the job, and in addition we need to know that they do indeed have the qualities for which we hired them.

Just how do we develop these qualities along before we need them?  Find out in our next exciting installment.

Oh… and if you like the blog please like my facebook page.  Thank you!

Oh... and a quick link to an article on the same wavelength...

Becoming a Leader at Work

How Emotional Intelligence Affects Work Success

This is a good article on emotional intelligence.  I find that we need reminders about this quite often, and this is a good short read.

How Emotional Intelligence Affects Work Success

Building Our Leadership Skills Part 3… Leadership Qualities and The Secret to Difficult Conversations

Man, I got so far off topic last time talking about setting an intention that I had to change the title of the post!  Let’s try this again.

In our example, we are helping a new supervisor get past the initial fear of talking to a team member about a behavior that needs to change.  Sometimes it’s something small, like getting back from lunch or break on time (maybe small now, and could turn ugly if allowed to go on for too long).  Other times we need to talk to a team member about a subject that could easily bring out some defensiveness.  I’ve had to talk to someone about personal hygiene.  I mean really… you could tell when this person was standing 10 feet behind you without turning around.  I’ve talked to a team member about calling out for funerals… after his 5th grandmother died.  He knew he was caught in a lie, and still got very irate…  Sometimes we have to address performance issues with people who think they are great workers, and they don’t want to hear the truth… it can be tough to get through their armor.  Other times, it’s any issue with someone with whom we’ve allowed ourselves to become friends.  Sometimes it’s just the person… there are lot’s of people out there who simply do not want to hear any feedback at all.  To them all feedback is a personal attack, and they can fight back as if defending their very existence.

So, how then do we approach these conversations; much less have them go well?  Crap!  Here I am again.  I’m about to start talking about a much larger subject, like developing relationships with our team members, and really just started talking about how to get our new supervisor started off right.  Oh well…

The only good way to have these conversations go well is to start having them long before we need to.  What the hell does that mean?  It means this…

If we spend the time and energy developing strong relationships with our team members, these conversations are not difficult at all.  Well… the vast majority of them.

Leadership is all about developing relationships.  Without these relationships you will be unable to achieve your goals.  With the right relationships however, your team will turn into a high functioning team.  Your team members respect you, as well as show you surprising loyalty.  You will never want for Leadership.  You will supply others will Leaders.  Your job will be a secure as you want it to be.  Your team will make you look like a god among men.  Well… anyway…

So whether you are a new Leader, new to Leading this team, or want to change the culture of your existing team, you still need to follow pretty much the same path.  You will need to develop a relationship with every person on your team.  What does that look like, and how do I do that?  It’s not as hard as it sounds.  It all begins with you, and your relationship with yourself.  Damn it Steve… now you’re just talking in circles!     Calm down… we’ll get through it.

There are many traits or qualities that a Leader needs.  John C Maxwell, one of the best-known people in leadership circles these days , and an author I would highly recommend, would list them in his “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader” as:

Character.  Charisma.  Commitment.  Communication.  Competence.  Courage.  Discernment.  Focus.  Generosity.  Initiative.  Listening.  Passion.  Positive Attitude.  Problem Solving.  Relationships.  Responsibility.  Security.  Self Discipline.  Servanthood.  Teachability.  Vision.

Since they are ‘indispensable’, we need all of them.  And… we are all unique and so each of us will be stronger in some than in others.  I have also come to believe that some are more important at different times for us as Leaders.  For our purposes here, we are going to talk about teachability, or humility, servanthood, security, listening skills, character, and communication skills.

We need to develop relationships, so what exactly does that mean?  Much of this is work that we will do, or have done, when hiring.  I would advise you to go back and read my series on hiring the best hourly team members starting here.  Until then, it means many things… getting to know the team member, about their home and family life.  It means finding out what kinds of goals they have for themselves, both long and short term.  What do they do for fun?  All of these are things we would want to find out if we cared about someone.  The point being… we have to actually care about our team members.  If you really don’t care about your team members at all… I would not waste my time reading any more… it will do you no good.

Servanthood comes into play here… we want to do for others.  It’s natural, for most of us anyway, to feel good about doing something for someone else.  There are multiple books written about servant Leadership… feel free to read them.  I feel that all we need to know is: that it feels good to do for others; doing for others makes them feel good about us; if we care about others’ goals they will be much more likely to care about our goals.  That last one is a little on the selfish side, and that’s OK as long as we don’t just focus on that part.  How do you feel about doing for others… caring for what others need and want?  Do you feel good when you do something for someone else, with nothing expected in return?  I hope so…

Humility is next, for no particular reason, and is listed as teachability.  For our purposes it means we are aware that we don’t know it all.  We are open to the ideas of others.  We can learn from anyone and everyone.  We are all unique, and all see the world through different eyes.  If you are humble and are open to ideas from others you know that the team can solve so many more problems than you can.  Are you humble?  Do you listen to ideas from your team?  Everyone on your team?  Are you open to learning from anyone?  If you think you know more than pretty much everyone around you… well… the word for you is arrogant.  You need a coach or mentor to help you with this if you want to be a good Leader.

Security is important so you don’t feel threatened by those around you.  If you feel secure in yourself you can listen to others, and allow them to be as good as they can be. If you regularly, or irregularly, feel threatened by those around you… please work on getting a mentor, coach, or therapist.  You may need some help here to achieve your goals.  You will have a tough time surrounding yourself with the best people if you are not secure with who you are.

Character is what you do… do you do the right thing, even when no one is looking?  People are always looking.  Perhaps called integrity… you will not be able to gain the respect of the team if you lack integrity.  They will see that you are out for yourself, that your actions do not align with your words, and they will not follow you.  I have failed, in the past, to act with integrity, and even though I wasn’t the best Leader at the time, that failure was the only thing the team rebelled at.  You must always do the right thing.

Listening skills and communication skills go hand in hand.  You cannot be a good communicator without being a good listener.  Good listening skills are not just sitting patiently while the other person speaks, preparing your rebuttal.  Listening skills include listening to understand what the other person means, how they feel about what they are saying, and putting yourself in their shoes.  If you are listening correctly, you will be able to argue the other side of any argument.  Please go back and read my post on listening, and what not to say.  Pay attention to what you are doing the next time someone is speaking to you.  You may be surprised to find yourself thinking about what you want for dinner, or how that dry skin on you ankle is itchy again… let those thoughts go, and return your attention to the person speaking, and your interest in really understanding them.

Communication is both listening and communicating what you want to get across.  Please go back and read my post on communicating…  Yes I have a lot of posts… I’ve been busy here.  It’s your responsibility as the person (in particular as a Leader) communicating a thought, to make sure the person listening hears what you are saying in the way in which you intend.  It is your responsibility to read the body language and facial expressions of the listener to ascertain whether or not they heard it as you meant it.  If they are not hearing it as you meant it, you have the responsibility of fixing it before they leave the conversation.  When in doubt, you can even ask… ‘What did you hear me say just then’?  When checking in I’ve found that many people feel attacked in some way if there is the slightest doubt about our intentions.  Make sure!

All of this was to explain the part above about your relationship to yourself.  How do you feel about the qualities listed above?  Please be honest with yourself… I hope you have a coach or mentor, and if so please ask them to give you some honest feedback about these qualities.  If you have a trusted, honest, and disinterested peer (disinterested means that they are interested only in the truth, not how you feel about it) you may ask them too.  These qualities are all necessary, and it’s OK to be working on them as we go along.  The most important thing is that you have an honest assessment of where you are with all of them.  That way you will be able to improve on them, and be transparent with your team.  These are the basis of your relationship with your team members.

Which, I guess, we will talk about next time…

Oh… and if you like the blog please like my facebook page.  Thank you!

I also wanted to share this article with you... I like what Tanveer has to say.
Revealing the Secret to Successful Leadership

Building Our Leadership Skills Part 2… Setting an Intention

          

 So… we talked a bit last time about how to mentor your new supervisor on having difficult conversations.  There is more to mentoring a new supervisor of course, and getting someone who is new to a supervisory role past the initial fear of having, what otherwise might be, a difficult conversation is an important hurdle to get over.

We didn’t really talk about what our conversation should actually look like, did we?  There are lot’s of different ways to speak to a team member about a behavior that needs to change… too many of them are not appropriate for someone who would call themselves a Leader.   I doubt that I’m alone in saying I have been on the receiving end of a conversation about something I was doing wrong, or not doing, that sounded like an angry adult who was not in control of their emotions yelling at a child.  I have been talked down to, told to shut up, shut up and listen, what you (I) have to say is not important here, that I had no business asking any questions, and more craziness than I care to get into.  How do you think a team member on the receiving end of these kinds of comments feels about their boss, and about their job?  Do you think they are invested in the success of the business?  Do you think they respect the boss, or care whether or not the boss achieves his or her goals?  NO… the answer is no.

So, Steve you ask… just how should a conversation to get a team member to change their behavior go?  Well I’ll tell you.  Just shut up and listen!   Ha!

Here is a key… before doing anything like having a conversation that could easily go wrong; we should set an intention for ourselves.  What does that mean you ask?  Well… what is my intention in speaking with you about your behavior?  You are a team member on my team.  There is a high probability that I have 1 or 2 team members that I do not want on my team and I am working to get off the team (you may have a higher number that you want off your team, and we’ll deal with that later).  We’ll ignore them for now.   You are one of the other team members, and you are doing something that I need to ask you to stop doing.  So… in general, I am doing my best to be a Leader, right?  So I want you on my team.  I respect you as a person.  I am interested in helping you achieve your goals.  I want you to succeed.  I want you to feel like an important and valued part of the team.  All of these things are true, right!?  If you want to be a good leader, and you have been reading the books, and you want to achieve your goals, then all of these things are true OR you are convincing yourself that they are true as best you can, and acting as if they were true.

My intention for our conversation then, is simply to talk to you about whatever behavior needs to change, and have you leave the room knowing all of those statements above are true, AND knowing that you are doing something that is not acceptable and you need to stop doing it.  If I take the time to set that intention before our talk I am much more likely to be able to start the meeting in a way that allows you to hear what I mean to say.  I’m much more likely to be able to speak from my heart without any fears messing it up.  If I set that intention I am more likely to be able to keep my emotions in check if you get defensive, or feel attacked and attack me back.  I won’t feel threatened by any of that, since I have just reinforced my feelings about you and the talk we need to have.  I know that sometimes people feel attacked and get defensive, and it’s not about me.  I will be able to keep my head, and bring the conversation back to the behavior that needs to change, without any emotional interference.

Before going into a meeting you might set an intention to be supportive of your team Leader, even though you rarely see eye to eye.  You might set an intention, when talking to one of those people you want to get off the team, to have them leave the room knowing that you respect them as a person AND their attitude and/or behavior will no longer be acceptable.  It’s about their behavior, not their value as a person, and so we will be more able to keep our emotions in check.  Their defensiveness, emotional outbursts, verbal attacks, or blaming of others need not impact your emotional state.  You have set an intention of being there to deliver a message… this is the first step in moving you off this team and off to another job where you will be a better fit.  There is no reason to get involved in their drama.

Setting an intention sets the scene.  It reinforces our emotional state.  Setting an intention is a great practice, in particular before doing something we often mess up.  For instance, if you often have a tough time dealing with the kids… getting them involved with something and allowing it to turn out however it turns out, try setting an intention beforehand.  Decide that you are going to let the kids help with dinner, and it doesn’t matter what happens.  The important part for them is spending time with you having fun.  You can always piece together something that is actually edible later, or better yet plan if beforehand.  If you set the intention that the outcome doesn’t matter, you will probably have a better time playing with the kids, allowing them to be kids.  You can set an intention about anything, from dealing with that jerk down the hall, to accepting your commute and getting home in a better mood.    Try it and see for yourself.

So… I think we’ll have to take up what our conversation with that team member should actually sound like the next time, as talking about setting an intention took much longer than I thought.

Oh… and if you like the blog please like my facebook page.  Thank you!