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Ron Potter

BlogLeadership

Consensus: The Split at the Top

by Ron Potter

I just love Scrat, the saber-tooth squirrel from the Ice Age movies. He always creates some minor little crack that looks harmless, but as the crack propagates, it begins to create all kinds of havoc in his world with major consequences. Such ‘cracks’ can be destructive and debilitating in corporations.

Image Source: Lars Hammer, Creative Commons

Image Source: Lars Hammer, Creative Commons

I was working with a couple major functional divisions within one corporation, trying to do some team building. These functions needed to cooperate with each other in order for the company to be healthy and thrive, they just couldn’t seem to get along. After a few of the normal approaches to overcome differences didn’t seem to produce any progress, I began to dig deeper.

The story that began to emerge was that the people in the functions had no problem working with each other and, in fact, preferred it. The problem was that their top leaders wouldn’t allow or, more impact-fully, didn’t want the cooperation to happen.

When I sat down with the first of the two senior VP’s that were responsible for one of the functions and asked about the oppositional position he had with the other senior VP, his response was, “Oh, there’s no opposition between us. We worked that out long ago.” I thought great, an answer exists, we just need to get the message down to the functions. So I asked, “Tell me about the solution the two of you worked out.” His response? “We simply agreed to disagree!” Well, that was very gentlemanly (and lady like in this case) of him but very destructive.

The difference between them didn’t go away, but like Scrat’s minor crack, propagated deeply into the organization. As I would talk to members down in either organization, they knew that their ultimate bosses disagreed and many of them took it on as their job to make sure the other function failed in a belief that their particular boss would be vindicated or somehow pleased.

Senior leaders cannot agree to disagree. They must build consensus. (More about how to build consensus later.) They’re part of a leadership team. If members of a team agree to disagree, there is no team.

Have you experienced a peer who just didn’t agree with you but was also unwilling to even work on the issue, preferring to agree to disagree?

How has disagreement of leaders above you on the org. chart impacted how you work with your peers?

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BlogTrust Me

No Soup for You! & Rigid Leadership

by Ron Potter

One of the more popular episodes of the Seinfeld television series was the Soup Nazi. The story line centered on an aggressive man who owned a small restaurant where the locals stood outside in long lines to enjoy takeout orders of his delicious soup concoctions. However, these same customers were forced to tolerate this man’s rigid rules:
“Only one customer in the restaurant at a time.”
“Place your order immediately.”
“Do not point.”
“Do not ask questions.”
“Pay and leave immediately.”

Customers were forced to do what this man said, or they were told, “No soup for you! Come back in three months!”

Image Credit: Seinfeld, Season 7, Episode 6, Shapiro/West Productions, Castle Rock Entertainment

Image Credit: Seinfeld, Season 7, Episode 6, Shapiro/West Productions, Castle Rock Entertainment

Leaders with a Soup-Nazi style have one way of doing things—their way. Their focus is totally on themselves. They do not want (nor do they take) any suggestions. They “know” what is best for the organization and everyone in it. They “allow” people to “help,” but only under their carefully prepared set of rigid rules. They are a proud leader.

An “unhumble” leader is notoriously self-focused. Writer and scholar Henri Nouwen once said,

“It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people.”

Isn’t that the perception most people have? It is far easier (and seemingly satisfying) to be focused entirely on ourselves and not on the needs of others or the opportunities presented by others.

A proud leader seems to “know” the truth and are usually its source. They take every measure to protect their point of view; they deny any effort to clarify the thought process; they do not encourage debate; they resist building a community of advisers.

A proud leader is critical. Such leaders develop self-centered standards and then tend to criticize anyone who does not follow their rules or who shows creativity and independence.

Yet, in today’s fast changing environment we need creativity and independent thinking and ideas more than ever.

Why are so many leaders resistant to change and innovation?

  1. They only want self-initiated change. Leaders who lack humility seek to develop only their own ideas. They have no interest in others’ opinions.
  2. They fear failure. We have seen so many potential leaders paralyzed by fear of failure. They fail to reach out for new territory because they are so afraid of losing. They do not understand the positive or learning side of failure.
    Baseball stars strike out more often than they hit home runs. However, they keep swinging for the fences. The best golfers in the world hit the green in regulation (two strokes under par) only about 75 percent of the time. One-fourth of the time they miss the mark. These golfers accept their failures, however, and give it their best to get back on track.
  3. They are too comfortable. Many times present realities give us hope that we do not need to change. We sit in our current situations, do the same thing every day, and hold on for dear life to past achievements.

A leader willing to change brings about change in the organization. Embracing change fosters an attitude of success and can deliver us from the quagmire of sameness.

Have you demonstrated willingness to:
Change?
Be open and seek new, maybe novel ideas?
Help your teams understand and experience experimentation?

Check your need for control or your fear of failure. It’s a great barometer of future success.

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BlogLeadership

Perspective Changes

by Ron Potter

In my executive coaching work, both with individuals and teams, one of the most useful techniques is bringing alternate or multiple perspectives. We so easily get entrenched in our own perspective, it can be difficult to see solutions or other possibilities.

I recently experienced heart bypass surgery. During one session in the post op process, I was lying in the hospital bed with the doctor on my right, his physician’s assistant on my left with my two nurses at the foot of the bed, and my wife over my shoulder.

At one point when the pain was severe, even the nurses had to look away. I thought, “I’m not sure how much the human body and psyche could stand more pain than this.”

But my mind immediately shifted to my father, lying in a muddy field hospital, (I’ve seen some of the hospital photos.) 4,500 miles away from home with no family around, with doctors and nurses who I’m sure cared very much, but had no time to spend comforting a patient, having his leg amputated.

Image Source: Ulf Klose, Creative Commons

Image Source: Ulf Klose, Creative Commons

My conditions, while seeming extreme, were nothing compared to what my father had experienced during WWII. My change in attitude and experience at that moment were such that even the doctor noticed and later asked me about what happened.

Nothing really, just a change in perspective. Perspective is very powerful. It can even change the level of pain we’re experiencing.

The next time you’re in that extremely “painful” corporate situation, see if you can help yourself and your team gain a different perspective. It often takes a jarring experience or question. “What would this look like to a chimpanzee? How would this be viewed from a four person jazz band? How about a 100 person symphony orchestra?” None of these questions make sense or they certainly are all out of context. But that’s the point! Get out of your context. Look at this from a new perspective, not just a different point of view from the same context; “How would our competitor view this issue?” Shake it up! Gain a new perspective.

Tell us about the last time that four year old child asked you a question that shook your perspective? Share with us a story or two.

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BlogMyers-BriggsUsing MBTI to Great Advantage

Using MBTI to Great Advantage – Deciding

by Ron Potter

Using MBTI to Great Advantage is a blog series in which I’ll do an overview of each of the four Myers-Briggs (MBTI) functions and then in subsequent blogs will dig into each one in more depth with some practical applications for creating better dynamics and better decisions making. Click here to read the Series Introduction.

Deciding Overview: Thinking vs. Feeling

MBTI series header

Now that you’ve “perceived” (the first decision making function) the world around you (see previous MBTI blog), how do you then finally decide (the 2nd decision making function)?

As we work our way through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), we once again encounter two words that carry a lot of pre-conceived baggage. Most business leaders assume (incorrectly) that business decisions should be made on a purely logical, fact based, “thinking” basis. There isn’t any room for touchy-feely in business decision making.

Well, the Feeling side of this function isn’t necessarily touchy-feely and in fact some of the most hard-nosed leaders I’ve met actually fall on the Feeling side of this equation. It’s not about emotion it’s about values and the “right” thing to do. Our Thinking types can lay out an argument that is purely logical, based on facts, and structured top to bottom building a clear argument for their case. Our Feeling types may look at all those facts and logic and actually agree with the conclusion but at the same time say “Who cares? Is this the right thing to do for our employees, customers, shareholders?”

Emotional Thought. This balancing act is often referred to as “Emotional Thought.” In his book Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization, Edward Hess says”

 “Neurobiological research has shown that certain aspects of cognition, such as learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning, are ‘both profoundly affected by emotion and in fact subsumed within the processes of emotion.’” (Bolds are mine)

This one is tough. Balancing this one becomes particularly tricky but has profound impact if we achieve the right balance. Also, all of the latest brain research that has been exploding over the last ten to fifteen years points to the fact that we as human beings actually make our decisions based on the Feelings side of this equation and then justify our decision based on logic (Thinking). We’ll have a lot more to learn about this one in coming blogs.

But, once again, the three rules for being more effective at decision making are:
1. Balance
2. Balance
3. Balance

This one may be the more difficult one to personally balance. What have some of your experiences been either successful or unsuccessful?

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BlogLeadership

Listening With the Intent to Understand

by Ron Potter
Image Source: shorpy.com

Image Source: shorpy.com

The next time you’re listening to something, especially on a topic where you don’t necessarily agree, try this experiment: Use part of your brain to pay attention to what you’re thinking when listening to the other person. It’s okay. Your brain has a lot more capacity than your think. You can actually listen to another person at the same time as you act as an observer to watch what your own brain is doing. I know you can.

If you’re like most of us, you’ll find your own brain developing some sort of checklist:

  • Those two points support my side of the argument so I’ll immediately respond with those.
  • That point is not supported by fact, so I can instantly discount that.
  • That reminds me I need to pick up dog food on the way home.
  • I can’t believe they actually think that point is valid. How could they be so naive?

Then the moment happens. The other person pauses; they may not even be finished with their point of view, but just pausing a moment to collect their thoughts or even pausing a moment before presenting their obviously convincing closing statement. It makes no difference; it’s a pause.
So you jump in:

“Let me reinforce a couple of statements you made earlier because I believe they make my point exactly. And let me also clarify another conclusion you reached that is counter to all the facts we have.”

And on and on and on until you’re forced to pause and the cycle repeats.

If this scenario reflects in any way what you are experiencing while “listening” to other people, then you listen with the intent to respond. Most of us do it. Most of us do it most of the time. It takes a conscious effort and some practice to actually start listening with the intent to understand. But what a difference it will make in your life if you even get marginally good at it.

When you listen with the intent to understand, your curiosity kicks in. You’re not trying to catalog the points you’re hearing. You’re wondering:

  • I wonder why they believe that?
  • I wonder what experience they’ve had with this in the past?
  • I wonder who they trust on this and why?
  • I wonder what they believe will be the best outcome?

If you’re truly curious and wondering, then your response when that inevitable pause comes will be totally different.
Your first reaction to the pause may be to simply wait to see if there is a conclusion or further thoughts.
You may actually ask if there is a conclusion or further thought.
You may express your wonderment and curiosity and begin to ask questions or clarification or deeper understanding or more background.

Whatever you’re response. If it’s driven by curiosity and wonderment, the other person will immediately know that you’ve been listening to understand. You want to understand, you want to know their viewpoint. This sparks a very different reaction on their part.
A few key things happen from their point-of-view:

  • Once they realize you’re trying to understand their point-of-view, they become less rigid in their stance and more willing to admit it’s just their point-of-view.
  • They become more open to questioning their own point-of-view because you’re honestly questioning it in an attempt to understand and not with the intent to control or discredit it.
  • And most importantly, once you’ve fully listened to and attempted to understand their point-of-view, they’re much more willing to listen to and be open to your point-of-view.

Steven Covey, in his The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, indicates that one of the seven habits is to “seek to understand before being understood.” This is what he was talking about.

Listen with the intent to understand. Practice it. Use it often. You’ll be amazed at how much people are willing to share with you and how much they’re willing to listen to and understand your point-of-view.
Try it. It will be refreshing.

And one more solid point: In my book, Trust Me: Developing A Leadership Style People are Willing to Follow, the number one trait of great leaders is humility. The foundation of humility is the willingness to listen with the intent to understand.

What’s your reaction when someone actually listens to you and truly wants to understand?

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BlogTrust Me

Is the Hero-Leader Hurting You?

by Ron Potter

Why is humility such a key quality on a leader’s personal resume?

For starters, being humble prevents most of the mistakes that cripple a person who is proud. Consider Henry Ford, for example.

He was an icon of American industry. His revolutionary ideas about manufacturing and design put him near the top of anyone’s list of great American businessmen. Ford carried out his vision with the Model T. The car literally changed the face of America and the priorities of American citizens. By 1914, Henry Ford’s factories built nearly 50 percent of all the cars sold in the United States. Now that’s market share!

There was, however, a chink in Henry’s armor.

He was so proud of his Model T that he never wanted it to be changed or improved. One day, as the story goes, a group of his best engineers presented him with a new automobile design prototype. Ford became so angry that he pulled the doors right off the prototype and destroyed it with his bare hands.

Not until 1927 was Henry Ford willing to change. Grudgingly, he allowed the Ford Motor Company to introduce the Model A. By that time, the company was well behind its competitors in design and technical advances. Ford’s market share had plummeted to 28 percent by 1931.

Image Source: Zeetz Jones, Creative Commons

Image Source: Zeetz Jones, Creative Commons

Henry Ford just could not let go. He had created something, and he was unable to imagine that his “baby” could be improved. Nobody could help him, and he was unwilling to stretch himself to learn how he could make his product better or different.

Consequently, he lost his executives, created havoc in his family, and damaged the company’s market share beyond repair.

Henry Ford’s leadership approach probably resembled what some now refer to as the hero-leader. Many organizations look to a hero-leader to deliver the power, charisma, ideas, and direction necessary to ensure a company’s success. In many cases, the hero-leader does create blips in performance. For a time the dynamic chief is seen as a savior of the organization.

For a time.

In an interview with Fast Company magazine, Peter Senge said,

Deep change comes only through real personal growth—through learning and unlearning. This is the kind of generative work that most executives are precluded from doing by the mechanical mind-set and by the cult of the hero-leader.

Senge points out that the hero-leader approach is a pattern that makes it easier for companies to not change or move forward. The hero-leader weakens the organization and in many ways keeps it at an infant stage, very dependent upon the hero-leader’s creativity and ideas. The people around the leader do not seek or promote change because the hero-leader is not open to new ideas (or ideas that he or she did not originate).

Under the hero-leader, people tend to acquiesce rather than work together as a team with a free exchange of ideas. The hero-leader may take the company in a new direction, but the troops within the organization only go along because it is a mandated change. This type of change is superficial at best.

Despite all of Henry Ford’s incredible qualities, it sounds as if he was a proud rather than a humble leader. In his case, the Bible proverb certainly was true: “Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

Is your pride getting in the way of doing something you’ll really be proud of? Or, often easier to answer, do you see someone else who could do great things if they would just let go of their pride? Share some stories with us.

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BlogLeadership

Lessons from a Professional Organizer

by Ron Potter

My wife is a very organized person in most of her life. But like all of us, there are a few areas that just get out of control over time and you usually need help to get it back under control. She hired a personal organizer.

For the most part, I tried to simply stay out of the way, but I admit I was curious. I thought the organizer did a good job of seeing what the issue was, stepping back and looking at the overall picture; noting what was working overall and what portion of my wife’s life felt like it was under control and what portion was not, gaining the bigger picture.

Then she began to dive into the issue and started to ask the very direct, tough questions:
• How long have you had this?
• When was the last time you used it?
• What do you want it for?

After several pointed and pertinent questions, she calls for the decision:
• Trash it?
• Recycle it?
• Donate it?
• Keep it?

If she gets the “keep it” answer, she immediately recycles through some of the previous questions and then comes back to trash, recycle, donate, or keep.

Now here’s what I found interesting, she had provided bins for the three “non-keep” answers and the item would immediately go into one of those bins. At the end of the day, she put all of those bins in her vehicle and she made sure they were trashed, recycled, or donated.

Image Source: Katie Chao & Ben Muessig, Creative Commons

Image Source: Katie Chao & Ben Muessig, Creative Commons

At first I thought this was a nice service she provided, but then she began to explain why she did it. This way the decision was final. No turning back, no rethinking the decision, no second guessing.
This is exactly the issue I was getting at in an earlier blog, “Decide: we’ve got it all backwards.” In that post, we explored the word decide and learned that it didn’t mean figuring out what to do, it means figuring out what to kill.

My wife had made the decision to “kill” certain items into the trash, recycle, or donation bins. The organizer wasn’t going to let those items be an issue any longer—they were gone!

All too often in our corporate decision making, we let things linger, be second guessed, never really put them in the trash or recycle bin. Because of this lack of decisiveness uncertainty thrives. It consumes the resources you need for top priorities. If you will actually “decide” and make sure the paths you’ve decided not to follow are actually killed off, publicly executed, thrown in the trash, you and your organization will become much more productive, nimble and responsive to current needs. We waste a lot of resources because we don’t finally decide.

I remember one CEO saying to me “I’ve tried to kill that initiative three times and it keeps coming back.” His frustration was caused by the continued wasted resources and people’s attention that were being dedicated to a project he thought they were over and done with. But he had never “Publicly” killed the program. He had never made the global announcement that “We are no longer pursuing this initiative!” He simply turned his focus and his team’s focus to the things they had decided to pursue.

I can’t tell you how important this concept is. My clients are constantly looking for resources to pursue much needed projects, changes or new initiatives. But they never really put the needed energy or public face behind killing off the old, outdated, or lower priority issues. Figure out how to decide. It will pay huge dividends.

Take a look at your personal life, home or work; would you share with us some areas that would save you a lot of grief and energy if you simply publicly ended the pursuit? Maybe you do have a very clear corporate situation that emphasizes this very issue. Share with us what caused it and what helped alleviate it (or what should be done to alleviate the issue).

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BlogMyers-BriggsUsing MBTI to Great Advantage

Using MBTI to Great Advantage – Perceiving

by Ron Potter

Using MBTI to Great Advantage is a blog series in which I’ll do an overview of each of the four Myers-Briggs (MBTI) functions and then in subsequent blogs will dig into each one in more depth with some practical applications for creating better dynamics and better decisions making. Click here to read the Series Introduction.

 

Perceiving (Attending) Overview: Sensing vs iNtuitionMBTI series header

We looked at an overview of our Energizing function in the last Myers-Briggs (MBTI) blog. Now let’s look at the Perceiving function.

For many years the MBTI referred to this function as your attending function, “What do you pay attention to? or What is your preferred source of information?” However, more recently they have gone back to Carl Jung’s (MBTI is based on Jung’s original analytical psychology work studying healthy personality types) original description of perceiving, “Through what lens do you perceive the world around you?”

Also note that was not a typo when I identified the second function as iNtuition. Myers and Briggs had already used the “I” indicator for the introverts so chose to use the “N” indicator for intuition. On this function your natural preference will be either an S or and N.

If you happen to be a more natural “sensing” type, you will tend to “pay attention to” facts, figures, what’s in the present, the immediate problem and what’s “real”. This is how you “perceive” the world around you.

If you happen to be a more natural “iNtuitive” type, you will pay attention to the possibilities, how might this play out in the future, what are the implications of the issue we’re dealing with? And maybe more importantly, does this fit into the world as “I believe it should be?”

 

Decision Making Function. This function is the first “decision making” function. It identifies where and how we gather our information, what information we gather and pay attention to and what information we tend to put more stock in when it comes to making our decisions (which will be the next function we discuss). We all have what is known as confirmation bias (the book Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization by Edward Hess is a good source of understanding) where we tend to look at and accept only data that agrees with our beliefs of how things work (or should work). Understanding your Perceiving function and balancing it with a great team (this one is difficult to balance within us personally so it takes a trusted team to provide the balance) is incredibility valuable to you personally, the team and the company.

Hidden cause of confusion. Like Extraverted and Introverted preferences (previous blog overview) this function is a hidden cause for much team confusion and misunderstanding. Because we use our preferred function to ask and answer questions, if we’re not clear as a team one person may be asking a Sensing question “What is the impact of only hitting 87% of our goal this month?” while someone provides an iNtuitive response “There is no impact at all because the entire market is going to shift over the next three years.” This is like two ships passing in the night. Teams must be disciplined about aligning Sensing and iNtuitive questions with Sensing and iNtuitive answers.

Therefore, the same three rules apply to working more effectively: Balance, Balance, Balance. What I’ve discovered in business is that good leaders have often figured out their need for balance on this one to run a business effectively because if you let this one get out of balance for too long, you will lose the business. It’s great to create balance in the other three functions. It’s critical that you balance this one if you’re running a business.

So remember the three rules:

  1. Balance
  2. Balance
  3. Balance

You can’t be sure of what you’re learning or need to learn unless you balance this function.

Share with us some of your balancing act stories.

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BlogCulture

Dirty Bathrooms and Annual Reviews

by Ron Potter

Have you ever noticed that the dirtiest public bathrooms are the ones with the log pasted to the wall with the signature of the person who cleaned it and when? In fact, the log itself looks so nasty that I usually give it a wide berth for fear that something contagious might jump off the page and infect me.

Image Source: Anjana Samant, Creative Commons

Image Source: Anjana Samant, Creative Commons

Why is this so? This culture obviously has rules and regulations and a check list system for accountability and yet the place is filthy! But that’s exactly the point. Is your culture built on rules, regulations, guidelines, and check lists for accountability to make sure people are doing what they’re told? Or is your culture built on ingrained values like, “We want our customers to experience a cleaner bathroom than they would at home!”?

Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many annual review processes work like that bathroom log. The annual review starts with the check list of goals that was created the previous year. Then we check to make sure the employee signed off on each item of the list and the date of accomplishment. There, goals accomplished, bathroom clean!

No discussions about innovative approaches they tried to take to make sure the bathroom stayed cleaner longer. No discussion about lessons learned from failed attempts at trying something new. No discussion about new approaches they are proud of that did work. No discussion about where they would like to apply some of their ideas elsewhere.

Are you really inspiring your employees with values and visions or are you expecting them to do their job and check off their list? How clean are your bathrooms?

Tell us some stories from both perspectives – leaders evaluating people with annual review processes or being the victim (sorry) recipient of an annual review process. What made it great? What made it suck?

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