‘Initiative’ is usually high on a manager’s list of traits they’d like to see in the workforce, but you may need to give that more thought in early 2010.
Be completely honest: Would you welcome initiative if you actually got it, or would it put you in the quandary of possibly having to turn it down? How often might you be saying “No, I’m afraid we can’t be doing that right now” to your staff, and killing their initiative in the process?
What says your Business Model?
Our “Great Recession” is demanding that our business models change to adjust to the changing habits of the consumer. It’s good news: Companies must be responsive to be successful, and we now have the opportunity to weave this innovative responsiveness into our organizational cultures.
More often than not, the strategies within a company’s business model would not be described as very democratic, and usually employees are fine with that: They don’t expect they have the right to speak into the basic strategy of how a business functions on the bread-and-butter level. Thus that’s not the level that their initiative gets to play out, and get brilliantly demonstrated.
Make room for what you ask for
That said, no manager is going to say, “You can take a break from demonstrating any initiative right now until we figure some things out.” Sounds silly doesn’t it.
And yet… that is exactly the impression we are giving many we have on staff. Those words may not specifically be voiced out loud, but business owners are still running their companies lean, and with a wait-and-see hesitancy which is killing much of the initiative we’ve seen in the past. “Let me check with my manager” is a phrase the customer is hearing much too often.
‘Initiative’ is a big word. It can be a bucket for so many different behaviours that are still aligned with your values though money may be tight and your business model is still in flux. So define it. Exactly what initiative would you like right now?
Talk about self-starting and systems fluctuation with your team, and break them down: What kinds of work initiative do you still wish to see them demonstrate on a daily basis? Instead of saying “no, don’t” or “please stop for now” look for ways to say “let’s try something new instead and see how it works.”
Please keep asking for new ideas, and give them some fertile soil in which they can germinate and take root instead of whither and die completely. Think of it as container gardening, until the business model decisions are done, signalling that time your now-budding seedlings can be moved to the flower beds.
Start where your customer will notice
When you have these discussions with your staff, I recommend you start with a focus on Ho‘okipa (hospitality) and the service they can, and should be providing. Much of it has to do with the sincerity and graciousness of effective communication, stuff that doesn’t cost you a dime, and are more about setting expectations, making them clear and consistent.
I encourage you to be quick with whatever decisions you may be making with your business model. However know that there is little reason for your staff to put their initiative on hold while you do so. If you do, it will be very difficult to start those energies up again.
So yesterday they were asking, “Now what?” wondering if there was specific goal-setting I recommended for them through November and December. They were feeling great about all the projects they successfully completed in October (within the Sweet Closure goal of ending 2009 early, to better enjoy the coming holidays), but now they felt a bit directionless – they are not at all used to facing two months with no new projects!
How’s that for a great problem to have?
You can still set goals for November and December. What accomplishing Sweet Closure does, is give you the opportunity to set some goals you may never have otherwise had time for. You simply have new and different choices.
I’m a habitual goal-setter too, and I don’t stay away from the process during these two months. What might be different for me, is that I feel no guilt whatsoever about shedding professional goals early so that I can have the time for tackling some personal ones – like seizing more holiday time for my family. As you know, the Sense of Workplace Call to Action is a biggie for me right now: I go big, and make room in my year for causes I care about.
Now I fully realize that I have an advantage you might not have: I’m my own boss (and in my company I am the boss). You might feel that you don’t have the same kind of discretionary freedom, and are caught in that common trap, where if you finish your “real work” early, your boss will just give you more to do.
Maybe so.
And guess what? If I were coaching them, I’d have them watching for lulls in your energy too, for remember – what great leadership does, is create workplace energy realizing it is the single greatest resource a prosperous company has – more than even time and abundant financial capital.
Here is one thing I know about bosses pretty universally. They don’t look for more work to give you if they feel you are already doing good work, and if energy is already buzzing up the workplace with good vibrancy.
Here is my premise: There is no leadership without self-leadership first.
Dedicate November and December to goal-setting on self-leadership. Trust me, your boss will applaud you because they will notice the fire in your eyes, and they will welcome your new-found energy as good for you, good for the business, good for them. They won’t give you more to do because they won’t want to break the spell: They’ll leave you be to keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.
Again, do good work. Do GREAT work.
I’ll help you with some ideas. Do some soul-searching and self-reflection as you read through this list, and then pick the ones you know you need to work on. Turn them into opportunities you will pursue as your November and December goals:
12 Rules for Self-Leadership
1. Set goals for your life; not just for your job. What we think of as “meaning of life” goals affect your lifestyle outside of work too, and you get whole-life context, not just work-life, each feeding off the other.
3. Take initiative. Volunteer to be first. Be daring, bold, brave and fearless, willing to fall down, fail, and get up again for another round. Starting with vulnerability has this amazing way of making us stronger when all is done.
4. Be humble and give away the credit. Going before others is only part of leading; you have to go with them too. Therefore, they’ve got to want you around!
5. Learn to love ideas and experiments. Turn them into pilot programs that preface impulsive decisions. Everything was impossible until the first person did it.
6. Live in wonder. Wonder why, and prize “Why not?” as your favorite question. Be insatiably curious, and question everything.
7. There are some things you don’t take liberty with no matter how innovative you are when you lead. For instance, to have integrity means to tell the truth. To be ethical is to do the right thing. These are not fuzzy concepts.
8. Believe that beauty exists in everything and in everyone, and then go about finding it. You’ll be amazed how little you have to invent and much is waiting to be displayed.
10. Champion change. As the saying goes, those who do what they’ve always done, will get what they’ve always gotten. The only things they do get more of are apathy, complacency, and boredom.
11. Be a lifelong learner, and be a fanatic about it. Surround yourself with mentors and people smarter than you. Seek to be continually inspired by something, learning what your triggers are.
12. Care for and about people. Compassion and empathy become you, and keep you ever-connected to your humanity. People will choose you to lead them.
If you are doing all of these things, no boss on earth is going to mess with you. In fact, they will be guarding you with their life, and making sure they keep you happy, because people like me try to hire you away from them.
The trouble with “all or nothing” is that it is often too intimidating to choose all, making it much too easy to choose nothing.
Reality is, most of our naturally occurring choices fall in between the two, and their outcome would significantly improve if they became choices which were more conscious and intentional. ‘In between’ all or nothing can be a very good place to be.
In fact, ‘in between’ is where you find the Sweet Spot.
Leadership is a perfect example.
I’m barely 5’1 and have never weighed enough for the Blood Bank to sign me up as a donor, so who in the world would I ever intimidate?
More people than I ever imagined. Much as I hate it, I know I still do, and so I have to constantly work on my approachability, helping people warm up to me, so they’ll talk to me.
An Intimidation Factor. We all have one.
I was oblivious to my own intimidation factor up until a wise (and brave!) mentor showed me the truth about my perceived demeanor. It was pretty painful, but not as painful as the realization I hadn’t self-corrected soon enough.
You have an intimidation factor too.
If you are thought of as a manager, someone of authority, “with power” or “in charge” in any way whatsoever, especially in the workplace, I’ll bet you are way more intimidating than you think you are, no matter how warm, nice and gracious you might try to be. A certain degree of that intimidation factor comes with the organizational territory, and what that means, is that people do not consider you as approachable as you are hoping they do. Probably not even close to it.
Now, before you get too smug, and say, “I’m just your normal Joe, nobody reports to me,” guess again. Got seniority? Tenure? More experience than a new hire? The new hire with a degree that didn’t exist for the old guard? Leading a team? Are you an older sibling? A parent? A local with the lei of the land, and advantageous sense of place? I bet if I dig deep enough, finding out more about you and the people you interact with, that I will find a person you intimidate.
I’ll find a handful of them. It just happens.
If you are unapproachable, people are not telling you what you need to know.
Not all of it.
Now there are bosses who will quietly admit that they like having a slight mystique surrounding them, forcing subordinates to use middle managers more than they otherwise would. I don’t buy it: ‘Mystique’ is a beguiling word for their intimidation factor that is similar to spraying a skunk with perfume, and they are justifying their lack of approachability with a pitiful excuse.
Besides, if you are unapproachable with one group of people, it spreads like a bad virus to everyone else too, and the ones brave enough to talk to you will be on their guard instead of being open and completely engaging.
They will not be curious about you either. They won’t seek you out, and ask you for your opinion, hoping to hear more of your mana‘o.
Is that what you really want?
No, I didn’t think so. No one likes not knowing, and feeling they are forced to second guess underlying messages in what they are told (or subversively allowed to discover.) No one likes being the one that no one else will turn to.
For you to listen, and to hear better, someone else has to do the talking.
My strategy for working on eliminating my own intimidation factor has been The Daily 5 Minutes®, something I had told you about in this posting: Two Gifts: Values and Conversation. The reason is pretty simple and straight-forward: The Daily 5 Minutes is about listening completely, and for me to listen, someone else has to talk. Here is an excerpt shared in that post to save you the click:
The Daily 5 Minutes® is one way that “talking story grows up and really, truly comes to the workplace with us.”
The D5M practice is a new conversation
The number one objection I will get from people hearing about The Daily 5 Minutes® for the first time, and hearing that it is a daily practice they will learn, is “But Rosa, I talk to my people every day. We talk story enough.”
No you don’t. I guarantee you, you don’t. Granted, most of us talk TO others, AT others, and even FOR others all the time, but we don’t talk WITH others enough. When those times come up where we know we really need to have a heart to heart with another person, we stutter, stammer, stall, or skip the conversation altogether, hoping it will just go away. And surprise, surprise, it doesn’t.
The Daily 5 Minutes® is a new conversation in which we learn how to listen all over again so that we can communicate better. It can get our island way of talking story to be better than it ever has been before, because over time it vastly improves the circle of comfort and aloha we have for each other. I hope you will take the time to read about it.
If you choose not to use The Daily 5 Minutes® as your strategy with grooming better approachability, come up with something else, aimed at improving the circle of comfort which exists between you and the other people you work with. Trust me on this: It will be the best gift you give yourself.
Having more people talk to you is not a burden; it lifts burdens. You’ll see.
The trouble with “all or nothing” is that it is often too intimidating to choose all, making it much too easy to choose nothing.
Reality is, most of our naturally occurring choices fall in between the two, and their outcome would significantly improve if they became choices which were more conscious and intentional. ‘In between’ all or nothing can be a very good place to be.
In fact, ‘in between’ is where you find the Sweet Spot.
Leadership is a perfect example.
We get too awestruck when we think about leaders. It’s another reason I prefer saying we’re all managers seeking to both manage and lead.
Say “Leader” and most of us think about charismatic dynamos who are a bit larger than life, giving speeches and leading hordes of people, and we don’t relate to them that well, thinking, “Well, all the power to ‘em, but that’s just not me.”
There is a influential degree of leadership at play, when you state an opinion about something or take a stand, and lo and behold, another person agrees with you. You’ve opened their eyes to something they did not see, you’ve helped them hear about something which had previously escaped them, or you made them feel a stirring which ended up moving them to action.
That’s huge.
And you know what? You may have achieved that magnificent feat in something as simple as a good conversation. You did all that without the extra baggage that comes with being up on the top in Charismatic Leader Land, being politically correct for mobs of people (and wasting an awful lot of time in the process).
Today, and for the rest of this week, look for your Sweet Spot.
Identify it (‘Imi ola: Seek your best possible life).
Appreciate it (live within the value of Mahalo).
Get comfortable with it (Nānā i ke kumu, look to your source).
Then get more intentional about it (Attach it to your Ho‘ohana).
Work can and should be a time where you are working to bring meaning, fulfillment and fun to the life you lead.
Ho‘ohana. Work with intent, work with purpose.
Managers do this for themselves, and they do this for those they manage.
When managers pair employees with meaningful and worthwhile work that is satisfying for them, they will find these employees work with true intention, in sync with the goals of the business. Be one of those managers.
No doubt about it. Ho‘ohana happens best in sweet spots, the ones between all or nothing.
(I didn’t talk much about nothing because it isn’t an option worth the consideration… Nothing has nothing to do with Alaka‘i, whereas having it all just might... “What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question.)
Preface: We’ve spent early October talking about your best-possible project work, and today’s post is intended to alert you to a red flag. When you are immersed in a Wow! Project, it is easy to get blinders on, and miss the outliers in the workplace which might have just as much potential – maybe even more.
When an organizational culture is healthiest, leadership initiatives are thriving in every nook and cranny. Leadership is shared freely with those who step to the plate, and put a hand up that means, “I’m ready, and I want you to trust me.”
Those in positions of power on a company’s org chart MUST say “yes” to new ideas as much as possible: You never know when a small idea will evolve into a big game changer. In these healthy cultures (healthy meaning fertile for self-leadership initiatives to seed), the ASA Trap is avoided like the plague.
Are you aware of the ASA Trap?
The ASA Trap is a speed bump and obstacle. It is another “yeah, but” in the workplace.
ASA stands for “As Soon As….” It is a delay tactic which clearly conveys your annoyance or impatience. When you say, “As soon as …” people rarely hear what you say in the last part of the sentence, because what they hear is, “Go away. Please don’t bother me with this now.”
Think about how you felt when someone said these things to you:
“Love the idea, and we’ll start as soon as…”
“We’ll add that to the agenda as soon as...”
“I’m not saying no, but we have to be practical here. As soon as... I will make the time to talk this though with you.”
If you were able to recall when a boss spoke to you with a similar ASA statement, you felt the disastrous result: He or she immediately burst your self-leadership idea bubble, and with that burst escaped your energy, your excitement, and your enthusiasm. The ASA Trap is a huge downer.
To Avoid the ASA Trap, Delegate!
A manager with a lot of ASA in their vocabulary is dangerously close to micromanaging, and must learn to use their team better. And the really good news is that better delegation is a baby step: There is no better time for staff development than with the birth of a new idea.
Managers can feel they must know “the whole picture” before they can bless (i.e. effectively direct) work commencing on any part of it at all, and that is rarely true. For instance, consider that great direction requires clarity first and foremost, and most new ideas are not yet clear: They are fuzzy, and need to be worked on. That shaping of the idea is the first task which can be delegated, and who better to work on it than its creator?
Managers can intercept and engage with idea-initiated work at a variety of touch points, and not just in the beginning. Stop directing, controlling and commanding. Replace those actions with good questions, smaller action agreements, and well-placed coaching.
When someone comes to you with an idea, get it in motion immediately. Turn those excitement draining sentences above into energy creating initiatives you place in the hands of those offering up the idea: Begin to develop them as leaders.
The moment an ASA trap rears its ugly head in your brain, recognize it for the red flag it is, and replace it with an encouragement similar to one of these:
“That’s an interesting idea, how would you like to get started with exploring it?”
“Thank you for sharing your idea with me! How can I support you as you begin?”
These are conversations which ask good questions, yet immediately offer coaching to an agreement in which you will finish the conversation well, but relatively quickly. When someone brings an idea to you, your goal should be to encourage them. Fail to do so, and they will stop coming to you and begin to think, “Why should I bother?” That would be tragic.
Respond to their next response (to the above questions) with a delegation toward self-leadership.
Self-leadership explores Why and When questions – Planning
(From the Archives: Leadership is Why and When.)
Begin with delegating toward leading/planning so your idea-generator immediately gets to work with formulating good, clear answers to these questions first: “Why do we need this idea?” and “When should we best engage with this idea within the scope of our overall vision, moving it forward?” These are the questions which will help them take full visionary ownership of their idea.
Self-management explores What and How questions – Projects
(From the Archives: Management is What and How.)
You can then follow-up with your idea-generator in this second intersection point of coaching (representing continued delegation) which aligns a well-led plan with a well-designed Wow! Project that will move that fresh idea to momentum-building action.
Your Opportunities with Idea Conversations
One of the best places idea conversations percolate is within the Daily 5 Minutes, that precious time when a conversation starts on an employee’s agenda and not the manager’s. Read more about the D5M here: Two Gifts, Values and Conversations
A second place is within the seemingly mundane day to day work every company encounters. Tom Peters wrote a great description of how this happens in his Fast Companyessay on the Wow! Project:
I've seen a person who was assigned a presumably dead-end task -- cleaning up a warehouse -- turn that project into a chance to redesign the company's distribution system and to earn a ticket to even more responsibility and even cooler projects. All it took for that to happen was the application of personal passion and an unwillingness to see the project as anything other than a first-rate opportunity.
How did it happen? Given the project of "cleaning up the warehouse," our passionate Wow Project leader (PWPL) quickly determined that the problem wasn't a "messy" warehouse; the real problem was that the warehouse was poorly organized -- which made the warehouse necessarily messy. A simple cleanup wouldn't do a damn thing to solve the deeper problem: The warehouse needed to be reorganized. That led our intrepid PWPL into a few carefully targeted benchmarking forays to educate herself and a small, select group of suddenly interested team members on the art of warehouse reorganization.
One of their key lessons: The organization of the warehouse needed to take into account both the incoming parts from suppliers and the outgoing parts to customers. So, a short time after getting the warehouse-cleanup assignment, this PWPL found herself making a compelling case for a new distribution system that would feed flawlessly into the reorganized warehouse -- a warehouse that would now stay neat because of newly designed processes that fit the new distribution system perfectly. And that is how you turn a little chore into a Wow Project.
Look for every opportunity you have to say “yes” to the ideas others will bring to you in the workplace.Alaka‘i managers celebrate leadership initiative with an abundance mentality.
The only ASA you want sounds like this: “As soon as you have an idea, I want to hear it so I know how to support you best.”
Additional reading
If you are just joining us, this reading path will help you learn the complete ins and outs of the coaching offered within this post today: The beauty of the blog is that this update will still be here waiting for you to return to it.
Rosa Say is a workplace Aloha coach, founder of Say Leadership Coaching and the author of "Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai'i's Universal Values to the Art of Business."
Manage and Lead: Learn to do both, and you can say and be Alaka'i (a leader), living and working within the Hawaiian value of management and leadership.
