Leadership

Employee Turnover is Not a Problem

Don’t get me wrong, I understand and appreciate that turnover creates challenges. Employee turnover causes a decrease in productivity, lower profits, inconsistent quality, and certainly creates work overload.

But here’s the question: Is employee turnover a problem or a symptom?

Turnover is a symptom.

But what is turnover a symptom of? You might argue that turnover is a symptom of unmotivated people, apathy or a labor shortage. But most often, turnover is a symptom of poor leadership. Turnover occurs because poor leaders lack purpose, lack integrity, lack a plan for developing people, have poor communication skills, and treat people like things instead of like people.

Have you ever worked for someone who lacked integrity? Someone who would say one thing and do another? Someone who promised to do something but never did it? Someone who took the credit and placed the blame? Unfortunately, I’d have to guess that each of us has had that kind of boss at one time or another.

When you were in that situation, did you continue to do your work? Of course you did. Was your work accurate and correct? Of course it was. Did you take the initiative on new projects for the benefit of the company? Maybe not. Go the extra mile to make a difference? Hmmm… Did you leave the company at the first opportunity? Point made. When an individual or a company lacks integrity, turnover occurs.

Have you ever worked at a company where the prospect of advancement was nonexistent? Someplace where you knew that you weren’t going anywhere? Did you stay very long? That’s my point. Without opportunity for growth and expanded responsibility, people leave.

Have you ever worked at a company where major changes were “sprung” on you? Where work was assigned to you and after you completed it, you found out you had done the wrong thing? What happens when people don’t communicate effectively? Poor communication leads to misunderstanding, conflict, de-motivation, and stress. What does misunderstanding, conflict, de-motivation and stress lead to? You got it – turnover.

And then comes the most insidious issue of them all – treating people like things rather than like people.

How does someone treat people like “things”? They do it in several ways. They do it when they’re insensitive to them and interact with people as if they have no feelings. They treat people like things when they ignore the fact that everyone has hopes and dreams and fears and stress. They treat people like things when they relate to people as if their own goals and aspirations are more important than the goals and aspirations of the other person. And they treat people like things when they don’t show respect for people or value their contributions and efforts.

When someone treats a person like a thing, it sends the message that they are unimportant and that they just don’t care about them. And when people sense a leader doesn’t care about them, they start not to care about that leader. When the company tolerates leaders who don’t care about people, people tend not to care about the company. When a leader treats people like things, turnover occurs.

In contrast, an effective leader understands that people’s hopes, dreams, fears, and stresses are real and matter to them. An effective leader inspires people. An effective leader interacts with people as people, helping them to be their best. And an effective leader helps people achieve their goals.

When a leader and an organization have a clearly defined purpose, they attract and retain the talent they need. When a leader and an organization have integrity, it builds trust and loyalty. When a leader and an organization are committed to developing people, people become the best they can be. When a leader and an organization communicate effectively, conflict and tension diminish, and cooperation increases. When a leader and an organization treat people as people, they appreciate it and reciprocate.

Turnover isn’t a problem – it’s a symptom caused by leadership problems. Fortunately, these problems can be resolved, and you have the power to make that difference. Strive to become the best leader you can be.

The Three Leadership Competencies That Matter Most in Times of Crisis

In times of crisis and uncertainty, people experience the gamut of emotions. Some are afraid (of both the known and the unknown). Some people get angry, others are frustrated. Some get depressed and some feel lonely. The list goes on…

It’s because of this wide range of negative emotions that leaders need to step up and play an important role. Leaders need to de-escalate anxiety and fear, and they need to offer hope for the future.

Although there are many traits and competencies a good leader must possess, three stand out as critical in times of crisis – Executive Presence, Empathy, and Effective Communication.

EXECUTIVE PRESENCE
Having executive presence is the ability to project mature self-confidence, to project a sense of being able to take control of difficult situations, and to project the ability to make tough decisions. There’s no one thing that gives a leader executive presence. Instead, it’s a combination of a number of factors:

Confidence: Especially during a crisis, a leader must display a strong level of confidence without being overly confident. It’s OK not to have all the answers. And it’s OK for people to know a leader doesn’t have all the answers. In fact, being open (transparent) and honest (vulnerable) act to build trust and respect. Be confident, but not casual or over-confident, in order to have executive presence.
Decisiveness: In business, postponing a decision until more facts are revealed or the future becomes clearer can be a smart course of action. But often, leaders must make decisions without all the facts and without certainty about the future. Even though the future may be cloudy, a leader with executive presence must make decisions in the face of that uncertainty.
Authoritative: How a leader leads should vary with circumstances (situational leadership). Under normal circumstances, it might be most effective to lead by getting buy-in for an idea or by coming to a decision by consensus. But in times of crisis, a leader must be strong and act in an authoritative manner in order to have executive presence.
Body Language: Our body language communicates a large amount of information. Body language includes how we hold ourselves when we sit, stand and walk. How a leader carries him or herself reflects their state of mind, so it’s important to sit and stand in a manner that projects and instills confidence. In addition, facial expressions matter. People often read others by their facial expressions. A leader’s expression shouldn’t reflect casualness, anger or fear if their intent is to instill confidence. A leader with executive presence is mindful of his or her body language.
Emotional Control: For leaders to instill confidence, earn trust and earn respect, they must stay in control of their emotions. Emotional outbursts are seen as a loss of control and people know that a leader who loses control is feeling overwhelmed. An overwhelmed leader lacks executive presence. Be mindful of emotions and the expression of those emotions in order to have executive presence.

In times of crisis, it’s important to have a strong executive presence.

EMPATHY
A leader who has empathy understands the feelings, needs and concerns of others. He or she is able to define, understand, and react to the concerns and needs that underlie people’s emotional responses and reactions.

The issue here is the importance of treating people like people rather than like “things”. When a leader regards people as people, he or she acknowledges that everyone – regardless of position or tenure – has hopes and dreams, fears and stresses.

Although it’s never productive to treat people like “assets” or “resources”, it’s especially true in times of crisis. If a leader communicates and deals with people as if they were “things”, it demonstrates that the leader doesn’t care about them. And a leader who doesn’t care about the people he or she leads loses the respect and trust of those people.

It’s not that a leader with empathy accepts mediocrity or doesn’t hold people accountable. Instead, having empathy is about HOW they hold people accountable and how they bring out the best in people. Most people want to do a good job – especially in times of crisis. By being understanding and helping people be productive given their specific circumstances, a leader will get more engagement, better results, and earn their loyalty.

In times of crisis, it’s important to have empathy and treat people like people.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Especially in times of crisis, how and what we say can have an enormous impact on people. People are quick to interpret (or misinterpret) messages. People are more sensitive to tone and languaging. And people are looking for reassurance and hope.

In times of uncertainty, it is essential for a leader to choose his or her words carefully. Leaders must make sure they say exactly what they mean to say. Read and then re-read each note and/or message. Try to read it from the point of view of the reader to ensure the message can’t be misconstrued. Make sure the wording has the right emotional “feel” as well. Remember, the reader can’t hear inflections or emphasis when they read the note.

Along those lines, often a phone call, conference call or video call/meeting can be a better solution for addressing issues than written communication. People can hear a leader’s tone and sincerity in their voice. If video is added to the equation, people also get to see a leader’s body language.

In times of crisis, it’s important to take time to craft each message and how it’s delivered.

If you’d like help with any of this, reach out to us. We specialize in helping leaders become more effective and help them bring out the best in people.

How to Develop Executive Presence

Executive presence is one of those things that’s hard to define, but essential to a leader’s ability to earn respect, influence others, and drive results. A person can have executive presence regardless of title or position. It’s not an elitist attitude or one of superiority, but rather one that projects an aura of credibility, confidence, and authority.

Having Executive Presence is the ability to project mature self-confidence, to project a sense of being able to take control of difficult situations, and to project the ability to make tough decisions. There’s no one thing that creates executive presence, but rather a combination of a number of factors. These factors fall into three categories – Appearance, Communication, and Demeanor.

Appearance
A leader can project competence and confidence with their appearance, which is composed of their dress and their body language.

People form opinions about others based on how they dress. They notice things like sloppy vs. neat, clean vs. dirty, formal vs. casual, poor fitting vs. well-fitting, and sense of style vs. lack of style. If you want to improve your executive presence and instill confidence, choose clothing that fits well, is clean, and displays some sense of style. Choose clothing appropriate to the office environment. A tech executive would generally dress differently than an investment banking executive.

We also communicate a great deal through our body language. Good posture projects strength and confidence. Poor posture projects weakness and a lack of confidence. A crisp pace suggests good energy, while a slow pace can appear as low energy. A firm handshake vs. a weak handshake, an appropriate level of eye contact vs. very little eye contact, leaning in vs. leaning back, sitting straight vs. slouching in a chair. Each of these actions either projects strength and confidence or projects weakness and a lack of confidence. If you want to instill confidence, you must appear confident.

Communication
Communication is effective when your message is clear and the person/people you are communicating with receive and understand that message.

You need to choose your words carefully, provide all the necessary information, and do so in a way that can’t be misinterpreted. Be clear about the points you want to make and then think through and/or write out how you want to make those points. Once you’ve written your message, re-read it a couple of times to see if your choice of words and phrasing can be improved. Additionally, read it from the point of view of the person who’ll be reading or hearing your message to see if it can be misinterpreted. If so, then add clarification to ensure your point is made clearly and effectively.

The manner in which you deliver your message also affects its impact. Use your voice expressively, adjusting pitch, pace and volume to convey the nature of your message. A higher pitch, faster pace and louder volume communicates enthusiasm and excitement. A deeper pitch, slower pace and lower volume communicates importance, seriousness and urgency. Adjust your manner of speaking to fit the message and the audience.

Demeanor
A person’s demeanor conveys their emotional state. It reflects the level of a person’s confidence, passion, decisiveness, and composure. Demeanor is projected by our speech, our facial expressions and by how animated we are.

As discussed above, use your pace and tone of speech to project confidence, passion, decisiveness and/or composure.

People read our facial expressions to determine our emotional state. Especially in times of stress or conflict, our facial expression tells a story. Expression can convey things like frustration, concern, apathy, nervousness, fear, confidence, displeasure, anger and/or happiness. However, sometimes in difficult situations it’s not wise to display our feelings. Sometimes, it’s better to project a “poker face” than to allow our current emotions to come through. In other words, to instill confidence and earn respect, it’s sometimes more effective to keep a strong emotion from showing on your face.

The final means of conveying confidence, passion, decisiveness and composure relates to how animated we are. Animated gesturing with your hands and moving your body communicate excitement, passion and enthusiasm. In contrast, expressing yourself in a reserved manner by keeping hands and body fairly motionless conveys confidence, composure and authority. Make sure your demeanor reflects your message.

In summary, in order to develop greater executive presence, craft your appearance, elevate the effectiveness of your communication, and be mindful of your demeanor. If you’d like help improving your executive presence, please call me (503-928-7645). It helps to have someone point out our blind spots.

The Three Most Common Leadership Weaknesses

Over my almost 20 years as an executive coach, I’ve worked with and assessed lots of smart, experienced senior leaders. And with each assessment I did, a pattern began to emerge. I noticed that there were several important competencies that almost always are among their weakest.

This pattern is interesting, because these leaders are very smart, have many years of industry experience, and are responsible for many millions of dollars of revenue and profit. They’ve been CEO’s, presidents, owners, CFO’s, CTO’s, VP’s and directors. And yet… these competencies regularly show up as some of their weakest competencies. These three competencies are their ability to coach & mentor, their ability to influence others, and their ability to resolve conflict.

Why are these competencies so often among the weakest? I believe it’s because the skills necessary to excel at them don’t come naturally to most people – regardless of intelligence or experience. Here’s why these three competencies are so critical to a leader and how to go about improving each one.

Coaching & Mentoring

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to develop the people below him or her. There is tremendous opportunity and satisfaction as a leader in developing others. By effectively developing the people around us, we elicit excellence in a number of impactful and far-reaching ways.

Study after study has shown that an important factor in driving engagement is having the opportunity for professional growth. When a person becomes stagnant, they become bored and disengaged. As a leader helps someone expand their skill set and knowledge base, they make them more valuable and more versatile. In addition, when a leader coaches and mentors someone, they demonstrate their belief in them, their abilities, and their potential, which nurtures loyalty and responsiveness. One additional benefit of developing others is that it allows a leader to groom someone to take their place, thereby paving the way for the leader’s promotion.

Given the impact and far-reaching implications of developing others, it is critical to master this important function, and adopting a “coach-like” attitude and manner is the fastest and most effective means of accomplishing that.

What does a coaching style of leadership look like? Coaching embodies a number of competencies and strategies. Many of us, in an effort to help someone “get it right” (and in the name of expediency), tell others what to do and how to do it. And while this does get the work done, it does little to develop the other person, their skill set, and their confidence.

The alternative – the coaching approach – is to ask rather than tell. Instead of starting off by telling them what to do, ask them what they would do and how they would do it. This strategy serves a number of very important functions. Firstly, it demonstrates that you have an interest in what they have to say. When you listen to someone, it acts as a sign of respect because it demonstrates that you value what they have to say. The next benefit of asking is that their answers will give you a sense of how they think. The answers will reveal their level of insight and judgment and will illustrate their problem-solving abilities. And lastly, listening to the answers to your questions will provide clues as to how best to help them develop. It helps you understand which aspects of development they need help and guidance with.

Influencing

Mastering the ability to influence others is critical to the success and effectiveness of a leader. A strategy, no matter how well thought out, will get mediocre results if there isn’t strong buy-in. A leader will always get compliance because of his or her authority. But compliance and commitment are two different things.

If people are compliant, they will generally do just enough to keep from getting fired. The consequence is that a strategy will get results, but not nearly to the level of a strategy executed by a committed team.

How do you influence people? How do you change their perspective so you get buy-in? People “buy” emotionally. It’s true whether you’re selling TV’s, cars, ideas or strategies. They buy emotionally and then rationalize logically. There are two tools to employ in order to change someone’s perspective. They are the use of question-asking and the use of analogies.

Asking good questions is an art. It took me many years to master it, with lots of practice and plenty of missed opportunities. I’ve found that there are two sets of questions that need to be asked. The first set of questions are those that give you insight. They are curiosity questions that help you better understand why someone sees things the way they do, thereby allowing you to effectively change or correct their perspective. The second set of questions are those give them insight. They are questions that help them rethink things.

The second tool for influencing people is the use of analogies. Analogies are an excellent vehicle for bringing someone around to your way of seeing things. Generally, you’ve been giving the issue at hand far more thought than they have and therefore have a deeper understanding of the problem and/or solution. Using an analogy helps people “see” and “feel” the concept you’re talking about and does it in such a way as to keep them from becoming defensive with respect to their position. Once you’ve come up with a meaningful analogy, it’s much easier for someone to shift their thinking and their perspective.

Resolving Conflict

The ability to resolve conflict is essential to a leader’s effectiveness. If conflict is allowed to fester, it erodes engagement and erodes the respect a team has for its leader.

Workplace conflict tends to arise from poor communication, unmet expectations, differing perspectives, and stress. Ultimately, these each can be minimized or eliminated by improving interpersonal skills, setting clear expectations, shifting people’s perspectives, and helping to reduce stress. But the stage has to be set before the issues can be resolved.

The blueprint for resolving conflict starts with acting to avoid further escalation. The more frustrated and upset a person is, the more difficult it is to resolve a situation. The next step is to de-escalate the situation. I’ve found that an excellent way to begin that process is to “state the obvious”. “Stating the obvious” means simply to acknowledge that the frustration and/or disagreement exists. It’s often the perfect way to open the door to resolve conflict. Just by starting with, “Look… we’re both frustrated by this,” sets the stage for a resolution. It acknowledges that you recognize the other person is frustrated, it doesn’t point a finger at them, and it implies that you’d like to work things out.

Once the stage is set for coming to a resolution, the next step is to understand the other person’s perspectives and or motivations. As discussed above, the most effective means of accomplishing this is through the use of good questions. In this case, a “good” question is one of curiosity about why they feel the way they do, phrased and asked in a manner that keeps them from becoming defensive. A simple example of what a good question might be is, “What am I doing that frustrates you?”, followed by, “Why does that frustrate you?” In contrast, a question that would cause them to become defensive would be, “Why do you have to get so angry?” Once you gain insight into the underlying issues, you can work together to resolve the conflict.

If you’d like help improving your ability to coach & mentor, influence others and/or resolve conflict, please give me a call.

Peer Groups Aren’t Effective for Developing an Executive

If you’re a CEO or President of a company, a peer group can be a really valuable asset because it a) provides networking opportunities, b) provides outside perspective on strategy, and c) allows you to help others. But peer groups aren’t effective at developing an executive’s leadership competencies. There are a number of reasons for this.

The first reason relates to the fact that leadership competencies are developed over time. It takes regular focus to break ineffective habits and form new, effective ones. Meeting once a month in a round-table setting with big-picture discussions just can’t address someone’s specific development needs.

The second reason relates to assessment. Peer groups aren’t designed to assess a leader’s strengths and weaknesses. The group can only discuss issues that someone brings to the table, and of us are poor at assessing the quality of our leadership abilities. In fact, I’ve never met an executive who thought they were a poor leader. Yet, we all know many executives who are poor leaders! This reality makes leadership development in a peer group pretty much impossible.

The third reason relates to blind spots. We all have them regardless of experience, intelligence and/or education. Peer groups can help point out strategic blind spots, but aren’t very good at pointing out leadership blind spots. It really takes someone working closely, one-on-one with a leader to spot them and bring them to light.

A fourth reason that peer groups aren’t effective at leadership development relates to personal productivity. Group discussions can be good for high-level topics pertaining to business strategies, but they don’t lend themselves to improving day-to-day functioning. Leaders need objective input from someone who has insight into how they function at work in order to improve productivity.

What then, is the best course of action for leadership development? It used to be mentoring by fellow executives – getting insights and guidance from someone in the company who could share the benefit of their years of experience. Unfortunately, because of cost-cutting and increased work load, those days are gone.

Instead, many executives turn to executive coaching to provide the assessment, insight, and guidance needed to improve. Peer groups have their place, but for personal development, one-on-one work is the most effective. If you’d like help in developing your leadership effectiveness and would find a confidential, objective sounding board useful, please give us a call at 503-928-7685.