February Leadership Development Carnival – Carnevale di Venezia Edition

Last year about this time, our colleague Jon Ingham hosted the HR Carnival and pointed out that it was during Carnevale in Venice. We’re continuing that tradition for this month’s Leadership Development Carnival.*

Carnevale is perhaps best known for the wide variety of masks that participants wear. The role of a mask in leadership has also been recognized throughout history, particularly in the context of politics and war. We tend to associate masks with “hiding” and “being fake”, but one can argue that even authentic leadership sometimes entails keeping a calm demeanor while chaos swirls around.

One thing is clear: just as the changes in technology and society over time have required changes in the kind of mask those historical leaders showed to their followers, so too have technological and societal changes impacted leadership in our organizations. For instance, employees are demanding more transparency and more voice in how decisions are made that affect our work, often via discussions taking place on collaborative technologies. Leaders must decide how to respond to that. The core principles of leadership still remain, but the conditions are rapidly evolving as to the way in which it is most effectively practiced.

It’s through efforts like the Leadership Development Carnival that challenges like this can be discussed, ideas shared, and understanding enhanced. We’d like to thank Dan McCarthy of Great Leadership for allowing us to host this month’s Leadership Development Carnival as well as for the great work he does to support this community. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the superb entries this month’s carnival holds:

Dan McCarthy presents What Prevents Leaders from “Connecting the Dots”?, posted at Great Leadership, explaining how in addition to the multitude of external factors that impact our ability to connect the dots, there is also something inside each of us that needs attention too.

Bret L. Simmons presents I Am Responsible For My Success and Failures And For Continuing To Learn From Them, posted at Bret L. Simmons, discussing an important principle in leading a truly empowered life.

Art Petty presents Team Stuck in the Creativity Deep Freeze? Try “Why Not?” to Start the Thaw posted at Management Excellence, providing suggestions for “waking the creative giant hiding inside your people and your teams.”

Becky Robinson presents Todd Pittinsky and Intergroup Leadership posted at Mountain State University LeaderTalk, describing intriguing ways to “increase positive interactions between different subgroups in your organization.”

Miki Saxon presents When Realities Collide posted at MAPping Company Success, which considers the difficulties in engaging the ‘just in time workforce’ to which many companies are moving and asks “how do you get people to care when they know without a doubt that the company doesn’t care about them?”

Coaching Category -

Shawn M. Driscoll presents 4 Simple Steps to Go Signature posted at Shawn Driscoll, providing tips to coaches for reaching a broader audience.

Executive Development Category -

Wally Bock presents Becoming a Great Leader is Up to You posted at Three Star Leadership Blog, saying, “If you want to become a great leader, you have to take responsibility for your own development. Here are some tools you can use.”

Mike King presents 100 Ways to Serve Others posted at Learn This, saying, “Leadership development requires an attitude of service to others. There are 100 ways to serve.”

Leadership Category -

John Agno presents Top 10 Leadership Tips of the Last Decade posted at Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog, saying, “Here are ten popular leadership lessons learned over the last several years and recommended by John Agno at CoachingTip.com”

Dean L. Forbes presents How to Achieve Your Goals posted at Dean L. Forbes – Powerful Principles of Personal Growth, providing tips for what to do once you’ve set your goals.

Bob Lieberman presents Our Debt To Adolescents posted at Cultivating Creativity – Developing Leaders for the Creative Economy, discussing some interesting coping strategies tapped from younger folks.

Jane Perdue presents Perfectly Matched Or Delightfully Oddball? posted at Life, Love & Leadership, challenging the assumption that all the people in your personal and work circles must be a perfect fit.

Aaron Windeler presents Why a leader with a bad mood can be good for business posted at Scientific Management, discussing evidence that shows us we should consider how our moods affect our followers.

Tom Glover presents Should Leaders Focus on Each Individual Follower? posted at Reflection Leadership, whether leaders should move followers in and out of their “in-group.”

Mike Henry Sr. presents Sources of Leadership posted at Lead Change Group Blog, asking, “What is the source of your leadership authority?”

Anne Perschel presents Why We Love Twitter – What Leaders Should Know posted at Germane Insights, recommending we “create a company-wide private Twitter to achieve desired actions and attitudes.”

Tanmay Vora presents On Leadership, Opening Up and Being Prepared posted at QAspire – Quality, Management, Leadership & Life!, urging us to “stay current, open and receptive to new insights.”

Nick McCormick presents Fill Your Pack posted at Joe and Wanda – on Management, providing a ten-minute Management Tips Podcast with Tim Clark, author of “The Leadership Test.”

Nissim Ziv presents What is the Difference between Management and Leadership posted at Job Interview Guide, saying, “There are many models that depict leadership and management in the business world. In reality management and leadership have very different meanings: a manager is a title and leader is a function. Management is a position and leadership is a skill.”

David Burkus presents Book Review: Leadership & The One Minute Manager posted at davidburkus.com, reviewing a classic book that teaches situational leadership theory.

Erin Schreyer presents To Be or Not to Be? posted at Authentic Leadership, talking about the benefits of being intentional.

Ralph Jean-Paul presents The Persuasion Experiment: 5 Effective Persuasion Techniques Tested posted at Potential 2 Success, saying, “We are constantly trying to persuade others in one direction or another. Whether it is trying to convince your friends to eat at one restaurant instead of another, or getting your boss to give you a raise, being able to persuade other people is important. Leaders must have this skill! In this post, I test 5 persuasion techniques to see if they really work.”

Jennifer V. Miller presents Stepping Into the Abyss posted at Jennifer V. Miller, describing the key factors necessary for employees to feel comfortable giving feedback to their bosses.

William Matthies presents Change: The New You posted at Business Wisdom: Words to Manage By, saying, “If you can’t lead change, it will lead you.”

Eric Pennington presents One Question For Your CEO posted at Epic Living – Leadership Development Career Management Training Executive Life Coaching Author, discussing “maybe the most important question for the CEO, and those who follow him or her.”

Erik Samdahl presents 20 Years and Counting: Leadership Development Once Again the Most Critical Issue Facing Organizations in 2010 posted at Productivity Blog, saying, “Based on a study of over 40 issues, leadership development is the most critical issue: what companies see as important but not effective.”

Lisa Rosendahl presents Have You Checked Your Credibility Lately? posted at Lisa Rosendahl, saying, “You have credibility currency. You trade in it and on it regularly, whether you are aware of it or not. Have you checked your credibility lately?”

Alice Snell presents Seats at Executive Tables posted at Taleo Blog – Talent Management Solutions, saying, “HR needs more Seats at Executive Tables”

Steve Roesler presents How To Get Your Good Ideas Heard posted at All Things Workplace, saying, “Leaders are always looking for other leaders. One way they find them is by watching people who know the importance of getting their ideas heard. Here are some ways to do just that.”

Jon Ingham presents Work sucks, play games! posted at Management 2.0 developing social capital, discussing ideas from a book which suggests using games and virtual worlds to change the way we work.

Tom Magness presents Spider-Senses posted at Leader Business, saying, “Good leaders need ‘Spider-senses.’ The power that comes from listening to that inner voice, from following up on intuition, can save a reputation, a project, or even a life. Take a few lessons from the world’s greatest ‘Webslinger!’”

Management Category -

Barry Zweibel presents The Heart of Effective Personal Management posted at GottaGettaBLOG!, a primer on Stephen Covey’s “Time Management Matrix” from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Laura, a.k.a. working girl presents Working Girls posted at Working Girl, discussing an increasing source of frustration for working women who want to work more effectively.

Sharlyn Lauby presents Anonymous Comments posted at hr bartender, saying, “Managers should ask questions to get better answers and build trust.”

Jim Stroup presents The Management Uncertainty Principle posted at Managing Leadership, saying, “Uncertainty operates not just in physics but in management as well. How can you use it to gain greater control over your work?”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of leadership development carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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*   Carnevale takes place during the two weeks prior to Mardi Gras, so the dates are not fixed. This year, it officially goes from February 6^th through the 16^th. So today’s Leadership Development Carnival (unofficially) kicks off the event.

Interesting Note: Americans might think that their electoral system is convoluted, but Venice had a truly remarkable voting system for electing its leadership. Here is a ‘brief’ description from Wikipedia -

The Venetians’ system for electing the Doge was a particularly convoluted process, consisting of five rounds of drawing lots (sortition) and five rounds of approval voting. By drawing lots, a body of 30 electors was chosen, which was further reduced to nine electors by drawing lots again. An electoral college of nine members elected 40 people by approval voting; those 40 were reduced to form a second electoral college of 12 members by drawing lots again. The second electoral college elected 25 people by approval voting, which were reduced to form a third electoral college of nine members by drawing lots. The third electoral college elected 45 people, which were reduced to form a fourth electoral college of 11 by drawing lots. They in turn elected a final electoral body of 41 members, who ultimately elected the Doge. Despite its complexity, the system had certain desirable properties such as being hard to game and ensuring that the winner reflected the opinions of both majority and minority factions. This process was used with little modification from 1268 until the end of the Republic of Venice in 1797, and was one of the factors contributing to the durability of the republic.

Photo by Mark Bennett

Focus on Failure!

No, this is not advice to try to fail, but rather if (and when) you do fail, you’ll want to expend some time, thought and energy into actively learning from that failure. This is hinted at by an interesting finding from some neuroscience research done at MIT, which has implications not only for individuals, but organizations as well.

The research showed that the part of the brain that tracks success and failure appears to change and process more efficiently after success, but not after failure. What does that mean for us? Here’s a telling quote from the HBR article citing the research:

“But after failure,” Miller points out, “there was little change in brain activity.” In other words, the brain didn’t store any information about what went wrong and use it the next time. The monkey just tried, tried again.

In other words, left to its own devices, our brains will likely not learn from failure. Fortunately, we have the ability to recognize that fact and take steps to correct it. We can pause after failure and seriously ponder what went wrong – what was the cause of the failure? But that takes time, thought and energy to figure it out.

Now, consider what you might be short of in an organizational culture dominated by fear. That’s correct; there’s never enough time, don’t stop to think – act, and the energy generated by fear is more typically applied to shift the blame or hide the failure than in learning from the failure. So, without Psychological Safety, as Victorio puts it, you get a compounded problem with failure. First, as we already know, people will be averse to taking risk in general. That means fewer opportunities for innovation, profit, etc. Secondly, when failure does occur, its ability to even have any positive learning effect at all is almost entirely wiped out. No learning occurs automatically and, since more effort is spent hiding the failure or shifting the blame, no learning from thinking through the failure occurs either. Since no one sees any benefit from taking the risk, the cycle is reinforced and even fewer risks are taken and even less learning occurs.

However, if your organization has tolerance for thoughtful risk-taking, the cycle can be turned positive. Just recognize that a bit more effort is required to make a failure become a learning experience. Avoid what happens to the monkeys!

Are You Ready for Some HR Carnival?

Steve Boese has posted the Carnival of HR – Super Bowl Edition over on his HR Technology blog. Go check it out – there are 30 submitted posts! Steve has also taken the time to create an entertaining, Super Bowl theme categorization of the posts, including a brief description of each post.

Some posts that stood out include:

‘Is Risk Avoidance Adding More Risk to your Company’s Talent Strategy?’ by Susan Burns at Talent Synchronicity

‘Four Ways HR Can Operate More Like a Profit Center’. by Trish McFarlane at HR Ringleader

‘Optimizing Talent in the New Workforce’ by Sharlyn Lauby at the HR Bartender

‘Leadership Development: When to Hire a Coach’ by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership

These an other posts await you, some by folks you may not have known about before. Here’s your chance to discover a new blog you might want to add to your reading!

Stacked Ranking and Karate

I bristled momentarily when the Sensai told my son and the other 4-6 year old girls and boys to line up in ranked order.  Flashbacks of painful ranking exercises clouded my mind.  Recent customer meetings in which talent leaders voiced their distaste for such practices echoed.   I was temporarily outraged and indignant: “why are you oppressing my son in such a manner?”  “and at such a young age?”

However, my fury dissipated immediately as the children easily lined up.  No feelings were hurt.  No one quit or threatened quitting.  I realized some noticeable differences:

1) It was transparent. Everyone knew where they stood.  There were no nuances or subjectivity.

2) Expectations were obvious. The children knew exactly what they needed to do to earn another stripe and move up in rank.

3) It was about work – hard work. Being a born karate-er was not going to cut it.  If they worked hard and focused, they would earn another stripe.

4) And it was about time and patience.  It was not possible to earn all of the stripes at once and leap to the front of the stack.  It was clear that experience and value take time.

Well!  Those are good lessons for a kid to learn.  Maybe there’s something to this ranking and stripes and belts thing!

Of course there are actually belt certifications in the Six Sigma method of quality management.  As Wikipedia suggests, Six Sigma is “not without controversy.”  But isn’t it nice to have a methodology to controverse over? What if we put a stake in the ground and created stripes and belts for leadership?  What if we focused rank and potential more on hard work & practice and a willingness to learn?  What if we laid out the expectations in such a transparent way, that everyone knew just what they needed to do to get to where they wanted to go?

I’d appreciate it if we could get this methodology figured out pretty soon.  After I’m done deciding where to send my son to kindergarten, I’ll be looking at employers for his first job.  And I warn you, I’m picky!

but why?

I hear a lot of people talking about their Talent strategy in a way that makes me think that they might be missing the big picture.

A good example is the current focus on Performance Management solutions.  Conversations often go something like this

HR group:

Our talent strategy is to have 100% participation in the performance process, where every person in our organization has a recorded performance rating.

Me: Why?

HR Group:

So we can make sure we have a common measurement of our resources

Me: Why?

HR Group:

So we can benefit from the Pay for Performance best practice. [Alternate: So that we can make sure we are "right sizing" the correct people]

Me: Groan

While it’s hard to know where to begin in deconstructing this discussion in a single blog post, let me start with the idea that I think we are again, confusing strategy with tactics.

A Talent strategy is one that shows how you can to achieve critical business results with people [your most important resource].  Technology might be  important, but for it to be effective, you must first make sure you know how to define success.

Of course, I’m a huge fan of Performance management systems/plans/initiatives.  I think having a solid system to measure people is a good thing.  I also believe that the communication of achievement, competency, etc. is important for both managers, employees and human resources.   I just get frustrated when I realize that people often forget that, at the end of the day, it is also a lot of paperwork.

The value is real, but so is the cost and in any event, this can only ever be a stepping stone for an effective Talent strategy.  You need this measurement to help you understand your workforce, to ultimately be able to better utilize them.

Without appropriate line of sight between the required effort and the desired outcome of the activity you will end up with a lot of frustrated people in the middle and no real results for the business.    Your strategy needs to connect the dots between the activity and the business results.  What does the business get from your [insert current talent focus here] initiative?

Do you know?  Do they care?

When the golden rule doesn’t work

I’ve come to realize that I have been unintentionally misled as far as the golden rule is concerned.

It’s not that the golden rule is a bad idea, in general treating others how you want to be treated is better than intentionally treating them how you don’t.

but…

it still can set you up for failure.  In a similar way that letting a four year old pick out a birthday gift for a twelve year old might.  While the twelve year old might be polite about it, I’m fairly certain that the glitter, sparkle princess pony is not as cool as the four year old believes it to be.

The golden rule is just another manifestation of our general tendency toward ethnocentrism, viewing the world with ourselves in the center.

In fact, we should be striving for Dan McCarthy’s Platinum rule and thinking how others want to be treated.

As usual, I have some great examples from personal experience, about what might not work so well.

Some things I’ve come to learn are:

• not everyone loves an lively open brainstorming session on how to fix their most important problems
• some people find debate uncomfortable
• some people do not find lots of hard questions a sign of interest in their topic, instead they might find those questions stressful
• publicly sharing your goals, flaws and challenges could be considered unusual

The tricky bit of all this is that following the platinum rule requires knowing more about the “others” in your life.  It’s a lot harder, but it’s also a lot more effective.  For it to work best, you need people who are willing to let you know how they want to be treated.

One obvious way to find out is to ask. Taking the time to get to know others and what works for them will increase your effectiveness as a leader.

On the flip-side, letting others know how you want to be treated will make things better for you.   So, the next time you find someone treating you differently than your ideal, consider opening this dialogue.  It’s possible that they are just following the golden rule, and have no idea they are getting it wrong.

And for all those people who have endured years of  my tough questions… sorry about that!

Speaking at Ted??!!

OK, here’s how it happened:

Somehow, Meg suckered me into going to TedActive (read: Meg generously offered to take me with her after busting her butt to apply and get accepted).  Then, she dared me to submit a TedYou talk (read: Meg inspired me to show some balls and come up with a submission).  I canvassed my set of personal stories and settled on my favorite love story (read: my husband is the funniest thing I have going for me).

So, now I need to figure out how to give a 5 minute talk (in the desert) that engages, surprises, entertains, and most importantly convinces people to talk to me and Meg throughout the rest of the conference.  I am re-reading “How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less” to help with the process, but I’m thinking I need something that’s more story-telling oriented and less *pointy*.  Any suggestions?

Thanks for the help!

Do you share your opinions freely?

I had the opportunity to attend a leadership training this week.  A lot of concepts were discussed, but one that got me thinking was about how important it is for a leader to create healthy debate in their organization.

Not that you want to always be disagreeing or even looking to drive consensus, but that you are making sure that all ideas are on the table and available to you to make the best decisions.

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.

- Dudley Malone

This got me thinking about how bringing forward ideas is not just about the leader, it is about all the participants being willing to share their ideas and opinions freely.  I think we can all think of ways this can be stifled by a leader, but even the most open and engaging leader cannot force participation.  An idea is something a participant offers.

Being a member of a great team is something we all desire, but there is a big responsibility on each of us to make that happen.  For teams to be high functioning trust has to exist, and in the end it comes down to each of us to give our trust and our thoughts freely to the team, often before that trust is earned.

My question today is:

Do you share your ideas and opinions on the important issues or do you sit back and wait for the opportunity to say “I knew they would get it wrong”?  How does that impact the outcome for your team?

The Stay Warm Carnival of HR is up!

Go check out the new Carnival of HR on Lisa Rosendahl’s blog. Lisa has gathered together 35 top posts and interspersed tips on staying warm in the frigid Minnesota winter. Lisa introduces each submission with a brief description to help you decide if you want to read it.

Some notable posts include: Margo Rose’s Compassionate HR: What’s Your Company Doing to Improve the Community?, Chris Young’s Non Strategic HR and the Destruction of Value, Michael Long’s Social Media Recruiting and The Bottom Line, Dan McCarthy’s Undercover Leader, and the Devon Group’s For Career Development, Get Involved with Mentoring.

This is a terrific opportunity for you to get a great sample of a variety of perspectives, thinking, and just plain good writing. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a great blog you never heard of before.

Overcoming My Fear of Failure

Fear of failure has always been a part of my life.

I was eleven years old when I first moved to Australia. By the time I finally allowed myself to speak English, I was almost twelve.

I remember mumbling “How do you do?” to our neighbor Harry one day and he was completely taken back. You see, Harry was teaching us English for over six months and had never heard me speak. (I used to mime so no one could hear how horrible my  pronunciations were.)

Growing up in a family of over-achievers, I set my own expectations so high that I was always truly petrified of failing. When I faced with a challenge, I can successfully talk myself out of it by asking: “What if I am not good enough?”

The worst case scenario is not to even give it your best shot. I have learned to set the right level of MY expectations while I was studying Computing Science: I excelled at subjects like “Project Management” and “Simulation and Modeling”; I was mediocre at Financial Accounting but I was at peace with myself. I realized that it is OK to be average on “some” things. I didn’t want to be an accountant anyway.

The key to overcoming fears for me is to give myself the PERMISSION to do it. (The fear may not go away, but I am not going to let it take control.)

In 2010, I am totally ditching the “What if I am not good enough?” question. After all, there ARE upsides to failures in life.

I am going to focus my energy on becoming a prolific blogger. The fear of writing a blog that suck may not go away, but I am going to stop playing safe and give myself permission to just write, even if some of them will be  bad ones. (Tip: if you get bored with my blogs, you can easily navigate to my favorite bloggers such as Meg,  Mark, Amy, Dan, Jason and many more listed on our blogroll.)

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. – Theodore Roosevelt

May you be blessed with the strength to succeed!