Category Archives: High Performance

How Psychologically Safe is your team?

In 1999 Harvard Business School Professor of Leadership and Management Amy Edmondson discovered that Psychological Safety was the most crucial factor for determining team performance.

Edmondson defines Psychological Safety as including the following three traits:

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Role clarity in two steps

How do you know that you are performing your role to the best of your ability?

The first step is to have a 100% role clarity. That is, you are certain that what you are focusing your time and energy on, is what you should be focused on.

To ensure that you have role clarity, follow the two steps below.

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Cash is King. Clarity is Queen.

In the mid-1990s, I was introduced to the term, “Cash is King”. It means that, in business, you can never forget that accountants and finance rule the day. All of us, no matter where we live and work, exist within an economic reality that is ruled by the mighty dollar.

Everything that we do as leaders, ultimately, will be judged by its economic impact. Yet, I preach Servant Leadership which is about recognising the full potential of people and enabling them to shine.

How does Servant Leadership marry with “Cash is King”?

Read on if you’d like to discover how the two are related.

Continue reading Cash is King. Clarity is Queen.

Excellence – if not now, when?

Excellence is an exciting topic. Is it about being perfect, never making a mistake? Or is it more about a mindset and set of behaviours?

In this article, I will share five tips that individually, and collectively, will have you achieving excellence more often, than not.

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What are you not saying to your boss?

One of my executive coaching clients is extremely successful. He regularly receives six-figure bonuses and is constantly approached by head-hunters.Gary Ryan

Earlier this year he was flat. He was frustrated with his boss. Despite his success, he wasn’t sure if his boss had his back or understood what frustrated him.

“Have you told him?” I asked.

“No, not really.” he replied.

“Why not?” I implored.

He had a lot of reasons. The biggest one was that he didn’t want his boss to see him as being paranoid. As we explored this issue, he shared that his frustrations were affecting him at home, and he had been less motivated than usual about his exercise and health program. This issue was affecting his entire life.

Continue reading What are you not saying to your boss?

A view of leadership from the ‘other side’

Below is a dialogue between two colleagues. One of them Paul, is upset with his manager because he believes that while she preaches ‘collaboration’, she is in fact (to him) a hypocrite. His colleague Aiden provides a different perspective and eventually enables Paul to see that maybe his manager isn’t the hypocrite he thinks she is.

Paul: “Amanda is a hypocrite!”

Aiden: “What do you mean?”

Paul: “Well, she says that she wants us to collaborate, so I gave her my opinion about the Seymour incident and she’s pulled rank on me. I’ve been told that it’s her decision and that if I do what I said I was going
to do, then I’ll be in trouble.”

Aiden: “Hmmm. You’re saying that Amanda has asked you for your opinion, you’ve given it and she’s made a decision that is not what you want. Is that correct?”

Paul: “Yes. That is exactly what has happened. She’s a hypocrite!”

Aiden: “Paul, let’s slow down for a second. What behaviour does Amanda display when you believe that she has listened to you?”

Paul: “Well, that’s easy. She does what I want. That proves that she has listened. After all, that’s what collaboration is, isn’t it?”

Aiden: “Well, not exactly. If we slow down and listen to what you’re saying it sounds like Amanda has to do what you want otherwise she isn’t seen to be listening to you. Is that what you mean?”

Paul: “No, not really. But she asked me to give my opinion and then she didn’t take it. What’s the point of asking me what I think?”

Aiden: “The point is that Amanda is seeking more information by getting your opinion. Think back over the past few times that Amanda has asked your opinion, have there been any times when she has appeared to listen to you?”

Paul: “Yes, a couple. There was the Monroe issue and the Pothole issue where Amanda’s final decision was very close to what I thought we should do.”

Aiden: “So, from your perspective Amanda does listen sometimes?”

Paul: “Yes, sometimes.”

Aiden: “What’s your definition of when Amanda isn’t listening to you?

Paul: “That’s obvious. When her decisions are different to what I want.”

Aiden: “Paul, Can you hear what you are saying? It seems to me that you’re saying that unless Amanda’s decisions equal what you want, then she’s being a hypocrite because she hasn’t listened to you. Yet you agree that there have been times when her decisions have been very similar to what your input recommended.”

Paul: “I’m listening” nodded Paul.

Aiden: “Look at it this way. When you’ve been a boss in the past, don’t you expect your positional authority to count for something from time to time?”

Paul: “Yes”

Aiden: “In that case, isn’t it possible that Amanda really has listened? In taking your opinion on board she has decided to do something different. She has then used her positional authority, which she is entitled to use, to make the decision. What’s wrong with that?”

Paul: “Okay. I suppose that you have a point. In fact she did say that she was using her positional authority to ‘make the call’. I took offence to that for some reason, but I’m not sure why”.

Aiden: “Great. I’m glad you’ve been open to having this chat.”

Paul; “Yeah, so I am I. I was going to go and do something that probably wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. In fact,, I probably would have undermined Amanda if I had continued with the action that I was planning to do. I suppose there are just times when I’m not going to fully understand Amanda’s decisions. I suppose I’ll just need to trust her and keep asking questions. That can’t hurt, can it?

Aiden: “Of course not. And my experience with Amanda is that she does listen and does try to explain why her decisions are what they are. I think that sometimes we don’t listen to her because we’re so focused on what we want. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for us all to have a chat about these issues at our next meeting.

Paul: “You really think that she’d be up for it?”

Aiden: “Yeah, I do.”

This dialogue highlights how powerful mental models (see How what you think affects what you see) can be and how they can influence what we see and don’t see. In this situation a manager who collaborates with her team is seen as being a hypocrite simply because she at times, makes decisions that aren’t exactly what her team members want her to do.

Collaboration exists when people work as a team. Teamwork requires members to perform their role from both a technical role and team role (see What Makes People Tick Personality Profile & Job Fit Assessments) perspective. In this context it is fair and reasonable for a leader to exert their positional authority from time to time when making decisions. Providing the leader is constantly seeking and absorbing input from team members, there may be times when the leader has to make a decision and that decision may not be popular with the rest of the team. The nature of a leadership role means that leaders are exposed to information that other staff are not able to access. (at least not in the same timeframe). This means that sometimes leaders have access to information as an input to their decision-making that other team members may not yet know. This can create a paradox for the leader who wishes to be known for their collaborative style because there are times (such as employee disciplinary processes) when a leader is not able to share all the information with their team members.

A way to manage this situation is for the leader to declare when they are expressing a view from the perspective of their formal position and authority, compared to when they are simply expressing a view. For such a system to work the leader will need to conduct a series of conversations with their team about how such a system should work. The intention of the system is to enable team members to be able to speak candidly with their ‘boss’ (see the video Transparency – How leaders create a culture of candor).

If conversations such as the ones just described had been conducted throughout Paul and Aiden’s team’s history, it is unlikely that Paul would have been so convinced that his manager, Amanda, was a hypocrite.

What have been your experiences with regard to the challenge of having a collaborative leadership style, with making decisions when required?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Candor as a catalyst for high performance

Recently I was honoured to be interviewed by Ian Berry, author of Changing What’s Normal and creator of the Enhancing Their Gifts System.

As part of Ian’s Candid Conversations Series I was interviewed on the topic of “Candor as a catalyst for high performance.”

Once you have completed viewing the conversation, I’m interested in hearing about your experiences of candor in the workplace.

Gary Ryan enables leaders and talented professionals to move Beyond Being Good.

If you listen, service excellence follows

The capacity to listen is probably the most important skill that relates to service excellence. Without this capacity staff will not know the expectations of their customers, each other, or the key stakeholders of their communities. Organisations that provide great service are fantastic listeners; to their customers, to their key stakeholders and to each other within the organisation.

William Isaacs (1999) notes that our culture is dominated by sight. Light moves at 186,000 miles per second, yet sound only travels at 1,100 feet per second. In summary, William Isaacs says that in order to listen we must slow down.

How do you and/or your organisation slow down to listen?

Quote
Our hearing puts us on the map. It balances us. Our sense of balance is intimately tied to our hearing; both come from the same source within our bodies…Hearing is auditory, of course, relating to sound. The word auditory…most ancient root means “to place perception.” When we listen, we place our perceptions.
(William Isaacs, lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, consultant and author)

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Increasing Team Member Motivation – Audio Version

If you are leading a team within a poor company culture, how can you increase the motivation of your team members? Gary Ryan explains a series of practical behaviours that a Team Leader can do that will enhance the self-motivation of their team members.

Find out more about creating Teams That Matter® here .

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com