Leading the Unleadable

by Alan Willett

  Jennifer said, “You said it well. And yes, that is what I mean. Do you need any guidance in how to talk to Dan?”

  The team members were worried about taking ownership of the problem, but because of the way Jennifer had been forming the team culture, they really did understand that it was up to them and the team to make the necessary improvements. They listened to Jennifer’s guidance and then talked to Dan. It turned out that Dan was very thankful for them coming to him. Dan was lost on some key parts of the technology and had been afraid to come to anyone for help. The whole team rallied together and helped Dan become a great contributor to the overall project.

  In discussing this with Jennifer, I found it amazing that Jennifer knew about the problem with Dan and was waiting for the opportunity to get the rest of the team to tackle it. She knew that it would further bond the team and strengthen their ownership of the mission. She was right. The team energy and commitment grew throughout the project.

  Once you have created your first gelled team, you will work continually to find more ways to create gelled teams and improve how you do so. After creating gelled teams that you lead, as an executive you will work to create a culture of leadership where that is the norm.

  When there are people problems in the organization like those described in the taxonomy of difficult people, many leaders understand that it is their responsibility to ensure that the trouble is fixed. However, many miss the point that they do not have to do it themselves.

  The exceptional leader is always looking for ways to create teams of people in which the team can figure out how to address the trouble without management involvement. As you grow as a leader, the troubles you and your organization encounter will not diminish, but as your skills grow at creating the desired culture, the number of times you must personally get involved will greatly diminish.

  • KEY #6 •

  Treat Trouble as Information-Rich Data

  You are holding a meeting with your team. One individual is on an especially long cynical diatribe and is enabling many others to join the conversation.

  What is your reaction?

  You are the executive responsible for multiple projects where almost all of the teams are missing the deadlines.

  What is your reaction?

  Your reaction to these types of situations indicates whether you possess the key mindset of treating trouble as information-rich data. The following reactions are sorted from the worst type of reaction to the best reaction.

  • The manager joins the diatribe with his own snide remarks.

  • The manager begins to argue with the team that everything is really better than they say it is.

  • The manager waits very patiently for everyone to finish and then moves on with the rest of the agenda.

  • The leader asks everyone to pause for a minute, remove the cynicism, and state more clearly what the problems are.

  • The exceptional leader, in addition to asking for clear problem statements, later reflects on why cynicism was the response by the team to the situation. This leader asks what in the environment, including his own leadership, may have contributed to this.

  In the second situation, where most projects in an organization are late, leadership responses ranging from the worst type of reaction to the best include the following.

  • The executive considers that “situation normal.” It is not even thought of as a problem.

  • The executive holds critical reviews of all the projects and terminates the employment of the project leaders who were furthest behind.

  • The executive looks for pattern differences between the projects that finished on schedule and the projects that finished behind. There is a lessons learned document written and never read.

  • The exceptional leader has the lessons learned sessions held publicly and ensures that there is ample incentive for all project leaders to attend. The exceptional leader is looking for everyone to come up with his or her own ideas on how to change the situation.

  • The exceptional leader, in addition to ensuring that the lessons learned document is a living document, reflects on how it became situation normal to deliver late. This leader asks what in the environment, including her own leadership, may have contributed to this.

  If there is trouble occurring in any of the things you lead, it is important information—not just about the actual incident or the actual trouble, it also contains information on the process, the people involved, the culture you are creating through your leadership, and you.

  The best reaction to the trouble is not to ignore it. Nor is it the victim response of whining. The ideal response is to treat the trouble as a rich source of information that can help the organization excel.

  • KEY #7 •

  Own Your Leadership Power

  Have you played racquetball or perhaps squash? In those sports, the two people playing each other are not on opposite sides of a net, like in tennis, they are sharing the same space and hitting the ball toward the same surface. The best players understand that the center of the court is a very valuable space to hold. Rookie players can be easily identified because they consistently are on the edge of the court, never contending for the center.

  Even managers with great titles and all the associated responsibilities that come with them have been know to behave like rookie players. They do not take ownership of their own leadership power.

  For example, when the manager ignores the cynic and just waits for him to finish, the manager has given the cynic the center of the court. When this is done repeatedly, the cynic becomes the unofficial owner of the meeting. As new topics come up, people will not watch the manager, they will watch the designated cynic. He can kill a topic with a sneer.

  The final key to the exceptional leadership power of being able to transform the troublesome to the tremendous is to take ownership of your leadership power. The meaning of this is simply that you understand and own all the keys of the mindset of leading the unleadable.

  It means that when you have setbacks in making those mindsets your first response (and there will be setbacks), you don’t let the setback become a norm; you forgive yourself and get back on track. It means that you don’t let the trouble you have to deal with define your response; you take ownership of your response. You take ownership of your leadership process and the results.

  I used to be the rookie on the edge of the court when I played racquetball. When I was playing with one of the best players in the club, he stopped the game we were playing and taught me about the power of the center of the court.

  When I actually beat him one year later, he was absolutely delighted. He understood the power of the center of the court so well that he absolutely owned it. He also understood it so well that he insisted on the proper sharing of it.

  You should do the same with your leadership power.

  REFLECTION POINTS

  How would you rate yourself on each of the exceptional leadership mindset keys? Use a scale of 1 (I seldom think that way) to 10 (that is always my first response).

  1. Appreciate the diversity of every leaf.

  2. Start with the belief that everyone has good intentions.

  3. Accept reality but do not let reality define me.

  4. Set the high bar for excellence that people desire.

  5. Understand the power of gelled teams.

  6. Treat trouble as information-rich data.

  7. Own your leadership power.

  How do you confirm if you are correct in your self-rating?

  PART

  2

  THE LEADER IN ACTION

  SPOTTING TROUBLE, DEALING WITH TROUBLE

  “Action is the foundational key to all success.”

  PABLO PICASSO

  Fine-Tune Your Radar for Trouble

  I was once leaving a hotel on my way home. I was partially down the hallway and was feeling very happy, which gave me pause. I am often happy, but I was so pleased with myself I asked myself, “Why?” That
’s when I realized that my suitcase had closed very easily for the first time!

  My situational awareness had kicked in.

  I immediately went back into the hotel room. I opened the closet. My suit jackets and shirts were still nicely arranged there.

  To deal with issues you first must be aware that they exist. And, as in all things, the earlier you are aware of issues emerging the more likely you will prevent damage and achieve the excellence desired.

  This chapter is focused on the methods you can use to develop highly tuned radar to catch trouble early.

  Before we begin, I have a quick question for you. How good is your radar for trouble? To help you answer this question, consider the following troublesome situations. How often do these types of trouble occur for the areas you are responsible for?

  • Quality issues in products found by customers

  • Significant issues with quality service to your customers

  • Projects that are late

  • Members of your teams having significant conflicts

  • Teams getting stuck and not making significant progress

  The question is not just “How often do these situations occur?” but also “How often do you find out about them well after there was the first indication of trouble?”

  Developing a Radar for Trouble

  For those who have now objectively determined that their own radars are flawless, scan these areas and see if you find anything new to help make them even better. If you have found that your radar can be improved, consider the following three methods.

  METHOD #1

  Talk to people. More importantly, listen to people.

  The most obvious way to be able to spot trouble is to be there when the situation is beginning or at least right when it happens. And since you cannot always be there, the next most obvious way is to hear about troublesome situations soon after they happen.

  One way to do this is by the classic “management by walking around” or, in this very connected world filled with distributed teams, leadership by calling around and checking in. You have two goals with this. The first goal is to find out if there are any situations that need your help to ensure the achievement of the project goals. The second goal is even more important. That goal is to build trust in a way that people will come to you without fear about difficult situations.

  The way you conduct yourself in listening and in responding will build the foundation of trust. Thus, the leader must provide help that is actually helpful, as opposed to “anti-help,” which many people feel they actually receive when they raise issues, such as being forced into endless fact finding and status reporting instead of actually attacking the root causes.

  The following are the keys to making your walkabouts successful.

  • Ask questions about the project and the person.

  • Vary the questions you ask. The most boring meetings are the ones that ask the same questions of each person week after week. The status in these meetings is often abbreviated to NNTR (nothing new to report). This same thing can happen on walkabouts.

  • Make sure you are in the right mindset before doing a walkabout. If you are stressed or distracted, your walkabout could do more harm than good. So set your troubles aside. Make room for their troubles.

  • Listen. Listen. Listen. The biggest mistake leaders make on walkabouts is listening to the first part of a problem and, before the speaker is finished, jumping in with advice or solutions.

  • Wait for people to finish—even if the solution is obvious to you! If you can’t wait because of time pressures on you, let the person know that. Instead of just cutting them off, ask them to provide you a concise summary on the spot. Too often, people try to provide a long background story before getting to what the key problem is. Simply say, “Tell me the core problem or question. If I need more background, I will ask.”

  When you do hear about trouble, first ask what the person is doing about it. Then ask for suggestions on how you can help. Of course, use your judgment here. There are situations that are obviously outside the person’s control and what he or she is doing about it is telling you. However, much of the time the person is already working on the problem and was just getting ready to tell you when you cut the speaker off with your ideas.

  Before offering ideas of what they could do differently, ask if they would like to hear your ideas. This is a good courtesy to give to people. It is also a very useful one. It gives the person who is going to listen a chance to prepare to receive. With that preparation, you are more likely to be heard. Be careful that your suggestions are not criticisms. Just asking questions may lead the person to figure out the best way to handle it. Employees often figure it out after you have walked away and given them time to think.

  Follow up. The most important thing you can do is follow up and let people know that you did. By doing these activities consistently and well you become a trusted leader who can be talked to. It makes your radar much better when people come to you at the earliest moments of trouble, well before you would have noticed!

  METHOD #2

  Pay attention to differences.

  Often, the first indicator that something is wrong is a feeling that something is different from previous experiences. The key is to pay attention to that feeling and investigate whether your feeling is meaningful or not. Is there something that needs your attention?

  On the surface this sounds easy, but in the turmoil of leading complex organizations, teams, and projects, it is often hard to sort out the significant from the noise in the differences you need to pay attention to.

  For example, some differences are so large they will be noticed. If Joe has worn shorts every day of the five years you have known him, it will be very noticeable if you meet him at a coffee shop and he is wearing shined shoes and a suit.

  Here are two simple examples of small differences I have seen good managers miss. Joe typically sat at the front end of the conference room table and was now sitting in a chair at the back of the room. Mary always stopped in her manager’s office to give quick updates of project status. In the last two weeks, she hadn’t stopped in at all.

  Joe in a suit might be at a coffee shop before a funeral or he might be going on a job interview. Joe changing seats might be Joe simply wanting a change of perspective or it could be meaningful in that he is actually feeling disenfranchised and removing himself both physically and metaphorically from being part of the leadership.

  Talking to Mary, perhaps you find out that she had stopped by but never at the same time that you were there. However, when I have seen this situation it is often because there is a significant issue brewing, either personally or at work.

  Notice the differences. Ask about them. The answers could be very interesting.

  Many managers are in such a hurry rushing from event to event that they miss these small things that are actually important. In their hurry, they have lost speed. Speed isn’t about being in a rush. Speed is about accomplishing things that bring great value. To achieve speed, move quickly in your mission and do so calmly such that you can notice the small differences that have big impact.

  METHOD #3

  Look beyond the first level of data.

  Often, project management data says the project is on track. When I examine the detailed data, I frequently find key indicators that the projects would experience trouble later unless underlying issues are addressed quickly. As W. Edwards Deming and many others have said, the key is to “Trust but verify.”

  People often have a story that goes with data, especially if that data doesn’t indicate good news about the project. And although the story gives a great context to the data, the data is still important. If people say the project is fine in spite of what the data says, I find that the data is almost always correct. It is important to go deeper when the story and the data do not match.

  When looking at data, the most important thing to do is to ask the following questions.

  1. Is the
data providing a compelling answer to useful questions? For example, the first question being asked in this situation is “Will the project finish on time?” The answer of a yes or no is insufficient. The real question is “When will the project finish and how do you know?” The answer will provide the next level of detail.

  2. Was the data collected accurately and consistently? What are possible sources of inaccuracy? Can the collection method be cheated? If so, know that the very act of collection is often a disincentive for accurate collection. Using this example, looking at the next level of data you can quickly tell if the predicted end date is superficial or is based on detailed estimates by all people involved, and get detailed tracking on whether or not tasks were finished completely, well, and on time.

  3. Based on the data, what actions can and should be taken based on trigger points? For example, to make schedules that can be consistently met, the plan should enable early delivery if things go correctly. Doing this would call for detailed plans to have been built with contingency in them to deal with inevitable surprises. The data tracking should have a built-in indicator that is as useful as a flashing light in the car saying you are about to run out of gas. The associated action (fill it up!) should also be that clear.

  Even Radar Has Blind Spots

  There are limits to developing your personal radar. If you are a leader of a team of people, even if you still do some work on the team, you are different from the rest of the team and you will be treated differently. In spite of what a nice person you are, team members won’t share with you the same concerns or frustrations they will share with other teammates. The higher you go in the organization, the less access you will have to the full story and all of its details.