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The Leadership Challenge: Likeability – 5 Tips!

September 25, 2016 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: While leadership isn’t a popularity contest, it isn’t an unpopularity contest either! There is much more to be gained than lost by being likeable as a leader. So in this post we’ll explore the leadership challenge of likeability and provide 5 tips so you can achieve the smiley face emoji of leadership likeability… Enjoy!

It’s about Respect… NOT Likeability!

Jim was a senior leader for a Fortune 100 organization that I had the pleasure of working with (Name changed to protect identity). Jim had a Top 20 MBA program degree, and from the outside-looking-in, a successful career going for himself. However, there was one problem that Jim couldn’t overcome in his race to the corner office… Jim!

You see Jim was one of those leaders that was raised in the “business” by a tough SOB. These years of hazing taught him that people don’t need to like you/your every move… but they sure do need to respect you. Those that fell outside of the respect rankings were belittled immediately and soon recognized for dismissal/reassignment. It was all Jim, all time, with little room for anyone else placing a premium on respect.

We Don’t Like You!

Jim’s organization recently conducted a 360* behavioral assessment, where Jim as well as his organizational stakeholders provided feedback. These assessments are great perspective on a leader’s abilities, and the competencies that shape their ability to execute. However, Jim’s feedback was far from positive from his stakeholders.

It appears as though the 360* feedback on Jim was extremely consistent (a good thing) in that it was nearly identically unfavorable (a not-so good thing). Time and again, the deltas (or gaps) between where Jim viewed himself and stakeholders were broad/wide. It was as if the 360* assessment was conducted on two different subjects (Jim being one and the stakeholders providing feedback on someone totally different!) What hurt the most were the open/honest/brutal feedback portions, where “We don’t like you!” was pretty well spelled out (because that’s what several people said… Ouch!)

5 Tips to Leadership Likeability

Was Jim clueless, and/or were these results inaccurate? Here are 5 tips that you can take so as to improve your leadership likeability and not be like Jim:

Tip #5 – Manners Matter

Jim had a nasty habit of cutting people off in communication. It wasn’t uncommon for him to interrupt others while they were speaking in meetings. He’d even cut them off while walking down the hall. Remember, manners matter if you’re the leader!

Tip #4 – Focus

Paying attention to others while they were speaking was another of Jim’s weaknesses. Instead of listening to what others were speaking of in the moment, Jim was too busy focusing on what he was going to say next. Focus on the present… Listen to others!

Tip #3 – Emotional Awareness

Pay attention to not only what others say, but how they say it. Sometimes, body language (especially facial expressions) can tell the story much better than the words someone is attempting to use.

Tip #2 – PMA

Your mental attitude is reflected in everything you do. As such, employ a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) in everything you do (oh, and be sincere while doing so!)

Tip #1 – Respect Others

Keep in mind that no matter what you do, you’re not going to please all the people all the time. There are going to be those times when in fact you perceive that you are pleasing no one at all (not even yourself!) As such, remember that regardless of likeability, show respect at all times for those around you and especially yourself.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve examined the leadership challenge of likeability and provided 5 tips. Different cultures, different personalities, different competing interests make today’s workplace much more challenging than in years past. Good news, the future appears to be shaping up even more dynamic! Therefore, your ability to achieve leadership likeability will certainly be tested (so make it a character trait in your favor).

Sam Palazzolo

www.BloodSweatSpears.com

The Leadership Challenge: Acceptance – 3 Tips!

September 20, 2016 By Tip of the Spear

The Point: No matter how much you’ve tried for a successful outcome (Diagnosed the problem from multiple perspectives, researched potential solutions, spent thousands of dollars, etc.), sometimes you simply have to accept that failure is an option. In this post, we’ll explore the leadership challenge of acceptance and provide 3 tips to help you draw closure… Enjoy!

Welcome to Reality Distortion!

In the “romance” stage of business, everything seems to come up smelling like a rose. For example, as a leader have you ever come up with a plan that you thought was “air tight” in design? Moments of failure after launch were most likely discounted/minimalized. Conversely, moments of success as only you can see them through your focal pattern were romanticized, blown-up to successfully epic proportions, and a comfortable glide pattern presented itself (Hence the “Walking on Cloud 9” analogy is appropriate).

The truth of the matter is that your leadership mind is playing a game on you. Unable to see reality for what it actually is, leads you to a state of reality distortion where the truth is “bent” in favor of what you want to see. Now you may really, really, really want to see things for the way that you want them and not as the way they really are. However, in the end, a slap of reality will occur snapping you out of distortion!

Just Get It Over With

I have worked with a leader for the last several years that is extremely bright, driven to achieve, and successful in their professional life (Not that there hasn’t been struggles professionally, but they’ve weathered many a storm!) This leader’s only downfall is that they continue to put themselves out of position on the personal playing field in the here and now. Their orientation is to simply be down the road where the future lies, leaving them to desire just get the current state over.

This “Just get it over with” mentality rings especially true when they encounter failure in the personal/private moment. Regardless of how much time, effort, or energy was applied to a given situation, their desire is to simply move on… But to where? (I’m not concerned of the “With Who?” as they are content being solo/alone in decision making).

Moving On

As a leader you are challenged to do your best, and depending on the situation at hand your best may not be good enough. So how do you fold tent after failure and simply move on? The following represent three leadership challenge tips for acceptance:

Tip #3 – Take Ownership

To simply “bounce” from project to project, initiative to initiative, and/or place to place might seem like a rather flipped acceptance response. While your visceral reaction might be to pull the sheets up over your head and never leave the bedroom, reality dictates that you take ownership and positively accept the situation for what it was. Whether you like it or not, you must take responsibility for where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Some albatrosses are larger than others to have around your neck, but start with recognizing that you, and you alone are responsible for your own actions (and quite frankly they are the only actions you are in control of!)

Tip #2 – Set a New Course

Upon positive acceptance of the situation at hand, set a strategic plan that identifies where you want to go. There are a host of visualization exercises that you can conduct to help you identify the where’s, who’s, why’s, and how’s that should be considered. Remember, the course you strategically plan for tomorrow might change due to situations outside of your control (But at least you’ll develop them for yourself!)

Tip #1 – Install/Sustain

Lastly, put your plan into action. Include a series of metrics to measure/monitor your successes as well as failures. Important to (1) recalibrate as appropriate and (2) lose your reality distortion goggles!

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve examined the leadership challenge of acceptance, as well as providing 3 tips to help you as a leader be more successful. If life is a game worth playing, I know two things are certain: (1) Tough times don’t last, but tough people do and (2) Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Sam Palazzolo

www.BloodSweatSpears.com

The Leadership Challenge: Deconstruction – 5 Tips!

September 16, 2016 By Tip of the Spear

The Point: If you are attempting to build leadership in your organization, you know just how difficult that can be. Who to select, what to instruct, and how to verify lessons learned/implemented are amongst the leading-edge decision points to be made for a successful leadership development program. But rather than work from the bottom of the org chart up, what if we went from the top down? In this blog post we’ll examine the leadership challenge regarding deconstruction, or how you can deconstruct top performers within the organization to identify key success characteristics to be replicated… Enjoy!

Leadership Autopsy

Building good leaders is hard, let alone great leaders. This was the central theme of a recent client visit where our task at hand was to develop a leadership development program. What exactly makes a good leader in this organization/division/department/role? If you’ve ever struggled with identifying that those characteristics look like, then welcome to the club. Most Human Resource Managers that lead leadership development initiatives will tell you that there are typically a common core set of characteristics/behaviors that those who are successful exhibit.

So if we know what success looks like, why is it so difficult to pinpoint the individual leader who achieve success characteristics/behaviors? One potential way is to receive input from the stakeholders themselves, rather than the individual leader. While the successful leader achieves great results, they typically can’t explain/replicate their exact methodology/reasons for. This is similar to promoting the super star associate to manager/leader level and seeing their performance not translate in their new role. Why the failure? The answer is simple… They either didn’t have the same passion/skills/knowledge to do so.

Deconstruction Tip Tools

So here is a list of 5 of my favorite deconstruction tips or tools for leaders to look for in order to replicate their success:

Tip #5 – The first tip I’ll share is to conduct a behavioral assessment. Behavioral assessments are good tools that “snapshot” who you are and what you’re comprised of (One of my favorites is from Hogan Assessments). Across a constant/similar characteristic categorization you then have a baseline measuring starting point.

Tip #4 – Conduct an employee/stakeholder survey of the leader with targeted questions pointed at key characteristics (identified in their behavioral assessment) for further input on not only what is important, but the how of execution for those important characteristics.

Tip #3 – Filter characteristics that are most important to the leadership development initiative at hand by comparing supporting position level with organizational mission/vision/values. In other words, if you have a characteristic that does not support/goes against what your organization stands for, you’re better off leaving it out.

Tip #2 – Align with a top tier leadership development methodology. There are a lot of schools of thought regarding what a leader should consist of and how they should learn therein. Top programs that come to mind are any Top 20 MBA program’s Executive Development sessions. While not nearly as long (most are 1-2 days versus 2-years of MBA school), these sessions provide laser focus on important leadership development topics. Presented by faculty that are considered subject matter experts (as well as typically consultants for example organizations), there can be a great transference of leadership knowledge.

Tip #1 – Implement your program and measure success much more frequently than an annual survey. Conduct weekly 1:1 (one to one) meetings, poll stakeholders for feedback, and observe for results.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve examined the leadership challenge of deconstruction and provided five tips. While most leadership moments are worked from blank whiteboard to full whiteboard with initiative details/processes spelled out, sometimes a better approach may be to just start at the top and work your way down by deconstructing successful leaders.

Sam Palazzolo

www.BloodSweatSpears.com

The Leadership Challenge: Poor Decisions – 5 Tips!

September 12, 2016 By Tip of the Spear

The Point: If you’re a leader undoubtedly you’ve come to the decision tree in the process map of leadership several times… Decide correctly and fame/fortune await you, but decide incorrectly and failure awaits. In this post, we’ll examine the leadership challenge of poor decisions and provide 5 tips to help decide correctly… Enjoy!

Ready, Fire, Aim!

Meet Jane, a mid-level executive for an Inc 500 company that oversees operations. Since joining the company (she’s approaching year 4), the organization has seen tremendous growth. Part of this growth initiative is the result of Jane making what she calls good “strategic decisions” in her role. The nature of these strategic decisions stem from a similar fashion of how the CEO of the organization makes his (Think of these as “Ready, Fire, Aim!” strategic decisions… Or decisions made without any strategic-orientation whatsoever!)

The organization has grown to a size now though that requires a much more strategic oversight. With a 4x growth in employees, approaching 2x growth in customer base, and the inevitable IT support required the future simply will not allow for poor decisions, let alone poor execution of those decisions.

Perfect Solution or Perfect Right Now Solution?

So Jane is challenged with the decision-making that takes place in the organization. On the one hand, she knows that she can do better (She did so in her previous role/organization, which she’ll be the first to admit was 10x more professional and had a rather litigious corporate counsel act as compliance officer for the operation). On the other hand, she somewhat enjoys the Ready, Fire, Aim! decision making process. The benefits as she sees them are less bureaucracy, time consumption, and simple stress associated with conducting due-diligence required to explore decision contingency plans.

A Machiavellian cavalier attitude prevails resting on Occam’s Razor theory, where you can do what you want, when you want and simplicity rules the day. This is what she’s seen the CEO do successfully since joining the organization, and other leaders replicate/follow suit with little/no failure repercussions.

5 Tips to Better Decision Making

But the times, they are a changing. Expectations are higher and as one of the organization’s only female leaders Jane needs to make her best decisions. She’s previously been “called out” for making less than favorable decisions in the past (Read that as the “Good Old Boys” club didn’t like them). The following 5 tips serve to provide you, the leader that might find themselves in similar Jane-like shoes, with decision making guidance:

Tip #5 – Take It Easy

Stress is the enemy of good decision making. Take a few deep breaths, go for a walk, and clear your head. Once you’re in a better position/situation then begin to examine your decision making next steps.

Tip #4 – Take a Step Back

What should you consider that will make your decision the best one possible, aligning with mission, vision, values of your organization. There should be a litmus test applied for each decision that is to be made, starting with taking the biggest picture possible before zeroing in on details.

Tip #3 – Take Data Into Account

Figures don’t lie, but liars figure… Take data that you can trust into account when determining future courses. If you can’t get insight/perspective yourself, call on others to help.

Tip #2 – Decide!

You know that your decision is not going to materialize without a strict action planning process that includes a date which decision is to be made. Establish this target and then move aggressively towards achieving it.

Tip #1 – Follow-Up/Follow-Through with Commitments

You made a decision, so now oversee the implementation/installation of the engagement. While some leaders would look at this as job completed in status, know that it is only the beginning stages of a successful initiative (With much more work to be done in order to be successful!)

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve examined the leadership challenge of poor decisions and provided 5 tips for the leader looking to make their best decisions. Leadership is a difficult job at times, and poor decisions typically upon autopsy provide insight into what should be done next time through learning.

Sam Palazzolo

www.BloodSweatSpears.com

The Leadership Challenge: Charisma – 1 Tip!

September 11, 2016 By Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

The Point: At the heart of change is inspiration. In other words, if you want those that follow you to heed the new direction set as a result of change, then they had better be inspired to do so. Inspiration in this sense is what occurs when someone is sparked to bring a new idea into being upon learning of the potential to do so. As a part of inspiration, we typically perceive the charismatic leader… A leader that looks the part, sounds the part, and acts the part. But what if you’re just trying to shift or change a minor course correction for your team/department, and not that of the organization/planet? In this post we’ll examine the leadership challenge of charisma and provide one tip to overcome challenges therein… Enjoy!

Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and You?

You’re in your office early on Monday morning pouring over the metrics from the previous week, and then you spot it. There’s an opportunity to once again “fine-tune” your teams processes. While you’ve made great progress over the year, heading into the remaining months of the year you know that there’s a greater emphasis placed on metric attainment (An emphasis that could spell the difference between budget funding or no budget allocation, period!) So how do you approach this delicate conversation to inspire change amongst the team?

Far too often, leaders believe that their ability to inspire others is derived solely from their ability to present the opportunity with charisma. While being a charismatic leader can make things exciting (especially in those moments where hot air isn’t administered), leaders simply cannot live up to the expectations stakeholders have when it comes to those perceived publicly as charismatic. Let’s face it, if you have to give a Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi performance to inspire change you will no doubt have your hands full right from the start.

Does Charisma as a Leader Matter?

In researching the abilities of leaders that either are/are not charismatic I stumbled upon a white paper on how the brain processes the importance of change. Specifically, if surrounded by stimuli that prompts you to focus on the unimportant, somehow the important pieces of the puzzle drop into place. It’s as if the stimulus provided by the unimportant spurs subconscious actions leading towards important process improvement/modification moments.

Furthermore, if those improved process improvements/modifications are put into place, then they spur on further improvements. In other words, you cross over into a creativity meets innovation producing successful change equation!

Charisma Tip #1 – Don’t Be

So here’s the leadership challenge for charisma… If you believe that you should attempt to put on your impression of a leader that inspires you, be yourself. But in that “be yourself” moment look to provide the potential to go forward by first going backwards. How far backwards will depend on how much knowledge/deconstruction you need to conduct. Just remember… You don’t need to be charismatic like the mentor leaders that inspired you.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve examined the leadership challenge of charisma, as well as provided one tip for successfully navigating a change dilemma. It’s important to note that too often leaders get caught up in “How should I say it?” or “How should I act when I deliver my message?” moments that aren’t appropriate considerations on the road forward.

Sam Palazzolo

sam palazzolo

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