Episode 46 - Attributes of Successful Leaders - Part Two
Speaker 1:
People of earth, we have come to upgrade your cosmic consciousness, DNA activation ready in three, two, one.
Lou Quinto:
Hi, welcome to Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
Today, in our episode, we're going to have a part two of an episode that we did last week. We did it on attributes to become an effective leader. In that episode, we talked about having a better mindset, we talked about emotional intelligence and we also covered an area on transitioning to a new leadership position.
Today, in our episode, we're going to continue and we're going to talk about three areas. The first area we're going to talk about is coaching. The second area that we'll be talking about is feedback, which by the way, Craig, if you're coaching, giving feedback is very good. Maybe we should reverse those two. Then the last one is decision making. So why don't we go ahead with the very first one and let's talk about coaching.
So Craig, as an executive coach, talk to me about coaching.
Craig Anderson:
Sure. What I love about talking about executive coaching is how few leaders and managers think it's their job to do executive coaching. They think their job's accountability. They think their job is hitting their numbers-
Lou Quinto:
[inaudible 00:01:26].
Craig Anderson:
but what they don't realize is there's such a critical part of that job that is coaching and developing your team rather than ... It's so much easier to take somebody who maybe they're a B player in your organization and coach them up to an A player, than to go out and find yet another person to come into your organization. It takes so much work to bring other people in. It makes sense to coach and develop your own team members. So things like, and again, this goes back to something we talked about last week, so little of this stuff is taught in business school. It's really just astonishing when you think about it, but it keeps us in work.
But giving timely feedback and delivering honest feedback and hard feedback, but doing it in such a way, that's not completely de-motivating for the individual, right? It's not just beating them down.
Lou Quinto:
Let's unpack that one.
Craig Anderson:
Sure.
Lou Quinto:
Giving feedback, but not feedback that is going to pull somebody down, lift somebody up. I mean, wouldn't you say both are very important?
Craig Anderson:
I think both are. And I believe it's the difference between, "I can't believe you can't figure out how to do this job. What are you? stupid?" which would be bad management just if we have to clarify.
Lou Quinto:
Did you know my father?
Craig Anderson:
But it's so true. There's a way to give the feedback. Say, "Look, I've noticed that you've been doing this. It's not the right way to do it. Let me show you how you can do this better, and I believe you have the capability to do this at an exceptional level." That's kind of the gist. I wouldn't put it that way, but that's the idea of it, right? It's corrective, but then also expressing the confidence that you have in that individual to actually do the role that you ask them to do.
Lou Quinto:
Do you believe when it comes to feedback in the old adage of start with the positive feedback first, and then go ahead and deliver the, I'll call it, bad news?
Craig Anderson:
Oh no. The feedback sandwich? I'll give you a little boost, then I'll kick you in the teeth. Then I'll give you a little boost. No, everybody knows. If you're going to have that conversation, if you talk to people, most people are like, "Just tell me, don't leave me ... " You know, if you start telling me all this good stuff, but you look like you're ready to drop a bomb, just drop the bomb, and then move forward.
Lou Quinto:
Ow.
Craig Anderson:
I think those are just those cute little tricks that people are like, "Oh, this will help people." No, it doesn't just tell them the thing and do it in a respectful way. How is that hard?
Lou Quinto:
Interesting. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right. But I think going back to your original statement, many people don't realize that part of their job is coaching the people that report to them, not only coaching them to do their jobs better, but also to coach them to eventually replace you in that management position so that you can move on higher up in the organization, as opposed to just if you leave, there's a vacuum there. And then the organization gets stymied because there's not a good leader to really move into that position so that coaching.
But it goes back to what you and I have talked about in several episodes, and that is, coaching is not part of a person's job description. Very seldom do I look at a job description and I see, coaching your employees in the job description. As you said, it's about numbers. Hit your numbers, make sure the projects are being done, you're staying within budget. It's all a numbers game, but yeah, when it comes to coaching, it needs to be as important as the productivity numbers that you're dealing with.
So which brings us into the next area, and we talked a little bit about it and that's the feedback area. I'll just go ahead and [inaudible 00:05:09] to maybe transition off of what the feedback that we talked about in coaching. That is, when it comes to the feedback part of it, we need to constantly be giving people feedback. I know some people, I don't have time to give feedback, but people want to be recognized in the moment when they do something right, and when they do something wrong, as opposed to leaving all that feedback, like many organizations foster, to that annual review. And 12 months later, I'm hearing about what a great job I did in February or worse yet about how I really messed up in February, and here it is December, and now you're just telling me it.
I know we've talked about this also is that feedback for the next generation of leaders coming in, needs to be much more consistent and constant. You're going to find that the millennials and now the Zoomer generation that is entering the workforce this year, because I think they're graduating from college, they want feedback regularly and they want it often because that's what we, as parents have provided them their entire life. So when they get into the workplace, that's a motivator for them and we need to, as a leader, we need to understand that.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah, you noted something I think that's important is that a lot of people think feedback, well I have to give them feedback when they do something wrong. But it's also the feedback when you do something right, and the timeliness of it, I think is a crucial factor.
Lou Quinto:
Sure.
Craig Anderson:
Sure it's people doing things right, which you said a lot of times in different times we've covered this. I'll never forget the boss or leader, boss I had, as we're walking into an appointment decides to give me feedback on something from a month ago that was negative.
Lou Quinto:
Boy, but that [crosstalk 00:07:03]-
Craig Anderson:
Boy, did it crush that sales call.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah, that turned that meeting into a positive meeting, didn't it?
Craig Anderson:
No, and I did have one boss who used to say, "Problems don't age." The negative feedback in a timely manner is important, and the positive feedback in a timely manner is important. Catch people doing the right things, and that is really the essence of it and catch them doing the wrong things and do it in a way that's, you know, we're not here to beat people up. That's not really our role.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah, but the feedback has to be in the moment. It's like-
Craig Anderson:
Yeah, absolutely.
Lou Quinto:
... playing a sports game. When you come off on the sideline, the coach tells you right then and there what you did right, or what you did wrong. This way you learn from that immediately as opposed to a week later or even a day later, because you've gone on to other things and you don't remember it exactly. But if as a leader, you can catch somebody right in the moment and either redirect them or push them forward even faster because they're doing things right, you're going to get better progress that way.
So it's all about making decisions, which is a great transition into decision making as an attribute to become a more effective leader. I know we've probably done ... at least six or seven of our episodes have dealt with decision making in some way or another. But there's no question about decision making needing to be an important attribute for a leader because you're the person that has to say yes or no, go, no go, and you need to be able to make decisions in a very timely fashion.
But again, you can't make just fast decisions and flip a coin and, "Okay, yes, we're going to do that. And 50% chance is I'll be right, and 50% chance is I'll be wrong." What you find out is that you're ending up going with your feelings as opposed to the data that's presented to you. So I think it's very, in fact, I wouldn't even say I think, I believe it's very important for an individual who's going to be a leader to become the best decision maker that they can be, to be able to look at a situation, identify your criteria, gather your data, identify your alternatives, and then quickly narrow things down using the data that you've gathered based upon your list of criteria. So that this way, you don't end up drowning in that sea of data, you are looking at data that specifically deals with the decision that you have to make at the current time. That's going to help up speed up your decision making. So, give me some feedback.
Craig Anderson:
I don't know about feedback, but you're right. We've covered this on decision making several times through critical thinking discussions, decision-making discussions, a lot of areas. What I'll pull back from that or take from that is, that this list even has to exist, underlies the importance of why you have to cover these things so often.
Decision making is really about, as you said, building the framework for making decisions, knowing who is the decision maker on a given topic so when it's done, it's final. And timeliness, you can't have perfect information. I know we differ on this. You take the information you have, you go with your gut, you make the call, which I know you ... and I think that's pieces of it is, you won't always have perfect information. We've talked about that in terms of the COVID thing. You may take the best information you have at the time, you make the decision, and then as you progress, you say, "Okay, let's look at what's gone. What's wrong? Where do we need to adjust?" That's the key part to me of decision making is, knowing when you've made the wrong decision and pivoting back to where you need to go. Those are the two pieces of it as well.
Lou Quinto:
Or immediately fixing what you broke, as opposed to falling into the sunken cost fallacy, which is digging your heels in and sticking with that one decision and investing more effort and resources and time to try to prove that you were right with that decision. You need to cut the cord and go, "We were wrong. I was wrong," and you need to fix what you broke and move on from there.
But I've seen in so many organizations where leaders, because of their ego, they'll want to prove they're right. They will invest more time and resources into something that everybody else on the team is going, "This ain't working." The leader goes, "Now, let's give it another week. Let's give it another month. Let's put Bob and Sarah on the project because they've got some experience here," and now we're wasting more resources on those particular things. Again, that goes back to the discussion that you and I always have about fact versus a gut and opinion is, sometimes you've just got to go with the fact, ain't working. Let's move on from it.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah, I remember in an organization I was in where I came in, I was new. I'm looking at all the things and I'm going, "We're like a million dollars into this." It was clear it was a dud, and I said, "We're going to kill this," and everybody looked at me like I had a third eye. It was like, "We've spent a million dollars." I'm like, "Well, are we going to spend two and just make it worse?"
Lou Quinto:
Yeah, I think the same situation we were.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah, and that is you're right. The sunken cost, I don't think of it as a sunken cost fallacy, but you can't just say, "Well, we've spent a lot of money. Let's spend more." That's just a bad way to go. So sorry I cut you off because you were going to take it away, but I had a story, Lou.
Lou Quinto:
No, no. The sad part about it is, so many organizations and leaders do that. They feel that they will be losing on the investment if they stop what they're doing to say that this was a bad decision. To your point, let's invest another million dollars and see if it'll work. Now you're $2 million and it doesn't work.
So anyway, what are your key takeaways from today, Craig? In our last second filming here of the attributes for effective-
Craig Anderson:
Part two. I'll reiterate what I said from last week, which is, these all seem so obvious, but clearly if you have to teach them so hard, and we keep covering them so much is, they constantly need reinforcement and skill building and all of these things for people to be successful. What I took a lot away from today was our discussion around feedback and the importance of the timeliness of it, both positive and negative and delivering it in a way that's constructive for all parties concerned. I think that was my big takeaway today.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. My key takeaway on this is, again, going back to what the title of the episode is, Attributes for an Effective Leader, coaching. Coach your people. We don't do enough of that. We spend more time worrying about the numbers and then if the numbers aren't there, we get into the weeds to try to make the numbers. What ends up happening is, people then think, "I'm the one that always is going to jump in at the last minute, and I'm going to save the day," and that's not what we want.
I truly believe that if you spend a good amount of time coaching your people, the numbers will take care of themselves because you are entrusting the people, you're giving them the skills that they need to meet those numbers. But if you weren't coaching, then you're going to find yourself at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year trying to make those numbers real quickly. You're the one who's going to be putting in the most effort to be able to do that.
But if you do it on a regular basis from the beginning of the year and you're coaching your people, the numbers will happen. You don't have to worry about that. That's my biggest key takeaway in all of this. Attribute for a good leader? Be a good coach.
Craig Anderson:
Absolutely.
Lou Quinto:
So, take us home, Craig.
Craig Anderson:
All right. Well, thank you for joining us for today's episode of Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership where we talked about effective leadership. It was a great topic and our first two-parter. So we'll have a little two-parter celebration after this.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please like it, share it with your friends, share it with people who you know in your organization or outside, who need to be better leaders and better coaches and subscribe so you always get the alert when we go live with these every Thursday.
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Lou Quinto:
And keep your hands washed, keep your distance. I'm Lou Quinto.