by Charles Plant | Jul 30, 2012 | Exercises, Leadership Development
“Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.” – Napoleon Hill
Perseverance works on your own tasks
Great books abound on the subject of persistence and perseverance. Seth Godin’s the Dip was an awakening for me as I am very slow to quit. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers countered my tendency to try to many things and never become a master at any one. Whatever your own demons, if you want to aspire to a position of leadership, you’ll need the perseverance to completely master your existing job and the persistence to keep seeking out new opportunities.
But its more than just persistence and perseverance. You need to know when to persevere and when enough is enough. If you persevere on a task that only involves you, that is great but when you persevere in trying to change other people’s behaviour, others will soon tire of you. To know when to quit, you need emotional intelligence.
But it doesn’t work when trying to change others behaviour
As a manager, your job is to get things done through other people. (Am I repeating myself often enough?) Persisting at changing a direct report’s behaviour when it isn’t bringing results is probably not going to work. In fact if you persevere long enough, you’ll do a great job pissing the other person off and frustrating yourself. So in terms of direct reports, perhaps persistence and perseverance is not always a good thing.
If you’ve tried multiple times to get a direct report to change his/her behaviour and it still isn’t working then it’s time to give up. It’s time to realize that you’ve either hired to wrong person, trained the person ineffectively or supervised them improperly. It has then become your problem, not theirs. Your options are to fire the person, change their job or change your approach. So in spite of everything you hear, there are lots of times when perseverance is the wrong approach.
Try this at work:
Think of someone at work whose behaviour you’ve been trying to change without success. Are things any better than when you started your change management attempts? If things are not any different and you’ve tried more than seven times then it is time for you to give up. Instead, try another approach, perhaps even a workaround.
by Charles Plant | Jul 23, 2012 | Emotional Intelligence, Exercises, Leadership Development
“Anyone can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everyone’s power and that is not easy.”
Aristotle
Staying calm in times of high stress is one of those leadership skills that amazes me. Watching someone react to a high pressure situation in a calm and balanced way is truly inspiring. Maybe I’m impressed because I am naturally excited, prone to get agitated and raise my voice in stressful situations. I know it doesn’t work and it’s a bad habit but I still manage to do it.
The problem with getting excited and not staying calm is that it exacerbates an already highly charged and stressful situation. If you’ve ever been in an emergency room as a patient, you’ll notice that unlike on TV, most staff don’t exhibit any stress. They are calm and measured but fast in everything they do. If they can stay calm when life and death is on the line, why shouldn’t business people be able to stay calm when revenue targets are missed, when customer returns increase or when costs rise unexpectedly. After all, it’s not as if anyone is going to die.
Try this at work:
You’ve probably been told to step back from stressful situations, breather deeply and modulate your voice. Easy to say, not that easy to do. Instead, the next time you find yourself in one of those situations, just imagine the worst thing that can happen.
It’s sort of like imagining the audience naked when you have to give a speech or your boss putting on his dress every morning to take away the jitters. In this case, imagine the worst thing that can happen. Could someone die? Will there be a loss of limbs or other essential body parts? If the answer is yes then by all means become excited but otherwise just think about the long run.
Try to imagine a room full of dead people and body parts that will fill up the room when the situation is over. If you actually take two seconds to try to create that image, it will be enough to make you realize that no matter how stressful the situation is, no one is likely to die or become maimed and that you’re better off remaining calm.
by Charles Plant | Jul 18, 2012 | Management, Research
Did you know that we’re working more but getting less done? The average work week has increased from 35 hours in 1970 to 46 hours in 2012 and three out of four Americans feel stressed at work and one out of four say that work is the most stressful part of their lives. We’re working longer hours but are we more productive?
What is the effect of these changes? Check out this post with a great infographic that Keri Damen sent me.
I’m not sure where this idea that you’re more productive working longer hours comes from. I suspect it comes from the world of lawyers, accountants, and engineers who bill their time by the hour. In their case, working longer hours results in getting paid more. For the rest of us, that isn’t the case.
If you’re a manager, your job is to get things done through other people.
If you’re doing a good job delegating responsibility and authority, there is no reason to work long hours. In fact if you are working too long you probably aren’t doing your job properly.
Working long hours means that either you are doing things yourself which is a no-no as a manager or you haven’t delegated enough authority to the people working for you. In either case, you’re not being an effective leader.
Don’t forget. Your job as a leader is to set the vision, communicate and motivate. Your job doesn’t actually entail doing any work yourself. So why are you working such long hours?
by Charles Plant | Jul 16, 2012 | Exercises, Leadership Development
I am told that when I was young, I woke up one morning having wet my bed the night before and ran to my parents and claimed that “Somebody wet my bed.” My son carried on this tradition in a new way. After having done something bad to his older sister, we asked him to apologize. After much frooing and froing his response was “Sorry, Gaga.” The Gaga was his attempt to deflect true responsibility. You might think from these vignettes that I come from a family of shirkers but I think we’ve all been in that boat at some point in time.
Responsibility is a funny thing. We crave it when things are going well, try to deny it when things don’t quite go the way we want, and wait for it to be given to us at work. Responsibility is one of those key leadership skills that separate successful leaders from unsuccessful ones. Taking responsibility early in your career creates advancement opportunities. Trying to deny it when things go bad gets you fired.
Responsibility is Taken. It is never Given
What many people at work don’t understand about responsibility is that it is taken, not given. No one gives you responsibility for getting something done. They might present you with an opportunity to take it but it is up to you to take that responsibility on. They might say that you have been given responsibility but in actual fact, it is up to you whether you take it or not.
Try this at work:
At work, it’s often the little things that go unnoticed and yet it’s the little things that can give customers a bad impression. Your task this week is to find some small way that you can make a difference and take responsibility for that action. It might be straightening up the office, making sure that there are peppermints in a bowl for visitors, or bringing in flowers from time to time. Whatever it is, find one new way to take responsibility for improving your work environment.
As weeks progress, make this a campaign with other people. Get them energized to improve your work environment.
I can’t promise you’ll end up being President for starting this but I’ll guarantee that your effort to take responsibility will be noticed and eventually rewarded.
by Charles Plant | Jul 12, 2012 | Management, Video
If your day seems like one long endless meeting, you’re doing something wrong. Kerri Golden has an interesting approach, she declines meetings. The key to her approach is to figure out where she is adding value now.
If you’re getting this video in an email, click on the link to the blog to watch the video.
by Charles Plant | Jul 10, 2012 | Exercises, Leadership Development
The Dog and the Wolf
A gaunt Wolf was almost dead with hunger when he happened to meet a House-dog who was passing by. “Ah, Cousin,” said the Dog. “I knew how it would be; your irregular life will soon be the ruin of you. Why do you not work steadily as I do, and get your food regularly given to you?”
“I would have no objection,” said the Wolf, “if I could only get a place.” “I will easily arrange that for you,” said the Dog; “come with me to my master and you shall share my work.”
So the Wolf and the Dog went towards the town together. On the way there the Wolf noticed that the hair on a certain part of the Dog’s neck was very much worn away, so he asked him how that had come about. “Oh, it is nothing,” said the Dog. “That is only the place where the collar is put on at night to keep me chained up; it chafes a bit, but one soon gets used to it.” “Is that all?” said the Wolf. “Then good-bye to you, Master Dog.”
Better starve free than be a fat slave.
And so it goes at work. If you take no risks you’ll never get anywhere. You’ll end up being a very fat slave, eating well but unfree.
The ability to take measured risks is one of the key components of leadership. The key is to be taking risks that are manageable and measured, ones that will not destroy your career.
Try this at work:
Risk is personal. What might be risky to you may not be risky at all to other people. What you need to do to start down the path to risk taking is to first identify those things that you find risky and then begin to try a strategy to manage your risks.
- Identify 5 things that you find risky at work.
- For each item, figure out the rewards for taking the risk.
- Next figure out the consequences of failure.
- Evaluate all of those items and pick one that seems the least risky.
- Now go and do it, take that risk and see whether it works.
Once you get the hang of taking risks, you should be trying out your new risk taking behaviour on a regular basis, trying new things and learning from them.
If you feel like it, tell me what you find risky and how you’ll manage taking that risk.
Try this at work: