Courageous Leaders Blog

Delegating is the highest leverage activity you can undertake in leader development - to move from doing to managing and then to leading. The faster this cycle is propelled the more opportunity is provided for personal and business growth. The quality of the delegating conversation determines the quality and quantity of the ultimate business results produced and the level of engagement felt by people within the business.

Delegation is the lifeblood of productivity, quality, stakeholder satisfaction, growth and staff motivation and retention – therefore a very critical conversation for anyone who manages and leads. Yet most people who manage and lead, if they are really honest with themselves do not delegate with the level of effectiveness that they could because they do not devote the time and thought it truly requires.

Delegating is critical to move you from being a member of a team to managing the team and eventually to leading the team, the business unit and then the organisation. Managers and leaders assign tasks for someone else to complete. They must rely on the efforts of other individuals to achieve results and delegating makes this happen. Delegating requires a solid process, strong task focus backed with clarity in delivery of the message and the engagement of the people involved. It needs clarity and rigour in three things – the right:

• Mindset
• Person and level
• Conversation

For the conversations you have when delegating to others to be creating the right experiences for everyone then:

• Create the “space” to have these conversations at the right time
• Be absolutely “present” during them
• Make them completely “real”.

Courageous leaders devote the thinking, apply the process and challenge their involvement in the delegating conversations. Constantly challenge yourself to improve the way you engage in these conversations – they can be done so much better!

Many leaders face the need to let go of control as they strive to be more courageous. This regularly pops up in conversations with people in our workshops and programs.

This feels threatening, especially for existing leaders and can bring about a hasty retreat to the safety of control and power.

Because when you are serious about being courageous then you are serious about speaking up and sharing thoughts, ideas and feelings; and you are equally serious about listening. When you do this - you don't know where the conversation is going to end up. For many leaders this is far too threatening - they want to be in control and have the answers. This can be the ego at work..........protecting and warding off challenging thoughts and ideas, and importantly being seen as having earned the title of "leader" - leaders are expected to have the answers - this is why we pay them the big bucks!!

This is at the very essence of vulnerability - and seeing it as a strength rather than a weakness is a challenge for many leaders to overcome before they can truly unleash their courage.

I engaged in a few conversations recently about the link between courage
and business outcomes. What is the business benefit of engaging more
courageously with each other?

When people hold themselves personally accountable to turn up more
courageously then conversations are different - they are more open, more
real, more challenging and ultimately result in improved:

1. Decisions - higher quality, greater speed, willingness to diverge
before they converge into a final decision and higher levels of buy in
to implement and embrace the decisions

2. Engagement - when people are real with each other and share openly
there is heartfelt connection and people bring themselves completely to
the resulting actions and activities

3. Intellectual application to business issues - when people are
enCOURAGEd to bring their thoughts, ideas and feelings openly and in a
very real way then you are leveraging the intellect of each person and
this adds up to far greater intellectual capability than just that of
the boss - it is simple mathematics!

4. Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking - because people are actively
invited to think outside the box and test the boundaries without fear of
retribution, labelling and judgement

5. Collaboration - increased speed at which people work together to
achieve a result in an innovative way, while feeling inspired and
engaged. Ultimately this provides a competitive advantage in the market
place.

And it all starts by bringing personal accountability for being
courageous. It works quicker and with greater success when it is
initiated and lead from the top - the existing leaders.

My initial and quick thoughts demonstrate the business outcomes for
putting courage into action are significant.

This is the first in a five blog-post series on a leadership development tool: The Leverage Cycle. Successfully transitioning from doing to managing.

One of the biggest learning curves in leader development is early on – when you’re first promoted from being a top performer in your particular area of skill to becoming a leader of a (hopefully) high performing team.

In business leadership, often the reason for promotion is because you were good at what you did – delivering. This then translates into therefore you will be good at managing others to also deliver – which can be easier said than done!

If you’re struggling to let go of the control you had over ‘delivering’, struggling to trust that your team members will produce to the high level of quality that you did and that you expect, using the tools of the Leverage Cycle with discipline will help you develop your leadership skills and transition from doing to managing.

The Leverage Cycle proposes that leaders must use conversation to create an engaged, high performance team. There are four types of conversation:

1.    Delegating
2.    Supporting
3.    Feedback
4.    Coaching

We will look at each conversation individually throughout this series, however the basics are:

Delegating: this is the most important step and affects the success of the future conversations. Delegation requires a solid process and strong task focus backed with clarity in delivery of the message – it needs clarity and rigour in three things:
-    Delegating mindset
-    Right person and right level
-    Right conversation
The success of future conversations depends on the delegation conversation, so it is worth spending time on it.

Supporting: this is the nurturing, engaging, regular check-in conversations to ensure your team members feel significant, supported and important. Because they are.

Feedback: both giving and receiving feedback is particularly important to ensure high performance. Remember that receiving feedback is not the same as accepting feedback – so those conversations need to occur to ensure changed behaviours where necessary.

Coaching: this conversation follows closely from feedback conversations. It’s about taking on the feedback that has been provided and acting on it to improve performance so when that team member is next delegated a task or project they carry it out better than they did (or could have) before.

Undertaking all four of these conversations regularly, diligently and with courage will mean even the newest business leader can expect a consistently high performance from their team.

Watch the first video of The Leverage Cycle series.

We explored this recently: people want to feel significant in their roles, in their organisation and in their lives - and do we know what makes people feel significant?

Courageous Leaders invest the time and energy to discover what makes each individual in their team feel significant. When was the last time you found out what makes each person in your team, in your family and in your life.......feel significant?

While engaging in a conversation with some of our participants about what makes them feel significant - it got me thinking: what makes me feel significant as a facilitator of leadership development programmes?

Ask yourself the question - what makes me feel significant? - and then be surprised by the depths at which you have to go to come up with an authentic response.

The question brought out my values at a deep level.  My top value is gratitude and after some reflection I was able to establish that for me to feel significant, I need words of gratitude in an authentic and heartfelt way about the difference my involvement has made. It is simple and relatively easy to do from a client perspective and does not cost money.

And to my surprise after participating in this conversation I received two lovely emails from two different clients doing just that.........and I felt significant, I felt recognised and valued. I felt I had made a difference and contributed to the organisational change being experienced. What an amazing feeling it is too!! It spurs your passion, your commitment to the end goal and to keep contributing exceptional value to people who are grateful for your efforts.

Significance rarely costs leaders or others anything other than the time and energy it takes to appreciate, show gratitude and recognise - and generally this is done through a real conversation! If it is so "simple" why do so many leaders find it so hard to do?

Too many leaders focus on the hard edge of leading - task orientation - and dismiss the soft edge of leading - people orientation; as the warm and fuzzy stuff that is not essential. In all honesty though, I think they  find it too hard to engage in a real conversation where the significance of people is recognised.  It is uncomfortable, it is embarrassing or at worst they deem it unnecessary because after all aren't they just doing their job?

 I find that very sad - human connection and personal gratitude - the personal cost to give it is so small and yet the personal reward to receive it is so great. So make a conscious effort to make those around you feel significant!

Now I can almost hear a groundswell of people challenging me - that people create their own reality and therefore their own feelings of significance. It shouldn't be up to the leaders to do this I hear you say.

I believe it is critical we recognise our "human condition" - and the need for feeling significant and how it is fuelled through external feedback. That's the simple reality - most of us are not well enough evolved and transformed to feel significant without such encouragement and involvement.

Courageous Leaders make people they interact with feel significant!

If you don't understand - ask me
If you don't agree - challenge me
If you don't like it - tell me
But don't start judging me silently.

I shared this with you in an earlier BLOG and wanted to check in on how you were going with putting it into action. It is one thing to read the mantra, understand it and another thing completely to action it.  I will share my thoughts and experiences and welcome yours!

In my experience it has been most difficult to stay true to this mantra with the people you know really well - because of my fear in hurting their feelings. It certainly requires complete transparency and this necessarily incurs and incites hurt for you and for others. The old saying - the truth hurts - is so true.

Yet when you engender this kind of truth, it means complete trust and openness with the people in your life - no games, no politics, no hiding and no false promises. It is actually an empowering place to operate in once you muster the complete courage to create this kind of personal accountability. Because what I found as I brought this mantra to life was the only person who knows you are judging silently is YOU!

What has been your experience?

It is one thing to think courageously and it is another thing to act courageously. We all have them - those courageous thoughts, mine happen in the shower!  We work out what we really feel and what we want to say. This is the first step - thinking courageously. The second step is to muster further courage to actually engage in the conversation.

This second step generally requires us setting aside thinking time to work out the exact words we are going to use. We also think about the reaction we might incite and determine how we can counteract these or better still prevent them. As you can imagine this requires an investment of time and energy.

I have raised the issue of talking in draft in earlier BLOGs and tweets, and I think this is where it becomes incredibly pertinent. If we can talk in draft when sharing our courageous thoughts that would be fabulous - we enable our courageous thinking.

If we could create the context and not get too caught up in the detail of the content then I think we would put our courage into action with greater speed and regularity. Courageous Leaders create this kind of space with the people in their team and so are able to put courage into action - sharing their inner most thoughts and feelings with greater speed and regularity. Try it out and let me know how it goes.

In this fortnightly series, Alison Glynn-Baker discusses some key concepts in Mandy Holloway’s book, ‘Inspiring Courageous Leaders’.  She also poses some provocative questions.  We invite you to provide your opinion and join the discussion.

The Slow Conversation Movement

Can you talk like you tweet?  Didn’t think so.  We may have worked out how to write a pithy tweet in less than 140 characters, but some things take good old-fashioned time.  A relationship is one of them.

Stephen Covey’s nifty graphic encourages leaders to think about where they spend their time.  Are you a Q3 kind of person - constantly putting out fires and attending to things on a last-in-first-out basis?  Do you get to spend much time in the serene space that is Q1, taking time to plan and reflect?

So it is with our conversations at work.  They can be to-do list, trivial, traumatic or transcendent.

Come again?

The To-do list Conversation – This is what I’m doing.  This is what you’re doing. This is who I saw.  This is when I’ll see them next.  There’s a lot of what in these conversations, but not necessarily much how or why.

The Trivial Conversation - A trivial conversation is neither urgent nor important.  Views are divided on social niceties – all the how’re you going and how was your weekend and so how’s this weather you hear in lifts and at water-coolers.  I suppose these conversational rituals are necessary, otherwise you could be seen as unapproachable and possibly weird.  As an introvert, though, I find this kind of conversation tiring unless it’s going to turn into a longer-term relationship.

Possibly even worse are trivial conversations in meetings.  How many meetings have you attended – or even run – where everybody talks about nothing and nothing is decided?

The Traumatic Conversation (Your time starts…. Now!) - It’s urgent. It’s important.  It’s one fire after another. Emotions and stakes are high, and everyone is exhausted afterwards.

The Transcendent Conversation - We apparently hear and process information four times faster than people can talk.  So, it takes some doing to sit still and listen, without judging, jumping to conclusions or planning a sharp response.

That’s what this chapter is about.  The importance of listening to understand.

This chapter is also about having the courage to share.   Maybe you’ve had the courage to peel the onion on your own behaviour and preferences and it hasn’t caused too many tears. The next step is to bring yourself to a relationship, and allow the other person to do the same.

As a leader, in a sharing conversation you shouldn’t treat knowledge as power.  There is a time for listening, but at some stage you need to makes yourself vulnerable by sharing your own views and experiences.  Only by having conversations that rise above the ordinary, can you begin to experience the force of relationship mastery.

Did you read this and feel you had to defend your conversational corner?  Maybe you are a big fan of the trivial conversation and see it as just as important.  And to-do list conversations are a necessary evil, aren’t they?  What kind of conversation works for you?  This is your chance to have your say.

Don't have a copy of Inspiring Courageous Leaders? Buy it now


About Alison Glynn-Baker: Alison Glynn-Baker has 15 years’ experience in professional services marketing, business development and operations.  Through her own consultancy, she has combined her two passions - training and writing – to help clients improve performance both personally and in business. 
 

We had a client talking to us the other day about developing sessions to support their leaders to continue being constructive in these tough economic times. I believe this is where constructive behaviour can absolutely bring out the best for the organisation and in people - and it requires great courage and humility. So much easier to bunker down and look after yourself and your budget while blaming the economy for your choices.

I believe at the heart of being constructive during tough times is complete transparency in what is happening, what you know, what you don't know and how you are feeling; as the leader in an organisation and as a leader of people. Then encouraging everyone else to do the same and this takes humility. This part is not about you and your ego.

Out of these conversations can come solutions no one person could have thought of and out of these conversations comes support with people embracing the ultimate solutions because they understand. Too often leaders bunker down during the tough times and think the only way out is to be tough, from an ego and task perspective. They do this kind of "tough" by ordering people around and imposing solutions. This is the safe tough because it does not involve vulnerability. They come from a source of positional power and disengage from the people and the feelings associated with the decisions. In this way organisations lose their heart and soul. When the good times return people remember - they remember how you lead and treated people when the going got tough!!

Courageous leaders remain constructive during the tough times. They leverage their learning and change agility and mix it in with the resilience to bounce back.  To do this you need to come from a growth mindset (as espoused by Carol Dweck - see my tweets for more insights!)  and prevent ego from getting in your way - not easy for many leaders.

Be vulnerable, expose your very real thoughts and feelings. Share what you don't know and share what you are scared of - and remember this is not a sign of weakness, it is a strength and it is highly constructive.

Facilitating a module in our leadership development program we started to compare business teams to sports teams. We explored the elements of a high performing team and moved on to what leaders needed to do to keep and maintain a team in this high performing space. I challenged that from my experience we get sports teams into the high performing space with much greater speed and effectiveness than business teams because we have a coach who is prepared to give very honest feedback. The coaches give this kind of feedback as they know this is the best way to shift the skills and attitude of each individual in the team with the greatest speed - and in sports teams you only have a season, and that is normally only a number of months! Leading the team into the high performing space for a sports coach takes great courage.

This moved the conversation to the role of the coach - because I claimed the coach in a sporting team is the leader of the team. Very quickly a participant disagreed claiming the coach is not on the field playing so how can they possibly be the leader of the team? This provoked insightful thought and conversation within the group.

A breakthrough in thinking erupted for everyone and I heard myself saying "absolutely that is exactly the point". The leader delegates and supports but they do not "play" - they do not go onto the field - what a great analogy! Thanks to the challenge from a participant we had a wonderful conversation and a breakthrough in thinking. Participants clearly understood how essential it is to let go of "doing" if you want to manage and lead a high performing team. This is an experience and conversation I plan to hold onto as I facilitate future programmes.