Tag: empowerment

What’s happening?

FabrizioLeave a comment

You enter the last week before the delivery of an important project. Your part is mostly done, you are mainly coordinating the work of others to make sure the deadline is met. One of the colleagues involved, talking with some stakeholders from other departments, gathers some piece of feedback that makes them reconsider a sizable part of the work they are doing on the project. They discuss it with you, and you feel put off by such a thing so close to the deadline. If that wasn’t enough, another person who has leverage and influence over the project sides with the criticism, and elaborates thoughts and ideas on how to possibly fix it in the long term. The deadline looms.

What do you do?

  1. You go in the tank. You have delivered your part after all, you are marginally involved in the remaining job, and excuses can be made for the lack of it. At some point, somebody will realize that there’s a problem, and you will be able to clearly explain why that has happened, and that it is not your fault.
  2. You block everything and ask to postpone the deadline. There’s lack of agreement on how to proceed, no reason to force a solution, and it is perhaps possible to open a broader discussion. People will ask about what happened, and you’ll have an explanation.
  3. You go ahead, as it was originally planned. The delivery is more important, having something some people think could be improved is far better than having an incomplete job and having to go around to explain why. You take a note to follow up on the criticism, and see if for the future it is possible to make that part better.

This is not a test.

We all probably go through the same (or very similar) thoughts at the same time. Each one of them has good motivations backing it and some kind of personal, self-interested roots. Eventually we will choose a course of action based on feelings and attitude rather than on concrete elements and facts.

We are all human beings, and it’s important to understand what is going on within us, before attempting to make a decision. That’s what can give us edge in the long term.

Pick three people

Fabrizio1 Comment

Your work would go in a much straighter line without feedback.

You’d just have to agree with yourself, put in the effort, enjoy the ride and deliver when its due. Nobody pointing out how that was tried already and did not work, how the sentence in the second paragraph could be better phrased to reflect the company’s values, how the blue could just be a bit more blue, or how it is fundamental to also feature the last meeting minutes to makes sure everybody is on the same page.

And how would you get out of doing the same thing over and over and over again? How would you get better, be more effective, get closer to your customers, in a single word “develop”?

We certainly get too much feedback, and yet we need feedback. And sometimes, in the rush of the end of the quarter, we just cut feedback out because we don’t have time to filter it, to process it, to act on it.

Pick three people. One you respect, one that is professionally close to you and one that is where you picture yourself in five-ten years. Ideally, they should be exposed to your work, or happy to be exposed to it. As you know them, you know that when they deliver feedback they do it genuinely, honestly and with your best interest in mind. As they know you, they know what type of feedback you are seeking, what your stengths are, your ambitions, your passions, your motivators, and where you want to go (and who you want to bring along). They might grow out of their role (respect is not forever, your role might change, your plans might as well), and that is fine, because other people will enter the stage ready to take their place.

Pick three people. And listen carefully to what they have to say. Absorb and digest their feedback, see what make sense, argument your position without defensiveness, open up and take the time to cherish the learning experience. Test what they suggest, see if it works, make changes and reiterate.

Pick three people. The others will have to wait.

Adaptability

FabrizioLeave a comment

Adaptability is one key skill for leaders.

Not only adaptability to situations and contexts, also and foremost capacity to adapt to the people you lead. Pretending to do the same things with a junior person at their first work experience and with a seasoned employee who’s seen their fair share is naive and lazy. This is true for items such as how frequently you talk to them, what type of vision you frame their work with, how and how intensely you approach development conversations, and what type of recognition you plan to reward them with.

Of course, and perhaps a bit counterintuitively, this does not mean forgetting about you, your goals, your company. It actually requires quite strong awareness. Of what you can do and what you can’t, of what is needed and required of you as a leader, of what the particular phase your organization is in needs, and of what your team member wants.

And at some point, you’ll realize you don’t have what it takes to lead somebody. Not because they are outstanding and better, nor because you have suddenly lost your touch. It’s simply that they require a set of skills that you do not have, or have only in part.

So, if they indeed are valuable to what you are trying to achieve, rather than falling back on proved patterns that most likely would not work and deflate their motivation, you could sit with them, understand more about their strengths and ambitions, and go as far as having them mentored by someone else in the organization they could resonate better with.

Most likely, at some point that person is going to leave. And that is true in any case, it’s not something you can do a lot about anyway. What you can do is determine the passion and excitement with which they deliver work while they are around. That is a lot.

Doing is not enough

Fabrizio2 Comments

Learning by doing is a great concept, yet certainly it is not by doing only that we learn.

The idea of experiential learning originates from David Kolb, and it dates back to 1984. Kolb suggests a learning cycle that starts with action (the by doing part) and ends with action (a new one, hopefully), but also includes other fundamental parts.

Without appropriate space for reflection (what has happened?), conceptualization (what does what happened mean?) and experiment (what are we going to do now?), we are simply stuck in a reality of actions without learning, and probably also without purpose and direction.

From that cycle, I believe it is possible to expand to clarify the role of leadership in learning.

On one side, the leader kicks off the experience with the formal or informal act of delegating. On the other one, it facilitates the interpretation of “what happened”, particularly for what concerns reflection and conceptualization.

No single way

FabrizioLeave a comment

No matter what you read online, in books, in magazines. No matter what you learn at school, at workshops, at conferences. No matter what your boss tells you, what your teachers tell you, what influencers tell you.

There is not one single way to be successful.

The world is full of companies that made it by being ruthless, and of companies that made it by sharing. Of people who have climbed the ranks by badmouthing all the competition, and of people who have been promoted because they are good at helping others. Of teams that deliver unprecedented results by focusing on control and performance, and of teams that have changed their industry by embracing uncertainty and freedom.

The only thing that matter is your way.

You have to know who you are, why you are doing what you are doing, how you prefer to be treated and motivated, what matters to you, how you define success and what you are willing to do to achieve it. And then, surround yourself with people with which you feel alignment.

Problem is most people skip the self-awareness part and go straight to the quest of finding a job, a partner, a team, a purpose. There is not one single way to be successful, and this is certainly one to not be.