Dan Erwin

The Best Way to Build Leadership Skills

Most of us have finally arrived at the conclusion that leaders are grown not born.  But what's the best way to build your own leadership skills?  The current issue of Fortune details the leadership gains from IBM's practice of forcing employees to take on new global risks.  IBM sends teams around the world to work with local organizations on local problems.

Essentially, the firm has developed an extensive program of stretch assignments, new work experiences, that force their fast-track potentials outside of their comfort zone.  It's been common knowledge for a long time that the best way to gain new insights and learn new skills is through real experience, not in the classroom.  There is a caveat to that.  The experience will also need to be supported with mentors or coaching.

Although very few of us will ever have the opportunity that IBM provides its potential leaders, locating stretch opportunities within your own firm is available to many employees.   It's a very common process for IT workers and those in the film industry.  Although a lot of consultants work with just a single shtick, many of us are continually upgrading with stretch work.  My business and my expertise have very little relationship to what I started with 25 years ago. A huge proportion of those gains came as a result of stretchwork.  I lay out the research in a paper aptly titled Bluff Your Way Into a New Job. You'll find the paper here.

The Fortune article also emphasizes that leadership development is an investment that will pay off only later.  With so many corporate cultures addicted to the short term, that's often a hard sell.  But that need not be a problem for the typical employee searching for stretch work inside his company or perhaps in better times, at another company.  Just remember that leadership development--call it career development--is a continual process.  It's not like a game of checkers.  It's a game of chess, always figuring out the next five or six moves and taking avantage of them.

(The article is in the December 7 issue, and not yet available on the web.)

Quotation of the Week: Thomas Wolfe

"The womb from which mankind emerged into the light, forever pulls one back – but … you can't go home again."

--Thomas Wolfe

   

My understanding of faith has a lot to do with homecoming, the act of finding "home."  At the same time, I'm aware that for many of us 'home" is about nostalgia.  Yet, real home is about caring, support and active loving bound together by mutual acceptance.

The Soft Approach to Persuasion

A recent, fascinating piece of persuasion research by Zakary Tormala of Stanford surfaces some very useful information on the process of persuasion.   The research clearly demonstrates that experts are more persuasive when they seem tentative about their conclusions.  In situations where the questioner perceives the other to be an expert and quite knowledgable about a subject, it pays off for the expert to express minor doubts about their own opinion. 

Rather than present himself/herself as very certain about the subject or issue, why does it pay to be  tentative about one's response?  The research shows that people do a "cognitive double take" when the perceived expertise is mismatched with their level of certainty.  As a result the inquirer becomes more intrigued, interested and involved in the issue, which helps the reviewer's message get across. 

In contrast, the opposite is true with novices.  Novices grow more persuasive with increasing certainty. 

The NY Times details one of the research methods: 

In one experiment, college students were randomly assigned one of four variations of a restaurant review, praising a local Italian spot. In some versions, the reviewer was described as a famous food critic; in others, he was a technology worker at a local college with a penchant for fast food. Each of the critics expressed positive certainty about the restaurant’s virtues in one variation, and tentative praise in another. Asked to evaluate the restaurant, the students who read the expert’s review liked it much better when he seemed tentative; the opposite was true of the novice.

When I see research like this, research which sounds quirky, I typically check out the methodology first.  Then, just as significantly, I want to know how this study fits into overall research theory.  This research actually ties into classic persuasion theory which shows that increasing involvement and interest in a subject, where it is well-argued, can more often result in conversion (the persuasion term for acceptance and commitment to an idea).   As a scholar in the field of persuasion, I suspect that the study conclusions are highly valid.  (How's that for tentativeness from an expert?)

I'm asked about areas of my behavioral expertise quite often.  A client will ask what I think about such and such.  If I'm quite certain, but I want the client drawn into the issue, I'll add a couple minor caveats, or assume a very thoughtful tone.  It nearly always draws the client into the conversation, provides for a persuasion experience as well as a dialog or teaching opportunity. 

A few weeks ago, one of my long term, senior clients wanted to know what I thought about a certain tactical maneuver.  I knew that if I was blunt, he'd either accept it wholesale without thinking about it or reject my notion.  So I said to him, slowly, thoughtfully and carefully (I'm a fast talker) that it was an "intriguing idea." 

What you're telling me, he responded, is that I'm "full of bullshit?"  I snickered, but he immediately engaged in the pros and cons of his idea, a useful discussion that probably wouldn't have taken place without my tentative response.

But you don't have to be a behavioral scholar to use these findings.  It may be something as simple as restaurant food, trip experiences, or your boss's relationships with his subordinates. 

Sure, you have to be calculating.  Sure, you have to know what's being asked.  But often, if you answer too quickly, you'll lose out on both the conversation as well as the decision process.  I've learned not to be in a hurry to respond when people ask for my expertise. 

So when you're approached and perceived to be an expert in a subject, tentativeness works better than certainty.  But when you're a novice, certainty works better than tentativeness. 

What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Stress Management

Reading a science article in this morning's NYTimes magazine, I was struck by how much new and useful information on stress relief is available today.  More than 25 years ago I taught an occasional night school course on stress management.  At that time we knew a lot about biofeedback, the skills of emotion management and how our perceptions play a huge role in building or deescalating personal stress.  I knew that I usually felt stress in my gut first, often long before I could name it.  That, of course, made it possible for me to start managing my stress before it built up.  I also knew that if I was on a creative jag and had come to a dead-end, there were several basic options: sleep, exercise and good nutrition.  

For example, project development can be stressful.  My modus operandi has been habituated over the years.  When working on a project, I usually dig up as much data as possible and start writing.  Usually the act of writing surfaces all kinds of issues, makes mental connections, offers other suggestions, and pushes me to dig up further data.  The rule is obvious:  stop thinking and planning and just start writing. 

But sometimes the ideas won't come.  When that happens, I set the material aside, go about my business, and shortly before bedtime, run over the data and material again for 30 minutes or so, and then hit the sack.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, either in the middle of the nite or when I wake in the morning, the issues have clarified themselves--and resolved my stress.  Scientists tell us that though the body is asleep, the brain is busily making connections.  And that's my experience. 

I've also learned from practice that no matter how stressed I am about business issues, my project work or even personal or family issues, exercise is key to relieving that stress.  I am constantly amazed at how effective a brisk walk of 30 minutes to an hour (I can no longer jog because of an idiopathic neuropathy) can clear out the mind, suggest resolutions and enliven me. 

Scientists have known for sometime that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells as well as enhances the connections of those brain cells.  In effect, exercise remodels the brain, enabling us to deal more effectively with stress.  Cool, eh?

The Times article reported on fascinating findings by researchers at Princeton University.  As I noted previously, scientists have been aware that exercise stimulates the creation of new brain cells, but not how that took place.  In the research, the scientists permitted one group of rats to run, but the other group were not permitted to exercise.  Then all of the rats were placed in cold water, requiring them to swim, which rats don't like to do.  Afterward they looked at the brains.  What they found was that swimming activated neurons in both sets of rats.  However, the brains of the rats that had been on the exercise regimen were less likely to bear the marks of stress.  Generally, they remained quiet.  What they concluded was that the rats that had been running had developed brain cells that essentially buffered those rats from stress. 

In a related study at the University of Colorado, rats that had run for several weeks . .  were less anxious and helpless despite the stress placed upon them.

The lesson is clear.  Don't quit your running (or in my case, brisk walking).  You won't get the magical reduction of stress after your first jog if you haven't been running.  But the molecular and biochemical changes will begin.  As I found out years ago, eventually the changes  become profound.

Successful careers are not built merely upon the so-called work skills, but also upon good nutrition, regular sleep, and REGULAR EXERCISE.

Quotation of the Week: Dr. Deborah Garh

Nothing is black and white in medicine.

--Dr. Deborah Garh, Gynecologist in New York city

Commenting on the new guidelines proposed for mammograms.

 

 

I laughed at Dr. Garh's statement of the obvious.  But it's a very good reminder that there's very little on God's green acre that's black and white.  That also includes my business and experience in career development and planning.  That's reality. 

Business Ethics

Business ethics are a lot more complex than most think.  A recent Wall Street Journal interview of Daylian Cain, a prof at the Yale School of Management surfaces some of those complexities.  This is one of the rare and astute statements that I've been hoping for.  It's unusual because far too many approach business ethics from the perspective of personal ethics rather than that of social ethics. 

Cain is right on when he comments that one of the issues he faces is that teaching students to become socially responsible managers first requires dispelling previous notions about where personal values fit in the workplace.  And, as he also emphasizes, acting on your values is more complex than it might seem.  Intriguingly, Cains major specialty is in the conflict of interest issues and behavioral economics a relatively new discipline. 

He makes a point I've tried to emphasize in conversations, but often with little success.  These are not evil people in the boardroom, these are the kind of people, who--on the weekends--don't litter.  But Cain goes beyond the usual claptrap of doing good, not lying, or even the arguments that organizations do good by doing well. 

Social ethics begins and ends with a significantly different lens than personal ethics.  Social ethics asks what it means to be an organization, while personal ethics asks what it means to be truly human.  They are both quite valid questions and they result in different behavioral practices.  Cain says that the underlying business ethics issue concerns itself with the nature of the corporation:  Can you ever care about anything other than maximizing profits?  You'll find some very astute thinkers all over that map. 

Although readers might want answers, that's not coming in the WSJ article.  Well, what are your concerns about these issues?

Twitter versus Real Networking

As an almost daily blogger over the past 10 months, as well as a member of Twitter and LinkedIn, I've been struggling to understand the distinctions between some of the media platforms and real networking, a subject about which I've coached clients for nearly 10 years.  In a recent post, Harvard's Rosabeth Kanter identified a number of distinctive differences and shared several original and immensely practical insights.  Among other important differences, she pointed out that real networking changes the very nature of career success, a terrifically important matter for most anyone in this economy.  So, networking should change the way you manage your career. 

The key to understanding Twitter is that it gives away access to information in each tweet and rewards the giver by building followers.  It's a circular process.  The more followers, the more info comes in to be distributed.  However, in contrast to face-to-face networks (what I call "real networking"), Twitter can't be controlled and there is no collective interaction, seriously limiting the quality of what you need for personal input.  The term "collective interaction" has a background in science referring to organized patterns like insects, colonies of bacteria, or even geese that may be controlled and in some settings commanded.  As Kanter implies, real networks have the potential to be accessed or managed by individuals for their own use.  But you can't control twitter like you can manage other networks.

Put it this way.  If you're a member of an organization you can create and access networks for career needs, be it information, strategy, contact with power and opinion leaders, resources or even new opportunities.  In the last century, as Kanter points out, America was a society of organizations with formal hierarchies and clear reporting relationships which gave people their position and their power.  Organizations and leaders controlled and limited power.  For career success in that world you had to be "technically adept" and "interpersonally pleasant" (thus, the skills of brown nosing and sucking-up).

Today, people from any level of the organization can manage influence and power by working with networks that were organized by other people.  The organizational hierarchy has no real control over that power.  If you actively set out to connect and build relationships among the various groups, you can get things done.  Or as Kanter suggests, "She who has the best network wins."  And you don't have to be the formal boss to have power. 

In sum, power is no longer controlled or limited by the organization.  It is accessible to all via face-to-face networking.  The caveat, of course, is that you also act with the understanding that the purpose of a network is to make a contribution, not merely to get.

In conversations with my Gen-Y protege, a networking genius, he tells me that it takes about six months from the start of your job to begin to see results and access information of various sorts.  He, for example, wanted information on other job opportunities, various supervisors, organizational insight and needed competencies for his own career.  What's also intriguing, he says, is that very few play the network field, leaving it wide open for proactive networking entrepreneurs. 

It takes moxie, strategy and focus, as well as conversational skills to get moving on networks.  Thinking of networks as social power, Kanter says that networking control is tied to two issues:  the length of your organizational experience and whether your job encourages getting know a large number of people.  Entry-level people rarely have jobs that ENCOURAGE getting to know a lot of people, but the fast-trackers, like my protege, have shown themselves adept at managing that barrier. 

Ultimately the power to connect with others and span all kinds of organizational boundaries lies in yourself, not "in the stars."  Committed networkers can readily access the rewards of real networking: extensive knowledge of opportunities, better pay, faster promotions, and promotions at younger ages.  Those are very exciting "goodies."

Why Personal Goal Setting Can Be Dangerous

While I am a personal advocate of goal setting, I've thought hard and deep about an instructive piece of research by Max Bazerman and colleagues on goal setting that goes bad.  Although the research focuses on the relationship between leaders and their organizations, the research obviously applies to personal career development.

The study contains numerous examples of goals gone wild, and includes overcharging by Sears mechanics, Enron's commission program for traders, and Ford's small Pinto, a car that was found to have dysfunctional engineering that caused it to ignite on collision. 

The research finds that performance goal setting is fairly easy to implement, easy to measure, and easy to document successes.  But it also can readily result in undesired results.  Indeed, good people, people with the best of intentions, focus so much on a stretch goal that they engage in excessive risk-taking, and on occasion, unethical behavior. 

Although focus is always necessary for personal success, what the research emphasizes is that when people focus on a specific stretch goal, they often fail to perform other valued activities that are needed by the organization.  So on occasion, the goal can do more harm than good.

What was most intriguing to me were the recommendations regarding goal setting.  Bazerman suggests that learning or mastery goals more readily lead to better effects than performance goals.  He provides us with an excellent analogy for thinking through our personal goal-setting processes. 

Just as doctors prescribe drugs selectively, mindful of interactions and adverse reactions, so too should managers carefully prescribe goals.  To do so, managers must consider. . . the complex interplay between goal setting and organizational contexts, as well as the need for safeguards and monitoring.

That conclusion applies just as readily to our own career goal setting as to organizational goals. 

One of the firms I've consulted with for years mixes performance and learning goals for yearly objectives.  We've found that though performance measures can be straightforward, mastery and learning goals need more support.  The organization is very good about helping in learning goals, but they actually take more insight and commitment to implement.  Over the long-term, however, the organizational leaders have also found that learning goals are more useful for the development of the firm's business.  That applies to our own careers.  Sure, we need measurable performance goals, but businesspeople who focus on mastery goals find that employability is rarely a problem and that opportunities often present themselves as a result of mastery-initiated successes.

What Can We Learn From GE's New Emphasis on Listening and Humility?

After stumbling badly in the recession, the Wall Street Journal reports that General Electric executives are studying recession lessons, as they seek new, more flexible ways to manage.  How are they going about this focus?  They're learning to admit they "made mistakes" and working at the "skills of humility and listening."  There's a significant lesson for all of us in that focus, but not what some might suggest or think.

But first of all, humility is not a skill.  It's a personal quality or state, marked, the dictionary suggests, by freedom from pride or arrogance.  If you were to give feedback to someone and say that he ought to be a bit more humble, what would that look like?  Should he walk stoop-shouldered, face to the ground and mutter, "woe is me?"  Not quite.  I suspect that anyone who tries to gain the skill of humility will eventually be very difficult to be around.  Most of us are repelled by smarmy, religious, "humble" people. 

Susan Peters, the VP of executive development and chief learning officer at GE says that the company has a "post-mortem headset" on as it evaluates where it erred.  The real humility issue is that the GE leaders are diagnosing, paying attention and trying to figure out their missteps.  It's about being able, Peters says, to admit that they've made mistakes. 

So the GE leadership is working on listening skills.  That's a smart move if you understand that listening is not a passive behavior, but a very active behavior. 

FYI:  More than 40 years of research, spotlighting the level of effectiveness and efficiency of the average leader, comes up with shocking results.  On average, listening retention from a conversational is down to 25% of effectiveness with 48 hours, and it goes downhill very quickly from that point on.

So GE's success in humility develpment will depend on their success in listening training.  Here's what I mean.  Students of listening look at listening quite differently than most laymen.  In a post earlier this past week, I pointed out that listening is not improved by merely trying to listen better.  In an earlier post,I suggested that active listening demands that you attempt to understand another person's communication WITHOUT PASSING JUDGMENT ON WHAT IS BEING SAID. 

One of my communication colleagues, Manny Steil, states from research that active listening involves sensing, interpeting, evaluating and responding.  That's a mouthful.  Sensing means that you're paying attention, hearing and inserting that data into your gray matter.  Interpreting is the mental process of trying to make sense out of that data.  Evaluating is more familiar:  looking at the pros and cons, the importance or priority of the data.  Responding is the conversation you have with yourself and then out loud to the talker about that data and what it means. 

Viewing listening that way means inherently that you view the other person and her ideas as worthy of consideration.  Active listening means that you're trying to understand and learn from the other person.  And that's what humility is all about.  Humility, in business speak, is the opposite of macho, the disease some of us catch with just a little bit of success.  Macho means that the success has gone to your head and you think that you can make no mistake.  You've got the world by the tail.  And as Immelt, GE's CEO has said publicly, the firm was close to a financial meltdown. 

Most of us have had an occasional comeuppance when we've become a bit too enamored of our own ideas and success.  I occasionally blush at some of my macho ways, and I also realize that the disease has not been conquered.  Most of us have not been cured of machoism.. 

But I find one semester-long experience from my sophomore year of college of ever-intense relevance.  I attended a land-grant college where all of the males (a few years ago) were required to take ROTC.  I had the shock of my life when some of the guys I thought I knew pretty well were promoted to the lowly position of squad leader or even higher in the echelon.  What I saw in a few was enlightening.  There were a few, thankfully not too many, who I had previously considered to be nice guys.  But give them the power of a promotion and they became, well. . . assholes.  They were incorrigible.  THEY STOPPED LISTENING!  And that is the real relationship between not-a-skill humility and a real skill: ACTIVE LISTENING.

Quotation of the Week:

“It’s kind of like the Civil War, where brothers fought each other across the Mason-Dixon line.  I don’t want to stain my faith, I don’t want to stain my fellow Muslims, and I also don’t want to stain my country’s flag.”

 --Abdi Akgun, who joined the Marines in 2001, from LIndenhurst, New Jersey, and was haunted by the fear that he might kill innocent Iraqi citizens.

My family, all originally from western Kentucky, had members who fought on both sides of the Civil War.  My grandmother, a landowner, tobacco farmer and schoolteacher who died nearly 45 years ago, told me that the family was permanently scarred by their differences and loyalties for an entire generation.  Most of the men, she said, wouldn't talk about the war and what it did to them.  The Muslim perspective differs little from that Christian perspective.