Mindlessness vs Mindfulness: A Secret Sauce for Leadership

When I ask people to describe the attributes that make a successful leader, I often get the answer, “I can’t tell you in words, but I know it when I see it.” How can something as important as leadership be an indescribable, non-tangible characteristic? Recently I heard an interview with two Jesuit scientists who described how they balanced their faith and scientific quests. They credit the concept of “Educated Ignorance” as the awareness of what we don’t know. This concept frees them to imagine an enormous number of possibilities that their inquiries can follow. While some of us fear the unknown assoicated with black holes, these two men seemed to thrive on what they call the “Joy of Ignorance.”

My “aha” take away: leadership is not about knowing all the answers. It is about having the courage to continue forward through uncertainty.

Leaders often can’t be certain of an outcome. That’s where they rely on their risk management skills. They leverage their past experience and their current knowledge to guide their teams forward. If the journey’s path was well-defined, there would be maps, alternate directions, and other travel support tools. It would be a middle-management bureaucratic milieu.

So what is the secret sauce for a successful leader? Is there a recipe aspiring professionals can apply? How do managers and leaders help their teams solve the complex challenges that will help them achieve their operational and strategic goals?

Karen Langer, a Harvard-based Social Psychologist, spent a year working with students at the Harvard School of Business. At the end of the year, she recognized the characteristics of mindlessness and mindfulness as a a means for describing successful leadership:

“Mindlessness is the application of yesterday’s business solutions to today’s problems.

Mindfulness is the attunement of today’s demands to avoid tomorrow’s difficulties.”

It is not possible to measure how mindful or mindless a leader might be; these characteristics, the same as other leadership traits, continue to be intangible.  The awareness of leaders regarding what they don’t know enable them to reflect on previous experiences and adapt lessons learned in order to be ready resolve uncertainties. Leadership is not necessarily about previous performance; it is about having the courage to seek out new solutions that are best-suited to evolving environments.

On-Schedule and On-Budget – A Pipedream?

Often in our efforts to achieve  objectives faster at lower cost, our  best intentions take the optimistic viewpoint and we forget to consider the impact that skipped steps or substitutions may have on the project outcome.

The physics maxim, “For every action, there is a reaction,” continues to hold true. Working through a thorough estimating process prior to officially starting a project will minimize unwanted consequences.

During a hectic period juggling two careers, two young children, and a myriad of other commitments, my husband and I grabbed a one hour time slot to purchase a refrigerator. We had done our research; we knew which features we wanted, our price range, and other purchase criteria. We completed our mission within the allotted time and applauded our efficiency. The refrigerator was delivered on the scheduled date and time. All was good – and then we realized the refrigerator was 1” wider than the unit we were replacing. It did not fit the existing space. Fortunately, the single appliance purchase that drove a five figure kitchen remodeling project has become a family joke. And for those who are curious, we now measure twice before any large purchases are made.

Our home project mishap occurred because we assumed a kitchen appliance maintained a standard width. Launching projects based on faulty assumptions is not reserved for homeowners and other do-it-yourselfers. Far too many business decisions and projects are pursued with minimal analysis. How many “lessons learned” sessions focus on business/political pressures and misinformation from anecdotal references?

The Project Management Institute (PMI) identifies ten Knowledge Areas that offer project managers a reference checklist to create a strong project management plan. A center point to PMI’s documented methodology is a series of Earned Value calculations that help people track estimated cost and schedule variances. Gauging the actual work completed and budget spent against the forecasted timeline help project managers realize that schedules and cost outlays are veering off course while there is an opportunity to make adjustments. The value these equations offer is the ability to focus on the multiple moving parts that affect the outcome and not a single calculation.

Earned Value methodology is not reserved for large, multi-year projects. Smaller project efficiencies can benefit from tracking the work performed against estimated costs and schedules. The Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI) are two Earned Value calculations that enable project managers to identify the probability that the budget outlays and schedule forecasts are tracking to plan. For example, a positive SPI means the project is ahead of schedule; conversely, a negative SPI means the project is behind schedule. Using these estimating tools, managers are able to recognize the relationship among the various project elements which will enable them to make decisions based on factual reality.

Assuring a project can be completed on schedule and within budget can be achieved when you are able to answer the question: If this element is adjusted, what reaction will that adjustment cause? Using facts, you will be able to determine if the project will meet goal, or if you will need to adjust expectations.

Emotional Intelligence: Honing Human Competence

Some might say we are already slaves to our “smart phones”.   Can you untether from your smart phone for four hours? How about an entire weekend? What decisions do you make that depend entirely on information received via your phone? Could you make these decisions, if you had to rely on other information sources?

“How to manage the man-machine collaboration” is the cover story in the June 2015 Harvard Business Review. In this article, Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby rally readers to address activities that require capabilities that cannot readily be converted into computer code. They ask readers to consider the essential question of what makes us human. Do humans have unique competencies? What strengths do we have that cannot be “designed into” robots?

The asset that makes us human over robots is our neural limbic system that drives our social relationships. The limbic system is the section of your brain that creates the feeling deep inside your inner recesses which warns you of danger or encourages you forward. It is this tiny feeling that has been difficult to quantify that makes us human and provides a depth of experience and social awareness that current robotic machines have yet to master.

During the 1990’s Daniel Goleman brought Emotional Intelligence (EI) into the popular business vernacular. He defined EI as “the use of emotions to enhance thinking.” I was never comfortable with his definition because the western business culture of the 20^th century defined emotions as weakness and a subject for disdain.

Over the last few years there has been a great deal of research and discussion that adjusted the perception of EI to be more of a procedural paradigm. Specifically, leadership theory has begun to describe EI as how people view and react to the world around them.

Strong leaders are gauged by the Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 tool by how they:

• Perceive themselves
• Express themselves
• Interact with others
• Make decisions
• Handle stress

The powerful part of this process is helping leaders learn how to collaboratively leverage the strengths of the people around them to create a team which is significantly stronger than the individual elements.

David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Journal identifies five practical steps that will help you improve your limbic brain activity and hone your “human skills toolbox”:

• Be Fair – a fair environment creates a synergy enabling people to collaboratively resolve challenging situations.
• Take a Social Approach — focus on the process and diversity of ideas that will drive desired results
• Sleep – sufficient rest results in fewer mistakes and enables the brain to conserve energy, merge thought activities, and enables innovative problem solving.
• Do Not Multitask – working on several simultaneous tasks actually causes the work to take longer with lower quality results
• Open Your Mind to Possibilities – just because that is the way it has always be done, doesn’t mean that it is the only means to achieve the objective

The key for success today and in the future, is the same as was used in the past. Recognize the strength and power of your tools; however, know that success is dependent on the innovative, collaborative capabilities that uniquely identify us as human.   What skills do we have that can’t be replicated? Hone those.

Change and Chopsticks

What should Dennis do with these two sticks of wood? He could use them to knit a sweater. He could play a drum rhythm at the table. He could pretend to be a walrus. Frankly, he could use them to perform a myriad of activities. These two sticks of wood offer him more opportunities than he is quite ready to wrap his mind around – and most certainly NOT a newfangled eating experience.

Change is tough. Dennis is reacting much the same way as many adults when our established patterns are disrupted by well-meaning managers. In fact, he is behaving more maturely than many adults because he is asking questions.

Do you remember the first time you were handed a pair of chopsticks? Did you know what they were? How to hold them? How much dinner actually made it to your mouth? Or, did you not even try and request a fork?

Think back to a significant change in your workplace. Perhaps it was two departments merging, a computer system upgrade, or a move to a new office location. Were you excited by new opportunities? What aspects of the change made you nervous? Were there unexpected bumps that threw you off your game? How was the change communicated to you and your colleagues? Were you involved in any decisions? Or, was the change foisted on you and the other change action stakeholders? Were questions encouraged? What type of orientation/training activities was offered? Did you take advantage of the change preparation offerings? Given the opportunity, what action would you take to smooth out the bumps that occurred during the workplace change?

Positive change reaction is all in the preparation and implementation. People will react to new situations differently. Some people thrive on new experiences and jump in enthusiastically. Others will question the necessity of the change (i.e. isn’t a fork good enough?). And then, you have the people who need a well-thought out introduction. They need to know the what, why, and how for the coming change. After an initial period, chances are each group of people will get on board with the change. To limit the number of bumps and enable the change process to occur smoothly, the management team needs to address the various information and communication needs within their groups.

Every change situation is different. Each one comes with its own situational glitch. The key to successfully confronting a new situation is to open your mind to different practices, procedures, and paradigms. Like Dennis, ask questions to understand the new context.

It is important for you to understand how you react to change and are aware of how your colleagues, management, and direct reports react to change. Openly acknowledge that people on your team will have different coping requirements. Create conversations that allow people to participate in the change planning and deployment. They may be able to point out an important detail that had been overlooked. Collaborative inclusion can help change attitudes about an unfamiliar concept from obstacle to opportunity.

Open Your Fists for Positive Change Deployment

Recently, I heard a Story Corps interview between nine year old Aiden Sykes and his father Albert Sykes. During the interview Aiden asked his father about any hopes or dreams his father had for him. Senior Sykes replied that he hoped his son would be able to follow his own personal dreams. He then related an allegory about children being born with closed fists that hid their unique, individual gifts. These gifts would be revealed to the world as they grew and opened their hands.

This simple wisdom can be interpreted from a variety of approaches. My initial linear interpretation approached the paradigm that every child has gifts to share with the world…even if we need to work a little harder with a child to draw these gifts out. The alternative is a child getting drawn into a world where they need to keep their fists clenched to survive. When this happens, not only is the child hurt, but others (and the world) will not benefit from the gifts.

Speaking with a colleague, we realized this allegory can be applied to the working world of grown-ups. Change often is met by “closed-fisted” resistance. Granted, the process of change is hard – uncharted waters and the need to trust new co-workers/procedures before time has elapsed for trust to be built can be scary. People are worried about losing turf, about having to learn new ways of doing things, and a myriad of other negative constructs. What if people take a purposeful pause and “open their hands”?

What if, the next time you feel your fists clenching because you are about to encounter a change moment, you open them and recognize that the rest of your colleagues are facing the same ambiguity that you are? What would happen, if you acknowledged that you have a difficult challenge to conquer and initiated conversations that enabled your new team to learn about each other?   Can you imagine the successful team effort that could occur If instead of protecting their perceived territory, everyone opened their palms and shared their gifts?

When You Aren’t Sure What To Say…Listen to Mark Twain

Many of us read Mark Twain in English class. I am sure you can agree he is a wonderful raconteur. I bet never in your wildest day dreams, you would have thought that his yarns might help you through a variety of difficult business situations.

Mark Twain was quoted:

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”

So, when you find yourself in a situation where you have very little knowledge of the topic or jargon, don’t walk away – Stay, Listen, and Learn.

How do you participate when you only have a basic understanding of the topic? You don’t need to be an active speaker. You only need to be an active listener. People enjoy talking about themselves and their topic of expertise. You can become a significant member of the conversation by using alert body language and focusing on the “expert” speakers. Listen carefully and try to build context within your own experiences.

Another lesson from Twain:

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”

If there is a break in the conversation, or someone specifically asks you a direct question, don’t be afraid to share your learner status. An open-ended question requesting clarification to improve your understanding of the topic gives the speaker permission to explain. For example, you might respond with a question such as, “Could you expand on your point about _______; I would like to better understand _______. “ Another response might be, “That is very interesting, how might you handle this situation if ________ were different?

If you are in a meeting where participation is required, but feel that you haven’t formulated a unique response or educated input, you still have options. If someone has identified a suggestion that you had wanted to contribute, reinforce the strength of the contribution by saying that you had the same thought and offer the reason why you think it is a strong suggestion. If you, need to offer a unique idea, asking for a temporary pass because “Mary” just shared your idea or you need a few moments to think is an acceptable tactic to gain a few extra minutes to organize your thoughts.

Finally, a third lesson from Twain:

“Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.”

Sometimes not having anything to say offers an opportunity for you to make an investment in yourself expanding your realm of knowledge and a terrific entrée to extend your network. If you find the topic interesting and want to continue the connection, don’t be afraid to ask permission to contact them for additional information.

Unsticking Yourself from Sticky Floors

Sticky career floors can be so frustrating. People find themselves getting stuck more often than you might think. It is tough when, like Dethany in the above On the Fastrack comic strip, people define your position as non-career (aka dead-end). It is even tougher when people put you inside a box and want to keep you there.

So how do you “claw your way outside of the box” when you have developed new skill sets and want to grow professionally, but your manager is set on keeping you firmly in your place? Your first step should be to determine:

• What you want to do and the next step that will help you move your career forward.
  1. Can these goals be reached staying with your current employer?
  2. Do you need to start exploring opportunities outside of your current employer?
  3. Do you need to change your career area or industry?
• What is stopping you from achieving your next steps?
  1. What can you do to help yourself?
     1. Check your attitude
     2. Check your appearance

• Do you need additional types of experience?

1. Do you need additional education or professional credentials?

1. Do you have a mentor or peer who will provide you honest reflection and feedback?

• Expand your network – the more people to whom you can reach out, the more opportunities you will find.
  1. Larger companies often have sports teams and interests groups – join one
  2. Look for after-work sports leagues (volleyball is great fun) or trivia teams

• Join the local chapter of your professional association and volunteer on a committee. Working as part of a team let’s people get to know you and recommend you.

• Make a commitment to yourself and develop a plan to help you get started and stay on track.

Create a career track plan that is comprehensible and open to new opportunities. Above all, maintain a positive can-do attitude. Don’t let a black career cloud create a negative karma. It will pass. Everyone has walked in your shoes at one time or another. You may have the worst job and the worst boss; take the negative lessons learned and move forward. People want to learn what makes you special and unique. You never know if the person you meet at the break room coffee pot or a professional meeting will be the link to your next career opportunity.

Leading with Purpose – Leading So Your Team Can Follow

 

Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director was asked to define “leadership.” Her response to the reporter’s question was fairly brief, “It’s about enabling them [people] to achieve what they can achieve – and to do that with a purpose.”

Within an organization, there are three types of oversight functional roles: supervisors, managers, and leaders. Each of these roles is important for an organization to function. Many times people – even if they are not the officially designated leader– will find themselves performing each of these roles at different times:

• The supervisory function provides specific direction regarding how and when to perform an assigned function.
• The managerial function delegates responsibility and assures time, budget, and quality requirements are met.
• The leadership function sets a team’s core values, demonstrates operational norms, and shares the mission passion.

This last one can be very difficult to learn because emerging leaders may not have the best role models. All too often leaders fall into an ego trap where they focus on their own personal needs vs. the needs of the team.

Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologies and leadership consultant for CEOs, provides advice in his book, Boundaries for Leaders. He suggests guidelines to help leaders create a culture that encourages growth, inspiration, and empowerment. As a quick summary he promotes the following core values and operational norms as a means to build high performing teams:

1. Help people focus and prioritize what is important.
2. Inhibit task actions which are not important or toxic.
3. Build strong communications among team members so that everyone maintains a common focus and works together toward an established goal.
4. Help people creatively gain control of what they can control and establish norms to manage situations which they cannot control.

So whether you are formally designated as a group leader or unofficially “step up” to the role, being a leader means helping people to achieve the group’s goals which can be assuring the completion a single, rote task, coordinating multiple tasks and teams, or maintaining the strategic vision of the project. In all of these instances, your actions as a supervisor, manager, or leader can have a positive effect on employee morale and productivity. Even people who may currently hold relatively junior positions have opportunities to step up and gain practice performing leadership-based activities.

Meetings Don’t Need to be a Waste of Time

Just about a year ago, the Project Management Institute upgraded their Body of Knowledge which describes standards of excellence among project management professionals. A significant addition to the list of effective tools was “meetings”. My first thought was “Yes!! People working together in collaborative environments to resolve problems: Brainstorming – information sharing – Broadening of Perspectives. And then, the reality set in: people scheduling meetings to schedule meetings; leaving us to coming in early and staying late in order to accomplish constructive work.

Below are some suggestions that are fairly easy to implement.

Pre-Plan

• Who needs to be invited?

o   Determine the objective of the meeting.

o   Invite people who have a direct stake toward achieving the meeting objective

• Who should be copied on the invitation?

o   Managers and ancillary support people need to be aware of the meeting and desired outcomes; they may not need to attend.

o   It is good to keep them apprised of your progress and they may have suggestions or be able to offer assistance to you.

o   Include a preliminary agenda and desired outcomes as part of meeting invitation

o   The preliminary agenda offers people the opportunity to prepare to fully participate in the meeting.

o   Invite people to request additions to the agenda, as well as share insights that might help you facilitate a stronger meeting. This could be a heads-up for regarding a situation you didn’t realize was delicate, or perhaps including someone with experience who could augment the discussion.

Start on Time

• Respect people’s efforts to be punctual.
• Do not allow late comers to divert the meeting. At a natural break, catch them up so they can participate. Do not return to an already covered agenda item.

 

Stay on Task

• Distribute agendas at meeting start, including any updates.
• Even, if there are no additions or updates to the original agenda which was sent in advance, do not assume people will bring the document with them.
• Assign a timekeeper to notify group when designated timeframes have elapsed.
• If in-depth discussion is needed by a specific group of individuals, ask them if they can take the topic on as an action item to discuss at a later time.
• Establish a goal of ending the meeting at designated end time.

o   Table agenda items for the next scheduled meeting.

o   Assign a task group to handle individual items and report back to group.

Summarize Action Items and Responsibilities

• Confirm decisions which were agreed upon during the meeting.
• Review the agreed upon future action items, the people who were assigned responsibility, and the expected timeframe for completion.

Send out a Meeting Summary – Not Minutes

• The Meeting Summary lists the attendees, the meeting purpose, discussion highlights, outstanding action items (including what, who, and when), and any items which may be postponed for future meetings.
• Minutes which reflect verbatim meeting discussions may be needed for specific archival purposes; however, people will not cull through pages of dialog.
• A summary overview of the meeting will identify the issues discussed, the action forward, and any outstanding challenges.

Check in with the people who are responsible for designated action items.

• This action reminds them you value their work.
• Everyone gets busy and a friendly check-in will help your tasks to maintain priority, or if necessary, assign the action to another person.

 

Even if you are not leading the meeting, you might be able to offer assistance. Your manager or group leader may appreciate your assistance sending out meeting announcements and summaries. Or, they may never have considered having someone act as a timekeeper to keep discussions on track.

Meetings don’t have to be run the way we’ve always run them. Take the initiative and begin to model meetings that encourage people’s constructive participation.

FEEDBACK – Shifting from Defense to Constructive Receive Mode

 

All through school, grades reflect our performance as measured by tests, papers, and projects. The teachers scoring our work point out the areas where we are deficient; but if it is an end of term grade, not much coaching is offered to help us close the gap. Both the instructor and the student are on to the next term with little thought to last term’s work. In the working world, performance reviews often are viewed with more angst than any final exam. Some organizations have developed a culture that use performance reviews as an opportunity to reflect on past efforts as well as a means to plan for future success. Even in these supportive environments, end of year reviews are stressful. The goal is improved performance, why is the performance review process dreaded by all participants — both givers and receivers?

Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen recently published Thanks for the Feedback – The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well in which they suggest people stop approaching performance reviews from a backward-looking, end of term perspective and shift their perspective toward a learner’s point of view that will enable them to digest the feedback to improve future performance. They open with their observation that one of the reasons people fear receiving feedback is that we fear being caught off balance by unexpected criticism.   What we view as truth is not necessarily reality, or the reality our reviewer perceives.

They focus on three triggers which can cause the feedback process to be threatening: Truth Triggers, Relationship Triggers, and Identity Triggers.

1. The truth trigger describes the situation in which both people are interpreting reality through different lenses. The feedback receiver is encouraged to query the giver to understand their perception. In so doing, the receiver has the opportunity to broaden their understanding; and if appropriate expand the giver’s understanding of the situation. One of the suggestions offered is to say, “Tell me more”, as opposed to saying, “That’s wrong”.
2. Relationship triggers are caused by factors that have nothing at all to do with the actual work performance. It has everything to do with how the two people relate to each other. The receiver needs to separate their personal history with the person and focus on “what” the giver is saying. The authors suggest the receiver step back from the emotion of the situation and ask the giver factual questions that can help both bring about improvement to the situation.
3. The identity trigger distorts our self-perception.   This can be the most difficult trigger to overcome because it affects our personal story. Recommendations suggest receivers do not immediately react to feedback that is perceived as negative. Clarify your understanding and give yourself time to digest the message. The giver may not have been able to view the situation from the same perspective as you; or, you may determine a growth opportunity for yourself.

As a young project manager with five years of experience under my belt, I experienced all three of the above trigger types when I was caught off guard by an end of year performance review. It was a pivotal career moment.

I was assigned to a very complex project which incorporated never-before implemented technology and intricate stakeholder relationships.   Both the technical and people aspects of the project required careful navigation through very choppy waters. No milestone was completed as originally planned. My reporting manager was removed from the daily project workings. In addition, we did not have a comfortable working relationship. When I asked my reporting manager for performance feedback mid-year, he had told me,” I was doing fine”. I didn’t realize how he perceived my project updates which tended to highlight the problems and not the solutions. Looking back the signs were there, but I had no clue that he didn’t want to hear the problems. He just wanted to know they were fixed. When I received an average review instead of the outstanding rating I thought I deserved, I responded emotionally. He responded emotionally telling me the truth that he had not previously shared. I stormed out of his office. Fortunately, a friend saw me and we went outside to walk around the block. She listened to me rage about our manager’s perceptions and the “unfairness”. And then with the greatest amount of kindness, she very softly told me that he was correct. Zing!!! I had learned some essential information. The experience went from a negative spiral to a significant learning moment.

As I mentioned, this review set off all three of my triggers: truth, relationship, and identity. It was not one of my prouder moments to realize how I was actually seen by my co-workers. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to improve my communication skills.   My only misgiving is that my manager did not have the courage to share his observations with me earlier when I asked for feedback, because I would have been a stronger employee that much sooner; and we might have developed a stronger working relationship.