Three Tips for New Leaders

By: Gina Kellogg-Soleil

Kate finally made it!  She’s moving up the ladder and feeling like her career is moving forward.  This is her time to shine, make a difference and create a name for herself.  She has put in her time, proven herself, and now she’s being recognized her for all her hard work.  Kate is being promoted to store manager!

Six months later frustration has set in.  Kate is repeatedly saying there’s not enough time in the day. She’s following all the company’s policies and standard operating processes, and making sure the team is performing its roles and responsibilities.  Emails are checked, deadlines are being met and Kate’s store location couldn’t be more organized.  She’s doing everything “right”, so why are sales down, her store employees disengaged, and customers moderately satisfied at best?  Kate’s spinning, and she needs to see results fast.

Ah, the proverbial new manager’s trap of being so focused on systematic perfection that we forget about what real leadership is and what truly generates results—people.  Sure, when asked what it means to be a leader, Kate, like all of us, can verbally provide the “correct” answer:  great leaders inspire a shared vision, model the way, leverage the strengths of others, yada, yada, yada.  Let’s admit it, although we all know what it means to be a great leader, leadership is hard work, and it takes time and practice. The reality is that great leaders are great because they’ve learned from the many mistakes they’ve made throughout their career.  Kate is experiencing one of the first lesson’s  every great leader learns—results come when you put energy into the people on your team, the people who are customers in your store and the people who are within your network; not from solely following systems and processes.

Like Kate, most new leaders tend to veer away from putting energy toward people, and  they gravitate to a systematic management approach because it’s tangible, easy to measure, and being able to cross off “to do’s” from a list gives a feeling  of success and recognition.  And many times they’re good at it! Yes, it’s important to have these systematic management skills, but they need to be balanced with basic leadership.  If Kate’s your employee, here are three leadership tips that can help shorten the new leadership learning curve:

1.  Trust:  The best thing a new leader can do in their new role is spend their first 90 days focused on building trust.  Yes, that’s correct – trust.  New leaders should spend their first 90 days beginning to build trust with their team by simply observing, talking with employees, and most importantly listening to what their team and customers are sharing.  Building trust requires new leaders to patiently soak in the environment and build relationships.  When trust is built, both employee engagement and customer loyalty increases—a combination that equates to increased revenue for all.  Building trust doesn’t stop after being in a new role for 90 days, though.  The 90 days gives the new leader time to begin establishing behaviors that will allow them to integrate the necessary management tactics.  Once employees trust a new leader, they become engaged, welcome leadership guidance, and will actually want the leader to succeed.

2.  Self-Reflection:  New leaders should immediately get in the habit of looking first at themselves before putting blame onto their employees.  Many new leaders fall into the employee blame game all too easy, making statements such as: “It’s like they don’t even listen,”  “She’s so frustrating,”  “Why can’t they figure out how to do something so simple,” “We’d be so much further ahead if they could only….” Alight new leaders, listen up.  A leader is a direct reflection of his/her team, and a team is a direct reflection of their leader.  What does this exactly mean? When frustration with employees rears its ugly head, it’s often times because a leader’s behavior is triggering a cause and effect reaction.  The solution?  When a new leader finds frustration surfacing, self-reflection is a must.  Here is a series of questions that can help new leaders troubleshoot perceived employee dilemmas:

     1) Is it possible that others have the same frustration with you?
     2) What about your behavior could be causing their frustration?
     3) How can you change your behavior to eliminate the frustration?
     4) How can you apply the same rational to the frustration you're having with your own employees?

3.  Servant Leadership:  It’s all about the people.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s the people on your team and the people who are your customers who achieve the business results.  New leaders can lose sight of how important it is to put down the PDA and put their energy towards their employees and customers.  The misconceived notion of new leaders is that they have been put in a position of authority and granted a title of control.  Great leaders know it’s the employees and customers who are the ones with the real authority and control, and an instrumental part of being a leader is about serving your employees and customers by helping to ensure they have the resources, knowledge and attention necessary to thrive.  Not surprisingly, the concept of serving your people circles directly back to the need for trust.  If a new leader wants results, help them put down the PDA and pick up the habit of servant leadership.

How to Make Good Decisions in Bad Times

By: Nick Tasler

From Detroit to Wall Street to Silicon Valley, it seems that bad executive decisions have become the rule instead of the exception in today's corner offices. Shareholders, employees, politicians and even managers themselves are asking - if not begging - to know why. What is the cause of all these bad decisions, and how can we start making good decisions again?

Bad managerial decisions do not stem from low intelligence. Bad decisions are not rooted in flawed logic, deficient math skills, a poor understanding of business trends or any other of the usual suspects. Bad decisions result from emotional ignorance.

At TalentSmart, we surveyed over 6,000 board members, colleagues and employees from a cross-section of industries that ran the gamut from hospitals to tobacco companies, churches to casinos and everything in between. The key stakeholders of these organizations rated managers on 22 separate leadership skills, including such stalwarts as strategic thinking, focus on results, character and the ability to communicate and articulate vision. When we compared scores on all 22 skills to managers' ability to make good decisions, one in particular stood out: emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence ratings tell us how well managers understand their emotions and regulate their impulses. As it turns out, nearly 70 percent of leaders ranked highly in emotional intelligence were also among the most highly skilled decision makers. Overwhelmingly, it's the managers who are most adept at understanding how others influence their own emotional state; take responsibility for their part in difficult situations; and make the most of bad situations, that are capable of making sound decisions in a timely manner.

In contrast, guess how many of those with a poor grasp of their own emotions ranked among the most skilled decision makers? Zero. In fact, 69 percent of emotionally ignorant leaders ranked among the bottom 15 percent in decision-making skill. Those who fail to handle conflect effectively; refuse to shoulder responsibility for their actions; and remain unaware of their own fear, anger or excitement are dreadfully inept at making decisions.

If emotional intelligence is so critical to a manager's ability to make good decisions, the next logicl question is how emotionally intelligent are most managers?

This is where the story takes a dark turn. In another study a few years ago, we measured the emotional intelligence of hundreds of thousands of workers from janitors to CEOs. We found that emotional intelligence rises steadily as people get promoted up the ranks into middle management. From there, however, emotional intelligence declines precipitously with every rung up the corporate ladder, finally bottoming out with CEOs. It seems that the people least equipped to make good decisions are those we trust to make the most profound decisions. Perhaps this sheds some light on how so many of our businesses have ended up where they are today.

The good news is that emotional ignorance is curable. It doesn't happen overnight, but it can be learned in a couple of months with just a little focused effort. Here's how to get started.

1. Understand Your Emotions as They Happen
Take note of what you are feeling and doing as a situation unfolds so you can learn to harness your emotions in difficult situations. Remember that ignoring emotions doesn't make them magically disappear. Only now after the Wall Street crash are we finally hearing people talk about fear and panic. A year ago, nobody wanted to talk about anything except fed policies and interest rates.

2. Step Away from the Emotional Situation
Keep your finger on the pulse of your emotions and know when to allow yourself the opportunity to step back from the situation. Once you get food at sniffing out your emotions as you feel them, evaluate them objectively. Try picturing the current situation in your head as if it were happening to someone else. What would you recommend that "someone else" to do in order to create the best results?

3. Prepare Yourself for Feelings of Uncertainty
Be definition, every choice you make depends on your estimation of uncertain outcomes. For nearly everyone, that uncertainty feels uncomfortable so expect some anxiety to accompany decisions. Anticipate it and prepare yourself for it by talking through your thoughts and feelings with a third party who may ot be as closely involved with the situation. Then, accept the fact that you may not have complete control over the outcome, but you can control your reaction to it.

Remind yourself to practice these steps everyday for one month each, starting with step one. Set a reminder on your Outlook calendar or jot it down on a sticky note and post it on your bathroom mirror. At the end of the first 30 days, switch the reminder to say, "Step Away From the Emotional Situation," followed by step three in the third month.

About the author: Nick Tasler is the award-winning author of The Impulse Factor: How to harness your impulses and start making better decisions, and is the former director of R&D at global think-tank and consultancy, TalentSmart.