Good Leaders Mentor

If you’re a leader, you’re also a teacher – whether you realize it or not. A recent Harvard Business Review article, “The Best Leaders are Great Teachers” by Sydney Finkelstein (Jan/Feb 2018) made me think more about this important role leaders share. For many of us, teaching others happens simply by setting examples (good or bad). That’s powerful and important, but taking an intentional approach is worth the time and effort too. In fact, Finkelstein, faculty director for the Center for Leadership at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, argues that taking an intentional approach to teaching within your organization will strengthen your staff and drive superior business performance.

This makes sense but how do you go about it? Organizational leaders are busy people and adding “teaching” to your already groaning “to do” list might sound daunting. But Finkelstein, who has studied world-class leaders for more than a decade, has found that it’s easier than you might suspect. He found that “teaching” can be defined broadly, falling into three main categories:

  1. Pointers on professionalism
  2. Technical knowledge
  3. Broader life lessons

He also found that many looked for opportunities on the fly, in addition to formal scheduled opportunities (such as annual reviews). Many also created teaching moments, often by taking protégés off-site for informal conversations in less stressful situations. I’m a big believer in setting a schedule, like meeting every quarter, to ensure consistency. And when it comes to teaching by example, nothing beats sticking to your scheduled appointments and respecting everyone’s time by starting and stopping as scheduled. I’ve developed a few teaching tips and mentoring techniques of my own over the years:

  1. If you’re an introvert, let the voice in your head come out (they can’t read your mind!).
  2. Recommend other thought leaders that can positively influence thinking. Whether it’s a book, course or other coaches, I always try to provide additional resources to inspire those I’m coaching or advising.
  3. Help other people in their network when possible, such as people who may report up to the person you’re coaching or teaching.
  4. Use your network and frequently ask, “who in my network might be able to help this person with what her or she is trying to achieve?”
  5. Remember that no relationship lasts forever. Know when you’ve imparted most of what you have to offer and be on the lookout for someone else who may be able to teach/inspire your mentee in new ways.

Finkelstein notes that leaders in his extensive study helped to make lessons “stick” by (1) customizing instruction to the needs, personality and development path of each individual, (2) asking pertinent questions to deepen learning, and (3) modeling the behavior they want others to practice.”

Here’s my practical advice to those seeking to maximize the benefits of a mentoring relationship:

  1. Listen and don’t be defensive.
  2. Take notes. It shows you’re taking things seriously.
  3. Follow-up on action items.
  4. Do what you promise or clearly explain why you did not.
  5. Say thank you in a meaningful way. In most cases, your mentor has more than enough money and doesn’t need a gift. Most people, however, are hoping to make an impact. Let your mentor know that he or she did and how that is making a difference in your life or career.
  6. Pay it forward. Look for someone you can teach or mentor and pass along the valuable lessons you’ve learned yourself!

 

standardFebruary 13Tom SalonekLeadership

Top 10 2017 Posts

My thanks to our customers, employees, and partners for an awesome year.  I’m going to be offline for a couple of weeks to be with my wife and kiddos.   I wish you and yours an enjoyable break and great start to 2018.  Below are my top 10 articles or posts for 2017:

  1. ​Business and life lessons, as taught by … mom
  2. The 100:  Downloads
  3. To keep employees, try valuing them
  4. 5 Lessons Most People Learn Way Too Late in Life
  5. Crazy Busy and Proud of it
  6. Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!
  7. Social Media Marketing Matters
  8. Listen Up – Your Customers are Talking!
  9. 6 simple ways to make every project successful
  10. 4 rules for delegating so you can retreat without regrets

 

standardDecember 19Tom SalonekHappy Employees

Letting Go of a Failing Strategy

Ice and snow, bringing in some wood and getting ready for the holidays: these rituals signal another year is winding down. For business owners and senior managers, strategic planning for the year ahead also happens now. As I’ve outlined in my book, The 100: Building Blocks for Business Leadership, annual strategic planning should be handled with care, precision and commitment. From gathering input from all employees, completing a SWOT analysis and even getting away from the office to limit interruptions, strategic planning is serious business.

But what if, despite these collective best efforts, your company is pursuing a failing strategy? How can this happen if a rigorous SWOT analysis is conducted every year, as we do at Intertech? An eye-opening article in the current issue of Harvard Business Review, “Stop Doubling Down on Your Failing Strategy,” explains not only why it happens, but what leaders can do to prevent this surprisingly common problem.

First the whys. Authors Freek Vermeulen, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School, and Niro Sivanathan, an associate professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, point out that “people have a tendency to stick to an existing course of action, no matter how irrational.” Academics who study this phenomenon even have a name for it: “escalation of commitment.”

Scratch the surface of any failed business case study and you’ll find commitment escalation was a major factor. Many mutually reinforcing biases apparently lead to this unfortunate syndrome, making it nearly impossible for leaders to abandon a failing strategy.

Some of these tie to great book Ego Is the Enemy.  They include:

  • Sunk cost fallacy—Leaders want to avoid losing costs already incurred.
  • Loss aversion—Decision makers often prefer to allocate more resources in the hope of turning around a failing strategy and avoiding loss.
  • Illusion of control—People habitually overestimate their ability to control the future.
  • Preference for completion—People have an inherent bias toward completing tasks.
  • Pluralistic ignorance–Dissenters often believe that they alone have reservations about a course of action and remain silent.
  • Personal identification—Withdrawing from a commitment may result in a perceived loss of status or threat to one’s identity. (Who wants to be the executive who had to kill his or her own failed strategy?).

How can companies possibly avoid these business-killing pitfalls? No surprise here. Building systems, or practices, into the strategy-setting process can steer leaders away from the pitfalls and closer to consistent and objective decision making based on facts versus (often hidden) emotions or psychological predispositions. These include:

  1. Setting decision rules—Agreeing on decision rules or objective formulas in advance.
  2. Paying attention to voting rules—Vote on a variety of criteria, versus a simple “yes” or “no” to prevent people from digging in their heels to “save face.”
  3. Protecting dissenters—This is easily done by providing anonymous feedback channels (we do this at Intertech with our all-employee Town Halls), deploying larger teams, calibrating diversity, and modeling doubt by executives.
  4. Expressly considering alternatives—Framing strategic questions to include the possibility of alternatives is an effective way to avoid an escalation of commitment to one course of action.
  5. Separating advocacy and decision-making—You can reduce the likelihood of escalation if you give responsibility for a strategic move to people who did not advocate or initiate that move.
  6. Reinforcing the anticipation of regret—We’ve all experienced “buyer’s remorse,” the regret you feel after you make a choice and realize all other choices now are off the table. Anticipating that this may happen, no matter what decisions you and your team make, helps soften the blow when it occurs. (Read the full article for more details and examples.)

Bottom Line: If you or others in your leadership circle have hung on too long to a business strategy that’s failing, remember it’s one of the challenges of being human. But like those fall leaves, sometimes there’s wisdom in knowing when to let go.

 

standardDecember 7Tom SalonekLeadership