8
GROWTH
Emphasize Continuous Improvement

We all have to grow into our jobs, whether we’re bike messengers or CEOs. Once you’ve built and shaped your team members into a vehicle for true productivity, focus on finding ways to optimize their performance through further growth. Effective, efficient execution is not a fixed destination; it is a moving target that can only be hit consistently if you and your team are seeking ways to constantly improve.

Growing together as a team and growing to become a team creates cohesion—with individual team members interlocking smoothly into one efficient entity like the parts of a good machine or jigsaw puzzle. A mature team develops features that naturally boost productivity. But the effort starts with you, the executive—whatever your job title. You can facilitate this process and avoid problems by understanding not only how you think but also how your team members think.

Among other things, a quality leader accepts both credit and blame when it’s due. Leaders act on constructive criticism without overreacting to the pain that accompanies it, because they know it can offer insight into where growth is needed. And most who deliver such criticism are trying to help, however clueless or hurtful their words might seem to you at the moment. Using your emotional intelligence while balancing your head and heart serves you well here.

STRETCH EVERY DAY IN EVERY WAY

Growth occurs on all levels in an organization—or at least it should. Lack of growth may not result in death, but it does lead to stagnation, which causes damage or death in the long run. While you have to center growth on your team to best benefit the organization, individual growth at the leadership level and cross-team development also affect team growth. So let’s look at all three.

Harnessing the Power of Metacognition

In his 1734 poem “An Essay on Man,” Alexander Pope declared, “The proper study of Mankind is Man.”³⁵

We’ve taken this motto to heart as a species. We’ve made radical advances in everything from economics and sociology to engineering and medicine in the handful of centuries since. Our ability to think clearly—and our willingness to do so—has led us to cultural and social heights undreamed of in previous civilizations.

Even better, we possess the remarkable ability to evaluate our own thinking. With a little self-reflection, we can understand how and why we think the way we do. And when we know the “how” and the “why” of something, we can usually improve upon it.

As an intelligent leader, you can take advantage of meta-cognition not only to comprehend your thought processes but also to understand how those around you think.

No one knows you as well as you do. You can use this knowledge to engineer your work patterns for maximum effectiveness and efficiency. So, for example: if you find it hard to stay off the Internet, then turn off the wireless connection except when you absolutely need to connect. If music soothes you, listen to Bach or play instrumental music on your noise-reducing headphones. If you know your mental energy peak occurs two hours after lunch, save your toughest tasks for then so you can power through them.

The more you think about how you think, the more you can use your self-knowledge to improve your productivity and boost your professional growth.

Know Them, Too

Metacognition also provides hints about how other people think—hints you can leverage to improve team performance. Suppose one of your team members enjoys a specific type of work. Why not make her the point woman for that type of work whenever you can?

Think about how the people around you think, even as you think more about how you think. Then you’ll be able to build a more effective collaboration—with a workflow process that produces like never before.

Whistling Up an Orchestra

Those who gravitate toward leadership (or create businesses as entrepreneurs) tend to be the independent type. It seems ironic, then, that humans achieve their highest levels of productivity only by coming together as teams.

Human beings are social creatures. Nearly everything worth-while we’ve achieved has come about as a result of team effort. Even those perceived as lone-wolf geniuses—Einstein, Mozart, da Vinci, Jobs—worked in a collaborative field or surrounded themselves with talented people they could trust. Yale Divinity School’s H. E. Luccock may have said it best when he pointed out, “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.”

Why We Bother

The greatest advantage of teamwork is that it achieves what individuals can’t through the medium of cooperation. Making personal goals secondary to group goals may seem difficult, but it pays off for everyone in the end.

Instilling effective teamwork as one of the team’s core values will make the team:

• More efficient. Typically, more efficient also means faster, since many hands make light work. Teamwork is much more efficient (and effective) when team members work together closely throughout the process. Many tasks have no clear-cut edges, so when people work separately, performing separate parts of a project in isolation and then piecing them together later, overlap and duplication may occur. On a team where the members inform each other of their progress, that’s easier to avoid. Ongoing feedback also increases the quality of output during the planning, design, and implementation stages. The result is more robust, with multiple perspectives.

• More reliant on multiple skill sets. Even in specialized fields, the constant evolution of knowledge and increase in information makes it impossible to know everything about the field. It takes a lot longer to complete a project if one person has to know everything necessary to accomplish it. To make efficient progress, put together subject matter experts on different aspects of the field and have them tackle the project as a group.

That said, you can’t be completely dependent on any one person. When an employee is sick or on vacation, someone else must pick up the slack and still get the work done on time. If only one person is working on a project and holds the keys to the kingdom, that project suffers until they return—and may even die in their absence.

• Accountable. Team membership encourages a sense of belonging, which often translates to a greater sense of ownership and accountability for the work. This is especially true when people respect each other and don’t want to let the team down.

• Synergetic. Cohesive, closely fitting teams often prove greater than the sum of their parts, such that the results are out of proportion to the number of people involved. Consider composers Gilbert and Sullivan, innovators Jobs and Wozniak, or pioneers Brin and Page.

And The Beat Goes On

Close collaboration is vital to human achievement at all levels. Teamwork stands as one of the chief hallmarks of human accomplishment. So encourage and exploit people’s tendency to work together for the common good, even if you prefer solitude. Collaboration is basic human nature, and it might be much easier to strengthen than you think.

MAKING ACCOUNTABILITY YOUR WATCHWORD

When you use employer thinking versus employee thinking—and you treat your business as your own—you and your teammates are more likely to be held accountable for what you do or fail to do.

Accountability means following through on your promises and accepting the consequences when things go wrong. Only professional victims blame other people when unforeseen circumstances trip them up. How accountable you hold yourself depends on the extent to which you refuse to blame others or extenuating factors when things go wrong. US President Harry S. Truman said it best: “The buck stops here.”

Personal responsibility isn’t always easy, even for hard-core, competent professionals. Indeed, it can be downright difficult when you’re at fault for something and may lose your job or hurt your career by owning up to it. But taking responsibility is the honorable, professional thing to do and the proper stance to take.

I’ve encountered some telling examples of the difference between employer and employee thinking in my work. When I schedule speaking engagements, I send a ten-question survey to my client and ask them to send it to fifteen or twenty intended audience members. Their replies help me tailor my speech to their needs. One question I always ask is, “What is the number one thing you would have to change about yourself to become more productive?” A large number of the answers look like this:

• I’m too hot (or too cold).

• Nobody will give me the right training.

• I don’t have the tools I need.

• Bad lighting.

Seriously? Bad lighting? That reflects not only an inability to read the question but astounding laziness. I keep thinking, “Okay, now I’ve heard it all,” but I’m always wrong. Most people would rather make excuses than make a little effort to help themselves.

Come on, you’re not a kid anymore. People won’t make themselves responsible for your actions and the results that follow. And why should they?

If you lack the right training or tools, get them. If you want the company to pay, ask for it. If you’re cold, wear a sweater to work. If the lighting is poor, buy a ten-dollar lamp. Stop complaining and be accountable for yourself.

This employer thinking approach distinguishes those willing to be accountable from the masses of those who are not. Rather than make an effort to understand how their actions affect the company’s profitability—and their own well-being—employees with an employee mindset view their company as an ATM machine that coughs up a paycheck every couple of weeks after they complete a minimum number of tasks.

In contrast, employees with an employer mindset treat the team and business as though it’s their own. They invest their discretionary effort, take account of their actions, and correct their own deficiencies instead of complaining about how the world’s against them.

Defeatist, entitlement thinking is the bane of the modern workplace—and some say society at large. Who are you: someone who takes personal responsibility seriously, donning a can-do attitude like armor and fending for yourself? Or do you want to gripe and keep on failing to add value?

You don’t accrue gripe time on your pay stub the way you do sick days. If you’re a griper, you’re just another expendable dime-a-dozen worker who’s the first to get the boot when things go south.

You can think like an employer and build the company or think like an employee and punch the clock. Your choice.

OVERCOMING CONFLICT AND OTHER GROWING PAINS

Growth hurts—especially when it pulls you along faster than you’d like. You’ve explored how you have no choice but to change along with the business world, lest you and your team fall behind. This is an integral part of growth: bearing the pain even as it eats at you. Like a professional athlete, you don’t ignore it; you simply find ways to handle it until you can fix it—and learn from the situation in the meantime.

The Painful Truth

Take personal criticism. Short of actually losing your job or suffering a demotion, getting criticized is probably one of the most painful workplace experiences possible.

But sometimes people need it. No matter where you stand in an organization, you can always improve your game. Many try to claim they’re their own harshest critics, but that’s rarely true. Even when it is, constructive criticism from someone you trust and respect matters more. Pain helps everyone learn and improve. Once you feel that pain, you can take measures to correct it.

You’ve probably received your share of criticism. I know I have! My audience members frequently complete evaluations after my talks, and I receive suggestions online weekly. Some comments I dismiss when they’re obviously meant to be destructive; I consider the source and move on. But when people you respect take the time to explain what they perceive as your weaknesses, listen. They’re trying to help you become a better person and a more skilled worker. If you have any doubts about what they’ve said, seek a second opinion from someone else you trust, someone who knows you well.

Practice these four tips for accepting and acting on constructive criticism:

1 LISTEN MORE, TALK LESS. Calmly absorb the criticism, being sure to think seriously about what the critic has said. Accept it gracefully; don’t interrupt with excuses or denials, and never try to scapegoat someone else. Refuse to let your negative emotions get the better of you. Even painful feedback is useful, and you need it to improve your performance. Think back, and you’ll realize your entire school career—from kindergarten on—was a constant back-and-forth session of criticism, feedback, and self-improvement.

2 ASK FOR SPECIFICS. If someone offers an offhand piece of vague criticism, don’t dismiss it or obsess about what that person meant. Just ask for an example. If you think it might help, also ask for suggestions about what to do about it.

3 TAKE CORRECTIVE ACTION. Whether it involves signing up for an advanced English composition class or learning to use certain products, do whatever it takes to raise your skill set to the next level. Often your organization will help you with the cost; if it doesn’t, do it on your own dime.

4 FOLLOW UP. You may need to speak to your critic again at some point to expand upon the original criticism and where you need to go from there. Take a deep breath and schedule a meeting. Once you’ve taken action to correct the problem, follow up again to determine whether your performance has improved in your critic’s eyes. I particularly recommend this step if that person is your supervisor.

No Pain, No Gain

If life were always a bed of roses, we would never get up and try to improve ourselves. Sometimes you have to deal with the thorns. Ironically, the pain they cause will help you grow as a person. So listen and act on constructive criticism.

Even when you’ve fixed the problem, continue your improvement efforts. Eventually, you’ll get so good at what you do that you’ll never need to worry about that particular topic again—as long as you commit to maintaining high standards of performance. Then you can go on to the next thing you want to fix … because there will always be a next thing.