CHAPTER 3
Have You Had Leadership Conversations Today?
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
You speak with bosses, peers, direct reports, and other stakeholders nearly every business day, but are they effective conversations that blend the leadership and management mindsets appropriately? Conversations in the leadership mindset build respect and trust, encourage bidirectional feedback, create learning experiences, and elicit the best from everyone, including you. Those in the management mindset involve processing information, evaluating alternatives, completing tasks, and meeting deadlines. Together, the conversations create alignment, inspire innovation, mobilize change, and produce superior short- and long-term results.
A Virtuous Cycle of Leadership Conversations
There are four types of leadership conversations:
- Building relationships that enhance decision making and coordinate action
- Developing others in a manner that achieves and perpetuates success
- Making decisions that are understood, supported, and executable
- Taking action to produce the desired results in a timely manner
Figure 3.1 shows that each leadership conversation increases the power of the next in a virtuous cycle. Building relationships and developing others produce better decisions and more effective actions. Successful actions in turn strengthen relationships, and the cycle continues, building an increasingly stronger enterprise. Taken together, the four types of conversations are a foundation for leading and managing through complexity and change. An executive who lacks proficiency in or ignores any of the four is likely to experience inferior results.
FIGURE 3.1. Leadership Conversations Create a Virtuous Cycle.
Effective leadership conversations produce an upward spiral in performance.
Leadership Conversations to Build Relationships
Leaders build relationships that attract, motivate, and inspire followers. How well do you know the desires and abilities of each of your people? How closely do those desires and abilities align with your organization’s goals? How regularly do you provide useful feedback? Would any of your people leave if they received an enticing job offer? People, and your relationships with them, count. If that understanding is not in your DNA, reconsider your desire to become a leader.
For example, Martin received survey feedback that was much lower than before—his people were in revolt. As second in command of a large office in a services firm, he had advanced rapidly and was heir apparent to the senior partner, who planned to retire soon. Martin wanted that job, but the new feedback jeopardized his chances. Considering that Martin had built productive relationships in the past, it was not clear why he was experiencing this problem, so his boss provided an external coach. Early in the first session, the coach asked Martin, “What is your job?” He responded by itemizing the professional services that his staff provided to clients.
The coach continued to prod: “What else?” Martin detailed additional issues his staff resolved and the regulatory filings they prepared. The coach listened silently until Martin blurted out, “Do you mean mentoring and training those ungrateful kids who leave after we teach them everything? If I have to continue doing that, I may shoot myself!” The coach looked on as Martin whispered, “Did I just say what I think I said?” Yes, he had. He was operating in a management mindset entirely focused on project results rather than on building relationships with his people. That mindset did not align with his position, let alone with the promotion he wanted. Martin understood: he could change his attitude and rebuild relationships with his people, or give in to his resentment and potentially lose his job. After bringing significantly more of the leadership mindset into conversations, Martin and several of his people continued to rise as high potentials.
Effective relationship-building conversations are essential to enable you and your people to connect and align to produce superior results. Part 2 of this book provides tools and techniques for building relationships by learning the new rules, knowing your strengths and shadows, fostering a relationship culture, and embracing differences.
Leadership Conversations to Develop Others
Once you choose to be a leader, you inherit the responsibility to develop your people—to have conversations that encourage them to stretch and that address new possibilities. If you focus only on today’s management tasks and this year’s goals, you limit your success as a leader and possibly jeopardize the future of the organization. Furthermore, the lack of developmental conversations and stretch assignments could drive away your high potentials, leaving you with those who only do exactly what you tell them. Your job as a leader is to provide the environment and the resources for your people to meet their career goals and increase the organization’s capability. After all, is that not what you also expect from your boss?
If you think you control your organization, you need only consider earthquakes and tsunamis that disrupt commerce, volcanic eruptions that interrupt travel plans, and renegade employees who take irrational actions for you to see how important developing others is to your success. When you develop people, you must anticipate both the unexpected and the more predictable industry-wide and company-specific upheavals. When you hold open conversations about progress, opportunities, and problems, your people will learn and grow rapidly—and so will you.
Developing others cultivates people who are more capable of assisting you in building productive relationships, making better decisions, and taking effective actions. Part 3 provides techniques and tools to meet the challenge of developing other high potentials, filling the succession pipeline, providing actionable feedback, and celebrating success, all of which enable you and your organization to win the battle for talent.
Leadership Conversations to Make Decisions
What would your organization’s future look like if you made decisions by throwing darts at a dartboard or reading a deck of tarot cards? What would your results be if you did not research critical issues or ignored key facts? What roadblocks would you encounter if you failed to consider relationships and personalities in your decisions? How effective can your decisions be if they are made without engaging the knowledge and experience of the high potentials in your organization? Decisions are the knives that whittle a universe of possibilities into future potential.
The IT division of a company that delivers its product electronically held a strategic workshop. It was late January, and they had not set goals for the year; their decision-making process was broken. The group split into teams to explore ways to get back on track. When Helmut, the division head, received their feedback, he paled. He thought that everyone agreed with his approach to upgrade the architecture, but instead found that the team had stopped talking to him. They detached from his decisions—and from him. To make matters worse, his decisions had become increasingly flawed because they were based on incomplete data, due to the lack of useful feedback during decision-making conversations.
The architecture redesign project was in danger of failing, and everyone’s job was at stake. The next day, Helmut offered to resign. But the other division heads told him that he was still the best person to lead the effort and that they were willing to give him another chance. Without the blunt feedback, the technology upgrade could have failed, resulting in mass firings. Instead, Helmut reengaged with his team to review earlier decisions, listened attentively to their feedback and suggestions, and modified the direction of the redesign project. With the feedback and decision-making processes back on track, they transitioned successfully to the new architecture on schedule later in the year.
You employ the management mindset to make decisions based on numbers and facts, whereas you use the leadership mindset to consider the people who will participate in making and executing the decision. When you blend these mindsets properly, you can make decisions with confidence that the people will perform and the numbers will work. Part 4 looks at how to develop the judgment gene, become curious, ask great questions, and find the third alternative—the one that exceeds everyone’s expectations.
Leadership Conversations to Take Action
In today’s always-connected, instant-information digital world, you rarely need more data—you need more effective action. A never-ending search for more information is often a sign of being stuck in the management mindset. Do not wait for the perfect time to start—respond now to the changes you sense around you. Take one small action and follow it with another in order to avoid analysis-paralysis. Do not let an opportunity evaporate while you search for the perfect solution—because it usually does not exist. What appears to be an ideal approach today might be less than ideal if you wait too long to implement it.
Some of our case studies do not have a happy ending; this is one. High-potential executives from four government agencies held a planning workshop to determine how they could work together more effectively. They moved decisively through the process of defining performance gaps and identifying areas to improve. They selected nine new initiatives and prioritized them based on cost, risk, and return on investment. But when it came to allocating staff and funding, the process came to a screeching halt. The agencies did not have sufficient resources available to begin even the highest-priority initiative.
The facilitator asked the executives, “What will you stop doing in order to begin the new initiatives?” They could not agree on ways to free up resources, so they compromised by adding the initiatives to the following year’s budget request. Predictably, Congress not only did not approve the budget increase but actually cut funding from the previous year’s level. The nine innovative and strategically relevant initiatives were never implemented.
Ending or curtailing old actions is as important as starting new ones, yet it is often more difficult. When you are considering a new start, quantify the time, the people, and the other resources that will be required. Do the same for activities you plan to stop. Because it is unlikely that you will have more time or resources in the future, the amount you save from activities you stop must at least equal what you need for the new starts.
By using conversations that align and motivate people, effective leaders tear down barriers that interfere with putting decisions into action. Planning conversations set expectations; feedback conversations compare in-process results to the plan in order to fine-tune the next actions. Part 5 provides tools and techniques that produce organizational and personal success through strategic planning, managing change, inspiring people, and learning from successes as well as failures.
Three Perspectives in Leadership Conversations
Figure 3.2 shows that conversations can be conducted from three perspectives. The most effective leadership conversations touch all three in a way that fosters innovation and breeds trust and respect:
FIGURE 3.2. Three Conversation Perspectives.
The most productive leadership conversations employ all three perspectives.
Few people routinely engage all three perspectives in their conversations; the ability to employ all three is a mark of a great leader. The order in which the three perspectives are addressed varies. For example, a visioning conversation held in the leadership mindset might begin in the third perspective, move to the second to explore ideas, and conclude with the leader communicating decisions in the first perspective. Conversations held in the management mindset often remain in the first and second perspectives. They focus on what each person must do to get the job done because boundaries on the possibilities are already established and are not open to debate.
Which perspective is the most important? It depends on your objective. If you must quickly win a point in the management mindset, focus on the first perspective (yours) by conducting a monologue that convinces others—commonly called a “pep talk.” Curious people naturally focus on the second perspective because they want to learn as much possible. But beware: these same people are sometimes reluctant to voice their own views. Visionary leaders who consistently extend boundaries often have conversations in the third perspective and instinctively tap into the experience and knowledge of their people by using the second perspective. In general, the most stimulating conversations occur in the third perspective. Learning happens in all three.
Blending Two Mindsets, Four Types of Conversation, and Three Perspectives
At any given moment, a leadership conversation may involve one of twenty-four distinct yet equally useful combinations of the two mindsets, four conversation types, and three perspectives. Consciously choose the mindset, type, and perspective appropriate for the situation, and shift to another combination to propel the conversation in the direction it needs to go. Conversely, recognize when one of your people shifts the conversation to another combination; that shift reveals the individual’s thinking about the matter at hand and is valuable information to a leader.
Executives who primarily operate in the management mindset (getting things done) reduce potential conversations with their people (and the possible results) by up to 50 percent. Similarly, executives with a command-and-control style frequently ignore the third perspective (additional possibilities), thus narrowing their potential conversations by one-third. Furthermore, those who do not consciously develop their people reduce the content of their conversations by one-fourth. If an executive did all three of these, she would engage in only six of the possible twenty-four conversations required to be a great leader.
Standards for Leadership Conversations
Effective leadership conversations (1) ensure that everyone shares the same information and understanding of the goals, (2) mitigate cultural and other differences that block innovation, and (3) produce agreement to work in unison toward the agreed-on result. Effective conversations are dialogues—not monologues—and end with a conclusion that satisfies individual and organizational needs. The organization wins in effective conversations, and every participant shares in the success. Conduct conversations that are direct, open, honest, and caring:
- Direct. You discuss alternatives with people who hold views different from yours and avoid sidebars with those who are sympathetic to your position.
- Open. You are willing to change your mind, but are not required to do so. Most executives are adept at convincing others. But to promote innovation and create unity, you must also give others the opportunity to influence you.
- Honest. You are transparent about your objectives and do not have a hidden agenda. You do not pull rank, leave out key details, or exaggerate.
- Caring. The conversation yields results that meet your needs and the needs of others. Use an optimistic and empathetic voice and avoid body language and tones that feel like an attack or denigrate the ideas of others.
Whenever possible, prepare for your leadership conversations in advance. Clarify in your mind the context of the conversation, your goals for its outcome, and the learning objectives. Map out the conversation in terms of the twenty-four combinations of mindset, perspective, and type—where do you intend to start and finish? You may want to obtain inputs from those who cannot be present during the conversation. Be sensitive to what others want from the conversation too—their desired outcomes may be different from what you assume them to be.
To avoid speaking at each other rather than with each other, ensure that you are in the proper frame of mind for the conversation and ascertain that others are as well. If the conversation gets heated, you may want to suggest a cooling-off period. If it gets emotional, ask the group what is needed to defuse the emotion. At the end of each conversation, validate a common understanding of the conclusions and schedule follow-on conversations if necessary. Consider your conversation successful if, after you and the other participants process the outcomes, everyone has made her points clearly, had her questions answered, and is in alignment regarding the course of action to be taken and her role in that approach. Apply these criteria to your next leadership conversation.