Government Executive - Authors - Scott Eblin

How to Keep Your Head Clear in the Weeks to Come

Scott Eblin — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 11:00:07 -0500

A few years ago, around the time my book, Overworked and Overwhelmed was launched, I wrote a series of blog posts under the theme of Mindful Mondays. I left that theme when I felt at the time that I had said everything I wanted to say on being mindful. On Election Day in the United States, it feels like a good theme to return to for a week.

It’s no secret that most of us, no matter which candidate we’re voting for, are feeling a lot of anxiety and stress around what might happen this week. For example, an NBC News poll from last week found that around 70% of Americans are worried about safety during the days around the election.

When people are that scared and stressed, they’re in fight or flight hyper-drive. As a result, the decisions they make and actions they take aren’t coming from a place of peak performance. If you think you might resemble that remark, here are some things you can do to keep your head clear and calm in the weeks ahead:

Raise Your DOSE

There’s a huge physiological component to stress management that begins with raising your DOSE. That’s an acronym for four neurochemicals that are key players in getting out of the fight-or-flighty state that comes from chronic stress. The big four are:

Dopamine – This is the one that drives habit cycles, both positive and negative ones. If you’ve found yourself “doom scrolling” through headlines or Tweets on your phone lately, that’s because you’re getting a dopamine hit every time you find one that triggers you. Consider replacing those kinds of dopamine hits with the ones that come from constructive habits like hobbies and exercise.

Oxytocin – This is the neurochemical of connection. Reaching out to family and friends, petting your dog or cat or going through photos that evoke good memories of fun times you’ve had with others can all reduce stress by raising oxytocin.

Serotonin – This one creates a feeling of well-being. Among other activities, exercise and movement raise serotonin levels.

Endorphins – These create good feelings in your body. Laughter, movement, singing, dancing and chocolate (in moderation!) can boost endorphins.

Use the 7-Second Delay

Radio and television broadcasters often employ a 7-second delay during live events to give their engineers time to bleep something that shouldn’t go out over the air. We can all employ the same idea by taking steps to control the gap between a stimulus and our response. The best way to do that is to take a deep breath from your belly before speaking or acting in a stressful situation. That gets you out of fight or flight mode and into a state where you can better choose your response. Check out the video in this post for my tips on how to get the most from your breathing.

Practice Awareness and Intention

Those two words—awareness and intention—are how I define mindfulness. First, there’s awareness which operates in two dimensions: external and internal. External awareness is focused on what’s going on around you. Internal awareness is tuning into the physiological, emotional and mental reactions you have to what’s going on around you. Noticing what’s going on within you sets you up to be intentional about choosing your response. You’re in a better position to ask, “Given what’s going on, what’s the best thing for me to do or not do in this situation?” Just asking the question can help bring you out of reinforcing loops of thought and action that perpetuate stress.

There’s a lot more I could say about managing yourself in times of stress; that’s why I wrote a book on it. For this week, though, I wanted to revisit some simple things you can do to keep your mind clear and your body calm so you can make your best choices as we go through this collective experience of a presidential election.

One last thought: No matter what happens, we’ll get through it. History has a way of reminding us that we have before and will again.

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When Facetime and a Beer Are Your Best Management Tools

Scott Eblin — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 13:13:07 -0400

In times of crisis, complex decisions often have to be made and implemented quickly. It can be challenging to coordinate and obtain buy-in on those big decisions even when the stakeholders can get in a room together to hash it all out. In the new work-from-home era sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, being in the same room isn’t an option. That can lead to some predictable conflict-management problems that you can avoid with a little foresight and creativity.

Think back to that distant time of February 2020 and earlier. There were probably times when you found yourself in the middle of an email flame war. You remember how those went. One or more participants poured gas on the fire by sharing crazy assumptions or accusations without having all the facts. If you’re like the best leaders I’ve coached, you calmed the conflict by pulling the parties together to talk things out. Just the act of bringing the players into the same room made things better because once people are together, they connect more as human beings and not as faceless combatants sitting at their keyboards.

Now that we’re all WFH, leaders need to be super intentional and proactive about creating virtual spaces for human connection. For instance, let’s say you’re finding yourself at odds with a colleague about how your teams should coordinate and work together during the crisis. One option is to send emails back and forth (and maybe CC’ing a few people in the process) so the two of you can argue about who’s right and who’s wrong. That’s not good for anybody – your customers, your teams or either of you.

If you were in the pre-WFH days what would you do? I asked that question of an executive coaching client a few days ago who was in the middle of one of those virtual conflict loops. He immediately answered, “I’d walk down to his office and say, ‘Let’s go get a beer and talk things over.’” We concluded that that was still a good move, it would just have to be executed a little differently. Later that day, he set up a FaceTime call with his colleague and they each had a beer while they talked things over. The next day, they co-led an online meeting of both of their teams so everyone was working from the same playbook. The show of leadership unity that was engineered over a virtual happy hour was a crucial component of getting things back on track. (Thanks to my client for giving me the OK to share his story with you.)

We don’t realize how much our effectiveness as leaders and colleagues depends on the little things like picking up on facial expressions and body language while we’re relaxing together until our usual ways of doing that are no longer available. Until they are again, we’re all going to have to be more mindful of creating and calling for virtual alternatives. Our ability to make complex decisions and get good things done without a lot of needless friction depends on it.

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A Crisis Leadership Playbook

Scott Eblin — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 11:44:46 -0400

Along with testing our public health and economic systems in unprecedented ways, the COVID-19 pandemic will test leaders at all levels in all organizations as never before. When I talk about the ideas in my book, The Next Level, one of the first things I usually say is that the next level is any leadership situation which requires different results. Since different results require different actions, leaders need to make adjustments of picking up new behaviors and mindsets while letting go of others to create the results that are expected or hoped for. Well, here we are. The apple cart has been turned completely upside down and leaders everywhere are going to need to make some big changes to restore health and well-being for the people in their organizations, their communities, their nations and our planet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how what I already know about leadership applies and what else needs to be in the mix for all of us in leadership roles now that the world has changed so dramatically. The ideas I’m sharing in this post are the basics of a crisis leadership playbook that is something of a work in progress. I’ll update my thoughts as I learn more but wanted to go ahead and share what I have now in the hope that there is something in here that may be helpful to you and the people you love and lead.

One thing I know for sure is that effective leadership in this new era begins with effective self-management. That’s the first of what I believe are three leadership imperatives:

Manage yourself.
Leverage your team.
Engage your colleagues.

You can think of these three as forming a pyramid with managing yourself at the base. Nothing else works as well as it could or should if leaders don’t manage themselves effectively.

So, what does it mean to do that well? Back in the old days (February 2020 and before), I focused on four domains of routines—physical, mental, relational and spiritual—that are the building blocks of effective self-management. I practice what I preach with those routines but, like everyone who is reading this, have had to learn over the past couple of weeks how to adapt those routines to the new realities of social distancing and life and business operating rhythms that are radically different than what they were pre-pandemic. I’ve always talked about optimal routines and “good enough for today” routines. For example, my optimal physical routine is a 75-minute hot yoga class in a room with 60 other people and a great instructor. That’s not happening now so, like a lot of you, I’m using online yoga and fitness classes. Not my old optimal but good enough for today and it’s helping me be at my best.

What I haven’t spent as much time thinking about over the years that I am definitely thinking about now is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There’s about a 100% chance you’ve heard of it, but if you haven’t looked at it lately, Google it and give yourself a refresh. The base of Maslow’s hierarchy is physiological needs like air, water, food, shelter, sleep and clothing. (If Maslow were alive today, I imagine he’d add toilet paper to that list.) The next level of his pyramid covers safety needs like personal security, employment, resources and health. The pandemic strikes right at the heart of this level of needs. The third level of the hierarchy is love and belonging with characteristics like friendship, intimacy, family and a sense of connection. Have you noticed how many FaceTime or Zoom calls you’ve been on the past couple of weeks to check in with family and friends? That’s because, even in the age of social distancing, you have a need for love and belonging. The top two levels of Maslow’s pyramid are self esteem and self actualization. My sense is a lot of high achieving leaders are not as immediately concerned about these two as they were a month ago. Other, more basic, needs have taken priority.

And that brings me to a new way that I’m thinking about leadership in these early days of the pandemic. As the accompanying picture illustrates, it’s about the way great leadership radiates across concentric circles.

The center and smallest circle, but a very important one, is you. To be any good for anyone else, you have to take care of yourself and manage yourself effectively. Your personal routines may need to be modified but you still need ones that will help you be at your best.

The next circle is occupied by your family and friends. You want to meet their physiological, safety and relational needs because you love them and care for them. When you do that at whatever level you can, you then free up mental and emotional bandwidth that you need to serve and lead your team.

Your team is where your leverage is. When you lead and serve them well, you can do great things together. The first task is to do whatever you can to help them meet their own basic needs. The second is to role model the approach you want them to take. Remember, as a leader, you control the weather. However you show up is completely predictive of how your team shows up.

From there, your work is about how you engage with your colleagues, your partners and other stakeholders and, ultimately, the customers and citizens that rely on your organization.

I’ll wrap up for now with some basic building blocks that, along with self-care and caring for others, are essential for leading effectively in a time of crisis:

Establish clear short-term priorities: Long-term visibility is impossible to come by right now, so focus yourself, your team, colleagues and other stakeholders on what you’re trying to solve for in the next 90 days. What, then, do you collectively need to do in the next 30 days to create that 90-day picture? What can you and your team do this week to support the 30-day agenda?

Communicate, communicate, communicate: The old cliché has never been more true than it is now—you can’t over communicate (doing it virtually as much as possible of course). As you organize and execute on your communications strategy, consider using William Bridges’ Four P’s checklist:

Purpose: What are we trying to do, why are we doing it and who are we doing it for?
Picture: What will success look like in the timeframe we can envision?
Plan: What’s our plan for doing that?
Part to Play: What are the roles and responsibilities of everyone on the team? Where are the interconnects and who has accountability for what?

Create more connection and touch points than usual: As the leader, be super intentional about keeping everyone informed, encouraging and creating opportunities for support and celebrating the wins along the way. There will be wins to celebrate.

So, those are my current thoughts on running a crisis leadership playbook. What resonates with you? What would you add? What’s working for you? What else is on your mind?

Please let me know. I’m here to support you.

If you’d like to go deeper on what I’ve written about in this post, subscribe here for a short video series I’ll be sharing in the coming days.

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The Three Essential Components of Strong Preparation

Scott Eblin — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 15:33:19 -0500

A few months ago I wrote here that preparation is the new leadership differentiator. That conclusion is based on close observation of my executive coaching clients and their colleagues. In an age where just about everyone has too much input and too much to do, showing up prepared for important meetings and conversations is something the best leaders do that sets them apart from the norm.

How do they do it? I shared some of their time management hacks in the earlier post. In this post, I want to share how they organize their thinking around three essential components of strong preparation.

Those components are: It, Them and I. Here’s the breakdown on how to put them to work for your own preparation.

It refers to the issue and the preparation required to master the subject. It’s basically doing the homework required to be up to speed on the issue. You read the reports, think through the deck, have the background conversations, get the briefing. You know you’ve done your homework on It when you have a good handle on the following questions:

What is It?
What isn’t It?
Why does It matter?

Them is the component of preparation in which you consider the other people involved in or affected by the issue. Some of the preparatory questions to work through on Them include:

Who are they? (In other words, who are the key people or groups involved?)
What do they care about?
What are their likely objections or concerns?
What do they need to know?
Who are the supporters?
What’s my strategy for engaging them?

I is about you as the leader who needs to prepare. You’ve gotten a handle on It and have thought through your approach with Them. Now, it’s about preparing yourself to engage.

That involves thinking through and, in some cases, visualizing your answers to questions like:

What am I trying to accomplish in the bigger picture?
What am I trying to do in this next conversation or meeting to support that goal?
If I’m completely successful with this next exchange, what happens at the end? What do people know? How do they feel? What have they agreed to do?
How do I need to show up to make those outcomes more likely?
What kind of energy should I project? High? Low? Positive? Negative? Some combination of those?
In my communications, am I putting more emphasis on transmitting or receiving or trying to hit a sweet spot between the two?

As you can see, none of this is rocket science. It’s mainly about giving yourself a little bit of space to think things through before you act. It’s things like that that separate the great leaders from the near-greats.

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Are You Hearing or Listening?

Scott Eblin — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 12:33:08 -0500

One of the things I’ve said for a long-time as an executive coach is that if you get colleague feedback that you need to be a better listener, take the feedback and start working on it. The positive leadership ripple effects from doing a better job of listening are enormous and wide-spread. Problem-solving, team-engagement, relationships and results all improve when leaders listen better.

I was reminded of this again a few weeks ago when conducting colleague feedback interviews for a new coaching client. One of the colleagues made an interesting distinction between hearing and listening as in, “I think he hears me, but I’m not always sure he’s listening to me.” That distinction between hearing and listening is a simple one but yields a big difference in outcomes.

Hearing is really just sound waves landing on your ear drums. When it stops there, it’s what I call transient listening. You’re on your way to someplace else—physically, mentally or both. You’re basically in transit and not present. How do you know when you’re just hearing and not really listening? Some of the warning signs include:

Your focus is on you.
Your goal is to wrap up and move on.
You feel distracted or impatient.
You interrupt to tell your thoughts.

Listening, on the other hand, involves a lot more than your ear drums. When you’re really listening, you’re engaging your brain and the other party’s brain. That’s how you build both connection and value.

From my point of view, there are two basic styles of value-added listening—transactional and transformational. You see a lot of transactional listening at work because it’s the kind of listening that’s best suited to solve a problem or identify a next step. Here are some of the signs that you’re engaging in transactional listening:

Your focus is on the other party.
Your goal is to move things forward.
You feel purposeful and focused.
You ask open-ended questions and clarify timelines.

In most organizations, you don’t see a lot of transformational listening. That’s too bad, because it’s the kind of listening that creates the most long-term value. Transformational listening not only engages the brains in the conversation, it quite often engages the hearts. It’s listening with the primary agenda to connect with the other person. Connection builds trust and trust yields results. Here are some of the signs that you’re engaging in transformational listening:

Your focus is on the connection between you and the other party.
Your goal is to learn more about the other party—what they think, what they value and how they feel.
You feel creative, connected and relaxed.
You observe with your eyes and are comfortable with silence and build on what’s said.

So, what do you think? Have you been hearing more or listening more lately? If it’s more on the hearing side, I’d suggest you pick one or two of the signs of transactional listening to focus on in your conversations in the coming weeks. If you think you’re already doing a great job on transactional listening, why not look for or create some opportunities for transformational listening in the next few weeks? Based on what my clients have told me over the years about what happens when they engage in transformational listening, I can practically guarantee you’ll be glad you did.

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You’ve Got to Leave the Launchpad If You Want to Get to the Moon

Scott Eblin — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 14:09:19 -0500

What do you want to accomplish this year? When you step back and look at your list are there any goals that scare you or just seem like a huge stretch?

I’ve got a few of those myself this year. They’re based on some ideas that have been somewhere on the radar screen of my brain the past few years. They were there kind of nibbling at my attention but staying busy doing what I’ve been doing kept me from paying much attention to them. And, honestly, I was OK with that. My work has been fun and fulfilling. Life has been good. Why mess with that or disrupt it?

And, then, as I wrote about last month, Diane, my life and business partner, and I took our annual retreat at the beginning of December to give ourselves space to think. Instead of thinking about what we wanted to do this year, we started with where do we want to be three years from now and then reverse engineered back from that picture to determine what we need to do in 2020. We came out of that weekend with about 13 pages of flip charts, each with its own headline and a bunch of thoughts about things we could do or should do. There was nothing that looked like a plan. It was just pages of ideas which we then put aside as the dash to the year-end finish line and the holidays took over.

But then, during the week of New Year’s Day, we came back to the flip chart pages and started getting more specific and sequenced. And, now, we’ve got a list of 2020 goals that put us on a trajectory to where we want to be in 2023. We have detailed plans for accomplishing those goals and have already taken significant steps on many of them in the past week and a half. Is it scary to stretch like this? Not so much actually. It’s just been a reminder that big goals are achieved by taking small steps. I’m concluding it’s not nearly as scary or energy-draining as having those big goals and not really doing much about them.

And that brings me to the title of this post: You’ve got to leave the launchpad if you want to get to the moon. I thought of that phrase last year in a conversation with a long-time friend and colleague. She’s brilliant, charismatic and a recognized expert in her space. She’s started some amazing programs which have proven to be very successful. And, she’s kind of played those out and it’s time for her next level, one that will lead to her playing an even bigger game that further shares her brilliance with the world. To reach that place, though, she’s got to leave the launchpad that’s brought her so much satisfaction, impact and success.

As does my friend, so do I and so do all of us who have bigger goals in our view. We’ve got to leave the launchpad if we want to get to the moon. My wish for you in 2020 is an exciting, safe and fruitful flight.

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How the Best Leaders Encourage Open and Honest Dialogue

Scott Eblin — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 15:52:19 -0500

The best leaders I work with as an executive coach encourage open and honest dialogue.

They’ve learned and understand why it’s so important for the people on their team and in their organizations to be completely comfortable with speaking up. First, you really want people contributing their best ideas on a regular basis because that’s how you win. Second, if your people aren’t contributing, speaking up and sharing the truth as they see it, you’re going to be flying blind as a leader. When you fly blind, you eventually crash.

Of course, it’s not enough to just encourage open and honest dialogue; you actually have to do things that demonstrate that you’re practicing what you preach.

How do the best leaders do it? Here are three best practice action steps they follow that you can use to create an environment in which everyone is comfortable engaging in open and honest dialogue.

First, ask open-ended questions that surface what people are really thinking. Some examples are:

What do you think about this?
What’s working for you?
What’s getting in the way?
What are our options?
What do you think you should do next?

The best open-ended questions start with the word “what” because they open up possibilities and put people at ease. They also help you learn a lot more than you would with yes or no questions and questions that put people on the defensive.

Second, check your body language. When you’re the designated leader, people are always trying to read you for clues about what you really think and how you really feel. Smile when it’s appropriate to do so. Lighten up, open up and let people feel a human connection with you. Don’t walk around stone faced or with a neutral facial expression. A lot of people will read that as anger or disappointment. Relax, smile and open up your body language.

Third, ask your team and colleagues for feedback. It doesn’t need to be complicated. Start by asking:

How am I doing?
What can I do better?
What should I keep doing?

When you get feedback, don’t debate it. Say thank you, soak it in, think about it, and, most importantly, act on it.

For more ideas on how to create an environment of open and honest dialogue, check out chapter four of The Next Level – Pick up custom-fit communications; Let go of one-size-fits-all communications.

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How to Manage Your Workload So You have Time for the Unexpected

Scott Eblin — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 11:38:55 -0500

Most leaders have calendars that are what an engineer would call a tightly coupled system. Their schedules are so packed with back to back meetings and commitments that they have no margin for the unexpected but inevitable problems and issues that pop up. At that point, their calendar gets shredded and they have a fight or flight inducing crisis on their hands as they try to address the surprises while keeping everything else moving. As a result, productivity, quality of outcomes and health and well-being all suffer.

Here are three action steps you can take to manage your workload so you have time for unexpected problems or issues.

First, start your workday with 15 to 30 minutes of planning time to flag the two or three things that you absolutely need to get done that day based on your bigger picture priorities. Don’t start your day answering email because an hour and a half later, you’ll find you’re still doing email and reacting to everybody else’s priorities and not acting on your own.

Second, reduce the length of your meetings. If you’re like most leaders I work with, your meetings run in 30 or 60 minute increments. And that’s only because those are the default settings on Outlook. Could you get as much done in a 15 or 20 minute meeting as you could in 30? As much in 40 or 45 minutes as you could in 60? Of course, you could. Start scheduling shorter meetings and use the time you get back to stay on top of your inflow and outflow throughout the day.

Third, schedule blocks of “you” time throughout the week. Maybe start with three 90 minute blocks—one each at the beginning, middle and end of the week. That gives you time to plan, catch-up, think, read and reflect. That kind of approach means that you’d be spending around 10% of your week focused on the things you need to do to lead at your best. It’s really not a big investment of your time if you look at it that way but the return on that investment can be huge for you, your team and your organization.

For more ideas on how to manage your workload so you have time for unexpected problems or issues, check out this recent post on preparation best practices along with chapter three of The Next Level: Pick up regular renewal of your energy and perspective; let go of running flat out until your crash.

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Great Leaders Give Direction Not Directions

Scott Eblin — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 09:00:00 -0500

A few weeks ago, I opened a post with a story about one of my favorite questions for leaders, “What is it that only you can do?” Since then, I’ve asked that question again in one of my last keynotes of the year and got an answer back that was so clear and succinct that I just had to share it with you.

The answer I received back from an executive in the room is actually the title of this post, “Great leaders give direction, not directions.” I loved that not just for the clever play on words but also because it’s true. I believe it so much that I wrote a whole chapter on the topic in my book, The Next Level. The chapter title is “Pick Up Defining What to Do; Let Go of Telling How to Do It.”

In other words, give direction, not directions. In the military, they describe this approach as commander’s intent. If you want to see a great example of that, take a look at the letter that former Secretary of Defense and retired Marine Corps four-star general Jim Mattis wrote to his Marines the day before they crossed the Line of Departure in the 2003 Gulf War.

Mattis’ letter is a model of expressing commander’s intent. You don’t need to be a military leader to apply this practice. If you want to get more done faster and grow your team in the process, you need to turn them loose. That’s not to say you just tell them to do whatever they want. Remember, that although you’re not giving explicit directions, you are providing clear direction. There’s a big difference. Here are three critical steps to doing this effectively.

Set the context. The first step is to connect the task or project to the bigger picture. In Mattis’ example, the bigger picture was to enforce international laws and norms by kicking Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait following Iraq’s unwarranted invasion of Kuwait. By setting the context, leaders define the most important purpose of the work. They focus on not just the minds but the hearts of their people by sharing a compelling case for why their work matters.

Share the “so that…” This is where the expression of intent gets more granular and tangible. The formation is “We’re going to do this thing, so that this specific and particular objective is accomplished.” Providing the “so that” gives people the guidance they need to make decisions in the moment rather than checking back for directions as plans and conditions change (as they always do). “So that” gives people the knowledge they need to keep going until the objective is accomplished.

Make the boundaries explicit. This third step is what keeps bad things from happening. By making boundaries explicit, great leaders essentially say, “To accomplish the objective, you can do everything you need to do except things that betray our values and norms or exceed our resources or authority.” Of course, that means the leader needs to invest time, day after day and year over year, to make values and norms explicit and, in the case of particular tasks or objectives, make sure that everyone understands the extent of their resources and authority.

That’s my breakdown of the basics of how great leaders give direction, not directions. What does your experience tell you? What have I missed? What would you add?

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Three Ways to Raise Your Decision-Making Confidence

Scott Eblin — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 13:55:13 -0500

When you’re the leader, you have to keep things moving. To avoid being the bottleneck that slows your team’s work to a crawl, you need to make decisions on a timely basis. In a fast-paced environment, it can be hard to gather all the information you’d like to have when making important decisions. That can definitely affect your confidence in making the tough calls.

The fact is that no one ever has 100% of the information they’d like to have when making important decisions. There are just too many variables and unknowns. If you’re waiting for all the information, you’ll never make a decision. Making the call with a sense of grounded confidence is an essential component of successfully leading at the next level.

Here, then, are three ways to build your confidence in making timely decisions.

First, prep and learn. What I mean by that is start doing the homework you need to do to prepare yourself for decision making. Learn all you can about your operating environment. To do that, conduct discovery conversations with knowledgeable colleagues. Talk with them about the patterns they’re seeing in your competitive space. Ask them to share the criteria they consider when they’re making important decisions. Read and absorb all you can about your field. Pay special attention to real life case studies of key decisions and how they played out. Take time to step back and connect the dots among the different insights you’re gleaning from your reading and conversations.

Second, test and learn. There are very few decisions—almost none, really—where you have to game out the next 100 steps. Most decisions are about identifying next steps. As much as possible, frame those decisions in a way that allows you to test and learn while you move forward. If you make meaningful but incremental next step decisions you usually won’t get extended so far out on a limb that you can’t course correct after implementation.

Third, trust your gut. Even if this is the biggest decision you’ve made so far, this isn’t your first rodeo. There’s a reason you’re here and are making the tough calls. You’ve had a track record of success and the people who selected you for this role view that past performance as a predictor of your future performance. You’ve made other challenging decisions in the past even if they weren’t the same decisions you’re making today. Since you’ve developed some good judgment along the way, you have a reason to trust your gut now. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prep and learn or test and learn. It does mean that you should believe you’ve got this.

For more ideas on how to build your confidence in making timely decisions, check out chapter two of The Next Level. Pick up confidence in your presence; Let go of doubt in how you contribute.

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How to Grow Your Team and Get More Done

Scott Eblin — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 09:32:26 -0500

No doubt, you’ve heard the phrase that the perfect is the enemy of the good. That doesn’t just apply to other people; it applies to you and your team too. And, the thing is, a lot of the time what you expect as a leader is your version of perfect. There are some cases when perfection is truly an objective measurement but most of the time it’s subjective and good enough is good enough even if it doesn’t meet your version of perfect.

If everything has to be perfect, not much gets done and the growth of your team stagnates.

Here are three action step ideas you can take as a leader to hit the sweet spot between what has to be perfect and what can be “good enough.” By following these steps, you’ll get more done and grow your team.

First, ask yourself on a regular basis, “By getting personally involved in this, do I create a significantly better result?” I’ll bet you’ll find some pretty interesting answers to that question. And the answers are going to be, most of the time, not so much. The key word in that question is significantly. Is your direct involvement as a manager really going to make it that much better? It might be marginally better with your involvement but is that really the highest and best use of your time and attention? What about the impact on the development of your team?

Second, recognize that while you’ve likely become an expert in a lot of things, getting results through your team probably no longer requires you to be the expert. Now that you’re in your leadership role, start giving away the things that you’re an expert in to your team. That’s how they’re going to grow and develop. They may not do it exactly the same way you would do it, but at some point, earlier in your career, somebody took a bet on you and asked you to do some things that they used to do. You did them well enough that you’re here now. Place the same kind of bets on your team. Identify the things that you’re an expert in and start giving them away to your team.

Third, step back and consider the risk-to-reward ratio as you decide what has to be perfect and what can be good enough. As you do, recognize that there are different kinds of risk. To name a few, there’s financial risk, operational risk and reputational risk. You certainly want to mitigate those, but if you look at your team’s daily workstream many of the things they’re doing everyday don’t have a lot of direct impact on those risk factors. There are also other types of risk, like the risk that a lack of engagement and low morale could have on developing and retaining great talent. To mitigate those kinds of risk, you need to factor in the rewards of giving people space and support to learn from mistakes and develop the ability to do their best work.

Accelerate the growth of your team and get more done by letting go of perfect.

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How to Make Your Performance Review Process Less Painful

Scott Eblin — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 12:12:42 -0500

This is the time of year when a lot of the leaders I work with are buckling down to write up annual performance reviews for the people on their team. This is a process that almost no one enjoys—neither the reviewer or the reviewee. Seriously, do you know anyone in any role who looks forward to an annual performance review?

There are a lot of reasons why annual performance review processes don’t work. Here are three.

First, they’re annual. Is there any other aspect of life where you expect great results from checking in for a half hour once a year? Marriage? Parenting? Working out? I didn’t think so. It doesn’t work at work either. If you want feedback and coaching to be effective it needs to be in the moment and ongoing. The annual review conversation should be a recap of coaching conversations you’ve had throughout the year.

Second, performance reviews are usually more monologues than dialogues. The reviewer comes in with a list of objectives the reviewee needed to achieve and then proceeds to move through the list. Quite often, the reviewer doesn’t have all the information needed to do a full assessment and the reviewee feels frustrated or dejected because they don’t get acknowledged for the range of things they’ve accomplished.

Third, in many organizations, the annual review process is directly tied to the compensation process. Everyone views the performance rating primarily as a mechanism to trigger the distribution of a bonus pool or eligibility for an increase to base salary. When the review process comes down to a rating or a number, nobody pays a lot of attention to the content of the review conversation. It’s more like, “Let’s just cut to the chase. Am I getting a raise or a bonus or not?”

If you’re a leader in an organization that puts a lot of effort into the annual performance review process, a lot of this probably sounds familiar. You may also feel like there’s not a lot you can do to change it. That may be true in terms of the process that you have to work within. It’s not true, however, in terms of how you can use the annual review process to set you and your team up for success.

Here are three ideas on how you can do that and, in the process, make your performance review process more meaningful.

First, make the process more prospective and less retrospective. If you’ve done a good job of staying engaged with your people throughout the year, you shouldn’t have to use the annual review to deliver a surprise message or drop the hammer about something that didn’t get done. Consider using the review to recap the year’s accomplishments and remaining opportunities and then pivot to the future. Use the one-on-one to talk about next year’s agenda and how the work that the reviewee has done this year aligns with and sets the foundation for what’s coming up next. Talk about their work and personal goals and connect them with the goals and the work of your group as a whole.

Second, separate the conversation from the compensation. You don’t need 30 or 45 minutes to tell them whether or not they’re going to get a raise or a bonus. Use the review conversations for developmental not evaluative purposes. Schedule another separate round of shorter conversations later to deliver any compensation-related news you need to share.

Third, remember that review conversations have a huge impact on your personal leadership effectiveness and establishing the perception of how you lead. What are you trying to accomplish with the review conversation? How do you want your team member to feel at the end of it? Motivated? Challenged? Excited? Appreciated? Get a clear picture in your mind about how you need to show up in the conversation to make it likely that your team member leaves the meeting feeling the way you hope they’ll feel. There are short-term and long-term effects of performance conversations on engagement and commitment. Be aware of what you’re trying to do and intentional about how you do it.

Interested in more on how to make the most of performance reviews? Check out this post I wrote back in 2013.

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Would You Rather Be Effective or Right?

Scott Eblin — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:24:55 -0400

If you’re in a leadership role, there’s a pretty decent chance that when you were a kid, you were one of the smartest kids in class. If that wasn’t you, you probably remember who was. You know the smartest kid routine. They always had the right answer and wanted to make sure everyone else—especially the teacher—knew it. In organizational leadership, being right is less important than being effective. My point isn’t that you should strive to be wrong. My point is that there is often more than one right answer and your answer is one among many possibilities. Instead of seeking to prove you’re right, focus on being effective.

Here are three action steps you can take to make that shift.

First, get in the habit of asking yourself, “What am I really trying to accomplish here?” In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get spun up or distracted by the little things people do or say that don’t really matter. When you feel yourself getting triggered by that, take a couple of deep breaths to clear your head and calm down. Then remind yourself what you’re really trying to accomplish and line your comments and actions up against that picture.

Second, take a break or sleep on it. Some of the biggest clown car moves I see from managers and executives happen when they react to an email they disagree with by immediately sending back a flamer to tell the sender how wrong they are. Quite often they’ll compound this by cc’ing everyone in a 50 mile radius. The next time you get triggered by an email, take a break or sleep on it before you reply. That will give you an opportunity to regain emotional equilibrium and choose a response that is more about being effective than right.

Third, get in the habit of asking yourself, “Does this really matter?” When you get up on the balcony and look at the pattern of what happens in your typical day or week there’s a lot of stuff that happens that just won’t matter in the long run. If you try to fight every battle, you’ll likely end up losing the war. Get clear about the things that really matter and quit engaging on the things that don’t.

For more ideas on how to choose effectiveness as a more important outcome than being right, check out Chapter 10 of The Next Level. Pick up a big footprint view of your role; Let go of a small footprint view of your role.

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Don’t Fall Into This Leadership Trap

Scott Eblin — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 16:55:42 -0400

As I’ve written here before, effective leadership communications involves two distinct activities – transmitting and receiving. You can think of it like a two-way radio or a smartphone. They only work when they both transmit and receive. For your leadership communications to be inspirational and influential, you need to do both as well.

Too many people in leadership roles overemphasize the transmission and underemphasize the reception. These folks equate leadership with giving inspirational speeches or pep talks. Before you can have the inspiration, you’ve got to have the conversation. To inspire and influence others to action, you have to know and address what they care about.

To do that, you need to be super-intentional about putting yourself in reception mode. An easy and proven way to do that is to conduct a listening tour. I talk at some length about how to stage an effective listening tour in chapter 8 of The Next Level but, for now, here are some tips for getting started.

Identify representative stakeholders: The groups of people you’re trying to inspire or influence are made up of real human beings with hopes, fears, wants and needs. They’re all people who have a stake in the movement you’re trying to lead or the outcome you’re trying to create. Go have conversations with a representative sample of them. Note that I said “have conversations” instead of “talk with.” The distinction turns on transmitting vs. receiving. “Talking with” is usually transmission-oriented; “having a conversation” is usually reception-oriented. You want more of the latter and less of the former.

Start with open-ended questions: Once you’ve figured out who you’re going to listen to on your tour, develop a list of open-ended questions that will help you learn more about them. Some of my road-tested favorites include:

What will make this a great year for you?
What difference would that make for you?
What’s helping you accomplish your goals?
What’s getting in the way?
What’s going on that has you excited?
What’s going on that has you concerned?
What kind of help do you need to be successful?
What can I do to help?

Compare and contrast: Take notes during or immediately after each of your listening tour conversations and then compare and contrast. What similarities do you see across the conversations? What differences do you see? How do the dots connect into a bigger picture that could give you guidance on how you should lead and communicate?

Spending some quality time in receiving mode will make you much more effective in transmitting mode. Get the balance right and you’ll be a more inspiring and influential leader.

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What Multiple Sclerosis Has Taught Me About Life and Managing Myself

Scott Eblin — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 13:58:51 -0400

It was 10 years ago this summer that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That first year or two was really scary. My thinking was frequently foggy. Most days my brain felt like a wet sponge inside my head. One way that showed up was that I was constantly letting our dog roam through the neighborhood because I thought I was pressing the button to close the garage door after walking him when I was really opening it.

My body was betraying me too. In a few months, I went from regularly going on 8- or 9-mile runs on the weekend to barely being able to walk around the block without leaning on my wife, Diane. There was one afternoon in Washington that I’ll never forget. I was coming out of a meeting and a huge thunderstorm opened up out of nowhere as I was walking the three blocks back to the parking garage. I started to run to get to the garage and literally couldn’t feel my feet on the ground. I had to steady myself against buildings as I walked, getting soaked in the storm.

Today, things are very different. This is the fifth year in a row I’ve flown 100,000 plus miles on United by the middle of the summer. I’m not particularly proud of that stat, it’s just one way of making the point that MS isn’t slowing me down. Diane tells me that people ask her all the time how I do what I do and keep the schedule I keep. My first thought is I just do it. Then when I stop and think about it, I recognize that what’s working for me is what I’m always telling leaders will work for them.

It’s all about the routines—physical, mental, relational and spiritual—that will help you live and lead at your best. For me, my core routines have become such a normal part of my life rhythm that I don’t really think about them anymore. You know how you can end up doing stuff so automatically that you just assume everyone else does all of that? Of course, that’s not true but it is true that routines can cut both ways—there are helpful ones and ones that aren’t so helpful.

The early effects of MS really caused me to step back and reassess the pros and cons of what I was routinely doing and open myself up to new routines that could help me get my life back on track. One thing I learned early on was that when you have a chronic illness you have to manage your stress. You can’t afford to live in a state of chronic fight or flight. Doing that makes you less productive in the short run, feel worse in the short to medium run and reduces your life expectancy in the long run.

So, in the hope that this might be of help to some of you who are reading this post, here’s what I’ve learned about life and managing myself in these past 10 years with multiple sclerosis. I’ve organized what I’ve learned and do by the four domains of routines that I share with readers and clients when I teach them how to create and use their own Life GPS®.

Physical

Keep moving. Rhythmic, repetitive motion activates your nervous system’s parasympathetic response. Pretty much every positive outcome in your body flows from that activation. I am constantly moving throughout the day and doubling down on that with regular yoga classes, long walks and lifting weights. All of that has increased my strength, range of motion, flexibility and sense of balance. Those are super important factors in living a healthy and confident life whether you have MS or not.

Eat cool. Over the years, I’ve adjusted what I eat and drink to reduce inflammation in my body. There’s a lot of research that demonstrates that chronic inflammation is a big source of disease. My anti-inflammation diet approach is no gluten, very little dairy, lots of plants, no red meat, lots of hydration, and limiting the alcohol to red wine and the occasional gluten-free beer or small glass of really good single malt scotch (Those last two are cheats but I also believe in doing things you enjoy in moderation even if they’re not on the “approved” list.)

Sleep. Research demonstrates that 95% of human beings need at least seven hours of sleep a night to be fully functional in the short run and reach their full life expectancy in the long run. When I learned this, I got serious about my sleep. When I get seven to eight hours a night I feel and perform a lot better the next day, both physically and mentally.

Mental

Keep breathing. In 2013, I did a 200-hour yoga teacher training program with a wonderful, highly experienced instructor named Birgitte Kristen. I quickly realized that a lot of what she was teaching us also applied to my work with leaders. I asked her to lunch to get her input on what I should share with my corporate clients. She immediately said, “Breathing. Ambitious people don’t know how to breathe.” She explained that the right way to breathe is deeply from the belly. About the same time, I learned of Nobel prize winning research from Elizabeth Blackburn and her team at the University of California at San Francisco that shows that as little as 12 minutes a day of meditative breathing improves genetic expression. When I heard that I thought, “As someone with MS, why would I not spend 12 minutes a day on breathing in that deep meditative way?” Since then, the meditation app on my phone tells me I’ve spent about 450 hours breathing deeply and intentionally. I’ve found that has lengthened my gap between stimulus and response. It’s made me less reactive and more responsive. There are way fewer things that trigger me than there used to be. I think more clearly and it feels like I make better decisions. All of that breathing has slowed things down in a way that sometimes makes me feel like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. That’s super helpful in maintaining a productive perspective on the ups and downs of life.

Remember: Almost everything is temporary. If there is anything MS has taught me it’s that almost every condition in life is temporary. In my early years with the disease I would feel completely crappy for a few hours and then suddenly feel OK if not pretty good for a few hours. Everything was subject to change. Since then, I’ve learned how to manage myself so I have way more feel-good moments than bad but I haven’t forgotten the lesson that most everything is temporary. It doesn’t really matter whether you like it or not because it’s going to change pretty soon anyway. Accepting that has made life in general much easier.

Relational

Enjoy the now. Once I literally got my feet back under me, Diane and I decided that whenever we could, we were going to enjoy and take advantage of the “Aren’t we lucky to be alive?” moments that life presents. My MS diagnosis made us realize that we don’t have any guarantees about how life is going to play out so let’s not wait. We don’t wait to connect. We don’t wait to have that experience or create that memory or touch that life.

Share your secrets. In the first five years after I was diagnosed, we only shared my condition with immediate family and close friends. We were so scared by what MS did to me early on and all of the terrible stories we had heard that we didn’t want people to know what I was dealing with out of fear that my clients might think I couldn’t perform or show up for my commitments. Then, in 2014, I wrote my second book, Overworked and Overwhelmed. I couldn’t have written it without the experience I had had learning how to deal with MS so I felt like I had to share my secret if I was going to be authentic in putting that book out into the world. What was shocking to me was how supportive people were and how much they appreciated me sharing what was going on and what I was learning from dealing with it. It was a huge stress reducer for me (which made me feel even healthier) and also a huge source of connection. One thing about being a human is we all have something going on. I’ve learned that it’s a lot easier to deal with your something when you share it. The bonus is that other people sometimes benefit from your story and what you’ve learned along the way.

Spiritual

Read for purpose. This last lesson is one that I learned a long time ago, kind of forgot about and have recently returned to. The volume and availability of news in 2019 makes it way too easy to overdose on the latest headline, tweet or outrage. A recent trip out of the country for business and pleasure made me aware of what I’ve been doing the past couple of years. In two weeks abroad, I didn’t see a single flat screen TV with a “Breaking News” headline in a public space. Here, in the United States, you can’t escape them. For me at least, the news culture was causing me to spend more and more time reading the same story in five different places. Thanks to the trip abroad, I’ve been on a cable news fast for the past month and, boy, do I feel better. I’m reading more books and fewer articles. I’ve found that my new reading habits are generating less stress (always good when you have MS) and providing more impetus and space to reflect on questions of purpose like why am I here and how do I want to contribute. That feels great and I intend to keep doing it.

So, this post has turned out to be way longer than I originally intended. I guess it takes about 2,000 words to process 10 years of life lessons and experience. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for hanging in there and I hope you’ve found something useful. If you did, I’d love to hear what landed with you. In the meantime, remember we all have something going on so, whatever it is for you, know you’re not alone and continue to rock on.

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Three Questions to Keep Yourself From Losing Your Cool

Scott Eblin — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 13:54:13 -0400

Have you noticed that there are certain triggers that are guaranteed to make you lose your cool? I have. One of my “favorite” triggers is when someone makes a commitment to keep me in the loop about a series of events that could affect the health and well-being of my family and then doesn’t follow through. Another is when someone misses an agreed upon deadline on an important project and doesn’t let me know.

Depending on the day and what else is going on with me, my reaction to the trigger can be pretty ugly. I can go immediately into a fight or flight response (more fight than flight) that is usually accompanied by a good bit of profanity and speculation on the intelligence of the other party. You know, something along the lines of “that bleeping idiot.” Like I said, not pretty.

Over the years, I’ve learned to take my rant offline rather than saying or doing something I’m going to regret later. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever express my frustration or disappointment. I do, but I try to choose a time and method that leads to positive short and long-run outcomes.

The key to doing that is to get really clear about your triggers so you know them when you feel them. I’ve written a lot about triggers over the years like this post on managing the gap between stimulus and response. What I haven’t written about yet is three simple questions that can help you learn how to keep from losing it when triggered.

The questions are ones that I have used for years to set up one-on-one peer coaching conversations in our leadership development programs. They’re based on Tim Gallwey’s idea that your performance is equal to your potential minus the interference. As I cover in more detail here, interference comes in two flavors—external and internal. The external interference is all that stuff out there in the world that triggers you. The internal interference is that monologue inside your head about how stupid, wrong or unfair that external trigger is (a phenomenon more commonly known as losing your shit.) Get rid of the internal interference and you’re much more likely to live and lead at your best. Your performance just equals your potential, straight up.

Here, then, are the three questions that can help you keep it together:

What are the situations or events out there in the world that are guaranteed to set you off? (These are your triggers or external interference.)
What’s the “go-to” story in your head when you’re triggered and what kind of language do you use and physical reactions do you have when you’re telling yourself that story? (This is your internal interference.)
What’s the impact on your performance when those stories in your head become super loud or overwhelming? (This is what’s keeping you from demonstrating your full “at your best” potential.)

When I ask leaders to coach each other using those questions, they use words like “cathartic,” “revealing” and “valuable” to describe the experience. From encouraging these conversations over the years, I’ve learned that most people haven’t taken time to stop and learn more about their triggers and their impact.

Getting to know your triggers is essential to living and leading at your best. Here’s a suggestion: Find a trusted colleague or friend this week and use the three questions to coach each other on getting to know your triggers.

What are your triggers?

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The Reasons Your Change Initiative Will Fail

Scott Eblin — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 12:31:08 -0400

A big part of leadership is about convincing people to do things differently. It could be persuading customers to buy your product or try your service. It could be getting employees or vendors to raise their game. It could be convincing regulators and other rulemakers to support what you want to do. In each of these examples, or a dozen others that you could come up with, success depends on getting people to change their behaviors.

And, as oft-cited research from Gallup suggests, there’s about a 70 percent chance you’re going to fail.

Why is it that so many change initiatives fail? Based on a few decades of experience as a corporate leader or a coach to leaders, I regularly see three related reasons your change initiative will fail. They all involve too much of this and not enough of that.

Here they are and what you can do to increase your odds of success:

Too much solution, not enough acceptance: Years ago, I learned a simple little equation about change management developed by leaders at GE. It’s Q x A = E. What it means is the quality of your technical solution multiplied by the acceptance strategy for your solution equals your overall effectiveness. If you score 10 out of 10 on both the Q and the A then you end up with a 100 percent effective solution. Most leaders and organizations don’t end up at 100 percent though and it’s rarely because they don’t have a good enough technical solution.

The relatively easy part of the equation is pulling together a group of subject matter experts to develop a good to great solution. What usually doesn’t get the same amount of effort is putting together an awesome strategy for stakeholder acceptance of the solution. The math makes the impact of that kind of obvious. If you score a 10 on the Q and a 3 on the A, you’re only going to be 30 percent effective. A score like that is usually a fail.

Too much thinking, not enough feeling: Overemphasizing the quality of the technical solution and underplaying the acceptance strategy stems from the second reason most change initiatives fail. There’s too much emphasis on logical thinking and not enough emphasis on emotional feeling. The problem with that is people almost always take actions based on their emotional feeling rather than their logical thinking. Too many leaders believe that just getting their logical thoughts out there about the change will be enough to win people over. As in, “They’ll see the logic of this and then we’ll be good to go.” Logical to you, maybe; perhaps not so much to them.

A more effective approach is to consider how you need people to feel to take the actions that will lead to the change result you’re hoping for. For instance, if they’re feeling angry, ignored or disengaged, they’re probably not going to take the actions you’d like for them to take. If, on the other hand, they’re feeling excited, appreciated and engaged, you’re much more likely to generate actions that lead to positive outcomes. What do you need to do as a leader to get your stakeholders’ feeling more supportive of your change?

Too much results, not enough relationships: Here’s a hint for answering that last question. Focus at least as much on the relationships as you do the results. You’ve probably picked up by now on one of the big things these three reasons for change failure all have in common. The mistake too many leaders make is over-indexing on “what” and under on the “how” of the change. One variant of this is when their time, attention and behavioral energy is focused too much on the results and not enough on the relationships that will yield the results. Great change leaders exhibit roughly equal measures of results-oriented behaviors and relationship-oriented behaviors. I summarized the differences between the two in this post from 10 years ago. The spoiler alert is that a lot of the differences I outlined come down to that old idea that they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Relationship building works best when it is part of your everyday routine and not a last-minute activity like you’re cramming for a final exam.

Why do change initiatives fail? There are lots of reasons—many more than I covered here. But if you want to do a post-mortem on why your latest crashed and burned or prevent the next one from doing so, I’d argue that the three I’ve listed here are a pretty good place to start.

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How to Have Your Best Week

Scott Eblin — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 15:06:39 -0400

Let’s face it. There’s way more to do in any given week than you can possibly do. What you can do, however, is manage your week in a way that gives you the best chance of living and leading at your best.

For example, I recently talked with an assistant general counsel during a leadership workshop I was doing for the big company she works for. We were talking about time management strategies and she shared how she organizes her week.

She manages a pretty large team of corporate attorneys and, like most managers, has a lot of meetings she needs to participate in. She tries to fill up every Thursday with those meetings and schedules as little as possible the rest of the week. As she described what her Thursdays are like—back-to-back meetings for 8 or 9 hours—I could sense that it was not her favorite day of the week. I asked if her energy was more extroverted or introverted. She said it was the latter and I responded that she must be pretty exhausted by Thursday night. She said she absolutely was but she recovers on Fridays by working from home and following up on all the commitments and to-do’s she gathered in the Thursday meetings. By doing that, she ends her week with a relatively clean slate and can focus on herself and her family over the weekend. Finally, I asked her what she’s usually doing Monday through Wednesday and she immediately answered, “I coach my team.” She keeps the first three days of the week clear to deal with whatever challenges or requests for help her attorneys have.

Her story is just one example of how one leader organizes her week to live and lead at her best. While your conditions and mileage may vary, I think there are some core lessons you can take from her story that, if applied, will help you to have more of your best weeks:

Know and honor your big rocks. The leader in my story is clear about what the big rocks or priorities are that she needs to attend to each week: her team, her other colleagues, the decisions she needs to make, her family and herself. She schedules herself so her big rocks get first dibs on her time and attention. That’s a proactive rather than a reactive approach to calendar management. Taking a proactive approach around your big rocks is pretty much the only way you’re ever going to have your best week.

Batch by energy impact. One thing this leader was extremely tuned into was her energy. As an introvert, she recognized that larger group meetings were energy drainers for her. So, rather than having several hours each day of energy drainers, she batched almost all of that on one day of the week. A key to her success was working alone the next day so she could recover from all of the interaction the day before while still getting important work done. Focusing on herself and her family over the weekend further renewed her energy for the one-on-one and small group coaching sessions she did with her team Monday through Wednesday. Of the things that you typically do in a week, which ones create energy for you and which ones drain your energy? As much as you can, batch your activities so you can manage your energy in a way that leads to your best week.

Set and enforce boundaries. Here’s a secret that’s not often discussed. All of the great leaders set and enforce personal boundaries. They know what they need to live and lead at their best and plan their weeks so they can invest time in those things. It might not be their optimal amount in any given week, but, in almost every week, it’s at least some amount of time. These leaders know and understand that the only person who’s going to take care of them is them. They establish boundaries that enable themselves to do that and then enforce those boundaries. The woman whose story I shared here does all of that.

I regularly work with groups of high potential leaders who are on the road to running flat out until they crash. We’ll talk about the pace they’re keeping and how they’re struggling with it and, almost invariably, someone in the group will say they don’t manage their life that way. Instead, they set boundaries at work that, unless there is a legitimate emergency, they don’t cross. They end up with time for their family, time to take care of themselves, time to think, time to relax. They’re still viewed as high potential leaders and many of the ones I know who organize their weeks this way have gone on to top level roles in their organizations. If you want to have your best weeks, you need to set and enforce some boundaries. What would make a difference for you on that front?

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How to Get Your Micromanager Boss to Back Off

Scott Eblin — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 12:54:06 -0400

If dealing with a micromanager for a boss isn’t the number one complaint I hear from high potential leaders, then it’s certainly in the top three. Pretty much every leader I’ve ever coached or spoken to has worked for a micromanager at least once in their career. The question that everyone always asks is a version of, “How do I get my micromanager boss to back off?”

To answer that question, I’ll offer one thing you need to know and three steps you need to take.

The one thing you need to know is that the primary driver of almost every micromanager boss is trust—or, more accurately, a lack of trust. If your boss doesn’t trust you to do the job well, you’re going to get micromanaged. As I’ve referenced here before, trust comes down to three factors: sincerity, credibility and competence. Sincerity means acting with and demonstrating positive intent. If you don’t have that, I can’t coach you for that.

Credibility and competence, on the other hand, are more coachable. Sure, you’ll need to have particular skill sets and knowledge to do your job, but there are ways you can position your work so you build the trust that will make your micromanager boss comfortable with backing off.

Here are three steps you need to take:

1. Anticipate needs. When you have a boss, whether they’re a micromanager or not, you need to learn how to anticipate what they’re going to need and want to do their jobs. When you anticipate what they need, you can get ahead of the curve of the stream of requests for information and updates that micromanagers engage in. You need to be a student of your boss and their operating environment. Who is their boss? What do they expect from your boss? (Remember, leadership rocks roll downhill.) Who are your boss’s peers? Which ones are supporters, competitors or a frenemy combination of the two? How do those dynamics impact your boss’s needs and wants? How is your boss being assessed and evaluated? Make sure your work is clearly supportive of their success. If all of that sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. It’s the kind of work, though, that will make your job a lot easier over time.

2. Train your boss. Who’s going to train your boss how to not micromanage? You are. Partner with your boss to create an operating rhythm that works for both of you. Ask your boss specific questions about how they like to receive and process information and how often they like to get updated. Are the updates expected on a timeline driven by the calendar, by milestones accomplished, by problems that come up, some combination of all of that or by other factors? Come to an agreement on how and when information is going to be shared and then stick to it. If you’re consistent in following your operating rhythm and get ahead of unpleasant surprises, then you’ll likely train your boss into asking for less and less that’s outside the rhythm. As the trust builds, you may even find that they start asking for less period. Establish an operating rhythm and stick to it.

3. Show empathy. The final step is to show that you understand your boss’s world. An important question to keep in mind as you’re weaning your boss from micromanagement is “What am I working on that my boss needs to know about to be in good shape with their boss?” As I talk about in The Next Level, that will mean that you need to let go of an inside-out perspective based on your needs and agenda and pick up an outside-in perspective that factors in what’s important to your boss and what they care most about. The more you can put yourself in your boss’s shoes and show that you get what they’re dealing with, the less micromanagement you’re going to get.

Anticipate. Train. Show. Taking those three steps and consistently following them can increase your chances of getting out from under the thumb of your micromanager boss and, instead, working along beside them as a valued colleague.

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How to Promote Your Work Without Being Self-Promotional

Scott Eblin — Tue, 28 May 2019 11:23:07 -0400

A lot of us grew up with the idea that if you just do good work, it will speak for itself. That’s not true in large organizations full of busy people all focused on their own agendas. If you’re a leader in that kind of place, the work doesn’t speak for itself; you have to speak for the work.

How do you do that without coming off as an annoying braggart? There are seven questions you need to answer when you speak for the work:

1. What is the work? This may sound obvious but it’s not as simple as you think. In the age of ever shorter attention spans, you need to get really good at describing what your work is and why it matters in a super succinct way. A good rule of thumb is if you can summarize it in the length of an old school tweet – about 140 characters – you’re probably hitting the mark. The goal is to lead with a great summary that hooks people’s attention and makes them want to engage and learn more.

2. Who does it matter to? Now we’re getting into some stakeholder mapping. Who are the different players inside and outside your organization who have a stake in the success of what you and your team are working on? One size does not fit all when you’re speaking for the work, so you need to get clear about the people for whom you’re going to need to tailor your message.

3. Why does it matter to them? Where you stand depends on where you sit. If you want to really connect with people when you’re speaking for your work, you must focus on understanding and addressing what’s most important to the people you’re speaking to. That’s going to vary from person to person and group to group. Take time up front to learn about their goals and make sure you’re tying your work back to the things they care the most about.

4. What progress have you made? Most people like to hear good news more than bad so start with that. Share the headlines on the progress you and your team have made since the last time you reported in. Tell the time; don’t build a watch. Avoid getting too weedy and into the details.

5. What obstacles have you overcome? This is where you can establish some context and show off the chops of your team. Highlight one or two of the major problems you and your team have had to solve and what you’ve learned in solving them. There’s likely some good information in there that others can learn and benefit from. Talking about obstacles overcome also provides you a chance to publicly recognize high performing team members.

6. What are your next steps? The last two questions have more or less focused on the rearview mirror. This one is about what you see coming up down the road. Put a marker out there and let people know what you intend to do next. Doing this creates an opportunity to confirm that you’re on the same page. It reassures people that you have a plan to move forward. And, it sets you up for the ask.

7. What kind of help do you need? Close out the “speak for the work” conversation by asking for help. Your request could be something as simple as, “Please give me a heads-up if you come across anything you think we should know about,” to something more substantive like an approval decision or money, people or other resources. You usually don’t get if you don’t ask, so ask. If you’ve done a good job of speaking for your work, you’re more likely to get a yes.

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How to Stop Being ‘Them’ and Start Being ‘Us’

Scott Eblin — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 12:19:52 -0400

A few months ago, I was in conversation with a group of senior director and vice president level leaders in a client company. I asked them, “Before you were promoted to senior director or VP, what did you used to say about the people who had those titles?” What I heard in response was pretty telling:

They don’t get it.
They don’t understand what’s really going on.
They’re arrogant.
They’re presumptuous.
They think they’re better than us.

It took maybe 10 seconds to get all of that out on the table. Clearly, the memories were pretty fresh. Then I asked my next question, “Do you think it’s possible that people are saying those kinds of things about you now that you’re a senior director or VP?” I didn’t hear much in response but I did see a lot of “Oh, s**t,” looks on everybody’s faces.

When you get a senior leader or executive title in an organization, you become one of “them” to the vast majority of the people who work there. All of the things the majority is saying about “them” may or may not actually be true, but that doesn’t matter. Their perception is your reality. If you want to be effective as a leader and create a working environment where people feel engaged and excited to be there, you’ve got to work hard to demonstrate that you’re not one of “them” but are, instead, one of “us.”

Here are some actionable ideas on how to do that:

Create opportunities to connect. I first tuned into the “them” dynamic when I was an executive myself. I had been the vice president of HR at my company for about 18 months when I extended an offer to everyone in the department to join me for a short duration discussion group on a book I really liked. (It’s called Slowing Down to the Speed of Life. An oldie but a goodie.) About a dozen people took me up on it and we met for about six weeks on Tuesday mornings. The discussions were great but the big takeaway for me personally came about three weeks in when I received an email from an administrative assistant named Lisa. She wrote to tell me that she enjoyed the group and was getting a lot out of the book but the best thing for her was learning, after three weeks of talking with me, that “not all vice presidents have green blood and horns.” That line really set me back. My first thought was, “How could she have thought that about me?” And then I focused on her language of “all vice presidents.” The green blood and horns imagery wasn’t about me specifically, it was about vice presidents in general. That was Lisa’s story about “them.” My unexpected lesson learned was that by creating opportunities to connect as people and not co-workers in a hierarchy you can break down the stories that separate “them” from “us.”

Sit in with the front liners. In our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program, we have high potential leaders shadow senior leaders for a day. So a senior director in operations might hang out with the company CFO for the day or a VP in IT might sit in with the CEO. It’s a great opportunity for the rising leaders to broaden their perspective and observe what it’s like to operate as a senior executive. What I’ve seen in our best client companies over the years is that after hosting a few shadow days, the members of the senior leadership team recognize that they should be shadowing colleagues who are closer than they are to the everyday experience of the front line. In one of our client companies, members of the senior team each spent at least a day sitting in with the employees who staff their customer call center. The senior leaders got some on the spot training and mentoring from the experts and took live calls. By doing that, they showed some vulnerability and that they cared enough to learn more about (or, in some cases, remember) what it’s like to work on the front line. It was sort of like an episode of Undercover Boss without the disguises. It definitely built trust between the senior leaders and the team members in a very important part of the company while shrinking the overall gap between “them” and “us.”

Talk about the big picture and where everyone fits. One of the perks of a leadership role is the power to convene. If you want to call a meeting, you can call a meeting. The key, though, is to use that power wisely and creatively. One of my executive coaching clients recently used that power to call a town hall meeting for everyone in his part of the company. He and his leadership team talked about where the company has been, where it is now, where it’s going and why it’s going there. More importantly, they talked about how everyone in the room played an important role in creating the present and the future. The leadership team members didn’t lecture or drone on. They were intentional about making the meeting a multi-directional, interactive conversation so everyone could learn more about everyone else’s work and how it how hangs together. The feedback on the meeting was off the charts positive. There were pages of appreciative comments about the “what” of the conversations and the “how” of feeling a sense of teamwork, inclusion and that “we all matter.” When that happens the distinction between “them” and “us” fades away. It’s just “us.”

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How to Know if You’re Keeping the Right Pace for Yourself

Scott Eblin — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:07:52 -0400

This is the time of the year when I’m doing a lot of reading and coaching around the results of the Next Level 360 feedback instrument. The 360 provides a picture of how leaders are doing around three vital leadership imperatives: managing yourself, leveraging your team and engaging your colleagues. As I’ve written here before, I completely believe that managing yourself effectively is the foundational imperative. If you’re not doing that well, then you’re not going to be very effective at the other two.

And, if there’s one behavior that underlies managing yourself effectively, it’s pacing yourself by building in regular breaks from work. I have not run a Next Level 360 or self-assessment for a group of leaders in the past 10 years where pacing yourself was not the number one development opportunity flagged in the average scores for the group.

And, as they say, all information is lost through averaging. Pacing yourself by building in regular breaks from work may be the number one identified opportunity but that phrase means different things to different people. It starts with figuring out what a break from work means to you. For a lot of leaders I’ve worked with over the years, their starting point on a break from work is a weekend or a day off or shutting their phone down for an hour or two in the evening. Nothing wrong with any of that. Anyone who wants to live and lead at their best should, in my experience, take those kinds of breaks. Those kinds of breaks are a good start but they’re not enough.

You need breaks throughout the day. Your brain can only stay focused for so long before it gets tired. Your body needs to move. Your bodily systems (blood pressure, stress hormones, digestive, reproductive hormones) need to get back in balance. Little microbreaks throughout the day—breathing, movement, human connection, gratitude—go a long way towards keeping the optimal pace that will enable you to live and lead at your best.

Here are three markers for determining if you’re keeping the right pace for yourself and what to adjust if you determine you’re not.

Are you:

Energized or Deenergized? Check in with yourself. Are you energized or deenergized by what you’re doing? If you’re energized, you may be in such a state of flow that you’ve become completely and positively absorbed in your work. If you’re deenergized, you’re probably feeling tired, cranky and looking for something to distract you. If you’re feeling that way, take a break and come back to it later. Maybe while you’re taking that break and your mind is working in the background you’ll come up with a better way to approach the work that was deenergizing you in the first place.

Prepared or Unprepared? Over the past few years I’ve been coming to the conclusion that taking time to prepare for what’s coming up on their calendars is the difference between great leaders and good enough (and maybe not even that high) leaders. Sadly, I’m seeing fewer and fewer leaders who are consistently prepared. Their calendars are so racked and stacked that they don’t leave themselves any time to stop, step back, take a couple of deep breaths and say, “OK, in this next meeting, what am I trying to accomplish and how do I need to show up to make that outcome likely?” You may have just noticed that that’s not a ton of preparation but it’s way better than what a lot of leaders are doing to prepare which is nothing. Just winging it from meeting to meeting is not a great success strategy. Get in the routine of taking a few breaks throughout the day (first thing in the morning is a great time) to do a little visualization around the what and how of your day.

Thriving or Surviving? This is the big picture marker of whether or not you’re getting enough breaks from work. Are you healthy, happy, and productive? If yes, the chances are you’re doing a good job of pacing yourself. Or, are you feeling run-down, stressed-out and grasping? I hope not, but if you are it’s likely that you are mired in the chronic state of fight or flight that comes with always having your foot on the gas and never tapping the brakes. Please, for the sake of your health and well-being, your productivity, your family, your friends, and your co-workers, read the post I just linked to and take a few minutes to do one of the simple pace yourself ideas I listed there. My guess is you’ll notice you feel a little better and, if you do, it’s because you changed the physiology of your body in a way that’s the beginning of the path to getting back to living and leading at your best. Don’t try to solve for 100 percent. Solve for five percent. If you get into a few routines that help you pace yourself five percent better each day or week, it won’t be long before you see significant positive differences in your life and work.

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What Did You Learn From Your Worst Boss Ever?

Scott Eblin — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 12:58:45 -0500

My first job out of graduate school was as a first year associate in a Wall Street investment bank whose last of the 10 corporate values printed in their annual report was, “Have fun!” Sadly, I did not.

Decades later, it remains the worst place I ever worked or have seen other people working in in 20 years of leadership development work. I didn’t last long there and a year later was back in my home state of West Virginia leading a small team of researchers in the Governor’s economic development office. One of the great benefits of my job was a wonderful administrative assistant named Freda. She was kind, smart and made sure stuff got done. On my first morning in the new office, she took me aside and asked me, “What’s your leadership style?”

I didn’t have an answer. After sitting there for a few moments I think I said something like, “Whatever they did at the investment bank, I’m going to do the opposite.” So that was my guide. If my terrible bosses in New York managed by fear, intimidation, uncertainty and pitting people against each other, I was going to be friendly and forthcoming, share information and try to build a one for all, all for one kind of team. It wasn’t a perfect approach and didn’t get me nominated for leader of the year, but it was a pretty good start for my first real management job. That was the beginning for me of learning how to lead in a professional environment and I owed it to the worst bosses I ever had.

Since then, I’ve been able to observe a lot of other people’s worst bosses ever. Fortunately, I haven’t had to coach many of the worst bosses (there’s a very low probability of success on those gigs), but, especially through our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program, I’ve coached a lot of leaders who work for them. There are definitely “worst boss” behaviors that come up again and again in conversation that serve as a reference point for anyone who wants to work on being the “best boss” ever. Just do the opposite.

Here are some of the themes I hear again and again:

Micromanager: This is probably the one I hear about the most. Almost everyone hates to be micromanaged because most humans want some freedom and control in how they do their work. The other big complaint about micromanaging bosses is the needless rework that results from the manager asking for rounds of changes on things (like the wording of one bullet point on one slide) that don’t matter.

Unpredictable: There’s so much that goes with this one. Leaders create unsettled working environments when they’re unpredictable. Unpredictability can be driven by not sharing needed information about requirements and deadlines. It can stem from emotional outbursts. It can flow from a lack of consistent communication.

Doesn’t have my back: Once you’ve lost a team on this one, it’s really hard to recover the trust. Managers who don’t stand up for their team’s work, who don’t provide air cover from pointless distractions, who take credit in good times and assign blame in bad times don’t have their team’s back. The common denominator of leaders who don’t have their team’s back is lack of courage.

Freaks out over small things: This one usually occurs when the boss has concluded that they are, in fact, the center of the universe and everything should revolve around them in service of their productivity, time, happiness and self-esteem. When life inevitably intervenes (maybe your staffer forgot the plastic fork for the salad they procured for you), they freak out. Almost everyone freaks out now and then, but a consistent diet of this from a leader leaves their team in a state of non-productive traumatic stress.

Doesn’t care about me: If you think about it, the other worst boss behaviors all sort of roll up to this one. Bad bosses are usually self-centered instead of others-centered. When they are, they act out through micromanaging, unpredictability, throwing people under the bus, freaking out and a bunch of other bad behaviors. We’ve all heard the cliché, “They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Clichés are clichés because they’re usually true.

I hope you’re not seeing yourself in any of these worst boss behaviors but if you are, why not pick one and be intentional about doing the opposite of that this coming week? You probably won’t reach 100 percent perfection in a week or two, but if you’re sincere in your intent you’ll probably improve in ways your team will notice.

And if none of these apply to you, congratulations! What would you add to the list of worst boss behaviors for leaders who want to make sure they do the opposite?

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Stop Inspiring Your Team to Underperform

Scott Eblin — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 14:39:13 -0500

Every so often I hear a phrase so well turned that I say to myself, “I wish I had thought of that.” That happened a few months ago when I was talking with a top executive of a Fortune 500 company to get his feedback on a colleague who was one of my executive coaching clients. This exec loved my client and compared him quite favorably to his predecessor who, the exec said, regularly “inspired his team to underperformance.”

I laughed out loud when he said that and asked him to elaborate on how that happened. The essence of his answer was that the predecessor leader didn’t set high enough expectations for his team and failed to even follow through on the low bar that he did set.

In close to 20 years of individual and group coaching, I’ve seen a lot of well-intentioned leaders who, by setting the bar too low, inspired their teams to underperformance.

During that period, my company has run over a thousand 360-degree leadership assessments based on the success behaviors I highlight in my book, The Next Level. I’ve read every one of those assessments and have come to some conclusions about how leaders fail to fully leverage their teams. Based on the patterns I’ve seen, here are three things to do if you want to stop inspiring your team to underperformance:

1. Dial Back the Nice

My observation is that leadership behaviors typically fall into one of two broad categories: behaviors that drive results and behaviors that build relationships. The best leaders, in my experience, exhibit roughly equal amounts of results-driven and relationship-building behaviors. A pretty common pattern when I’m reviewing 360 results is to see a leader whose top 7 or 8 highest-rated behaviors are all relationship oriented. They’re genuinely nice people and lead with that strength. Nothing wrong with that at all unless the nice is dialed too far to the right. What I usually see on the flip side for those leaders is that their lowest rated behaviors are all deficiencies in the kinds of actions that drive results. They need to improve on things like holding their team accountable for results, setting up systems to monitor progress towards results and assembling a team of experts who meet or exceed the requirements. To create space for those kinds of results-oriented behaviors they usually need to dial the nice back a bit. Most of them are so nice that they can dial it back a good bit and still be one of the nicest people in the room. One thing I encourage them to think about as they make the change is short-term nice vs. long-term nice. The short-term nice approach is to sugarcoat it for people and let them coast or drift along. The long-term nice move is to be straight up about what’s expected and coach them to get there so they grow as the organization grows.

2. Let Go of the Work

Another thing that leaders who inspire underperformance do is hold on to work they shouldn’t be holding on to. I’ve coached a lot of rising leaders in our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program who think they’re protecting their team from being overwhelmed by holding on to work that they think is going to be too much for their team to handle. That’s almost always the wrong call. Instead of helping their team, they’re hurting them by becoming a bottleneck. The other thing that happens is by holding on to the work, they hold back their team’s development. In reading all of those 360 degree feedback reports, I’ve never come across a comment from a direct report that says, “My boss is giving us too much work.” On the other hand, I regularly see direct report comments along the lines of “My boss is holding on to things she should be giving to us and, by doing so, she’s holding us back.”

3. Share Perspective and Information

The best leaders inspire their team’s performance by connecting their work with the bigger goals of the organization. In doing so, they focus a lot more on the “why” and the “what” of the work than the “how.” If you’re the leader of a team, you likely have access to information, people and conversations that your team doesn’t have. All of that shapes your perspective as a leader. That perspective is only valuable to the degree that you share that perspective with your team. When reading 360 comments from direct reports, I love it when they write things like, “My manager shares information and perspective with us that my peers on other teams don’t get from their bosses.” The people who write comments like that are on higher performing teams because they have the context and information they need to make smart decisions without having to constantly ask for permission or validation.

See anything here that could inspire and raise the performance of your team? What would you add to the list?

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Don’t Assume the Worst

Scott Eblin — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:09 -0500

When I asked communications expert, Dr. Nick Morgan, for his one best piece of advice for anyone who wants to be a more effective virtual communicator, his answer was quick, simple and powerful, “Don’t assume the worst.” Here’s the backstory on why Nick offered that advice and how you can apply it for positive outcomes.

Towards the end of last year, I interviewed Nick about what he learned in writing his latest book on how to communicate effectively through virtual platforms like email, text, and video conferencing. The book is called Can You Hear Me? and I highly recommend it.

Nick is a true expert on the art of interpersonal communication and, I think it’s fair to say, is not a fan of virtual communications when direct person-to-person three-dimensional communication is an option. But, Nick is also a realist and, because getting work done relies more and more on virtual communications every day, he wrote his book to help leaders make the best of a challenging situation.

One of the points Nick made in our conversation is that virtual communications often go nowhere or, worse, go off the rails is because we can’t get all of the sensory input we get when we communicate in person. When you’re in the room with someone, you intuitively process things like their body language, tone of voice, breathing, micro-expressions on their face, and all kinds of other subtleties that let you know whether or not you’re tracking with each other. The information data set is much richer in person and that’s why face-to-face communications is almost always more effective.

Almost all of those kinds of input get lost in virtual communications. Think about it, how often do your emails get misinterpreted? When was the last time you had a conference call where you knew people were multi-tasking during the call and not really tuning in? (Maybe because you were multi-tasking too.) If you do video conferences, you’re probably used to some people not turning their cameras on or maybe there’s one camera for a whole room full of people sitting around a conference table and all you can really make out are unidentifiable human forms, forget about facial expressions.

Because we don’t get all of the information we need in virtual settings, Nick and I agreed that we usually suffer from sensory deprivation in those situations. We end up in an information vacuum and tend to fill that space up with a bunch of assumptions, stories, misperceptions and other junk that just doesn’t help.

What can you do about it? Here are a few ideas:

Communicate in person whenever you can.
Take the time to learn more about the other people involved and what they care about.
Remember that they’re human beings and not just functions of production.
When you engage in virtual communications, make an effort to be really present and watch for the gaps in understanding and circle back to fill in the gaps.
And, when all else fails, don’t assume the worst. Most people are operating with positive intent. If they’re frustrating you or ticking you off, slow down, take a few deep breaths and check your assumptions.

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