In Great Company Page 4
That is the ultimate takeaway of this book—to help organizations and the people within them to become more successful. We will begin with the people who help set the stage and set the standard for being In Great Company: leaders.
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THE EMOTIONALLY CONNECTED LEADER
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People who are In Great Company love their workplace. And it shows in everything they do. They make decisions that add value, strive to perform better, and work in collaboration with colleagues to cocreate a company that achieves great results for customers. More than anything, the emotional connection they feel in the workplace is the driving force that motivates them to perform at their peak every day.
The reinforcing dynamic of EC, whereby the more that people contribute, the greater their payback, is as vibrant and relevant at the leadership level as it is across the rest of the company. In fact, I would argue that leaders are the most important piece of the In Great Company puzzle for a few clear and compelling reasons.
First, leaders need to be the champions of change for any effort to take hold and take off. As change expert John Kotter has established in his work, it is the leaders’ responsibility to formulate a vision, communicate the change to the organization, and ultimately create a sense of urgency that generates the momentum a transformation needs to succeed.1 Next, leaders must be role models who set the behavioral norms for others to follow. When leaders introduce and authentically adapt a transformation like this one, their buy-in helps to enroll others, create a culture shift, and build a coalition of support. Organizational change is viewed as risky, so leaders need to be out in front to create the psychological safety that encourages others to proceed. Last, organizational transformations are delicate to begin with. The commonly accepted data point is that 70 percent of all change efforts fail. If that’s true, then the 30 percent that succeed in a sustainable way are doubtless those that are being driven by dedicated leaders.
More specifically, the In Great Company promise—that emotional connectedness among employees can create a workplace where people are so deeply engaged and aligned that they are willing do whatever it takes to grow the business together—is not possible without leaders. In fact, when leaders are disengaged, their apathy infects the organization like a virus. People “quit their bosses, not their jobs” for good reason. Everything leaders do is magnified. Every word and action by leaders, good or bad, has an outsized impact on the rest of the organization. With that, emotionally connected leaders make it possible for the In Great Company effort to succeed.
A leader who proceeds In Great Company is more productive, more effective with delegation, sells more, markets better, and is a magnet for other employees who want to learn, grow, and perform at a higher level. In my work with CEOs and CHROs, the majority confirm that they achieve their goals faster (and with less resistance) when they lead with a love for their company and with a feeling of emotional connectedness to their team and employees.
But being In Great Company is not for passive leaders who wait for opportunities. It’s for those who are committed to working hard doing what is right and then reaping the benefits. In Great Company leaders lead with emotional connectedness first—they respect and are respected by followers, and in return followers perform better for them. Being In Great Company requires the ability to collaborate effectively, have a future focus, align with your company’s values, create an environment of respect with others, and commit to achieving killer outcomes. You need to be hungry, active, and ready.
In Figure 2.1 I’ve sketched out what the emotionally connected leader looks like. The remainder of this chapter shows how to achieve the ideal, relevant to each of the five elements of In Great Company. As part of that, I have also included the prescriptive models I use with leaders to help focus their efforts. This includes guiding questions that link to core concepts given in Chapters 3 through 7 and the prescriptive playbook that sparks the In Great Company transformation across organizations.
FIGURE 2.1
Element 1. Systemic Collaboration
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Do I Insist on Fairness and Full Participation?
Collaboration is not always part of the natural order in leadership. Corporate structure, bureaucracy, politics, and simple inertia can work against it. Yet, we know from the research mentioned in Chapter 3 that organizations that set people up to collaborate are better able to succeed. For that reason, leaders need to not only inspire collaboration but also insist upon it from others. They need to get beyond the rhetoric to make collaboration a priority—and many of the best leaders do.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, for instance, has said that leaders can enable collaboration by “looking for people who privately celebrate an achievement but do not care that their name is the one in the lights, . . . people who appreciate different points of view.”2 Former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano said, “The key is to listen. . . . You can’t have a dominant point of view because you won’t get to the right answers.”3 And Jive Software CEO Elisa Steele said, “For collaboration, the environment for individuals to be able to get their work done with ease and simplicity is critically important.”4
There is not just one right way to do it, but these emotionally connected leaders have a point of view about collaboration and a plan to keep it at the center of their businesses. What’s your plan? Start with these questions to make collaboration a part of your leadership legacy.
Do I Monitor for Equal Airtime in Conversations?
Whether you are a CEO, line manager, or any type of team leader, the most fundamental way to set people up to collaborate is to give them a chance to speak up and express their ideas without fear of recrimination. This means having zero tolerance for conversation hogs, bullies, and time wasters in meetings. It also means making it clear that everyone is expected to participate—no excuses.
How Present Am I During Conversations?
I frequently see leaders who ask a question and then interrupt before their colleague is finished responding. Does this sound like you? Regardless of why it happens (time constraints, lack of emotional intelligence), this bad behavior closes off collaboration. If you are authentic in your desire to be a collaborative leader, you need to keep an open mind, actively listen, and exhibit open, impassive body language that signals you are serious about hearing multiple perspectives before making a decision.
Do I Make Functioning Teams a Priority?
Collaborative leaders know that empowered teams can solve problems, generate new ideas, and manage projects efficiently. As a leader, your job is to design the rules so that teams can function collaboratively. For instance, have you eliminated needless silos? Empowered teams to act within guidelines? Set up an open dialogue and systems for sharing information and expertise? Provided the right tools and technology for collaboration? Perhaps most importantly, have you gotten out of the way to let your teams do their job?
Do I Make Difficult Interactions a Positive Experience?
Collaboration can get messy. Multiple perspectives and differing points of view sometimes surface emotional reactions and dysfunctional dynamics. Therefore, one of the most critical competencies leaders can model is the ability to manage difficult conversations without drama. Collaborative leaders resolve conflicts and settle differences in a positive and upbeat way with empathy as opposed to enmity.
STAIRWAY TO COLLABORATION
Whether an interaction is complex or routine, running through this Stairway to Collaboration model (Figure 2.2) offers a simple framework for successful collaboration.5 Each of the six stairs may seem familiar to you because they connect back to other EC elements.
FIGURE 2.2
Source: The Stairway to Collaboration figure and practice are inspired by a coaching model that Deborah Slobodnik taught me that is based on the Four-Player Model—the core concept of David Kantor’s theory of structural dynamics published here: David Kantor, Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders, Jossey-Bass/Wiley, San Francisco,
2012.
1. First, propose your idea to the team, including scope and what you want to accomplish.
2. Ask for feedback and advice, keeping an open mind.
3. Mirror back the advice and express gratitude.
4. Challenge yourself to see the other person’s viewpoint, even if it seems uncomfortable. Ask yourself in earnest, “What can I take away from this advice?”
5. Decide what next step you want to take, and gain support from others—stakeholders, team members, customers, peers, bosses, and more. Listen to their reactions, make adjustments accordingly, and allow others to share ownership of the decision.
6. Finally, move on the changes. Enlist the help of others to make them happen. Continue to connect it to stakeholders with updates and follow-up.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos put it like this: “Disagree and commit.” By way of explanation, he said, “It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way.”6 In other words, leaders need to listen carefully, express their opinion, and then make a call about how to act. After that, everyone supports the decision regardless of what “side” of the dispute they were on—no drama and no hard feelings.
Element 2. Positive Future
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Am I Passionate, Forward Facing, and Eager to Innovate?
Emotionally connected leaders have a positive future outlook when they are passionate about their work, innovative, and focused on the future.
It is no surprise that so many of the CEOs who are highly rated on Glassdoor’s “Employees’ Choice” survey year after year are innovative, passionate, and future-focused leaders with a unique and positive vision for their company’s future.7 Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, for example, has been able to articulate a uniquely visionary and future-focused strategy in an incredibly fast-moving and complex industry. Benioff, arguably more than almost any other CEO in the post–Great Recession decade, has famously demonstrated the ability to drive dramatic business shifts and lead employees into the future through constant change and innovation.8 Even better, he manages business advancement while also giving back to society through the Salesforce Foundation, which has become a role model for other organizations interested in delivering social change. Unsurprisingly, 97 percent of Salesforce employees in Glassdoor surveys approve of Benioff’s leadership.
In Chapter 4, we will look at why a positive future vision is one of the main elements of emotional connectedness. The bottom line is that an upbeat outlook is “positively” contagious, and it motivates people to change for the better to be their best. This future focus by leaders is crucial because passion and positivity inspire people almost more than anything else.
Do I Leverage My Personal Passion and Encourage Employees to Do the Same?
When we think of charismatic leaders in business and society, we often attribute some of their success to passion. Martin Luther King Jr. was passionate about equality and civil rights. Henry Ford was passionate about advancing automobile manufacturing. Bill Gates was passionate about personal computers. And so on. In these cases, and others, the connection between passion and a positive future is straightforward. First, passion will sustain you and propel you past innumerable setbacks. Second, it will inform your vision and help you sell your ideas to other people. Finally, passion will connect you to like-minded employees and stakeholders who will help you achieve audacious goals.
Fueled by a passion, you are far more likely to tap into the resilience you need to lead. In addition, if you can engender passion in others, you will surround yourself with the support you need to move toward a positive future.
Do I Have a Positive Relationship with Change?
Leaders who have a knack for change are in a better position to make the numerous shifts needed to keep an organization moving in a progressive trajectory. Benioff makes change look easy at Salesforce. Likewise, Jeff Bezos shifted Amazon from online books to full scale e-commerce to bricks and mortar and back again—almost effortlessly. These leaders are all about change: they know that staying the same is far riskier than experimenting with change.
Even if your relationship with change is not quite as effortless, you need to have your game face ready for change. As mentioned above, change is a top-down endeavor. You need to be the one to envision the change, clearly communicate what it looks like, and be the organization’s first and best change champion. Only then can you expect everyone around you—employees, partners, and customers—to take their turn and “stick the landing” of transformation.
Do I Enable and Champion Innovation?
Progress is a main lever for individual happiness. It engages and motivates people and keeps organizations moving forward. Giving people a path and process for innovation, then, will provide you with yet another lever for sparking an emotional connectionthrough positive future. Enabling innovation has numerous paths: empowering people to propose new ideas, incentivizing them to solve seemingly intractable customer problems, and even investing in notable new ventures on the side.
POSITIVE FUTURE DESIGN GRID
To create a positive future vision for yourself, you need to let go of things from your past that are holding you back and leverage those that serve you well. The Positive Future Design Grid in Figure 2.3 will help you along in this process.
FIGURE 2.3
First, honestly assess how you view yourself. What negative feelings and behaviors from the past can you let go? What positive traits, beliefs, and experiences can you build on? Next, engage in the same clear-eyed assessment to determine how others perceive you. Ask for feedback. What can you shed, and what should you leverage? Finally, consider where you are now and where you want to be. Use that grid to envision a positive future and put a plan together to get there.
The leaders who do it best tend to enable innovation on all levels. No matter what it looks like, your job as a leader is to create the guidelines and guardrails that help people experiment and manage the risk appropriately. Institutionalizing innovation not only removes the fear of failure. It also starts to instill the positive future ethos into your organization’s cultural DNA.
Am I a Positive Force for Emotional Connection?
While the concept of creating a positive future is not about being a positive and upbeat person per se, the reality is that leaders who spark emotional connection tend to be enthusiastically supportive of progress. They drive change, leverage passion, and enable innovation. In other words, they are a positive force.
You usually know it when you are a positive force. You are a leader who asks for feedback, and you are highly rated by employees. You give people credit for their ideas and engender loyalty. And you have zero tolerance for meddling managers who squash enthusiasm and innovation. There is commonality here with the characteristics of emotional intelligence. The difference is that emotional connection means that not only are you high in EI yourself but you also expect others in the organization to exhibit the same affinity for driving forward toward a positive future.
Element 3. Alignment of Values
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Do I Do What I Say I Will?
Pepsi’s longtime CEO Indra Nooyi, who was widely credited with transforming the beverage maker, has a leadership model she calls the “5Cs”: competency, courage and confidence, communication skills, consistency, and moral compass.9 She talked about this memorable set of leadership promises in board meetings, blogs, keynote speeches, and interviews. Why? Not so she could “claim credit” for her ideas but so she could put a stake in the ground about her beliefs and hold herself accountable for her actions. And the best part of the 5Cs? They dovetail nicely with Pepsi’s corporate values and serve to reinforce her commitment to the institution’s cultural norms. In other words, Nooyi walked the talk.
Emotionally connected leaders use values to guide their actions, decisions, and communications and to create a “values chain” whereby employees and p
artners are in sync as they put these values into practice to engage customers.
There are other leaders who walk the talk the way Nooyi does. Honeywell CEO David Cote refused his annual bonus in 2009 to encourage employees to make sacrifices and embrace austerity in order to avoid layoffs during the Great Recession. WD-40’s Garry Ridge, a passionate believer in creating an enjoyable workplace where people “step into the best versions of themselves,” hosts an annual award ceremony to hand out awards like “The Mother Teresa,” “The Rookie of the Year,” “The Unsung Hero,” and “The Energizer,” to recognize employees for their talents.10 And the infa-mous and ingenious Richard Branson? He once dressed as a Virgin Airlines flight attendant—red skirt and all.
These leaders and many like them are living by the norms they want to see reflected in their organizations. They are setting the tone for values alignment across the organization, where employees are all working together to create an emotionally connected culture.
As we see in the above examples, leading for values alignment requires a combination of confidence and competence, not to mention a strong dose of charisma. One of the best ways I know to help leaders model and create values alignment across their company is through guided questions to test and strengthen their EC aptitude. Accordingly, we will use the questions below to explore each of the five EC elements and frame it through a leadership lens.