Leading with patience

Over the course of my career, I have been blessed with being given different teams to lead. I started with managing more than leading and it took me about ten years to realize the difference. Managers typically make sure that the work assigned to the team is done. Leaders, well, what do they do?  Leading is not all about barking orders and telling people what to do. In fact, doing so really is detrimental to the team’s productivity. Instead the leader should do whatever they can to get the team to get to their goal as effectively as possible. Here’s how I’ve accomplished this.

• Let the team own the goal by coming up with it themselves.
• Ask questions to see what the team comes up with as answers. Say “Do you think we could take on twice the business that we currently have?” Instead of saying, “Everybody needs to be twice as productive.”
• Listen to what the team has to say. Many good ideas should come out of the conversation, don’t pick or focus on one, just let them come up with ideas. One idea may get a bunch more going.
• Help them to choose. Voting is okay. Come up with two or three candidates and start a debate.
• Then ask “why?” Get the team to defend their goal by asking why they think it is a good one. The goal should be SMART, but don’t let the goal be dictated by having a measurement defined beforehand. I tend to focus more on the Attainability and Realistic parts at this point.
• Let the team make mistakes
• Sometimes the temptation is to take over or say “I need to do x.”  While that may help with the particular deadline or completion of a task, it doesn’t help the team to grow. In fact, this type of action will stifle your team. 
• Say, “What do you think?” This is a great way to turn the question around. You may know the answer off the top of your head, but the team member may need a little bit more time. And they may even come up with a better answer.  “What answer are you looking for?” is a great way to get out of a situation when the person is reluctant to give what they think is a bad answer.
• Give permission to fail. I don’t know about you, but when I screw something up I usually know why. Give your team permission to fail as long as they go into a situation with a goal and plan in mind. 
• Force improvement. Running retrospectives is a great tool for this. Many managers will do a “Root Cause Analysis” looking for one reason why the task went wrong. This puts everyone on the defensive and is hugely counter-productive since what you get is a bunch of CYA data that the team has wasted their time on creating. Instead, run a retrospective – what did we do right, where could we improve. Don’t just do this when something goes wrong, do it when things go right and do it on a regular basis. 
• Be positive. People improve and react better to mistakes when the conversation is “Well, what can we learn from what happened?” Rather than, “We need to find out what happened and make sure that it does not happen again!”

Those are my ideas and maybe even secrets to success. I wonder what your secrets are.

Being an agent of change

One of my co-workers described me as “an agent of change.” The funny thing is, I don’t think of myself that way. My DISC (https://www.innermetrix.com/disc-index/) profile says that I am a 99 in Stabilizing, which means that I tend to prefer a controlled, deliberative, and predictable environment. I also, as indicated by my 53 Cautious score, have a preference to adhere to the defined and proven way of doing things. So how could I possibly be an agent of change? I think it came to the point where the way of doing things just didn’t make sense to me. I, for whatever reason, really love improving on existing inventions. I’m not so good at initial ideas but can take the initial idea and make it happen. In fact, I’ve made a pretty decent living doing just that.

So, how did I become an agent of change?

1. Get involved with the team – I don’t think I’ve ever had an original idea. Some of the best change ideas come from the teams themselves. Teams tend to like change if they own the change and if they have input into what is being done. By owning the change and being involved, the team will believe in it. I often start out my change discussions with a “bitch session” or simply with, “Hey, I have an idea and I’d like your feedback.” The more that the team can lash out – hopefully not at me – the more they will have ownership.
2. Start small – Most needs of change come from a management edict like “get more done”. Well, the change is not “get more done”; it’s really about figuring out what could be done better. Plant the idea of “a change might be good” in an abstract way before suggesting your change. Many people have had other jobs so I’ll ask, “Did you do things differently where you were before?” “Was it better?” Then follow up with, “Do you think the same things could work here?” Or, “You seem to know a lot about it, is there something you think might help?”
3. Come up with a plan – Now that you’ve talked to the team and have some ideas, work with a few team members to come up with a plan. Keep the process transparent to the entire team and ask for feedback. Usually there won’t be much feedback, but transparency really helps to minimize resistance when you try to initiate the change.
4. Believe in the change – I really have to believe strongly that the change has many benefits. I hate to see people wasting their time, so as long as the change contributes to that, great. If the team learns something new, I really like it. I have to believe it, but more importantly, the team has to believe it.
5. Marketing – I call it top down and bottoms up. I market to the people who will realize the benefit and those making the change. Once I have a plan, I market that plan to all of the internal customers that the team serves and to the team itself – before I officially suggest the change. It can be, “The dev team really came up with some good ideas on how to do their job better. I’d like your opinion.” Or, “Would it help if…”Then there is the marketing to the team itself. “I’ve gotten some good responses from your customers. I’m excited for the change, are you?”
6. Execution – The hardest part is executing the change. If you have a measurement or KPI (Key Performance Indicator) on the current state, that is great. If not, take a couple of weeks before execution do some measurements. This way you can show how well you did. Market the fact that the change is underway as hard as you marketed the idea for the change. This does two things – it motivates the team to execute the change because they know that everyone is watching and it prevents the customers from being surprised.
7. Recap – I run a retrospective after the change is in place with the team and with the team and customers. This way we can get better next time and people will be comfortable with one another.

I think that’s what I do. I have never really put it to paper before. Maybe I’m doing something other than this. I’d love to hear other people’s ideas too.