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Man, This is all screwed up…

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by Patty Azzarello

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As a leader how do you deal with with negative energy?

Leading in rough times

This has come up a lot lately, so I wanted to talk more about this point I often mention as one of my top Leadership Values:

It is never the wrong idea to be positive and to lead.

When I say this I do not mean you should bury the problems and pretend everything is OK. Quite the opposite.

Face reality.

I mean jump in with both feet, acknowledge how ugly it is, and personally help find a way out of it.

When it gets bad…

OK, so they said there would be no layoffs, and now they are laying people off. They are treating people like crap. They don’t care. People are pissed off. Now there is even more pressure on schedules and cost cutting. My boss has checked out. No one has my back. I am getting blamed for things that are not my fault. My organization is likely to be shut down, so why should I care. Nothing I do matters.
What will you do next?

Winston Churchill once said,
“If you are going through hell, keep going!”.

You have a choice: Jump on all the crap with an equally negative attitude, or face it head on as leader who intends to make a positive difference for the business and the people.

Why do people choose to be negative?

It’s funny.

It is a wonderful comedic platform to go on about how messed up everything is and how stupid all the managers are, and how no one gives a damn about the employees.

It’s cool.

Being cynical and subversive is way more cool than being the boy-scout, showing that you are aligned with the lame corporate way of doing business.

You look smart.

If you can use a lot of details and data about why everything is screwed up, and dive into endless root-cause analysis, and catalog all the blame at a very granular level, some people will think you are really smart.

It’s easy.

Being negative and generating lots of data and commentary absolves you of having to do any work to fix anything.

But…

Being Negative is Toxic

It doesn’t help.

Nothing moves forward or gets better. This type of negativity draws people in because it a source of energy, and camaraderie in the absence of positive leadership. It becomes the way things are. And then it defines the future.
What does it look like to be positive and to lead?

Acknowledge the bad.

This is a really crappy time. I’m disappointed too. What do you think?.

Invite some discussion.

Let people tell you how this is impacting them. But then close that discussion off and make it clear you are planning to go forward. Ask for their help.

You have my commitment and support to create a new plan of attack. We can’t keep doing things the same way because it is killing us, but we need to move forward. Let’s focus on one thing that we can do well and start doing it right now. Or, at a minimum, let’s focus on how we can build our career capital for the future.

Life is long

If you choose negative path, or if you choose to checkout, or broadcast how screwed up everything is, in reality it might not make a big difference in that moment. So what are you hurting? You are having some laughs.

Sometimes there is no way practical way forward. Your organization could be being dismantled, outsourced or eliminated entirely. So who cares, right? What’s the big deal if I check out? It doesn’t matter anyway..

I have faced this many times at the helm of an organization who was being acquired or laid off… it might not seem like anything we do matters right now because this is all going away.

What you do now matters to YOU

Just remember that even though it might not matter in the current business situation, all of those people around you will eventually move on to other jobs in other places.

They will remember how you acted NOW.

Will they remember someone taking cheap shots at everyone and everything and checking out? or will they remember someone who stepped up tried to find a way to help?

If you can’t help the business, help the people.

People need you to be positive and to lead. It is never the wrong choice.

If it’s too bad, get out

If it’s really bad, get out. But while you are on your way, it is still the right choice to be positive and help others — if for no other reason, because it’s better for you.

You can build a hugely positive reputation for leadership in tough times.
People are always watching. It always matters.

How have you dealt with negative energy as a leader?

It’s so important (and at times really difficult) to stay positive. How do you it? Please share in the comment box!

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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5 Ways to Motivate Virtual Teams

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by Patty Azzarello

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empty-conference-room-3

How do you motivate people you can’t spend time with in person?

1. Virtual Team Building (literally)

I always did team building exercises when I had my team in a room together. But somehow with a remote, virtual team, I never considered that it was possible. This was a brilliant idea that one of my members offered. I wanted to share this because it is a great idea that I wish I had thought of ages ago.

How to do remote team building

First, prepare.  Distribute a template ahead of time that each person fills out.  It should include a photo of them, and questions which help people get to know each other.

Some examples:

  1. What is on your iPod?
  2. What was your best/worst job ever?
  3. What are your hobbies?
  4. What is your favorite book, movie, sport, animal?
  5. What is something from your childhood that has stayed with you and you use in your work?

Then when you have your virtual meeting over a conference call, show each person’s template and photo, and have them talk about it.  It is an amazing way to help your team get to know each other as people, and build a much more productive working relationship.

Photos!

Photos alone go a long way to build trust and camaraderie.  If your team is comfortable with photos, create a social media, facebook sort of page for your team to share non-work things with each other.

This is something you can easily assign to someone on your team who is inclined to set it up and keep it alive.  Refer to recent posts in your meetings.
(note: if someone refuses to submit a photo, let it go, don’t force the issue.)

2. Improve the Quality of Communications

Another issue with virtual teams is often that they are spread around the world, in different countries with different native languages.

Conference call communication is difficult enough, but if it’s not in your native language it’s excruciating.

A colleague of mine created a brilliant process to deal with this. 

Add written reinforcemnent to conference calls

On all of their multi-country conference calls they use an additional IM window where people in each country type out the key points being made, translate any jargon, highlight questions and decisions, and clarify areas in the discussion that were moving fast, or unclear.

They also use blog updates which capture the key ideas and decisions from the conference call in writing, to re-inforce the key outcomes and have a record for later review and understanding.

Adding written communications to conference calls, improves understanding, relationships and productivity dramatically.  Brilliant!
(I would think these were good practices even if there were not language issues.)

3. Timing

Being sensitive to time zones can go a long way to make people feel like they count.

Use their time zone: Whenever I recommend a meeting time, I always note it in the time zone of the other person.
From their perspective, if they are not in the headquarters time zone they need to translate every single meeting. Just doing that one step for them makes a big difference.

Use GMT: Another idea that came from a member was to always note times in GMT so everyone has to translate equally.

Share the suffering: Also, if you need to get the US, Europe, and Asia on the phone at the same time, alternate the suffering.  Have the meeting on rotating schedule so that one time zone is always comfortable.

4. Individuals must exert their presence

As a leader, another thing you can do is let individuals who are remote know that part of their job is to make sure they are not invisible.  The more they step up to make their presence felt the more included they will feel and the more motivated they will be.
It just works so much better for the remote individual to own this.

5. Have Better Virtual Meetings

How to have better meetings when no one is in the room:
When people are in a meeting I expect them to be “present” – listening, participating, contributing, and NOT doing email. If people are not going to be present why have a meeting?

Insist on starting On Time.  Everyone is to call in 5 minutes prior and be ready to go on time.  If need be, start the meeting start at 5 minutes after the hour – sharp! No excuses. Being late degrades accountability for presence, and is a huge time waster.  Don’t tolerate it.

Start with a weather report (or another personal topic) from each person on the call.  This gives every person’s presence a chance to be felt even though you can’t see them around the table.  And it gives you an opportunity to treat people like humans, which always helps.

Insist that no one mutes their phone. I don’t care if I hear children or dogs.  This also makes it harder to type, or watch TV without getting found out.  Mute degrades presence.  And it’s another big time waster.  After a discussion has gone down the road a bit, someone will chime in and say, “sorry, I didn’t realize my phone was on mute and I need to go back to …”

Be there. Make it clear that if this is an important meeting you are supposed to have it on your schedule, be on a landline, and not be driving somewhere between more important things.  You need to set the example for this yourself too – or don’t have the meeting.

Have a clear desired outcome and the promise of a shorter meeting.  “We will finish this meeting at 9:45 so that you can hang up and do 15 minutes of something else before your next meeting.”

Reinforce the fact that you value each others’ time. “The reason we have a shorter meeting, keep our phones un-muted, and don’t do email is because we respect each other’s time and therefore commit to being present, even though we are not in the same room.”

What has worked for you?

Having your whole team int the same room these days is a rare exception.
How have you motivated your people around the world?
How did you improve productivity, communication or motivation for your virtual teams?
Please share your experience and ideas in the comment box so we can all get better at this.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Uncertainty is Expensive!

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by Patty Azzarello

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uncertainty-is-expensive

Hidden Expense…

Uncertainty is a huge hidden expense in your business.

There’s the obvious expense of work not getting done — as uncertainty causes people waiting for decisions instead of working. But the more damaging and expensive side of uncertainty is the work that gets done the wrong way.

The wrong work

Unresolved strategic issues, don’t just stay in the board room until you finally get them answered.
Every unanswered strategic question leaves legions of people in your organization, less productive and more expensive than they would be with clear direction.

It’s the inconsistent work that comes from everyone taking their best guess while waiting for the strategy from above, that is expensive.

As a leader one of your biggest responsibilities is to remove uncertainty.

Strategic Chaos

What are the unresolved strategic issues in your company?  What are the decisions that are never seem to get closed?

Are we a product or service company? Should we do an exclusive agreement?  Should we be selling through different partners?  Should we upgrade our architecture, or build on the one we have?  Should we change our pricing for global customers or optimize regionally?

The true cost of indecision…

It’s not that strategic unanswered questions go answered that causes the problem. It’s that they get answered every day, differently, by front line employees who are making the best choices they can in the moment for how to implement their work.

A tale of 2 business units:

An interesting example of this is a company I worked with that had two business units.  At the executive level, it was a political war.

They could not commit to a decision if one or the other business unit was the primary mission of the company, or if both businesses should get equal attention and investment.

So what happened…

Hundreds of front line, individual contributors had to wonder, debate and make up their own answer to the most strategic decision in the company: What business are we in?

Yikes! A customer-facing, unsupported strategy…

A specific, downstream effect of this was that every trade show event manager had signs for both businesses in their inventory.  So they each had to decide on their own, Do we hang one sign or both?  Do we make one bigger? Put one on top? Or give them equal treatment?

They all did their best, but of course they all made different decisions.  And different local politics ensured that the company was never represented the same way twice!

Because the executives left this uncertainty, the most fundamental positioning of the company was executed differently at every event.

Failure to build value, and wasted time and money…

The company shot them selves in the foot at every event, failing to build their credibility and recognition consistently in the market.

Your job is to eliminate uncertainty, so that everyone can invest in executing in an aligned way, to build value, market confidence and brand.

This is true for every function and every team in the organization. And this has a huge ROI.  Failure has a huge expense.

How do you deal with uncertainty is in your organization?

This is at the heart of the work I do with my corporate clients.  It is so important, and profitable, to create clarity, concrete actions and motivation both at the executive level AND with all of the employees.

We all wish we got more clarity and strategic decisions from above. How do you remove uncertainty for your team?

Please leave your suggestions and experiences on this in the comment box below. It’s so important.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Four Free Ways to Motivate People … When Money Isn’t Free

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by Patty Azzarello

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Motivation is Personal

Money is the easiest and least personal way to motivate people (if you have money). If you don’t, you need to get down to the real business of making people actually care about what they are working on.

In any economy, it’s important to focus on the non-financial motivators for three key reasons.

  1. Those are always within your control
  2. They work better than money – people work for meaning, not money
  3. Money doesn’t buy loyalty, it only rents effort

Free motivators that work wonders

1. Remove Uncertainty about the work. The biggest de-motivator you can have is when people don’t know exactly what to work on or why it matters. Make sure you keep people engaged in meaningful work, and always connect the dots of why it matters. Just because you are waiting for answers from above, don’t keep your team waiting. Never pass uncertainty downward.

2. Communicate a lot, on a regular cadence. Clear consistent communication from above is a magical motivator that so many leaders miss. You get huge points for leadership and credibility when you communicate well. People are always more motivated to work for people they know and respect, than invisible, or checked out leaders. Even if you are not checked out, if you fail to communicate regularly, you will appear to be checked out.

3. Don’t guess what people care about, ask them! Personally ask each person that works for you. You’ll be amazed at the answers, and how many things you can do without money that will make a material difference to them.

4. Say Thank You. Create a habit in your organization to recognize contributions. Don’t over complicate it with processes, nominations, reviews, and spreadsheets. Just make it clear to your staff that you want to know when anyone in your organization does something remarkable, and then have one of the executives say, “thank you”.

Want to know more?

I’ll talk more about each of these and share some great stories about what really works (and what really pisses people off) in my free webinar: Motivating Without Money, Wednesday, Aug 25.

Sign up now to learn more great motivation techniques.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

Don’t miss a great hire – be careful what you ask for

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by Patty Azzarello

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Creative Thinking vs. Job Skills

This a story I first read about 15 years ago in an airline magazine. If you google “baramoter story” you’ll find mixed opinions on the source of it, but it a great story worth sharing.

Solve this problem…

This was a science class and there was a homework problem which was the following:

If you needed to find out the height of a tall building using only a barometer, how would you do it?

The “correct” answer involved measuring the air pressure at the top of the building and on the ground, and using the difference in air pressure to calculate the height of the building.  Kids that used that approach and got the math right were marked correct and given full credit.

But there were two other answers that stood out to me, that the teacher marked wrong, with no credit.

I would have marked these correct and given these two students a job!

The first “wrong” answer:

One student said he would take the barometer to the top of the building, drop it off, count how many seconds it takes to hit the ground, and calculate the height based on the time of the fall.

This is probably at least as accurate an answer as using the air pressure based approach.

The second “wrong” answer – even better!

This student said, I would find the general manager of the building and say to him. “If you tell me how tall this building is, I will give you this barometer.”  – Fantastic!

Not only did this solution meet the requirements of solving the problem, it was likely to give a far more accurate answer than the correct answer based on air pressure!

What a shame these two students were marked wrong. These are precisely the kind of creative thinking skills that help people solve important problems when the by-the-book way does not work.

Be careful what you ask for

I have made many hiring mistakes by looking for job skills — by keeping my interview only to the spec of what needed to be done by the person in the next 6-12 months.

People would come in with very impressive experience and just the right skills to do the job that needed to be done right now.  These hires are so tempting because you can see how they will immediately take some pain away.

But, what about when the job changes?

But more often than not, when the world changes around them, they get stuck.  They don’t adapt easily.  They need to find another job that matches their skills vs. being able to step up to do the new job that needs to be done.

Hire Fast Learners

The most valuable hires are the ones that can do the job today, but also can learn and adapt. You are far more likely to hire a star if you ask questions that get at how the person thinks, and hire creative thinkers that are fast learners.

In your interview process you need to try and assess how much potential the person has to learn, and judge how fast they will grow.  People with the most room for growth and the most acceleration (smarts and ambition) are your best hires.

This approach is valuable from hiring summer interns, to top executives.  I have used it at every level, once I learned that sticking to the job spec doesn’t work very well.

Some approaches…

1. Puzzles: Actually give someone a puzzle to solve.  Some people will get annoyed and refuse to engage,  some will give up very quickly, and others will visibly start thinking and working it out.  They will tell you how they are thinking about approaching the problem.  They will ask you more questions about it. Hire the person who is doing something with the problem.

2. Stories: Ask for stories about how the world was different when they first got into a job compared to how it is now.  What did they think needed to be done?  What new ideas did they come up with?  What changes did they drive?  If they just did the job as-is for a few years, and did not grow the responsibility or usefulness of their role, they are not a top hire.

3. Actual Problems: Tell them a situation that you are facing that needs a solution.  Ask them to talk through how they would approach it.  The ones that say, I don’t know yet, I’d need to get into the job first, are not your top people.  The ones that ask a bunch more questions and say, of course I’d need to listen and learn more, but from what I know right now this is what I think… and start offering insights, have stronger creative thinking skills.

What clever interview techniques have you used to get the best hires?

Please share the great questions, puzzles, problems or other approaches you’ve used to learn more about your candidates’ creative thinking skills. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comment box.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Aristotle Scooped My Ideas on Personal Brand

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by Patty Azzarello

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not
an act but a habit.” –Aristotle

Consistent Behaviors

aristotlesun

I am always talking about how Brand is about consistent behaviors.

In fact, I just was interviewed by a Forbes Magazine editor for 90 minutes on this topic. Turns
out, I was scooped by Aristotle!

As Aristotle will tell you, what I am saying about branding is not a new idea.

The Big Idea

But the big idea here for me is that we build or degrade our Personal Brand every single day — in every single conversation, meeting, email, presentation, and interaction we have with others.

You are broadcasting your Personal Brand

The behaviors people experience most consistently from you, ARE your Personal Brand.

(By the way this is true for corporate brands too. Your company’s brand is granted to your
company based on your customers’ cumulative experience with all the products, services,
processes, communications, and employees that interact with customers.)

You have a personal brand today whether you know it or not.

The question is – is it what you want it to be? And are you doing anything consistently, on
purpose, to give people any particular impression of you?

Choice #1 – Build your Personal Brand on Purpose

If you want to build your Personal Brand here are the steps.

Learn what you are known for. Get some feedback from people who know you and work
with you.

  • Decide what you want to be known for. Understand if there is a gap.
  • Define some specific behaviors that support your Brand.
  • Do them on Purpose every chance you get.

.
For example if you wanted a Brand of being…

Efficient: Don’t write long emails, ever. Do present (every time) how your solutions save time and resources along with getting the desired outcome.
.

Well Connected in your industry: Don’t take on projects alone, engage your network. Do expose the virtual team you’ve created and always include externally sourced content in your communications.
.

Cutting Through Chaos and solving complicated problems: Don’t ever participate in group email debates, offer obtuse suggestions, or let issues fester. Do offer concrete ideas and close off loose ends – every day.

Choice #2 – Leave it to chance

Why now?

If you have made it this far in your career without bothering to build your Personal Brand, why
should you worry about it now?

One hazard of leaving your Personal Brand to chance is that you remain somewhat of a blank.

Even if you are generally known as “good”, when opportunities come up, if you are not known
for anything in particular so you don’t stand out very much. You don’t stand out as much as
someone who is known for something specific.

Many people are striving for more recognition, relevance, and respect. Building your Personal
Brand is a key factor in positioning yourself to attract the respect and the rewards you deserve.

Stand out more. Be more Credible.

You become a much more credible and powerful presence in your company if everyone around
you says similar, specific things about their impression of you. Your Brand becomes significant
and believable.

Your intentions do not equal others’ perceptions

It doesn’t matter what you think or feel, or intend to do. Those things only matter to you. No one
else can see them.

Others can only experience what you DO.

Another hazard of leaving your Personal Brand to chance are that you can be giving negative
impressions that you don’t intend.

For example, I remember once when I did a 360 review, I got low scores on being a good
listener. I was totally shocked, because I always considered myself to be a great listener.

What I learned when I dug in was that the few people I listened to, indeed thought I was a good listener, but the vast majority of my organization never observed me listening.

Build your Brand with visible behaviors

So to build my Brand as a Listener, I created more opportunities to listen.

I created office hours, and breakfast and lunch meetings with groups of individuals. I created a website where people could give me feedback. I requested input every time I spoke. I told people what happened as a result of getting input.

My Brand issue was not with my listening skill or intention, it was about the accessibility and
visibility of listening opportunities. I was able to build positive brand value by creating more highly visible listening opportunities on purpose.

By investing some thought and energy in building your Personal Brand on purpose you will
increase your credibility and your value.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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