Month: January 2020

Exhaustion is a shared decision

Let me make sure there is NO confusion:  Building Strategic Managers and eliminating Exhausted Heroes is the responsibility of both the individual leader and the senior leaders of the organization.  In the workplace, it’s common for everybody to look at somebody else to solve any given challenge. Stop pointing fingers and start working together to solve the problem!

When you look at executives, they look at the high potentials or those people stuck in an Exhausted Hero role, and they say, “Well, they’ve got to figure it out.” If that’s the case, then the executives aren’t taking responsibility for their own development.

Go online and read the Glassdoor reviews page of any company out there. If you find comments from tenured employees saying something to the extent of “these young people need to suck it up, this is business, not a playground,” then that’s a sign the company culture and senior leadership are out of touch with their own responsibility.

At the same time, because Exhausted Heroes are so exhausted, they’re more likely to look for an outward cause, rather than inward. They’ll wonder, “Why am I not getting help? Why am I stuck here? Why does my boss not understand this?” They likewise have a projection out, for somebody else to take responsibility for their exhaustion.

Both sides aren’t taking responsibility. We can really look at this situation as an opportunity for better professional development. When it comes to an individual’s development, executives and Exhausted Heroes must sit down together and say, “Okay, what is our intention? Where are going? What are we trying to do? How are we trying to get there?”

It needs to be a mutual responsibility, because it’s really hard to do without both parties actively participating. The executive who says, “Hey, middle manager, figure it out,” is now putting responsibility on somebody who might not have the resources do it, and will then leave. If you are the middle manager who’s saying, “I need the boss to figure it out,” you may get really tired of waiting and leave. Those are two ways to really quickly create employee turnover with future leaders with high potential within your organization. Instead, sit down together, show your engagement, show your investment, and execute a game plan together.

This approach of mutual responsibility creates higher retention within these leaders. It creates better leaders who are going to be able to take on more work, continue to take on more responsibility, and continue to lead their teams in a way that will continue to grow profits for the organization.

How to Hire Strategic Managers?

When interviewing and recruiting, we must ask ourselves, “What does somebody need to have to be a director? Or a VP? Or an executive vice president?” Most look for experience in operations, or in finance, or in marketing. Then they describe a list of technical experience requirements, like “need to have managed a large P&L,” and the description ends there. Technical experience is good enough, right?

We are missing a huge opportunity if we don’t hire someone with experience in the four big-ticket items that make a strategic manager:

1.      setting a vision,

2.      driving change to achieve the vision,

3.      influencing others, and

4.      coaching and developing their team.

When you bring on a director or VP to run a team, you’ll create another Exhausted Hero if you’re exclusively looking to hire only based on technical experience.

Instead, hire the Strategic Managers who can tell you how they set a vision for their team, drove the transformation to achieve the change, influenced other stakeholders outside their team in the change, and developed their team members as they went along.

We must prioritize these four qualities when we interview candidates. The question is no longer, “Do they know how to technically make us more money, technically improve this product, or technically drive the sales organization?” The most important question is: Do they know how to lead?

Coach Your Team

One of the core behaviors to focus on is “coaching your team.”  Many supervisors, when they think of their responsibility to coach their team, think that’s outside of their job description—“I’ll just delegate coaching and providing feedback to HR,” they think.

Many executives, as they’re looking to develop their high potential talent, hire an external coach or someone to build a high potential program so they can simply check “develop my team” of the to-do list, because those experts will take care of it. Unfortunately, that’s the same thing in my opinion as throwing a high potential employee into the deep end and seeing if they’ll swim.

There is a benefit to external coaching and workshops. But on the job, how they actually complete their work is the responsibility of their supervisor. And it always will be. The supervision part of supervising has more of an impact on learning than even an executive coach or a leadership program can have. Together, these integrate into the Game Plan that makes sure that an individual elevates successfully.

Yes, it’s important to have an executive coach to help you. Yes, it’s important to have a leadership program that helps teach new leadership skills. It is the responsibility of the individual and their supervisor to implement these learnings on the job for practical purposes.  This partnership and sponsorship—from the executive team to really make sure that their executives are going through the elevation zone, and that they truly are helping them on a day-to-day basis, giving them feedback and reinforcement to help them be successful.

The reality is, outside coaching can only get your direct reports so far. You can’t delegate your role as a supervisor.  At the end of the day, you have to continue to coach them as well. 

New Year, New Hope, New Choices

January.  A New Year.  A new decade. 

Do you have new year’s resolutions that look something like this?  

• More time with the family
• More time at the gym or yoga
• More time reading
• More time on vacation

All of these goals are about finding better balance.  But I believe these goals create more exhaustion. All are requiring more of your time, which is something you don’t have!  By adding more tasks to an already busy schedule, will it really create balance?

If you want these resolutions to stick,  it is also important to add the leadership goal to “elevate from Exhausted Hero to Strategic Manager”.  First, delegating individual contributor work to create space for more strategic work. Next focus on getting ahead by managing your team, not managing your tasks.  You should spend over 50% of your work week focused on planning for the future by setting a vision for the months ahead, planning to avoid future roadblocks, and positively influencing the change for your team.  

As a leader, you need to get ahead and stop feeling like you are always reacting.  Choose to lead. Choose to delegate. Choose to create a path forward for your team to follow.  Choose the proactive leadership approach that will create more time for family, your health, your development, and your being.