Accelerate Results – Now and in the Future

My early career years were tough. As newly hired entry level managers with Procter & Gamble, we were given tremendous responsibility -- and we were expected to deliver! Most of my colleagues seemed to excel under that pressure. Not me. By about my 5th year with the company, I doubted my ability to reach the next level and I was worn out from the constant struggle to meet the new stretch goals. In year six, I took an opportunity to transfer within the company to a very different role in a different division. In this role, I had the opportunity to work with the senior leaders of the Laundry and Fabric Care business. I facilitated their leadership team meetings, ran the Strategic Planning process, spent much 1-1 time doing what I later learned was ‘Executive Coaching’ and marveling at the discovery through this work, that we all struggle with some level of self-doubt. Some of us are better at masking it than others.

I flourished in this new role and environment. Within a short period of time I was promoted and I started researching my discovery of the impact of negative self-talk and how that manifests in our culture.

A Strengths-based Approach

About that time, there was research coming out, based on work done by Martin Seligman, who is considered the Grandfather of Positive Psychology (University of Pennsylvania). Gallup had recently published Now, Discover Your Strengths (M. Buckingham and D. Clifton), which debunked the myth that our greatest area for growth is in improving our weaknesses. That was fascinating to me!

Instead, our greatest opportunity for growth and delivering exponential results (in addition to greater confidence and true joy) is in working to develop our strengths.

Later, Malcolm Gladwell’s research indicated that it takes 10,000 hours of disciplined practice to achieve greatness in a particular discipline.

Unfortunately, in our culture, it’s easy to stay focused on our weaknesses. We gleefully point out other people’s weaknesses – often not to their face of course, that would be rude! And we confidently put together a list of our own. Some of us willingly share those with others and some prefer self-torture. Many do both. That doesn’t do any good.

What I learned is that you, me, your staff, and everyone else has amazing strengths: skills you’ve built over years of growing your business; qualities and characteristics that are inherent to who you are, that come naturally in special situations and in your everyday life. The thing that makes your performance in those strength areas really special and unique is your willingness and commitment to identify, acknowledge, and develop those very strengths. They don’t become amazing on their own. Look at Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Steve Jobs. They all developed their strengths with hours of disciplined practice. Why not you? If you invest in developing your strengths and your staff’s strengths, you will transform your business, your culture and their lives.

What about weaknesses?

So what if your staff (or even you?) have weaknesses? Should you ignore them? No. Mitigate them. Make their impact on your business and life inconsequential.

Now, if you have an employee in a role where his weaknesses are truly holding him and the company back, you may need to make a change in his role and/or responsibilities or you may ultimately discover he’s not a fit for your company. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have strengths! It simply means the fit isn’t right. Allocate roles and responsibilities with strengths in mind and you’ll find your results and engagement soar.

Get started:

1. Identify your greatest strengths and then note the ones you most enjoy using. If you are stumped, think about the feedback people consistently give you.
2. Take a look at your team. What strengths do they have that are underdeveloped or underutilized?
3. Invest in an assessment to highlight and validate their strengths. Strengthsfinders is web-based and for $10, you can get a list of your top 5 from their set of strengths . If you want a competency-based leadership or management assessment, contact us for more information.
4. Invest in developing their strengths. Look for ways to re-allocate roles to better align strengths and responsibilities to maximize results.
5. Begin your 10,000 hours of disciplined practice to expand your impact using those strengths. So, if you want to be a better decision-maker, for example, figure out how you can leverage your strengths to do that.

This is a pretty seamless way to get your team engaged and performing at their best, which means your business is on the cusp of something big! I can’t wait to hear what you will accomplish by shifting to a strengths based approach in your business! Drop me a note and let me know how it worked for you!

Creating New Rituals and Habits

Happy New Year! Many of us make resolutions for healthy habits this time of year, but really any time you make a life change – such as getting a new job, having a baby or retiring – is the perfect opportunity to reassess not just your daily routine, but also your regular habits and rituals. What changes do you want to make in your life? What has worked well for you and what might you like to be different? Now is the time to decide: Do you want to sleep in until 7am? Do you want to cook healthy meals? Work out before lunch instead of 5:15am? Do you want to buy tickets to the theater for a Wednesday night because you don’t have to worry about the alarm clock waking you on Thursday morning? Do you want to take a class at the community college that meets from 2pm to 4pm on Mondays? Or do you want to create a habit for reading, journaling, walking, biking, coffee with friends?

Decide what habits and rituals you want and then set up a place to do it. Ensure your tools of the trade are handy and then build the time into your schedule using a trigger that indicates when it’s time to do it. For instance, if you want to read your Bible every day, create a place to read, put your bible and any other tools in that space (reading glasses, a pointer, a coaster for your cup of coffee), and then build the trigger into your schedule. If you want to read right after you make your morning cup of joe, that’s your trigger. This year, as my schedule changed, I set a resolution to write in my journal every day. I created a space at a table in my home office, placed my journal, reading glasses and pen on the table, and my trigger alerts me to journal right before I head downstairs for breakfast. If you want to eat healthy meals, where will you find or create those meals? What tools do you need to do it well? What will trigger you to create or find those meals instead of the traditional fast food you’ve been relying upon?

You don’t need a life change to create healthy good habits. Pick something small and get started today.

Good luck!

How to Transfer Your Most Important Relationships to Your Successor

Your chosen successor has many wonderful strengths and experiences that he or she will bring to your business. But there’s one thing they lack: the depth and breadth of the relationships you have invested years building and maintaining. They will never be just like you in those relationships and they cannot start with the level of connections you have with your key vendors, customers and employees.

This is a huge concern for a lot of owners because they have been the company’s primary external relationship builders, especially with really significant accounts.

So how do you transition them?

You need to identify what is most valuable or important about your relationships with each of your external connections. Is it the ability to negotiate a win-win? An abiding commitment to shared risk? Or the ability to get to the right person at their company quickly to resolve an issue? If you know what is most valuable, you can set up a plan to pass that along to your successor or another appropriate person within your company.

If you are the company’s top salesperson, things get a little trickier. If your successor won’t be picking up the responsibility for sales, you’ll need to prepare your sales team to pick up the slack, and ensure that your successor is prepared to appropriately support key sales calls.

As you engage in these external meetings, insist on bringing your successor with you. If you are renegotiating a banking agreement or vendor agreement, establishing a new vendor/customer, or sitting down with your CPA for an annual business review, bring them along. Discuss your objectives in advance. Talk about the relationship dynamics, the history of the partnership, the areas you will be working on in that particular meeting.

By inviting them along, they learn so much about your priorities, the relationships you have, the way you handle the meetings, the issues, challenges and opportunities that exist. After each meeting, take time to do a focused debrief and coach them on what you were trying to accomplish and assess the effectiveness together. Use it not only to help them learn, but ask them for input, insight and ideas. They offer fresh perspective and will likely surprise you with new ways of thinking or partnering. Some of it will probably be very useful and directly applicable.

Look for opportunities to get your successor involved in annual events such as your year-end audit or regular tax filing too, so they don’t have to face it for the first time without you. Those internal systems that interact with external relationships are also important to plan for.

Over time, you will have to attend these meetings and be intimately involved in the systems less frequently, and your successor will be in a position to handle more and more.

For one of my clients, the board relationship was really important. The successor didn’t have much of a relationship with the board, which would be guiding and directing his work, but it was critical. They needed to be able to influence and support each other.

Our task was to establish the necessary credibility and rapport so they could call on each other as needed. We brought the successor in to the board meetings and gave him targeted responsibilities that increased over time. We then directed him to meet one-on-one with board members outside the meeting to learn how the board saw the company, its CEO, his role as successor and the risks and growth areas in the business. This all facilitated a deeper relationship. We also had him join the audit committee to penetrate that aspect of the business and work with several key board members in a small group setting.

You’re probably asking the age-old question now: My gosh, how long does this relationship transition take? Depending on the uniqueness, length and complexity of these relationships – as well as how comfortable you are with letting go – you can expect it to take from three to nine months to establish and it could be years before it’s fully in place at the level of the relationships you’ve built. Of course yours weren’t built in 6 months either!

While we’ve been focusing on the importance of transferring external relationships, don’t forget about facilitating the relationship transfer between your successor and the employees who get the work done day in and day out. People such as your administrative assistant, controller/CFO, operational team leaders and department heads, etc… will be invaluable in helping ease your transition and keep the company running smoothly.