9/27/2019 0 Comments ListeningListening, perhaps more important than ever in today's society. Lets be honest, how many of you post something on social media and then not read the comments or even worse, look for specific responses to either argue with or confirm your own opinion?
"When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But when you listen, you may learn something new." -Dalai Lama It seems with all this technology to help us communicate, we are getting worse at it. We are not listening to others opinions to learn, think differently, assess the situation, but rather, only as means to confirm what we think we already know. It is not only social media, it is your personal relationships, it is your boss, it is the random checkout person, IT IS YOU! It is certainly me, especially when I feel crunched for time with what seems to be a never ending task list. To be better leaders, spouses, subordinates, human-beings, we must stop and listen, forget all the other things going on in life, and focus on that person in front of you. You may learn something, you may change the way you think. Prime example, rewind 10 years. I would have laughed at you if told me to do you yoga. I would have laughed at you if you suggested I eat Paleo or Keto. But I opened my eyes and gave them a try and became on convert. I took my wife several tries, but she was relentless and I finally LISTENED! So if you strive to be a better boss, a better leader, a better follower, start listening. Dale Carnegie wrote basically a whole book about it, which is ageless. Here are his principles summarized with my comments
Okay, okay, so I do that and I am now a good person, so what? What does that have to do with leadership? First of all, go back to my post on empathy. Had I not listened, I couldn't have been empathetic. Second, I am a servant leader, and in order to serve those you lead, you need to listen to them. Employ their ideas, take care of them (goes back to my Bill Belichick leadership post), value opinions to generate the best outcomes, the list goes on. Any Stanley says it best, "Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say." Now you have only one track thinking, which even if you are machine running on lean six sigma principles, there are still wrongs and errors, but chances are, without other people's opinions, you are going to be wrong a lot more often. Furthermore, you will begin to corrode other leadership principles such as: Trust, work ethic, motivation, drive, responsiveness, etc. By not listening, you will create your own cancer. So I am going to leave this post shorter than most...because rather than continue to share my thoughts, I am going to go out and listen to others!
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The following is my analysis of the article posted here... https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/13/bill-belichick-leadership-rules.html.
So why this article? Why sports? Why Bill Belichick? The man is a proven winner obviously. He has taken personalities and managed to get them to buy into the system, stay out of the lime light and effectively become a team player. So why not? As for sports, two reasons, I love sports! Two, sports can cover the grey area of the business world and the military world. It is a for profit business, money is exchanged and there are strategies for running organizations. On the field however, it is Xs vs Os, just like the military. In the military is Blue vs Red, but it is the same war-gaming concept. Therefore, I feel sports is a nice transition to bridge the communication gap. Specifically in Bill's case, who grew up around sports and the military. He watched tape at Annapolis when his father was an assistant coach. You can still see his connection today, as he builds condition and teamwork amongst the Patriots by conducting training with the US Navy Seals. I pick Belichick because he is humble and hungry. He states he knows "little" about leadership. Guess he keeps getting lucky with all those Ws and Super Bowls! This article sums up the following five principles:
1- There is only one sign in the Patriots locker room, "Every battle is won before it is fought." -Sun Tzu. There is that business to military comparison again. So what does that mean. Plan, plan, plan, prepare, prepare, and prepare and the battle fought is easier. Even in the corporate world, when you can control and dictate things (let's say raw material for example, you are not left reacting to your enemy, or in this case, an external supplier potentially). The ability to analyze and see things before they happen in order to control your own destiny. Bill leaves a window for the ability to adjust on the fly. However, to do this, you must be an effectively organized team in sync. So here I am picturing a UH60 Blackhawk Air Assault Battalion, conducting an air assault, when the main avenue or route becomes compromised. A code word is announced, and the flight of 20 helicopters seamlessly maneuvers to the alternate route to maintain the element of surprise and maintain control of the battle. This ability to adjust was not an exact part of the plan, but the battalion used another plan to implement a portion. Likewise, it was executed because the team started by practicing individual skills, before conduct training as a flight of two, then four, then 8, and so on. But before this, they conducted a 10 mile run together, slept in the field and suffered together, supported each other through families, etc. Perhaps more easily said, build your team with mentality to ruthlessly plan and prepare with ability to quickly adapt if that plan fails. 2- Bill defines dependables as those that are confident and consistent. Maybe they are not as flashy, maybe they don't bring in the big sales. But when things get down to the nitty-gritty , they plain old get things done. Avoiding those peaks and valleys will help your team stay more cohesive and allow each person to build that trust that is necessary for adapting on the fly. 3- Requires you to step up and take charge. In the story about Belichick telling the mouthy player to shut it and listen, what he is refer to here is accountability. He was holding his player accountable to pay attention in the meeting. He could have not said a thing and perhaps the player would have missed a play call, or a block, because he did not pay attention. Bill and that player would have been just as accountable then as they were during the meeting, he just chose to nip it in the butt earlier. To military personnel, this really becomes second nature. With a rank structure organization, if there is more than one person standing around, the highest rank has to step up and take charge. Couple that with the fact that in the business of national defense, accountability or lack there of, could cost lives. The ability to be the boss is something you will get with most prior military personnel. 4- I don't need to go much further than this (you can see my previous blog on empathy). Even big stars need to have a work-life balance, and no matter how much you want to sell it to yourself, they intertwine and are inseparable. Therefore, Bill believes in helping his players sort out personal issues, so they can be 100 percent focused on the team, the game, and the mission. Though I will not say that this is common to all military personnel, most of us get this, especially those of us who have deployed. When deployed, life moves on without you back home and sometimes things happen. You want to see someone effected, visit those deployed! They have no control whatsoever, but have to live the consequences and find a way through the situation. Good leaders recognize that and take them out of the fight to take a knee, again, because an unfocused team member could cost the lives of people if a mistake is made. 5- In a day of analytics, it sounds crazy right. Don't get big headed over your accomplishments sure, but maybe don't take every piece of data to heart. The past is the past, rather spending time analyzing it, focus more on the present and the future. Prepare for the sale you have now, the parts you need to make for your customer now. Then you can circle back to #1 and begin building that team to get be better in the future through planning and preparation. You can see that, although used in sports, these principles resonate in both the military and the business world, so they certainly are lessons that all leaders can follow, I mean wouldn't you want to be the best and have your team considered the greatest of all time? I know I would!!! 9/16/2019 0 Comments Empathy The first leadership topic I wanted to cover was empathy. Why? Just visit the statistics page. Whether you are a Baby Boomer, GenXer or a Millennial, chances are you agree on at least one thing, and that is you are feel empathy is a necessity in workplace...and if not, you are willing to leave over it.
I start with empathy, not only because it is clearly important to a vast majority of the workforce, but it is a rather simple skill. Dale Carnegie wrote about it. Let the other person talk about what they want and assist them in achieving it. Pretty simple right? Henry Ford said, "If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own." So why is so hard and why is so important? Today, we generally come from and work with all walks a life, contribute that to a global economy, growth in technology, or as it relates to this website, deployments while in the military. Social Media, wait, what? Today, we see opinions from all ranges, all up in our face, whether we want to see them, agree with them or like them or not. Call it opinion analytics! The same thing that is our strength, is our weakness. Unlike years ago, we have the luxury of visiting different cultures and learning a different way. But we have started to become numb to it all. The news feed on our phones, opinionated one way or the other. The Facebook post, opinionated. It becomes so overwhelming to think about each topic and try and see it from another’s point-of-view, that we retreat back into our opinion, so that we too can be seen and heard. However, once we do this, we step out of leadership and into followership. No one will argue that it is hard, harder than it has ever been before, to be empathetic, but if you want to be a great leader, you better start right here. Being a leader isn’t easy, especially when there are more and more voices to hear. You must listen and try to see it from that person’s perspective. You don’t have to agree with it, but if that person values it enough to share it, then helping them achieve it will give you that much more credibility as a leader. So here is my story. A seasoned platoon leader, relatively recently returned from a deployment to Iraq and getting ready to move on my to my next position. We go through the regular post-deployment personnel turnover. Of the bunch is a brand-new warrant officer (not a W01, but a CW2). He was enlisted prior to becoming a warrant, so he wasn’t green to the army by any stretch. At first, he didn’t standout. Seemed like a run of the mil guy, but we didn’t have any helicopters, so I couldn’t really assess him as a pilot. I sat down with him to have a one on one, like I did with every single one of my soldiers I lead as a platoon leader and a commander. Seemed like good guy, not much really to assess him on other than showing up to the right time and place, which included taking a physical fitness test. Now as I said, this guy was no rookie to the army, which means, you know how to prepare and pass a PT test, it wasn’t that hard. On top of that, he was a pretty big guy, looked in decent shape. Here comes the first PT test…epic fail, I mean bad. I think 2 of 3 events. So I sit him down, give him the generic counseling. You failed a PT test, this counseling is for your records, you will have 2 weeks to retrain and take the next test, you are an officer now, we expect you to figure this out on your own, etc. etc. I figured this was a case of lack of physical fitness that occurs at flight school. So that shot across the bow to re-motivate him back into the regular army from TRADOC would be more than enough, after all, he was previously enlisted. Second PT test comes, bombed…I mean somewhat better, but still a fail. At this point, it becomes clear to me that there is no way this guy wants to spoil the luxury of becoming an army pilot, especially after having been enlisted in the army. Rather than sit him down and give him counseling strike two, I have a hear to heart. Only this time, it’s not me doing the talking, it is him and I am doing the listening. After the generic I will do better next boss, speech, I sit. I listen, watch his body language, his pitch and tone. I leave moments of silence. “What else?” Stoned again. “Come on man, I cannot help you if you don’t tell me and I want you to succeed.” Finally, with a little trust established as I put the generic, unwritten counseling form away, he opens up. Turns out, the dude had gone through a divorce during flight school and now was going through a custody battle. Ouch. But what did I know? I was a 27-year-old single guy with no kids. I didn’t know. I wanted to say, sorry man, but these are the rules, so you have two more weeks to figure it out. After all, that would have been the easy way. However, I decided to go against conventional army grain. “Sorry man, I can see how that would be very stressful. Obviously, I cannot give you any advice on the situation, but I can search around and try to find someone who can. More importantly, I want to know what you need from me to help?” It was like no one, especially in the army, ever asked him that question. If he was Stuey from Family Guy, his head would have rotated 90 degrees on his neck. Furthermore, his silence showed he was not prepared for the question. We walked through the steps. He had a lawyer but couldn’t find time to connect with him and work. He needed to clear his mind a bit, and he needed to come up with a plan! “I tell you what, take next week to clear your head, decide what is best for you and more importantly, your daughter, talk to you lawyer and forget the PT test thing for now. Beyond Stuey, his had would have been twirling in circles if it could. “Yeah we aren’t doing anything, we are waiting for our helicopters anyway and I need your head clear for when we start flying again.” I told him to not leave the local area, that I would trust him and to always answer the phone if I called. I told him we would reschedule the PT later, but to keep in mind, I could only postpone it for so much longer, so not to lose focus. A week goes by, you would have thought I performed a miracle. He comes in, just carrying himself in a much more positive manner. He gives me many thanks and tells me to schedule to the PT test for next week. I told him it doesn’t need to happen that soon, but he tells me he is ready. This is a story that ends happily ever after. The guy maxes out his PT test. So yeah, it is that simple. Listen and give them an opportunity. I knew little about this guy, didn’t share a common background and frankly, at that time in my life, couldn’t even imagine it. But I had empathy for him regardless. Now being married and having a child of my own, I see even more how important my decision was. So next time you see that post you or hear that person talk about something you disagree with or cannot understand, rather than tune them out, listen and try and see it from that point-of-view. One, you may learn something and two, you might have just been handed an opportunity to be empathetic…and therefore…a leader. |
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