What stories are you telling your people? Do you know what stories are you telling yourself?

The finance and banking industry has long used the analogies of Bull or Bear to describe the market and its leaders have been known to use military metaphors to ‘inspire the troops’. Perhaps it is time to come up with some more creative metaphors, particularly in Asia where there is a strong tradition of passing on wisdom through story?

From a Self-leadership perspective, personal metaphors are extremely important in terms of motivation and achieving objectives. I remember coaching one senior manager who described his situation as, “It feels like I am clearing snow from my driveway whilst my neighbour is shovelling it back on!” Contrast this with another leader who had become frustrated with the status quo and indecision around an important issue for his global function; he told me, “I am throwing red paint balls at the wall, so now the discussion is no longer what colour to paint the wall, but how do we finish painting it red?”

Personally I am fond of using sailing for a metaphor and if you have ever sailed you will know that it requires knowledge and skill to harness the natural elements which are constantly shifting. You must ‘set your sails’ and then work the rudder and sheets (ropes connected to the sails) to achieve the optimum speed and direction. If you pull on the sheets too hard you can capsize the boat, if you let them go slack you will flap around and go nowhere. I was talking to a senior leader recently who had achieved quite a substantial goal and was now just ‘going through the motions’; we chatted about what, on the horizon, he would need to focus on to cause him to tighten the sheets and really set sail again. After some reflection this senior leader realised that he could now focus on transforming the culture of his organisation from a ‘dog-eat-dog’ experience to one where objectives could be met through collaboration.

After the global financial crisis has anything changed? The story certainly has. Just keep kicking the debt down the road expecting growth to take care of things has gone from a fairytale to a nightmare. There’s a new game afoot, a game with tighter rules, a game where we are rewarded by adding value and we do this by thinking strategically but by being flexible in the present. This is not a game for amateurs but a game for professionals who can learn and unlearn to suit the changing circumstances. So the game is on, will you lead or will you follow?

Self-leadership

It should be no surprise that as the author of a Self Leadership blog that I think it is critical that Senior Managers begin to master their Self-leadership. Self-motivation, Self-direction and Self-regulation enable the manager to ‘walk the talk’ and be a positive influence to those that they lead.

Transformational Leadership

Much of management is transactional; setting goals, giving feedback and achieving business objectives. A senior manager must continue to do these things whilst also being transformational. Transformational leadership is about creating and communicating a vision of “What can be”. Transformational leaders focus on people and the environment (culture) to achieve extraordinary results.

People Leadership

Senior Managers realise that they can’t get the job done without hiring, retaining and developing the right people. As a manager this is often handed off to HR but critical skills include coaching and mentoring as well as a deep understanding of what drives people and how to motivate them. Effective leaders know how to “read” people and use this skill to positively influence outcomes.

Creating a Positive Performing Culture

We are strongly influenced by our environment and the people around us, it is therefore critical that the Senior Leader understands how to create a positive performing culture. Cultures can be subtle or obvious but we usually know what counts for success in any situation. By purposefully acknowledging and validating the behaviours that count, the senior manager can create high performing teams and an environment where people want to work and exercise Self-leadership.

Obviously these ideas are just a broad overview, if you would like to take a deeper dive, why not contact Self Leadership International or attend our program in Singapore on October 12-14, 2011.

Most people I speak to have a negative perspective of politics, they associate it with backstabbing and pushing your own agenda at a cost to others. I have a different perspective; my experience is that business politics is about human nature and to ignore it is to ignore reality. In a perfect world the best workers would be promoted on merit alone and the best ideas would be adopted regardless of personal interest – but we do not live in Utopia we live in the real world. If you want to survive and prosper in the real world you need to combine good work with smart politics.

The term ‘Machiavellian’ is often used to negatively label those who have mastered the Art of Politics in Businesss but this may be paying a disservice to Nicolo Machievelli ( 1469 -1527) who wrote a handbook for politics and human nature called “The Prince”. I read The Prince as a young man but I recommend that my coaching clients read “The New Machievelli” by Alistair McAlpine. McAlpine’s book is a practical and readable guide to mastering the Art of Politics in which he explains why:

• Loyalty is not a reliable factor in the workplace
• Great power is held by the “little people” in a business
• It is better to spread power than to centralise it
• You should never believe your own publicity

I have just picked up the book again and was impressed by how Machievelli’s description of an ideal leader is as relevant today as it was in the fifteenth century. He suggest a natural leaders will:

• Be guided by as sense of morality, he/she has a philosophy for life and business
• Be able to assess the loyalty of his followers as well as demonstrate loyalty to them
• Be trustworthy and be known to be trustworthy
• Be fair; even if the leader has to make an unpopular decision, if it is fair he/she will be respected
• Be able to accurately judge a follower’s ability
• Always act in a way that commands respect and beyond that, respect others
• Resist trading old friends for new
• Never shirk responsibility or fail to express gratitude to others
• Look after their own health, have a balance of mind body and spirit

Finally a leader must have a sense of their own place in history, for that will ensure wellbeing.

Much of what Machievelli is advocating here has been validated by modern research, Kouzes and Posner imediately spring to mind. What is refreshing is that Machievelli accepts that these are ideals that we should look for in those that we follow and aspire to develop in ourselves. How did you do with the list?

Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity. Shared-leadership allows team members to influence peers, superiors and sub-ordinates with the objective to lead one another to innovation and the achievement of high performance objectives.

In this video, inspirational speaker, Andrew Bryant shares a contingent model for developing leaders with self-leadership.

“Why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts, and thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are?”- Plato

Self-leadership begins with self-observation, which means noticing our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Self-observation is like checking the instruments of an airplane to ensure it is flying level and on course. By checking in on ourselves we can make adjustments which allow us to be more purposeful and effective.

Self-observation, also known as introspection, contemplation and self-reflection is simple but not always easy. When we observe we find it difficult not to judge and self-judgment can be painful because So many of us have been taught or conditioned in childhood that we’re not good, we’re lacking, we’re not good enough. And so that makes us very reluctant to look at ourselves.

Self-observation should not be confused with your super-ego which may have been programmed by authority figures or religion to guilt and shame us when we have certain thoughts. Many religions have a very limited application of self-observation; because they “know” what’s right and wrong they have a list of sinful thoughts, feelings and behaviours to look out for.

Self-observation in a self-leadership context is about making a commitment to learn the truth about yourself and your world, no matter what it is. This requires comparing, but not judging, our thoughts, feelings and behaviours with feedback we get from the world around us so that we don’t get caught up in our own fantasies and biases.

Self-observation is about when, why and under what condition you exhibit certain behaviours; questions to ask yourself include:

• What do I think/ feel about this?
• How is my body responding? (stress, relaxation, pleasure etc)
• What am I paying attention to?
• What am I paying undue attention to?
• What are my distractions?
• What are my biases?
• What am I unaware of?
• Am I focused on problems or opportunities?

Self-observation is about how you run your psychological machinery; “What’s going on? What’s behind that? What else can I learn about this?” This enquiry must be undertaken with the commitment to accept whatever you learn about yourself; to quote a maxim. “The truth will set you free.”

Allow me to share a concrete example. Recently I was in a meeting with a potential client for my consulting services; the client had kept me waiting, shown me into an interview room and then said, “Tell me about yourself”. I asked if they had heard of my work or read the bio data that had been sent to them, the responded with, “no we are just looking for some vendors”. At this I felt myself becoming angry and indignant, I noticed the muscles of my jaw becoming tense and my mouth dry. My self-observation noted that my ego had been threatened and that I had been labelled a vendor when I preferred to work as a partner in creating solutions. Self-observation allowed me to notice all of this before I engaged in a behaviour that would have guaranteed me not getting the contract. At this point I was able to use another self-leadership strategy to shift my thinking and feeling to a calmer place and build rapport.

So how do you get good at self-observation? Isn’t this likely to lead to being self-obsessed are two questions I am often asked. The answers are as follows;

To get good at self-observation requires practice, the practice to check in non-judgmentally. Try this, look at your watch for 5 minutes without distraction.

You will probably find this quite challenging because you experience all sorts of distractions and judgements such as, “this is taking a long time”, “Has my watched stopped?””This is a waste of time.”etc.

Now spend five-minutes just sitting and observing the world around you, and accept every little thing that comes along without judgement. You might hear the ticking of a clock, the sound of an air-conditioner or feel how the chair is supporting you and whether you are moving to get comfortable. As you notice all the sensory data that comes your way, just accept it as information without judgement.

When you can do this you can begin to regularly and especially when you notice you are feeling stressed. Start with noticing, what am I thinking about this? What am I feeling abut this? What are my behavioural choices about this?

Through self-observation you may find you making some changes to your actions and reactions or you will be ready to apply other self-leadership strategies.

So does self-observation make you self-obsessed? Quite the contrary, once you accept the truth about yourself you are much more accepting of those around you and so you can build much more robust relationships.

Remember, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

The ideal Mentee is:

High potential, commmited to their career, hungry to learn and disciplined enough to execute what they have learned.

In short, the ideal mentee is leadership material.

An ideal Mentor is:  

• Someone who has experience in field (they have been there before).
• Someone interested in developing others.
• Someone prepared to take another by the hand and guide them through the territory.
• Someone who asks questions that the mentee doesn’t ask themselves but ought to.
• Someone trustworthy who inspires confidence.
• Someone who will be there in time of need.

The Mentor needs to develop the following skills

1. Supporting
2. Listening
3. Validating growth and development (Cheer leading)
4. Questioning
5. Giving feedback to behaviours and skills
6. Guiding and offering perspective

At our mentor trainings we work on all these skills, but perhaps the most difficult is questioning. Questioning, because the art of mentoring is in the balance between guiding and self-discovery. In medicine, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice; it is therefore essential for the mentor to fully understand the mentee and their situation before offering advice. What worked for the mentor might not work for the mentee or their situation.

After asking questions the mentor can use his or her experience to point out ‘traps for young players’ such as misplaced priorities and pot holes that the mentee has not yet seen. An important role for the mentor is to help the mentee align their goals and values to those of the organization. Ultimately, the mentoring relationship can only be successful when the mentee takes their destiny in their own hands and takes action to achieve their goals.

The Principle of Mentoring

The principle of mentoring is to balance challenge with support. Too much challenge with not enough support and the mentee shuts down. Too much support and not enough challenge and the mentee just feels validated in their status quo.

If the mentor does too much for the mentee, they may actually compromise the mentees ability to reach their full potential. Ideally, when the correct frame of mind is identified the mentee will facilitate the mentee to integrate that and to take action.

Questioning

Here some ‘starter’ questions to use when mentoring.

• What do you want to get out of this session?
• What are your career objectives?
•  What is happening for you now?
• How do you know this?
• How do you feel about what is going on?
• What judgments are you making about people, the company or this situation?
• What have you learned from that?
• What do you most need from me right now?
• What questions does that raise?
• What result do you want?
• What options are open to you now?
• What is your biggest difficulty or problem?
• How can I help you move forwards on this issue?
• Can you think of three options for action?
• What are the pros and cons of each of these options?
• What first steps are you going to take before our next meeting?
• Whose responsibility is it to make this happen?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to do this action?

Mentoring is NOT telling someone what to do or just giving advice. When the Mentor asks questions they allow the Mentee to reflect and synthesise and prepares them to apply new behaviours.

Done well, mentoring is beneficial for the mentor, the mentee and the organisation in terms of engagement, sharing  of knowledge and most importantly developing future leaders.

Done badly, mentoring becomes a chore for senior managers and increases the cynicism of would be high potentials. For more on this read the post, ‘Does Singapore Lack Leadership Skills?’

The 7%, 38%, 55% Myth

You may be familiar with the above statistics which are regularly rolled out by communication trainers to make the point that tonality (38%) and body language/facial expressions (55%) are important in getting your message across. The irony is that people, who I believe should know better, are promoting a myth by quoting statistics without knowing what they mean.

Think about it. If verbal communication only accounts for 7% of a message then we could all communicate by mime, charades would be easy and we could watch foreign language films with the sub-titles turned off.

Try this: Turn to a friend or colleague and try to communicate without words, “I feel deeply about global warming because I feel as humans we have a responsibility to our environment and the generations that follow us.” It’s not possible but according to some so-called specialists we should be able to get 93% of this message across.

Words are very important, they create meaning. We can use words to inspire, motivate and to reframe toxic or unresourceful mindsets. As a professional speaker and executive coach I would be lost without words.

The Truth about Tonality and Facial Expression

I am grateful for ad article published in Anchor Point by Dr. C. E. “Buzz” Johnson who investigated the origin of the the 7-38-55% myth.

The originator of the 7-38-55 theory was Albert Mehrabian, Ph.D of UCLA. He speaks of it in two books, Silent Messages published in 1971, and Nonverbal Communications published in 1972. In these two books, he refers to research projects which were published in various professional journals.  .

Mehrabrian was interested in how we decode inconsistent messages such as whether we like or dislike something and found that the facial component of communication carried a 2/3 waiting to the verbal 1/3.  Consider having to say you like your hosts cooking when it tastes like burnt rubber.

The Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1967, Vol. 31. No. 3 contains a description of an experiment using the neutral word “Maybe”.

Three female speakers were tape recorded saying that word while varying their tone of voice so as to communicate three different attitudes (i.e., like, neutral, and dislike) towards an imagined addressee. Then the tapes were listened to by 17 female subjects with instructions to imagine that the speaker is saying this word to another person and judged by the tones what the speaker’s attitude is towards that imaginary addressee. So there was no direct feedback by anyone who was being addressed. It was a number of third-party listeners who were asked to mind-read, guess, interpret, imagine, etc., how the speaker felt towards someone who wasn’t even there and, in fact, didn’t even exist. There was no way to see or hear the reactions of this phantom individual, about whom someone was going to make several long-lasting and powerful speculations.

Next, black and white photographs were taken of three female models as they attempted to use facial expressions to communicate like, neutrality, and dislike towards another person. Then photos were shown to the same 17 subjects with the instructions that they would be shown the pictures and at the same time hear a recording of the word “maybe” spoken in different tones of voice. “You are to imagine that the person you see and hear (A) is looking at and talking to another person (B).” For each presentation they were to indicate on a rating scale what they thought A’s attitude was toward B. Again, third-party mind-reading with no direct contact with the person addressed, B, because that person was non-existent. The conclusions from this experiment were that the facial components were stronger than the vocal by the ratio of 3/2. This research combined with another from the Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 1967, Vol. 6, No. 1 on Decoding of Inconsistent Communications created the .07, .38, and .55 coefficients.

Improving your Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

Remember the research projects were limited to a single word not words but when communicating we must remember that our facial expressions and tone give listeners clues as to how to decode our message.

The old addage – “It’s not what you say it’s how you say it.” Should be updated to, “It’s what you say AND how you say it.”

To get you message across; get your facts right, make a connection between your facts and what they mean to you and your audience, and let your face and hands show you believe it.

If you are interested in developing your communication or presentation skills you can visit www.selfleadership.com.sg

You know the symptoms; you are sitting in a slightly darkened room and the speaker drones on in a montone whilst showing you slide after slide, dot point after dot point, spreadsheets you can’t read and before you know it your eyelids feel heavy and your consciousness floats away.

Power Point is a powerful tool that is often misused and yet with a little preparation can bring your presentation to life and free you to inform and inspire your audience.

I trust you enjoyed the short YouTube video above. For more information about presentation skill training and coaching, visit www.selfleadership.com.sg

When I teach a programs on influence or influence without authority, I ask participants to create a circle of influence like the diagram below.

I then ask them to put ticks or crosses, representing ability or inability to influence, against each circle.  Obviously some circles will need sub-circles to represent individual key people. This is a useful exercise to map out where you need to develop or strengthen your influence.

In a modern matix style organisation, your success will be determined not just by what you do, but by what you can influence others to do. The effective manager/leader learns to find out what is important to the people in their circle of influence and communicates to them in terms of what matters them rather than directly stating their own needs.

Another previous post, titled ‘Leadeship is Influence’ expands on finding needs and looks at what are people’s currencies. When you know what is valuable, a currency, to another person you can trade them what they want for what you want.

I have been coaching a senior manager who had a history of antagonising clients and colleagues alike by telling them what he thinks is the right thing to do. We had discussed this  and he had commited to stop “telling” and start finding out what’s important to the people in his circle. This week he reported a dramatic improvement in his relationship and that he was getting things done quicker. This result surprised him because he thought it would take longer to ask questions than to tell people what seem to him to be an obvious solution.

Have you drawn a circle of influence? Do you know the currencies of the people you work with? Are you exercising all the influence you could?

Feel free to let me know.