Issue No. 524 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a new WSJ bestseller on the five conversations for unlocking creativity, purpose, and results. It’s already a Top-10 pick for 2022! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”
Leading with Heart suggests a team exercise. Give nine Post-its to each person: "...ask everyone to write one important or quirky need they have from each category of need.”
How to Coach Perfectionists, People Pleasers, and Imposters!
What do CEOs fear? A study of 116 CEOs revealed that most executives have deep-seated fears. “While few executives talk about them, deep and private fears can spur defensive behaviors that undermine how they and their colleagues set and execute company strategy.”
That’s from The Wall Street Journal bestseller, Leading with Heart. The authors quote a Harvard Business Review article that documents how these fears often fuel dysfunctional behavior. (Read “What CEOs Are Afraid Of.”)
So how do your fears (and the fears of your CEO) impact your organization’s future? “What fears are holding you back?” is one of “Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results” in this powerful book by two very savvy executive coaches, John Baird and Edward Sullivan. Leading with Heart says “there are three typical fear archetypes that leaders fall into, one for each of the fear responses: fight, flight, and freeze. Each archetype has an unexpressed underlying fear, as well as a ‘tell,’ a way of behaving that we can see quite plainly from the outside.”
The authors spotlight three CEOs (changing their names, of course):
• Chris: THE PERFECTIONIST. She freezes and her “tell” is “chronic indecision and nitpicking.” For her, it’s the “fear of getting it wrong.”
• Andre: THE PEOPLE PLEASER. “Flight” is his fear response and his “tell” is “conflict avoidance and craving consensus.” For Andre, it’s the “fear of not belonging or being accepted.”
• Luis: THE IMPOSTER. He fights and his “tell” is “arrogance, anger, and irritability." Luis fears “being seen as incompetent.”
Yikes! Recognize anyone? These archetypes are not uncommon, but many executives are blind to their own blindness. “Of the five Leading with Heart conversations, this is often the hardest one to have and create change around.” But there’s good news: you can make fear your ally and the authors suggest some very practical steps.
This is an important book—phenomenal, really. The power of coaching oozes throughout the chapters. It reminded me of my early CEO years—and how coaching could have transformed my leadership. (See Chapters 12 to 15 in Mastering Mistaking-Making.)
Do you want results? Focus on these five conversations (five chapters):
1) What do you need to be at your best?
2) What fears are holding you back?
3) What desires drive you, and which might derail you?
4) What are your greatest gifts?
5) What is your purpose?
Page after page, you’ll find dozens of delightful surprises, helpful pokes-in-the-ribs, PowerPoint-worthy quotes, and amazing, amazing exercises! (The authors generously give the store away with dozens of exercises and group facilitation ideas. Stunning!) Plus, it’s jam-packed with probing questions in every chapter. You’ll appreciate:
#1. STAND UP FOR YOUR NEEDS EXERCISE. Give each team member nine Post-its (3 each of 3 colors) and “then ask everyone to write one important or quirky need they have from each category of need.” Example: physical needs (maybe use a yellow Post-it), emotional needs (peach), and environmental needs (lime).
The facilitator posts them, by category, on a whiteboard or wall. Then the group sits in a circle, “and the facilitator goes through each of the needs in every category, saying, ‘Stand up if you need _______ to feel creative, productive, or safe.'” (What happens, the authors note, “…is that people start standing up for needs they didn’t even write down.” Read more on how this exercise helps foster a safe place for conversations.)
#2. “I HAVE A LEFT-HAND COMMENT.” How often are team members thinking, but not saying something in a meeting? The concept: “…the right-hand column contains all the things that are easy to say—all the ideas and comments that don’t rock the boat. The left-hand column is where potential conflict lives. It’s the pushback, the probing question, the nagging doubt that often goes unsaid.” When someone announces, “I have a left-hand comment,” everyone in the room “snaps to attention” because even though it is hard to say, it’s worth saying. Brilliant!
#3. “THE TEMPERATURE READING.” One way to develop a “fear-naming habit is to embed it into other exercises.” At the beginning of any meeting, just ask three simple questions:
• “What or whom are you grateful for today?
• What are you worried or concerned about?
• What are your hopes and wishes for this meeting?”
#4. CEOs: THE ONE QUESTION. In the chapter, “What Are Your Greatest Gifts?” the authors name names with the permission of many well-known CEOs. (Reminder: they are premier executive coaches.) In a coaching session, Sullivan observed that Ariane Goldman, CEO of maternity fashion brand Hatch, “was spending all of her time putting out the flames of fears and tending to the organization’s low-level needs.” In a coaching session, he asked her, “What is one thing you alone can do at this company?”
• Goldman: “Strategic and creative direction.”
• Executive Coach: “And how are you spending your time?”
• Goldman: (silence…)
“Ariane was spending 90 percent of her time on the ‘small stuff’ that zapped her energy. She wasn’t giving herself the space to feel creative.” She was also consumed by fears of failure. Yet, inspired by her executive coach, she was able to integrate the issues addressed in the “five conversations” and began leveraging her gifts. And this summary: “The more we get the flywheel of expressing our gifts spinning, the more our needs are met, and so on. It’s a system that builds upon itself.”
#5. ODE TO THE RELUCTANT LEADER. The authors comment on the engineer and/or the designer who builds something—and then becomes the reluctant CEO who “does not have enough desire for power and does not do a good job giving employees power, status, and recognition.” Good news: there is hope for those who “now find themselves leaders by circumstance, rather than by design.” (Read “Which Desires Drive You, and Which Might Derail You.”)
#6. OVERPLAYING YOUR GIFTS. Yikes! Is your CEO or any of your senior team members like “Aaron,” a force of a nature—a machine—yet a “diminisher” (a term coined by Liz Wiseman in Multipliers). “…diminishers tap into just 50 percent of their capabilities by micromanaging, telling people what to do, hoarding all the decision-making power, and generally underusing the brilliant people they painstakingly hire.” Why? “…they are often overplaying their gifts.”
It's only July, but Leading with Heart is already on my Top-10 list of books for 2022. If you’re a consultant (or a consultant wanna-be)—it’s a must-read.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results, by John Baird and Edward Sullivan. Listen on Libro.fm (8 hours, 8 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending a review copy.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Try this at your next staff meeting! When Edward Sullivan’s prof in the “Exercising Leadership” course at the Harvard Kennedy School quizzically sat down during an early class session, “apparently refusing to lead the class any longer,” chaos ensued as students wondered if the prof was orchestrating “Lord of the Flies meets Survivor.” It’s another must-read section in the chapter, “What Are Your Greatest Gifts?” On the last day of class, the prof circled back to that chaotic class session—and Sullivan experienced a profound insight about himself (see pages 173-177, “Claiming the Gifts Born from Our Pain.”) When is the last time you truly injected stunning creativity and deep learning into your weekly staff meeting? (Read this book!)
2) Yikes! The authors warn, “Many companies that have amazing perks actually have horrible cultures. The posh benefits are often a weak attempt to make up for the fact that people no longer see their families, live in fear of their managers, or receive no encouragement or praise. It’s sad, but true.” (Read the final chapter, including the section, “Cultural Perks Are the Only Ones That Matter.”) Pop Quiz! List the “cultural perks” here in our organization.
The author of The Coaching Habit says the best coaching question in the world is the AWE question: “And What Else?”
Why We Need Coaches: We are pitifully blind to our own behavioral tics!
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—and What I Learned (The 10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson - Order from Amazon.
Here are four books to remind you that, as Marshall Goldsmith notes, smart, successful people are pitifully blind to their own behavioral tics and “the higher you go, the more your problems are behavioral.”
[ ] What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter (John’s 2013 Book-of-the-Year: read the review)
[ ] The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier (read John’s review)
[ ] Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—and What I Learned (The 10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. See “Part 4: Every Leader Needs a Coach, Especially Leaders Who Endorse Coaching Books!” - Mistakes #12, #13, #14, and #15. (Download the table of contents and order the book here.)
[ ] Christian Coaching, Second Edition: Helping Others Turn Potential into Reality, by Gary R. Collins, Ph.D. (Order from Amazon) – Note: Gary Collins (1934-2021) opens his chapter on “Coaching Through Change” with LOL headlines: “Bill Clinton Appointed Head Coach of Miami Dolphins.” “Mother Teresa Named General Motors CEO.” And “Michael Jordan to Pastor Megachurch!” (No…you can’t be anything you want to be!)
10 FATAL FLAWS! “Accepting mediocre performance in place of excellent results” is one of “10 Fatal Flaws That Consistently Lead to Failure in Leadership” in the helpful book, The New Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders (3rd Edition), by John Zenger and Joseph Folkman. Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog.
JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are some of your key marketing and communications team members “overplaying their gifts”—to the detriment and disappointment of other team members who don’t get to fully leverage their gifts? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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