How Did I Not See This Coming?

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One thing is clear to everyone who has been exposed to management… management is tough. In this book, Katy Tynan speaks about the misconceptions that many new managers have regarding what management is all about. Told in the form of a story, it follows the journey of fictitious character, Julie, a recently promoted team leader in a software development company. She’s just run head-on into a brick wall realizing that, even with the best of intentions, she has been doing things wrong.

Most new managers approach their new role optimistically. They believe that all they need to do is work harder and stay on top of all the tasks their team is responsible for. They aren’t thinking about leading a team, they are thinking about keeping track of a lot of tasks.

The first thing Julie learns is that it’s less about tasks, and more about articulating a sense of shared purpose, or a vision. Consider the values that your team members have in common, and how your work contributes to the goals of the whole company. Having a clear understanding of that purpose and vision is the key to prioritization, and to resolving conflicts.

The second challenge most new managers face is the realization that they don’t (and probably can’t) know everything. Before becoming a manager, you may have been an expert in a certain area, but once you make the transition, it’s not about expertise. It’s about your ability to help the people on your team do their best work. Managers most often need to focus on the “what” and not the “how”, which means leaving the details up to your team.

This leads to the third thing that Julie discovers in her journey. While most people who become managers know that goals are an important tool for tracking a team’s progress, they sometimes overlook how important it is to not just have goals but to align them with the vision and with the needs of the people on the team. It’s important to master the mechanics of setting and tracking goals, but they won’t get you very far if they aren’t connected to the larger objectives of the team and of the organization.

Goals are a little like ingredients when you’re cooking. If you go to the grocery store and pick up a random selection of vegetables, you can throw them all in a pot with some water or stock, and you will end up with something that looks like soup. But if you want to make a specific kind of soup, you have to get the right ingredients, combine them with the right spices and cook them for the right amount of time.

The fourth secret is that we all make mistakes. Sometimes it’s a project that goes off the rails. Other times it’s a tough day that makes you lose your cool when your goal as a manager is to have a calm and stable demeanor. The truth is that nobody is perfect and putting pressure on yourself to be perfect or feeling like a failure when you make a mistake is not going to help you in a management role. Keeping your focus on learning from mistakes and fostering a culture of learning rather than a culture of blame is one of the most positive changes you can make in your approach to leadership.

The fifth truth that Julie learns about management is about trust. Leadership comes from mutual trust. Trust is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Your team has to believe that they can trust you to keep your commitments, to tell them the truth and to go to bat for them if need be. You have to trust that your team members are doing their best, that they care about the work they do and the team as a whole. When trust breaks down, it becomes almost impossible to achieve any goal, no matter how well-aligned or constructed it is.

So to sum it up, this book covers five key truths about management:

  1. Vision: Define the values your team shares and measure everything against those values.
  2. Team: Know the strengths of your team members and focus on clearing the obstacles to their success.
  3. Goals: Focus on the output and recognize achievement.
  4. Learn and Adapt: Develop the habit of learning from each day’s work and focus on growth vs. perfection.
  5. Trust: Without trust there is no team.

This is a great book for new managers. There are many takeaways from this book and can only be acquired by getting a copy. It’s an invaluable tool and a great investment that you’ll not regret.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Most new managers go into the role with good intentions, but they don’t know what they need to do differently to be a great leader. New managers need training and support to make the transition successfully.

Key point #2: The most important thing a new manager needs to do is create a vision and clearly articulate how the work the team does ties into that vision. From top to bottom, everything the team does needs to support those shared goals.

Key point #3: Today’s work environment is constantly changing. We all need to learn new skills and have a growth oriented mindset to be successful. The manager’s role is to facilitate that learning process, and to create an environment of trust where people can feel safe enough to learn and grow.

 

One Last Thing

The distinction between leading and managing is important. Managing consists of overseeing people who work for you, along with their time and money. Leading refers to your ability to influence and motivate those you oversee; you lead their energy. A great leader understands the difference and balances both. ~Anonymous

Zilch – The Power of Zero in Business

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Nancy Lublin is the founder of Dress for Success and the CEO of the youth volunteering organization, Do Something. In her book, she draws out her concept on how to do more with less of everything, especially human and financial resources while still upholding innovation, creativity and passion. In a time when best-known companies have become non-for-profit organizations because of their dysfunctional models. There are many things profit-oriented organizations can learn from the not-for-profit organization. The challenge of not- for- profit organizations has been thriving in a tough environment where there is not enough money, people or time. This book focuses on how to do something with brand, people, finance and their suppliers.

Lublin addresses the structure and operating practice of the organization. She felt that unless an organization changes its operating model, the chance of survival is low. She decided to transition from operating out of physical offices in different cities to become online organization using social media. By transitioning, it could be faster in delivering its service and cheaper in its operating model. It could also be an organization that is web and social media based and doesn’t require local adult involvement on projects or charge people money to become a member. Nancy explained the five qualities she uses when screening ideas before acting on them: 1) First 2) Only 3) Faster 4) Better 5) Cheaper

Lublin went further to offer ways by which organizations can increase the value of their brand by focusing on hard work and not just marketing. She encourages leveraging on social media to support operations and growth. She also shares advice on ways in which organizations can get more out of their staff and the board of directors to bring value to the organization and not just showing up for meetings throughout the year. This can be done by creating organizational mission and culture where everyone feels like they are part of something big. It is amazing how motivated the employees will be. If there is something more important than profit at stake, it makes everyone more devote and engaged to success. You need to make everyone in the organization pursue the same purpose and develop an organization that communicates its mission.  

 

She proposes that companies should broaden their understanding of reward and compensation so that employees will be motivated and also offer great techniques for extracting the best from people like offering skill development, set specific and attainable goals, give millennials responsibility early, dole out titles and make your work environment communicate your mission etc.  She also shares advice on branding, doing more for customers, stretching finances and many more. She concluded each chapter with eleven questions to prompt creativity in specific areas.

According to Nancy, doing more with less is not so easy but the ideas in Zilch can make it a little easier to do. This book distills the best practice any company, private or public, can adopt.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Money does not make people work hard, everything else does.

Key point #2:  Make everyone in your company pursue a corporate goal.

Key point #3:  Leverage on social media for operation and growth.

One Last Thing

The way I think about culture is that modern humans have radically changed the way that they work and the way that they live. Companies need to change the way they manage and lead to match the way that modern humans actually work and live.”

– Brian Halligan, CEO, Hubspot

The Art of Thinking Clearly

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The Art of Thinking Clearly translates complicated results from cognitive bias experiments, interprets and synthesizes them into short, easy to understand summaries.  Humans experience diverse reasoning patterns out of which many are limitations to logical thinking. Most cognitive errors made by humans are standard and can be identified when you know what you have been and are dealing with.

Knowing these will help you to minimize them, and then you can open yourself up to logical alternatives. The author opens up the reader’s mind to human psychology, reasoning and how to avoid cognitive errors for better decision making.

Among the logical errors, Dobelli explores survivorship bias or systematic overestimation of the chances for success and social proof or feeling that an action or decision is right because a lot of people are doing it. You come across survivorship bias when dealing with money and risk. It becomes especially pernicious when you become a member of the winning team. The author suggests an amazing solution to help clear your mind against survivorship bias, which is a frequent visitation of graves of once-promising projects, career and investment.

Clustering Illusion: When it comes to recognizing a pattern, we are oversensitive. However, it is best to regain your skepticism. If you or someone, close to you, thinks you have found a pattern, first take in consideration that may be pure chance. If it seems too reasonable to be true, see a mathematician and have the data tested statistically.

Social Proof:  It dictates that individuals tend to think they are behaving correctly as long as they act the same as other people.  In other words, the more people follow a particular idea, the better we think the idea is, and therefore support it.

Outcome Bias: Attributing positive outcomes to our capabilities and blaming external issues on external circumstances. This attribute was tested by having two groups of subjects take a personality test then arbitrarily assigning good or bad scores. The students with positive outcome believed the test results were fair and reflected their abilities. The students with the not so good score, on the other hand, found the test was garbage and didn’t reflect their personality. An excellent way to overcome your judgment is to listen to honest feedback and to learn from it without taking it personally.

An illusion of attention:  We often think that we notice everything around us but this couldn’t be farther from reality. As a Harvard study found, it is easier to lose attention than what we think. The experiment had subjects watch a video of students passing balls back and forth while counting how many times the player in white shirts passed the ball.  Later they were asked if there was something unusual that caught their attention. Half of the subjects did not notice anything unusual, unaware of the fact that in the middle of the video, someone dressed as a gorilla walked across the room pounding his chest. We tend to remember things which happen at the beginning and end of a stream of information forgetting what comes in the middle.

Lastly, amongst others is alternative blindness. Whenever people think about an offer, they become blind to alternatives. However, to be able to make the right decision, you have to go out of your mental limit.  

To overcome these cognitive errors in reasoning, we have to be aware of them and take a conscious effort to defeat them.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Cognitive biases cause simple errors in most of our day to day thinking.

Keypoint #2: Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Therefore, make decisions based on facts, only lazy minds are comfortable with the illusion that perception is reality, perception is perception, reality is reality.

Keypoint #3: We are drunk on our own ideas. To sober up, take a step back now and then and examine their quality in hindsight.

 

One Last Thing

“If you ever find yourself in a tight, unanimous group, you must speak your mind, even if your team does not like it.”

― Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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Patrick Lencioni is an American writer who specializes in business management books, specifically in relation to team management. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team describes a pyramid of five layers which represent the maturity of a team. The maturity in which the team interacts is commonly known as teamwork. The layers are connected in a way that a team becomes more effective when moving  from the bottom layer to the top layer. The author reveals the basics of teamwork by using a leadership story, a fable of a technology company that is scraping to grow and find customers. As the team attempts to work through issues and make progress, the five dysfunctions of their team becomes very clear:

1- Absence of Trust

2- Fear of Conflict

3- Lack of Commitment

4- Avoidance of Accountability

5- Inattention to Results

Understanding these five dysfunctions is the first and most important step to reducing misunderstanding and confusion within a team.

ABSENCE OF TRUST:  The primary cause of the absence of trust is rooted in the inability of team members to show their weakness and be vulnerable with each other. The absence of trust is one of the most damaging traits in team dysfunctionality. A great deal of energy is wasted when team members invest their time in defensive behavior and are hesitant to ask for help or to offer help. Teams can overcome this dysfunction by creating an environment that encourages the sharing of experiences, following through with commitments to demonstrate credibility and developing strong insight into the distinctive characteristics of team members.

FEAR OF CONFLICT: Teams that lack trust are hindered from having a passionate debate about things that matter. This causes a team to replace conflict with artificial harmony. Understanding that conflict can be productive is highly essential when working with a team and can help a team overcome their fear of conflict.

LACK OF COMMITMENT: People are more willing to take on tasks when their opinion is included in the decision-making process. Productive teams make joint and transparent decisions and are confident that they have the support of other team members. It is only natural that when people do not feel committed to the outcome of a result, they feel less responsible for it. The commitment of team members exists when each member has the chance to offer their opinion. This can only be done comfortably when there is a warm environment. People will also be more open to allowing others talk to them about their responsibilities.

AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: You can’t have accountability when a team doesn’t commit. People rarely hold each other accountable if they haven’t bought into the plan. Considering a well-organized team, it is the responsibility of the team members to hold each other accountable and accept responsibility when necessary. Often, success is measured by the level of progress. The WHAT, HOW, WHEN and WHY must be clearly communicated to the team.

INATTENTION TO RESULTS: When team members are not held accountable, they will often defer to looking out for their own personal interests rather than the team’s interest. A team can only become results oriented when all team members are focused on the team’s results rather than their own. In this regard, the primary role of a leader in overcoming this dysfunction is to set the tone for the team and lead by example. To prevent this dysfunction, you must start from the bottom of the pyramid and build trust between team members. The easiest way to get someone to trust you is to be authentic and reliable. Always do what you say and people will see you as a master of your words.

Patrick Lencioni wraps it up by describing how to improve a team’s result: by celebrating successes, discussing what is most important for the organization and addressing the most critical challenges of the team. In doing so, it encourages team members in a difficult situation to choose the company goal over their own personal goal.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: There are five dysfunctions of a team.

Key point #2: Leaders can overcome these dysfunctions by setting the tone and leading by example.

Key point #3: Successful teamwork is about combining common sense with an uncommon level of discipline and persistence.

One last thing

“Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think. Simply put, politics have no place in a functional team.”

― Patrick Lencioni

Resonate

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Resonate explores deep into the art of presenting and analyzing what makes a presentation persuasive and memorable. The knowledge of Resonate will raise your game in the art of creating a compelling and convincing presentation. In this book, Nancy Duarte drives the reader through the use of story principle to hold the audience’s attention. She successfully makes a case for:

1- Placing your audience at the center of the story.

2- Seeing yourself as a mentor instead of a hero.

3- Building a workable call-to-action.

4- How famous communicators structure their ideas and most moving speeches.

Nancy advocates a new attitude towards presenting. She believes you need to see your audience as the HERO. Your presentation should not center around your brilliance or the brilliance of your company, but rather you should cast your audience as the hero while you, the presenter, step into the role of a mentor. You should invite the audience to come on a journey with you, from an ordinary world to your special world. Nancy says, casting yourself as a mentor gives you both wisdom and humility.  Audience insight and resonance can only occur when a presenter takes a stance of humility. However, there is a gap between the audience’s ordinary world and your specialized world; it is your role to make the gap clear and invite the audience to take the leap across the gap. Before your audience can be willing to go on a journey with you, you must deliver a concise formulation of what everyone agrees is true. Accurately capturing the current reality and sentiments of the audience’s world demonstrates that you have insight and experience about their situation and that you understand their perspective, context and values.

Nancy also sees the use of contrast as being a primary way of engaging and holding an audience’s attention. If you attempt to play down the contrast so as not to stand out or attract resistance or objections from your audience, your presentation will be bland and boring. The author suggests that for every idea or point in your presentation, you should also think of a contrasting idea. You may not use them all in your presentation, but even thinking about them will be useful. Nancy also suggests that you perform an audit of your content to ensure there is an appropriate balance between analytical and emotional content. She reminds us that whenever we recommend change, either behavioral or organizational change, even if it is a positive change, your audience is likely to resist because change involves loss.

During your presentation, be ready for nitpicking of any errors in your language, cynical body language and outright hostile questions or statements from your audience. Prepare yourself by thinking through your audience’s position. Research has shown that acknowledging and countering opposing viewpoints is more persuasive than only presenting your view.

Of course, always create a memorable moment in your presentation. Nancy refers to this moment as the S.T.A.R. moment, Something They will Always Remember. Traditional public speaking advice has advocated that this moment should be at the start of your talk. However, Nancy suggests that the attention-grabbing and memorable moment can be at any time in your presentation. Your attention-grabbing-opening or moment must align and magnify your big idea and should be worthwhile and appropriate, not kitschy or cliché.

In conclusion, a presentation has the power to change the world. Changing your stance from that of a hero to one of the wise storyteller will connect the audience to your idea and an audience connected to your idea will bring wanted change.

The author helps the reader to present stories that transform them into visuals. This book is highly recommended for any level of presentation geeks, from the beginners to the experts. Every point in the book is supported by detailed analysis of many presentations and speeches, which admittedly, is one of my favorite parts of the book.

As a professional, presentation designs and delivery are one of the most exciting parts of my job. It is a chance to not only express artistically, but also to connect with others. Nancy Duarte’s work is amazing, as seen in her other books, Slideology and Illuminate. If you yearn to be a phenomenal communicator, start with Resonate and let your audience to be the hero.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key Point #1: Cast your audience as the hero and yourself, the presenter, as the mentor.

Key Point #2: Incorporate stories into your presentation  Having the right balance of logic and emotion is essential to bring your audience into your specialized world.

Key Point #3: A presentation has the power to change the world.

One last point

“The audience does not need to tune themselves to you; you need to tune your message to them. Skilled presenting requires you to understand their hearts and minds and create a message to resonate with what’s already there.”

        ― Nancy Duarte

The CEO Next Door

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The authors, Elena and Powell carried out groundbreaking research which reveals the common attributes and counterintuitive choices that set apart successful CEOs. The CEO Next Door draws on the most significant dataset of the CEOs in the world with the real habits of top leaders. Elena and Powell focus on the “four Genome behaviors” that separate great leaders from the rest.

  1. Great leaders are decisive. They make fewer decisions, make them faster and get better every time.
  2. Great leaders engage for impact. They lead with intent, understand the players and build relationships through routine.
  3. Great leaders are radically and relentlessly reliable. They embrace “the thrill of personal consistency,” set bold but realistic expectations, “stand up to be counted on,” and adopt the drills of highly reliable organizations”.
  4. Great leaders adapt Boldly. They ride the discomfort of the unknown, respect but are not a hostage of the past and build an antenna for the future.

Great leaders are women and men who hold themselves to very high standards for personal character and professional achievement. Only then can they hold others to the same very high standards. CEO Next Door debunks a host of popular myths about CEOs which has created a misconception about what a CEO is like. The authors set to eradicate the myth with facts that are derived from an impressive database of intensive interviews with executives. Some of the myths are:

  • CEOs are from Ivy league universities while the truth, based on research, is only 7% of CEOs graduated from Ivy league university. 8% of CEOs did not even have a college education
  • CEOs are destined for greatness from an early age while the truth is over 70% of the CEOs interviewed did not set out to be CEOs
  • CEOs have larger than life personality with enormous charisma and confidence while the fact is a third of the CEOs described themselves as introverted.
  • To become a CEO, you need a flawless resume while the truth is 45% of CEOs interviewed had at least one major blow up or mishap in their career.

The fact is, successful CEOs stood out for decisiveness itself- the ability to make decisions with speed and conviction. They make decisions with only 80% of the information available to them, and they reach out for others perspectives because they realize that all input is not created equal.

Drawing on an exceptional analysis of thousands of current and potential CEOs, they find that the best of the best share some similar traits. They may not come from outstanding schools, but they do know how to make smart decisions, adapt to changed circumstances and work honestly and directly with customers and employees. Culled from the breakthrough study of most successful people in business and illustrated by real-life stories from CEOs and boardrooms, The CEO Next Door offers career advice for anyone who aspires to get ahead. Botelho and Powell, utilizing research, tell us how to:

  • Fast-track careers by deploying the career catapults used by those who get to the top quickly.
  • Overcome the hidden handicaps to getting the job you want
  • Avoid the hazards that most commonly derail those promoted into a new role.

 

This book is recommended not only for the aspiring CEO, but for anyone who aspires to accelerate their career trajectory and looking to raise their leadership to a higher level.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: CEO Next Door uncovers Four Genome Behaviors of a CEO:decisive, engaging, reliable, and adaptable.

Key point #2: One of the greatest myth is that great CEOs are from Ivy league universities while the truth, based on research, is only 7% of CEOs graduated from Ivy league university. 8% of CEOs did not even have a college education.

Key point #3: One surprise is that 70% of the CEOs didn’t intend to become CEOs when they set out on their career paths, or even mid-tenure in their career. It was only when that role became within striking zone for them that it became a relevant career aspiration.

One last thing:

“Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.” - Ben Horowitz, CEO of Opsware

The 3rd Alternative

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Stephen Covey is the co-founder and Vice-chairman of Franklin Covey, a global professional service firm. He is a great author and a recipient of many awards, including eight honorary doctorate degrees and the National Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

The 3RD Alternative shows a way to solve life’s problems. There are two sides of most conflicts; the two opposing sides see their way as the best while another side as wrong. Stephen Covey refers to this as two alternative thinking. Problems are everywhere in the society; religion against science, white against black, liberal against conservative. Each side profoundly identifies their belief with what they believe. Therefore, when the belief is attacked, it is like their self-image is being attacked. Stephen Covey argues that this is why it is so hard for people to get past the 2-alternative mindset; the problem lies in our mental paradigm. Our paradigm governs our behavior which in turn regulates the consequence of our action. “Would you be willing to look at the 3rd alternative we haven’t even thought of yet?” This is a question that is rarely asked during a conflict, yet it seems so simple.

Stephen Covey describes the process of getting to the 3rd alternative as Synergy. He quickly explains that synergy is not a compromise since in compromise everyone loses something. However, synergy deals with the transformation of conflict and not just resolving it, and it is better than just my way or your way.  It is our way.

The 3rd Alternative describes four paradigms and without them, there would be no 3rd Alternative. This paradigm includes: I see myself, I see you, I seek you out, and I synergize with you. Once these paradigms are adopted, you can quickly get a 3rd Alternative.

 

The first paradigm of synergy is I SEE MYSELF paradigm. It sees oneself as unique and capable of one’s own judgment and actions.  This paradigm asks you to think about what you see when you look at yourself. Stephen defines this paradigm as “I see myself as a creative, self-aware human being which is more than the side I favor in a conflict. I might share certain beliefs or belong to certain groups, but these do not define me. I choose my own story.”

 

The second paradigm is the I SEE YOU. This is about seeing the other person as a person not as a thing. When you look at others, what do you see? Do you see them as unique human being with diverse talents? In the I SEE YOU paradigm, you and I are uniquely powerful because your strengths complement each other. There is no combination like us anywhere else. When one embraces this paradigm, they see the other person as complex human being, their respect for that person is authentic, and they can look past the side of the conflict.

 

The third paradigm is I SEEK YOU OUT.  This paradigm is about actively seeking out different views instead of avoiding them. It is significant to see conflict as an opportunity to learn something rather than defending yourself and your side. It is important to listen to someone who does not agree with you. They key however is actually listening to them. During a conflict, we are usually thinking about our side and are not listening to the other person talk. An empathic listener seeks to understand the thought and feelings of others.

 

The fourth paradigm is I SYNERGIZE WITH YOU. This is about coming up with a solution that no one has ever thought of yet. In the synergize paradigm, we look for the 3rd alternative. But this stage is impossible without the first three stages. Once these three paradigms are met, synergy will definitely occur.

 

This book focuses on conflict resolution. By adopting the paradigms necessary for synergy and creating the 3rd alternative, a better solution to any conflict can be reached.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: A 3rd Alternative requires no concessions at all because it's truly a better deal for everyone.

Key point #2: Synergy occurs when the first three paradigms are adopted.

 

Key point #3: The 3rd alternative can only be reached by opposing sides when there is synergy.

 

One last thing:

“It’s not only natural but essential for people to have different opinions. I’ve said many times over the years that if two people have the same opinion, one of them is unnecessary. A world without difference would be a world of sameness where no progress is possible.” –Stephen R. Covey

The Radical Candor

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The author, Kim Scott was the previous Director of AdSense with over 700 direct reports. Now, she is the CEO of Candor, Inc. where she serves as an executive coach for several notable CEOs, including those at Twitter and Dropbox.  Kim perceived radical candor as the ability to care personally about people you work directly with while still challenging them directly. When you care about them, you want to help them get better. Radical Candor is a simple, direct and candid book that puts emphasis on being sincere and putting a stop to beating around the bush. The author gave a formula which is:

Radical Candor = Care Personally + Challenge Directly

The first dimension, care personally, is about being more than just professional. It is about giving a damn, spending  time beyond necessary work, sharing more than just your work self and encouraging everyone who reports to you to do the same. If those that report to you hide behind policies, ethical politics and strict-minded process, they should not be on your team and not join you as part of your leadership team.

The second dimension, challenge directly, involves telling people when their work is not good enough and why. This can include, being honest when they are not going to get the promotion they wanted, when you are going to hire a new boss over them or telling them when the result does not justify the investment.

Radical Candor reveals that most people are afraid to challenge directly and many fail to care personally.  In Radical Candor, the author helps us to understand the essentials of communicating, precisely in terms that drive efficient team performance.  She provides a practical framework to help guide your interactions and help you recognize when you are not challenging directly and caring personally. The framework includes four quadrants:

  1. Manipulative Insincerity: This is not caring or challenging the person at all. It is failing to give needed criticism or giving praise when you don’t really mean it.
  2. Ruinous Empathy: This is caring for the person but in the wrong way. It is worrying about hurting the person’s feelings so you soften the criticism to protect them or giving praise that isn’t specific enough for the person to understand what they did well.
  3. Obnoxious Aggression: This is challenging the person without showing that you care. Giving criticism in an unkind manner or offering praise that in a manner belittling to them or others.
  4. Radical Candor: This is challenging the person while showing them you care. It is being specific in your criticism so they understand how to improve. It is being clear with your praise so they know exactly what you appreciate about them and their work. In essence, giving a damn about your people that you take the time to properly give them the good and the bad when it is needed, even when it is uncomfortable.

The author urges that radical candor should be practiced not only in organizations but amidst teams as well. She said “to be radically candid; you need to practice it “up,” “down” and “sideways.”  Create honest and attainable growth management plans once a year for each person who works for you. Hire the right people, fire the appropriate people, promote the deserving people and reward only the people who are doing great balanced work. Too many leaders focus on being professional and do not care personally. In doing so, we actively avoid crossing lines of friendship and ultimately wind up caring about things that actually stand in the way of our end goals.

We are in a beat-around-the-bush culture; Radical Candor dispels that mentality and helps transition managers into leaders who are able to successfully provide guidance to their people and it provides the framework for a leader to be effective when managing people in uncomfortable situations.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Don’t just work hard at being professional, adopt the radical candor approach.

Key point #2: Don’t triangulate in interpersonal conflict.

Key point #3: Radical candor is about caring enough to speak directly, and as a leader, being honest with yourself and the people that report to you.

One last thing:

"When leaders are too invested in everyone getting along, they also fail to encourage the people on their team to criticize one another, other for fear of sowing discord. They create the kind of work environment where being "nice" is prioritized at the expense of critiquing and therefore improving actual performance.” -Kim Scott

The Steve Jobs Way. iLeadership for a New Generation

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Jay Elliot served as the senior vice president of Apple; he worked side by side with Steve Jobs which helps him to bring us a deep insider perspective of Steve’s Singular ileadership style which encompasses for major principles which are the product, talent organization, and marketing. There is no doubt that Steve jobs reign supreme in this four domains. Jay Elliot described Steve Jobs success in details. The more he advanced, the simpler his product became.  In some instances, it’s less about the product and more about the user. Every user wants to be successful. When you know how to operate something masterfully, how does it make you feel? More people will buy if customers feel good using your product.”

The Steve Jobs Way describes Jobs as a person who strives to improve the user experience. The vision drove him in every of his creation and Wozniak during their cooperating time.  Jobs believe there is nothing cooler in the world than creating a product that millions of people immediately want and many who don’t have are envious of those who do. He has the ability to create a consistent, positive product image in the mind of his customers. Jobs combines stick-to-itiveness with an intuitive sense of exactly what it takes to get the public enthralled with a product. This is because he understands that it isn’t a question of how well the product is designed and how smoothly it works (although they are critical factors) but of how it is perceived by the user which of course, is the key to product success.

The Steve Jobs Way points out that Jobs regularly spoke about the power of synergy and trust. Sometimes even during the development process in the company, Jobs referred to his Mac engineers as his most trusted associates. Each employee was provided with a T-shirt with Jobs single quote” pirates! Not the navy.”

The Steve Jobs Way also portray Steve Jobs as a man of principle. He is regularly guided by them.  "If you are not satisfied with no for an answer, your engineers will have no other option than to deliver you the technology product that you require." Jobs seek new opportunities; hire talented people and transfer, their reality in short time.  He believes that a broad set of experiences expands our understanding of human experience. A broader understanding leads to breakthroughs that others may have missed. Breakthrough innovation requires creativity and creativity requires that you think differently about the way you think.  You can have most innovative ideas in the world, but if you can’t get people excited about it, it does not matter. His model of business is The Beatles. “They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business; great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people” Steve said.

In The Steve Jobs Way, Jay Elliot shares the lessons that come out of Steve’s Intuitive approach to show how the creative and technologically brilliance of ileadership can be utilized to drive breakthrough in any organization irrespective of size.

THE BIG THREE - KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Innovation takes confidence, boldness, craziness, and discipline to tune out the negative voices.

Key point #2:  You have to focus on improving user’s experience rather than the product design.

Key point #3: Work through your people and celebrate as a unit with every success.

 

One Last Thing

"My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better."

THE SPEED OF TRUST

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The speed of trust is coined out of Mr. Covey’s experiences he has seen over the years in leadership and while working with companies. It focuses on helping individuals in building and infusing trust in and around them. The Speed of Trust starts off with the “Economies of trust”. The author uses this formula to demonstrate his point: When trust is low, speed goes down and cost goes up; when trust is high, speed goes up and cost goes down. The author equates trust to paying taxes. As a taxpayer, we know a certain amount of money must be paid to IRS annually as a tax but when it comes to trust or lack of trust, we are paying a tax and we may not be aware of it.

 

The other equation the author offers is the product of strategy and execution.

Strategy * Execution = Results

 

But then he goes on to say the product of strategy and Execution and Trust gives Results

(Strategy * Execution)*Trust = Result

 

Trust is a multiplier. You can have a good strategy and a great execution plan but without trust, the project can get derailed. Trust is a key ingredient for all relationships and it’s one of the most powerful forms of motivation and inspiration. People want to be trusted. The author goes further to break down trust into five waves:

 

  1. Self-trust, which deals with confidence we have in ourselves, in our ability to set and achieve goals, keep a commitment, to walk the talk and also with our ability to inspire trust in others; a person who is worthy of trust.
  2. Relationship Trust, which is about how to establish and increase trust with others, to enhance relationships and achieve a better result.
  3. Organizational trust, deals with how leaders can generate trust in all kinds of organizations like businesses, not for profit organizations, etc.
  4. Market trust, is about reputation, whereby everyone clearly understands the impact of trust; and lastly,
  5. Societal Trust is about contribution and focuses on creating value for others and society at large.

                          

The first wave is about the four dimension of credibility. These are the foundational elements that make people believable to themselves and to others. They are: integrity, intent, capabilities, and result.

 

The second wave is about the thirteen different ways leaders behave. Covey believes that these behaviors are common to high trust leaders and individuals worldwide. These enhance one's ability to establish trust in all relationships. The first five flow from character, the second five flow from competence while the last three are the combination of both character and competence.

 

These 13 behavior characteristics are:

  1. Talk Straight:  Be honest and tell the truth. Let people know where they stand and use simple English while communicating.
  2. Demonstrate Respect: Demonstrate respect, don’t fake caring and don’t attempt to be efficient with people.
  3. Create Transparency:  create transparency by telling the truth, don’t have hidden agendas or information, get real, be genuine, open and authentic.
  4. Right Wrongs: Make things right when you are wrong, don’t cover things up. Demonstrate humility  and apologize quickly.
  5. Show Loyalty: you show loyalty by acknowledging the contributions of others and giving credit freely. Don’t bad mouth or disclose others private matters.
  6. Deliver Result: this is done by getting the right things done. Make things happen, don’t over-promise or underdeliver. Always be on time and within budget.
  7. Get Better: Don’t assume today’s skill will be sufficient for tomorrow’s challenge. Constantly improve your capabilities and don’t consider yourself above feedbacks.
  8. Confront Reality: Lead out courageously in conversation, address the tough issues directly. Don’t bury your head in the sand instead take issues head-on.
  9. Clarify Expectation: Disclose and reveal expectation, discuss them validate them, renegotiate them. Done violate expectation or assume that expectations are cleared or shared.
  10. Practice Accountability: Hold yourself accountable, hold others accountable. Take responsibility for results. Don’t avoid or shirk responsibility. Don’t blame others or point fingers when things go wrong.
  11. Listen First: Listen before you speak. Understand, diagnose and listen with your ears and eyes and heart. Find out the most important behaviors are to the people you're working with. Don’t assume you know what matters to others. Don’t presume you have all of the answers or all the questions.
  12. Keep Commitment: Say what you’re going to do or do what you're going to do.
  13. Extend Trust: Extend trust abundantly to those who have earned your trust. Extend trust conditionally to those who are earning your trust. Don’t withhold trust because there is risk involved.

The speed of trust affirms that to inspire trust is to create the foundation on which truly successful organization/relationships stand. This ability is the prime differentiator between managing and leading.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Trust can be efficiently taught and learned, and it can become a leverageable strategic advantage

Key point #2: Trust is one of the most powerful forms of motivation and inspiration.

Key point #3: Trust is a function of character and competence

One Last Thing

“None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.”

― Paulo Coelho