Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

business executive coaching

Does Your Lack of Authority Make You Anxious?

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Does Your Lack of Authority Make You Anxious?
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Does the thought of using your authority make you anxious?

This can really get in the way of moving the business forward.

Susan was the CEO of a small company, who found it challenging to manage her people with authority. And it was costing her considerably.

I first met Susan at a CEO forum. She was instantly likeable – people flocked around her to laugh and joke with her, and it was clear that she made friends easily.

Later, when she called me to work with her, I found that her employees also enjoyed her humor and engaging manner.

“Susan is a great listening ear,” one of her executives said. “And she’s always good for a lift in spirits.”

“Yes,” I said. “Everyone seems to appreciate her.”

“Appreciate her? Not as a leader. They like her,” the executive responded. “But as a leader, she could do with some spine. She needs to stop letting her executive team push her around.”

Although I didn’t let on, this was exactly why Susan had invited me to meet with her.

“I’m noticing that the executive team is making key decisions without me,” Susan shared later. “And I have to confess that I feel some frustration when we hold our team meetings. I feel like people are riding all over me.”

“What do you think is happening?” I asked.

Susan looked blank. “I’m not sure. But, Patti, I’m scared. How did I get here? Maybe I’m not fit to lead. Can you help?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to attend one of your executive team meetings,” I said. “Perhaps I can glean some insights that might help. Let’s talk afterward.”

When they next met, I was present. Susan introduced me as her new executive leadership coach. “If I expect all of you and the organization to grow, I need to grow first,” she laughed.

The meeting adjourned two hours later, and we met back in her office. I shared what I had observed.

The team was not aligned in any of the discussion, and they fought for personal agendas. Further, when Susan gave a recommendation on an item, two of the other team members argued her down. Finally, one of the team members seemed to dominate the entire meeting with his ideas about how things ought to run. Susan finally sat back and remained silent.

“So, I can see why you are frustrated, Susan,” I said. “It was pretty chaotic in there, and you didn’t move any one of your agenda items forward.”

“Things are just out of control,” she said. “Where do I start?”

“Pretty simple, really,” I responded. “When did you first become uncomfortable with your authority?”

During the rest of our meeting, Susan shared how she transitioned from a competitor to become CEO of her current company. When she first onboarded, the outgoing CEO warned her to play small and allow the team to acclimate to her. It seems one of the executive team members had interviewed for the CEO position and lost. Over the next few months, Susan fell into allowing the team to decide by consensus. She became anxious each time she thought about asserting her authority and backed off.

“I became a fly on the wall and became frozen, Patti,” Susan told me. “I didn’t used to be a highly anxious person. But I am, now. And the stress is overwhelming.”

Susan had taken the path of least resistance, and it had backfired.

  • People on the team started making key decisions without her.
  • She felt she was losing footing.
  • She became vague and unclear whenever she provided direction.
  • Other executives pushed back, and she backed down again.

“The anxiety has become overwhelming,” she told me. ”And I’ll do whatever it takes to remove the stress.”

“Well, get ready for more anxiety, then,” I countered. “But this time, it will be worth it.”

I shared that, whether you make a change or not, when you are not comfortable with where you are (and in Susan’s case, with exerting her authority), you will experience anxiety.

“Right now, you are experiencing chronic anxiety. Chronic anxiety comes from putting up with a situation that is stressful rather than taking the painful steps to resolve it. So that’s where you are, because you find yourself frozen and unsure as to how to move out from this space. Yet, should you choose to confront and make the change you need to make, that also creates anxiety. This kind of anxiety is acute. And we don’t like the thought of more anxiety. We put up with the chronic anxiety of inaction, so we don’t have to go through the acute anxiety.”

“That’s sounds crazy,” Susan said.

“It is, in a way,” I said. “Any attempt to change is going to make us feel the disruption of the familiar. A mentor coach of mine once explained it to me with the following example:  chronic anxiety would be if you walked around with a pebble in your shoe and you just kept walking with it because it’s too much effort to take off the shoe. You don’t want to face the challenge. Acute anxiety would be if you are in a 10k race, and you have a pebble in your shoe. You realize that, if you stop to take it out, you will go a lot faster. But you will also lose time. And you will now have to face compensating to win the race. But you choose to do so; and, thus, face the challenge.”

“So, in order to get peace and reclaim my effectiveness, I will need to get off the path of least resistance, and face this. Stand up. Take back my authority.”

“Yes,” I answered. “But it’s easier said than done. There are a lot of people out there who know they need to face change, but they won’t. They need a thought partner to help strategize and implement, someone who can support them through the acute stress. The difference between them and you is that you are willing to take action on those needs.”

“Makes total sense,” said Susan. “When and where do we start?”

Susan and I worked over the next six months to help her reclaim her authority in a respectful, yet firm manner. There were some eruptions along the way, but Susan dealt with them well, which made room for the team to come together and begin to build cohesion and trust.

A year later, she called me.

“You wouldn’t recognize us,” she said. “We are moving forward together on all cylinders. Our conversations are different, and we are getting things done. I’m feeling comfortable leading, and the team is taking great pride in each of their areas of responsibility. Thank you.”

“You did the work, Susan,” I responded. “You decided a bit of acute anxiety was worth the prize. Congratulations!”

Are you identifying with Susan’s dilemma in this story?

  • Where in your own leadership are you feeling chronic anxiety?
  • How much is it costing you, your team, and the company?
  • And the most important question: Are you willing to go through the acute anxiety needed to take back your authority?

—

This article is part of a series of real-life scenarios that leaders face in today’s business world. The names and details are modified to preserve confidentiality and may represent multiple occurrences.

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© Patti Cotton and patticotton.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that attribution is made to Patti Cotton and patticotton.com, with links thereto.

Three Behaviors of Best-Performing Teams

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Three Behaviors of Best-Performing Teams
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Many teams can produce great results for a while, but fewer can sustain such high performance over a longer period of time.

Why?

It’s in the way they operate as a group.

Behaviors are key.

Here are three nuancing behaviors you will always find in groups that outperform the rest.

  1. Clarify

Brainstorming should be a creative process, but it often shuts down quickly due to snap judgments such as, “We’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work,” or “The budget won’t allow it.”

Become an observer, and see if you can head off this thwarting behavior by doing the following:

  • Listen carefully. As ideas are put on the table, ask the team member to say more. Use clarifying phrases such as, “talk more about that” to allow them to expound on the concept and how it might play out.
  • Take the idea further by working with them to identify the positive business impact this might have beyond what seems immediately apparent.
  • Only after you have explored the positive business impact should you move on to identify potential roadblocks. Many great opportunities have otherwise been lost.

  1. Bridge

The improv philosophy of “Yes, and…” is a great way to position common ground and build on an idea when you may differ in opinion. Questions such as, “Can we do this?” can be met with a “Yes, and” response, outlining what would need to happen in order for the idea to work.

  1. Connect

High-performing teams connect personally. Instead of limiting your interactions to work topics, remember to delve more deeply into conversation to learn about their lives, what makes them tick, their passions, and more. When people are seen and known as human beings and not just as work machines, trust and camaraderie are built, and biases diminish. Performance thrives on this!

These are just three of a few nuancing behaviors that make the difference between good and great.

What others have you experienced that help your team perform at their best? If you aren’t sure, it’s time to assess.

© Patti Cotton and patticotton.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that attribution is made to Patti Cotton and patticotton.com, with links thereto.

5 Ways to Cut Your Meeting Time in Half

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5 Ways to Cut Your Meeting Time in Half
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Ask anyone in management about how much they love meetings, and I can guarantee you will hear a loud groan. Chief complaints are that there are too many, they waste time, and little gets accomplished during these. A top upset is when meetings rehash the same agenda items without any move forward.

How can you minimize the time spent on your meetings, maximize the focus and outcomes, and get back to work quickly?

Here are 5 ways you can make sure your meetings are effective, stay on track, and keep the organization moving forward:

1. Prepare your attendees for the meeting.

Make sure your meeting has a clear purpose, an agenda, and any background information to brief people. Send this out ahead of time and alert attendees that they need to review the info before the meeting is held. This one move can eliminate a lot of time in your meeting wasted on bringing people up to speed and risking conversations around things that have already been decided.

2. Clarify what you want from your attendees.

Is this meeting informational, for consideration, or for action?

a. If the meeting is for information only, make it clear that you are sharing for awareness, and decide during your meeting what information from your time together needs to be shared with the larger employee base or select management.

b. If the meeting is for consideration, make sure you define what is up for consideration and what outcomes you would like for the meeting. This kind of meeting is most likely to be typed as a time-waster unless you facilitate for the outcomes you request, identify next steps with deadlines, and share this with all involved to pull things forward. It is important especially for this type of meeting that you as leader facilitate and allow other team members to speak and weigh in. Your job is to conduct the meeting and keep it on track to desired outcomes – not to dictate opinion by reason of your position.

c. If the meeting is for action, be sure that you have identified and have present all decision-makers who need to be in the room. This avoids having to chase down and reintegrate any new views or opinions coming from those who were absent (and which can often cause another new meeting on the same subject, rehashing the same agenda). As with the meeting for consideration, articulate clearly the decisions that were made, the actions you have determined, who will follow up on each, and a deadline for reporting back.

3. Go lean on your attendee list.

Do you have tourists in your meetings? People who have climbed “on the bus” by virtue of association, but who really don’t need to be in there? Review your agenda carefully and decide who from your regular attendee list no longer needs to be involved. This can be touchy as you may send the wrong message by simply disinviting them. Be sure to explain why – that the agenda isn’t something to which they need to devote time, and you are revamping in order to minimize meetings and time spent on these so that they can do the work at hand.

4. Avoid highjacking.

Three major ways this can happen to your meeting are when Parkinson’s Law of Triviality is activated, when side-barring occurs, and if you have a personality who tends grandstand or hold court.

a. Parkinson’s Law of Triviality is where people spend a relatively large amount of time, energy, and focus dealing with relatively minor issues. How does this work in a meeting? People will stay with trivia inside of a more major decision because they are more comfortable with that. They may not understand the larger issue at hand, or they may not be fully engaged with it. When this happens, and they begin to “major in minors,” the more important issue being neglected, and a whole team diverted to a side conversation. If you notice this happening, be quick to call people back to the larger focus at hand.

b. Stopping your own meeting to side-bar means that the rest of your team has to wait while you do take care of things that should be cared for in a 1:1 meeting or other forum. It sends a poor message about your own leadership abilities and causes people to lose their focus and engagement during your time together. That’s a hard thing to recapture – so don’t do it!

c. Do you have a grandstander? A personality who considers meetings the place where they can make sure everyone else is impressed with their opinion? This person tends to takes up all the air in the room so that others aren’t able or willing to participate, or interrupts loudly to show expertise. If so, you need to have a critical conversation with this person to help them to understand the behavior you are noticing, how it is adversely impacting the team, and the desired behaviors you want to see instead.

5. Recap of your meeting.

Send out a recap of your meeting notes with appropriate action steps, designated people in charge of them, and deadlines. These notes should be taken by someone other than you to allow you to focus on leading and facilitating. If you have an assistant, this is optimal. If you have a leaner team in attendance for this one, ask one of your members to capture what you want on the agenda so that you can have your assistant type these up later for distribution.

What are your pet-peeve time-wasters in meetings? I’d love to hear more about it.

For more about making your meetings more effective to promote better decisions and outcomes, see McKinsey’s May 2019 article “Want a Better Decision? Plan a Better Meeting” by Aaron De Smet, Gregor Jost, and Leigh Weiss.

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© Patti Cotton and patticotton.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that attribution is made to Patti Cotton and patticotton.com, with links thereto.

Peter Drucker – Goals and Self-Control

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Peter Drucker - Goals and Self-Control
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Peter Drucker once stated that his mission was to help other people achieve their goals.

Helping people reach their big leadership goals is what I do. If I can help them develop their leadership, they can then achieve the personal and professional things they set out to do.

And at face value, it’s easy to reach your goals.

To do this, all you need are these three things.

  • Define your goal
  • Identify the steps and ways to get there
  • Practice the self-control to work the plan

But a lot of leaders don’t reach the goals they set for themselves. Why? If the formula is so simple, where is the hitch?

To give some insight on this, I’d like to share some background about meeting objectives and reaching goals by reflecting on Peter Drucker. Drucker, a widely influential thought leader, has been described as the founder of modern management. I believe his work holds the key.

Drucker invented the concept of management by objectives and self-control, somewhat of a “household idea” in strategic planning today. He popularized this idea in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management.

Drucker maintained that in order to effectively reach objectives, these must first be defined by management and conveyed to other members of the organization. Then, it must be decided as to how to reach these objectives (strategies), and these strategies must then be broken down into sequential steps (tactics). The resulting outline or strategic action plan could then be used as a roadmap for those who had assigned responsibilities therein.

Drucker’s theory proposed to create an organized and positive work environment. As people worked the steps in the plan, they would be motivated by their achievements and spurred to continue on to the “finish line.”

Let’s translate all this into you as leader as you work on developing your own leadership.

Most of you reading this can easily identify the goals that are important to you. You can probably also outline the steps you need to take in order to reach your goals.

But you may not be reaching these.

What’s missing?

Self-control.

A lack of self-control is usually the culprit in thwarted goals. This is when leaders often call an executive coach. They’ve read the books, attended the boot camps, and yet, little has changed. And they aren’t quite sure what to do about it.

If this is you, it’s easy to feel discouraged and fall back into old patterns. After all, good enough is good enough – right?

But quietly, you know that if you develop greater leadership, you’ll benefit not only yourself and those around you, but the entire organization.

If you are at this point, I challenge you to adopt the following four tools.

These will help you to develop more self-control to move past obstacles and on to success.

1. Begin in a corner to set yourself up for success.

Is your goal to be a better communicator? Identify two to three things that will help you to become one. And then, start with just one of those. Let’s say your three strategies to becoming a better communicator include being a better listener, asking more questions, and being clearer and more concise in your written communications. Attempting to shift to all three of these behaviors at once is too much and will discourage the best of us. Begin with the one that feels easiest or like the biggest win, and work on that for a few weeks before taking on the next shift.

2. Assume a can-do attitude in your language.

What are the things you say to yourself when you think about taking that next step toward goal? Does your language feel heavy, full of examples like, “I need to…” “I have to…” “I must…”? Try shifting this type of language to one that is more encouraging, such as, “I am looking forward to trying…” “It’s fun to think about experimenting with this…” Look for the negatives and turn these around. Your language reinforces attitude with feelings around the work you need to do to reach goal.

3. Keep the transformation in mind.

If being a better listener is your goal, the transformation might be that by being a better listener, others will respect you more, share more, feel recognized, etc. and this will help to motivate and engage them, resulting in greater outcomes. Identify this transformation and keeping it in front of you as a carrot is powerful to helping you stay the course.

4. Congratulate yourself for wins and points of learning.

One step at a time. Each time you move a little closer to your goal, congratulate yourself. Each time you recognize when you have taken a step back, look at this as a point of learning. Ask yourself what you will do differently next time to move forward. The brain needs this in order to flex where it needs to go next. Rome wasn’t built in a day – and neither has your leadership been developed overnight. Decide that it’s “brick by brick” and keep going.

As you contemplate 2019 and what you would like to see in your personal leadership, remember that this is a journey. By traveling in this way, you model this for others, providing encouragement and a sound way forward.

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

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3 Essential Shifts Every Leader Must Make

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3 Essential Shifts Every Leader Must Make
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Are you prepared to lead into the future?

Most leaders are not.

The world is increasing in complexity, and you as a leader must grow to support change effectively. The problem is that most in leadership have reached the top and stopped growing. They have given in to the false premise that, because they have the ability to meet today’s demands, they can certainly meet what the future brings.

Are you a leader who has reached the top – and stopped?

You may think you have what it takes. However, there are three shifts that, unless you make them, will quickly render you ineffective in the future.

What are these? And why should you pay attention when things are fine the way they are right now?

This week, we’ll talk about the first shift – why you need to make it and first steps to take.

Shift I: Relational Abilities Must Increase

Relational skills are now taking a front seat to all other leadership competencies. Your ability to relate well to others may work well today, but tomorrow’s leadership will need to call on more and to sharpen their emotional intelligence (“EQ”) on a consistent basis.

Why?

Emotional intelligence (“EQ”) is what helps you have high relational skills, and these are paramount to effective leadership.

Here are just some of the ways that EQ facilitates this:

  • EQ allows you to understand how your emotions and actions affect the people around you. This is necessary to regulating the way you interact with others so that you can create bonds and team.
  • EQ provides you with the ability to put yourself in the shoes of others, to understand how they feel, and to consider their perspectives. This ability to empathize can draw people to you and influence them. It can serve to power negotiations in tense times, and to promote compassion, which is a necessary component to embodying powerful servant leadership.
  • EQ promotes good communication. If you have forged bonds and trust with others, you tend to communicate better and more often, avoiding conflict and misunderstandings that poor communication fosters.
  • EQ provides you with the ability to mentor others and shape a healthy culture. Your ability to model high relational skills will serve as the prototype for your entire organization.

And in a world where constant change has become the norm, your ability to relate well to others is what will instill confidence in you and commitment to you on the part of those around you.

The problem is that we relate to others as we have been taught. This means that we bring with us a host of older experiences that color how well we are able to show up with and relate to others. Sharpening your EQ so that you up-level your ability to relate is more important than ever.

Are you already a pro in relating? Is your EQ high? You still need to make the shift to lead successfully into the future.

Here’s why: Emotional intelligence needs consistent exercise to remain effective. Your EQ is a “muscle” that needs flexing on a regular basis, or you will lose it. What’s more, just like working out at the gym, you can’t focus only on bicep curls and expect that the rest of your body will become fit by osmosis.

Use it – or lose it.

In fact, if you neglect your EQ for an extended period, you place yourself in danger of developing what we call Hubris Syndrome. If this is the case, you are now in imminent danger of losing your leadership position and perhaps your company.

How do you avoid this?

Here are 5 steps to systematically strengthen your EQ to support your relational skills.

1. Tap back into your own emotions. For example, how do you typically respond when someone delivers bad news to you? Criticizes you unfairly? Cuts you off on the freeway? By recognizing your emotions, you will be better able to regulate and control them so that you manage your relationships and interactions with others better. Tapping back into your emotions also allows you to recognize these emotions in others and to empathize with them. When you exhibit empathy, you build rapport, as others feel you care.

2. Ask others for their perspective. Leaders develop tunnel-vision when it comes to decision-making. After all, putting out fires all day long, dealing with the unexpected and the myriad of pieces that make up the organization requires fast thinking and acting. However, 60% of all decisions that leaders make are wrong, and this is primarily due to “either-or” problem-solving. “Either we do this, or we do that.” Asking others for their perspective on various issues that arise can give you added insight to expand your options. At the same time you widen your perspective-taking, you also allow others to feel they can contribute to the larger picture. And that’s a great relational skill.

3. Be curious instead of quick to judge. You think you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes, but can you really know how they feel? We bring our own experiences to the mix, and it is wise to ask questions rather than assume that you understand how they feel or what they want. Replace phrases such as, “I know just how you feel…” with ones like, “This feels devastating to me, but tell me how this affects you. I want to understand…”

4. Develop deep listening skills. There is perhaps no greater gift than that of being heard. Exercising deep listening skills is to hear beyond words, to ask questions instead of assuming, and to attune with another so they feel recognized and validated. Developing your skills in this area takes consistent practice, and it is well worth your time and effort. For more on this, see my article “How to Raise Your Influence in Less Than 5 Seconds.”

5. Decide to confront conflict courageously. There is perhaps nothing more damaging to our ability to relate than to allow unresolved conflict to fester. To feel a rupture in a relationship without repair is to foster stress, negative feelings, lost opportunities, and poor modeling for others. The cost of inaction – of allowing the rupture to fester – touches many, affecting the quality of your leadership and the lives of those around you. Want to fall in love with conflict so that you improve the quality of your relationships on a systematic basis? Read here.

I invite you to begin sharpening your emotional intelligence today so that you enjoy more influence, better decision-making, more productive and fulfilling relationships, and a healthier leadership future. How might having higher relational skills benefit you, your team, and your organization?

Next week, we will explore the second of three shifts you need to make: Vertical Development 2.0.

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

​Learn the two vital parts to trust and how they can help you become a more highly effective leader.

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© Patti Cotton and patticotton.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that attribution is made to Patti Cotton and patticotton.com, with links thereto.