Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

business leadership

What’s Not Going to Change for Your Leadership

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What’s Not Going to Change for Your Leadership
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Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, once observed that he is frequently asked what would change in the next 10 years.

His answer has really influenced the way I approach my work with CEOs and their teams to make change.

Jeff said, “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time…

“In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible.

“And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.” (Source: Jeff Bezos at reInvent, November 2012)

How does this relate to leadership?

Character.

In a world of variables, character is the foundation of excellent leadership. And this will never change.

Is your foundation firm?

If you are a regular reader, you receive regular leadership tips and tools on how to be effective.  I write about problem-solving, making change, confrontation and critical conversations (and more!) – all skills and competencies that you as leader must manage effectively.

But unless you possess the strength of character to put these tools to work, your results in these areas and all others will be compromised.

Why don’t leaders and their teams give greater focus to this? Well, character is hard to define. And measuring it also becomes a question.

This means that these decision-makers tend to shy away from it and turn to other aspects of development to their own detriment.

Ivey Business School’s professors Crossan, Gandz, and Seijts remind us, “When it comes to leadership, competencies determine what a person can do. Commitment determines what they want to do, and character determines what they will do.” (Crossan, Gandz, and Seijts, Developing Leadership Character, Ivey Business Journal, January/February 2012).

There are 10 leadership virtues, a key part of character, that Crossan, Gandz and Seijts have identified:

  • Humility is essential to learning and becoming a better leader.
  • Integrity is essential to building trust and encouraging others to collaborate.
  • Collaboration enables teamwork.
  • Justice yields decisions that are accepted as legitimate and reasonable by others.
  • Courage helps leaders make difficult decisions and challenge the decisions or actions of others.
  • Temperance ensures that leaders take reasonable risks.
  • Accountability ensures that leaders own and commit to the decisions they make and encourages the same in others.
  • Humanity builds empathy and understanding of others.
  • Transcendence equips the leader with a sense of optimism and purpose.
  • Judgment allows leaders to balance and integrate these virtues in ways that serve the needs of multiple stakeholders in and outside their organizations.

And now, let’s examine how they outline that these affect leadership:


(Source: Crossan, Gandz, and Seijts, Developing Leadership Character, Ivey Business Journal, January/February 2012)

You can see how these character traits undergird all that you undertake, and this will not change.

Which of these leadership character traits needs sharpening for you? Your team? Decide to give greater focus to this. Because taking your organization into the future will always begin – and end – with character.

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.

When Your Executive Drops the Ball

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When Your Executive Drops the Ball
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Every leader has encountered a situation where one of his executive team members has messed up. It happens.

The problem is, in the heat of the moment, if the blooper is big, we might tend to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

Statements such as “I can’t believe you did that!” or “What were you thinking?” can really shut down any further dialogue. They can also fuel negative emotions and shame. These don’t help the situation.

What can you do to avoid creating more problems?

How can you respond in a supportive and proactive way so that the two of you can work from mess to solution?

Here are three questions that make this simpler than you think, helping you to turn a “bungle” into a positive coaching opportunity.

1. Focus on desired outcomes.

Pause. Breathe. Then, ask yourself, “What outcome do we need to achieve here?” This will help quell your emotions and keep dialogue productive.

2. Focus on the future.

Ask your executive, “What do we need to do from here?” This allows the executive to see that you are working as a team. At the same time, you are encouraging your executive’s critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities.

3. Focus on support.

Follow with the question, “How can I help?” Reinforce your show of support and your confidence in the executive’s ability to move forward.

The way you handle crisis can be alienating or team-strengthening. You’ll also be modeling this for others, fostering trust and support for growth in your organization.

The Clockwork of Excellent Leadership:   3 Essential Gears

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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.

Five Steps to Charter Team Values

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Five Steps to Charter Team Values
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Are you and your colleagues living up to your team’s core values?

Core values serve as a GPS to shape culture, drive better decisions, and sharpen best behaviors and attitudes.

Sadly, most don’t understand why they need core values at the team level, nor how to use these to move from average to high performance.

How do team core values differ from organizational core values? And how do you make your team’s values come alive?

I work primarily with leaders and their executive teams who are ready to either merge, realign, or grow. They know they need to improve the way they work together in order to tackle new vistas.

Part of the work I do is help the team create its own identity, establish a safe psychological space in which to work and play, and recognize its personal team power. These three factors are what go into creating a highly emotionally-intelligent team – one which outperforms others.

Without getting into the weeds in this article, part of the work we do together to accomplish this involves creating a team charter – a set of operating rules that the team creates together, and which are based on its core values. In other words, we define the attitudes, behaviors, and ways of doing that reflect the team’s values.

For example, if a team’s core values include honesty, the charter might define what honest conversation looks like, what honesty looks like in the face of conflict, etc.

Chartering your team’s core values in this way makes them come alive. It is powerful and serves as the foundation of your team culture.

What is important to remember as you develop active core values?

Here are five steps to keep in mind.

  1. Develop your values with full team participation.

Every person on the team needs to be involved in the process of defining your values. This creates buy-in and ownership. Do you have someone who is reticent to participate or to speak up? Make sure you include them and let them know their weigh-in is important.

  1. Hold a discussion with your team on what these values mean for you.

It is not enough to pick a word to represent each value – you collectively need to come up with a definition that reflects what you mean by that word choice. Craft together two or three sentences that expand on the value’s meaning until you feel it reflects clear definition to the team.

  1. Identify attitudes and behaviors that support these values.

Take some time to talk about how you should relate to each other (and other teams) in light of your values. If one of your values is integrity, what kinds of attitudes and behaviors reflect this? What needs to change in order for you to fully embody each value?

  1. Assess your systems, processes, and protocols to ensure these support your values.

Do a review of these to see if they support your values. What changes need to take place in order to have these align with your values? This is truly systematizing a team culture.

  1. Accountability as a way to fully integrate your values.

How will you hold yourself and others accountable for the way you embody your charter? I suggest you define this, and then do a spot check-in at least once monthly. Be candid in rating the team – and if you are courageous, ask an external stakeholder to review your values, their definitions, and to share with you any gaps or growth opportunities they see in the way your team lives these.

Are you and your colleagues living up to your team values? Where do you need to start?

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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.

Four Types of Leadership Behaviors You Can’t Do Without

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Four Types of Leadership Behaviors You Can’t Do Without
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How many leadership behaviors have you read about? Ten? Twenty? Another number?

Pretty mind-boggling, isn’t it? And if you are like many, such a sea of varying information can cause you to simply put the latest article aside and go back to doing things the way you know how.

In the world of leadership development, schools of thought are just as varied, and this means that I, as executive coach, can choose to use an assessment that evaluates 10 areas, or 26 areas.

So, now what?

If you are seeking to fast-track your leadership in this new year, I advise that you focus on enhancing just a small subset of four leadership behaviors.

Just four areas.

New research reveals that these four types of leadership behaviors account for 89% of leadership effectiveness, especially for front-line leaders. (Source: McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index https://www.mckinsey.com/)

McKinsey & Company surveyed 81 organizations, diverse in industry and geography (agriculture, consulting, energy, government, insurance, mining, and real estate in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe).

The results showed the following four areas of leadership to be most important, explaining 89% of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness.

  1. Supporting others.
  2. Solving problems effectively.
  3. Operating to follow through for results.
  4. Seeking different perspectives.

What does this mean for you?

Well, what it doesn’t mean is that you just need these four and then you can sit back and relax. But what it does mean is that, as you review your leadership commission and where to start, it may well be with these four.

Rating yourself on a scale of 1-5, how do you feel you measure up?

I’ve included some reflective questions to help you begin your assessment:

Supporting others.

Do you operate with authenticity, and show a sincere interest in those around you? Do you seek to inspire and build trust? Are you adopting the approach “tough on issues, tender on people”?

Solving problems effectively.

Are you thoughtful as you analyze and consider best options for action? Do you seek to be proactive in identifying and anticipating challenges, and to come up with solutions, rather than to react too quickly without the information you need, risking a poor decision?

Operating to follow through for results.

Do you marry vision and supporting strategy to action? Have you mastered the behaviors required to meet your goals and objectives, and can you manage people, products, and process effectively so that outcomes are a reflection of your best work?

Seeking different perspectives.

As esoteric as it sounds, do you “seek first to understand, then to be understood?” (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People). Do you ask your team members to contribute ideas for performance improvement? Are you keeping the pulse on changes in the environment that are likely to influence your company and your work?

Developing any one of these four is a game-changer, and I will tell you frankly that you probably won’t do this alone. Why? It is one thing to be self-aware about the changes one needs to make, and it’s quite another to be able to effectuate those shifts and make them part of who you truly are. You will need to tap into some kind of expert support to step into more of this potential.

This said, the first step to change is to identify the needed change. So, where will you start? What will give you the greatest ROI in your own leadership?

And secondly, who might help you get there?

Taking Your Manifesto to Work

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Taking Your Manifesto to Work

Part III of Making Your Leadership Work

Is your leadership only in your head? You should be taking your manifesto to work.

Here’s a pet peeve of mine: anything that sounds great in theory, but doesn’t teach you how to use it.

This is especially true of leadership. There’s a lot of “feel good” stuff out there and heady theory about what leadership is, who you ought to be, and how it should work.

But what do you do with this?

Unless you can apply your knowledge practically, on the job, knowledge is not power, contrary to the old adage. You just walk around thinking about it and living off the warm and fuzzy feelings that thinking about leading can generate.

You and your leadership will just sit in your head.

How do you fix this?

You learn how to make the powerful connections that put your knowledge to work.

The power in possessing knowledge is always the same, whether it’s learning how to lead or perfecting your backstroke in the swimming pool.

You have to practice. You actually have to take your knowledge and apply it to learn how to master it.

So when it comes to your leadership manifesto – your beliefs as to who you are as leader, what is important, and how you intend to act on these beliefs, there’s a big hole.

And it’s taking your manifesto to work – seeing how it can make significant change.

How do you do that?

Well, first you must have developed your leadership manifesto. If you haven’t crafted your manifesto, click here.

And then, you need to put your manifesto to work by defining the impact it can make on the enterprise. This powerful visioning will serve as your inspiration for all you do.

To do this, you’ll need a piece of paper and pen or pencil. And then…

  • Position the paper so that it is in “landscape” mode.
  • Draw lines to make three columns on the paper.
  • Across the top, your column headers will be (left to right): “Manifesto Statement,” “The Enterprise,” and “The Transformation”
  • In the left-hand column, under the heading “Manifesto Statement,” list out the key statements from your manifesto.
  • Across from each statement in the “Manifesto Statement” column, and under the heading “The Enterprise,” write how the enterprise can be positively affected because of the statement.
  • Example: If your manifesto statement reads, “Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart,” then across from that, your statement about how it can affect the enterprise might be, “We have created a culture that cares and is involved.”
  • Across from each statement in the middle column, “The Enterprise,” list the resulting transformation in “The Transformation” column. “My employees are more creative and engagement, resulting in a superior product.”

Here it is so that you can see the relationship between your leadership manifesto and how you can impact the enterprise.

 

Manifesto Statement The Enterprise Transformation
Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. We have created a culture that cares and is involved. Our employees are more creative and engaged, resulting in a superior product.

 

Continue with each statement from your manifesto until you have exhausted the list. As you review your paper, congratulate yourself. You have just outlined the impact that your unique leadership can have on the enterprise – and the world.

Once you have defined the unique impact you can make with your leadership, you will identify those strategies that will best support this intended impact, and then, the actions necessary to effectuate them.

How will you put your leadership manifesto to work?