Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

executive presence

Does Your Leadership Suffer from the Bandwagon Effect?

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Does Your Leadership Suffer from the Bandwagon Effect?
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Are you following the crowd when it comes to the way you lead? You may not think so.

However, if you are like most leaders, you may unwittingly suffer from “the Bandwagon Effect” without knowing it.

The Bandwagon Effect is a cognitive bias that can cause us to think and act in certain ways if we believe others are doing the same.

My father had a different way of describing it.

“Monkey see, monkey do, Patti,” he would quip.

Does any of this sound familiar?

1. Do you react to the current conditions that affect your business, rather than anticipate and plan for change? Or do you hesitate to adopt new practices or approaches until you see others doing this with success?

Learning to read the business landscape and anticipate with confidence and action enables you to lead out in front. Otherwise, you will be left behind.

2. Are you shortchanging the development of your own leadership?

It’s necessary to stay relevant and sharp. Reading the latest books everyone else recommends, as well as attending recommended conferences and industry meetings is important. But do you take a systematic approach to developing your personal leadership? Intentionally targeting and working on your personal blind spots and growth opportunities is key to operating at your best.

3. Are you missing an accountability mechanism for your leadership development?

The Bandwagon Effect would reflect that you rely on your board or your colleagues, holding you accountable for business outcomes. But who supports you rising to your potential in the way you lead? Be sure you have a confidential “internal board of directors” for this, comprised of leaders who have your back, understand you and your business, and invite you to take responsibility for your growth.

Where does the Bandwagon Effect show up in the way that you lead yourself and your business? I challenge you over the coming week to carefully examine the way you make decisions and take action to see where you can break away and get out in front.

© 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 Things a Leader Needs to Get the Mojo Back

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Three Things a Leader Needs to Get the Mojo Back
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Leading is challenging.

But it should also be energizing and exciting.

If you as leader have lost the drive you used to feel, take heart – there are three things you need to focus on in order to get back on top of your game.

In fact, if your actions don’t inspire, motivate, and empower, it is time to regroup.

Inspire

When your employees are inspired, great things happen. People follow inspiration. As you inspire, your workforce feels a sense of belonging and commitment, and they become more engaged and productive.

And, lest you think you must be charismatic in order to be inspirational, take heart. In a recent employee poll, traits such as humility, empathy, openness, and high regard for others were named among the 33 traits identified as being inspirational (Eric Garton – “How to Be an Inspiring Leader,” Harvard Business Review, April 2017 ).

Motivate

When you bring passion and positive energy to your workforce, you spread an infectious attitude that supports high morale and keeps stress at lower levels.

Incentivizing your employees to do their very best goes far beyond offering higher wages. Find out what motivates your executive team members (hint: each will have something different to share). Things like feeling a part of the company’s success, learning to move a career ahead, personal development to step into higher personal leadership, receiving acknowledgement and recognition in a certain way – these are just a few examples of what really motivates people.

Do this – and teach your team to do likewise with their own teams. You’ll create an incredibly motivated workforce and a higher level of retention.

Empower

Demonstrate trust. Clarify the ends instead of the means, provide them with any non-negotiable parameters, and then let them spread their wings.

Explore where you can delegate, outline your expectations as far as results, and simply be on hand for questions.

Don’t know where to start? Ask them. What projects or responsibilities might they like to assume in order to flex their leadership skills?

And here’s a question I use with my clients to help them think outside the box: If you decided to take a six-month sabbatical, what would you need to delegate in order to feel that the company could move ahead as per usual?

If you will work on these three areas, you will find that you have not only reanimated your workforce, you will also recapture your own drive and commitment to lead. A win-win.

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.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC

Three Ways Compassion Makes Your Business Better

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Three Ways Compassion Makes Your Business Better
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In a recent CBS This Morning interview, Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, expressed the importance of compassion in the workplace.

Regarding the organization of the future, Jeff said, “It’s about walking the walk… It’s about looking at different perspectives…it’s about those interpersonal or soft skills…that will set yourself, your team, and the organization up for success.”

To some people, this may sound like fluff.

After all, what’s love got to do with it?

How do you link compassion with success in a way that makes business sense?

First, let’s define what compassion is – and what it isn’t. A short definition of compassion is to have concern for the well-being of others. For more on this – and to learn what it isn’t – see my article on compassion and boundaries.

How does having concern for the well-being of others increase the bottom line?

Here are three ways compassion directly impacts your revenues.

1. Communication.

When compassion is absent from communication, it reflects a lack of willingness to walk in the other person’s shoes.

It is evidenced by little or no interest in hearing the perspectives of others, or in seeking to understand. It is also evidenced by a heightened tendency for reactive and judgmental thinking.

Poor communication can actually cost your company an average of $26,041 in productivity per employee per year. It can cost your managers the ability to perform the work and manage others; and it can cost you your leadership reputation.

2. Team and organizational alignment.

When compassion is absent from a company, teams and team members within teams work in silos.

Silos are responsible for missed deadlines, arguments over who is responsible for what, distrust, poor assumptions about others, conflict – the list goes on. The energy in such a business is negative and draining to the soul, and productivity is low as a result of it.

Do you consider yourself a compassionate leader? Be careful. Hubris Syndrome can creep up quickly, and you may discover you have actually compromised your leadership. For more on this, see my article: “Can You Lead with Heart and Get Results?”

3. Competitive advantage.

Caring for others gives you a corporate edge. But when compassion is absent, it has been proven to compromise your employees’ feelings of safety and loyalty.

They doubt that learning, collaboration, and innovation are possible at your company and can shut down, which impacts the bottom line. Service quality suffers without compassion, and the employee’s desire to empathize with others and move beyond personal bias to form a team suffers as well.

It is time to identify and take action on strategies for the workplace that ignite compassion, because, as you see, love and results do, indeed, go hand in hand.

Inspired by the book, Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power that Elevates People and Organizations (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2017, 272 pages)

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.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC

Has Your Leadership Expired?

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Has Your Leadership Expired?
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There is much buzz about “the organization of the future” as the top business focus around the globe. Indeed, in a world-wide survey conducted by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd, the focus takes first place among 11 other key issues facing executives today as they ask themselves how to keep their respective companies sustainable into the next generation and beyond.

This makes sense. What leader doesn’t want his or her company to move into the future successfully? Those leading realize that, as technology and shifting customer demands transform the business landscape, they will need to restructure the organization, including many processes, roles and responsibilities, and other moving parts in order to deliver services and products.

But leadership needs to change, too.

In order to lead the organization of the future, to support required new approaches, ways of thinking, doing, workforce shifts, and so much more, leaders will need to up their game.

Is your leadership up to it?

Or is it out of date?

Top tenets of the organization of the future include operating at a faster pace, adapting more quickly to market demands, acquiring new knowledge more rapidly, and embracing dynamic career demands.

What will the leaders of today need to do in order to prepare for this?

The answer lies beyond a traditional emphasis on horizontal development, which concentrates on acquiring additional information, skills and competencies.

Instead, leaders will also need to add a focus on their vertical development – developing more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking.

This only makes sense: a more complex world mean that the organization needs to respond in kind.

To do this, we need a more sophisticated way of seeing and making sense of things so that we can lead effectively.

Here are some highlights of vertical development. Do you reflect these in your leadership?

  • Strategic Thinking 2.0

Your strategic thinking sees many patterns and connections. Gone is the black and white thinking of the past. It’s time to become comfortable with uncertainty as the norm instead of having a high need for certainty.

  • Leading Change

Success is no longer defined as achievement of individuals and teams, but a realization of a shared vision. Change is embraced as a culture and is a collaborative, ongoing process.

  • Leading Across Boundaries

Are you focused on the success of your own area of responsibility? This will be termed “siloed thinking,” and replaced by working in partnership with other functions. Brain-trusting will become a regular way of thinking and doing.

How do you develop these traits and practices in yourself, your team, and your employee base?

Nick Petrie, author of “Vertical Leaders,” www.CCL.org, outlines a 3-pronged approach that can support your growth initiative:

  1. Intense stretch experiences

Provide periodic “bursts” of learning stimulation by providing a challenging work initiative or project that stretches current thinking and skills.

  1. New ways of thinking

Hold periodic meetings with an outside facilitator with the intent of challenging beliefs and behaviors to develop higher thinking. During these meetings, choose two to three difficult business issues to surface beliefs, biases, and mental models so that you can collectively challenge these and shift thinking.

  1. Strong developmental networks

Use peer coaching to see through the eyes of different stakeholders and learn how to work on real-life issues incorporating multiple considerations.

As you review the suggestions above, you no doubt recognize that these kinds of shifts require dedication and time. However, without this commitment, your enterprise will probably become a casualty of the coming changes. Making the effort to meet the future now is an investment that will surely pay off today, as well as tomorrow.

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.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC

Are You Holding Your Employees Hostage?

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Are You Holding Your Employees Hostage?
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Five Ways to Find Out…

Do your employees feel happy and secure at work?

Or do they feel as though they are being held hostage?

You may not realize it, but when an enterprise is trust deficient, its employees suffer, which means the company does, too.

In fact, if your culture isn’t emotionally connected, your employees can experience the same stressful range of emotions as a hostage does, feeling anxious, fearful, and with the ambition to get out quickly.

It’s difficult to detect the emotions – but you can readily see the effects. What should you look for? And what’s causing it?

Here are five ways to identify whether your culture is lacking in trust, and what is causing it.

  1. Your executive team hasn’t had a new idea in ages.

Your executives are aware of changing trends, but they aren’t exhibiting the creativity and innovation needed for the company to retain its competitive edge. This usually indicates an atmosphere where new and creative is not welcome, or where the opinions of others are not valued.

Are you surrounded by “yes” people who always think your ideas are wonderful?

If so, you will want to take a look at your listening skills and determine if you are encouraging the perspectives of others – not being first with all the answers.

  1. You have a manager who is a chronic complainer.

Your managers tend to shy away from solutions and wait for you to solve problems. One of them consistently brings complaints to your door.

Are you holding them accountable for results?

I’m guessing you are. But are you empowering them with the ability to come up with possible solutions to problems?

If you have complainers or those who wait for orders, this means you need to exercise providing feedback to help them take that responsibility.

  1. One of your teams doesn’t play well with others.

Teams have trouble getting the work done when they must involve other teams to complete an initiative.

Does one of your teams have a chronic “bad kid” reputation? If they can’t connect well with others to get the job done, this means a conversation about their performance with the rest of the enterprise.

Of course, this can’t be done in isolation – chances are, if you have a “bad kid” team in your company, the culture supports it. Time to revisit.

  1. You put up with a key employee who is rough around the edges.

This person is great at technical skills, but very poor when it comes to getting along with others.

This is close to #3 above – the “bad kid” team. However, if you have put up with a key employee who is rough around the edges, this probably means you don’t want to touch the situation for a reason.

Perhaps the person is a star performer or some kind of genius who can do something for your enterprise that no one else can.

Think again – when an employee is allowed to mistreat or disrespect others, this is a de-motivator to the rest of your employee base. Demotivation leads to productivity loss, turnover, etc. – so, no matter how good they are, their behavior is not worth putting up with. Find a solution.

  1. One or more of your teams or areas is less productive than others.

This can manifest in ways such as sub-par productivity, continually missed deadlines, and finger-pointing and blaming in meetings.

Who is steering your ship? If you find that you are continually taking that team’s manager to task on poor performance, this means you haven’t defined what productivity looks like – or you aren’t holding him or her accountable to that shared agreement.

Being transparent about how this is affecting the larger body is pivotal. You are otherwise disrespecting your entire employee base.

These five scenarios cultivate a culture that is devoid of trust. And when trust is lacking, the enterprise will suffer. Where do you need more trust in your organization? Download the infographic to find out.

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.

GET THE INFOGRAPHIC