This situation is intriguing to me because I have seen it repeated with numerous leaders and managers.  In the leadership development field, we lament the fact that many managers aren’t open to feedback.  Yet those who are often struggle to get it!

I most often see this pattern when the manager is an EJ according to the Myers-Briggs Type Instrument or a high D or I on the Disc instrument.  While we (yes, I fit both descriptions too) have good intentions, we can unintentionally overwhelm others and actually quash feedback – even when we want it.  We come across as overly direct and unwittingly confrontational.  We enjoy debating and playing devil’s advocate and fail to recognize that this conversational style may encourage others to shut down.  When communicating with others who have opposite styles we need to slow down and soften our approach.

Here are some suggestions I’ve tried and shared with other extroverted, action-oriented leaders.

1.    Try to avoid asking yes/no questions such as, “Do you have any feedback for me?” or “Is there anything I could be doing better?”  Instead try asking questions such as, “As you know I am working on being less stubborn about my ideas.  I want to express that I am open to input from others. What suggestions do you have for me?” or “What suggestions do you have for me about how I can be a better listener?”

2.    Recognize that some people may never feel comfortable giving direct critical feedback to their boss.  Learn about your effectiveness as a manager indirectly by talk more about how the employee and the team are doing.  Ask open questions such as:
•    How are you doing?
•    How is the rest of the team doing?
•    Are you getting enough direction?
•    Are you getting enough support?
•    Are our team goals clear to you?
•    Is there anything you need help with

Their answer to these questions will indirectly tell you if you are doing a good job at leading them!

3.    When shy or quiet direct reports provide feedback, remember that this is a big first step for them. In your enthusiasm, it can be easy to overpower them or scare them off.  I like to use a little bird metaphor in situation like these.  Your employee is a little bird and you are a nature lover who wants to encourage the bird to come closer.   View the first piece of feedback they offer much like a bird who has worked up the nerve to take a crumb from the edge of your deck.  Speak softly.  Thank them and move on to another topic.  Avoid the temptation to “run at them” by asking a lot of direct, pointed, or probing questions.  Over time they will see you accepted the feedback and will be more likely to come closer/speak up.

I’d love to keep adding to this list. What else have you tried?

If you are like 95% of managers who responded to a Harvard study, the answer may surprise you.  Most managers believe that recognition for good work has the most impact on employees’ emotions and motivation.  But a decade-long study from Harvard shows that support for making progress is actually the most powerful lever, especially for scientists, engineers, programmers, marketers, and other knowledge workers.

For more than a decade, researchers from Harvard tracked the emotions and motivations of knowledge workers by having them keep detailed diaries of their days. By analyzing the diary entries, the researchers discovered that employee emotions, perceptions, and motivations fluctuate every day.  Lead researcher, Teresa Amible, writes, “We found that the most common triggering event for a ‘best day’ was any progress in the work and the most common event triggering a ‘worst day’ was a setback.” Amabile and her colleagues named this phenomenon the progress principle and they detail their research, findings, and implications for managers in their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.

What does the progress principle mean for you?  Should you stop giving recognition or providing financial incentives for a job well done?  Of course not. These tools are still an important part of your motivation toolkit.  However, if you manage people who do creative, complex work you will see the biggest improvement in motivation if you focus first on helping your people make progress.

I’ve been studying energy at work for years and have long noted that the manager’s day-to-day actions can have an enormous effect on their people’s drive and dedication. Thanks to this new research, we now understand that manager actions directly impact employee motivation, which in turn improves their performance and productivity.

To boost motivation, managers need to focus on actions that help people make progress. Such actions include:
•    Clarifying goals
•    Providing resources and tools to get the job done
•    Removing obstacles
•    Providing support and encouragement
•    Enabling autonomy and ownership
•    Helping employees solve problems
•    Encouraging team members to help one another

This list of actions may not seem new if you’ve been managing for any length of time.  The problem is that trying to remember all of these ideas and implement them can be overwhelming.  The beauty of the progress principle is that if you want to motivate your people you simply need to ask yourself, “What can I do to help my team make progress in their work today?” And when employees seem demotivated or deflated, ask “What is getting in the way of progress?”  Then experiment with taking actions and watch the resulting impact on your people’s emotions and productivity.  You may be surprised.

As we conducted focus groups with the target population, we quickly learned that the word “delegation” had a negative connotation.  Managers associated delegation with “dumping”.  In the words of one participant, “Oh, I’d never delegate to someone.  I give my people assignments all the time, but I don’t think it’s fair to just dump stuff on others just because I don’t want to do it.”

Hmm. . . when did delegation become dumping?  My take is that this interpretation is the end result of bad management.  If I’ve only had leaders who dump stuff on my desk with no context, explanation, or support  (I call this “drive-by delegating”)  then I will start to have bad feelings about delegation.

Of course, dumping is not what delegation is about.  Delegation is allocating decision-making authority or task responsibility to the appropriate people to maximize individuals’, and therefore the organization’s, effectiveness.

In his book, Bootstrap Leadership, Steve Arneson writes that, delegation:

• Increases work output and maximizes your team’s productivity
• Fosters growth and development]
• Keeps employees motivated and engaged
• Allows the leader to focus on higher level work

Arneson goes on to write, “A general rule of thumb is that you should consider delegating ANYTHING that someone else can do and NOTHING that only you can do.”

The way you delegate makes a big difference to you, the person you are delegating to, and the success of the project.  For some great advice on how to delegate, check out the blog posts from these leadership experts:

• Ron Edmundson
• Dr. Allison Friederichs
• Scott Eblin

My final thought for leaders: Delegating is only dumping when you don’t do it well.

In my own work and research, I have identified eight best practices for culture change:

1.    Engage people in the process.

People commit to what they help create. The most successful changes happen when leaders actively engage people at all levels in all phases of the process and when there is a constant feedback loop between people on the front line and the leadership team.  Rather than hinting at the culture you want to see – be explicit about what changes are needed and collaborate with your people to implement the next seven practices.

2.    Describe the current and desired cultures.

What aspects of the current culture do you want to keep?  What do you want to tweak or shift?  What needs to change entirely? Many efforts to change a culture fail because change is described too vaguely and is interpreted in many different ways.  Being specific and descriptive is imperative.

3.    Focus on a few key behaviors.

Because culture is an outcome of thoughts, feelings, and actions, the best way to change a culture is to focus in on a few key behaviors that, if changed, would significantly impact the overall culture. Again, be specific about who needs to do what differently. (see my post Want Change? Get Specific)

4.    Communicate.

To drive a culture change, you must communicate a compelling case for change, along with your vision, and clear expectations. And, you have to repeat yourself. A lot. If you are introducing a change, you’ve probably been working on this long before you unveil it to the people who are going to need to execute the day-to-day details. If it’s your initiative, your project, by the time you say “let’s go” you are thinking that everyone should be right there with you. They aren’t. They time to catch up.  (see my post on The Marathon Effect at Work)

5.    Lead by example.

Research consistently shows that culture is largely top-down.  It is imperative for the leader to not only talk about – but also demonstrate desired behaviors.

6.    Empower and equip employees.

Once you have engaged people, you need to ensure that they are empowered to take action. Empowerment as it is used here means giving people what they need in order to take action, including access to information, authority, and equipment, as well as the knowledge, skills, and ability to demonstrate the desired behaviors.

7.    Recognize progress.

Think about your organization’s reward structures—both the informal and the formal. Which behaviors are getting reinforced and rewarded? The new ones you want to see or the old behaviors you want to do away with? If the answer is “the old behaviors,” you most likely need to take involve the right people in revising expectations and reward structures. Remember the old adage: Only behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated.

8.    Maintain momentum.

Research shows that many culture change efforts fail because attention is only paid to the launch or kickoff.  All too often change loses momentum and becomes “flavor of day” to people on the front line. Be sure to identify a team who is responsible for maintaining momentum, refocusing energy, and revitalizing the effort when the initial attention starts to wane.

Culture change isn’t impossible and it doesn’t have to take forever — but to be successful it requires ongoing focus, energy and engagement.

To me, Zander’s points illustrate exactly what it means to be an Energizing Leader. Imagine the impact we would all have if we remembered and lived by his three simple points:

• The conductor of an orchestra (leader) doesn’t make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful.
• I realized it was my job to awaken possibility in other people.
• If their eyes are shining, you know you are doing it.

Probably the most inspiring description of leadership I have ever heard.

I’m certainly not the only person making this comparison.  Last week management consulting guru Alan Weiss wrote, “We are watching popular uprisings gain traction or fail largely based on whether those in power and the military are willing to turn their guns on their own people or refrain from doing so. In organizations, the ability to change for the best is often a question of whether senior people will listen and offer avenues for communication to do so, or whether they are insulated and aloof, and those with new and bold ideas get “whacked” by the status quo.”

Peter J Minich, MD, Ph.D, is author of Rethinking Power in Healthcare: What to do when Authority Fails and Patients Suffer.  In his online article Positive Power in Organizations, Minich writes: “Our organizations are filled with committed people with varied beliefs, strengths, and ideas; in other words, talent. These people also have the energy and thus power to support or sabotage leadership. Now is the time for leaders to rethink their own notions of power, and build new behaviors that help, rather than hinder their leadership.”

Giving up power is incredibly difficult for those who are used to holding it.  Yet fighting to maintain power and control will likely backfire as we move to a digital age where people have unlimited access to information and the ability to connect with others.  Are you ready to reframe your idea of power?  If you are a leader who is not embracing collaboration rather then control, you may find the world is about to leave you behind. For more on the revolution check out:

• Why It’s Different this Time, Fareed Zakaria’s Time magazine article about how youth and technology are driving a wave of change.
• Leadership in a Wiki World by Rod Collins.
• Gary Hamel’s Management Information Exchange (MIX)

It turns out, I wasn’t alone in my initial hesitation.  As part of the design phase I interviewed 27 of the women who would be invited to the conference.  Their responses to my opening question, “What is your response to the idea of Women’s Leadership Conference?” ran the gamut.  About 50% of responses were highly positive:

At the same time, about 50% of women expressed hesitation, saying things like:

In the end, with input from all of these women and guidance from a core team of female senior leaders, we designed a powerful, positive, and productive event.  The conference didn’t resolve the challenges facing women in this organization and industry, but it did elevate key issues and start the journey toward finding solutions.

So, it’s been interesting to me to notice that there seems to be a resurgence of women’s leadership conferences and forums.  I wondered if I was simply noticing them more (buy a blue Honda CRV and suddenly you see them everywhere) or if such conferences were indeed increasing.  If they are increasing I wondered what that says about the progress women have made and how far we have yet to go.  In researching the topic of women in leadership I learned that:

• While women occupy 40% of managerial positions in the United States, only 6% of Fortune 500 executives are women. (Harvard Business Review, Required Reading for Executive Women and the Companies Who Need Them.)
• Rather than rising to the point where we hit the proverbial “glass ceiling” most women are affected by a series of challenges and choices that researchers call a “labyrinth of leadership.”
• Two of the main issues that seem to continue to plague women’s entry in senior leadership ranks are style differences and family demands.

Hmm. Maybe we do have a long way to go. Perhaps Women’s Leadership Conferences weren’t a throwback to the 70′s, but rather a crucial mechanism for addressing these issues?

Just this month, Forbes contributor Meghan Casserly posted article on Gender Quotas and Women’s Conferences: What Works, What Doesn’t.  Early in the article, Casserly admitted her own skepticism about the value of having women talk to women. Yet, more  women’s conferences are taking place every year. Maria Shriver’s 2010 Women’s Conference in California drew 30,000 attendees.  This year’s TED conference included its first-ever breakaway session called  TEDWomen.

Casserly goes on to quote women like Lesley Jane Seymour, editor-in-chief of More magazine, which runs its own women-focused conference each year says that, unfortunately, break-off women’s conferences are still an essential piece of the equality puzzle. “I’d love to live in a time when women’s conferences weren’t necessary,” she says. “But until women are a true 50% in all levels of the business world and all of the people in the room, women are still a minority.”   Lisa Witter, chief strategy officer at Fenton, the socially-conscious ad agency behind the campaign for Half The Sky and a speaker at this year’s TEDWomen conference, says that, far from feeling like the conference was “ghettoized” by its all-female focus, the panels and presentations acted as springboards for many women to launch their ideas onto the national scene. “Sure, we need to push organizations and conferences to have gender balance,” she says. “At the same time we need to push women to do a better job at raising their hands. To say that they are good speakers, they are the experts and that they should be listened to.”

That final point resonated with me.  It just so happens while we were at my client’s Women’s Conference last fall, a number of women rallied together to encourage one female leader to apply for an open position on the Executive Team.  It may be exactly that kind of encouragement, support, nudging, and challenging that that it takes to see equality for women in the leadership ranks.

Hundreds of others have said it, but apparently the point bears repeating:  If you want your people to accept and support change, you must first show that you understand the organization from their perspective.

When we try to motivate others or mobilize energy for a change, the most important element is being able to connect with people.  An authentic connection has a lot of ingredients, including understanding:

• What matters to this person;
• What is this person’s reality;
• What is this person trying to accomplish at work;
• What is getting in the way?

Attempting to change anything without intimately knowing the answers to the above is a recipe for disaster. Take, for example, leaders who try to “boost morale” with ridiculous actions that only serve to demonstrate their lack of a clue.  David Spark recently wrote a post about 10 tales of condescending morale boosting efforts.  The examples he shares are incredibly funny in the way that Dilbert is funny -  familiar and painful.

Contrast these awful examples with leaders who know how to connect with the emotions and reality of their people.  One of my favorite examples comes from Peter Bregman.  Bregman wrote about the CEO of a software company who skipped his usual morale-boosting  visionary holiday speech and instead authentically empathized with what his people were thinking and feeling after a very tough year. After the speech, more people came up to thank, appreciate, and congratulate him than after any speech he had given before.  (You can read Bregman’s article and the CEO’s speech here.)

Michael Abrashoff, past captain of the U.S. Navy’s USS Benfold put it best, saying,

Acting in accordance with this belief helped Abrashoff lead 311 sailors through one of the greatest turnaround stories of the modern military. Similarly, as a leader at any level, it is critical that you understand your organization from the point of view of the people on your front line.

Repeatedly, the leaders being interviewed stressed the importance of communicating a sense of urgency, setting a clear direction/vision, aligning processes with the direction, and empowering people.

Here are a few more sample quotes:

- Tony Blair

- Lou Gerstner

For more great nuggets on leadership and leading change, watch video clips of the show:
– Watch Blair HERE .
- Watch Gerstner HERE .
– Watch Whitman HERE .
- Watch Levin HERE .
– Watch Mullen HERE .

According to Sutton, research confirms what many of us have long suspected: People who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centered and less mindful of what others need, do, and say. That would be bad enough, but the problem is compounded because a boss’s self-absorbed words and deeds are scrutinized so closely by his or her followers. Combined, these tendencies make for a toxic tandem.

Check out this video of Sutton describing the Toxic Tandem and other concepts in a presentation at Google:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m curious . . . if you are a leader have you learned to  avoid the toxic tandem?