Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

How to Fix an Accountability Problem on Your Team

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“Everyone on a team knows who is and who is not performing,
and they are looking to you as the leader to see
what you are going to do about it.”
The late Collin Powell,
Former US Secretary of State
How many times in the past year have you heard, “We need more accountability on our team?”
When you’re frustrated and things aren’t going well — maybe your numbers are down, or people aren’t showing up the way you need them to, or team members aren’t meeting your expectations — it’s easy to turn to this all-too-common refrain. But when you announce that you “need more accountability here” what your team actually hears is: “You’re failing, and it’s your fault.”
No one is inspired by being blamed. While there may be times when your team could put in a more focused effort, a lack of accountability is rarely intentional. Any lack of accountability is a downstream problem that requires upstream action. It’s always better to prevent pollution than to clean it up. Leaders who default to a plea for accountability will inevitably hit a wall of frustration.
Further, verbalizing that there is “a lack of accountability” on your team can easily come off as threatening or condescending to people on the receiving end. This is hardly productive when you are trying to inspire change, and more importantly, it doesn’t help you get to the root of the problem.
Rarely is an accountability problem actually an accountability problem. It’s an agreement problem. The way you fix it is through a better agreement process:
  1. Clarify your expectations. Ambiguity breeds mediocracy. It also breeds frustration. Clearly communicate the measurable results you expect, including the kind of behavior that demonstrates your values.
  2. Create a compelling WHY. People need to understand how what you expect from them makes a meaningful impact toward the overall success of the organization and the people you serve.
  3. Assess fit. Be sure that people are passionate about what you expect from them, and that it lies in their wheelhouse of strength. Accountability without an element of passion is drudgery. Leaders are accountable to ensure that you have the right people on the team.
  4. Aim high. Expect high standards, both for yourself and others. Challenge yourself and those under your care with lofty goals, a commitment to results, and high expectations so everyone will grow and feel great about themselves at the end of the project.
  5. Get an agreement.  A request is not an agreement. Be sure to get a clear yes to your request to deliver expected results. Every defined expectation needs to end with, “Can I count on you?”
  6. Clarify support requirements. Aside from a lack of understanding the expectations, people fail to perform as expected when they lack the required skill or capacity. Leaders are accountable to assess workplace competencies and ensure adequate resources are available. Ensure the person you have expectations of feels supported.
  7. Identify consequences. Clarify what the results will be for delivering on your promises – to the individual and to the organization. What’s important to the individual? What’s important to the organization? Negotiate a win-win relationship. And sometimes, especially if you’ve made a mistake around fit, help people make a career decision and move on from their role.
  8. Have an evergreen plan. Map out a process for keeping your agreements to each other current and useful. How often do you need to meet to review expectations? Be sure to have a clear process for tracking and measuring success and how you will discuss it when your expectations of each other are not being met.
When you are promoted, you don’t get more power, you get more accountability to assess and implement the accountability process. Any accountability problem on your team is corrected by being accountable. Just as blame is never a good strategy, pleading for more accountability isn’t the answer either. Those who develop self-awareness, clarity, empathy, and courage to have the tough conversations will create powerful solutions, build winning teams, and create workplaces where people are inspired.
If you want to be an authentic leader that people want to work with, shift your mindset from blame to ownership, assess the gaps, and practice filling the gaps with these eight strategies. You’ll drive better results, make lasting impactful change, reduce your frustration, and create unstoppable workplaces.

CREATING A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE BELONG

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The need to create a place where people belong grows out of the isolated nature of our lives, our workplaces, and our communities. The absence of belonging and the realization of its importance in re-engaging our workforce has been especially amplified in the past two years.
I believe that creating a place where people belong is a key driver of engagement, fulfillment, and success. So… what is belonging, and how do you create a place where people belong?
When we think of belonging, memories of high school often come to mind where belonging was about popularity, appearance, and fitting in. But through a more mature lens, belonging is about being valued for our unique contributions, knowing that we make a difference, being connected to our co-workers, supported and encouraged in our daily work and career development, and being proud of our work.
From my research and experience, belonging is rooted in five key elements:
1. Personal Responsibility: From our high school experience, many of us learned that it was up to someone else to make us feel we belong. While those around us undoubtedly impact our sense of belonging, belonging starts with a decision that “if it is to be, it starts with me.”
2.  Heartfulness: Heartfulness, according to author Elizabeth Lesser, is “knowing what you love, and having the guts and grace to go for it.” The goal of our Authentic Leadership programs is to dig deep into your self and discover the essence of who you are. Until you can belong to yourself, you will never quite feel that you belong in the world.
3.  Contribution: I learned from raising children that there is a difference between chores and contribution. We all must roll up our sleeves at times and get the chores done. But contribution is about knowing, deep within us, that our unique gifts, talents, and strengths are truly valued and make a difference to the organization and those the organization serves.
4.  Care: People around you at work – peers and senior leaders alike – genuinely care. They are sincerely committed to helping you find the resources, support, and encouragement you need to succeed in your daily work and live a full life. With caring comes a sense that we are safe and among friends, that silos are being replaced by a genuine community, strangers are welcomed, diversity is celebrated, leaders are committed to creating systems and structures that support belonging, and problems are being exchanged for possibilities. When it comes to belonging, caring is everything.
5.  Pride: While visions, plans, mission statements, and committed leadership are important, even essential, they cannot be successful without the engagement of every person in the organization. Pride is a genuine alignment with your organization’s purpose, vision, and values. Pride is what shows when you excitedly tell your six year old where you work, what you do, and why what you do matters.

The Secret Life: Getting To The Core Of Self Awareness And Great Leadership

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The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, The Secret Garden, is the story of young girl whose parents die of cholera in India. She is sent to live with her uncle in a large British manor and when exploring the grounds of the estate, she discovers the entrance to a magical secret garden where anything is possible. Initially, the garden appears dead. But through her caring presence, she plants seeds, cultivates the soil, and eventually brings about a dramatic transformation of the entire garden within one season.

Stephen R. Covey used to say that we live three lives: public, private, and secret. In our public lives, we are seen and heard by the people around us. In our private lives, we interact more intimately with loved ones, family members, and close friends. The secret life is where our heart is and where our true motives and ultimate desires are revealed; it is where our authentic self resides.

Many leaders never visit the secret life. Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by everything around them and the pressures of their world. And so, they never find the key to the secret life: self-awareness. It takes courage to connect with our secret life. If we continually distract ourselves rather than seek the uncomfortable journey to the secret life, we distance ourselves from our true identity and the roots of meaning and purpose.

Leaders who attend our Authentic Leadership Academies have said, “This is the first time I’ve ever done any soul searching…” “This experience is the first time I’ve ever slowed down long enough to truly see myself…”

Most of us spend our busy days in our public and private lives, never pausing long enough to enter the secret life, the secret garden, where masterpieces are created, great truths are discovered, and every aspect of our existence is enhanced.

S-L-O-W-I-N-G D-O-W-N TO THE SPEED OF LIFE  Lessons on Leadership and Life from a Fly Fisherman

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Everything moves in rhythm. Atomic particles, waves of electrons, molecules in wood, rocks, and trees, amoebas, mammals, birds, fish and reptiles, the earth, the moon, the sun, and stars… and we ourselves.

In a world alive with a myriad of rhythms, “entrainment” is the process by which these rhythms synchronize. Rhythmic entrainment is one of the great organizing principles of the world, as inescapable as gravity. And in the fast-paced era of technology, immediate gratification, and on-demand news and entertainment, the heart yearns to find its own rhythm away from the demands of consumption and pressures of the world. As the percussionist Tony Vacca once said, “If you can’t find your rhythm, you can’t find your soul.”

This summer, I experienced finding my own rhythm. I spent a day on the Bow River with Chas Waitt, an inspiring, caring, and human leader on our team, and Dana Lattery, a gifted fly-fishing guide (https://www.flyfishingbowriver.com). As a fly-fishing guide, Dana doesn’t just guide you to the fish. He guides you to yourself. The day wasn’t as much about fly fishing as it was about living connected to my heart, to each other, and to what truly matters.

And it was also a course in leadership. With the tag line, “Love People; Catch Fish,” love and service were integral principles in everything that went down: from the grace in the coffee shop to start the day, to the support, patience, and encouragement in learning to cast and untangling line, to his commitment to stewardship of the river, to how the fish were carefully handled before they were released, and to how I was treated in every interaction.

Here are a few of the lessons on leadership and life from spending a day on the river with Dana and Chas:

1. Leadership, like fly-fishing, requires a relaxed presence of mind. Fly fishing is an extremely complex process that takes time and experience. You don’t have to be perfect, but you miss opportunities if you aren’t present. You must, for example, wait and watch for any sign of movement in the water, mending when needed, and make sure the fishing line drifts naturally and effortlessly. This is the mastery behind guiding that enables Dana to make it look easy. But he’s paid attention for years so he can take his students to the fish with such accuracy it truly seems like magic.
2. You’ll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul. No matter how many fish you catch, they all go back into the river. No matter what you accumulate, accomplish, or achieve in life, it all goes back into the river of life when it’s over. All that ever truly counts in life is the experience you have, the person you become, and the difference you make along the way. Life is lived in the present.
3. You won’t find ego in authentic leadership. Kindness crowds out arrogance. A genuine interest in others and what they care about replaces making yourself look good. Your self-confidence allows others to grow and flourish in an atmosphere of support because you don’t need the approval of others to evaluate yourself or make yourself look better than you are. Even the masters know they aren’t the smartest person on the boat.
4.  Humanity is more important than the illusion of perfection. You don’t have to be perfect or create an appearance of flawlessness to be called a leader. Being human, creating a safe place to make mistakes and learn and grow and be inspired together, is some of what it takes to be a leader.
5. It’s all about showing up. None of this matters if you don’t show up. Accountability isn’t just about being able to be counted on when it’s easy. It’s about being there in the grind. It’s about embracing the suck. Showing up not only earns self-respect. Showing up inspires the respect and love of everyone around you.
6. Service is at the core. Servant leadership is a timeless approach that emphasises your priority as a leader: to attend to the people in your care. You won’t win in the marketplace until you win in the workplace. Take care of your people so they will take care of their people.
7. Fly-fishing is a call to simplicity that makes leadership and life better. The art of being authentic is really the art of being, of knowing and living in harmony with ourselves, connecting with the highest possibilities of our nature. And being connected with our nature requires being connected with nature. This requires stopping, disconnecting from the distractions and demands, and being present to the world around you. The good life and good work require good leisure: not just time that we are not on the job, but that is free from pressing expectations. Simple living doesn’t necessarily mean a quiet life. It can be filled with challenges and excitement. But it is important to take time to go slowly and to do things at the pace they are meant to be experienced – such as when eating a meal, talking with a colleague, returning an email, telling a story to a child, or walking the dog.

Discovering your authentic leadership concerns not the what and how but the who: who we are and the source from which we operate, both individually and collectively. We are clever people, efficient and high-powered, but in the zeal to get things done we can forget our humanity and the simple art of living. Let us make a resolve that we will begin to relax and saunter and be present, and take time to meditate and watch the sun go down behind the hill. Let us be good to ourselves. Let us s-l-o-w d-o-w-n to the speed of life.

Knowing Your Authentic Self

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At the conclusion of my book, The Other Everest: Navigating the Pathway to Authentic Leadership, I tell a Sufi story about a pregnant tigress who chases a flock of goats in search of a meal. As she pounces upon them, she brings on the birth of her baby as well as her own death.
After returning to their grazing place, the goats found the just-born tiger cub and his dead mother. They adopt the little guy and, surrounded by goats as his only models, he began to believe he was one. He learned to bleat and eat grass, even though the grass was very hard on his digestive system.
Months later a male tiger chased the flock, and as they scattered, only the young tiger was left to stand helplessly and bleat.
“What are you doing living with goats?” the tiger asked the young feline.
When the little tiger responded with, Maaaaa, and started nibbling grass, the big fellow was mortified and carried him to a pond. For the first time, the young tiger saw his face in the reflection. When the big fellow gave a roar, the young tiger could only bleat, and the elder tiger said, “No, you have to roar like a true tiger!”
After several attempts, the young fellow could roar fully with the sound of a tiger. That deep, loud roar is what the Sufis say is equal to one human being who discovers his true nature.
As authentic leaders, we must decide if we want to live a mistaken life or live the life we are destined for. The decision to live in alignment with our true nature means deepening our self-awareness.
A commitment to awareness – the will to understand – is a central pillar of authentic leadership. The 75 members of the Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Advisory Council unanimously agreed that self-awareness is the most important capability for leaders to develop.
So, how is self-awareness developed? While attending presentations, reading or listening to books, and investing in leadership training is useful, self-awareness ultimately involves deep personal honesty and asking and regularly answering the hard questions. Self-awareness is like fitness – you don’t get there by going to the gym once a year. It’s a daily habit.
But unlike fitness, self-awareness can’t be done alone. While personal reflection is a component of self-awareness, it’s not sufficient. You can’t see what you can’t see. Your gifts and your blind spots are too close to you for you to be aware of them. You can’t see yourself accurately through your own lenses. A mirror – in the form of a guide, community, confidant, or mentor – is essential to see yourself.
And that’s why I’m excited to be launching the SAGE (Self Awareness Group Experience) Forums.
It consists of a group of ten to twelve like-minded leaders who meet in a virtual four-hour session each month and potentially once a year in a retreat. The group is facilitated by one of our trained and experienced leaders, designed to offer a safe and supportive community to discuss how to authentically navigate any of the issues and opportunities you face.
We sincerely hope you will consider applying for this life-changing program.

CRACKED OPEN – Finding Your Authenticity in Adversity

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“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Shortly after a good friend suffered a massive heart attack and survived an eight-hour surgery, I was debriefing the experience with him and asked, “How has all this changed your life?”

“It opened my heart,” he said jokingly. Then the conversation got real, and he went on, “It gave me renewed resolve to live life more fully, more present, and more connected to my feelings and to the important people in my life… This heart attack was probably the best thing that ever happened to me…”

There is something both horrible and potentially liberating about hard times. Adversity—the kind that finds you exhausted, depleted, laying on a cold, hard hospital bed wondering if you are going to be alive in the morning —strips you down, cracks you open, takes you apart, and sets you free.

Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s not the way we planned it. Life is the way it is. The way you respond to life is what makes the difference. In the words of the mythologist, Joseph Campbell, “You must be willing to let go of the life you’ve planned so as to have the life that you are meant to live.”

In my leadership development programs, I ask people to reflect on the defining moments in their life, the significant experiences that helped shape and make them who they are today. A good number of life-defining experiences have to do with coming to grips with adversity. It only makes sense. We are meant to learn and grow and evolve in this brief human experience we’ve been given. As such, we can expect some difficult times on the path of life. That’s the beauty of it all. What’s the use of anything that’s too easy? Just as we develop our physical muscles by facing the opposition of weights in a gym, we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

The adversity journey, the journey to your authentic self, describes the process of surrendering to a time of great difficulty, allowing the pain to crack us open, so that a stronger, wiser, kinder person will emerge.

Here are three lessons I learned through facing my own adversity:

1. Strip away the non-essentials.
When we’re exhausted and mired in the snake pit of depression, or facing an addiction, or carrying unspeakable grief, or coming to terms with a serious health diagnosis, or confronting a layoff or unexpected divorce, when we are trying merely to survive and make it through another day, we discover that anything not essential begins to strip away like old paint. It served its purpose, but it’s now past its shelf life. Our old identity, our expectations of life, our attachments, everything we thought we had control over – all begin to disappear in the dawning of the light of our true self.

When we abandon the outdated ways we used to define ourselves, we begin to compassionately appreciate the self that would not have been valued without the hardships. We can see what others and the world truly needs, and our unapologetic authentic self gets to work.

2. Embrace the hard stuff.
Life isn’t pretty when you’re in the trenches. Pain gets real when we are pushed to our breaking point and beyond. It hurts to come to grips with loss and fear and powerlessness, or give up hopes and dreams we had for our lives and for the people we care about.

Embracing the hard stuff means refusing to hide or escape. It means facing life on life’s terms. It means shedding blame and getting real with ourselves. It means finding a community who will hold the space to make it safe to be who we are. It means giving thanks for obstacles that became steppingstones, and for those friends, guides, confidants, and family members that helped – and continue to support us – along the way. It means reaching inside and finding a strength and a faith to help get us through and emerge stronger and brighter.

3. Ring the bells that still can ring.
Leonard Cohen famously said, “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Ringing the bells that “still can ring,” means bringing your whole imperfect self to whatever adversity you’re experiencing. Your contribution, however small it might feel, is vital. Know that the sound of your bell is needed today. And within our brokenness and imperfect efforts we find that the light of our gifts is our greatest contribution to the world.

Terry Fox lost his leg to osteogenic sarcoma at age of eighteen and underwent sixteen months of treatment. While in the hospital he was overcome with suffering. Not his own, but the anguish he witnessed in the cancer wards, many who were young children. He decided one morning to ring the bell that still could ring. He decided to set out to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. He would call his journey the Marathon of Hope.

His last words were, “If I don’t make it… the marathon of hope must continue.” Continue it did. To date, over $800 million has been raised for cancer research in Terry’s name through the annual Terry Fox Run, held across Canada and around the world.

Disruptive times create an opportunity to get us in touch with ourselves and our world differently. They crack open the old to see a fresh view of living and working and leading. New movements are shaking up old norms. Reconciliation, restoration, and the common good are calling out for our attention. Let’s use whatever adversity or pain we might be going through to reclaim our capacity for meaningful contribution in our communities, workplaces, and institutions. Let’s do our imperfect best to make meaning out of our mess.

I walked a mile with pleasure, She chatted all the way,
But left me none the wiser for all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow, And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her when sorrow walked with me.
Robert Browning Hamilton