Tag Archive for: leadership

ACCOUNTABILITY: It’s Not About Criticism. It’s About Clarity

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In my role of board chair in a non-profit organization I’ve felt some strain the past few weeks. I’ve imagined that the executive director is unhappy with the board and am wondering whether we’re best serving this organization. An incredible board member who has been the glue holding the organization together since it’s inception is stepping down now that her tenure is up. I’ve been questioning if I’m able to fill her shoes. It’s stressful when you are unsure if you are meeting the expectations of the people who depend on you.

What I’m going to do this week is meet with the executive director and ask for help. We are going to discuss and negotiate what we expect from each other and how to best support each other. We will clarify how we define success in this organization, our agreements with each other, how to measure expected results, and what to do if either of us inadvertently gets off track. In short, we’re going to reset the compass of our relationship.

What we’re going to do is be accountable to each other. It’s not about blame or accusations or fault-finding or finger-pointing. It’s about ownership and clear agreements.

Accountability lies at the foundation of every good relationship. It’s meant to foster trust, decrease stress, build fulfilling connections, and get a grip on results that matter.

Five Ways Leaders Accidentally Create Dishonesty In Employees

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Honesty is a key value for any organization. It sets the tone for the kind of culture you are committed to create. It provides consistency in behavior. And it builds loyalty and trust. Honesty is one of the most effective ways to establish the environment that will propel your organization to long-term success. As a leader, the importance you place on honesty can create a culture where your team members feel inspired, empowered, and validated.

Moral dishonesty, such as stealing, padding expense accounts, or lying about results can unfortunately be a part of an organization. More subtle and every bit as important, however, is psychological honesty.

  • What is the experience of your team members working in this organization?
  • Do people feel free to bring you their concerns, questions, or feedback without fear of reprisal?
  • How tense do people feel working around you?
  • Can people be honest with you about your leadership?
  • And how do you know if people are giving honest answers to these questions? How much are people on your team choosing to be merely polite rather being genuine?

Here are five ways leaders accidently create dishonesty in their team. I say accidently because no one sets out to create a dishonest work environment. Often, however, amid stress, demands, and particularly in a hybrid work environment where we may not be as connected to our team, we may inadvertently overlook some unintended consequences of our behavior.

  1. A lack of transparency with your team about why you made a decision. If you aren’t modeling honesty, it’s difficult to expect it.
  2. Unacknowledged stress, tension, and anxiety. It’s tough enough to be honest with your boss. But when you add emotional volatility to the mix, you are inserting a variable of instability which encourages being polite rather than genuine. It is for this reason that leaders must pay close attention to how they act and communicate. To create an honest workplace, you must attend to your inner state. Whether you see it or not, if you have unrecognised strain, tension, and anxiety, your team is likely going to hold back telling you the truth. Volatility breeds unpredictability. And unpredictability breeds dishonesty.
  3. Talking over people. When we interrupt others rather than sincerely listen, we give the message that we think we are smarter than they are, that they aren’t as valued, and aren’t needed. I, for one, am guilty of this when I’m feeling stressed, pushing for results, and forgetting about the importance of the people on my team.
  4. Ignoring people’s emotions. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to ignore your team members’ feelings. This error often occurs when a leader is either unable to deal with their own emotions or are overly focused on tasks and results. The key here is empathy: you will succeed only when you care enough to attend to those around you. You are less likely to increase anxiety in others if you consider how your actions impact them. It’s your responsibility to be attentive to how people around you are doing.
  5. Defensiveness. This is the big one. If you ask for feedback in these areas, you need to let go of needing to be right to protect your ego. As Steve Covey used to say, “seek first to understand…” That is our work. When people have the courage to bring anything to our attention that creates discomfort in us, our responsibility is to resist the tendency to get defensive and to listen to understand.

In summary, positional leaders impact their employees’ stress and anxiety levels. What they say, feel, and do hugely influences their team’s physical and emotional well-being and how they respond. But sadly, far too few leaders are aware that they have this power. And many are overconfident in their leadership skills, creating a gap between their perceived and actual levels of competence. This explains why even well-meaning bosses may inadvertently contribute to high anxiety levels in their team members and how they inadvertently shut people down.

You can change people.

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We’ve all heard the adage: “You can’t change other people. You can only change yourself.” While I get that it’s wasted energy to try to change others by pushing them or cajoling them, or attempting to control them, it doesn’t mean that you can’t change people.

If you sincerely care about a person and you give them consistent positive feedback, provide encouragement, listen and show genuine interest in what they are interested in, honestly value their input, find value in their work and contribution, and show up in their lives, I’ll promise that over time, they will change. Maybe not right away. But they will change. They will grow. They will become better people because of your influence.

And… if you spend time criticizing, disrespecting, discouraging, diminishing, and focusing on all the things that you don’t like about someone, the fault-finding and belittling will also change them. It’s hard to be around bitter, critical, negative people without taking some of that on.

Now that I reflect this, a question arises: Are we are actually “changing” another, or simply bringing the best out of them? In this light, I’m not sure we can even change ourselves. Perhaps, at best, all we can do is create the right conditions for our true, finest nature to be expressed.

And for simplicity sake, let’s assume we can change people. Maybe not without their consent, but don’t overlook the impact one person can have on another.

It’s Hard To Care About Others When You’re Stressed

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Last week, I was presenting to a wonderful group of leaders. I arrived two hours early to ensure the technology would work. It turned out that the AV equipment provided at the venue wasn’t compatible with my computer. A stressful moment to say the least.

A recent study has determined that empathy originates in the anterior insular cortex, which is a different part of the brain that is activated when you’re stressed. I’m no neuroscientist, but my experience of being stressed about the AV equipment and its implications for my presentation made it difficult to be empathic with the guy from the venue who was trying to help me, was defensive, and knew nothing about technology.

His lack of people skills and my lack of empathy created a scenario that did not end well. My impatience led to a less than respectful exchange.

The irony of the situation was that I was presenting on Caring In The Workplace!

Upon reflection, here’s what I learned:

  1. When agitated, pause. Step back, go for a walk, call a friend, do whatever you need to do to get to a calm state. Agitation, irritability, and impatience never help a situation.
  2. Decide, when going into any stressful situation, that blame is a waste of time. Working on solutions rather than being angry about the problems is far more effective.
  3. Ensure you are clear about expectations and have a backup strategy. “This is what I need to make this project a success.” And, when life happens and everything falls apart, calmness and confidence arise from having a plan B.
  4. Accept your humanness and when you are wrong, and promptly admit it. I called the venue yesterday and apologized to the guy who was trying to be helpful that morning.

Reflections On Thanksgiving Day

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On this magnificent and beautiful Thanksgiving weekend in Western Canada, I have much to be grateful for. I have been richly blessed: with a family who inspires, supports, and loves me, with good friends who see the good in me when I can’t see it in myself, with good health, with a career that allows me to live my purpose, with the dogs that I walk every morning who remind me to stay present to all the beauty that surrounds me, with mentors who help me maintain perspective, and for a imperfect path to inner peace and well-being.

In the midst of the gratitude, I am also feeling anguish about the current troubles in the world. While reflecting on the horrific tragedies in Israel this morning, I had a call from a good friend, Peter Nieman, a pediatrician who has recently completed his third book, “SUSTAINED: A Life Re-Written After Sudden Misfortune.” SUSTAINED is Peter’s story of his healing journey and some lessons he is learning through the loss of his young son who took his own life.

Peter and I spoke of getting through a crisis with a sense of equanimity, inner-peace, well-being and realness, even as we embrace fully the horror of whatever we are facing. We spoke about the importance, when confronting catastrophe, to keep, our MVP: Motives, Values, and Priorities front and centre. Then we looked more deeply into what each of our motives, values, and priorities were at this stage in our lives.

Among Buddhists, a Sangha is a community. In Sanskrit, sangha means “collective” or “assemblage,” a group of friends committed to support each other to sustain perspective, support, and continually renewed self-awareness.
On this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend I am grateful for my Sangha.

DIVERSIFYING YOUR IDENTITY: A Key To Becoming Resilient

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For several months I’d been helping a client prepare for a speech she was to present to one of her important clients. Knowing that this one presentation could be a key to leveraging her career, she put all her energy, including many coaching sessions and a great financial investment, into the crafting of the speech.

It resulted in an incredible delivery that far exceeded her client’s expectations. However, she received one small piece of corrective feedback and went into a dark funk for days. She became so despondent she considered walking away from her entire career.

After a long debrief about the experience, we explored the trap of putting our identity and worth into one facet of our lives. Like our financial net worth, we’re vulnerable and even fragile if it’s all in one basket. What happens when our entire life is defined by our work, and we retire? What happens if our identity is in raising our kids, when our kids leave home? What happens when our worth is attached to a healthy, strong body, and you become injured or get old? What happens when your worth is attached to your position on a board of directors and your tenure comes due? What happens if our identity is tied entirely to our possessions, and a fire destroys our home and everything in it?

Diversifying your identity, a concept I first learned from Brad Stulberg, is parallel to diversifying your financial investment portfolio. If you place your investments with a mix of stocks, bonds, international companies, and domestic companies, when one goes down, another one might be going up or staying stable.

The story of world record holder speed skater Nils van der Poel illustrates what it means to diversify your identity. Prior to his phenomenal performance at the 2022 games, Nils was struggling. He wasn’t performing at his best. When he stopped and reflected on what was going on, he realized that every time he stepped onto the oval to compete, fear began to consume him because his entire identity was derived from speed skating. This singular identity resulted in excessive, destructive pressure. Nils van der Poel as a person was synonymous with the results he generated on the ice.

Nils decided to create a strategy to diversify his identity. During the week, he trained with the same level of commitment and intensity. On the weekdays he remained a world class athlete. However, on the weekends he stepped back and allowed himself to be a person away from speed skating. He started hanging out with friends who weren’t athletes. He started going out for beer and pizza. He went bowling. He went on hikes. It wasn’t just giving his body a rest. He was giving his mind a rest. As he diversified his identity, he developed a sense of worth beyond speed skating. No longer was he just Van der Poel “the speed skater.” He was Nils Van der Poel, the friend, the community member, the man who loved hiking in the mountains.

Not only was Nils preparing for life after his sport, diversifying his identity also allowed him to come to the ice with less fear. He started to race with greater ease and joy. He was more relaxed. He was less attached to having to win to prove his worth because he had an identity away from the ice. And, at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, van der Poel, paradoxically, went on to win two gold medals and set a world record.

Identity diversification isn’t just good for sport. Many great difference makers were diversified. Da Vinci wasn’t just an artist. He was also a mathematician, inventor, and writer. Eleanor Roosevelt was a writer and great humanitarian. A well-worn fiddle case accompanied Einstein wherever he went. Diversifying your identity builds resilience by becoming a more well-rounded person. It also strengthens your primary path of focus.

Reflect on what you might be overly identified with at the present time. Where is there vulnerability, fragility, and unnecessary pressure from being overly attached to one identity? Where is there a need for “identity diversification?” What relationships might you be neglecting? Where might you need to let go of some over-attachment to roles you currently have? What is something in a totally unrelated field you could learn about that would enrich your life? What hobbies could be developed? Where is there an opportunity to do some service in your community – beyond your current role?

My client turned her experience into a learning opportunity. While she did take her career to a new level with an amazing presentation, after an extended holiday following the experience, she came back more well-rounded and committed to continue to work on diversifying her identity – with much more joy and greater resilience.