Herding Tigers

5 Conversations To Have With Your Team May 24, 2022

There are five process-related conversations that can help your team maintain better focus, dispel fear, and manage expectations. In this episode, I share the five conversations and how to implement them effectively.

First a few ground-rules. Do not steamroll your team with these and if you're a team member, don't barge into your manager's office demanding to have these conversations. This is about relationship and relationship is about empathy, trust and commitment. If we're going to have these conversations, we must be committed to the results, even if they're not what we wish for. We have to be willing to hear the truth and act on it even when we dislike it.

One more quick ground rule. You need to be having these conversations both on a team level and an individual level with your team members. Some team members might not feel comfortable expressing themselves in a larger group, but they might have insights that can help you engage in a more healthy way if you give them space to talk. You need to formalize your conversations. In the words of management guru Peter Drucker, "what gets measured gets done." You need to have a system for these conversations and not just wait for the opportune time to occur. It never will.

1. The Clarity Conversation

This conversation is all about bringing alignment and combatting dissonance with our teams. It's about making sure that what we SAY we're about is what we're actually about. It's about making sure that we understand the objectives of our projects, our teams and our organization's reason for being.

– Do what/why add up? In other words, is what we SAY we're about what we're actually doing? One way to ask this question is "is there anything we're doing right now that seems out of character for us?" Step back and allow the conversation to ensue. Don't get defensive and don't feel the need to argue. This is not about being right, it's about discerning and identifying problems within the team.

- Do you understand the objectives? Are they clear? Is there anything you're unclear about? Sometimes people won't speak up because they assume that everyone else gets it and they're the only idiot. This kind of isolation is a lie and it countermands creative effectiveness. The more we discuss the objectives until everyone is crystal clear, the better off we'll be.

Clarity is critical to healthy team creating. The more clear we are about the problems we're trying to solve, the more effective we will be in that creating. But the less clear we are about aligning the why and the what, the more our process will dissolve into chaos.

2. The Expectations Conversation

This very simple conversation is designed to neutralize the victim mindset. By calling out and allowing conversations about expectations we can be certain that we're not allowing confusion to grow, which can lead to finger-pointing and self-protection rather than generosity and trust.

– Do you know what’s expected of you? Get the artist to express their understanding of expectations directly and simply.

– What do you expect from me and am I falling short? Again, don't be defensive and try to defend yourself. If the stated expectations are unrealistic, have that conversation, but it's important that you realize that your role is to serve, not to be right.

3. The Fear Conversation

This is the most nebulous of the conversations and is one of the more difficult to get people to open up to, but it can be one of the most powerful if we have the guts to engage in it. This is all about shining light into dark, unspoken places and neutralizing emerging fear.

– What are you afraid might happen and why? In other words, what makes you "gun shy" in your creating?

– Do you feel free to take risks? If so, why? What environmental cues are leading you to that?

4. The Engagement Conversation

This conversation is all about identifying patterns of engagement/energy/enthusiasm on the team. Creativity is rhythmic, both on an individual and team level and we have to take that into account as we're planning our work. This conversation helps you - as the leader of process - to gauge where the team is in terms of energy and engagement and plan accordingly. It also helps the team - in a collective sense - to gain a better understanding of where each member is in terms of inspiration and energy level.

– What’s your energy level/enthusiasm?

– What’s inspiring you?

– How do you feel about the work you’re doing?

– What’s the best thing we’re doing and why?

5. The “Final 10%” Conversation

This conversation is all about neutralizing - as my friend Ben likes to call them - "whispers in the hallway." These are the conversations that emerge when a small group of people want to commiserate but they don't have the guts to speak their thoughts to the organization either because they're spineless or because there isn't a culture of trust. Either way, you are WAY better off having these conversations in a team context and one-on-one than allowing them to fester and create dissonance and fear. So what you're going to do in this conversation is ask them to tell you the "final remnant" of feedback that they're not going to volunteer unless you ask for it.

- What’s the dumbest thing I/we are doing right now?

– What’s the smartest thing I/we are doing right now?

– What something obvious that you don’t think I’m seeing?

Self-Care For Leaders May 13, 2022

On this episode, we do a quick habit check-up to ensure that you're protecting your viability as a leader. The old saying says "As goes the leader, so goes the team." To be effective, you need to model not only work ethic and character, but also what it looks like to be a healthy creative pro. We discuss five key areas where you should have practices to help you maintain health as a leader.

Exorcise The Ghost (Rules) May 05, 2022

There are ghosts haunting the halls of your organization. They are invisible assumptions, false and limiting narratives, and other types of "rules" that limit the kinds of ideas your team members will introduce, who will collaborate with whom, and how your team functions.

In this episode, we discuss the nature of ghost rules and how to exorcise them for good.

Shift From Maker To Manager Apr 20, 2022

The hardest transition to make when you step into a leadership role is the one from maker to manager. When you are early in your career, you are primarily evaluated on your ability to do the work - to control it, shape it, and make it great. However, once you transition into leadership your job is no longer to do the work, it's to LEAD the work. This is a fundamentally different responsibility, and one that many managers get wrong.

In this episode of the Herding Tigers podcast, I discuss some tensions that every leader of creative people experiences as they attempt the shift from maker to manager, and how to deal with them.

Join the Leader List to get one short leadership essay a week for 52 weeks.

Want to dive deeper? Check out the Herding Tigers Creative Leader Course.

Why Your Perpetual Optimism Might Be Killing Your Team Apr 13, 2022

There is a big difference between telling the actual truth and telling people what you wish was the truth. Some leaders think that to inspire their team they must always have a positive vision, so they translate that belief to “I must ensure that team members feel like everything is going great.”

However, this is not driven by a desire to do what’s in the best interest of the team, but by the neediness of the leader. They don’t want to deal with the discomfort of wading through the murky grey waters of uncertainty. It’s much easier to deal in black and white, so they paint the situation as much more simple and positive it really is. The dissonance team members feel between words and reality causes a major breach in trust. (By the way, your team is smart.)

Have you ever met that person who always puts a positive spin on everything? The world could be falling apart, cats and dogs living together in harmony, and fire and brimstone falling from the clouds, but somehow they still muster a smile and say it’s going to be OK? You’ll hear many gurus and leadership experts touting the importance of optimism and the strategic value of always keeping a positive mindset. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this advice, except that it’s taken to an irresponsible extreme. When your optimism is decoupled from reality, you risk losing the trust of your team and your perspective on what needs to be done.

That person who always puts a positive spin on things? You probably don’t trust them. Not fully, anyway. They might be fun to hang out with, and they might be able to turn around a bad night out, but it’s doubtful that you’d go to them first when you need serious advice about an important decision. You simply can’t trust that they’ll give you a realistic viewpoint. They are too clouded by their unrealistic “future’s so bright I gotta wear shades” mentality.

If you aren’t realistic with your team, then you risk losing their trust. They’ll listen to you, but they won’t believe you. As legendary leadership expert Warren Bennis said, “Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.” If your team suspects that you’re putting a glossy overtone on everything, they’ll soon stop paying attention and will seek out a truth teller. Your organization will become dysfunctional.

Yes, informed optimism is the fuel of change, but naive optimism is deadly. Wishing and hoping is never a solution to actual problems. If you want to effect change, you need to pair your optimism with realism and skill.

The same principles apply to your team.

Don't fall for the temptation to put a glossy coat on everything. Your team will trust you more, and will follow you into the uncertainty, when they believe that you're telling them the truth.

Leaders, Your Team Needs You To Be Precise Apr 06, 2022

In many ways, leadership is about risk mitigation. You want to channel resources and team effort in the direction most likely to generate the results you want, while at the same time minimizing the potential downside of getting it wrong. This is especially challenging when doing creative work, because the downside of getting it wrong can be significant. If you make the wrong decisions early in a project, the net result can be days or weeks of wasted work, maybe making it impossible to course correct.

Because of the risk involved, many leaders unknowingly become less than clear about their expectations for the work or of the team. They might speak in vague terms or give opaque direction because they themselves are not certain of the right decision. They know the team needs to move forward, but it’s not clear to them yet what forward actually means. They want to protect themselves from a mistake, so they lack precision.

The problem with this is that their lack of precision and clarity has a trickle-down effect within the organization. Direction diffuses. Things don’t become more clear as you get farther and farther from the decision-maker, they become less so. Thus, a few team dynamics emerge:

1. Because they don’t want to waste their time, team members just wait until you tell them what to actually do before starting their work.

2. Dissonance emerges as each team member interprets what you want, sometimes leading to misalignment and disjointedness among those responsible for executing on the work.

Team members need leaders to be precise about expectations. They don’t need you to be right, but they do need you to be clear even when you are uncertain. Here are a few areas where you need to ensure you are being precise:

Precise Language. When sharing your decisions or expectations with the team, speak in nouns and verbs, not lofty adjectives and adverbs. Be a laser, not a lighthouse. A lighthouse tells you what not to do by pointing out danger areas, but doesn’t really give you a clear path forward. A laser is precise and focused and points you to a desired outcome. You should aim to use precise language when speaking with the team. Don’t use industry buzz-phrases or metaphors. Find a clear, compelling, precise way to communicate what you want, even if you’re uncertain you’re correct.

Precise Expectations. Be very clear about what you want, when you want it, who will do it, why it matters, and what the outcome will be if you are successful. Don’t leave room for vague interpretations of when the work is needed, who the responsible parties are, or why any of it matters to begin with. All effective expectations include assignment of responsibility, articulation of timeline, and accountability for results. If your expectations don’t include all three, you aren’t being precise enough.

Precise Objectives. Where are you leading the team? How will you know you’ve arrived? Why will any of it matter? Many leaders speak in lofty, vague terms about their vision for the work or the team because they aren’t really certain about their own intuition. Team members need to know that you have clear objectives in mind, that you are aware of the obstacles you will encounter along the way, and that you have a plan to overcome them. You must be clear about where you are leading the team in spite of your personal insecurities.

Leaders, be precise in how you communicate with your team. You owe them that. Once your team members have clear bounding arcs and a solid objective in mind, they will reward you with more consistent, aligned, imaginative work.

Want to explore this topic more? Check out my book Herding Tigers.

Are You Committing This Leadership “Sin”? Jul 09, 2021

One of the more concerning dynamics of the “everything is on the record all the time” world is that changing your mind – especially in a highly public way – has become SIN NUMBER ONE. If a politician or business leader evolves in their understanding of a topic, we call them a flip flopper. If someone alters their once-fierce perspective in light of newfound information, we call them a hypocrite or a traitor. However, one of the most crucial roles of the leader is to be a learner, and it is impossible to learn without being shaped and changed in some way. To be shaped, you have to open yourself to the idea that you don’t know everything, and that your present ideas could be incorrect, or at least incomplete.

On this episode, we discuss why it's important to change your mind (sometimes) and how to do it effectively.

The Two Types Of Relationships Every Leader Needs Jun 18, 2021

The Herding Tigers podcast is back! We'll be featuring leadership conversations, interviews, and tips for helping your team do its best work each day.

Leadership is only lonely if you're doing it wrong. On this episode, discover the two types of relationships that every creative leader needs.

Join my weekly in-person meetups at CreativeLeaderRoundtable.com.

How To Handle Conflict Apr 19, 2018

If you have talented, driven, creative people on your team, conflict is inevitable. Conflict isn't bad, it's just a by-product of the creative process. However, how you handle conflict will determine the health or dysfunction of the team. On this episode, we share three core principles from Herding Tigers about dealing with conflict in a healthy way.

Dealing With A Culture Of Blame Apr 04, 2018

It’s human nature to want to assign blame. Since the dawn of time we’ve assigned unseen causes to effects that we can’t explain. We even find ways of off-loading blame for our vices (the devil made me do it!) and our shortcomings (it’s just my nature.)

Much of this blame-shifting is in the effort to protect ourselves. We don’t like being seen by others as a failure, or as lacking self-control. There are sometimes consequences for failure that affect our job, our family and even our health. We also don’t like to see ourselves as a failure, and we do everything we can to protect our desired self-image.

When a culture of blame infiltrates your team, it can be devastating.

On today's episode, we share a few ways to identify a culture of blame, and several principles for dealing with it.

For a deeper dive, check out Herding Tigers.

How To Handle Failure Mar 28, 2018

After a failed project, many teams simply move forward to the next one, without a postmortem. This is a huge mistake. It’s important as a leader that you seize those failures and mistakes and turn them into growth moments for your team. Otherwise, people are likely to commit the same mistakes again. Some of the biggest coaching opportunities you’ll have are in the moments when an individual or your team has failed, and you have to seize them.

On this episode, we share a handful of questions to ask at the end of any failed effort to help you learn from them and move forward with confidence.

3 Critical Pressures Every Manager Faces Mar 20, 2018

Leading creative work is like trying to organize something that doesn't want to be organized. You will face a number of unique pressures that can easily sidetrack you (and your career) if you don't handle them well. On this episode, we share three of those pressures, and offer a few questions to ask yourself to gauge how well you're managing them.

Why Great Leaders Tell Great Stories Mar 12, 2018

As a leader of a creative organization, your job may be to tell your client’s story through the work of your team. Your team is in the business of positively shaping the perception a market has towards what your client is selling. You are attempting to gain the market’s trust through creative storytelling and branding. If effective storytelling is as much a part of selling your client’s image to the market then why shouldn’t it be an important tool in selling your leadership to your team?

Lisa Johnson has spent years studying the elements of effective storytelling and has become a sought-after consultant by some of the world’s largest brands. She believes that one of the best ways for leaders to show themselves to their team is through telling stories. Specifically, she says that leaders should tell stories that reveal something about themselves that the team may not have previously heard.

On this episode, we share are a few kinds of stories that Johnson recommends leaders tell. This episode is excerpted from the book Herding Tigers.

Today's episode is sponsored by the Herding Tigers Workshop, and live event for you and leaders just like you. Check it out at HerdingTigersWorkshop.com

Four Traps Leaders Fall Into (And How To Avoid Them) Feb 28, 2018

Leadership is hard. It’s a lonely role, you face crushing uncertainty with elevated stakes, and you’re expected to deliver not only on your own work, but also to corral the creative minds of others and parade them into the promised land. (Oh, and did I mention that it’s often thankless?)

However, leadership is also a tremendous opportunity. You get the privilege of helping others unleash their best work, and you get to have a level of influence on decisions that will often determine the success or failure of the organization.

When the pressure is on, and uncertainty is rearing its ugly head, there are traps that even the most experienced leaders fall into. When you fall into one (or more) of these traps, you put an impediment in your team’s path, and introduce dissonance into the organization.

On this episode, we share four common traps that leaders fall into when the pressure is on: deferring, blaming, bending, and hovering.

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This episode is brought to you by the Herding Tigers Workshop, a live event for you and leaders just like you that's designed to help you be the leader that creative people need.

Staying Inspired As A Leader Feb 06, 2018

Here is a core truth of leadership: if you are not inspired, you cannot inspire. Take time each week to inspire yourself and to connect with the deeper stream of your motivation. On this episode, we share three simple ways to stay inspired so that you can earn your team's trust and respect. Remember that great leaders have great rituals.

Learn more about Herding Tigers.

Your Leadership Philosophy Jan 31, 2018

If you control the work of your team, their capacity never scales beyond the scope of your personal involvement. Great leaders set effective rails to help their team members make good decisions in the face of uncertainty. On this episode, we share the elements of a good leadership philosophy and how to establish your own.

Learn more about Herding Tigers at HerdingTigers.net.

How To Protect Your Creative Team Jan 25, 2018

Your team needs to know that it will have the time and attention necessary to do the work. However, organizations are often their own worst enemy, and it can be difficult to protect your team from the onslaught of demands and pressure that can get in the way of brilliance.

On this episode, Todd Henry and riCardo Crespo discuss some specific and practical strategies for protecting your team's time and attention.

Today's episode is brought to you by the book Herding Tigers: Be The Leader That Creative People Need.

Know What Motivates Your Team Jan 10, 2018

To do brilliant work over the long term, creative people need a great coach. As a leader, you need to understand what motivates the people on your team, and help them align their work around what they do best. On this episode, I share insights from Chapter 5 of Herding Tigers about how to step up from peer to coach, and to identify which of the three primary motivational categories your team members fall into.

The Three Challenges Of Leading Creative Work Dec 14, 2017

Leading a creative team can feel like trying to build a bicycle while riding it. What worked last time might not work next time, so it feels like you're always trying to figure things out as you go. On top of managing personalities and the complexity of the work itself, there are also a few unique challenges that creative work present: opacity, insecurity, and subjectivity. On this episode, we dissect each of these three challenges and offer some practical tips for overcoming them.

Learn more about Herding Tigers at HerdingTigers.net.

Herding Tigers: The Unique Nature of Leading Creative People Nov 06, 2017

On the first episode of the Herding Tigers podcast, Todd Henry and riCardo Crespo discuss the differences between traditional management and leading creative people.

Herding Tigers Intro Oct 20, 2017

How do great leaders unleash their team to do its best and most creative work? Join Todd Henry, riCardo Crespo, and guests as they discuss what the creative people on your team need from you, and how you can help to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy.

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