Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

Latest Episodes:

Midweek Motivate - Daily Practice Three - Developing May 19, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to midweek motivate, where our goal is to build your leadership and give you something practical to try with your team.

We are part way through a six week coverage of the Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders. These practices are based on research I've conducted over the past three years across thousands of leaders to identify what outstanding leaders actually do that makes a difference when engaging their people and producing results. So far we've looked at the importance of Reflecting and Inspiring. The third daily practice that we will explore today is Developing.

Ongoing development is important to build the capacity of our organisations, but it's also important in motivating individuals to contribute. Research I've conducted shows that those who are developing capability in areas that are important to them have 26% lower negative work-related stress and 60% higher engagement. Not only that, but their likelihood of staying with the organisation for more than a year is 87% higher than those who don't feel they're developing capability through their work.

As leaders, we need capable and motivated people. Developing people through their work is an essential investment.

Leaders who focus on Developing regularly undertake four activities:

Identify capability needs - they assess what skills and capabilities are required to deliver.
Clarify development interests - they work with their people to identify what they want to learn. Great leaders Invest in that development even if it isn't core now. It's about retention, and also building capacity for the future. We don't always know what skills will be needed, or the benefit of people applying new skills.
Coach people towards growth - great leaders coach on a daily basis. They ask questions and guide people to come up with their own insights and solutions.
Recognise and celebrate progress - they make a big deal out of people applying what they have learned. They look for opportunities to catch people getting better.

Developing is great for our organisations and our people. What are you going to try today?

Episode 78 - The Four Best Ways to Learn at Work May 15, 2020

Show notes

Summary

When have you learned the most at work? I bet it wasn't sitting in a training course. In this week's podcast we look at the four best ways to learn at work.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 78 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the four best ways to learn at work.

When have you learned the most at work? Was it sitting in a training course? Probably not. We usually learn best through stretching assignments where we are placed outside our comfort zone, with a supportive leader and team around us. We often try to add learning to work. However it is far better to learn through our work.

Charles Jennings has long championed this approach to learning. He believes we should focus on extracting learning from the work we do, rather than adding learning on top of our work. We should therefore focus more on performance metrics rather than learning metrics. Our performance is the key measure of our learning. We have learned something new when we can demonstrate it, not when we can restate it. And that learning should flow through to our performance on the job.

Charles outlines four drivers of learning. Let's step through each of those in turn, along with some practical examples.

The first driver of learning is exposure to rich and challenging experiences. As leaders we need to delegate important and challenging work to our people. From a development perspective, we can't wait until we're 100% confident that someone can deliver before we delegate. People learn through opportunities to be stretched. Delegation is not about short-term efficiency. Whenever you delegate, there is always going to be a short-term drop in performance. The key is to provide support and encouragement to help people push through the discomfort of learning.

The second driver of learning Charles Jennings identifies is the opportunity to practice. To learn, we need some freedom to experiment and try things out. We recently shifted a face-to-face leadership program to an online format. The facilitation team had varying levels of experience and comfort in delivering online. Most, including me, had never delivered a multiple day program in this way. So part of the learning process was to practice and experiment with the platform. We encouraged people to use the platform to catch up with family and friends - to just play with the technology in a real setting. That meant the occasional drop out and technical issue, but it's much better to have those in a practice session than during the real thing. No amount of online how-to videos could have equated to the learning of actually practicing using the platform.

The third driver of learning is participation in rich conversations and networks. It is really important to have people to share ideas and feedback with. I have always sought to be part of small groups of people for the purposes of learning. As a leader I encourage you to connect people together from across the organisation to form learning groups. Such peer learning opportunities are really powerful as people have the chance to coach and learn from each other with a focus on real work.

The fourth driver is spaces for reflection. In order to maximise our learning we need time to reflect while we are working, and time away from the work to reflect as well. Let's be honest - no one is going to mandate or schedule that reflection time for you. You need to set aside time yourself to reflect. But you can encourage your team members to spend time reflecting. It's great to ask people about what they can do now that they couldn't do a month ago. That will encourage people to reflect back on just how much they have learned. Without reflection, we often miss the opportunity to consolidate what we have learned.

These past few months have been a massive opportunity to learn through our work. With millions of people thrown into working remotely, we've all had to learn on the run. That might have included figuring out how to unmute ourselves on Zoom, or how to structure our days when working from home, or working out how to lead people remotely. To make the most of this globally enforced learning opportunity, it's important to continue to stretch ourselves, to practice, to discuss what we're learning with others, and to take the time to reflect on what we have learned. And, as leaders, we need to encourage and support out people to do the same. That way we will emerge with even greater capability and capacity as individuals and organisations.

Reference

Charles Jennings - The Four Ways Adults Learn : Learning Technologies 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ItF1s9O9Y

Midweek Motivate 9 - Daily Practice Two - Inspiring May 12, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to midweek motivate, where our goal is to build your leadership and give you something practical to try with your team.

We are part way through a six week coverage of the Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders. These practices are based on research I've conducted over the past three years across thousands of leaders to identify what outstanding leaders actually do that makes a difference when engaging their people and producing results. Last week we looked at the importance of Reflecting. The second daily practice that we will explore today is Inspiring.

As leaders, we want motivated people who are aligned to the direction we're heading as an organisation. But aligned motivation doesn't just happen - it takes effort. And we can't force anyone to be motivated. Instead, a key part of achieving aligned motivation is inspiring our team members.

What does it take to inspire someone? First, it's important to recognise that what inspires one person may not inspire the next. We can't just push out the same message to everyone the same way. Just like any other influencing exercise, we need to start by understanding the individual. Which brings us to the four activities of Inspiring.

Inspiring leaders:

Understand what motivates their people - they take the time to uncover what connects people to the work, and what motivates them outside of work
Communicate a compelling vision - the leader takes their plans and shapes them into a vision that is clear, concise and memorable
Align individuals to the vision - they work with each individual to help explain the vision and why it matters in a way that is aligned with the individual's interests
Define roles in the context of the vision - the leader ensures all the work that is undertaken links back to the vision

Inspiring isn't a once a year activity. We can't just leave inspiring up to the most senior leaders in our organisations. Inspiring is a daily practice of every outstanding leader. What are you going to try today?

Episode 77 - Can I Make Myself More Creative? May 08, 2020

Show notes

Summary

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 77 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore ways to make ourselves and our teams more creative.

In a world that's unpredictable, creativity is more important than ever. But we often treat creativity like it's an inherited skill - something you're either born with, or not. Does that then rule us non-creative types out? Or can we make ourselves more creative? While the field of creativity research is a bit of a mess of conflicting models and ideas, most research supports that people can make themselves more creative. So how do we do that?

Well, first of all, let's define creativity. Creativity is about producing something genuinely new, even if we eventually take that new thing for granted.

A great example is the development of the first iPhone. The iPhone was announced in January 2007, and launched later that same year. It's worth watching a recording of the launch and I've provided a link as a reference in the show notes. In the video, Steve Jobs takes to the stage and announces that Apple is launching three revolutionary products - a widescreen iPod with touch controls (and there's some enthusiastic cheering), a revolutionary mobile phone (louder cheers), and the third a breakthrough internet communication device (muted cheers). He then keeps repeating "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator" and then asks "Are you getting it?" He then blows people away by saying "These are not three devices, these are one device". When he demonstrates the multi-touch screen by using his finger to scroll through a list of songs, people in the audience gasp. In a world where all smart phones had keyboards and extremely convoluted software, the iPhone was something completely out of the box. But now we take all those revolutionary features for granted. Now every smart phone looks pretty much the same as the next.

All of this plays to the narrative that people like Steve Jobs are the exception. Surely they are creative geniuses from birth and mere mortals like us could never be that creative and smart. And we often equate being creative with being smart. But being creative can also be about being unrestrained, and that is something research suggests we can learn and develop,

For example, research was conducted with jazz musicians with varying levels of experience. After they had warmed up, each musician was asked to improvise over a pre-recorded track as they "normally would in a jazz setting". This was the baseline. They were then given three more tries, but told they should "improvise even more creatively than your past performance". Those with less experience did markedly better when consciously deciding to be more creative. For the musicians the key was actually about less effort and worrying less about judgement, both their own and others'.

Daniel Kahneman talks about two ways of thinking in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow - system 1 and system 2. Neither system is perfect, and both are necessary.

System 1 - thinking fast - is fast, automatic, emotional, unconscious, and biased. System 2 - thinking slow - is conscious, effortful, logical, and calculating. One of his arguments is that we think of ourselves in terms of system 2, but the reality is we can never turn off system 1. Creativity involves using both of these systems to make the most of our experience and intuition.

Here are five tips for being more creative, whether it's individually or leading a team:

Decide when you are going to be creative. If you're working with others, let them know that's what you're doing. That will give you and others permission to be more loose on logic.
Pose provocative questions, What if? Here you want to beg, borrow and steal from other business models like Uber, AirBnB or Netflix. You can take any business model and think about how that might apply to your business or product.
Free yourself from constraints. We are focusing here on the volume of ideas. Judging the merits will be relatively easy - we're all experienced at punching holes in ideas. So take the time to ditch fear and judgement.
Pay attention in the shower. Our best ideas rarely emerge through conscious effort, but rather when we are relaxed. Creativity is as much about letting your mind wander as it is about focused problem solving.
Decide when to be practical. All that creativity is worthless if you don't apply it. Again, if you're working with others let them know that's what you're doing. It's time to critique the ideas and put together a road map.

So we can all be more creative through a combination of effort and intuition. Why not explore creativity with your team this week

And just a reminder that I do have some more webinars coming up. You can go to the Leadership.Today website to find those, and I've also included recordings of some of the previous webinars.

You'll also find details of our online facilitated workshops including Well-Being For Leaders and The Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership. We can run those with your teams. They're around an hour each, and we can run that with any number up to 100 participants.

Anyway, I hope you have a great week and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with you again next week.

References

Rosen, D. S., Kim, Y. E., Mirman, D., & Kounios, J. (2017). All you need to do is ask? The exhortation to be creative improves creative performance more for nonexpert than expert jazz musicians. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(4), 420–427.

iPhone launch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoM_wVrwng

Midweek Motivate - Daily Practice One - Reflecting May 05, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to midweek motivate, where our goal is to build your leadership and give you something practical to try with your team.

For the next six weeks we're going to be exploring the Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders. These practices are based on research I've conducted over the past three years across thousands of leaders to identify what outstanding leaders actually do that makes a difference when engaging their people and producing results. The first daily practice is Reflecting.

One of the key leadership challenges for 2020 and beyond is what I call reflection deficit. We're just not taking enough time as leaders to reflect on why we're doing what we're doing. And, on an even deeper level, whether we're doing the right work in the first place. As a result our teams can be diligently and efficiently working away on precisely the wrong things. I'm sure we're working hard, we might even be working smart, but are we doing the right work?

There are four activities that I see as central to reflecting. You might need to dial up one or more of these activities.

Reflecting leaders:

Scan for opportunities and threats. They explore beyond their department, organisation, industry, and geography. They take a look at broader trends.
Craft a purpose. They develop and share a clear sense of purpose in the work that's undertaken. They can explain why we do what we do, and why it matters.
Establish goals. They stretch teams to aim higher. They are extraordinarily clear about what's expected and they help the team to strive.
Formulate a plan. The purpose and goals are clear, so they determine a path to get there.

Perhaps this list has prompted something you could do this week. One thing you could try is simply setting aside more time to reflect. Put it in your calendar on a daily basis. You might be surprised at the benefits.

Bonus - Increase Your Influence Webinar May 04, 2020

Show notes

This bonus episode includes audio from our recent Increase Your Influence Webinar. It includes some research-based and practical tips to increase the influence you have at work. You can find upcoming webinars and recordings of previous webinars at our website, leadership.today

Episode 76 - Pause Before You Pivot May 01, 2020

Show notes

Summary

It seems like everyone is being encouraged to pivot - to try something completely new in order to maintain your job or business. But it's important to pause before you pivot and consider four Cs - Capability, Content, Channel and Call.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 76 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the need to pause before we pivot, and consider four Cs - Capability, Content, Channel and Call.

There's a lot of focus at the moment on the need for organisations and individuals to pivot. That we need to look for something new to do rather than sticking with old approaches. That being agile and nimble is essential to survival in rapidly changing circumstances.

Research by LinkedIn highlights the tension for individuals, showing 22% of people feel like they've just fallen into their job without much planning, and 23% are feeling like they are on a treadmill going nowhere. Why not give something completely different a try?

While I absolutely agree with the sentiment behind this, it's important to pause before you pivot. Yes, there are new opportunities emerging every day, but the answer isn't to mindlessly change what we're doing and hope for the best. We can bring a far more considered and systematic approach.

LinkedIn and other social media feels like a giant experiment at the moment, with people and organisations throwing forth seemingly random ideas and offers in an attempt to find a solid foothold. Much of it is driven by a genuine desire to be helpful, or at least needed. And much of it will ultimately fail. There's just not enough substance behind many of these pivots.

It's helpful to think of the need and capacity to pivot in terms of four Cs - Capability, Content, Channel and Call. I know this sounds like I've pivoted overnight to a podcast on marketing, but we can think of these four Cs for ourselves and our organisations when considering whether to pivot, and where to pivot.

For any organisation or individual, we bring value to the world via our Capability and Content delivered through a Channel. We then receive value back based on whether there is a Call or demand for what we bring.

You can think of Capability as the skills and abilities that we bring to bear. There are things that we can do that are potentially of value to others. And we can always develop our Capability through the investment of time and effort.

Content is what we know. It's the knowledge that we've acquired over time. It's our views and perspectives about different areas. We can always build more Content.

Then there is the Channel. If you think about this from a marketing perspective, a Channel is how you connect and communicate with others. In the context of making a pivot, a Channel is how you bring your Capability and Content to the market. That might be a job, or a voluntary role, or a business, or a blog. It's the conduit between you and the outside world.

The final and perhaps most important area is Call. Here I'm talking about the market demand. If you're looking to remain employed or in business, the Call will be mainly financial - how you can bring value that warrants the amount you are paid. But even if you're doing something in a voluntary capacity, there still needs to be a Call for what you're offering. When considering Call the key question is "what do people want or need?"

A risky pivot is to try to change in multiple areas simultaneously. For example, to do something outside of our Capability, with new Content, through a new Channel, without a clear sense of the Call. We are much better at any point in time to pivot in one or two areas, rather than all four.

We do want to experiment, but think of a minimum viable product based on a clear Call. Start by thinking about what people need - clarify the Call. Then, rather than working away at something that requires a huge investment, why not test a smaller version of that first? I hate the term, but it might be a side-hustle alongside your paid employment. Or it could be a new service or product for your business.

I'll provide an example from my own business. At Leadership Today our mission is to help leaders to achieve results through people for good. That's why we exist. The mission hasn't really changed in the past 8 years, but it has been refined and clarified.

When I speak with clients, the Call I'm hearing around leadership development at the moment is in two areas - well-being and remote leadership. How do leaders look after themselves and others in a broad definition of well-being? And how do leaders lead teams that are physically distanced and isolated? There is an ongoing Call for leadership development that aligns with the mission of my organisation, but these two areas are most pressing.

If I think about those two leadership development needs in terms of Content, there's a lot I know about leadership in both of those areas. But there's always more I can learn, so I've been spending some time increasing my Content knowledge.

In terms of Channels, up to last year I had been primarily using this podcast and face-to-face leadership development programs to deliver my Capability and Content to the market. But even before the pandemic, I saw that the vast majority of people who listen to this podcast are outside of my home country of Australia, so I was already looking at ways to deliver what I know (the Content) to people where face-to-face would not always be possible (the Channel). So, for me, I had already identified webinars, online workshops, and online courses make a lot of sense in linking the Content to the people who want it (the Call). The pandemic has just increased the Call.

It's then that Capability comes to the fore. So I can record podcasts, but I also have experience in recording video for leadership development programs, and also in hosting webinars and online web conferences. Perfect - I'm pretty much ready to go from a Capability perspective.

Taken together, the Call is slightly refined, the Capability is pretty much there, the Content just needs tweaking - it's the Channel that's the greatest change. So that's a pivot mainly in one area - totally do-able. And I can try it out with some low risk experiments and learn quickly to refine the Channel.

At this point you might be saying, "that's great for you Andrew and I'm glad your business is going well, but I'm in a job or looking for new work".

Let's take the example of someone who has recently lost their job. It might be tempting for them to either try and find exactly the same job but in another organisation, or go completely to the other end of the spectrum and try something entirely different. The best answer is likely in between these two extremes.

You can think of the job as the Channel - it's the way you deliver your Capability and Content to the market, the market being your organisation. I think we often underestimate the breadth of Channels or jobs across which we could bring our skills and knowledge to life. We also routinely underestimate our Capability and Content. But we also need to recognise the market demand - the Call.

Let's say I'm a flight attendant and I'm out of work as the number of flights occurring has dropped dramatically. It might be tempting for me to try to find the same job somewhere else - to keep the same Channel and try to join a new airline as a flight attendant. But the Call has dropped dramatically globally. So then I should invest my time thinking about the Channel and the Call. Where are my skills and capabilities in demand? Sure, I could also rush off and do a course in something completely different - I could focus on Capability and Content. But then I'm looking at Capability, Content, Channel and Call at the same time. That's not impossible, but it is risky. It would have been safer to develop my Capability and Content while I was also safely employed.

One final example. I was recently looking for a laptop stand and couldn't find one anywhere due to the sudden increase in people working and schooling from home. Everyone was out of stock with future deliveries nowhere in sight. I stumbled across a great Australian business called Stagekings. They were, until recently, focused on making staging for concerts and performances. Clearly, that work has dried up during the pandemic - the Channel and Call had both evaporated. They were facing the prospect of closing down and laying off staff until things returned to normal, whenever that might be. So they looked at their Capability and what the market needed, the Call. They saw the huge demand for desks, monitor stands and laptop stands. They connected this to their Capability to manufacture plywood structures using a commercial router, and started making exactly what people needed - easy to ship and assemble desks and related products. Sure, that meant they needed to develop some new Capability and Content, but those areas were less of a stretch. It turns out making a monitor stand isn't that different to making a stage. They now have their original team busier than ever, have hired more people, and are even using event crew to drive delivery trucks. On top of all of that, they donate money towards supporting out of work people in the event industry. So, for them it was the perfect pivot.

It's tempting for me to look at their business and think "why didn't I think of that?". But, even if I recognised the Call, I lacked in the other three areas of Capability, Content and Channel. Pivoting from leadership development to desk manufacturing would have been way too big a pivot. But pivoting from stage construction to desk construction is less of a stretch. Still challenging, but ultimately successful. If you're in Australia, go to stagekings.com.au and check them out.

So, yes, I absolutely encourage you to think about a pivot. Just ensure you're keeping in mind the four C's - Capability, Content, Channel and Call. Try not to make radical shifts in more than two at once. And don't underestimate how much value you already have to bring.

Just a quick reminder that I have a free webinar coming up on the morning of the 8th May in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, or the afternoon and evening of the 7th May in the US. The topic is "The Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders". You can register at leadership.today - just look for the link on the homepage. I'll make sure the next webinar is at a decent hour for my European audience, but you can also check out previous recorded webinars at our website.

Also, I'm running a number of online workshops for clients around topics including Well-Being for Leaders and The Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership. They're interactive and just an hour long. We're getting great feedback about the research-based content, practical tips and facilitation approach. Send me a message via the website if you're interested in having me run an online workshop with your organisation. Have a great week.

Reference

Blair Heitmann (2018) Nearly a Third of U.S. Professionals Are Career Sleepwalking: A Career Pivot Could Be Your Wake Up Call. LinkedIn Official Blog

https://blog.linkedin.com/2018/august/15/nearly-a-third-of-u-s-professionals-are-career-sleepwalking-career-pivot

Midweek Motivate - Physical Health Apr 28, 2020

Show notes

Welcome to Midweek Motivate. This week we're looking at some quick wins around physical health.

Physical health is a core part of not just our well-being, but our effectiveness as leaders. Research into maintaining our mental capacity into older age repeatedly returns to the importance of diet, exercise and sleep.

But we know all this don't we? But if it's that easy, why do so many of us struggle with poor physical health. Here are some rapid-fire ideas to try for yourself and share with your team members.

Let's start with diet. One key concept when it comes to diet is to think replacement instead of removal. Diets often fail because we focus too much on what we're losing. I can't eat donuts anymore. There goes potatoes. Whatever it might be - we pull things from our diet, while not focusing on replacing them with something new. So if you're giving up a muffin, maybe you can replace that with some fruit or nuts that you like. And keep it fresh in both senses of the expression. Hang around the fresh food section of the supermarket and fill your trolley with things that go off. And keep it fresh by trying new things.

On exercise, make things a habit rather than a choice. Build it into your daily routine. Maybe park further away from work. Get back to nature - don't just go outside, but find a park or somewhere with trees as this has a greater benefit on our well-being. And find the joy in exercise. Do what you enjoy doing. Maybe you love catching up with a friend. Why not do that over a walk instead of over a coffee.

When it comes to sleep, maintaining regular times to go to bed and wake up is really important. Include some wind down time device free - an hour should be enough. And keep a note pad next to your bed. That way, if you wake up with some great new idea or something troubling you, you can note it down and go back to sleep. Otherwise your brain might continue to loop on that idea in an attempt to not forget it. Writing it down ticks the box for our brain that the idea is important, while also letting us get back to sleep.

Give a couple of these ideas around physical health a try this week, and make sure you share it with your team. Have a great week.

Episode 75 - Four Ways to Build Hope Apr 24, 2020

Show notes

Summary

"Hope" can sound just like wishful thinking. But at the heart of true hope is driven initiative. This week we explore four research-backed ways to build hope.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 75 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore four research-backed ways to build hope. "Hope" can sound just like wishful thinking. But at the heart of true hope is driven initiative.

The concept of hope captures the human imagination. We see it reflected in popular quotes.

Martin Luther said "Everything that is done in this world is done by hope". His namesake, Martin Luther King Jnr said "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope".

We're encouraged to live a life focused on hope not fear. As Nelson Mandela said "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears".

But it's easy to see hope as just wishful thinking. We might even accuse people of having false hope - of being unrealistic in their optimism.

The reality in life is that we are constantly barraged by opportunities and threats. Our brain is wired for survival and will always tend towards the threats. That's why we are so amazed by stories like that of Nelson Mandela - someone whose life circumstance while in prison suggested there should be no hope, and yet he held onto a sense of hope and purpose even through tough circumstances. Indeed, this hope drove and strengthened him.

From a psychological perspective, those who research hope focus on two components:

The first component is Pathways - one element of hope is thinking about routes to achieve desired goals. Those with hope dream a dream, but a practical dream. For those with hope there's a belief that they will find a way forward - that there's always a pathway.
The second component is Agency - that's having the motivation to follow these pathways. Those with hope are willing to put in the work. Agency is the belief that we can initiate and sustain action towards our goals.

The researchers find a raft of benefits from those who demonstrate these two components of hope, ranging from improved academic performance, physical health, and mental health. The research shows that Agency, in particular, really matters. Agency, that drive and motivation to keep going, is linked with later decreased demonstration of both anxiety and depression.

If you use this two part definition of hope, the researchers argue that you avoid "false hope" altogether. Having a goal, a plan, and the drive to get there is far from false hope.

Those with hope are confident they will find a way through challenge. They are also confident in their drive to pursue goals. So it's not just trying to smash through obstacles by sheer effort. Often hope is about having confidence that you will be able to find a way around an obstacle, or perhaps develop a new goal in the process.

You can think of hope as driven initiative. Agency is the drive element , and Pathways is the initiative element.

If I think about the TV shows and movies that appealed to me when I was younger, they featured characters who exemplified this definition of hope. I may be showing my age, but the original 1980's TV series MacGyver comes to mind. The back story of Angus MacGyver, the main character, was always a little vague. He had a military special forces background but also an education in physics. But he was a case study in hope. Every week he overcame extraordinary odds, often by fashioning some solution out of everyday objects.

I recall one episode where MacGyver was escaping an angry group of mercenaries in a hot air balloon when one of them shot a hole in the side of the balloon. MacGyver initially looks worried as he stares up at the gaping hole and the balloon starts to descend. But then we see, moments later, that he has somehow duct taped a map to the outside of the balloon to stop it from deflating. Cue a big smile from MacGyver and roll the credits. I remember being slightly annoyed that he taped the map to the outside of the balloon, when taping it on the inside would have worked much better. And they never did show how he made his way halfway up the outside of a hot air balloon. But, despite those nit picky details, MacGyver was a picture of hope. He was always willing to put in the work. And he was always willing to look at new pathways to get to his goal.

Being filled with hope is a mindset you can develop. We can train ourselves to look for the hope in a situation or beyond a situation. And we can build hope in others as well. If you've worked for leaders with hope you will have seen just how positively it shaped the culture of your team and organisation.

As a leader we can build hope in four ways:

Helping people to see not just the threats but also the opportunities. The great leaders I have had a chance to work for and alongside have helped me to always seek out the opportunities in even the darkest times. So when something goes bad, I now demonstrate greater hope by looking for opportunities that others might miss.
Encouraging people to explore multiple pathways to the goal. We often develop just one plan and then get frustrated when it doesn't work. Hope is as much about finding a way around as it is about finding a way through. It's an overused word, but those with hope are agile in their thinking. They hold onto their plans loosely so they can find another way to the goal if needed.
Sharing progress. Part of maintaining motivation is measuring and communicating the progress that is being made. We can be in such a rush that we fail to look back at our progress. Looking back helps us to see that we can indeed move forward and we can find a way.
Recognising effort. Notice when people are putting in the work and persisting in the face of obstacles. We want to encourage this drive to achieve.

Our world and workplaces can really do with more hope. My challenge to you is to not just build hope for yourself, but also build hope in others.

I hope you found that helpful. I have a free webinar coming up on the morning of the 8th May in Australia, Zealand and Singapore, or the afternoon and evening of the 7th May in the US. The topic is "The Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders". Given the webinar kicks off at 10am Melbourne time, that will be the middle of the night for those in the UK and some other parts of the world, but it will be recorded. You can register at leadership.today - just look for the link on the homepage.

I've also put up two new recorded webinars. A 20 minute webinar on Rethinking Assertiveness, and a 30 minute webinar called Increase Your Influence.

One final thing before I go. We're up to 75 episodes of the podcast, and I genuinely see this as a way of helping leaders to achieve results through people for good. If that sounds like a cause you want to support, please let a few friends or colleagues know about the podcast and, for bonus points, provide a rating or review for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Thanks for your support and have a great week.

References

Snyder, C. R., Rand, K., King, E., Feldman, D., & Woodward, J. T. (2002). "False" hope. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(9), 1003–1022. doi: 10.1002/jclp.10096.

Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249-275.

Episode 74 - Train to Retain Apr 17, 2020

Show notes

Summary

This week we explore whether investing in people's development makes them more likely to stay with an organisation, even if it increases their career opportunities elsewhere.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 74 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore whether investing in people's development makes them more likely to stay with an organisation, even if it increases their career opportunities elsewhere.

There is a cartoon that does the rounds on LinkedIn every so often. It has two people, typically a Chief Financial Officer and a Chief Executive Officer. In the cartoon the CFO says "What if we train them and they leave?" to which the CEO replies "What if we don't train them and they stay?" It's pretty cheesy and has sparked thousands of variations. The origins of the quote probably go back to Henry Ford, who reportedly said "The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay!" The sentiment clearly strikes a chord - we need to invest in people, even if it increases the risk of them leaving.

What's missing in both the cartoon and Henry Ford quote is the other side of the equation. It implies that developing people is almost a regretful necessity - a short term investment we need to make, even if it does nothing to retain people. I'm sure we would all like to think that investing in the development of our people will make them more likely to stay, but is that actually the case? Can we increase staff retention while also making it easier for people to take their increased capability and leave?

Before I tell you the research answer to these questions, I want you to think back over your career. Think about those managers and organisations that really invested in your development. It might have been through training courses, but it was more likely time taken to mentor you and give you challenging experiences combined with support and encouragement. Were you more likely to leave as a result? Probably not.

For me, the times I was invested into were also the times when I really wanted to stay and bring my best. And, interestingly, the times when my development was placed as a high priority were usually a combination of a great manager and a great culture of ongoing development. Continuous improvement and relentless feedback were features of the work environment. That meant some painful conversations at times as I was pushed to keep improving. I even remember telling a colleague that I wished there was a point where my leadership development was done! But it was also motivating. It seemed like everyone, from the newest employee to the most experienced, were all pushing themselves to get better. No one was pretending that they were perfect. Everybody had more to learn.

Back to my earlier cliff hanger around the research. A paper published just a week ago by Daniel Dietz and Thomas Zwick showed that investing in training significantly increases employee loyalty and retention. As people receive development that increases their chances of finding work elsewhere, they simultaneously are also more likely to stay with that employer. This increase in retention occurred even when the training meant employees could take a higher paying career path outside the business. Even gaining externally certified and portable qualifications still increased the likelihood of an individual staying with the organisation.

Richard Branson is quoted as saying "Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don't want to". This research helps demonstrate that investing in development is part of treating people well. It's an investment that pays off through higher loyalty and higher retention.

While we are on the topic of development, I have a series of webinars coming out over the next few weeks. Head over to the Leadership Today website and join our mailing list to ensure you know what's coming up. Have a great week.

Reference

Daniel Dietz, Thomas Zwick. The retention effect of training: Portability, visibility, and credibility1. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2020

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