Executive Coaching

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No, You Probably Shouldn’t Follow Every Order from Your Boss

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By Ira Chaleff

(As appeared in GovExec.com August, 2016)

To protect the reputation of your agency and its leaders you need to know when and how to disobey. You read that correctly. There is a high level competency called intelligent disobedience. It is rarely taught in leadership development programs. It should be. Here’s why.

No leader is going to give correct orders all the time. Sooner or later they will issue or approve a poorly thought out initiative. Why? There are many possible reasons. They have been given skewed data, the analysis is faulty, they are under pressure from powerful constituencies, they are tired. It happens. The question is what do the people who receive the order do?

I was teaching a course for the Office of Personnel Management on Leader-Follower dynamics based on my earlier book The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders. I asserted that most of the time it makes sense to comply with orders, but sometimes it is wrong or dangerous to do so. A mid-level careerist said she had an example of that under the table. Huh? That got my attention.

There was a dog under the table, she explained, that was being trained to be a guide dog for a blind person. For the first 18 months of its life, the dog lived with her family and learned to obey all the commands it would need to know. After that it would go to a higher level trainer to teach it intelligent disobedience. If the dog received a command that would cause harm to the team (of leader and dog) it must disobey that command. For example, the dog would not proceed into oncoming traffic, travel through areas where storms had toppled power lines, or walk into a construction site. If the dog could not differentiate between commands to obey and commands to disobey, it could not become a guide dog.

I suggest that this is equally a test for fitness to be a senior government manager. It is also much harder to do than it sounds. The pressures of hierarchy, culture, and leadership style can overwhelm a sense for doing the right thing. Yet failing to do the right thing ultimately lets down stakeholders, agencies and senior executives themselves. We watch in pain as agencies are skewered in congressional hearings, in the media and in costly legal proceedings for ill-advised actions individuals took or failed to take. Someone in the chain of command could have prevented that with the early use of intelligent disobedience.

Creating a culture that understands the place of intelligent disobedience in risk management and mitigation takes time. But there are principles to begin the discussion.

  1. Understand that the social pressures to conform and obey are baked in and powerful.
  2. Recognize that the number of people who touch any major decision is so large that it is hard to feel personally accountable.
  3. Despite this, each individual is personally accountable and cannot claim to be just following orders if executing the order would result in harm.
  4. The formal channels for expressing concern are necessary but often insufficient.
  5. The group needs to step back and create norms of communication to guard against groupthink and pre-empt inappropriate obedience.

Lessons that we can import from guide dog training include: training together before a danger is encountered; pausing before determining the safety of an order; “counter-pulling” if the leader is about to step directly into the path of danger; generating alternatives to safely achieve goals; appreciating appropriate disobedience. These save lives, careers and agency reputations.

Obedience is in the DNA of hierarchies. The whole point of a hierarchy is to determine who can give orders to whom in service of the mission. This arrangement avoids endless conflict and paralysis and allows us to get things done. Suggesting there are times when obedience is not the correct response to a situation flies in the face of this solid wiring.

Yet, it has been observed that if you want to do in your boss, do everything that he or she orders exactly as you are told. Sooner or later you will get a bad order and executing it will make the boss look very bad. So it is in the interest of leaders to create and support cultures that value both great execution and skillful push back when each is warranted.

We think of dogs as paragons of loyalty. We can think of guide dogs as the best of man’s best friends: they serve, support and protect. Both their obedience and disobedience are acts of loyalty. When needed, intelligent disobedience in public service is also an act of loyalty to the leadership of our agencies and to the citizens we serve.

Change Careers By Using the ‘Sugar Grain’ Principle

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To Shift Fields in Midlife, Start with a Manageable Process

By Beverly Jones

(This article previously appeared on Clearwaysconsulting.com.)

The trick to shifting careers in your 50s or 60s or even earlier is to create a disciplined change process and stick with it.

When I work with mid-career coaching clients, I often suggest a simple process that I’ve been exploring since I was a teenager. I call it the “Sugar Grain Principle.”

As a child of New Zealanders, I drank lots of tea and liked it loaded with sugar. But during my teen years, I worried about the calories. Kicking my sugar habit seemed tough. One day, though, I came up with a way of reducing the sugar volume so gradually I’d never miss it.

Origin of the ‘Sugar Grain Principle’

As I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the heaping pile of sugar on my spoon, I decided to start by removing just a few granules. In each of the following days, I tried to remove a few more. I kept at it, progressively lessening the amount of sugar from two or three spoonful’s to none. It took nearly a year, but I ultimately learned to enjoy sugarless tea without ever feeling deprived.

I was so intrigued by the power of creating change through small, painless steps, I started applying the Sugar Grain Principle to other aspects of my life. For example, I became better at keeping my room neat by building little habits, like spending five minutes cleaning each morning.

A 7-Step Process

Today, I often suggest the Sugar Grain Principle to mid-career clients looking for a new direction in their lives. Here’s my seven-step process to do it:

1. Start with a vision of the career you want. Begin the “Sugar Grain” process by creating, as clearly as possible, a picture of what you desire in your next career phase.You needn’t define a precise destination before you get going, but you may be surprised at how much you already know.

List the elements you want in your work. One way to begin is by identifying the good and not-so-good aspects of your current situation.  As you find the negatives, rephrase them as positives for your next-job wish list. For example, if you’re bored, reframe that into “I want work that’s varied and interesting.”

Think too, about new skills you’ll need to develop and embark on a plan to get them.

Next, imagine it’s three years from now and you’ve moved to a new professional path. Figure out what made those years so productive and satisfying. You may want to add some of those elements to your wish list.

Consider, too, what else you want in your life. Certain values or interests might be important in shaping your career. If you want to spend more time with your grandkids, for instance, maybe “no weekend work” should go on your vision list. Or perhaps you want to live in a different climate.

2. Organize your vision. Now, break your wish list into categories. I often ask clients to create a “mind map,” a colorful, branching diagram with the power to quickly portray complex concepts or projects.

Start your mind map with an image or keyword in the center of a page. From that center, draw main branches, spreading like the spokes of a wheel. Label each branch to represent a sector of your life and fill out the details by adding smaller branches to the main branches.

3.Add a category for your job search. Now that you have a vision of where you want to go, add a branch on your map (or a section on your vision list) related to your possible job search.

If these items don’t show up anywhere else, you may want to include: expanding my network; reconnecting with people I know; building my social media presence; developing new skills or experience or acquiring certifications and methodically exploring fields a step or two removed from my own.

4. Commit to a pace. Once your know where you want to go, decide how quickly you need to move. That will determine how many things you commit to doing each day, or week, or month, for each category you’ve identified. The power of the Sugar Grain process comes from your commitment to keep up your pace even when you feel like you’re out of ideas or don’t have the time.

5. Begin a list of small to-do’s for each category. You’ll want a list tor each area on your map. They might include sending an email to an old contact or spending an hour setting up your LinkedIn account or exercising for 30 minutes.

They needn’t be related to one another; sometimes they’ll feel pretty random. But over time, patterns will emerge.

6. Maintain records.  Keeping track of the things on your lists is important to the success of your process. Your recordkeeping will help you see your progress, bring you new insights and inspire additional to-do’s. Whether you keep records on paper or in the Cloud, is up to you.

Logs often work well because you’re more likely to stick to, say, an exercise if you record each minute you spend on it. Logs can illustrate your efforts, reinforce your commitment and help you see the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Journals are another method. They can promote self-reflection, help you explore and keep track of new ideas and give you a way to manage frustration and setbacks in the course of your transition.

7. Finally, enjoy the Sugar Grain Process. Once you get going, your small-step agenda will seem to generate its own energy. You’ll start feeling confident that it’s taking you somewhere interesting and important.

Often a client who has completed a career shift will say something like: “I’ll kind of miss the Process. It was getting to be really fun.”

 

8 Tips for Inspiring Employee Engagement

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By Beverly Jones

It’s well understood that upbeat and highly motivated employees achieve more than their negative, disgruntled peers. Recognizing the link between attitude and job performance, human resources experts used to talk a lot about the need to enhance “employee morale” and build “job satisfaction.”

In recent years, however, the buzz has been all about increasing productivity and innovation by promoting “employee engagement.” Definitions vary, but the Gallup organization describes “engaged employees” as “those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”

Your engaged colleagues are the builders – the ones who are moving the organization forward. You probably enjoy working with these animated people. Folks who aren’t engaged may do the basics, but they won’t be passionate about tackling challenges or breaking new ground. And your actively disengaged coworkers can spread their unhappiness around and undermine the whole group’s progress.

According to Gallup Daily tracking, only about 32 percent of U.S. employees are engaged at work. And, despite a wave of engagement improvement programs, that number hasn’t fluctuated much since Gallup started its measurement in 2000.

Experience shows that there’s no one simple way for leaders to jumpstart a surge of workplace enthusiasm, but many small steps can help.

My client Heidi began reading about employee engagement as she started a new assignment. She had moved out of the busy headquarters office of a Federal agency to become director of a low performing regional office.

Heidi is talented, personable and deeply committed to the service mission of her agency. To date, her rise through the government ranks had been rapid and smooth, and she’d made many friends along the way.

When Heidi arrived at her Midwestern post in the dead of winter, the climate inside her office felt as cold and frightening as her icy commute to work. Three of the top ranking members of her team had applied for the directorship, and now all three made it clear that they resented having the position go to her, an outsider. And while the attitude of those senior staffers seemed to vacillate from sullen to openly hostile, most of the dozen other professionals just seemed tired and disinterested.

Heidi developed a set of principles for stimulating new energy and commitment from her team. After a year, she has seen a mood shift, and the office’s performance statistics are up.

These 8 strategies are helping Heidi to stimulate better work from her more fully engaged team members:

  1. Meet in person. Heidi’s predecessor, Jill, was described as a brilliant but reclusive workaholic. Jill spent long hours alone in her office, with the door closed, and she’d make her wishes known by shooting out frequent emails. Particularly during her early weeks on the job, Heidi elected to meet often and face to face with her team members. She shared news from around the agency but generally tried to listen more than she spoke. As Heidi concentrated on listening, she grew better at resisting the urge to feel defensive or disheartened from the flow of negativity
  2. Empower the team. Jill had talked often about her own high standards, and had tried to control the workflow so that every project was done in exactly the way she would do it. Heidi looked for ways to delegate more responsibility, and make assignments that allowed professionals to show off their strengths and personal styles. She caught an early break when her embittered deputy left for another job, enabling her to distribute his responsibilities so that more people could share in team leadership.
  3. Reward good work. As a Federal manager, Heidi had limited control over bonuses and raises. But she found other means to express appreciation for excellent work. For example, she shared an insightful staff memo with high-ranking colleagues in Washington, she worked her network to snag a plum speaking invitation for one of her experts, and she asked her people to speak about their successes at meetings with sister agencies.
  4. Find learning opportunities. Heidi saw that many of her team members had been doing the same kind of work for years, and they were bored. She made training a top priority, and encouraged each person to commit to a professional development path. She also shuffled assignments so that most folks enjoyed more variety, and she came up with new projects that meant learning for everyone involved.
  5. Clean up. When she agreed to take the job, Heidi negotiated a budget to improve the office’s aging physical space and furniture. Early in her tenure she involved her team in planning the modest office redesign. And she designated certain days when everybody wore jeans to work and pitched masses of old documents and other clutter. When the renovations were done, the fresh new atmosphere gave most people a boost.
  6. Have fun. In an early meeting, one employee told to Heidi, “Once this was a fun place to work, but Jill didn’t believe in fun.” On the job, “fun” might mean that the tasks are stimulating and coworkers are good partners for brainstorming. But sometimes “fun” just means having a good time. Heidi found ways to vary the routine with surprise treats and entertaining meetings. She invited clever speakers to come to staff meetings, she encourages humor as long as it wasn’t mean-spirited and she created a committee to create events like surprise pizza parties.
  7. Remember the mission. Most members of the staff began working for the agency because they believed in public service. But they had become cynical and discouraged. Heidi invited reports about the full scope and value of the agency’s work, and she encouraged team members to join agency-wide or other professional committees. She regularly looks for ways to remind people of the value of their work together.
  8. Take care of yourself. Even though she had family members nearby, Heidi was a bit lonely in her new town. And after a week of struggling to be relentlessly positive, she often felt like spending the entire weekend in bed watching old movies. Heidi knew that negativity can be contagious, and in order to inspire her team she needed to remain optimistic and energetic. So a key element of Heidi’s leadership philosophy is to find stimulating activities and build supportive relationships when she’s away from the office. As part of her program of self-care, she decided to act on her lifelong dream of horseback riding. She rented at horse housed near an indoor riding arena, and she takes lessons every Saturday.

Engaged employees need strong relationships and lots of communication with their managers. To launch an effort to energize your colleagues, consider a round of meaningful conversations.

For more tips on how to engage your team or rediscover your own enthusiasm at work, check out my new book The Like an Entrepreneur, Act Like a CEO

Why Are Some Women Still Holding Back?

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By Beverly Jones

Lately I keep finding myself in conversations about how women aren’t moving confidently into leadership within their careers. I’ve heard some worries from clients, but I’ve also encountered a rising tide of talk in other business and social venues.

This doesn’t seem to be just an us-against-them, women-versus-men thing. Insightful men have expressed concern that too few women are reaching their full professional potential. For example, two male professors recently asked me why their star female students seem to have lower job aspirations than their less qualified male classmates?

And in recent months, both at formal industry conferences and in casual chats, some of the most accomplished American women journalists have been talking about how leading newsrooms still seem to be dominated by a male culture. This seems to be the case, in both print and digital realms, despite the fact university journalism programs often have more women than men students.

Also, disturbingly, young women in several career discussions this spring told me they feel more threatened than supported by women who are senior to them in their organizational hierarchies.

Part of the problem may relate back to those of us who were among the first women to enter many professions. Sometimes we were more wounded than we realized by the struggle, and our lingering discomfort may continue to influence the wider culture of women at work.

It wasn’t fun to be on teams where we weren’t really wanted. And despite years of achievement, we “old girls” still experience surprising lapses in confidence. It can show up in little ways, such as:

  • Self-deprecating speech. We may undercut our commanding presence by repeatedly using phrases like “I think,” when a simple statement or request would be stronger.
  • Risk aversion. When law, engineering and MBA programs were first opened to women, female students might hear, “It’s important that you get all A’s so the faculty will let in more women next year.” Tiresome speeches like this sometimes translated to an unrealistic sense of responsibility, which was particularly painful if we felt like we were just hanging on. This is one reason some of us were too slow to take breakout career risks.
  • Apologizing. When we felt unwelcome in the first place, some of us became too inclined to say “sorry,” even when we weren’t at fault. It was tempting to waste time and energy blaming ourselves when things weren’t going well. For some, it is still a challenge to face problems quickly and move on to solutions.
  • Bad hair days. Appearance often seems to matter more for women than for men. So we sometimes overreact if we don’t feel at our best. It was like that when we were young, and today our appearance may seem overly important because women who don’t seem put together could be dismissed as too old.

Many women who fought for professional acceptance decades ago, and went on to success after success, say they still experience surprising flashes of uncertainty. We wanted to push the doors wide open for the future generations of female careerists. But is it possible that we also have burdened them with some of our lingering insecurities?

Yes, we have come a long way. But there’s still work to be done before we can count on an American workplace where gender seldom limits opportunities for growth. Here are things we can do:

  • Keep talking. There’s an absence of good research and nobody truly understands the factors that add up to the lingering glass ceiling in so many sectors. Let’s acknowledge the problem and keep up the dialogue, as we try to better understand it. This might mean new kinds of groups or workshops, or simply raising the discussion wherever we happen to be.
  • Create new forms of mentoring. Since the 1970s, feminist activists have looked to mentoring programs as a way to move women smoothly up career ladders. Some programs have worked well but others have floundered, sometimes burdened with over-blown expectations. It’s time to invent new ways of engaging, perhaps including reciprocal programs, where women of all ages can teach each other across generations and skill sets about everything from communicating with colleagues to managing social media.
  • Get over it. Our language patterns and ways we hesitate have become habits. We can move beyond them. One way to change long-held patterns, and model new ones, is to recruit friends to notice how we speak and carry ourselves. With our permission, friendly coaches can remind us when it’s time to reword our statements, or reshape our attitudes, in more positive ways.

What’s Keeping You Stuck in Your Dung Pile?

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by Marsha Hughes-Rease

I love the Buddhist stories because there always seems to be a truth that I can relate to. I recently found this wonderful little story about two monks who lived together in a monastery for many years; they were great friends. They died within a few months of one another. One of them was reborn in the heaven realms and the other monk was reborn as a worm in a dung pile. The one up in the heaven realms was having a wonderful time, enjoying all the heavenly pleasures. But he started thinking about his friend: “I wonder where my old mate has gone?” So, he scanned all of the heaven realms but could not find a trace of his friend.

Then he scanned the realm of human beings but could not see any trace of his friend there, so he looked in the realm of animals and then of insects. Finally he found him, reborn as a worm in a dung pile… Wow! He thought: “I am going to help my friend. I am going to go down there to that dung pile and take him up to the heavenly realm so he too can enjoy the heavenly pleasures and bliss of living in these wonderful realms.”

So he went down to the dung pile and called his mate. And the little worm wriggled out and said: “Who are you?” “I am your friend. We used to be monks together in a past life, and I have come up to take you to the heaven realms where life is wonderful and blissful.” But the worm said: “Go away, get lost!” “But I am your friend, and I live in the heaven realms,” and he described the heaven realms to the worm. But the worm said: “No thank you, I am quite happy here in my dung pile. Please go away.” Then the heavenly being thought: “Well if I could only just grab hold of him and take him up to the heaven realms, he could see for himself.” So he grabbed hold of the worm and started tugging at him; and the harder he tugged, the harder that worm clung to his pile of dung.

This story very poignantly reminded me that all of us can fall victim to being comfortable in our own “dung pile.” And not only are we comfortable… we actually resist or reject the notion that we might be happier if we left the pile. The worm actually believed he was happy in the dung. As humans, our dung pile can be our beliefs.

Research has shown that 90 percent of one’s belief system is formed by age 12 and it undergoes a “final lock” at age 20. I would imagine you can add or subtract a couple of years on either side of this belief continuum formation but the point is, most of us have an intact belief system by the time we reach adulthood. These beliefs are the result of our unique experiences during the first twenty or so years of our life along with how we have been socialized based on our family of origin, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. Our belief system then results in unconscious but predictable adult behavior patterns which usually have been reinforced by what we rewarded or punished for.

These well entrenched beliefs are changed only by some significant personal life event such as death of a loved one, birth of a child, marriage, loss of a job, not getting a promotion, or a not so personal events such as 9/11, the civil rights movement, or the 2008 recession or maybe we have a sudden realization (usually with the help of significant feedback) that some of our behaviors resulting from our belief system are actually self-defeating or have a negative impact on others.

Certain types of stressors or maybe a friend or coach can certainly help motivate us to change. However, we often rush to change without examining our current beliefs or assumptions that may be actually competing with our desire to change….competing to the point that we are more committed to staying in the dung pile then actually changing….even good change! We may need to stop and examine how our beliefs or assumptions are keeping us stuck in our dung pile before trying to make a change. This is not easy especially if these competing commitments are usually unconscious.

What have you done lately to surface and examine how your competing commitments are keeping you stuck in a dung pile?