There are a number of areas that affect the success rate of change management projects. In fact, research from McKinsey and Co shows that 70% of all transformations fail. Ultimately, change is not optional, but it is a choice. It is the job of a leader to create the conditions that support change and promote the choice to embrace it.
In this 50-minute video, Peter Keith and Jonathan Clark touch on some of the common myths of change management that leaders buy into–often to their own detriment. They will also explain how to avoid these pitfalls during your own change management project and outline the five pre-conditions for contentedness in an organization as a way to understand how employees may perceive change.
Presenters
Jonathan Clark & Peter Keith, The Eighth Mile Consulting
Length of Video
51 minutes
Video Highlights
0:00 – Myths of Change Management #1: “Change Management Comes Down to the Manager”
0:25 – Industry Example: Making Policy Change
1:18 – Individual Ideals vs Organizational Values
2:16 – How Change Management is Like Driving a Car
4:10 – Myths of Change Management #2: “If the Change Is Good Enough, People Will Accept It”
4:30 – Using Wants, Needs, and Knowledge to Overcome Fear and Resistance to Change
8:36 – Myths of Change Management #3: “Leadership Isn’t Essential In Change Management”
10:01 – Leadership vs Management
10:58 – Listening-Based Communication
13:34 – Leadership Doesn’t Need a Title
15:40 – Defining and Communicating Values As a Leader
18:20 – Provide Systems and Processes to Create Effective Leaders
20:47 – Myths of Change Management #4: “Change is Optional”
21:28 – The Concept of “Burning The Ships”
22:22 – The SCARF Model (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness) for Contentedness
25:11 – Change is a Choice
30:19 – Myths of Change Management #5: “Change Management is a Small Team Responsibility”
30:58 – Scapegoating a Team Prevents Learning From Mistakes
32:39 – Expectation Management
34:40 – Change Must Be Linked to Overall Business Strategy
36:13 – The Role of External Parties
37:15 – Question to the Attendees: What is Your Experience with Change Management?
45:29 – Wrap-Up
47:37 – Storytime: Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Company Overview
Eighth Mile Consulting is a leadership training and consulting agency focused on creating and supporting better leaders in all industries. If you are seeking to develop yourself professionally, we have created an online leadership course to help you become better, more resilient leaders for your team.
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Are you investing in your employees? Could doing so benefit your business? Most often, the answer is yes! Improving skills often enhances a person’s ability to do their job and may make it more enjoyable. Numerous benefits of upskilling employees exist, whether through professional courses, in-office training, or a combination of tools. The topics taught range widely based on what employees need but may include skill development, leadership, and teamwork training.
5 Benefits of Upskilling for Employers
As an employer, you’re only as good as the employees working for you. What are you doing to motivate and grow their skills to remain competitive? The benefits of upskilling employees for employers tend to be more obvious since employers can choose the educational content they provide. For example, professional development could offer benefits such as the following:
1) More Engaged Employees
One of the core benefits of upskilling employees is that they feel more valued, which translates into better engagement. A Gallup poll found engaged employees can contribute to increasing employee profits by as much as 23%. Your investment in professional development may pay for itself over time, and that makes it a bottom-line-wise investment.
2) Increase Long-Term Retention
When companies invest in training and professional development for their talent, that helps to drive loyalty. It may mean that your employees are less likely to seek new employment. Valued employees can help lower costly high retention rates as a direct result. It’s a good way to build relationships that last.
3) Higher Productivity and Better Insight
What about improving the work your employees provide to you? Companies benefit directly in day-to-day work by providing employees with opportunities to learn new and more modern methods of accomplishing tasks. That could enhance company efficiencies and bring new, perhaps enhanced, ideas to the table.
4) Enhances Competition
Another of the benefits of upskilling employees impacts the company’s ability to provide a better product or service in the marketplace. In some situations, having a highly skilled leader in your business could help your company to stand out from the competition, allowing for growth in revenue and overall market share. With highly skilled people working for you, your company stands out.
5) Boost Confidence and Collaboration
Whether meeting with a new partner or trying to close a sale, when you have highly trained and dedicated professionals working for you, it often leads to more confidence in the work they do. It also creates a more collaborative environment for all employees. As a result, teams may work better together, share a higher level of knowledge, and contribute more fully to the company’s success. You want confident employees that can work well with each other.
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5 Benefits of Upskilling for Employees
The benefits of upskilling for employees aren’t just related to the value it presents to the business itself. It is also an exceptional way for companies to put value into their employee’s overall satisfaction. This type of professional development can offer a range of benefits to employees themselves.
1) Increase Career Prospectives
Employees with better-enhanced skills are more versatile and may be able to follow numerous career paths. Even when employers pay for that training, it can benefit the employee who may wish to advance or find a job in a field that requires more thorough education, even if you’re not trying to encourage them to leave.
2) Improve Stress Management
Many employees struggle with the stress of the job, and it’s not always something you can fix with better teamwork. This could be from clients, customers, or from the team they work with and the pile of work they do. By providing leadership or productivity training, employees can navigate challenging situations more confidently, often reducing their ongoing stress levels. That makes work more enjoyable.
3) Gain Expertise
The benefits of upskilling employees also allow that individual to access skills above and beyond what is typical for the position. It may enable the employee to become an industry expert or an industry leader. The more skill and knowledge a person has, the more they can make a difference in their company and their field at-large. For many employees, that makes their job valuable and meaningful.
4) Build Connections
Leadership or career training programs enhance a person’s ability to make connections within their field, too. That could lead to more responsibility or better recognition later in their career. Employees gain a positive professional reputation because of their level of knowledge and understanding in their field, which is valuable to career development and growth.
5) Enhanced Empowerment
Employees feel empowered when they can continue their education, gain professional skills, learn new things, or build a better level of communication. They can take on new challenges with ease and complete tasks with less frustration. Interactions with other employees or clients improve as well.
The benefits of upskilling employees are profound across all sectors, and it’s simply a good thing to do for your people. No matter who decides to invest in the training, the employer or the employee, the right programs can stimulate interest, boost productivity, and make work more enjoyable.
Maximum Education With Minor Disruption
The Eighth Mile recognizes the importance of these benefits of upskilling employees. It offers numerous online courses that streamline the education process, including an 8-week online leadership and development course that can be completed at an accelerated rate. Reach out to learn more about courses that will benefit both your employees and your business.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Training-benefits-for-employers-and-employees.jpg5001100David Nealhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngDavid Neal2023-03-09 04:32:142023-03-20 10:04:0210 Benefits of Upskilling Your Employees
This is the third of a four-part series on the role of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in leadership.
Let’s say you believe that keeping your teams motivated requires inspiring a positive attitude. Why do you believe that? “It’s obvious–because motivated teams perform better,” you might answer. But what about your motivation and attitude? Shouldn’t the best attitude for leadership be the same one you’d like to inspire in those who follow you?
Do you believe in the mission? Do you believe in your teams? Do you believe in yourself? In order to inspire, you must act the part of the motivator. To act the part, your attitude needs to align. You are your first audience whom you must motivate.
A Leader’s Attitude Affects Everyone
As a leader, your attitude is important because your team instinctively reacts to it. A highly motivated leader lifts the spirits of their team. Conversely, if your attitude is poor, your team will either mirror you and join your downward spiral or hold you in contempt and sideline you. A great leadership attitude is about demanding more from yourself to better serve your team and organization.
Mirroring: A Direct Example of How Attitude Affects Leadership
Teams who respect their leaders will naturally take their leader’s side. If a leader is unhappy, their loyal team will be unhappy as well. The team might even become hostile toward whatever or whomever they perceive to be the source of their leader’s problems.
What about the work? A loyal team might react to your attitude by taking on more responsibility, which might actually be a positive change. However, increased workloads can also lead to a decline in morale. Everything pivots around the leader. Your visible attitude is a fixed point around which your team bends all other variables to fit.
Understand how attitude affects leadership: only you can change your situation to get the team back to work on the job rather than on you. Be thankful for such loyalty, then promise yourself not to abuse it.
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Intervention
If your team stages an intervention this is your alarm bell ringing, “Last chance.” You are on the verge of losing the loyalty of your team. Your team may not call it an intervention by name, and it might not be as formal as what you see depicted in popular media. However, you will know when your team—or your boss—is staging one. If ever there were a time to find the best attitude for leadership it would be when your team is asking, “Are you okay?”
“I’m not, but I will be.” Make this promise, and keep it.
Contempt
Worse for you, though perhaps better for the team, is contempt. Your negative attitude is pulling your team down, so the team takes charge and proceeds without you. You can do and say whatever you want, be it good or bad. The team will nod in acknowledgment, then ignore you entirely.
This is how a bad attitude affects leadership if you let it: it will stop you from even being a leader at all. Instead, you become an obstacle for your people to route around. The only way out of this situation is to try and foster the best possible attitude for leadership before a disaster occurs.
The Best Attitude for Leadership Means Taking Responsibility
Clearly, when you haven’t adopted the best attitude for leadership it’s not your team who will save you (assuming they even still want to). The best attitude for leadership—and really, the only one—is to take responsibility for yourself and your mistakes just as you do for your team.
Look Up to a Leader
If you have a leader that you admire, take inspiration from them. It doesn’t violate any sacred management code to mirror your leader if they have the best attitude for leadership. If your leader is a worthy role model, have the wisdom to model your leader as your team mirrors you.
Your role models have almost certainly endured hardships similar to your own. Be mindful of the good example they set when dealing with pressure and difficult situations. “If they can do it, so can I,” is a good exercise in perspective. But don’t be too hard on yourself if you fall down a few times on your way to success. Setbacks are a necessary part of any leader’s journey–your role model probably had more than a few before they got to where they are too.
Practice Gratitude
Surround yourself with positive influences. Mirroring isn’t just for leaders and followers but for peers and colleagues as well. Find good listeners, and be a good listener. Find peers excited about the work and reflect that excitement back. Be generous giving people credit for good ideas and they will match that generosity. To show gratitude for positive influences you must be one yourself.
The best attitude for leadership is to practice gratitude literally — as in “practice makes perfect”. Make gratitude a regular habit. The constant automatic flow of small adjustments to your attitude will keep you positive when adopted as part of your daily routine.
Take Care of Yourself
Nowhere will you find a better example of how attitude affects leadership than with your own well-being. If you’ve heard the phrase, “Mind, Body, and Spirit,” think of mind and body as indicators of wellness, and spirit as a projection of your attitude. Your self-presentation, presence, and even posture are your team’s first point of contact with your attitude as a leader. Likewise, your own well-being is your first responsibility as a leader. Lead yourself into a virtuous cycle: as you improve your well-being, your well-being improves your attitude.
The best attitude for leadership means taking responsibility for your own well-being. This means you must try to get enough rest, eat well, exercise, and commit to a lifetime of learning.
Conclusion
To adopt the best attitude for leadership, you need to understand how attitude affects leadership. Then you can start to take responsibility for your own outlook and actions. A negative attitude can drag you down and might take your team with you. With a positive attitude, you’ll inspire loyalty from your team, and they will naturally mirror your positive stance, resulting in better productivity and a more satisfying work experience for all.
If you need further assistance with maintaining a positive attitude as well as fostering strong values and beliefs among your team, check out our 8-week online leadership training course.
This is the second of a four-part series on the role of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in leadership.
The role of beliefs in leadership is pervasive. Operationally, few jobs can survive the lack of a base theory or system, especially if you don’t make detailed plans. Ethically, few teams can survive a purely mission-oriented leader without a framework of beliefs to resolve conflicts and inspire cohesion. In both cases, “What are my beliefs?” requires an answer to qualify you for leadership.
You should divide the role of beliefs in business into two broad categories: beliefs as tools for operational success; and beliefs as morals that are not subject to change except in extraordinary circumstances. A good leader holds solid beliefs, but a great leader knows which ones to adapt to a given circumstance.
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Beliefs as a Toolkit
If you believe in specific things, you can be a successful leader in specific situations. If you can adapt your beliefs, you can be successful in most, if not all of them. This doesn’t mean that having a preferred operational style makes you less of a leader if you have the wisdom to recognize when your preference aligns with the project. If asking the question “what are my beliefs” reveals permanent, unchangeable ideas, then at least you’ll know what projects you’re best suited to lead and which you should pass on to someone else.
Consider the following three statements. When you ask yourself “what are my beliefs,” do one or more of these resonate with you?
This belief makes sense if even the most minor mistakes cost lives or the tiniest change adds millions to the cost. The role of beliefs in leadership in safety-critical projects is literally life-or-death. When you’re building things that you can’t afford to let fail, you’d better believe in getting things right the first time.
2) Do It Fast
I believe that the sooner I get a prototype of our minimum viable product into the customer’s workflow, the faster we can iterate toward the customer’s perfect solution.
When the customer says things like, “It’s exactly what I asked for, but not what I wanted,” you’ll be thankful you’re the kind of leader who favors speed over perfection. The key to customer satisfaction when nobody really knows what “perfection” even looks like is iteration. If you believe in speed and iteration, you’ll succeed as an Agile leader. If you’re a consummate perfectionist, you’ll be chronically over budget with a lot of unhappy customers.
3) Do Both
I believe in using the right tool for the right job.
Yes, there is a way to complete tasks both correctly and quickly. You could use an agile methodology for the early prototyping stages of a safety-critical project, allowing room for failure without putting anyone at risk. Or, instead of handing over a minimum viable product to an actual customer, you could deliver it to a QA site and run a few iterations to perfect it.
Once you’ve decided which one of these statements best matches your beliefs, does that mean you can never change your mind? Of course not. In fact, there are advantages to adapting your beliefs to the job at hand. If you can identify when the role of beliefs in leadership is a toolkit rather than an ethical mandate, changing them makes you a more effective leader.
Beliefs as Morality
If you’ve honestly and thoroughly considered which beliefs are tools in the situational toolbox, then you should have some idea of which beliefs play a more constant, moralistic role in your leadership approach. When your moral urgency is aligned with your team, it motivates them to power through rough patches and maintain their drive to succeed.
Beliefs Determine Reality
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
When your team is working late, why are they working late? Why are you? How can you all remain enthusiastic when the work has become a grind?
The ideal team plays what project manager Tom West called “Pinball”: you win one game, you get to play another. Few teams are this motivated simply by the work itself. With your inspiration, they will play to win when they believe that winning matters far more than simply getting a paycheck.
Aligning Beliefs
You can’t adapt your morality, or at the very least probably shouldn’t — morality isn’t a toolkit. This brings up the issue of alignment. If you’re a leader in a religious institution or political organization that you don’t actually believe in, you’re either deceiving your teams to keep them motivated or they’re going to see you as an outsider rather than an inspiring leader.
To motivate your team and yourself, it’s important to align your beliefs with the mission. A leader must also have a moral framework to handle internecine conflict. Otherwise, teams might turn on each other and blame you.
To be a leader, you must inspire, and inspiration comes from the alignment of beliefs and actions.
Conclusion
If you understand the role of beliefs in leadership, you can determine which are woven into your moral code and which you can possibly adapt to the situation at hand. If you ask and answer the question, “What are my beliefs?” you can motivate your team on a moral level — or identify if there is a misalignment that cannot be reconciled.
Want to learn more about the power of beliefs in leadership? The Eighth Mile offers an 8-week online training course where you will find out how your beliefs fit and inform your leadership abilities.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2-16-Beliefs.png5001100Don Bakerhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngDon Baker2023-02-16 04:10:252023-03-01 12:30:13The Role of Beliefs in Leadership
This is the first in a four-part series about the role values, beliefs, attitudes and behavior in leadership.
Your values are your individual principles motivating your sense of right and wrong. They serve as your guide for judging behavior, whether your own or those you interact with. The starting point for what your values are is what you were raised with, plus the influence of your role models, especially during your childhood. Culture also plays a role in both defining your values and shifting them over time. Here’s how to clarify, balance, and answer the question, “What are my values?”
Values and the Art of Leadership
Leadership is as much art as science. We’ve all known people skilled in their craft who aren’t good leaders, and we might have even met people who could lead a team without the expertise of any of the team members. The missing element of the former and the magic ingredient of the latter is the art of leadership. Just as an eye for the visual makes the painter or an ear for music the musician, part of the leader’s art lies in the wise and fair application of integrity and values in business.
You might wonder how to define values in business as an art since values are often things like honesty, hard work, and self-discipline. But doing what you say you’re going to do is the starting point, not the end. If you look deeper, however, true leaders have a style that inspires. People look up to them and trust them, and they create confidence in clients and eagerness in teams. Good leaders develop and demonstrate an inspiring set of defined values, and therein lies the art.
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We all understand the price of lies, and they’re often blatantly transparent to all but the liar. Deception is no virtue, but honesty isn’t always easy–or right. The maxim “Always tell the truth” applied without nuance — telling truths as if everyone deserves or needs to hear them — can lead to mistrust. No one can tell a naively honest person anything in confidence and not eventually be betrayed.
How much truth about yourself would you be willing to tell? How much would you be willing to have someone else tell about you? Ask yourself, “What are my values?” Apply some empathy, and you’ll instinctively know the answer. If you want to add an artistic flourish, be willing to give of yourself more than you’d divulge of another.
To a client, what will you say to a missed deadline? You owe your aggrieved customer an explanation, but telling the truth and saying, “my chief developer’s son went into rehab,” won’t go over well with your chief developer. Obviously, it’s not the client’s business. What, then, can you say to the customer that’s not an outright lie? If you develop enough understanding of how to define values in business to balance honesty with privacy, you’ll be equipped to deal with delicate situations consistently.
Empathy vs Productivity: Challenge vs. Death March
“Do what you say you’re going to do!” That’s fine advice, but is it always? This should be your working goal, but death-marching your team to every deadline will inevitably destroy morale and productivity.
But didn’t Andrew Carnegie tell us that throwing down a challenge is a great leadership strategy? Again, we’re back to balance — and your values, which will guide you to that balance.
Declaring the conflict a false dichotomy in favor of synergy is a start. What needs to happen is empathy and productivity working together. Having a team that wants to hit the goal is the best way to get a team that hits the goal. But this is also stating the obvious.
Inspire!
Why does your team want to make the goal? Is it merely because you do? That can be an answer if you’re inspiring enough. You can also tell a story, and dramatize that cold, abstract deadline into an operatic tale of heroism and triumph over long odds. Whether your goal is curing cancer or having an excellent dinner service, it’s your job to inspire your team during whatever Hero’s Journey you find yourselves on.
In order to inspire, we must go back to how to define values in business. A hero must act the part. How will you demonstrate your heroism?
If you must lead a death march, maybe you should be the one who marches the furthest. If the last team member to leave at the end of the day notices that your light is still on, your living up to your values will shine too.
Relationship vs Reward
Finally, there’s the balance that comes into play when you’ve made a deal too good to be beneficial for both parties. Where is that point? Both provider and client need to walk away happy for a long-term business relationship to succeed, but not every client will be satisfied with a perfectly fair deal. Some clients may be so naive they might not recognize a bad deal. What are your values when you’re presented with an opportunity to take advantage? Will you interrupt a good thing to avoid the potential of becoming an issue later on?
Will you provide a little extra service, the kind your competitors don’t offer (or offer at an additional cost)? If you have an over-generous client, perhaps you can add value for them by going the extra mile. Now you’re not taking advantage, but offering a premium — one your competitors aren’t matching, but one that your client now expects and will continue to get as long as they do business with you. But to recognize this win-win situation, you need your values to guide you past the win-lose.
Find Your Values
To borrow from Sun Tzu, if you know yourself and know your values, you’ll know the art of leadership. How to define values in business is the foundation from which your leadership inspires your teams.
Looking for more instruction on how to define your values in leadership and business? We can help. The Eighth Mile offers an 8-week training course dedicated to helping leaders like you attune yourselves to your individual leadership potential. Get started with us today.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2-9-Values.png6001200Don Bakerhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngDon Baker2023-02-09 04:02:432023-03-01 12:30:23How to Define Your Values as a Leader
The concept of “rupture and repair” is widely used in the fields of social work and community services. It has origins in attachment theory founded by John Bowlby (1958) and is well known in therapeutic disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, and contemporary trauma-informed practice disciplines such as neurobiology. It is also something you can adapt to your leadership practice with great benefit.
In simple terms, “rupture and repair” is about breaking, fixing, and improving relationships. Specifically, it is about a breach or disconnect in a relationship followed by the restoration and positive continuation of that relationship.
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My experience with rupture and repair comes from my work with children and young people with trauma/abuse histories. The majority of this population has been betrayed by their loved ones, and as a result, they have ongoing trouble forming attachments and building trust. By using the rupture and repair approach as a way to promote healthy conflict resolution, we could assist in their healing by showing them that they are safe and appropriate people in the world with whom they can communicate openly.
From a leadership perspective, this approach can be invaluable. Conflict in the workplace is inevitable. If a leader reaches across the divide to help reconnect their employees after a conflict, it can improve and strengthen relationships across the team.
How Professional Relationships Can Break Down
Let’s say you have received an email from a staff member. They are unhappy with a work policy and demand to know what you plan to do about it. Imagine that the employee’s tone is blunt to the point of aggression and very accusatory, attacking your abilities and competence as a leader.
You may be tempted to match the employee’s tone by going on the defensive, matching their aggression with your own in an attempt to shut them down or “be right.” If you are experiencing additional stress in other areas (such as a looming deadline or a sick family member), that might further fuel your ire. The moment you hit Send, however, you have created a rupture in that professional relationship.
To start the repairing process, take the following action:
Reach out to your employee and apologize. Do not make excuses or try to justify your actions. What matters is that your poor communication caused the rupture. Ideally, you should do this as soon as possible after the rupture. However, make sure you fully acknowledge and accept your responsibility for the situation before you reach out. If there’s a chance you will return to a defensive posture, it might be better to wait.
Let them know how much you value their contributions. This whole thing started because this employee was trying to bring a potentially problematic issue to your attention. That kind of proactiveness and concern is what makes them a great team member.
Listen. Whether they need to vent further about the initial problem or they want to talk about how the rupture has made them feel, give them plenty of space to speak freely. They may say some things that are hard for you to hear, but hear them you must. It is your job as a leader to accept those critiques instead of thinking up ways to defend your behavior.
Assure them that you will address their initial concern as soon as possible. You might even consider asking them to assist you, giving them an even greater sense of ownership and input over the resolution.
Follow through. If you’ve told them you would have an answer for them by the end of the day, do it.
By addressing ruptures quickly with a desire to fix what is broken (instead of a need to win), you are more likely to come out of the situation with a stronger professional relationship than you had before the rupture.
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Learning From Ruptures
At Eighth Mile Consulting, we believe that mistakes are opportunities for reflection and improvement. Next time you experience a rupture, spend the extra ten minutes repairing things regardless of who you think was at fault. More than likely, you will both come away with a greater sense of trust and support. This could translate into improved performance and productivity down the road.
We also know that accountability and accepting critique doesn’t always come naturally–it takes training. If you’re looking for a straightforward lesson on how to face your mistakes head-on, explore our 8-week online personal development and leadership program or contact us for personalized coaching.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2-2-Rupture-and-Repair.png6001200Mitchell Burneyhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngMitchell Burney2023-02-02 01:13:282023-02-06 13:32:35How to Apply Rupture and Repair Therapy as a Leader
Our experiences over the last decade, specifically transitioning from the military into the corporate world, have given me and David Neal a unique perspective on characterizing leadership. One of the questions we hear the most is, “Am I ready for leadership?”
Well, you’re the only one who can answer this. Are you ready for leadership? How do you know?
One of the signs you are ready for a leadership role is understanding and preparing for the challenges ahead. It isn’t just a matter of stepping up to the plate. You have to be ready to swing.
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Am I Ready for Leadership?
Asking the question is the first step, but not the last. In a nutshell, you’ll know you are ready for leadership when:
You can give great feedback. Anyone can tell someone about their horrible performance. It takes a leader to look at that performance from an objective standpoint. Offering serious, analytical feedback that’s also positive is an art. You must be constructive, while still providing accurate assessment and direction to help them along their career journey. If you often offer fellow teammates advice or constructive direction, and those teammates not only find it helpful but grab that productivity baton as if the starting pistol was just fired — congratulations. That’s a sign you are ready for leadership.
You’re calm, decisive, and can say no when the situation calls for it. Do your superiors and teammates often tell you how well you perform under pressure? Or maybe they give you compliments on how your decision-making skills seem to sharpen the crazier things get? These abilities are definitely prerequisites and good signs you are ready for leadership. Knowing when to say no to favors and additional projects when you honestly don’t have the time is an art.
Your team likes you. If you’re well-liked, you are ready for leadership. The idea that leaders have to be rough, crass, and overly demanding to maintain control is simply not true. And how many movies have proven this? Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) in The Devil Wears Prada or John Milton (Al Pacino) in The Devil’s Advocate — sensing a trend here? If you’re not well-liked, you don’t stand much chance of leading the team.
You hold your team in high esteem — but you also hold them accountable. From the moment you assume a leadership role, you also assume responsibility for every teammate who reports to you. You are ready for leadership if you share in their mistakes as much as their successes. Working and growing together is now on your shoulders, and that is probably the most important aspect of what it means to be a leader.
If this sounds doable to you, you might be ready to take that step into a leadership position. If you’re still not sure, here are some more questions to help you assess your leadership readiness.
Are You Ready for Constant Growing Pains?
Leadership isn’t a “nine-to-five” job. It requires constant evolution to remain relevant. The leader you were when you began the journey isn’t the leader you should be today. The lessons from failure and success shape your leadership style and effectiveness. When you shift roles, projects, and teams, the dynamic and the personalities change. Therefore, your approach must change. Can you adapt? You need to be able to constantly evolve.
Are You Ready to Take the Hits?
Poor leadership blames others for mediocre performance or unmotivated teams. Subject matter experts may be involved in planning and preparation, and tech experts may execute the practical and technical delivery, but the leader owns the outcome. As a leader, you need to accept responsibility for the performance of your team and provide a means to isolate them from unnecessary business friction and white noise so they can do their best work.
Are You Ready to Abandon Self-Interest?
Your co-workers are more important than you. If you genuinely care about your people, open yourself up to professional feedback on your performance from them. After all, they will influence your projects when you’re not present. By building rapport and loyalty, your team will protect your interests (aka, the team’s interests). For example, strong leaders fight for raises for their staff, not themselves.
The team’s outputs will determine whether a leader is deserving of progression. Never take for granted those who surged, stayed late, and put their own needs aside to deliver on a goal that ultimately reflects favorably on you.
Are You Ready To Be 100% Accountable?
Team decisions are your decisions. Own them and deliver the outcomes. If something fails, it is your failure. Learn from it, and evolve. You may benefit from the team’s success in the long term, but your personal recognition cannot be your primary focus.
So…Are You Ready for Leadership?
These are our observations, and in no way are they a sequenced road map to succeeding. That is your responsibility as a leader to find and shape. David and I are passionate about leadership and investing in teams. We believe that people make a team, and teams make an organization.
If you have answered “no” to many of the above questions, then leadership may not be a good fit for you. In that case, you have three options:
On the other hand, if you have evaluated yourself honestly, believe you have what it takes to be an accountable and respectful leader for your team, and you are ready for leadership, then we want to help. We believe that a good leader can lead anyone, and knows how to be led. The Eighth Mile offers leadership courses and an 8-week personal development leadership program. To learn more, contact us today.
Team building, motivation, workplace culture, and telling uncomfortable truths are the benefits of well-crafted workplace comedy. The manager who understands it builds resilient teams with confidence in their leader. The manager who doesn’t will be resented as a scold and — worse — leave teams brittle and unable to endure challenges. Workplace comedy invariably offends someone. A wise manager must balance the risk of offense against the necessity of comedy in the workplace.
Every Court Needs a Jester
The term “jester” is derived from the Anglo-Norman (Old French) words gestour or jestour, meaning storyteller or minstrel. Over time, the role of this entertainer became far more vital than mere entertainment: The jester could tell the truth that could not otherwise be told. Who could tell the king he had lost a battle? Who could declare taxes were too high or confidence in military leadership too low? This guy — unless an unwise king ordered his hapless jester beheaded.
To the wise business manager, comedy in the workplace serves the very same function — with the same caveat.
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A Jester Beheaded
When I was a new Lieutenant, I had a soldier in my platoon I’ll call “Steve.” Steve was an experienced troublemaker with a natural charismatic aura. The other soldiers respected and looked up to him, and he in turn asserted himself socially as their representative. The secret of his success was perfectly timed and executed comedy.
Gaining Insight
Steve had the rare ability to point out the elephant in the room, the thing no one else wanted to acknowledge or address. With surgical precision, he would crack a joke that would draw attention to the forbidden and make his teammates laugh it off.
What turned this comedian into a leader was how he shaped and targeted his humor to hit everyone equally but fairly. His jokes were pointed but never mean, his demeanor was always friendly, he didn’t hold back because of rank, and his jokes always contained an element of truth. As a result, his leaders found him as valuable as his teammates, and no one felt unfairly treated. To a wise manager, he was a walking informal complaints department who provided an unofficial way to deal with problems before they became official.
Losing Perspective
To my regret, however, during a period of weakness brought on by too little sleep and too much responsibility, I lashed out at Steve when he was doing no worse than just being Steve. The result of this lapse in judgment was a break in rapport, who abruptly retreated into his metaphorical shell. I had beheaded the jester.
Suddenly, I was blinded to the needs and feelings of my men. The section commanders did an adequate job of allaying the soldiers’ concerns, but even the best section commander is somewhat detached due to rank and hierarchy. Comedy in the workplace was my back channel, and now it was gone.
Luckily, after some time had passed, Steve regained his confidence, thus restoring the team dynamic of my platoon. Once again, he became a reliable source of information. And I learned a permanent lesson at a — thankfully — temporary cost.
Gaining Perspective
In essence, the Jester is and has always been the last line of defense in the battle for common sense. They have forever been the pressure tester of ideas and the illuminator of idiocy, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies. They identify social patterns and have the courage to communicate their observations. By their very nature, they are incredibly intelligent and observant.
Political Correctness Also Kills
During my time in the infantry, I noticed it was invariably the class clowns who bonded teams. Their jokes knew few limits, and no one was exempt. An officer who could take a joke on the chin and walk it off demonstrated his strength of character and earned the respect of his team, who rightly expected he would demonstrate equal resilience in other, more challenging situations.
Conversely, how can you trust an officer with the lives of his men if he can’t even handle a joke? The teams with the best-developed comedy in the workplace were the ones who survived the greatest hardships, plain and simple. The leaders who were unable to value comedy in the workplace destroyed morale and fractured teams.
Private Sector Fun Police
When I transitioned from military officer to business management, widespread censorship hit me with the subtlety of a freight train. Even my top-secret work had never been this censorious. It was as if an unseen presence imposed an unspoken taboo that to give offense was the gravest of crimes, forbidden under any circumstances. Even a hint of workplace comedy earned the would-be jester an interrogation by the Fun Police — uptight managers who kept the workplace on edge and the workers wound tight.
Is Offense Subjective?
What is okay for one person might be highly offensive to someone else. As such, it is impossible to uphold a policy of “never offend anyone, and yet many workplaces accept that as the preferred mode of operation. Have they never learned that comedy in the workplace is the key to getting through tough times? Have they never experienced “tough times”? Perhaps Gabrielle Union was right:
“Drama can feel like therapy whereas comedy feels like there’s been a pressure and a weight lifted off of you.”
I’d seen brittleness turn to failure before, and I knew what it took to endure hardship: a sense of humor — some comedy in the workplace.
Conformity By Exhaustion
Nevertheless, the censorship was there, always pressing down. The best practices I’d learned in the field prompted “correction” so often that I, too, began to conform. Slowly, the humor drained from the workplace, and with it the insight it brought. Looking back, I see how avoiding humor translated into avoiding problems by not addressing them.
I finally realized how I’d let myself down when, at a leadership conference, I answered the question, “What do you think is the most important function of a leader?” Drawing from my own experience as a leader, I said, “Good leaders are those who can articulate and contextualize the truth.” At that moment, I realized I wasn’t living up to my own leadership standards.
Political correctness also kills. No leadership, no jester. No jester, no truth.
Offense Taken, Not Given
Though modernity may have killed the fearless jester, comedy in the workplace need not follow. Applying balance to what is acceptable (while taking subjectivity into account) is how good managers must confront the challenge. To address this balance, I’ve developed three principles:
Bullying vs Banter. Banter is good-natured. Bullying intends to harm. The difference is in the intent. A wise manager divines the intent before addressing a conflict.
Problem vs Person. A good jester can delineate between the problem and the person responsible, and target their joke appropriately. Subtle changes in language can mean the difference between constructive criticism and personal attack. The most proficient jester can talk about the elephant in the room and leave out the person behind the pachyderm.
“Time and Place” vs. “In Your Face.” There’s a time for jokes and banter, and there’s a time for seriousness and decorum. A good jester needs to read the room, and a good manager needs to provide guidance on how to do that.
Ultimately, to fear the jester is to fear the truth. To kill the jester is to sail in willful blindness toward whatever peril might be lurking before you. Are people going to take offense? Of course. Will you allow them to destroy morale and turn your teams into fearful, wounded wrecks? Not if you want to weather the storms that inevitably lie ahead.
Comedy in the Workplace and Learning Leadership
To conclude, be mindful when silencing your jesters, particularly if they might be telling you something you need to hear. If you have a jester in your team or organization, be grateful — and careful. Too much offense might ultimately expose you to legal liability, sure. But if you behead the jester who provides truth and common sense, you may not see key issues in your team until it’s too late. Wise managers must nurture healthy, resilient, and capable teams. There’s no better way to do that than by introducing a little comedy in the workplace.
Workplace comedy is serious business — and we’re brave enough to say it. The Eighth Mile offers an 8-week leadership course where we share all the important lessons (and some hard truths) we’ve learned from our experiences as leaders. View the course page to see if this program might be a good fit for your career journey.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Jester.jpg6001200David Nealhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngDavid Neal2023-01-05 09:03:472023-01-19 04:34:47Where Did All The Jesters Go? The Role of Comedy in the Workplace
There is a difference between positive stress and toxic stress. Problem-solving and coping skills are examples of positive stress we can exercise for our benefit. However, long-term exposure to stress can have significant impacts on our health. In this presentation, Samantha Pickering moderates a discussion with Peter Keith on the science behind resilience in the workplace. He begins by decoding the four main chemicals that affect behavior and mood, which have an enormous impact on our workplace resilience. He continues to examine the subconscious speech patterns that are limiting our own experience, as well as the five areas that can serve as a source of resilience and strength when applied correctly.
By the end of the video, viewers should be able to make simple but positive changes as a precursor to leading their teams through times of uncertainty and managing ambiguity with decisiveness and clarity.
Presenters
Peter Keith Samantha Pickering
Length of Video
60 minutes
The Science of Workplace Resilence: Video Highlights
0:00 – Introductions
1:45 – Who Should Watch This Video
3:02 – What is Resilience?
4:07 – The Four Chemicals That Affect Behaviors and Mood (Using Language to Access the Positive Chemicals and Limit the Negative Ones)
10:00 – Self-Talk and The Subconscious Voice
14:45 – Resilience Reflective Questions
18:20 – “SAVES” Workplace Resilience Checks: Social Connections, Attitude, Values, Emotional Acceptance, Sense of Humor
56:55 – Storytime: “All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten”
Company Overview
Eighth Mile Consulting is a leadership training and consulting agency focused on creating and supporting better leaders in all industries. If you are seeking to develop yourself professionally, we have created an online leadership course to help you become better, more resilient leaders for your team.
For more helpful videos to help you grow your people and your organization, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/resilience.jpg6001200Samantha Pickeringhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngSamantha Pickering2022-12-21 13:39:352023-01-12 11:13:18Workplace Resilience After A Setback
As leaders and managers, part of our responsibility is to find credible information to assist practical and informed decision-making. Unfortunately, decisions often have to be made on deadline — without all the necessary information available. Decision makers in these circumstances must leverage their management experience to estimate the likely risk-to-reward ratio of a business decision and act within their authority on limited information. How to make better decisions faster is a skill all leaders must learn, or else they may be left behind.
Indecision Is a Decision
From my own experiences, I have often observed leaders who are very uncomfortable making decisions without “all” the information. But to not make a decision is also a choice. In a competitive environment, indecision is the kiss of death: Situational opportunities get snatched up by competitors who are more adaptable and agile. Decisiveness now on an incomplete set of facts beats a perfectly informed decision later — provided the educated guess was close enough.
Military strategist Carl von Clausewitz coined the phrase “the fog of war” to describe uncertainty within the complex, high-stakes arena of military conflict. It addresses the complexities of gathering accurate and timely information in a constantly changing environment against thinking opponents.
Key to the “fog” metaphor is the importance of how to make command decisions faster with what little information one has. Fog is also everywhere; there is no place to hide from it. Indecision does not lie outside the Fog of War, but within.
In war, achieving goals requires maintaining momentum. Momentum requires action. The skilled commander must timely act within the Fog of War, maintaining momentum on limited information rather than losing by default to indecision.
No Perfect Decisions in the Fog of War
So why can’t people conceive of making better decisions in the absence of “all” the information? The simple answer is fear of making the wrong decision. With no information at all, this prudent caution is perfectly understandable. But there is no prudence in wasting time on an endless search for the “perfect decision” because it does not exist, except maybe in hindsight.
If there is no such thing as a time-constrained “perfect decision,” and if all decisions are time-constrained, making better decisions while maintaining momentum is the wiser course. A leader whose decisions are rash and ill-considered doesn’t stay a leader for long. Overcompensating for this, however, is no better.
What a wise leader will find is that the most effective balance lies closer to action. From my own experience in competitive environments, I’ve found that making faster decisions that are good 80% of the time beats 100% of the decisions made too late. Making better decisions while maintaining momentum creates the most reliable recipe for projects succeeding on time.
In the Fog of War, Information Is on a Budget
On a time budget, gathering data is not income but expense. To make better decisions, your information needs to be worth more than the time it takes to gather. For every data-gathering endeavor, ask yourself, “Am I gathering the right amount of the right data? Was the time I spent worth the cost?”
Sir Richard Branson once said, “There’s no such thing as perfect decision making — only hindsight can determine whether you made the ‘right call.’”
One of Branson’s techniques places greater emphasis on a small set of key questions, gathering the most accurate information possible on a small set of parameters to inform the broader decision. “Perfect information” on a narrow set of specifics is a viable technique — it’s the time budget that matters. If budgeting all the time on a narrow set of specifics provides a way to make better decisions faster, it’s a good method.
Too often, people appear to be gathering information without a good understanding of what decision it will influence. In these instances, people are most certainly busy; unfortunately, they are likely collecting the wrong information. Quantity without quality is wasteful spending of the time budget. Getting the right data and only the right data is how to make decisions faster.
4 Ways to Manage the Fog of War
As a trained leader, there are several things you can do to assist your team members so they spend the minimum of their precious time collecting the most valuable information:
Prioritize your questions of fact. Determine what one must know versus what is nice to know. In some cases, a metric applied to the data itself might signal the end of the useful collection. Always place greater emphasis on answering questions that will determine go/no go criteria for the project.
Route the right questions to the right stakeholders. Too often, we engage the wrong people with our critical questions. When engaging with subject matter experts, ensure that your question drives toward a decision and that you ask in language or vernacular appropriate to your audience, as words often mean different things to different professionals. Don’t make the common mistake of assuming every project manager knows complex engineering terminology.
Streamline data collection toward specific questions targeted to make better decisions. Effective project managers adequately define the project scope and ensure the project remains oriented toward a measurable end-state. If you are collecting information that does not target how to make decisions faster, stop collecting it.
Sequence your data collection to align toward project milestones. Get what you need most first. Do, however, keep one eye on preserving data you might need later.
Make Better Decisions Within the Fog of War
If you wait too long for too much information, you can miss critical opportunities as projects and situations evolve. The Fog of War will never part to reveal the perfect decision until it’s too late to matter. Do you have enough information to make a “good enough” decision now? Make it. Learn how to make decisions faster, and you’ll find you can make better decisions.
These principles inform our work at The Eighth Mile Consulting. We work with good people who are ready to take a critical inventory of their skills and make the changes necessary to become better leaders for their teams and businesses. If you’re facing the uncertainty of the Fog of War, we’re a good ally to have on your side. Take a look at our 8-week online leadership course and see how The Eighth Mile can help you make better decisions faster.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Fog-of-war.jpg6001200Jonathan Clarkhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngJonathan Clark2022-12-13 13:11:002023-01-12 11:15:30The Fog of War: Making Better Decisions on a Deadline
