The Leadership Value Of An Apology

The Leadership Value Of An Apology

Tom Searcy is a Vistage speaker who also writes for CBS MoneyWatch.  His recent blog titled “7 Tips on How to Apologize in the Business World” resonated for me, so I thought I would share them. Here are the tips:

1- Separate the apology and the explanation

2-Ask for the discussion, but don’t insist upon it

3- One-up the connection – face to face is best – try Skype or GoToMeeting and then phone

4-Don’t assume you know what will make it right, but be prepared with options

5-Own more than your portion

6-Focus on what happens next

7-Move on

Seems to me we can all benefit from applying these in our personal as well as professional lives.  To read Tom’s  full blog, click here.

Elisa K. Spain

What Results When Leaders Ass-u-me?

What Results When Leaders Ass-u-me?

We make assumptions daily, mostly about other people. These assumptions enable us to take shortcuts and keep us moving forward. Or so we think.

  • We assume a person attended or didn’t attend an event because…
  • We assume a person responded to us a certain way, because…
  • We assume a person took an action or didn’t take an action because…

What if instead of assuming, we, as CEO’s and leaders, paused and asked “What is the reason you made this choice or took this action?”

As a leadership coach, I had a recent reminder of the importance of asking, when I assumed a new client made a choice because he was not engaged in our relationship.  I decided to pause and ask the reason for the choice and I learned the choice had to do with his family and had nothing to do with our business relationship.

When I was a young driver,  I learned this leadership lesson from a police officer who pulled me over for passing him on the right, when he and and another officer were stopped – blocking both sides of the road.  He asked me why I passed him. My response was “I assumed you were going to be there for awhile and I wanted to get to my destination”.  His reply, “When you assume, you make an ass-u-me”.

Yet another reason to pause, as we were reminded by Joshua Bell in my December 18, 2011, post ” Take a Pause and Avoid Missing Out-of-Context Opportunities”.

Elisa K. Spain

Laws Of Success: It's All About The Ride

Laws Of Success: It's All About The Ride

Years ago, I was sitting on a bench at Union station. An old man sat down next to me and we engaged  in conversation. I asked him where he was headed and he replied with glee, “San Francisco!”

Wow, I said, that is a long way to go on the train. His reply: “There is as much fun in getting there as there is in being there.”

This man’s answer has stayed with me and I often think of him in these situations:

  • When I am too focused on getting to the outcome
  • When it’s time to pause
  • When it’s time to remember to be in the moment

Recently, I came across this TED Talk by Professor Srikumar Rao, who developed the first MBA course on Creativity and Personal Mastery. Professor Rao is known as the happiness teacher. Like me, he is a leadership coach and he teaches his students how to achieve success by first plugging into your hard-wired happiness.

I wonder if my traveling acquaintance, from many years ago, realized that he had seized on the secret to happiness and success…

Perhaps something to consider in the new year?

Elisa K Spain

Want Greater Success? Nurture Your Butterflies

Want Greater Success? Nurture Your Butterflies

Good leaders always strive to have butterflies in their stomach, says Kathleen L. Flanagan, president and chief executive of Abt Associates, a $450mm consultancy firm.

When we are out of our comfort zone, we have the greatest opportunity for success. It’s when we become complacent and run on auto-pilot that we as leaders are most at risk of failure.

In this interview in The New York Times, Kathleen describes her first big promotion, the first time she managed people, how she had butterflies in her stomach the entire first year, and how she ultimately learned to trust her gut.

Her advice is the same advice she heard from her first boss and mentor, the one who gave her that first job. “There is no blueprint, you have to make a plan and be goal oriented. Always have butterflies and always plan for success.”

To the advice she received from her former boss, Kathleen adds her own wisdom: Be flexible. Listen to people. Give them the opportunity to give feedback, tell you what worries them, what they are thinking about, what part of the strategy they think is risky.

As a leadership coach, I ask myself and you the following questions as we plan for 2012:

  • What is your vision for success?
  • What specific goals have you set to move toward your vision?
  • Are we taking the risks that create butterflies, and if not, why not?

 

Elisa K. Spain

 

 

Sight Over Sound: When Face-To-Face Communication Improves Negotiation

Sight Over Sound: When Face-To-Face Communication Improves Negotiation


Mode of communication matters! So say Kellogg School of Management professors Roderick Swaab, Adam D. Galinsky, Victoria Medvec and Daniel Diermeier.
In research described in the article below, the Northwestern University team discovered, not surprisingly, that face-to-face communication is critical to negotiation in two circumstances.

  • When two parties don’t know each other well
  • When two parties have a history of negative interactions

When the parties already know each other AND “have a history of cooperation” and positive interactions, face-to-face communication is not so important. In short, where there is trust, negotiating partners assume the best in each other.

Let’s start with this question: Why?

We easily understand the need for direct, in-person communication in the first two circumstances. What we are likely to underestimate is the need for personal exchanges with people we know, but with whom we just don’t have that storehouse of positive interactions.

While the Kellogg team’s research was specifically related to negotiation, my sense is that we can apply this insight to all of our business and personal interactions. After all, as Jack Kaine, our Vistage Speaker on negotiations, says, “Every interaction between two human beings is a negotiation.”

This study also prompts me to ask additional questions:

  • In each of our lives, what important relationships still require us to build a “history of positive interaction” before we can become highly reliant on written communication?
  • When we want to resolve a situation, is it worth pausing and asking ourselves whether we should continue using email — or would it be better to schedule a meeting?

Here’s the full article: http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/Kellogg/article/sight_over_sound

Elisa K. Spain