And What About Our Own Resistance?

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Whether leader or follower, we are all in the position of having change thrust upon us. Vistage Speaker, Mike Scott, responded to my March 19th blog (Is Resistance The Problem?), with the questions I asked, turned inward. Thank you Mike for this wonderful reminder of the responsibility we each have to notice our own resistance.

HOW DO I OPERATE?
I justify my resistance when:
1) I resist when I don’t “get it.”
2) I think I know more than I do therefore I don’t actively listen. Then I resist. 
3) I think I heard all you said when I didn’t. Then I resist. 
4) I think I know what you’re going to say so I stop listening. Then I resist. 
5) I mentally criticize what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Then I resist.
6) I really don’t know what you mean when I think I do. Then I resist.

I blame others when I should be asking, “What was my part in this problem that was created?”

In my workshops one of the principles is to have people repeat or paraphrase all verbal requests. I’m going to use this as the logical justification for repeating and paraphrasing. A new context.

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Q1 2017 Vistage CEO Confidence Index Results: CEO Economic Confidence Reigns

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Q1 2017 Confidence Index

 

A rebound in CEOs’ perceptions of economic growth combined with a more favorable outlook for the economy has created a new optimism. The Vistage CEO Confidence Index was 106.9 in the 1st quarter 2017 survey, slightly above the 105.2 in last quarter’s survey, and well above the 3rd quarter reading of 91.4. Although the surge in optimism has thus far only restored confidence to the highs recorded following the Great Recession, the return of optimism to the highs of the past few years has meant that CEOs anticipate favorable trends in their revenues and profits.

Q1 2017 Vistage CEO Confidence Index highlights include:

  • Economic growth rebounds. 57% of CEOs expect the economy to post additional gains during the year ahead, more than twice the 23% who expected improvement a year ago.
  • Robust hiring plans. 60% of all CEOs plan to expand their workforce in the year ahead.
  • Record revenues and profits. 77% of CEOs expect increased revenue, and 64% expect increased profits in the year ahead.
  • Strong investment spending. 47% of CEOs expect to increase investment expenditures in the next year, barely below the decade peak of 49% set in the closing quarter of 2014.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Is Resistance The Problem?

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Leading change in an organization is full of challenges. Most of these challenges are associated with creating a vision, inspiring action, achieving buy-in, and sustaining the change.

And sometimes, we don’t take the simple steps to achieve buy-in. Put simply, everyone hears through their own filter. Therefore the actions we see may not be the actions we expected. Obvious perhaps, and yet when leading change, we sometimes think that things are not happening the way we want because people are resisting.

  • Sometimes, they simply didn’t hear
  • Sometimes, they heard, but we haven’t made the effort to help them see the value from their perspective, i.e. the WHY
  • Or what they heard is different from what I thought I said
  • Or they need to hear it more than once; 7 times I have been told is the magic number
  • Or they need to do it more than once, or even twice, to “get it”
  • Or we simply need to allow time for the change to settle in

So, next time, before calling out a “resister”, first pause and ask them what they heard.

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Continuous Improvement

by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Last week I talked about ratings and how we seem to have lost the purpose. So if ratings have taken on a life of their own, what do we do instead to foster continuous improvement?

In the manufacturing world there is the concept of Kaizen, brought to the U.S. by Edward Deming. It’s a simple concept that goes like this. Intentionally and continuously look for ways to innovate and improve your business processes. Employees, customers and other stakeholders can be a source of those ideas.

So, rather than give up on surveys, what if we turned them into something useful?

  • Instead of focusing on the ratings, what if we focused on the comments?
  • Instead of looking for what is wrong, what if we looked for what is right?
  • Instead of focusing on big initiatives, what if we encouraged our stakeholders to share ideas for continuous improvement?

Once we start collecting these ideas and small innovations, what metrics can we put in place to measure the results of our continuous improvement efforts?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Is Everyone a 5 or a 10?

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

We seem to be in a place where everyone is rated, everything is surveyed and everyone expects a rating of 5 (or when a 10 point scale, a rating of 10).

It began with the car dealer who tells us, “You will be getting a survey and if your rating will be anything less than 10, please let me know now so I can fix it”. They make it sound like they will lose their job if they get anything less than a 10, and perhaps that is so. Then came Uber and Lyft and customer service surveys every time we call anyone for anything. And the message is the same, the results of a rating less than 5 (or 10) will be disastrous for the person being rated. Frankly we have a similar system in Vistage with our resource speakers.

I want to believe the intent of all these surveys is to solicit feedback for continuous improvement. Somehow we moved away from feedback to scoring; and from scoring to ranking; and from ranking to “everyone gets a 5”; kinda like the stereotype we hear about the millennial generation where everyone gets a trophy.

So what to do?

  • Do we all just play along?
  • Is it worth it to give a fair rating, and what we believe to be a true rating, knowing that most everyone else is giving a 5 or a 10?
  • Is it worth it if the person on the receiving end may actually lose their job for a 4 or an 8, or lose their opportunity to get more gigs?
  • What happens when we encounter that rare person who truly is a 5 or a 10, what then? How do we reward them, communicate to them that they are a star?
  • Or is finding stars not the point? Is the goal simply to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable, pass/fail?

What do you do in these situations?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

 

 

 

Vertical Silos vs. Multitasking

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Lots has been written about the downside of multitasking. And research shows that when it comes to tasks, at least amongst pre-millennial generations, it doesn’t work. Working on more than one thing at a time, e.g. talking on the phone and filling out a form or writing a paper, doesn’t work. It actually takes longer to get both tasks done when we multitask because our attention is divided.

And yet as leaders, we must pay attention to both the content, and the context of each situation. Isn’t this a form of multitasking?

I was discussing this with a friend recently and he had the following commentary, “My view is that we don’t really multitask but hold vertical subject or action silos in our heads, and each time we get an update for that silo we mentally log it in, decide if it’s critical or not and then process the next data segment for another silo.”

For me this was an ‘ah-ha’. As leaders, we must do this type of multitasking. Information flows in throughout the day. Vertical silos help us determine how to separate the urgent from the non-urgent and the important from the unimportant. And, if we hold both content and context in a silo, we can remind ourselves when we must pause and address the context before we can make further progress on the content.

An example that comes to mind for me is leading a meeting, something we leaders do frequently and sometimes without thinking. In meetings, there are at least 3 vertical silos we must monitor throughout the session:

  • Most of us focus primarily on the content silo. We prepare agendas, prepare materials, ask for participation, assign tasks, etc. etc.
  • But what about the context silo? Is everyone present, fully present? What else may be going on in the lives of the people present that distracts their attention? How are people feeling about the subject matter and the time given for discussion? Are they feeling that they are being heard? I recently led a session where we gave an assignment and when we stopped the work at the end of the allotted time, the participants were visibly angry. Clearly we had not given them enough time. I wish context was so easy to read all the time. Most of the time it is subtle and if we don’t have that silo in mind, we miss the cues.
  • And what about the environment? Have you created an environment that makes the participants feel comfortable? Are the chairs comfortable; what about the temperature and ventilation? If an all-day meeting, or even a half-day, is there nutritious food so people stay focused? Or are you serving all sugar (e.g. fruit and bread products only) creating highs and lows and inadvertently impacting attention?

So, as you go through each day, I encourage you to think about your silos and ask yourself, are you logging into each of them appropriately?

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

How Do You Manage The Flow?

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Sometimes the demands of one part of our life, work or family, consume us. Sometimes because of a crisis, sometimes because of a spike in workload or children’s sports or…, sometimes just because we become consumed.

These days, mobile devices link us 24/7 to the office, our bosses, our employees and coworkers. We are, as I heard it said recently, living in time poverty. It may be necessary, now more than ever, to pause, regroup and allow ourselves to do something counterintuitive; listen to music, go sailing, jogging, practice yoga, make pottery or simply go for a walk.

Why counterintuitive? Because our responsible self says, stay with it, do the work, finish the project, take care of the sick loved one, etc. We tell ourselves its selfish to do something for ourselves “at a time like this”.

If we think of our lives as a three legged stool….when one leg is gone, it won’t balance and falls over. We can’t take the pressures of work and family and go back and forth between them alone….that’s where the third leg, a completely different activity that is our individual interest alone, comes in.

At the height of World War 2 when the pressures were immense, President Roosevelt would escape to his stamp collection for an hour or so, doing something completely different. General George Marshall would ride horseback many mornings to relieve the pressures of his job of building and leading an Army of 8 million men and women.

Think about it—

  • What is your third stool leg to balance your life?
  • How often are you trying to balance on only 2 legs?
  • How might you feel if all three legs were grounded on most days?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

But, Do They Really Like You?

by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Many years ago, Sally Field famously accepted her Oscar saying, “You like me,” she declared. “You really like me.” With the strong emphasis on the word really.  Turns out what she actually said was, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.” We probably misremember or misheard the quote, because it isn’t just actors who are primarily motivated by being liked, we all are. Psychologists say this misquote is so sticky because it exemplifies a central human need.

And, whether we are liked, impacts our ability to have long term, lasting, success. Likability is an essential component of EQ. Likability impacts the legacy we leave.

I am fascinated, particularly lately, with how this shows up in politics. Here in Chicago, our mayor nearly lost the last election, despite what he has accomplished, because lots of people, don’t like him. Our previous mayor was extremely popular. As a result, he could do things that people didn’t like (like swoop in and close an airport in the middle of the night, without any authority to do so), because people liked him, even if they didn’t always like what he did. The airport closing, by the way, turned out to be something the citizens of Chicago ended up liking because it became a lovely park and concert venue. And, our parks and the overall beauty of the city is part of Mayor Daley’s legacy.

Working with CEOs and executives, I observe the same phenomenon. The CEOs who, like Sally Field, are really liked, by their teams, get results. They get a pass when they make a mistake, especially when they own it and admit it. And more importantly, they get support when they want something to happen.

As we think about our own leadership, a question worth asking ourselves, perhaps daily:

What can I do today, to hone my EQ skills and increase my likability?

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain