MANAGEMENT leaders as catalysts 24 TD June 2015 PHOTO: VEER
podcast To succeed, new leaders must learn to ignite action in others. BY TACY M. BYHAM AND RICHARD S. WELLINS When you accept your first leadership job, you take one of the most important and courageous steps in your career. You re now a boss. But will you be a good one? The reality is that nobody knows exactly what to do when they start. Chances are, as a new leader, you re perched precariously on an emotional range from awkward excitement to abject terror and back again. You have a lot to prove. Making the transition Consider Marian, a social media specialist and writer at a midsized university. She had a classic bad boss: He didn t communicate, failed to set team goals, missed deadlines, and played poorly with his peers in other departments. He gave the department a bad reputation throughout the whole campus and was fired abruptly. June 2015 TD 25
Marian was tapped as his interim replacement, with an ugly catch: Her old boss had negotiated to stay on for six months and was refusing to announce Marian s new job or even train her for it. He told me that he didn t want to be seen as a lame duck, but it got really awkward. I had no idea what to do, Marian explains. Marian is not alone. Our research shows that the transition to a leadership position is among life s most challenging, falling somewhere on the list of stressors between personal illness and managing teenagers. Only one in three leaders in our study, Leaders in Transition: Stepping Up, Not Off, felt they were handling things effectively. Conversely, firsttime leaders who transition well are more able to make a positive impact on their teams, families, and careers. Our goal is to help new leaders become engaged and more productive more quickly. So, we start by offering a simple but powerful idea of what people must become to succeed: a catalyst. Much like an ingredient that induces a chemical reaction, a catalyst leader is someone who ignites action in others. That ignition might jump-start a change in an inefficient process, spawn a new idea for a new product, or most important effect change in others. Luckily for Marian, she had a strong, intuitive sense of this. She introduced herself to every department head and showed up at the industry functions she usually skipped as a team member. In an informal way, she let people know that she would have a role to play as a leader in her department. She also sought out key people in a variety of functions such as the printers and web folks who understood her role better than she did. She got creative. I started hanging around and casually joined meetings that were starting after mine, she says. She began offering advice to anyone with communication needs that fell outside her normal job. She made new friends and reached out in new ways, such as informally mentoring other working mothers. Marian s new network came through. They helped her identify power players and their quirks. She got a handle on all the issues that caused delays. When she officially took over, she was able to help her team handle assignments more quickly and smoothly than before. If I hadn t reached out to those people, it would have been impossible, she says. Key principles This illustrates the simple truth about catalyst leadership: It s really about connecting with other people. And the basic unit of connection is conversation. In fact, your success in leadership and in life will depend on the thousands of conversations you have with the people around you. There s no secret to effective leadership conversations. We ve found that there is a core set of essential behaviors and skills that everyone must master to create conversations that build positive relationships while getting work done through others. It begins with recognizing that people come to work with both practical needs (to get work done) and personal needs (to be respected and valued). FIRST-TIME LEADERS WHO TRANSITION WELL ARE MORE ABLE TO MAKE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THEIR TEAMS, FAMILIES, AND CAREERS. If you ve been in your new leadership job for more than a day or two, you ve probably noticed a steady stream of issues many of them involving other people for you to fix. What many leaders would do is just jump in and make decisions, right? But, in fact, you always must consider people s personal needs handin-hand with practical needs. And that involves a set of skills that we call the key principles: Maintain or enhance self-esteem. Listen and respond with empathy. Ask for help and encourage involvement. Share thoughts, feelings, and rationale (to build trust). 26 TD June 2015
Provide support without removing responsibility (to build ownership). During the past four decades, we have trained more than 8 million leaders in these principles in just about every country and industry. Maintain or enhance self-esteem Amy, a new marketing assistant, described some brutal feedback that sent her into a downward cycle at work. It wasn t just that her memos were a little light on data or her presentation skills needed polish, it was that she was bad. My manager told me that people on our team didn t like working with me, Amy recalls. When I asked why, she said it was because I was aloof and didn t seem to want to work with other people. We thought you were different, she said. You re just not a generous person. Different? Not generous? I kept thinking, am I really this person? How can I keep working here? I felt like my career as a leader was over. As a leader, every conversation you have is an opportunity to affect the way a person feels about herself or the way a team feels about itself. You can enhance self-esteem and make people who feel great even better. You can lift people up from feeling down. How? Maintain self-esteem by focusing on facts, not the person. People s self-worth will be damaged if they feel they are attacked. And you can show respect for others by not putting labels on them (by saying, for example, You are insensitive or You are rude ). In both cases, maintaining and enhancing self-esteem is the most motivating when your statements are sensitive and sincere. Listen and respond with empathy Listening and responding with empathy, when applied in combination, are two of the most powerful skills you can master, because these behaviors immediately reduce the tension and temperature in emotional situations. As a leader, your temptation may be to rush through difficult moments by telling people that you get it, not to feel the way they re feeling, and what to do to remedy the problem as What It Takes to Have More Catalyst Leaders Heavily weigh catalyst behavior for both selection and promotion decisions. While these behaviors are trainable, finding those potential leaders with a reasonable level of emotional intelligence will save you headaches later on. The type of leader you promote also sends a strong signal to the rest of the organization about what behaviors are valued in leaders. Let your leaders know where they stand. There s an array of powerful and reasonably priced assessment tools that accurately evaluate catalyst leader behaviors. These tools help leaders recognize their strengths and often identify blind spots. In addition to guiding development, they should be used as part of your leader selection process. Ensure ongoing practice. Our research, across thousands of leaders, confirms the developability of catalyst behavior. However, positive change comes with skills development and ongoing attempts at application. There are no shortcuts. The right behaviors need to be modeled at the top. Unfortunately, as leaders rise to the top, they tend to regress in demonstrating the behaviors we describe in this article. In some ways this is understandable because using the right skills consistently isn t easy. But when senior leaders don t model catalyst behaviors when they damage selfesteem, micromanage, or don t listen they make it easier for frontline leaders to avoid putting in the effort. June 2015 TD 27
OPEN COMMUNICATION FOSTERS A POSITIVE TEAM DYNAMIC, WHICH MAKES EVERYONE MORE PRODUCTIVE. quickly as possible. To be successful, you ll need to resist these temptations because they won t help to build trusting relationships. Using empathy shows others that you understand but don t necessarily agree with what a person is saying. DDI s Lessons for Leaders from the People Who Matter research shows that leaders who demonstrate empathy with their employees are perceived to be better coaches. And employees who believe their leaders are empathetic tend to be more engaged in their work and less fatigued, depressed, and anxious. Ten Characteristics of a Catalyst Leader asks and listens fosters innovation provides balanced feedback builds trust focuses on people s potential collaborates and networks empowers others encourages development energizes and mobilizes aligns actions with strategy Start with this simple formula for empathy; fill in the blanks with both facts and feelings. When you [closed that sale/were running out of time/heard about the direction we were taking on the project], I am sure you were feeling [excited/anxious/frustrated]. Ask for help and encourage involvement This principle is about encouraging ownership. This behavior, or some variation, is one of the fastest ways to get people involved in solving the day-to-day problems you ll be facing together. Your team s engagement depends on more than just their paycheck. They want a voice in how to do their work, to be involved in decisions that affect them, and to have input regarding changes they ll have to implement. The most effective way to get work done through others is by spending less time telling people what you think should be done (and expecting people to do it) and more time building on your team s ideas and thoughts. Why? First, chances are they ve already got at least part of the answer figured out. Second, when you ask people for input, it s another way of letting them know that you value their opinions, knowledge, and skills. Third, you get to learn how their minds work. Do this successfully and watch their commitment skyrocket. 28 TD June 2015
Share thoughts, feelings, and rationale to build trust Andrew worked for a technology company as a designer. By the third time in a one-month period Andrew found that his team s projects had been summarily reassigned to other teams, he got angry. Was the work no good? Was this just standard procedure? Not only was nobody telling us what was going on or when or why it was happening, my supervisor told me to just do the new work we were being given and stop being so dramatic, Andrew says. But it felt like everyone was lying to them. We d see [our supervisor] in these meetings before it happened, and he obviously didn t like what was going on. What if Andrew s supervisor had said, Hey, I get that you re frustrated with the way we are reassigning projects. And maybe it feels random or that we don t have faith in you. That s not what s going on here. Let me tell you what we re doing and why. Would this rationale have made a difference? No doubt. Sharing rationale helps people understand the whys behind a decision, idea, or change. Leaders also build trust by disclosing their own thoughts and feelings. This open communication fosters a positive team dynamic, which makes everyone more productive. need to during any stage of any conversation. Over time, they ll become second nature to you. If you stick with it, the payoff can be tremendous. In the Lessons for Leaders research, we asked workers around the world to tell us about their best boss ever. In their own words they perfectly reflected the catalyst behaviors and key principles we presented here. Sadly, few of the workers said they were working for their best boss ever. But those who did were significantly more motivated to give their best and were up to 60 percent more productive. And that, in a nutshell, is the impact of a catalyst leader. Tacy M. Byham, PhD, is CEO of Development Dimensions International (DDI). She is co-author of the new book Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others; tacy.byham@ddiworld.com. Richard S. Wellins, PhD, is senior vice president of DDI and a global expert in leadership development. He is co-author of Your First Leadership Job; rich.wellins@ ddiworld.com. Provide support without removing responsibility to build ownership Are you a micromanager? If so, this principle will be tough for you. One of the biggest temptations new leaders face is to solve problems themselves by taking over or micromanaging. But that s not what your new job is about. It s about accomplishing work through others providing support and coaching to ensure all of your people are productive, engaged, and growing every day. Try to do it all yourself and you will erode your team members confidence in themselves, and eventually it will wear you down. The payoff You don t need to use the five key principles sequentially. Instead, apply them as you June 2015 TD 29
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