Breaking Through
Leadership and Strategy Notes by Laura Huckabee-Jennings

August 24, 2011

Why focus on strengths?

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development,Executive Coaching,Positive Psychology,Strengths — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:24 pm

When you see a report card from school with 1 A+, 2 As, 2 Bs and a C, what are you drawn to comment on?  For most of us, the answer is “Why did you get a C?”

We may comment on the A+ in passing, but it is often glossed over as an area we don’t need to worry about, rather than one in which that student might really build some outstanding strengths.

What about a performance review or a survey on your presentation or reviews of a paper you wrote?  What sticks with you?  Research shows that the negative or critical information is where we tend to focus our attention and is what sticks in our minds.

This focus on “problems” or weaknesses is called negativity bias, and it’s a common human trait.  In fact, it seems to be how our brains are wired, and may be there to protect us from harm and ensure the survival of the species.  Imagine a brain wiring rule like, “100 good things in the environment and 1 bad = focus on the bad so that it doesn’t wipe you out”.  As a survival mechanism, this is pretty powerful.  In our modern lives, however, it has some consequences that are not always so helpful.

One of these consequences is that we focus disproportionately on negative information even when it is not particularly helpful to do so.  When you give or receive feedback on performance, you may notice that even if more than half of the feedback is positive, the overall impression is often negative.  Whether focusing on yourself or others, you will tend to look for “what I need to work on”.  This may lead you to focus on improving some perceived weakness or shortfall, but the overall result is often to feel worse about your performance than is truly justified, and to feel compelled to continue to “try harder” to do things that are very difficult for you.  You may take a class, find a mentor, read a book or implement a new system for getting better at your weak areas.  With lots of effort, you will get better at it, but if it doesn’t come naturally to you, you are unlikely to ever be truly great at it.

The cost of this kind of negativity bias is nothing short of our long-term results and happiness.  We are most productive, creative and satisfied in our work and lives when we have a “positive experience” ratio of 3:1.  If our natural inclination is to accentuate the “negative”, we can have a hard time reaching that ratio.

The value of the strengths movement and a focus on your talents as an individual is to change the focus of your energy and attention to what is already working well, and to find ways to leverage those talents to make them more and more relevant and powerful.  Conscious practices that shift your focus to “what’s right” and from your “to do” list to an “I did it” list help balance out your tendency to only see what remains to be done, what needs improvement and what isn’t working very well.

The purpose is not to ignore very real challenges, or to reframe them in a positive light, but rather to balance your perception by appreciating real progress, real effort, and real successes, even when incomplete.  By taking note of what does work and where your efforts are met with success, you recharge your mental batteries and are better able to take positive action in all areas – including those in which there is still significant work to be done.

In fact, the seeds of success in challenging areas are often hiding in plain sight in the areas in which you have been successful.  Your personal areas of talent can often be leveraged to bring about improved results in new areas of your life.  Take time management, for example.  If this is an area of weakness for you (it is for me!), but you do have a need to achieve something each day, leveraging that need to achieve by putting some time-management tasks in your daily routine as tasks to be achieved may be your route to success.

Everyone desires to reach goals, achieve meaningful results and feel successful.  The way in which you do this varies greatly, and you will have higher levels of success when you find the strategies that leverage your innate talents.  You can get better at many things, but you will make the most improvement in areas where you are already naturally talented.

Think of the star athlete.  If you are a great pro football player, no doubt you worked very hard at perfecting your game, your physical condition, your skills.  But you also were born with some gifts that made it possible for you to not only be reasonably proficient, but truly world-class.  In contrast, the player with below average natural ability can improve significantly with hard work, but can only aim for about average – not world-class.  The difference is the level of natural ability or innate talent.

Each of us has similar natural gifts and talents, innate tendencies of thought and behavior that give us power, make us feel great and where we can excel naturally and without great effort.  If we discover those natural talents and invest in growing them, nurturing them, and applying them to as many situations as possible, we begin to grow into our potential.  For example, if you are an introvert, you can learn to network like a pro, but you will never be energized by it. In contrast, an extrovert may never love putting together reports or analyzing data all alone.  Our introvert can focus on leveraging a few close relationships to build networks of contacts, and our extrovert can build teams to work together to create reports or analysis.  They could even swap specific tasks and still get the work done, but in a way that allowed each of them to do what played to their strengths.   When you begin to create space to focus on those things you do well and enjoy, you can begin to truly shine and stand out as a star in that area.

While it is not possible for most of us to change our daily work overnight to cater to our unique talents, it is certainly possible for each of us to begin to skew our work to include more activities that let us shine, that allow us to grow and begin to see how unique talents and a diversity of talents in a team can be leveraged to overcome individual weaknesses.

If you want to improve your results, or build a high-performing team, one of the keys is to consciously shift your focus from what isn’t working well and try to figure out what is working well and how you can build on that to improve results.   Great analysts can delve into data and discover new trends, phenomena and theories to improve results.  Great motivational speakers can bring the message to more people and get involvement from partners, customers and colleagues to improve results.  Great project managers can marshal and organize the resources to get things moving.  Regardless of the talents you bring to the picture, you can still achieve the needed results, you will just do it in your own way – and differently from someone who brings other talents to the team.

By focusing on your innate talents, your daily accomplishments and small victories, you can increase your “positive experiences” at a conscious level and build strategies that will allow you to build real and lasting strengths.

What will you do to notice your own talents and achievements today?  How about those of your team?

 

October 12, 2010

Stepping into Your Greatness

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 10:04 am

Within each of us we carry the seed of our own greatness.  We nurture this as children, but soon learn to hide it from the light of day and fit into what we think society expects of us.  We build our internal beliefs and habitual thoughts about what we “should” do and “must” be, and in doing so, we protect ourselves from the thoughts and words of others, but also lock away our most precious gift to the world – ourselves.

As we mature, we even forget who we really are and begin to believe that the shell of beliefs and habits we have built is really “us”.   We make excuses for ourselves and others, thinking “well, that’s just the way I am”, instead of committing to live in our own true image.

An analogy I found that rings true to me relates to the weather (posted on Michael Neill’s Genius Catalyst blog):

  • If you are a victim of the weather, then sunshine is far preferable to rain.
  • If you are the weather, which weather you are most comfortable with will be a function of the weather you are most familiar with being.
  • If you are the sky, it really doesn’t matter what the weather is.  It will change according to the day and the season, and you will carry on, regardless.

When we are acting like someone we “should” be, we are pretending to be the victim of the weather, when we are actually the sky.  The first step is to understand that you are playing the victim, or at best the weather in your own life, with your mood and reactions driven by what is happening.  Step outside of that “should” perspective and know that you are the sky, and that the passing weather is an interesting experience to be observed and learned from, but no more defines you than a raincloud defines the sky.

From this bigger, more powerful perspective, what greatness inside yourself are you willing to reach out and commit to being?  When you make a commitment, great things begin to happen.  Step up and start creating your own success.

For one man, his commitment is to be TBOLITNFL (his story here).  Post your own commitment and step into your greatness.

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant To Be – Part 6: Great Planning for Success

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 9:36 am

Behind every good strategy and every goal achieved, there was an action plan that brought it to life.

The strategy is not the end of the process, but the beginning of your journey toward your vision.  You have defined the vision, made it concrete with some goals that define what it will take for the vision to come to life, developed some strategies that you think will help you achieve your goals, and now you are ready for the plans.

Plans are the day to day activities that are how you will implement the strategy.  In some cases, it may be as simple as attending a meeting, or joining a group and putting it on your calendar.  In others, it may involve multiple steps in meeting with others to get feedback, breaking your strategy down into specific steps and tasks, and then making time to take those actions every day, week and month until you have built new habits, new ways of being and a new feeling about your life.

So if your goal is to bring in 10 new clients, for example, your strategy might be to increase your number of prospects in your target market.  Your plans might include joining a new group with lots of your target clients in it, attending more events where your target clients will be present, or speaking at those events.  It might include making sure you actually attend the meetings of the new group by blocking that time in your calendar, having a plan for talking to at least 5 new people at each meeting, or spending 30 minutes a week identifying events where your target will be present, or calling organizers to find speaking engagements.  When you break your strategy down into specific actions, plans for overcoming habits, time pressure and your own thoughts, you are creating a plan to implement.

Plans are at the most basic level, so if you find you planned to do something important in the morning and you just can’t get up, adjust your plan to do it at a time that feels more natural to you.  Plans are the level at which you “play” on a daily basis until you find a formula that works.  It is the most flexible, but that does not mean you don’t need to have a written plan and a commitment to work your plan.  Unless it’s written down and scheduled or made concrete for you in some other way, a plan becomes just another “nice idea” that you didn’t do anything about.  So, while your plans can be flexible and changed when they are not serving you well and moving you toward your goal, you have to take positive actions on your plan regularly.

What will your plan be for this month?  For this week?  For today?  How will you make sure you follow your plan?  When will you review your ability to follow the plan and make adjustments?

September 15, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant to Be – Part 5: Developing Strategies

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 11:57 am

With SMART goals in hand, you are ready to build strategies around them.  This is just like developing business strategies in that you can look at your various strengths and build strategies that play to them.  If you know one of your key strengths from Strengths Finder is “Relator”, you work best through people.  So, you might find that you want to work on a goal through finding a group that share the goal and working with them. Or you are an extrovert, you might exercise more regularly if you were in a group doing the same (a class, a group training together for a race, etc.).

There are always multiple strategies for achieving any goal, and these can be as personal as the goals themselves.  If you want to reduce the amount of soda you drink, you might think about when you drink it now, what triggers you to drink it, and what alternatives you might create for yourself.  Not having it at home could help someone who primarily drink soda at home, but if you drink it mostly at work from the vending machine while on a break with colleagues, your strategy would probably be very different.

If you are trying to replace an old habit, whether it be interrupting others in conversation or asking multiple questions at once before you get answers, you will want to find new behaviors to replace them with.  You might work on shutting off the internal dialogue that has you preparing what you want to say by listening to the other person and building a mental image of what they are saying and taking a breath in the silence before you say anything.  You might have a mantra before you speak of “one question”… and practice not speaking until you had the question you really wanted to ask.

A strategy is simply a decision about how to use resources to solve a problem.  It is a choice about what you will do and what you will not do in order to achieve a goal.  When you have given a strategy a good chance to succeed and find it ineffective, it’s time to come up with a new strategy.  Remember, experimenting is how we learn.  Failures are opportunities to examine what happened with a critical eye and design a new solution that may work better.

What strategies will you come up with to reach your goals?  How can you learn about strategies that have worked for others and might be useful to you?  How will you leverage your innate strengths and values to make your strategies right for you?

August 12, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant to Be – Part 4: Setting Great Goals

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 11:30 am

Now that you have a vision of where you are going, it is important to set goals that move you in the direction of your vision. I like to make sure they are SMART goals. You may have heard this acronym before, but it stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

If your goal is to have a healthy body, for example, you might set a goal of losing 20 pounds by October 31st, 2010, or you might set a goal of reducing your soda consumption to no more than 8 oz per day by September 1st, or any other goal that helps you reach your definition of “a healthy body”. The exact goals you set will be very specific to you, and there is no “right” or “wrong” goal, just like there isn’t a “right” vision.

In a business context, your goal might be to improve effectiveness of your meetings, and the SMART goal could be something like: Have a clear agenda for each meeting 24 hours ahead of time and end each meeting on time and with a clear set of action items assigned to specific individuals with deadlines. Or: Have only one key issue per meeting, and keep meetings to under 1 hour. Or: Have meetings only when there is a need for discussion and decision-making or quick touch-base meetings, not just to “share” information better presented in writing. All of these are possible goals. The point is to make it specific to your image of what the goal looks like.

To start with, you need to get specific about what things would have to be present for you to feel you have attained your vision. If your vision is to have a healthy body, what does that mean to you? Is it about weight, body fat percentage, how fast you walk a mile, ability to touch your toes, how much you can bench press, how often you exercise, the kinds of foods you nourish yourself with, the measure of cholesterol or other blood chemicals? If your vision is to have effective meetings, what does that mean? Is it about wasting less time, enjoying meetings more, having fewer meetings, building accountability, increasing focus, or just about making clearer decisions in meetings? All of these are possible, and many many more. Sometimes it helps to close your eyes and place yourself in your vision and imagine how you will feel there, and what will have changed for you to feel this way.

Now that you have visualized it, what specific goals did you attain to feel that way? And how can you begin moving in that direction? If you have a specific business-related goal, what are some first steps you could take to work toward your vision?

While setting goals, it is important to remember to set Realistic goals (remember the “R” in SMART?). Too often, we set goals that are very ambitious, but perhaps too ambitious and when we are unable to achieve them as quickly as we planned, we feel that we have failed.

In order to avoid this feeling of failure, but still stretch yourself to push a little further than is “easy”, it is best to set yourself a series of smaller goals for the coming week or month. To stick with our health example, a set of first steps might be to have a physical, stop drinking sugary drinks, and start walking 30 minutes every day. While this might be possible, it might be challenging, so you might set a “minimum acceptable” goal of getting the physical, and walking at least twice a week for 30 minutes, and eliminating sugary drinks during the week. Finally, you might set a target somewhere between this minimum and your ideal, and aim for that. At least if you achieve the minimum, you will feel that you have made meaningful progress, and you may be able to do even more than that in the process.

For our business meeting example, you might start with small steps such as making a list of all the types of meetings you currently have, and identifying the purpose each is serving, and outlining which ones could be eliminated, which ones need to be improved, and what might need to be added. Your “minimum acceptable” goal might be to just have the list of current meetings and their purpose. And the target could be somewhere in between where you have the list of meetings and their purpose, and you identify which ones most need improvement. Again, you will at least be able to make the list, and feel you are “on the path” to making improvements, but also feel like there is some challenge in reaching for the middle and ideal targets.

If your goals are long-term, such a 1-2 year or more away, be sure to set up some interim goals. In most cases, it is hard to set a goal of getting a big promotion, getting married, changing your corporate culture or other multi-step challenges and achieve it in a couple of months, so break your goal up into shorter-term milestones that you can aim for and feel the satisfaction of making progress before you achieve ultimate success.

Now that you have established your goals, write them down. Track them. Review them at least weekly and see how you are progressing. If you find that you are slipping, think about what specifically happens in the moment you slip up, and how you might change your thoughts and emotions to break through the next potential slip and move forward.

More next time on developing strategies around each goal.

July 6, 2010

Becoming the Person You Were Meant To Be – part 3: Establish Your Personal Vision

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 8:30 pm

The next step in this journey to greater success and fulfillment is establishing your personal vision.  A personal vision is grounded in the present and includes every significant aspect of your life, who you are, and what you desire in your life.

A great place to begin this is to start with a deep understanding of your own natural talents, abilities and preferences.  There are several tools to do this, but one I really like is called Strengths Finder 2.0, and it will give you a clear idea of your top 5 strengths and the kinds of activities you will undertake with mastery.  Building a vision that plays to your strengths will drive greater enjoyment and fulfillment.  Anytime that you are working against your strengths, you will find it feels like really hard work.   Your innate talents do not change with training, experience or education, but are intrinsic characteristics of who you are.  Knowing what your talents are is vital to creating a robust and meaningful personal vision.

The other elements your personal vision needs to incorporate are:

  • Your Skills and Experience: what expertise, knowledge and wisdom have you gained in your life?  What specific skills have you acquired?  Which ones do you want to continue to use?
  • Your Interests and Passions:  What gives you energy and ignites your passions?  What needs in the world are you compelled to meet?  What activities or causes create “flow” or a state where you lose track of time?
  • Your Communication and Interpersonal Style: how do you prefer to interact with people?  Are you introverted or extroverted?  Do you prefer to deal with data or feelings?  Are you future-oriented in your interactions or more grounded in the here and now?  MBTI, DISC, MAPP and other assessments can help you define this if you don’t already know.
  • Your Values:  What are the values that drive you?  Can you name your top five?  Some you might consider:  hard work, spirituality/closeness to God, honesty, fairness, adventure, fun, accomplishment, service to others, family, wealth, mastery, unity, questioning, organization, acceptance, faith, exploration, healing, appreciation, respect… etc.  Taking the time to identify your most important values is worth the effort in making sure your vision honors those values.  (See #2!)
  • Your Goals: What you want to accomplish in life, how you see the purpose of your journey and where it is headed.
  • Your personal history: what messages have you incorporated from your childhood and early development?  What did your family, teachers and other mentors tell you about your role in life and what you might accomplish?  How do you wish to keep these messages or free yourself from them?
  • Your stage in life:  Where you are in your life will determine what you will include in your vision.  Be clear about how this stage of your life is unfolding and what decisions are facing you and how your vision can address this.

Start by just writing what feels right at the moment, and then revisit it and edit frequently until you have a vision statement that inspires you to take action to realize that vision, and begin living like it has already happened.

You will want to post your vision statement in a place where you will see it daily, and make time to read through it at least once a week.  If it starts to feel stale, or your vision of the future begins to shift, just rewrite it.  It’s yours, and it needs to serve to inspire you, so change it until it does that for you.  You may even want to include images that help you feel the joy in your vision, inspiring quotes, or record it with music that uplifts and inspires you.

March 9, 2010

Have a Personal Vision

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development,Life Choices — Tags: , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 6:07 pm

When you feel least motivated at work or in any role in your life, what is keeping you from being motivated?  Perhaps it is a poor work environment, insufficient rewards, a difficult boss or coworkers.  Or is it?

The surprising answer to motivational deficits are not individual relationships and physical environment or a lack of financial reward, but rather on your ability to control your destiny and the alignment of what you are doing to your personal values and vision.  Certainly all the variables in your surroundings help, and may make your work less onerous, but true motivation comes from internal factors:

  • Control of your own work: how, when and by what method you achieve the goal
  • Ability to do the job well: having the skills, knowledge and support to do a great job
  • Alignment of the goal with your own personal values and goals

The first two are driven by management culture, and are key elements of engagement, but the third is only possible if you have a sense of your own personal vision.  In fact, having a personal vision, a passion for something larger than your own personal gain, is such a strong motivator, that it can overcome the first two factors and drive you to unprecedented success and achievement.

Think about Gandhi who began a career as a mediocre lawyer, and discovered his purpose to overcome the abject poverty of his people, and their feelings of inferiority, and rose to greatness and influence on the power of that vision.

How can you develop your own personal vision?

First, start with identifying your core values, then work on envisioning a future in which those values are all honored to their highest in your life and work.  This becomes your personal vision.  Now look at the work and life you have and start planning how this can change into the life and work you need to manifest your personal vision.

Your vision enables your most powerful self to emerge.

February 25, 2010

Building Engagement

Filed under: Business Strategy — Tags: , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:45 pm

Engagement is one of the most difficult concepts for most managers to grasp.  “What is engagement, what control do I have over it, and what would I do to increase it?”  And sometimes, “Why is this my job?”

Engaged employees work harder, are more productive, and actively build enthusiasm among fellow employees and customers.  If you are not the primary customer interface, think about the attitudes of the people in your company who are.  An actively engaged employee is going to go the extra mile to satisfy your customers and feel happy about doing it.

If your employees are not actively engaged (and the average percentage who are is 30%), they are either “not engaged” or worse, “actively disengaged”.  You may think of the actively disengaged as the whiners, complainers and others who spread disgruntlement throughout the organization.  You already know what impact the actively disengaged have on their coworkers – have you thought about how they treat your customers?  They don’t necessarily break procedure, but they are less cheerful, less helpful, and generally less willing to do the right thing for the customer.

So, if you weren’t before, you should now understand why engagement is part of any manager’s job.  It’s linked to critical measures like customer satisfaction, employee turnover, productivity and profit.

Secondly, you might ask, “How can I improve engagement?”  You probably have employees you think will never be engaged, but the average company has 25% of employees “actively disengaged”, while world-class companies only have 8% in this category.  Clearly there are some who cannot be budged out of this category, but most of them can be engaged.  Take responsibility for the level of engagement in your organization.  You can make a difference and you are contributing to the level of engagement you currently have.

But how do you build engagement?

Engagement starts with taking a personal interest in each employee.  Understand what they get out of work, help link their personal values and goals to those of the company or workgroup.  After this, begin to think of employees as assets that need development.  If you had expensive capital equipment on the factory floor, don’t you think you would pay for maintenance and upgrades as needed?  Well, employees are often the largest expense in any company, and yet they don’t get the training, mentoring and career development opportunities that would improve their productivity.

Find out what their strengths are, and find ways of using those on the job.  Find out their interests and look for ways to provide opportunities to grow and learn in areas they are interested in.  Celebrate successes, learn from failures and treat them like the valuable human capital they are.

You won’t be sorry you did.

Transcend LLC