Author Archives: sedinger

Learn To Be Charismatic

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Inspirational leaders have charisma. People want to hear what they have to say and do what they advise. But can you learn to be inspiring? Sure. Here are three things you can do to build your charisma:

  • Focus on others. Don’t concentrate on what you need and want. Understand what others care about. The more you relate on a human level the better.
  • Put yourself out there. Seek out and engage others. Be upbeat whenever possible so others feel the same way.
  • Communicate you care. Charismatic leaders are verbally expressive. Tell stories. Use concrete examples. Talk about your feelings. All of these things will invoke common ground in an audience.

Developing A Winning Culture

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Are You Firing the Right People?

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Most organizations I have worked with appropriately obsess about recruiting and retaining the right people. Volumes of work are written about retaining staff and keeping them engaged. (Bev Kaye’s Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em  is a good example.) What unfortunately gets short shrift is whether or not the right people are being fired. It is a less popular topic because, admittedly, none of us particularly enjoys terminating the employment of another person. But, for organizations to reach their potential, they need to be rigorously focused on this question of dismissing the right people. Without addressing this issue, organizations get stale and suffer incompetence too long. So allow me to give longer shrift to this important and sensitive topic.

Start with the actively disengaged. In a very popular  Gallup study it was determined that workers who are actively disengaged cost the U.S. economy several billions of dollars each year. These employees are less productive and less effective than their counterparts, and what’s worse, they can actually get in the way of your success. We are not talking about employees who are simply less engaged than others. It’s the actively disengaged people who get in your way, create problems, cause rancor, and are generally disruptive. Sometimes this occurs with longtime employees who were at one time quite valuable, and that makes it even tougher to deal with. Still, I have worked with dozens of situations like this, and I’ve never worked with an executive who, after making a tough decision to let someone go, said, “I did that too soon.”

Move quickly on mis-hires.  In a matter of months, sometimes even weeks, we can identify those who do not fit your organization’s needs. Frequently, in an effort to save face on making a bad hire, we do all we can to invest in development and coaching to help someone who simply doesn’t have the right skill set or cultural fit. The costs of doing “failure work,” and the opportunity costs of not having the job done well are huge. Don’t make the mistake of waiting too long after you have identified a mis-hire. Instead of throwing good money after bad, cut your losses fast. This is not to suggest for a moment that the hire is a bad individual, rather, that you made a bad hiring decision. Be swift, rip the Band-Aid off, and get it over with by either redeploying them in a position for which they are better suited, or let them go. This is not to be crass about people’s careers, but you have an organization to lead, and the employee will be better off in a position that suits them well.

Evaluate your talent (more than once per year). Performance reviews have the potential to be useful, but when they come around annually, too much time passes to make good decisions. Further, many performance reviews fail to evaluate both potential and performance. Leaders need to routinely evaluate and review their team members’ talent, and, more importantly, they need to regularly assess the potential for continued growth. Doing so will allow you to make good decisions about additional development, support resources, coaching, and of course, career development. Inevitably, some people will not measure up to your standards, and you need to take a good hard look at the impact this is having. Only then can you make decisions about their continued employment and contribution to the organization.

Build your bench strength. Having quality people ready for new challenges is key to being prepared to take action. Managers are frequently crippled by the fact that they have no other options if they let a non-performer go, and as such, allow poor performance to persist. By having a solid bench, leaders are able to make the necessary tough decisions to dismiss employees who aren’t achieving expectations. Make this investment in the future by cultivating talent at all levels of your organization, and when it is time to make changes, you will be ready.

Managing your talent is one of the critical roles of a leader, but it is not always pleasant—just ask any of us who have had to terminate someone’s employment. Answering the question “Are You Firing the Right People?” is not a question devoid of sensitivity—quite the contrary. It involves a careful and thorough look at what’s best for the organization. Ironically, it is often what is best for the individual as well.

The Keys To Sales Leadership

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Scott discusses the challenge of being a sales leader. He shares seven keys that separate the average sales leader from the best sales leaders. They are:

  1. Create useful successful metrics that create progress.
  2. Provide visionary leadership.
  3. Develop talent and coach relentlessly.
  4. Pay close attention to selling roles.
  5. Focus on creating value in the sales process.
  6. Forecast with an understanding of where the customer is in the buying process.
  7. Motivate by using recognition and reward.

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Success Strategies For 2013

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A Culture of Innovation

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The ‘power of alignment’ brings common ground to team goals

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It is that time of year when goals are being set, strategies are being finalized and objectives for the year are being established. Unfortunately, too many efforts to improve organizational performance fail to deliver on their stated objectives. Whether the aim is to reduce costs, increase engagement and productivity, or drive growth, most of the time they fall short because of a lack of organizational alignment. Most leaders understand that in order to achieve critical objectives like these, a clear sense of alignment is needed in order to get everyone on the same page.

Have you ever worked with someone who seemed to have a different set of goals than you did? Or perhaps you have had someone on your team who did not share the same performance objectives as others.

It’s is kind of like a crew team that has people rowing at different cadences — the boat just doesn’t move as fast as it can or should.

That’s why it is so vitally important that leaders focus a good deal of their energy and effort on helping their teams become more aligned, like the coxswain of the boat who ensures that everyone keeps the same rhythm and produces the optimal speed.

Here is how to do it.

Make sure everyone shares the same definition of success. Ask most groups in an organization to tell you what the definition of success is for a project they are working on and you will get wildly different answers. When I do strategic planning with organizations this happens regularly, and the downside is that without a common vision for the outcomes of an initiative there is little chance to succeed. Take the time to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the problem to be solved, the implications of the problem and the definition of a successful outcome. It sounds simple, but it is not easy and this alone will increase your likelihood of productive results.

Help people see their role in the outcome. Once people have a clear and complete picture of a successful outcome, they need to understand their roles in producing that result. Draw a clear line of sight from the responsibilities that each individual plays on your team to the desired outcome. Translate those overall contributions to the tactical and practical day-to-day activities for each person, so they understand the importance of behaving strategically and in alignment with the goals for any given objective.

If the aim is growth-focused, make sure they see the connectivity of their actions to customer results.

If the focus is on getting leaner as an organization, the link from specific behaviors to the bottom line needs to be illustrated. Get granular and help people see their part in the achieving success.

Align your performance drivers. In every organization there are systems that support the achievement of objectives but those systems, if not aligned, can become barriers to the attainment of your goals. Pay attention to things like infrastructure, compensation, staffing, career development, and even how cross-functional collaboration.

All of these drivers of performance will have some kind of impact on how well your organization performs. Make sure they are reinforcing the right behaviors that will make your initiative or strategy produce the intended results.

Focus on commitment not compliance. At the end of the day what you are driving for is a sense of commitment to the organization and its objectives. While motivation for most comes from within, great leaders are able to create an environment that makes people want to go the extra mile. Help people gain a sense of ownership of the organizations direction and goals.

Too often managers settle for compliant action and don’t push further for the kind of commitment that produces great results. In order for this to occur, leaders need to be the exemplars and avatars of that commitment and demonstrate it with their actions, work ethic and care and concern for the organization’s people.

Alignment is a powerful competitive advantage for organizations that choose to use it. When these elements are in place, commitment flows through the organization at all levels, and that can be a benefit that produces great value.

Make Your Sales Vision Come To Life

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In my previous Harvard Business Review blog I have written about sales leadership being the toughest of the functional leadership roles. No other position demands such a disparate set of competencies, ranging from financial management and forecasting, to inspiring and motivating a geographically dispersed team.

In my blog about the keys to sales leadership, I noted that visionary leadership is particularly important in the sales function. While working with sales leaders over the last two decades, I have found six areas of strength in the best of them:

1. Driving for results is the top priority. Nearly every sales leader I have had the opportunity to work with has had a relentless focus on achieving “the number.” That is, the revenue number for their team or organization. A vital component of the vision for a sales organization is the achievement of the top (and often, bottom) line growth objective.

2. Coaching and developing others is the cultural norm. These leaders posses a clear perspective on the importance of onboarding and inculcating new members of the team, as well as developing their existing talent. This vision includes a recognition that sales is one of the few disciplines in which professionals gain the majority of their knowledge and experience from peers and managers. There are few college degrees in sales.

3. Strategy is the name of the game. A strategy comes to life during the interaction between an organization and its clients. Most often, this happens with the sales organization in the acquisition and management of clients. As a result, the actions of everyone in the sales organization need to be carefully aligned to support that strategy. And the vision for the sales organization must express that strategy clearly.

4. Working as a team makes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I have seen few selling efforts succeed on the hard work of a sales professional alone (though in fairness I have seen some.) More often than not there is a team of support professionals from marketing, product development, and service that have helped to make for a successful client experience. Sales professionals are frequently in a position of leading that team, which requires cross-functional collaboration to be a part of that vision.

5. Motivating to action is the objective. A sales leader’s vision ought to inspire and create confidence in order to achieve the organizational goals. By its nature a powerful vision expresses a hopeful future about what your organization will be. That envisioned future state ought to provide a level of excitement about where you are headed and inspire people to carry out the actions required to achieve it. Further, as a sales leader, you are the message, so your behaviors must show that you are the exemplar of these characteristics.

6. Effective communication is the foundation. A terrific vision for a sales leader that is not well-communicated will lie fallow. This is more than just eloquent speaking ability – it has everything to do with conveying value. Not just talking about a vision, but also listening, and asking questions that provoke interest and uncover needs.

Visionary leadership is frequently discussed in theoretical or fuzzy terms. When sales teams in particular look to their leaders, they expect vision in practical, sometimes even tactical terms. They want that vision to be clear and unequivocal, and to be guided by that vision. Using these guidelines to help you craft a vision for your sales organization or team, you can create a pithy and concise vision that compels them to action.

Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle

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In my nearly 20 years of work in organization development, I’ve never heard anyone say that a leader communicated too much or too well. On the contrary, the most common improvement suggestion I’ve seen offered up on the thousands of 360 evaluations I’ve reviewed over the years is that it would be better if the subject in question learned to communicate more effectively.

What makes someone a good communicator? There’s no mystery here, not since Aristotle identified the three critical elements — ethos, pathos, and logos. — thousands of years ago.

Ethos is essentially your credibility — that is, the reason people should believe what you’re saying. In writing this blog I made an effort to demonstrate my ethos in the introduction, and here I’ll just add that I have a degree in communication studies (emphasis in rhetoric for those who want the details) for good measure. In some cases, ethos comes merely from your rank within an organization. More commonly, though, today’s leaders build ethos most effectively by demonstrating technical expertise in a specific area (which helps convince people that you know what you’re talking about), and by displaying strong levels of integrity and character (which convinces them that you’re not going to lie to them even though, since you know more than they do, you might get away with it).

Pathos is making an emotional connection — essentially, the reason people believe that what you’re saying will matter to them. I’ve written here before about the importance and the power of making emotional bonds (more ethos?) and why I believe this to be a critical area of competence for present-day leaders. Giving people your undivided attention, taking an active interest in your team members’ career development, and being enthusiastic about both the organization’s progress and the individuals who enable it are ways that leaders do this well. At the end of the day, pathos has the greatest influence on followers’ perception of their leader’s effectiveness as a communicator.

But all the authority and empathy in the world won’t really help you if people don’t understand what you’re talking about or how you came to your conclusions. Logos is your mode for appealing to others’ sense of reason, ergo the term logic. Employing strengths in strategic thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills are how today’s leaders express logical ideas in clear and compelling enough terms to influence outcomes. While some people can get by on gut feel, as Steve Jobs famously tried to convince us he did, most leaders are required to provide some kind of analysis to make clear their decisions. This is where many leaders feel on the firmest ground — when assembling and analyzing data to address organizational problems. A caveat, though — assembling facts is not the same as presenting them clearly (here talking in complete sentences helps a lot), or marshaling them expressly to demonstrate the merits of a course of action. Facts do not speak for themselves, which is sad, since it would save so much time if they did. Effective leaders know the effort and time spent making explicit the connections they’re drawing from the data to the analysis to their conclusion are well worth it.

These three elements of communication reinforce one another. You may rely heavily on data and analysis (logos) to make a point and in so doing create a perception of expertise and authority on a topic (ethos). And while all three are necessary to excellent communication, improving your ability to do any one of them will help you become a better communicator and so a better leader. Combining them is the path to achieving the greatest success.

Make Emotional Connections with Your Employees

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The higher up you go in an organization, the more important is to connect with your employees on a personal level. Show people you work with that there is more to your relationship than the job. Here are three ways to forge these connections:

  • Give your undivided attention. This sounds simple, but it’s easy to overlook when you are overloaded with ringing phones and packed inboxes. In conversations, put everything down and focus exclusively on what’s being said.
  • Remember emotions are contagious. If you’re feeling particularly anxious or negative, make an effort to quarantine yourself. When you’re feeling especially buoyant, go to more meetings and spend more time with others.

Get out there. Even if you’re an introvert, reach out to people, engage them in discussion, and actively provide feedback. You can’t connect from behind a closed office door.