What do you notice about your own self-accountability? Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach
The best way to be true to your word is to be more self-accountable, and *less* self-critical. Click To Tweet
Leaders spend a lot of time asking people to get stuff done.
But how much time do you put into targeting the way you ask somebody to do something?
And particularly, how much time and attention do you pay to which is the right way to ask that specific person?
Asking someone to get something done in a way that avoids their unconscious barriers and makes the most of their natural predilections is incredibly helpful in maximising opportunities at work and in not discovering when its too late that there’s actually been no progress!
One approach that can easily help is to think about two of the dimensions that have a big impact on people’s behavioural and thinking styles at work:
For 1, their preferred Motivational Direction, that simply means do they prefer to:
For 2, their preferred Operational Mode, that means do they prefer to:
Put these two dimensions together and you’ve already got four possible combinations of how people respond to and think about the world around them. You can see this in the matrix at the top of this post.
The very best leaders already know which preferences their team members have in the way they think about and respond to the world about them. They can then adapt their approach so that when they ask somebody to get something done, HOW they ask also supports them and doesn’t actively get in the way.
Try it yourself.
Think of anything that you need to ask somebody to get done, and see if you can ask it in each of the four ways I’ve outlined in my matrix above.
What is your OWN preferred way of being asked – which of those approaches in the matrix would be most persuasive with you?
“Understanding people is much deeper than knowledge. There are many people who know us, but very few who understand us.”
Unknown
Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach
Leaders should pay more time and attention to the WAY that they ask people to get stuff done. Click To Tweet
Think you’re a good leader? Then that will shape how you behave towards the people in your teams.
Feel like you’re organised and capable? Then that will influence how much work you take on and what you can cope with.
Do you regard yourself as someone who gets up early and pushes themselves? Then that’s way more likely to shape your motivation than ability, experience and resources.
And the converse is true as well:
Rigorously examine your beliefs about who you are.
What kind of person are you – really?
Strip out all of the negative judgements. Nobody is perfect. We all fall short of the highest standards in some areas, some of the time.
It’s so important to guard against self-beliefs that limit us. Be careful about who you think you are. For example:
“I am a failure …”
… is 100% NOT the same as: “I am someone who has tried and failed.”
Someone who has repeatedly tried and failed is a “Tryer”, not a “Failure”!
Someone who has repeatedly tried and failed is a 'Tryer', not a 'Failure'! Click To TweetWhenever you can, sculpt your self-identity to be totally honest and true and all-inclusive. Not rose-tinted, but not judgemental either.
What are you here to achieve?
Who will benefit from you being at your best?
What are your efforts in service of?
And in the context of those answers – who do you choose to be?
What do you notice about your own self-beliefs about the kind of person you are? And how do they influence what you say and do, day-to-day?
Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach
Another occasional casualty of our new remote-working that I’m hearing more about is the need for stroking and moral support.
Different people call this different terms: “recognition”, “connection”, “praise” and “stroking”.
Each of these actually means slightly different things, but that’s not the important point – which is for leaders to not miss out on doing the human touch while their teams are remote from them.
Why is that so? Why aren’t leaders doing enough remote stroking and moral support for their people?
I’ve been collecting some of the reasons that clients mention and, in my limited samples, here’s the reasons I think come up the most:
Co-ordinating and leading the work of others when you’re rarely in the same room as them takes a different mindset. It’s not difficult to lead remotely, but in the need to get all the nitty gritty of the work stuff done, it is perhaps easier when working remotely for the human side to get forgotten.
Ask how people are feeling. Be open and honest about how you’re feeling – this gives permission for others to do the same. “How are you doing, in yourself?”, “I notice I’m feeling a little more stressed these days; how about you?” Just really simple things like that will do it. There’s a fundamental need (for most of us) to be fully seen as human beings, for others to “get” our condition. Leaders need to let people know that they’re ready, willing and able to ‘see’ their people fully in this way.
There’s some research to suggest that only about 40% of people absolutely ‘need’ to get recognition from others at work. If you’re in that 40% and you’ve got a boss who doesn’t need any external recognition themselves, and who also doesn’t understand that other people DO need it, then you can really feel the lack.
Leaders – tell people how they’re doing. Again, it isn’t difficult. Just find a quality that someone has displayed and play it back to them: “The way you handled that project really showed what a tenacious person you are; thank you for all your effort.”
A few years a go there was a trend for leaders to be taught to give feedback in sandwich-form – one positive thing, one negative thing and then finish on another positive thing. I hated that approach then and I still hate it now and I think it just showed how HR people are often not natural leaders themselves. If you’ve got something to say to me, say it straight, whether it’s good or bad. I reckon that the unnaturalness of the sandwich approach put leaders off from giving straight feedback and had the unfortunate side-effect of teaching them to believe that you can’t tell people positive and negative stuff together – which is rubbish.
Say it straight please leaders, and make sure that you’ve generally got something genuinely good to say about others. Again, it’s not difficult: “It’s great how you always find a new angle on things or a new project to get started with. And, I need you to finish this priority work too.”
And if you as a leader can’t generally find something genuinely good about each of the people in your team, you’ve surely got to go and have a stiff talk in the mirror with the person responsible for that team!
Previously, I think this reason would have been lower down the list. Perhaps it’s because we’re all running on slightly empty tanks these days. I write this at the start of autumn, as the days are shortening and the weather worsening and a second covid19 wave looks increasingly likely. Instead of getting ‘back to normal’, or even finding some normalisation in how we’ve set things up over the last six months, it looks like we’re going to need to adapt and adapt again.
It’s rare for leaders to say things to me like, “Why do I have to reach out and stroke them; it’s not all plain-sailing for me you know!”, but it’s not unknown. This is understandable.
If there’s any leaders reading this who notice they might not be reaching out and supplying the human touch to their remote teams, please make sure that you’re also taking care of yourself enough. Do what it takes for you to feel healthy, balanced and whole yourself. Don’t resent other people for their needs – take care of your own.
Let me know if you’ve noticed any of this too please – or what you’re discovering about the remote human touch these days.
Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach
Why don't leaders reach out more, now we're working remotely? Click To Tweet
Readers will recognise this as the unofficial motto of the US Marine Corps (and also the humorous Bear Grylls meme of a few years ago).
It was in my mind for no real reason as I woke today, feeling more than usually get-up-and-go-ish.
I often treat this kind of Improvise, Adapt, Overcome stuff with a bit of caution. In particular, how do you know when:
Some people would say that it’s an important distinction to make.
Because if you’re not feeling especially resourceful, but are unconsciously telling yourself that you should be able to deal with whatever comes your way, then you’re actually just setting yourself up to fail.
The more I do this coaching work, the less sure I am about the usefulness of this kind of distinction.
I’ve seen lots of people move mountains by telling themselves they should be able to Improvise, Adapt and Overcome, even when it really ups the stakes of failure for them. Equally, I’ve seen people frozen into inaction by trying to live up to some impossible standard.
Perhaps the following is the best way to test the usefulness of these kind of mottos and slogans. My definition of empowerment is this:
Empowerment is the power to make decisions and take actions that affect our circumstances Click To TweetSo does this kind of thing help you to make decisions and take actions that affect your circumstance?
If yes, go for it, maybe even get the tattoo!
If not, drop it, this one’s not for us; instead, work on what you want to have happen until you’re really clear about that.
As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach.
Tell me about your own favourite motto and whether or not this kind of thing helps you to be empowered? Click To Tweet
I’ve written before about The Motivation Equation and how leaders can use it to motivate themselves and others to get great results and feel good about their work.
In that original article, I said that motivation is like a chain. Our overall willingness to get stuff done and our overall feelings about our ability to achieve things are only as strong as the weakest link in that chain. In other words, in order to spur ourselves and others into action and to feel good about the ambition behind it, we first need to make sure that each of the components of the Motivation Equation as strong as possible.
Here’s the overall equation: The Motivation Equation: Motivation = Self-Belief x Task-Relevance x Outcome Value Click To Tweet
We can think of each of the links as a kind of question or judgement that people make about themselves and their situation. For example, in the Task-Relevance link, people might ask themselves: “If I do this task well, will it lead to the outcome that’s required?“
This series of articles will take that much further and deeper, in a bite-size way, by looking at each of the links in turn, starting with Self-Belief.
If you want to motivate yourself or someone else to have more self-belief – either as a way to increase motivation, or just because the right amount of self-belief is usually a good thing – you’ll find the first of my seven essential steps to healthy self-belief set out below.
In terms of our overall Motivation Equation, the question that people ask themselves or the judgement that they’ll be making about themselves or their situation for the Self-Belief link in the chain, is this:
Self-Belief is about asking ourselves, 'Can I do this task well?' Click To TweetOne thing that’s really worth emphasising at the outset is that self-belief is highly-contextual. That is, it depends on what we’re doing, where we’re trying to do it and what our situation is at the time. This is one of the reasons why self-belief can vary so much over time. It’s also why my first essential step is about getting really clear about that context:
What exactly is it that you’re trying to do?
You might be surprised at the number of people I coach who’re not feeling good about their self-belief precisely because they haven’t been clear enough about what, specifically, it is that they’re trying to achieve.
I think that this is partly a kind of defence mechanism – if we’ve been vague about what we’re trying to get done, then we can be similarly vague about whether or not we actually succeed. But that kind of hedging your bets, not being clear about the outcome you want, or avoiding getting too specific makes it much more likely that your motivation will be similarly ill-defined.
So don’t be vague, get clear about the outcome you want to achieve. What exactly is it that you’re trying to do?
For most people, it can also really help to then consider step 2:
How will you know when you’ve done it well?
Again, this is such a simple step, but one that can often get overlooked. It’s also one of the reasons why I encourage people to celebrate and mark the occasion when they’ve achieved something significant. By looking back at it in this way, people get used to evaluating things in a much more rounded way, including the emotions involved in that accomplishment as well as the hard data.
I think also, that one of the reasons why we might avoid doing that kind of post-achievement reflection is because things rarely go as well as our secret desires had hoped for. There’s usually some wrinkle, or some aspect that wasn’t as perfect as we might have hoped.
So don’t wait until afterwards to set-up those measures. Have them be transparent right from the outset. Ask yourself these questions:
And remember to reflect on and celebrate those things afterwards too!
In summary:
The first two steps towards healthy self-belief are: 1. Define the Outcome and 2. Establish your Evidence. Click To TweetIn the next article, I’ll continue with the Self-Belief link in the motivational chain and will look at:
I hope that’s been helpful in some way and that this bite-size approach works for you. Please look out for the forthcoming articles in this series. As they’re published, I’ll hyperlink them here.
As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. Tell me about your own experience of motivation and self-belief, either as a leader working with other people, or for you personally?
My favourite response whenever someone starts imposing their own limits on me.
Click the image above and then right click it and select ‘Save as…’ to download your copy.
As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. How unstoppable are you?
There’s a great Zen koan which goes:
Before enlightenment, chop the wood and carry the water;
After enlightenment, chop the wood and carry the water.
Like all those koans, this can be interpreted in a few different ways but I like it because of the importance of just doing the small, daily stuff. Even when working towards something as big as Enlightenment, the fire still needs to be kept going, the water still needs drawing. Even afterwards, we still need to cook, eat and drink.
I don’t think we always find it easy to adopt this mind-set. Perhaps it’s because popular culture emphasises the dramatic, heroic interventions, or the long-shot that finally pays off big-time.
Some changes, even good ones, do happen suddenly and with huge impact. But my belief is that even those are usually just the visible tipping points that result from an accumulation of force over time.
In reality, most change, progress and innovation is the result of small, daily actions that build and build. Daily actions that become habits, habits that become traits, traits that lead to paradigm shifts.
I’ve written elsewhere on this website about the importance of linking long-term goals to short-term activity. For example, see here: Planning, productivity and the cumulative S curve and here: Productivity, prioritisation and the rule of threes
The kind of daily, chopping the wood and carrying the water-type actions I’m looking at here are the most granular level of achieving your long-term objectives. We should ask ourselves:
“What’s the small thing I could do in the next five minutes that will at least keep the fires burning?
What small task can I choose every day to help water this year’s crop?”
As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. What’s your current equivalent of needing to chop the wood and carry the water?
Click the image above and then right-click it to download a copy.
This quote from Theodore Roosevelt has long been a favourite of mine for helping to motivate myself and others:
Do what you can,
Where you are,
With what you have.
– You can click and then alt-click the image above to download a copy for yourself –
Anytime I’m stuck or feeling powerless, or can’t see the route through the forest for looking at all the trees, this quote gets me unstuck and into purposeful action.
But it still has three hidden weaknesses.
Leaders who want to use this kind of thing to help other people feel motivated need to be aware of these flaws and to take extra steps to combat them.
It’s really worth doing this, especially if you’re the kind of leader who:
Each of the flaws I’m talking about are right there in that first line:
“Do what you can“
And this is why…
1) People aren’t always aware of just what they can do, both in terms of what they have ‘permission’ to do, and in terms of their own capabilities.
2) People don’t always believe that what they can do will actually lead to the outcome that’s needed. To take a really basic example, even though someone ‘can’ make 20 sales calls today, do they truly believe that those calls will lead to the extra business they’ve been asked to generate? If not, they won’t be motivated.
3) People don’t always know in advance if the outcome that their actions might lead to is actually an outcome that they really want. It’s not so much about them not wanting to achieve a specific outcome, but more that they just don’t really, consciously know if they do want it! I believe that this hidden flaw derails more attempts to motivate people than almost anything else.
So as well as using that brilliant quote from Teddy R, leaders who want to motivate people should also be doing these four things as well:
1a) Always give the permissions up front. This is basic delegation skills. If you’re asking or expecting someone to do something, what permissions do they have or need? What resources can they access? What approaches, methods or ways of doing it can they use or not use?
1b) Help people to assess and grow their own capabilities. Which means you really do need to encourage and show people how to learn and adapt.
2. Break the unconscious rule that people make for themselves about taking action and needing to get the correct result. Help them to be more like a scientist. Any action will lead to ‘a’ result. Get people to be curious about selecting from a range of possible actions. Have them observe the results like a scientist doing an experiment. What worked, what didn’t get the expected result, what would you try next time?
3. This is perhaps the most significant one for leaders to be doing. Encourage people to live in the future a little. This outcome that you want them to help achieve – what will that be like? What will it mean for them when it’s been achieved? How will it change or affect their day-to-day experience?
This important part of motivating people is the equivalent of getting them to try on some new clothes in the mirror before they know whether or not they want them.
As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach What do you think of that Roosevelt quote? Does it help you motivate yourself and others? What also works for you?