A simple truth to leadership

Simply put, compassion makes the difference between understanding and caring. It’s the kind of love that a parent has for a child. Cultivating it more broadly means extending that to the other people in our lives and to people we encounter.

I think that in the workplace, that attitude has a hugely positive effect, whether it’s in how we relate to our peers or how we are as a leader, or how we relate to clients and customers. A positive disposition toward another person creates the kind of resonance that builds trust and loyalty and makes interactions harmonious. And the opposite of that — when you do nothing to show that you care — creates distrust, disharmony, and causes huge dysfunction at home and in business.

Source: https://hbr.org/2015/05/what-the-dalai-lama-taught-daniel-goleman-about-emotional-intelligence

Bosses and Leaders

An incredible crash course in corporate culture, management and HR.

Culture from Reed Hastings

This presentation has gone viral and created a huge amount of discussion on the web. Some love it, some hate it. I'm with the former. This is some of the most powerful business literature I have ever read.

The most interesting thing about it is that in my past experiences, I have sadly gone through counter examples to nearly all of these points. This further reinforces my conviction that this document is spot on.

Anyway, highly recommended reading. On my end, I will keep this presentation in my toolkit.

Tough love

So I just read another interesting post on the HBR blog:  "The fine art of tough love" by Joanne Lipman

The 5 concepts the author brings up are as follows and bolded. My comments follow.

1. Banish empty praise.
And banish empty compliments as well (which is the actual definition of tough love of course)
2. Set expectations high.
This brings us back to the "aim high" principle I am fond of. "Shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll end up with the stars".
3. Articulate clear goals – and goal posts along the way.
Yes, yes, yes. Setting attainable intermediary goal does wonders.
4. Failure isn’t defeat.
This is where the U.S. have an edge on so many other cultures. Grit, resolve in the face of failure.
5. Say thank you.
Her supervisor is spread so thin that he is putting out proverbial fires all day.  “He has the time to tell us what we did wrong,” she said. “He doesn’t have time to tell us when we do something well.”

N°5 is a big one, however let me improve on it. Saying "thank you" in a management setting is actually not that great because it puts us in a "selfish" position. Thank you entails somebody did something for US, because WE asked for it.

Therefore let's replace "thank you" by "congratulations" / "good job" and similar expressions... This entails somebody did not do something because he was asked to do it, but that he did something because it had to be done and because it was for the greater good.
When I think back to best managers I ever had or have been in contact with, they all strictly applied this concept. It wasn't about them, it was about the task at hand.

Last but not least:
- tough love can only work when the manager has actual expertise and added value to bring to his team and collaborators.
- let's not forget the love part. Sounds very hippy, but without the love part, we would just be tyrants.

When You Criticize Someone, You Make It Harder for that Person to Change

Great article by an HBR blogger True in work and life.

When You Criticize Someone, You Make It Harder for that Person to Change
by Daniel Goleman

“If everything worked out perfectly in your life, what would you be doing in ten years?”

Such a question opens us up to fresh possibilities, to reflect on what matters most to us, and even what deep values might guide us through life. This approach gives managers a tool for coaching their teams to get better results.

Contrast that mind-opening query with a conversation about what’s wrong with you, and what you need to do to fix yourself. That line of thinking shuts us down, puts us on the defensive, and narrows our possibilities to rescue operations. Managers should keep this in mind, particularly during performance reviews.

That question about your perfect life in ten years comes from Richard Boyatzis, a professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western, and an old friend and colleague. His recent research on the best approach to coaching has used brain imaging to analyze how coaching affects the brain differently when you focus on dreams instead of failings. These findings have great implications for how to best help someone – or yourself — improve.

As I quoted Boyatzis in my book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, “Talking about your positive goals and dreams activates brain centers that open you up to new possibilities. But if you change the conversation to what you should do to fix yourself, it closes you down.”

Working with colleagues at Cleveland Clinic, Boyatzis put people through a positive, dreams-first interview or a negative, problems-focused one while their brains were scanned. The positive interview elicited activity in reward circuitry and areas for good memories and upbeat feelings – a brain signature of the open hopefulness we feel when embracing an inspiring vision. In contrast, the negative interview activated brain circuitry for anxiety, the same areas that activate when we feel sad and worried. In the latter state, the anxiety and defensiveness elicited make it more difficult to focus on the possibilities for improvement.

Of course a manager needs to help people face what’s not working. As Boyatzis put it, “You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive. You need both, but in the right ratio.”

Barbara Frederickson, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, finds that positive feelings enlarge the aperture of our attention to embrace a wider range of possibility and to motivate us to work toward a better future. She finds that people who do well in their private and work lives alike generally have a higher ratio of positive states to negative ones during their day.

Being in the positive mood range activates brain circuits that remind us of how good we will feel when we reach a goal, according to research by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin. That’s the circuit that keeps us working away at the small steps we need to take toward a larger goal – whether finishing a major project or a change in our own behavior.

This brain circuitry — vital for working toward our goals — runs on dopamine, a feel-good brain chemical, along with endogenous opioids like endorphins, the “runner’s high” neurotransmitters. This chemical brew fuels drive and tags it with satisfying dollops of pleasure. That may be why maintaining a positive view pays off for performance, as Frederickson’s research has found: it energizes us, lets us focus better, be more flexible in our thinking, and connect effectively with the people around us.

Managers and coaches can keep this in mind. Boyatzis makes the case that understanding a person’s dreams can open a conversation about what it would take to fulfill those hopes. And that can lead to concrete learning goals. Often those goals are improving capacities like conscientiousness, listening, collaboration and the like – which can yield better performance.

Boyatzis tells of an executive MBA student, a manager who wanted to build better work relationships. The manager had an engineering background; when it came to getting a task done, “all he saw was the task,” says Boyatzis, “not the people he worked with to get it done.”

His learning curve involved tuning in to how other people felt. For a low-risk chance to practice this he took on coaching his son’s soccer team – and making the effort to notice how team members felt as he coached them. That became a habit he took back to work.

By starting with the positive goal he wanted to achieve – richer work relationships – rather than framing it as a personal flaw he wanted to overcome, he made achieving his goal that much easier.

Bottom line: don’t focus on only on weaknesses, but on hopes and dreams. It’s what our brains are wired to do.

Fire the Wrong People Today

Kevin Ryan has hired--and fired--plenty of people in his day. Here, the Gilt CEO explains why not firing an employee can cause a bad situation to "fester.".
Sources: inc.com

Managing priorities and the day to day routine

Managing priorities - Covey's Quadrants
Take a blank piece of paper, divide it into 4 equally sized rectangles.
QI - Important and Urgent
QII - Important but Not Urgent
QIII - Not Important but Urgent
QIV - Not Important and Not Urgent

Classify all your tasks in these 4 quadrants (remember that long term projects need to be broken into individual short term tasks), and just write them off when you're done.

The key here are the following points:
- "Important activities have an outcome that leads to the achievement of your goals".
- "Urgent activities demand immediate attention, and are often associated with the achievement of someone else’s goals."
- The secret to being effective is making sure you focus enough on QII. QII is what drives the value of your work daily.

Of course, priorities are always shifting, hence I create a new quadrant every week.

Tweaking the quadrant
The quadrant is simple, efficient and changed my life (at work at least). However, I did tweak it a little when I started managing.

This is what my quadrant used to look like before I was managing.

Today this is what my quadrant looks like.

You will notice I added a "sub quadrant" where I list my managees' priorities.
I also added a sub section to QII: even though the quadrant is supposed to be weekly, I like to keep a small space on the page where I write down the important slightly longer term priorities (full market study for country X for example). This helps me keep the bigger picture in mind.

Even though my version of the quadrant is now slightly more cluttered, it still works for me. I no longer use up energy and brainpower every time i finish a task to think about what I should do next.
Furthermore, I can summarize what needs to be done and what's a priority with just a quick glance at the sheet. This is great for impromptu reporting requests.

The quadrant is an invaluable tool in my priority management and has a great impact on my productivity. Try it, you'll be surprised.

And finally: I draft my quadrant the old fashion way: pen and pencil. I am way more focused and clear headed when I'm not staring at a computer screen.

My Day to Day routine
Ending the day
- Clean and organize my desk to have a clear workspace waiting me next morning.
A clean desk is kind of a zen exercise for me: it helps me start the next day super focused and reduces my stress level.

- Identify the 3 to 5 important tasks I need to complete the next day.
Make sure the timing is realistic. Stick a post-it on my keyboard, so it's the first thing I see the next morning.
It's important to do this at the end of the day, when your brain is still "enjoying" the day's momentum.

The interesting thing about this is that research has shown that motivation and happiness at work is closely linked to getting things done and moving ahead (more than money and peer appreciation for example). Hence by completing a limited and realistic number of tasks each day, not only are you moving forward because you completed tasks that you intelligently chose, but you are going to be feeling great about it and it'll strongly motivate you.

Starting the day
- Spend the necessary time WITHOUT turning on e-mails and making/taking telephone calls. Use this "no communication" time to complete at least one to three of the important tasks.

Once this is done:
- review quadrant
- fire up Outlook and dive in the "operational overload" phase of your day :p

Managing e-mails
- Disable Outlook's email notifier.
It's insane how an email notice systematically breaks my concentration and rythm.

- Don't create a gazillion inbox subfolders.
Subfolders are helpful, but I wouldnt go overboard with it. Today's email search engines and organisation option makes it easy to find that specific e-mail you are looking for, so several subfolders per project folder seems excessive.

Other concepts:
- "Act on, file, or toss every document I touch".
Take action EACH TIME you have a document in hand.

- "Pay attention to the times of day when you feel that you are at your best; do the most important work then". In my case its early in the morning, during my "no communication" time.

- Group similar tasks together (outstanding phone calls, Excel reviews, answer urgent emails...). The brain works best when doing repetitive tasks.


Sources: almost exclusively HBR's "managing yourself' collection.
Covey's Quadrant is from "The 7 habits of highly effective people".

On Managing people

People management is not nuclear physics ok?

The fact that it’s not an exact science doesn’t make it a highly complex discipline, unlike many managers would like you to believe. Also, you are not BORN a manager. Ok sure, some people have predispositions for management, but just like any other skill you can hone it with experience.

So what is, IMO, at the core of people management? What is the most important trait of a good manager? Simple:

You need to be focused on your team’s problematics, and you need to solve them. Period.

If you don’t apply this concept, all the rest is useless. Clutter. Cheap management guru talk.

Imagine a Manager who’s a great communicator and has great charisma and knows how to push his team to perform well. Everybody loves him, yay! Ok.
Now imagine a Manager with bad communication skills and no charisma, but that correctly identifies all a department’s issues and solves them one by one, hence removing all obstacles and clearing the way for his team to perform optimally.
As a CEO, who would you rather have running your sales department, your IT department, your M&A department?

Furthermore, what makes problematic focused managers so cool is that if they lack some specific management skills, well that’s a problematic! And they solve it (through personal/professional development, coaching etc...).

Management: identify your team’s problematics and solve them.


PS: for those who doubt “problematic” is even a noun (I imported it from French) I admit I do to. But: http://www.yourdictionary.com/problematic.