Communication | Leadership IQ

Bad Listening Can Hurt Your Career

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

Almost every conversation involves 4 layers: Facts, Interpretations, Reactions and Ends. At Leadership IQ, we call this the FIRE model.

Each of these four elements of conversation feeds into the next. The process starts with the Facts, things that empirical evidence render objectively provable. And from the facts are born Interpretations, which bears emotional Reactions, which leads to a desired Ends. It’s an automatic process, and it’s the way the brain is wired to work. And in some situations, it’s not a bad system to have in place.

In workplace situations, however, it can damage your career and cause untold headaches. And here’s why:

Suppose you’re walking in a jungle where tigers are known to live, and suddenly you hear a rustling in the bushes. What do you do? Do you simply say, “Gee, I just heard a rustling in that bush over there,” as you continue blissfully skipping along? OR do you say something like, “Holy crap, there’s a tiger in the bushes; I’m outta here!” as you react without thinking and high-tail it out of the jungle?

If you’re like most people, you’d do the latter; you’d react without thinking and remove yourself from potential danger. And there’s a natural, evolutionary reason for that.

If you want to succeed in management, sales, customer service, patient interactions or anywhere that involves interacting with people, you need expert listening skills. In our new webinar, “The Psychological Secrets of Great Listening,” you will learn the groundbreaking science of truly effective listening techniques (including the kinds of listening techniques that clinical psychologists and behavioral investigators use). Click here to learn more.

You see, the center of your brain houses something called the limbic system, which controls your decision-making when high levels of fear or uncertainty are present. When you’re in high-pressure situations where you must make snap judgments, your limbic system acts as an interpretation machine that takes observable facts and instantly interprets them — often with very little knowledge or experience to go on — to dictate an appropriate reaction toward your desired end. (This is commonly called the “fight or flight” impulse. It has been observed in animals fleeing predators and even in investors selling stocks as markets crash.) But the jungle scenario is an example of the FIRE model working to the best of its design: You hear a rustle in the bushes; your brain interprets that it could be a tiger; so you react by running; and the end result is you make it home safe.

In the jungle, the limbic system part of your brain can save your life. In fact, our survival as a species has depended on this most irrational but necessary part of the primitive brain.

But in the day-to-day course of business, the “rustle in the bushes” — those observable, verifiable facts that grab the brain’s attention, thereby leading to interpretations, reactions and ends — typically aren’t life-threatening. Yet the primitive part of the brain (the limbic system that’s wired to produce IRE) doesn’t know that; it takes over the moment you hear trouble; it doesn’t bother to listen for more facts; it has all it needs to react. So what should you do to combat your natural fight-or-flight impulse when confronted with fear and uncertainty in the workplace?

To illustrate the answer, I’ll use a common office scenario. Let’s say one of your employees, Bob, shows up for work five minutes late. It’s an observable fact; you see Bob walk through the door just as the clock strikes 8:05 a.m. What you don’t know is why Bob was late (and we’ll get to that in a minute).

Next, let’s assume Bob has an important meeting to lead in just a few minutes at 8:15. On top of that, over the past few weeks, you’ve been dealing with several employees who are bending the rules a bit too far: long lunches, leaving early, that kind of stuff.

You’re normally a rational leader, but given the circumstances, Bob’s late arrival is the last straw; you immediately begin to interpret based on the little knowledge you have to go on (the same way your knowledge of tigers in the jungle made you instantly fear a tiger and not a squirrel). You might be thinking something like, “Look at Bob waltzing in here five minutes late on such an important day. I’m getting really tired of the lazy attitude around here. I bet Bob’s slacking off like the other folks, which certainly doesn’t say much about his commitment to the team.”

As goes the FIRE model, your interpretation leads to reaction; perhaps something along the lines of, “Bob sure has got a lot of nerve!” Now, with the emotional reaction out of the way, your next step is to crave a desired end; maybe something like, “From this point on, everybody must be here 10 minutes early.”

The problem with this scenario is that you didn’t have all the facts. Once your brain’s limbic system had taken over, facts became irrelevant; your brain had already launched into interpretation mode. Consequently, your interpretation was all wrong, and it led you to some reactions and ends that have no bearing on the actual situation and might actually make the situation worse.

But now, armed with the ability to recognize and thus self-correct the FIRE model, let’s take another look at this scenario: When you see Bob stroll in five minutes late, you instantly start to have negative interpretations. (Again, this is natural given your knowledge and recent experiences.) But just as your brain starts to leap from interpretation to reaction, you recognize you’re following the FIRE model, and you realize that the limbic system part of your brain (the irrational part) has taken over your decision-making. You take a step back to reassess the situation; it’s clear you need a few more facts before you interpret. So you ask Bob a few simple questions (for example: “Bob, why are you late?”). As a result, you learn that Bob was walking into the building at 7:50 a.m. when he ran into the Chairman of the Board. The Chairman pulled Bob aside for a little chat, and he was especially interested in hearing Bob’s feedback about you and the kind of job you’re doing. So Bob spent 15 minutes singing your praises and telling the Chairman about all the wonderful things you’ve been doing. Then Bob hurried into the building to make his important 8:15 meeting.

Once you can recognize the FIRE model, things sure look different, don’t they?

It’s true that your primitive brain is a valuable asset — when you’re walking in the jungle — but it’s almost always a detriment in the workplace. If you realize that the FIRE model has taken over, step back, take a deep breath, and listen for more facts before you proceed to interpret, react or determine a desired end. Instead of being the person who addresses problems with knee-jerk reactions (and usually gets poor results), you’ll be the leader people depend on when the stakes are high, because they know you will be calm under pressure and listen for all the facts before you react.

If you want to succeed in management, sales, customer service, patient interactions or anywhere that involves interacting with people, you need expert listening skills. In our new webinar, “The Psychological Secrets of Great Listening,” you will learn the groundbreaking science of truly effective listening techniques (including the kinds of listening techniques that clinical psychologists and behavioral investigators use). Click here to learn more.

The Secrets of Killer Presentations

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Past Events, Webinars

When you have to make a presentation, don’t you wish you could morph into Steve Jobs for the hour?

Think how great that would be. Your audience leaning forward to experience what you have to say about your company, its products, its strategy all because YOU can connect with that audience on emotional and intellectual levels that keep them riveted to your message.

In our new webinar, “The Secrets of Killer Presentations,” you will learn, what Jobs and other powerful presenters know — the tips, tools and techniques that you can use to connect powerfully with your audience and transform your presentations into can’t-miss visual experiences.

We’ve compiled the latest presentation techniques from neurologists, visual designers, speech writers and psychologists, PLUS the most cutting-edge presentation technologies from companies like Google and Prezi, and packed them into a 60-minute, interactive presentation that will get you up to speed with the best presenters in the business. We’ll show you how to keep your audience riveted on the edge of their seats (and not sitting back in their chairs, arms folded, half-asleep).

The trick is learning how to develop a stage charisma that will help you connect with your audience on an emotional level and keep them riveted to your message. After you attend our 60-minute webinar, The Secrets of Killer Presentations, you’ll be able to differentiate yourself, sell your big strategy, land that big client, impress the Board, get your project funded, and more.

Of course, you could choose to continue to be like most presenters who trudge through a pile of text-heavy slides, boring their audience to sleep, never conveying the one thing an audience actually needs to hear. Or maybe you’re already an effective presenter, but you’re looking for a few tips to take your presentations to the next level.

Here are the 12-plus tips, tools and techniques you’ll learn. Adding just one of these tips to your presentation arsenal will make you a more effective presenter. Adding 10 or more will make you a killer presenter, second only to people like Steve Jobs.

See if this is what you’re looking for:

The secret technique that neurologists know for making your message unforgettable (and planting it deep in peoples’ brains)
How to use a specific storytelling technique proven to entice your audience in the first 30 seconds
How to make PowerPoint jump off the screen (and not look like PowerPoint)
How CEOs of Apple, Google and Starbucks deliver killer presentations in just one sentence
How to create a presentation roadmap that keeps you on track and your audience engaged
New presentation technologies that are easier and more versatile than PowerPoint
3 visual designs that need to be in your next presentation
How to speak effectively to the 4 distinct personality types you’ll find in every audience
How to develop “stage charisma” whether your audience is big, small or even online
New online technologies that radically improve attentiveness during webinars and teleconferences
2 critical changes you must make to adapt your live presentation for an online audience
How Analogies, Pain, Stories and Facts help you connect to your audience on an emotional level and create the “wow” factor you need to drive your message home

DATE & TIME:
This 60-Minute LIVE Teleconference is being held on Friday, September 16th, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time. 24 hours before the event, you will receive an email with detailed instructions for calling in and downloading handouts.

PRICING:
This 60-minute interactive session is ~~$249~~ $199 only for the first 100 registrants. You can invite as many colleagues as you’d like to listen in at one site or location, using a single phone line and one computer. You will also get slides to download before the session.

LEADERSHIP IQ has been featured in: Steve Jobs Killer Presentation

THE FACULTY:
Mark Murphy, Chairman & CEO of Leadership IQ

Mark Murphy is one of the country’s leading management & communication experts. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, and more. His clients include Microsoft, IBM, GE, MasterCard, Merck, AstraZeneca, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins, and hundreds more.

Mark leads one of the largest leadership studies ever, and his groundbreaking work has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and many more. He has also appeared on ABC’s 20/20, CBS News, Fox Business News and NPR.

Mark has authored 4 bestselling books, including HARD Goals: The Science of Extraordinary Achievement, Hundred Percenters, Generation Y and the New Rules of Management, and The Deadly Sins of Employee Retention.

Mark Murphy is a 3-time nominee for Modern Healthcare’s “Most Powerful People in Healthcare” Award. And Mark won the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Helen Yerger Award for Best Research.

The One Question That Instantly Improves Accountability

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

There’s one area that we all participate in where accountability raises its head, and that is meetings.

In a typical meeting, people share several ideas, goals and plans, but we’re all too familiar with what often happens next: nothing.

Days, even weeks go by, and no one brings their concepts to life. Virtually no progress is made toward achieving the meeting’s goals. Everyone gets frustrated, you, the project leader, most of all, and people begin to point fingers. When you follow up to ask everyone for an update, you start to hear an array of responses that noticeably fit into the 5 stages of accountability (denial, blame, excuses, anxiety, accountability). You hear statements of denial like, “Oh, I didn’t know this was a high priority.” And blame like, “I can’t do my analysis until I have the numbers from accounting; have you talked to them?” And excuses like, “I couldn’t get it done because IT was fixing my computer last week.” And anxiety like, “I thought this would be easy to finish, but turns out there’s a lot more to it than I thought. If you still need this, I’ll need a few more days to figure it out.”

If any of this sounds familiar to you, your organization could suffer from a problem with accountability.

One of the best ways to improve accountability is to increase the effectiveness of your constructive feedback, meaning stop giving advice and start delivering crystal-clear directives that elicit immediate action. Learn more about our FREE white paper, “Why Giving Advice Doesn’t Work.” Click here to download your copy now.

There are several ways to improve the accountability of your organization, and one of the quickest and easiest comes in the form of a simple two-part question that you should ask at the end of every meeting:

“What are you personally going to achieve and by when?”

This question seems simple enough, and you’re probably already familiar with its use in the workplace. But the key to this question comes not only from its wording, but also from when and where you ask it. (Everyone thinks they’re already asking this question, but unless it’s done just right, it won’t be effective).

To dramatically improve this question’s effectiveness, follow these tips:

Ask the question at the end of every meeting to summarize the actions required to move forward.
Make sure every attendee in the meeting answers the question in front of the group. It doesn’t work if all the other group members don’t hear the answers.
Make sure a specific date is given to the “by when?” part of your question (“Next week” and “next month” are unacceptable.)
As each person answers their question, make note of their goals and deadlines. Within an hour after the meeting ends, send an email to the group with a summary of everyone’s goals and deadlines. (For maximum effect, draw a three column grid on a white board. Along the vertical axis, write everyone’s names. Along the horizontal axis, write “Goals” and “Deadlines.” As people answer their questions, add their answers to the grid while everyone watches.)
Finally, after everyone has answered their questions, and you’ve taken note of each of their responses, end the meeting by saying, “Ok, everyone. I’ll be sending around the summary of what everyone has agreed to here (pointing at the white board). If anything comes up between now and your deadline that might push back the completion of your task, be certain to let me know, and I will update the entire group as needed.”

Here’s why each of these tips is important:

First, research shows that when people make promises not just to one person (even if that person is their boss) but to an entire group of people including their peers, they are more likely to keep that promise. This is easily applied to the workplace. In other words, if you can make your employees accountable not only to you, their boss, but also their peers, they are more likely to achieve their goals.

Second, if everyone shares their goals and deadlines in front of the group, the group achieves 100% transparency. When everyone is on the same page like this, not just conceptually but also with regard to specific actions and deadlines, you greatly reduce the chance that denial or blame will come into play in the future.

Third, when you can visualize accountability, like putting everything on the whiteboard, you’re accessing the powerful “pictorial superiority effect.” This is the neurological finding that concepts are much more likely to be remembered if presented to our eyes rather than our ears. To what extent do we remember more? Well, when we only hear information, our total recall is about 10% when tested 72 hours later. But, when we see visuals, that number shoots up to 65%. It’s a pretty substantial difference.

Finally, once everyone knows it’s their own responsibility to alert you if something comes up that might affect their deadline (such as an unforeseen circumstance around the office or a greater scope than originally thought), you will dramatically reduce the likelihood that excuses or anxieties will affect the completion of their tasks. Instead, if any excuses or anxieties do arise, you will learn about them in real time, which allows you to manage them individually so no single task will delay the larger goal.

If you follow these steps carefully, more often than not you will bypass the first four stages of accountability (denial, blame, excuses, anxiety), and your employees will be left with only one choice: complete accountability.

Why Your Presentation Needs a Headline

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

Do your presentations have headlines? When you’re delivering a presentation, is there one sentence that sums up your presentation and sears it into the minds of your audience?

When Steve Jobs announced the launch of the iPod years ago, his headline for his presentation was “1,000 songs in your pocket.” When he announced the MacBook Air, his headline was “The world’s thinnest notebook.”

Those are headlines that immediately capture the essence of the presentation. And even more importantly, because the language used in those headlines was both pithy and highly visual, every audience member instantly remembered it. In fact, most of the press coverage following those presentations used those headlines right in the articles.

Here’s a fun little test of the “stickiness” of those headlines: Googling “1,000 songs in your pocket” returns more than 71,000 results. And “The world’s thinnest notebook” returns more than 457,000 results. That’s the kind of retention and viral discussion you get with great headlines.

In our webinar, “The Secrets of Killer Presentations,” you’ll learn the science of creating truly compelling presentations. You’ll learn how to write great headlines (including the correct length), and much more, like optimizing your message to reach 4 distinct personality types, developing stage charisma and using a specific storytelling technique proven to entice your audience in the first 30 seconds. Follow this link to learn more about the upcoming webinar, plus get $50 off if you’re one of the first 100 people to register.

Speaking of Google, when the founders of Google were seeking venture capital to launch the company, they described the company by saying “Google provides access to the world’s information in one click.” Starbucks founder Howard Schultz said in his presentations that “Starbucks creates a third place between work and home.”

Like the Apple headlines, notice how these headlines are short and highly visual. I know I keep beating this issue that headlines have to use highly visual language, but there’s a great reason why.

There exists a whole science of language retention that looks at the use of visual language (also called “concrete” words). Allan Paivio, now professor emeritus at the University of Western Ontario, is the scientist who pioneered the concept of concrete words (aka visual language). In one of my favorite studies, Paivio analyzed peoples’ ability to remember concrete words vs. abstract words.

Concrete words have high “imagery value,” that is you can visualize or picture that to which they refer. For example, words like road, bridge, clown and even picture, are all pretty concrete (and thus highly visual). But words like condition, amount, request and purpose are all pretty abstract. (Even before you read the rest of this article, just ask yourself, are the presentations in your organization filled with more concrete words or abstract words?)

Paivio paired concrete nouns and adjectives and tested them against paired abstract nouns and adjectives, to see which words were easier to recall. Some of the word pairs were related, like “young lady,” and some were not, like “soft lady.”

In every case, recall was better for concrete word pairs than it was for abstract word pairs. It’s just easier to remember “dead body” or “happy clown” than it is “essential nutrient” or “significant result.” In fact, and this is critical, you’ll remember totally unrelated concrete word pairs way better than you’ll remember related abstract word pairs. Across Paivio’s experiments, concrete words could be remembered as much as 2-3 times more frequently than the abstract words.

Now here’s the real kicker: The majority of presenters in today’s organizations suffer from abstract word disease. Let me share some of the actual abstract word pairs tested in Paivio’s study:

Complete set
Annual event
Useful purpose
Original finding
Critical condition
Reasonable request
Constant attention
Adequate amount
Significant result

If you’ve ever heard a corporate presentation, I guarantee you’ve heard word pairs like this (and probably these exact ones). Over and over again we hear presenters use abstract language. Then they look around bewildered as to why nobody remembers what they said. And the reason is because they are using language that is guaranteed not to be remembered.

Nobody’s going to remember every single point you make in a presentation. But if you give them a great headline, that’s both pithy and highly visual, they’ll remember the most important parts. And when other people ask them what they heard in the presentation, they’ll spit back the exact message that you want the whole world to hear.

In our upcoming webinar, “The Secrets of Killer Presentations,” you’ll learn the science of creating truly compelling presentations. You’ll learn how to write great headlines (including the correct length), and much more, like optimizing your message to reach 4 distinct personality types, developing stage charisma and using a specific storytelling technique proven to entice your audience in the first 30 seconds. Follow this link to learn more about the upcoming webinar, plus get $50 off if you’re one of the first 100 people to register.

How To Cut 15 Minutes From Every Meeting

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

Imagine that you have a meeting scheduled for 60 minutes, but you only have 45 minutes worth of content. How long does that meeting last? Of course, it lasts the full 60 minutes.

What if you only have 35 minutes worth of content? The meeting still lasts 60 minutes. 25 minutes of content? Don’t worry, you’ll still be there for 60 minutes.

(What if you actually had 60 minutes worth of content? In that case, your meeting would probably take 90 minutes!)

For you scientist types, you learned in physics class (thanks to Boyle and Bernoulli) that a gas will expand to fill the available space (for example, there’s not a little pocket of oxygen in the middle of your office right now; it’s expanded to fill your entire office). Well, in more ways than one, meetings are like gas; they will expand to fill whatever space you give them.

Why do most meetings last 60 minutes, regardless of how much content there is? It’s because we usually don’t have any other way of knowing when the meeting is over. Our schedule said we have a 1-hour meeting, so it’ll be done when that hour is expired.

We recently conducted a study, which we’ll be releasing to the media in a few weeks, that analyzed meetings. In one part, we asked people coming out of meetings whether the meeting they just attended had accomplished its original objective. Sadly, the most common response wasn’t “yes”, and it wasn’t “no,” either. The most common response was, “I have no idea.”

(Of course, uncertainty levels are usually higher after virtual meetings, as any number of technical hiccups can exacerbate the problem.)

The overwhelming majority of meeting attendees can’t tell you the real objective of a particular meeting. Sure, they sit through lots of meetings, some of which even have agendas, but they still can’t articulate the actual objective of the meeting.

Whether your meetings are face-to-face or remote, there’s a simple tool to ensure that everyone in attendance achieves your objective (and that they do it without lots of off-topic chit-chat so everyone can get back to work). This simple yet powerful tool works in any meeting environment, but it’s absolutely essential to leaders in the virtual workplace, people who manage remote employees. Learn more about this tool in our new live webinar, “The Science of Managing Remote Employees.” The first 100 registrants get $50, so hurry to reserve your seat now.

This causes two big problems. First, if you don’t know the real objective of the meeting, it’s pretty hard to assess whether the meeting was a success or failure. Second, if you can’t describe the objective, you don’t know when you’ve achieved that objective. And that means that you don’t know when you can tell all the participants, “Hey gang, we just accomplished our objective, so let’s get the heck out of here.”

I’ve always been amazed that so many meetings take exactly 60 minutes. Regardless of the company, industry, size, geography, type of meeting, etc., they all seem to take 60 minutes. It turns out that every meeting takes 60 minutes because we don’t have a way of measuring when we’ve accomplished our objective. Instead of clear objectives, all we’ve got is a calendar entry that says this is a 60-minute meeting.

How do you fix this (and cut the wasted time out of your meetings)? Very simply, you write a Statement of Achievement for every single meeting (including conference calls, etc.). A Statement of Achievement is one sentence that says, “As a result of this meeting, we will have achieved [insert your objective here].”

It’s not complicated; it’s just a statement that tells you what this meeting needs to achieve before we can adjourn and go back to whatever we should be doing. And if you can’t identify a hyper-specific achievement that defines the meeting, you should cancel that meeting.

It doesn’t matter what your Statement of Achievement says, as long as everyone in the meeting will know exactly when you’ve achieved it. Time is not a good metric for assessing the success of a meeting. But agreeing on a price for the proposal, picking a color for the new product, settling on a new location, or completing 10 employee reviews, are all viable Statements of Achievement. And they’ll tell you exactly when you’ve achieved success (so you can leave the meeting and go accomplish some other work).

Here’s a startling revelation: Every one of our clients that implements this simple technique saves, on average, 15 minutes from every meeting. (How much time could YOU save every single day if you could shorten every 1-hour meeting by 15 minutes?) It turns out that most 60-minute meetings do NOT have 60 minutes worth of content. And even when they do, if you tell people that the meeting ends as soon as they achieve their objective, they cut out all the nonsense and chit-chat and focus like a laser beam on achieving that objective.

Too many meetings are seen as a waste of time. But if you can eliminate the wasted time from your meetings, using the Statement of Achievement, everyone will be more productive and much happier.

Pixar’s Secret for Delivering Tough Feedback

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

If you have kids, you know Pixar (the animation studio that made Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Cars, A Bug’s Life, and more). By any measure, they’re amazingly successful; kids love their movies, their films have grossed more than $6 billion, and they’ve won 24 Academy Awards. But that’s not what makes Pixar extraordinary. Here’s what does: Their movies never flop. Most filmmakers — even hugely successful ones — have a dud here and there. Not Pixar. And we’ve identified one of their keys to success that can be applied to your organization: Learn how to give brutally honest feedback.

At Pixar, when a director hits a snag on a film, they immediately call in the “brain trust.” This is a group of brilliant senior filmmakers who come in, look at the film in progress and give brutally honest feedback for about two hours. As President Ed Catmull says, “it’s far better to learn about problems when there’s still time to fix them than from the audience after it’s too late.”

Now, don’t think the brain trust is the “secret” mentioned in the title of this article; it’s not. There’s another critical piece. Because if having a “brain trust” rip apart your ideas sounds painful, surprisingly, it isn’t at Pixar. At most companies it would be gut-wrenching, but Pixar discovered an incredible technique that makes the process both productive and painless.

At first, they didn’t understand their own secret. The brain trust was working great, but when they tried to export the concept to areas beyond directors and producers (like technical areas), it flopped. Instead of breakthrough innovation, they got bruised egos, defensiveness, even anger.

Stop giving advice and start providing constructive feedback that improves performance. Download Leadership IQ’s complimentary white paper, “5 Reasons Giving Advice Doesn’t Work,” and immediately improve the effectiveness of your interactions with employees and colleagues.

Why didn’t the brain trust work in other areas? What was the “secret” that allowed directors to receive brutally honest feedback without feeling angry or defensive? Simple: The brain trust has no authority. There are no mandatory notes, and the brain trust has no authority over the person to whom they’re giving feedback. The people receiving feedback are the only ones responsible for making a great movie, so they’re under no obligation to take the feedback. And here’s the crazy psychological twist: Because they’re under no obligation to take the feedback, of course, they take a lot of it.

Removing formal authority, losing the hierarchical relationships, liberates both the giver and receiver of feedback. No matter how tough the feedback is, if you remove the power dynamics, the typical problems with defensiveness, anger, etc., immediately dissipate.

If I tell my kids to eat their green beans, they’ll fight me every step of the way. But if I shut up and just leave them alone, they’ll eat them all. They love green beans. But if I make it a power struggle, they’ll stop eating them just to exert control. The exact same thing happens in professional situations. Make it a power struggle, and people will ignore your feedback. But remove the forced obligation, and they’ll be thrilled to take your ideas. [In our upcoming webinar called 5 Secrets of Truly Innovative Cultures we'll give you lots more techniques for unleashing your employees' innovative potential].

The Entrepreneurs Organization and the Young Presidents Organization have made the same discovery. These are two of the most elite networks for business owners and CEOs, with thousands of members around the globe. At the heart of both groups is a monthly meeting with about 10 members called “forum.” (In any city, there could be dozens of forums meeting each month). During forum, the members present challenges they’re facing, and their peers offer their thoughts.

But here’s the trick: They don’t offer advice; they offer experience. When a CEO is presenting a problem, the other CEOs’ natural inclination is to tell them what to do (that’s a common personality trait for executives). If you hear a friend tell you about a problem, it’s human nature to respond with “what you should do is,”

However, there’s a problem with telling CEOs — or anyone for that matter — what to do: They get defensive. If you say “what you should do is,” they’re likely to reply “but that won’t work because,” And that’s a giant red flag of defensiveness (which ultimately leads to anger and damaged relationships — not solutions). So instead, these CEOs discovered that when they don’t say “you should do,” and instead say “what I did was,” the power dynamic is removed and the walls of defensiveness crumble.

By sharing only their own experiences — good, bad or mixed — and not their advice, they remove any obligation on the recipient’s part to do anything with the feedback. Just like at Pixar, it removes the power dynamic. The recipients are not under attack, they’re not being disparaged, and they’re not having their arms twisted. And because they’re free from obligation, their minds are open to hearing their peers’ new and wonderful ideas.

When you get really smart people sharing their best ideas, and you get everyone else listening to those ideas, you will have an amazingly innovative culture. Like Pixar, you’ll fix problems long before they lead to a flop.

Advice Is Not Constructive Feedback

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

Who started the damaging rumor that tough feedback is easier to take when it’s delivered in a warm and fuzzy package? Sandwiching difficult feedback (“your work is unacceptable”) between niceties (“but you’re always on time and everyone here loves you”) is what I call the Compliment Sandwich. It may seem kinder, but it’s guaranteed that the only message being heard is the positive one. Equally counter productive is using words like “should”, “would”, “ought”, “gotta”, “must” and “try”, all which turn constructive feedback into advice.

It may “feel” nicer to make a correction by phrasing it as advice, “If it were me, I’d go with some brighter colors on that report.” However, there’s nothing in that statement that indicates a mandatory action. It’s just advice, and when an employee fails to take that advice (after all, it sounds optional), the penalty is often harsher to take than it would have been to just hear up front; “You must use brighter colors on that report.”

Which would you prefer: a) staying late to rewrite a report because the boss made the directions sound optional and then freaked out when you didn’t take his advice or b) leaving on time because you were told what the boss wanted from the get go?

Read our free white paper, “Stop the Compliment Sandwich,” to learn the most effective ways of giving feedback.

There are five core reasons advice doesn’t work as constructive feedback:

#1: Judgment- Giving advice sends a message that says, “You’re obviously not as smart as I am or you would have thought of this already.”

#2: Directive- As the boss, you have the right (and an obligation) to be directive. But when you deliver directions as advice, it comes off sounding like a recommendation, and that leads to unclear directions.

#3: Inflexibility- Advice offers two choices: take the advice or don’t take the advice. The former tends to incite resentment and the latter fear. A direct order is much easier for the ego to take.

#4: Narcissism- Admit it, we’ve all, at one time or another said, “If it were me, I’d do it this way,” not because it “has” to be done that way, but rather to fill a personal emotional need. There’s nothing constructive about that.

#5: Unsolicited- Unless someone has asked to be judged, corrected or directed (and not many of us do), being on the receiving end of advice typically raises the impenetrable walls of defensiveness. Which means nothing is being heard.

There’s one golden rule for delivering constructive feedback: If something is mandatory, where an employee will face repercussion if they don’t do it an exact way, don’t even think about softening directions and corrections. That means no Compliment Sandwiches and no advice; just the facts. In the end, upon being rewarded for a job well done, your employees will thank you.

Read our free white paper, “Stop the Compliment Sandwich,” to learn the most effective ways of giving feedback.

Motivating Middle Performers

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ in Articles

Most leaders assume that middle performers are already doing the best they can, and so dismiss taking any action to improve their performance. Middle performers, in turn, internalize this assumption and stop trying to be anything more than what they already are.

Employees need feedback, both good and bad, in order to succeed. Middle performers typically account for 70 percent of the workforce. This translates to two-thirds of your employee base that, if you are like most leaders, by the very merit of not being told whether they are doing “good” or “bad,” are being encouraged to tread water at only average performance levels.

While it is likely that a few of your middle performers simply do not have any more to give, most of them, for reasons we will explore, have substantial unrecognized potential. In other words, middle performers absolutely have the ability to tip the scales of success in your favor. As a leader, it is your job to uncover this hidden talent and motivate middle performers to reach towards higher performance.

It sends a powerful message when you tell a middle performer, “You’ve got what it takes. Go ahead and run with this. I trust you.” When you can say these words with conviction, and a middle performer suddenly realizes they can be more than what they currently are, it’s a powerful moment for them, for you as a leader, and for the organization as a whole. You may even find that when given a little time and attention, middle performers will rise considerably on the performance curve and become high performers.

Middle performers are not some amorphous group that can be lumped into a single category and uniformly addressed. There are five critical reasons why middle performers remain middle performers, and we’ve created a grouping for each. In the course of working day-to-day with these folks, you should be able to pick out the patterns and key elements that assign them to one of these five groups. If not, it’s time to get out there and get to know your middle performers. Most of them are eager to be noticed and heard, and with just a little prompting, they’ll probably tell you exactly what you need to know. Let’s take a look at these middle performer groups and explore what can be done to maximize their hidden potential.

Maxed Out
The first group consists of employees that are simply maxed out. These are the folks who are perfectly competent at doing what they’ve always done, but who are consistently unable to produce when given more challenging tasks. There may have been a time when those in the “maxed out” group had a desire to be high performers, but they’ve since reached a pinnacle of performance they’re unable to eclipse. Most leaders mistakenly assume that all middle performers belong to this group; however, only 10 to 15 percent of those in the middle are truly maxed out.

It’s a poor use of a leader’s time to try and develop those in the “maxed out” group. This is not to say this group of middle performers is incapable of bringing value to an organization. Not everyone can run a four-minute mile, but this does not mean that those who can’t should give up running. If this were the case, Mark, by his own admission, would never have started running, let alone plodded his way through a marathon! The “maxed out” are steady, reliable employees that meet expectations and tend to be generally happy where they are. They may not win the race, but they definitely know the way to the finish line. Investing time to develop “maxed out” employees may be unwise, but remember, these folks still have Shoves and Tugs that need to be recognized and acknowledged if you hope to retain them.

Don’t Know How
The employees that make up the second group are those that just don’t know how to reach high performer status. They seem to be going full steam ahead, but somehow always fall short of distinguished performance. The “don’t know how” middle performers are often stuck in this performance rut due to working for leaders that don’t take the time to clearly state high performance expectations—or any expectations at all. This is often a result of the afore mentioned misconception that middle performers have no more to give, hence the belief that it is a poor use of time to try and develop any of them. And so the cycle of middle performance begins.

As discussed in our other articles, a leader will never successfully create a high performance workplace if he or she does not clearly communicate expectations. Even a high performer is going to be at a loss for how to meet the mark if told, “Sales are just not good enough. I need to see improvement.” Without knowing how much improvement and by when, the “don’t know how” middle performer may give what he or she thinks is high performer effort, only to be met by dissatisfaction from the boss. Ongoing, this situation becomes a confusing hit or miss scenario where the employee is never sure whether or not they are on target. They start viewing their leaders as capricious, and making the effort to try and please them becomes obsolete.

No Confidence
Middle performers that lack confidence in their ability to achieve high performer status make up the third group. By and large, this situation exists due to an erroneous notion of what defines a high performer. When a leader’s time and attention is primarily focused on combating low performers and praising high performers, a very clear, although often inaccurate, message of “good” and “bad” is absorbed by those in the middle. By merit of the positive attention they receive; high performers can appear to be perched on a pedestal that seems impossible to reach. Even though many middle performers possess the skills and attitude of a high performer, they simply do not see themselves as having what it takes to make the climb to the top.
As a leader, there is much you can do to induce “no confidence” middle performers to make the climb to higher performance. If employees don’t get regular feedback from the boss, they are left to their own devices to figure out how they are doing with respect to performance. And if communicating displeasure over negative performance seems to come easier to you than giving positive feedback over a job well done (as is the case with many leaders), you are actually promoting negative reinforcement that will have an equally negative effect on getting middle performers to shoot higher.

Because middle performers tend to discount their own accomplishments, it is especially important to take the time to comment on the good work being done by this group of employees. Granted, their efforts may not be in the same realm as high performers, but their positive actions warrant your attention nonetheless. This is your opportunity to set the record straight that middle performers are of value to the company, and to start turning their confidence levels around.

Costs Are too High
A common misconception among some middle performers is that being a high performer goes hand-in-hand with being a chronic workaholic. The fourth group of middle performers refrains from giving their all as they foresee that the costs of being a high performer are just too high. It may be that they have been witness to a few high performers that compulsively feel the need to work, and who, in doing so, embrace long hours and weekends at the office. It may also be that this group of middle performers does not fully understand what the expectations of high performance are, and so imagine that the only way to move to the next level of performance is to trade personal life and outside interests for increased work time.

The “costs are too high” middle performers are blocked from becoming high performers by their apprehension over the Shoves they think accompany the role. It may be that these Shoves are only hypothetical, and that you can easily assuage these concerns by talking these middle performers through their incorrect assumptions. However, there is always the chance that these high performer Shoves are in fact quite real. Once again, employees can provide a clear view to organizational problems of which you may not be aware. It is worth your while to ask your high performers, during your monthly or quarterly Shoves and Tugs conversation, if any of these shove factors are factual. You may uncover valuable information by which you can instigate some changes that not only will help you motivate middle performers to a higher level of production, but will have the added bonus of working to retain high performers.

Benefits Are Too Low
The fifth group of middle performers is comprised of those employees that believe the benefits of being a high performer are just too low. These are the folks that have the skills and attitude of a high performer, and who would be happy to do what it takes to move up to the next level, if only they could see the tangible benefit of doing so. They question each possibility of advancement, and if they foresee no favorable return, suspecting instead that the “rewards” will be factors such as a minimal pay increase, added hassle, and little to no promise of promotion, they turn away from making high performer efforts.

Not unlike the “costs are too high” middle performers, those in the “benefits are too low” group may simply be reacting to hypothetical conditions. In this situation, middle performers will be demotived by what they perceive to be a lack of Tugs. Once again, this may be valuable information that should be investigated with your high performers during Shoves and Tugs conversations. If you find that the suspicions of the “benefits are too low” middle performers are not valid, you will need to reinforce the actual benefits of high performance. And if they are valid, you will need to address that factor.

Make sure that high performer benefits are things that will work to motivate all your employees. If some or all of your high performers concur that the benefits really are not all that great, it’s time to consider making some changes that will retain your current high performers and induce middle performers to make the jump.

Leadership IQ