DMS Blog

“We live in very uncertain times,” says CCL’s Amy Martinez. “The question isn’t how can you avoid difficulty and stress. The question is, “How do you face it?”

Change is ongoing, plans get undone with regularity, and your own expectations do not always get met. “The work priorities shift, the players change,” says Martinez. “You could be transferred, reassigned, or – who knows – will there even be a job?”

And of course, personal setbacks and crises don’t go away just because work is already difficult. We often get an unwanted double dose, with setbacks facing us at home and work. “All of us can benefit from becoming more resilient – better able to face our struggles, recover and adapt,” Martinez continues.

Resiliency is also a business issue. People who can’t handle a fast pace or uncertainty won’t perform at their best in many of today’s organizations. They may be more likely to call in sick and perhaps feel unmotivated when they are working. Stress lowers productivity and increases health problems (and healthcare costs). And when people in leadership positions are angry, reactive, anxious – not resilient – it sets the tone for how others interact, react and get work done.

Our ability to cope with stress, difficulties, roadblocks, criticisms, rejection or change is made easier when we take better care of ourselves. One way to do this is to focus on overall well-being and building energy across multiple dimensions of life: physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual. This is the framework that participants in CCL’s Leadership Development Program (LDP)® use to come up with ideas for building their own resiliency and helping others to do the same.

1. Physical. What can you do to build your physical energy? During the workday, get up and move every 90 to 120 minutes. Suggest a walking meeting. Climb stairs instead of taking the elevator.
2. Mental. What can you do to overcome mental fatigue and exhaustion? Learn anything new. Take a mental vacation by daydreaming. Solve a challenging puzzle. Focusing on something other than your work or personal challenge creates a mental break.
3. Emotional. What can you do to become more conscious of your emotional triggers? Figure out who and what pushes your buttons. Step away, slow down, or enlist an ally to help you slow your reactions and choose your response.
4. Social. What can you do to create more meaningful and productive relationships? Ask a colleague for advice, give positive feedback, or share something you learned about yourself recently.
5. Spiritual. What can you do to more effectively align your behaviors with your core values and purpose? Clarify what you value most, quiet your mind or think about what inspires you.

Still unsure of what to do to become more resilient? Martinez suggests taking another page from the LDP participants’ workbook as a starting point:

Recall a time in your personal or professional life when you were able to overcome, prevail, bounce back or rise above a difficult situation. Then ask yourself:

• What happened?
• What was I thinking and feeling at the time?
• How did I get through it?
• What did I do that helped you to get through this situation?
• What did I learn from the experience that made me a more resilient person today?

“You have the resources within you to become more resilient,” Martinez says. “But it does take some effort to learn or remind yourself what will work best for you.”

by Kenneth W. Gronbach

Generation Y (born 1985 to 2004) is the big story for 2012-and the years ahead.

Generation Y is the biggest generation in the history of the United States. They out-number the Boomers (born 1945 to 1964) by about 4 million. There are about 83 million of them. They are flooding the labor force and charging head-on into an employer’s market. This means that the public and private sectors will be able to hire the best young workers the labor market has offered in decades. The millions of Generation Y young people who don’t get hired will open their own businesses out of necessity because they have to eat. This bodes very well for our nation.

New 2012 Generation Y hires should be a refreshing contrast to the entitled Generation X (born 1965 to 1984) hires of years past. Remember for every ten jobs left behind by the Boomers there were only eight Gen X’ers and thus the entitled attitude. Hard work will truly be a condition of employment for Y. Look for Generation Y to be so relieved that they got hired that little else will matter. Generation Y will put pressure on Generation X to perform or get out of the way. It’s a whole new dynamic in the US workforce. Baby Boomers will love Generation Y’s spunk and ambition.

In 2012 Generation Y men will continue to discover the acute unmet demand for skilled technical careers that do not require a college degree. This explains the huge and growing 60/40 college enrollment imbalance favoring women. Even with nearly 9% unemployment nationally, manufacturing jobs have gone begging because of the resurgence of this sector and the absence of skilled labor.

The average age we marry for the first time in the United States is 26 years old, so in 2012 Generation Y will begin to find mates and start to marry at record levels and start households. They will then start a Baby Boom all their own. Consumption of related products will spike. The United States is the only Western culture and the only industrialized nation in the world that is having children at above replacement level fertility of 2.2 children per couple. This ensures a viable labor force until further notice, unlike China that has committed demographic suicide with their “One Child Only Policy”. This arcane policy has “prevented” 400 million live births under 31 years old and reduced their future labor force to an unsustainable level.

In 2012 Generation Y’s presence will be begin to be felt by the United States’ private shared- risk health insurance model. Generation Y (now aged 8 to 27 years old) will begin to pay into the system but not use many of the health services because they are young and healthy. This will begin to off-set the problems created by the diminutive Generation X (now 28 to 47 years old) who did not have the critical mass to pay into the system at a level that would compensate for the Boomer’s over utilization of health services. Boomers are now 48 to 67 years old. Over time Generation Y should be able to remedy the health care crisis without Obama-care.

Bill George is Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic. His latest book is True North Groups: A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development, coauthored with Doug Baker. The book is a continuation of the ideas developed in George’s previous books, Authentic Leadership,True North and Finding Your True North. In True North Groups the authors draw on recent research in psychology and sociology to explain why surrounding oneself with a small, supportive group of people is so critical to personal and leadership development.

AMA spoke to Bill George recently for an Edgewise podcast. The following is an edited version of that interview.

AMA: How does the new book, True North Groups, continue the concepts of True North?
Bill George: This is an idea that came out of True North, because the issue we’re trying to resolve is, how do people stay grounded? How do they know who they are? I think we all need in our life a small, intimate group of people with whom we can have complete trust, total confidentiality, and with whom we can be very open.

In my first book, Authentic Leadership, I described the kind of leaders I felt we needed back in the early 2000s, to overcome some of the problems we were having at Enron, WorldCom, and more than 200 companies who had accounting adjustments of very large sums of money.

Then I did some intense research on 125 other leaders that led to True North, where I described how these people became leaders. Ever since then I’ve been working on the question, how do we continue to develop really exceptional leaders, not just at the top of organizations, but throughout organizations? These are the people who can turn around the lack of trust we have in our society towards leaders, and also turn around our whole business community.

AMA: That brings us to the new book. Just what are True North Groups?
BG: A True North Group is a group of six to eight people with whom you can share the greatest challenges of your life, at work and personally-your joys and sorrows. It’s a group of peers. You don’t necessarily need a facilitator; it can just be people who share on a two-way basis. We believe this is a very big idea, because we think it’s a key to leadership development. It can help you develop the essence of leadership, which is emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Through having a group like this, you can see yourself as others see you. You can work through a really difficult situation, either in your past or your present, or determine where you want to go in the future. It is a safe place and a support group that’s always there for you.

AMA: How do you go about choosing people in your group?
BG: They aren’t necessarily people you know well. Some of them might be; many others might not be. The important thing is to choose people who really want to explore their lives and are willing to engage in a mutual exploration of some of the challenges we’ve all faced. Because in our society today, groups have kind of fallen apart. Just having 2,000 Facebook friends does not ensure that level of intimacy or support when you really need it most.

AMA: Tell us about your True North group.
BG: I actually have two groups. One was formed in 1975 with a group of other guys. We’ve been meeting together every Wednesday morning for the past 36 years. We talk about the challenges we’re facing, and there’s typically a program that takes us into the realm of the heart, or our beliefs, or our values.

I am also part of a group of four couples that have been meeting since 1983. We meet once a month. We too talk about things that are very important in our lives, and we travel together a lot, and vacation together too.

We have a lot of fun. In fact, last week’s program in our couple’s group was on humor, but humor at a deeper level. My wife posed the question, “Think about a time you did something really dumb,” so we had to talk about that thing and have a good laugh about it. This is a group where it’s a safe place to talk.

AMA: How have you personally benefited from these groups?
BG: The groups have been very beneficial in my life at crucial times. Let me describe one briefly. I was at Honeywell, en route to being a leading candidate to become CEO. My wife had a good job, my kids were in high school. Seemingly everything was going well. One day I’m driving home, I look at myself, and I see a miserable person in the mirror. I realized I was really losing my sense of who I was-losing my sense of True North- because I was trying so hard to get to be CEO.

So after discussing it with my wife, the next morning I went to my men’s group and shared this with them. They said, “We have seen these changes in you, and yeah, you seem like you’re not being as authentic as you were; you’re kind of trying to put on a role or a façade on this corporate ladder.”

I acknowledged they were right, and then one of them said, “You know, you’ve turned down Medtronic for a job several times. What about Medtronic?” And it caused me to go back to Medtronic to rethink that, and I can tell you, it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my professional life. But had it not been for that defining moment, and the opportunity to talk to my men’s group, I don’t think I would have done that.

AMA: How can these groups can help you in business? Are they or something like them already being used in companies?
BG: The thing we’re really uncovering is how much you can affect the development of leaders, and that’s where I think this book will have a big impact.

Leadership is changing dramatically inside corporations today. It’s no longer about having a few great leaders on top of the organization; it’s much more of a horizontal or collaborative model. The old, command-and-control hierarchy model is dead. At least, if it’s not dead, it ought to be. This is a whole different way of looking at leadership, which asks the question, “How are you going to develop the kinds of leaders that have a high level of self-awareness, and are very value-centered?” We believe True North groups are one of the very best ways, if not the best way, to achieve that. We’re finding that these groups become a low-cost, extremely effective way of developing leaders for the future. Also, since in essence, it is a collaborative model, it teaches people how to be good, collaborative leaders, and not to depend upon title, money, fame, power, or some kind of hierarchy.

We have seen some companies starting to use this model. One of them is Unilever, which has put their top 100 people through a program where they use small groups. And they’re now moving that to the next 500 people.

AMA: Haven’t you used these groups in your own classes at Harvard?
BG: We’ve had more than 1,500 people participate in True North Groups in my MBA classes, in our executive education program at Harvard Business School. All of them go through a format where they start by telling their life story, talking about times they lost their way, the greatest crucibles of their times, times they violated their own values, what they really want, and what’s the purpose of their leadership. These groups get much higher evaluations than anything else we do in the classroom, and they’ve been very impactful in people’s lives. Many people have written that they consider it a transformative experience. Even though we’re now doing 300 students a year, far more students are requesting it than we have places for.

AMA: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
BG: There is a great hunger for more intimacy in people’s lives. They’ve realized they can’t achieve it through material means, and many of the large organizations they were a part of have kind of disappeared or fallen away. This is an opportunity to help people in their personal growth, while at the same time helping their leadership development.

I think a lot of people say, “Look, I’m not really a leader.” Actually you are. We just have to reconceptualize what makes a leader. It’s not about controlling budgets and having a big title. It’s really much more about leading people, even if they don’t report to you, towards a common goal, and a common set of values, and a common bottom line.

Coaching others isn’t always easy. Daily pressures and demands often overtake our work, leaving limited time and energy to focus on coaching direct reports.

While formal coaching sessions may be few, you can fit in coaching conversations and coaching moments. CCL defines coaching as “formal or informal conversations between a leader coach (you) and a learner (someone else) intended to produce positive changes in workplace behaviors.”

To increase your opportunities for coaching, pay attention to the cues others are sending. If someone is upset, not ready to talk or needing to vent, then just hear them out. They need a safe place to air thoughts and emotions but aren’t ready for a coaching conversation.

Coaches use active listening techniques when people are ready to identify problems and find solutions. Cues that someone is open to coaching include, “Can you help me think things through?” “I’d like to bounce some ideas off of you.” “Could you give me a reality check?” “I need some help.”

In these moments, seven active listening skills can help turn a typical conversation into a coaching opportunity.

1. Be attentive. Convey a positive attitude to the learner (the “coachee”) and a willingness to talk through the situation. If timing is a problem, let the other person know you are interested and commit to a time for the two of you to have a focused conversation. During the conversation, remind yourself that your role is not to interrogate the coachee, jump to advice-giving or solve the problem yourself. Listen. Near the end of the conversation, you need to be able to accurately summarize the coachee’s main ideas, concerns and feelings. Allow “wait time” before responding. Don’t cut the coachee off, finish his or her sentences or start formulating your answer before he/she has finished. Be conscious of your body language.
2. Ask open-ended questions. These encourage the coachee to do the work of self-reflection and problem-solving, rather than justifying or defending a position, or trying to guess the “right answer.” Examples include: What do you think about …? Tell me about …? Please further explain/describe …?
3. Ask probing questions. Again, the emphasis is on asking, rather than telling. It invites a thoughtful response by the coachee and maintains the spirit of collaboration. You might say:”What are some of the specific things you’ve tried?” “Have you asked the team what their main concerns are?” “Does Emma agree that there are performance problems?” “Are there any issues in your own leadership style that might be contributing to the situation?” “How certain are you that you have the full picture of what’s going on?”
4. Request clarification. Double check any issues that are ambiguous or unclear to you. Say something like, ”Let me see if I’m clear. Are you talking about …?” or “Wait a minute. Try that again. I didn’t follow you.” if you have any doubt or confusion about what the coachee has said.
5. Paraphrase. Recap the coachee’s key points periodically. Don’t assume that you understand correctly, or that the coachee knows you’ve heard. For example, your coachee might tell you,”Emma is so loyal and supportive of her people – they’d walk through fire for her. But, no matter how much I push, her team keeps missing deadlines.” To paraphrase, you could say, ”So Emma’s people skills are great, but accountability is a problem.”
6. Be attuned to and reflect feelings. Identify the feeling message that accompanies the content. This is an effective way to get to the core of the issue. When you hear, ”I don’t know what else to do!” or ”I’m tired of bailing the team out at the last minute,” try to help the coachee label his or her feelings: ”Sounds like you’re feeling pretty frustrated and stuck.”
7. Summarize. Give a brief restatement of core themes raised by the coachee: ”Let me summarize to check my understanding. Emma was promoted to manager and her team loves her. But you don’t believe she holds them accountable, so mistakes are accepted and keep happening. You’ve tried everything you can think of and there’s no apparent impact. Did I get that right?”

Once the situation has been talked through in this way, both you and the coachee have a good picture of where things stand. From this point, the conversation can shift into problem-solving. What hasn’t been tried? What don’t we know? What new approaches could be taken?

As the coach, continue to query, guide and offer, but don’t dictate a solution. Your coachee will feel more confident and eager if he or she thinks through the options and owns the solution.