DMS Blog

By Tracy Scates 

Feedback is hard. In my experience, well-meaning, smart professionals responsible for developing others often fail in giving appropriate feedback. Why is it hard, and what can you do about it?

I became a student of feedback through trial and error-a lot of the latter.  Over time, I crafted a model to help myself stay out of trouble, help others do the same, and ultimately serve as a catalyst to help professionals advance their success, in their own terms. It has been a fun journey. In 2006 I designed, sold, and taught a course on “Giving and Receiving Feedback” through a social-benefit organization. Somewhat to my surprise, it was well attended! And, much to our delight, it was well received. Emboldened by success, I continued to practice, evolve the model, and share my findings with those that I feel would benefit directly and indirectly from giving feedback.

What circumstances warrant giving feedback?

While leading a seminar recently and after some grappling with feedback practice, I asked the group, “Why do we give feedback?” Quietly, one manager spoke, “To develop people,” to which was added, “to reward good behavior,” then, swiftly, “to help people change.”  After several seconds of silence I observed, “I didn’t hear anyone say ‘because we are expected to.’” The group nodded in confirmation.

On the other hand, have you ever found yourself saying, “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about that?!?” In this case the recipient of critical feedback might have feelings of  sabotage, sadness, embarrassment, and even resentment.  I trust that you would not like to provoke such feelings in another, so take the risk. A small bump to the system is preferred to the whack of a Mack truck traveling from the rear.

We managers must let our charges know that in order to help them advance, we will use real opportunities, or “teachable moments,” for this purpose. One way is through giving feedback. Meetings are great venues, as I am wont to say, “If we can be observed, then we are presenting.” One way to gauge the viability of a teachable moment is to witness how team members respond to the employee. Observe evidence of engagement, shock, agreement with, disagreement with, levity, and such. We must be mindful of our deductions based on evidence; bear in mind, too, that nonverbal behavior and tone of voice outweigh the words we use.

Why is giving feedback hard?
Giving feedback is hard because while we know that we need to do it and even agree, it is a challenge to know when and how. Furthermore, if our employee is conducting him or herself in a manner that doesn’t serve him or her or the team well, it somehow reflects upon, well, us, the managers. We may feel angry about that, and strong emotions can  trump critical thinking. Giving feedback is complex, more art than science, and precious few of us went to “Feedback Class” when we got our promotions. In development, including and especially our own, we begin with self awareness and the acknowledgement that in order to advance our own skills we must practice.

In advance of giving feedback, decide whether you ought to go forward at all:

• Check your intentions. If giving feedback is for the benefit of the professional first and then her immediate team, continue to the next test.
• Ask permission to share something with the professional in person. Seek to do this within 24 hours of the teachable moment or event. I feel that the best way to do this is immediately prior to giving the feedback. Time lags can cause a lot of stress, for both of you. If you receive a supportive response, proceed.

Prepare yourself

Once you have inspected your reasons for giving feedback, and immediately prior to sharing it, get yourself grounded. This is no easy task. I recommend learning and practicing The State of Ease by the Institute of HeartMath to achieve this state.

Feedback can result in damage if not done deftly, so take care! There is value in restraint as there is value in action.

After thanking the professional for meeting with you, set the context, share a brief bit of information about the particular scene, or situation to which you are referring.

Start by stating your observation of the professional’s behavior or actions. Be descriptive.

Then, say how the professional’s actions affected you and the team. Use emotional language. I recommend learning about and advancing your Emotional Intelligence (for this purpose, and with many benefits beyond feedback). Strive to link the behavior with an actual result or forecast a future potential outcome.

Offer a suggestion to the professional. Explain what the benefit would be if that fits with the situation. Avoid coercion. Expect that during the “suggestion” phase the person may not have the capacity for listening well; she may still be taking in and thinking about what you have just said. Emotions could amplify. Pay attention. Remain engaged, calm, and supportive.

Example A: Patricia, during our team meeting when you shared your concerns about the proposal, you really got my attention! I am happy that you had the courage to speak your mind, and did so while remaining respectful of the dissension at the table. I feel that we collaborated at a deep level and ultimately came up with the best decision. Patricia, please continue to share your ideas and feelings with our team!

Example B: James, during my presentation on the change initiative I saw you on your phone. I felt disregarded. When, instead of making a quick check, you continued to work on your phone, I became angry and embarrassed. I think that my emotions interfered with my ability to do a good job, and I fear that some of the attendees may not support this initiative as a result. In the future, James, please stay engaged. If you must conduct business on your phone or otherwise, take it outside of the room.

Encouraging improvements

I recommend experimenting with people who love you and will therefore help you to weather your mistakes. I also suggest that in giving feedback suggesting, encourage continued positive behavior. To paraphrase Karen Pryor in her book Don’t Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training, behavior that is rewarded continues.

Through small, perhaps undetected efforts, you can build strength, flexibility and ease in giving feedback. Done well, it has many benefits for the recipient, you, and the team.

It’s time to let go of the heroic leader.

The ability of any single individual – as heroic or skilled or dedicated as he or she may be – is no longer enough to meet the complex challenges we face today.

“With the decline of the value of the heroic leader comes the rise of collective leadership,” says Nick Petrie.

During a sabbatical year at Harvard, Petrie (now with CCL) undertook a wide-ranging study to explore what the future of leadership development will look like. One of the key trends he identified was the shift to collective leadership – what CCL describes as “interdependent leadership.”

In his paper Future Trends in Leadership Development, Petrie explains:

“The complexity of our environment increasingly calls for collaboration between various stakeholders who each hold a different aspect of the reality – and many of whom must themselves adapt and grow if the problem is to be solved. These groups (which often cross geographies, reporting lines and organizations) need to share information, create plans, influence each other and make decisions.”

If this trend has you thinking that we need to be sure managers have strong collaboration and influencing skills, you are missing a larger point, Petrie continues. “Individual competencies still matter. However, something more significant may be happening – the end of an era, dominated by individual leaders, and the beginning of another, which embraces networks of leadership.”

Making the shift seems to require us to redefine leadership. Many organizational theorists have begun to reframe leadership, getting away from leadership as a person or role, to leadership as a process. Leadership can be enacted by anyone; it is not tied to a position of authority in the hierarchy or any one individual. Leadership can be distributed throughout networks of people and across boundaries and geographies. Who the leader is becomes less important than what is needed in the system and how we can produce it.

If leadership is thought of as a shared process, rather than an individual skill set, senior executives must learn new ways to help leadership develop broadly and collectively in their organizations. Collaborative, networked leadership is more likely to flourish when certain “conditions” support it, including:

• Open flows of information.
• Flexible hierarchies.
• Distributed resources.
• Distributed decision-making.
• Loosening of centralized controls.

To create these conditions, leadership development methods will have to address the collective mind-shift needed to enact leadership in a shared way. Leadership development practitioners will also need to create learning tools and strategies that mesh with the technology and social networking that has been rapidly flattening hierarchies and decentralizing control in recent years.

“We are still at the early stages of thinking about leadership development at a collective level,” says Petrie. “But I have no doubt that future generations will see networked, interdependent leadership as a natural phenomenon, the way of the world.”

Want to learn more? Download Future Trends in Leadership Development, a CCL white paper by Nicholas Petrie. You can also follow Nick on his blog about learning, growing and performing atwww.nicholaspetrie.com.

You’re the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here’s how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it’s time for you to “be strategic.”

Whatever that means.

If you find yourself resisting “being strategic,” because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you’re not alone. Every leader’s temptation is to deal with what’s directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you’ll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you’re on is leading off a cliff.

This is a tough job, make no mistake. “We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It’s hard to be a strategic leader if you don’t know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.

After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what’s required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders – the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate

Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically

“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution.  A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
• Encourage others to do the same
• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide

Many leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align

Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge.  To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives other people’s agendas, including what remains hidden
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable
• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by.  You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure–especially failure–are valuable sources of organizational learning.  Here’s what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
• Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Paul J. H. Schoemaker: Founder and Chairman, Decision Strategies Intl. Speaker, professor, and entrepreneur. Research Director, Mack Ctr for Technological Innovation at Wharton, where he teaches strategic decision-making. Latest book: Brilliant Mistakes

Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?

It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.

What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.

Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you’re taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?

The biggest cost – assuming you don’t crash – is to your productivity. In part, that’s a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you’re partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it’s because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you’re increasing the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.

But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.

I know this from my own experience. I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.

If you’re a manager, here are three policies worth promoting:

1. Maintain meeting discipline. Schedule meetings for 45 minutes, rather than an hour or longer, so participants can stay focused, take time afterward to reflect on what’s been discussed, and recover before the next obligation. Start all meetings at a precise time, end at a precise time, and insist that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting.

2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day. It forces your people into reactive mode, fractures their attention, and makes it difficult for them to sustain attention on their priorities. Let them turn off their email at certain times. If it’s urgent, you can call them – but that won’t happen very often.

3. Encourage renewal. Create at least one time during the day when you encourage your people to stop working and take a break. Offer a midafternoon class in yoga, or meditation, organize a group walk or workout, or consider creating a renewal room where people can relax, or take a nap.

It’s also up to individuals to set their own boundaries. Consider these three behaviors for yourself:

1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you’ll be. When you’re done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don’t, you’ll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity – preferably one that’s relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you’re off, you’re truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you’ll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.

A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. When you’re engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time. When you’re renewing, truly renew. Make waves. Stop living your life in the gray zone.

Have you ever griped about employees’ lack of initiative? Grumbled over their unwillingness to take ownership of projects, processes and problems? Then just shook your head, thinking there is nothing you can do to boost accountability?

“The challenge for organizations is that accountability is intrinsic,” says CCL’s Henry Browning. “People have to choose – for themselves – to act with ownership and accountability.”

But accountability can flourish in the right environment. If you want accountable people, you need to create the conditions that encourage people to fully own their decisions, explains Browning in the new book Accountability: Taking Ownership of Your Responsibility.

To foster a culture of accountability, organizations need to do five things:

1. Give support. Employees need support from senior leadership, direct supervisors and their work teams. Learn to tolerate mistakes and individual differences.
2. Provide freedom to direct important aspects of the work or to accomplish a goal.
3. Share information. Employees need access to all information needed to make decisions.
4. Provide resources. Red tape, tight control and too-few resources will undermine ownership and accountability.
5. Be clear. Communicate with clarity the goal, responsibility and consequences of action or inaction. Who else is involved and what outcomes are expected?

Just as important, organizations need to remove unnecessary fear. When there is fear, people tend to hide, hold back and do only the minimum of what is expected. Fear can generate many other secondary emotions, such as aggressiveness, anger, micromanaging, defensiveness, lack of engagement and victim behavior.

The first step to reducing fear is to earn and maintain trust. Trust is built slowly, and when it is lost, it takes a long time to rebuild, Browning explains. “The best advice is to build it consistently over time by being competent in the work, knowing when to communicate openly and when to keep things in confidence, and following through on what you say you will do.”

In addition, every manager can counteract a culture of fear if they:

• Listen and observe behavior in meetings. Is there a balance of inquiry (asking questions) and advocacy (making statements)?
• Catch employees doing something right. Don’t just look to correct them when they do something wrong. Provide rich developmental feedback to foster learning and appropriate risk-taking.
• Get feedback on fear. Talk to employees and managers who you can count on to be straight with you about their observations about fear and trust. Ask questions like: “Are people encouraged to innovate rather than conform?” “Is dissent tolerated?” and “What happens when mistakes occur? How does leadership respond?”
• Acknowledge and share mistakes. Be up-front about your own missteps, poor judgment and errors – as well as the lessons learned. True accountability comes when you are willing to own your mistakes as well as your successes.

Finally, be sure to send a consistent message of accountability. Strive to be a role model of accountability yourself and expect others on your team or department to be accountable, too.

“Sometimes in an effort to minimize fear, managers ‘over-correct’ and fail to hold others accountable,” Browning explains. “Even letting just one person off the hook can do a lot of damage. You send the message to everyone, why bother?”

“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.