A benefit of being invited to speak at events, albeit as a last minute fill-in, is you get to hear other presenters. At the Conference Board of Canada HR 2008 annual conference last week, it was a pleasure to hear Bill MacKinnon, CEO, KPMG Canada, discuss how he’s helped them embrace great leadership as a true objective throughout the organization. He keynoted the main conference theme – Influential Leadership - anchored to how this improves results.

He kicked off with the emphasis on why paying attention to leadership is becoming so much more important – because organizations, the challenges they face and the tasks of managing and leading them have become so much more complex. He proceeded to virtually itemize the same five key elements I build on.
Most striking of all, he very much emphasized the importance of leaders remaining “calm” (to use his term) in the face of the daily onslaught of challenges we now face. In other words, developing and maintaining the skills of balance in the midst of furious activity ended up being the point he stressed more than any other. I couldn’t agree more.

And balance, of course, involves including all the elements that must be balanced together so you don’t get blindsided by something you’ve forgotten about… like people’s attitudes and engagement, for instance, while you are nonetheless pushing for results. “Both/and” becomes a big challenge of complexity that many managers struggle with. Practice makes perfect. It was great to hear a CEO of a major organization put it in such a “must have, every day” light!

Again today I found myself giving a would-be human resources (HR) manager the same advice I give all job hunters - the new boss is the most important factor in any job you’re considering. A great boss can encourage you, give you projects, mentor, coach, guide and introduce you to a world of further possibilities. In other words, they can make your job exciting, worthwhile and a continual learning experience… or they can pigeon-hole you from day 1 and demand nothing, but routine, even menial results.

You can spot the good ones because they are alive, people with plans themselves for things that need to be or could be done that aren’t yet. They will talk about possibilities not only for you, but for themselves, their teams and the organization. You can feel them inviting you into the process. Others in the company will speak highly of them as coaches and cooperative supporters. Just ask around.

By contrast I very often get to hear (from people looking for new jobs) about current bosses who can’t imagine their report ever progressing. No one in their opinion is ever ready. They’ll consider hiring outside in almost every situation before looking at anyone internally… or they’ll constantly pick people they believe will simply follow orders. “Loyalty” plays big with the latter type. Cross them (ie: have a new idea they didn’t tell you to pursue) and you’re on the hit list forever. Bosses who aren’t interested in growing people abound. Which makes it easy to be a great boss.

I’ve spoken with two university researchers recently who express concern that the hoopla over the uniqueness of Gen Y recruits may be overblown.

It’s been 4 months since futurist Dan Pink (other books: Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind) jumped into the fray with The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, said to be the replacement for What Color Is Your Parachute specifically for Gen Y.

Maybe. It’s light and light-hearted in manga comic format so it’s clearly targeted there. Many reviewers are quite taken with this, but the questions remains, are Gen Ys buying it or reading it when it’s bought for them.

Dan’s advice is six simple (all in favor of that!) principles for career path choices:

1. There is no plan. [The economy changes too fast for your career to have a plan]
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses. [Find your advantages]
3. It’s not about you. [Serving others serves you best]
4. Persistence trumps talent. [Keep showing up]
5. Make excellent mistakes. [Take risks, but fail forward]
6. Leave an imprint. [Do something that matters]

The issue is, of course, there never was a plan. We mostly stumbled into careers before so that’s not new. Neither are the other items.

Will Gen Y really change the workplace or, when they get mortgages, spouses and kids, will they “sell out” just as everyone acuses boomers of doing? More to the point, will our concern for what Gen Y thinks continue past the first blush of staffing shortage. Will we genuinely start listening to diverse employees’ needs and interests?

Meanwhile Pink doesn’t substitute for good career ‘how to’ books like Parachute or Barbara Moses’ excellent What Next. It’s a useful add-on whatever your generation - things we should all be considering, not just when we’re starting out, but for once, could we hear from Gen Y if they actually want this stuff instead of hearing from “grown ups” that they for sure will? If we’re really as interested in listening as we say, perhaps we should show it by doing so. Anyone heard what they think?

Sometimes you just read something and say, “Right on, brother.” David Malouf’s post today is one of those! And they say accountants don’t understand people.

Often we discount others’ abilities to understand. Many times in frustration, we get at the real truths under the every day stuff we keep hearing over and over. I particularly like his comment about being tired of “leaders” who never interact with their protegés. Although I’m one of those who promote the (in my case) “five” irrefutable laws of leadership, I like to think all I’ve done is take the simplest advice available and used it to encourage exactly that - interaction with the people you’re trying to grow and lead.

Thanks David.

A reader was kind enough to undertake to set me straight as follows: "On the outsourcing point of view the key question for me is what is the return on the asset and people unfortunately are assets in a company. If I’m in banking my assets are money and financial minds tat create retrurns. If my business is commercial real estate then my assets are property, buildings and people who know a good deal from a bad one. If I’m an HR outsourcer then my assets are HR savvy people who others are willing to buy expertise from. If I’m a multinational pharma company or software company then I’m afraid I don’t see much return from an HR person.

It’s all about following the money."

I started to write a return comment and realized it needed to be longer and more people might want to see it…. Thanks for the comment Darren. I think you’ve succinctly captured one point of view. Where can I start to explain more clearly. You can always outsource "hard" HR basics - the transactional systems, record-keeping and benefits. But people absolutely are assets in every company - like the financial minds you mention. Those minds can get balled up in worrying about minor stuff on benefits or they can worry about when their next promotion is coming. While they’re worrying, they aren’t creating as good returns as they could. Often those worries don’t fit in boxes like, "what does the dental plan pay for this?" The real key is continual coaching approach from their direct leader, but who helps the leaders who aren’t naturally good at this?

People are unique in being assets you don’t own or control. Leaders can use them up by hiring for great potential, using them for a while till they feel they’re being used and toss them out as some bosses regularly do or you can have someone who helps develop and coaches bosses who in turn listen and respond to concerns. In a small business (as most are) if you hand pick business leaders and they have good listening skills, see the need and the CEO listen as well, you can get by without a designated HR person for a long time. But as you grow, merge, acquire others and have to expand your ranks, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure enough people who give the continual time to listening that is needed as part of their job, as part of getting the work flowing smoothly and to give the thinking time to make good decisions about every person. And coordinating all this takes time.

In every company someone tends to fall into the role of listener and thinker for resolving HR "soft" issues. That person becomes the de facto HR person, the go to individual when someone has a problem or a manager has a problem with an employee. They may do other things, too, as I did even in a very large corporation, but they need some latitude to help set the tone for how people are treated and to counsel those who behave outside the program, to be a second set of ears and eyes for the CEO to marshal people on track continually to get the best return on those assets. As Colin Powell says in his first book, "every division needs it’s ‘chaplain’ [his description for someone who listens and helps resolve]." You can leave the role informal, but that tends to hide a very important lever in getting things moving and keeping them moving smoothly.

Quite often this person doesn’t carry the title HR and isn’t hired for that alone, but they are in a real sense running the HR program of the organization and it takes a real and usually substantial portion of their time. If you lose that person, your return on human assets tanks fairly quickly. Research shows great HR multiplies financial results by four or more times over the average company. I probably don’t need to say that anything that runs "great" like "great HR" is great because it is run by an effective leader. Who is leading HR in any company is a key question. It’s a daily culture-building influence that you cannot thrive without. Someone organizes that and it almost never can be the entrepreneurial leader who drives the business attack - the roles and the things you have to do and dedicate the majority of your time to are simply incompatible. So do you give the HR role to someone formally (full or part time) or just let it happen by itself, haphazardly? Contractors can’t do this for you unless they’re on site virtually full time and have the ear of the senior leadership continually.

Often when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it, some remark you’ve made the day before seems incorrect (that’s the polite word) or maybe just dumb.

Yesterday I suggested that "multitasking" would be OK if you’re working to help people become better while also working toward an objective was an exception to the rule against trying to do two things at once. That’s not what I intended, I see in retrospect.

In fact, it’s better to say you should look for ways to achieve two ends at the same time with the same, single action. By helping others improve, you get work done - through them, with them and even on your own as you model for them how they could approach things. It’s a way of working and thinking about work that ultimately produces better results in every situation.

It really isn’t a "multitask" because you’re not stopping to help them and then stopping that to go back to work, you are doing both together, sometimes working alongside them on a problem, sometimes on your own, but with the objective that your work will help them move forward in some way.

Of course, we can’t avoid distractions. They happen all day long inevitably. But we can avoid distracting ourselves by attempting multiple tasks at the same time. Everyone gets caught up in the sense of urgency and the layering on of one new demand on top of the last.

We have to catch our breath sometimes and say stop the roller coaster, let me sort out what to work on first, second and third and then do those in that order… without trying to do every task simultaneously. If the goals of every task include how this improves things for people as well as achieves results, we’re on the right track. If we can’t see how, we need to rethink our approach to it until we find a better strategy for it.

The volunteer leadership think tank I work a lot for, Strategic Capability Network, had the pleasure and good luck to host Dr. Mintzberg in January on the subject of a new project he’s developing. It’s goal:  simplifying leadership development to a program companies can do themselves in-house that will compete with the International and Advanced Management programs he’s run for years - the new one at a cost of a few hundred dollars versus the $45,000 to $100,000 tuition per person for the International and Advanced programs.

The long-time management guru (not at all too strong a word for a professor, author of 140 articles and13 books like Managers Not MBAs) has always worked toward taking the mystery and myths out of effective leadership… and now out of leadership development.

The new venture, CoachingOurselves, is fascinating if not entirely unheard of previously, but its great to see an acknowledged master show how simply we can develop leadership skills.

In this approach groups of managers, usually four to seven, meet together with the role of chair rotating among them, on topics of their choosing. They follow a guide in the form of an agenda and a few PowerPoint slides, created by Henry or his co-authors and learn on their own from their own discussions about their own experience.

He suggests the primary model is that the group meet once a month for about an hour and a quarter for as long as they feel they’re benefiting. So far there are intended to be a couple of hundred topics to choose from with about 20 or so currently available and more in development that can be tailored, costing in the range of under $200 each - that’s $200 for all five or six people, not per person… and no travel cost or time.

Obviously the major advanced and travel programs can expose managers to experiences, people and diversity that no in-house program could duplicate. Nevertheless Mintzberg insists the core feature of the expensive programs carries over - managers sharing their own experiences and learning from open discussion with each other. So it’s "go big or go home" literally, with the option to learn at home now being a valid one.

It isn’t a program that creates learning, it’s individuals’ willingness to learn and to share their thoughts, knowledge and experience with each other that makes for more effective leadership. And we know from personal experience that doing it consistently beats a one-time shot in the arm every time.

My objective with my five principles is a simple model for what you or organizations actually need to do to be effective in all sorts of situations. ADKAR (previous post) looks helpful for organizations.  Stephen Covey’s seven habits work well with individuals.  Both could be stretched to the opposite situation (organizations or individuals), but most systems are designed primarily for certain types of challenges and from a single point of view.

ADKAR’s elements - Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement - effectively describe end results needed for organizational change. As a memory aid they don’t point toward HOW to achieve these, which is where I find most managers ask the most urgent questions.  The strategy is good; how can it be executed?

Take "desire" for example.  Desire or motivation often seems to managers the most difficult thing to develop in yourself or others if it isn’t there to begin with.  ADKAR accurately suggests that once you become aware of the need for change you need to create a state of wanting to or desiring change.  But how?

My corresponding principle is "positive."  I describe the five principles as habits you need to build toward in yourself, others or both. With this in mind, I think managers have a relatively easier time concluding what they need to do - talk and behave in ways that get people into habits of feeling positive about aspects of work in general. Most can think of ways to be more positive, more of the time.

You can’t usually get a group of people fired up, motivated or filled with desire to change on the spur of the moment.  There are exceptions.  When the theater you’re in is burning or some other inescapable crisis makes it absolutely clear that you should all be motivated, pretty well any leader who stands up and points to the door is seen as charismatic. 

Highly charismatic individuals seem to have the ability to motivate groups purely through words.  Unfortunately lots of CEOs attempt this by putting speeches on video and sending them out to the troops.  Needless to say, lots fail.

But if you work with a group of people over time and have always been honest and positive with them, encouraged them to take initiative, and they’ve seen the results that occur when they jump into action as you suggest, they are very likely to do so again when you point out that change is needed. They build on already positive beliefs that taking action makes sense. They are positive about acting and positive they can succeed. That’s how "desire" bubbles up when needed - a lot of small positive elements adding together.

Am I splitting hairs? Maybe. But my focus is decidedly in favor of describing what’s needed in terms people can most easily see how to put into action. Consistently positive people make both organizational and personal change far easier.

I just gave someone blogging advice that applies to anyone wanting to get attention and more business - offer tips.

Case in point: one of the many email newsletters I keep finding myself on the list for is from Lynda Goldman (http://www.impressforsuccess.com/). The first I’ve seen arrived recently with a tip for being more charismatic.

The tip: Stand and walk tall. There’s a lot of truth in this. You’ll project confidence, speak more strongly, seem a bit larger than life and generally send the message that you know what you want, what you’re doing and that you can’t be dissuaded. Confidence is attractive and, to some degree, catching, so people feel better aournd you.

Is this really charisma? Well, probably if you practice it enough to make it your usual style of presenting yourself, it could be. It won’t be if you do it only occasionally or drop the manner suddenly in the middle of something. Then it will appear false, as a facade, a feeble attempt to be something you’re not. Whether you "are" or "aren’t" really depends more on whether this becomes habit. If it does, you’ve raised your charisma level permanently.

Only you can decide if this is something you want. There are trade-offs. Particularly if you begin to believe your own press (very appropriate word here since Goldman is a communications expert) you may become insufferable. But you don’t have to. You can find a balance. You can develop skills to use in appropriate situations and not in others. It takes time either way. Adding a new capability always gives you more options.

Can it ever become "as good as the best natural" charismatics? That depends on how much you puruse the initial stage you reach. You can always go further, add other behaviors that typify charismatic people. Over time you can pretty much go as far as you want. Can you ever catch up with someone who started in their early teens or get ahead of them. That, too, depends - on how hard, how often and how insightfully you practice.

So the tip makes sense. Whether you choose to pursue it depends on your sense of whether you need it, whether it adds something you want to your skill set and how much time you are willing to devote to it in lieu of devoting time to other things. It rarely takes as long as you might think.

Given that we have such choices, the next challenge becomes sorting out which to pursue. It makes little sense to waste a lot of time on something you’re not going to follow up fully.

Now all I need to figure out is why I can’t accept a perfectly good tip without analyzing it to death. The short anwswer is that it doesn’t make as much sense to me if I don’t.

It’s easy to miss the most obvious ideas when you’re too close to a topic. While working on revising how I present people skills it occurred to me that the "ultimate" people skill can be described very simply as "helping and being helped" by others. When you’re hired, essentially "helping" is the job description. Whether your primary role is to help customers, help co-workers, help your boss or suppliers, it’s likely all of these come into play. You’re hired to help.

The challenge is that adults don’t actually like to be helped. They want to be in charge. In fact I often recommend that the best method for disciplinary situations is to tell the person you intend to help them - as in "I am going to help you improve your attendance. I think you need help." You can see that wouldn’t be welcome news to most people. In fact, most will say they don’t need help of that sort and can do it themselves, which is, of course, exactly what you hope in that situation.

So, how you help and how you offer it is clearly going to be an issue. Lot’s of employees see ways they believe they can help their team, their boss or their company, but no one seems interested. This turns off so many people it should be almost a crime for managers to brush off suggestions. The other side is that the idea needs to be "on strategy" which implies that the company needs to have a strategy so it’s obvious what’s on or off base.

A key job of any manager should be to work with employees and their suggestions to get as many of them as possible "on strategy" and implemented in one form or another. It may well be that the idea has been thought of before and perhaps even tried, but chances are there is some way, some variation that would make it workable and see it adding value. If an employee really wants to help, has ideas and energy to work on them over and above their usual "boring" routine work, it’s imperative to help them find ways to take things further. Managers who ignore these ideas will lose the best employees they have, the ones with ideas who want to grow. The best will try variations to get their manager interested, but will eventually pick up and go elsewhere to find some place more willing. The greatest reward is to see our ideas implemented and successful.

So, while helping is the core work skill, finding ways to make use of help is perhaps even more important.