CEO Essentials Archives - BrightHill Group

It happened again this morning. Don’t let it happen to you!

It happened again. Just this morning.

A colleague had a defection of sorts.

Two key tech employees independently gave their two weeks’ notice.

I’m close enough to have some insight into what happened in this particular case.

This is a growing, vibrant technology firm. The leaders are smart, nice, hard working people. They want to do the right thing for their clients, and for their team members.

Each employee decided to leave the company. Why? One key factor: senior leadership.

Project Oxygen- 8 keys to being a great boss - google — Click here to download our FREE Infographic – Google’s 8 Keys to Leading Technical Team Members

One of the “defectors” was an up and coming leader himself. His key frustration is that his boss was unwilling, or perhaps unable to let him lead.

Think about this: you have a smart, hard-working, emerging leader on your staff. Your vision is for this team member to grow and become a future leader of your company.

You look for opportunities to help them grow.

But:

because you are overwhelmed,
because you are incredibly busy,
because it’s not a crisis for you,

YOU just simply have not made the time to grow your leadership skills.

Your lack of leadership skill is a key factor holding you back, and holding back your team from growing.

Your People Skills Matter More Than Technical Skills

business success 87 percent people knowledge 13 percent product knowledge stanford

The research is clear that our success is tied to our “people knowledge” but time and again, we invest our energy in product knowledge!

I wrote about this a few months ago – the demand for tech talent in Charlotte is high – and unless you set yourself apart, your best folks are going to leave. Period.

The Cost of Turnover

What does this turnover cost you?

For this colleague, some of the impacts that they are dealing with right now are:

Knowledge transfer.
Customer relationships.
Developing a plan to deal with all of this transition.
Follow through on delivery of promises made to current customers.
Reassuring customers that the company can continue to meet their needs during this transition.
Finding time to keep up with all of the commitments that were made to other customers.
Opportunity cost: what deals are lost because leaders are distracted by all of these activities right now?

And none of these costs are related to actually replacing that staff member!

You still have to invest time in:

Updating job descriptions.
Advertising the position on job boards.
Reaching out to recruiting firms to try to identify good candidates.
Scheduling interviews with potential candidates.
Assessing the skills of potential recruits.
And on and on.

This turns out to be a pretty expensive exercise, doesn’t it?

Again, let me emphasize that this is a good company. The owners of the company are decent, hard-working, nice people. They are smart. They care about their team members. They want their team members to grow. And yet they’ve suffered this loss.

What Went Wrong?

mind the gap doormat flickr daveblogs007 cc_license_8488204426_218f1c0a41_o_with_attribution_cropped

1. They didn’t “Mind the Gap” between their intent to grow, and their ACTION to grow.

They talked about personal growth. They talked about a staff development program, but by the time they actually started working on that, the emerging leader had lost hope.

The delay between the company leaders intending to do something and ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING was just too long.

2. Neglecting personal development. The owners of the company were “too busy” to work on their leadership skills.

What Can You Do Now?

There’s a huge gulf between your intent and your action.

Make a plan to grow your leadership skills and then
Take Action!

person jumping across a gap - pixabay public domain leap-456100_1920_cropped_resized_edited

Think you don’t have the time or money? Neither did this colleague.

In this market you can’t afford NOT to invest in your people and your people skills.

Just ask my colleague.

Want help? Give me a call. 240-668-4799

The 5 root causes of bad meetings – and exactly what you can do to have better meetings!

Better Meetings

In this Geek Leadership Essentials Podcast, I connect with Bryan Field from MeetingResult LLC.

We talk about making your meetings useful and efficient!

How to make your meetings more effective
The root causes of unproductive meetings (and what to do about it)
One powerful, simple system for making your meetings far better

Bryan has generously offered to provide two great resources for us.

FREE

One chapter from his book Powerfully Simple Meetings. Click on the book below to start your download!

Great Discount!

For our listeners, Bryan has offered a 40% discount on annual subscriptions
Go to meetingresult.com and use promo code “Web-MR” for 40% off individual or team annual subscriptions!

About Bryan

BRYAN FIELD is a senior information technology executive and cofounder of MeetingResult LLC. He has more than sixteen years of experience in Software and Systems Development, IT Security, Business Process Reengineering and Web and Mobile Technology Implementations and has worked extensively in both the federal government and private sector. Before cofounding MeetingResult, Mr. Field built and led a sales organization for a defense contractor. He received his bachelor of science degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and has been a certified project management professional (PMP) since 2005.

About the Podcast

We host a podcast focused on the essentials of leadership. We interview experts and publish a new podcast every few weeks on topics like project management, sales, marketing, leadership development, and so much more.

Don’t miss out! Sign up here for future podcast episodes to be delivered to you as soon as they are released! (You can also find the podcast in iTunes)

How to have a tough conversation with that jerk at work

This morning I was working with a client. The discussion was about “How do I handle a conversation with a difficult customer?”

Have you ever had that problem?

What does it feel like knowing that you need to talk about it, and you can’t?
What would it feel like to have that conversation over with?
What would it feel like to have the other person not mad at you at the end of the discussion?
What would it be like at work to partner with them rather than be at odds with them?

This morning’s coaching call reminded me that this is a common issue and one that you may be facing, too.
I know I’ve had tough conversations with customers, partners, team members and bosses. Sometimes I’ve handled it well.
Other times not so much.

I Really Blew it

I remember a time that I had Jay (a team member) tell me he had made no progress on the work I had assigned him because Alan (MY boss) had told him to work on something else. Of course, Alan still expected me to get results on the stuff that I had originally assigned to Jay.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Who did Alan think he was to undermine my authority? Alan and I had previously talked about the fact that I needed Jay to work on this, and we both knew that Jay really didn’t want to do it. When Alan approached Jay, it was a clear signal that Jay didn’t need to worry about that crummy project that Tom had assigned.

anger-18658_1920_pixabay_public_domain — The more I thought about it, the more I think I had the same look on my face, as she does on hers. I was MAD!

How could he do that? (Alan owned the company, and was used to doing what he wanted, that’s how!)

I was frustrated, embarrassed, and I felt completely disrespected. Jay was a new addition to my team (he had previously reported directly to Alan, and did not appreciate the change.) Jay didn’t want to work for me, he didn’t want the project I assigned to him, and now Alan was telling him to ignore me and focus on the stuff that Alan wanted.

I got on the phone and challenged Alan’s having undermined my authority. We shot barbs back and forth a few times, and eventually I was shouting at Alan. The call ended quickly.

Let’s go over a quick list of what I did wrong:

I was not “calm and centered.” I was MAD!
I did not “slow down and listen” – I was focused on telling Alan exactly how wrong he was and how mad I was.
I didn’t ”acknowledge his perspective. In fact I didn’t care about his point of view.

Here’s a great Harvard Business Review article on this topic. I thought you might appreciate it.

For what it’s worth, in my conversation with Alan, I think I broke every rule listed in the article.

If you’d like help preparing for a difficult conversation, I can help. (I’ve learned a thing or two since I worked for Alan, thankfully!)
Give me a call!

Who is John C Maxwell, and Why Should I Care?

Many times when I tell people I am partnered with John C. Maxwell they say “Interesting. Who is John Maxwell?”

I smile because I remember when I didn’t know who he was.

It was more than 15 years ago when I was first introduced to John.

I was a geek working on technical projects. I had studied my technical discipline (software development) and that had served me well. I had moved up in position through the early part of my career and wanted to learn how to “make the jump” to be more effective. A friend introduced me to John’s book Developing the Leader Within You.

What is Leadership?

In this interview, I answer that question and I talk about three key questions that your team members are dying for you to answer. I also talk about how people who are “just an employee” can improve their influence with others.

Who is John?

John C. Maxwell is the foremost leadership thinker, the most influential leadership speaker in the world. It’s not just my opinion. Ask Inc Magazine. Ask GlobalGurus and any number of other sites. John tops the list year after year as the most influential leadership thinker, trainer and speaker in the world.

He is the author over 70 + books (new one this Wednesday), sold over 24 million books including 2 million copies of “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, that he is by far and away the #1 Leadership Guru in the world (Inc. Magazine and other sources), has been doing it for four decades….

Take a look at the bookshelf from a local Barnes and Noble bookstore.

John’s books start at the end of the top shelf, fill the entire 2nd and continue onto the third. Over 1/15th of the business shelves.

BTW, this picture is less than half of the books he has written, but who is counting?

John has sold more books on leadership than anyone else. Three of his books have sold over a million copies, and he is in the Amazon.com hall of fame as of the top selling authors in history.

So what? Why should I care about John Maxwell?

That is an excellent question. Who cares about leadership? I didn’t think about leadership at all. I thought about:

How my technical skills were amazing, and people should see them, and I should be rewarded for my brilliance, and
How annoying it was that the “real work” was idiotically interrupted for “politics” and “games”

What I learned was that my thinking limited my growth and advancement! I was so focused on technical competence that I overlooked the power of relationships and influence.

Learning from John helped me reframe my thinking and allowed me to achieve so much more!

I grew in my ability to lead myself

I got better at making and keeping commitments.
I became a better communicator
I learned how to DWISIWD – do what I said I would do – because people are watching me all the time to see if my actions match my words – in big and in small things!
I learned how to plan more effectively
I discovered tools to help me get help from others

I grew in my ability to lead others

I learned how to get others to want to help me
I learned how to equip others so that they could perform well
I learned how to grow my team’s effectiveness
Our projects got healthier
Our portfolio of projects got larger
I learned how to build a high performing team from a group of smart individuals
Our team got bigger

I became a leader of leaders

I learned how to help people grow from team member to team leader
I learned how to help people learn to equip others
I learned how to help the entire organization excel by growing leadership skills across technical disciplines

Tom is John’s Partner in the John Maxwell Team

When I learned that I could get to know John, work with his team, and become one of an elite set of leadership speakers, trainers, and coaches; it was an easy choice. John had added so much to me over the years that it was clear how much more I could gain.

So let me ask you: What do you want?

Do you want to communicate more clearly?
Do you want to work more smoothly with team members and customers?
Do you want to get great work from your team (even if they don’t report to you?)
Do you want to get more of the most important work done?
Do you want these things for your team members?

How Can You Get These Results?

You probably don’t have the budget to work directly with John. It’s true. John works with very few organizations these days, and as the worlds #1 leadership guru, he charges a fortune for his time.

You CAN work with me! I help highly technical experts communicate clearly, manage conflict productively, delegate effectively and plan well.

I can bring the best leadership thinking and practical action to you and your teams, and together we can grow your leadership skills and the leadership skills of people around you.

GIVE ME A CALL!

You can reach me at 240-668-4799 or via email at Tom@BrightHillGroup.com

Let’s get started on YOUR leadership journey!

240-668-4799