Our community posted an article about “Making Tough Decisions” and discussed that a lot of people think that leaders are cold blooded and inhuman whenever they make decisions which results in some people suffering.

I remembered one of my former superiors terminating one of my colleagues because he felt his skills is a commodity and didn’t want to pay him more just because he was with the company for ten years or so.

I totally disagree with his decision but I won’t be discussing my arguments here and just gave you an example of what seems to be an unjust decision. To the eyes of the employee he is ruthless but to the eyes of the manager he was just cutting cost and I would like to think he did what he thought was best for the team and the company as a whole. Though wrong in my opinion, I would give him the benefit of the doubt that he suffered emotionally and thought long and hard before making the decision.

The thought and emotional process a leader has to go through before making a tough decision is what makes them human; but in the end, they have to do what they feel is best for everyone.

When you a part of a team at work, or part of a committee in your community, your individual actions reflect on the greater team or committee.  Like it or not, how people view you is how they view your team or committee as well.  They reflect on your relationship with the team, and, in turn, the relationship with the team to the company or community.

Make sure that your words, appearance, and actions, reflect positively on your team and organization.

Body language is a vital part of your communications.  They send out a powerful message, and should be working to support your verbal message, rather than work against it. 

If you feel like you are always being misunderstood, perhaps your body language is contradicting your verbal message.

Do you find that your typical communication stance is with your arms crossed across your chest, shoulders hunched, and a sort of distracted look on your face?  If so, it’s no wonder that your message isn’t hitting the mark.

Take a look at some other nonverbal signals and see if these describe you:

• Shrugging shoulders
• Rolling eyes
• The “look” (whether it’s a glare or a distracted look of disinterest)
• Pursed lips
• Squinty eyes
• Tapping foot
• Pacing back and forth
• Clamping mouth shut with a strong set of the jaw
• Sighs
• Slumped posture

Even when you aren’t the one speaking, your body language may be speaking for you.  When you are listening, are you tapping your foot in frustration, or perhaps sighing throughout the message?  If this describes the position you assume when someone is talking with you, what message are you sending back?  Chances are you’ve negated their message before it has even been delivered.

It’s the rare person that can diagnose their body language ills, so to do a skill check you’ll need to enlist the help of a trusted ally. 

Ask someone to observe your nonverbal signals, writing down the specifics of your body language and the message that you were delivering.  Then go over the information, and see where you can make changes and improvements.  If the list seems overwhelming, just start working on one item at a time.

If you have no one to give you honest, safe feedback, try these three basic techniques when in conversation:

• Stand with your body in an open position.  Arms and hands in a neutral or open position (not crossed on chest), shoulders back, and head up
• Maintain eye contact with the person (or people) you are talking with, keeping eyes open.
• Remain casually stationary, unless there is a necessity to move.  Any movement should add to the conversation rather than distract from it.

Our words are only a part of the message.  Make sure your body language enhances the impact of your message rather than shooting you in the foot.

Have you ever obsessed about something to the point where it took on a life of its own?  Where a small irritant became bigger than life?  When that one irritant consumed a disproportionate amount of your time?

When this happens within a team environment, it can destroy your individual productivity and motivation, as well as poison the relationships within the team.  Ultimately, the whole team will suffer.

Since it is inevitable that irritants will arise when working closely with others, how can you guard against the “mountain out of a molehill” scenario?

The first thing to do is identify the source of irritation or disagreement.  It could be a difference of opinion, a habit of someone that you find annoying, or a thoughtless comment that you just can’t seem to shake off.  If it’s something that you just can’t seem to get out of your mind, then it’s something that needs to be addressed, and the earlier it is recognized and addressed, the easier it will be to resolve.

How do you move to resolution once you’ve identified the source?

Stay (or become) calm:  When tempers are running amok, it’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation.  When backs are to the wall, there is no room for resolution.  So take a break if you need to. Agree to discuss the matter later, if that buys everyone time to calm down.  Just get your head and your emotions in a place where you can address the issue.

Make it all about business:  Keep your focus on the dispute.  Veering off into the personal may be a sign that you’re in angry mode, rather than calm mode.  If necessary, take a break and start over when you can focus on the business end of things.

Identify and echo the other person’s position:  You already know what you think, so by articulating the other position you gain clarification, and perhaps insight, on the subject.  There may be rationale and concerns that you didn’t think of.  Awareness of both will help you create a win-win solution.

Closure:  Eventually you just have to move on.  If it’s necessary to agree to disagree, then fine, that’s a resolution.  Even better, though, is to find a solution that meets the needs and concerns of both parties.  It’s always best when both parties can take ownership of the solution and its implementation.  Don’t forget, sometimes the best resolution is a sincere apology.

You may not be able to head off all irritants and disagreements within your team, but armed with these leadership techniques, you’ll be better able to turn the situation around.

What other techniques have worked for you?

Always act to elicit the best in others, and thereby in yourself.

(Felix Adler)

All this talk about wasting time with unproductive meetings brought to mind one of my favorite books:  Death by Meeting, by Patrick M. Lencioni.

From Publishers Weekly: 

Lencioni’s message comes across loud and clear—meetings should be interactive, not passive, and they should be structured (i.e., issues of immediate importance should be discussed in “weekly tactical” meetings, and issues that will fundamentally affect the business should be addressed in “monthly strategic” meetings).

The book is a quick read.  The ridiculous meeting situations would be funny — if they weren’t so true.  I gave the book as a gift to a friend after hearing him complain about all the time he wasted going to meetings that had no agenda, no focus, were never kept on task, and that he believed he did not even need to attend.  Anyone who has suffered through a meeting will relate to these scenarios all too closely.

Whether or not you can implement some of the changes suggested in the book, you’re sure to get ideas that can impact your approach to, and behavior in, meetings.  With that in mind, remember to lead by example.

MJ has this post on 5 simple tips to becoming a better listener. I remembered this article I read more than a year ago about a study conducted by a group of people on listening skills. If my memory serves me right, there are only less than 5 percent of the people studied considered as good listeners. Are you? The study is fairly accurate because I began to pay attention to how many people are really listening to me when I say something and noticed that most of the time people would not even remember what you told them or would ask the same question twice or even more.

You could start with a simple activity of paying attention to what you say and to whom you said it to, and later on you will realize if the person hasn’t listened to you at all in another conversation.

Anyways, start beefing up your listening capabilities with MJ’s post.

Do you love to hold meetings? Do you love to attend meetings? A lot of leaders makes the mistake of conducting regular meetings too often that team members no longer appreciate them. Generally, team meetings are held once or twice a week with every team member present and discussion points for people’s tasks are covered.

Meetings for everyone is a waste of time

I always get irritated when the manager or team lead always hold regular team meetings and go through each and everyone’s tasks for which I have no concern at the moment or for the duration of the project. Leaders do not realize that meetings should only be held for the person concerned and if necessary, instead of conducting this gathering only to waste team member’s time. The focus of members working on their respective tasks is disrupted and the hours spent on these assemblies add up to the duration of the project.

Why are meetings held?

Usually meetings are held to give feedback and to inform people how the team is progressing in the project. Also, it gives the leader a sense of control of the project especially when everyone on the room reports and gets his approval.

What should be done if regular meetings are not held

Go straight to the person. I would not need everyone else to listen if I need updates from certain people. What I do is to require individual status reports accomplished only for five minutes submitted to me on a daily basis. This gives me visibility of the project and allows me to act on certain concerns immediately without disrupting people who have no concern of the situation. For team accomplishments, I would use the email to communicate to each member of the team the status of the project which is easily and conveniently read by everyone without any disruption of focus. I would assume that every team member is responsible enough to read every email sent especially when it is project related.

When to hold meetings?

I use team meetings for significant project milestone achievements where everyone is given the chance to report on their respective tasks and accomplishments as well as share what they feel is beneficial for the team. This is usually scheduled once a month or one and a half at the most.

Conclusion

Be smart in conducting team meetings and make sure you are able to maximize each person’s time to bring great productivity to your group.

How many team leaders have you worked with who do not know the stuff you are working on? I would think most of these leaders don’t have the technical knowledge to understand what you’re doing and rely solely to what you tell them before hand to create project timelines and deliverables.

Is it important for a leader to be technically competent?

Leaders who do not have the technical knowledge and skills would tell you they don’t need to know the stuff to become a good team leader and help with the success of the team. On the other hand, leaders who possess both the technical knowledge and the passion to continuously learn stuff would tell you otherwise.

I belong to those leaders who have the passion for learning the technical stuff and I am biased towards leaders not having the knowledge I possess. I have been handled by people who do not have the same knowledge and passion that I have and often I feel shortchanged for getting a lower salary than a team leader who only does the plotting of the timeline and follow-ups for deadlines for which I feel are dumb tasks that could be accomplished by people fresh out of college. Please excuse me for being rude but I must say I have no respect for such leaders and being the technical guy that I am, I would always find members of my team and on another team feeling the same way towards their non-technical leader or manager whom they would never be able to rely upon for help on difficult problems and still get all the perks and benefits on simple tasks of disturbing your from time to time for project timelines easily plotted in a spreadsheet or Ms project.

How technically competent should a leader be?

Being fair to all leaders and managers, it would be impossible for them to keep up with the nitty and gritty stuff of the technical guys but a leader should be technically competent enough to point the members of the team in the right direction to solving problems. Fair enough.

Experience In Point

My senior manager talked to me a while back and told me that my technical involvement would become less as I go up the ladder, but it doesn’t mean inferior. He told me that I would still be doing programming tasks around ten percent of the time but often this ten percent of the time shall be used to write the most difficult and hardest codes for the team. True enough, in every project I worked on, the most technically challenging tasks ended up with me and this enabled me to stay sharp and competent with the task that allowed me to bail out the team in difficult times over and over again. This kind of technical competence have helped me earn their trust, confidence and have always looked up to me during difficult times.

Conclusion

A lot of people would not agree with me, but one thing I know is that technically superior people doing all the hard work, feel shortchanged and have little respect for superiors and leaders who comfortably sit on their paychecks for simple task monitoring and timeline plotting whether they show it or not. For leaders, at least give your extra effort for the huge paychecks you receive and try to learn as much as you can, to be of help to your people, and understand the difficult tasks they are facing.

I am reading this post by Tom Foster on delivering either a positive or negative reinforcement to a member of the team.

In a nutshell he describes:

“You smiled. The immediate response to positive reinforcement is a smiling face. Many managers think they are delivering positive reinforcement to their team members, but I see scowls in return. Positive reinforcement invites a smile. If you don’t get a smile, you didn’t connect.” -TF

I attended a leadership training several months ago and I was surprised that the lecturer emphasized the need for conducting surveys amongst team members, to determine whether a leader is doing well because often, leaders are too arrogant and confident to think they are doing their job extremely well and turns out that members flank them in surveys.

The post of Tom Foster is a simple and immediate indication to determine whether the person approves your leadership style or not. I too found myself thinking of situations where managers would lecture me, and I came to realize that I don’t smile when I don’t approve of them and instead just nod my head in return.

Next time you talk to your subordinates, pay attention to their reaction as it says a lot about you.