I mentioned to a friend that I was helping  the people who run  a large organization become a team. His response was, “Isn’t the team at the top an oxymoron or a joke depending on how you look at it?” His comment is validated over and over in research. People who wind up running functions and business units are exceptional and conscientious leaders of their own teams. But what happens when they are all put in a room and one person is technically in charge?

The word is team is often used to describe the group of people who run the staff functions and the business units. Katzenbach’s work clarified that the word is often misused with that group of people as my friend so eloquently pointed out.   The team at the top tends to be a group that exchanges information and humors one another.  However, a lot has happened in the workplace since Katzenbach eloquently addressed the struggles of teams at the top. First and foremost, the level of ambiguity and change in the marketplace is such that the brilliance of one person is not enough. Second, whether it is simple dysfunction or human nature, it is very difficult to get honest feedback by the time you reach a high level of responsibility. Without honest feedback, we humans digress twoard negative behaviors, stupid mistakes, and become our own worst enemies over time.

As a result, doing the work to help the top of the organization practice as a team on a regular basis is of critical importance in driving decision making that takes into account multiple and conflicting variables. But there is another reason that we don’t often think about. Where is that group of individuals likely to get honest, fair, and challenging feedback. You got it. The only place that the team at the top is likely to get helpful developmental feedback is from each other. Without feedback, we humans regress into our own unique and creative self deception traps.  Top leaders need to maintain the ability to get over themselves regularly.  What happens when top leaders lose the ability to get over themselves? Oh my. . .

Consider the notion that women are inferior to men in only one key skill for success and happiness.  Unfortunately, this skill is also critical to leveraging hard work and intelligence.  I call this skill taking  out the “mental garbage”.  The majority of us are so used to our own unique mental garbage that we don’t even consciously hear that negative inner voice.  What mental garbage in the form of thoughts are you carrying around with you? “Mental garbage” includes thoughts that are self-critical, unpleasant, unproductive, and simply need to go to the dump.  Successful and unsuccessful women feed themselves thousands of pieces of mental garbage hourly.  Here are a few examples:

• Somebody smarter would have said ______
• I am lucky to be in this role.
• Did that really go allright? ( one of my personal top five pieces of garbage)

There is no fix for this in the external world.  We as women have more opportunity than we are taking.  The fix is to step up and take charge of the story line between your ears.  Take out the garbage, curate the storyline, and become the hero of your own life.  The first action step on this longer journey is to become aware of your top five garbage thoughts.  You will find that you are not that original in your thinking.  Cognitive psychology has proven that our thoughts are incredibly repetitive especially the garbage.  You and the rest of us are using the same 5-7 thoughts to discount ourselves daily.  Get some new material this week!

Are you choosing to opt out in small, medium, and large ways everyday or are you bringing it? Opting out looks like choosing not to speak up, not to think too hard, not to ask hard questions, not push too hard etc.  Lots of really nice and talented people opt out everyday. In contrast, other people choose to “bring it” every day.   The bring it crowd is  choosing  to be themselves fully.  They  hold big intentions, raise their voices, manage their mindset on a daily basis, challenge the status quo with skill, and think really hard about how to make things better. 

The choice to “bring it” versus opt out in big and small ways everyday is a fundamental choice that is most relevant to women in my generation.  As Maddy Dychwald so eloquently spells out in her text entitled Influence; we have the security and the independence but we are not cultivating the level of influence that will allow us to be heard as women both individually and collectively.  We as women  will not achieve the significant level of influence that we are capable of as a force of society without “bringing it”. 

There are three action steps required for women to “bring it”.  The first one is to hold an intention to do something big and bold as defined by you.  The second is to take out your mental garbage.  And the third is to take a big gulp and raise your voice.  Three future blogs will focus on each step individually. 

Betty Ford was quoted as saying, “If we have to go to the White House, I have to go as myself.  It is too late for me to change my pattern.”   Betty chose to “bring it” and literally changed the world in important ways.  What will you choose today?

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most extraordinary executives of the modern era.  But we don’t talk about her in those terms.  We talk about her in tribute as if we are talking about a saint.  She is larger than life and iconic.  It seems almost demeaning to call Oprah an extraordinary executive who is running a highly effective organization.   

When we step out of the end of  the  Oprah Show hoopla, how do we make sense of an African American woman who moves to Chicago to do a local talk show and 25 years later emerges as the head of her own network?   The true art of the executive is the building of an organization.  What if the real O in Oprah is the organization that she has built? 

The goal of the executive is to build an organization capable of turning out extraordinary results consistently.  Perhaps her legendary empathy and ability to connect with the audience is only half the story.  Would Oprah’s vast success have been possible without this executive ability to build and manage a productive organization?

Now I must come clean.  I have never been a big fan of the Oprah Winfrey show.  I am not in the demo and have always been rather neutral.  However, I have become addicted to the Oprah Behind the Scenes show airing on, you guessed it, the OWN network.   Now, I know that Oprah Behind the Scenes is carefully produced and edited such that it is compelling.  However, it does give us a look at this executive side of Oprah and a few clues regarding how she has been successful at building an effective organization.    

Peter Drucker, the eminent management scholar, explained that every effective executive  followed eight simple practices.  He minimized the effects of personality, charisma, and magic and presented executive effectiveness as a skill that could be learned.  How does the Oprah that we see  “behind the scenes” measure up in terms of Drucker’s eight practices?

 Each of Drucker’s eight practices have been demonstrated in one form or another over the course of the show.   However, one of Drucker’s practices has been consistently demonstrated in each episode. Effective executives run productive meetings.     

 How does a meeting with Oprah work? What does it look like?   First, the level of thinking and focus of the team increases when Oprah enters the meeting.  Everyone sits up a little straighter and becomes more attentive non-verbally.  Second, people respectfully disagree and she will listen. Oprah asks more questions than anyone else in the meeting.  She challenges her staff and is willing to come around when she is wrong.   Oprah will change her view if her staff can convince her that she is wrong.  Oprah runs productive, focused meetings with clear goals every single time. 

 Oprah Winfrey is an icon.  Her legendary ability to connect and courageous honesty have changed the world. Her personal story and individual talent and drive are extraordinary.  She has not accomplished her feats of greatness alone.   It is also fair to say that her impact has been amplified by the productive organization that Harpo has become over the years.

Think about the last time someone said I have some feedback for you.  What was your emotional reaction? Emotional reactions fall into one of four categories: mad, sad, glad, or afraid.  What was your emotional reaction? If the honest truth is that your emotional reaction was unadulterated gladness, stop reading now.  But if like most of us, the emotional reaction was bit less positive, keep reading. 

I notice the non-verbals as my clients recount feedback conversations.  Here is a very common behavior pattern.  As they say they appreciate the feedback from Mr. X, the non-verbals are usually similar to what you would see as someone discusses a route canal or a colonoscopy.  I am starting a movement to replace feedback sessions with learning conversations. Here is how a learning conversation works:

1.  Positive and negative dimensions of performance are discussed in balance.  This is hard for all of us.  There is a natural human cognitive error.  We tend to see things as overwhelmingly positive or negative in regard to the performance of ourselves and others.  Reality is always grounded somewhere between perfect and horrible. 

2.  Learning conversations take place regularly and are not specially scheduled.  The lead in can be something like do you want to know what I think? Think of the difference between the regular local news versus President Obama breaking in to tell us Osama Bin Laden was dead.  Less drama makes for a learning conversation. 

3.  Both parties learn something.  It is not a one way deal.  If only one person is learning or attacked, that is feedback not a learning conversation.  There is an exploratory, curious tone.  That sounds esoteric, but it is not.  How many questions were asked versus declarative statements made.  If they were a written transcript, a learning conversation would have at least 10 question marks. 

So, go have a learning conversation today.  You may want to try it at home too.

How would your rate your ability to make the right decisions? The proper term in management psychology is judgement.  Just how good do you think your judgment is? What makes some individuals have good judgment while some of us are marginal at best? The other interesting fact is that less than  five percent of us view ourselves as having questionable judgment.  The vast majority of us would describe our judgment as good to excellent.  The Lake Wobegon Effect is constantly and powerfully at work as we assess ourselves.   

There are  many  practical problems with our myopic views of ourselves. These practical problems keep myself and many others very busy.  In short, our myopic views create a great deal of misery, chaos, and bad decisions.  But that is another blog. 

The goal of this blog is to encourage a very practical test called the six month test.  What is the six month test? Pick a decision that you must finalize this week.  Make the call.  Create an exhaustive list of every single positive and negative consequence of that decision.  Put the list away.  Make notes on your calendar to pull the the list exactly one month from now, three months from now, and six months from now.  Compare what actually happened with your predictions.  Then, ask yourself how good is my judgment?

The idea that more diversity in the room makes for better decisions is widely accepted.  People from diverse backgrounds, genders, race, and nationalities bring different perspectives to bear on key issues.  Not to mention the fact that the customer bases of most businesses are becoming more diverse.  So, imagine that you have been successful in bringing people from diverse backgrounds into a room to work a key issue.  What do you do if nothing constructive seems to happen by magic? What if the discussion is stalled because the same two people talk too much and the rest of the diverse individuals remain silent?

Translating diverse viewpoints into more insightful discussions and better decisions does not happen naturally.  The magic of diverse viewpoints often takes a bit of practice and solid technique on the part of a leader.  But, what doesn’t take a bit of practice and solid technique? I have five suggestions for translating diverse viewpoints into constructive discussions:

• Give all parties a heads up regarding the topics in the meeting.  Ask people to type out their general reactions and comments in reponse to specific questions on a blog or wiki prior to the meeting.  Then, use the content from the blog or wiki to stimulate discussion.
• Be clear that your intent is to look at the issue from multiple perspectives.  As a result, the meeting is not successful if everyone agrees and sings kumbayah.  Set a clear expectation that you really do want diverse input.
• Speak with the individuals who are going to be in the meeting who have the most authority.  I am talking about the 2 or 3 people with the highest rank on the organization chart.  These folks need to be on board with the strategy or it won’t work.
• Challenge everyone in the meeting to ask a question before responding to anything that they happen to disagree with.  You can disagree but you ask a question first is the rule.  The magic of this rule is that it tells people how to disagree with colleagues. 
• Find some way to lighten up the meeting and make it fun.  Don’t underestimate the power of this one.  It may be with a cartoon.  Having food in a meeting can make a real difference as well.  Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to enjoy a tootsie pop without loosening up a bit? You get the idea. 

Appreciative inquiry or AI represents  the impact of the postitive psychology movement on organizational change.  The principle is simple.  You can make needed organizational changes  more effectively by focusing on the existing strengths, competencies, or high points in the organization’s functioning rather than diagnosing the problems.  Then,  the strengths are used to address the negatives. 

Why is AI a novel idea? We have ingrained habits of fixing problems by focusing on them.  Fixing problems by focusing on them is very effective if we are talking about concrete objects like air conditioners, faucets, and flat tires. Less concrete things like human social systems which are made of human beings have more variance and complexity than faucets and flat tires.   AI is  simply lighting a candle as oppossed to cursing the darkness.  AI or appreciative inquiry, despite the less than approachable name, is worthy of consideration as a management tool. 

So, how could a manager actually use this idea today.  What follows is one of several thousand possibilities.  Imagine that you have a bickering team that can’t agree on anything.  A good AI line of thinking could go something like this.  How is it that this team maintains such a high level of energy? What might this team be like if they really focused on developing effective energy and intensity toward task completion.  You get the picture.  Give it a try.  You may even  find it helpful in your personal life.

We all know the differences between a tailored suit and a standard manufactured size 10 or 44 long.  Leadership development programs are very similar.  They can be tailored or off the shelf.  Just like suits, there are many cases in which the manufactured off the shelf program will be just fine. 

At the risk of being overly simplistic, off the shelf solutions work quite well for individuals and teams if the the leadership development needs are clear and the off the shelf program addresses very specific needs.  It is when we start thinking about leadership development at the enterprise level that things get a bit more complicated.  Off the shelf tends to fail at the broad level.  The practical tip here is if you are seeing leadership development as part of the longer term shaping of your organization’s culture,  go customized.  There are three primary considerations in developing a customized program: 1.  How do leaders develop in their real jobs? What is already working? 2.  What learning styles are typical of your population? How much variance  in learning style do you have in your population? 3.  How are your leadership development needs connected to the competitive and strategic challenges in your business right now?

The answers to those three questions provide a compass for the general direction of creating a leadership development program that is not just the right thing to do.  It becomes a part of your competitive advantage in the marketplace.  If you would like to discuss further,  email karissa@karissathacker.com to discuss your program.

I am pleased to offer new tools techniques and tips through the new and improved www.karissathacker.com.   Go check it out.  Are you trying to figure out how to meet your goals at work this year? Check out the high impact time managment tools on free  resources.  Ever wonder how coaching could help you? Check out the services page. Do you ever wonder why your boss acts the way he or she does? How about your colleagues.  Check out  the video on managment psychology.   Best wishes for a proseperous and purposeful work life in 2011.