Are you hanging on to a familiar way of doing your work or leading your team because it’s comfortable? If it’s been a year or more since you experienced a significant change for yourself or your team, you might be missing out on great opportunities to build morale, build your career, and enjoy your work. Managing change is critical for your success—too much change, too quickly creates instability. But resisting natural, healthy change will prevent growth and stagnate your team.

Resisting Natural Change

Off the east coast of North Carolina and Virginia, a set of barrier islands known as the Outer Banks stretches over a couple hundred miles, guarding the inner sound from the worst of Atlantic storms. On a recent visit, our brother-in-law Steve, who’s visited these beaches and dunes for decades, took me on a driving tour and pointed out some changes he’s seen over the years.

He pointed across the road at a five-foot rise of sand you could walk across in a few steps. “To climb that dune, you used to have to work at it and scramble on all fours. It was huge.” We drove a little further and earth-moving equipment worked to keep blown sand from obliterating the narrow strip of asphalt road as the wind seemed to fight to reclaim and reshape the island.

Then he showed me the Oregon Inlet where private deep-sea fishing boats enter and leave the sound. “In the early 1800s the inlets all closed up and there weren’t’ any islands at all. It was a straight stretch of sand. Then, in 1846, a hurricane carved out the inlet. These days, sand keeps filling it in, and they have to dredge it out regularly so the fishing boats can get in and out.”

The Outer Banks are a land of change. And it takes an incredible amount of work to prevent that change. And some day, given a big enough storm, the change will probably happen anyway.

The visit reminded me of the mountain west where I grew up. In the mountains, lodgepole pine forests evolved to burn periodically. Quick burns opened the forest floor to new plants, refreshed the soil, helped cones to disperse seeds, and prevented disease or insect infestations. Decades of fire prevention along with climate change, created huge, intense burns and stands of diseased dead trees. Resisting that natural change came at an enormous cost.

Resisting Business Change

You’re certainly familiar with companies like Blockbuster and Kodak who resisted change and faced extinction. It’s easy to shake your head and wonder how those leaders could have let that happen.

But the CrowdStrike bug that crashed Windows PCs, snarled airlines, and interfered with hospitals’ ability to access patient records had a similar cause. Microsoft tried to shift its approach to security two decades ago, but regulators prevented them from doing so.

Why?

Because the software giant had always allowed open access to their computers’ kernel and some companies had built their entire business model on that access. (Access that Apple and Linux have never allowed.)

When Microsoft tried to do what Apple and Linux have done, the companies who relied on kernel access went to regulators who ruled in favor of the status quo, rather than allowing developing technology to address the situation. And that decision created the conditions that allowed the CrowdStrike crash to happen. (For a full analysis, check out Ben Thompson on Stratechery: Crashes and Competition.)

Again, it’s easy to point the finger at regulators who get stuck in time and cling to the way things are.

But intentional change isn’t easy.

Build Your Ability to Lead Change

In our research for Courageous Cultures, 67% of respondents reported that their manager was stuck in “that’s the way we’ve always done it” thinking.

And you don’t have to look very hard to find places you might be stuck. I’ve been guilty of these at times:

• Holding on to a team member that you should promote or give other opportunities outside your team—because you don’t know what you’d do without them.
• Hanging on to team member that you really should move off the team—because then you’d have to find someone new and train them.
• Continuing the stale team-building activity everyone loved five years ago—because it always worked before.
• Refusing to decide—because going one way or the other will take effort.
• Resisting new ideas from team members—because hearing them out might mean you don’t have the answers you thought you did or will require you to act.
• Hoping against all evidence that the recent changes you’ve experienced will “go back to normal” – because acknowledging the change will require energy and effort to explore a new path forward.

But ignoring or resisting these moments of natural change won’t work forever.

The status quo’s comfort and ease are illusions. If you don’t invest in managing change, the changes will happen to you.

That team member will leave. Or they’ll stay and everyone else will leave.

Your credibility suffers. Your career lags. And you’re stuck frantically trying to do what used to work, working harder, with more stress, and missing out on what’s possible.

Two Questions to Find the Flow and Know What’s Next

One of the easiest ways to lean into natural change is to ask yourself this question:

What are you up to?

As a team leader, manager, or executive—what are you getting up to?

• Is there a problem you’re trying to solve?
• Are you helping your team to grow?
• An opportunity to explore?
• Some improvement or process you’re implementing?
• What are you learning?

When you’re up to something, you’re managing change. You can’t help it. You’re moving, flowing, and growing. Once you’re up to something, you can start managing change:

• Challenge yourself and your team to answer strategic or these UGLY questions to uncover possibilities:
• Ask your team for their I.D.E.A.s.
• Consider competing values and priorities.
• Make decisions about what matters most.

When you get up to something, you collaborate with natural change and create the future, rather than have it happen to you.

A second question you can ask yourself to find the flow of natural change is:

What’s happening in my industry?

No matter what kind of work you do, there’s something new to learn. Technology changes. Trends shift. Someone somewhere is innovating. And it’s easier than ever to learn what’s happening.

You might not apply what you learn immediately. Changes in the business environment, shifting tastes, or new AI applications may not affect your work tomorrow (though they could).

But knowing what’s happening and being informed will give you the perspective to be better at your work and be a better leader for your team.

What if My Boss Isn’t Managing Change and Doesn’t Want To?

If you want to get up to something or start learning more about what’s happening in your industry, but you worry that your boss just wants you to “focus on doing what needs to be done,” there are two possibilities:

You need better results.

We’ve worked with many leaders who were eager to get up to something new, but weren’t succeeding at their current work. You’ll be much more influential in selling a new idea or approach if your current work is solid. Master that, then build on your success.

You’re doing well and your manager fears change.

If you can objectively show your success, but your manager still wants you to limit your focus to doing what you’re asked, they might be the one hanging on to what they know.

In this case, keep doing your work well—and get up to something anyhow. You’ll have opportunities—the world needs more thoughtful, innovative problem solvers than ever. “Just shut up and do your work” isn’t a path to the future. What you learn will serve you and your team.

And you don’t need permission to learn.

Your Turn

Managing change is a critical leadership skill. Sticking with what’s familiar feels safe and comfortable, but change is inevitable. You can lean into change and become a more innovative, creative, and adaptable leader by taking initiative to move and actively learning.

How about you? We’d love to know one of your favorite ways for managing change and leaning into the future.

And if you want to help your team or organization drive innovation and improve results:

The post Managing Change: How to Cultivate Forward Thinking Leadership appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Hi Karin, “I attended your Courageous Cultures, how to Read Courageous Cultures with your team book club, and we loved it. We are using the book and we’re reading it. The good news is we’re getting SO MANY IDEAS.  I continue to respond with regard (with gratitude, information, and an invitation) to the ideas I receive. The team knows I want their ideas, so they keep bringing me more. Now I have too many ideas. I don’t want to crush team innovation, but I can’t possibly use them all.

How do I respond and SAVE THE IDEAS for later? #AskingForaFriend

The Challenge of Abundance: Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time

First let me say, GREAT JOB! You’re doing a lot of things right when it comes to fostering psychological safety and encouraging team innovation.

I would start by ensuring that everyone understands your vision and your MIT priorities. The more clear people are about where you need a great idea, the more remarkable, usable ideas you’ll receive.

This is the essence of my TEDx Talk: How to Help Your Team Bring You Remarkable, Usable Ideas

The best innovation comes from a combination of strategic clarity and psychological safety.  See our article in Smartbrief on Leadership: Safety First, Clarity Next: The Secret Formula For Better Workplace Innovation.

The Idea Garden: A Solution for Sustainable Team Innovation

Even with strategic clarity, you’re still going to get some great ideas you don’t want to lose, or that might be useful to consider as your strategy evolves.

Enter the “Idea Garden,” an innovative approach to team collaboration that acts as a repository for creativity. Here’s how it works:

• A Place for Every Idea: In this garden, no idea is too small or too wild. It’s a space where every seed of thought is valued and preserved, ensuring that nothing is lost in the hustle of immediate priorities.
• Accessible and Organized: Using project management software, this garden is not a wild thicket but an organized oasis. Ideas are cataloged, making it easy to revisit and nurture them when the time is ripe.
• Inspired Team Innovation: It’s a space where members not only pitch their ideas but also appreciate the creativity of their peers.

Why Team Innovation Matters More Than Ever

Here are five reasons why team innovation is so important.

1. Ensures No Idea Is Left Behind: In the rush of deadlines and deliverables, brilliant ideas can slip through the cracks. The idea garden ensures that doesn’t happen.
2. Encourages Continuous Engagement: Knowing that their ideas are valued and preserved, team members are more likely to continue contributing enthusiastically.
3. Fosters a Culture of Innovation: By institutionalizing the practice of saving and revisiting ideas, you create an environment where innovation is not just encouraged but expected.
4. Improves Project Management: With ideas organized and accessible, integrating them into future projects becomes seamless.
5. Strengthens Team Bonding: Collaborating on nurturing ideas strengthens relationships and builds a sense of shared purpose.

Cultivating creative team collaboration in an idea garden helps you manage an abundance of ideas. It’s a strategy that not only saves ideas for later but enriches the soil of creativity from which future innovations will sprout. So, next time your team’s creativity feels like a wild garden, remember: with the right approach, you can turn it into a well-tended haven of remarkable ideas.

The post How to Inspire Better Team Innovation: Cultivating an Idea Garden appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

One of the real joys of being authors is hearing from leadership book clubs and teams who are reading our books together.

We love learning about what’s resonating, and most importantly, how teams are applying what they’re reading as they grow leaders and encourage courage and innovation.

And, you don’t get better at leadership or building culture just by reading a book. You’ve got to do something with what you read. We write all of our books so the techniques are easy to apply. We also make it easy for teams to read together and discuss what they’ve learned.

5 Ways to Improve Your ROI of Reading Courageous Cultures With Your Team

So if you’re considering reading Courageous Cultures with your team or leadership book club, here are some ways to spark deeper reflection, better conversation, and most importantly, action. You can also download (or listen to) the first chapter and the foreword from Amy Edmondson.

1. Download the Executive Strategy Guide

The Courageous Cultures Executive Strategy Guide is a free fillable PDF workbook where you will find the First Tracks templates, additional discussion questions to engage your team or leadership book club, and more detail about the tools, best practices, and approaches you can use to build a Courageous Culture in your organization.

You will find the guide here (scroll to the bottom of the page at this link.)

2. Leverage the “First Tracks” Tools and Conversation Starters

As your team or leadership book club reads Courageous Cultures, you will likely encounter ideas and techniques that feel like you’re in unchartered territory. If you’re a skier, it might feel like you’ve ridden the first lift up the mountain after a great fresh night of show and you get to make the first tracks in the deep powder.

Or perhaps you had a similar feeling as a child jumping in the wet sand and making prints for your friends to follow. Beginning in chapter 5, we conclude each chapter with a “First Tracks” exercise. These work great for book group conversation starters.

For example, chapter 5’s First Tracks exercise is a Courage Map to reflect on your own moments of courage. You could have each person in your leadership book club or team complete their map and come ready to discuss the questions in the guide. Questions like: “As a leader today, where would it be helpful to show up more like this or with these values?”

3. Complete and Discuss the Courageous Leadership Reflections Assessment

One of the tools our clients tell us is useful as they read and discuss Courageous Cultures self-assessment. You can do this at the beginning, and then again at the end of your book group discussion.

4. Own the U.G.L.Y. and/or Share an I.D.E.A.

Over the last few years, we have been using our I.D.E.A. Incubator process with teams all over the world to apply the tools to strategic business challenges and come up with practical, remarkable, usable ideas.

We would love to come work with you in this way. You can learn more about our Courageous Cultures strategic team innovation programs here. 

And, in the meantime, you can also do this yourself. You can download our FREE I.D.E.A. Incubator Guide which guides you through the process.

5. Experiment with Practical Ways to Be More Daring

You can also have your leadership book group pick an experiment from these Practical Ways to Be More Daring.

6. Supplement Your Conversation with Multi-Media Discussions

In any team or leadership book club, you’re going to have people who absorb information in different ways. Courageous Cultures is available on Audible (read by us). You might also consider including some supplemental videos like my recent TEDx Talk: The Secret to Getting Remarkable Ideas You Can Actually Use which contain new insights since the book was first published.  You might even invite each member of your leadership book club to find one fun way to share a key insight from the book.

A few ideas of how your team can share a big takeaway:

• A short fun video highlighting a key point
• Have each member bring an object to your meeting that represents something they learned
• Invite people to draw a picture of a Courageous Culture
• Or, if you want to get fancy, like this team at Amazon, use Legos
• Divide your leadership book club into smaller groups and each group teaches back a main point
• Have your team share images of where they’re reading Courageous Cultures.

7. Watch the Recording of our Courageous Cultures Book Group Event.

• Learn about the research that grounds Courageous Cultures and what we’ve learned applying these techniques with teams over the last few years.
• Explore a few of our favorite Courageous Cultures tools and how you can apply them with your leadership book group or team.

If you missed our Leadership Book Club Event: How To Read Courageous Cultures with your Team – you can watch it here now. (or click on the image below).

The post Leadership Book Club: How to Read Courageous Cultures With Your Team appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Do you have someone on your team who doesn’t speak up in meetings…then shares all their excellent ideas and important perspectives after the fact?

“I have this guy on my team, let’s call him Joe. Joe is SO SMART, and there’s a problem. We’ll be in a meeting and he’ll just sit there quietly, not really saying anything… the meeting will end, and we’ll be walking out of the meeting and then he shares all the great ideas, his great perspective, and all the information that we really needed to talk about in the meeting. What should I do? How can I help Joe?” #askingforafriend

Joe is what we call in our book, Courageous Cultures, a SILENT PONDEROUS type. He’s got ideas but he doesn’t speak up in meetings. He’s not bringing his voice to the team as he could and probably should, results suffer and he’s potentially holding back his career

What You Should Know About the Silent Ponderous Type Who Doesn’t Speak Up in Meetings

• They likely have great ideas but and can get frustrated with other people’s wacky ideas. They spend time thinking through their ideas to articulate them just right, and sometimes by the time they’re ready to share, the conversation has moved on.
• Often they need time to think and get clear on their ideas before they speak up in meetings. They don’t do well when put on the spot.
• There’s a good chance they’re concerned their ideas aren’t 100% accurate and they need permission to explore ideas openly.

Practical Tips to Help Your Team Member Speak Up in Meetings

More Thoughts on Helping Joe Get Better Speaking Up in Meetings

Joe – might be right on the verge of a career breakthrough and he’s holding himself back by not speaking up in meetings. It’s hard to notice his innovative thinking if he stays silent. Not only can you help your team grow and get better results by helping Joe speak up, but you’ll also help his career.

1. Be curious with Joe about what’s going on.

If he’s consistently sharing thoughts with you after a meeting, ask him why, and really listen. The possibilities are extensive. As one LinkedIn follower shared, he might even be neurodivergent and could use some additional understanding and support.

2. Explain why his voice matters.

Make sure he feels like a valued member of the team by letting him know that his ideas are important and that speaking up in meetings will make a difference. Be sure he understands that it’s not just his input that matters, but the conversation with other team members to expand his thinking that leads to deeper collaboration and ultimately better results.

3. Help Joe prepare for the next meeting.

Give him the agenda a day or two in advance and ask him to think about and prep what he wants to share. Not only will this help him prepare, but he’ll also take note of your interest and enthusiasm around his participation.

Another important element of this is helping him consider who will be in the meeting and what might be on their hearts and minds. Have him write down his most important points, and anticipate questions he might be able to answer. Giving him a concrete process to prepare can go a long way in increasing confidence and competence.

4. Debrief and help him learn the process so he can do it himself.

Check in with him after the next meeting, and debrief how the preparation process worked for him. Celebrate and recognize his contributions, and encourage him to continue to refine and use that process on his own.

Your turn.

What would you add? How would you encourage Joe to feel confident and competent in sharing his ideas in the next meeting?

Check out these related articles:

How to Get Your Coworkers to Embrace Your Great Idea (Video)

Share Your Ideas: Practical Ways to Ensure Your Voice is Heard

Speak-up Culture: How to Encourage More (and Better) Ideas

The post The Silent Ponderous Type: How to Help Your Team Member Speak Up in Meetings appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

It’s a strange and ironic phenomenon. Despite all the change going on, have you noticed your team sometimes gets stuck in a rut of uninspiring routines?

It’s easy to hunker down and do things the old way, particularly when so much else is changing. But what if the old habits, make it even more tricky to thrive in the midst of change?

For example, your tried and true approach to one-on-ones may feel comfortable and familiar… after all, that’s one less thing to think about. But, is it giving your team what they need most, now?

Or, your pivot to virtual sales calls, worked well when your customers were all working from home. Sure, they’re more efficient, but what are your customers yearning for now?

In our research for Courageous Cultures, 67% said their manager operates under the notion “this is the way we’ve always done it.” And it’s not just managers who can get stuck in a rut. It’s easier for your team to keep thinking and doing things the way that’s worked before.

If you want your team to thrive in the midst of all this change, ask some courageous questions to show up just a bit more curious about potential ruts, and how to get out of them.

Courageous questions are specific, vulnerable questions that get right to the root of the matter. Courageous questions help eliminate FOSU (fear of speaking up) and create the psychological safety your employees need to speak up and ask for what they need.

7 Courageous Questions Help Your Team Get Unstuck

1. Is there any aspect of your work where you feel stuck in a rut? What do you wish you could do instead?
2. What should we say “no” to, in order to free up time to focus on our most strategic priorities? 
3. If you could design our staff meeting from scratch, what would you do differently?
4. What are we spending a lot of time on (e.g. reports, communication, analysis) that no one would miss if we stopped?
5. How do you think we could make things a bit more fun around here? What are one or two specific ideas to make that happen?
6. What’s one strength or talent you feel is being underutilized in your work? What ideas do you have for how we could better leverage that strength?
7. What’s one suggestion you have for making this coming year remarkable? What must we do differently?

One way to get started is to share this article at an upcoming team meeting. Invite team members to consider which of these questions they think are most important to answer. Of course, you can also invite them to ask their own “let’s get out of a rut” courageous questions as well.

For example, “What’s the most important question we should be asking ourselves right now? Why?”

Of course, asking questions is only the beginning. Be sure to “Respond with Regard” and help the team identify one or two doable I.D.E.A.s (Interesting, Doable, Engaging,Actions) that would make the biggest impact.

More Questions to Inspire Your Team Toward High Performance

How to Build a High-Performing Team: Ten Vital Conversations

The post Stuck in a Rut? 7 Questions to Inspire New Thinking on Your Team appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

New ideas have a life cycle. Many senior leaders jump in to help their teams refine, grow, or prune an idea before they’re ready – and as a result, their teams can’t innovate at all.

Idea Killer?

I have a confession to make.

I’ve been an idea-killer.

It’s not that I don’t want new ideas, solutions, and innovation. I didn’t callously shout “that’s not how we do it!” No, my problem was different.

It came from trying to help in the wrong way at the wrong time. Someone would bring me an idea and I’d jump in with all the possibilities. The three distinct problems we’d need to solve. How we had similar solutions already in place. Most of the time, that was the end of the idea.

And I know I’m not alone. Many leaders and managers, in their desire to be helpful, show off their vast knowledge, or shortcut to a faster solution, will give quick answers when team members ponder “what-ifs.” I’ve done this more times than I care to admit.

How Well-Meaning Leaders Extinguish Ideas When Teams Can’t Innovate

As we work with leadership teams to help them build a Courageous Culture filled with teams of innovators, problem-solvers, and customer advocates, we’ll often hear that their teams won’t solve problems on their own and lack creativity.

When you watch what happens in these organizations, people will often have ideas—and then senior leaders swarm that seedling of an idea and pick it apart, tell the team what they’d missed, and what’s already happening. The swarm of input crushes the idea and spirit behind it before the team can learn more or experience the joy of innovation.

And I get it—from an experienced leadership perspective, you want to help. There are five different perspectives you’ve learned through your experience that are relevant and that the team hasn’t considered. You can see the potential in version 3.0 of their idea, and you jump to that, asking if they’ve considered incorporating x, y, and z. You’re also sensitive to time—after all time is money and if you can shorten the learning curve and get to a better idea, faster, doesn’t it make sense to get there as quickly as possible?

Not necessarily.

Or at least, not now.

When Your Team Can’t Innovate—Pay Attention to Idea Life-Cycle

When your team’s new ideas meet with a flurry of input, criticism, or overwhelming additions, they can’t innovate. The new idea drowns before it can grow. And people give up—it’s just not worth it to try.

Think of ideas like an apple tree. When the seed first sprouts, that tiny seedling needs enough room to grow, put out a few leaves, and get some roots down to anchor it in the soil. It wouldn’t make sense for you to prune or shape a seedling or look for apples. It’s not ready yet.

Give that tiny seedling time to grow, however, and it will develop strength as it faces wind and rain. Eventually, it will be big enough and strong enough that you can shape it and prune it—and doing so will make it healthier and help it produce more apples.

Nurture the Birth of Ideas

Your team and their ideas have a similar life cycle.

When your team can’t innovate, pay attention to what happens in the early stages of ideation. Is there room to explore and grow an idea? Can they experiment and try ideas at a small scale to see what works, what they hadn’t considered, and how to get the information they need to contribute better solutions? To make mistakes that won’t cripple the business, but that help people learn and grow?

Real learning grasps the essential elements, understands “what happens if,” makes new connections, finds new solutions, and creates new visions. Be careful not to squelch creativity and risk-taking by trying to help too much or jumping ahead too soon.

Recently I interviewed Olankunle Soriyan, author of A Love Affair with Failure, and he captured this tendency to paralyze ourselves or our teams by focusing on perfection before we’re in motion. “If you wait to release an iPhone 14 and all the features it has today, you’ll never release the first edition.”

“If you wait to release an iPhone 14 and all the features it has today, you’ll never release the first edition.”

-Olankunle Soriyan, A Love Affair with Failure

How to Help When Your Team Can’t Innovate

Here are three strategies to help nurture new ideas and people who are learning how to innovate:

• Provide context and clear criteria

When someone on your team has an idea, they likely are thinking only of what the world looks like from their perspective. Help them grow and make it more likely their idea can have a meaningful impact by sharing context and clear criteria. What is happening in the organization, the environment, or the industry that they need to be aware of? What are the boundaries within which they can play as they implement their idea? Where do you or the organization most need a good idea?

One of the most powerful ways to equip your team with criteria to help them contribute meaningful ideas is with our I.D.E.A. model. What makes an idea interesting? Doable? Engaging to stakeholders? And what are the next specific actions they recommend?

Learn more about the I.D.E.A. model here.

• Respond with Regard

How you react to incomplete, unusable, or half-thought-through ideas has a huge effect on whether you’ll ever get useful ideas. When your team can’t innovate, pay attention to your response to the ideas you hear.

Start with gratitude for the act of contributing. For example: “Thank you for thinking about how we can improve in this area.” Note: You are NOT thanking them for their specific idea or even telling them it’s a good idea. Celebrate their effort.

Next, add information – this might be additional criteria, context, or even how their the idea is already in use. Give them enough information that they can continue exploring, growing, and making connections, but not enough to drown them. (Think of that apple tree seedling – it needs water to grow, but not too much.) If their idea can’t work right now, this is the time to let them know why.

Finally, invite them to continue thinking, contributing, and to refine this idea. This is critical to give people the same chance to learn and grow that made you the expert you are today. As they gain experience and think through their concepts, they’ll gain strength and be ready for the pruning and shaping stage of innovation.

Here’s more on how to: Respond with Regard

• Reward Failure

This may sound strange, but let’s think about the concept of rewarding failure for a moment.

If your people take a risk, but you only reward the risks that succeed, what will happen?

People will naturally stop taking risks.

By their very nature, risks mean uncertainty of success. By only rewarding the risks that work out as hoped, you communicate that you don’t actually want creativity and innovation; you communicate that you’re only interested in a “sure thing.”

Avoiding loss is human nature. Most people in your organization will therefore choose to do nothing, rather than risk your censure for a creative idea that doesn’t work.

The solution to this problem is to reward behaviors and attempts. Some organizations take this concept to a grand conclusion and annually give an award for “The best idea that didn’t work.” Others describe every new initiative as “an experiment” – a term that clearly communicates the desire to learn from the effort and acknowledges the reality that it may or may not work out as intended.

Your Turn

When your team can’t innovate, but you really want new ideas, make it safe to experiment and take risks. Avoid the temptation to swarm a new idea with too many corrections and criticisms. When you celebrate creative behaviors, attempts, and even failures, you make it OK for the effort to not work and for everyone to learn something along the way—and you’re that much closer to the game-changing ideas you do need!

I’d love to hear from you: what’s your most effective way to help new ideas thrive?

The post Why Your Team Can’t Innovate When You Want Ideas and Try to Help appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Helping your team make change work is tricky. It’s easy to talk about empowerment, taking appropriate risks, or showing empathy, but it’s quite another to translate those concepts into practical daily actions.

In today’s Asking for a Friend, I  share a very practical technique you can use to help your team identify the behaviors that will have the biggest impact.

This exercise works well for several reasons. First, it starts by giving everyone a chance to really consider the behaviors for themselves. This ensures everyone is thinking about it and gives your more introverted team members a moment to think before participating in the group conversations.

Then, the group conversation helps to quickly general conversation at a very practical level about what the team can actually do. The dialogue is always so rich.

And finally, the prioritization process helps to identify specific next steps the team can agree on. The most important thing to remember here is to keep the list practical and short.

Isolate a few key behaviors that are observable. The best way to make change work is one behavior at a time.

Helping the team to (1) understand what behaviors matter most

(2) and picking a few to practice consistently can make all the difference.

Use this Practical Technique to Help Your Team Make Change Work

Related articles to help your team navigate change and uncertainty.

How to build a strong team vision

How to build a high-performing team, 10 vital conversations

Leading through change: Inspect what you expect (with curiosity and compassion)

How to help your team navigate their concerns about culture change

Your Turn.

What would you add? What are your best practices to help your team make change work at a behavioral level?

The post Make Change Work: How to Translate Your Vision to Practical Behaviors (Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Everyone’s On Board, and We’re Still Struggling!

Steve, the CEO of an energy company, had thrown every ounce of energy into launching their new strategic product.

He was counting on this game-changing offering to help their company be stickier to customers in an increasingly commoditized industry. He also hoped it would attract new customers away from their competitors.

Steve had done so many things right to create clarity. He ensured employees at every level understood WHY the new product was so mission-critical to their long-term future.

His 5×5 communication strategy was more like 30×30. Everyone in every corner of the company knew the goals and their specific mission-critical behaviors to achieve them.

Steve had dedicated leaders whom he trusted leading through change nearly full-time. He had committed significant financial resources to see it through. People cared. They were working hard on bringing the product to market. They knew what they were supposed to do, and they were doing it.

But the program struggled to gain traction.

As Steve told it:

I was getting so frustrated about the lack of sales, I had reinforced why this was so important so many times, I was sick of hearing myself talk about it. 

But the service reps were struggling to convert inquiries to sales. Then one day, I went into the contact center and took a few customers’ calls myself. The questions were tough.

I realized our new program was difficult to explain and our training had not prepared our reps to take those calls.

It occurred to me that no amount of explaining WHY this program mattered would help until or reps had the information to answer our customers’ questions.  No marketing campaign or incentives matter if our reps were stumped by the calls they were receiving.

When I got closer to what was happening, I realized we not only had a gap in our training but there were also a few policies and procedures we hadn’t quite figured out.

When you’re looking to make a significant change, it takes more than clearly communicating what’s important and tight action plans to make it happen. It’s vital to show up curious to ensure the behaviors have the desired impact.

In this case, the reps could explain the value proposition with excitement and had learned to eloquently bridge to the sale in common inbound calls. But they couldn’t answer the deeper logistics questions that mattered most to prospective buyers.

When Leading Through Change: Schedule the “Show”

In our book Courageous Cultures, we call this “scheduling the show.” Scheduling the show means making a deliberate plan to inspect the behaviors you assume should be happening AND that those behaviors are having the impact you anticipate.

You can schedule a site visit, a skip-level meeting, or, like Steve, you can dive in and participate alongside your team.

The leaders who do this best master the art of the old Russian proverb made famous by Ronald Reagan and now repeated in conference rooms around the world: “Trust, but verify.”

To truly understand the support his team needed, Steve had to experience the initiative from the frontline and hear from customers.

And here’s what else he learned.

His frontline employees were much more interested in hearing his sales ideas when they knew that he knew how hard it was—and that he was vulnerable enough to admit it. In companies where the Show phase breaks down, we often hear complaints that “leaders just don’t get it.”

They stay away from the action. They count on frontline managers to inspect and raise issues, many of who lack the confidence or competence to do that well (see also Share Your Ideas: Practical Ways to Ensure Your Voice is Heard).

Leading Change: 5 Ways To Inspect What You Expect

1. Model and test the behavior yourself
2. Invite your team to show their approach
3. Hold regular skip-level meetings and leadership visits
4. Teach your team to ask courageous questions of one another
5. Acknowledge the difficulty

When leading change it’s tempting to focus more on clarity than curiosity- telling people what needs to happen and why. It’s also important to show up curious to understand what’s happening and why.

1. Model and test the behavior yourself (and, if you’re a manager of managers, ensure they can do it too).

When I (Karin) was leading the store channel at Verizon, I found that one of the best ways to learn how to position our products to customers was to spend time on the floor talking to customers.

And there was a direct correlation between how well my managers could talk about our products and the sales results of their teams.

My team and I often learned that there were gaps in the training or nuances we could add that made our products easier to understand and more appealing when we rolled up our sleeves and practiced ourselves.

2. Invite your team to show you their approach

We know, most people cringe when they hear the words “role play.”

But do you know what works well to help fine-tune behavior? Role play.

When you’re leading change, one of the best ways to build momentum is to have your team practice and show you and one another the behaviors you’re looking to engrain.

3 . Hold regular skip-level meetings and leadership visits. 

Leadership visits and skip-level meetings are a great way to check for understanding to ensure people understand what’s important and that they know what to do at a behavioral level.

And, as Steve learned, it’s helpful to show up curious about the impact. Do the behaviors you’ve encouraged and trained have the results you desired?

Make it easy for your team to give you bad news and tell you what’s not working.

4. Teach your team to ask courageous questions of one another

Of course, in a courageous culture, it’s not just the leader “inspecting” what they expect, it’s everyone, coming to work asking “is this working?” “Is there a way we could do this better?”

One simple technique we teach in our team innovation programs is the art of Courageous Questions. 

Courageous questions are specific and humble.

• What’s one policy that really annoys our customers?
• If you could make one change to improve the customer experience, what would that be?
• When customers call, what’s their number one complaint?
• What is the most important action we take to delight our customers? How would you recommend we do that more consistently?

5. Acknowledge the Difficulty

One of the biggest frustrations we hear from employees when it comes to large-scale change is that their boss doesn’t “get how hard this is.” Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

It could be that the new behavior your expecting the team to embrace isn’t actually that difficult. But what IS hard is making the change on top of the twenty-seven other tasks they’re trying to manage, along with customer escalations and team members out with Covid.

Your team wants to know that you understand all they’re juggling. Give them an opportunity to show you that too. And of course, thank them for their efforts.

When leading change efforts, curiosity is key. Show up confident and clear about what’s most important, and curious about how it’s really going. Stay involved and model the way.

Your turn.

What are your best practices for leading through change and inspecting what you expect?

The post When Leading Through Change, Inspect What You Expect (With Curiosity and Compassion) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Being challenged to be more courageous at work can feel overwhelming. You might find yourself asking (for a friend) just how to demonstrate courage as a manager.

Here’s the good news. Most acts of courage don’t require big bold actions. It’s consistently doing the right thing time after time.

So this week, on Asking For a Friend, I bring you this very special managerial courage challenge to help you be more courageous at work. Or, to encourage courage in others. Each of the seven challenges was filmed at the ATD (Association of Talent Development Conference) where we were speaking about how leadership development leads to sustained culture change.

I encourage you to COMPLETE A CHALLENGE A DAY (or week) and notice the impact. Or even better, share this article with your team and complete the “courageous at work” challenges together to encourage courage in one another.

Your Courageous at Work Managerial Courage Challenge

1. Own your strengths

I’m going to bet you have a talent or strength you’re holding back. Maybe it’s not directly related to your job description and you want to “stay in your lane.” Or, you’re trying to stay humble, so you hold back your ideas.

Your first challenge is to consider one strength you could leverage a bit more.  If you’re doing this Courageous at Work challenge as a team, take a few minutes and ask one of these conversation starters.

“What makes you a rock star in your role? How could we be leveraging that more as a team?”

“What’s a skill or talent that you bring to the team that we might not know about or fully appreciate?”

Before you begin trying new ways to show courage, start by recognizing what already makes you a strong leader.

2. Ask for feedback

When people are really honest with me behind closed doors (or in a private zoom chat), I hear a few reasons people don’t ask their peers for feedback:

1) they don’t want to bother people or appear needy
2) there’s an underlying conflict or tension and they don’t trust the motives behind what they will hear
3) they perceive what they’re doing is working and so they don’t want to change
4) they’ve received feedback before and it was delivered poorly or was just stupid (like the time my boss told me a smiled too much)
5) they don’t have time

So today’s managerial courage challenge is to go ask a peer for feedback.

The easiest and most effective way to do this is to ask a specific courageous question. 

Rather than asking a big open-ended question, like “How can I be more effective as a leader,” you can encourage their courage by asking, “what’s ONE way I could be more supportive of you?” Being specific (just asking for one idea makes it easier to provide feedback. Of course, be sure you respond well (our REAP method can help with that). 

As a manager, showing your willingness to hear feedback from your colleagues goes a long way in being courageous at work.

3. Share an idea

If you’ve been following us for a while you know how passionate we are about this one. You can read about our Courageous Cultures research and download the first few chapters of our book Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates here. 

If you’re doing this challenge as a team, imagine how powerful it would be if you each shared one idea to make things easier or better

An idea can only make an impact if it’s shared. Hopefully, you will inspire your peers to be courageous at work and share their ideas as well.

4. Address a performance issue

When employees come to me frustrated that their boss “LACKS COURAGE,” their biggest complaint is usually that they let slackers slide.

They don’t have the courage to maintain a culture of accountability or build a team who knows how to do that for one another.

So, here’s your next “Asking for a Friend” challenge to help you to encourage courage and be more courageous at work.

I mention our I.N.S.P.I.R.E. method for feedback. If you aren’t familiar with that approach to accountability conversations, start here. It’s one of the most popular techniques we teach in our leadership development programs. 

 Though challenging, this can also help to quell the frustrations of your team members. Here’s the #1 tip for mastering the art of the tough conversation.

5. Try a new approach

Your next challenge to help you be a bit more courageous at work is to try something new.

If “It ain’t broke, don’t fix it” feels comfortable, experimenting with a well-run pilot can go a long way in upping your managerial courage while managing your stress.

67% of the employees in our courageous cultures research said their manager operates around the notion of “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

If this could be you, this is a managerial courage challenge for you.

It takes a lot of courage to break from the routine, but it can lead to game-changing results.

6. Ask for help

I imagine that this nex managerial courage challenge might be tricky.

Ask for help.

This Harvard Business Review article is full of reasons why asking for help builds trust, reduces burnout, and increases job satisfaction. In case that helps encourage this aspect of being courageous at work.

And, I know it’s still hard.

We don’t want to be a bother.
We don’t want to appear needy…

AND if you’re looking to make the biggest difference possible, why wouldn’t you get all the help you can on your important mission?

Asking for help is really a sign of strength, not weakness. Doing so demonstrates your humility and humanity.

7. Lift up your peers

Sometimes it takes courage to lift others up– to find and encourage heroes around you.

This one can be tricky, particularly if you’re working in a highly competitive environment. And, it’s one that I wish I learned sooner.

It’s natural to support your team and your boss, but it’s also so important to keep your peripheral vision open and notice and celebrate your coworkers.

So that’s your final challenge in our 7-part, Asking For a Friend Managerial Courage Challenge.

Find a coworker to celebrate and advocate for them.

Having the courage to advocate for a team member will give them the courage to do the same for someone else.

I’d love to hear about how you’re using this managerial courage challenge to be more courageous at work. Drop me a note in the comments!

To learn more about each of these ways to be courageous at work, click HERE

The post Courageous at Work: A Managerial Challenge [VIDEO] appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Whenever we ask participants in our Courageous Cultures or Team Innovation programs to share a time that felt particularly brave at work, the room explodes with powerful energy.

People love to share times when they were scared and did the right thing anyway.

Sometimes we even construct a “Courage Buffet” so people can share their courageous moments privately and publicly at the same time. This leads to poignant sharing and powerful insights.

Perhaps some of these moments of courage will feel familiar to you. Moments where someone…

• “confronted my boss’ bad decision”
• “fired a poor performer after years of everyone looking the other way”
• “had the courage to walk away from a toxic situation”
• “stood up for a coworker being discriminated against.”
• “fired a customer.”
• “defended a co-worker against a bully.”

We’re curious. What’s a time YOU felt brave at work? (We would love to hear your stories in the comments).

Most of these stories are not about Bravery with a capital “B”—the front-page news stories of whistle-blowing and confronting ethical breaches.

They are stories with a lower-case “b”—choices to take a small, uncomfortable risk for the good of the business, team, the customer, or themselves.

How Does Courage Make You Feel?

When we ask about how being courageous at work made them feel, the answers are remarkably consistent. People report that they felt:

• “Fantastic”
• “Strong”
• “Relieved”
• “Proud”
• “Stupid that I Waited So Long”

Avoiding Regrets of Boldness

This discussion of courageous moments often leads to confessions of regrets – those times when you don’t act.

Dan Pink calls these “regrets of boldness” in his book, the Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.

Dan collected 20,000 regrets from people around the world. In fact, you can take take part in this ongoing World Regret Survey here.

He found that people have the same four regrets, and one of them is a “Regret of Boldness.” (Learn more in this short interview:)

Here are examples of regrets we heard from audience members in one of our recent Courageous Cultures keynotes.

• “My regret is not talking to my boss about this sooner. She was so receptive.”
• “I wasted years in a toxic job, but I was too scared to leave.”
• “I knew what we were doing was wrong—still wake up at night feeling guilty.”

5 Powerful Questions That Will Help You Be a Bit Braver at Work

Our goal today is to save YOU a regret or two. Or, to help you encourage courage in your mentoring or coaching conversations.

1. Why is this courageous act so important?

One of the most interesting side findings in our psychological safety research was that when people described their courageous acts, they told us, “At the time it didn’t feel remarkably courageous, I was just doing what needed to be done.” They were brave at work because the cause mattered.

2. What does a successful outcome look like?

You can gain confidence to be braver at work by visualizing success. What’s better because of your courageous action? What will be better when you take action this time?

3. What’s at stake if I don’t act? (Will I regret not doing something?)

This one’s the inverse of number two. What’s the consequence of inertia?

Consider what happens if you don’t speak up or address the concern. What if no one else does anything either? What are the consequences?

4. Imagine you’ve just taken courageous action, what do you notice about yourself?

Dr. Amy Edmondson of Harvard, who wrote The Fearless Organization and the foreword to our book, talks about the risk of “discounting the future,” or underestimating the future value of speaking up and over-weighting their current fear. This question can help you be braver at work by visualizing those powerful, positive feelings that come from doing the right thing.

5. What do others notice about you after this brave-at-work moment?

This final question can be fun to consider too. Confidence and daring are contagious. They may or may not even know about the courageous act—many of these acts of courage necessarily happen behind closed doors. But they might just notice a renewed sense of calm, peace, or maybe even some healthy, well-earned pride.

Looking for more ways to speak up and be a bit more courageous at work?

Check out these articles, or download the first chapters of Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates for FREE.

• Managerial Courage: 7 Ways to Be a Bit More Daring
• Share Your Ideas: Practical Ways to Ensure Your Voice is Heard
• How to Deal With Team Conflict 

Your Turn

We would love to hear from you. What’s a moment that you were brave at work that makes you proud? Do you have any “regrets of boldness”?

Leaders Coaching Leaders: One Secret to Sustainable Leadership Development

The post Braver at Work: Questions to Inspire Your Next Courageous Act (with Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.