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Contracting For Purpose:
Begin these disciplined conversations by contracting with teammates about the desired enterprise outcomes. You’ll want to proceed in a way that focuses on the work, that’s thought provoking for everyone, that focuses on learning rather than blaming, and that allows you to see their business realities through their eyes. Fundamentally, these conversations are a vehicle for you to partner with your direct reports to:
Your role is to communicate purposefully with, as opposed to talk at, your people. By listening strategically to peoples’ feedback, you’ll listen to both the content and the contexts of their conversations. While team members will most often report their input from their functional perspectives, you must be listening from the perspective of the overall business leader. Too often, the CEO gets sucked into the mire of solving day-to-day operational problems. There is skill and artistry involved in coaching well, and being able to maintain the proper perspective is one of the skills one needs to develop in order to become a strong player-coach. Listening In and On the Process: While listening strategically to debriefings, you’ll hear the thinking behind the priorities and activities of your direct reports. These conversations enable you to look for alignment between their perspectives and the business idea. What’s reported and what’s overlooked are both rich sources of data. By listening authentically, you will be tending your personal relationship with each member of your team. This provides opportunities for demonstrating your commitment to their success by doing something other than telling them what to do. These conversations will allow you to ask for feedback about their frustrations, while listening for the following:
These conversations provide opportunities to listen for areas of team stress and strain. Your unique perspective (hearing independently what each feels about the others) also enables you, the organization’s leader, to make note of the apparent leverage points, issues that give you an opening or an excuse to promote needed changes, that you can address over time that will produce significant dividends to the enterprise overall. By listening from a strategic perspective throughout these conversations, you will learn. There is feedback from the trenches that you continually need to hear to stay in synch with your organization. You can gather feedback relevant to your leadership style. You can listen to tales of your impact and calibrate them against your intentions. Don’t be defensive. Indeed, other people perceive what they perceive, whether you like it or not, whether it is accurate or not. If the implications of what you hear are that you have to work harder to market your ideas and initiatives more accurately, so be it. By listening well, you ensure the communication pipeline stays functional and unclogged. These conversations provide an opportunity for information to flow back and forth. If the efforts of your team are to be orchestrated effectively over time, you must provide ongoing input and collaboration. Here are opportunities for you to plant seeds in the minds of your team. Think of these conversations as opportunities to market your vision to each member of the team. By asking timely, considered questions, you can expand or focus the thinking of team members. By engaging your team as thought partners, and displaying amiable curiosity, you help them consider the implications of their thoughts, assumptions and perspectives. These conversations provide rich opportunities for coaching. Points can be made, agendas set, and information shared. By listening to the content of specific conversations, while thinking from the broader business context, you’ll shape your feedback in a way that better aligns their actions with the goals and values of the enterprise. During these conversations, assess the gaps or deficits in the team’s collective knowledge.
It is worth noting that these same conversations not only provide you with new data, but also stretch your thinking and perhaps teach you a thing or two. These conversations provide an excellent venue for you to learn about the best practices being employed across your organization, thus putting you in a position to cross-pollinate ideas. You can ensure that good practices are recognized across the whole group. You can use the perspectives you’ve gained to help others share those practices throughout the company. Listening strategically, the CEO can focus the efforts of the team. Some of you might need the services of a coach to help you learn how to work this process most effectively. Others may feel equipped to dig right in. Either way, the benefits are worth the effort. Don’t let a lack of confidence keep you from growing in your role. This approach reduces the isolation of the family business CEO, who is able to share the sense of ownership for decisions made about the business. It also provides a professional posture for strengthening the bonds between and among people in the company, rather than approaching your work as mom or dad parenting your business “children.” It minimizes your need to rely on your personal power to influence people at work. <> The role of leader as coach is one that places you in role of being the best steward of your company’s human assets. (Important foundation information can be found in “Lessons in Authentic Leadership” by Dan Elash and Jim Long, published on-line at the CEO Refresher, www.refresher.com) 41. A Worksheet For The Leader’s Business Conversations
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