Fire up Your Team: 50 Ways for Leaders to Connect, Collaborate and Create with Their Teams

FIRE UP YOUR TEAM

50 WAYS FOR LEADERS TO CONNECT, COLLABORATE AND CREATE WITH THEIR TEAMS

Copyright © 2013, 2014 Jacqueline Throop-Robinson .

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-1597-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1598-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-1599-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013921855

iUniverse rev. date: 02/20/2014

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

MINDSET AND MIND GAMES

1 Really Want To

2 Be Playful

3 Rethink Rewards

4 Let More Be More

5 Collaborate Your Way To Abundance

6 Nurture Great Relationships

7 Think EQ

8 Deep Dive Into Authentic Conversations

9 Be Present. Listen Deeply. Ask Questions. Relax.

10 Build And Restore Trust

11 Live Your Personal Values

12 Create A Culture Of Accountability

13 Avoid Being Hijacked

14 Don’t Jump To Conclusions

15 Quit Being A Victim, Villain Or Hero

INSPIRATION AND ACTION

16 Aspire To Something

17 Let Go. See. Create.

18 Be True Not Safe

19 Help Others Aspire To Something

20 Set Goals

21 Embrace Ambiguity And Just Enough Action Planning

22 Diversify And Catalyze

23 Let’s Play!

24 Just Show Up

25 Give Up Personal Agendas

26 Use Open Space Technology

27 Employ Elements Of Open Space Technology

FEEDBACK AND FEEDFORWARD

28 Create Feedback Loops

29 Embrace Feedback

30 Apply The 10 Types Of Feedback To Feedforward

31 Encourage The Heart

32 Align To Meaningful Goals

33 Track For Impact

34 Revisit Plans

35 Assert Standards

36 Correct To Stay The Course

37 Value Effort And Commitment

38 Build On Strengths

39 Develop For Career Progress

40 Celebrate To Uplift And Reward

41 Set A Foundation So Feedback Doesn’t Fail

PROGRESS AND FEARLESSNESS

42 Peg Your Progress

43 Make Bad Pots

44 Turn Obstacles Into Progress

45 Take Seven Steps To Yes We Can

46 See Progress As Its Own Reward

47 Ditch The Team Dysfunction

48 Find The Fit

49 Unthink Unwanted Beliefs

50 Take Care Of Yourself And Your Team

A Few Final Words

Glossary

References

About The Author

This book is dedicated to my mother, Mary Irene Bourgeois Throop, and my father, Ludger Valmond Dugas Throop.

You are my unwavering guides, and I continue to learn from your wisdom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge my spouse, Evan. His generous love and belief in me provide endless sustenance. I also want to recognize the support of my young children, Taylor and Jamie, who always encourage me with shouts of Good job, Mama!

As I wrote this book, I thought often about my first true mentor, Edward (Ted) Scott. He led by example, and his unfailing ability to see the good in people and build from strength, not from what was lacking, has been a lifelong inspiration to me. During this time, I was also mentored by my executive assistant, Kay Stevenson. She was central control for our team, keeping all the moving pieces in order and, most important, functioning as our wise woman.

I am also indebted to David Jones, my friend and business partner, whose love, empathy and big-heartedness I treasure. As cofounder of PassionWorks! Inc., Dave has shared his work and his life with me, both in good and more difficult times. Our work researching passion has enriched how I see and experience both leadership and life.

Since 2002, I have been attending professional and personal development workshops in Vermont hosted by Robert and Rosalind Fritz. Although I have attended innumerable conferences, seminars and certifications, these remain the most influential. My work as an artist and as a business consultant, combined with my aspiration to live life consciously, found a home within Robert’s work. I have done my best to explicitly recognize within the pages of this book his direct influence; however, after a decade of study, some of our ideas are undoubtedly intertwined. I would encourage all readers to discover firsthand Robert Fritz’s thought leadership.

I also want to acknowledge two very special and early readers, Roger Bouthillier and Rhonda Caldwell. I am both touched and humbled by their thoughtful and insightful feedback. Also helping me in the early stages was Lissa Pattillo, whose fresh typography heavily influenced the cover design.

Before this book was born, I had an idea that if I could only hide myself away for a week, I could write this book. I approached a colleague, Jan Fraser, and asked her if she would host a book-writing retreat. A few months later, a handful of novice writers gathered in Lake Las Vegas, in Jan’s remarkable condo. Jan’s hospitality, enthusiasm, positivity and willingness to share her knowledge created a container within which we all thrived. By the end of that long weekend, we had drafted our books. Jan and each person on the retreat contributed to the creation of this book.

Although clients engage me for leadership development, they inevitably teach me as well. I am blessed to have many wonderful clients, and their relationships mean the world to me. Over the last few years, two clients in particular, Wanda Richardson and Lisa Robinson, have become sources of unflagging support. Your work and love are also in these pages.

And finally, I am thankful for my editor, Susan Macaulay, who truly partnered with me, all the while caregiving for her mother debilitated by Alzheimer’s. Despite the challenges she was facing at home, she remained positive, helpful and giving. Her insight and creativity were invaluable in helping me create my vision for this book.

Thank you all. I am ever so grateful.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Fire Up Your Team, a handbook to help you achieve your full leadership potential. Even if you are already a CEO, a seasoned manager or a natural-born leader, there is still untapped capacity within you—capacity you can unleash using the tools and techniques in this book. I write specifically to your inner leader and invite you to take a deep dive with me as we explore the depths of fearless people leadership.

To say leadership is a journey is a cliché, but it’s true. Our leadership evolves and deepens with experience; it is an endless path of personal growth, possibility and learning. I know because I’ve experienced it myself and coached countless others over the past 30 years. Fire Up Your Team is packed full of the most valuable leadership lessons I’ve learned along the way.

The world has changed a great deal since I began my career several decades ago, when I was still wet behind the ears. Our global economy has become a highly complex, dynamic and interconnected system. Traditional management practices ill-equip us to navigate in its sometimes turbulent, often vast and frequently unexplored waters. The economic crisis of 2008 hammered home our collective vulnerability, and the domino effect of our mutual dependency was disconcerting to say the least. Likewise, our environmental challenges will not be overcome using traditional thinking and problem-solving techniques. The stakes are high: 7 billion people are involved, and time is running short. Today’s leaders must learn innovative techniques and skills to manoeuvre successfully in this challenging new reality. The game has changed dramatically, and so have many of the rules.

Chess is commonly referenced in the business world as a metaphor for strategy. It is not unusual to see images of chessboards on marketing materials, in annual reports or in leadership-development workshops. The metaphor is part of how we currently think about strategy. Now imagine the game of chess reconfigured. Consider, for example, what might happen if the rooks and the knights were eliminated and the board was reduced in size by eight squares—one vertical row. Or what if the new game was played on three planes instead of just one? Clearly, yesterday’s masters would have to relearn how to play and create new strategies from new experiences.

Old strategies are no longer relevant when a game changes. Playing on a chess cube, for example, would be nothing like playing on a chess board. And so it is in today’s business environment.

Many leaders are discovering that the game they once knew, the one they played successfully and in many cases had completely mastered, has changed so much they barely recognize the rules. Best old game practices no longer generate the results they once did. How could they? Worse, the old approaches often create more problems than they solve.

To be successful, today’s leaders must be comfortable with the notion that we need to create anew every day—new solutions, new ideas for action, new strategies. We must relinquish our attachment to old rules, old practices, old mental models and insanely detailed action plans. We must trust ourselves and our teams to navigate the turbulent and ever-shifting waters of this new world. We cannot do it alone. One person’s thinking, brilliant though it may be, will never be enough to overcome the challenges at hand. We must engage those around us and invite them to collaborate to manifest a bold new global future.

Change requires us to adapt, learn and evolve. It’s the essence of survival of the fittest: when our environment changes, we must adapt to survive and then thrive. Past successes do not guarantee future success, because the world and our surroundings are in a constant state of flux. We are offered new challenges and invited to respond in novel, unexpected ways. Leaders who do not understand this natural process put themselves at risk of losing credibility, losing ground and losing followers. Leaders who embrace the edge of chaos and trust in their ability to learn, adapt and thrive hold the key to the future. This kind of leadership demands we live fully in the present, in tune with the changing world, so we can be nimble and ready for what lies ahead. It requires leaders to step beyond their insecurities and fears and to calmly, confidently and unhesitatingly lead their organizations into the unknown territory of the future, one step at a time.

This book aims to better equip you to lead through a sense of play instead of through always having to know; to lead fearlessly and to dive deeply, creating new paradigms to steer through unknown terrain. To achieve all of this, we must leverage the thinking of our right brain. Right-brain thinking gives us access to our imagination and aspirations, our intuition about ideas and people. It’s comfortable with ambiguity and thrives on change and uncertainty. It’s orientated toward the future, not the past. It prefers collaboration to competition and play to solemnity. Our overreliance on left-brain norms and the underdevelopment of our right-brain competencies limits our effectiveness as leaders.

We all possess the wisdom, the courage and the mental capacity to lead our teams and our companies into a positive and progressive future, albeit a challenging one. We simply need to access the full range of our talents to do so.

The voice of experience

Leadership has always been important to me. My experience has shown how leadership directly affects long-term productivity and profitability. I became a corporate leader in 1989 when I was just 24 years old. (It’s hard to believe, even for me, as I look back.) How did it happen? To make a long story short, a forward-thinking head-office director recognized my ability to learn and took a risk, placing me in a mid-manager position. He was committed to building talent and felt I was well-suited to the new management style he wanted to develop.

A couple of years later, another director promoted me into a senior-manager position running a large retail operation on the Canadian west coast. He told me at the time, You have a lot to learn. I am taking a huge risk. But I believe you can do it. Don’t let me down. At the time, I didn’t question my ability to do the job. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so there was no reason to be intimidated.

When I assumed the role, six managers (four men and two women), ranging in age from 35 to 55, reported to me. I was responsible for more than 100 stores spread over a large geographic area; together they generated millions in annual revenue. The culturally diverse and unionized workforce comprised thousands of employees governed by seven collective agreements. At the time, leadership felt natural to me, and I was undeterred by the scope of the challenge before me. In this case, ignorance was bliss!

I rolled up my sleeves and decided I would be the best area manager the company had ever seen. I was out to prove myself, and I wanted to do it my way. I would operate in a style that was authentic to me and that I felt would get the best results.

•  I didn’t attempt to memorize the seven collective agreements or learn the mind games so often employed at the bargaining table. I would lead by following my own operating principles and trust my managers to guide me regarding the various collective agreements.

•  I refused to micromanage. My managers were seasoned professionals; some of them had strong track records and others were considered weak, but they all knew more than me when it came to running the day-to-day business.

•  I pushed back on the corporate culture and challenged the status quo. I questioned everything that did not seem to generate productive activity or behaviours. I believed norms had to serve a clear, positive purpose and that there was no sense in being a yes-man, as the business could not grow without fresh thinking.

I chose instead to do the following:

•  I developed solid relationships with all the shop stewards and demonstrated my respect for their mandates and mission. My colleagues thought I was naïve and foolish. The union said I was sitting on the wrong side of the table. Regardless, cooperation gradually emerged and tensions eased.

•  I created a container for my managers’ success. I saw myself as their facilitator, helping them think through issues and challenges, creating a team culture in which we would celebrate and appreciate our individual and collective achievements. In addition—and perhaps most important—I saw it as my role to be a buffer, so my managers could focus their energy on their own duties and responsibilities rather than worry about office politics.

•  I looked at everything with fresh eyes and asked why questions. The corporation had a very long tradition and well-entrenched practices that people conducted while on auto-pilot. The policies, procedures, systems created a bureaucracy I found mind-boggling. I fought to release us from this mantle of red tape, thus freeing my managers to serve their customers and their communities.

There are probably many other things I could mention, but many years have passed and these are the strategies that stand out to me in hindsight. From this foundation, I developed an earnest interest in leadership and in creating a way of leading that would allow others to be the best they could be in service of themselves and the company. Each time I led a team, they grew from lurking at the bottom of the pile to being top performers or from being inundated by challenges and problems to forging new paths for the company. In all instances, the leadership strategies and approaches I adopted served me well.

As I worked with my teams, underperformers rose to the challenge, broken systems within our control were fundamentally repaired, and new ways of working were created to fill obvious gaps. Work was challenging and great fun! My goal was to create a container that would allow all individuals to use their talents to thrive, and I share many of these ideas in this book.

This book was also informed by my experience with toxic, destructive and selfish leaders. I reported more than once to people who did not deserve to have another’s career or person under their influence. These individuals taught me what not to do and about the damage one can do to workers, teams and the company. They allowed the company to lose millions to protect their own interests, they created scapegoats to protect their own yes-men, and they treated their employees as assets, much like equipment, to be discarded on a whim. From these men and women, I learned the damage that self-interest, cronyism and abuse of authority can inflict. It was not a pretty sight.

Through such exposure, I learned to take great care with words and actions and recognize that leadership positions are a privilege, not a right. As a leader, it is difficult to overestimate the impact on those around you of your words, gestures and actions. By virtue of your role and position, you hold power. Do not be careless with it. Appreciate that what you do and say (or what you don’t do or don’t say) will take on more significance than you may anticipate or expect. Understand that your position on the organizational chart is neutral. Your position does not come with a predetermined set of values. You do. People do. Decide what kind of a leader you want to be and make your work an expression of your values and an opportunity to make the world a better place.

Working with your team in generative and positive ways will enrich your life. The many hours invested become hours passed in meaningful ways, seeing real progress. Work becomes a deeply satisfying experience for you and your team. My consulting practice strives to achieve the same. All of us can be exceptional leaders, either officially or by example. The world can never have too many leaders. We simply need to understand that the leader’s journey is a learning journey. This quest sometimes requires us to follow and serve to deepen our self-awareness and mature our practices. Leadership and followership are yin and yang—interconnected and interdependent.

My passion is leadership: leadership that supports people’s deepest and truest aspirations, that adds value where and when people least expect it, that rallies people to do what’s right and not what’s expedient. Great leadership makes the world a better place.

Using this book

Every leader I know wants his or her team to be fired up—in positive ways, of course! We want our teams engaged with a desire to achieve. I often hear leaders say of a colleague, employee or team, What happened to the fire in their belly? In other words, what happened to the passion and the drive? Many people begin their career or job with great enthusiasm and a belief in its worthiness. Over time, this energy and conviction erode or are blocked. Why? People don’t one day decide that caring less and coasting are better than investing emotionally in something that matters. People don’t decide Life is better if a job is just a job and I’m better off working in a job that leaves me feeling unfulfilled.

The sense of possibility and the joy of contributing to something that matters, which is present for so many people at the beginning of their journey, can fade with life’s challenges. But it doesn’t have to. It is within a leader’s sphere of influence to keep a team focused on possibility, to work in ways that nurture collaborative endeavour and to appreciate and value effort and progress.

Remember: When people move from engagement to complacency, resistance or burnout, they have reasons for doing so. Something happens that leads to a shift in mindset, which in turn leads to a change in behaviour. It’s like a domino effect. Most people don’t know how to manage through and beyond this kind of process in constructive and healthy ways. As a leader, it’s your job to help, guide and support your followers on their journey—when they are cruising and all is well, when there are bumps in the road, and especially when they need a boost over daunting hurdles that stretch across their path.

To truly move individuals and your team collectively from low engagement to igniting the passion that lies within—or, if you are fortunate enough to have a dynamic team, to sustain the fire in their bellies over the long haul—you as a leader need to fully embrace your role and dive deeply into the guts of engagement. Be forewarned: It can get messy, it can be unclear, and it can be uncomfortable. It can also be playful, joyful and deeply satisfying.

Leadership happens one conversation at a time. I recognized early in my leadership journey that every interaction with another person or with the team as a whole was an opportunity to develop the relationship and support a shared goal. Leaders evolve by becoming adept at working with what happens around them, at all times, and channelling the energy (positive and negative) into constructive and productive aims.

For the record, here’s what firing up your team is not:

•  being a motivational speaker like Tony Robbins

•  spinning truth to get buy in

•  manipulating your team so they do what you want

Firing up your team may happen in quiet, subtle ways. Sometimes it will happen through a boisterous, tension-releasing celebration. As a leader, learning to recognize what a person or team needs to create or sustain their engagement is fundamental.

The 50 Ways format

Leaders are rarely taught the art of leadership. True leadership requires a mindset that’s authentic, an ability to breathe life into work, honest conversation and vision to see future possibilities but also to see how far we’ve come. I have used these four elements to divide this book into four sections.

Part 1: Mindset and Mind Games

Always remember: Your mindset leads your actions. If you don’t want to become a manager who plays mind games, your starting point must be to lead yourself from within. Getting your own mindset (attitudes, values, operating principles, beliefs) in order will anchor you in ways that are hard to describe. It will allow you to trust yourself and others. With trust, you will have crucial conversations, collaborate with amazing results and pilot your team through anything the business or marketplace throws at you. Mind games, which are destructive, will be minimized.

For a leader, looking within is a must. At the end of the day, it is who you are as a person that makes people want to follow. It’s not about what you know but who you are. As you will read, many of the 50 ways will invite you to face yourself and see what there is to be seen so that you can make informed choices about how to lead authentically. This section will help you to ground yourself in the reality of today, ask you to reconsider old paradigms and conventions and open up possibilities for moving forward.

Part 2: Inspiration and Action

This section explores the importance and impact of inspiration. Inspiring an individual or your team requires connecting to aspiration. Sometimes it’s helping people become clear on their own true desires; sometimes it’s communicating why you believe a goal is meaningful and worthwhile. Your role is to encourage action in service of the aspiration, regardless of the current set of circumstances or situation. Your belief in employees’ ability to find the path forward will inspire them to persist in discovering the right avenue, either through existing knowledge or creative thinking.

Leaders with self-motivated teams have won half the battle. Their energy isn’t absorbed by constant prodding, incessant following up or uncomfortable performance-review meetings. Investing time and energy in figuring out true desires, building a picture of what they look like and establishing connections between personal aspirations and these desired end goals generates self-sustaining energy and enthusiasm. The trick is not to stifle this energy but to allow it to continue to release and to cultivate it. To do so, you must work with ambiguity, leverage diversity, play with possibility, encourage interconnectivity and, above all else, learn how to be truly present as a conduit for your team’s success.

Part 3: Feedback and Feedforward

Most leadership programs and books address performance management and coaching with a focus on feedback. There are many, many programs and books on the market to help leaders with difficult conversations—again, usually involving some type of negative or constructive feedback. Few, however, emphasize the need and challenge of feedforward, which is delivering core information and positive, useful commentary daily to counteract performance issues and, most importantly, to ground people in how this knowledge will inform and support future action.

Building complete feedback loops and working with them all the time usually eliminates the need for difficult conversations, because poor performance is less likely in environments that create true conditions for success. Leaders who work systematically with feedback loops—normalizing the act of receiving and giving feedback to facilitate others’ success and oversee the impact of actions—create a dynamic learning environment that breeds high performance. This section gives you ideas for using both feedback and feedforward to improve leadership practices and overall productivity.

Part 4: Progress and Fearlessness

Seeing one’s work as meaningful and believing in the vision and values of one’s organization fuels team engagement. Meaning is a cornerstone of passion at work. However, meaning alone is not enough. People need to feel a sense of forward movement or progress. If your team invests a great deal of time and effort in a project, team members will want to see that it has made a difference. They will want to know they have contributed to the organization in a way that moves it into a better position or helps it achieve a milestone.

Often, in organizations, we do not nurture a culture that acknowledges and celebrates progress. We might miss the smaller but significant wins and move on too quickly from enjoying the fruits of our bigger wins. Sometimes we are afraid of making the bold moves that will generate real progress. Tracking progress is essential to maintaining engagement. Often, in order to get progress, leaders must help their teams tackle difficult issues or obstacles, and they must encourage their teams to take risks. Seeing progress or enabling progress in difficult circumstances requires fearless leadership. This section is dedicated to sharing ways leaders can help their teams overcome obstacles fearlessly, foster a sense of forward movement and create ways to mark progress visibly so people don’t miss the signs of progress that surround them, even seeing progress in mistakes and disappointments.

A learning strategy

This book acknowledges that leaders today often have little time but want to make time to strengthen their leadership capabilities because they value its power to transform. The book is structured in 50 ways to help resolve this dilemma. I have chunked the content into small digestible bites without compromising the depth of the conversation I want to have with you. In addition, at the beginning of each chapter, you will see an upward arrow 01.jpg indicating that I have summarized the main message