Editor’s note: Yvette Wikstrom is owner and client partner at strategy and insight firm Mercury Strategy, Denver. She can be reached at yvette@mercurystrategy.com.
In my last article, “Using change leadership to raise the profile of marketing research” I talked about why change leadership is a critical success factor for an organization. While it is true that change does need to happen at an organizational level, long-term success comes down to individual adoption and individual change.
In my career as a researcher I’ve observed an increase in pressure and expectation on professional staff. You all know the need to wear different hats to be successful in your role: close a new deal, help address a conflict in the team, negotiate with senior leadership on resource allocation, collaborate with other business units, etc. This is the new reality that demands more professional tools, management skills and a higher level of leadership awareness and execution.
In this article, I want to share with you how you can use research to unlock your team’s professional strengths, begin to tackle leadership improvement opportunities and challenge the behaviors that are holding you back from achieving your goals.
Forgetting the why
We all recognize the importance of good leadership skills. We see it everywhere. There are ongoing dialogues, deliberations and research on the importance of leadership in leading publications – both offline and online – on how leadership can unlock the true potential of the human capital. But most professionals, managers and leaders are caught up on what to do and how to do it. Somewhere in the ongoing demands of the job the very simple question, “Why do we come to work?” gets lost. Incidentally, one of the most prevailing and most frequently expressed feedback from staff is that the vision of the firm is unclear and that they don’t wholly understand how their daily activities contribute to the overall strategy. Leaders are often promoted because of their subject matter expertise. Then in a role as a manager and leader, the requirements to achieve success shift. It is easy to get caught up on what and how to do the job, whereas the most important question is why we do the job in the first place.
To address the why and be able to be successful internally and externally, there have to be good project and management skills supporting how business is executed.
The execution is only as good as the overall leadership. In other words, if aspects of the leadership role are lagging, then the execution of the jobs never reaches its full potential, and the full potential of the organization and staff is never reached.
By using a simple three-step framework that focuses on research as the foundation to realize the need for change and, more specifically, which aspects of the behavior that will benefit from improvements, we must:
- expand self-awareness;
- design the research for professional development; and
- reinforce behavioral change.
Expand self-awareness
Understanding what to improve and why is not easy. Leaders and managers don’t always have access to honest and timely feedback on their leadership style and the impact of that leadership style.
Take Kelly. Kelly is a senior leader in an organization whose main purpose is to protect the consumer in complex insurance situations. Kelly is a no-nonsense, smart and result-oriented professional. His work ethic makes the rest of us feel lazy and unproductive and he brings subject-matter expertise second-to-none. He is a natural go-to resource for the most complicated legal issues and policy developments. But his staff feels he is arrogant and intimidating. More troublesome is the fact that his peers and seniors perceive him as someone who can’t roll with the punches. Though Kelly is one of the best subject matter experts, they feel he lacks vision.
Kelly works hard but his return on that investment is not where he needs it to be. The fun factor of his job is dwindling with the covert negative feedback he perceives. He also feels marginalized at strategic meetings when he realizes that his voice does not generate the positive impact he feels he deserves.
When Kelly begins discussing the issues, it becomes clear that there is no structure behind the feedback he is receiving and some feedback might even be flawed or misconstrued by perceptions of situational context or personality issues. Kelly needs insights on his behavior to be able to narrow down what is holding him back. Who would be better to help Kelly than all those stakeholders that Kelly interacts with, tactically and strategically? By capturing feedback from all parties involved in the relationship, the leader can get feedback on his or her own behaviors and role in providing the right support to drive success. In this case, these conversations help Kelly realize that to overcome the problems, he has to get in deeper. This inevitably involves gaining a more profound understanding of why his staff, peers and seniors hold the views they do. Kelly needs the why to inform and motivate the how and the what to address in his professional behavior.
Design research for professional development
To arrive at actionable insights, it is important to organize feedback questions into the three categories explored above: subject matter expertise; project and management skills; and finally leadership skills.
First, explore the relevant key performance measures for each category to ensure that they are aligned with strategy, consumer value and professional goals. As part of the process, partner with managers and engage in an open dialogue around which colleagues should be included in the feedback process. You can also raise the conversation to focus on the overall organizational objectives and how you could play a more active role in driving these goals.
In Kelly’s effort, a total of about 20 individuals across staff, peers, leaders and policy makers provided their feedback. First they took an online survey where they rated Kelly on key performance attributes in each category and then followed up with each one of them in a one-on-one interview to probe on why they rated Kelly at a certain level, examples and implications of Kelly’s behavior. Here are some measures that you can include when requesting this type of feedback:
Subject matter expertise:
- has the right expertise and knows how to apply it;
- understands the role of the business unit internally; and
- understands how the business unit creates and delivers value externally.
Project and management competencies:
- manages projects and programs effectively and efficiently;
- enables and directs resources where needed;
- openness to feedback from team; and
- delegates authority, while encouraging independence and ownership.
Leadership skills:
- inspires strategy and vision;
- is a positive influence on culture/work atmosphere;
- develops talent and team; and
- encourages communication and facilitates conflict resolution.
The industry you operate in and the issues at stake determine the final design, inclusion and wording of behavioral measures. In Kelly’s case, we captured feedback on 24 behavioral measures that were relevant to the vision of his firm and his role as a manager and leader.
It is wise to protect the respondents’ anonymity to better ensure honest responses. This means that the respondent doesn’t have to stand behind their feedback and they don’t have to face the discomfort of expressing and verbalizing feedback to the person directly. It is therefore critical to establish ground rules for feedback and what type of feedback that will be most helpful.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen these types of efforts go pear-shaped because of a failure to recognize the human aspect of the effort. It is important to remember that though the research principles are important, more critical is the way in which data is created, i.e., the context around feedback and ensuring an environment that can be constructive and safe for all involved parties. The following is a helpful list for setting ground rules:
• Focus on behavior, not personality.
• Remember you are interested in strengths and improvement opportunities – it is not a complaint session.
• Expect the respondents to be genuinely interested in helping.
• It is an honor to be asked to provide such feedback and this honor comes with an expectation of professional maturity.
Reinforce behavioral change
The insights from the research are only as good as the clarity around the end outcomes. The closed-loop process is helpful for professional development. Kelly invested hours upfront looking into his leadership goals and how he would like to be perceived as a leader, ultimately defining the targeted outcomes and discussing where he anticipated roadblocks and why. This created a highly relevant and customized terms-of-reference for Kelly. The following points represent some of the specific insights Kelly gained throughout the process of weighing the feedback versus his own leadership goals:
- Recognize that there are technical versus emotional leadership skills.
- Realize that there are different ways to live a leadership mantra.
- Understand that different stakeholders and different individuals have different expectations and need for support from him.
- Realize the importance to constantly evolve his own leadership ability and thus drive change rather than reacting to responses in his environment.
- Implement a stakeholder roadmap where stakeholders can experience his new leadership behaviors. Some of these behavioral targets are being open to feedback, respecting others, listening effectively and encouraging open dialogue.
As you develop a roadmap using the insights from the research, talk about how authentic and natural it would feel to adopt new behaviors. We need to accept that some of the new behaviors can feel awkward to start with and we need to mitigate knee-jerk reactions to built-in behaviors that have stopped serving us well. In this process, it is critical to discuss how to surrender the old to give way to the new.
To close the loop, however, the people in the environment also need to be open to change. It is often hard to give up an old and negative view of a colleague and it is not uncommon that the team, peers and/or seniors will simply not accept the change as truthful or authentic. By looking for early and easy successes, you reinforce both the individual who is changing and the people in their environment. By building a roadmap of upcoming events, meetings and touchpoints with teams, peers and/or higher-ups, we can prepare proactively and put words to desired outcomes and the behaviors that will take us there. It takes time, commitment and consistency before change feels natural and the environment is ready to believe the change.
Research is both science and art. When we fuse research with professional and leadership development it becomes so much more than research. The science and art of asking questions fuel change and change is the future.