Taking teams for granted ...

When a professional develops experience and successes over the years, he at one point often gets promoted to manager (or leader, or supervisor ... pick your preferred term). And most of the time does quite well. He will get some feedback or evaluation about which of the managerial skills he needs to develop. And again most of the time all this goes well. Until it no longer does. And then the peers or superiors get into analysis mode about how to deal with this manager (leader, supervisor ...) who is not performing as he should. At that point, we often realize that the person had kind of - accidentally ? - stumbled into a management role. He had not really been prepared, or mentored, or trained to take on the role of a manager.

We often assume that people know what management is about because of what they have seen around them. If you have been around it, can't be so difficult to do the same, the thinking goes.

In my experience, the same happens with teams in organizations. Second to leadership, teams are probably one of the most talked about/written about concepts of personal and organizational development. Everybody knows what a team is, often starting from a young age with sports teams. And when we start to work, we are part of teams. Or at least they tell us we are part of teams. Some teams are working well, others are not. So just as with the management itself, we assume that people know what teams are and what to do or not to do when working on a team. But often, and in my experience this happens even more frequently than the case of the individual managers, teams do not live up to the expectations or the potential. Open conflict is probably (hopefully !) rare, but what we call a team is most of the time a group of individuals coming together once in a while to share information.

A team can be so much more. But for that to happen, you cannot expect to get there without some effort. Teams require work. Where do you rate your team in 2016 on a scale from 1 to 10, and what is your plan to improve on that in 2017 ?

Why working in a team is the best leadership development ...

Bringing a diverse group of people together and asking them to find solutions for a complex company-wide problem will push participants slightly out of their comfort zone. How they deal with this challenge will demonstrate their capability to learn and survive in the VUCA world in the future.

A recent experience with a services firm confirmed this. I worked with 11 high potentials during a couple of months. The organization's focus was to validate who from them were really high-potentials, ready for further development or promotion. At the end of the series of sessions, the team presented their conclusions and recommendations on the challenge they had worked on, and each team member presented separately to the top management team what they had learned, the insights they had discovered and how they evaluated the experience over all.

And it was during the individual presentations that things got interesting. Some of the people who were thought of as high-potentials confirmed or even exceeded their potential. Others who had in fact been a bit under the radar jumped out from the crowd and positively surprised the management team. And a few who were considered as top guns strongly disappointed.

As the country manager said (at the end of the session): "We now know where people really stand ... and in some cases that is not where we thought they were standing !".

We could have decided on some leadership training. And I am sure the participants would have liked it. And learned a lot. But working in a team, not being in their area of expertise and having to progress together really highlighted the strengths some had, and brought to the fore the gaps others were struggling with.

It is tempting to identify HIPOs and future leaders by looking at each of your team members individually. But it is by having them work in a team that you really will see how they stack up !

What will you learn next year ?

The new year is (again) just around the corner ... As usual, time to reflect on what is behind and make plans for what is ahead. You can think about what you did last year, or didn't do, and how good or not that was. And you can make lists of what to do and places to go in the next year. Or even commit to doing things you never did and you know you will not do !

What about thinking not about what you have done or not done, but instead about what you have learned last year ? What did you learn about yourself ? About the people around you. What do you do better thanks to what you learned compared to the past ? The same goes for next year. What will you learn next year ? What will you do to help others around you learn next year ? Looking at learning opens up a more positive and empowering view on your development and of those around you. There is always learning and yet learning is never completed. When you frame what you do as learning, you are never at zero and you are never fully done. When you are supporting others, see not just what they do or what they don't do. See what they are doing as learning.

We do what we do thanks to what we learned, starting all the way from childhood. We are what we are in life and in work because of what we have learned in the past. And we will be more successful in the future if we can continue to learn.

Happy learning next year !

When the cat's away ...

What happens to your team when you are not around ? My experience with different teams in Asia is not so much that people will start to play or muck around. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Rather than getting together and doing all the stuff you maybe do not allow when you are around, most of the time, when the cat is away, the mice will go in hibernation !

That "team" that you often think of as the group of your direct reports will more or less fall back to its components. The HR manager will go and focus on the HR stuff and the marketing person will quietly keep on working on the marketing assignment you handed out. The team ceases to exist.

When an issue comes up where collaboration or joint action is needed, and when you are not around, does your team huddle together, come up with solutions and decide on the best way forward ? Or do they get lost in arguments and turf wars ? Or - and I think this is what happens most often - is the issue put on the 'pending' list until your return. Whichever of these two extremes, it seems that anything but routine work gets done when you are not around.

What is the solution ? You cannot expect a team to grow by itself if you are involved in every decision. Step back ... even when you are around, and refrain from intervening while at the same time asking for progress to be made. In fact, if the mice start playing when you are not around, that would be a pretty good sign. If however they go into a comatose state, you need to reflect on how you can change the way you work to start building a real team !

Sticking to what you do well ...

I came across this shop in Lisbon, Portugal. They sell eels in cans. Only eels in cans. One flavor. They have two sizes, big size and small size. And they have been selling eels in cans and only eels in cans since 1942.

I found it a refreshing approach in a world where we are constantly bombarded with "new and improved". Found your favorite tooth paste ? Very likely you will no longer find it in in six months or so, replaced by dozens of "new and improved" flavors, sizes and packagings. Toilet paper for some time comes in double (2x) size and triple (3x) size. And I recently came across another "innovation": we now have 1.5 x and 2.5 x regular size. Really running out of ideas on the never-ending "new and improved" front !

If a company can survive for nearly 80 years on canned eels, let this be an inspiration to stick what you really want to do and do not allow yourself to get sidetracked, however tempting this may seem, and however many others are running around after every new trend and opportunity that comes around !

What questions were not allowed ?

Samsung's debacle with the Note 7 caused a loss in profit of more than 2 billion US$ and the company's image will be dented for a long time to come. Who will rush out to buy the Note 8 ??

The official cause for the batteries catching fire has not yet been communicated and there will undoubtedly be technical explanations about the reasons the phones overheated and started to melt. And maybe a few engineers will be shamed (publicly, undoubtedly) and for sure a good part of the blame will end up in the lap of the suppliers who built the batteries.

But very likely, someone, at some point, at Samsung or at the supplier, had raised questions about the stability or safety of the new generation batteries that were being rushed through production to meet the deadlines. Maybe it was an engineer or technician who thought that some test results were too borderline to allow for the next phase in design and production  ... And they were probably told that the impact on the timely launch would be too important. The Challenger and Titanic disasters are examples where people had raised questions and concerns but been overruled or ignored.

These are dramatic examples. For sure your company will not end up in the headlines to this extent. But just wonder how difficult questions are dealt with in your organization ? Are they written off as disconnected with the business priorities ? As a disturbance ? Or are they looked upon as a way to challenge current practices and do better in the long run ? The impact may not be as dramatic as in Samsung's case, but the way you deal with questions will definitely impact how your organization grows ...

There's no app for that !

Human beings are social creatures. We crave interaction with others. In the workplace, we spend most of our time amidst colleagues, bosses and subordinates and most of what we do is connected to what others are doing, either through direct contact or through any form of communication. 

I am amazed at how little time managers have (or rather ... find) these days to really communicate with their team members. They are swamped by meetings, visitors, reporting, budgets, forecasts or management retreats. They solve problems, monitor action plans and send out and read tons of emails each day. 

Amidst all these priorities they struggle to carve out meaningful time and engage in real conversations with those who report to them. They often feel that sending emails is a valid substitute for exchanging views. I once had a manager asking if he could send the developmental or improvement feedback to a subordinate by email since this was so much easier  and faster ... ! The fact that the real meaning of giving developmental feedback is in the dialogue that happens between the boss and the team member was for him probably an inconvenience pushing him out of his comfort zone.

In so many organizations I get to work with, the annual performance review is the only time a manager sits down with a team member to look at and discuss past performance and future development. The once-a-year ritual becomes stressful and time-consuming for both parties.

Having regular conversations along the year about how someone is doing takes some practice and self-discipline but it is the minimum necessary when thinking of employee engagement. There is not really an alternative for one-on-one dialogue. I am afraid someone (maybe a busy manager ... ?) will one day come up with an app for giving feedback and having conversations with others !

Learning together !

One of the great things of my "new" 4-year old career is that I come to meet and get to know great like-minded people. You could call them competitors but I prefer to see them as colleagues from whom I can learn and whom I can help as well.

I am happy to help other consultants, trainers and facilitators in Thailand to improve their facilitation skills. Graphics and visuals can bring a lighter touch to the many flip charts we like to make. I know for sure that my flip charts are way too boring, so I will be one of the 20 participants to learn from Kailin Huang.

Although still 2 months away, only 5 seats remain !

The power of small ...

The former CEO of SAS once said "You cannot improve something by 1000% but you can improve a 1000 things by 1%". 1% doesn't look that exhilarating. Most websites/blogs/consultants or coaches will entice you with breakthrough improvement. They promise to bring you from where you are today straight to best-in-class ... The promises are convincing.

But let's take another look at these small 1% improvements. I came across this visual on Linkedin some time ago. Don't know if this is copyrighted in any way, and if it is, credits go to the author ! 1% a day, for one year. Doesn't sound impossible, but also doesn't sound as much of an improvement at first sight. Until you realize that doing this every single day adds up to a pretty huge difference after one year. Just as huge a difference as 1% decline every day adds up to after 365 days.

And I would add that 1.00(365) = 1 ... The biggest challenge for many is that they are stuck in their current mode.They think/talk or find excuses about the changes and challenges around them ... and as times goes by, nothing gets done.

So a gentle reminder that 1% is not that small after all, if only you can keep it up !

Keeping employee engagement simple !

Employee engagement is probably one of the greatest buzz words of the last few years. Consultants make great money with measuring and evaluating employee engagement, and often show leaders how terribly low the engagement of their employees is. And after having shamed these leaders, they then feel obliged to hire the aforementioned consultant to hopefully turn those disastrous numbers into something more presentable. Often, a multi-year "engagement project" is started ... with great costs.

So it is refreshing to once in a while come back to earth and see how simple engaging employees can be ! I had the chance to work with teams at a service firm in Bangkok a few times. Each time I discovered different knowledge sharing sessions being offered to employees, designed and delivered by peers and colleagues. Not by the training department or the HR function, but by the seniors in the different departments.

It is a great step forward if an organization can instill a mindset of sharing knowledge as opposed to hoarding it. Knowledge is the only thing that multiplies when shared amongst others. Yet in reality, people are often incentivized to sit on their knowledge for their own performance measures. Through this kind of sharing sessions, the company instills pride and empowerment when it gives the opportunity for employees to develop and deliver these sharing sessions.

Just think how different this kind of sharing sessions are received by the employees compared to the traditional email from HR about the list of training programs to sign up for ?

Employee engagement is a long term effort, for sure. But it doesn't need to be complicated. When you are embarking on an engagement effort, start by looking at and asking your ... employees !

When self-awareness hits home

I was positively surprised in a team Action Learning session some time ago. Two very high-potentials, extremely sharp and well-spoken, contributed heavily in the first half of the session. Not to say they pretty much monopolized the discussion. Their peers sat and nodded most of the time. But then again, their contributions were really top notch.

As the session progressed, and the Action Learning coach invited the team members to share their personal reflections and learning, both spoke out to say they "had to be more quiet" and "give more chance to others to participate". Now, that happens quite often. What happens more rarely though is that they actually changed their own habit without much prompting.

They were both more quiet but explicitly encouraged others to share. Even if they had some great ideas, they refrained from expressing them. They encouraged the entire team to contribute and share. The dynamic of the team changed from one with two dominant figures to that of a team working together.

During the reflections at the end of the session, one of the initially dominant ones shared a well-known quote, which was poignant because she had just demonstrated how to apply this wisdom, rather than just being able to rattle off the quote. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

High-potentials are often those of who the organization thinks they are a level above the other, today and in the future. If this potential can be combined with a genuine self-awareness and actions to work on their own shortcomings, then you have in your hand a few gems. Rare but really valuable.

Learning meetings ... ?

I just read an article of one of my favorite authors in the latest issue of HBR. Michael Watkins is a very good resource when you are interested in career transitions and he is pretty much the expert in this little-researched area. In this article however, something caught my eye ... and makes me react.

Watkins explains that as a leader of a team, you should have three types of meetings. Strategic meetings to make the big decisions on business models, vision, strategy or organizational evolutions. Operational meetings to review forecasts, short term performance and adjusting plans. And finally, you should have "learning meetings". These meetings are "scheduled on an as-needed basis, often after crises or in response to emerging issues. They can also focus on team building."

Wow ... what a let-down ! Learning meetings ?!

So let me get this straight. There are meetings where we "do" stuff like operational things and strategy things. These are the doing meetings. And then when we do not do anything, and if we have some time on our hands, we can have a "learning" meeting to think and learn ... I strongly disagree with this view of what learning means and how it should be integrated in the way people work. My other favorite author and thinker - and father of Action Learning - Reg Revans says

"There is no learning without action and there is no action without learning"

and from what I seen in my experience, this is the only way to make learning a continuous and integral part of how to grow a team and a business.

If learning is something that is distinct from the "real" work that is being done ... it means you are relegating it to the back seat. The only way to really learn is to make learning part of every meeting, project, and activity.

Using Action Learning to accelerate the development of team psychological safety

Click on the link here or below the picture to read my blog post published online in the CLO Chief Learning Officer magazine !

http://www.clomedia.com/2016/06/09/action-learning-can-accelerate-team-psychological-safety/

Where do you practice management ?

Whenever a team needs to perform, it spends lots of time to practice. Sports team train and practice 90% of the time to be ready for a single performance once a week. Orchestras or music groups spend hours practicing and aligning with one another to make sure the performance they will give in front of paying clients will be perfect. All this is normal and expected. People would be shocked if a sports team or a music band arrived for the performance and looked at one another saying "OK, how will we do this thing ... ?".

And what about a management team ? A management team needs to perform as well. Pretty much all the time. When do we train or practice as a team to get better at solving problems, dealing with customers, introducing new products or growing the business ? Do you do that in training courses ? Not really. Or once a year in the annual retreat ? Obviously that is not enough to develop a real way of working together. Maybe the team-building session ? Great fun but this is not really where we talk about solving problems as a team or dealing with conflicts that may arise.

Practice is the key to moving to a better performance. Yet when it comes to practice to be more effective as a management team, we cannot find the time or, more likely, the way to go about practicing. Management teams need to look for new ways to deal with their challenges, try out new ideas and see what works and what doesn't work, and then practice practice practice to get routines established.

Action Learning sessions are a way for management teams to practice becoming better while dealing with real business challenges. Team members explore new ideas, try some of them out on a small scale and report back to the group how things turned out and what they have learned. Over time, the team gets more aligned and stronger as unit !

About questions and onions !

When a team experiences Action Learning through a first discovery session, the questions they ask can be a bit haphazard. It sometimes feels like there is a competition for asking as many questions as possible. This can frustrate the problem presenter who might think that this “great new tool” that would help with the problem feels more like an inquisition ! And indeed, not all questions are created equal. Team members are aware during the session what questions are really powerful and helped the problem presenter, and which ones were not really helping that much. So after debriefing about what they learned, they sometimes ask me “But how should we ask more of these great questions ?”.

I prefer to avoid any attempt to “teach” which questions are great and which questions are average. After all, it is the person who receives the question who determines whether that question helped to open up new thoughts, or whether it felt more like a burden to answer. There is no such thing as “the one great question” that works in any situation !

It is not really a matter of great questions versus average ones, but more about the extent to which the questions help the problem presenter think. I use the metaphor of an onion (see the picture) before we start the session. I explain that there is no harm in asking the questions that are at the level of the outer peel of the onion. When exploring a new issue, team members need to get basic information. These questions are useful for the team members to start to know about the problem, but they will not really help the problem presenter develop new ideas. For new ideas to be explored, team members need to try and move “towards the center of the onion”.

The team typically gets this concept very well. In a recent session, I asked the team what they thought about the kind of questions that were asked. One team member replied “We are asking questions at peel of the onion !”. The team immediately picked this up and confirmed that they would have to try and move to the center of the onion if they wanted to help the problem presenter. A similar intervention when I feel a team is asking rather superficial questions is “Team, from the questions we have been asking so far, have you seen the problem presenter having to think a lot or not ?”. The metaphor of the onion comes up almost immediately.

Avoid to teach what a great question looks like. Invite the team to think about questions that help the problem presenter … think !

Communicating is not collaborating

I was at an interesting experience-sharing event last week where the speaker popped up "Collaboration Tools" on the screen. Whenever I see collaboration my neurons start to fire because I believe this is the key to successful team performance.

And so I was paying full attention when he explained that in his organization, many of the younger employees were steering away from email but using the "collaboration tools" Line or WhatsApp pretty much all the time. And that's when my neurons went in overdrive. Do business leaders really believe that Line or WhatsApp, or emails for that matter, are evidence of collaboration ? It is maybe useful to distinguish communication from collaboration ...

Communication is exchanging information. With modern tools, I can communicate with 100s of people at the same time. But getting a "read" message in Line or WhatsApp does not mean anything but that. It does not mean "I received your message and will act on it". So although Line and WhatsApp may be cooler than email, not much has really changed.

Collaboration is when people work together to a common objective. And that does not work with 100s of people, and although communication is important, it is very different from collaboration. Collaboration requires people to be really connected and for things to actually get done.

If Line were a collaboration tool, there would be loads of great collaboration going on all the time, most of it on the BTS skytrain system in the morning. Exchanging information is good but don't confuse this for things actually getting done.

Message received ?

Funny story this week in the Thai Premier league (soccer). A match had to be postponed because the referee didn't show up. He was not held back or anything but he had simply not read the Line message that was sent to him by the organizing committee to tell him that he was the referee for that particular game. This may look like an extreme example of bad organization but it reminded me of how often this happens in work situations. All the communication tools and apps available these days should help us to be more effective in ... communicating with others ! The reality is often different.

When I have discussions with leaders who share the challenges they have with their teams, I often hear "I sent her the report .." or "I sent him the email ...". Communication in the mind of many seems reduced to hitting the "send" button on the email or the app. And sometimes the "receipt" message is an even stronger piece of evidence that the communication has been successful.

And when we dig into communication issues, we often find out that the issue is that the other person does not react, reply, act or confirm, although ... I had sent the message (and I got the receipt confirmation to prove it!). Sending the message has "thrown the ball" back to the other side and puts people in a mode that says "now I am waiting for them". Amongst the 1000s of apps, one function the cell phone can still perform is to actually call and talk to somebody. If you want to be sure your message is received (and understood, although that may be another challenge), it is sometimes useful to switch back to this most basic of apps !

Changing others ...

In the team sessions I run, participants share management challenges and learn from each other through a questioning process. 100% of the challenges are about someone who is not in the room. The difficult colleague. The demanding boss. A team member who is not doing what is asked. Or another who is talking behind your back. The context and specifics are different, but it is always about them. And how to change them.

The presenter explains to the colleagues in the team session all he has tried, all the tricks in his management tool kit that have been tested. And how all these attempts were not successful and how the issue is still there. Once the explanations about the situation are complete, the presenter eagerly listens to what the colleagues will come up with, in the hope they will have a magic trick in the tool box that is brand new and untested and will be the secret to dealing with this management challenge. Alas, after a few minutes, the discussion often turns into "I have tried that too and it doesn't work" or "This solution is not possible in this case because ...".

The exchange quickly grows stale when the focus is solely on what other or innovative tricks exist to change the other person's (peer, boss, team member) behavior. The real insight comes when the presenter realizes that he or she can only change his or her own behavior ... and then see what impact that has on the other person. This seems pretty basic for some but it is only when this awareness has grown that the presenter can come up with real steps of what he can do himself to deal with the challenge.

Nipping ideas in the bud ..

I keep on coming across managers who tell me their team members have no ideas or inputs when asked for them. I wrote a blog sometime earlier about what you can do to create an environment where people are more comfortable to share their ideas. With a rote learning education and associated culture, many folks in organizations in Asia are not used to ask, challenge or propose.

Illustration by Saul Steinberg

So managers should put extra effort in inviting their team members to share their ideas. But I have come to think that the real problem is elsewhere. The real problem lies in the reaction the manager offers when someone brings up an idea. The courage to share the idea is often squashed but the very first things the manager does while the words are still floating in the air.

Those first things can be ...

1. the body language ... What does your FACE say when someone shares an idea ? Does it show genuine interest or does it show that this idea is not what you expected ?

2. the dreaded "but" ... as in "Great idea, but ....". But is then followed by "let me explain you why this won't work", "I have tried this in my years of experience and ..." or "this is not compatible with the main plan" ... or a combination thereof !

3. the follow up ... If you do not act upon the ideas your team proposes, or better still, give them the green light to act upon their own ideas, you are sending the message that you had the better answers anyway.

Next you find yourself frustrated with your team members' lack of ideas, input or creativity, think about how you react when they do propose something.

What Google's research DID NOT say about high-performance teams

Amy Edmondson's concept of team psychological safety has been around for 15 years. But it takes a company like Google mentioning it to bring the topic in the mainstream ! Google spent a lot of time to analyze what differentiates high-performance teams from mediocre ones. Although many interesting characteristics were looked at, none of them was really the differentiating factor. What really set high-performance teams apart from others was "a shared belief by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking".

Unfortunately this complex team dynamic is already being reduced to one-liners and simplifications. One of the articles I came across discussed Google's finding with the eye-catching title

"Google spends years figuring out that the secret to a good working environment is just to be nice."

Well, no ... First of all Google didn't try to find out what a good working environment looks like, but what high-performance teams look like and behave like. Secondly, the title leads to a serious misunderstanding. Being nice is not what makes a team excellent. If that were the case, I would know of numerous high-performance teams. Especially in Asia, being nice is very important and doing the opposite creates tensions. But being nice in itself does not result in excellence. When being nice means not challenging one another (for fear of losing face), not speaking up when you really should (for fear of standing out) or faking agreement (for fear of creating tensions), you have a team with lots of niceness but little excellence.

Nothing wrong with being nice. But do not equate that with a high-performance team !

Looking for A-Ha: what neuroscience tells us about creativity

That was the title of my talk at ASCIM 2016 in Bangkok recently. I really enjoyed preparing for this talk. It took me probably a full 4 days of researching, reading, putting pieces together and then changing them all again. The best reward for this kind of effort is double. First of all, I learned a lot by preparing for this. The reactions from participants during the talk, and from those that came up to me after the talk, confirmed that they had learned some valuable new things as well. Nice visual summary made by the conference drawer to remember the key points !

What insight looks like

One key objective of an Action Learning session is to help a colleague get a better understanding of his or her problem. A better understanding leads to better solutions ! Asking questions helps a leader explore possibilities he or she had not thought of before. This takes time, and simply telling someone what should be done does not work. To come to a genuine insight, our brain requires questions and explorations.

We often ask team members to write out in a full sentence their understanding of the underlying problem. Sometimes, the leader sharing the problem insists that he understands the problem very well, and that there is not really a need to write it out.  Yet the different rounds of asking questions to one another and evaluating different perspectives can sometimes lead to real insights. When the "light bulb is switched on" leaders immediately see their challenge - and the solutions - in a whole different way.

Here are two examples from actual sessions.

The leader's understanding of the problem at the start of the session:
"How can I improve the employee engagement score related to the department's leadership ?"

The leader's insight of the problem at the end of the session:
"How can I develop trust between myself and my leadership team ?"

And the second one ...

At the start:
"How can I improve the relationships between myself and the team ?"

and at the end:
"How can I control my emotional reactions to minimize the impact on the team ?"

Maybe it is time for you to take a fresh look and the challenges you are facing ?

Teams are more complex - and powerful - than you think

Look up any clipart representation of the word "leadership" and chances are you will come across something looking like the first picture. The leader is always shown in the middle, with his or her team members in a neat circle around. And the secret to being an effective team leader is shown through the different arrows. These represent the trust the leader creates with each of his members, how he or she communicates with them, what targets or goals they are given. That is the neat representation of team leadership.

The reality looks more like the second picture. Of course the relationships of the leader, still shown in the middle, with each of the team members is important. But in reality, there are not 8 but in total 35 connections and therefore relationships going on in this team. So as a team leader, you may excel in the 8 relationships you are a part of, but the reality of the team, and how it performs, is much more complex. You may have a trustworthy relationship with each of the people in the outer circle, but does that automatically mean all these team members have an equally trusting relationship with one another ?

There are two ways to look at the second picture. The first is to say, "Wow, this is way too complex to even try to do anything about it". The second is to say "Wow ... look at all the potential there is in this team if all 35 connections and relationships are working optimally".

Way too much leadership tools, blogs and books focus on the person in the red in the middle. The real power of teams lies as much in the other 27 connections and how well these sync. I continue to be amazed how little effort leaders put in the actual development of their team, in other words, in the 27 relationships that make up the team connections. So here is a question to you: what can you do, as the leader in red in the middle, to optimize these 27 connections that you are not directly part of ? I am interested to read your thoughts !

How do you rate yourself ?

Self-awareness is a key element of leadership growth and development. And self-awareness often starts with rating/comparing yourself against a number of criteria. Many tools used in leadership development are based on self-assessment. In fact, most are based only on self-assessment because 360 degree assessments are more complicated to set up and administer, and maybe riskier to the individuals.

So the start to self-awareness is rating yourself, identifying where you are in comparison to a benchmark or just in general which areas are your strengths and which need more work. But how honestly can one really rate oneself ? When it comes to concepts such as "transparency" or "honesty" or "ethics", it gets quite hard, doesn't it ? Who would rate themselves as "average honest" or "not really very ethical" ?

I came across an article in Rotman Management magazine recently where an interesting study was mentioned. When comparing self-assessment with the assessment made by peers, colleagues and team members, about 70% of us overestimate the strength of character that others see in us. And what is even more interesting is that those leaders who are seen by their peers as most in need of development, are the ones that overestimate their character the most. In short: those who could most benefit from real self-awareness don't see themselves in a balanced way.

That is why I try to avoid using profiling tools based only on self-assessment. The mirror that OTHERS can show you is really much more meaningful. So first step in building your self-awareness: go out and ask for feedback !