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Is it safe to contribute fully on your team?

May 3, 2023By Mike Hohnen

Emotional safety, it’s interesting. Five years ago, we did not talk a lot about this, but since Amy Godmonson especially put this on the map for all to see, it has become an important and much-discussed topic when we talk about Leadership development.

John Hibss just posted a great piece here on this that made me think: This is such an important point – but I wish I could get more people to understand the subtleties involved.

Emotional safety is one of these things that we all understand. Nod our heads and go: “Yes – so important. Thankfully not something I need to be too concerned about – can’t imagine anyone on my team feeling emotionally unsafe.”

Well, I have news for you (and us all ) – we make a lot more people feel emotionally unsafe than we often imagine. I know this because, in my job, I often coach people from the same organisation but at different levels as part of my Grow Leadership program. And I observe this unfolding again and again.

So many brilliant, well-meaning managers are unaware of how their sense of humour, moods, decision patterns, goal setting, meeting style, lack of inquiry, focus on advocacy etc. etc, impacts people around them.

The best way to become more self-aware is to try and notice – but truly pay attention to – everyone on my team contributing. ( in the broadest sense of the word). And if you get the feeling that someone is holding back – even just the slightest – they are probably holding back because they are unsure if it is safe to contribute fully. ( you can define ‘contribute’ as it applies in your context)

How well did you score on ‘Plays well with others’ ?

March 30, 2023By Mike Hohnen

In my coaching practice, I think that I spend more than 50% of the time working with managers on some aspect of their collaboration with others. Situations that, for some reason, are dysfunctional or even, at times, toxic.

For the person involved, it is often a ‘big thing ‘ that takes up much bandwidth, and at the end of the day, it can’t help but affect their output negatively.

The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our results.

But for some funny reason, we rarely pay much attention to developing collaborative skills – When things are difficult, it is obviously because someone else is [ ] put in whatever applies ( Stupid, incompetent, tone-deaf)

Collaboration is a learned skill, and it is really not that hard. And surprisingly its not so much about the others… it’s all about us

Not since kindergarten days did you get a report card that scored you for “Plays well with others” or not…

Maybe now is the time

Elearning is fantastic – if you have a tutor

February 14, 2023By Mike Hohnen

That may sound like a contradiction in terms – I mean is the whole point of e-learning not that there is no ‘teacher’.

Yes and no.

E-learning is flexible. Learning is self-paced. You can take as much time on a subject as you like. Watch and rewatch til you get it.
No need to travel – it is an enormous cost and time saver

There are so many advantages over traditional classroom learning.

But, and that is serious but.

Possibly for exactly those same reasons e-learning can be challenging.

You need a lot of self-discipline to make sure you get it done
You can lose motivation when things get a bit tricky
You may miss the feedback and encouragement, or possibly just another person to bounce off ideas and your own understanding with.

That is also why a substantial proportion of e-learning courses are never completed.

What you really need is a coach

In most areas of life where we would like improvement, we would hire a coach – when it comes to learning we call it a tutor. Adding a tutor to your e-learning program is incredibly effective – in fact, adding a tutor solves Bloom’s famous 2-sigma problem.

Bloom’s 2 sigma problem shows that students who receive one-on-one tutoring using mastery learning techniques perform two standard deviations better than students in a traditional classroom setting.

But supporting students individually becomes very expensive – that was Bloom’s problem – we know it is the best way to learn – but how to do it without breaking the bank?

When we combine e-learning with tutoring, you get the best of both worlds. You have the convenience and flexibility of e-learning, but with the added support and personalised instruction of a tutor.

A tutor will help you stay motivated, answer your questions, and provide immediate feedback.

All my e-learning programs come with a tutoring option – for all of the above reasons.

But if you think about why not apply this thinking to your learning in general?

What would you like to learn or get better at?

Today all the knowledge is out there – that is not the challenge. Knowledge is really available.

No, the real challenge is converting knowledge into new behaviour. The famous knowing-doing gap and that is where a coach/tutor can be of enormous help

Tell me more about what you would like to improve and we can put together a learning journey for you.

Work Your Inside for a change

January 31, 2023By Mike Hohnen

I have a challenge for you – watch and see if you are up for it…

Video transcript

I have a challenge for you.

Its called work your inside for a change.

But before I disclose what the challenge is I want to share with you what has inspired me to create this challenge.

This summer, I came across a really interesting initiative that has come out of Stockholm, Sweden, a group of consultants, academics, and researchers have asked themselves this very important question. We have this beautiful framework called the United nation sustainability framework? When you look at them, It very obvious what needs to be done?

The research is there, the knowledge is there. Everybody knows what needs to be done,

But somehow it’s not happening. Or if it’s happening, it’s in a very small way compared to what is actually needed. So in that sense, this, this sort of classic knowing, doing gap,

We know exactly what has to be done, but somehow it’s not happening.

You could also say that we have a collective blind spot. Somehow we’re not seeing what it is that’s tripping us up and preventing us in actually taking the necessary action.

And so they ask themselves this question, what would it actually take? What are the skills and abilities and attributes that we would need to develop individually and collectively in order to fulfil these sustainability goals.

And they put this question out to a wide range of people and asked for their input. And out of that came what they have now labeled, The inner development goals. Go to their website and you can learn a lot more about them, the way they researched it and process that’s behind developing this framework.

A lot of interesting companies that are backing up this initiative. It’s, it’s not a two centsstart up in a basement. It’s a very serious initiative.

What that came up with was 21 skills and attributes, including things like openness, how our ability to be open to new things, our ability to take perspectives, humility, trust, empathy, all these kinds of things.

They then grouped them in five main categories that they called

being
thinking
relating
collaborating
acting,

This framework is open source and free to use for anybody who is interested in working in the field of sustainability and leadership.

When I saw the framework I went, hallelujah.

Those are exactly the same attributes that we would need If you asked someone, what does it take to develop sustainable leadership?

What do we need to develop?

Well, they’re exactly the same skills and attributes.

This then brought me back to something that I’ve been asking myself for a long time now.

In the so-called Western world, we seem to have an over focus on the outside. We are fascinated with skill development that has directed towards task orientation and optimising performance. But that over focus on the outside seems to develop some kind of imbalance in the system that we are part of.

And the way that imbalance comes out is in things like th is the great resignation people leaving their jobs in droves. Companies having problems with recruitment. Theya little red lamps popping up that are telling us that somehow our system is out of balance and that imbalance is due to a blind spot or a knowing doing gap.

We know what it takes to create sustainable leadership. We know what kind of organisations and workplaces we need to develop, but somehow it’s not happening.

And my feeling is that the main reason it’s not happening is because we are neglecting the inside. We are not working hard enough on achieving a balance by developing individually and collectively a healthier inside.

I think one of the reasons this happens is because most of us, when we look at these things, humility, trust, openness, whatever they are and we ask ourselves, am I good at that? And we all go, yes, of course, I’m good at that. I’m a very open person. I’m humble, I’m trustworthy. And so we give ourselves a 10 out of 10 on all of those. But the reality is that when we look at that list of 21 things, we all have some serious blind spots and we cannot work on them until we start exploring them.

Awareness, proceeds, change remember.

So what I mean is that you can be the smartest person in the room. You can have the most fabulous education. You can have gone undergone all sorts of incredible training courses. But if you’re inside is underdeveloped, then you will end up getting in your own way. You will not be able to perform as well as you could, if you had a better balance.

And that’s why I’d like you to join me in this exploration of inner development.

And that’s the challenge that I want to present you with today. I call it working on your inside for a change. Over the next five days. I will send you a podcast, one podcast each day. In the podcast, which will be about 25 to 30 minutes. I will take up one of these 21 Inner development goals could be trust, humility, empathy, complexity awareness.

And at the end of each podcast, I will ask you a question to reflect on. It’s really important to do this reflection, because if you just consume the podcast, then you have just added more knowledge to your knowledge bank, but you’ve actually not started working with the inner development.

In order to work with inner development, we need some kind of a conversation, a conversation with ourselves or a conversation with somebody else.

And so the conversation with ourselves could be in the form of answering a reflection question and putting in that reflection question on an email to me.

In that way, there’s a certain commitment to doing it.

So that’ll be the rhythm: podcast, reflection, another podcast, reflection at the end of the five podcasts, I will offer you a coaching conversation where we can go over the five inner development goals that we have covered as well as your reflections for each of them.

There’s no charge for this.

There’s no payment, but there is a catch, a small catch. And the catch is that if you don’t do the reflection, you don’t get the next podcast. You can’t just consume the content because you’re just going to add to the knowing, doing gap. And so podcast + reflection, and that releases the next podcast.

That also means that if you feel that doing it every day for five days is too fast, or you don’t have the time for it, then you can skip a day, even two, as long as you realize that you don’t get the next podcast before I receive your reflection.

So that’s the deal.

So how do I think you might be able to benefit from this?

Well, I think first of all, and that’s my overall goal with this, I wanna give you a taste of what could it be like to work with your inside?

And in that process, I would also like to raise your awareness of this phenomenon that I’ve talked about, of this imbalance, how we seem to be much more focused on working on our outsides and not paying enough attention to what would actually happen if we start working a little bit more on our insides.

And I also hope to make it clear to you that the quality of our insides ends up driving the quality of our output – of our outsides if you like.

And finally, my larger hope is that this little sequence of podcasts, and the coaching conversation will inspire you to continue working on your own innerdevelopment development.

So how does that sound?

Are you up for the challenge?

I really hope so. I would so enjoy having you board. The next step is very simple. All you need to do is go to my webpage, Mikehohnen.com/inside, and then add your name and email address in the form that’s provided.

When you are registered as a participant you will first of all, get an email back where I will send you some more material to think about that will inspire you to further consider, your own inner development.

I expect to be shipping the podcasts around the end of August.

So that’s when you can expect the first podcast to arrive in your imbox, but in between, I’ll make sure to keep you busy with something else to think about. I really look forward to seeing you on the program.

Bye bye for now.

Join the challenge here

Is is time to get of the dance floor?

February 2, 2023By Mike Hohnen

Over the past weeks, I have been catching up with clients.

Reflecting on these conversations one thing has struck me. Most of them are incredibly busy… and frustrated. When I poke a bit at that busyness it turns out that there is a common denominator. Somehow most of them have got trapped on the dance floor.

By that I mean, they are working on stuff that rightly should be done by someone on their team. That’s how it used to be but after all the confinements, shutdowns and staff shortages, they have drifted into sacrificing their own time for subordinate imposed time.

Let me explain.

Most managers operate within three main categories of time.

Boss-imposed time – used to accomplish tasks imposed by the boss and that can not be ignored without serious negative consequences.

System imposed time, meetings, request for support from fellow managers etc. Also, stuff that can not be ignored without getting into trouble.

Self-imposed time – is the time that the manager gets to work on ‘own’ projects, but a portion of that time will be taken by subordinate-imposed time. So when we deduct the subordinate imposed time from the self-imposed time it leaves us with the manager’s discretionary time.

Often this discretionary time is negative in the sense that it overshoots the number of hours available in what we would define as a reasonable workday or workweek. The manager is then faced with the choice of working unreasonably long hours or not working on their projects. An impossible choice. Hence the frustration.

This was all described brilliantly in a 1999 HBR article called, ‘Who’s got the monkey?’

Seems it’s still relevant.

Because of the ‘situation’ over the past many months, the manager has got into the habit of taking over the monkeys that subordinates are struggling with. This happens in more or less subtle ways.

“Boss, how are we going to cope with x now that y is no longer available to us?” “Hmm, I don’t really know yet, leave it with me and I will think about it.”

“Boss, I am missing two key people on my team, and I still have not sent that activity report for HQ – I just don’t know how to cope at the moment.” The manager thinks… don’t want to lose this lady as well, then responds. “Don’t worry leave it here with me I will sort it out later today.”

And so it goes on and on throughout the day.

In the process, subordinates have learnt that the best way to ease their workload and get home in a reasonable time is to drop by the manager and see if he will take over a monkey or two. It has become the new way of doing things.

It’s a swamp that will suck even the best manager under if not attended to.

But even worse, subordinates are learning to be helpless, it may be easier, but in the long run it is not very stimulating.

It’s time get off the dance floor and onto the balcony.

The first step is to be much more aware of what monkeys are truly yours and what monkeys are not yours. Subordinates who bring problem monkeys to you, need coaching, maybe direct advice, but when they leave your office they take their monkey with them.

It’s their monkey and they need to feed it.

Hard skills or Soft skills

May 19, 2022By Mike Hohnen

What is more important?

Neither – its a polarity – they need to be balanced and present

Lots of managers have fantastic hard skills – often that is what got them the job in the first place.

But if there is a lack of soft skills

they lose people – lots of people.

“a toxic culture is the biggest factor pushing employees out the door during the Great Resignation” -Sloan Review

Previously we accepted high turnovers. We shrugged it off – ‘that’s the industry’ we said to each other.

It was easy to find replacements.

That is no longer the case

In the future, we will need a better balance

You will need one thing and one thing only next year!

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

The courage to act

I promise you

It’s not more planning, bigger goals or even new KPI’s that is going to get you through the coming year.

You will need one thing and one thing only.

Courage

The courage to act

The biggest threat you face at the moment is to get bogged down in passivity while you are waiting for things to get better.

Things are not going to get better or worse for that matter.

‘Things’ are what they are

Uncertain, unpredictable, and continuously evolving.

This Corona thing is just an accelerator for so much that has been percolating for a while.

On a high level, what is happening is that we are transitioning from a period where things were complicated to a situation where things are beyond complicated – they have become complex.

In a complex world, there are no known answers – no experts to turn to. Situations are unfolding and developing constantly. There is no longer agreement on how things work or what will happen when we do x y or z.

To navigate this uncertainty, we need to experiment. To test things out.

That way, if we are smart, we can learn and adapt.

The crucial part is the do part – without the doing, we will lack vital information.

But taking action in the face of uncertainty requires courage.

Courage to accept a lot of failures
Courage to be critiqued for trying and missing
Courage to get up and try again

So you just need to find the courage.

I think I can help you with that.

For years I have operated a coaching system that I call Micro Coaching – it is basically an adaptation of a basic action learning concept.

It works like this

Every Friday morning, you receive an e-mail from me with the following questions:

What was your focus this past week?
What did you do?
What did you learn?
What will you focus on next week?

You answer the questions and return them to me before the end of the weekend. Monday – latest Tuesday I will send you my reflections, thoughts and feedback.

We continue the same process every week.

You will be surprised at how much it helps you stay on track. But most importantly, it will help you find the courage to act – and that is your secret weapon for 2021.

Click the link here, and it will take you to the page I created to describe the concept in more detail.

The courage to act

All the best

Mike

Your ego loves ‘this’ not ‘that’

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

It’s got to be like this. And if it’s like this, it obviously cannot be like that. This is the world your ego loves.

We have been exploring the difference between to be above the line and below the line in a number of blogposts now. The concept of ‘this’ not ‘that’ relates back to my original video in this serie about how we get trapped in wanting to be right. When we get trapped in ‘this’ not ‘that’, then we also are trapped in right and wrong and black and white and all the rest of it. And that’s fine. As long as we are operating in a simple world: that car is blue, that horse is moving or appels are fruits.

Video and Soundcloud versions below

‘This’ not ‘that’ works when things are simple

But as soon as we start moving out of very simple situations and into something that starts getting more complicated or even more complex, we start getting into trouble.

Just to recapitulate, computers are complicated. They are difficult but once you figure them out then you know how they will respond. A bowl of spaghetti on the other hand is complex. You have no idea how its is ‘configured’. If you pull a strand what happens next? It is unpredictable and the next bowl will behave differently.

That’s the beauty of complexity. Things are so interconnected and there’s so much randomness in the system that we don’t really know how things will evolve, respond or perform. In a complex world ‘this’ not ‘that’ is pretty useless. It doesn’t work.

Of all our fears, the fear of the unknown is the greatest

So why do we get trapped in wanting to be right? Well, you’ll see what happens is that most of us get scared when faced with complexity. We have nothing to hold on to, no rules to live by and our little ego freaks out and looks for something to cling to: And there is it is ‘this’ not ‘that’. The moment it does, it drags us below the line. It’s the end of open mind, we no longer see possibilities, we are not open to perspectives. We are fighting for ego-survival. It’s ‘this’ not ‘that’!

In order to stay above the line, we need get comfortable with complexity and we need to be okay with our ‘not knowing’. Complexity means dealing with the grey tones, resisting the black and white solutions. In complexity, we need more options, because we can’t possibly know beforehand which options will actually work out.

That is the world that we’re operating in.

In a complex world this not that no longer works

Great team leaders are not afraid of complexity

And in case you were wondering, anything that involves human beings is not only complicated, it is also very complex. That means the big error we keep on making is, we think we can reduce all those questions regarding our teams and people to ‘this’ not ‘that’. If we do ‘this’, they are going to do ‘that’. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. It just depends. “If we give them a bonus, they will do this”. Maybe, some people will, sometimes. Maybe they won’t. To be a great team leader is also to become a master of complexity.

Here are the previous post in this series

Leadership skills every team leader needs to master

As a leader do you have the courage to examine your mindset model?

Feeling right you are probably wrong

Great team leaders do not get sucked into drama

Because you will drift you need to learn how to shift

Mike Hohnen, MBA is a coach, trainer, author and public speaker who supports leaders, managers and their teams in implementing the principles of the Service Profit Chain.