3 Common Pain Points We Hear from Clients

It all maps back to the drivers of Cultural Competitive Advantage

ATLAS

It stands for:

A – Activation from above
T – Trust and shared purpose
L – Leader effectiveness
A – Actionable people data
S – Systems that support leaders

These are the things that organizations must constantly diagnose and work to improve to create a healthy work culture. You might be saying, “Those drivers look great on paper, but what do they look like in the real world?”

Below are three sentiments I’ve heard both recently – and consistently – from clients, and how they map to ATLAS:

Activation from Above

1) From CEOs: “My top level leaders aren’t operating with an executive mindset.”

I’ve heard several mid-level managers (in our open leadership development programs like Leadership Fundamentals, for example) sharing something along the lines of, “I’m so glad I’m in this program and I’ve learned a lot, but I’m unsure that I’ll be able to change anything when I go back to work because the leaders above me have no clue what any of this means.”

The problem is less about that manager and their ability to implement change, and more about the highest-level leaders in their organization who sent them to “leadership camp” and patted themselves on the back for investing in their employees’ development. What these organizations are lacking is activation from above.

To be clear, I’m not against investing in employee leadership development journeys. It’s the who and the how that organizations sometimes get wrong, making managers feel hopeless when the goal was for them to feel empowered.

So how do you get the who and the how right?

Any leadership development initiative has a better chance of making meaningful impact when the organization’s highest-level leaders start with themselves.

• They work – preferably together as an executive leadership team cohort – to build their own language around the behaviors they want to see from leaders in their organization.
• They learn the models.
• They practice in the training room.
• They get the 1:1 coaching and work their personal development plan.
• And they feel their highest priority as an executive leader is to then develop, coach, support, and amplify these behaviors in the managers and directors who report to them.

Work cultures are complex, multi-faceted, and always shifting. Yet, there is a universal truth: no matter the industry or the organization’s size, its leaders are the culture carriers. In its simplest terms, culture is “what most leaders say and do around here most of the time.” And while we believe that leadership is for everyone – it’s not limited to a certain tax bracket or C-suite title – it’s also true that highest-level leaders not only have to be “on board” or “bought in.” They have to show the way.

Without activation from top leaders who are speaking a clear, common language and modeling the behaviors they want to see throughout their organization, employees become confused at best, and at worst, hopeless.

Your organization’s highest-level leaders not only have to be “on board” or “bought in.” They have to show the way.

Leader Effectiveness

2) From EVERYONE, always and forever, until the end of time: “Our leaders struggle with providing clear and direct feedback and navigating tough conversations.”

The phrase, “They’re a natural-born leader,” is misleading. Sure, I believe some people are born with certain characteristics we’ve socially deemed as “leadership qualities,” but most leadership behaviors are learned. Therefore, to develop leader effectiveness behaviors like providing clear, direct, and kind feedback in your workplace, you must teach people.

Navigating conflict at work is hard work. It’s complex. It can feel messy. It takes time away from our technical to-dos. And to put it plainly, most people simply don’t know how to do it because they’ve never learned. We assume that once people are promoted to positions with direct reports, they will automatically possess both the mindsets and the capabilities to do things like deliver feedback effectively.

Developing leader effectiveness demands a multi-faceted approach.

The way we think about it at ADVISA is best explained through the 10/20/70 principle – the idea that 10% of adult learning takes place in a formal training setting, 20% takes place through relationships and socialization (think mentorship, manager conversations, etc.) and 70% of learning happens through experience, or trying new things on and learning as you go.

Not to be overlooked, the learning also needs to be customized, using the leader’s personality drives and motivators (we use PI, but applaud any behavioral assessment tool that helps build self-awareness), their mindsets, their challenges, and their priorities.

My family once took a trip to a working dude ranch in Montana, and I’ll never forget a conversation I had with Les, the Corral Boss, about training horses. He was working with a wrangler that day who was struggling to get a horse to follow her commands. Les gave her some feedback and she said, “But yesterday you told me to do something completely different!” His response was, “Yes, and that was for THAT horse. Today, you’re working with a different horse. New horse, new approach.” He explained that his goal is to give his (mostly young) wranglers a variety of tools in their toolbox so they have options to pull out based on the circumstance and the personality of the horse.

We approach training leader effectiveness in the same way. Every manager is different and needs a customized approach. These skills need to be taught (and often re-taught). They have to be tried on and practiced in a safe space. They have to be woven into the context of that leader’s workplace, as well as their personality and natural strengths. And they have to be honed through coaching and admitting points of struggle or failure.

10% of learning takes place in a formal setting, 20% takes place through relationships and 70% happens through experience.

Systems that Support Leaders

3) From VPs of HR: “Our 1:1s aren’t happening consistently even though we’re pushing them and asking our managers to have them.”

Kelly Corrigan – author, speaker, podcast host, and my life guru – says you should “maybe blame yourself less and your context more” if behavior change feels impossible.

Cigarette smoking in the U.S. has decreased steadily since the 1950’s, from 45% of the population in 1950 to just 12% of the population today. This can’t be attributed to human willpower getting stronger, because it hasn’t. It’s that our societal environment has changed. In other words, the systems to support people in quitting smoking have gotten stronger and clearer. It’s now illegal to smoke in bars and restaurants, on planes, at bus stops – basically anywhere other than your house or your car.

If you’ve told managers over and over again to have 1:1s with their people, yet they’re still not doing it on a regular basis, or not consistently tracking it in the way you want them to, or you hear feedback that they don’t feel like productive meetings, it’s likely not the fault of the manager, but whatever system your organization uses to support those meetings (or, more often the case, doesn’t exist at all). Meeting notes in google docs ain’t gonna cut it.

A system like PI Perform for 1:1s can strengthen the relationship between manager-and-employee, and prevent that all-too-familiar cocktail of frustration and disappointment (in themselves) when their 1:1s feel unproductive, or worse, get cancelled or pushed to the back burner week after week.

Habits, rituals, rules, and good systems lighten our cognitive load. Those systems to which you give your leaders access should support the behaviors you expect of them, yet all too often, the absence of a supportive system frustrates them to the point that they just go back to whatever feels comfortable and familiar, even if it’s not aligned with best practice or what they cognitively know is “right.”

If you’ve repeatedly told managers to have 1:1s with their people, yet they’re still not doing it on a regular basis, it’s likely not the fault of the manager, but the system your organization uses to support those meetings.

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Check out ATLAS for yourself.

Flip through our eBook about all 5 drivers of cultural competitive advantage. Then, be sure to hit the red button underneath to take ATLAS Navigator, our 5-minute survey that will give you an immediate snapshot in time of how your organization is doing toward each of the 5 drivers.