Executive Presence–How do you stack up?

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

My colleague Rowan Jackson in London wrote a piece for one of his clients describing what it means to have “executive presence”. There is an interesting point here about threshold qualities–those that get you into the game–and differentiating qualities–those that set you apart.

Also, I was intrigued by some of the characteristics that seem to transcend cultures and others that appear particularly British. I asked him if I could post it here. See what you think about his point of view.

Rick Harris 

Executive Presence

Rowan Jackson
Founder and Managing Director
CMI Strategy
London

Introduction

Success in business critically depends on relationships; the higher up in organisations one goes the more critical relationships become. In fact across industries long-term retention of customer supplier relationships is the single biggest driver of profitability. Small wonder that companies rely on their C-Suite executives to manage these relationships, in some cases relying on the CEO to be the company’s primary relationship manager. Why do companies rely on their scarcest resource to manage these relationships when more junior people may be equally qualified? In my experience consulting to CEOs and their leadership teams, it all comes down to executive presence. In this paper I’ll describe the characteristics of executive presence that I have observed over a career that started in the Royal Marines and that has brought me face to face with senior leaders in the military, royalty, business and government.

Just What is “Executive Presence?”

Stated most simply, Executive Presence is the ability of any person to be comfortable and to work effectively at the highest corporate level. Dr Stephen Long gives this definition: “Executive Presence is demonstrating the judgment and character to do the right thing; to be the leader who’ll get the job done with integrity and inspire others to commit fully to the task, mission and vision”. He says: “Executive Presence has less to do with titles and hierarchy and more to do with the judgment and competency that enables high performance to occur. Leaders with Executive Presence display multi-dimensional skill sets. They not only set strategy, they also implement the plan and lead others to assist them. They think and do. In essence, it comes down to character; those with Executive Presence have the judgment to determine the right course of action and have the fortitude to drive the implementation process to completion.”

Mark W. Sickles, an advisor to corporate boards and executive teams, knows Executive Presence when he sees it. “When executives with presence walk into the room, people think, ‘Now something good is going to happen’ says Sickles. “These leaders are respected for the job they’re doing, not just the job they’re in.” Bart Nasta, Director of Information Services for Perot Systems experienced Executive Presence up close and personal in founder Ross Perot. “People respect the leader not so much for their position, but for their personal effectiveness and credibility.”

These descriptions of Executive Presence give us a general understanding of what Executive Presence is, but I’d like to drive the discussion toward more specifics. I believe that senior leaders with executive presence exhibit a number of defining characteristics. These can, in the main, be learned. In the rest of this paper, I’ll outline these characteristics and provide some guidance on how they may be developed. The list is in two parts: Threshold Qualities and Differentiating Qualities.

Threshold Qualities

The list of qualities or characteristics below is regarded as basic (“must have”) for anyone to be considered as having executive presence. Building these as a foundation is the start point for anyone.

Credibility. An essential characteristic of any successful manager, no one who lacks credibility can be considered to have executive presence. Credibility builds trust. Credible managers exhibit four characteristics that make them credible:

Competence. Skills, knowledge and experience, coupled with a high degree of common sense. Competence is essentially the ability to do things well. It is closely associated with the technical aspects of any job or profession, but is more than simply that. Competent people do those day-to-day things in their job at the highest level – sometimes called mastery.

Consistency. The ability, guided by attitude, to maintain a reliably similar approach to the way they carry out any task. Consistent people build trust because they can be relied on, at any time or in any situation, to behave reliably. There is an authenticity in the way they act. Inconsistent managers create different perceptions in others, leading to a reduction in trust.

Concern. The ability genuinely to demonstrate concern for others, their needs, issues, fears, doubts, preferences and expectations. Concern entails empathy and an authentic interest in others leading to action. Servant leaders demonstrate a degree of concern for others where they subjugate their own interests to those of their team.

Commitment. The ability both as an individual to commit to a team or a task and, as a member of the team, to deliver on the task as agreed. Committed people make things happen, believe in a cause or way of doing things, infect others with their beliefs and drive tasks to completion in line with their beliefs. Those with commitment do what they say they will do and thereby create trust in themselves from others. Their personal actions create their reputation and this impacts on their ability to persuade others to their point of view.

Communications. The best managers have excellent interpersonal skills and know that the communications they employee is the response they get. They employ these skills in building relationships. They exhibit this by:

Listening. A genuine ability to listen and observe, taking in what others say and do and making sense of what they hear and see. Good listening also means absorbing and analysing the many messages from non-verbal communications.

Questioning. High calibre questioning ability, using questions to demonstrate genuine curiosity in others and other things, phrasing questions so that they provoke thought in others. They use questions as a technique for illustrating a point, and for focusing the words used in a question to obtain the maximum amount of information about facts and feelings.

Clarity of speech. Words are said crisply, clearly and are enunciated with the listener in mind. High calibre communicators use pauses for maximum effect, vary the tone, volume and pace of their talking for maximum effect and adapt their style to their audience. For example, when talking in English to an audience of non-native English speakers. Talking more slowly increases gravitas. These people can captivate an audience by clear speech.

Concise speech. Choice of words used is appropriate, brief, concise and relevant. An ability to talk for short periods only with maximum impact. Maintaining a few, usually three, simple points and expressing them without jargon, acronyms or flowery words. They choose words with as few syllables as possible. They are aware that too much information confuses people and causes the listener to stop listening.

Stories and visual images. They use stories, analogies, allegories, visual images and similes to illustrate a point. If using tools like PowerPoint, they ensure that text is supported by visual imagery and that the quantity of text is minimalised. The passion that they have emerges in the way they use stories to enhance the validity of their ideas.

Duration. Never talks for too long, 2 to 3 min without engaging others in some way. Recognises that people buy into ideas by talking about them, so uses verbal tactics to get others to talk.

Good manners. In the two qualities above, credibility and communication, it can be seen that good managers can differentiate themselves from others. The two qualities are enhanced by good manners. In addition to politeness, etiquette and diplomacy, those with good manners are self and socially aware. They demonstrate a genuine interest in others, are not loud, rude, brash or arrogant but show humility in dealing with everyone. They treat everyone as a customer, no matter what their station in life is and behave respectfully at all times. Good manners are more important today in the era of mobile phones than ever before. Well mannered people are able to combine an ability to use modern technology to the maximum effect without offending or disrespecting others. For them the height of bad manners would be using a BlackBerry in a team meeting.

Executive dress. No one can expect another to have executive presence unless they physically look the part. Appearance does matter, especially when meeting someone for the first time. Clothing should not only be appropriate to the meeting and to the people being met, but also clean, pressed and in good condition. Good condition applies to shoes as well. Those who aspire to have executive presence must dress soberly, with well-made, well fitting clothes that enhance their appearance rather than detract from it. Clothing must be both culturally and situationally appropriate. For example, in the USA, in some organisations, casual dress may mean denim jeans are permitted, or even de rigeur. In Europe, such informality could be frowned on. In some organisations, men are encouraged to wear white shirts to work, in others wearing a white shirt at a job interview could mean automatic rejection. Choosing the right clothes carefully is very important. It is also a given that personal hygiene must not be an issue!

Bearing. Physical bearing is important; it is an indicator of the state a person is in. In general, standing erect and still is better than extensive use of gesticulations, but no gestures or hand movements at all may indicate someone who is boring. Slouching, sloppy walking, scuffing of heels and generally poor posture with excessively casual actions causes eyebrows to be raised. In polite conversation it is best to stand at an angle to another even though there are only two in the conversation, as by doing so permits others to join the discussion. A firm handshake and good eye contact are important in many cultures.

Differentiating Executive Presence Qualities

All of the above will get you into the executive suite, but once there, additional qualities are required to stay there. Here are a few:

Being well and widely read. Senior executives like to work with those who are environmentally aware; they seek people who can bring insight to their own world and are sufficiently knowledgeable about a wide variety topics that they can drop them into any conversation. Knowing interesting and relevant facts that enhance discussion and demonstrate a worldliness appropriate to the topic will be of great value to earning the right to stay in the executive suite. This means that those with executive presence must be well read, up-to-date and able to quote examples of research or articles by well respected journalists, politicians, professors or business leaders. They read quality newspapers, for example, the Financial Times, the Economist, the Week, the Harvard Business Review, etc. They will be able to use these articles as evidence to support their point of view in any discussion.

POV. In addition, they will have a strong personal point of view on how business works. Those with executive presence have developed, often over many years, a point of view on how things should be done and how they are best achieved. They know what high performance looks like and can describe how it has been achieved in other organisations. This gives them insight, a valuable quality in any senior executive. They know why they themselves are good at what they do and they can explain why their personal skills create the results that they do.

They demonstrate method. CEOs seek others who can help them with the question of: “how do we do this?” A good CEO can devise the strategy of the business but evidence shows that far fewer of them know how to get there. Those with executive presence will have a wider understanding, knowledge and experience of how to do this. They know about methods, mechanisms and have an holistic view of business management.

Culture. The person with executive presence has a wider understanding, knowledge and interest in non-business topics, sport, the arts, theatre, social activities and can adapt and employ their knowledge to any topic. Emphasis is placed in many businesses at executive level on social activities, as well as more fundamental social awareness. Those with executive presence need to be comfortable in the social environment. They are also aware of the need for care in multi-cultural environments; they avoid the international social gaffes that distinguish the gauche.

Situational awareness. Those with executive presence have outstanding situational awareness, meaning they understand quickly the many facets involving high-level decision-making and are able to anticipate situations, risks and scenarios before they occur. As one boss put it: “I want somebody near me who can see the train coming.” These executives don’t wait for someone else to act; they act first and ask questions later. They are gifted with problem analysis and solving skills of the highest order. They maintain awareness of how the many streams of work they control are progressing and step in to take action fast when progress is not at the level they expect. They are highly proactive, and make things happen rather than wait for things to happen to them.

Learning. Those with executive presence are lifelong learners, knowing that the skills they have are not acquired overnight but take years to hone to perfection. They are well aware enough to know that earning the respect of the CEO or top executive does not come quickly and that it takes time, perseverance, dedication and patience. Their social, situational and self awareness does not come overnight either. It has taken years of trial and error and practice to achieve this high standard and they are constantly seeking ways to improve it.

Summary

As Dr Long points out: “In the end, Executive Presence is about character. Executive Presence is displayed by doing the right thing in the right way and getting consistent results. The leader strives to find solutions without cutting corners. “People won’t go all-in if they don’t trust the top guy”. Without trust, employees resort to “survivalism” – paying more attention to their personal agendas than the organizational mission.

Executive Presence is a result of the head and heart working together to their maximum capabilities. “Judgment and wisdom, character and courage; these are the things that effective leaders convey consistently” says Sickles. They do the right thing. Nasta sums it up, “It’s about being a whole person. Leaders with Executive Presence have both high IQ and high EQ.”

 

Guest Post from Rowan Jackson, founder and managing director of CMI Strategy. CMI Strategy, based in London with clients across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, helps companies become more competitive by doing something simple to describe and devilishly complicated to do–out-execute the competition. As Rowan points out in this post, the quality of execution is compounded by the executive presence of those tasked with carrying out the strategy. 

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What can we learn from Steve Jobs–The Biography

February 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There are plenty of reasons to read this well written book. It’s a great history of the rise of the personal computer. It’s a recap of lore about Steve Jobs. (Remember when The “Lisa” was supposed to have been named after one of his girlfriends? It was his daughter!) There are some compelling character sketches; I liked the ones of Bill Gates and Woz. It’s a great book about what Lexus calls “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” (And with Jobs “relentless” takes on special meaning.)
I was a bit put off at first by Isaacson’s psychologizing: adoptee scarred for life by birth parent abandonment. But I think in retrospect Isaacson was trying to balance the story of the person with the story of the business phenom.

There’s a great section about Jobs’ desire to hire only the best players and insist on his underlings doing the same thing. Isaacson almost underplays the importance of Jobs’ insight that A players seek out other A players, while B players gravitate toward C players. This is a profound insight about what it takes to build a consistently high performing organization. But it can get lost in the stories about Steve’s tantrums. Sure Jobs was the deciding factor at Apple and Pixar. But he had damn good people around him who attracted damn good people.

If you’re going to read the book for how to be a better leader, don’t try to match Jobs’ behavior; match his business acumen.

 

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If an Introvert Shows Up at a Meeting and Doesn’t Say Anything, Was She Really There?

February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Thoughts after reading “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking”

I keep coming across books about introversion, all with the same message:  the culture makes introverted people feel inferior to outgoing people. I thought three things in this book make a positive contribution to the discussion:

First, from a historical perspective, American Culture (and perhaps Western Culture) has gone through a transformation over the past 150 years. In the 19th century good character was essential. You didn’t need to see good character to know a person had it. In fact, many people demonstrated character by the accumulation of quiet deeds. By the end of the 20th century, however, personality has come to be valued over character…and a certain type of personality. People who speak with confidence, have a steely stare and iron-clad handshake—the extraverts. It’s not that character is unimportant; it’s just that personality trumps character nowadays.

Second, the author argues that a mix of introverts and extraverts is preferable in social and business settings. While the culture of personality values the outgoing, it is the inward looking who can get undervalued. According to the author, introverts comprise more than a third of the population.

A different book, The Introvert Advantage, by Marti Olsen Laney, is written as a pep talk for introverts. Quiet is focused on the leader: make sure you don’t miss the contributions introverts can make to your team. I see the books as complementary.

Third, there is an extended discussion about how parents and teachers can support introverted children and stop trying to “fix” them. This section includes some interesting case examples.

The journalistic writing is reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell and Joshua Foer. It’s fast paced and full of colorful anecdotes—Tony Robbins seminars, or a visit to an evangelical church campus. The chapters read as if they could be free-standing articles. If you’re a stickler for research discipline, it might bother you the number of times she uses the phrase “research has shown”. And if you’re a stickler for spelling, you spell extravert with an “a” not an “o”. But hey, sometimes we introverts get bogged down in the damnedest things.

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Dunbar’s Number, Google Circles, French Wine and all that Jazz

December 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post from Rowan Jackson, founder and managing director of CMI Strategy. CMI Strategy, based in London with clients across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, helps companies become more competitive by doing something simple to describe and devilishly complicated to do–out-execute the competition. In this post Rowan discusses what it takes to identify and nurture the most important people in your ecosystem. 

Not long ago as part of a research project into high performing investment bankers, I had the opportunity to interview the head of a well established firm in the City of London. Like other high performers in this industry, he was highly intelligent, very sophisticated, and had high emotional awareness. And he has relied on these personal attributes to find, win and retain many of his firm’s most profitable clients.

Francois (not his real name) is French and speaks excellent English with a charming accent. When I asked him how he won business, he replied, “Oh, that is easy; I have a list of 200 carefully selected people, and I make sure I connect with all of them at least once every three months in some way, a meeting, dinner, drink or a sporting event. I do them favours and they introduce me to clients.  It is pretty simple really.” On probing further he revealed that his Top 200 were all senior people in different walks of life, in business, government, the arts, sports and the media. By staying connected to them he developed first hand knowledge of who would be most likely in need of his services. “Then I go to see people and win business,” he said.

I’m convinced that what Francois has done is harness the power of Dunbar’s number. Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist whose studies of communities led him to conclude that the human brain was limited to managing a finite number of relationships. Recent studies have pegged that limit at 150, but Dunbar actually thought that the number could be much higher depending on a person’s brainpower. I do not know whether Francois knew about Dunbar’s number but he has created a successful method for winning business that appears to follow its principles. Furthermore, is Francois’ 200 simply proof of his cognitive processing ability? I wouldn’t argue against it.

Recently Google has released Google Circles; this too has many parallels to Francois’ 200. Google Circles provides a high-tech solution to Dunbar’s limit by enabling people to create “circles” of friends around specific themes—say family, or business, or sports. What Francois keeps in a special section of his Outlook, Google Circles helps people manage via the web. But it still has the same function—to help one focus one’s energy on a limited number of relationships. Unlike the social media penchant for over-sharing, however, Francois keeps his “circle” private. Other than his PA who books his meetings, no one knows who is in or out of the circle.

What Francois is doing, of course, is networking. The curious aspect about his method is it is much more effective and selective than traditional networking. I have heard many disparaging remarks about using networking organisations for winning business, most of them based on the relatively low return on time spent. On the basis of “You have to kiss a lot of frogs….” much networking seems random, an activity where a lot of effort goes in to get a small result. Francois has a better system. When he described how he used his list, several things seemed counterintuitive:

  • Membership in Top 200 is exclusive. He selects them carefully from the over 2500 names he has in his Outlook address book.
  • The group does not change much. Even when a member retires, they remain on the list because of their valuable contacts and perspective.
  • Membership criteria have been carefully honed over time: senior people in different walks of life with a strong level of mutual “like and trust”.  They are not random acquaintances, but trusted, successful and highly competent people who move in the higher intellectual and social circles.
  • Many of the Top 200 are not clients, nor in a position to be clients.
  • With this group he practices “give to gain”, seeking to help them before he asks for help.
  • Many of his face to face meetings with this group’s members are social affairs, some business but more intellectual discussion.
  • The locations and style of the connections he makes with the Top 200 vary a great deal and do not follow any obvious pattern. Nor do the intervals between the meetings. His method seems chaotic and yet it works very well—not a planned coordinated symphony, but more random like jazz.

I realised after my time with him that many of the ways that he originates business apply to any professional services firm. In my own consulting practice I’ve had a careful look at my “Top 200” and found that I need to do more work both refining my list and attending to the people on it. Of course, some things that Francois does I could never do. For example, he owns a vineyard in France, and every one of his Top 200 is sent a case of his wine each Christmas. But the reasons for his success rely less on the quality of his gifts and more on the quality of his relationships. And that’s something I can work toward. The central point of his method is that we trust referrals more than anything when they come from people we trust.

In a future post, I’ll describe more about how Francois goes about establishing “like and trust” both with his Top 200 and the people he meets through them.

 

 

 

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4 Things I Learned at Startup Bootcamp: Managing Relationship Clutter

December 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I originally wrote this post about 18 months ago as a guest on J. Anthony Miguez’ Learning Hacks blog. I’ve recently spoken with several entrepreneurs who are coping with various kinds of what I’ve called “relationship clutter” here. So I’ve reposted it here as well….with minor editing tweaks to update certain sections.

RH

 

I’ve been involved with several start-ups in the course of my career, and looking back, the first thing that comes to mind is the thrill of the start. Making something new happen is exciting. But there is another side to the startup experience—the emotional upheaval that can happen when the pressure’s on. Where does it come from? How does the entrepreneur manage to maintain focus?

At the recent Startup Bootcamp [held at MIT in June of 2010], 12 companies came together to tell their stories. A lot of the talk was about products and markets. But a surprising amount of the time was spent on this issue of managing relationships. In fact I was able to identify four different types of relationship issues that I’ll call relationship clutter that the successful entrepreneur must navigate. Here are some examples.

Founder-Founder Clutter

A striking number of presenters talked about the importance of taking time for the founders to maintain their relationship. Strategies for clearing out the clutter varied. Some founders learned the importance of doing things together that were not related to business. Bill Clerico (WePay) said that he and his cofounder bought a dog together. The dog acted as a real life reminder of the consequences if the partnership failed: one of them would get the dog—and the other wouldn’t.  Alexis Ohanian (Reddit, YCombinator) joked that that the relationship was like a marriage—“although it was never consummated.”

There seemed to be many causes for founder/founder clutter. Ego can be a big source of conflict. Genuine differences of opinion about strategy also pop up, particularly if the company is not performing to plan: Pivot or persist? Sell or refinance? Cut costs or invest?  One thing is certain, if founder/founder clutter is not cleaned up, it will have a knock-on effect on the entire company.

Leadership Team Clutter

Once the company is large enough to move beyond the 2-3 person founding team, another issue emerges: how to keep the leadership team aligned. Ric Fulop (A123 Systems) advised entrepreneurs to think that they are not just hiring for the present. Instead the people that they hire should be the people they will look to to build the company.

Bob Metcalfe (3Com) pointed out that engineers and salespeople may be “common carbon life forms” but they differ from each other on many significant dimensions. Clearly the domain knowledge needed to grow a successful start-up requires a strong leadership team made up of different disciplines: design, engineering, sales, operations, finance, etc. And with each of those perspectives come the potential for relationship clutter. One of the first things I look for as a consultant to these teams is not how well they get along, but how well they manage their conflict openly. Are they using their differences to build a stronger company? Are they stuck in endless squabbling? Are they simply putting up with each other to avoid a hassle?

Company-Customer Clutter

Companies sometimes appear to go out of their way to frustrate customers. Of course they don’t any more than they deliberately make low quality product. Kevin Hale (WuFoo) described one of his company’s techniques for staying in touch with their customers. Employees write hand-written thank you notes. An added benefit of this approach: several customers have posted shots of these notes on social media sites giving the company free PR. WuFoo also has each person in the company take a turn on the customer support phone line. This is done to heighten the engineering group’s awareness of how customers are experiencing the product. “Design it as if you had to support it.” Interesting mantra.

Mick Mountz (Kiva Systems) described how his company uses customer experience for R&D. Customers buy his company’s robot-enabled inventory management system, and then Kiva Systems works closely with them during installation to document the changes that are needed to make the system work in the customer’s environment. These changes are incorporated into future customer sales. Customer responsiveness is sustained at a high level and the product improves with every new installation.

Founder-Funder Clutter

One of the critical relationships to get right is the relationship between the funder and the founders. Several speakers spoke of the number of pitches it takes in order to find an interested investor. There can be an element of desperation in trying to get early stage funding. And yet, Ric Fulop, who is now a VC, talked about the importance of focusing on the right investor and the access to other resources that the investor provides. In my experience the funder has the potential to offer way more than money, but both founder and funder need to be clear what those other sources of value are…or they’ll find themselves talking past each other and wondering why things are always so tense at board meetings.

 

Why can’t we all just get along?

Many years ago a French academic observed that people in high performing teams liked each other more than people in low performing teams. This finding in the late 1940s appears to have launched a movement in business to get people to like each other in order to improve performance. How else to explain the millions spent each year on Survivor-type team building exercises, company picnics, softball leagues, and beer blasts? Sure those things are fun, and they satisfy a social need.

But smart CEOs know that conflict is built into any relationship. The goal is not to make people like each other. The goal is to achieve something significant together—customers included. If you’ve got relationship clutter in your company, the important thing to do is focus on performance, and the liking part will take care of itself.

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Who Are You? Part 2: Five Ways to Take Control of Your On-Line Brand

February 26, 2011 By 4 Comments

The last post, “Who are you? Part 1: On-line branding starts with off-line integrity”, grew out of a discussion I had with a group of recent college graduates around how they can use social media in their business lives. While it made intuitive sense to them that their on-line presence should reflect their values, I was struck with the amount of skepticism that the group held about the potential of social media as a business tool.

Can you blame them? Their Facebook friend list is filled with people who aren’t really their friends. They watch their younger siblings tweeting about Justin Bieber and they wonder, what’s the point? Plus, as I pointed out in the last post, the web is a playground for the distractible. There are hundreds of social sites that bring people together. You can get overwhelmed when all you’re trying to do is keep up with your friends and make sure that if a recruiter with a dream job is out there, you’ve got a fair chance of being found.

The following comments are a composite of the recommendations I made to them and the recommendations I wish I had made. Sometimes the learnings from a session like this one outweigh the knowledge imparted!

In recent years I have learned that there are five ways to use social media to establish an on-line brand that is consistent with my own sense of professional integrity. I’ve seen these things work for a broad array of professionals, whether they’re just starting out or have been active in their careers for many years.

  1. Be focused. It only takes two sites. In my experience, in spite of all the potentially cool sites out there that want your traffic (and your friends’ names), you really only need to be on two sites. Most people are already on Facebook…which may be problematic if the past got a bit out of control for you. Recently it’s come to light that recruiters have ways of searching for you on Facebook, so it’s safe to say, you won’t be able to erase the past. My advice is to be sure that your recent updates reflect the social life of a mid-20s professional, not an 18 year old party animal.

    The other site you should be on is LinkedIn. LinkedIn helps you create your professional brand in several ways. First it is a place to store an on-line resume; more and more it’s the first place that recruiters look for potential new hires. Second, LinkedIn offers the means to develop a truly useful list of professional contacts so be thoughtful about who you’re linked to.  And third, the “groups” function helps you find interesting people, who may be only one or two contacts away from you. For an article called “How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile”, click here.

  2. Be present.
    Use Facebook and LinkedIn to share links to useful information as well as posting status updates. Most organizations have a page on Facebook. Find the pages of the organizations you’re most interested in and “like” them. That gives you access to tons of information–information that can be useful to you and that you can share out to friends and followers. Groups provide a similar opportunity on LinkedIn. Another way to be present is to follow blogs in your field and don’t just read them. Comment on them. Be part of the conversation. At minimum it helps you focus your own thinking by commenting. It may also open doors to new relationships. I use Disqus for responding to the blogs that I follow. It’s a convenient way to avoid captchas and other sign-in protocols when all you want to do is respond to a blog post.

    Should you blog? I think there’s a simple answer to this question. If you like to write, then blog. If you don’t like to write, I don‘t think a blog is on the critical path to your on-line brand. Your status updates do that just as well, and in fact they are a form of blogging. If you’ve got more to say than these short formats allow, check out Posterous or Tumblr for easy on-line blogging.

  3. Be constructive.
    Professional blogs are often refereed to ensure that proper standards are followed. Try to remember that the purpose of social media is to build on-line community. Look for ways of supporting others‘ ideas. And when you disagree, say so, and explain why. I‘m always struck by the snarky-ness of some newspaper comments sections compared to the professional blogs that I follow. People may think they’re being clever by being snarky, but it just spoils the dialogue for everyone else.
  4. Be edgy.
    In being constructive, you don’t have to be overly nice. Look for an opportunity to voice a controversial opinion. It will help you stand out. Just don’t do it by trashing the other guy.
  5. Be yourself.
    I’m not a big fan of over-engineering your on-line portfolio. But I do think it’s important not to just let it happen. The student just lets it happen. The professional compares her ideal self with the one that is unfolding on line. Think like a graphic artist assembling a portfolio. You want your best work to go into the portfolio. Prospective employers treat your on-line presence as your portfolio. What is it telling them about your achievements, relationships, passions, attitudes?

………

There is an old joke about always telling the truth so you don’t have to remember what you’ve said. The lesson holds for your on-line persona. When you are clear about your values and you make every effort to express those values in the social media you use, an authentic person emerges. That’s the one that hiring managers are looking for.

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Who Are You? Part 1: On-Line Branding Starts with Off-Line Integrity

February 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

My friend George Cookman asked me for an odd favor the other evening over dinner. Would I help a group of recent college grads get smarter about using social media in the business world? Me…help a group of digital natives who are younger than my own children? I agreed under one condition: that I would share my experience using social media, but that I would not represent myself as an expert, an evangelist, or any other term that might suggest that if they followed my experience they’d become wildly popular.

A quick word about Millennials and technology. I believe that the Boomer generation has made a fundamental error about how well their children have mastered social media. Boomers (I’m talking about your average 55 year old, not tech savants) are befuddled about two aspects of 21st century technology: navigation and social media. Millennials, on the other hand have mastered navigation. Try this: give a Boomer and a Millennial iphones and ask them to come up with the best place to have thin crust pizza within a 10 minute drive. Bet the Millennial has visited three sites, while the Boomer’s fat thumbs are having trouble spelling p-i-z-z-a. Millennials can navigate.

That ability to navigate also extends to Facebook where Millennials have gotten good at uploading the evening’s events (with pictures!) as they unfold on a Friday night. So Boomers might be forgiven for thinking that their children are also masters at social media. But navigation is not social media. Navigation mastery helps you get around the internet. Social media mastery helps you know what to do once you’re there. And this is the point I would like to make: everyone is in learning mode when it comes to understanding how to take advantage of the social power of the web.

Initially, I thought I would share my experience using the most common social sites–Facebook, LinkedIn, maybe Twitter. But just to be sure I wasn’t overlooking anything, I did a quick Wikipedia search on “social media” and discovered a list of more than 100 sites. Then, at the bottom of the list was another list, this one of virtual communities with more than 100,000 members. I knew that social media was big, but seeing it posted in one place makes it seem not just big, but daunting.

Of all these sites, are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter the best ones for a recent grad?  What about commenting on blog posts or answering questions on Quora? Checking in on Foursquare? Should I encourage them to blog? It’s a jungle out there, with new sites appearing all the time exhorting you to sign up and enroll your friends. Hey, they’re just looking for a job.

That’s when it hit me. Getting the most out of social media is not about keeping up with the number of new sites that spring up. It’s about being clear with yourself about why you even turn on your computer.

Hence, the title of this post. Some people treat personal branding as if it is a choice–you can be whoever you want to be on line. That may work well in late-night chat rooms or role playing games. But if you’re trying to establish yourself in a business context, you’re better off making statements that are aligned with your values and that show what you stand for. That’s what will show up at work every day. “Who are you?” answers the values question for yourself. Making sure those values appear in your on-line persona is your integrity test. Do it before you hit the “send” button. That’s showing mastery about using social media. And it’s a lesson that not just for kids.

Next week I’ll post a summary of the discussion that I had with this group.

[If you want to see a more detailed picture of the graphic in this post, go here.]

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They Always Stop–Reflections on the self-absorbing energy that Millennials bring to the job

January 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

I was out for a walk the other evening in my home town, Newburyport, Mass. As I rounded the corner from Market Square onto Water Street, I saw in front of me three teen-aged girls in the crosswalk…in the middle of busy Water Street…walking against the light. One of the girls, who obviously didn’t think this was a very good idea was shouting to the girl in front of her who was in the middle of the street, “What are you doing?” Her friend’s answer was brief, to the point, and right on: “They always stop.”

Business leaders that I talk with are perplexed by the attitude of entitlement coming out of this young girl’s mouth. It’s not so much the concern that these kids are bending the rules as it is that these kids expect the rules to be bent for them…and by kids I’m talking about more than high school students. Their siblings in college expect to get good grades, and when they don’t, they expect that a conversation with the professor will result in a bump up. And their older cousins who are already out in the business world expect to be running the company that they just joined.

Or do they? Are we over-generalizing, or have today’s adults created a self-centered where’s-my-trophy? monster?

To get a first-hand look at the situation, I spent a day at Communispace in Watertown, just outside Boston. Communispace just celebrated its 10th anniversary doing something that social media mavens thought they’d invented three or four years ago. Communispace creates on-line communities. But these aren’t just any on-line communities that happen to emerge; think of them as virtual focus groups. When Charles Schwab was looking for a better way to connect with 40-year-old investors, they looked to Communispace to help them set up a community that would give them the straight story. Same with GlaxoSmithKline when they wanted to open a dialogue with seriously overweight adults about that sensitive topic. Over its ten year history Communispace has managed more than 350 on-line communities, giving community members an opportunity to network and providing sponsoring companies an opportunity to listen in on the discussion so that they can be more responsive to the needs of their customers.

Diane Hessan was brought in as CEO of Communispace shortly after it was formed, and her spirit of customer centered-ness and fun permeates the place. (Move over in the employee amenities arms race, Google. Communispace has a two-storey employee lounge that is painted to look like Fenway Park.) I’ve known Diane from our days together at The Forum Corporation and I’m one of several thousand followers in her Twitter stream. A few months ago at one of our non-virtual lunches in her office, I was struck by the number of young people who work there. So I asked her if I could come back and spend a day with these recent college grads to find out more about the attitudes and work styles of people who are old enough to know that they should cross with the lights, but young enough to have been conditioned by the fact that the traffic always stopped for them when they got on and off the school bus.

To put some rigor into the process, I met with a group of 12 employees who were in that demographic cohort known as Millennials. We sat around a conference table for an hour and talked about what motivated them, how work compared to college, is there such a thing as work-life balance, etc. When the focus group was over, I spent 30 minutes with each of them crammed into their work spaces lurking as they handled incoming client inquiries and talking with them as they went about their work.

Here are five things that I learned.

Engagement is more important than recognition. Humans respond positively when they are genuinely appreciated. But there may be a downside for giving this generation a reward every time they showed up. The downside is that “good job” now raises about as much affect as “havaniceday” does in the supermarket checkout line. The way this group feels appreciated is if you ask them for their ideas on a problem. It gets those autonomy juices flowing and it also makes them feel part of a team.

Autonomy breeds commitment. A big difference between the world of the university and the world of work for these people was that they felt that they had more autonomy in school. This means that for a lot of them, they are working hard, but not on their own agenda. They recognize that that’s part of life. “In school, you get to pick your term paper topic. Here, they give you the topic.” But it’s not as satisfying as being able to exercise some autonomy. When they do get a chance to make their own decisions, then they own them. But the lack of autonomy is a clear demotivator.

Focus is key. This group works hard and they don’t shirk from hard work. They work under tight timelines. Accuracy is extremely important to them. Client satisfaction is a must. And like most people in the workforce today, they’re juggling more than one project that claims to be THE Priority. We tend to think of this group as the ones who did homework, watched TV and IM’ed as they were growing up. Maybe they did. But the people I met with had developed their own ways to minimize multi-tasking: checklists, noise-canceling headphones, limiting access to personal email and Facebook to breaks, etc. One person captured the sense of the group: “If you want to leave each day by six, you can’t spend two hours a day on Facebook. If you want to spend two hours on Facebook, you can plan to leave by eight. It’s up to you.”

Demands for advancement may be insecurity showing. In the focus group there was a great deal of open discussion about how they should define success: “I feel like I should have started Facebook.”  “We’ll probably not be as successful as our parents.” “Madonna is my role model. She’s always reinventing herself.” Many of these people were also juggling part-time MBA programs. You get the sense that this is a group of high achievers who lack benchmarks that would tell them they’re on a path to achievement. That’s an uncomfortable place to be. So perhaps it’s no wonder that a person upon being told by his manager that he had been promoted would ask in the same discussion when he might expect his next promotion. Maybe he’s power-hungry, or maybe he’s fishing for a benchmark.

Maturity is in the eye of the beholder. If you are a 50-year old manager supervising someone who is half your age, it’s hard not to view that person as 50% as mature as you are. You’ve got twice as many years on them and presumably some wisdom has accreted to you along the way. Here’s the irony. The 25-year old has never been any older than twenty five. She’s 100% grown up in her eyes and she views the world through her lens. So maybe we’re dealing with a perception gap here: younger workers feel they’re ready for the next challenge; older managers think they need to wait. We may also be dealing with a reality gap. Arguably the Millennial Generation has crammed more life experience into their 25 years than the typical 50 year old has. These kids got their passports at a younger age than their parents, spent their junior year abroad, probably did some volunteer work in some place that opened their eyes, and have had more lessons than any other generation on the planet. It’s entirely possible that they’ve got more to offer than they’re being given credit for.

The PhD in me wants to load this post up with a lot of caveats about sample size and so forth, but the pragmatist says we’re on to something. Companies in general, not just Communispace, have groups of highly educated individuals within their young workforces who are dying for the opportunity to be part of something important; who thrive on learning and self improvement; who are looking for the autonomy to “pick the term paper topic”. The challenge for today’s managers is to take advantage of that drive, not try to stifle it. But be careful. They can walk right out into the middle of the street without looking.

Special thanks to Siobhan Dullea and Paul Koelle at Communispace for coordinating my day.

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4 Reasons to Look Forward to 2011

January 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I sent this out to several people as an email…sharing it here to a wider audience.

Happy New Year

4 Reasons to Look Forward to 2011
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Leading Your New Team: Dealing with the challenges of being the outsider

December 14, 2010 By 1 Comment

Much of the advice about leading teams assumes that the team leader is in charge of putting the team together. But what happens if you inherit an existing team?

The world of work is team-based. R&D teams compete with other R&D teams to produce scientific breakthroughs. Marketing teams work to create more innovative products and approaches to customers. Sales teams have replaced the individual sales rep, motivated solely by quota. Even assembly lines are broken into teams to take advantage of synergies and dispel boredom.

The rise of the team based organisation has had a profound impact on the role of manager, making the manager not just an overseer of work, but a leader of teams. In this expanded role, there are many opportunities for the manager to make a significant impact. These opportunities include getting more done through increased worker flexibility, using team member engagement for creative problem solving, and channeling competitive energy to focus on external opportunities. In short, the team leader has the opportunity to take advantage of the intangible team dynamics which can make the difference between success and mediocre performance.

Think sports. At the beginning of each season, the manager has a roster of highly competent individual athletes. As the season progresses, the winning teams are not necessarily the ones with the best individual athletes. And by the end of the season, it is the teams which play the best together that win the most championships.

The comparison to sport is also relevant for another reason. In sport each year a small but visible number of managers join new clubs. When they do, they enter an environment in which the core of the team already exists. A similar situation exists in most business environments. In both situations new team leaders share a common challenge: how do they provide the direction that they have been hired to give the team whilst simultaneously motivating the team to perform? Too little direction and the team can degrade to a set of individuals each pursuing unaligned agendas. Too much direction, and team members may revert to dysfunctional behaviours ranging from passive compliance to outright rebellion.

In short, the new team leader needs to earn the right to lead the team. In the words of one team leader, ‘Neglecting the shared history of the team and/or assuming it was all ”bad” before I got here is a terribly arrogant/insensitive mistake to make.’ In a more positive vein, there is an emerging consensus of how to successfully assume leadership of a team which can be summarised in a set of Five Lessons.

Lesson 1: Get Grounded

Being appointed as the head of a team is an expression of senior management’s confidence that you can get results. However, smart team leaders know that when they have been appointed to lead a team, they have not been anointed to lead the team. They still need to make a realistic assessment of the team’s prospects and convert that into a vision which will motivate the team. They also know that no matter what assessment they make, there are certain organisational expectations for performance which already exist. They are serving two masters: the team needs to be motivated, and management’s goals need to be met.

To get grounded you have to answer three questions:

  1. What do the key stakeholders of this team (including the members) care most about?
  2. Where does the work of this team fit into my immediate supervisor’s priorities?
  3. What is the strategic contribution that this team can make to the wider organisation?

The best way to answer these questions is to talk to people. Engage your boss with direct questions about his view of the big picture, his priorities, and his immediate expectations for the team. Also, find out from peers and colleagues what the reputation of this team is: are people looking forward to working with your team, or are they on guard? Finally, poll your own team members about their insights about the team and its priorities.

The process of getting grounded should help you get more focused on your priorities. It should also be the basis for getting the support of other stakeholders.

Lesson 2: Build shared vision

Much has been written about the importance of vision in leadership. Unfortunately some of it is misleading. For example, we seem to have confused having vision with having vision statements, turning efforts to clarify vision into editing exercises which are unsatisfactory for both the team leader and the team members.  Alternatively, some leaders are led to believe that the only way to create shared vision is through some expansive consensus exercise which starts with a blank sheet of paper.

The practical reality is that if you take the time to get grounded, you cannot help but come away with a view of the future—a vision. The challenge is not to create a vision. The vision will emerge from the process of getting grounded. The challenge is to build ownership in your vision.

The team leader’s role in building shared vision is to help resolve a classic management paradox: a good team leader will develop her own vision of what is possible; at the same time, people tend to own what they create. Is the only solution to do one or the other? The way to resolve this paradox is not through clever word-smithing. Instead the best way to resolve it is through dialogue. Dialogue enables conflicting points of view to be explored so that a shared direction that all team members can support is created. This is the key difference between writing a vision and creating a vision. It only takes one person to write a vision, but it takes the ability to discuss different points of view openly to create a vision that is owned by the team as a whole.

Lesson 3: Don’t wait for the master plan

Getting properly grounded and creating shared vision require investments in time. But team leaders need to start making decisions from the first day on the job. In fact, there are often pending decisions that have been delayed with the departure of the prior team leader. You may not be able to be overly rational in a situation where immediate action is needed. This is no time for your perfectionist tendencies to take over. It will be more important for you to act than it will for you to be 100% right. You’ll get a few things wrong along the way, but in the early days, people will also be willing to cut you some slack.

Find something that seems to be of concern to a critical mass of your stakeholders and do something about it. This gives them immediate confidence that you will act in their interest. In a surprising number of cases the decisions that are creating the most angst are not all that significant. But when action isn’t taken, what is objectively insignificant can often fester.

Lesson 4: Deal Directly and Discretely with Difficult Relationships

Not all members of your team will be happy to see you as their new team leader. For all team members a new team leader is a source of uncertainty, even fear. Will the new team leader’s approach be a dramatic change from the past? How will past team accomplishments be viewed? Engaging each member of the team and building shared vision helps dispel a lot of this uncertainty. However, there is still the possibility that difficult relationship issues may be bubbling under the surface.

It is not uncommon, for example, for at least one person in the team to resent not being appointed to your position. Others may have heard of you and have already formed a negative impression without even having met you. (Why don’t rumour mills put out positive rumours?) Still others may have fundamental disagreements with the direction in which you want to take the team.

There are usually an unlimited number of reasons for not confronting these situations directly. But the number one reason for taking quick action is that they rarely resolve themselves by being ignored. In fact when relationship issues are ignored, they usually get worse.

In many cases a private word with the individual describing your observations and asking for their perspective is enough to resolve the situation. Occasionally more dramatic action, such as reassignment or termination, is needed. Naturally dramatic action should be reserved for extreme situations, especially if you will need your management’s support to carry it off. But it is an option.

Lesson 5: Celebrate Success

The vision for your group should create shared meaning for all team members. But your work is not done when people are aligned with your vision. You have only just begun. There are targets to be set—and met.

The drumbeat of continuous improvement, or as one auto manufacturer likes to say, “the relentless pursuit of perfection” is music to a customer’s ears. This same mentality, however, when used as a management mantra, can burn your people out. So it is important for their mental health to know when they have done a good job—and to know that you know they have done a good job. Don’t be afraid to tell people. It won’t make them lazy and it will give you a chance to reinforce the fact that the vision which you have developed is actually producing results. People like to work for a winner.

Another important part of celebrating success is letting the wider organisation know what the team has accomplished. This type of outward communication has two benefits. First, it raises the profile of your team, and in an era of diminished budgets, you don’t want your team’s potential to be lost in the background. Secondly, it raises the confidence of team members in your leadership: not only are you recognising the team for its performance, you are using your stature to stand up for the team in ways that they can’t.

Taking on the leadership of a team has many parallels in other management situations—a new CEO has 100 Days to make an imprint; a new department head has to get grounded, create shared vision, build a track record of success. The lessons in this article can apply in many different situations. However, the team leader role is unique in that it is much more of an influence role than leadership roles in the formal structure. As an influence-based leader, the team leader relies on open communication, relationships, and perhaps most importantly, the energy and commitment of the team. By applying these lessons, team leaders not only help their teams achieve a higher level of performance; they broaden their leadership capacity, which can prepare them for more traditional positions in the hierarchy as well.

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