All Posts by Ann Tardy

0 Leverage the Power of Labels

My teacher in 2nd grade wrote the word “enthusiastic” on my report card. My parents beamed with pride. So I continued to be enthusiastic. Teachers continued to write the word on my report card. And my parents continued to beam.

Labels are a powerful influence.

Diagnosis Bias When a person gets labeled by someone they admire, respect, or value, they mold and shape their behaviors to fit that label. This phenomenon is called “diagnosis bias.” Essentially, once someone is diagnosed, their brain looks for evidence to confirm that diagnosis.

The label is so powerful that it literally causes that person to start acting out that label through their behavior and decisions. And once they start acting out a label, they perpetuate it as they continue to reinforce and reaffirm it with more behaviors and decisions. Essentially people confirm the diagnosis they are given through their own actions.

Parents Label Children. A mom says, “Sally is shy.” The more Sally hears that she is shy, the more she acts shy, which then confirms that Sally is, in fact, shy.

Bosses Label Employees. Jane has been identified as an “up-and-coming leader at the company.” Bob, however, has been told he might not be cut out for sales.

• The more Jane hears her label, the more Jane acts like an up-and-coming leader, which confirms for her and everyone else that Jane is, in fact, an up-and-coming leader.
• Bob’s diagnosis shapes his behavior, and his sales slip, which then confirms the diagnosis that he is, in fact, not cut out for sales.

Brand Your Labels Carefully When someone respects and admires us, we must apply labels carefully. When we brand that person with a label (ex: smart, dumb, strategic, ineffective, leader, follower), they will embrace the behaviors of that label and then mirror the expectations we have for them. Essentially, they adopt the characteristics of that label.

How can we use labels more vigilantly?

• Notice the labels you use for people – consider that your label may be perpetuating their behavior
• Select labels for people based on the behavior you want, not the behavior you see currently
• Employ empowering titles and nicknames for people (ex: Queen of People Success, King of Sales, Client Engagement Specialist, Product Guru, Leader of Leaders)

Pay attention to the labels you use and wield this superpower with diligence and intentionality.

0 The Art of Pulling Relationship Weeds

Like a garden, relationship weeds result from neglect.

Upsets, miscommunications, missed expectations, disappointments, frustrations, altercations, and conflict. All weeds that sprout in our personal and professional relationships.

When relationships are new, weeds are rare. We are too busy making a good impression, establishing trust, creating rapport, being a new boss, or being the new team member. In new relationships, we are intentionally vigilant against weeds.

However, when we get comfortable in our relationships, we tend to get lazy. We forget to update our boss; we make a decision without including our team; we fail to follow up on a commitment; we cancel meetings or show up late; we neglect to set expectations on an assignment; we tolerate emotional outbursts; we inflict snarly or rude comments.

Like gardeners, we must diligently pull weeds to foster those relationships. 

Here’s your candid, no B.S., weed-pulling script:

• What’s working for you?
• What’s not working for you?
• Here’s what’s working for me…
• Here’s what’s not working for me…

Example:

• What’s working for you? I love this new project
• What’s not working for you? I’m not getting the support I need from you.
• Here’s what’s working for me… I’m excited to see your leadership shine in this new project.
• Here’s what’s not working for me…I need you to get better at delegating so other work gets done.

As you embark on pulling weeds, a few pointers:

1. Start by identifying a topic, a situation, an issue, a relationship weed to address.
2. Emphasize your commitment to the relationship and to the other person’s success.
3. Muster your courage. It can be uncomfortable asking for such pointed feedback, but your vulnerability will invite theirs.
4. Prepare for some defensiveness, especially if the neglect has eroded the trust between you. Reaffirm your commitment.
5. Focus on the issue, not the person.

When a relationship matters, weed-whacking doesn’t work. You need to intentionally and unabashedly pull the weeds to strengthen the soil that allows the relationship garden to flourish.

0 What Zappos Got Wrong When They Booted Their Managers

In 2012, Zappos got rid of all of their managers.

Why? They decided the company was saddled with too much bureaucracy, which was suffocating its innovative, entrepreneurial spirit. So they eliminated all of their managers in favor of a new structure called “Holocracy” (a self-management operating model in which everyone is autonomous and no one has bosses).

Blaming managers for bureaucracy and suffocated innovation is so trite.

But their solution is equally inane. By eliminating their managers, they eliminated their powerhouse in the middle of the organization.

Managers have two vital and powerful roles in every organization:

• to propagate the message from the top
• to develop people’s leadership from the bottom

Managers are the gateway to a company’s success, not the barricade.

What Zappos should have done is prepared their managers to be effective. Instead they hurled them off the bus.

What are you doing to prepare your powerhouse of managers?

0 Are you an Advocate of Job Crafting?

Job Crafting: The act of adding meaning to your work

More than 65% of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs. Why? They’re focused on a fixed list of duties. It’s time to encourage these people to expand the boundaries of their job description…

Coined by researchers at the University of Michigan and Yale, “job crafting” describes people who meet the expectations of their job and then find ways to add something that makes a difference and benefits the team/company/customers.

Examples of job crafting:

• People who volunteer to mentor others
• Salespeople who solve problems instead of sell products
• People who take on a project for an employee resource group or a Diversity Council
• My colleague who stayed late to help me prepare for a big presentation
• The hotel front desk clerk who walked across the street to get me a first-aid kit
• The Xerox employee who turned an error in adhesives into Post-it Notes
• The Zappos call center rep who sent flowers to a customer whose husband had just died and who was calling to return a pair of shoes she had purchased for him
• The utility workers from around the country who traveled to the East Coast to help neighborhoods get their power back after Hurricane Sandy in 2013

Where to start? Assess and alter any of the following areas in your job:

• Tasks – what tasks could you perform differently or more effectively? what new tasks could you take on?
• Relationships – what new relationships could you develop and contribute to?
• Perceptions – how does your work affect others? how does your work make a difference?

3 essentials for success in job crafting:

1. Create value for others:  find ways to benefit and serve your boss, team, colleagues, and customers
2. Establish trust:  help others see that your actions are in service of them, not in service of you
3. Start with the yaysayers:  focus first on those who support you

Why should leaders advocate for job crafting? It’s a potent way to empower people to increase their own satisfaction, elevate their own achievements, and improve their own resilience.

The result? Employees who are re-energized and re-committed because they found new ways to contribute and make a difference. And who wouldn’t want to work in that kind of culture?

What kind of job crafting have you been up to? Send me an email – I want to cheer you on!

0 Are you using a Fiascos and Flops List?

Bad events are stronger than good.

Research shows that we learn from and use negative information far more than positive information when making decisions.

Negative events have a greater impact on us than positive ones. Negative events are more memorable. An embarrassing moment, losing a friend, getting fired, receiving criticism, an altercation with a stranger. We are more motivated to avoid these bad situations than we are to pursue good ones.

It would make sense to focus on our failures to avoid replicating them. But our ego gets in the way of allowing our errors to serve as teaching tools, pointing to bad luck, unfortunate timing, or external circumstances to excuse our gaffes: the weather, the traffic, the sabotaging colleagues, the jerk in the store, our manager’s poor judgment, the short-sited client.

And society has convinced us to study successful people through books, magazines, speakers, and movies. The reality, however, is that success is hard to replicate. There are too many factors involved.

Failure, however, can easily be replicated. So let’s focus on others’ failures, mistakes, gaffes, errors, and missteps so we don’t replicate them:

• When engaging with a Mentor, ask about their mistakes and lessons learned
• When talking with anyone about their success, ask about what didn’t work
• When reading about successful people in books and magazines, focus on their errors and blunders
• When in awe of role models, notice their miscalculations and gaffes
• Keep a list of failures, fiascos, and flops of other people, teams, and companies
• Then study the list regularly

Warren Buffet’s business partner, Charles Munger, keeps an inanities list and a file of foolishness filled with other people’s missteps, errors, and bad judgment. He studies it to ensure he doesn’t replicate them.

Create your own Fiascos and Flops List and reference it before making decisions. When everyone else is trying to parrot the successful, you’ll be busy generating your own success.

0 Set the Herd Free

Animals herd. Cattle, geese, bees, birds, fish, wolves, and people.

We herd, flock, swarm, migrate, school, pack, gather, and crowd.

All of this herding breeds groupthink.

People tend to follow the behaviors, actions, and beliefs of those in their herd to avoid the herd’s rejection.

Here’s how it works. The herd starts circling around the same idea until it is unanimously embraced. And in the face of the growing consensus, people edit themselves, stifling their fresh perspectives, insights, and ideas for fear of ridicule or rejection.

And then we are left with a group of people who think alike.

Groupthink infiltrates meetings.

Everyone coming to your meeting has unique expertise and knowledge that could benefit the group’s decision-making process. But, as research shows, herds are terrible at pooling their information. Here’s why. Meetings are dominated by (1) information that people already know and (2) information that confirms the consensus. As a result, people dilute their contributions and lean nothing new. And we wonder why people hate meetings!

As leaders, we have the power to set the herd free.

How? By intentionally blocking groupthink. Here are 5 practical actions we can take immediately:

1. Ask for Ideas in Advance. Before gathering the herd in a meeting, have people submit three ideas or new pieces of information to help the group make a decision on a particular issue. This will thwart the addiction to pre-existing and consensus-driven information.
2. Brainwrite With brainwriting, you submit a question or an issue to your group and everyone writes their ideas on paper. Like brainstorming but without the influence of the loudest group members.
3. Assign a Devil’s Advocate Designate one person in each meeting to introduce opposing ideas, views, and perspectives. By assigning this role, you allow that person to contribute alternative viewpoints and positively dissent without the fear of the herd.
4. Talk Last When leaders go first, people follow. And when people follow, they mute their own ideas for fear of not only the herd but of you. By talking last, you set the herd free to generate solutions independent of your influence.
5. Engage with Smaller Focused Groups Literally break up the herd. Invite people based only on the expertise, knowledge, and perspectives they can contribute to the issue at hand.

It’s easy to manage a herd, but you’ll be a lot more effective if you focus on leading the people in the herd.

0 Lower Your Expectations

Lower your expectations.

I first heard this advice at RAGBRAI, the annual bike ride across Iowa held the last week of July. When my friends and I arrived at camp to start the adventure, the head of our outfitter, Pork Belly Ventures, welcomed us with the following, “This is going to be a great week. But here’s the reality: It’s hot. You’re sleeping in a tent. And you’re riding with 10,000 cyclists into towns built for 400 residents. Just lower your expectations.”

Brilliant. Most employed advice of the week. Whenever anything was about to cause an upset (like the mid-week downpour and tent-flooding), we would look at each other and say, “Lower your expectations.”

When our expectations are high, we easily get disappointed, angry, and upset. In fact, conflict is merely the result of missed expectations. One person’s expectations are higher than another person’s. That gap produces the conflict.

If you’re like me, however, you’re suddenly looking at an entire career rippled with high expectations of people. You cannot fathom lowering them for fear of breeding complacency and mediocrity!

But here’s why we should heed the advice from RAGBRAI and apply it to work:

• We can have high expectations of things we manage: time, money, budgets, deadlines, and projects.
• We get in trouble when we place high expectations on things we do not manage and therefore cannot control: weather, traffic, airlines, family, and people.

We manage things and we lead people. Expectations are things to be managed. People are not.

So what should we do with those high expectations we have been dumping on people? Exchange those expectations for aspirations.

As leaders, our commitment is for people to be wildly successful. So we need high aspirations for them. And only through leading can we contribute to and influence their success with those aspirations. We influence aspirations. We control expectations. 

New Rules

• If you cannot control it, then lower your expectations around it.
• Exchange those high expectations of people with high aspirations for them.
• Then influence the success of those aspirations by relentlessly leading and contributing.
• Lower your expectations. Raise your aspirations.

Caveat: Lowered expectations does not mean no expectations. You must have minimum standards of expectations for every role.

Try on this perspective this week! Let me know how it looks through the kaleidoscope.