Julie Winkle Giulioni on employee development

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A significant investment is made each year on studies, training, portals, and programs related to career development. Sadly, the return on this investment continues to disappoint organizations, leaders and employees alike. And it’s unfortunate because what’s needed doesn’t cost even a penny. What’s needed to ensure healthy, sustainable career development is creativity.

“Creativity” and “career development” rarely come up in the same sentence. In fact, many organizations have inadvertently wrung a lot of creativity out of career development through the creation of complicated systems, processes, and forms. What many organizations are discovering is, the more sophisticated the individual development planning process, the less creativity is actually allowed. It turns leaders into box-checking bureaucrats, for whom career development is yet another task on a never-ending To-Do list. It’s like completing a paint-by-number career development plan. That’s not creativity, that’s drudgery.

APPROACHES TO CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

Although many organizations have completely revamped many aspects of the employee experience—from recruiting to compensation—innovation in career development practices have typically remained largely stagnant. There are, however, a few pacesetting companies that are implementing genuinely creative solutions that ensure relevant and sustainable development. 

In general, these companies focus on two broad approaches that cost nothing but can quickly shift mindsets about how to develop employees:

  • Thinking outside of the box—the checkbox on the standard forms, that is. There’s a balance to be struck between the structure (required for manpower/succession planning) and the ongoing, iterative, informal, in-the-moment way people actually learn, grow and develop. Lightening the administrative load of the former frees up energy and creativity for the latter.
  • Rebranding the outdated career ladder. Although the regular, predictable progression associated with the ladder metaphor went missing from many workplaces some time ago, too many employees and leaders alike still hold that image. Progressive organizations are replacing the ladder with more nimble, lateral, and reality-based models including climbing walls, jungle gyms and Tetris-style ways of thinking about how career development really works.

Here are a few examples of creative ways to embed career development into your work team’s daily life:

ASK

This is the simplest route to helping employees grow: ask their opinion. Yet, managers sometimes forget to ask, “Where do you see the need to develop?” or “What would feel like a stretch assignment to you?” As a manager, it’s easy to get caught up in prescribed “development” activities handed down from upper management and take shortcuts. 

EXTRAPOLATE

What tasks/projects does your employee already do that can be extrapolated into a new project that will energize him/her and provide value to your organization. Perhaps she took a financial project and ran with it; what can you help her do to increase the complexity in the task, so she grows in this area?

DELEGATE

You’re probably already delegating, but here’s the twist: give away a task that you love to do. Perhaps there’s a task that you long ago mastered, but you hold onto because you enjoy it. Who on your team would also enjoy it, if only they had the chance to try it? These are just three possible avenues to injecting creativity into your organization’s career development processes. Everyone from the C-suite to the front lines needs to update their thinking about, expectations of, and efforts to support career development. As these examples show, the shift does not require a significant financial investment. Rather, what’s necessary is the infusion of the priceless quality of creativity.

ABOUT JULIE WINKLE GIULIONI

Julie Winkle Giulioni helps organizations enhance learning, engagement, retention, and the bottom line. Named one of Inc. Magazines top 100 leadership speakers, Julie is the co-author of the international bestseller, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Organizations Need and Employees Want, a respected speaker on a variety of topics, and a regular contributor to many business publications. Julie will be presenting her insights for IMS members in 2020. Learn more about Julie at: https://www.juliewinklegiulioni.com/

Women's Leadership Expert and Author Audrey Nelson PhD.

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  1. ACCOUNTABILITY
  2. ACCESSIBILITY
  3. ASSERTIVENESS
  4. AGGRESSIVENESS
  5. ANGER
  6. AFFABILITY
  7. AUTHORITY
  8. ACCOMMODATE
  9. AVOID
  10. AFFILIATION
  11. APPROVAL
  12. APOLOGIZING
  13. AMBITION

The 13 A’s to Ax are critical behaviors that impact women’s leadership style. Before a woman can forge a path to leadership, she must conquer these internal roadblocks. The thirteen behaviors are struggles women experience with their attitude and expression of them; that is, their comfort level and familiarity is problematic and does not serve them well as leaders.

For example, one of the A’s is affability. Women not only compulsively smile more than men, but they smile at the wrong time, which can jeopardize their credibility by sending mixed messages—a contradiction between verbal and nonverbal messages. People don’t know which one to believe. Often a woman will smile when she is making a serious point or engaged in conflict as if to mitigate the situation, to soften the blow. So, I am not saying women should stop smiling altogether, but they need to consider the context and the message. We all like to work with happy people, but we are confused by contradictory messages.

Approval and Affiliation

Another example is approval and affiliation. We are social animals and have a hard-wired need for approval and inclusion in the group. For women, it is paramount that they are liked; men often gauge their prowess by not necessarily always being liked and approved of by others—sometimes a “macho” factor. This is best represented by a remark I heard a middle manager make: “Somebody has to do the dirty work and call out this bad solution and if it means I am not going to be liked, so be it.” Women face the task of monitoring what they sacrifice: their opinions and ideas for the sake of approval.

Approval and affiliation can bring down a teen girl and a senior executive equally.  Friendships are important to women, and they learn young the prerequisite of liking other children in order to play with them; fast forward to a managerial level: Women feel an immense loyalty to their colleagues. It is common for women to refuse to transfer to another department because of the bond they have with existing peers.

In a recent consolidation of research on women in the workplace for the last three decades, Gallop produced a report, Women: Work and Life Well-Lived. The report identifies the “friendship factor.” For women, work not only provides a steady paycheck but also a sense of purpose and an important social outlet; sixty-six percent of women say the social aspect of a job is a “major reason” why they work. Because a woman has a deep sense of affiliation with her team members, it benefits the organization, as well. In other words, her ability to form strong relationships relates to better business outcomes, including profitability, safety, and most importantly, customers’ emotional connection and loyalty to the business. One of the most important realizations women have to learn is how to maintain the positive qualities and attributes of affiliation without compromising their ability to express a conflicting opinion.

New Rules and Realities

There are new rules and realities for leadership in the workplace. Men and women are not the same and have different approaches to how they lead. In order for women to share their work lives as equals, they must learn to tackle simple behaviors governed by internal thought patterns. A woman cannot always control the external environment, what people think or organizational constraints, but she does have control over her internal attitudes and predispositions; she can change the way she thinks and then the way she behaves.

There are many lessons girls have learned from playing cooperatively rather than forming hierarchical groups. Girls generally prefer a flat organization and the premium is on getting along with others and learning how to smooth things over and negotiate to save and preserve relationships. Girls will typically choose reciprocity and intimacy in playing games. These lessons have served women well in developing interpersonal competence, emotional intelligence, enhanced social skills, and the ability to sustain relationships. However, the paradox of interpersonal skill and acquiescence is a tightrope women must walk. It functions as a part of the micro-political structure that undergirds the larger political structure of the workplace. For the larger political context to exist and carry on, there are many actions and interactions that take place during the workday to support it and maintain it.

The 13 A’s to Ax are interrelated issues women have with behaviors that serve to perpetuate the disparities in men and women’s attitudes toward leadership and the willingness of others to follow women. When a woman pursues leadership, whether it is an entry-level leadership position or if she is already in a mid-level management or director position, she becomes frustrated, bewildered, and confused. She begins to mistrust her judgment. She is experiencing a backlash to her leadership style.

Finally, these 13 A’s serve to maintain and convey signals of compliance, control, and dependence that influence us and those around us. Conquering the challenges a woman has with The 13 A’s to Ax will enable her to not only join the ranks of male leadership, but to also surpass it.

Dr. Jeffrey Kuhn

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Aspiring young leaders often ask me, “How can I learn to think and lead strategically?”  Normally, I smile and reply, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  The answer is, of course, practice.  Lots and lots of practice.  That’s how you get to Carnegie Hall, and that’s how you learn to think and lead strategically.

Strategic leadership is a form of leadership that is future-oriented and broad in scope. It emphasizes building the organizational capabilities and culture that strengthen a firm’s competitiveness and its ability to create customer and economic value on a sustainable basis. Strategic leaders speak a language of growth and value creation, rather than cost-cutting and downsizing.

Role of Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is the engine room of strategic leadership. It’s impossible to lead strategically without the ability to think strategically. They are two sides of the same coin. Strategic leaders have an innate ability to recognize patterns and seize emerging growth opportunities in dynamic market environments and tend to have strong conceptual skills and immense creative capacity that is fueled by an insatiable curiosity, openness to new experiences, a vivid imagination, and eclectic interests.

Many leaders struggle with strategic thinking and regard it as an inborn trait possessed by members of the lucky gene club rather than a cognitive capability—a mind-set and muscle—that can be developed.  It’s is my belief, however, that with the right development experiences, working under the watchful eye of a master teacher/coach with expertise in enterprise-level strategic thinking and transformation, operationally oriented managers can develop the capacity to think and lead strategically in dynamic market environments that are undergoing profound change. I have watched scores of operationally oriented managers develop the capacity to think and lead strategically in my executive development programs.

Building Your Strategic Muscle

Here are some tips and development activities for developing your capacity to think and lead strategically. 

Read Business Journals to Develop a Repertoire of Patterns

Strategic thinkers are expert pattern recognizers. A leader learns how to think strategically one pattern at a time. Commonly recurring patterns in business include a disruptive threat from a new entrant, organizational decline and renewal, growth spurts and growth stalls, industry maturation and commoditization, and price wars that create a death spiral.

A great way to develop a repertoire of patterns is through reading business journals and case examples in business books. Most of the strategic leaders that I have worked with are voracious readers and lifelong learners. Reading periodicals like Businessweek or the Wall Street Journal is a great way to develop broad, cross-industry business acumen and a repertoire of patterns.

Develop Eclectic Interests

It’s also important to develop eclectic interests outside of your work environment to develop your creative capacity. It doesn’t matter what you pursue, whether it be music, art, or birdwatching. The key is to pursue an interesting activity outside of work that brings your innate creativity out of hibernation and allows you to look at the world from different perspectives.

Develop Networks Outside Your Industry

It’s also vital to cultivate professional relationships outside your industry in order to develop a broad, cross-industry perspective. Thinking outside the box requires spending time with people in different boxes. Industries become inbred over time, so it’s important to connect with “switched on” leaders outside your industry to gain fresh perspectives that you can apply to your organization.

Participate in Strategic Projects

Experience is by far our best teacher. One of the best ways to develop your strategic thinking skills is by participating in enterprise-level strategy projects at your organization. You can also ask a senior-level mentor to shadow and/or support he or she on a shorter-term strategic project. During my doctoral studies, I worked with a retired CEO on strategy projects in an apprenticeship-type arrangement to hone my strategic thinking skills. The experience accelerated my development immeasurably and continues to bear fruit.

Maintain a Strategic Thinking Journal

Finally, it’s a good idea to maintain a strategic thinking journey to capture your insights, observations, and reflections.  Nearly all the executives I have worked with over the years maintain a journal to capture key insights.

Enhancing your capacity to think and lead strategically is clearly within your grasp provided you have the passion and drive and are willing to invest the time to hone your craft.  There are no shortcuts in life.

You have to practice, practice, practice!  That’s how you get to Carnegie Hall!

About Dr. Jeffrey Kuhn

Dr. Jeffrey Kuhn is a distinguished thinker, author, strategy advisor, and educator with expertise positioned at the intersection of strategy, innovation, growth, and organizational renewal and vitality—the work of strategic leadership. His work centers on helping senior business leaders develop the capacity to think and lead strategically in dynamic market environments undergoing profound change. He holds a doctorate from Columbia University and has served on the faculty of Columbia Business School and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a founding member of the Strategic Management Forum and is a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts. In 2017, Dr. Kuhn was inducted into Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.

Dr. Kuhn is doing four IMS programs in October. Learn more about them HERE.

Author and coach Bill Hawkins

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In 20 years of conducting leadership seminars and one-on-one coaching with executives, what would you guess to be the most common complaint I hear?

It sounds something like this:

There’s just so much on my plate. The amount of work that needs to be done can be overwhelming. There are meetings, conference calls, administrative requirements, not to mention routine emergencies that suck up all my time. It seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done.

And what advice does our busy leader get? “You need to delegate more.” 

Surprisingly, the answer for the “not enough hours in the day” boss isn’t to delegate more but to delegate more effectively.

Delegation is not a quality like “demonstrating integrity.” Honest, ethical, and legal behavior is always appropriate―delegation isn’t. Inappropriate or poorly executed delegation can do more harm than good.

Criteria for Delegation

A good place to start is to review the criteria for delegation. Why do it? There are 3 good reasons a leader should delegate work:

  1. To ensure the work is done at an appropriate level (closest to the customer, at the lowest cost, with access to the needed information, etc.).
  2. To free up your time to do other more important activities.
  3. To develop the people on your team.

Ideally, you want to include all 3 criteria. So, how do you know what to delegate and to whom?

Steps to Delegation

Step 1: Every job (no matter if it’s the CEO or the person greeting at the front desk) can be broken down into 3 to 5 major components. There are no exceptions to this rule! Identify the key 3 to 5 areas of your responsibility, and then list several activities you do to achieve success in each of these key areas.

For example, one area of responsibility for a customer service manager might be: Train new customer service representatives.

Activities to support that responsibility might be:

  • Orientation on email and voice mail communication
  • Dealing with angry customers
  • Researching information on shipment and delivery questions
  • Handling quality issues

Step 2: Look at each activity and ask yourself, “Is this developmental for me? Am I building skills that will be useful in the future? Am I learning more about this business or industry? Is this increasing my business acumen, building my skills, and expanding my understanding?” If the answers are all “No,” even if you enjoy doing these activities, it is not necessarily a good use of your time.

Step 3: I can assure you there are people on your team who think your job is more interesting than theirs. Some would like to have more responsibility, earn a larger raise, or maybe get a promotion. Is there anyone on your team you could delegate all or some of these tasks to and it would be very developmental for them? If so, this is an appropriate opportunity to delegate work.

No Dumping Allowed

Step 4: There is a difference between delegating and dumping work on people. Effective delegation requires orientation to the new assignment. To the person assuming the new responsibilities:   

  1. Communicate why he or she has been selected for this assignment.   
  2. Discuss how much time it will take and how to structure their schedule so there is time available for this additional work.
  3. Make sure they have access to needed information or know where to find it.
  4. Confirm that they feel like they have the authority to do the job.

If you follow these simple steps, you’ll free up time for yourself and you’re also engaging and developing people on your team.

That is a Win / Win.  And that is effective delegation.   

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THE FUTURE LEADERS THAT ALREADY WORK FOR YOU

Every year, organizations invest untold amounts of money in the relentless search for executive talent. Recruitment is big business, and many will tell you reams of tricks and tips for hiring top talent, but what if the talent already works for you? Your current employees already have the business knowledge, organizational wayfinding and corporate culture to hit the ground running for you, so why are they being overlooked? Because they sometimes don’t fit the standard experience of executive presence. Often times, they are women, minorities and introverts that don’t get the consideration they deserve.

In my corporate program, “The Invisible Leaders: How to Find Them and Let Them Shine,” I show how companies can uncover the hidden leaders in their organizations and gain a competitive advantage by leveraging high-value, underrepresented talent. Promoting from within saves time, money and recruiting costs while improving employee retention.

Start helping your hidden leaders develop their executive presence by focusing on the 3 most common traits they lack.

Confidence

  • In my trainings, I often help participants break down the components of what CEOs and senior executives say when they refer to “executive presence.” One consistent element we identify, time and again, is confidence. Leadership hopefuls are expected to speak with poise and conviction, and a self-assuredness that feels genuine and natural. Your hidden talent likely has every reason to possess such confidence but may have trouble expressing themselves with the gravitas expected. This could stem from culture, upbringing, or a quieter, more introspective nature. Make sure they get the coaching they need to think, speak and act with conviction, and they will soon be closer to the executive track.

Authority

  • Your hidden talent may also need a boost in demonstrating assertiveness and persuasive communication. Top leadership is drawn to those with strong communication skills and the ability to be prepared, concise and convincing. Ensure your untapped potential leaders are given the training and the opportunity to master these skills and deliver with conviction, even when questioned. People are sometimes uncomfortable when challenged by authority figures and may have been taught that is always better to defer to superiors, even when they are incorrect. Offer your potentials the tools to build on their own ways to be respectfully assertive and to speak with conviction.

Reputation

  • Many individuals working for you have already done a great deal of excellent, attention-worthy work, but no one knows about it! Many of us have been taught to avoid boasting and cockiness at all costs, and that understating your accomplishments is far preferable to being seen as a loudmouth or a braggart. Many are uncomfortable with the idea of self-promotion and hope that their work will speak for itself. Your hidden talent will benefit both from workshops and training on respectful and positive ways to take credit for accomplishments, as well as a good deal of advocacy and reputation building you can do on their behalf. Make sure senior management knows of all the great work they’ve done to date.

If you supply the training and tools for building confidence, demonstrating convincing communication, and strengthening reputation, many otherwise overlooked individuals can assimilate executive presence into their existing competencies. Just because they don’t fit the expected characteristics out of the gate doesn’t mean they can’t develop elements of executive presence within their own style and personality. With coaching and guidance from you, your hidden talent can become shining stars of the organization.

About the author

Joel Garfinkle is a sought-after speaker and corporate trainer that has delivered more than 1000 workshops, speeches and keynote addresses. He is recognized as one of the top 50 coaches in the U.S., having worked with many of the world’s leading companies, including Oracle, Google, Amazon, Deloitte, The Ritz-Carlton, and Starbucks. He is the author of 7 books and over 300+ articles on leadership.

Joel Garfinkle will be teaching four programs for IMS in 2019. He is at IMS Los Angeles in June. In August he will be in Chicago, St. Louis and Houston.