Great Leader vs. Great Manager Is There A Difference?

When you are confident that you are a good Manager, does that mean that you are automatically a good Leader? Leadership should not be considered to be the same as management. They are different, yet not in the way most people presuppose. Leadership is not something that requires a specific personality profile, such as one requiring charm or a sense of inquisitiveness. Leadership is not a replacement for management nor is it to be thought of as being even better than management. Leadership and management are two distinctly different systems that must both be alive and complimentary in every successful organization. Management is more about system interactions, processes and accountability that keep the organization running. Leadership is directly responding to change and the use of it applied to improving or supporting others.

The challenge is to combine great leadership with great management, skillfully balancing the two. Do you see your company as being over managed and under led? Are you developing your leadership capacity? Additionally, have you identified someone within your organization as the next leader?

Executive Coaching Explained on the Back of a Napkin!

Markets Media Magazine on Just Ask - September/October 2009

By Markets Media Magazine

Coaching: The Fad that Won't Go Away

By: Jim BoltTue Jul 8, 2008 at 5:47 PM

Five suggestions for getting the most out of a coach.

I ended my last column noting that we would examine three very popular leadership development methods (Action Learning, Coaching, and Leader-Led Learning) in more depth. So let’s start with executive coaching, which is now a billion-dollar industry experiencing explosive growth. Frankly, it wasn’t very long ago that having coach was sort of a dirty little secret -- you kept it to yourself. It meant you were in trouble and probably on the way out. Now it seems everybody has a coach. It means we’ve arrived, that were a rising star, someone our organization is investing in for the future. Wow, what a turnaround!

Our findings in my firm's executive development surveys (mentioned in the last column) indicated a dramatic increase in the use of coaching: In 2004, 56% of the companies said that executive coaching would be a major learning method they would emphasize. Then in a 2006 follow-up survey, 51% said the use of coaching had actually increased. Given this nearly miraculous change in the status of coaching we recently decided, along with our research partner, Dr. Brian Underhill of CoachSource, to conduct a major research project to explore the murky world of executive coaching in depth.

Our study, High-Impact Executive Coaching, was unique in that it examined the topic in a 3-D manner, i.e., through the eyes of coaches, organizations that retain them, and leaders being coached. The study included 48 organizations and 86 leaders being coached. In this column I want to focus mostly on what we learned from the leaders being coached since it’s highly relevant for anyone interested in either providing coaches to leaders or in being coached. (Read Full Article at Fastcompany)

Survey: Although Popular, Definition of Leadership Coaching Eludes Managers

Leadership development tops the list of training manager, coaching managers and executives say they prefer, according to a survey by CO2 Partners, an executive coaching and leadership development firm based in Minnesota.

Actually defining leadership development, however, isn’t quite as popular. Gary Cohen, CO2 Partners president, said many people do not fully understand what leadership development coaching is or what it entails.

“Leadership is a captivating objective for most executives and managers,” he said. “So individuals feel obligated to choose leadership development, even if they have no clear sense of what it’s all about. Despite this lack of awareness, leadership ranks first on any survey of coaching needs.”

Cohen said, though, that leadership coaching is not well-defined and that it makes sense many people do not fully comprehend exactly what it is. (Full Article Chief Training Officer)

Few Employees Turn To Boss For Advice

MINNEAPOLIS -- Most employees are unwilling to turn to their boss for advice on problems at work, according to an Internet survey of more than 3,000 employees by CO2 Partners, a Minnesota-based leadership development and executive coaching firm.

In fact, a supervisor was cited by only 11% of employees surveyed as a source for workplace advice. More employees rely on a peer, another senior person, a friend outside the company, and a mentor or coach.

Whom do you turn to for advice on problems at work? (Read Full Article at HR.COM)

Business Coaching Becomes The Focus

As executive coaching continues to expand, the field is shifting away from a therapeutic model to a greater emphasis on business performance and leadership development, according to Minnesota executive coaching firm CO2 Partners. (Read Full Article in HR.COM)

"Hearts" Trump "Heads"

Emotions vs. Intellect in the Coaching Experience By: Peter Coleman As executive coaches, we are always looking for the right words to make our clients understand their situation, and to help them find their way out of the dilemma or to accomplish their goals. Just as the Japanese are reputed to nod "yes" when all they mean to convey is that "I understand what you are saying," many times our clients will acknowledge the wisdom of our interpretation without really committing to a change of direction or action. The problem is one of emotion trumping intellect, of "heart vs. head." "Business," as many of us understand it, is based on a cold rationale: profit is the only real purpose, so all elements must be intellectually aligned to produce said profit, and that's that. But of course it's never that simple-behind each element is a number of human factors that can influence, interfere, or accelerate the opportunity for accomplishment, and the good coach must discover and address them if the process is to move ahead. So, how do we find the "heart" in each process? As always, "just ask"! If, for instance, the coach is getting all kinds of intellectual acceptance to his or her coaching ideas, yet the business remains stalled in an old approach, there is always something more that hasn't been identified. As leaders and coaches, we must keep asking questions, keep probing, until we find the real reasons, which may be surprising. The heart is always stronger than the "head" because emotions are what ground people in the rightness of their decisions. You may have heard the old joke, "Don't confuse me with facts. I've already made up my mind." That mind has been made up based on emotional commitments, not intellectual ones. The only way we can achieve change is to find another way into the emotional argument, to supplant the current "heart" commitment with a stronger one. All the intellectual arguments in the world are useless against a strongly held emotional one. In conclusion, the good executive coach listens to the client's rationale for the status quo, but continues to probe deeper into the real motivations. Until the fundamental reasons (usually emotional ones) are addressed, there is little possibility of fundamental change. Find the "heart" of the matter, and you can then "head" in the right direction!

William E. Mayer Chairman of Aspen Institute Asks Leaders to Find There Special Strength

William E. Mayer is the Senior Partner of Park Avenue Equity Partners, a private equity firm, formerly professor and Dean of the College of Business and Management at the University of Maryland. When Bill gave his closing address at the Aspen Idea Festival he said, 'It dawned on him several years ago that one needs to find that one thing that makes them special and do that every day all day. He found it difficult as most people do to discover this unique quality because he does it on automatic pilot without effort and gives it no attention to this strength. His attention like most of ours is spent on those things that we don't do well. For himself he found coaching others was his special gift. He had been doing it most his life everyday in all aspects of his life. It was someone else that needed to help him become aware of this skill he gave to those he connected with - because it was so common he didn't even know he did it.

What is your special skill, strength that is so easy for you and is a gift that is unique to you?

When should I stop asking questions and make a decision?

I asked a number of high-profile leaders when they shifted from information-gathering to making a decision. While there wasn’t uniformity among the responses, most leaders acknowledged the need to stop asking questions at a certain juncture.

Walter Isaacson, President & CEO of the Aspen Institute and former President & Chief Operating Officier of CNN, waits for about 60% of the input to come in, then stops asking questions and makes a decision. If you wait for everyone to respond, or all data to be assembled, you might miss your window to act. Besides, you don’t want to aggravate your coworkers by over-asking questions. If you do, they will eventually tire of your approach. On the other hand, you want to be careful not to give the impression that everyone’s input isn’t needed or welcome.

Tim Welsh, a Principal of McKinsey & Company, stops asking questions when the matter needs an immediate response or he simply runs out of time. If an organizational rule or guideline is breached, for example, he feels it should be addressed quickly. In that instance, questions might be used to establish the reason for the breach, but a quick and firm decision ensures the rule or guideline is upheld in the future.

Bob Senkler, CEO of Securian, believes that no answer is an answer. In other words, if an acceptable decision can’t be reached, a decision should not be made. If this is the case, however, those invested in the decision should be notified of the reason for the impasse.

Richard “Dick” McFarland, retired Chairman and CEO of Dain Rauscher, believes that a decision should always be made and relatively quickly—provided the stakes aren’t very high. His rationale is that the lack of a decision and the consequences of making the wrong decision are often less than inaction. “You can always change the decision as long as you’re not betting the farm,” says McFarland. “It is about small betting, not the whole farm, but maybe an acre here or an acre there.”

Organizations aren’t typically democracies. Decisions must be made and often by leaders. Your coworkers will expect consistency and fairness from you. When do you stop asking questions and make a decision? What’s your rationale and are your coworkers aware of it?

Progress on Gary's Book

Just Ask: Greatness Happens When You Ask!

The research is complete. We conducted two focus groups, and in the first focus group we beat out the two bestselling books that we were compared to. In the second focus group we beat out one of the two bestselling books. Given ours was only in rough format, that's pretty exciting. David Brake, CEO of Content Connections (the firm that we are working with to improve the messaging of the book), says that we can expect a marketing plan any day now. I hope to report that the book and the marketing plan will be sent to Jonathon Lazear, one of the most respected literary agents in the country, by the next newsletter. Yahoo!

How can I ignite imagination?

Dear Readers;

Gary Beck says that igniting imagination comes from rubbing minds together. With all of his leadership and marketing experience (as former President of FCB Database Marketing Group and former Executive Director of Database and Infrastructure for vehicle sales and services marketing at General Motors), he ought to know.

Naturally, questions are an integral part of bringing people (or minds) together. At your next strategic planning session, consider starting with personal accumulation: asking each group member to write down all the potential solutions that they can think of to a particular question. When pens come to a rest, ask group members to share one idea, then proceed in order around the room until all potential solutions have been voiced. In doing so, everyone will get heard, and group members will listen closely so that they don't repeat an idea.

Be sure to use open-ended questions that don't point responders to your opinions or cut off potentially creative avenues. Here are some you might ask:

• What is most important to the customer?
• What are clearly differentiable aspects of the product that we are trying to sell to the customer?
• How do we best communicate this particular aspect to our target customer?
• Who is our target customer?

Some group members may generate a ton of ideas—inspired either by the promise of getting their ideas heard or in a spurt of competitive energy. Some group members may not thrive under this time-pressured scenario, so don't cast judgment. They may well prove their worth in the development and support of others' ideas.

Not all ideas will be usable, of course, or worthy of extended discussion, but don't dismiss anything initially. The biggest impediment to creativity is having critics or skeptics in the room. The group will take its cues from you, the leader/moderator. Make it clear up front that all ideas are welcome—no matter how hare-brained or obvious or radical they may first appear. Those ideas may be the ones most easily missed—and perhaps most indispensable.

Leadership At the Top

Q: I lead a small company, and I manage it very tightly. In meetings, I find I am the only one offering ideas, while others do not contribute. Although my ideas have really worked to grow the company, I feel I am doing it alone. What should I do?

A: If you think you are talking too much, so does everybody else.

Growing up with movies like “Patton” and watching world leaders on the news every night has led to the illusion that leadership means repeatedly giving your opinions. The old school of “command and control” management has been around for decades, passed from one generation to the next. Some leaders may lack self-esteem, and the notion of controlling others may seem an attractive alternative to being controlled.

Remember: If you are not asking questions, you are making assumptions.

Mike, a former CEO and Chairman of a Fortune 100 company, would lead a meeting by first asking a question. He would then listen to the answers from each person present. Mike did not believe it was his job to give his opinion, but to listen to and observe the problem solving of others. He would monitor the room for how people were contributing and, if he noticed someone was not speaking much, he would be overly encouraging and supportive toward that person. This was true even when the employee’s comments were not on track with Mike’s agenda. Mike found that, by providing heavy doses of support over a course of five or six meetings, he could usually draw the employee out to be a fully functioning part of the team. Mike was clear that, if the employee continued to be withdrawn, it was likely he or she would have to move on.

When he encountered an employee who was talking too much in meetings, Mike applied a different strategy. Careful to avoid belittling the person in front of others, Mike would make a sharp comment or a non-verbal gesture that emphasized his desire to hear from everybody.

As a coach, I have been intrigued by Mike’s technique of asking a single question. I have witnessed other leaders use similar techniques, but found them to be somewhat limiting. A team often needs leadership, rather than just consensus. Mike demonstrated that his technique still provided leadership. If certain employee comments began guiding the discussion away from the company’s visions, goals, objectives, and values, Mike would simply ask, “How does this help us meet our goal?” or, “Is this in alignment with our vision?” He had a motto, which he taught to everyone, including me: “E3: Earnings, Earnings, Earnings.”

Mike tells the story of an analyst who asked him about his goals for the company. Mike’s answer was simply, “Earnings.” When asked if he had other goals, Mike said, “Oh, yes. Our second goal is earnings, and our third goal is earnings.” There was no need to ask about additional goals!

As a true leader, Mike ensured understanding. He had a clear message and a clear focus. Printed on company shirts, hats, and posters, E3 became the symbol for driving the corporation forward. When an employee’s comments were not aligned with E3, Mike set the employee back on course and made it clear to others that this was not acceptable.

Mike understands the value of asking questions and doing what all great leaders do – LISTENING. If you want to see change in your company, follow Mike’s example: Ask the question, then be silent and listen. The books on leadership speak much about courage. It takes courage to trust your team. It takes courage to believe your employees will deliver ideas and execute them successfully. Facing the fear of giving up control is what I call “Leadership at the top.” You may be surprised how much your people know and want to contribute.

Establish Accountability

Q: I have four people reporting to me, and I feel like none of them are accountable. What can I do to make them more accountable?


A: Establishing accountability is a common challenge for entrepreneurs and managers. I suggest using a process I learned from a good friend, Henry Chidgy, who once ran several railroad and diamond companies. Henry emphasized the use of monthly performance reviews -- yes, monthly! These reviews, however, need not and should not be complex; they work best when kept extremely simple. Maximum accountability is the main goal.

Here’s how the process works. First, each employee is responsible to bring you all information for his or her review; you should not provide anything. The day before meeting, the employee brings you a list of five or six key objectives, detailing his or her progress on each. During the review on the following day, you simply assess the data and discuss how performance compares with objectives. Depending on the employee, this can be a short 30 minutes process, or as long as 2 hours. (Tip: When an employee comes into your office, he or he should always bring a pen and paper and be required to take detailed minutes of the meeting. Immediately afterward, the employee needs to make a photocopy to go in your file. The reason for this is two-fold: first, the notes allow you to verify the individual’s understanding of the review; second, the notes increase consistency from one review to the next.)

There are three key questions to ask during the meeting:
1) How well did you meet the objectives we mutually agreed on?
2) Choose one of the following:
a) If you are ahead, how did you get ahead?
b) If you are behind, how did you get behind?
c) If you are on target, is there anything I need to know?
i) If yes, discuss further
ii) If no, extol the virtues of coming in one target.
3) If you are not meeting your objectives, what is the root cause?
The third question should trigger a discussion, in which you remain objective. If you can accept the employee’s explanation of the “root cause,” you allow it to be the actual root cause. If you cannot accept this explanation, you become the employee’s coach, helping him or her better understand the situation. Refrain from providing solutions; the employee needs to do this. If you tell rather than ask, you will not have accountable employees. Be patient – having employees solve their own problems is the key to building the accountability you want!


Once the employee develops a solution, I suggest coaching him or her through the following steps:
1) Establish an action plan.
2) Establish a deadline for implementing the action plan.
3) Schedule another meeting immediately after the deadline.
With difficult employees, you may need to increase the pressure, particularly if they consistently fail to meet goals. Pressure can be increased, simply by increasing the frequency of reviews. The process can occur every two weeks, every week, or even daily, if needed. It is unlikely that daily review will continue long term, as an employee at this stage is usually on the way out!
The key is to remain “on board” with the employee, instead of playing “the heavy.” Let the progress reports do the hard work. An added benefit of the reports is that no goal will be overlooked for long, without action being taken. Even if you feel like a micromanager, remember you merely coaching, not giving answers.
Some may ask, “If I manage like this, how will I ever get my own work done?” If this describes you, you need to re-examine your role as a leader. This is what leaders do. You must make time to enforce accountability, so that the team can achieve a common vision. If your employees are not accountable, you will be doing other people’s work for the rest of your career! Remember: If you practice this management style consistently, most of your employees will require very little time. Who knows. They may even become your apostles of accountability, replicating your style throughout the organization!

The Annoyance Factor

Question: Have you written on the "annoyance factor” yet? In my eighteen years running business affairs at three different studios, we always talked badly about the "leader" who could only ask questions and never come to a decision. I agree with your premise about Ask, Don't Tell, but not taken to the extreme. Do you? Do you really? No, I mean do you really? See what I mean?

Answer: I like that, “annoyance factor.” I have been accused of it more than once from my former direct report. She became annoyed when she believed I was leading her somewhere that I wanted her to go. As an “Ask, Don’t Tell” leader, if you receive a lemon face (all forehead lines bunching and lips puckering) or a particularly loud sigh, it could be because you are making employees fish for a specific answer you have in mind. If you do know exactly what you want, don’t play games. This is when you should tell, not ask.

One key to avoiding the “annoyance factor” is to ask yourself, “Am I the decision maker here?” when employees confront you with a problem. If you are the appropriate decision-maker, you need to pitch your questions so that your direct reports will provide you the information you need. If not, you need to ask non-leading questions that will assist your direct reports with making their own decisions. If you are unsure about who will make the ultimate decision, you will often ask the wrong questions and annoy (or confuse) your employees.

If you are the decision-maker, your first questions likely will revolve around establishing the problem. It is a mistake to try to solve problems before fully understanding their complexity. Then, after brainstorming potential solutions, rank the best options, determine who will be responsible for implementing the plan, assign a timeline and communication plan, and build in a feedback loop to ensure that all aspects were done correctly.

Sometimes employees will encourage you to make a decision when, in fact, they are simply shirking their responsibility. No matter how much they slump their shoulders and give hangdog looks, you must not make their decisions for them. If you do, be prepared to make more and more decisions for them in the future. Pretty soon, you might as well assume their job title.

How can you help your employees make decisions on their own? What sort of questions should you ask? How do you provide wisdom without telling your employees how to accomplish the objective? First, be clear. Here’s what you might say: “I really would like to help you with this issue, but I won’t provide you with an answer because this is your decision to make and I trust you to make the call.” Then ask your employee questions that you would ask yourself if you were in his/her position. You might start by asking the employee to define the problem in more specific detail. Have your employee jot down his/her own answers. Explain that you will not be doing anything with this information. The decision is still the employee’s to make.

If you are not the decision-maker, remember that you are the teacher, not the learner. If you position yourself as the learner, you will subtly suggest to the employee that you intend to come to an independent decision about the problem at hand (even if you never reveal your decision to the employee). By positioning yourself as the teacher, you will impart a valuable message to your direct reports—trust. You trust them to fully establish the problem and make their own problem-solving decisions. And you have helped define boundaries—your role vs. their role. Your employees will leave your office inspired to make good decisions.

Sometimes leaders can use questions to shirk their own responsibilities. A venture capitalist shared with me a story recently about how the senior partners at [his or her?] company were providing assignments to junior associates without any explanation or resources. When the junior associates went to the seniors for help, they would engage in “annoyance factor” questioning. The junior associates would ask for direction and the senior partner would say, “How do you think it should be done?” Inwardly the junior associates were saying, “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have come to ask you!”

Sometimes leaders behave irresponsibly because they are intent on re-enacting what happened to them as junior associates. If I had to suffer, why should it be any different for my employees? Instead, a true leader would ask, “Why did this system work so poorly when I was a junior associate?” and “How can we improve the performance and morale of our junior employees?” Leaders seek to uproot dysfunctional systems, not perpetuate them.

To avoid the “annoyance factor,” determine who is the appropriate decision-maker for the problem at hand. If the decision is your employees’ to make, let them make it. Ask non-leading questions. Be sure your employees have a clear objective and access to enough information and resources to complete their work. And convey your trust in them to make good decisions.

Independence Day

We have more individual choices than ever. We can choose from sixteen movies at a megaplex, eight different kinds of orange juice (low acid, some pulp, not from concentrate, etc.), and countless shoe brands and styles. Is it any surprise that we want to be free to make choices in our jobs as well?

If you grew up with only four TV channels to choose from, you might believe the command-style leadership is still viable. You might believe in shared values and needs, the way we did in the ‘60’s. Unfortunately, centralized leadership doesn’t work with this new generation. They want to work their way, not your way. They know what motivates them, how they best achieve results and obtain information, and they want to receive full credit for their efforts. If you try to steamroll their independence, you will wind up with flattened cartoon characters, not productive employees.

As a leader today, you must decentralize the power and authority. With leadership opportunities, your employees will find personal meaning in the work they do. And they will do it well, provided you meet their needs. Your challenge—accommodating leaders on all levels of the organization—is daunting, maybe even terrifying. How do you align each employee’s needs with the needs of the organization? With so many leaders, so much independence, will chaos be far behind?

Not necessarily. Not if you build in some safeguards. It’s important to understand that total independence is often desired, but not always healthy. Individualism can lead to a sense of helplessness, and this helplessness can lead to depression. Despite fiercely independent childhood heroes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, we want and need to be part of something greater than ourselves. We want the support of a community.

We want to feel like the work we do has meaning not only to ourselves, but to others. Chances are, this meaning has already been established—in the form of your organization’s founding mission, vision, goals, and values. These pillars were originally set by the founder and then enhanced through time by the organization’s leadership teams. As a leader, you can bring this meaning to your employees by frequently asking how their needs and goals match the organization’s. In doing so, you give them the respect they want and need, as well as communicate a sense of belonging to a larger community.

Do you believe in your organization’s mission, vision, goals, and values? If so, you will be able to impart this sense of togetherness to your charges. If not, you will be herding cats.

Authentic leadership requires allowing everyone to lead at times, but to instill one cohesive purpose, so that these leaders will work together and move in one overarching direction. For each and every project, ask yourself, “How does this contribute to our organization’s mission, vision, goals, and values?” Ask the same of your direct reports. And have them ask the same of their direct reports.

Ego vs. Altruism

Why is it important to lead with questions? Why this strategy over others?

Organizations are made up of people. Like you, every employee has his/her own goals, aspirations, concerns, experiences, and dreams. And each of us has an ego. The ego allows us to believe that we are capable of performing many tasks successfully. In all likelihood, your ego is what propelled you to a leadership position. Your great effort and desire to succeed led to major accomplishments and accolades.

Here comes the paradox. Egos can vault you into a leadership position, but as a leader, you must set your ego aside. Your ego can prevent you from being an effective and truly great leader.

Before you became a leader, you likely operated as an individual contributor. You used your creativity and resourcefulness to meet objectives—a reduction of resources, an increase in quality, or an increase in revenue. If you asked questions, they were about how you could accomplish a specific task. In general, however, your ego discouraged you from asking questions and disliked having to follow orders. Egos want to accomplish and achieve. And, egos crave recognition from others.

Every time you accomplished a task and met the objective, your career moved forward and your standing in the organization or community grew. With each accomplishment, your ego grew, too. You asked fewer questions and provided more answers. After all, with your success, others came to you as an oracle of information—perhaps even your boss or your boss’s boss. You were in control.

As a leader, you must relinquish control. You must shrink your ego and concentrate on altruism. Your career advancement is no longer task-oriented. Leadership is about allowing others the chance to achieve and flourish. You advance as a leader only when you place your employees’ egos above your own. The heads of many organizations are not able to do this. Their companies may still succeed based upon their drive for individual success, but they are not true leaders. For one thing, their employees will not be inspired to reach their full potential because they know they will not receive full credit for their efforts.

General Jack Chain is a true leader. When he was in the Pentagon, serving as a staff officer, his ten-year-old daughter asked him, “What do you do?” He thought for a minute and said, “I answer questions.” Later, when he was made a commander, he reminded his daughter of their earlier conversation. She asked him how his new role would be different. His response: “Now I ask the questions.”

As a leader, why should you lead with questions? Because questions confer power and control to your employees. It allows their egos a chance to shine. And you, they, and the organization will all be better served.

Speaking to the crowd

Dear Coach,

Question: I have always been intrigued by politicians, who utilize “Town Hall Meetings” to communicate with their constituents. These meetings seem to be a great tool, allowing voters to ask any questions they want. Recently, I decided to try out the Town Hall concept on a corporate level. I manage a company of 2,000 employees, all in locations outside the United States. In the course of two weeks, I visited 12 countries, presenting a slideshow on the “state of the union” and taking questions. Despite working hard to engage my employees and remove barriers, I feel something is missing. Any ideas?


Answer: “Ask, Don’t Tell” leadership is my mantra, and I am glad you are taking questions from your teams. In addition, explaining the company’s state of the union is a wonderful way to insure everyone is on the same page. Communication is particularly critical with a company as widespread as yours.

I do, however, have ideas for how you might improve your meetings. Consider turning the direction of questioning around, so that you are asking the questions. Questions empower others, build your authority, and provide information that might otherwise be overlooked. At the same time, questions convey your willingness to listen and to consider the viewpoints of others. Your appreciation for each employee’s knowledge, skills, and efforts will undoubtedly shine through as you ask, rather than tell. When the company is gathered as a whole, your questions can be even more valuable, because the persons who answer gain the respect of all present.

It may seem counterintuitive that you, the leader, should do most of the asking. It is important to acknowledge and accept, however, that no leader can have all the answers. Acting as the “Oracle of Knowledge” can diminish your appeal and destroy appropriate lines of authority. Your managers will be rightly irritated if you are allowing employees to skip channels.

Regarding your PowerPoint presentation, again consider incorporating the input of others. The downfall of doing a presentation by yourself is that you appear to be the expert. I suggest sending a copy of the presentation to each office, prior to your visit, and asking leaders at each site for suggestions and comments. You may even want to invite these leaders to conduct the presentation with you. Be prepared with your own questions for them. For example: “How is this office going to achieve production goals?” “What happened during the second quarter?” “How will you be able to reverse this trend?” Remember that questions empower people, affirming the significance of their roles and responsibilities. Your willingness to step back and listen creates accountability and demonstrates your genuine interest in others’ thoughts, plans, and actions.

As a leader, it can be difficult to reduce your need to be the bearer of truth. The most successful leaders, however, are willing to be vulnerable, approachable, and open to others’ perspectives. Remember: Leadership is almost always about asking the right questions, not telling the right answers. Ask, don’t tell!

Ask Don’t Tell – Lines of Authority

Question: I am a VP and have about fourty people reporting to me through 6 direct reports. I seem to be continually dealing with exceptions from the managers. What should I do?

Answer: It would seem that you have an issues that need to be addressed regarding your organizational roles and responsibility for you and your staff. Dealing with exceptions, often means that you are in need of creating clear accountability with your team. Often when leaders experience this they have not created rules outlining everyones lines on authority in the organization. Given that this is happened within your area of responsibility it is likely that you are finding yourself without lines of authority going up the organization.

Clear lines of authority are when the roles and responsibilities of each person in the organization are defined. All staff members know who is responsible for what in the organization. The organization must establish authority lines that facilitate the work and maintain authority structure to ease operations. This structure provides accountability, clarity, and coherence to the work of the organization.

Because you are in need of establishing these lines of authority currently it is likely that your staff has an operating assumption of how these lines are already drawn as do you. Before you begin drawing up a grid of lines of authority articulating everyones roles and responsibilies for your department I would invite you to send a note out to, at minimum, your managers asking them what they believe are the lines of authority for their direct reports, themselves, you and your boss. You may find how having these outlined in ones heads is contributing to many of the requests you get daily.

If you decided to move in this direction please let the staff know up front that you are the decider. For those of you following the Ask Don’t Tell Leadership model remember it is not that we believe that organizations are a democracy, it is simiply better to ask than tell. In this case as the leader it is your responsibility to determine what the rules are going to be. And you know that when you are asking for more information you are in this case asking for information to make a better decision. It is this that you want to communicate up front. If you go and ask for everyones opinions and then you don’t appear to take that into consideration you demotiveate them for the next time you want their help. People must be clear up front what is expected of them and who the decision maker is going to be. At the end of this exercise everyone will know that you are the decider on this issue because it will be outline under your role.

People are more than willing to help. They just don’t want to be disregarded by you if you decide that you really are not going to take their opinion into consideration. If they know up front that you are asking for an opinion and really want to know all you can in consideration of making a decision that is yours to make. Then you will have buy in and empowerment happening.

Once you get the feedback from your staff – if you don’t understand it clearly ask more questions until you truly understand their point of view. It is not that you need to agree with them but you do need them to know you understand them and that you really want to consider all that they say as valuable and worth consideration.

When all the data is in from the troops you may want to consider getting feedback from your boss on what your lines of authority are. By doing this you will find that you can operate with greater clarity both inward and outward in the organization.

The ambiguity of decision making comes from not having clarity on each person’s role in the organization. Another way to help you determine how to resolve conflicts in the area of roles and responsibility are by examining the exceptions in more detail.

When someone comes to you with an exception the first question you could ask yourself is – what am I going to consider in making my decision? Once you know what this decision making process is you will then be able to see what is not clear in the organizations roles and responsibilities. For example if you find that your manager continues to come to you with changes to the territory if your in a sales role then the first question is, Am I the decider? If you are the decider the next question is what will you be wieghing in your decision? If you can clarify this for your direct reports then they can prepare that information for you. If they can prepare the information for you then the next question is what boundries do you need to develop around that decision so that you will not have to continue to make the decision. Once you put qualifications to these exceptions they fale to continue as exceptions. If you can establish rules, guidelines that can be distributed then the managers are handling these items without you.

When establishing these lines of authority remember that your role as a leader is to distribute as much authority as you can down the organization. This does not mean to abdicate responsibility but to establish it.

How do I deal with A Terrorist?

Q: I am a sales manager for a business services firm in Minneapolis. I am responsible for all new business revenue for my company and I have 5 sales people that work for me. Of the 5 sales people only one is a star performer. The issue I am having is he breaks all the rules and creates really bad relationships with all the other people in the company. I am on the senior team and the rest of them are angry that this keeps happening. While I don't like to hear the comments from the senior team, I am aware that I cannot make my numbers goals and the company can't make there's for the year without him. What do I do?

A: I call this a terrorist! A terrorist is someone who knows what they have on you and they use it to hold you and everyone else in the company hostage to their behavior. I like to take my clients through an exercise of understanding the Goal, Position, and Strategy Questions to determine what actions need to be done.

The first question I ask is, "What is the goal around the problem?" This is to ensure that we are aiming at the right issue. What I invite my clients to do is to first reflect on the organization's overall goal. Then link that to the current situation. This way what ever you do, you will be in total alignment with what is best for the business overall.

In this situation you have identified the fact that in order to make your business units goals and the companys, you need this employee. That is a big step and often time's leaders become so emotionally charged by such situations they act before they consider the goals and objectives of the company or the department. I commend you for your forethought. Typically leaders who do this are considered high in emotional intelligence. This has been shown to be one of the key components in assessing ones long term success in their career.

The next step is to understand the position you and your company are in. Elevate to 50,000 foot level to see the whole situation. Go beyond yourself and ask, "How did this begin to happen? Sometimes we might find the root cause built into the culture of the organization. Is this type of behavior is tolerated here?

In the case of Enron when the CEO learned that two of the traders were stealing from the company he did nothing and then soon after said, 'keep making us money.' What they were stealing was minor compared to what they were making the company. He knew that if he took action, he would stop his revenue machine that he needed because it was his end goal. It also gave permission to the others that if they were that good at making money for the company they could steal from the company as well. It was the outcome they got, should not have been a surprise. This is the extreme case of the terrorist working for the company - and it was exaggerated by a lack of moral compass by the leadership. In the case you present it is apparent that this behavior is contrary to what the leadership tolerates is searching for from a behavior.

Once you go up to the 50,000 foot level and see if the company has had complicity in the situation, than it is good to come down to 10,000 foot perspective and see if "you" have complicity in the situation. To be frank, and I hate doing this in a column where I can't ask qualifying questions, but it is hard to imagine that you did not allow this to happen. It is not about absolving the terrorist from his behavior because that is wrong, however, if you had stopped the behavior cold, this would never have happened. I say this because the solution, what ever one you choose, will need to involve your being mentored or coached into creating boundaries for your team. Without these boundaries you will be faced with this issue again.

The third part of our position investigation is to go to ground level – the situation itself. When we find ourselves in this type of situation with an employee we only have two choices, we can either fire or teach. If an employee makes a mistake, it is because we did not teach them correctly or because they are not capable to do the function. Ask three questions to determine what choice to make. The first, is the employee capable of learning? Secondly, does the organization or I have the time and resources available to train this employee? Lastly, is this employee motivated to learn and change? If you answer anyone of of these questions is NO, the decision is chosen, you need to let this person go. The decision is, as Donald Trump would say, Your Fired!

It is unclear from your description if the employee has capacity to change behavior, so I will assume that he is rather good at what he does for your organization and likely has the ability to change. It is clear that for your number one producer you should have the resources and time to help him come into alignment with the company. The bigger issue is that of motivation. Often times a terrorist does not feel the threat of what can happen to them if they don't start falling in to line. They have become fat, and happy and arrogant! This arrogance is what blocks their ability to realize that they need to change. The company has reached a point where it can no longer tolerate this kind of behavior.

Unlike Donald's TV Drama we live in the real world, and just letting him go is not a great first choice given the companys dependence on his revenue.
In almost all other circumstances the move would surely be to fire, but because this employee mean so much to the organizations health as far as revenue.

The last part of understanding our position is to understand whose decision is it to make, and what needs to be done. If the consequences of your actions will compromise the strategic direction of the company, I would invite you to consider involving the senior team and that the responsibility is yours to deal with it, and the final decision may actually be the teams or the CEOs call, given its importance to the organization.

This is truly a strategic decision then, it is not simply letting one person go, it is letting many people go, if one presumes in a service firm, lower revenue means fewer employees needed to service the customers.

At this point I would coach you to have a conversation with your CEO and the rest of the strategic team and tell them the steps that you are considering and ask these strategic questions: At what point as an organization are we willing to take a principled stance on the issue over that of revenue? Are we clear what the outcome of this will be to our other employees? Will we need to do cost cutting to compensate for this move? What will the industry see from losing our most talented sales person? Will he go work for our competition? What impact will that have on your company? By working through these strategic issues as an organization and lifting this issue to its proper place the senior team - you will be aligning everyone to be part of the process and stop complaining about it.

By going through these questions the conclusion you may arrive at the end of this process is that you use a three pronged approach to dealing with this situation. Executing three plans simultaneously.

Plan "A" You will need to continue coaching the employee towards the behavior that is in alignment with the firm’s values, beliefs, and rules.

Plan "B", at the same time I would highly recommend moving the rest of the sales team to a higher level to loose your dependence on this terrorist, and operationalize Plan "C" and start the recruiting process for the possible if not probable replacement of the employee.

It is important that the others on the senior team and your sales team know that you are coaching this employee in these areas of behavior and that it is not sitting OK with you. But no more information than that - it is inappropriate to say more than that in a public setting. It will build your credibility as a leader and not allow one persons behavior sink the culture the company wants to build.