Archives for November 2009

Be The Best That You Can Be — Part One — Know Yourself

November 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been working on this project for a little while and I feel it’s time to give it a little bit of an airing. For a few years I’ve used the phrase “helping you be the best that you can be” to describe my role, whether I’m coaching or facilitating leadership development. I thought it was time to figure out exactly what I meant when I said this. This led me to develop a five stage plan that I believe anyone can follow in order to be the best that they can be. A lofty goal I know, but it has been fun putting this together and I’d love to get some feedback (getting feedback is of course a feature of the plan).

The five stages of the plan are:

  1. Know yourself
  2. Have clear goals
  3. Lighten up
  4. Persevere
  5. Embrace paradox

This blog post will explore stage one of the plan. Future posts will explore the other four stages.

Knowing yourself seems pretty straightforward, but I think this is a life’s work. I know I’m still working on it. For the purposes of BTBTYCB (you knew I’d have to use the acronym sooner or later didn’t you) I’ve broken this stage into four facets. The first facet and the simplest to achieve, is to know your weaknesses. For most people this won’t be a challenge, we all know what we’re not good at. I’m not good at paying attention to details. I know that I have to write things down or else I forget them in seconds. I’m also not good at staying focused. I no longer fight this one. I have iTunes and my email running on my desktop while I write this blog! There are many ways we come to discover our weaknesses, but if we want to be the best that we can be, we need to know what our weaknesses are and how we’re going to manage them.

The second facet of knowing yourself is knowing your strengths. We usually focus less on our strengths than we do on our weaknesses. If we’re going to be the best that we can be then we have to play to our strengths, it just makes sense doesn’t it. However, most people I’ve met aren’t too clear about what their true strengths are. They usually know what they’re good at, but this isn’t necessarily a natural strength. I’m a half decent computer programmer (ten years ago I was anyway) but it’s not a strength, it’s just something I practiced a lot and got paid well for. Strengths Finder (by Tom Rath of Gallup) really helped me figure out my true strengths and now I’m much more conscious about how I play to them.

The third facet of knowing yourself is knowing your values. Values get talked about a lot. Barack Obama has highlighted the call for values-based leadership but the concept of values-based rather than rule-based leadership and decision making has been around for a long time. Many believe our current economic crisis is a result of a flawed reliance on rule-based systems. Clearly, you’ll be the best that you can be when you live a life that’s congruent with your values. To do this you first need to be absolutely clear about what your values are, and then start living them. If you’re not sure what it is in your life that you value then check your credit card statement and/or figure out how you spend your time. Both of these will give you clues into what you truly value.

I hinted earlier at the final facet of knowing yourself. Figuring out who you are can be a soul searching experience but introspection only goes so far before it becomes naval gazing. If you really want to know yourself then you need to know how others see you and you can only find that out by asking them for feedback. Good honest feedback is hard to come by. Friends and family can be too kind and strangers don’t know you well enough. Work-based 360 feedback can be really helpful but not everyone has access to this. Tools like rypple.com can help you gather honest feedback. The key to receiving feedback is to be open to hearing it. You’re only really listening to feedback if you’re willing to change your mind about the thing you’re asking about.

That’s a sneak peek at stage one. Clearly each facet is worthy of a book or two in its own right, but that wouldn’t make for a manageable BTBTYCB plan! What do you think? Watch this space for the rest of the BTBTYCB plan.

Filed Under: Leadership

Canadian National Values Assessment

November 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

In May 2009 1251 Canadians identified their top ten personal values, their top ten values describing the current culture of Canada and their top ten values for a future desired Canadian culture. Last week (Nov 3rd 2009) the results were published (see www.royalroads.ca/tti). As a relative newcomer to Canada and as someone fascinated by values and organizational culture, I couldn’t let this pass without comment.

The results show a strong agreement between all regions and age ranges. This was somewhat surprising as I’d been led to believe that there would be a difference between Anglophone and Francophone cultures. I also thought there might be discrepancies between the generations. As far as values are concerned, Canadians seem to be more homogeneous than I’d expected.

Summary of Canadian Values May 2009

Personal Values Current Culture Values Desired Culture Values
  1. Honesty
  2. Family
  3. Caring
  4. Humor/fun
  5. Respect
  6. Friendship
  7. Responsibility
  8. Positive attitude
  9. Trust
  10. Patience
  1. Bureaucracy
  2. Human Rights
  3. Freedom of Speech
  4. Wasted Resources
  5. Unemployment
  6. Crime/violence
  7. Law Enforcement
  8. Corruption
  9. Uncertainty about the future
  10. Quality of life
  1. Accountability
  2. Caring for the elderly
  3. Affordable housing
  4. Effective health care
  5. Caring for the disadvantaged
  6. Concern for future generations
  7. Poverty reduction
  8. Employment opportunities
  9. Human rights
  10. Governmental effectiveness

Personal value themes show what I have come to understand as a typically Canadian emphasis around honesty/respect, family/friendship along with humour/fun/positive attitude. No surprises for me here. This is one of the main reasons I love living in Canada!

Positive current culture themes around human rights and quality of life didn’t surprise me either. Having travelled widely, I really do believe that Canada is a great place to live. However there were also some strong negative themes around bureaucracy/corruption, wasted resources and unemployment/crime/violence. What is your personal perspective on this?

Overall the potentially limiting or dysfunctional values polled 32% of the selections. This figure of 32% is a measure for the dysfunction or cultural entropy in our current culture. Canada is the seventh nation to implement the National Values Assessment created by the Richard Barrett Values Centre (www.valuescentre.com). An entropy of 32% put us at a similar level to Sweden (31%), more dysfunctional than Denmark (21%), but in a much better position than the US (52%) and Argentina (60%). Don’t you just love these league tables!

The major emphasis in the desired culture is caring. From my perspective at least, 8 out of the top 10 values in a desired Canadian culture are about caring. From #2 to #8 we have caring for the elderly, homeless, sick, disadvantaged, future generations, poor and unemployed. Add human rights to the list and it’s clear to me that caring for others is enormously important. The final values in the top ten desired culture list are accountability and governmental effectiveness. These look to me like a clear reflection of some of the negative themes in the current culture.

I believe that there is a clear message here for business leaders who are building organizational cultures. If you want to build a culture that is aligned with the values of your employees then you absolutely have to show that you care. You have to show that you care about people, all people. You also have to demonstrate honesty and accountability. You have respect work life/balance. And you need to do all of this while having fun and maintaining a positive attitude. A tall order indeed, but one that I’m confidant is achievable.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: ,

Information Overload, Procrastination and Confidence

November 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I remember the words of my PhD advisor when it was getting down to the wire in terms of me finishing my dissertation, “You are forbidden to go to the library. There is nothing else out there you need to find out about. You just need to figure out what you think and write.” Great advice and it finally got me onto writing my dissertation instead of thinking about writing my dissertation. While I thought his advice was unique to the writing process (and more specifically a dissertation) I have recently come to the understanding that his advice is about much more.

It’s about information overload, procrastination and how that relates to my confidence and ability to create the sorts of things I want in my life. I have many ideas about the kinds of things I would like to be doing in our business and have occasionally felt frustrated when they don’t come to fruition. There are all sorts of theories I’ve come up with about why … but it was on a walk last week when I came to an epiphany moment for me.

When I get a great idea, I think I need to research it to death (I blame the academic world for this quite frankly!). This leads to information overload, which leads to procrastination on doing anything with the idea, and a chipping away of my own confidence. I start to think that everyone else has far better ideas than I do. It quickly becomes a downward spiral that kills the idea and sucks the energy and confidence out of me. The same thing happens to me on a daily basis when I spend too much time reading other people’s ideas on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Any insight I think I may have had gets lost in the voices of others. I think I’ve become so attuned to listening to others that I may have lost touch with what I really want or even think.

There’s a difference between doing one’s homework and succumbing to information overload. I have been doing the latter off and on for years, especially so in the last few years with the explosion of new technologies. So, here’s what I decided … when I have a project that I want to get off the ground, I am going to STOP doing all those things that lead to information overload. I am going to STOP analyzing my ideas when they are still babies and instead nurture, grow, protect and enjoy them. I am going to wait for them to be young adults before I subject them to the criticism of the “real world.”

I think this is a real leadership challenge. It seems to me that the great leaders have managed the tension between listening to others and acting on their own passions and ideas. What do you think?

Tammy

Filed Under: Creativity, Leadership Tagged With: