Two senior associates, Debbie Robbins and Frank Wagner recently published the following superb article in the Huffington Post that I believe you will find both interesting and intriquing titled ‘It Takes Human Contact to Create Success’. Enjoy.

If you made a list today of your top 25 business relationships and asked yourself, “How much full-on human contact have I had with these people this year?” we (Frank Wagner and I — Frank is also a top leadership and executive coach, an expert on leadership behavior) think you’d be shocked to discover that 95 percent of it may be solely digital: e-mail, Facebook, texting or Twitter. Frank and I have stopped tweeting each other the number of times weekly we beg our clients to simply pick up the phone! We recently sat at a business dinner where, despite the opportunity for unimpeded face time, the two executives at the heads of the table were texting one another while we ate!

Up until 1990 the phone was the equivalent of e-mail, and CEOs were always telling their employees to hang up and have meetings. Now it’s a win to get to voice contact. What’s so powerful about full-on human contact is that it engages all aspects of our ability to access information and make informed decisions. Most meet-ups will include writing, reading, seeing, hearing, speaking and doing. 

Yes, technology has expanded our network of relationships. People brag about how many friends they have on Facebook or the size of their network on LinkedIn. Yes, technology has expanded our capacity to communicate in writing. Twitter has made communication almost ubiquitous and omnipresent. Yes, technology allows our thoughts to be transmitted instantaneously at the speed of our wireless networks. It’s easy. It’s seemingly efficient. That is the good news. 

The not-so-good news is that the side effect of all this technology is the loss of genuine connectedness. As humans we have always found in-person interaction meaningful, rich and complex. Face-to-face relationship-building also deflects the possibility for miscommunications and misunderstandings. With less physical data to interpret because of the heavy use of digital communication, more and more problems are arising between colleagues and consumers. 

Psychology Today did a great piece about a social psychologist and Northwestern University law professor named Janice Nadler, who paired Northwestern law students with those from Duke University and asked each pair to agree on the purchase of a car:

Researchers instructed each team to bargain entirely through e-mail, but half the subjects were secretly told to precede the negotiation with a brief getting-to-know-you chat on the phone. The results were dramatic: Negotiators who first chatted by phone were more than four times likelier to reach an agreement than those who used only e-mail. In the study, which appeared in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, subjects who never spoke were not only more likely to hit an impasse, but they often felt resentful and angry about the negotiation.

Our personal favorite is the famous New Yorker cartoon that shows a dog sitting on a chair in front of a computer. He turns to his doggie friend sitting on the floor and says: “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.”

Be honest — electronically, you do not really know who the person is on the other end of your digital exchange. You can’t hear their voice, which is robust with clues. You don’t know how they are receiving your words or even when they are getting your message in physical-time reality. You can’t assess their body language or observe their responses. The sense of professional “intimacy” we depend on is, at best, only utilizing 10 percent of our communication cues, tools and competencies. The more we rely on e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and texting as our primary ways of communicating, the less likely we are to be known by those with whom we are interdependent for our success.

What to do:

1. Assess who is important to you in your professional life, those people with whom you will need a relationship strong enough to weather any storm. 
2. Consciously monitor how much e-mailing, texting or tweeting you rely on for building these relationships.
3. Make sure that at least once a month you either speak with these people by phone or see them in person! The latter is better, even if it entails travel.
4. When you do connect in person, leave enough time to communicate in greater depth so that it really strengthens your relationship. Enjoy yourself when you get this chance to be up close and personal (it is contagious).
5. When you are in human contact, keep any electronic devices far enough removed so that these devices do not interfere with the conversation. Even the slightest eye movement to see who is texting, e-mailing, etc. gives the other person the impression that someone else is more important to you.
6. Find media-free time each week to counter your addiction to staying connected online. You will probably find out you like it.
7. Stay vigilant in your efforts; technology is amazing, but it is also seductive.

When babies aren’t physically touched, they develop severe emotional challenges. E-mail does not qualify as touching, even if your fingers are on your computer or mobile key pad.

We would enjoy hearing your observations and insights. In the meantime, take care!

We received a call the other day from Tony, a CEO of a major oil and gas company, who shared with us that he was quite concerned about one of his key executives. He said that Frank  had been recently promoted to replace a key member of the ELT (executive leadership team) who had retired about nine months ago. He bluntly stated, “Frank doesn’t appear to be working out the way I had hoped and is quite frankly derailing! Can we explore the situation and help me better understand why some leaders derail and and some don’t? What can I do about it?”

These are not uncommon questions that are raised by our corporate clients from time to time. In our executive coaching conversation with Tony, it was noted that The Centre for Creative Leadership found that approximately 50% of high potential managers and executives derail. Contributing to this is the fact that the initial technical and problem solving skills that had fomerly served a number of these derailed leaders well now can’t be relied on to address the increased complexity of operating at a more strategic leve, nor the resulting demands placed on their leadership that are typically changing from day to day, never mind month to month, or year to year.

Further, research has indicated that those leaders who are in fact successful in their leadership roles exhibit some of the following characteristics:

1. They tend to be highly flexible and responsive to change
2. They have a powerful ability to navigate through ambiguity and complexity
3. They pick things up very quickly and in a variety of circumstances
4. They are able to coach, facilitate, coordinate and develop their teams in a variety of circumstances with many different types of people
5.  They are highly grounded, self-manage themselves and work with others well under highly stressful circumstances
6. One of their mottos is ‘Feedback is the breakfast of Champions’ and thus constantly seek it out from those all around them
7.  They are quite aware that their strengths when overused in fact become their weaknesses, and those identified become their primary focus of professional/personal development
8. They readily acknowledge and champion their people, no matter how small the contribution or how challenging the initiative(s)
9. They are able to authentically share their thoughts, feelings and wants in equal amounts with their staff, colleagues, boss(s) and customers/clients, encouraging reciprocation, and do so with a strong sense of empathy and compassion toward others

Leaders having the potential for derailment include: the overly ambitious, the perfectionist, those who go it alone, over-managing, over-loyal to the organization, those who are over-controlling and 0ver-results oriented, single minded, too focused on technical detail, unduly personable and relying solely on relationships to get things done, having excessive fire in the belly, having too many things on the go, overly dependent on others, won’t be pushed off the mark, caught up with escalating-commitment, the constant need to be right, and loves to scrap with others beyond having constructive differences. 

To avoid derailment or to rerail, the leader needs to learn thoughtfully and constructively how to develop the team; strengthen strategic thinking and decision making; clarify specific expectations around deliverables and follow up; be self-aware and self manage under stress while at the same time being empathetic towards others; creating the right balance between collaboration, independent action and delegation; manage strategic alliances, assure functional strategic alignment and effectively manage differences vertically and horizontally. 

What’s been your experience? What have you learned as result and what did you do with it? What have you done with these insights? We would love to hear your thoughts and feelings on the subject. Take care.

“I can’t believe those people. They just don’t get it!” was the response of my executive coaching client, Gerry, who heads up a key line of business with a leading defense contractor. I typically start off coaching conversations with a check-in question. After listening to Gerry further, I asked “So what’s in the anger my friend?” For a moment there was silence on the phone. I had learned long ago to always let silence do the heavy lifting! “Hmmm . . . , ” he expressed and then went on, “I really resent the fact that we had agreed on what had to be accomplished last week, and they haven’t even started on it. It’s simply damned unacceptable. I really feel let down. I could tear my office door off the hinges right now. I’m going into a meeting with them shortly and I think I’m going to straighten them out . . . make them new rear ends if I have to!”

“Well before you charge on in, are you game to take a few minutes to step back and take a look at what’s happening with you right now?” I asked. Gerry, to his credit had always been very open to self-exploration and said “Yeah, let’s go for it coach?” I love his honesty and candidness.

“So, if your boss was this angry with something you did or didn’t do, and stormed into a meeting with you having the same intent, how would you react?” In his typically succinct and earthy way he quickly responded, “Well I’d probably hang back, not offer much and look for an opportunity to get the hell out of there!”. “Given that, then what would you predict your people will do when you give them the old what for?” “Got it!”, he said with a bit of a snicker.

“So coach, I’d like to hear what the heck you think?” Gerry asked. “Sure. First of all, it’s not about them, it’s about you Gerry! Anger is actually a gift, not a weakness. It only becomes a weakness when this strength is taken too far. Kind of  like manure in the system that gets clogged up. Need I say more? Does that make sense?” “Completely.” Gerry responded.

“So, having said that, what’s in just enough anger for you?” I asked. “Well, for me,” Gerry shot back, “It certainly gets me up and running. Actually a source of energy. It sort of acts like a catalyst for making things happen. Come to think of it, if I become more aware of it in the moment I can actually use it to be more effective, otherwise it can get in my way. I think I prefer the former. Any thoughts on what I can do to regulate myself when the old fuse gets a tad short?”

“That’s a great question. Why don’t we take a quick moment and brainstorm some approaches?” “Ok”, Gerry said, “Maybe I should start not to sweat the small stuff as they say. Hell, if I learn how to better spot it when it shows up, I’d be better able to dial down the intensity a tad, not shoot first and figure out what I shot after the fact!”

“I love what you’ve come up with.”, I said. “You might also consider talking yourself down, for example saying to yourself, hey, this is no big deal, can I put this issue on the backburner for the time being? Perhaps I should give this some thought before I shoot. Why don’t I take  a couple of minutes to just let every muscle in my body, from my toes right up to the top of my head, just relax and decompress. You do whatever works for you.”

“So, when you do walk into the meeting after decompressing, how do you need to be?” I asked. “As opposed to what I would do?”, he responded. “Yes, exactly,” I retorted. Gerry then continued, “Probably be calm, more focused on them rather than me. I need to be honest with them in a respectful way, by sharing what my thoughts are in a fairly specific way, how I feel about it all in terms of its importance to me and what it is I think we should consider doing about it.”

“That sounds like a superb approach, but what might you do even before that?” I asked. “I think I know what you’re driving at. Rather than adversely pre-influencing them in a way that they think they’re getting my orders, it might be a hell of a lot better if I asked them collectively and individually what they thought, felt and wanted regarding the issues at hand, and then do the former. Yeah, that’d work a lot better. Probably generate a lot more information and data that would help us make much more informed decisions. Man, that’s my game plan!”

“What are some other potential payoffs of your taking this approach? I asked. “Obviously, it’ll be a heck of a lot safer place them, we’ll build more trust, they’ll feel heard, buy in will clearly go up, and the solutions we collectively come up with will  probably be a lot more effective as a result.” said Gerry.

“So what’s the take away for you my friend?” I asked in bringing our meeting to a close. “Well I guess it’s that I can use my anger in service of myself, my folks, our customers and our organization, or I can quite frankly let it control me and then blow it!” “If it is the latter,” I asked, “What might be the adverse consequences for you?” “I don’t want to even think about it . . . too scary!” Gerry concluded. “May the force be in you my friend with the upcoming meeting. I know you’ll be more than successful!” I offered.

Does your temper rise at times and get away from you?  Do you find that under stress your anger, anxiety, fear and/or shame show up a tad too quickly?  Do you even notice it?  If you do notice, what do you do with it?  I’d love to hear your insights and experiences. Take care.

“Bob, I’m a little shocked!” This is how my executive coaching client, Danny, the Vice-President-Production Operations with a large energy firm in the oil patch responded at the beginning of our conversation when asked, “How are things back at the ranch?” He went on to explain that when he had been nudged by their Human Resource function to get a sense of forecasted turnover over the next few years through retirements, attrition, etc., his people had collectively come to the conclusion that 70% of the staff in Danny’s division would turn over in the next 3 years. “Well, what are you planning to do to prevent the potential adverse consequences?”, I asked.

In response, Danny stated, “We clearly have to start identifying successors to the key Production Operations leadership positions, and in parallel with this identify and accelerate the development of High Potentials.” “What are your other glimpses of the obvious?” I asked him. “That’s a darn good question. I guess we’ve got to review other critical roles and specifically any flight risk staff!” 

“What generally would be the outcomes you and your leadership team would likely look for by doing this?” I asked again. He quickly responded with increased energy, “Well for one, identify key talent at the senior levels of our division, get a solid sense of our bench strength, get those we identify to be clear on their needed development activities, and agree with our senior team as to what exactly the key succession management metrics should  be!”. Danny had quickly created excellent strategic direction around this challenge that’s common to most private and public sector organizations.

When asked, “What’s really driving all of this?”, Danny said “That’s another great question. We’re anticipating continued strong growth once the economy gets back on its feet and obviously anticipating turnover of our key people. The increased challenge of filling these key roles along with our questionable current bench strength and readiness to backfill are clearly wanting, as well as our lack of being able to identify HiPo’s right now and having them ready to step into senior leadership roles when we need them to surface. I think these are the real concerns here.”

“How do you feel about all of this?” I asked. “Quite frankly, I’m disappointed, mad as hell for allowing ourselves to get into this position, and I’m damned anxious about what might happen if we don’t get on top of it . . . and yesterday! It’s now one of our top priorities!”

“So, what do you want to do about it?” I asked him. “Well, it’s clear that we’re engineering experts and not Human Resource experts so we’ll need to get together with HR and soon. I’ll put this at the top of the list at our next Production Ops executive leadership team meeting this coming Tuesday.”

“If you thought you knew what needed to be done in terms of the overall process for moving this forward quickly, what might that be?” Being the quick thinker he naturally is, Danny stated, “OK, do you just make these questions up? Well first, I would think that we need to scope out what actually needs to be identified through our succession management initiative. Second, we would no doubt have to assess and review our current engineering talent for levels of performance and potential. Third, we’d obviously have to start figuring out what key leadership and individual-contributor engineering roles need to be replaced and when. Last, I’m thinking it’s about making sure we have a top notch development action planning process in place that can be quickly designed and implemented. Does that make sense?”. “More importantly, does it make sense to you?” I responded. “You know, it does. Thanks.”, said Danny.

“So what’ll your next steps be given what you’ve said so far?” I asked him. “Again, the questions Uncle Bob!”, Danny said jokingly. “Well let me see. I’m thinking we start right away by initiating a succession planning meeting between us and HR early next month to agree on role expectations, determine critical roles in the Production Operations division, identify high impact engineer flight risks and begin a talent review to develop a list of HiPo’s.” “Then what?”, I asked. “OK”, Danny said, “Later in the month, we’ll make sure we have a talent replacement plan in place. In the following month we can shoot for having a development plan nailed down, and the month after that have our succession metrics in place with a solid progress plan established. Yeah, that’s sounds like it would do it.” 

Lastly I asked Danny, “So how will we know you’ve done what you’ve said?” “Again, with the questions!” he responded tongue in cheek. “I’ll send you a one page copy of our general plan for making this happen with target dates. I’ll send you an email once I believe each of the key milestones have been achieved. We can also carve out a small portion of some of our future executive coaching calls for us to discuss what’s happening. Will that work?” “It’s sounds like a plan my friend.” said I.

What insights in the foregoing were there for you? What one word captures your reaction? How do you feel about the subject of talent management and succession planning. What do you want to do with it? I would love to receive any gems this may have conjured up for you. For those interested, a wonderful book on this subject is ‘The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company’, by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel. Take care and have a great day!

“I’m responsible for Strategy.” said Mike Payne, General Manager – Strategy & Portfolio with Shell Gas & Power, while on a Continental flight from Houston, Texas to Seattle, Washington. We just finished introducing ourselves and had an interesting discussion about organizational strategy, employee loyalty and corporate cultures and how they positively or negatively affect organization performance, particularly during these white water times. The whole concept of corporate strategy, its development and implementation have always fascinated me. Having led and facilitated strategic change both in organizations in executive roles and as an executive coach/consultant, I’ve always believed that strategy development, which of course is critical, is really where “the rubber hits the sky.” Strategy implementation on the other hand is where “the rubber hits the road”! The latter is where real management change takes place. I’ll come back to this shortly.

Strategy development is critical, but my experience and observation is that most senior leaders would simply rather chew through their left arm than spend the usual inordinate amounts of time working through a long laborious strategic management process facilitated by high priced consulting firms over many months (even years). The end result is a strategic document so massive that one could hit a moose between the eyes with it and drop him right on the spot. Typically, along with the other ‘pressing demands’ that await them back at the ranch, the participants never truly want to revisit these documents no matter how well initially intentioned.

So what’s the alternative? Most will agree that organizations have to have a clear vision and supportive strategy! In these turbulent times being faced with imperfect organization systems, people and the world around us, there are truly no right answers. But there is a way to accelerate the development of powerful strategy with the foregoing imperfections. By utilizing full involvement of the whole organization from top to bottom you will be able to maximize understanding, ownership, commitment of the people that have to make it happen (not the executive) and quickly increase the probability of the organization’s strategic advantage and success.

This means moving forward in a way that fully involves the organization’s people while driving up the collective dissatisfaction of all involved with the organization’s current state of affairs and producing substantive clarity around what improvement would look like. Collectively determine the first steps toward moving quickly and powerfully forward on that vision and clarify the capabilities that need to be developed to accelerate the changes needing to take place rapidly thus resulting in the organization overpowering the ever present inertia that resists any planned change.

Now that your organization has a quick and well developed strategy it’s ready to move forward! Whoa Nellie, not so fast. Remember that inertia piece previously referred to. Well it has been temporarily disabled and if you don’t exploit it quickly it will solidly re-establish its dysfunctional presence. You must start to quickly redesign your organization to assure you successfully achieve your organization’s new dream: the strategic plan. The focus now is on redesigning and changing your organization in ways that will enable it to quickly realize the new strategy. This requires you to revisit your organization’s current structure, systems, staffing, competencies, leadership style and the way we do things around here (often referred to as your organization’s culture, those principles that guide how people are expected to work with each other and the organization’s customers/clients).

These key areas must be revisited and fundamentally changed creating full alignment with and producing the strategic results planned for. Otherwise, as Edward Deming put it, every system is perfectly designed for the results it produces! So if you want different results, i.e. achieving the organization’s new strategy, then by definition you must change each of the foregoing components of your organization or it will simply continue to create the results produced to date and perhaps further deterioration of same. Oh, the dangers of being an executive in this day and age! No wonder these positions are affectionately known as ulcer jobs!

Here’s a small insight, the most important aspect of the foregoing is not the strategic planning, strategic management and change in management processes, but rather having the ‘leadership cajones’, courage and confidence to make it all happen! This requires a very unique leader and these are truly a very rare breed, thus being paid the big bucks as they say. However, if the desire is squarely there, then surrounding oneself with the right team who first prepare to invest in themselves working from the inside out, rather than the outside in (i.e. strategic planning, management and change) then you have a fighting chance of success.

This is really all about the CEO and his/her team being different individually and as an executive leadership team as opposed to simply doing things differently. Otherwise, as was previously inferred, the probably of bringing about needed change will be minimal. If anything it will probably become worse. Being different at both the individual and leadership team levels necessitates having the courage to work with highly seasoned executive coaches, being ready to engage in quick and powerful diagnostics, and preparing to first make the personal changes necessary to assure that the new strategy truly sticks to the wall and doesn’t just slide away. Otherwise the whole strategic management process will be an enormous waste of time, money and organizational energy. And if this is the case, it will clearly contribute to executive candidacies for transfer outside the organization!

What feelings surface for you on this subject? What to you think about it? What is it that you want to do with the information? I’m most interested in hearing from you: the good, the bad and the ugly!