by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
I just 
read a talk by the head of the US government’s Office of Personnel Management, John Berry. He provides a concise and cogent summary of the new management thinking that I hope will become a major influence in organizations around the world. This shift in management is, I believe, the result of two major trends. First, the crash of 2008 made it very clear that we had been placing too much emphasis and confidence in our top leaders while day-to-day quality of life for the rank-and-file stagnated or declined. Second, a huge wave of research in behavioral economics and positive psychology is shifting management practice toward methods that are tested and proven rather than anecdotal and heuristic.
Below are excerpts from the speech that illustrate some of my favorite points, the practices I emphasize with my own CEO executive coaching clients.
But don’t read my excerpts.
I recommend that leaders of organizations, particularly chief executives, read his entire speech by clicking here. Try to forget that he is speaking about government employees. Ignore references to the President and Congress. Imagine, instead, that you made this speech to your managers and employees. What would the impact be of making these changes in your own leadership style, in your company’s performance review process, in your day-to-day life?
Selected remarks of OPM Director John Berry
Interagency Resource Management Conference
Kellogg Conference Center
What if, when setting performance standards, we engaged our employees and got clear about expectations? What if we made sure performance standards were detailed, objective, aligned to agency mission and goals, and had employee buy-in – that they weren’t just dictated from on high?
Consider the four essential pieces of how we currently manage performance: (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Leadership Development
Guidelines for Communication that Supports “Team”
- Speak for yourself about yourself. Starting sentences with “I” is a powerful shortcut to this skill. You can state facts, opinions, emotions, concerns, requests, suggestions—whatever—if and only if you take ownership of them.
It is okay to carry a message or speak for someone else; just be clear about what you are doing. Label it.
- Communicate to cause a result.
Stay in every conversation—whether in person, by email, telephone, whatever—long enough to learn how your communication lands with the other person and be responsible for their response. How they feel or act is your business and you should be ready to respond.
- Include the whole team in team conversations. Avoid having conversations about any person not participating in that conversation. This guideline also includes those conversations you have inside your head.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development
The pace is slow for an online video but Brené Brown’s message is deep and true. Use the extra time to think about your own life, relationships, and desires.
Tony recently published a Kindle version of his talk inspired by Brené Brown’s work. See it on Amazon by clicking here.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
The telephone and Internet were still not connected three days after moving our office. I had spent way too much time on hold and hearing excuses from Verizon. I needed to get free of their bureaucracy to focus on running my business. So I called in the Marines. Actually just one former Marine, a recently retired Colonel. For some jobs one Marine is plenty.
“Chet,” I said, “I know you are an executive here and you have plenty to do. So do I. We need telecomm restored ASAP. Do what you can. Okay?”
“Sure, boss.” Chet replied, “Whatever it takes.”
I was a little concerned by the martial fire in his eyes when he said, “Whatever it takes,” but I was determined
to get the business back online and myself focused on other tasks.
“Right,” I said, “Get it done.”
When I walked into the office the next morning (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Recommended Books
The Economist offers a fascinating summary of the new book by Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t. The key requirement is to get into the right department and specialty. As with starting a business, riding a rising tide by choosing a growing, lucrative sector makes everything else easier and success more likely. Once you are in the right place, three practices help you rise to power:
- Manage up. Ask for help and mentoring; flatter your seniors; and make a good impression.
- Be a bridge or node. Nurture relationships across departments and levels; be able to call on the right person to get key information or smooth a transaction.
- Practice loyalty. Persevere with difficult postings. Don’t change companies for short term advantage.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
New York Times columnist David Brooks, alumnus of my college and our off-campus newspaper, explains beautifully some of the reasons I advise my executive coaching clients to put away popular business books and get into great novels.
Studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write. No matter what you do in life, you will have a huge advantage if you can read a paragraph and discern its meaning (a rarer talent than you might suppose). You will have enormous power if you are the person in the office who can write a clear and concise memo.
Studying the humanities will give you a familiarity with the language of emotion. … Branding involves the location and arousal of affection, and you can’t do it unless you are conversant in the language of romance.
Studying the humanities will give you a wealth of analogies. … If you go through college without reading Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon, you’ll have been cheated out of a great repertoire of comparisons.
—David Brooks
History for Dollars
NYTimes.com.
Also see my short post, Why I review novels on a blog for CEOs and executive coaches
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
I noticed something interesting about executive effectiveness while reading an article in The Atlantic Monthly titled, What Makes a Great Teacher? The researchers identified specific traits of the most effective teachers, traits that I immediately recognized as characteristic of exceptional business leaders. Try reading the following excerpt from the article while substituting “manager” for “teacher” and “employees” for “students.”
First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11
Click here for more posts on luck.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Leadership Development
Disputes are inevitable any time you are working with people to produce significant results. What is not inevitable is dreading or delaying the confrontation required to resolve the conflict. Here’s how to get it over within one conversation.
My 3 Rs of dispute resolution are:
- Relationship,
- Responsibility, and
- Request
RELATIONSHIP: Early in the conversation, state plainly the quality of the relationship you want to have with the person. Invite the other person to declare their intentions, too. A client once said to me, “I hope when we’re through negotiating this and we (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
During the Internet bubble, I assisted with a large event for entrepreneurs by working the registration desk. It was busy until a few minutes after the speech began, a How I Did It presentation by an executive at a suddenly large dotcom.
One of the organizers said, “I can handle the late arrivals. Go in to hear the talk.”
“That’s okay,” I replied. “You go.”
“Don’t you want to hear it? He’s one of the founders!”
“Why would I want to hear him? All he can tell me is what he thinks is the reason it worked, but he doesn’t actually know. He got lucky but believes he’s a genius.”
Too many successful business people do not realize that being struck by lightning doesn’t make you an expert on electricity.
We all make thousands of decisions and take millions of actions. After assessing the results as a “failure” or a “success,” we attribute the outcome either to (more…)
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