Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com
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Self-knowledge is the crucial component of self-improvement. How can you improve what you don’t understand? Of course, the other side of that coin is ‘what you don’t understand can cause you great harm.
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The Perfectionist: During a recent coaching engagement, I came to realize that a CEO I was working with had a tendency to accentuate the negative. She was heavily committed to building her first successful business – driven to the point of almost maniacal focus on correcting the mistakes of her team. Her behavior was corroding the enthusiasm of her team. I decided to arrange a one-on-one session focused on her management style.
We began with a discussion of her almost constant criticism of her team. Nothing seemed good enough – everything needed improvement. When I pointed out this tendency, she responded, “I guess I am just a perfectionist”. I had heard this justification before. “A perfectionist is someone who does things perfectly – and that starts with themselves. There is a difference between a perfectionist and an anarchist,” I offered. My statement took her aback and she struggled to find a way to maintain here self-image as a ‘perfectionist’. However, we had been working together for some time and she knew that I was having none of it.
“If you were fulfilling your role to perfection, there would be much less friction and resentment among your team members”, I said. We had just finished an all-hands off-site during which some of that friction and resulting frustration had surfaced. It was clear that she had never really stopped to connect those kinds of results with her vision of herself as a ‘perfectionist’.
As we talked, I suggested that there were two areas which she ought to think about. The first was her tendency to correct team members – often in public – without full knowledge of the situation. The second was a tendency to focus on criticism and seldom offer praise or reinforcement. The questions I put to her was, “would a perfect perfectionist act in ways which generate these results? Or are you just insisting on perfection from your team and not from yourself?”
By the end of the first session, it was clear that she had a lot to think through. I suggested that she put aside some quiet time. She began keeping a journal of her thinking about the ‘perfectionist’ and the tendencies that were holding both her and her company back. We reconvened after a week.
As we set to work, the focus was on the second tendency – in fact, on her almost complete avoidance of complementing the efforts of team members. As she thought about it, I suggested that she was probably compensating for insecurity. My suggestion was that she had come to believe that her authority derived from delivery of criticism and was undermined by openly recognizing good work.
I then added a second suggestion – she thought that her complete control – dominance of any situation – was critical maintaining her authority and that trusting her team members to act on their own initiative was risking her position as team leader.
If you can put yourself in my client’s place, you will get some sense of my approach to coaching. She and I were struggling to come to terms with some of her personal tendencies that were causing friction within her company and limiting its potential. This kind of coaching is almost like close-in, hand-to-hand combat. The core question is always ‘what is it about me that make this situation worse rather than better’?
Chits: My suggested solution to this dilemma was simple. “OK, I said – here are two cups with three chits in each. I had labeled the first cup ‘criticism’ and the other ‘praise’. When you give praise, you take one chit out of that cup and put it in ‘criticism’. If you give criticism, you do the opposite. If either cup is empty, you cannot give that feedback until you move a chit into it.”
Well, as you can imagine, the ‘criticism’ cup emptied during the first hour. Frustrated, she called me – complaining that the cups were ‘cramping here style’. “Look”, I said, “all you have to do is find something to compliment. This is not rocket science. Call me when you have a real problem.” For the next few days, the line stayed quiet.
We had organized an all-hands meeting for the following week. I arrived at the offices to find a real sea change. There were cups everywhere. Each team member had his or her own set – ‘criticism’ and ‘praise’. The CEO smiled as I entered the room. I noticed that her ‘criticism’ cup was full but there was only one chit in her ‘praise cup’.
The all-hands meeting was a real hoot. Chits were transferred from cup to cup and, in more than one case, they were transferred back as the person on the business end of the criticism interpreted it as constructive and, therefore, really ‘praise’. After the meeting, the CEO said, “Thank you. I am not a perfectionist anymore – but I am more of a human being.”
As I left their offices, I thought to myself, “all coaching should go this well.” Then I smiled.
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Related Articles:
* Sea Change Brings Change
* Knowing Versus Doing – Post-Success Malaise
* Three Ways Not to Be a Great CEO
* Coaching – Improve Personally and Professionally
* Coaching and Self-Knowledge
* Reflections of a Coach
* My Executive Coaching Perspective
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The Federal Circle provides advisory services to companies working in the federal contracting space. Its core team and network of advisers has a deep understanding of the government contracting space. Together they represent a rich resource for companies trying to generate traction in these very competitive markets. Contact us for a free initial consultation.
14 Responses to “The Other Side of the Coin”
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Chris, Thanks for the comment and the link. I have used a variation of the structure in some of my leadership coaching engagements. I combine them with a leadership, management and organizational assessment in order to keep the process from being completely intellectual – a real danger with well educated executives. One distinction that I have found useful – training managers to make decisions is different from enabling leaders to make them. Your four categories in the example you provided might be a good starting point for a discussion of this. Earl
Chris Wells wrote:
You raise an important point here and this is often a blind spot, not only for individuals but for organisations too. Lock and Wheeler have built on Hershey and Blanchard’s work on Situational Leadership (see: http://formula4leadership.com/f4model.htm ) and have built a tool around this. The Leadership Judgement Indicator (LJI) measures a leader’s ability to accurately judge which decision making style is the most appropriate in a given situation and also shows the leader’s style preferences. A norm group of hundred’s of senior managers globally gives a good measure against peers. A version tailored specifically towards sales leaders is also available and 360 degree versions are in preparation.
Using this tool and coupled with feedback from staff/peers/managers we found that we were able to give leaders better insight in to their abilities, they could really see themselves for the first time. This was particularly helpful for leaders who were struggling with their teams and highlighted possible derailers.
Mili Lewis wrote:
I think your article provides the insight. It is linked directly to honest and sometimes painful (for the recipient) feedback. Seeking feedback, understanding what it relates to and measuring the incidences of ‘when’ a particular behaviour happens is a good way of understanding how you see your behaviour and how others see it. Difficulty is deciding how much to change before you stop being you, and morph into something you may not be comfortable with. Too much feedback can do this. Especially in cultures which require a high level of ‘conformance’. Most inspirational leaders have something about them which is different they are often ‘personalities’. For my part I have paid more attention to team feedback, since you are only as good as the team you work with and who help and support you to achieve your (team) goals. If you invest in their views and ask them how you could improve anything you do, they will respond and often will help you by telling you when you have done certain things without perhaps recognising their impact. With peers and immediate superiors the task takes on a different and in my experience ‘less honest’ aspect. This is especially true if there is rivalry and competition or an aspect of tribalism, which can exist in larger organisations. Acess to the grapevine often provides insight into what is said about you in your absence, and does not in some cases match feedback given to your face. Many times I have been given a negative view from someone, which has not proved accurate. On other occasions I have been given positive views and experieced the opposite. Quite a minefield, especially if you have little choice on who you ‘do business with’.
Mike Schwarzer wrote:
Hi Earl. Great discussion point. I come across this quite regulary in terms of leaders, managers or simply people who are limited in their perceptual capacity. Meaning they often look at situations from only one perspective which gives them also limited, what I call, behavioural range of movement. My approach to when I work with a client who seems stuck in one perspective or perceptual position to give them an experience of multiple perceptual positions. The aim is to expand their view of the situation, the players involved, the relationships, the implications, etc. Generally, I will walk my clients, with their permission, through 5 perceptual positions. And by walking I mean physcially walking or stepping into these positions. 1.) In the first position, they will experience and observe the situation from their own point of view. They way they see it. The way they feel about it. The way they experience the situation in their body. 2.) In the second position, I get them to step into the position of the other person or persons involved. Here I allow them to experience the situation from someone elses point of view as so as if this other person was looking at the client (self). I get them to observe what it is like to be this person. What they see, how the feel, what they think. 3.) Then I get them step into a third, a neutral position. From here they get to view and experience the situation and the players involved from a strangers or a fly on the wall point of view, one where they have no biased involvement. They get to observe the relationship between the players involved, the dynamic of their communication, etc. 4.) In the fourth position, I step them into the position of the system, the environment that the situation is part of. Here they get to view the situation from the organisational point of view. The way this situation and the relationship of the players is viewed from the system’s perspective. How it is affected. What the implications might be. 5.) And lastly, the client is taken to a universal or global position. Observing the situation as if they were standing on the moon looking down. Once they have been through these 5 stages, I walk them back from the 5th (global) to the 1st (self) position. That is critical in this process. As they step from the 5th back into the 4th position they do so with greater insight and understanding. They then step back into the 3rd postion and yet bring back the new insights and understanding from the previous steps and so on. Until the client arrives back in the 1st postion (self). Having gone through this process, the majority of the clients I have worked with, have had a significant experience. Some actually mimicking and quoting word for word how they were perceived by others. They experience how others feel and what is important to them. They also make distinctions of the perceptual positions others operate from and the language they use. For example, someone who lives predominately through the position of self would talk a lot about themselves. Whereas someone who speaks from the system point of view would talk more about the organisational issues like the bottomlines, the processes, the performance, the productivity, etc. By understanding the different perceptual positions, clients can then adjust their lanuage to that of those that they communicate to. Having said that, they have to want to do that. With the new insights and understandings comes the intention of what the client wants to do with that discovery. However, the leaders and people who have been willing to develop their situational awareness & behavioural range and flexibility of movement are now demonstrating greater influence on their environment and make better informed decisions. Hope this is of value to the readers of this discussion. I am happy to share a worksheet with this process I am using. Feel free to contact me.
Glenn, There may be another way to look at it – with relief that the travesty is over. One of the joys of discovering a ‘shortcoming’ is that you have an opportunity to put their negative impact to an end. That is a reason for celebration in my book. Every person who takes the time and makes the effort to acquaint you with such shortcomings should be thanked – blessed – and treated as a friend. Every person who stands by and allows you to continue causing discomfort should be looked on with suspicion. It is far better to spend you time with things to celebrate than with things to regret. Earl
Glenn Tobe wrote:
Earl, with my self the hardest feedback is from people I respect and feel I have seriously taken the stewardship of their careers to heart. But often it is sobering and painful to see my numerous shortcomings. To look deeper into the data, and feedback from other and to look deeper in my self. I see the struggles I have to become the leader I feel I am but I do not behave that way. Great topic
John E. Burk wrote:
Dr. Smith a very interesting assessment of a situation I have encountered several times in my profession. I too am a perfectionist, but I learned long ago I can apply those expectations to only one person, myself. Your blog is an excellent example of what I have often seen as a failure by management to understand and that is how to get the best out of their people. It is not through criticism!
In my career I have had the opportunity to turn around three companies operating at a loss. In each case it was achieved with the same staff that was previously at the firm. In every case it did not matter how much I told the people that we could turn the company around. What it took was a commitment to train the staff how to better perform their job function and by constant praise when they were successful in their performance. Instead of criticism the best tool I ever learned was to be willing to take the time to show people a better way to do something when they made a mistake. I have been lucky to have had people who were passionate about their job and wanted to learn better ways to do it and were willing to learn.
The truth of each of my successes in turning around these companies; it was not me but the willingness of the people working for me to learn a better, more efficient way to do their jobs that created the success. They did this because I was willing to give them the tools they needed to show them how. It is a huge commitment of time by management to achieve that. As the leader of these turnarounds my job was to commit to spending the time to teach people what they did not know and to be willing to say “great job” when they were successful. Over time even the most distrustful of my staff learned that I did know a better way and by training them, praising them and sharing information with them they developed a trust in my methods and bought into what I was saying and we were successful in making the companies profitable.
One of my rewards for this is the number of these employees who are still in touch with me and have often told me how much they appreciate what I did for them. To me they are the true success story as several now have their own companies and are passing on these examples and knowledge to their staffs.
Dr Lionel Boxer wrote:
Positioning theory may be helpful – that is, the discursive production of self and others.
Joe, Thanks for the comment – great observations. My experience has been that in order to get changes to become the new norm, you have to inject them into the culture of the company – in other words, you have to get the team to pick up the new approach and individually insist on maintaining the new approach. the reason that the chits worked so well in this company is that 1) the culture was eclectic enough to accept it, 2) the CEO had a fun-loving side, 3) senior members of the team were aware of the problem and wanted to engineer a solution and 4) the new approach – chits and all – became a fixture in the company. Every member of the team had cups and chits. I have problems with solutions such as the one you referenced. 3×5 cards are inherently isolating and easy to finesse. It is easy to drop the habit before it really gets set as a habit. when the whole team is helping each other, the habit becomes part of the corporate culture and the new norm. Dr. Smith
mymangersguide.com)Joe Jenney wrote:
I have both observed this problem in my bosses and in myself. I have seen it suppressed for long periods of time but not defeated completely. Your process worked well with the client but I wonder if it was a long term fix. Your client is a good example of a manager that instills what I refer to in my book (www.mymangersguide.com) as fear. Fear comes in many forms but it always results in lower effectiveness of an organization. I am wondering if it would help for such a manager as your client to go through the exercise of writing down the behavior they need to suppress and the behavior they need to develop. Perhaps an even more effective approach would be that recommended by Lanny Basham. He suggests writing how you want to be on 3 x 5 cards and putting them around where you see them several times a day for a couple of weeks.
Dann Pettit wrote:
Dr. Smith:
How about discovering ways to prevent the “conflict” alltogether? Most conflict revolves around communications or a failure to communicate. I have a couple of thoughts on this:
When teams create norms and practices around learning, they make learning a habit. This helps teams to achieve consistently high performance levels and allows for rapid learning and fast action when necessary. In learning-savvy teams, members:
• Actively ask questions.
• Discuss errors.
• Experiment and reflect.
• Seek external feedback.
• Analyze mistakes to seek improvements.
• Value feedback, both positive and negative.
To willingly engage in these learning behaviors, a team must also have a shared belief that no member of the team will be embarrassed, rejected or punished for speaking up and identifying errors or problems. Team members must also believe that team members will support each other during challenging times. Without these pivotal beliefs, team members will not take the interpersonal risks involved in team learning. Continually assess how you work together. Take some time during each meeting (okay, most meetings) to look at how you are working together, to identify what is effective and what is not and to make decisions about what can be done differently to increase your effectiveness.
Conflict between the two employees may also be a symptom of a much larger organizational problem, or, as I like to call it, a system malfunction. In this scenario, a system malfunction can be a direct result of poor leadership, dysfunctional work groups, inadequate performance management processes and/or a general lack of soft skills training and resources for employees on the part of the organization. It is important to look systemically or holistically at this situation to ensure the organization is not exhibiting a systemic illness. Now do not get me wrong. It is very important to address the actual conflicts between employees and to help them reach acceptable resolutions, etc. However, it would be a mistake for an organization to limit the scope of a conflict resolution to the immediate conflicting employees without also being willing to look at the surrounding system where the conflict resides in. Without a more thorough assessment, an organization can easily get into the habit of treating the symptom while ignoring the problem.
Develop a culture conducive to learning and trust. Shifting a culture from one of greed to one of ambition is the most important step in establishing a trusting culture. In a trusting culture, success is built around a healthy respect for ambition but a distaste for greed. Trusted management is the product of an executive team that has clearly identified the values needed to support their mission, has evaluated the cost of upholding those values no matter what, and is committed to living those values at all costs. That means, as Jack Welch used to say: “We fire managers who don’t live our values, even if they deliver results.” Easy to say–so very hard to do.
Now about teams and techniques leaders use to promote greart team work. To begin improving your team and to better understand the level of dysfunction you are facing, ask yourself these simple questions:
- Do team members openly and readily disclose their opinions?
- Are team meetings compelling and productive?
- Does the team come to decisions quickly and avoid getting bogged down by consensus?
- Do team members confront one another about their shortcomings?
- Do team members sacrifice their own interests for the good of the team?
Trust, credibility, authentic actions, respect, all are hallmarks of teams that deal successfully with incongruence.
Stephen Harvard Davis wrote:
I think your article and question is very interesting and an issue that I deal with very often. The result in different “self-perception” and “reputation” that can be gained is often a significant a contributing factor to “new hire failure”.
In my work I have often observed a senior new hire has been brought into a business and how they express the reasons for their hire or how they wish to be seen by others.
For instance I have heard one Sales Director announce his arrival by saying. “I’ve come to save the Company”. (Interestingly most people who worked for the company didn’t know that it needed saving!).
Another was an HR Manager who introduced herself to her new team of highly qualified individuals by saying. “My name is …… and I’M A PROFESSIONAL” (Her new team interpreted this as meaning that she thought that they were not professional).
Both new hires in the examples above ended up failing and research identified that their initial introduction had clouded perception adversely.
The suggestion I always make when mentoring “new hires” is to agree with the business (Boss) what their reputation should be and to ensure that it will compliment the business strategy. As such if change or bad news needs to be given it is worth having the New hire’s boss stand one pace behind and to the left (literal or otherwise) of the new hire.
The same situation is advised with “good news”.
As strategy is that it’s better to remain silent on plans and objectives until an assessment of how the team might be influenced and that leadership and image are congruent with strategy. This may not be the best news for those that like to (or have their new hires) “Hit the ground running” but it is more likely to achieve the required business results.
Another suggestion I sometimes make is to ask the individual at their job interview how they see themselves and how they might introduce themselves to their new teams.
I like your article. I have seen many examples of your client CEO in corporate America typically at high-level positions.
I have one feedback for Mili. I don’t think management as a role where you tell what your sub-ordinates to do, but as the leadership you provide for a team that you as a manager are working with. (Hopefully there is more than one goal that brings and keeps the team together.) When you look at the management from this perspective one won’t feel obligated to praise before they provide negative feedback but they in fact praise when it is due and people won’t get offended when they are given feedback on how they can improve.
Ultimately as a manager you need to create an environment such that your sub-ordinates will feel comfortable to receive and give negative or positive feedbacks without thinking that they are being targeted and they believe 100% that this to better themselves and the team.
Sorry it’s me again. I love this article. Many years ago, at the start of my career, I attempted to improve praise ratio and spent time catching people doing things right. After a week the team asked me for a meeting at which they asked me if I was Okay. When I asked why they were concerned, they said I was praising people and it made them uncomfortable, they were not used to it. I should add that I was new at the time to the role of team manager, but the culture was very much a negative one, which I had found depressing, and wanted to change. Another tool which helped with negative culture was the: if you say 1 negative thing you have to say 3 positives, but this just stopped some people saying anything at all!