For weeks, the wind howled across the Antarctic shelf. The frozen air penetrating the vulnerability of both unsuitable equipment, and human bodies that were never intended by God to withstand such extreme conditions. The bitter and unspeakable cold drawing the last elements of breath and life from any living thing that dared to challenge it. The men penned their final words to their families, and knowingly to the world…their final decision to make every attempt to reach the pole before their expeditionary adversary, Roald Amundsen, had been a fatal one; one from which there would be no return. Robert Falcon Scott, a British hero of great Antarctic exploits, bravery, and determination, was gone, his dreams shattered, and with him, the lives of several extraordinarily loyal men abandoned to the will of Antarctica and left to perish in that godforsaken place.

Some years later, a different group of men in a different time clattered over the bulwarks and onto the steel decks of the Argentine seagoing tug Yelcho. It was 11:40 AM on 30 August 1916, marking the end of over 10 months, and as many days and hours of the most brutal and lonely isolation that men could endure, and an unsure return from the most desolate and forbidding place on earth. Liberation from a spit of land they named Point Wild, the last refuge of desperate men. The world had taught them that Hell was a fiery furnace from which there was no escape. Shackleton’s men knew different: Hell was a frozen wasteland that never gave up its victims…until today. Because of their “Boss” and his indomitable spirit, all 28 of Shackleton’s men returned to their families. Their country had lost all hope that these brave men would ever return, but because of the extraordinary ability to lead in the face of incomparable odds, Sir Ernest Shackleton succeeded where so many others had failed. Living out the motto that adorned a doorway in his family home in Ireland: Fortitudine Vincimus, (Through Endurance We Conquer) he saw the futility in his original mission, set aside his ego, and with flexibility and determination saw his men through a new mission of survival and rescue.

Shackleton and Scott, two different men, leading different expeditions at different times, but both during the great era of great polar exploration. On the surface, they would appear fundamentally similar in many ways, yet different in a few very critical aspects. Men cut from the same cloth; assertive, determined, visionary leaders; where 80% of the way they lead was very similar, and on which they would mostly agree. Yet the 20% dissimilarity in their leadership ultimately made all the difference to those they lead. In Shackleton’s case, that 20% difference resulted in a change in scope and mission that harnessed the collective spirit and ability of his men, and that ultimately saved their lives and secured a new future for each of them.

No matter how many times we ask people to define leadership at seminars and conferences, or just to identify some of leadership’s key characteristics, the responses, for the most part, are reasonably similar. Motivating, Charismatic, Compelling, Knowledgeable, Organized, etc. The first five minutes of the discussion resembles a rapid-fire drill with the audience stepping on one another, offering up similar terms that represent what they consider common and obvious descriptors of leadership. In fact, there is usually very little resistance, if any at all, to the terms that make up about 80% of the initial definition. It isn’t until things start to slow down that folks begin to suggest that there is a key element missing here or there. That’s when disagreement begins to rear its head, and this is the part of the discussion that yields the most interesting and productive results; because it is at this point that the leaders in the room begin to share things that are unique to their experience as leaders. Elements that have changed their common view of leadership and shaped the way they now lead.

It is relatively easy to identify what we all agree on when defining leadership, but not so easy coming to grips with what others think is critical to leadership. Because we haven’t all shared the same experiences, we aren’t always going to readily grasp the value that somebody else places on a specific aspect of leadership. Where you’ve been as a leader, and what you’ve done, particularly that which is different, is where the organization’s greatest potential resides. That difference and that potential are exactly what we mean in the chapter title “Been there, done that!” Organizations need to seek out and unlock the hidden potential from where their leaders have been and what they’ve done, and harness it as Shackleton did. He had seen ego, inflexibility, and an almost monastic adherence to conformity lay waste to entire teams of talent, ability, and lives. Because of where he’d been and what he’d done, he wasn’t going to make those mistakes again despite resistance from some of the less experienced members of his expedition. Douglas MacArthur once said after offering up a battle strategy to his staff, that if everyone agreed with the plan without reservation or resistance there must be something terribly wrong! When collectively focused on solutions and new ideas, the opportunity for extraordinary solutions can be found in our disagreements and differences.

You’ve probably gathered by now that this chapter is not going to provide you with a definition of leadership. Nor will we at any other place in this book, because it’s not about a common definition, or on what we agree. What we want leaders to do is think. Think about and leverage what they have experienced, and what others have experienced.

As you think about what leadership means to you we want you to ask the following: What are the game-changers for an organization? What drives innovation, finds solutions, and accelerates growth on the team? Where do great ideas come from? That is the definition of leadership we want you to grab and keep hold of like the brass ring that it is. That 20% that you bring to your organization is what has the potential for making the greatest difference.

“You can’t reach old age by another man’s road.”

Mark Twain

Suits, Guitars & 3D Glasses
Copyright © 2013 Mike Westman & Ed Gillcrist
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

He’d spent every morning that summer with his hero, and for that 10-year-old boy, riding around the farm sitting on the passenger end of that long bench seat was the stuff of dreams.  The boy knew better than to ask, but he longed for the day he would hear his grandpa utter the words: “You wanna drive?”  Grandpa would stop that old Ford truck here and there, and the boy would dutifully carry out whatever task he was assigned.  Hopping back in and hoping…all summer long.  The morning it finally happened he slid behind the steering wheel and was immediately distracted by smells of tobacco and brake fluid he hadn’t noticed before, and a huge, toothy grin stretched his cheeks as he carefully listened to his grandpa’s instructions.

“Turn that key and she’ll start right up” Grandpa said as he buckled his seatbelt and spat out the window.

I know how to do it the boy respectfully muttered to himself.

“The pedal on the right makes you go, and the one on the left makes you stop.  Loosen up a little on that death grip and turn the wheel to go left and right, and please son…try not to hit a cow…or run off in a ditch.  Now take me to the barn.”

He had just received his first lesson in driver training, and by all accounts possessed the technical proficiency necessary to operate the truck: Go & Stop, Left & Right.  Within a half hour the boy was growing more comfortable behind the wheel, and after a few days…so was Grandpa; now forever relegated to the passenger side of his own truck.

Now take that same boy with his newly mastered technical proficiency and drop him in the center lane of the beltway around Atlanta doing 80!  He may have the technical proficiency to manage the basics of Go & Stop, Left & Right, but in this complex environment with all the other traffic, the speed, navigating the exits and on and off ramps, changing lanes, inconsiderate NASCAR wannabe drivers, etc., he simply hasn’t developed the practical proficiency to employ those same basic skills that define technical proficiency.

The U.S. Marines describe an individual’s combat readiness based on technical and tactical proficiency nearly the same way as we described technical and practical proficiency above.  In simplest terms, an individual Marine Rifleman must have the technical proficiency required to care for and properly wear his gear, clean and maintain his weapon, and when required, deliver accurate, debilitating fire on the target.  Go & Stop, Left & Right…the basics.  To be effective in battle though (the equivalent of driving around the Atlanta beltway) that Marine must also possess the tactical proficiencynecessary to employ his technical skills in the environment for which they were intended: the complex, highly dynamic, modern battlefield, with other Marines running around carrying out their own duties as part of a small team.  Likely combined with a larger effort that involves perhaps hundreds of Marines from the rest of his battalion and from other units; tanks, artillery, aircraft, and possibly other armed services as part of a combined effort to defeat the enemy…yeah, it just became decidedly more difficult to manage Go & Stop, or Left & Right, and all the technical proficiency in the world is useless without the tactical proficiency to employ those basic skills.

The Big City Driving analogy enables an understanding of the leader’s true role in developing people.  It is relatively easy to develop that farm boy’s technical proficiency, and if he needs more basic skills (like operating a manual transmission) it would be simple and straightforward enough to teach.  His practical proficiency though is altogether a different matter, and developing those skills will take time, focus, planning, practice, and a very deliberate approach…usually with a healthy dose of help, experience, and the wisdom of others.

It should be widely accepted that developing people within an organization is a responsibility normally associated with leadership, but the task is sometimes overlooked or simply overcome by events.  Creating and executing a plan to develop your people clearly benefits those individuals by coaching them into a better understanding of a leader’s perspective on growth, and it also directly improves the organization while implicitly maturing your own skills as an effective leader.  The more complex the environment, the more critical it is for leaders to grasp Big City Driving and clearly understand the distinction between training people technically and developing them practically.  The leader’s biggest challenge might be not seeing the value in deliberately distinguishing between the two, or worse, foolishly believing that it’s just common sense and will happen on its own.

“Training” is what Grandpa gave the boy by teaching him the basic technical skills he needed to drive the truck.  Unfortunately, “training” also tends to be the default path when leaders consider individual development plans.  Effectively developing people focuses more on their practical proficiency, and requires planning, foresight, and an understanding of organizational and individual goals.

Practical proficiency is understanding the strategy and structure of the larger organization, how to effectively apply your technical skills within that organization, and how to manage the relationships and integration necessary to get your piece to fit into the bigger picture.

Developing people focuses on the future and the potential for increased responsibilities, expectations, and performance. Developing people is softer and more difficult than training them, but done correctly, it stretches their capabilities and allows for growth. It enhances team loyalty by exemplifying the leader’s personal interest and encourages innovation and creativity by fostering a sense of belonging. Demonstrating to people that their individual growth is a catalyst to the overall health of the organization also propagates an environment in which it is easier for them to stay motivated and engaged. Developing your people is time-consuming, may require additional resources, and definitely requires a leader’s focused effort. Fortunately, it can be viewed and justified as an investment rather than a cost, and with significant ROI for the organization as well as the individual. Your ultimate goal as a leader should be to ensure that both technical and practical proficiency is developed and that it is done in such a way to benefit both the individuals and the organization.

Contact Shackleton Group at https://staging.shkgrp.com/ to learn more about our four-hour workshop on Facilitation Skills for Leaders.

Although studying Maneuver Warfare to seek a competitive advantage in a business environment may not appear immediately obvious, there is plenty of literature and evidence supporting the notion. The challenge resides in capturing the essence of what makes Maneuver Warfare so successful and using that knowledge as one of many leadership tools that can leverage others’ successes. Taken individually, the key characteristics of Maneuver Warfare pale in comparison to the collective power of applying the philosophy of Maneuver Warfare within the culture of your organization. While you may not face an enemy on a battlefield, the enemies you do face are evident in the daily challenges of uncertainty, complexity, limited resources, tight schedules, changing requirements, competing agendas, and most importantly, fleeting opportunities. These challenges can become so overwhelming that the level of friction results in degraded efficiency and effectiveness in the organization.

U.S. Marines define Maneuver Warfare as “A warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a series of rapid, violent and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which he cannot cope.” Translated into civilian terms, Corporate Maneuver Warfare could be “An operating philosophy that seeks to influence your environment by leveraging capabilities and established characteristics, which when skillfully applied to dynamic circumstances can achieve and exceed goals and objectives.”

Understanding how to apply Maneuver Warfare can enable leaders to more effectively exercise influence over any given circumstance, fully leverage the capabilities of their organization, and recognize opportunities when they arise. Maneuver Warfare for the Marines, though, is more than a list of guiding principles. It is an ethos. The application of maneuver Warfare off the battlefield then is not just about “a series of rapid, violent and unexpected actions.” It is more about imbuing the organization and its leaders with that same culture of assertiveness, innovation, intuitive thinking, and rapid response that when coupled with its key characteristics has made the application of Maneuver Warfare so successful over time.

Corporate Combined Arms: Putting the Competition in a Dilemma. 

How do we crush the competition while continuously growing the team and getting better at what we do?

For almost two and a half centuries, the United States Marine Corps has relentlessly perfected effective approaches to defeating our nation’s enemies in battle. Their success rate remains arguably one of the best, and that’s more than just opinion or coincidence—it is intentional, calculated and refined. Facing a Marine unit of any size in battle usually results in more than just a problem for the enemy because Marines are particularly adept at placing their opponents in no-win situations.

The use of combined arms is a tactic in which Marines use multiple and varied approaches (e.g., weapons systems, maneuvering, supporting fires) in such a way that any action the enemy takes to avoid one threat makes him more vulnerable to another. He is now in a dilemma—a no-win situation. He is forced to do something that will guarantee his failure.  The effe
ct is both immediate in single-strike victories and cumulative in the longer term. The tactic can overwhelm and demoralize the enemy by slowing them down and creating confusion.

The basic theory of combined arms transfers easily to a sports team, but what about in business? How do we leverage these lessons and apply the principles of combined arms in the corporate world to “create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy [the competition] cannot cope?” Success requires leaders to be flexible, to deal with the fog of war, and to rapidly adjust their plan as required while staying true to the overall strategy.

A client of ours successfully competed for—and won—millions in funding for the development of innovative products by applying these very principles.

• They developed clear intent from the chief executive and articulated that vision to the next level of leaders.
• These measures established clear targets that focused the rest of the organization as they developed multiple courses of action and alternatives to the execution of the funding if granted.
• The teams worked hand-in-hand with executive leadership to shoot holes in the alternatives, to resolve them, and to determine how best to communicate all viable alternatives for consideration.
• The client also invested in outside support for determining the best solutions to offer for use of the funding.

Their competitors, on the other hand, waited too long and determined that they did not need to make an outside investment. By the time they realized what our client was doing, they were unable to provide options for use of the funding that remotely rivaled the well-planned and disciplined alternatives provided by our client. For each consideration proposed by a competitor that appealed to the awarding agency, our client was able to adjust and to provide alternatives, as well as demonstrate their capability to execute them. Receiving this funding was neither coincidence nor luck for our client, but the direct result of flexibility, sound knowledge of strategy, an understanding of resources capability, and the requisite leadership to execute change in a highly dynamic environment.

Corporate combined arms is about having eggs in more than one basket when it comes to clients. Think “art of the possible,” and provide clients with multiple options from which to choose, compared to the competition. Think ahead, strategize and provide alternatives to close the deal. These actions will force the competition out of their comfort zone and make them waste resources reacting to flexible approaches, keeping them behind the power curve in a constantly changing business environment.

Best Practices for Implementation

The best practices mentioned below are proven to help in implementing the ‘Fight Like a Marine’ approach. (For any questions on applying these practices in your specific environment, email us at info@shkgrp.com).

To apply corporate combined arms within your organization, develop the following:

• Clear Intent. First, develop a clear purpose and intent for any initiative and articulate to planners and executors.
• Mindset. Get your team to focus on solutions. Fixate on how to accomplish the initiatives instead of why they won’t work.
• Multiple Solutions. Develop, wargame, assess and resolve multiple courses of action, and be proficient at addressing all of them.
• Flexibility. Educate yourselves on the information and environment in which the team intends to engage.  Understand the alternatives. Be prepared to switch midstream to an alternative.
• Investment. Make the appropriate investments in time, effort and support required to develop solutions and win.

It should be widely accepted that developing the people within an organization is a responsibility normally associated with leadership, but the task is sometimes overlooked or simply overcome by events. Creating and executing a plan to develop your people clearly benefits those individuals by coaching them into a better understanding of a leader’s perspective on growth, and also directly improves the organization as a whole while implicitly maturing your own skills as an effective leader.

The US Marine Corps describes an individual’s combat effectiveness from a dual perspective of technical and tactical proficiency. Simply explained a rifleman must, among other things, possess the necessary technical skills to operate and sustain his weapon, maintain an unparalleled level of physical fitness, and be able to hit a target when called upon to do so. Those are the very basic technical skills, but to be truly effective in battle that individual Marine must understand the tactical environment in which he is expected to employ those technical skills. He must clearly grasp how he contributes to the bigger picture and the success of his team as a whole, his Marine Corps. Putting holes in a bullseye at the rifle range is an important technical skill. Engaging the enemy with accurate and debilitating fire in battle, with a clear understanding that your actions, timing, and skill are relied upon by other Marines coming from another direction, and perhaps that they cannot succeed without your input, that is tactical proficiency! This concept is easily translated off the battlefield with the same meaning, but thankfully with less dire consequences. Shackleton Group calls it technical and practical proficiency, and it should be considered and understood by leaders as skills that must be developed in your people.

It is important to understand the conceptual difference between training and developing your people. While training typically focuses on technical proficiency, effectively developing your people focuses more on their practical proficiency, and requires planning, foresight, and an understanding of organizational and individual goals. Technical proficiency refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilities required to accomplish a specific task associated with someone’s role within the organization, e.g. being a competent engineer, and increasing technical proficiency tends to be the default path when leaders consider individual development plans. Practical proficiency, however, is the ability to operate effectively in the environment within which those tasks will be accomplished, e.g., an engineer executing his or her duties on a team that requires integration with other teams within a large, complex organization. Having practical proficiency is to understand the strategy and structure of the larger organization, how to effectively apply your technical skills within that organization, and how to manage the relationships and integration necessary to get your piece to fit into the bigger picture…just like that Marine!

Developing people focuses on the future and the potential for increased responsibilities, expectations, and performance. Developing people is softer and more difficult than training them, but done correctly, it stretches their capabilities and allows for growth. It enhances team loyalty by exemplifying the leader’s personal interest and encourages innovation and creativity by fostering a sense of belonging. Demonstrating to people that their individual growth is a catalyst to the overall health of the organization also propagates an environment in which it is easier for them to stay motivated and engaged. Developing your people is time-consuming, may require additional resources, and definitely requires a leader’s focused effort. Fortunately, it can be viewed and justified as an investment rather than a cost with significant ROI for the organization as well as the individual. Your ultimate goal as a leader should be to ensure that both technical and practical proficiency is developed and that it is done in such a way to benefit both the individuals and the organization.

One should not measure leaders by the followers they collect, but, among other things, by the quality leaders they develop.

Best Practices: (For any questions on implementing these practices in your specific environment, email us at info@shkgrp.com).

Clearly articulate foundational doctrine: For team members to understand how they fit into the bigger picture and contribute to organizational success; they must first understand what that looks like. Clear, concise, relevant, and well-articulated foundational doctrine (Philosophy, Vision, Mission, and Objectives) paint that picture and give team members tangible targets to which they can trace their own actions.

Think long-term: Pure leadership tasks like developing your people take foresight and planning. First, understand the difference between technical and practical proficiency, then set aside time to focus on the good of the organization within that context and from both perspectives.  How to develop your people’s practical proficiency will reveal itself.

Set and manage clear expectations: Consider your organization’s individual and combined capabilities, then encourage growth by setting and managing expectations just slightly beyond where you think they can go. If the team understands your intent…you’ll be surprised by the results!

Leading teams can be exhausting. Riddled with challenges, short on recognition, but nevertheless rewarding. Getting the most out of your team is dependent on a host of factors, making it more an art than a science. While there is plenty of research that suggests what makes teams effective, this perspective is from that of my experience as a U.S. Marine, and some critical variables I’ve learned that can help maximize your team’s potential.

Leveraging Diversity

Most agree that diversity on a team helps foster greater strategic communication leading to better results. The opportunity to handpick participants, creating your ‘dream team’, is a rarity. More than likely, your team members have a range of talents and experiences that you aren’t tapping into. The goal is not to homogenize the team, but to seek out those differences and leverage them for the organization. The more perspectives the higher the likelihood for better results. As the leader, it is your responsibility to find out who your team is, where they have been, what interests them and makes them tick. You do this by being honest, open, and approachable, and may be surprised at the positive impact.

Lead the Team You Have

John Navagh said, “Coach the team you have, not the team you wish you had.” It’s your job as the leader to focus on continuous improvement and increased efficiency. If you want to grow the team, you can’t be afraid to put people in positions where they can be more effective or improve the dynamics of the team. Balancing the well-being of the individual with that of the team or organization can be delicate at times and the impact should always be considered.  Experience alone can be a costly way for a team to learn. Leaders like coaches must recognize the skills a player needs, but lacks, and develop them. Experience and deliberate development then can have an exponential impact on individual and team performance.

Knowing how to Task

When tasking a team, it’s important to instruct them based in part on understanding their individual knowledge and experience. The loudest or most assertive may not be the most knowledgeable or experienced for a specific task and might even result in impeding the input needed from the real experts. Soliciting collective input from appropriate sources will likely result in a much more informed and effective solution. Encouraging dialogue and providing the forum are your responsibility to the team and the organization. During one engagement, an extremely vocal individual was responding so negatively that others just stopped contributing to the conversation. Once the leader recognized what was happening, they were able to curb the naysayer effectively and reengage others without losing the critical input that was needed to move their initiative forward.

Be Specific

It’s important to be specific when tasking team members or giving them feedback on their performance. Vague direction can lead to misinterpreting desired outcomes or the level of urgency. Telling your team members exactly what you expect of them dramatically increases the probability of them successfully meeting or exceeding your expectations. As an aircraft maintenance shift supervisor during combat operations in Iraq, I explicitly instructed my Marines that any movement to the flightline, must be as fast as possible. An extra 30 seconds that the helicopter was on the ground, could easily mean more casualties for those we were supporting. For most of us now, we are not dealing with “life or death” scenarios, but a sense of urgency goes a long way in improving team efficiency and effectiveness.

Latitude

While being specific regarding the desired outcome is critical to success, bringing out the best in your team requires that you allow for autonomy and encourage them to think outside the box. Create an environment where individuals have the freedom to determine the “How”. This is empowering and helps improve leadership and intuitive decision-making abilities. Be sure to acknowledge and celebrate their wins, while constructively coaching them through learning from their mistakes. In one instance, a Project Manager was having difficulty “controlling” the efficiency on his night shift. After weeks of leaving explicit instructions, he saw no improvement. When he finally approached his night shift Lead, he learned that they spent a significant amount of time trying to follow the directions to the letter. He then gave only the desired outcome, and the parameters and the shift’s productivity quickly improved.

Mentoring is continuous

Mentoring is more than a check in the box. As a leader, you must take an active role in continuously building your team members up with positive, meaningful feedback as well as constructive criticism. Be sure to address specific behaviors and their impact on the team. If you wait until their annual review to discuss deficiencies or give them praise, you run the risk of poor or ineffective behaviors taking root or missing the opportunity to leverage and replicate good practices. In either case, the whole team suffers. You must continuously follow-up with the team if you want them to follow through with your guidance. It is your responsibility to support them and ensure that they have the tools and resources required to succeed in their job.

These recommendations aren’t intended to be a panacea for leadership, but rather definitive needle-movers where you and your team can experience immediate results without dramatic effort. The effectiveness of a leader is best measured by the success of those they lead. A leader’s “style” should be flexible and determined by consideration of all the factors that influence the team, organization, and environment. These are relatively simple ways to bring out the best in your team.

Best Practices for Implementation in your Environment (For any questions on implementing these practices in your specific environment, email us at info@shkgrp.com).

• Focus on improving relationships with team members. Get to know them on a more personal level and their respect will transcend the employee-supervisor relationship.
• Listen to their suggestions. Don’t give the impression that you know what is best all the time, or your team will stop sharing ideas for improvement.
• Explain the “why” your team is doing something to foster a greater buy-in and enforce shared values.

Leading an organization requires a broad range of capabilities and skills; from developing an effective strategy to establishing a structure that will allow you to realize the organization’s objectives, to selecting, resourcing and developing the people that make it all happen.

While it’s important for any leader to understand their role in each component of the organizational model below, the most critical role they play is finding and maintaining the right balance between all of those elements simultaneously.

Taken individually, each of these elements seems fairly straightforward. When viewed in concert with one another, the ongoing interactivity that evolves as the organization grows stimulates the development of increasingly complex and dynamic relationships between these organizational components.

A leader’s final and ongoing role is in establishing and maintaining the balance necessary between these components in order to achieve the organization’s desired results.

Without this balance, organizations are unlikely to maintain whatever success or desired culture they’ve achieved for any reasonable length of time. Gaps will form leading to failures in task execution, and ultimately in the ability to maintain productivity.

Balance requires an understanding of the value that each individual brings and ensuring traceability from their roles to the organization’s mission and objectives.

Absent a deliberate focus on maintaining that balance and the resultant culture, teams and business units begin down the slippery slope of operating in silos whether they intend to or not (or as a colleague used to facetiously refer to them as ‘cylinders of excellence’).

Balance requires leaders to develop and clearly communicate the philosophy, vision, and strategic objectives, then take a step back and allow their team to develop the mission, operational objectives, and structure required to execute.

A key to the success in both establishing and maintaining organizational balance is the clarification and expectations of the roles, responsibilities, and relationships required to execute that structure. Despite how overwhelming it might seem to find and maintain this type of balance, like all challenges, the key is first recognizing its need and importance.

When viewing the model, it is helpful to see it from the perspective of initially standing up an organization. First, the organizational strategy must be developed, and then the structure required to execute it should be derived from that strategy.

Finally, the capacity and capability of the people required to facilitate the execution of that structure should be established. While this may be a helpful way to view the initial establishment of any organization, it does not account for the more complex dynamics of an organization already operating at full steam.

This is where maintaining organizational balance really comes into play through the vigilant evaluation of results and diligent application of leadership.

As the organization begins to execute its strategy, and results are realized, a leader should assess those results to determine if they are those that were anticipated and desired. If the assessment determines otherwise, then the components must be evaluated individually and collectively to determine where change(s) should be made to achieve the desired results and consequently maintain the necessary balance.

For instance, the initial structure dictates a certain capability at a certain capacity, but during execution, you determine that you are falling short of anticipated results. You further determine that the required capacity was initially underestimated, or that some capability was not properly accounted for.

In either case, you may need to adjust the structure or provide training to accommodate that discovery. This assessment of results and subsequent adjustments illustrate the application of maintaining organizational balance.

Simply put, if the organizational model depicted were viewed as an algorithm where Strategy + Structure + People + Leadership = Results, then like any mathematical formula the only way to influence something to the right of the equal sign is to make appropriate adjustments to the factors on the left.

The best practices mentioned below are proven to help in maintaining organizational balance:

Accept the mantle of leadership 

Leaders must accept that they play a major role in maintaining and optimizing the balance required between the strategy, structure and people components of the organization to ensure achievement of desired results and implementation of a deliberate organizational development plan.

Articulate to leaders at all levels that they play a critical role in maintaining organizational balance in each component of the model and within their teams so that the overall organizational balance can be maintained.

Ensure traceability

Strategy drives structure which significantly influences organizational behavior, people, and an organization’s culture.

Establishing and implementing the foundational doctrine is a large part of setting the groundwork to execute the strategy; these include philosophy, vision, strategic objectives, mission and operational objectives required to guide the organization in the achievement of its desired results.

Establishing a valid structure

The structure is reliant on orienting the organization’s resources, processes, and relationships around the active development and delivery of its products and services. Understanding the four primary elements (leadership, execution, support, and sustainment) of an effective structure is essential to developing and executing it successfully.

Leadership at each level should develop, articulate, and evangelize the organization’s foundational doctrine. The execution component is responsible for the development and delivery of the organization’s products and services and the component around which all of its resources should be focused (product/service-oriented structure).

Establishing a valid structure within your team is or should be a logical extension of a leader’s authority. Done properly, it makes maintaining organizational balance at the global organizational level much easier and more effective.

Roles, responsibility, and relationships

Understand and clearly communicate roles and responsibilities.

When people suggest that communications aren’t working in their organization, they are seldom referring to eye contact, body language, etc. (not to diminish the importance of this), but rather fully understanding the nature of the relationship that must exist bilaterally between functions to be able to execute the structure.

To identify those, the roles must be firmly established and defined, and to maintain them; relationships must continue to be cultivated.

“Break hard right now!” the crew chief of the search-and-rescue helicopter yelled over the radio. Until that moment, the flight had been relatively uneventful. The weather was good, and the five-person crew had executed this same routine several times a week. The crew chief’s words shattered the calm. The pilot’s response at the controls was an instinctive and immediate hard right turn. The crew chief continued, “Keep it coming, sir. Keep it coming. OK, roll out!” Again, the pilot complied without hesitation. “Alright, sir, descend about 500 feet,” the chief continued. “OK, sir, that’s good, you can level off. You’ve got it.”

Exercising authority as a leader is not always about where authority formally resides; sometimes it is about who has the best situational awareness at any given time and can provide the best guidance in achieving the overall mission or objective. That is the individual to whom leadership should transfer, at least for long enough to see the team through the transition of circumstances. This is the essence of tactical leadership and one of many ways to effectively exercise authority as a good leader.

In effect, this is what occurred in the scenario above: The crew chief was the only one aware that another aircraft posed an immediate threat of a mid-air collision. Training, trust, assertiveness, and intuition on the part of the entire crew took over and allowed them to safely move their aircraft out of harm’s way. This concept is transferable to any number of circumstances in sports or business. On a business team, one member might best understand the situation with a client or the competition, allowing him or her to help guide the team to a critical and timely decision that creates opportunity or averts disaster. In sports, a particular player might be in the groove, able to see what the opponent is trying to do more quickly or readily than anyone else, and therefore be able to either defend against it effectively or exploit that awareness offensively and create a win for the team.

Exercising authority is really a direct reflection of leaders’ fundamental beliefs and philosophy about leadership. It reflects how they do or do not adapt to the environment or circumstances when required. Ultimately, it reflects who they are as a leader.

As good leaders develop over time, they will learn to embrace the opportunity to exercise their authority. Confident and effective leaders are not threatened by delegating their authority. Either explicitly or implicitly, good leaders encourage their people to take charge and lead. This not only broadens the effectiveness of the overall team, but also builds trust, innovation, timely and intuitive decision-making, and effective and rapid responses from the team. In the final analysis, a good leader exercises authority by maintaining it when and where appropriate, delegating it when necessary, and ultimately retaining it at all times.

Following are four best practices for exercising authority:
• Know the boundaries of your authority: It takes courage to give up control and let new or less experienced members of the team take control, but this is the only way they will learn and become better leaders. You will reap the rewards of this approach as your team members become more knowledgeable on how you would approach a decision and thus are able to make decisions on their own.

• Remain confident: Delegating authority is not a threat to a leader’s authority. You still retain your position of authority and have the ability to make the final call if necessary. Remembering this is key to appropriately exercising authority.

• Provide teaching moments: After allowing a team member to take the reins, go over the situation with them afterward, highlighting what they did right and what could use improvement. This will reinforce the idea of empowered execution and improve their decision-making in the future.

• Create a personal checklist: Are you providing equilibrium in your approach to leading and decision-making? Could you more effectively communicate your philosophy as a leader to your team? Is your attitude negatively affecting your team? Are you inhibiting individual thought? Are you learning from other leaders?

It’s time to dust off your virtual environment skills, and no it not just like riding a bike! Unfortunately, it’s more like skiing after having skipped a couple of seasons. You get back on the slope way too confident before finding out the hard way just how much those muscles have atrophied. Operating in the virtual environment isn’t as easy as it looks and beware of those that think it is! There are some real “gotcha” differences between being literally versus virtually in the same room.

Facilitating engagements of any kind is hard enough and not a natural skill for most. Rather than try to relearn our bicycle riding skills, let’s just focus on some of the major muscle movements (big needle movers) that any of us can deploy immediately when leading or participating in the virtual environment (VE).

Understanding the VE should include recognizing some of its advantages, challenges and basic things to consider when spending time there. Advantages range from being able to work from almost anywhere leading to a potentially improved work life balance. Having technical issues or being distracted by barking dogs and vacuums present typical challenges, but they pale in comparison to the lack of an entire dimension of communication simply because you can’t see the expressions on the faces of your colleagues. It’s important to remember that when we operate virtually listeners tend to have shorter attention spans, and we should recognize that big personalities tend to become bigger, and small ones smaller. Team bonding is difficult, and finally, it’s way too easy find yourself loitering around your work too long.

Since we spend the majority of virtual time in meetings, there are some critical things to do before, during and after to make these engagements more effective.

Before
Preparation is key for both the leader and participants. First, determine the overarching purpose of the meeting, three to four key objectives that need to occur during the meeting to achieve that purpose, and the tasks required to successfully accomplish each objective. That and that alone should drive your agenda and determine the participants. Plan the logistics and determine the best medium to support the meeting, then get it out there to the participants so that they can come prepared to play their expected role.

During
Set up the venue well ahead of time, make sure it all works and that you know how to use it. Set the stage for participants by reminding them of the purpose and objectives. Remind them of some basic rules of engagement, and that you will be enforcing them through the meeting. The first-time folks start going down a rat hole (which they will), remove all doubt by stopping the conversation and immediately getting them back on track. Since facilitating is hard enough under normal conditions, it’s important to enlist someone to help capture information so the leader can stay focused on facilitating the crowd and keeping the train on the tracks. Participants need to come prepared, on time, stay engaged and in their lane throughout. Finally, always end with a quick review and validate any action steps.

After
More important than ever is to review, clarify, and circulate action items for the entire team. Share the findings of the meeting with the necessary team members and be sure everyone is clear on their next steps. Because this is a new environment, it never hurts to call out what worked and what didn’t to help establish a more effective battle rhythm with your meetings over time.

Tips & Techniques
While these tips and techniques apply in any setting, they are particularly important virtually and they are all things that each of us can control. Establish and prepare the Setting that allows you to focus and minimizes distractions. Effective Listening or listening to understand what people are saying versus listening to respond. Effective Questions: asking questions that elicit substantive and relevant responses. Using Media Effectively, most importantly using the right media and technology, and secondly knowing how to use it. Engagement Triggers involves using mechanisms that keep people engaged without making them feel like they are on the spot. This is particularly important since you can’t see who is paying attention and who isn’t.

Maintain Balance & Control, involves the facilitator not letting anyone dominate, or others hide during the meeting, ensuring relevant input from appropriate participants, and participants staying engaged in their role.  Finally, Maintaining Tempo: it’s hard enough to stay focused under normal conditions and the VE can be even more taxing. Keeping participants on track and on time will not only establish more effective engagements and meeting credibility, it will likely reduce the number of meetings needed in the long run.

As a way of wrapping up, let’s take a look at some do’s and don’ts for everyone involved:

Leaders

• Don’t invite unnecessary people to the meeting/ Do ID them based on meeting Purpose
• Don’t play favorites/Do give attention and floor time appropriately
• Don’t give up control/Do act as the only facilitator
• Don’t run over the designated time/Do start & end on time
• Don’t repeat/Do rearticulate only those issues that are unclear

Participants

• Don’t assume what you can’t see/Do assume positive intent by the speaker
• Don’t dominate or interrupt/Do respect your colleagues time and input, share the crayons
• Don’t “Hot Mic” or refuse to go on mute when you aren’t participating in the conversation/Do keep your mic and video on mute unless asked otherwise or you need to engage
• Don’t status what we can read ahead of time/Do come prepared
• Don’t multitask/Do respect your colleagues. They are participating, you should too

Don’t let working in a virtual environment stop you from continuing critical development initiatives in your organization. For a more in depth look at these concepts as well as help deploying them take a look at our short webinar, Leading in a Virtual Environment (LIVE) and its accompanied downloadable tools.

“Gentlemen…this is a football!” Every year in late summer, rookies, walk-ons and old-timers alike would assemble on a training field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The anxiety and tension were palpable as they gathered around the veteran coach in hopes of gleaning some football wisdom from him and maybe even having some of his magic rub off on them. Vince Lombardi started every pre-season training session of his career the same way, holding up the pigskin and reiterating those now-famous words. It was immediately followed by a discussion about the role of the ball, its impact on the game, walking the gridiron together and rediscovering the length and breadth of the field, its boundaries, the rules…in short: revisiting the basics. Vince Lombardi understood that in the final analysis, regardless of your level of experience or natural abilities, success isn’t found in the complexities of the game or the sophistication of your strategy, but very simply in executing the fundamentals soundly and effectively.

Facilitation, like any other skill, is about mastering the fundamentals in order to be as effective as possible, but we must first understand what those fundamentals are. In looking at the facilitation playing field and its boundaries, we’ve had to learn as Mark Twain said: “To not let schooling interfere with our education!” That said, we have broken from the traditional view and redefined what our experience has taught us the fundamentals of good and effective facilitation really are.

Ask anyone what “facilitation” means and they will likely describe anything from keeping an audience engaged to running a meeting (and any number of other like descriptions in between). In most cases though, those descriptions are referring only to the actual engagement itself. While none of these descriptors are in and of themselves wrong, truly good and effective facilitation encompasses so much more than just this typical, but limited view. We’ve discovered over the past 30 years as leaders and facilitators that good and effective facilitation encompasses seven key elements: Session Organization, Preparation, Standards, Flexibility, Technique, Subtleties, and Self-Awareness. Dissect a good facilitation, and its anatomy will reveal that aspects of these elements are applied across three critical phases: Pre-facilitation, Conduct of the facilitation, and Post-facilitation, or simply put, what must happen before, during, and after facilitation to make it as effective as possible.

Session Organization involves coordinating administrative and logistics requirements across all of the phases. Preparation is about ensuring the facilitator understands the purpose, the plan, and the environment of the facilitation before walking into the room. Standards are those absolute things that should ALWAYS occur during the conduct of any facilitation. Flexibility means just that; good facilitators must be able to assimilate and adapt their plan in order to meet the objectives. Techniques are skills that can be applied in order to maximize the facilitation or overcome challenges. Subtleties are more advanced techniques that are the result of years of facilitation experience, but can still help accelerate a facilitator’s growth and yield a higher impact session. Finally, Self-Awareness is about a facilitator understanding how they are coming across during a session, and those things they can do to ensure their impression does not distract from accomplishing the objectives. Any of these elements applied individually can improve how a session runs. Applied in combination though, these elements can have an exponential effect on the outcome of the session and the individual and collective experience of the group.

Like every good mission or project, getting organized and having a plan dramatically improves the chances of success. This requires the facilitator to take time to develop a plan, adequately prepare for and execute that plan, and provide documentation to the participants. That means that certain tasks need to be accomplished and standards applied in each of the three phases. The Pre-Facilitation phase involves the facilitator getting with the appropriate leaders and identifying what the intent of the session is, and what needs to be accomplished during that time. Developing a plan and coordinating the logistics to ensure the intent is met is what postures the facilitator and the participants for success. Conduct of the Facilitation is where the facilitator applies the standards and employs the necessary techniques required to effectively execute the plan and meet the intended objectives. Finally, the Post-Facilitation ensures a record of the actions required and the agreement made during the session. It gives teeth to the outcome of the facilitation, and a means of accountability that is normally missing from most facilitations we’ve experienced. It is the combination of these three phases that provides a level of rigor and organization before, during, and after a session that makes this concept of facilitation unique, and ultimately yields a much more effective and successful session than the traditional approach.

While good facilitators can make it look easy, facilitation can be a challenging responsibility even for experienced leaders. Recognizing first that it is a skill set that needs to be learned and practiced, and then applying some of these techniques can go a long way towards getting the most out of any group collaboration. Mastering the basics takes time, but even the most inexperienced facilitator can apply these fundamentals and experience an immediate impact on any session they facilitate from a common meeting to a complex conference. Always remember, go back to the basics…”Gentlemen, this is a football!”

Contact us for more information on our high-impact, four-hour workshop titled “Facilitation Skills for Leaders.”