Presentation To NYC Based Leadership Group

In late September 2023, I presented to District Leaders Toastmasters club, an online Toastmasters club serving established and emerging Toastmasters leaders in greater New York City.

I was asked to offer comments to help these established leaders further enhance their leadership skills. To do this, I relied on my experience with similar presentations and audiences to;

1.    Acknowledge the past success of the group

2.    Discuss my background and credentials, and encourage the attendees to professionally and concisely present their credentials

3.    Request each attendee to privately note a stretch ambition

4.    Provide a speech structure to help them focus their teams inviting support for their ambition

 

Should you wish to see the presentation, it is available here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY6zFfOv950

Pursue Greater Personal Significance

 

On July 1^st and again on July 8^th, I present virtual keynotes to groups based in Toronto and in Singapore. One speech is 20 minutes long and the other is 15 minutes long. One session includes a 10-minute Q&A.

The theme of these talks will be Pursuing Greater Significance.  My objective is to encourage attendees to commit and achieve the goals assigned to their teams, while helping them to recognize that the skills and behaviors they will need to exhibit in achieving the team goals will serve each of them very well as they pursue other personal goals. If I am successful in helping the attendees define what greater significance means to each of them, and helping them see the link to team performance, then I will be successful. What would greater personal significance mean to you?

Pat Riley: The Winner Within

During the speech, I refer to a book from basketball executive, former player, and former coach Pat Riley.  Riley coached the NBA Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, and Miami Heat. I recently read his 1994 book The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players.

Riley has some tremendous stories to tell and amazing experiences. However, I found the book difficult to follow, because during long passages continuity was lost as the text veered from game 7 in the NBA finals, to a speech the author gave to some business executives, to thoughts on the Japanese car industry, to a touching story about a Vietnam veteran.  All of the content is good, but the abrupt switches made it difficult for me as a reader to organize and process the messages. Structure matters.

Team Goals

However, late in the book, on page 211 of the 272 pages in the copy I was reading, Riley offers a quote from a friend of his and I thought the quote was gold. I’ll use it in my speech.  The friend is identified as Dr. Lew Richardson.  He doesn’t seem to have a book, but if he did I would find it. The Richardson quote reads as;

“Teams break when they don’t have a goal, or the goals aren’t clearly defined by the leaders. Goals have to be firmly entrenched, otherwise, people begin to operate as independent entrepreneurs in a system that really needs cooperative work.”

Gold. This applies to basketball, and to any team sport.  It applies to any work team.  I note that this does not exclude individuality and individual achievement, but does assert that team goals need to be clear and team members need to direct energy and attention to accomplishing them. I will add that the goals, progress, and helpful behaviors require frequent reminders with the team.

Personal Significance

Within the speech, I will speak to my pursuit of significance in various roles including some in Toastmasters International, my past volunteer work with L’Arche, and my current mentorship work with newcomers to Saint John.

I plan to connect each attendee’s personal ambitions and search for significance, to the work and skills required for my audiences to meet their defined team goals.

If successful, I can further develop this new material and theme.

Assigned Goals & Some Feedback on Poor Performance

Did you ever receive a performance review indicating you had done absolutely no work on an assigned goal?  I have.

Do you usually set your own goals, or are your goals assigned to you? Do you easily accept any goals assigned to you?   I’ve struggled with this in the past when I wasn’t fully bought in, but over the years I became better at accepting assigned goals.  There were occurrences when I didn’t think the goals were fair or valid, and I put little effort to completing them.  One time I received a written performance appraisal stating exactly that.

Career Beginnings

I began my career writing computer code as a Cobol programmer.  I progressed well in the IT organization of the former New Brunswick Telephone Company. As my skills and ambitions grew, I decided I wanted to work in sales and marketing, so I took a position titled Application Analyst, which was a great job, although I didn’t fully realize it at the time. What appealed to me was that I would support sales people when they discussed technical solutions with customers, and this experience would enable me to transition to a sales and marketing position at a later date.

Using my technical skills, which were current at the time, I supported some customer software and hardware applications, and I accompanied sales people to discuss the art of the possible. I also performed some internal systems support.  There was tremendous variety in the job, and I learned a great deal, including the ability to manage multiple competing priorities. This is what I most appreciate looking back at the role.  

Very Direct Feedback

One year when planning my upcoming annual performance goals with my manager Phil, I was assigned the task of transferring an internal software application from a minicomputer to some other unspecified hardware, in order to speed up the remaining applications.  I was informed emphatically that my budget for this was zero. Zero.

I didn’t bother to clarify.  I didn’t seek to understand.  I decided he wasn’t serious. This goal clearly was not fair or valid. Then six months later I received my mid-year performance review.

In that review I received good comments in all areas but one, where the written comments indicated ‘Jim has done nothing to migrate the SAM system off the VS65 minicomputer.” That was accurate.  I guess more senior managers were more serious about getting this work done than I realized. (I still have that written review.  It’s a good reminder for me.)

After receiving this feedback, I interviewed some of the more senior managers to understand this better. I learned that the SAM system had been hogging system resources, and for many years there had been desire to migrate the application to another platform.  But it never got done, it never became a priority, it remained as an unglamorous piece of work, and frustration had mounted.

Additionally, the more senior managers knew that we had some decommissioned hardware that could operate the application on its own, although some complementary hardware would be needed.  So, I worked with some technicians and we got the work done, not without some of the twists, turns and surprises that occur with most IT projects.

Conclusion

It’s great when we can select our own goals. However, often organizations assign goals to people and work teams. Well aligned goals support other organizational objectives.

As leaders, we need to communicate clearly and frequently on the reasons goals were selected and assigned, and we need to communicate frequently on progress, and observed behaviors that will lead to goal attainment.

As team members, it is best to understand how assigned goals fit with other organizational objectives.  Regardless, as team members we do need to accept responsibility for working to achieve assigned goals.

Dealing With Team Conflict, Real And Perceived

Some years ago I was working on a project with a team comprised of senior leaders. On a conference call, I had a couple of awkward interactions with one of the team members. I felt that he made some dismissive comments in response to some of my comments after which there occurred some awkward silence.  So, I quickly emailed him and suggested we book time to talk.  And we did. It was scheduled for noon on a Thursday in my Atlantic time zone. 

As noon on that Thursday drew near, I was dreading the conversation.  At noon I called him and I began with ‘how’s the weather in your part of the world?’  He said it was fine and he asked the same of me. After I shared niceties about our fantastic weather in Saint John I quickly moved to the purpose of the conversation.   

I said ‘I get the feeling you are upset with me.’

He responded ‘No, I thought you were upset with me.’ 

I responded that I wasn’t and then we talked about our recent interactions.  We realized we had misinterpreted responses and intentions.  It was still a little awkward but a new and better awkward. 

What continues to amaze me about this interaction is that based on our misinterpretations, we created some weirdness in our relationship. If we had not addressed the perceived issues, I am confident that to this day that weirdness would persist, and if asked I’d be saying ‘I don’t know what it is, but we’ve never been comfortable working together.’ However, we addressed the issues early and we continue to comfortably do occasional work together. 

How To Manage One-On-One Conflict 

I write this because these scenarios of conflict are common.  Dealing with conflict, real or perceived, is one element of leadership.  Here is my approach or dealing with these scenarios;

1. Schedule a time to talk one on one

2. After niceties say something like ‘I get the sense you’re upset with me.’  It’s important to have specific examples ready, but start with a general statement as you might be entirely wrong on why the other person may be upset with you.  Don’t start with a specific example. 

3. If the other person doesn’t want to address the issue let it go.  There will be a future opportunity to try this approach again. 

4. If the person does want to address the conflict let her talk.  Your role is to listen and only say ‘I see,’ and ‘ok.’  This doesn’t mean you agree with all she is saying but you want to acknowledge that you’re listening.  When there is conflict, you’re dealing with emotion and you need to let the other person tell you why she has reacted as she has. Let her tell her full story. 

5. As the other person tells you how he feels you wronged him, he will likely lose eye contact as he replays the scene in his head and describes it to you. Just keep listening. 

6. Eventually the story will wind down. Be comfortable with some silence.  As the emotion is expunged, you’ll start to get eye contact again.  Test for completion with ‘Okay. I see.  Anything else?’  If there’s more, continue to listen. 

7. If there’s nothing more ask this key question, “Where do we go from here?’   90% of the time the other person will say ‘I just want to do my job, and I’m glad we had this conversation.’  If they don’t say that, that’s another level of conflict management and another article for another day.

8. In a team environment, your goal in managing conflict is to repair a working relationship, to be able to work together.  You might become friends in the future, but in most situations, we simply need to be respectful and learn to work together. 

Accepting That Conflict Will Occur

Differing view points about goals, strategies and results is not uncommon.  A disagreement about goals, strategies and results isn’t usually a personal attack. It’s always advisable to listen to other viewpoints and consider the pros and cons of other interpretations   We all want to be listened to and respected.

That said, when conflict occurs, or is perceived to be present, effective leaders work quickly to understand it, manage it and resolve it.