SETTING DIRECTION WITH FEEDBACK

Your phone just rang. On the line is the CEO, telling you about speculation that a major competitor plans to launch a new product. If that proves to be true, the CEO tells you, one of your company's major product lines will be impacted. The company needs to devise a strategy to respond. What do you do?

Your initial tendency is usually to get your team together in the nearest conference room and lay it all out for them—not only the situation at hand but also how you believe your team (department, division, and so on) should respond. After all, time is of the essence. The quicker you can get the word out to the team along with an action plan, the faster you can respond.

My reaction to this scenario, however, is an emphatic “No!”

Your first step as a leader in the process of setting a clear direction is to be a great listener. After all, as we discussed in the previous chapter, it's all about people. You have taken the time to develop a great team, and each member is aligned with the values of the company. They are engaged and empowered, and have complementary strengths and abilities. This is precisely the time that you need to draw upon the capabilities of the excellent team you've put together.

As a values-based leader who believes in gaining a balanced perspective, you are open to hearing everyone's opinion. Believing there are no bad ideas, you want as broad a set of potential actions and solutions as possible. Therefore, when you gather your team, your priority is listening, not talking. Although you may have your own opinion regarding the best way to proceed, you're not going to share it with the team at this point, because you don't want to limit or shut down any options before you even know what they are. Instead, you lay out the issue for the group and ask for their thoughts. In fact, you decide to give your input last. Your objective is a free-flowing discussion that is unencumbered by your own perspective.

When you, as a leader, tell people that you're listening to their feedback, you're likely to encounter some skepticism. Most people have had at least some experience with leaders who don't really listen. As they see it, leaders often engage in monologues, not dialogue. What may look like pauses to invite feedback are nothing more than breaths between sentences. Knowing that your team may be skeptical, at least initially, you need to think about how you communicate with them, in terms of both what you say and how you listen.

The first step is to let your team know that you really do want their thoughts and ideas. As you withhold your own comments and solicit their opinions, feedback may be slow at first. Don't rush in to fill in the blanks with your thoughts. Keep asking the question, “What ideas do you have to address this issue?”

Let your body language and facial expression broadcast that you are truly listening to every person's comments. Give the person speaking your full attention without letting yourself be sidetracked by distractions. Articulate team members' different viewpoints back to the team. A summarizing statement, such as “What I hear you saying is ...,” will let them know that you really understand their perspectives.

To know what people are really thinking, you need to make the environment safe for those who are willing to speak up and give feedback. People must see that you don't just tolerate being challenged; rather, you demand that they challenge you. They should actually be rewarded for challenging you! However, your team probably won't believe this until they experience it for themselves. Their doubtfulness may have nothing to do with you. Their last boss, either internally or at a different company, may have seen feedback as a personal affront. Whatever the reason for their hesitation, for your team, seeing will be believing.

Here's a real-world example from my own career. As I mentioned earlier, one of the challenges in a large, complex global company is to determine whether to focus on running each of the business units globally across multiple geographies, or to run the company on a geographic basis with each country or region responsible for the businesses in that location. When I was CFO of Baxter, I was asked to address this very problem. To find the best approach, I decided to get as much input as possible.

First, I spoke to business and geographic leaders within Baxter, as well as executives at other multinational companies, such as IBM, Kraft, and Emerson Electric. I wanted to gather as many different perspectives as possible. Then I pulled together the senior team and discussed the pros and cons of various approaches. When I was asked what I thought made the most sense, I explained that the global business model had a lot of appeal given that our competitors operated globally and given the impact of technology on these businesses. Then I asked the team for their input about what made the most sense.

One of the senior geographic leaders, Carlos del Salto, pointed out that although my observations did make sense, he wondered if I had taken into account the fact that each geography had very different customer requirements, and that the sales and marketing process was also very different in each country. Carlos challenged me as to why we needed to have only one solution across the entire company. Could there be another approach?

As I reflected on his comment, I realized that he was right. The final decision was to implement his recommendation. Businesses would operate globally across the United States and Europe, but would operate geographically in South America, Canada, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Given his expertise and passion for the topic, Carlos ended up running all the geographic areas. Once again, the goal was not for me to be right but to do the right thing by drawing on the expertise and knowledge of the entire team.