01

Become an Inspirational Leader

Leaders need vision, energy, authority, and a natural strategic ability. But those traits won’t help you inspire your employees to be their best and commit to you as a leader. Here are the four qualities you need to capture the hearts, minds, and spirits of your people:

• Humanness. Nobody wants to work with a perfect leader. Build collaboration and solidarity by revealing your weaknesses.
• Intuition. To be most effective, you need to know what’s going on without others spelling it out for you. Collect unspoken data from body language and the looks people share across rooms to help you intuit the underlying messages.
• Tough empathy. Care deeply about your employees, but accept nothing less than their very best.
• Uniqueness. Demonstrate that you are a singular leader by showing your unique qualities to those around you.

02

Become a Creative Leader

Yesterday’s leadership skills will not work in today’s fast-moving and evolving world. Only creative leaders who are visionary and empathetic will succeed. Here are five things you can do to succeed as a creative leader:

• Instead of commanding, coach your team and organization toward success.
• Don’t manage people; facilitate them. Often, the know-how, experience, and solutions are there; help people to discover them.
• Cultivate respect by giving it, instead of demanding it.
• Know how to manage both success and failure, not just success.
• Be gracious. Be humble about your successes and, whenever possible, give someone else the opportunity to shine.

03

Lead Confidently

Confidence is a key ingredient in leading effectively. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s easier to know your weaknesses than your strengths. Ask yourself these two questions to help find your self-confidence:

• What do you do well? Make a list of your strengths. These items are not the same as the accomplishments on your résumé; they are what made those accomplishments possible. How will your strengths lead you to future success?
• Why should people follow you? Look at situations where you mobilized yourself and your team to face a particularly tough challenge. Why did people believe in your ability to get things done and trust that you were the one to follow?

04

Master the Fundamentals

There are countless opinions on how to be an effective leader, but it’s important not to forget the basics. Here are five rules for mastering the fundamentals of leadership:

• Shape the future. Articulate where your company or division is going and be sure everyone around you understands the direction.
• Make things happen. Once you know where you’re headed, focus on how. Again, be sure all of your people know what executing will take.
• Engage today’s talent. Make the most of your people; engage and inspire them to do their best.
• Build tomorrow’s talent. Find and build the talent you need for future success.
• Invest in yourself. You can never be a perfect leader; find ways to continually build your skills and become better.

05

Keep It Simple

Every generation of leaders thinks it’s facing a new set of challenges that require new models of leadership. But being an effective manager is not about mastering mysterious and complicated methods. It’s about keeping it simple and following old, proven, and even obvious ideas. What made a good leader in the past is still what makes one today: being competent, caring, and benevolent. Before you discard this old model in exchange for the latest reinvention of management, take a close look at the new method. Often it’s the same message in a new package.

06

Avoid the Tendencies of Bad Bosses

Being the boss is hard, especially when you need to counter the natural tendencies that separate you from the people you manage. Recognizing these tendencies can help you avoid them. Here are the top three to watch out for:

• Self-delusion. Not only do bosses have this tendency; the majority of people estimate their skills to be higher than they are in reality. Be aware that you might be self-aggrandizing and find ways to get input and evaluations that show you your true skills.
• Heedlessness. Those in positions of power are watched carefully by the people below them. But that level of attention is often not reciprocated. When you become the head honcho, don’t forget to remain curious about and engaged with your direct reports.
• Insulation. No one wants to deliver bad news to the boss, so the boss often doesn’t know the full story. Create a culture in which the messenger isn’t shot, but is lauded for bringing important information forward.

07

Don’t Be a Martyr

The best bosses shelter their people from disruption and stress. But you shouldn’t put your employees’ happiness first all the time. Sacrificing yourself will only lead to burnout and resentment. This is especially true if you have weak or destructive people on your team. Whether you hired or inherited them, your job is to help them improve and, if they don’t, to help them move on.

08

Be a Both/And Leader

In today’s tough economy, should leaders be dogged, analytic, and organized or should they be empathic, charismatic, and communicative? The answer is simple: they need all those traits. Rather than categorizing yourself as a certain type of leader, explore the nuances that a complex, fast-moving business environment requires. Leaders need to confidently deliver tough messages with analytics as evidence, but they also need to be sensitive to how people receive those messages. Most leadership traits are not an either/or choice, but rather complementary sides of effective management.

09

Give Your People What They Need

Traditional leaders see the employee-boss relationship as a transaction: money in exchange for labor. Transformational leaders know and recognize that employees want much more than that. Here are the four things your people need to succeed:

• Love. This may sound touchy-feely, but love simply means concern that is focused exclusively for that person’s good. Show your employees you care about them and their future.
• Growth. No one wants to stay exactly where they are forever. Create a culture that allows your people to grow and expand.
• Contribution. To feel fulfilled, employees must know that they are contributing to the whole. Emphasize the ways that their work matters to the organization.
• Meaning. People seek meaning in their work. Share a vision that demonstrates how all of your employees are engaged in a larger purpose.

10

Improve Your Team’s Performance

Managing your team’s performance is a challenge no matter what the environment. Take the extra time and effort to help your team members succeed:

• Offer perspective. Relieve pressure by encouraging them to have fun and remind them work is not the only thing in their lives.
• Make time. Devote attention to all your team members, not just the stars. It’s easy to focus on A+ performers, but success relies on everyone doing his or her job well.
• Move on. When something doesn’t go as planned, acknowledge the setback and move on.
• Focus on team success. Celebrate what the team has accomplished together, rather than individual achievements.

11

Support Your People

Countless distractions, threats, and roadblocks prevent people from getting work done. Good bosses take pride in shielding their people from these annoyances. Here are three ways you can help your employees focus on what matters:

• Show up on time. One of the biggest detractors from work is wasted time, possibly time your people spend waiting for you to arrive for meetings or give needed direction. Being important doesn’t give you permission to impede productivity.
• Stop the intrusions. Set aside time for your employees to think and work; don’t expect them to respond immediately to voice mail and e-mails.
• Let them have good fights. Don’t avoid conflict. Make your people feel safe enough to speak their minds, even to you, so they have productive and creative disagreements.

12

Bring Out Their Best

The brightest leaders don’t rely on their own intelligence just to succeed, but use it to help their people shine as well. Here are three ways you can help your employees not only feel smarter, but act smarter:

• Look for ideas everywhere. Don’t assume you know where all the new and creative ideas will come from. Involve people on projects not because of their titles but based on their ability to contribute.
• Encourage openness. Create a safe environment where your people know they can—and should—think, act, and speak with reason. Have a high tolerance for mistakes so people aren’t afraid to take risks.
• Challenge people to get better. Offer opportunities for them to stretch their thinking and behavior. Set the expectation that everyone, including you, should improve his or her skills.

13

Pat Employees on the Back

An abundance of studies have demonstrated the power of touch on everything from rhesus monkeys to students in a classroom. A pat on the back or a brief touch on the shoulder can express support and reassurance, making the recipient more willing to take risks and improving his decision making. Next time you want to communicate support to a colleague, convey your intention through a small touch. Often times, contact can be more powerful than words. Use touch sparingly though, and don’t linger. It only takes a brief moment of contact or a verbal “pat on the back.”

14

Let Your Employees Fail

Good management is somewhere between controlling and ignoring; your job as a manager is to figure out the right balance. When you see an employee making a mistake, you may want to intervene. But people don’t learn by being told how to do something right. Stop yourself from interfering. Let your employee make the mistake and then help her adjust to get it right the next time. Of course, you do need to assess the risks and the consequences of failure; if your employee is about to present a flawed report to the CEO, intervene. But when the risks are lower, be prepared to watch and endure more failure than you might be comfortable with.

15

Make a Mistake or Two

Very few people feel comfortable making mistakes at work. They fear that they will lose the respect of their managers and peers, and that they will tarnish their reputations. Yet mistakes are often the best teachers. Your people won’t learn something new if they only do things they know well. Create a mistake-making culture. Encourage your people to take risks. Help them accept their gaffes and share what they’ve learned from them. Of course, there are times when blunders are too costly. But for those less mission-critical times, ask your people to approach problems not as experts but as learners.

16

Forgive but Don’t Forget

Common wisdom holds that failure is inevitable, especially when innovating. If you want people to take risks and try new things, failure must be an option. But few organizations have actually created cultures that accept gaffes. To show your support for failure, encourage your people to make the most of their blunders. Try adopting a “forgive but don’t forget” approach. Forgive honest mistakes, but make sure employees learn from past failures so they don’t repeat them.

17

Have Your Employees’ Backs

In tough times, people feel more vulnerable, and their senses of safety and confidence can easily evaporate. Never has it been more important to watch out for your employees. A boss who supports her people provides emotional and material relief. Don’t assume that your employees know that you’d go above and beyond for them. Clearly tell them that you have their backs. And, since actions always speak louder than words, take every opportunity to demonstrate your unwavering support and avoid creating situations in which it seems everyone is for him- or herself.

18

Avoid the Unilateral-Thinking Trap

Your employees want to see you take action. But to make smart decisions, you need input. If you’re like most managers, you probably seek input from people you know best. That can lead you to gather ideas only from those who share your viewpoints. Result? Unilateral thinking: everyone adopting the same point of view.

Unilateral thinking is good for cheerleading squads, but it’ll get your unit into trouble. To avoid this trap, make certain your people feel free (and safe) to voice opinions and ideas contrary to the prevailing thought in your group. Go out of your way to seek alternate approaches to problems—from maverick thinkers and those you don’t know as well.

19

Embrace Diversity Tension

Diversity is a strong asset for a company: differences of ideas, methods, and competencies are advantages for teamwork and problem solving. These differences, however, can also cause stress and strain. Don’t try to minimize that tension. Instead, use it as a force for productivity and creativity. Prepare your employees to understand others without judging differences; create an inclusive environment where people feel valued for their skills; and emphasize the complementary skills that diversity brings. Finally, recognize and reward successes that result from diversity. By embracing the tension instead of trying to mitigate it, your team will be able to produce more imaginative and creative results.

20

Develop a Culture of Trust

Leadership should not be a solitary act. Leaders need to surround themselves with people who will challenge their ideas, point out their shortcomings, and tell it like it is. To be an effective manager, you need to ensure that honest opinions and information reach you. Get your people to bother you by bothering them. Open-door policies are well intentioned, but you need to go further. Develop a culture of trust and openness. Show your people that you reward candor and that the more they bother you, the better.

21

Resolve Conflicts

Working with teams can be a frustrating experience, especially when seemingly straightforward conflict devolves into personal or protracted disputes. Next time your team members start throwing proverbial punches, take these three steps to get them to stop fighting and start working:

• Intervene early. The sooner you step in, the better. A simple disagreement can turn into a serious conflict within seconds when emotions are running high.
• Focus on team norms. Refer back to something the parties can agree on or, hopefully, already have agreed on. Use team norms to guide behavior and help the parties identify common ground.
• Create shared agreement. To reach an accord, have the team members talk it through. With all parties’ cards on the table, facilitate an outcome that is amenable to all. Avoid a lowest-common-denominator solution. Instead, find one that integrates all parties’ interests.

22

Motivate Employees Set in Their Ways

Employees who are slow to react can be frustrating, especially in environments where responding and adapting to change quickly is imperative. However, don’t assume these slow pokes are trying to undermine progress or resist change. They may have very good reasons for their response times. Next time you’re waiting for someone’s input, go talk to him. Explain that you are all under pressure and that you value his response. Ask that he get back to you quickly—within a day or so. He may have a thoughtful rationale for proceeding cautiously, and when he realizes that the matter is in his hands, he may speed things up.

23

Drive Real Change

Getting people to change their behavior can feel like an impossible task. Even when the change is positive, people find it difficult to embrace something new. Here are three ways to approach change to make it more palatable:

• Focus on joy, not fear. Fear may seem like a powerful motivator, but it actually can make people freeze. Instead, focus on the positives of the new behavior and the joy people will derive from it.
• Create the crowd. Despite our professed love of individuality, people still want to fit in with the crowd. Have someone people respect model the new behavior.
• Harness momentum. One bank got customers to change their saving habits by rounding up their debit card purchases and putting the extra in a savings account. Make the new behavior easy to master by integrating it with something people already do.

24

Assess Behaviors, Not Just Results

When star employees churn out great results, you might be tempted to pat them on the back and ask them to keep doing whatever it is they’re doing. However, your job as a manager is to understand the behaviors that drive those results and ensure they are in line with your company’s values. Here are two ways to do that:

1. Give separate ratings for behavior and results. When you combine the two, you can easily give employees a pass for bad behavior when they’re producing positive outcomes. Assessing them separately ensures that you can give fair behavior ratings without obscuring the business results.
2. Use 360-degree assessments. These are better at assessing behaviors and their impact on other employees. Use the findings to set behavioral goals that each employee can work toward, such as “treat my team with respect.”

25

Give Better Feedback

Feedback is essential to your development as a professional. So why is it so painful to give and receive? Here are three tips to help you give constructive feedback that works:

1. Focus on business outcomes. Explain what the company needs—talent development, sales growth, improved service—and frame your feedback as a way to reach those outcomes.
2. Give it often. When feedback is reserved for semiannual reviews, people rarely receive it well. Give feedback regularly. You will be more practiced, and your people will be more accustomed to hearing it.
3. Be specific. Identify the specific behavior that a person needs to change. State clearly what you want her to do differently. Use illustrative examples that help the receiver understand exactly what you mean.

26

Don’t Just Communicate, Explain

Good communicators know they need to use energy and enthusiasm to persuade their audience. Great communicators know they also need to explain what all the excitement is about. Next time you need to share something important, be sure you convey enthusiasm, but also clearly explain what is at stake and answer the question, “What does it mean?” Lay out what the issue, initiative, or problem is—and be clear about what it isn’t. Use metaphors only if they are helpful to your point and share details that support your claims. Then, define what you want people to do by establishing clear expectations. Don’t lose or confuse your audience with too many details, though; save those for written communications.

27

Master the Art of Being Assertive

Overly assertive bosses can be seen as bullying and overbearing. But bosses who tend to hold back may be considered wimps. Good bosses find a balance between the two. This doesn’t mean you should try to be assertive all the time. Instead, be prepared to use both approaches in different situations. Your team members may need you to challenge them to accomplish a particularly tough goal. Or you may need to be more passive to let them step up. Be flexible. Use your emotional intelligence to determine when being assertive will be motivating rather than stifling, and laying low will be appropriate rather than discouraging.

28

Create a Mentoring Culture

Encouraging older and younger employees to share knowledge, ideas, and advice makes sense. But old-school, top-down programs in which mentors and protégés are assigned to each other don’t work as well as relationships that come about organically.

Help mentors and protégés find each other by starting with specific work needs, when one person can contribute to another’s project or goal. This establishes the initial relationship in a comfortable, useful way. Later, if the chemistry between the two proves strong, the relationship may evolve into a broader discussion of career goals and personal aspirations.

29

Empower Your Employees

Successful leaders empower their people to make decisions, share information, and take risks. Here are three ways to get out of your people’s way and let them take ownership:

• Give responsibility and autonomy. Let those who demonstrate the capacity to handle responsibility take on new levels of accountability and have autonomy for their tasks and resources.
• Focus on growth. Create an environment where people have the opportunity to expand their skills and are rewarded for doing so.
• Don’t second-guess. Unless absolutely necessary, don’t doubt the decisions of others. This undermines their confidence and encourages them to hold back when they have ideas.

30

Focus Your People on What They’re Best At

Most performance review systems set an ideal image of how an employee should act and then point out how each employee uniquely fails to meet that ideal. We call these failures “development areas” and encourage people to focus their energy on improving them. However, improving on weaknesses takes a tremendous amount of energy. Instead, focus your people on their strengths. Encourage them to do what they are uniquely good at. Most importantly, accept their weaknesses. If someone isn’t good at spreadsheets, ask another person to do them instead. If you can’t take away that part of his job, help him improve enough so it doesn’t hinder his strengths.

31

Identify Hidden Talents

Finding external talent to fill your company’s needs isn’t always possible. Nor is it always necessary. By paying attention and asking the right questions, you will likely discover a myriad of hidden talents among your existing employees:

• Turn a compliment into an interview. When congratulating an employee on a job well done, ask exactly what helped her succeed. By better understanding her process, you may uncover an unseen strength.
• Ask why employees prefer certain tasks or projects. Preferences can be a view into someone’s talents. An employee might enjoy a project because it involves a product she cares about or because it gave her a chance to design surveys. By learning which, you will possibly uncover talents.
• Inquire about dreams. Ask your employees what they would do if they had their career to do over again. Peoples’ dreams often include an aspect of themselves they don’t regularly share.

32

Use Action Learning

One of your most crucial jobs as a manager is to help develop your direct reports’ leadership capabilities. Action learning can help. Through action learning, individuals work through actual business problems and apply lessons learned to new challenges. Here’s how it works:

• Assign an employee a substantial, important project that is “in plan” and for which failure would have visible consequences.
• Deliver some feedback that’s relevant to the employee and the context in which she will be learning.
• Debrief her on the experience of tackling the project, reviewing with her the results she achieved and how.
• Articulate the results’ business implications.
• Help her transfer the lessons learned to future projects.

The more relevant the challenge and the higher the stakes, the more action learning stretches your employees and the more they learn.

33

Participate in Their Stories

Motivating employees to higher levels of performance is a challenge for most leaders. Often people are motivated to do things simply because it feeds into the story they tell themselves. For example, your star performer regularly exceeds your expectations because she tells herself that she is the kind of person who impresses others, or a team member triple-checks a document because he is the kind of person who doesn’t make mistakes. You can fuel internal motivation by understanding and supporting these stories. First take notice of what kind of person your employee wants to be. Then articulate how what you need done fits into or even enhances that image.

34

Manage Your Smartest People

The people in your organization who have the largest capacity to add value are not necessarily those who have the best titles or the most impressive educations. Also, they may not be the easiest people to manage. Here are three do’s and don’ts for leading the smartest people in the room:

• Do explain things and persuade them. Don’t tell them what to do. Smart people don’t take a leader’s word at face value; they need to understand why you’re asking them to do something.
• Do use your expertise. Don’t use your hierarchy. Smart people aren’t impressed with titles.
• Do tell them what to do. Don’t tell them how to do it. Smart people enjoy figuring out how to do things and will almost always rise to the challenge.

35

Leverage Your Best People

Too often managers unintentionally hinder or discourage their star performers. This counterproductive behavior is not ill intended. Often the manager isn’t sure how to motivate someone who is exceptionally talented. If you are lucky enough to have such high performers on your team, try these three things to make the most of them:

• Push them to the next level. Stretch and challenge stars. Find out what they are good at and what they need to learn, and craft assignments accordingly.
• Let them shine. Don’t hide your stars. Give them visibility. Let others know what they are doing. When they look good, you do too.
• Let them go. Top performers need room to grow. If it makes sense for their development, let them move on.

36

Give Feedback to High Performers

Don’t assume your high performer knows how good she is. Instead, use these three tips to give her the feedback she wants and deserves:

• Identify development areas. There may only be a few, and you may need to work hard to identify and articulate them, but help your star understand what she can improve.
• Show your appreciation. Failing to say thank you is a simple and common mistake. Your stars need feedback and praise just as much as everyone else.
• Give feedback often. Don’t wait for review time. High performers thrive off feedback, and your job is to give it frequently.

37

Give the Gift of Time and Space

For the past thirty years, the MacArthur Foundation has awarded “genius grants” to creative achievers to support their pursuit of new ideas. With virtually no restrictions on the money and no obligations required of the recipient, the awards are a vote of confidence in what the recipient is capable of achieving, given the luxury of time. Next time you want a talented employee to pursue a new idea, give out a genius grant of your own. It doesn’t need to be money; you can give slack time so that your star has breathing room to explore her idea. Giving these awards not only will result in useful new ideas, but will signal to your people that you value creativity and are willing to invest time and resources in cultivating it.

38

Don’t Forget to Manage

The distinction between leading and managing is a subject of ongoing debate. Leading is often characterized as the more glamorous job: leaders guide, influence, and inspire their people, while managers implement ideas and get things done. But leaders who focus exclusively on coming up with big, vague ideas for others to implement can become disconnected from their team or organization. Avoid being a “big-picture only” leader. Make decisions and develop strategies that take into account the real-world constraints of cost and time. Stay involved with the details of implementation. Sure, it’s easier to come up with ideas and tell others to make them so, but you also need to roll up your sleeves and understand what those ideas take to become reality.

39

Inspire Your Team

As a manager, one of your key responsibilities is to inspire your team members—to motivate them to give their best on the job, make difficult changes, and overcome major obstacles. Your communication skills can make or break your ability to provide inspiration.

To sharpen up, practice framing a call to action as a challenge; for example, “We can turn our struggling business unit around.” This approach lets your people know that if they want a new and better team, they’ll have to work for it. You’ll lead the charge, but you need their support. As you present the challenge, communicate a sense of hope that will help your team push through the tough choices necessary to survive and succeed.

40

Engage Your Team

Team meetings are supposed to be collaborative events. If you are doing all the talking and your team members are doing all the listening, something’s not right. Here are two ways to revive your team and get them to share their best thinking:

• Share your ideas sparingly. You may be tempted to share all of your genius ideas up front. Instead, share one or two suggestions at a time. By limiting your comments, you give others the chance to contribute.
• Ask lots of questions. Don’t worry about having all of the answers. Ask insightful questions that spark discussion. When people speak up, ask them to clarify their ideas so others can understand.

41

Trust Your Team

Although skepticism has its merits, trust is crucial to team effectiveness. To cultivate trust among your team members, place your trust in them first. Show them you believe they are competent and capable. Value their contributions by trusting them with increasingly challenging tasks and give them the autonomy they need to shine. Leaders who “test” employees can do serious harm to the overall well-being of the team. Trust is a two-way street, and the sooner you start down your side, the sooner your employees will accelerate down theirs.

42

Give the Right Directions

All too often people work really hard on a project without fully understanding how their efforts contribute to the organization’s overall goals. Next time your team isn’t sure where it’s headed, take these three steps:

• Don’t assume everyone knows the strategy. Don’t make the mistake of presuming that just because executives have shared the strategy, your people understand it.
• Confirm shared understanding. Sketch out a “from-to” chart that shows where your organization is now and where it is headed. Share this with your boss and your team to be sure you are all on the same page.
• Connect the dots. With your team, create two lists: one of the major projects, and one of the organization’s goals. Draw lines between the two lists. If there are projects that don’t line up, consider refocusing or killing them.

43

Take the Extreme Question Challenge

A leader, especially a smart one, might be tempted to provide her team with all of the answers. However, a smarter leader knows that allowing her team to contribute ideas is not only good for the team, but makes for better results. To counter your tendency to do all of the talking, pick a meeting or conversation and commit to leading it by asking questions. Start by presenting a query that will spark discussion. Ask clarifying questions to dig deeper and better understand the ideas. Then use questions to determine next steps. You might find it difficult to avoid chiming in with a statement or suggestion, but holding your tongue ensures that others will use theirs.

44

Don’t Cry Wolf

If you claim that every project or task is critical, your employees will soon ignore your sense of urgency and do things at their own pace (which is likely too slow for you). If everything is important or urgent, then nothing truly is. Use relativity to convey when a project is really critical to your organization or unit. Be selective about when you apply pressure or claim that something has high impact on your goals. The less often you raise alarm, the more likely your team is to respond how you want it to.

45

Get Rid of Negativity

Every organization, unit, or team has both good and bad. As a boss, is it your job to accentuate the positive or eliminate the negative? You should try to do both, but studies have shown that negative information, experiences, and people have a far deeper impact than positive ones. A better use of your time and energy is to focus on clearing your organization of the negatives as much as you can. This may mean tearing down frustrating obstacles or shielding people from destructive behavior. Grumpiness, laziness, and nastiness are contagious, and by reducing those types of negativity you give your people a better chance of success.

46

Battle Change Resistance

Any change effort is likely to face a few resisters. Unfortunately, even if these resisters are few and far between, they can quickly erode momentum and stop change in its tracks. Here are four tools to help you get people on board:

• Cold hard facts. Use evidence to show that change is necessary and possible. Get your facts from multiple sources and be diligent about details; even a small error can discredit your case for change.
• Counterarguments. Know what your opponents are saying, and be prepared to acknowledge their concerns and offer a compelling argument for your case.
• Big picture. In the short term, change is uncomfortable. Look at the big picture and explain why the change is the right thing for the long term.
• Repetition and pressure. Stay on message, repeat your best arguments, and apply the necessary pressure to turn around the change-averse people.

47

Align Employee and Company Priorities

Lucky managers find that their employees’ interests naturally align with company priorities. If you’re not one of the lucky ones, here are three ways to line up what your employees care about with what your company needs to get done:

• Know your employees’ priorities. Don’t wait for review time. Regularly ask your employees what they personally care most about. As a manager, you need to know what drives them.
• Communicate company priorities. Tell employees what the company needs to achieve in the next week, month, and year. Be clear and consistent, and do this often.
• Align interests to responsibilities. Now that both agendas are clear, try as much as possible to channel employees’ interests into relevant company priorities.

48

Don’t Assume People Won’t Understand

Strategic decisions can be tough to make, especially in a time of limited resources, but communicating those decisions is often a tougher challenge. One of the most common communication mistakes leaders make is to assume their audience won’t grasp the complex reasoning behind a decision. Instead of presuming people won’t understand, find ways to explain the details, even to those who may not have the same organizational or financial sophistication as you. If your people don’t understand, your job is to find a way to explain it to them. All employees deserve to know where the company is headed and the rationale behind key decisions. They will be happier and more productive when they are clued into and on board with the company strategy.

49

Refocus Your Team on the New Strategy

Most strategic change initiatives fail or at least hit some major bumps along the road. If your team is struggling to adapt to a new strategy, try these three steps to get them back on track:

• Push decision making down. If people are told to act differently, they feel like “doers” with little control or power. Let people make choices about how they will contribute to the new strategy.
• Ask for input. If your people are stuck, ask them to suggest ways to remove the barriers that are holding them back.
• Share successes. No one wants to change if he doesn’t think the new strategy will succeed. Whenever you make progress, no matter how small, share it with your team as evidence that the new strategy works.

50

Create a Simple Strategic Principle

Helping employees understand a strategy while simultaneously motivating them to achieve it is a dire challenge for many leaders. Creating and sticking to a pithy, memorable, action-oriented phrase can help. When designed and executed well, a strategic principle gives employees clear direction, while inspiring them to be flexible and take risks. A powerful strategic principle forces trade-offs among competing resources and provides a litmus test for decisions. When faced with a choice, an employee should be able to test her options against the strategic principle to make a decision that lines up with the company’s objectives.