BOLSTER your Leadership … Develop Followers

Leaders, by their very nature, require followers. One of the key factors in the alignment, health, and engagement level of any organization is how the leaders of that organization interact with their people. The most effective leaders successfully bolster the relationships they have with their people by practicing a number of specific behaviors that align and reinforce their organization’s values, goals, and vision. Over the years, I have observed a number of behaviors that seem to separate the most successful leaders from the leaders who had trouble retaining followers. I refer to these keystone behaviors as the BOLSTER Model of Leadership Behaviors.

·         B = Balanced

·         O = Objective

·         L = Listen

·         S = Selective

·         T = Timely

·         E = Empathy

·         R = Redefine What is Realistic

Balanced - Healthy workplace relationships require a certain amount of feedback to ensure the participants remain engaged. However, not all feedback is created equal. Negative feedback, or criticism, tends to weigh heavier on the human conscience than does praise. No successful relationship is built on a foundation of negativity. To the recipient, over reliance on negative feedback ultimately sounds like Charlie Brown’s whiney teacher in the Peanuts cartoons. Similarly, a constant barrage of positive feedback eventually devolves into background noise catering only to the ego of the recipient. The key is to find the proper balance, ensuring both types of feedback remain effective. The most effective leaders pay close attention to how often they praise their people with how often they criticize them, being careful not to tip the scale too far in either direction.  Unfortunately, the perception of balanced dialogue rarely exists when the proportion of positive and negative feedback stays at a 1:1 ratio. Science and research has found the optimal level of balance exists when positive feedback outpaces negative feedback by a margin of roughly 3:1. This means managers should aim to provide three pieces of legitimate positive feedback for every one piece of negative feedback delivered. The more balanced your feedback, the more likely your people will be to heed your criticism and coaching as it is intended, to help them grow and develop. That is your intention, right?

Objective - Employees can see through hidden agendas. When leaders behave with an absence of authenticity and alignment, their people can sense the deceit. The most effective leaders are objective in their dialogue with their people, avoiding generalities in favor of specifics whenever possible. They avoid initiating conversations focused solely on what it can do for them. They are well aware that hidden agendas do nothing but breed discontent and cynicism. Moreover, they avoid improper generalities with words such as “always” and “never”, knowing that these over-generalizations are engagement killers. Feedback should be focused on what the conversation can do for your employee, the customer, the company, and your relationships. While you might not like the way someone works, unless you work in an industry with significant safety risks where diverging from the established way could lead to injury or death, give her the latitude to individualize her way of working. Don’t get caught up in the idea of “people need to be just like me”. If you find yourself saying “I think”, stop and decide if what you are about to say is based on observable facts, or just personal biases. Instead, focus your attention on measurable behaviors that relate directly to the job, team, and organization. By remaining objective in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty, you will gain credibility, sustainability, reliability ... and followers. When you check your assumptions and biases at the door, you’ll change your perceptions and begin hearing things that were once indiscernible.

Listen - Talking with someone is a powerful leadership tool. It is foundational to help you learn, understand and explore possibilities. Unfortunately, all too often, instead of listening, we are preoccupied with what we want to say next. The most effective leaders avoid this tendency. Instead, they are master practitioners of active listening, opening their mind to what is being said, not just biding time until the other person is done talking.  They focus on both listening to what is said, and hearing what is said, allowing them to astutely and efficiently guide the conversation. When you ask open ended questions, listening to the words spoken, and hearing the meaning (both obvious and hidden) of what is communicated, you can uncover deeper messages. Repeat what you heard to ensure you and your employees are on the same page. For example, saying “Let me repeat what you just said to make sure I understand your point”, will help generate a much more effective dialogue. Learn to listen for language clues (pace, pitch, and profoundness) that signal what your employee is trying to tell you. Watch for body language clues that signal uncertainty, fear, passion, and relief. Watch your own non-verbal signals that may unconsciously signal disagreement, power, or contempt. Once you have heard the words, take the time to digest what was said so you really hear what messages were communicated. Where do you hear your personal biases clouding your decision making and listening skills? What information contradicts, or supports, previously held assumptions or information? What role have you played in the employee’s current level of professional proficiency and resolve? How do you synthesize what the employee said with previously gathered information to create a new understanding for you, your employee, and your organization? When you and your people are on the same page about an issue, it’s far easier to brainstorm and find a solution to any given problem.

Selective - The most effective leaders are selective in what they do, what they say, and how they spend their time. They know they can’t be everything to everyone, nor can they be everywhere at once, so they learn become disciplined in deciding where and when to take action. Their discipline keeps them from chasing the next big thing just because it’s the “hot” idea. They invest their time and energy into making sure their decisions further their journey and reinforce their organization’s alignment. These leaders didn’t get into e-commerce during the “dot com” era just because everyone else did. They are the ones who measured their possibilities through analytics and predetermined criteria. They were selective in the opportunities they pursued. The leaders I studied that demonstrated deep levels of selectivity were never concerned with trying to raise everyone’s performance to some arbitrary level of standardization. They were selective in how, when, and where they benchmarked success. To them, standardization was just another word for mediocrity, and they were not interested in mediocrity. They were interested in excellence. They looked for the outliers, the ones who consistently outperformed their peers. It was in these remarkable individuals who existed outside of the norms, that these leaders saw possibilities. Their goal was move the entire organization up to meet these outliers, setting a new standard for excellence. When Jim Collins talks about the hedgehog concept in his book Good to Great, he is really talking about selectivity. Collins argues that the best organizations “know what they do well, where they can make money and what they have a passion for producing”. The most effective leaders I have studied are passionate about “knowing how to do one big thing exceptionally well, and stick to it”. These leaders select what their organization will master, then devote their organization’s resources and energy to mastering their strengths. Finally, they selected people for their team who believed what they believed, building a tribe aligned with the same vision.

Timely - As leaders build relationships, they have timely conversations. Have you ever received feedback from your boss during your annual performance review that meant nothing to you because it happened so long ago that you forgot the details of the situation? Maybe it was recognition for something that didn’t resonate as being important with your boss at the time. Or maybe he was just afraid of delivering critical feedback. All feedback has to be timely, almost immediate, for it to be effective. It has to be able to tie in to the emotions of the situation in order to elicit any sort of change. Leaders ensure these moments are not lost. The most effective leaders I have observed have structured processes and habits to ensure they provide feedback in a timely fashion. By timely, I mean generally within 48 hours of the event occurring. If you find yourself waiting for annual review time to disclose your feedback, get rid of your annual performance reviews! Put processes in place to give feedback to new hires at least once a week. Meet consistently with your direct reports. Interact with your customers at planned intervals. Make certain there is a formal feedback mechanism that every employee receives feedback at least once a quarter. Get in the habit of stopping, paying attention, and providing immediate feedback. When you see something, say something. No task that you need to accomplish can compare to the necessity of fully engaging your people.

Empathy - Great leaders realize that leading is largely about relationships. In order to build relationships, they are willing to look at the world through other people’s eyes, sharing in their people’s perspectives. By doing so, they are able to make decisions that impact the good of the many against the good of the few by understanding what their decisions will mean to everyone involved. This doesn’t mean that they don’t make tough decisions. It just means that they more fully understand what their decisions mean to everyone involved. Leaders who have trouble displaying empathy tend to make decisions based on sympathy, trying to solve the problems of a few, unknowingly affecting the lives of the many. The most effective leaders I have ever encountered are far more empathetic than they are sympathetic. They realize it is far more powerful to “feel with people” than it is to “feel for people”. Sympathy creates distance between people, digging a moat that delineates where you are, and where they are. Empathy is the bridge that crosses the moat, allowing you to share in the experience with someone else, through his or her eyes. Leaders realize they don’t need to solve everyone’s problems, because they understand that insisting on solving someone’s problems insinuates you think you are somehow better than the other person. Rather, leaders join people in their journey, connecting with them on a personal level, displaying their own vulnerability and humanness. If you have not taken the time to build authentic, trusting empathetic relationships with your employees, they will look at you with skepticism every time you speak. This skepticism distracts them from your messages and reduces their willingness to learn. Regularly displaying empathy for others encourages people to listen to you with an open mind because they know you feel what they feel, see what they see, and live what they live. Show someone empathy on a consistent basis, and you will have someone who will follow you anywhere.

Redefine what is Realistic - Effective leaders change the nature of work, relationships, and communities. They change history by introducing a better way. Leaders are the ones who see something that needs to change and they enlist others to help them change the situation. We can all see things in our lives that we would like to impact.  Unfortunately, few have the courage to take that first step or possess the tenacity to see their visions become reality. Leaders inspire others to give their very best to their job, their boss, their employer, and their community. They inspire us to be courageous. They help us form a new reality. They inspire us to follow them. They do this by showing how deeply they care about others, encouraging action beyond what people previously thought was possible. They create the conditions necessary for us to be vulnerable. They behave in ways that resonate with their constituent’s hearts and minds. As you progress on your journey towards becoming a great leader, don’t be afraid to redefine what you believe is realistic, shaking the tree of what has always been to jolt people out of their complacency. Remember, leading is a verb, and verbs require action.

Your success, or failure, as a leader hinges upon your ability to ensure your people follow you. As John Maxwell once mused, “Take a look behind you, if nobody is following you, aren’t you really just out for a walk?” The world is filled people claiming to be leaders, but whose leadership is more like they are out taking a walk. How are you going to distinguish yourself from all of the noise in your marketplace, differentiating your business to attract and retain followers you need?

Scott Brown, MSOL, is the Founder and Chief Engagement Officer at Hardie Consulting, a Fort Lauderdale, FL based management consulting firm.  Scott is a coach, a consultant, an author, and an award winning speaker who has successfully helped countless organizations learn how to meet shifting customer and employee expectations. Follow him on Twitter: @ScottBrownMSOL, connect with him on LinkedIn, visit his company’s website:  www.HardieConsulting.com, and check out his new book, Alignment: How to Transform Potential into Performance, Productivity and Profit, available on Amazon or CreateSpace to learn more about how employee engagement and organizational alignment can become the linchpin to your success.