The Magic Question

McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

"How can I help?"

Isn't that the question every leader longs to hear?

What if every person on your team or in your organization consistently asked you, "How can I help?" What if your team was totally in sync with and committed to achieving your organization's objectives? What if the members on your team were willing to leave their comfort zone and take a risk to help your team win?

Impossible? Unrealistic? Pollyanna?

Maybe it is expecting too much for team members to ask how they can help you achieve your goals. Perhaps it's far-fetched to think they could care that much about what happens at work. Maybe it is "old school" to think that people want to help an organization succeed. After all, people are just in it for the paycheck, right?

Maybe not.

According to a recent study of more than 17,000 people, less than 10 percent cited compensation and advancement opportunities as the most critical aspects of a job. It seems money is only one piece of the puzzle ... and perhaps a small one at that. So what are the other pieces? According to the same study, the top factors that people consider important in a job include stimulating and challenging work, personal accomplishment, a friendly workplace, and belief and involvement in the organization's mission.

Most people do want more than a paycheck—they want to feel good about where they work, whom they work with, and what they accomplish together as a team. Of course, there are some people—and you know who they are—who don't fit this category. A few are in it just for the paycheck, or perhaps they don't have the same agenda that you do. And some people simply are not in the right job for them at this time in their life. But these people are the exception rather than the rule.

One of the most ignored facts of leadership is that the majority of your team really does care about doing a great job. They care, but something may be holding them back ... or pushing them out.

The result of this disconnection is apathy. My observation is that many people on the team are so disenchanted that they would prefer to take a risk and venture into an unknown organization rather than stay in their current situation. That means they must be missing those other, all-important aspects of their job. A popular word used to describe this seemly apathetic and dispirited group of today's workforce is disengaged. It's an interesting way to describe someone—detached, disconnected, cut off. Who wants to spend the majority of their waking hours that way? Why would people consciously choose to be disengaged? Perhaps there is more to the issue of disengagement than that ... maybe people are not given the opportunity to engage.

If the majority of your team are good people doing a good job who want to be rewarded in ways beyond a paycheck, and you, as the leader, are there to guide them in doing a good job, then why are your results often less than what you expected and hoped for?

Perhaps the cause is external factors—marketplace or regulatory changes, economic factors, or a strategic error. However, in most cases, the cause comes from inside the organization. Peter Drucker once said that every business failure was the result of leadership failure. I have found that statement to be true. Whether it is hiring the wrong people, a lack of capital to sustain the business, failure to address marketplace challenges, creating chaos within the organization, or just not paying attention, everything falls at the leader's feet.

The team with the best leader usually wins. But what distinguishes the best leaders is typically not competency; most leaders are competent enough to do the job. The best leaders understand how to lead others toward a common goal. They are competent and also passionate, trustworthy, creative, and humane. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, says: "After analyzing 181 competence models from 121 organizations worldwide, we found that 67% of the abilities deemed essential for effective performance were emotional competencies. Compared to IQ and expertise, emotional competence mattered twice as much."

Likewise, the Gallup organization found that the single most important variable in employee productivity is the quality of the relationship between employees and their direct supervisors. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman put it this way: "What people want most from their supervisors is the same thing that kids want most from their parents: someone who sets clear and consistent expectations, cares for them, values their unique qualities, and encourages and supports their growth and development."

The best leaders have developed skills that help them understand people and know how to get results through the efforts of other people. That is why leadership is complex—because you are dealing with real people, each of whom has needs and desires. The greatest leaders learn how to turn the complex task of dealing positively with everyone on their team into its simplest form.

In its simplest form, leadership comes down to answering six key questions your team members are always asking (whether you hear them or not). These questions are the same regardless of team members' gender, generation, background, or position:

1. What is REALLY important?

2. How am I doing?

3. How is our team doing?

4. Do you care?

5. What difference do we make?

6. Are you worth following?

People have a deep-rooted need to know what is happening in your organization, how they fit in, and how well they are performing. When you clearly and consistently answer these six questions, your team will work together with energy and enthusiasm. Their talents will be galvanized and directed toward the achievement of a common goal. Morale will improve. Job satisfaction will increase, and turnover will decrease. You will have a lot more fun leading. And, you will earn the right to hear your team ask The Magic Question: "How can I help?"

Some of you may think that this is a book solely about communication. Answering your team's six questions is about more than communicating—it is about connecting. It's about meeting the common need of all people ... to understand and to be understood. Connecting involves people, and when people are involved, they are engaged. When they are engaged, they will give discretionary effort, and that is when you will hear The Magic Question.

You may believe that you are already an expert at communicating and connecting, and, therefore, this book is not for you. Well, you are not alone in thinking that your communication skills are top-notch. In fact, in one study, researchers asked a group of leaders to rate their personal communication skills. The findings revealed that 90 percent thought their communication skills were in the top 10 percent. Do the math ... something doesn't add up! Eighty percent of those leaders believed they were better communicators than they really were. Obviously, their perceptions did not match their reality. I'm not throwing you into that category, but I am saying that most leaders are not meeting their teams' basic communication needs.

The bottom line is this: If you depend on results from others, this book is for you. It will provide you with a proven leadership method to create an atmosphere in which your team will want to ask you The Magic Question. It is not about a new leadership strategy. Strategies come and go. What you will learn in this book is tried and true regardless of the strategic focus of the time. Likewise, the principles apply to businesses in every industry, as well as schools, hospitals, churches, even homes.

Successful leaders must earn the discretionary effort of their people, and earning the right to hear The Magic Question is hard work. It would be nice to say "Abracadabra!" and have everyone on your team begin asking "How can I help?" Nice, but it's not going to happen. There is no magic in getting to the question, but when you do your part and your team does their part, you will see magical results.

Read, enjoy, and apply what you learn.

THE First Question:

What is REALLY important?

"Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.' —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many of Aesop's fables teach us modern-day leadership lessons. One of my favorite lessons comes from the fable "The Fox and the Cat." Here is the story: A fox boasted to a cat one day about how sly and wily he was. "I've got all kinds of tricks," the fox said. "For example, whenever I hear the dogs coming, I know a hundred different ways to escape."

The cat was impressed and humbly said, "Your cleverness is amazing. As for me, I have only one way to escape, and that is to climb up a tree. I know it's not as exciting as all of your ways, but it works for me. Maybe someday you could show me some of your different escape routes."

The fox smiled smugly, "Well, friend, perhaps I'll have some free time one of these days, and I can show you a trick or two."

Shortly afterward, the fox and the cat heard a pack of hounds baying nearby. "They're coming this way!" the cat shrieked. In a flash, she scaled a nearby tree and hid herself in the leaves.

The fox stood there trying to decide which of his many tricks to use. Paralyzed with indecision, the fox waited too long to make his move, and the hounds pounced on him. The moral of the story: Having too many choices can lead to indecision and inaction.

Just like the fox, when your team has too many "important" things to focus on, they become paralyzed and take no action at all. Confusion about what is REALLY important is a major source of stress on your team. This is why your team has to know the answer to "What is REALLY important?"

You may think that the people on your team are totally connected to what you are trying to accomplish together. You may even think that the "What is REALLY important" question is easy to answer because you communicate in numerous ways. After all, you have mission statements, job descriptions, performance reviews, e-mails, memos, texts, motivational posters, screen savers, and many other ways of communicating what is REALLY important.

But all that communication oftentimes muddies the water. In fact, so much communicating is going on and there are so many things coming from different directions that it's difficult for your team to separate the relevant important from the irrelevant trivial. In survey after survey, year after year, regardless of the new communication tools available, a major issue within organizations continues to be communicating what is really important around here.

The reality is that we work in a constant state of change that, unfortunately, creates communication static. As a result, team members become frustrated, thinking, "We are out of the loop ... Things are always changing ... I don't know what they want ... I'm not a mind reader ... The target is always moving ... It's hard to figure out what to focus on."

Leadership is frustrated, too: "Are you kidding me? Communication is not the problem. I work with my team constantly—train them, discuss results with them, create mission statements, share weekly updates, and give them performance reviews. I spend the majority of my time communicating. They just don't listen."

Both sides could be right. Communication may not be the problem, and communicating more may not be the solution. In most cases, people do not need more information. Much of the information they receive doesn't get read; what they do read is frequently misunderstood; and what they do understand is easily forgotten. That's not a knock on your team. It's just that there is so much communicating going on that what is REALLY important is hard to sort out from the stuff that is not so important. So rather than communicating more, we need to be connecting and clarifying.

Since conditions are constantly changing—a.k.a. moving targets— effective leaders must keep the REALLY important targets in their crosshairs. It is up to you to identify the overriding objectives that will ultimately determine your team's success and keep the team focused on those main things. If the attention and energy of your people is being directed to anything other than the few main things, that attention and energy is being wasted. In fact, if you are trying to get your team to focus on more than three or four main things, you really don't have any main things at all. Wherever you put your focus ... that is where you will get results. Part of your value as a leader is in eliminating the clutter—the minor things that can get in the way of the important things.

If the REALLY important things are not crystal clear, each person on your team will do what is comfortable to do, and the easy and comfortable will trump the important. Likewise, if you have too many REALLY important things for your team to focus on, they will become paralyzed and take no action at all.

The Importance of Everyone Being in Sync

Synchronized swimming, which involves a team of swimmers who perform in perfect synchronization to music, has been an Olympic sport since 1984. It's beautiful to watch but very demanding for swimmers, requiring fitness, stamina, and flexibility. As I've watched synchronized swim competitions, I've wondered how the team stays perfectly in sync, especially when they are performing upside down and underwater, neither of which is natural for most human beings.

Olympic-caliber synchronized swim teams must work in perfect unison. Every member must know their individual roles, when to perform each move, and how each of them personally contributes to and affects the team's performance. When every swimmer is in sync, the performance is breathtaking. But if even one team member is out of sync at any point, the entire performance falls apart.

The same is true with your team. Synchronization around what is REALLY important is absolutely critical to success. The military calls this "unity of effort"—harmonizing the efforts of different people toward a common goal. When every individual on your team clearly understands what is REALLY important, and all are unified in working toward those goals, their performance will be energizing, spectacular, and profitable. But without unification— when team members are out of sync because not everyone is clear on what is REALLY important—people lose focus and stagnate. Before you know it, forward movement comes to a halt, and lackluster results follow.

How do teams lose sight of what is REALLY important and get out of sync, especially in light of all the communication, that goes on between leaders and their teams? The three most common situations that cause teams to be out of sync are confusion, contradictions, and fuzzy expectations. Let's look at each of these.

Corporate Attention Deficit Disorder (CADD)

If your team is out of sync with what you are asking from them, perhaps it's because they're confused about what you want. A dizzying array of team and organizational objectives creates Corporate Attention Deficit Disorder. CADD occurs when the things you say are REALLY important are constantly changing. One month, your focus is to increase revenue. The next month, the focus is on decreasing costs. Then hiring is the priority, and 30 days later you are focused again on cutting costs. Which one does your team choose to be in sync with? How do they know what is REALLY important?

When your goals are constantly changing, you can count on chaos and confusion ... and confusion shared will become confusion multiplied. You may be thinking that changing direction is not necessarily a bad thing, and of course, you're right. Changing direction isn't a problem as long as everyone is on the same track and understands that the change will help them accomplish what is REALLY important.

If your REALLY important things are a continuously moving target, your team will lose hope. Some people will simply ignore the current goal because they've learned from past experience that the goal will soon change anyway. Why bother changing course now when another change is probably just around the corner? Instead of asking The Magic Question, their thoughts are, What is it that you really want? One day it's this, another that, then something else. All of this can't be important ... what is REALLY important around here?

Ask Yourself ...

Do I know what is REALLY important?

If someone woke you up in the middle of the night and asked what was REALLY important for your team to accomplish, could you immediately give the correct answer without even thinking about it? How would your team members respond under the same circumstances?

What percent of your time today was spent on accomplishing REALLY important things? What if you improved that by 10 percent? When you make the best use of your time every day, you make more time for the things that are REALLY important.

Unintended Contradictions

Contradictions are the enemy of clarity and synchronization. Very few leaders purposefully create contradictions. However, unintended contradictions occur all the time and in many forms, for example, team priorities that conflict with the organization's stated mission or claiming that people are your greatest asset and then eliminating employee training because you "just don't have the time or money." Another contradiction is continually stating the importance of teamwork while implementing programs and incentives that actually pit team members against each other or giving employees performance reviews that are different from what you've been telling them (or not telling them) about their performance. Do any of those sound familiar?

Inconsistencies and contradictions will absolutely paralyze your work group. Consider a call-center environment where there may be two primary performance measurements—answer at least 25 calls an hour and satisfy every customer's needs. When a client calls with a problem that requires significant time to resolve, the call center agent must make a decision: "Do I take the time necessary to satisfy my customer, or should I let someone else handle this problem so my numbers will not look bad?" Either decision is right ... and wrong. What is REALLY important in this situation, and how would that team member answer the question?

A common contradiction in organizations is reward systems that are out of sync with team or organizational objectives. In fact, leaders often unintentionally reward actions that are diametrically opposed to what they want to accomplish. For instance, have you ever asked your best employees to do more to take up the slack for others who are not pulling their share of the load? Do you reward people who are late for meetings with a brief recap? Do you allow unimportant agenda items to dominate your team's time in meetings or conference calls? If you do any of these things, you are inadvertently punishing your best performers and rewarding the lowest performers.

Another example of an unintended contradiction is how you respond to new ideas that may be outside your comfort zone.

Do you reward innovative ideas with sincere thought or shrug them off as quirky brain drizzle? When you reward creative ideas as thought provoking and potential game changers, your team will reward you with more ideas. If, on the other hand, you "punish" ideas with cynicism or ridicule, you will likely lose the opportunity to even hear the next idea.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Magic Questionby David Cottrell Copyright © 2013 by David Cottrell. Excerpted by permission of McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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