Can we please move on?

Can we please move on?

By Susanne Biro

Lately I have found myself having a similar conversation with a number of clients. The conversation begins with my client stating they want to increase their visibility within their organization and better position themselves to work at a more senior, strategic level. They want to be noticed and earmarked for succession by supervisors; to be seen as a thought leader by peers; and, ultimately, to position themselves as someone ready to participate in the larger decisions facing the company.

What is surprising to me is that these are the same people who will either completely fail to show for one of our scheduled sessions, send an email stating they need to reschedule at a minute’s notice, or arrive late and unprepared for our time together, and then fail to apologize for their lack of professionalism.

I often find that the way a client manages their time with me is indicative of how they manage themselves with others. Therefore, some of the behavior I experience is serious cause for concern. If my client is unable to successfully arrive at our meeting – on time, prepared, and having followed through on the commitments they made at our last meeting – it is almost guaranteed that they engage in this (poor) behavior with others. How then are they to be seen as the kind of person and professional ready for more responsibility? Perhaps they are unaware of how some of their behavior is negatively impacting their professional advancement.

It seems that professionals today have forgotten what it means to be professional. We have allowed each other to become lazy, as what was once considered to be rude behavior has slowly become acceptable. Consider the following:
• When you are meeting with another, do you respond to emails and/or answer your phone?
• How frequently do you arrive late to a meeting and/or allow a meeting to run over the allotted time without re-negotiating this with the many others it will impact?
• How often do you cancel or reschedule meetings?
• What tone of voice do you use when you answer your phone? (In my experience, many will use a tone that would indicate I am interrupting or bothering them, when the fact is they chose to answer their phone. Some will even use this tone of voice when they have specifically asked me to call.)

I am frequently appalled by the behavior I witness from otherwise talented, educated, senior professionals. I once left a message for a very senior colleague but never received a return call. When I next ran into the colleague I inquired whether or not he had received my voice message. He had. When I asked why he never responded, he told me, “Oh, I don’t return phone calls.” What?! The irony is that this person had just purchased and was holding a copy of Daniel Goleman’s book “Social Intelligence”. I thought to myself, forget about reading the book, just focus on having the basic human decency of returning another person’s phone call.

From over 25 years of research there is one behavior that is seen to be more important than any other behavior for leaders to exhibit. This behavior is “treats others with dignity and respect.” If we fail to get this right, it almost does not matter what else we do. It is that important. One of the simplest ways to demonstrate respect is to show up on time, come prepared, and keep meetings to their allotted time. When we do this, we show others that we regard their time as valuable as our own. Another way to demonstrate respect is to listen, something that is difficult to do we when allow interruptions from our Blackberry or iPhone. Regardless of culture, one of the easiest ways to demonstrate disrespect (whether we intend to or not) is to interrupt another.

I have worked with experienced, highly successful C-level executives and those new to management entirely. What I can tell you is that the more senior and successful the leader, the better the listener, and the more respectful, professional and gracious the person.

I am embarrassed to have to spend so much time coaching senior professionals on basic issues such as time management, the importance of treating others with dignity and respect, and reminding them that everything – EVERYTHING – they do matters. As a result, I am going to write one article on the topic and hope that by doing so we can move on to more important and necessary leadership conversations.

In his book, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business, Dov Seidman coins the term “out-behaving the competition” and states that those organizations/leaders who are able to bring professionalism back into our daily interactions will prevail in today’s marketplace. Treating others with the utmost respect is not a nice-to-do, it is business critical and, potentially, your competitive advantage.

Try This: From now on, treat every person you interact with as you would your most important client. Perhaps one day they will be just that …

Susanne Biro is a senior leadership coach with Bluepoint Leadership Development and co-author of Unleashed! Expecting Greatness and Other Secrets of Coaching for Exceptional Performance. She can be reached at susannebiro@bluepointleadership.com


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Betting on High Leverage Leadership

Betting on High Leverage Leadership

By David Parks

One of the things I love about my job is that I get a unique window of insight into why leadership development does, or does not, occur in organizations. Like a corporate anthropologist, I seek insights into how some organizations achieve a world class reputation for leadership development whilst others struggle to launch a single workshop. When it comes to leadership development in your organization, how will you ensure you are placing your bets on the right strategy, talent and solutions?

Broadly speaking the phone rings for leadership development because clients are: a) Proactive – they want to proactively develop leaders that will propel their organization to a new level; b) Reactive - things have gotten so bad that leadership development is a last ditch attempt to get things back on track; or c) Tactical - there is a specific business, team, or operational need that leadership development can address.

Most of us are happy to put 2009 behind us with the hope that 2010 will be a much better year. Hope, however, is not a strategy. The best business leaders know that the downturn will end, and while they may be up to their eyeballs managing the present, they know they need to create a compelling picture of a better tomorrow for those they lead. Executive recruitment firm hrQ is seeing a shift in 2010 away from downsizing and re-org’ing. Katie Kaiser, Managing Director of hrQ in San Francisco, says “most conversations we are having with our clients are focused on talent upgrades, training and development, and employee retention. The tone is optimistic proactivity.”

It should be no surprise that the best companies for leadership development are hard wired with optimism and are highly proactive. They focus their leadership development efforts where they are going to get best results – the right people working on the right projects. The Human Capital Institute’s 2007 White Paper ‘Accelerating the Performance of High Potential Leaders’ claims that “the top 10% of high performing leadership talent accounts for nearly two times the profit over the middle 80%.” High performers get things done and deliver a business result. In a down economy it is the force of leadership energy from high performers that is going be a major catalyst to get out of the rut. If I were a betting man, or a Leadership Development Director, this is where I would proactively invest my leadership development dollars: your key talent, working on high leverage projects.

When most companies were dialing back leadership development, trailblazers like GE and Cisco maintained or increased their emphasis on the high potential / high performer population. GE ranked # 1 on Fortune Magazine’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ list six times in the last ten years. CEO Jeff Immelt says “when times are easy, leadership can be taken for granted. When the world is turbulent, you appreciate great people.” Immelt personally leads part of the Executive Development Course (EDC) at GE and tasks teams of participants to travel the world benchmarking and working on high leverage business initiatives. For example, a team went to Africa to aggressively open up new market opportunities (see video case study). Other EDC teams conducted benchmark tours to well-known organizations such as Stanford, Disney and NASA.

Cisco’s Center for Collaborative Leadership, led by Annmarie Neal, VP, is blowing conventional leadership development out of the water. The flagship development vehicle is their Action Learning Forum (ALF). In each ALF, sixty senior leaders participate in a 50% executive development and 50% action learning forum. Over the 16 week course of the forum, teams are vying for internal project funding, with one project receiving funding. Since launching in 2006, each ALF project has generated over $1B in value to Cisco. Neal says that the goal is to deliver $25B in value added over the next five years. Again, if I were a betting man, or a Leadership Development Director, this is where I would place my bet.

Some of the key common threads between GE and Cisco approaches include:
- leadership development is positioned as a competitive enabler
- they develop their leadership brand as a great place to be for leaders
- there is a very clear business outcome / value add expectation
- they invest the time and the money
- the business projects are ‘disruptive’ and aim to fundamentally alter or create markets.

GE and Cisco are great examples of ‘best in class’ leadership development, and we can certainly learn from them. My ‘corporate anthropology’ research visits with both of these organizations in 2009 gave me inspiration and fuel to aim for great things.



The disappointing thing reflecting on last year is that so many organizations stopped leadership development in its tracks due to the economic conditions. The transition from 2009 to 2010 in itself is a catalyst. It allows us to look back at what we might do differently and harness the energy for change. The first five weeks of 2010 show a lot of pent up demand for leadership development. It is not just that initiatives were put on hold for financial reasons in 2009, organizations know that leadership is the key to economic recovery and they are putting energy and action behind it. Boyd Clarke, the former CEO of Bluepoint, used to say “Leaders light fires and make maps.” Now is the time to put Boyd’s words into action and ignite the passion that will accelerate us out of the downturn doldrums. What fires will you light in 2010?

David Parks is Vice President of Business Development at Bluepoint. He can be reached via email at davidparks@bluepointleadership.com or by phone at 415-383-7500.

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