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Do you wonder why the folks that report to you rely on you to solve their problems?  Probably because you always do.  That is great if you are a parent or the star of a reality TV show called “Problem Solver”.  But, as a leader having people rely on you to solve their problems creates a cycle of dependency.  That isn’t leadership that is enabling bad behavior.  Want to create leaders? Start with developing accountability

DEVELOPING ACCOUNTABILITY

We are inundated with stimuli.  With all the tweets, IM’s, emails, phone calls and “drop-ins” it is hard to think straight let alone get anything done.  More often than not, we simply react to questions or issues that are brought to our attention.  It is easier to do that than reflect and ask questions.  But in order to develop leaders on our teams, we must stop doing for people and start expecting them to do.  Let’s look at how to encourage your team to develop this muscle
John brings a problem to you. It is urgent and needs to be dealt with RIGHT NOW.

• Thank John for coming to you.
• Ask him “Why is this issue occurring?”  Follow that up with one or two other why questions to get to the real issue
• Once the real issue is uncovered, ask him –
◦  ”What is the outcome you want?” or
◦ “What would success look like” or
◦   “What would happen if you did nothing”
• Finally, ask him
◦ “How would you make [the outcome he stated previously] happen? or
◦ What is the process you’d use to make that happen?
• Help him tweak the process/solution he suggested but unless people’s lives are in danger or some other safety issue could occur, do not give him the answer EVEN IF YOU KNOW IT.
The last thing you need to do is to encourage him to go out and implement his solution, even if you’re not 100% it will work.

ENCOURAGING FAILURE

Don’t shield the people on your team from failure.  That is not going to help them grow or learn.  Failure is one of the greatest tools for people to understand what to do and not to do.  Failure avoidance only causes us to limit ourselves.  It stifles our innovation and creativity.

Push the people on your team to implement their own solutions.  Of course they should do their due diligence, but it’s critical that they are coming up with and implementing their ideas.  Whether the solution is successful or not, they will learn.  It will foster growth.

GIVING AWAY RESPONSIBILITY
Once people start implementing their own solutions and coming to you less to solve their problems, start giving them more responsibility or authority.  This doesn’t mean that you should abdicate your role or stop overseeing things.  Instead, it is recognizing their growth and rewarding them.  As a leader, your primary roles are :

• Develop other leaders
• Ensure people understand the impact they have on gaining and retaining customers

The more you responsibility you can give to your team, the less they will rely on you to solve al their problems.  This will allow you to focus on leading, finding innovative ways to serve your customers, or develop yourself.

As leaders, the worst thing that we can do for our teams is to solve all their problems for them.  It makes them dependent on you and limits their growth.

How do you encourage accountability?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

My wife and I have noticed a trend lately. People are horrible at responding to messages on getting back to people. Although I trust my wife a great deal, I wanted to find out if this was something that occurred outside of just between the two of us. After conducting a very unscientific poll, what I found was that responsiveness was becoming something of a lost art. It wasn’t that people didn’t get back to you. But it seems as if the speed with which they got back to you was proportional to how much you could do for them.
 
Due to the insanity of schedules and the incredible amount of information that is available, people seem overwhelmed. It is difficult to navigate through the course of the day, let alone return a phone call or a message that was an urgent or had some action behind that impacted you.
 
Let’s make one thing perfectly clear, I am both a victim and perpetrator of this unresponsive phenomenon.
 
What does this  say about our interconnectedness? What about our vaunted ability to be separated by one or two people from anyone in the world?
 
Its both a curse and blessing of being interconnected. Because our expectation is a immediate response anything less is a disappointment. The other lesson we learned is that just because someone agrees to be part of our network, does not equal a lifelong friend or someone that you can count on to help with the job or referral. For the most part, it is important to be clear about the expectations of someone that you are connected to and to always practice the platinum rule.
 
NETWORK EXPECTATIONS

In order to keep one’s sanity, it’s important that we understand the relationship we have with people in their network.
 
FRIENDS

Obviously, there are going to be some people that are genuinely your friends. These people that you can count on when there is a question that needs to be answered her door a favor that needs to be asked. It is very rare that this is a large group. However, there are exceptions to this rule.
 
CONNECTORS

There will be a percentage of people in your network who are the kind of people you can talk to occasionally. But, they’re always good as connectors to other people. Although they may not know you they’re more than willing to say a kind word.
 
KINDA KNOWS

Then, there is the vast majority. According to some statistics, this can be anywhere from 45 to 65% of your “network”. These are the people that are in your network in name only. With all the best intentions between both you and these individuals, there is nothing more to your relationship with them then they are part of your network. It is important that you understand that. If for some reason this is unacceptable to you, is possible to remove people that do not respond to you from your network. But, this is generally not a practice that is utilized by most people. (In full disclosure, this year I attempted to contact each person on my LinkedIn. Currently I have over 615 contacts. After sending each one an individual message I had less than 25% respond). Therefore, it is vital that you understand that the majority of people in your network move the names that you never interact with.
 
THE PLATINUM RULE

I know that there is a golden rule, but personally I am much more interested in working with platinum. Platinum rule is to treat others as they would want to be treated. Several little differently, do one to others as they would want to be done to themselves. That means that if you want people to respond to you you have to be doubly responsive to others. This is hard because for the most part people respond to you. But, it’s important that you don’t let this deter you from being responsive. It’s important to be responsive because you never know where that is going to lead you.
 
Another way to think of the platinum rule is a little bit like the idea of “pay it forward“. This was made popular by a movie with the same title. The important thing to remember is that in order to have people respond to you need to be ultimately responsive.
 
Yes it’s true, we are all far more busy and distracted than ever before. But in order to keep our tenuous grip on reality it’s important that when someone reaches out we reach back to remind him or her that there’s someone else out there.
 
What do you think?  How do you stay connected?

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

LEADERS OFTEN STRUGGLE WITH ADMITTING THAT THEIR COMPANIES HAVE FLAWS, AS WELL AS DEALING WITH FAILURE. HOW CAN LEADERS SUCCEED IN GROWING A STRONG EFFICIENT COMPANY IF THEY DON’T FACE THEIR ISSUES AND MAKE SOME CHANGES? THEY CAN’T.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

DANGEROUS THINGS TO DO

HERE ARE SOME REALLY DANGEROUS WAYS TO SPEND YOUR DAY…

• Wrestle an alligator
• Tell your spouse they really do look fat in that outfit
• Admit that your baby is ugly
• Honestly analyze your organization, admit it’s flaws, and put a plan together to work on those issues.

Although there are not many ways to deal with the first three, organizations have found an excellent method to help with the fourth; hiring management consultants.

Yes, that’s right I said it…

Hiring management consultants can be a good business practice and actually helps organizations succeed over time.

WHY HIRE THEM?

Generally speaking, there are thousands, possibly millions, of highly intelligent and capable individuals that work within organizations. However, after a certain amount of time people get “relationship blind.”

Regardless of capability and intention, over time issues and concerns regarding our relationships or an organization tend to magnify if they are not dealt with a remedied.

Good management consultants help an organization shine light on areas of that aren’t working and help to fix them. These are usually areas that aren’t a surprise to the organization to learn about.

Yes, the solutions are things that may even have been discussed previously, but no action has been taken on them and things have gotten worse.

Enter the management consultant…

They are not all incompetent “Bobs” from Office Space (an excellent movie) or those shady characters from House of Lies.  Many management consultants are intelligent,hard working, and dedicated professionals that want to help their clients succeed.

They all allow for a purview into an organization that self-analysis does not.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A CONSULTING PARTNER?

There are numbers of excellent ways to find a consulting partner (find some great tools here). But, all of the processes boil down to some key things.

3 KEY SELECTION CRITERIA THAT WILL MAKE OR BREAK A GOOD CONSULTING RELATIONSHIP

1. CULTURAL FIT
The consultant is a good cultural fit with the organization.

It doesn’t really matter how smart or able the consultant is if they are the opposite of your organizational culture.

People won’t listen if the consultant is tone deaf to how the organization communicates.

Partner with someone that mirrors your organization’s style.

2. FLEXIBILITY
The consultant is willing to update or modify their approach tools to best align with the culture of the organization

One size fits all only works in fantasy.

All approaches need modifications to be a fit for …wait for it…your culture. Make sure that the consultant is willing to make changes to materials and approaches to ensure that folks will “hear” them.

3. SITUATIONAL EXPERIENCE
The consulting organization has a wealth of experience and experienced consultants that have lived through this situation, issue, or problem that your organization is facing.

If you are hiring a consultant to help you with a technology problem, it’s probably a good idea that they are technology savvy or have experience in IT .

SUCCESS FOR CONSULTANTS NOW AND ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS IN THE FUTURE

Contrary to popular belief, management consultants really want their clients to succeed for two reasons.

Reason Number One:
Many management consultants are passionate about making workplaces great.

Reason Number Two:
Great references. Those great references are former clients that are successful as a result of the management consultant’s work.

In fact, many really good management consultants want clients to be even more successful after they leave. That takes work both on the consultant and client’s part. As a client, it’s important that you pave the road for the management consultant to be successful.

• Make their role visible.
• Show leadership support.
• Give them access to the information they need.
• Encourage folks to be open with them.
• Make sure they know the scope of their role.
• Make sure that their recommendations come with implementation plans.

Don’t be afraid to end the relationship if its not working.

It is important that the organization gives enough time for the relationship to form. However it shouldn’t be too long.

PLAN FOR THE END

In the end of the project, the consultant will leave. It is important to ensure that you select a consultant that is setting your organization up to sustain the success of the project or initiative after they leave.
 
It’s important that the consultant works with you to create practices and initiatives that enable or encourage organization to pull the change instead of it being something that’s a “bolt on” or “additional step to take”.

That will increase the likelihood that the work they do will be successful after they leave.

THAT’S A WRAP

Management consultants are very important to the success of an organization.

Consultants Provide:

• An objective expert opinion about the progress or current situation of the organization.
• Very real feedback about why the organization or department is not as successful as it could be.

What successes have you had working with management consultants? How are you using them? What are areas that you think an outside perspective could make all the difference? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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This blog also appears on the Linked2Leadership Blog.  Please visit them!

Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.

Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.