Cortex Leadership Consulting

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Commander’s Intent – Is yours clear to your team?

In military leadership terms, the commander’s intent describes the desired end state. It is a concise expression of the purpose of the operation and must be understood by echelons below the issuing commander. It is the single unifying focus for all subordinate elements. It is not a summary of the concept of the operation.

Courtland JamesAs a leader, it is important that you explain, with clarity and purpose, what your intention is in regard to the project or task you are having people on your team execute.  Confusion, as to your intent, will result in slower production times because team members have to be checking back with you to make even the smallest adjustments in the initial plan.  When your team doesn’t achieve its mission or isn’t doing so consistently, you can refer to the following to be sure that you are effectively setting them up for success.

If everyone on your team understands the overall objective of the initiative, then they will have the knowledge necessary to make command decisions at their level that will facilitate the achievement of that outcome.  You want your team members to be able to adapt and overcome any obstacle that presents itself as they are executing their tasks.

As General Dwight Eisenhower famously said, “In preparing for battle, PLANS are useless, but PLANNING is indispensable.”

Courtland James, Executive Coach, Cortex Leadership Consulting, will appear on tonight’s 10pm news with Bill Wadell and with Kathlynn Stone on Good Day Virginia tomorrow morning at 7:40am to discuss what he has learned about this topic from being an officer in the Marine Corp.

Make sure your commander’s intent statement:

  1. Is short and within the scope of the overall operational plan. Make sure your commander’s intent statement matches up with the overall initiative.
  2. Provides a framework for the project or task. Rather than telling them exactly what to do, the commander’s intent focuses on what needs to be accomplished for them to be successful.
  1. Can complete the following statement:

If we do nothing else tomorrow (this week), we must ____________________.  OR

The single most important thing we can achieve tomorrow (this week) is _______________.

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Brain Rules to Power Up Your Best Thinking

There are a few brain rules that can help your brain age more slowly and power up more quickly.

Our brains are the most complicated organs in our body and require 20% of the oxygen from our lungs and 20% of the blood from our heart to maintain. As a leader, your memory can be one of the best tools you have. Here are some ways to protect one of your biggest assets.

FEED it.. the top 5 foods to keep your brain healthy. Blueberries, almonds, wild salmon, green tea and dark chocolate. CLICK HERE to find out others and what NOT to eat.
KNOW it’s capacity… the brain can hold 1 million gigabytes of information with the way that the neurons work together to store data. That’s equivalent to 3 million hours of TV shows stored on your DVR. So, it can store as much information as you want it to… the trick is retrieving it when you need it.


WHAT makes your brain age… You have more control than you might think when it comes to how fast your brain ages. FIND OUT here what research has discovered.
REMEMBER mBrain Anatomyore by using these techniques…and know that laughter, managing stress, getting enough sleep and exercise, and challenging your brain will net big dividends when it comes to it functioning well. HERE’s the most comprehensive article on your brain that I could find. This one’s worth printing.
WATCH this…about the #1 rule for your brain. You might design your workspace in a completely different way or change the way you hold your next meeting. Improve your team’s performance when you spend (3:37) viewing this from John Medina.

The next time you want to eat that donut or have that soda that contains high fructose corn syrup, don’t consider what it will do to your body… think about its effect on your brain. As leaders, you need your brain to work well. If you weren’t a champion, you wouldn’t even be reading this. Take a few moments this week to review this information and maybe pass it along to your team. The great thing is that if you’re taking care of your brain, the rest of your body is going to be pretty healthy, too!

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A Leader’s First 90 Days – Onboarding for Successful Outcomes

Many of the executives we work with receive promotions, land their dream job, or become CEO’s.  Having the first 90-day transition, also known as onboarding, go well, can be essential to create connection and engagement with the team they will need in order to be successful.

First 90 Days Cortex CoachingThe First 90 Days:  Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter by Michael Watkins, is a strong and helpful reference guide for you, as a leader or executive, as you transition to your new position.  Here’s the quick video (a little over 20 min) that has solid take-a-ways that you can immediately use.

  • Promote yourself – not in a self-serving way. Michael explains that you need to mentally prepare for the new role and be sure to get a running start.
  • Accelerate your learning – you’ll need to adopt structured learning methods and ask these questions to your direct reports one-on-one:
  1. What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face) in the near future?
  2. Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges?
  3. What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth?
  4. What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities?
  5. If you were me, what would you focus on?
  • Match strategy to situation – diagnosing your situations is key.
  • Secure early wins – the right way by avoiding the most common traps that afflict new leaders, according to Watkins:
  1. Failing to focus.
  2. Not taking the business situation into account.
  3. Not adjusting to the corporate culture.
  4. Failing to get wins that matter to your boss.
  5. Letting your means undermine your ends.
  • Negotiate success – engage with your new boss to shape the game so you have the best chance of reaching the desired outcome and hitting the goal markers along the way.
  • Achieve alignment – make sure that key elements of your team are in alignment.
  • Build Your Team – to create leverage to deliver value. You’ll want to avoid the following traps:
  1. Keeping the existing team too long.
  2. Not repairing the team where it needs it.
  3. Not working organizational alignment and team restructuring issues in parallel.
  4. Not holding onto the good people.
  5. Starting team-building before the core team is in place.
  6. Making Implementation-dependent decisions too early.
  7. Trying to do it all yourself.
  • Create coalitions – by mapping the influence landscape and identifying the key players.

Based on these same types of principles, Becky Freemal did a story for WFXR’s Virginia at Work series on the first 100 days in a new position.  Here’s the video of the story.

 

Start here:

  • Get a head start before the first day, so you can hit the ground running
  • Think team

Focus on these 5 building blocks for increasing tactical capacity for a highly effective team:

  1. Get buy-in for one burning imperative
  2. Use key milestones to drive team per performance
  3. Invest in early wins
  4. Get the right people in the right roles
  5. Shape team culture with an ongoing communication plan

If you are thinking right now, Lynda, I wish I would have had this a year ago when I started this position.  No worries, you can still use these principles and practices to know where you might have pivoted off course.  It can be helpful to hire an executive coach (that would be me or a member of my team) to be a strong and objective thinking pair to give you perspective and help identify how to get things back on track.

The best time to use this list is well before you start the position.  Following this roadmap can help you get off to the best start possible.

 

 

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Leadership Training: How to spot the elephants in the office

Leadership Training

As a leader, will you know the quickest way to spot the elephant at your office this week?
By:  Lynda McNutt Foster

The proverbial “elephant” in the room. You’ve experienced it, I know you have.  The topic that everyone was talking about before the meeting for days and sometimes weeks isn’t being brought up in the meeting.  It’s the only thing that really matters to anyone, and yet, no one says anything about it.  You dare not be the one to bring it up.  Maybe you’ve been the one to bring it up before.  You finally call out the elephant in the room and everyone else looks at you with disillusionment.  People look away or they look down.  Silence.  Complete silence.  You are alone to hear your voice echo throughout the space.  It’s as if you just revealed that you had a terminal illness that is contagious and everyone wants to flee the building as quickly as possible and be sure they are not associated with you or whatever the hell you have.

Yes, the quickest way to spot the elephant in the room, if you are a team member, is to notice what is NOT being talked about in meetings, but IS being discussed whenever people feel safe when they are in one-on-ones or small groups together, outside your earshot. 

As a leader, it’s tougher.  How do you get your team members to talk about the elephant in the room when YOU are in the room?

Here are 3 ways to reveal the elephants that are impacting productivity and that really matter to the grow and prosperity of your organization and your team members.

  • Ask more complex questions that you don’t have answers to. In addition to appreciating and recognizing what went right recently, ask, “What could we have done differently?”  Be the one to lead the conversation with what you could have done differently to be more effective in a process.  Appreciate when someone demonstrates the courage to speak up, in a professional way, about what they see from a different perspective as everyone else.  It’s highly possible that a lone wolf is the only person calling out an elephant in the room and many others are thinking about it, regardless of their reaction when it is brought up.  We have all been in meetings where the elephant is brought up and after the silence, the leader might say something like, “Does anyone else feel this way?” and the crickets.

Try, at that moment of impact, saying, “Thank you for being brave enough to bring that up, Stan.  I want to understand your point of view.  Let’s do a round (asking each person to take about 20-30 seconds to give their input) to discover others points of view.”

  • Be brave. Ask for feedback regularly in meetings and one-on-ones with Conversational Intelligence© questions like:
    • What issues concern you the most?
    • What can we do to build trust in this situation?
    • What are you afraid might happen?
    • What are other feared implications?
    • How does that make you feel?
    • How is what we are doing impact you and your situation?
    • What feeling can you share that will help us understand your perspective?

Be an observer. Rushing from meeting to meeting, from task to task, leaders have a tendency to be focused on what’s next.  Try stopping for a moment each day and just watching the flow and sounds in your workplace.  Be mindful and completely present for a few minutes each day.  What do you hear?  What do you see?  What patterns can you spot among team members interacting with each other?  How often do people smile or laugh?  Do your team members look healthy or unhealthy?  Are people avoiding a particular person or subject as you listen to them interact?  Sit someplace different to do your work for a day and see if the sounds and interactions change.

In our Leading a Winning Team coursework for leaders we train the skills necessary to identify the elephants in the office that are leading to lower productivity levels like drama and distrust and build the skills like Conversational Intelligence© to conquer them.