Tag: tim schneider

Collaborative Innovation

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Innovation Process

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Brainstorming does not work.

That’s right. Brainstorming as most people think of it is highly ineffective and does not achieve the level of collaborative input desired. The brainstorming that incorporates twenty or so of your team members and peers with the obligatory facilitator, flip chart pad and colored markers does not work.

There is a pretty large population of people that will not share their ideas, suggestions and thoughts in this type of forum. Some people fear embarrassment, ridicule or even just speaking in front of a group. No matter how comfortable you make the environment, they are going to contribute very little or nothing at all. Worse yet, they may even openly mock the process because of their discomfort and pollute the participation of others. These people have great ideas, they just will not share them in a traditional brainstorming environment.

There is also a population of people that require time to process information and formulate ideas. They do not do well in an environment that rewards near auctioneer speed in conveying thoughts. They want to collect themselves, play around with various scenarios and have time to form something that meets their standards. Brainstorming sessions exclude the great ideas from this group.

Before we visit what processes work to achieve collaboration in innovation, we must examine why collaborative innovation is desirable. If you are an effective leader and have great ideas, why do you need the input from others?

The effective leader is looking for innovation partners and not just innovation participants. Ownership and buy-in are only achieved with participation. You cannot demand buy-in, sell buy-in or purchase buy-in. It is only achieved when others can willing participate in the process. As the leader, you get a team that believes they designed the innovation rather than was victimized by the innovation.

A collaborative approach to innovation also assists the leader in seeing potential unintended consequences of an new approach or change. The different views from your team and the perspectives they represent can be real eye-opening to the leader. They have operational level and daily knowledge that even the most in-tune leader will never know. Quite simply, they know what works and often, what is best for the customer or end user.

There is a short process to obtain collaborative input from your team or others in an innovation process. The first step is to announce the issue or process that you would like input about. As a general rule of thumb, give people a ten to twenty day window of time to think about what you want them to have ideas about.

The second step is to require, yes require, input. That is achieved by sending your team members a note or form with the identified issue or process and requesting that each team member produce three suggestions or ideas for how to perform it better. Establish a deadline and build a follow-up mechanism to insure you receive feedback from each team member or organizational participant. Upon receipt, be sure to thank each team member for the input, no matter the quality.

The next immediate interim step is to reconcile the written comments from your team. There are two areas of awe that occur here. First is the feedback that you will receive from the quietest members of your group. The ones that never speak in a staff meeting or traditional brainstorming session will come up with and articulate some great ideas. The second awe point relates to the degree of commonality. Commonality between your approach and theirs and commonality between their suggestions. Leaders who utilize this method report that out of hundreds of individual ideas, they can be edited down into a dozen or so common responses. Different words but same processes or suggestions.

The final step of this collaborative innovation model is the only public airing and it is a relatively brief one compared to traditional brainstorming. A group meeting is conducted and all the ideas are presented equally. The leader can include his or her suggestions and ideas on equal footing with other input and feedback at this time. With each idea out in the open, the leader or facilitator will begin reconciling ideas by pairing people, then in groups of four, groups of eight and finally the entire group to build ideas and suggestions that represent the entire group. Everyone participates and everyone is represented in this reconciliation. Ideas are formulated, documented and fully vetted. Each of the consolidation steps are time sensitive with short deadline periods to avoid over-pontification by any one group member. The team leader often excuses himself or herself from this process because of the influence they carry among team members.

Collaborative innovation takes a little more time and work but the results and the buy-in of affected stakeholders is dramatically better than dictated ideas and solutions.

 

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Feedback from Others

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Understanding Yourself

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

The third and final source of information related to understanding yourself comes from the feedback of others. This can be in two subsets, formal and informal. Formal feedback from other people includes performance reviews and 360 degree evaluations. Performance reviews are usually not a very good source of self understanding and awareness because they are done infrequently and they are generally not done well.

The formal process of gathering leadership, performance and behavioral information from others is commonly referred to as a 360 degree assessment. It obtains feedback from those you lead, your boss and others, including vendors and customers, in which you exercise influence. The best versions of these instruments contain both quantified and numeric ratings about key leadership indicators but also include a section for anonymous comments. The most helpful information is often found in the comment section under headings that include behaviors to stop, behaviors to begin, things the person does well and things the person could do better.

The one intellectual honesty risk with 360 degree feedback comes from selecting the audience to comment and evaluate. Two errors occur frequently in choosing either people that you know will be very supportive and positive or choosing people that will be very critical. Both populations do not provide an accurate picture of you or your style. Evaluators and comment providers must be a cross section of those who love you and those who do not.

Informal methods of gaining feedback include the highly complex transaction of (gasp) asking people how you are doing. One of the best leadership sources of this information come from those being led. Simply asking how you are doing as a leader, what you could do better and what is working well is a great source of feedback to understand yourself and uncover some important blind spots.

Another great source of the same type of information comes from peers or near peers. Since they have no real vested interest in how you lead, their degree of honesty would be pretty high. This works especially well if you can create a peer mentoring type of relationship where the feedback is shared between both of you.

As with all types of self understanding feedback, this also contains a warning tale or two. The first time out of the gate, many people will not provide you with direct and fully honest information. In fact, your subordinates and peers may sugar coat things or deny that there is anything in you that needs to be changed. They may even openly think you are up to no good in this questioning. It is only through a consistent approach in which you have demonstrated no repercussions that team members will provide you with complete honesty and feedback that you need. You must ask several times across multiple months and show that no one is going to get hurt to get the self management information you want.

The final cautionary tale about direct feedback is the desire that many people have to dismiss the source. In informal feedback, if you hear something you don’t like from someone you don’t like, it is easy to discredit the information. You might say things like “you know Bob, nothing ever pleases him” or “Mary has not had a good thing to say about a boss in ten years.” Unfortunately, even when the source is not valued, some of the feedback is important. Even when wrapped in exaggeration or dislike, important information about you might lay below the surface and underneath some emotion. Focus on the message and not the messenger.

The three ingredients of understanding yourself are what you already know and believe, feedback from personality assessments and profiles and the feedback from others. Armed with this information you are now ready to begin the final step of self awareness and understanding.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Overusing Reward, Threat and Organizational Power

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Threat Power

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Threat power is a form of “if, then” equation. It is the direct or intimated threat that if a team member fails, something bad will happen to them. A little bit of threat power is needed in any leadership dynamic but if overused, can drain the spirit and desire to perform from any team.

The necessary application of threat power is usually reserved for formal disciplinary actions when coaching has not produced a successful turnaround in a team member’s performance. In formal disciplinary action, there is the “if, then” that relates to continued failure could result in more disciplinary action or termination. Beyond this application, threat power serves no good purpose in leadership.

Like threat power, reward power is an “if, then” type of proposition. The only difference is that reward power provides for a positive reward or carrot at the end of a stick upon achieving a desired result. Also like threat power, it is necessary but in small doses.

Two areas of concern for any leader is the ongoing availability of rewards. If rewards dry up, now what? The other area of concern is why people work for and perform for a leader. Is the leader really building loyalty and relationships or simply offering compensation and spiffs on a regular basis. Many times the leader that is over-reliant on reward power is compensating for a lack of true relationships with team members and trying to buy performance.

Organizational or legitimate power is the actual authority granted to a leader based on their position and title. It is where you live in the organizational chart. It is your authority to approve things, initiate action and operate independently. It can also be seen as “do it because I said so.” It is very common in military and paramilitary type organizations which rely on a rigid hierarchy.

Unfortunately, too much emphasis on organizational power will lead to bottlenecked decision making, lack of innovation and failure to take risks. It can also be a contributing factor in sheep breeding and the lack of success associated with that. The use of organizational power can also become territorial and hoarding with people waging turf wars to insure their areas of influence are protected and insulated.

The effective leader should never have to order anyone to do anything or beg anyone to do anything. The effective leader creates a climate and the relationships needed for team members to want to do the work prescribed and direction defined by the leader.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Creativity Dampeners

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Creativity Stimulants

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Before delving into the leadership role in driving innovation, a few comments and notes about creativity.

Creativity can be stymied in individuals and in organizations in a variety of ways. Among the most common dampeners of creativity is a lack of recognition for ideas. When an idea falls on deaf ears and is not acknowledged or validated in any manner, people will not provide creative solutions. Even worse than ignoring an idea, is if an idea is openly besmirched or ridiculed. When that occurs, ideas and creativity will be greatly diminished in the long term and people will be hesitant to ever participate in creative solutions or suggestions.

Other common dampeners include the proliferation of policy and procedure in a company. When all behaviors are defined by the dreaded P and P, there is little room for creative thought. Add a cumbersome process to revise policy and you will have a great recipe for no creativity.

Hyper rigidity is also a contributor to lack of creativity. When there are rules for the sake of rules and adherence to those rules are more important than achievement of results, creativity is diminished. Creativity is not stimulated through sameness.

A final piece of creative dampening is history. History is a poor indicator and predictor of what may work now. Many people look back and remember how something failed previously as an excuse to not try it again. Your history and your organization’s history should never be used to not attempt something anew. After all, people have changed, the environment has changed and it just might work this time around.

Stimulating creativity requires that an organization consistently reminds itself and the team members in the organization of what is really important. Is quality service more important than clocking in at eight? Is performance more important than rigidity? Is the quality of the end product more important than attendance at the mandatory Monday meeting?

Another creativity stimulant comes from a concept linked in this section. Personal change will tend to drive creative though process and stimulate the mind to seek different paths. Trying a new drive to work, rearranging your office and new working hours all stimulate creative thought. Change some patterns and habits and grow your creative output.

Without venturing into the spiritual or metaphysical realms, there are some other creative stimulants like listening to music (softly, of course), getting fresh air and exercise that are effective as well. One of the most overlooked creative stimulants is the gift of time to think. Supervisors, managers and leaders at all levels are very often consumed by their schedule. Things to do. Meetings. Tasks. None of that provides any time to sit back and sit back and think and be creative. The most effective leaders provide themselves some time to reflect, review and be creative. No interruptions, just thinking and being creative.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

The Coach as Mentor

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Mentoring Dynamics

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

The final role for the coaching leader is that of mentor. Mentoring has a lot of dynamics and sub-competencies and can be the most rewarding of all the coaching related activities.

At it’s core, mentoring is the growing of talent. Growing talent to take your place. Growing talent so you can be more easily promoted. Growing talent to ease your workload and increase team member satisfaction. Growing talent to increase your organizational influence by the promotion and transfer of people you have mentored. Growing talent to create a pool of succession for your organization.

The first mentoring dynamic is finding someone to mentor. This needs to be a collaborative operation. Not everyone you think will be a good successor wants to be mentored. Not everyone who wants to be mentored will be a good candidate for future promotion or advancement. The process needs to be available to all but utilized with only a few at a time. As a rule of thumb, you should only consider directly mentoring two people at any one time. You will have to conduct some courageous conversations with people to both encourage and dissuade participation in mentoring.

The reason that mentoring is done in plural with two people is because stuff happens. People quit. They may not be exactly what you thought they were. You need to have points of comparison and need to have choices when opportunities arise. Placing all of your mentoring stock in one candidate is risky and often backfires.

Identifying mentoring candidates will require you to do a little career counseling. You will need to discover what they want out of this job and their career in whole. What are they looking for and what are their key motivations and satisfaction points. This process is just like hiring for correct fit.

After you have identified a couple of mentoring candidates, the first step is to solidify relationships with them. Discover commonalities, reconcile differences in style and appearances and build bonds on a deeper level. This relationship base will further establish trust and communication comfort which is important in the mentoring process. Get to know the mentoring participants. Let them tell their stories. Know their biography. Both you and the mentored team member must feel good about expression and deeper communication intimacy.

The effective leader now wants to add some quality doses of storytelling. Not of the bedtime variety but the types of stories that reinforce how to be a successful leader. The challenges you faced. Things you have seen. Lessons you have learned. Not related in a I’m-The-Best-Thing-Since-White-Sliced-Bread type of approach but in narrative of lessons and matter-of-fact approach. This is uncomfortable for many leaders but priceless for those being mentored.

After relational and storytelling activities, the leader must begin the process of delegating, empowering and developing the mentoring participants. You must be able to let go of some key tasks, allow the team members to perform them using their techniques and styles and debrief their decisions and performance. Much more about this process in found in the Sheep Breeding Commandment.

Another powerful mentoring tool is job shadowing. This allows mentored participants to gain a feel and firsthand appreciation for higher level jobs and functions. Job shadowing should be done in a programmatic and long –term approach that gives a sustained look at the job.

The other key mentoring piece is to allow mentored team members to act in your behalf and for you at key meetings and during times of your absence. This is an important step of translating their learning from storytelling, delegation and job shadowing into the practical world of acting and performing. During any period when a mentored candidate acts for you, even if it is very brief, a debrief dialog is critical. This dialog is designed to see what went well and what could have been done better. When done in a non-comparing and non-judgmental form, this is a great form of learning for mentored participants.

Mentoring requires a good time commitment. A time commitment that is not always returned in the near term but an investment that will pay dividends to you and your organization for years to come.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Avoiding Change for Change’s Sake

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Hope for the Best

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

New is not automatically better. New is just new.

Trying and testing new methods is absolutely positive and effective leaders must constantly force the issue of challenging the status quo. That does not mean that the leader is blindly committed to new methods.

Some organizations have embraced an innovation only to find that the desired outcome has not been realized. The efficiency and improvement were no where to be found and the ease of implementation has been an oxymoron. In fact, during and after the change, things became much worse but unfortunately, no leader had the courage to raise a stop sign and cease the insanity.

An important part of innovation is to insure that the new method, process or product actually delivers the desired result set. The effective leader must monitor and test all of the assumptions associated with the innovation effort to insure that it is on track. If the results slip, the effective leader must be honest in their assessment and in some cases, stop the innovation.

One sure way to disengage team members and breed a jaded response to change is to narrowly assume that all that is new must be better.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

The Starting Points of Coaching

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Competencies in Coaching

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Coaching is defined in many ways, terms and contexts. For our purpose, coaching is a stream of communication from the leader to team members for the purpose of maintaining and improving performance.

Often times, coaching is viewed as an athletic function and visions of Bobby Knight, Dean Smith, Tom Osborne or Lou Holtz are summoned. The model provided by the athletic version of coaching is not far off from the business model but there are some distinct differences.

One of the comments that has often been expressed about coaching is the lack of time to devote to this activity. This is a classic symptom of a leader being too involved in doing and not involved in leading. When debunked this comment is really more about a lack of comfort in coaching skills than it is about available time.

Team members who do not receive regular coaching often feel disengaged from the organization and leader. Morale will suffer and in the absence of good coaching, team members will take an active role in defining what is good and bad in the organization. Strong personalities, sometimes for very bad reasons, will rise to an unofficial position of importance and drive team effectiveness. Team members with no coaching will also become fearful, tentative and resentful of the lack of knowing where they stand.

When effective coaching is present, the opposite will occur. Team members are engaged, upbeat, clear in their direction and clear in their understanding of where there performance is at. Team members will develop a much clearer understanding of the organization’s needs and how they fit in the big picture with good coaching. They also will see hope in their own growth.

The core coaching competency is good communication skills. To coach you must be able to communicate. In groups, with individuals, following-up in writing; a leader must be able to express their comments, suggestions, praise and encouragement effectively.

The other core competency in coaching is the need to be a people person. Although this phrase is pretty grossly overused, you must enjoy interacting with team members to be an effective coach. The boss that hides in her office and buries her nose in projects and paper work is often expressing a discomfort with dealing with people and thus avoiding coaching activities.

The journey into effective and excellent coaching will begin with breaking coaching into three separate pieces. The first piece is feedback. Feedback is providing either positive or corrective information to team members about their performance or behavior. This is the most common form of coaching and should represent a big part of a leader’s coaching interactions.

The second tenet of coaching is teaching and mentoring. This is different from feedback in that it takes a more long-term and nurturing approach. Teaching and mentoring is about providing skills to be successful and growing people for maximum results.

The final piece of the coaching puzzle is a catch-all wing that includes decisions to release team members, game planning and protecting team members. For the purpose of simplicity, we will call this operational coaching.

No single part of coaching is more important than another and none are effective without the other. For team success, feedback is needed, mentoring and teaching are needed and the operational elements of coaching are certainly engaged. Equally important and equally distributed from a leadership perspective.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Maintaining and Reparing Relationships

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Swallow Your Pride

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

As simple as beginning to build a relationship seems, maintaining a relationship in the working environment becomes tricky and difficult. The first order of business is to insure that the relationship is reciprocal and not one sided. People must not feel, perceive or detect that you are using them or manipulating them in the relationship.

This means that you must provide assistance and openness when required and without strings attached. You must be willing to help, mentor and coach when there is no immediate gain for your or your part of the organization. You must also spend time with the people you have built relationships with and continue to communication and build rapport. Effective relationships also require a healthy dose of forgiveness. The forgiveness of faux pas, the forgives of neglect, the forgiveness of lack of understanding, the forgiveness of neglect and the forgiveness of the lack of reciprocation.

Forgiveness is a funny equation. We all admit we need it for our own mistakes and misspeaks but we tend to be a little stingy in providing it. As openly as we seek forgiveness of others, we must provide it to others.

Repairing
The final element of fully engaging relationship power is the need to repair relationships in the working environment. Repairing relationships that have been strained over time or not tended to because of the demands of our jobs.

Repairing will require a big amount of swallowing your pride and ego to do the right thing. Relationships are about building a long lasting power base and sometimes you have to subordinate your own ego to get this done.

Like in building relationships, this is not about you waiting for others to approach you. This is about you taking the initiative and responsibility for the relationship and reaching out to those in which the relationship has become strained. This will also require you to apologize for something that, in many cases, you have not done wrong. You are apologizing for the strain or apologizing for the miscommunication or apologizing for the neglect. It is the first step in repair and may not always be reciprocated but it is a starting point.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Non Verbal Communication and Tone

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Message Recieved

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

A great deal has been written about the importance of non-verbal elements in the totality of the communication picture. Ranging between sixty and eighty percent of either message content or message richness, all experts agree that body language, facial expressions and tones account for a big part of the message received.

In addressing tone, a good communicator must understand their environment and situation. During corrective coaching, a leader cannot be overly upbeat or friendly in tone. When having relationship based dialog or during tone setting, you cannot come across in a flat, monotone or disinterested tone. Tone, in communication is an interesting dynamic that is driven by attitude. When the attitude is strong and healthy, a person is more likely to correctly adapt to different tone situations. When attitude is poor, tone adaptations are less likely to occur or, at the least, occur in a well done manner.

The great mirror of tone, and attitude for that matter, is the human face. Very few leaders are truly in tune with how their face looks during communication. Many are unaware of the wrinkled brow, scowl or stares of indifference that they cast on a regular basis. Under stress and with a poor or sinking attitude, managing facial expressions becomes a remote after-thought.

Effective leaders and great communicators make a special point of being aware of and managing their facial expressions. They understand what others see on their face and they actively work to create facial expressions that add to, and not distract from the message. This facial management is an important part of the non-verbal communication package and very important in controlling the tone of any dialog.

A couple of other non-verbal messages to be aware of include crossed arms, hands in pockets and single finger pointing. The crossed arm position, especially prevalent in sitting positions and during colder temperatures, shows a closed and uninterested position. For men more than women, the hands in pants pocket message is very common. When those hands slide in the front pockets it demonstrates a nervousness or disinterested position. Many people show this when standing for introductions or in other uncomfortable situations.

First recognized by the airline industry, the single finger point is a very aggressive piece of body language. Many people report that they feel assaulted or at the least, uncomfortable when others point. And as we all remember from our parents, it is rude. An interesting side note on single finger pointing is that many studies conclude that the aggressive nature of this piece of body language is not limited to pointing at a person but rather is equally aggressive when pointing towards other objects.

We can’t put them in our pockets, cross them, put them around our mouth or point them, so what do we do with our hands and arms. Effective leaders have found great value to engaging their hands and arms as message accentuation tools. Quite simply this means to use your hand and arms to assist in adding emphasis and enthusiasm to the message package. A little hand and arm movement shows you are engaged and believe your message as well.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Object Oriented Innovation

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Desired Outcome

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

An excellent resource in innovation and improvement is the use of Object Oriented Innovation. OOI is a very simple approach that yields the highest success in innovation and creativity.

The starting point of OOI is to define the end point. What is the desired outcome? What is the product or process that you need to achieve? What is the end game? Equally important as defining the ending point in which you want to achieve is insuring that the end point has value and is valued by the organization. You must connect the end product or process to the core values and mission of the organization. If it fits, you keep going. If it does not fit, you have to look to see if it should be eliminated, discontinued or repackaged in such a way that it will fit.

Without deference to how it is done now or who is involved now, the next phase of OOI is to determine how the end point is achieved. Identify the needed steps to deliver the product, service or project. Again, the challenging point in this step is to ignore how it is currently being done or how it was done before and concentrate on how it needs to be done. The step must include identifying resources needed, labor and time, regulations, laws and other requirements.

Since no leader works in a vacuum, the next step in OOI is to identify the areas of impact. What other departments will have to change the way they do things? Is there an impact on customers and end users? Are there organizational considerations and the egos of other leaders that may be in play? What is the human resource impacts such as changed hours or more or less people? What are the financial considerations? The effective innovation leader must now reconcile these realities without overly compromising the desired outcome and make some good judgments and decisions about the next course of action.

The final OOI step involves converting the identified process steps to action and delivering the desired outcome.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.