September 27, 2010 by Kim.

In keeping with the theme from my last post on setting up a scenario and asking how you would respond, I have a new, real life scenario for you. I’ve changed the names and the specifics of the incident to protect the guilty party.

Here’s the set up. Many of the members of your executive staff don’t communicate well with each other, let alone others beneath…I’m sorry…at lower levels of the organization. Imagine that your employee has received an email from one of these executive managers that begins like this:

“Understand that I am way past pissed off on this one.”

Point number one: The employee who received this email reports to you. You are not in this executive’s chain of command, and therefore neither is this employee.

Oh, did I mention that this executive copied the entire leadership team, along with others down stream, to spread his good cheer?

Point number two: The contents of the email go on to berate this employee for their ignorance in making their request. It also does a good job of making the employee look like an idiot.

Point number three: The, dare I call him, gentlemen who sent this email, never bothered to pick up the phone and call the employee to ask any clarifying questions before sending the email. Nor did he call you, his peer, to ask about the situation.

Point number four: The facts in the email were WRONG. The executive had not bothered to communicate with other members of the team who already had the information, understood the project, and were well informed of what was happening.

Question: What would you do in this scenario?

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September 14, 2010 by Kim.

In preparing for an upcoming presentation, I did some research on the qualities of leaders. Most qualities pop right to mind: integrity, honesty, respect, and so on. These are qualities you never want to compromise. Once you’ve crossed the bridge and your honesty has been breached or your integrity called into question, you will like never have the opportunity to gain the trust and position you once held. It’s sad, isn’t it, that we have so many leaders today that don’t display even these foundational leadership qualities. But I’ll save that topic for another blog.

One of the not so obvious qualities of great leaders I know and have worked with is intuition. There is a strange phenomenon that occurs as you progress up the corporate ladder—you have less and have less information available to make decisions. It isn’t necessarily that the information doesn’t exist, but you now have a broader range of responsibility, a much bigger portfolio of projects, and potentially hundreds or thousands of staff. It isn’t possible for one person to know everything about dozens of projects or hundreds of staff members in their span of control. Many times, decisions are needed quickly without time to perform analysis paralysis. Often, those decisions are snap decisions that are made from the gut.

Most good leaders I know and have worked with, have an innate ability to intuitively make good decisions. I have had times when intuition was the only information I had to rely on to make a decision. Practice honing your intuitive skills by thinking back on specific examples in your own life where you just knew something was right. A right answer, a correct choice, the right card to play or number to pick. Anything where you didn’t have sufficient information but you still knew the answer. Think about how you felt and how the intuitive information came about. Was it quick? Did it come from your head or your gut? Was the answer audible? (Okay, we could get into some real funny stories here about psycho leaders, but let’s save that for another day.) Try to use these same experiences when a new situation arises to bring about an intuitive response. One more experiment you can try is make random guesses in benign situations. Guess what kind of car will be in front of you when you enter the highway. Guess which parking space you’ll get before arriving at the store. Guess which commercial is coming up next on your favorite TV program. Intuition is a good skill to have. However, I do recommend using information to help with decision making when it’s available and when you have time to review it. But don’t discount that “feeling” you might have that something just isn’t adding up and learn when to go with your gut.

I’m starting a new feature in the blog to spur some discussion. It’s called “Scenario for Discussion.” I’ll set up a scenario and then ask what you would do in this situation. I hope you enjoy it.

Scenario for Discussion: Suppose you’re a new leader in a brand new organization. You don’t know anyone on staff yet. One of your employees sets a meeting with you to discuss the poor morale he’s witnessed among his fellow teammates. As you’re meeting with him, something doesn’t sit right. He’s describing scenarios that don’t make sense, and he has performed some questionable actions himself such as contacting a reporter with information about the latest project your company is working on. When you ask him if he’s met with management to discuss his concerns about this project and the poor morale issue, his response is no. He tells you that they wouldn’t listen so why should he waste his time? Since you’re brand new, he’s hoping you aren’t like “them” and will take this situation seriously. Scenario question: What would you do in this situation?

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