Dear leaders, there has been a lot made of disagreeing and committing in the recent macroeconomic times.
The chances are you are in either of two camps;
(1) Survive at any cost: have had to reduce the size of your department or lose whole teams, you have likely lost some budget and have to revisit another 9-box exercise.
Or
(2) Attempt to grow without spending the same budget you had at the turn of the financial year and requests for more headcount are not entertained.
Either camp is hard, but you are being pressured to either get on board or disagree and commit to where you have landed or where the HiPPO is driving the business.
The Backstory: The 13th Amazon leadership principle “have backbone; disagree and commit” has become a default principle in many boardrooms to ensure everyone is on the same page around the significant changes, whether that's hiring, headcount freezes, company restructuring or mass layoffs.
(Re)Connect With Leadership Colleagues
In hard times, it can be a real challenge to be a manager, it can be a real challenge to continue to be a leader and support those around you.
You can become unsure of your role and your own future and connecting to these huge shifts can feel like a constant uphill battle. This is where I recommend you deepen your working relationships and keep improving the bonds within your leadership team.
(FYI here’s how to build better management teams with management pods).
It is essential to refresh and reconnect with your colleagues when times are good but when they are at their most challenging I find a refresh is group therapy and can be group-defining.
Here are the 10 questions to ask each other:
What have you achieved in your career?
What piece of work are you most proud of working here?
What do you want to achieve here?
What inspires you every day?
What was the worst day of work here?
What was the best day of work here?
Tell me about when you made a big work-related mistake and learnt the hard way? -- And what was the lesson?
If you had to take three colleagues from three different departments to run a secret mission to save the company, who would you take and why?
If you were told to reduce your department by 50% what process would you take to do this?
If you were to revisit one project to optimise for better success what would it be and why?
These questions can be asked in many settings and work from one to one, one to few (small groups of the management) but ideally in offsite settings as an exec leadership team. This is where open conversation will flow and your colleagues will want to connect with you on a personal and professional level.
Why Ask And Answer These 10 Questions? These questions take real thought, a chance to show you can be vulnerable and a chance to create materials for the management team to onboard others onto the management team and add their experiences.
This week’s focus action: Create a time slot where you and your colleagues run through the ten questions and learn about each other and what drives and motivates you and see how you could form a squad or SWORM to complete a secret mission within the company.
Have a great week and remember IQ will only get you so far, EQ and PQ will take you and your business further.
Thanks,
Danny Denhard
Here are 3 other essentials tips to improve your leadership this week: