When you don’t pay enough attention to strategy, you and your team end up lost in a wilderness of meaningless, unproductive busyness. However, when you don’t pay attention to tactics and effective management, you create needless conflicts, frustrations and hurt feelings. When you embrace effective leadership strategy and tactics, they’ll work together to help you, your teams, and organization thrive.

Leaders and managers often struggle with the difference between strategy and tactics or vision and operations. But they are both vital to your success and don’t have to be complicated.

The Danger of Focusing Only on Strategy

This weekend I went for a long trail run. The terrain was rocky with roots snaking across the trail. I kept a close eye on the ground and placed my feet carefully. Then I caught up with two women on the trail ahead of me.

I called out a friendly “passing on your left” and as they moved over to allow me to pass, I focused on the trail ahead where I would pass them, and I sped up.

And that’s when one of those roots caught my foot and I tripped, falling down in an inglorious pile of dirt, blood, and embarrassment.

In looking at the trail ahead, I lost focus on the ground beneath my feet.

That’s the danger of focusing on strategy or vision (the trail ahead) to the exclusion of the operational and management realities you face today (the ground beneath your feet).

The trail demanded attention

Tactical Questions to Help You Avoid “Injury”

Operational tactics (looking at the ground beneath your feet) include clear communication, a shared understanding of success, healthy professional relationships, and consistent accountability.

When you lack these elements, your team will experience the “injuries” of frequent conflicts, frustrations, and misunderstandings that derail productivity and quench morale. Here are several vital questions to help focus on the tactical aspect of leadership strategy and tactics:

• Does everyone know what success looks like?
• Does everyone know what specific behaviors are critical to achieving that success?
• Have you checked for understanding to ensure everyone has the same understanding?
• Are you consistently communicating critical messages and concepts five times, five different ways?
• Do you schedule the finish with clear discussions and mutual appointments to conclude tasks and projects?
• Do you and your team hold one another accountable for commitments?
• Do you acknowledge and celebrate success?
• Does your team know how to discuss and resolve day-to-day conflict, dropped balls, and misunderstandings?

For more on these critical leadership questions and competencies, check out Leadership Skills: 6 Competencies You Can’t Lead Without

To help your team with tough conversations, check out How to Provide More Meaningful Performance Feedback

The Danger of Focusing Only on Tactics 

Back to the trail…I got up, brushed myself off, and continued to run. Twelve miles later I took a new trail I’d never explored. I was determined not to fall again, so I watched the ground closely.

When I reached the end of the new trail, I turned around, confident I’d counted the number of branching trails I’d passed and that I could get back easily. But I was tired, hadn’t looked at a map, and I’d been watching the ground so closely that I hadn’t paid enough attention to my surroundings. I took a wrong turn and I was lost.

In looking at the ground beneath my feet, I’d lost track of where I was and where to go.

That’s the danger of focusing on tactics and operations (the ground beneath your feet) to the exclusion of strategy and vision (the map and the trail ahead).

Lost and Wandering

Strategic Questions to Help you Avoid Getting “Lost”

Strategic clarity and vision (looking at the map and the trail ahead) include understanding the big picture, why you’re doing what you’re doing, and how your team’s work contributes to the whole. In addition, a shared vision (picture of where you’re going and what it will feel like to get there) inspires and energizes your team.

When you lack these elements, your team will get “lost” in business. Their work might be precise and done well, but it’s not meaningful—it doesn’t move the team or outcomes forward. This type of meaningless work saps morale and wastes precious time and energy. Here are several questions to help avoid getting lost in unproductive work as you focus on the first element of leadership strategy and tactics:

• Why do we do this?
• And ask again, up to five times… why do we do this?
• What is our organization or team’s purpose?
• Do we have a shared vision of success for our team? (What does it look like, feel like, and what is happening when we are at our best, doing our best work?)
• How does our work contribute to the bigger picture? (That bigger picture can be your customer, the organization, or society beyond the business.)
• What is changing in the world, our industry, technology, employees, or our customers so that we can understand and respond?
• How will our customers, client, or world be better because of the work we do?

For more on connecting your team to the “why” in your work, check out Strategic Planning Tool: How to Engage Your Team in Better Conversation

To create more clarity and ensure everyone understands what matters most: Creating Clarity: Strategic Activities For Human Centered Leaders

To help your team make these connections and build a foundation for high performance: How to Build a High-Performing Team: Ten Vital Conversations

Resolving the Tension Between Leadership Strategy and Tactics

Many leaders and teams get into arguments and conflict as they struggle with the need to “look at the map” and focus “on the ground beneath their feet.”

The reason for many of these disagreements is that most of us have a natural tendency to focus on one direction or the other. Some people are natural visionaries, looking at the horizon, seeing into tomorrow, and inspiring people to come on the journey with them. Other people are naturally good at operations and ensuring everyone is on the same page, connected with one another, and doing their work well.

Obviously, you need both for any team or organization to do meaningful work and make a difference. What is obvious and self-evident for you will not be so clear for your colleague with a different gift.

In most discussions, the best way to resolve the tension between leadership strategy and tactics is to start with strategy. Where are we going? Why are we going there? How will we and our customer/client be better off as a result?

Once you’ve clarified the strategic goal, then focus on how you will achieve it and the leadership practices that help the team operate smoothly.

In your own leadership, commit to a weekly habit of strategy and tactics. If you’re strong tactically, schedule time at the beginning or end of the week to re-examine why you’re doing the work you’re doing and ensure it aligns with the big picture.

If you’re strong strategically, ask the tactical questions and ensure you haven’t let communication or accountability lapse while you’ve looked at the horizon.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics – Your Turn

A mutual focus on leadership strategy and tactics helps you and your team do motivating, meaningful work without morale-sapping frustration.

I’d love to hear from you: how do you balance leadership strategy and tactics, ensuring you don’t lose focus on one or the other?

The post Don’t Get Lost or Hurt: The Vital Role of Leadership Strategy and Tactics appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Early in my career, I learned a vital leadership lesson about how to give your team energy. I was working with an education nonprofit that supported children who lived in poverty.

During the summer, we would frequently take these students bowling, hiking, or swimming. It was new to them, an inexpensive way to build mentoring relationships, and fun. Or at least, it could be fun if we allowed it to be.

As an adult, the eleventh time you take kids bowling doesn’t have the same novelty. On a steamy Monday morning in late July, a senior leader, Sue, must have seen the malaise creeping into us. She looked each of us in the eye and said, “Never forget that it’s their first time. Honor that experience for them.”

As a leader, you’ve shown up to a team meeting, started a new project, helped a team member over an obstacle. The novelty can wear off.

You’ve been there. Done that. Have the tee-shirt. The scars. Maybe a little cynicism.

How can you recapture that spark and energy?

Find Your Rock Star

Recently I heard comedian Conan O’Brien interview Bruce Springsteen. The Boss, who is known for the incredible energy he and the E-Street Band bring to every performance, talked about his approach to performance. “I want to be on the frontier—on the edges of my own psychological, emotional spiritual frontier. I want to be working there until the day I die.”

That, Springsteen says, is the difference between a professional and a careerist.

As you move forward and live life, he says, your life blossoms and so you can never actually sing the same song twice. You’re always a new and different person.

The interview called to mind the first and only time I saw the band Kansas perform live. They were opening for the band Yes. This was decades after both bands’ heyday.

But you wouldn’t have known it.

Kansas has two or three songs most rock fans know. They’ve probably performed that catalog thousands of times in venues ranging from huge stadiums in the 1970s to tents at state fairs.

When I saw them, it was in a smaller theater where I was standing in the back. And …

They. Brought. It.

To this day it’s one of the most energetic performances I’ve ever seen. The same few songs. “Dust in the Wind”—sang with the passion and perspective of people who have lived and seen life. “Carry on My Wayward Son”—filled with conviction, wisdom, and hope. “Point of Know Return”—carried the passion, challenge of adventure, and even an invitation to leadership.

They gave everything they had, and I’ll never forget it.

What must it be like performing those same few songs over and over across decades?

It was a challenge to me to show up for what matters most with all the energy and passion I can bring. To find what is new and fresh and meaningful.

Give Your Team Energy

Today, where can you give your team energy by showing up like it’s the first time?

• Reconnect to your why. What’s the deepest meaning and purpose behind your work? Refresh yourself and your team in the “Why?” behind every “What?”
• Focus on who you serve. You and your team exist to do something for someone. Who are they? How do you help them? Ask your clients, customers, or constituents to share a few words with your team about how the work they do matters.
• Practice your craft. This is my takeaway from Bruce Springsteen’s conversation: You’re a different person. You are (hopefully) a better leader. The activity might be rote, routine, and even boring, but you’re not. You’re a different person. How does this new you bring their best self to the task and team?
• Look through the eyes of a new team member. This was Sue’s challenge to us as adult mentors. It’s their first time going bowling. Find that magic. You’ve solved this problem fifty-five times, but your newest person is just learning and the magic of expanding their capacity is waiting for your leadership.

Your Turn

Life will always include some level of the mundane and routine. As a leader, you can give your team energy to meet these challenges.

I’d love to hear from you. What’s your best suggestion to meet the routine or boring aspects of work and energize your team?

The post How to Give Your Team Energy They Need appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You’ve noticed a problem, spent the last four days meeting with finance, strategizing, and building an action plan. You’re energized about what your team will achieve, your boss and peers are on board, and it’s time to meet with your team to roll out the new process. You share the details, all the benefits, and next steps. But it feels like your team resists change.

Your enthusiasm is met with quiet reluctance. Then your team brings up three different operational challenges and two reasons your customers won’t like it. Why can’t they understand the benefit and just move forward?

4 Things to Do When Your Team Resists Change

The resistance to change frustrates many leaders, but it doesn’t have to. In fact, the resistance you feel often means there’s an opportunity to create buy-in and ownership that will help you build a courageous culture (download your free courageous cultures white paper here). Here’s how to do it:

1) Avoid Labels

It’s easy to label people who raise objections. But they’re not necessarily lazy, stuck, negative, or even “resistant” (despite the title of this article).

Rather, they’re normal and human. Resisting change actually makes a lot of sense. After all, if what you did yesterday worked–it got you through the day, alive, fed, and healthy—why spend energy to do something differently? That’s a waste of time—unless there’s a good reason.

2) Start with the Problem

If you’re like most leaders, when you see a problem, you move to solutions as quickly as you can. Then you go to your team with a solution. It’s natural, but when you do this, you deprive your team of the understanding and connection that helped you arrive at the answer you’ve brought them.

Without that same connection, of course they won’t feel the same way you do. One way to solve this challenge is to start the conversation with your team by identifying the problem.

Eg: “I was looking at the numbers and we’re seeing a steady decline in re-enrollment.”

Then pause, let the issue sink in. If you have a team of introverts, give them time to think about the issue.

3) Ask for Their Thoughts

Once you’ve shared the problem and given them a moment to reflect. Ask for their thoughts. This helps anchor the problem in their thinking. They explore the consequences and how it interacts with other issues.

Change always starts with desire or dissatisfaction. By introducing the problem and letting it sink in, you’re creating the same emotional connection that helped you move to action.

When your why is bigger than your won’t, you will.

4) Ask for Their Solutions

As the team discusses the issue, they are likely to start asking about solutions.

When someone says, “What do you think we should do?” Resist the urge to answer. Instead, continue to ask for their ideas. They may come up with ideas you haven’t considered—or they may arrive at the same solution you’ve thought through.

But now there’s a crucial difference: they own it.

And if they can’t come up with any reasonable solutions, your ideas now have a hungry audience.

At this point you can move into decision-making mode: establish what a successful solution will achieve, determine who will make the decision, discuss, decide, and act.

Final Thoughts

It may feel like this process takes extra time—and it does. It’s 15 or 30 minutes of time that prevents days, weeks, and even months of procrastination and foot-dragging. The team owns the problem and the solution. They’ve connected to the why and are ready for action.

This small investment of time overcomes some common reasons people resist change. A few notes:

1) If you suspect an individual is resisting because they will lose something (status, money, comfort) you will need to address that separately. Maybe there is a bigger “why” available that makes the trade-off worth it. Or, it may be an unavoidable consequence of a changing world. Don’t overlook these personal losses – they are real and if left unaddressed, make you look inhuman.

2) Sometimes you need to move quickly. The more you connect with your team and connect them to the why behind the change, the more buy-in you’ll have for the times you need to say “trust me and we’ll discuss it later.”

Your Turn

We’d love to hear from you – what’s your best practice to help teams navigate change?

The post How to Lead When Your Team Resists Change appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

As a leader, there is one connection you can make that will do more to inspire your team and increase productivity than anything else you might say. In fact, when you move from none of this to all of it, you can double your team’s productivity.

The post Start Here to Inspire Your Team and Double Productivity appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You know that the ability to lead different and diverse people to come together and blend their talents is key to achieving breakthrough results. But if you’re like most leaders we work with, we imagine you’re still a bit caught off guard and surprised from time to time about just how different (and frustrating) these differences can be.

Learning to understand our own differences and how they impact those we are seeking to lead has been a critical part of our leadership journey.

As a young introvert, it flabbergasted David when he first learned that many people talk to figure out what they think. In a leadership training class one time he asked the facilitator, “You mean extroverts say things they don’t mean?”

Early in her career, Karin, a high-energy extrovert had a leadership mentor explain that her enthusiasm for her own ideas sometimes made teammates reluctant to speak up and share their concerns. She had to learn to slow down and ask strategic questions to give people time to process and catch up with her thinking.

The struggle is real. In our work as business and life partners, it often amazes us at how differently we interpret the same situation—and we teach this stuff!

People are Different

You may know it intellectually, but do people’s differences play a core role in your leadership? Do you lead different and diverse people differently?

People have different motivations than you. They process information differently than you do. Some want to compete, some want to get along. Some want to talk, some want you to leave them alone to do their work.

They have more or less urgency than you…more or less attention to detail…more or less focus on people or tasks or process or outcomes…they have different backgrounds. Something you find easy, they may have struggled with all their life just to get by.

Some people need to explain, some people don’t want an explanation. Some people trust authority; some trust no one – especially authority. Some like public recognition; others prefer a quiet “thank you.”

And those are just a few of the many, many ways people are different.

Your success as a leader depends on your ability to lead different and diverse people – to bring all these differences together to achieve results.

The Leadership Challenge of Differences

Unfortunately, people’s differences trip up many leaders. Over the years, we’ve seen so many leaders (and we’ve done it too) become exasperated when a team member doesn’t do what they expect.

When you dig deeper, you find out that the leader expected the team member would act just like the leader would in the same situation.

This creates many conflicts and expectation violations. Here are a few examples:

• Mary gives the team the freedom she craves from her own manager, but it confuses her team full of people who prefer more daily attention, and they feel like Mary doesn’t care about them.
• Joe methodically adds the new project his manager gave him to the bottom of his to-do list. But he frustrates his manager who thought Joe would intuitively understand that this project trumps everything and needs to be done right away.
• Mike comes to a staff meeting prepared to take part, arrives early, sits in front, and his teammate, Jill, thinks he’s angry because he didn’t talk engage or talk with anyone while the meeting was getting ready to start.
• Laura, a database manager, works long hours to ensure the data is accurate and then quits when the Kathy, her team leader, ignores her data in favor of political relationships.

At their core, all these relationship breakdowns happened because the leader didn’t understand that people are different.

Effective leaders understand that people are different and lead to draw the best out of each person.

Five Ways to Lead Different and Diverse People

Here are a few solutions for the challenges presented by our diversity.

1. Familiarize yourself with the basics of human diversity. There are many tools to help you do this. The specific tool is not as important as the fundamental understanding that people are different and that these differences can all add value.

2. Value the differences. No one wants to be tolerated. Every person on your team needs to be valued for the meaningful contribution they make. Intentionally seek out different perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking. Get all the feedback you need to make the best decisions.

3. Give people what they need to be effective. This doesn’t mean that you enable poor performance. Rather, learn how your people are wired, what energizes them, and meet them where they are to draw greatness from them.

4. Provide clarity. Mind the MIT (the Most Important Thing), clarify the decision, who owns the decision, and the specific behaviors that lead to success. Clarify the relationships and interactions different roles will play as everyone works together. Use the Expectations Matrix to align the team’s expectations of one another – and of you. The clearer you can be, the more you pull everyone’s diverse talents and strengths together to achieve results.

5. Understand the ways people are the same. For example, everyone wants a leader they can trust. Everyone benefits when you link activity to meaning and purpose. Everyone wants appreciation (though they may receive it in different ways). Also, most people enjoy a sense of control and self-determination. (Though again, the amount varies.)

Your Turn

Remember, leadership is a relationship. The more you recognize, appreciate, and bring different strengths together, the more you’ll achieve. Leave us a comment and share your best example of a leader who brilliantly showed how to lead different and diverse people.

See Also: Speak Up Culture: How to Encourage More and Better Ideas

The post How to Lead Different and Diverse People appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

One of the biggest reasons, employees get frustrated and disengage is that they don’t understand the “why” behind what they are being asked to do. Why to explain why again.

Last week, we were wrapping up our final session of a six-month strategic management intensive with a group of engineering managers by helping them to synthesize what they’d learned.

In addition to a number of more mainstream techniques, we asked them to craft strategic stories to pass along their key messages to the next generation of managers coming behind them.

They picked a leadership priority or approach they wanted to reinforce, and then found a real story from their personal or work life to make the message more impactful and sticky.

As you can imagine, this is not the sort of exercise that is necessarily embraced with a gung-ho attitude by engineering types. Even with a formula, this process was a stretch (that’s why we saved it to the last session so we couldn’t get fired 😉

They nailed it.

Steve’s Story

“Steve” picked the Winning Well principle of connecting “What to Why” to ground his story.

“When I was 17, I worked at Ace Hardware. It was my job to keep track of the inventory in the back and sometimes I ran the register. My boss had made it perfectly clear about what you would call a “MIT (most important thing).” If a customer asked for something they couldn’t find, our only response should be “I’ll be happy to go in the back and check for you.”

But on this particular day, I KNEW the tool the customer had asked for was not in the back because I had just noticed the issue when I was working in the back. When the customer asked me to go in the back and double-check, I informed him that I was absolutely sure we were out and there was no reason to check.

My boss overheard me and when the customer left, he let me have it, and told me in no uncertain terms that if I ever told a customer we were out of something without going into the back to check, I would be fired.

I thought this was ridiculous, but I complied AND thought my boss was a jerk. I didn’t understand why we would have such a stupid policy—what a waste of time.

Fast forward 3 months

Fast forward a decade to a few months ago. I was neck-deep in renovating my house and I ran out of something I really needed to get the job done. My fiancé and I were really tired of all the mess and I just needed to get this done. I ran over to Ace and asked the kid at the counter for some help finding what I needed. “Oh no man, we’re out,” the kid shrugged and moved on.

And then, I found myself looking at this kid in disbelief and saying “Come on, can’t you at least go look in the back?”

And then it hit me.

The Why Revealed

That’s WHY my boss had that “stupid” policy. To make frustrated customers like me feel just a little bit better—that someone cares enough to go one more step. If only if he had explained why.

It’s tricky. We always make sense to us, and the “why” behind our intentions always seems so obvious–to us.  If your “why” really matters, why leave the understanding to chance?

Reinforce your “why” every chance you get.

4 Tips for Explaining Why

1. Check Your Gut. Be sure you know why you’re asking them to do what you’re asking them to do.
2. Reinforce. Share stories, dig for data, illuminate examples.
3. Check For Understanding. Ask strategic questions to help your team see what you see, or just ask them what they heard.
4. Repeat anything that’s important is worth communicating five times, five different ways.

Your turn. What are your favorite ways to explain why?

The post Why To Explain Why, Again appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.