Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Audio Downloads

  • Entitlement Mentality is a Poor Excuse

    Some worry that organizing around the team will foster an entitlement mentality among employees that will backfire on the well-meaning leader. Empowerment will lead to unrealistic expectations that in turn will force the leader to buckle to ever-increasing demands that will eventually break the organization.

    I’m sorry, but I’m not sympathetic to this line of thinking. It’s what I call a leadership excuse. And, of course, since our hallmark is No Excuses Leadershipâ„¢, we don’t go there.

    There are unexpected complications, extenuating circumstances, and disingenuous employees everywhere. These are the leadership realities we face and never form the basis of a rationale for poor results, weak decisions or ineffective policies.

    Back to entitlement. How employees respond to radical empowerment varies. Hence the tight link with accountability for results.

    To forfeit the potential of an empowered, fully engaged team in order to avoid the occasional risk of destructive entitlement mentalities is like giving up the benefits of a regular exercise routine because there’s a risk of injury. The risk is real, sure, but the solution erased your only chance for success. What good is that?

    Where do your solutions remove more than the presenting problem and inadvertently undermine what you need to make progress?

    Catch up on the entire Influencing Others series here.

  • Listen In -> Influencing Others #3: Clarity and Commitment to the Team

    Does it matter who’s in the chair?

    In this week’s podcast, we discuss the hard fact that working with people requires knowing who those people are. Who they are and what they bring to the table. Their personalities, their strengths, their skills, their working styles and their professional passions to name a few.

    Most leaders use organizational charts and job descriptions as a basis for hiring. What if the job descriptions and organizational charts flowed from the make-up of the people chosen to be on the team?

    Think about it, and then listen in.

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  • 3 Keys to Securing Employee Buy-In

    If we’re going to hold people accountable to achieving the mission of the organization, they not only have to know what it is, they need to buy in. Unless their hearts are invested as much (if not more) than their heads and hands, we are squandering our most valuable resource.

    Employee buy-in cannot be commanded, coerced or manipulated. What options then does the leader have for winning the hearts of the team for the mission of the organization? In this weeks podcast, we discuss three keys to securing employee buy-in:

    1. Begin well by hiring well. Remember you’re hiring a person not a job description. These initial interviews are your chance to discuss the mission of the organization and gauge understanding, interest and passion. Don’t make the mistake of only looking for skill competence when hiring.
    2. Provide on-going perspective by continually articulating how an employee’s individual part fits into the organization’s whole. People can get absorbed in the details of their particular role and lose sight of its significance to the organization’s mission.
    3. Verbalize appreciation. Instead of a general word of thanks, try being more specific. “Thank you for (what was done in specific and concrete detail) because it (it made this beneficial and measurable difference).” What how people come alive and go the extra mile when they feel their contribution has been recognized and appreciated.

    You cannot purchase employee buy-in. You have to win it. Earn it. Nurture and sustain it.

    How do you go about winning the hearts of your team to your organization’s mission?

  • Listen In -> Influencing Others #2: Clarity and Buy-in to the Mission

    The key to effective accountability is not threats or sanctions, but a clear vision of the future.

    Who you are, why you exist, where you are going and how you intend to get there as an organization.

    Of course, having a clear organizational mission is helpful only to the extent you have buy-in from the rest of the team. We need our teams to pour their hearts and souls into the effort, not merely rent us their hands and feet.

    In this week’s podcast conversation, Claudia and I discuss the power and importance of these two crucial aspects of your organization’s mission: clarity and buy-in.

    Listen in.

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  • Toxic at the Extremes

    Operating at any extreme rarely works well.

    Empowerment and accountability as extremes are toxic. As partners they are generative.

    Authority and resources for making an individual contribution along with expectations for achieving specific results.

    Empowerment alone is a recipe for chaos, diluted focus, and the tyranny of individual entitlement agendas. Accountability alone is a recipe for abusive manipulation, unrealistic and unfair standards, and begrudged work efforts.

    But get ready for an explosion of energy, engagement and results when you hold empowerment and accountability in creative tension with each other.

    Claudia and I are discussing this right now in our current podcast series on Influencing Others. Be sure to click on the player in the right column and listen in.

    How do you combine the extension of authority and resources to empower individual contribution along with the expectations and accountability to achieve specific results?

  • Listen In -> Influencing Others #1: Empowerment and Accountability

    The solution is a tension. When it comes to influencing others, there are no shortcuts.

    If you were hoping for tips on how to manipulate people into doing much more for much less and then thanking you for the privilege, you’ll probably be disappointed with our current podcast series on Influencing Others.

    Join us as we discuss a powerful and inseparable relationship between empowerment and accountability. A total commitment to results and achieving the mission of the organization on the one hand, and a total commitment to trust and creating a place where people engage fully and bring everything they have to the table on the other.

    Over the next four weeks, we will be discussing:

    1. Empowerment and Accountability
    2. Clarity and Buy-in to the Mission
    3. Clarity and Commitment to the Team
    4. Organizing for Trust and Results

    Listen in.

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  • Listen In -> Strategic Planning #5: A Matter of Perspective

    When finding one’s way through the forest, it can help to get to higher ground for a vantage point from which to get some perspective.

    The final segment of our podcast series on strategic planning has to do with perspective. Perspective and multiple perspectives at that.

    The more angles from which you can view a plan, project or issue, the more options you give yourself. Stepping back for the big picture. Zooming in on the particulars. Walking alongside an emerging and unfolding scenario.

    Listen in.

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  • Sorting Through the Voices

    What distracts and overwhelms me when I try to focus are all the voices.

    The projects that shout for attention. The connections that whine about their perceived neglect. The calls still unanswered, the thank-you notes yet to be written, and the mail lying unopened, all cry out for my time and energy.

    And while all that is urgent make their incessant demands, the dreams quietly begin to fade before I have a chance to capture the essence of their initial power and vitality.

    Hence the attraction of being freed to focus on the present. But focus can’t happen in a vacuum. There are too many voices with too many persuasive arguments clamoring like email spam or celebrity paparazzi. I need the perspective of the past and the future to inform the present. To help me sort through the voices. To find my own voice in the tumult and then to speak up and declare what I choose for today.

    Catch up on the entire Strategic Planning series here.

  • Listen In -> Strategic Planning #4: Focusing On The Present

    Yesterday and tomorrow help us choose a better today.

    In this week’s podcast conversation, Claudia and I discuss how we have freed ourselves to focus on the present. Reflectively learning from the past and actively designing the future frees me up to laser focus on the present.

    Instead of being buffeted from all sides by the demands of the moment, my perspective provides criteria for making choices. Criteria enable us to rank priorities. Priorities enable us to schedule tasks.

    Become a more strategic planner today. Listen in.

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  • Listen In -> Strategic Planning #3: Learning From The Past

    Assess. Adjust. Assess. Adjust. Assess. Adjust.

    In this week’s podcast conversation, we find ourselves hungry to benefit from our past decisions. Instead of a black and white, right or wrong, success or failure, credit or blame mindset, we adopt a stance of attentiveness and action.

    Crucial to effective strategic planning is the capacity to learn from the past.

    We pay attention to what is and is not working and adjust continually. In smaller, more frequent increments, it is easier to learn, change course, recover from mistakes, seize new opportunities, etc.

    But only if the past is a source of rich learning. It’s the difference between knowing more and knowing better, capacity versus capability, facts or wisdom.

    Listen in.

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