Five Ways to Lead Product Teams More Effectively

In order to bring quality products to market that delight your customers and meet their needs, a company must have leaders that run the product teams effectively.

Read Brian Lawley’s guest post over at About.com Management and Leadership for
5 Ways a Product team leader or Product Manager can be more effective in accomplishing this and leading the team and the product to success.

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Leadership Styles: How to Dress for the Occasion

While some leadership styles may be more naturally comfortable than others, effective leaders need to adapt their style to the needs of their employees and the situation at hand.

Read my latest post over at About.com to find out why and how.

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The Future Of Leadership Development

As in all things, the future promises an array of new ways and new understanding in the practice of leadership and leadership development. These are critical role-changing contexts which will play an important part in leadership development.

Several trends will assume major roles in the days to come, changing perspectives and changing premises of old assumptions and general thinking.

Leadership competencies

First, leadership competencies (requirements) will still matter. However, they will change as the competitive environment changes.

A study indicates five critical forces will shape leadership in the future: 1) global competition, 2) information technology, 3) the need for rapid and flexible groups, 4) teams, and 5) differing employee needs.

Globalization

Future leaders will have to be familiar and fluid in doing business on a global basis. Globalization, in effect, will require leaders to deal with more and more complex groups outside the realm of their organizations.

There will be more components involving international markets, global economic trends, and outside regions like the Asia Pacific rim, the Southern Hemisphere, etc. There will be an extensive use of the internet in the marketing of products and services.

Technology

The revolution in technology has drastically altered organizational life. It has changed the ways information and knowledge are obtained and spread.

One of the most important changes is in the way people communicate. This had produced some deep implications in terms of effective leadership. In the future, technology will have a vast participation in leadership development.

Leaders will have to be more knowledgeable with technology and its uses. As a matter of fact, technological savvy is slated to become an integral factor in leadership.

Character and integrity

The 90s had produced some of the most blatant corporate arrogance among executives of certain huge corporations. (Think Enron and WorldCom.)

This had triggered and accelerated sentiments among governing board members of companies that character and values shall be made more prominent in the leadership business.

There is a trend among the new crop of CEOs to be self-effacing and modest. (This is in direct contrast to the self-promoting styles of well-known business leaders before them who did not have enduring positive impacts on their companies after they exited.)

Return on investment

The strongest pressure of leadership practitioners in the future would be to demonstrate ROI (return on investment). Leadership development may be strategically important, but it is altogether expensive.

Today’s leading-edge companies (Pepsi, IBM J&J) have been quantifying the benefits of spending time and resources on leadership development for years.

In the future, it is likely that leadership development investments will be a priority of organizations committed to this end. However, plans are afoot to maximize ROI for leadership development efforts by way of effective planning, implementation and evaluation.

New thinking

Some time from now, the thinking would be that leadership and leadership development are going to be inherently collaborative, social and relational processes. It shall be understood as a collective capacity of all members of the organization.

This kind of leadership development is more difficult to design and implement. This is because it is in direct contrast to the popular notion of the past decades where the focus is to train individual leaders.

The Importance Of Leadership Development

More and more companies these days are seeking for help from various firms that offer leadership development. This is because they believe that the trainings that they give would be beneficial not only to their individual employees but for the betterment of the company in general.

Leadership development is very important for a company because it helps the employees and its leaders to be updated on how to make the company stronger in terms of strengthening its human resources. It is also important because the activities during leadership development reintroduce the employees various concepts that will help them adjust in the company and how to deal with its leaders.

New trends in leadership development training

As defined, leadership development pertains to activities that aim to enhance the skills of leaders of individuals or those that belong in an organization. It is usually categorized into two that include individual leadership development or collective leadership development. Individual leadership training focuses on the behavior of the leader when it comes to achieving the goals for the company and in interacting with employees.

The collective leadership development on the other hand refers to the entire process of enhancing leadership skills. This involves not only the leader him or herself but also include those that surround that person including the people that he or she works closely with. Here, interpersonal skills, social skills and networking skills are assessed to gauge the effectiveness of the leader.

Before, leadership development is conducted through traditional setting which is formal and more on theories on. These are usually through seminars wherein participants usually sit down the whole day listening to lectures and jotting down notes from Powerpoint presentations prepared by the speakers.

Now, there have been drastic changes when it comes to leadership development because it is less formal and more interactive. Aside from prepared presentations, leadership development these days are more personal because it focuses on the issues that hinder the person from bringing out his or her inner leadership skills.

Successful leadership development training

To ensure the success of leadership development training, an effective program is needed. It should be designed in way that integrates a range of developmental experiences over a given period of time. The program should also include monitoring scheme and gathering of feedback.

In making leadership development training effective, it should also combine experiential classroom style programs and business school style coursework. It should also include reflective journaling, executive coaching, and well as continuous mentoring. It should also involve goal setting that should follow an assessment of key developmental needs. Then, the evaluation of how goals can be achieved after a given period of time.

An effective leadership development training should include not only have the component of experiential learning but should also focus on self efficacy which include the right training and coaching as well as visioning which aims to develop the ability of the leader to formulate a clear image. This image should reflect the aspired future of the organization based on skills of the leader that heads it.

Developing Your Leadership Style: Getting Into Leadership Development

Being the boss may sound like a good thing but it's more often a headache when you actually reach the top. This is because, like the employees at the bottom, leaders face a unique set of challenges that is comes part-and-parcel of being where all the decisions are made. Nowadays, leadership development course are all the rage – this is because the people who are in upper management are usually the same people who have the drive to make themselves better to improve the bottom line.

This is because most often the key to a succesful business is good leadership and having a style of leadership that enhances company performance is what most executives and managers are looking for. Here's some steps to follow to get your commanding skills up to par:

1) Self-Assessment Is Where It Begins – Knowing yourself and your capabilities is always at the root of developing your skills. How else can you know where to improve? Start by thinking about what type of person you are – how do you view problems and how do you deal with them? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do a simple tally of what you think are your positive and negative attributes.

Next, move on to your skills – ask yourself what are you really capable of; how good are you at dealing with people? Do you know how to write a proper report or plan a proper budget? Would you be able to do your subordinate's job in a pinch?

2) What Are You Going To Do About It? - By this time, you should know exactly what you're capable of and your limitations. This is where you need to get planning. Look at your negative traits – how can you offset or eliminate them? Are they really negative traits for your job?

Are the positive traits that you listed really positive? Being aggressive is nice and fine for a sports meet but may not exactly jibe well with calm negotiations. Next, look at your skills: Are there any holes in your knowledge? Do you need to be familiar with something to be able to work at your maximum efficiency? Developing yourself is mostly about asking questions and coming up with answers to them. While you're doing all of this, write it down – this is important for the next stage.

3) Getting It Done – You've got the plan in hand, now you've got to make it happen. Implementing your plan may be a bit difficult – change is never easy, after all. The first thing to keep in mind is to not give up; self-improvement always pays off in the end as long as you stick to your guns and get the desired results you'll be fine. The other thing is you need to have someone else checking your progress. An independent evaluator makes sure that you are not cheating yourself of your development.

There you have it, the first steps to good leadership development. It can be a bit trying at times but it is rewarding all the same. In the end, remember that improving yourself can only help your business.

Ensuring a Winnable Game: Four Steps to Organization-Wide Strategic Success

We live in a fast-paced, ever-changing world that is filled with many distractions. Our organizations—and the members of our teams—are faced with many competing priorities. How do we help our teams and organizations stay focused to achieve our very important strategic goals in the midst of the “urgent” day-to-day responsibilities? 

Many organizations place their primary focus on creating a strategic plan. The high-level strategic plan helps set the direction for the organization. A company’s strategic objective may include goals for revenue growth, improved customer service, designing a new product, or moving into new geographical markets.

Common Challenges

But much of the important work comes after the plan is created. Bringing the plan to fruition to achieve the strategic goals requires focus, commitment, engagement, accountability, and regular review of progress. And in many cases, it requires people to change their behavior. As many leaders know, getting others to change their behavior can be very challenging—even changing our own behavior can be tough!

The challenges faced by Atrion, an IT services organization, while creating and implementing its strategic plans are common to many organizations.

Too Many Great Ideas. Have you and your organization ever been faced with so many great ideas that it becomes confusing and overwhelming to decide where to start and how to prioritize? Have you ended the year with completing few, if any, of your objectives? Not Enough Communication. Are you communicating the organization’s strategic goals to all your team members, or just to the Senior Leaders? Are all leaders communicating the same message to each of their teams? Does everyone understand the reason and importance of the goals you’ve set, and the company vision? Does each person know how they can contribute in their role? Inconsistent Participation. Is there a compelling reason why team members should participate? Is participation consistent across the organization? Have the leaders helped the team members understand “what’s in it for me?” Is everyone accountable for their participation? Lack of Clarity on Metrics. Are your metrics clearly tracking progress? Are your dashboards or reports easy to read and understand at a quick glance? How do you adjust your behaviors and efforts if you’re not achieving the progress you need to meet your goals?

When I took on the role of director of corporate strategy execution, we were faced with these challenges. But we recognized the importance of adopting a formal, proven methodology.

The Solution: Four Disciplines of Execution

To address these challenges, we selected “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” (or ‘4DX’) based on the research and book of the same name by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. The four disciplines of execution that the authors outline—and we have used to successfully execute on our strategic plan are: 

Focus on the Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). Consider the “law of diminishing returns,” which says that if you try to focus on too many things at the same time, it generally dilutes the focus and effectiveness. Instead, choose two to three strategic goals. Make sure that these are the highest priority to help your organization or team achieve your vision. Act on the Lead Measures. How do you know which activities will help you and your team achieve success? If you wait until the game is over, it will be too late to adjust your strategy and plays if needed. The lead measures need to be activities that you and your team members can influence and be measured regularly. These measures will provide the visibility as to whether your actions are leading to the goal. And if they are not, it will allow you time to change direction. Another important key to success is to engage members at all levels of the organization. If team members feel their role and participation is valued, and are supporting one another, they’re helping to set the team up for success. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. Have you noticed that your team’s efforts and participation are usually much higher when they’re keeping score, and they can easily track their progress? The healthy competition is a great motivator for each team to do their best. And this visibility also allows you to recognize the accomplishments of the teams, or help coach them to get back on track to achieving their goals. Create a Cadence of Accountability. What happens when goals are set but there isn’t a consistent, formal process for follow-through and accountability? It becomes very easy for strategic initiatives to be side-lined or lost in the midst of all the other competing priorities. It’s critical for the team to set a regular cadence for their meetings, to make weekly commitments for the actions they’ll take to help “move the ball down the field,” and for the team members to have shared accountability to help achieve their success. 

We have used these four disciplines to help us achieve organization-wide strategic success of exceeding our company’s revenue goals, profitability and client satisfaction. We have definitely found that this approach helps to bring the focus, discipline, participation, and accountability to create a winnable game.

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Bagels: The Secret to Building a High-Performing Virtual Team

With more and more companies working seamlessly across cultures and time zones, I am often asked by clients what the secret is to building an effective virtual team. 

The answer is simple: fresh bagels. Okay, the secret is really building trust, but we’ll get to the bagels in a minute. 

The challenge, of course, is that it is much tougher to build trust when your team is split across time zones and continents than it is when you’re able to have a friendly chat across the water cooler every day. So, perhaps a second step needs to be added to help trust develop: getting together. 

I appreciate that there may be logistical and financial challenges for some organizations in getting together, but it is almost certainly a cost less painful than the missing financial targets due to a poorly functioning global team. 

Case in Point 

A team leader in a global IT company asked me to help improve the performance of his project team. He told me: “My team members are all respected experts in their fields and perform to an outstanding level individually; but I don’t understand why they miss their targets as a team by some 75 percent?” 

The client was British and based in Singapore; his team members were based in China, South Korea, South Africa, Japan, and Holland. We talked about teambuilding, and he added: “But that’s a lot of culture and time zones to navigate just to build a team!” 

We went back to basics. I interviewed every member of his team. It quickly became apparent that they didn’t trust each other and, as a result, were holding back from sharing information and collaborating with each other. 

What I found was that, right from the beginning, a few cultural miscues and misunderstandings had spiralled out of control and resulted in a very fractured and dysfunctional team. 

At the first few team conference calls, the Dutch and South African members had led most of the discussions. Hearing no questions or objections from the rest of the group, it was assumed that everyone was in agreement with their proposed plan. 

As time went on, it became painfully apparent that not everyone was on the same page. Deadlines were missed, tasks weren’t completed and, seemingly, much of the inaction came from the team members from Asia who hadn’t spoken up at the group meetings.

The South African and Dutch team members were frustrated and told me: “I thought we all agreed on the plan! But some team members didn’t keep their commitments. They seemed incompetent. I am not sure I can trust them again.”

On the other hand, Asian team members were equally frustrated: “We never agreed with the decision. They dominated the meeting and didn’t ask us for our input. We need more time to process the information and reach our own conclusions. We felt excluded!” 

Over the next year, as the project continued, they communicated less and less with each other and worked in silos. What communication they did by emails and conference calls often led to finger pointing on both sides as the divide between the various groups grew wider and wider. 

Hardly any effort was made to establish positive relationships among the team members, to better understand the various cultures at play within the group, or to resolve the conflicts in a constructive way. 

For example, if the South African and Dutch team members had spent some time understanding Asian culture, they would have recognized that the fact that their Asian colleagues were quiet during the meeting was not necessarily acquiescence or their tacit approval. It was much more likely that the Asian team members were taking the time to process the information due to language barriers or they simply disagreed with the decision but were too polite to challenge. 

On the other hand, if the Asian members had realized that many from western cultures are more direct and require more active involvement, they could have asked more questions and made more of an effort to make their feelings known. 

In the absence of any genuine bonding, along with misunderstandings due to cultural differences and language barriers, the group had each made assumptions about other members of the team and were jumping to conclusions about each other’s motives. It was like a cancer growing within the team that my client simply couldn’t stem. 

The Solution 

I worked with the client to bring the team together for three days—not only to work on their challenges, but also to rebuild trust. 

On the first day, we talked openly about what each of them needed from the others in order to build better teamwork, and the responsibilities each of them had to the others.

It was striking how straightforward their needs were. They all consistently asked of each other: 

be respectfuldon’t interruptlistensay “thank you”apologize if you’re wrong. 

In other words, act with consideration and kindness—the basic human building blocks of trust. Somehow these ideals had gotten lost along the way because there was no rapport among the group.

They worked out what their top five behavioral rules would be for future team interactions to ensure their new-found team spirit didn’t evaporate again. The team leader turned this into a slide which would always appear at the start of every meeting to remind them of their commitment to each other. 

They completed the three-day meeting with a memorable night out eating Singapore’s famous Black Pepper Crab and drinking ice cold Tiger beer. They all returned to their countries reinvigorated. One year later, the team leader called me with the news that his team had just hit 89 percent of its targets. 

Examples of Creating Connections 

The importance of not forgetting the basics can be seen in other ways, too. 

I heard recently of a global virtual team that takes turns, once a quarter, to send local food from their country to other team members around the globe so that they can all share breakfast or snacks together during their regular conference calls. At a recent team video conference, the United States colleagues sent a box of fresh bagels and coffee grounds to introduce team members in the Philippines to an “all-American” breakfast. This simple idea has transformed their calls into something that is the highlight of their meeting and the call is now a vibrant and effective communications forum. 

Another U.S.-based client was struggling to connect with a member of his new team, based in Mexico City, who seemed very slow to respond to email requests. Hiding his growing irritation he asked other colleagues, “What’s she like?” 

The leader learned that the worker had recently had a baby and was balancing work and new motherhood, which explained the sporadic responses. He immediately emailed her, congratulating her on her new arrival and sharing the news that he had become a grandparent around the same time. He even attached a photo of his grandson. Within minutes she responded with a picture of her daughter, starting a dialogue that helped them to quickly build an effective working relationship. 

Five Tips for Moving Forward 

Here are my five top tips for building a virtual team that trusts each other and works as well together thousands of miles apart as if they say in the same room. 

Keep your commitments. Do what you say you are going to do. Keep your promises. This may sound obvious, but keeping your word is absolutely essential to earn trust with other team members.
 Share information equally, transparently, and timely. Make sure everyone, particularly team members in remote locations, are not left out in the communication loop. Give feedback in a culturally appropriate way. Give positive feedback in public and negative feedback in private. Be culturally sensitive when delivering feedback so you don’t damage relationships and trust. Don’t jump to conclusions. Check your assumptions first. Make sure your understanding is in tune with other team member’s cultural tendencies. Listen to everyone’s opinion. Check back to confirm that you understand their point of view. Ask open-ended questions to make sure you are all on the same page. Always take a step back to understand the other person's perspective and pressures and give them benefit of the doubt. Help other team members without being asked. Maybe you’ve heard of the “Pay it Forward” principle? Doing something that is kind and helpful for someone (without being asked) is both a simple act of kindness and powerful way to build trust and rapport. It will also probably make their day. 

In my next blog, I will talk about how to take advantage of best practice and technology to ensure your virtual team is properly equipped to deliver outstanding results.

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