Paul's Update Special 7/7

Leadership and the curiosity quotient

Leadership and the curiosity quotient Curiosity is one of the most vital - but least acknowledged - of leadership values. It is the catalyst for creat...

Why do leaders and their teams still struggle? In last month’s Harvard Business Review, Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull put this failure down to a consistent breakdown in leaders’ ability to execute their business strategies ( Why Strategy Execution Unravels - and what to do about it). And while that is often true, I believe the authors overlooked a more fundamental issue that plagues almost every organization.

Leaders lack curiosity.

In particular, they lack:

• The curiosity to become better leaders
• The curiosity to learn what good looks like and to share best practices with others
• The curiosity to develop or learn why team members struggle with new skills
• And vitally, they lack curiosity about their own and their customers’ businesses.

Simply defined, curiosity is, “the desire to learn or know more about something or someone.” It is the starting point to every great idea, invention and new business. It is what makes some businesses wildly successful while others are just average and it’s the real reason why some leaders and their teams succeed, while others fail.

As Jeff Bezos put it, “You have to say, ‘Wait a second. Why are we doing it this way? Could it be better? Could it be different?’ That kind of curiosity, that explorer’s mind, that childlike wonder, that’s what makes an inventor.”

Thriving in a complex and volatile business environment requires leaders who approach every day, every problem and every opportunity with an inquisitive spirit. It’s this curiosity that drives leaders to learn their companies inside and out and to never stop looking for ideas to improve.

Business Curiosity is the skill of looking at your (or your customer’s) business differently and uncovering ideas and opportunities that disrupt the thinking, processes and practices which your company (or your customer) has grown accustomed to. Business Curiosity starts with deep listen listening, and it requires continuously asking “why?” without being satisfied by superficial answers. Answers don’t change the world; questions do.

In coaching workshops I have asked over 300 business leaders to measure the time they spend working with direct reports. The results are both eye-opening and troubling. Assuming 240 workdays per year, most only spend between 30 and 60 days per year directly engaging with team members - that’s less than 20% of their time. 

Breaking this inward focus requires alignment at all levels. First, leaders (and their bosses) need to prioritize time differently, focusing on customers (their people and end users). And they need to block time to do this, regardless of what’s going on around them in their own organization.

Next, leaders must take a curious interest in the skills and goals of their team members and they must be willing to have tough conversations to really understand what is limiting personal performance and getting in the way of their success. A leader who purposely spends 60-80% of their time traveling and engaging with their team for three months will be amazed what they will learn both about their team and about themselves.

By clearing the biggest obstacle to progress - YOU - leaders give themselves permission to learn more and engage differently with both team members and customers. They actually give themselves a chance to become more curious.

Developing a high Curiosity Quotient takes time and practice, particularly because it far more about changing your behavior rather than learning a new skill. Here are four ways to get started:

• Be a Curious Learner: Spend at least an hour per week learning about business, the markets you serve, and your customers’ businesses.
• Become More Curious: Ask better questions in every conversation whether at work or outside of work. Listen for how you respond to conversations and hold your urge to respond with your own story.
• Disrupt the Status Quo: With your team and with other leaders, discuss what status quos are holding back your company and your customer’s business, preventing you both from reaching your full potential today.
• Dig Deeper: Try to understand the underlying beliefs, experiences and assumptions that are underneath current business processes and practices. Dig for the “Why” and understand why you (and they) do business the way you do business today.

As Albert Einstein said: “I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted…I am only very, very curious”.

6 Ways Leaders Use Silence To Increase Their Power (And You Can, Too)

6 Ways Leaders Use Silence To Increase Their Power (And You Can, Too) Avery Blank Silence is powerful, if you know how to use it properly.

Sometimes, words are not all they are cracked up to be. Silence can yield more power than words. Inventor and artist Leonardo da Vinci said, “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

Here are six times when leaders use silence to increase their power that can grow your power:

• Build trust. If you want to develop effective relationships, you must build trust. To build trust, you must listen.
• Emphasize a point. If you use too many words, the point you want to make can get lost. Silence or fewer words allows you to be heard when it matters.
• Negotiate. Silence when negotiating can be nerve-wracking. When the other person is silent, you wonder what they might be thinking. Turn the tables. Let them wonder what you are thinking.
• Empower others. Leaders empower others. They rarely tell people what to do. Rather, leaders provide others the opportunity to identify the roadmap for achieving the goals they set out to achieve. Leaders want to know what other people think.
• Get the answer. The sooner you become silent, the quicker you will get your answer. Many people are guilty of asking a question and not stopping at the question mark. Ask the question, and stop.
• Center yourself. You don’t need other people to reap the power of silence. Take time out of your day to be silent.

There are times when silence can speak louder than words. Know when silence will help you more effectively speak up for yourself, lead and increase your power.

The Pyramid Principle – Lessons from McKinsey – Medium

The Pyramid Principle – Lessons from McKinsey – Medium Ameet Ranadive At McKinsey, one of the lessons I learned was the importance of structured thinking and communication. We often ...

One of the tools that we used at McKinsey was the Pyramid Principle, a methodology for structured communication. The key take-aways from the Pyramid Principle at McKinsey were:

1. Start with the answer first.
2. Group and summarize your supporting arguments.
3. Logically order your supporting ideas.

Start with the answer first.
To communicate in a structured way with a busy executive, you should start with the answer to the executive’s question first, and then list your supporting arguments. Only then, after you have answered the question, should you present your supporting reasons. Why?

1. First, you want to maximize your time with your audience. Executives are busy people. They are perpetually short on time, are used to processing lots of information quickly, and get impatient when they feel like someone isn’t getting to the point. 
2. Second, many executives often think in a “top-down” manner. They want to focus on the big picture—in this case the “answer”— and don’t want to get bogged down by details.
3. Finally, you are more persuasive when you are direct.

Group and summarize your supporting arguments.
Your audience—whether listeners or readers—will naturally begin to group and summarize your arguments and ideas in order to remember them. So you may as well help them do it and make your overall recommendation more effective and memorable. The Pyramid Principle advocates that “ideas in writing should always form a pyramid under a single thought.” The single thought is the answer to the executive’s question. Underneath the single thought, you are supposed to group and summarize the next level of supporting ideas and arguments. 

Logically order your supporting ideas.
Finally, you want to ensure that the ideas you bring together under each group actually belong together, are at the same level of importance, and follow some logical structure. There are a few different ways of logically ordering ideas that belong in the same group:

• Time order: if there is a sequence of events that form a cause-effect relationship, you should present the ideas in time order.
• Structural order: break a singular thought into its parts, ensuring that you have covered all of the major supporting ideas.
• Degree order: present supporting ideas in rank order of importance, most to least important.

The Pyramid Principle is not just valuable for communicating with executives, but really it’s effective to communicate with anyone whom you wish to persuade with argument.