#1: Create a Shared Language Using “Leader A” and “Leader B” with Your Teams

I developed the heuristic of “Leader A” and “Leader B” as a way to help leaders process, make sense of, and describe the complexity of what they were experiencing. Within the coaching setting, the nomenclature provided my clients and me with a way to talk about, track, and better understand:

• The conditions that feed and align to their highest and best when they feel especially effective, present, and satisfied (Leader A mode)
• The conditions that lead to feeling their worst—stressed, overwhelmed, or negative, where their effectiveness, presence, and satisfaction are limited or compromised (Leader B mode, and the pitfalls that come with it)

In the same way that there is value for a coach and a leader to have this shared language, so too is there value for you to have this shared language between you and your direct reports or team members. (It’s also been a great tool for HR or talent leaders.)

One client, for example, used the language of Leader A and Leader B in a team retreat for his direct reports. He had called the meeting because he sensed falling morale, burnout, and high stress throughout the division. After a brief explanation of the Leader A and Leader B framework, the group had a concrete and objective way to organize their discussion.

They were able to acknowledge the parts of the business and their jobs that would naturally make for Leader B days. One by one, they had the opportunity to honestly share their ratios of Leader A to Leader B days and the conditions that led to each. The group then worked together to brainstorm ways to shift the A:B ratio, not only for their division but especially for those colleagues who were experiencing the worst ratios at the time. The group devised ways to create fewer Leader B days for their teams and to watch out for their own behaviors that could be driving Leader B days for others. With their conversation framed around the concept of Leader A and Leader B, they were able to have an honest dialogue about what they were each experiencing, what they needed from each other, and what support they needed from their boss.

By the end of their day together, this group felt closer and more cohesive. One participant put it like this: “I feel like our team is more of a ‘we’ now rather than a ‘we versus me.’ The Leader A and Leader B framework showed us we have so many common experiences.” This group of peers typically spent their retreats focusing on business issues or doing team building by taking personality assessments or talking about style differences. This time, they felt they were getting real with each other about the stresses, complexities, and challenges they were facing.

I’ve seen these same outcomes even for leaders who don’t work together every day. I’ve facilitated retreats for executives from across many different companies and industries, and I have seen the productive dialogue that can come from something as simple as asking people about their ratio of Leader A to Leader B days, or to describe who they are when they are operating on all cylinders as their highest and best Leader A. The buzz and energy in the room suggests there is a common set of experiences we are all having as leaders in trying to do our best in a climate marked by speed, change, and complexity—experiences that need to be addressed head-on.

#2: Don’t Normalize Leader B; Get to the Root Cause

By having language for and a definition of what Leader A and Leader B look like for your team, you have a neutral language with which to discuss some tough issues. Part of our responsibility as leaders is to disallow any toxic Leader B behavior in the organization. Toxic behavior undermines morale, productivity, team cohesion, and the positive development of all team members. And because of the ripple effect, it will spread from one to many. If you see a colleague or team member in a string of Leader B days or in a full-blown pitfall, you have a responsibility to give that person feedback and to help coach them through it. The Leader A and B framework makes giving feedback easier, more objective, and less personalized, and it gives you an effective way to avoid normalizing Leader B.

Remember that we all get off track from time to time, so bring some compassion and put on your “manager-as-coach” hat to support someone in getting back to Leader A mode more quickly and with less damage. Even those with the most egregious, uncivil behavior need the support of their managers, and quite often, when you get to the root cause of their behaviors, what you find is they are overloaded, inordinately stressed, or insecure.

Research from Christine Porath, associate professor of management at Georgetown University, supports this observation. Porath has spent much of her career examining incivility in the workplace. In her book Mastering Civility, Porath says that uncivil behaviors such as emailing during meetings or interrupting others, all the way to more extreme behaviors such as belittling others, are on the rise. In her research, fully 95 percent of survey respondents believed that civility is a problem in the United States, and 70 percent said incivility had reached crisis proportions. The most common reason people gave for poor behavior, Porath asserts, was the feeling of being overloaded or stressed.⁵

Obviously, boorish, arrogant, or any other uncivil behavior in the workplace creates a toxic work environment and can’t continue. But remembering that the root cause is likely to be stress and overwork gives you a way to effectively address the situation and facilitate real change. If one of your direct reports seems especially overwhelmed, stressed, or unable to scale into a larger role, or is demonstrating negative behavior, meet one on one and clearly and objectively share your observations. You can use the language of the pitfalls to help shift his or her lens from Leader B to Leader A:

• I see that you’re handling a lot of volume (Just Do More Pitfall) → let’s make sure what you’re doing is your highest and best value-add.
• There are a lot of fire drills happening lately (Just Do It Now Pitfall) → let’s look at your team’s scorecard and discuss what’s truly a priority.
• You’re taking on a lot of the load from your team (Just Do It Myself Pitfall) → let’s talk about how to reset your level of involvement and make sure you’re getting the leverage you need and that the team is empowered to do their job.
• I’m worried that you’re just doing what’s most urgent instead of what’s most important (Just Do It Later Pitfall) → let’s look at what we can put on the back burner or deprioritize to get your focus back on the most important things.

Then, use the five Ps to help the person create a plan of action, as shown in table 7-1.

If the low performance or negative behavior persists, then you may need to go back to chapter 4 on people to remember that sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is to take the “pitcher out of the game” and not let one person bring down the performance, morale, or effectiveness of an entire team.

#3: Be a Good Steward of Organizational Time, Energy, and Resources

Ultimately, part of leading from a place of meaning and purpose is to recognize that as a leader of a team, organization, or home, you are a steward of the time, energy, and resources of that context. One of the biggest issues in organizational life today is the feeling that there are never enough hours in the day, that there are never enough resources, and that motivation is waning. Fortunately, there are things you can do to help set up processes, norms, or structures to productively channel time, resources, and motivation. Here are some action steps to take to create conditions for others to have more Leader A days.

Be Ruthless about Prioritization: Keep the Team Focused on the Highest and Most Important Priorities. Work and priorities trickle down from above, so do all you can to help your colleagues or direct reports stay focused on what matters most and on the most important goals for the year. One CEO I worked with was brought in to help turn around an organization that had been lagging in performance. As he assessed the situation, it was clear the entire organization was mired in a lot of busy volume and activity, but there was no real prioritization from the top. He created an image of a magnifying glass that depicted their highest-priority goals, posted it everywhere in the organization to help keep everyone focused, and asked all functional heads to do the same for their areas.

When I spoke to people in the company, they said the most amazing thing about this leader was that when you had an idea, he would listen and hear you out, and his decision to move forward with the idea or not was always tied back to the magnifying glass and priorities. This was a leader who was not only committed to changing performance but also determined to get people focused to avoid becoming overworked or burnt out. A year later, the organization’s performance is on an upward trend, the workforce is more motivated, and the people are working fewer hours.

Be intentional in identifying a focused, essential set of goals rather than overloading the deck, which diffuses time and energy. Hans Schulz, former CEO of Liechtenstein-based industrial company Balzers, shared in a 2010 Harvard Business Review article that managers “are no longer allowed to set 10 top-priority goals.” While head of Balzers, he permitted managers to name just three “must-win battles,” because, he pointed out, the point of goal setting isn’t to pile up projects but “to give people an orientation and to focus their action, attention, and energy.” After this rule went into effect, significantly more goals were achieved. To help make goal reduction stick, Schulz said, a visible commitment from the CEO is necessary—especially in companies accustomed to following a management-by-objectives approach. Leaders must help managers understand the purpose and value of refocusing on just a few goals and assist them in applying the new rules.⁶

As a leader, not only should you be asking, “Am I using my time and energy toward my highest and best use in the role?” but also asking your team that same question, over and over again.

Have Clear Decision-Making Frameworks for Go-No-Go. A few of my favorite ideas on keeping teams focused on their highest and best comes from the Harvard Business Review article “Help Your Team Stop Overcommitting by Empowering Them to Say No.” There, Diana Kander points out that you only have enough bandwidth for the truly groundbreaking ideas and tasks if you say no to the ones that just aren’t good enough. Saying no was a point of pride for Steve Jobs, for example. “As he put it at a conference in 1997,” Kander writes, “ ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.’ ”⁷

Saying no includes being able to recognize and act on what Kander calls “pivot indicators” for key initiatives and ideas. Pivot indicators are warning signs that you need to change course or pull the plug on an initiative or idea that isn’t adding value. She points out that most organizations measure only success metrics, or the numbers that tell them they’re doing well—how much money was raised, how close they stayed to the budget and timeline, and so on. Pivot indicators, on the other hand, answer two questions: When will we know if this doesn’t work, and how will we know? Heeding pivot indicators can tell you when an adjustment needs to be made and save you untold time and resources.⁸

Leadership professors Heike Bruch and Jochen I. Menges also suggest that leaders institute “spring cleaning.” While this doesn’t necessarily need to happen every spring, it’s smart to periodically cull lower-performing initiatives that don’t contribute to the organizational goals. Some companies establish a schedule for spring cleaning; others simply decide that they’ll “clean house” whenever tasks and activities seem overwhelming or before launching a new change process. At one company Bruch and Menges studied, employees were asked not for ideas for new initiatives but ideas about what could be terminated. With little effort they came up with 540 ideas! That was three times the annual number of new-project ideas they’d been suggesting, and the company ended up halting 40 percent of its projects. Bruch and Menges’s advice? “Regularly ask yourself, your managers, and the whole company: ‘Which of our current activities would we start now if they weren’t already under way?’ Then eliminate all the others.”⁹

Create Cultural Norms, Processes, and Programs That Protect Productivity, Attention, and Performance. So much of the overload and stress that people feel comes from the 24-7 nature of work. Many of us are now expected to be on the clock around the clock, and in many cases, overwork is explicitly encouraged. Thankfully, many forward-looking organizations are taking steps to change the culture of overwork.

As a leader, part of our responsibility is to create cultural norms and processes that protect employees’ productivity, attention, performance, and overall well-being. Vynamic, a Philadelphia healthcare consultancy, created a policy called “zmail,” where email is discouraged between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays, and all day on weekends. The policy doesn’t explicitly forbid work or communication during these times, but it does compel staff to assess whether an after-hours message is important enough to warrant a phone call. If employees do choose to work during off-hours, zmail saves the messages as drafts to be manually sent later, or they program their email client to automatically send the messages during work hours. This policy underscores Vynamic’s stated belief that downtime is important and encourages employee behaviors that contribute to the culture.¹⁰

One organization I worked with instituted no meetings on Thursdays and encouraged folks to schedule fifty-minute meetings to give people ten-minute breaks between meetings. These short windows, during which employees could get a bite to eat or grab a cup of coffee, make a quick call, or simply enjoy a bit of downtime, did wonders for morale. It was just enough of a “recharge and reset” to clear the decks and get them ready for the next meeting’s agenda.

Other companies are taking advantage of mindfulness programs to help their teams manage stress and prevent burnout. At Aetna, for example, CEO Mark Bertolini has instituted yoga and meditation classes for employees. More than one-quarter of the company’s 50,000 employees have participated, and on average, they report a 28 percent reduction in their stress levels, a 20 percent improvement in sleep quality, and a 19 percent reduction in pain. They’ve also gained an average of 62 minutes per week of productivity, which Aetna estimates is worth $3,000 per employee per year.¹¹

Take Victory Laps Together as a Team. I’ve heard all too often from clients how frustrating it is to have worked hard on something only to have their leader immediately move on to the next target or goal without any kind of pause, acknowledgment, or celebration of what’s just been accomplished. So much of the anxiety and insecurity I hear about seems to come from leaders who don’t listen, say thank you, or acknowledge when others have gone the extra mile.

To counter this unhealthy habit, consider making it a priority to acknowledge and appreciate your employees—and to take victory laps with them when the team has completed a major initiative. Taking time to express gratitude and cultivate some team spirit can be hugely beneficial in bringing out the Leader A in all team members, and it’s made for a more cohesive, productive team.

One leader kept a giant visual of a soccer field up on his office wall. On the field he listed the top three initiatives for the year, and each time the team made progress, they moved the “ball” up the field together at a team meeting. It was a vivid and concrete way of celebrating the milestones they’d achieved. Another client dedicated the first thirty minutes of every monthly staff meeting to having his team leaders share something their team accomplished or that they were especially proud of. Three benefits emerged: staff meetings started with a positive tone and energy; employees shared that it helped them to feel part of something larger than their individual silos; and they gained important information about what other areas were doing, which in turn enhanced their own objectives.

#4: Keep Purpose at the Forefront

Part of being a leader is being able to see a vision and a higher aspiration for your organization or industry and connecting that to a vision and higher aspiration you hold for those who work for you. It’s about being able to see what’s possible for the organization and for its individual employees.

Make it part of your mandate to help others become the next best version of themselves. And part of accomplishing that work requires helping people stay connected to their ever-evolving sense of purpose. As we discussed in chapter 2, one’s purpose—what we are passionate about and the difference we hope to make next—changes over time. So be a leader who helps others stay connected to their dynamic sense of purpose.

It’s so easy for every interaction with your direct reports to turn into a rushed conversation that’s focused on getting things done, fixing problems, or putting out fires. Instead, make sure that some portion of your time together explores what drives their intrinsic motivation on the job. To do that, ask questions such as the following during natural points in the workflow:

• IN ADVANCE OF NEW EXPERIENCES: What are you excited about for this upcoming project or initiative? What are ways you hope to develop, learn, or grow with this experience?
• AFTER KEY MILESTONES: What’s something you felt great about or were especially proud of on that team or project? What was especially rewarding, meaningful, or inspiring coming out of that project, initiative, or event?
• AT ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEWS: What did you most enjoy working on this past year and why? What are the types of things you’d like to get more experience in for the coming year?
• IN CAREER-DEVELOPMENT CONVERSATIONS: What is your career aspiration over the next three to five years? How do you see this role helping you get there? What inspires you now?¹²

Infuse All Levels with Purpose: Individual, Team, and Organization. So far, we’ve discussed ways to keep purpose alive at the individual direct report level, but purpose is something to keep in mind at the team and organizational level as well. Consider the remarkable turnaround of DTE Energy as described by business professors Robert E. Quinn and Anjan V. Thakor in a Harvard Business Review article. After the Great Recession of 2008, DTE president Gerry Anderson knew he had to do something different to get employees more engaged and committed. He reached out to board member Joe Robles, who at that time was also the CEO of USAA. Robles invited Anderson to visit some USAA call centers, where Anderson fully expected to find bored workers just going through the motions. Instead, he found the kind of workforce he wanted at DTE: “positive, fully engaged employees [who would] collaborate and go the extra mile for customers.” How had USAA achieved this? Robles’s answer was simple: “a leader’s most important job is ‘to connect the people to their purpose.’ ”¹³

Anderson went back to DTE with a plan. He had a video made that articulated the employees’ purpose by featuring workers describing the impact of their work on the well-being of their community. It was so effective its test audience gave it a standing ovation, and later audiences were moved to tears. Making this connection to purpose was the missing piece. “Never before,” write Quinn and Thakor, “had their work been framed as a meaningful contribution to the greater good.” But the video—and the salient connection it made—was just the first step. From there, DTE’s leadership dedicated themselves to supporting the company’s purpose, weaving it into onboarding and training programs, meetings, and culture-building activities beyond the workplace. Soon enough, nothing short of a transformation occurred. Employee engagement scores rose, DTE received a Gallup Great Workplace Award five years in a row, and from 2008 to 2017, their stock price tripled.¹⁴