A few months back a large bank was looking to beef up the effectiveness of their leadership development program for new supervisors. At the same time, they wanted to get people up to speed more quickly. So they called on Doug to come onboard and rework the program.

Doug’s an experienced facilitator and developer, and after looking at the previous program, he decided to bring in the VisualsSpeak system. Now, one of the first things he does in the program is ask people to create images around “What is a leader?”

As the group discusses their images, they start thinking about everything that changes when you move from being an individual contributor to being a leader. Just tacking that on at the beginning was, well, just the beginning.

Now Doug has reported they used VisualsSpeak every session of the program, with great results. By incorporating these activities, people are understanding their new roles more quickly, and effectiveness has really grown. Well done, Doug!

Ah, if one could be a leader by just experiencing goodness and light. If every team member were Mary Poppins and every CEO were Dumbledore. If a lively happy tune were played every time the leader entered a room.

Well, that last one might get old pretty fast. Although the President seems to enjoy it (Bill Clinton once said it was the hardest thing to get used to after being president — he kept waiting for the music to start when he’d get someplace!).

Of course, none of these things are reality. In fact, often the measure of a good leader is more what s/he does when times are difficult than when times are good and the livin’ is easy.

Enter the Mensch

Mensch is a Yiddish word that, loosely, translates to a “real man” or a “stand-up guy.” But I mean it in a gender-neutral sense. A leader who scores high on the mensch factor is one who is upfront, honest about bad news or negative tidings, and who is direct. That’s not an easy skill to acquire, and it’s easy to slip up.

The most common way that leaders lose mensch points is through avoidance. And technology helps with this quite a bit. Have a bit of bad news? Sure, you probably should tell someone face-to-face, but why not just send an e-mail? After all, that means there’s a record of it, and the recipient can always refer back to it. Or maybe, a bit sneakier, call the person after hours and hope to leave a voice mail message. Either way, it’s the same thing: avoiding the issue.

Another method of building up a mensch deficit is through mealymouthing. By this, I mean sugar-coating something to the point that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. So if a leader is trying to address a performance problem, the message “Your work isn’t working because of X, Y, and Z” becomes “This approach may not be the best,” which then becomes “As you work, you might think about some other ways, too” which then becomes “Be sure to be thoughtful about your approach.” By the time you complete the coating, it’s all sugar and no content.

The Band-Aid Theory

Sometimes, it’s like the best way to get a Band-Aid removed: you just have to rip it off. Yes, it may sting for a few moments, but then it’s done and you can move on. It’s just the same thing with menschy leaders. They know that the news or feedback or content is important and that people need to know. So they deliver the information. That’s just how it’s done. And then it’s done.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean being rude, or being abusive. Those are on the other end of the spectrum, and also lose you points on the mensch factor. People who are accused of being too abrasive or rude will sometimes justify their actions by saying they “just give it to ‘em straight with no sugar-coating,” but that’s not really true. Those folks are into shock therapy, and that’s rarely the right approach.

Instead — and it’s a really novel concept — approach the conversation on a person-to-person basis. Be firm, be direct, but be kind. Those aren’t mutually exclusive characteristics.

And they’re just what you need to be a real mensch of a leader.

Included in our Visual Icebreaker Kit, the facilitator guide contains dozens of icebreakers covering a variety of outcomes — from building trust to conducting a mini-assessment.

Of course, these activities are designed to be used with the icebreaker images, but could be used reasonably well with the images in the Developing Great Leaders or Building Great Teams toolsets as well. Here’s a sample icebreaker that helps to conduct a mini-assessment:

Purpose: This Core Icebreaker gives some indications of what people’s goals are. What are they lacking or needing to accomplish these goals? VisualsSpeak Core Icebreaker processes are described in much more detail in the Visual Icebreaker Kit Facilitation Guide.

Process:

• Put images in a place accessible to all participants.
• State the prompt.
• Give participants 30 seconds to select an image.
• Participants share about their response with the group.
• Debrief.

Prompt: Choose an image that represents something you hope to accomplish here today.

Variant: Choose an image that represents something you home to accomplish as part of the group.

Debrief:

• What was the process like for you?
• What did you notice?
• Was there anything interesting or surprising?
• Do you have any new insights?
• Did you notice any patterns or trends?
• Does anyone want to add anything else?

In the current issue of the Harvard Business Review, a team of folks wrote a piece about Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind. It is, for the most part, an interesting and well-sourced read.

In brief, the authors’ position is that two otherwise equivalent managers will be seen differently if one is “demanding and occasionally abrasive” and the other is respectful. The latter may be more admired (especially by members of her team), but the former will be seen as more powerful — and will be more likely to get picked for a top spot.

Of course, in the anecdotal example that the authors cite (they also incorporate some more scientifically-conducted experimental data), the end result is no good: the more “powerful” person gets promoted to the top spot, a bunch of promising executives that were mentees of the respectful manager left, and the powerful big boss gets forced out by the company’s board a few years later.

Throwing an Elbow on National TV

It may be an apocryphal story, but the legend is that basketball player Bill Russell — an amazing talent on the court — was having lots of trouble in the paint because he didn’t want to throw an elbow. He was, in our analogy, the respectful manager. So the team’s owner, Red Auerbach, sat him down and told him to throw the elbow — just once — on national TV.

So that’s what Russell did. And it was an elbow seen around the world — Russell got left alone after that. It only took one.

In the HBR article, one of the experiments cited showed that participants’ opinions about who was more powerful, the respectful or the abrasive, were shaped by only a single incident. They saw one being respectful, the other being abrasive, then “worked for them” each displaying respectful behaviors. Yet the one-time abrasive manager was rated higher.

Impressions Count

So perhaps the moral of the story is that it’s useful to have some balance — an occasional edge along with a more rational and supportive center. Or maybe it’s that a little theater can be helpful when leading teams.

Either way, consider the impression you leave on others around you. Working toward the longer-term success of being respectful and kind may be more difficult than surrendering to a baser instinct to be abrasive, but it will certainly pay off in the end.

Included in our Visual Icebreaker Kit, the facilitator guide contains dozens of icebreakers covering a variety of outcomes — from building trust to conducting a mini-assessment.

Of course, these activities are designed to be used with the icebreaker images, but could be used reasonably well with the images in the Developing Great Leaders or Building Great Teams toolsets as well. Here’s a sample icebreaker that helps to spark engagement:

Purpose: This Core Icebreaker gets people immediately focused on the topic, and gets insights on your group’s perceptions of the meeting, which may or may not be in alignment with what you planned. VisualsSpeak Core Icebreaker processes are described in much more detail in the Visual Icebreaker Kit Facilitation Guide.

Process at a Glance:

• Put images in a place accessible to all participants.
• State the prompt.
• Give participants 30 seconds to select an image.
• Participants share about their response with the group.
• Debrief.

Prompt: Choose an image that represents something related to today’s topic.

Variant: Choose an image that represents something related to today’s topic of (specify the topic).

Debrief:

• What did you notice?
• What was the process like for you?
• Was there anything interesting or surprising?
• Do you have any new insights?
• Did you notice any patterns or trends?
• Does anyone want to add anything else?

It was a week ago that Cy Twombly died. If you’re not familiar with Twombly, a 20th-century artist who used painting and drawing, along with scratches and etches, to make his art, it’s worth taking a minute to look him up. The evolution of his work is fascinating.

So is the evolution of the reception to his work.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, critical reception was, to put it mildly, not welcoming. As in some other fields, critics took Twombly to task not only for the perceived quality and artistry of his pieces, but also for how he lived. He decided to move to Italy when the art world was fleeing The Boot in droves. The horror!

But Twombly’s style, with graffiti scrawls and mixed techniques, was always something a bit different. A risk. And for those initial decades, it seemed to many that the risks just didn’t pay off. It remains unclear what the artist thought, as he virtually never wrote or talked about his own work or its critical reception. Given that he iconoclastically kept painting, however, one imagines that he was relatively unfazed.

Fast forward to the late 1980s. Cy Twombly is around 60, and has been an artist for decades. And people begin to ramp up their appreciation. Museums and galleries open wings to showcase his work. His paintings begin selling for $1 million and up at auction. And the tide has turned.

The Virtue of Patience

It’s certainly an object lesson in the virtue of patience. But also the value of pursuing a passion despite the external voices telling you that your work isn’t worthy.

What’s more, the life and experiences of Cy Twombly speak to the shifting sands of public opinion. What is considered passe or superfluous or tedious or ugly today may be the aesthete’s masterpiece of tomorrow. Or the Next Big Thing, to use the language of tech innovation.

Popular culture seems to love the idea of an Overnight Sensation. As far back as the myths of anonymous girls being discovered right off the bus at Schwab’s drugstore in Los Angeles — and probably back to ancient times! — the idea of being plucked from obscurity to fame and fortune is a collective fantasy.

But the reality, as proven by the life and work of Cy Twombly, is much different. Persistence, effort, some selective listening to the voices around you, and passion — not necessarily in that order — are much more likely to get you where you want to be. A little “right place, right time” doesn’t hurt, either. But it’s never enough without all the preparation that comes beforehand.

Included in our Visual Icebreaker Kit, the facilitator guide contains dozens of icebreakers covering a variety of outcomes — from building trust to conducting a mini-assessment.

Of course, these activities are designed to be used with the icebreaker images, but could be used reasonably well with the images in the Developing Great Leaders or Building Great Teams toolsets as well. Here’s a sample icebreaker that helps a group with initial introductions:

Purpose: This Core Icebreaker allows each participant to share a little about themselves and what they can contribute to the team. VisualsSpeak Core Icebreaker processes are described in much more detail in the Visual Icebreaker Kit Facilitation Guide.

Process at a Glance:

• Put images in a place accessible to all participants.
• State the prompt.
• Give participants 30 seconds to select an image.
• Participants share about their response with the group.
• Debrief.

Prompt:Who are you and what do you bring to the team?

Variants:

• Who are you?
• What do you bring to the team?
• Share something about yourself with the group.

Debrief:

• What did you notice?
• What was the process like for you?
• Was there anything interesting or surprising?
• Do you have any new insights?
• Did you notice any patterns or trends?
• Does anyone want to add anything else?

The most costly disruptions always happen when something we take completely for granted stops working for a minute.

Or so says Aaron Sorkin, writing for fictional president Jed Bartlet on TV’s The West Wing. And upon reflection, that’s probably true. If water service just stopped altogether, for instance, or (as in the case of the fictional TV episode) there’s a US outbreak of mad cow disease that threatens the nation’s beef supply.

But perhaps a corollary to that is that the most significant innovations are those that alter things we take completely for granted. Yet it seems like the pace of these innovations is pretty slow.

Open Wide

As an example, think of your teeth. Good practice in taking care of your teeth involves taking a stick, slathering some pasty substance on it, and jabbing it in and out of your mouth. Multiple times a day! And more or less, that hasn’t changed in 5000 years!

In an age where pills can unclog blood vessels, robots can clean our carpets, and lasers can polish surfaces, doesn’t it seem like there could be an innovation in this department, too? And if such an innovation came along, think of the worldwide ramifications!

What’s Next?

To come up with a new form of cleaning teeth takes some degree of knowledge and skill in dentistry, of course. But we each have our own areas of skill and experience, and surely we could apply those to the banalities and ubiquities of our lives.

The other prerequisite for such an innovation, though, is something we all can do — and something we all too rarely do. And that is observe. Really observe. As I sit here writing this, I am noticing the surface of my work table, the swivel mechanism of my chair, the hum of the lights and computer fans. I’m seeing how the curtains wrinkle at the bottom and how, if I listen hard, I can barely hear some birds chirping outside. Each of these sensory experiences (and there are many more) could be opportunities for innovation.

Observation is the foundation for innovation. So why not see what you can see?

Included in our Visual Icebreaker Kit, the facilitator guide contains dozens of icebreakers covering a variety of outcomes — from building trust to conducting a mini-assessment.

Of course, these activities are designed to be used with the icebreaker images, but could be used reasonably well with the images in the Developing Great Leaders or Building Great Teams toolsets as well. Here’s a sample icebreaker that helps to get a group aligned together and ready to tackle the topic at hand:

Purpose: This exercise begins to explore how individual ideas contribute to the larger group story.

Materials:

• A set of images

Process:

• Have participants select an image that is related to the topic.
• Put participants into small groups of three to six people.
• Ask participants to share individual impressions, then put the individual images into some kind of sequence that tells a story.
• Ask each group to share their story with the larger group.

Prompt: Pick a photo that catches your eye in relationship to (specified topic of session).

Variants:

• What is an important part of the story of (topic of session)?
• What is the story of today’s topic?

Tips:

• People will most likely not be able to find the pictures they want to describe an idea in their head. This is good; it provides an opportunity for thinking differently and creatively.
• If you want participants to really open up, encourage them to come up with a wacky or far-out story. If you want a more focused discussion, provide that guideline to the story.

As consumers, we want what we want. Many successful companies that sell to consumers have capitalized on that very thing. Take, for instance, Burger King’s “Have It Your Way.” Or the way Subway and Chipotle will each make your food exactly how you want it while you watch. All of these are great examples of leveraging customer choice. (All are also food examples — can you tell it’s almost time for lunch?)

Some authors have even extended this logic to people seeking work. Elizabeth Wagele and Ingrid Stabb wrote a book on how to find the perfect career based on your personality, as one example of many. (Recently, Wagele has been following it up with posts on the Psychology Today blog.)

Check It At The Office Door

So why, then, are we so often forced to abandon choice when we become employees? Why do managers of companies and organizations large and small so often expect that staffers will be happy when all the meaningful occupational choices are given to them?

It is all too frequent that employees in the workplace begin to feel marginalized — out of the loop and stuck in a rut, to combine two apt metaphors. This can stem from a fundamental lack of choice. (It can also stem from actually keeping people uninformed or outside of key decisionmaking processes, but that’s a different post topic.)

One of the amazing things that we’ve witnessed when teams use the VisualsSpeak facilitation processes is that previously marginalized team members start to emerge. They often bring new ideas and new perspectives that were simply swept off to the side before. Sometimes, after feeling constrained at work for so long, people just shut down and stop offering new insights. Effective facilitation starts to reverse that effect.

Making It Better

Of course, sessions with tools like the VisualsSpeak team-building or leadership development sets are only one component of empowering the workforce.

Another good place to start is a little empathy. Put yourself in the place of each member of your team. How would you feel in that position? What would you want to see change? Certainly, people react differently to the same situation, so it’s important to verify your reactions with the team members, but it’s a helpful launching point.

Then start a dialogue — sometimes, even just getting the conversation going will relieve some of the pent-up frustration about people’s roles and their confinement. (Again, we have tools to help that.)

Regardless of how or where you begin, begin. If you have people working on your team and you can increase their choice and their satisfaction even a bit, you’ll see a measurable increase in both productivity and longevity. And that’s certainly worth it!