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In work as in life, being present is not always possible…
And I have been absent. By the team or the client, absence is sometimes misconstrued as your having dumped people and responsibilities without out care or concern for their well-being, even when the absence has been unplanned and impossible to manage. Life throws some pretty big hits at people sometimes and when it does you’ll tend to do a resetting of priorities. Not everyone will like them, not everyone will be on your side with them, and some priorities may cause you to be absent in your role as leader. When this happens, the team members and clients are not the only ones affected. For an often engaged leader, the one folks depend on and have trusted, absence eats at their very heart more than the team or client will ever understand.
Life is about priorities…
We set priorities every day and our grown-up choices cannot always follow our dreams and desires. Parents quit their jobs to take care of ailing children, people leave big corporate to focus on community, folks take on the care of a sick parent and these are just a few of the life-changing priorities that may come into a person’s life. No matter what the choice is, all choices are good because they are yours. Some are influenced by tragedy, some by desire and yet others by love, either way a person’s priorities land front and center and can leave others feeling abandoned.
Not everyone will like it…
Any time you reset your priorities, it’s going to shake up the lives of those around you. People to whom you were once freely available will feel hurt, people who depended on you for your old priority will be frustrated and others will feel your absence has eroded their trust. The best you can do is try to explain and hope they compassionately empathize with your moment in time, and when that is not good enough, the best you can do is stand firm knowing you are doing the right thing for you.
It’s just the right thing to do…
Does it make you a bad leader? It can in the eyes of a team member or two, perhaps. The thing is, when people are hit by a reset of priorities, when life has offered them a chance to do the right thing for one person it might be the wrong thing for another. Off and on over the last year I have been blessed to spend some time helping my mother who has been very ill. Our loving, caring family have almost lost her 4 times, it has been a wild roller coaster ride of fear, love, sadness, promise, tears, hope and finally elation that she is now gaining strength. In that time some things have fallen through the cracks, my reputation for being always on, always available and provide a fast turn around may need to be rebuilt…but…
I’ve no regrets…
This priority reset is opportunity to honour the parents I love, by using the flexibility life has afforded me as an entrepreneur to be able to provide a little assistance. I do not and never will regret this choice. I can only hope that as things begin to settle down and life starts to return to what will be the new normal that those people I have been open and available to in the past will understand. In return, I will understand that each of them must meet their own priorities and if they are absent upon my return, it is because they are honouring their own lives, and that is all anyone can ask of another.
Just many thanks!
To those of you who have prayed, sent messages of kindness and who have continued to understand, I am in deep appreciation for your role in my life. Whether friend, client, team member, family, or acquaintance – your part in helping me stand by this priority has allowed me to focus on two people who have made my life what it is, my parents.
Thank you.
In work as in life, being present is not always possible…Life is about priorities…Not everyone will like it…It’s just the right thing to do…I’ve no regrets…Just many thanks!
 Patti Blackstaffe works with people and organizations to develop
Happy Workplaces world-wide guiding them toward mastery and leadership
through consulting, advising, coaching, speaking, and delivering training.
You can reach Patti at 1-855-968-5323 | contact her here | book her to speak
…When Cultures Collide in Mergers and Acquisitions
Business consultants tell entrepreneurs to know their exit plan, and many focus on a merger or acquisition market as they build their businesses. This is especially true in the technology or engineering space, where valuations are done of a technology which may be attractive to larger firms looking to grow their offering.
When a valuation is being performed on a company prior to merging or acquiring it, that valuation is usually based solely on the financial side of the business. A careful calculation of the assets and liabilities, the varied business market, the intangible assets like trademarks or patents, financial reporting and more. A company does their homework before any merger or acquisition, and typically if a sale goes through, they feel confident they’ve made the right move.
But there is one thing that is rarely done… and that is a careful study of the differences between the company cultures. Culture is about shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that make up the “personality” of a given company. Personalities are important. Imagine, if you will, two people discussing getting married and they both have children and homes.
Of course ‘marriage is of the heart and this is business’, you say?
Well, two companies coming together needs to be treated like a marriage. If you were considering marrying someone, you do need to consider your partner’s financial health and see if it matches yours, but is that all you would look at? I would think you should see if there is compatibility of the values, attitudes and practices. How you raise your children and how they raise theirs may be so far removed from one another, you could be creating Armageddon rather than a loving, caring blended family. It could be that you are sending a child or two on a run-away spree, or will be forever burdened by being the nasty, horrible and wicked step-parent no matter how hard you try.
 image courtesy of Presentation-Process.com This little analogy is very apropos for M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) and cultural evaluations are starting to make headway in some M and A analysis of companies. Why?
Because after you buy the company and by the time you ask a consultant to come in and help with the messy change management of the two cultures, it can be too late.
It is imperative the company buying takes a careful look at the culture of the company being purchased and consider this in their valuation. A company purchasing a heavily creative and innovative group whose mandate it has been to focus on the customer may find their new family clashing with a process driven conglomerate whose focus is global spread and, trust me, that can be disastrous. In fact, in technology, the key component to a wise purchase is in determining how to retain the knowledge held by the employees. Your software is only as good as the people writing it, and you want them to stay.
I am not saying it cannot be done or to avoid the purchase, what I am saying is, you better already have a great plan in place for merging not only the technology or the company, but the cultures too. Doing your homework needs to be holistic, not finance specific, know what pitfalls and roadblocks you will suffer if culture is left out of the equation, or that beautiful valuation sheet may very well be worth far less once the knowledge has walked out the door.
There are things you can do to prepare in advance:
- bring someone in who understands how to evaluate cultures and
- work at building a plan of action toward a healthy merger or acquisition, upfront.
It behoves you to do so, because business is of the heart, and shouldn’t be about wasting money or losing talent.
Patti Blackstaffe works with people and organizations to develop
Happy Workplaces world-wide guiding them toward mastery and leadership
through consulting, advising, coaching, speaking, and delivering training.
You can reach Patti at 1-855-968-5323 | contact her here | book her to speak
 Today’s guest post is by Mike Figliuolo, the author of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. Here’s Mike:
Your team doesn’t trust you. Honestly. They don’t.
Trust is key to effective working relationships; yet, as you climb the corporate ladder, trust seems harder to earn and easier to lose.
What causes a team to not trust their leader? You. Yes, you. You’re unpredictable and your team doesn’t know what to expect from you. But, these are fixable problems.
Trust is about an ability to rely upon or expect a predictable outcome. When you act in ways your team doesn’t expect, it erodes trust and makes them wonder what you’re going to do next. If you want to get a sense for how much your people trust you, you can take this Trusted Leader Assessment online – it only takes 3-5 minutes and you’ll get a comprehensive analysis of your results after taking it.
If you can clearly lay out how your people can expect you to behave in a variety of situations, they’ll have a basic expectation upon which to build a foundation of trust. These expectations have to be personal and meaningful enough to you that they guide your behavior. I refer to these guiding principles as “leadership maxims” which are rules of behavior or conduct. The collection of all your leadership maxims becomes your personal leadership philosophy.
Defining Your Leadership Philosophy
I encourage you as a leader to define your own set of leadership maxims. They can be as simple as one of mine which is “What would Nana say?” For reference, Nana was my grandmother. I can use that maxim to guide my behavior. When faced with difficult choices, I simply ask “what would Nana say?” and my choice becomes clear. When I explain this maxim to my team, they’ll better understand how I make choices and they’ll see my behavior as consistent with this maxim. It is this consistency that forms the basis of trust.
If you want to define a powerful leadership philosophy, here are a few steps to start with:
- Be yourself. When you write your leadership philosophy, spare your team the corporate-speak and tell your personal story instead. They can spot a phony a mile away.
- Give in to emotion. Articulate your leadership philosophy as a set of reminders of stories that have deep emotional meaning for you. The reminders are touchstones to guide your behavior. The stronger the emotions associated with the story, the more likely you are to change your behavior to be consistent with the lesson the story reminds you of.
- Lead yourself. You have to know where you personally want to go in life and define your personal code of conduct before you can lead someone else. Write down reminders of your code as part of your philosophy.
- Lead the thinking. Your job is to set direction, challenge outdated thinking, and define standards. Create reminders that force you to do these things on a regular basis – not only during the annual strategic planning process.
- Lead your people. Get dirty. Know their jobs. Know them as individuals – not as a box on an org chart or a job title. When they know you care about them as a person, they’re much more willing to give you everything they’ve got.
- Lead a balanced life. If you’re burned out, you’re worthless. Set your boundaries and stick to them. Let everyone else know what they are. Balance applies to your work too – have enough work you love to do to balance out all the mindless tasks you don’t enjoy. Again – create some simple yet personal guidelines that remind you make decisions that keep you in balance.
- Pull it all together. Document all your reminders of how you want to behave on a single piece of paper. Tack it up on your wall or carry it on a card in your wallet. Having that simple reminder of your approach to leadership always within arm’s reach will help you live up to that standard every day.
- Share. Tell people your personal story. Share your triumphs and failures. Help them understand the experiences that have made you who you are as a leader. When you share, you help them understand you better. That understanding and the vulnerability you demonstrate while sharing builds trust between you and your team members.
The Bottom Line
The sooner you commit your leadership philosophy to paper, the better off you are. Be sure it is personal, authentic, and free of jargon or buzzwords. Share it with your team. Live it every day. Help them see you’re really not that complex or unpredictable. Morale, productivity, and trust will all increase as a result. Take the Trusted Leader Assessment to see where you stack up. The results can make a big difference in helping you build trust with the members of your team.
 Mike Figliuolo is the author of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. He’s the managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC – a leadership development firm. An Honor Graduate from West Point, he served in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer. Before founding his own company, he was an assistant professor at Duke University, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., and an executive at Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He regularly writes about leadership on the thoughtLEADERS Blog.
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