The Surprising Reason Emerging Leaders Stop Emerging

Posted on November 13, 2018November 15, 2018 by Karin Hurt | 12 Comments

I met a fellow keynote speaker at a conference where we both presenting. She was a seasoned entrepreneur who had built a successful business from scratch, so what she had to share with me was surprising.

Karin, I’m so intrigued by this research you’re doing on FOSU (fear of speaking up) and the downstream consequences for employees and organizations. The truth is I’m one of those people. I had such a bad experience when I was 23, that I would never offer my opinion at work again.

I was just out of college and so eager to make an impact in my new role. I had tons of ideas and was always looking for ways to make things better. So I offered my opinion on EVERYTHING. Which as it turns out, was exhausting to everyone around me. I got fired and was completely devastated. After all, my heart was in the right place. I was gung ho. But, the truth is, I was commited but clumsy.

Once I got back on my feet in a new job, I kept my head down, my mouth shut, and just did my job. I had this FOSU thing you talk about in a big way. And I was misearable.

It’s why I eventually had to go start my own business. I knew I would never speak up to an employer again.

Please feel free to share my story.

I hope it can help leaders understand the long-term damage they can do to emerging leaders who may have good ideas, but just haven’t learned the skills to position them well. Also leaders need to understand how easy it is to lose high-potential talent when you scare them into suppressing their best thinking instead of teaching them the skills they need to get their point across.

I thought back to one of my own early-career, well-intended, clumsy moves. I was an inexperienced HR manager attending a meeting on employee engagement where I told a room full of VPs, all with at least a decade more experience than me, that they were completely wrong. But in contrast to my new friend’s experience, here’s what the SVP took me aside and said next.

Karin, You’ve got great ideas, but you’re incredibly clumsy. As a manager, you don’t tell a room full of VPs that all of them are wrong in a meeting with their peers, and in front of their boss! You quietly take notes, and then talk with a few of them offline to stakeholder your ideas. You really ticked me off, so I couldn’t even process what you were saying. But I’ve been thinking about it and you’re right. I’d like you to lead the HR leg of this project. You help me fix this problem and I’ll help you learn how to navigate politically so you don’t sabotage what could be a promising career. Sound like a deal?

I took her up on her offer, and she became an amazing mentor.

The Cost of Ignoring Your Emerging Leader’s Ideas

When I tell some executives about our FOSU research, sometimes they laugh. “Oh, that’s not OUR issue. Our problem is these damn millennials can’t stop speaking up. They complain about everything.”

“And do you listen?” I ask.

“Some of the time, but after a while you can only take so much.”

Which begs the question. And then what happens? After you’re tired and they’re ignored?

I imagine it’s only a matter of time until they stop trying, or leave.

If you want to create better ideas positioned well, it’s worth the investment to teach them well.

4 Ways to Help Your Emerging Leaders Articulate Their Ideas

1. Give them perspective.

When leaders come to us wishing their team was more strategic or are frustrated that their employees are all fired up about some small issue that’s not so important in the grand scheme of things, what we often find is a gap in strategic communication. For employees to position their ideas well, they need context. Be sure you’re articulating the “why” behind strategic business initiatives.

2. Provide candid feedback about how their behavior is holding them back.

One problem with over-generalizing about “this millennial problem,” we so often hear about– the feeling that these emerging leaders want everything right now and feel entitled to say whatever is on their minds–is that managers are often afraid to address the issue because they see it as a generation problem, not an individual needing guidance, training, and support. And so, these emerging leaders don’t get the feedback they need and the behavior continues.

They don’t hear that saying the same thing in a different way would be 1000 times more impactful. No one tells them why jumping over their boss to bring an issue to the senior leader without context is a problem.

Here’s the truth. I was a clumsy emerging leader. So was the keynote speaker who got fired from her first job for speaking up. I imagine you were or are one too.

Care enough to have the tough conversation.

3. Build problem solving competencies.

“Don’t bring me a problem without a solution” is the fastest way to get your team to stop bringing you problems. Work to build problem-solving competencies on your team. Try this simple 9 Whats Coaching Model technique as a start.

4. Teach them the power of stakeholders.

In our emerging leader training programs, we teach the V.O.I.C.E. technique for positioning ideas which includes understanding and involving stakeholders and other key influencers.

We don’t just need more people speaking up, we need to help our emerging leaders speak up in a way that can be heard so their ideas can add the most value. It’s worth slowing down and giving our new managers the skills and encouragement they need to do that well.

Your turn.

How do you help your emerging leaders better position their ideas?

5 Conversations Your Millennial Employees Are Longing To Have

Posted on November 10, 2016November 10, 2016 by Karin Hurt | 4 Comments

Morgan (a family friend who also happens to be a millennial) was practically screaming in frustration as we began our mentoring session, “Arghhh, Karin, I’m just so frustrated. They want me to do all this crap… none of it seems important, and it’s getting in the way of my real work.”

It would have been tempting to just take Morgan’s word for it– that the “crap” she was being asked to do made no sense.

After all, I suppose I should be on Morgan’s “side,” but as I dug below the “crap,” I could see a logical explanation for almost everything she was being asked to do.

K- “Has your boss explained why these things are important?”

M- “Nope.”

K- “Do you think your boss has your best interest at heart?”

M-“Sometimes.”

K-“Well let me try to explain why I think they’re asking for all this.”

She let out a palpable sigh as I went through the possible explanations. (Keep in mind that I have no idea if these were the real reasons… but just connecting her dots with my experience.)

Imagine how much better that would have been coming from her boss.

I stand by my view that millennials are just human beings doing the best they can, like the rest of us. The more I work with this generation, however, I realize that it’s not that they their needs are that different, it’s that they are more vocal when things don’t make sense.

Thank goodness.

Asking more “whys” can be powerful, positive disruptive force
in our organizations, communities and world.

And of course, the flip side of this conversation is that there often is a very good “why” worth listening to. We need to all get better at explaining and listening, even if we don’t like what we hear.

Five Conversations Your Millennial Employees Are Longing To have

If you’re running into frustration with your millennials questioning everything and not “getting with the program,” consider tackling one of these five conversations.

How can I show up authentically (be true to myself) and still be effective? (Help me navigate the politics.)
Why do we have to do it this way? (Explain the why behind all these policies and processes that seem to be wasting my time)
Why does my work matter? (Help me find the greater meaning in the work I do.)
When you say “I’m not ready” for a promotion, can you be more specific? (And how do I get ready beyond just putting in my time?)
I’ve got some ideas for how we can do this better. (Please listen to me and take me seriously).

The best way to bridge the generational gap is open dialogue. Let’s have more.

Who Leads Next? What Every Employer Needs to Know To Develop Your Millennial Employees

As David Dye and I prepare for our Winning Well Asia Tour this Spring, we continue our dialogue on with Michael Teoh, author of the Potential Matrix and founder of Thriving Talents. To hear more, you can listen to this recorded webinar in which we discuss:

How to Build a Culture that Develops Leaders before they have Titled Responsibility
Ways to Talk with your Younger Talent to keep them Engaged and bought into the Development Process
Key Mistakes to Avoid – Don’t Push Your Leaders Out The Door!
A Process to Identify and Draw Out the Best from Your Emerging Leaders

Managing Millennials: What's Really Different

Posted on July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 by Karin Hurt | 16 Comments

A working student in my evening MBA program approached me to talk about a work situation that was driving her crazy.

She gave me the gory behind-the-scenes view: a few apathetic employees were fully taking advantage of a system that had let them get away with ridiculous performance for too long. She was a new supervisor and knew what was right. Apparently her instincts had been reinforced in our class that night. But the situation felt difficult to reverse. She shrugged and said, “It’s probably because they’re millennials.”

I laughed, “Uh…you do realize YOU are a millennial. right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she acknowledged, “but I’m a DIFFERENT kind of millennial.”

Of course she is. Every millennial is.

Whatever your generation, I’d bet money you don’t feel like you fully fit the stereotype.

Don’t let generational labels and stereotypes screw up your ability to build a winning team.

What Every Employee Needs

All this talk of the millennial situation is aggravating the perceived “generation gap.” It happens every time a new crop of growing leaders gains traction. The truth is, the problem she was describing was not generational. It was a hard-core, poster-child example of weak expectations, exacerbated by low-reinforcement and no consequences.

I had those same slippery characters working for me when I was 26. Oh sure their names and contexts were different, but I recognized the story. Back then, I was a gen-Xer trying to manage gen-Xers (I even had to take a course on managing gen-Xers before I could move into management). I recall telling the trainer I was a DIFFERENT kind of gen-Xer.

Yes, we need to understand and value the millennial generation. They bring insights and values we may not understand.

For example, I was all ears when my informal millennial coaches (employees in my organization at the front lines who I specifically put on my informal board of directors to tell me the truth) told me how to become more trusted and accessible to the front lines: Stop wearing a suit and heels to the call centers–it was too intimidating; bring my humor to the next corporate video; and for God’s sake watch some TV every now and then so I can chime in on the break room small talk. It worked. Sure there are few things you can do to be more relevant to the masses.

But the truth is, it didn’t work because they were millennial. It worked because it was a way to meet people where they are. That wisdom has worked for centuries.

Figure out the easy things you can change to connect better at a broad scale, but never forget that teams are built of unique human beings.

The next time you’re faced with a “millennial” problem, I encourage you to resist the label and dig deeper. What’s really going on at the individual level? Do they get the big picture, so they have the skills to do the job, are they confident and competent…? You get the picture.

Are you struggling with a difficult employee engagement scene? Please call me at 443 750-1249 for a free consultation.

Managing Millennials: What’s Really Different