What is the Cost and Risk?
I am in another waiting room filling out another form. Name, age, email, address... Then, the symptoms, history of illnesses/surgeries, and then circling the parts of the body needing treatment on the little muscle anatomy figures. I draw a lot of circles.
Observe for your Friction Points
On page 32-33 there are four questions which are proving to be more revealing than I could have imagined. In workshops and coaching programs people are sharing with me the most insightful and helpful responses.
The obvious reason is the feeling of resistance. Stephen Pressfield refers to this at length in The War of Art - his book on what it is to be true artist and the biggest obstacles we experience in this pursuit. It is powerful as every business owner, engineer, technician, manager, and accountant is an artist in their own right (i.e. we all are). To not see this in ourselves is a misrepresentation - the act of solving problems with expertise and dedication is artistry. Brene Brown says it well, "Art is not confined to galleries. It lives in classrooms, kitchens, courtrooms, and clinics—anywhere craft meets care."
Pressfield refers to resistance as internal (coming from within us) as well as external forms. Through this lens we can see how these four questions are so revealing for leaders.
What are your Friction Points?
Sometimes this is obvious (I don't have enough time!), but when we dig deeper and put it to paper something extraordinary happens:
It is easy - it becomes apparent that the biggest struggles and frustrations are not as big and ugly as we believed. Intellectually, they are easy to understand and immediately action becomes easier.
It is big - usually, most friction points will not be solved within a week or even a few months. They will take intentional dedicated effort over a length of time. But this is tremendously powerful. I love seeing people hatch plans to get on top of this stuff and make progress when otherwise these same issues would be nagging away (and metastising) a year later if action hadn't taken place.
It is where progress lies - when we work on the Strategic section of their program it is this area where the legacy programs are seeded from (things a leader will leave for others to benefit from long after they have moved on). Recently, one leader merged two departments to lower duplication and raise customer service levels within a six month period. It all started from three bullet points in this area of his Leadership Journal.
What is causing the Friction Points?
"My director is undermining me"
"My people leaders are not coaching their teams"
"We don't have systems that talk to each other"
"No one is taking responsibility for their own work!"
These are some real world examples people have been sharing with me recently from their journal.
In every case I will dig deeper to the real causes we need to tackle and surface them. This is where it gets exciting. Seeing people reflect on the internal and external reasons for the friction they are experiencing is often cathartic and always clarifying. I can see it physically as shoulders relax and facial muscles ease. We take all the assumptions and weird perspectives out of the line up so the metaphoric perpetrator can be i
dentified. This gives the clarity we all crave.
Where is your leadership contributing to the Friction Points?
I am not your best friend, I am not your therapist, I am not your parent, and I am not anyone's guru. I am the guy with one explicit agenda - to help leaders to get to where they can or want to be. That's it. I have no other agenda than your success as a leader and professional. I don't need people to like me, but I need them to run the gauntlet. This includes facing some home truths, with the first one being - where are your funky ways of leading contributing. In the words of Susan Scott (author of the brilliant Fierce Conversations), “Leaders get what they tolerate. If you want to know why you’re getting what you’re getting, take a look at yourself. You are not the innocent bystander.” Again, this is liberating and helps a leader identify where the opportunities are for self development - often this comes in the form of a five degree tweak and not a 180 degree U-turns.
How are these Friction Points affecting your team performance?
In short, what is the cost (and risk)?
Immediately, this builds a business case for the investment of time, resources, and effort a leader needs to ensure the Friction Points can be squashed. This in itself increases a leader's influence. If you have ever presented to a Global Executive or a company CFO you will know it can be brutal. In my corporate career this happened a few times, and I can openly and honestly say, not once was I sufficiently prepared. I went into the room hoping certain questions were not going to be asked, and every time they were. I got slaughtered. Instead, be the leader that knows the biggest Friction Points in the business they are solely responsible for and know the costs/risks associated with them. The leader able to do this immediately speaks from a position of power.
Know the Friction Points intimately, tackle them head on, and be the one flagging and solving these problems before any other. Opportunity (of all types) sits on the other side of this act.
Not only do these four questions reveal so much, but they also give us our starting point to formulate meaningful change via the legacy programs of our leadership tenure. Along with all the other benefits, this gives us a wonderful starting point to artistically create our masterpiece like the true artist we are.
