StandOut (16 page)

• You are emotionally insightful—you see things from the other person’s perspective and you know that what you see is true and valid. This means you can act on it: to change it for the better, to sell into it, to market to it, to intervene in a timely manner to avert emotionally dangerous outcomes—like a person quitting or two people clashing. All of these stem from your emotional insight.

• You have excellent institutional memory—you can retain who has been involved in an issue, what their interests were, what their emotional stake was, what their state of mind might be now.

• You are sensitive and can become defensive if you sense your perspective is not being heard.

• Because you are thin-skinned, other people can wind you up quite easily.

How to Describe Yourself (in Interviews, Performance Reviews)

• “I can pick up on other people’s feelings, whether customers or colleagues.”

• “People seem to trust me quickly. Why? Because I don’t judge them. I find it really easy to see things from their perspective.”

• “When it comes to finding solutions, I find I’m best at the brainstorming stage when people need to feel okay sharing all the ideas they have.”

• “I tend to be able to remember things about people— birthdays, favorite foods, names of their kids. It makes them feel special.”

• “I am an intensely loyal person. Sometimes to a fault. But I have lots of long-lasting friendships and I stand by my friends no matter what.”

• “Many people in my life rely on me. And I like that.”

How to Make an Immediate Impact

• Start by taking the temperature of your team
. You have an excellent sense of the institution you are joining—as in, who is in relationship with whom, who are the heroes, what are the war stories—so feed this sense by listening and watching closely. What is said in the room? What is said only in the hallways afterward? What projects brought the best out of the team? Where does the team struggle? Who are the leaders? Who are the troublemakers?

• Get to know the troublemakers first
, because in their minds they are misunderstood. You have a gift for allowing people to have their say and holding what they say without either criticizing it or condoning it. You just take it on. And this “taking on” lets them move out from their defensive mode and into a healthier and more productive frame of mind.

• If there are no troublemakers on the team,
start with those who need the most help
. Where are they struggling? Which aspect of their work is holding them back? How can you help them? If you’re not the one to help, then can you secure the resources they need?

• As soon as you can,
assume responsibility for a specific project or task
. Obviously, you shouldn’t barge your way into someone else’s area of responsibility, but when a chance presents itself, volunteer to take ownership for a clearly defined deliverable. You’ll get it done—because you are an instinctively responsible person—and you will begin to build your reputation as someone on whom others can rely.

• Seek out situations that require you to listen carefully to others’ concerns and secrets
. Your ability to keep people’s confidences comes so naturally to you that you may take it for granted. Instead, see it for what it is—a rare quality—and put yourself in situations where it is one of the keys to success.

How to Take Your Performance to the Next Level

• Build your base of supporters
. Who is protecting you? Who is looking out for you? You, of all people, gain strength from knowing that you are surrounded by people on whom you can rely. Amidst all the self-interest and the personal ambition, take care to build a small work “family” whom you trust utterly. You will always be at your best when you know that a few carefully chosen people have your back.

• Your need for a work family shouldn’t stop you from taking on new assignments. Just know that when you move into a new position, you will sense your lack of coverage and, more than most, you will feel exposed.
Neutralize these feelings by starting to build a new “family” as quickly as you can
. Find one person you can trust, nurture that relationship, and carefully build out from there.

• Make it a ritual to gather your team together at the beginning of each week to talk about responsibilities.
Ask your people to make specific commitments
. You are at your most passionate, authentic, and persuasive when you ask people to step up and take ownership for their work.

• Find examples of how team members supported one another and then share these examples with the team
. People often need reminding of how much they need one another, how vulnerable the “lone wolf” is, how powerful mutual support can be. Others will look to you for these vivid reminders.

• You have the potential to lead large groups of people. People will want you to lead them. They know that in you they have someone who will look out for their interests, someone who will advocate for them, someone who will expect them to step up and make a bigger contribution.
So learn how to transfer your own sense of responsibility to them
. Use stories, examples, heroes, and success stories to show them what true personal responsibility looks like in their world.

• Seek out messy situations where trust has disappeared and conflict reigns
. Through your actions and your demeanor you can be an agent of transformation. You can serve as an example of personal responsibility and constancy. This is potentially a massive contribution to a world broken by mistrust.

What to Watch Out For

• You tend to avoid conflict when it involves you. And yet it builds and builds, until finally you explode in a way that can come as a surprise to others, in a way that can even seem irrational to others. Since you tend to fight for yourself only when you are backed into the kind of corner where your values are being questioned or challenged,
discipline yourself to use your values as backstop earlier, rather than later
. In this way you will take a stand earlier, and when it comes your stand will be, at the very least, predictable to your colleagues.

• You are not naturally politically astute. You assume that everyone will be as responsible and as inclusive as you are. And yet they aren’t. And so there will be times when you are taken by surprise, times when you are disappointed by other people’s blatant self-interest.
When this happens, tell yourself positive stories
. Remind yourself that though people can be selfish, they can also be trustworthy and caring and forgiving. These stories will right your ship.

• People love to share. They love to tell stories about others on the team, some of which might be quite unflattering. Resist your temptation to believe everything you hear. Before you commiserate with them, before you take on their slight and try to do something about it,
get the facts
. The slight may be imagined, and so your responsibility may be to listen to the person who is complaining and let them get it off their chest, rather than diving in and trying to right the slight. The worst reputation you can get is that you are a “gullible shoulder to cry on.”

• Since you are acutely aware of personal responsibility, the sight of others whose standards of responsibility are not as high as yours will sometimes disappoint you.
Learn to move past your disappointment and into the land of expectation: “What are you going to do next time?”

• Few are as inclusive as you are. There is always a delicate balance to be struck between people’s need to be included and people’s need to feel special. Often you will err on the side of including everyone and run the risk that no one will feel special.
To make everyone feel special, frame everything in the language of responsibility.
It’s fine to include everyone, as long as everyone has a specific responsibility. Responsibility drives expectation and expectation drives each person’s sense of self-worth. Each person feels special when something specific is expected of him or her.

• Since few are as inclusive as you are, there will be times when you are excluded. Try not to take this personally. It isn’t.
It is just a function of the fact that not everyone feels your need to include everyone.

How to Win As a Leader

Provider
: Your strength is that we trust you will be there for us. You are with us. You will protect us, support us, and advocate for us. We all rely on you.

• We remain loyal to you because we know you care deeply about our experience. Guard this trust. It is your most valuable leadership asset.

• We follow you because we know you never leave anybody behind. We stay with you because of this but only because you also ensure that our strengths are being put to use in pursuit of the goal. We won’t follow simply to follow—we have to feel like valued contributors. Take the time to tell us why we are special.

• Keep building your base of supporters. You need a strong, trustworthy management team around you. These people are like family to you—and this takes work to maintain. Maintain it, because with it you will be at your most powerful. Without it, you will feel surprisingly vulnerable.

• You are adaptable. If things go off plan, see the new possibilities this provides. When you demonstrate that you aren’t attached to one way of doing things, you free us to call on our strengths to find the solution. This unstructured, open-minded approach supports flexibility and speed in doing what needs to be done to serve our clients.

• Whether it’s a chaotic meeting, an angry client, or a mechanical mishap, tap into your talent for tenacity. Knowing that you’ll stand by us and support us through the challenging parts of the day gives us the strength to push through.

• Share stories of success. You notice the wins, particularly those that involve people. Make sure we hear about them too. This will reinforce our loyalty.

How to Win As a Manager

Provider
: Your strength is your unwavering support. I trust that you will never leave me dangling, exposed, and unprotected.

• I know you have my back. I can count on you to do what it takes to protect me, even if that’s giving me difficult feedback about something that I need to change. You are loyal to me and so I will always be loyal to you.

• Work alongside me and catch me doing things right. You have your senses tuned to what’s working, and this positive spin on managing my performance is incredibly encouraging. You don’t turn a blind eye to my misses, but you frame them with “Next time, try this . . .” That tells me you want me to succeed. It works.

• You are perceptive. You pick up on the subtle energies in the room and are tactful in addressing them. You call the elephants out from under the table and sort things out then and there. I admire you for this.

• Give us leeway to choose the appropriate actions to aid a service recovery for our clients. By empowering us to make good decisions and not slowing us down by requiring us to check in with you before offering a guest a solution, we feel trusted and valued.

• Create opportunities for us to “take our work hats off” and engage in real non-work-related conversations together. Whether it’s a payday luncheon or an informal off-site gathering, leverage the power of genuine connections to gel our team.