Bishop House Consulting, Inc.

Who’s on 1st, What’s on 2nd

Build consistency in your leadership and delegation of tasks and projects by clearly differentiating the roles people should play.  It’s important to clarify that roles are not people.  Leaders must distinguish, clearly articulate and consistently visualize the differences between the roles that exist and the people who fulfill those roles.

One great tool to help identify and communicate roles and responsibilities is a project management approach code named RACI.  RACI is a responsibility matrix and stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed.  Below are descriptions for each role copied directly from Wikipedia.

Responsible – Those who do the work to achieve the task.  There is typically one role with a participation type of Responsible, although others can be delegated to assist in the work required.

Accountable (also Approver or final Approving Authority) – The one ultimately answerable for the correct and thorough completion of the deliverable or task, and the one from whom Responsible is delegated the work.  In other words, an Accountable must sign off (Approve) on work that Responsible provides. There must be only one Accountable specified for each task or deliverable.

Consulted (sometimes Counsel) – Those whose opinions are sought, typically subject matter experts; and with whom there is two-way communication.

Informed – Those who are kept up-to-date on progress, often only on completion of the task or deliverable; and with whom there is just one-way communication.

Give it a Try

Grab a blank piece of paper (or open Excel or Word) and create a table.  Across the top write the names of the people who are part of the project.  Down the left side of the table write the tasks or activities.  Next assign the roles using the RACI indicators for each task/activity by person.  Think hard on the delineation of the roles and even more deeply on how well you’ve communicated those delineations among the folks who fulfill the roles.

Need to see an example?  Click here to see a sample RACI matrix should you need or like to see a visual sample.

Rehire Yourself

Remember those feelings of the first days and weeks in a new job.  The thrill of learning a new environment, the freedom from office politics and gossip, the flood of ideas, the intrigue with meeting your employees for the first time, the adrenaline rush of opportunity to make an impact, and the unwavering belief of your boss and peers in your ability to have great success.

Re-create it!  Rehire yourself into your position.

Today is your first day of your first week of your first month in the job.  Clear your calendar and GTD list (Getting Things Done).   Let the fog roll into your memories of relationships.

Start everything anew. . .

• Review your job description
• Re-introduce yourself to your employees
• Craft a vision and align your resources around the vision
• Draw a stakeholder chart of key peers and teams with whom you’ll need to establish relationships
• Champion and enable the execution of your plans
• Start a new GTD list

Create the opportunity to allow yourself to be fully motivated for your leadership role.  Rehiring yourself will allow your mind to discard old baggage that weighs you down and explore/establish boundaries that enable you to be more effective.

DiSC Tip:  Adjust Your Face

Are You Having an Impact?

Effective leaders seek to continuously improve how they impact the organization and those with whom they interact.  Gaining objective insight on your behaviors and how those behaviors impact others can provide you with critical data to adjust your actions and behaviors.  So, where do you really stand?  Are you an impactful leader?  Is that a positive impact or a negative impact?  When was the last meaningful conversation you had with your boss regarding how you are performing as a leader?

Seek the feedback.   A profound method for analyzing how well you are doing is to seek feedback from individuals within various stakeholder groups that surround you.  As a leader you have your direct reports who have a perception of you.  And there’s the boss who has her own perception as well.  But there are several other groups who can provide valuable insight.

• Peers – locally and globally
• Customers – external as well as internal
• Matrix team members – up, across and down
• Members of the Board of Directors, Mentors, External advisors

Formal feedback can be garnered via a 360 degree feedback survey – think of yourself as at the center of the circle and your stakeholders surround you laterally, above and below – which provides tremendous, objective and usually anonymous feedback.  Well run 360 degree surveys provide the input along leadership competencies which allow you to internalize the perceptions from various stakeholders.

Short on your budget?  Here are some less formal methods you could follow to gain input.

• Create your own electronic survey and deploy to your stakeholders via
• Free survey tool: www.Surveymonkey.com
• Outlook Exchange Voting/Tracking Survey
• Create a simple questionnaire and email to your stakeholders
• Facilitate in person meetings with stakeholders

To be successful, you should:

• Seek the feedback
• Create an action plan
• Find an accountability partner; you boss is a good place to start

Take Action:  Take 4 minutes to determine your stakeholders.  Using a blank piece of paper draw a circle in the middle of the page the size of a half-dollar.  Place your name in the circle.  Now, draw spokes off of that circle and write the names of stakeholders.  Start with broad groupings if needed such as direct reports, bosses, peers.  Then narrow those groupings with individual names or subsets.

By taking inventory of your stakeholders you will at least begin to think through how they might perceive your leadership impact on the organization.

Click here to see a sample 363 for Leaders tool which we use with our clients.

We’re Looking for New & Maturing Leaders Who Want to Increase Their Wisdom 

Get the training, tools and skills needed to be a successful manager. Our management training program immerses participants in the art and science of managing.

• Eight half-day training sessions held weekly
• One-on-one situational leadership coaching sessions guide application of new skills
• Dynamic training, invigorating discussions

Our next program starts the morning of March 22nd! Click here to learn more about our highly rated training program.

Cultural Storytelling

My friend Jerry can tell a heck of a story.  He pulls in that southern charm, teases you with just enough data to paint the picture in your head and then delivers the guts of the story.  In a matter of 3 to 4 minutes he has conveyed a full set of moral values usually with a laugh that can bring you to tears.

For your organization a good story can reveal so much about the culture of the organization.  The blending of experiences, people, events, success, challenge, tragedy, and life converge within the organization over time to create the existing culture.  Great leaders work hard to build a culture they believe will allow the organization to survive and excel over time.  These leaders know that culture – good and bad – evolves over time and well told stories reveal the threads of people and events that created desired aspects of the culture.  The leaders use the stories and history to paint the picture of the desired cultural state.

As you daydream in one of your back-to-back meetings today, meditate on the phrase “cultural storytelling.”  What messages, morals, history, and behaviors would you like to convey to employees the next time you tell a story from the old or not so old days?

Our Next Management Training Program Starts March 22nd! 

Over 500 local leaders have grown their expertise through Bishop House management training programs.  Our 8 week dynamic program focuses on:

• Increasing leadership impact
• Leading change
• Improving communications
• Managing employee performance
• Motivating staff

Are you looking to build your management skills?  Are you dreading difficult conversations?  Are you struggling as a manager?  Do you know a struggling manager?

Learn more about our Building New & Maturing Leaders Training Program.

Surround Yourself with Positive Leaders

We’ve all seen him, that leader who just has a black cloud hovering over his head throughout the day.  The world seems dark around him.  He is unhappy with the changes in direction of the company, changes that were announced 7 months ago.  He’s discouraged with his team that appears to always be in some type crisis.  He spreads gossip about other leaders.

Every day you have a choice regarding how you will approach the day.  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking provides great insight on the power of your perspective.  The day will be what you perceive the day to be.  Surrounding yourself with positive minded leaders will create an atmosphere that inspires you to approach the day’s challenges with a strength, an inspiration to be the best leader you can be.  Surround yourself with negative leaders and the opposite will likely happen.  The day will be fraught with insurmountable problems, constant headaches and discontent among the people.

Take a moment to read each statement below. Which one of these statements best describes your perspective today as others will perceive you.

1. Leading is a lonely job.  Today is filled with more meetings listening to my team tell me why their work is behind schedule.  Then I’ll have to listen to someone complain about their continuing problems with a co-worker.  And to boot, I have to sit through a 2 hour status meeting over lunch.

2. Leading is such a great job.  I have the fantastic opportunity to inspire, grow and motivate people.  I look forward to the challenge today of helping someone feel great about their work.  The guidance I will provide will be thoughtful, have impact and help my organization to achieve success today.  During the status meeting today, I’m going to sit in a different seat and learn one new thing from the person next to me.

Life’s short.  Find the positive leaders with whom you can mingle.  Be inspired; be inspiring to others.  It’s your choice to make.

How’s the Street View

Have you used Google Maps Street View in the past?  What a great way to drop in and see the actual destination of your trip.  You can see the building, the street, parking even what restaurants might be close by.

A professional roadmap helps you to document where you’d like to head in the future prompting you to develop a target, areas of focus, goals and broad actions to layout your professional trip.  Maybe you’re just taking a small trip to expand your skills a bit or possibly a once in a lifetime, cross country trip taking you on a 2 year adventure to reach that next rung in the ladder.

You should check in on your progress just as Google Maps let’s you drill down from a broad, global view to the street view.

• Regional View – you can see your starting point, your ending point and the organizational terrain you’ll cross.
• Neighborhood View – you can see more details regarding bends in the road, turns that will need to be made, special navigational opportunities (shortcuts, country roads, highways) all with pros and cons.
• Street View – The real deal!  What is actually around you at the moment in time when the snapshot is taken?

To Think About:

• Where are you on your roadmap?
• Is the highway really your best choice or might the country road with all its scenery build more leadership wisdom?
• What feedback might a passer-by at street level be able to provide?

Leaders Leading Leaders

I recently finished John Maxwell’s 5 Levels of Leadership.  I’m struck by the simplicity and power he reveals in his model for describing the role leaders attempt to play.  The simplicity of the 5 Levels – Position, Permission, Production, People Development, and Pinnacle – is a basic path through increase of power and influence.  However, Maxwell’s depth comes from painting a shift in paradigm with regard to how power and influence are wielded.  Most intriguing for me is the movement from the 3^rd Level, Production, a level revealing leaders making things happen and separating themselves from the pack with high production through a team or teams, to Level 4, a level summarized as developing leaders into leaders who can lead others.

Take a moment and re-read the last 8 words.  Think about the skill/maturity/emotional intelligence gap which exists from leading teams to produce to developing leaders to lead.  Becoming a great leader will require you to identify, grow, equip and support leaders.

Ultimately you lead well not through your perceived power but through empowering others – other leaders as well as employees – who become successful because of the leadership you model.

Here’s a rundown of Maxwell’s 5 Levels:

• Level 1:  Position – It’s a great place to visit, but you won’t want to stay there.
• Level 2:  Permission – You can’t lead people until you like people
• Level 3:  Production – Making things happen separates real leaders from wannabes
• Level 4:  People Development – Helping individual leaders grow extends your influence and impact
• Level 5:  Pinnacle – The highest leadership accomplishment is developing other leaders to Level 4

Get the Leadership Learning Moments Book! 

Leadership Learning Moments for the New & Maturing Leader  is now available on Amazon.com.

Seeking Authentic Leadership

We know authentic leadership when we see it and at times in the absence of it.  Authenticity, that genuine, honorable, right stuff that is revealed as leaders walk forward ahead of their teams behaving in ways which portray the culture they believe can be built.

We teach managers to become leaders through adaptation of behaviors and development of key skills.  But authenticity is difficult if not impossible to teach.   We often look to rules, policies, laws, and regulations to guide behavior and instill a sense of expectations for situations in which leaders may find themselves.  Leaders grow up following the organizational and societal structures which enable them to effectively lead within the organizations and industries they have chosen.   We understand that the banking executive’s environment is much different than that of a software executive and still different from that of a hotel executive.

But there is a higher standard that cannot be found in law or a policy or a handbook or Roberts Rules of Order.  There is a standard to which, in my opinion, all leaders should judge themselves.  The standard of what’s appropriate, what’s the right thing to do when the rule book just doesn’t go far enough in detailing every imaginable scenario.  The standard that demands the leader make non-selfish decisions and to put the good of employees – individually and in total – ahead of self-interests.

The year is coming to a close and now is an opportune time to assess if you been an authentic leader or a selfish leader?  I recommend you invest an hour in reviewing your decisions and the trend line of your actions through the year.  Think through your motivations and rationalizations for decisions and conversations.

Worried about investing a whole hour?  Maybe that worry is a good place to start your assessment.

Play A Game

Looking for a creative and cheap way to practice your leadership skills?  Be a kid again and play some games.  Here are some game ideas and the associated skill areas.

• Blokus, Chess or Backgammon – strategic thinking, patience
• Charades – situational agility, team work
• Halo – executive politics
• Rock Band – team work
• Twister – relationship building
• Monopoly – winning it all. . . and putting it all back in the box
• Nerf Gun Wars – focusing, agility
• Scrabble – performance review terminology
• Settlers of Catan – budgeting, resource planning
• Wii Fit – stamina
• Risk – strategic thinking, execution, agility and decisiveness
• Bananagrams! – creativity, flexibility, adjusting course

Gather a few peers, play a game and increase your leadership skills.  And maybe you’ll laugh a bit along the way.

Have a game you’d like to add to our list?  Share your game idea on our Leadership Learning Moments Blog.