Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

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Tough Times Call For Excellent Strategies to C.O.P.E.

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

The current state of the economy makes it very difficult to inspire employees to perform at their peak levels. They are concerned they may lose their job, and the negative emotions keep them from performing at the peak levels needed to keep the company operating successfully.

Your top job is to help your staff determine the best areas to focus on and how to take action so that productivity levels stay high. Over the years, I have discovered four effective emotions can help staff members move from fear to positive action. These include:

Control Optimism Purpose Engagement

Here are tips for helping employees move from anxiety to COPE feelings.

1. Control

One of the reasons that the current situation is so frightening to so many people is because it feels as if our economic well-being is out of our control. As human beings, we don’t like it when we aren’t in control. Leaders can help employees deal with uncertainty by helping them regain a sense of control.

Although the economic problems are worrying, there is no real point in worrying about something we cannot control. By getting your employees to focus on customer service and productivity, you can allow them to regain a sense of control.

As a leader of a group of employees, you may find you need to give up a portion of your own control to give your staff a feeling of empowerment toward improving their lives. A know it all approach will do nothing but create suspicion and hostility from your staff. It is very important that you encourage them to involve themselves in the areas of the company where they can have a positive impact.

2. Optimism

History has proven time and again that good leaders use optimism as a core strategy in re-igniting faltering organization, motivating troops and even changing national policies for the better.

Leaders in a company must be able to inspire their employees to be positive and give their best on a consistent basis. It has been proven by countless studies that creativity, innovation, and other qualities needed to cope with the current economic factors are best fostered when the workforce feels positive emotions such as optimism and hope. The leader who can motivate employees to face challenges with a “can-do” approach will be much more likely to solve the business problems they need to in order to be successful.

3. Purpose

The performance of mundane daily tasks make it easy to lose sight on the ultimate goal and let short term stress take over. Find ways to keep your staff reminded of the reasons and purpose for their work and the organization they work for. Merely reminding them that their work makes a difference can give them renewed energy and motivate them to take action.

A leader should always lead toward a positive path forward, and also be clear as to what the goals of his employees and the company as a whole are, according to Jim Owens, Senior Vice President for North America operations of H.B. Fuller. A serious error Jim has seen many managers make is to leave the purposes they want to achieve up to the employees to translate, and giving no clear direction for how to achieve it, leaving them to attempt it on their own.

4. Engagement

The final element of the COPE model is engagement. Engaged employees understand and care about what is happening and what the company’s strategy is for moving forward. They also feel that they have meaningful ways to contribute.

Engagement means actively involving your employees in looking for solutions. When your organization is dealing with challenges, provide opportunities for your employees to get involved in problem-solving. Doing so not only increases employees’ sense of control, it also unites your organization and helps you come up with solutions!

One Denver based company, Sashco Sealants invited their employees to give cost-savings ideas for the company. They shared the dozens of ideas they received with team leaders of each specific unit within the company. The team leaders shared the suggestions with their team and reported the results back to senior management. The company has realized significant cost savings simply by involving the employees in the process.

To conclude, the COPE model is a method in which you can lead your employees in a positive, forward thinking way as well as create a work environment committed to creativity, direction and high performance.

Wendy Mack is a professional advisor, trainer, and author with a focus in leading and communicating change. Contact Wendy at, or download her free e-book, Transforming Anxiety into Energy at www.WendyMack.com.

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How to Get Your Projects Approved by Focusing on Organizational Plans

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Senior level support of an initiative is always a key goal of any group manager or project director, in order to ensure success of a project. Therefore, I am not surprised that in my work over the past decade with change managers, gaining executive support continues to stay at the top of the list of concerns these managers have with their work.

I talked with a number of senior managers in a wide range of public and private organizations in order to find out what my clients could do better to gain their support on a project. I learned there are two things often ignored by team leaders in their presentations. If you are able to incorporate these areas into your proposals, the chance that senior management will support your initiative will be much greater.

Expecting Immediate Support

A number of the senior managers I talked to indicated that project directors often believe that if their initial proposal is good enough the executive team will immediately agree and support it. Unfortunately it is more often the case that executive support is created gradually over time.

It can take 3 or 4 years to gain enough executive support to increase congressional funding according to one government agency executive I spoke with. While most corporate initiatives would never take so long, he used the example to emphasize that managers and team leaders must understand the strategic and long-term perspective senior management has on the organization. His suggestions for those seeking executive support are to:

1. give clear and understandable examples of how your project or proposal will become an asset for the entire organization.

2. Explore your case with peers from other groups/units. Look for ways to align priorities across multiple teams.

3. Talk in advance of your proposal to senior management and other stakeholders in the organization. Listen to their ideas and advice. Be willing to change your proposal based on their feedback.

4. Wait to present your proposal until after you have built a strong case and obtained initial support for your ideas.

Failing to Be Strategic

This is one area that cannot be ignored if you want your proposals to gain serious senior support. Executives of most organizations have developed strategic goals for achieving the organization’s vision for the future. If you are able to clearly communicate how your proposal will help to achieve those goals your chances of gaining their support will increase substantially. In order to be successful at this, you cannot wait to be told what senior management deems important, but rather proactively analyze their vision for the future and strategic goals to determine what those important items are.

What does it mean to be strategic? In my experience, executives want their directors to:

1. Recognize the company’s key objectives.

2. Approach senior management will specific areas that their team can assist the organization in meeting those objectives.

Scott Eblin suggests in “The Next Level” that you spend time with executive management before approaching them with a proposal in order to identify how they define a successful initiative. They key to keep in mind, however, is that at this stage they are unlikely to provide a specific to-do list and ideas for achievement. Your goal is to listen to discover organization-wide priorities and constraints. Be a sponge in these conversations. Take it to your management and discuss it further. Then return to senior management with more concrete goals for your group and plans to achieve the goals. At all times, flexibility is key in order to provide for feedback from the executive team.

Executive support for a project you feel strongly about may seem as though it is out of your reach, but if you are patient you will be able to build a case that senior management will understand. The key is to always stay focused on the overall strategic plans of the organization and to let senior management know how your project will help achieve those goals. Before you know it, your project could become a key factor in the success of the entire company!

Wendy Mack is a professional advisor, trainer, and author concentrating on leading and communicating change. Contact Wendy at, or Download her free e-book, Transforming Anxiety into Energy at www.WendyMack.com.

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Senior Executives Reveal What They Look For in Project Proposals

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Almost every person in charge of a team has had a similar experience. With only a few minutes to present to senior management, you must communicate a proposed project on behalf of your team. You labor until you perfect the delivery, only to see that the executives were unmoved by your proposal. Why?

I have found some excellent techniques to help gain senior level support through my work with change leaders over the past ten years. I have also seen more than one attempt flop. I decided to talk directly with several senior level leaders both in corporate and public organizations in order to discover best practices in presentations to senior management.

Too much information in a proposal for monetary or other support is one mistake made by many team leaders, agreed the executives. A lot of proposals they hear fail because the executives dont have time or interest to digest every nuance of the proposed project. It is not necessary for most senior managers to understand every task involved in the proposed initiative. And the executives agreed that in most cases, minor decisions can be left to the team, leaving senior management out of the day to day.

Here are three proven strategies to have a presentation to senior management that will limit the presentation to the most important details.

1. Use PowerPoint to summarize your main points.

Power point is so powerful in this type of presentation because it forces you to organize your key points into short and to the point statements. The Power Point Presentation should be high level key points, and you should be prepared with illustrative stories and anecdotes to bring those points alive. The goal will be to stay on any one Power Point screen no more than three minutes during your presentation. Make sure you have the details to back up your presentation, but only as a resource if you receive specific questions about a key issue.

2. Organize your main objectives and goals into relevant groups.

I recently saw one team leader list every activity his team planned to work on in 2009 in his pitch to executives. Instead of strengthening his case, all of the details turned off the executives he was trying to influence. One leader even spoke up to tell the team leader that they didnt want to know all of the team’s tasks. They just wanted to know the priorities.

Separating goals and tasks into related groups is a helpful technique. One example of this might be to state in your introduction that in the coming year, your groups goal is to focus on cost savings, making processes more efficient and creating a stronger bottom line. Then, your presentation would consist of giving examples of how you intend to be successful in each of these three areas. Using this approach will help senior management to focus on how the proposals you suggest for your team will impact the entire company, and allow them to decide if these are the areas that they want to stress in the coming year.

3. Concisely summarize what you need from the executive team in order to move forward.

A good deal of proposal presentations are merely informational. The team leader will give an update on the progress of the project and then asks the executives if there are any further questions. Their hope with this approach is that the executive team will be so impressed that they offer funding and support to the project without being asked, which is rarely the case.

A better approach is to end the presentation with a visual that describes what you are looking to senior management to support. Perhaps this will be a financial commitment, a key decision only they can make, or additional resources to complete the project. True, there is always the possibility that what you ask for will be denied, it is a much better situation to understand right away if what you need to be successful is a possibility.

In the 90s, a group of external consultants went to work with General Electric to derive a change acceleration process. As part of that process, the team found a four step process that worked very well in short, effective presentations:

* Our project or initiative is about . . . * It is critical to the company because . . . * What this means for you is . . . . * Heres how you can help . . .

This approach will work both in informal individual conversations with senior management staff as well as in your formal group presentations. And, as you become more proficient at answering those four key questions, your ability to get your proposals approve will increase.

Streamlining your sales presentations so that they are short and to the point, you will be much more successful at communicating your goals and not your tasks. Being very specific and clear about what you need will help senior management to know right away what you are proposing, what you would like from them to help you succeed, and, most important, how it will positively impact the entire organization.

Wendy Mack is a professional mentor, trainer, and author with a focus in spearheading and communicating change. Contact Wendy at, or Download her free e-book, Transforming Anxiety into Energy at www.WendyMack.com.

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