The 360⁰ Evaluation
Recently I initiated a 360⁰ evaluation of my leadership. I did it in response to a recommendation in the book What to Ask the Person in the Mirror and after discussing the topic with my peer learning group.It’s important I understand my leadership strengths and weaknesses including any blind spots I might have. Knowing this information is especially critical in light of SpringHill’s current and future growth.
As I expressed to the folks I asked to participate in the evaluation, I do not want my leadership to be a hindrance to SpringHill reaching its potential. Because the truth is, the effectiveness of an organization is always less than or equal to the leadership capacity of its chief executive, never greater.
So if you’ve ever contemplated having a 360⁰ evaluation of your leadership, consider the following recommendations from my experience and the experience of my peers, in helping make the process more fruitful and productive.
- Have an outside human resources professional administer the evaluation on your behalf.
- Use a reliable and valid 360⁰ process. I used The Center for Creative Leadership’s evaluation tool. It’s proven and compares your feedback to a database of 100,000’s of leaders from around the world.
- Don’t make it part of your performance appraisal, it’s better used for developmental purposes.
- Initiate the review; don’t wait until someone initiates it for you. You want feedback sooner than later and not when someone (like your boss) thinks there might be an issue, because, in that case, it might be too late.
- Be open to all the feedback and be prepared to make changes.
Feedback isn’t always easy to get and receive, but as Proverbs 10:17 says “He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.”
The Symptoms and the Cure for the Out of Control Schedule
This week I met with my friend and advisor Bill Payne. The topic I sought his input on was prioritizing and managing my time. It’s become a bigger challenge as my job continues to evolve in light of SpringHill’s growth (see my post Time – One of Most Valuable Gifts). As always, Bill provided wise and practical input.Below are the symptoms I’ve been experiencing over the last year and some of Bill’s wisdom to help cure the out of control schedule I’ve had. As you read, ask yourself – “are you experiencing any of these same symptoms?” If you answer yes, then join me in trying some of Bill’s input for yourself.
Symptoms:
My time and schedule feel like they’re being driven and managed by everyone else but me.
I’ve had barely enough time to do all that I need and should do in my role.
To accomplished both what I need to do and what everyone else has expected me to do, I’ve cut short or cut out such things as exercise, sleep, house and home projects, reflection time and planning, time with friends and even, I hate to admit this, at moments, time with my family.
The Cure:
Block out time in my daily and weekly schedule as “no meeting” times to assure I have space to do both the important things and the things only I can do.
Trust my team to do their work and to do it well.
Stop trying to please everyone by saying yes to everyone’s requests and begin to say no in appropriate ways. Bill promised that saying no becomes easier the more you say it.
Then stop feeling guilty when I say no.
Finally, stop over playing my desire to please, a good quality I have, until taken to the extreme – which is trying the impossible – to please everyone all the time.
Wisdom is Supreme
“Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding”. Proverbs 4:7This week our Development team received wisdom. It cost us three long days away from our families and the office, but it was worth every minute.
Actually, it maybe the best 3 days of any professional investment I’ve made in a long time. Not because of the subject matter – yes development and fundraising are incredibly important for ministries like SpringHill – but because of the wisdom of our seminar leader Bill McConkey of McConkey Johnston International.
Bill has been a development professional for 50 years as well as a local church pastor for over 40. He sits on boards of well-known and significant ministries while continuing both his consulting and pastoral work. Bill embodies wisdom.
Which had me thinking, why is there such a serious lack appreciation in our culture for true wisdom and its sources?
First we need to understand wisdom. Wisdom is the accumulated learning and knowledge one has gathered from personal experience or the experience of others. The two key words are “accumulated” and “experience”, both of which can only happen over a long period of time, such as a… life time. By implication then, the only truly wise people walking the earth are those who’ve been around a long time and those who have learned from them.
Which is why our culture doesn’t value true wisdom, we don’t value the people who have it. There’s a bias against older people because they’re not always “current”. Bill McConkey doesn’t own a computer, thus never does email. So it would be easy to dismiss things Bill has to say, but oh, what a mistake that would be (could it be that Bill’s wiser because he doesn’t have email?).
So beyond all that I learned about fundraising this week I also reminded of my need to be with and around wise people, those who’ve traveled life for a long time, because “wisdom is supreme”.
Time – One of Our Most Valuable Gifts
If I learned anything in 2011 it’s that time isn’t just my most valuable resources, it’s a gift.
It’s a gift because it’s part of God’s creation. It’s one of God’s most valuable gifts because (along with space) it’s the context in which we experience all His other good gifts.
In the book What to Ask the Person in the Mirror (see my post) Robert Steven Kaplan recommends leaders do an audit of how they spend their time. Sensing, that with the growth of SpringHill, I was beginning to lose my grip on this gift, I did a time audit in November and early December.
I accomplished this audit by carrying around an Excel spreadsheet with a list of key activities I do, or should do, during a typical week. Then I marked down, in ¼ hour segments, where I spent my time. I did a tally at the end of each day and at the end of the week. After the first week I made adjustments in the spreadsheet to better reflect where I was actually spending my time. It was a simple process, requiring little time and, most importantly, it was enlightening.
After five weeks one major theme became apparent – the time I’m committing to my work has increased as SpringHill has grown. The trouble is, if this pattern continues, one day I’m going to run out of time (time being a finite resource), which could result in me becoming a hurdle instead of an aid to SpringHill continuing to reach more kids in more places more effectively.
This result would be unacceptable. So I’m taking intentional steps in 2012 to do a better job with the gift of time God’s given me. (See my post on questions to ask yourself in preparing for 2012).
What will you do with your gift this year?
10 Questions to Ask Yourself about 2011
Every year over the Christmas holidays I take time away from work and spend it with family, doing needed projects around the house, and readying myself for the New Year. One exercise I do in preparation for the upcoming year is to set personal goals, as well as layout plans to achieve those goals.
As in any goal setting exercise, I always begin by evaluating the past year. After a conversation about 2011 with my good friend Jack McQueeney, Executive Director of the Navigators’ Glen Eyrie Group, he sent me the following list of thought-provoking questions to help me evaluate 2011 and plan for 2012. I share them with you in hopes that they’ll be as helpful to you as they have been for me.
- What is the greatest lesson you learned this year that you never want your kids to forget?
- How might you have behaved or acted differently this year if you had to do it over again?
- Looking back over the year, what did you set out to do that you didn’t do and why?
- What key discipline did you live out this past year that had a significant impact on your life? What was the impact?
- What are you most proud of this year?
- What were the key surprises (good or bad) that happened this year?
- Which relationships in your life grew this year and which regressed?
- If you could go back to the beginning of this year, what piece of advice would you give yourself? Why?
- Looking back, what was the overarching theme for the year?
- What will be your overarching theme for next year?
Are there other questions you’ve found helpful to answer in evaluating your life? Please share them with us.
Submitting to the Mission
I’m reading Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen’s new book Great by Choice where, for illustrative purposes, they compare the leadership styles of the two Antarctic explorers, the well-known Robert Scott and the lesser known Roald Amundsen, who raced each other to the South Pole. In particular, Collins and Hansen references Roland Huntford’s fantastic book The Last Place on Earth – Scott and Amundsen’s Race to the South Pole.
I read The Last Place on Earth in 2009 and immediately appreciated it as both an important historic account as well as a great study in leadership. It combines the two types of books I love to read – history books and in particular biographies of historic characters and books about real life adventure. The Last Place on Earth takes a historic look at one of the great adventures of all time – the story of the two men who raced to be the first to reach the South Pole.
I won’t repeat Collins and Hansen’s leadership lessons (you can read their book) but instead share one leadership observation and one conclusion I drew from The Last Place on Earth.
The observation – Scott ended up being the more celebrated of the two explorers though he failed in his mission which ended in his and his team’s death while Amundsen, the first man to the South Pole, is largely unknown outside of historical and exploration circles.
The conclusion – if a leader submits all, including their own personal ambitions and recognition, to the fulfillment of the team’s mission they’re more likely to be successful. At the same time they’re more likely to be unknown or forgotten because they made accomplishing the mission look easy while doing it with less drama than those who failed.
Keeping Your Eye on the Ball
I grew up playing baseball, basketball and football (in which for many years I was a receiver). One of the most common instructions I’d heard from my coaches, regardless of the sport, was “Perry, keep your eye on the ball.” This meant, whether playing third base or wide receiver, to focus entirely on the ball until I had it completely in my control.This instruction, on the surface, seems to be easy enough to follow, except for that linebacker ready to put a hit on me the moment I touch the ball, or the man on second base waiting to advance to third as soon as I made a throw to first. Then what became easy was to “take my eye of the ball” and try to see, at the same time, more than just that ball coming my way. When I did this it almost always led to me missing that ball and still getting hit or the guy still advancing to third.
Keeping my eye on the ball required discipline, focus and courage. It’s probably why I heard so often my coaches yell “Perry, keep your eye on the ball” and why it’s now burned forever into my consciousness.
Looking back I’m thankful for my coaches’ consistent instruction and the fact that their words continue to be front of mind now that the “sports” I’m participating in have changed and become more significant. Mishandling the ball, be it SpringHill’s mission, vision and values, the stewardship of my health, my role as father and husband or my relationship with Christ, has significantly more serious consequences than that ground ball that went through my legs.
And it requires even more discipline, focus and courage, three qualities I continue to ask God to provide so I will never take my eye off these important balls.
The One Quality Every Enduring Leader Possesses
I’m a student of leadership. I read leadership books, listen to leadership gurus and read leaders’ blogs. I’ve especially gained much insight by reading biographies of leaders from many fields, walks of life and historical periods such as Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln.
In addition, as a benefit of my work at SpringHill, I have the privilege of spending time with incredible leaders from many leadership contexts and places in the world. And over the last couple of months I’ve been with more leaders than usual which moved me to ask “is there something all these leaders have in common?”
Through all my study and observation I became convinced there’s one quality every effective and enduring leader possesses.
It’s that they’re intensely curious. They desire (and maybe more accurately “need”) to learn and grow as people and as leaders so they can lead their organizations better and see those they lead grow as well.
I can’t think of an effective and enduring leader I’ve studied, seen or interacted with that didn’t have this quality as part of their being.
Just as every leader’s different, this quality – the desire to learn and this intense curiosity’s expressed differently.
Some leaders learn through experience such as benchmarking other organizations.
Most leaders read, which explains why the cliché “readers are leaders” resonates as true.
Many use coaches, mentors and other advisors to help them learn, grow and improve.
Yet regardless of the method of learning this quality’s still the same – they have this intense curiosity and an endless thirst to learn.
And for this reason it’s also the one quality that I will fight to have in my life for as long as I live.
Why I Journal
Why do I journal? Why do I keep a journal of my workouts and health, a fishing journal, a work journal and a journal of my spiritual life? Simple answer – I can’t help myself.
But there are reasons I can’t help myself. They’re the things I’ve experienced over the past 30 plus years of journaling.
First journals have created a record of the activities and events I’ve been a part of and the associated reflections I’ve had so I can refer back to those moments at a later date.
Second, writing helps me process what I’m thinking and experiencing by bringing clarity to a topic, situation or season of my life. Some people talk things out, I write them out.
Finally, for what it’s worth, I’ve created a record of my life that one day my family and friends may want to experience and share.
More recently I’ve converted some of my journals from written only to photo journals with some writing. For example I’ve converted my fishing journal to a series of photo journals because capturing the moments of a fishing trip in pictures has become more important than creating a detailed record of the number of fish we’ve caught, the type we caught and where and how we caught them. I use Shutterfly to create these journals and I’m happy with the results.
In my written journals, apart from this blog, I still write them out with a pen in an actual journal. Somehow it feels more intimate and authentic doing it this way. Plus my handwriting reflects my mood, physical condition and the environment I’m journaling in, making my entries more reflective of the moment.
So now you know why I journal. It’s really not a compulsion in my life; it’s more like the act of breathing.
What to Ask the Person in the Mirror
“The most successful leaders are very good at knowing how and when to ask the critical questions…” (Kaplan, p. 12)As part of our recent Chicago 7 gathering we read What to Ask the Person in the Mirror by Robert Steven Kaplan.
Kaplan’s a former Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc and currently professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. After being assigned to read Kaplan’s book by John McAuley of Muskoka Woods the first thing I did was to scan the description of Kaplan and his professional background. I don’t judge books by their covers but I do often make snap judgments based on their authors.
In this case I mistakenly believed What to Ask the Person in the Mirror would be a theoretical book best suited for very large organizations.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. In a very clear, concise and practical way Kaplan lays out the key questions leaders must ask and the critical roles they must play if they’re to effectively lead an organization – large or small, profit or not-for-profit.
The book begins with questions related to the articulation of the vision and priorities of an organization. This discussion becomes the foundation for the rest of the book with the topics working together to build a comprehensive plan for a leader and an organization to follow.
The topics include time management, receiving and giving feedback, succession planning, delegation and evaluation. Then Kaplan concludes with an important discussion of leaders as role models and the importance of a leader understanding their “talents, personality, values and passions.”
It’s an appropriate conclusion to a very practical and insightful book, a book that I will continue to sit on desk so that I can reference it in my ongoing efforts to becoming a more effective leader.
