Jay’s Daily Checklist
If I’m being honest, I’d have to say that going into my 360-Eval that December day I was very confident that I’d receive high marks and high praise for the way I had led within our organization in the past year.
I had led the successful turnaround of a department.
I had identified and recruited some “A” players to join our team.
I was being invited into all sorts of discussions and strategic opportunities.
I was tapped to lead an organization-wide initiative, and it had exceeded expectations.
I had been asked to mentor and develop some young, ascending leaders, and they were progressing well and earning great reputations.
My peers were coming to me for advice on how to lead and develop their teams.
I had received glowing remarks on all my performance reviews.
I had gotten a nice bonus and a substantial raise.
It had been a very good year!
So, when I walked into the room to meet with the outside consultant who had conducted our 360-Evals (I hate to admit this, but it’s true), I was feeling confident…maybe even a little cocky (for accuracy’s sake you may want insert “definitely” in place of “maybe” and “a little” with “overly”).
Despite the fact that I had just watched a coworker – a peer who I respected – leave with his tail between his legs, I walked in feeling overly cocky. This was gonna be a homerun! My boss…my peers…the team I’d hired and developed, I knew that every last one of them had given me 10 out of 10’s across the board.
But.
They.
Hadn’t.
The truth is most of the scores I received were really good. In fact, most were really, really high. And over and over again, those surveyed remarked about all that I had accomplished that year, citing the things I shared in the list above.
But…
When it came to HOW I had gotten those things done…
When it came to HOW I made people feel when things were being done…
When it came to HOW I made people feel when things weren’t getting done…
THEIR COMMENTS AND REMARKS
STUNG
BECAUSE THEY WERE
TRUE.
They said things like…
Jay has tunnel vision on his goals.
Jay’s feedback is often unnecessarily blunt and critical.
Jay rarely celebrates the wins.
Jay forgets we have lives outside of here.
Jay can be arrogant and condescending, but I don’t think he means to come across this way.
Jay is always in a hurry.
The list went on in pretty much the same vein, but you get the idea. I could be a major jerk in pursuit of goals and productivity.
Fortunately, as surprised as I was in the moment, I was somehow internally “ready” to receive this kind of critique, and the outside consultant was AMAZING at his job!
He let me sit with the remarks for a moment without saying anything. Then he let me verbally process for a minute or two. And then he pulled up a second slide with all of the same information from the first, but this one was color-coded – green for praise, red for critique, and yellow for anything that was neutral. And he showed me that my boss, my peers, and my team – to a person – had far more positive things to say about me and my contribution than they did negative things. In most cases, it was an 8:1 or 9:1 ratio.
He said, “They see how valuable you are to themselves and the organization.”
Then, he showed me a different slide with the same information, but this time there were all sorts of random words highlighted. And as he read each word, he did it with the emotion he felt the word carried. Then he asked me, “How do you think the people felt as they wrote these words?” It was obvious. “They felt nervous…afraid…tentative.”
Then, he said, “Yes, you make them nervous, afraid, and tentative. They don’t want to disappoint you. They don’t want to tell you where your blind spots and weaknesses are, because they’re afraid of how you’ll react.”
He then went on to show evidence that their fear wasn’t of me blowing up in anger; it was of me invalidating or disregarding their criticism through defensiveness and logic. And that’s when he hit me with some life changing words.
He said…
Jay, they all like you. They are all impressed by you. They all think you can make them better. But if you want to move from a place of INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION to a place of ORGANIZATIONAL INFLUENCE, you are going to have to learn to be…
GENTLE
APPROACHABLE
HUMBLE
MERCIFUL
A SERVANT
His words hit me like a ton of bricks, but like I said, I was somehow “ready” to receive them, and I wanted to become a better leader…I wanted to lead with gentle influence more than I wanted to get pats on the back or accolades for accomplishments…I wanted to be enjoyed and appreciated as someone who supported those around him and gave his power away, not someone who used others to accomplish my purposes or achieve my goals.
So, as I walked back to my office and processed this necessarily humbling leadership lesson, I was reminded of something that’s often read at weddings but pretty much never at corporate retreats or leadership trainings – it’s a description of love found in the Bible, specifically in 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
It does not envy.
It does not boast.
It is not proud.
It does not dishonor others.
It is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered.
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
Always trusts,
Always hopes,
Always perseveres.
Love never fails.
DISCLAIMER: I’m well aware that a large percentage of my blog followers would not classify themselves as religious or spiritual. You are here for leadership lessons, not Bible stories. I know that, but this is how my leadership journey developed and took major strides forward; so, please, stick with me.
It was late when I returned to my office. All the lights were off. Everyone else had gone home. So, for quite a while, I just sat there in the dark letting all the scores, ratings, and remarks of the 360-Eval wash over me. The consultant was going to email me everything we’d gone over in a couple days, but after maybe an hour of sitting there marinating in my thoughts, I decided I couldn’t wait for his email…I needed to process this and get to the bottom of it now.
So, I pulled out a dry erase marker and started making columns of single words on my whiteboard. Any word that stood out from that meeting made its way up there. Then I found myself grouping them into categories.
I could feel it.
Something was forming.
Something was taking shape.
I was on the verge of breakthrough.
And that’s when 1 Corinthians 13 popped into my head again.
And as I thought through all the descriptors of love and considered all the things my boss, my peers, and my team had pointed out, I realized that what they described was the opposite of love.
So, I quickly erased the words that were there and replaced them with a checklist that stayed on my whiteboard for a year. You can see a picture of it on the cover art of this blog post. It had boxes for checkmarks next to each of these statements:
Jay is patient.
Jay is kind.
Jay is not jealous.
Jay is not boastful.
Jay is not proud.
Jay is not rude.
Jay does not demand his own way.
Jay is not irritable.
Jay keeps no record of being wronged.
Jay does not rejoice in injustice, but truth.
Jay does not give up.
Jay does not lose faith.
Jay is always hopeful.
Jay endures through every circumstance.
I wrote those statements with the intention of them serving as a constant reminder of what I aspired to be. And I put the boxes beside them so I could do a daily inventory.
At the end of each workday for several months, I would pause at that board to check off the ones I’d accomplished that day in green and the ones I’d failed at in red…and I’d leave it that way overnight so the next day I’d be inspired to do better…and to make things right with whoever I had failed.
I wrote those statements on the board for my personal reflection and accountability, but it didn’t take long for team members or peers to notice them while in my office for meetings.
And they
asked me
about them.
So, I started inviting my coworkers – anytime they wanted – to pull out a red and green marker and go to town, letting me know where I was getting better and where I still needed improvement.
Interestingly, I was never scared of their red ink, because I knew they were doing it to help me get better.
What I also noticed was that people were less tentative about giving me feedback on other things.
And then, several months later I happened to walk past someone’s office as they were describing me to a member of their team. They said…
Jay leads with
GENTLENESS.
That day I gave myself all greens on the board!!!
I’m not sure what your leadership challenges are or in what ways you need to grow, but I would encourage you to write out a list of statements about the kind of leader you aspire to be and place it in a prominent place in your office where both you and others can easily see and interact with it. If you work remotely, maybe find a way to turn it into the background on your Zoom calls for a little while!
Whatever you have to do…whatever creative plan you can come up with for it…find a way to create accountability and conversation around the type of leader you aspire to be.
Do this and I can almost guarantee that you will move
from a place of
Individual Contribution
to a place of
