J. Elise Keith

November 2018 - TD Magazine

Use these five methods to get sustainable engagement in your day-to-day meetings.

5 Steps to Improving Meeting Engagement

Procrastination is probably on most managers’ “Seven Deadly Sins” lists. But don’t be too quick to assign the moniker of “procrastinator.” According to personality type theory, as described by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) instrument, certain work style and cognitive preferences, which look an awful lot like procrastination on the surface, indicate anything but laziness.The MBTI instrument categorizes personality type along four categories, including Judging/Perceiving, which describes how people make decisions. Those with preferences for Judging (J)—whose work style dominates the corporate world currently—tend to make decisions quickly, and work more efficiently and are more energized at the beginning of a project. Conversely, those who prefer Perceiving (P) tend to make decisions later, and work more efficiently and are more energized toward the end of a project. It’s easy to see how an outsider, who can’t see what’s going on “under the hood,” might easily dismiss this tendency as procrastination, which usually entails delaying something because you simply don’t want to deal with it. However, for someone with a preference for Perceiving, quite the opposite is occurring. Instead, these workers are likely taking more time to gather all the information possible in order to make the most-informed decision. While those preferring J feel unsettled waiting to commit to a course of action and like to do it early on, those preferring P feel unsettled if they close off options before they’ve fully vetted them. Both approaches are valid and offer unique benefits. But it doesn’t take much vision to understand why—in a business climate riddled with the consequences of rushed decisions—the P approach might provide balance to an “I need it yesterday” culture. Yet, this particular cognitive and behavioral orientation, while common in the population at large, is marginalized in business, education, and society—often from childhood. **You’re a Slacker, and So Was Your Old Man!(No McFly Will Amount to Anything!)** From early in life, those with a preference for P receive messages that negate the value of their natural approach—and praise when they make more immediate decisions. This carries on into college, where you’re expected to choose a major before you even crack open a textbook (never mind that many of tomorrow’s most critical jobs probably don’t even exist yet). In fact, you could say that P preferences are programmed to self-identify as procrastinators and, as a result, learn to fake the J approach to school and work. How many times have you heard someone joke about the fact that they procrastinate, but can’t help it because they work better at the last minute? If that person is successful, chances are low that they truly procrastinate. More likely, they prefer P but have stereotyped themselves, because of a negative perception of what a preference for Perceiving really entails. In organizations, we don’t like when people delay making decisions. It’s unnerving because the merits of this work style are not understood in our J-biased corporate work culture—and we can’t necessarily discern what’s going on inside a person’s head. We can’t see that they’re actually gathering facts and weighing options; we don’t know that this process is so important to them that they’re willing to take all of the time that they possibly can before committing to a course of action. Efficiency Kicks in at the Project’s End As the deadline approaches, however, P preferences will quickly commit to a course of action and become efficiency machines, operating just as efficiently as those that prefer J tend to at the beginning of a project. This isn’t necessarily because they perform any better under pressure than anyone else, but rather that they work more effectively if they’ve had time to assemble the puzzle pieces in their head. On the other hand, if they’re required to operate in a Judging-oriented manner, focusing on the production end at the beginning of a project, they tend to work less efficiently. To put it in laymen’s terms, they may “doddle” a bit. This has nothing to do with their work ethic—they simply haven’t had sufficient time to formulate what they want to produce. And they’ll often change courses midstream, because along the way they’ve discovered a better approach. The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow Admittedly, for someone with a Judging-oriented outlook, the idea of allowing someone who prefers P to follow their natural work style within a modern business setting probably sounds like following a rainbow to its end in search of a pot of gold. However, in this case, there is a substantial pot of gold in terms of value to the organization. First, this approach provides a critical counter-balance to the J-driven propensity to make decisions and act on them quickly. To be sure, the Judging-oriented approach offers tremendous value, particularly in projects that require milestones. But sometimes decisions are made too soon—and organizations are locked into a course of action that turns out to be less desirable than one that materializes later. If both Judging and Perceiving perspectives are respected, however, teams can achieve ongoing, yet tempered momentum. Second, understand that those that prefer P really aren’t at their best when they have to conform to J-driven processes. If they’re allowed to operate within their natural work style, they produce higher quality work. To put it simply, you’re getting more value out of them by giving them the flexibility to do things their own way, and positioning them for greater career success by allowing them to make best use of their talents. Finding Common Ground We’ve established that P frequently conforms to a J world. But should it be the other way around? The reality is that it’s probably unrealistic—and perhaps equally unbeneficial—for either side to completely flex its behavior to the expectations of the other side. Those preferring Perceiving have to understand what things look like to a manager or co-worker with a J preference, and provide assurances that things are indeed progressing toward a desirable outcome. This may involve agreeing on certain markers that indicate progress. A Word to the Wise… If you prefer P, understand that when your J-preferring colleagues flex their own work preferences to your style, you’ve got to deliver the goods. If you don’t, you may not get another chance to prove the value of your approach. The good news: As you consistently deliver quality results, your J colleagues will become increasingly supportive of your work style.

Why You Might Want to Give Procrastinators a Chance

An unusually astute sense of self translates into an ability to understand the world and the people around you on many levels and in many different contexts. Purpose to ‘change the world’ coupled with a powerful strength of conviction keeps leaders pushing forward even in the face of obstacles or when pressured by others to do something else, while never forgetting their responsibility to satisfy the needs of the board, shareholders, customers, or employees. Recall how N.R. Narayana Murthy, one of the co-founders of Infosys Ltd., the Indian-based business consulting, technology, engineering, and outsourcing services company, stood up against political corruption in his home country to change the way business was done in India.Many of the truly exceptional leaders I have worked with possess a rare capacity to rapidly absorb, synthesize, and organize information that helps them understand the world around them, even when that world is radically different from what they have experienced before. Almost simultaneously, they are able to use that new worldview to determine how best to lead themselves and their organizations going forward. This multi-level processing enables them to respond more quickly and effectively to market changes and opportunities. The ability to make connections and interconnections across industries, technologies, markets, and geographies is an incredibly important skill for the global leader. It is essential to the process of developing strategies and collaborative relationships that keep a company, even an entire industry, relevant over the long term.              Another essential trait is in knowing when that which has worked in the past is destined for failure going forward. The dilemma faced by many leaders is that when they find a good model, say Dell's "Build it to Order," they have a hard time letting go. For global leaders, this dilemma is amplified, given the need to operate multiple business models simultaneously around the world. Truly global leaders need the intellectual acuity to know what to keep, what to destroy, and what to recreate across their organizations, in order to remain relevant to myriad markets and constituents. More importantly, they need the emotional intelligence and the mettle to take action, especially when what must be destroyed is exactly what made them successful in the past.  Consider how LEGO dramatically undertook an aggressive diversification plan (i.e., changed its business model) expanding its business beyond the traditional interconnecting building blocks to include a new line of clothing, theme parks and video games to improve revenue and capture greater market value.While more of an operations focus and engineering mentality may have been successful in the past, today's leader needs to be more of an inventor and an experimenter, willing to try out a new idea (a hypothesis) and recognize that failure (disproving the hypothesis) can be just as valuable, if not more so, than when the hypothesis turns out to be correct. Experimentation is a critical component of the reinvention process—whether you are reinventing a product, a solution, your business model or organizational structure, and even an industry platform or standard. [Let’s Recreate Leadership Series – Final PostBlog #4: The nature of organizations has changed, and the leaders they require in the future will be fundamentally different from those they require today. It is time to recreate leadership for the requirements of the modern organization.](http://stockmonkeys.com)[](http://images.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=6ddcewZIeuHIBM&tbnid=GF-iv8QA4q-dTM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/duboc/7896404652/&ei=5JkJUru\_CImsiAf\_goDoBQ&bvm=bv.50500085,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNFm5h4mgyFMC0GTeXZYwhLGf5W\_Fw&ust=1376447315952368)Over the years, serving as a management consultant and as the corporate lead in charge of executive development, I have assessed and developed thousands of leaders, most of whom were either preparing for or already in significant global assignments. Working closely with these individuals, I have learned that there are certain notable traits that distinguish those who hold global positions from those who are truly (deep in their being) global leaders. Interestingly, the differences have little to do with age, gender, where they were raised or schooled, and not even the kind of "on the job" training they received or the number of countries stamped in their passports. These are certainly important factors that contribute to one's ability to do global work; they provide the playground in which budding leaders can learn and grow, but they do not make a global leader. What I have found is that the true differentiating qualities are more psychographic than demographic in nature.  [Failure is a necessary ingredient to success. Leaders need to learn how to fail: How to understand it, learn from it, and importantly, how to recover from it. Learning how to fail is essential if you want to know how to be successful. As Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."  Failure is not the opposite of success but rather an integral part of the invention, reinvention, and innovation process.  Within each failure are lessons that develop experienced judgment to apply to subsequent reinvention or innovative projects. Today's leaders need to see their corporations as if they are part of living systems, in which the success of the individual is dependent upon the success of the larger whole. In the business world, they understand that the success of the corporation is dependent upon the success of the broader ecosystems. For Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, improvement of his company's core product, Linux software, depends on cooperation among software developers around the world far beyond those on Red Hat's payroll.  This approach is in sharp contrast to the more common economics of scarcity in which something of value is protected by copyrights and is only available to those willing to pay for it. In Whitehurst's world, value is actually created by maximizing access, which increases the size of the brain trust working on a given problem. This approach, long lauded by the free software movement, can yield unprecedented results.Today's leaders also need to not only learn to live with, but also to appreciate, messiness on the outer edge of their organizations. This requires co-existing in two worlds, one that is more reminiscent of the past, where a certain level of control and oversight is important to drive today's performance expectations, and another where the leader sets the vision and then gives permission to those working on the edge to self-organize and find solutions—often to problems that have not even been considered or created. By understanding and balancing the needs of both worlds, leaders can help their organizations stay profitable today, which can help financially support innovation for the future. To do so, leaders need to be comfortable with the messiness inherent in a knowledge (versus industrial) economy.  Leadership, especially at a global level, has a tremendous capacity to change the world, for good or for bad. Unlike industrial age thinking that at times disregarded or diminished the importance of environmental and social responsibility, leaders today need to be much more aware of the impact their operations have and are adjusting processes and policies to promote sustainability. Growth going forward must depend upon business models that support sustainability: of communities, of workforces, of the environment.For many businesspeople, a word like empathy seems too soft for the fiercely competitive, results-driven world in which they live. But empathy can yield some very tangible business results on many fronts, from employee engagement to product design to identifying new market opportunities.Authenticity is even more critical in a world of social networking, where anything you do or say can be captured and shared with the rest of connected humanity in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. For Frits van Paasschen, CEO of Starwood Properties transparency is a fact of life. In his manifesto on leadership, written in early 2012 for the employees of his worldwide hotel and resort network, Frits says, "It is not enough to have a strong brand or a great product. People expect to know about the company behind the brand and the people behind the product. Thanks to Facebook, Wikileaks, and LinkedIn—there are virtually no degrees of separation anymore. All the world's a digital stage."  The author would like to thank Karen Conway for her contribution to prior materials that inspired the content of this blog.](http://images.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=qAIj51xYsMFmfM&tbnid=1OxD7ZSM5jTkuM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.keral.com/index.php/narayana-murthy-to-head-infosys-again/&ei=f5QJUpD6D4yFiAeywYHIDA&psig=AFQjCNHPU3lz2G-TvW0hht3mg\_cULvPjjg&ust=1376445937659029)

J. Elise Keith

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