In addition to providing a welcome opportunity to eat and drink with wild abandon, the holidays are a great time to reflect on our year. Personally, 2016 required me to get out of my comfort zone. I temporarily scaled back my consulting practice so I could focus on my new book on self-awareness.
And even though I worked with just a handful of clients this year, I’ve learned many invaluable lessons from them. So for the third year running, and in the spirit of our collective success, I wanted to codify this wisdom.
1. In the raging winds of change, we must build windmills.
For better or for worse, nothing lasts forever. But not that long ago, I often heard business people say things like “once we get through X change, we can regroup and make a plan.” Whether it was a new job, a merger or acquisition, or even an industry disruption, there used to be a sense that the business world was punctuated by change rather than pervaded by it. But that’s becoming less true with each passing year.
And as the winds of change continue to blow, to paraphrase a Chinese proverb, I see some leaders building walls while others are building windmills. The latter have accepted this reality and recognized the different behavior it requires. They manage through uncertainty instead of trying to eliminate it. They help employees replenish their energy instead of burning them out. They support their team’s change agility instead of surrendering to the status quo. It is my belief that this set of skills will be a key ingredient for success in the future.
2. Leaders receive the behavior they reward.
Of all the business scandals of 2016, Wells Fargo’s took the cake. In September, the Federal Consumer Protection Bureau discovered that the bank’s employees had opened millions of fraudulent customer accounts. When these 5,300 people were fired, now-former CEO John Stumpf laid the blame squarely on their shoulders. But this wasn’t a case of 5,300 bad apples. The real culprits were more likely unrealistic sales goals and a winner-takes-all culture. And this underscores one simple fact — leaders receive the behavior they reward. Always.
Yet as harmful as this principle proved to be for Wells Fargo, it can also be a force for good. For the past two years, I’ve been running a large-scale leadership development program for a client. Naturally, our expectation is that participants will change their behavior and actually become better leaders — which in turn will drive business results. So my client smartly started rewarding those actions, in large and small ways.
My favorite was an award they created for those who most embodied the new behaviors we were targeting. In February, the 20 worldwide winners were…