Test your Executive Productivity Quotient 1. You've taken a young manager into your team and you notice that he seems to defer all decisions to you. What do you do? Make up your mind that the person doesn't have what it takes and just use him to do little jobs as an assistant. Engineer some small breakthrough projects that are within his scope and will challenge him to make decisions while at the same time acting as a thinking partner. Get the HR department to talk to him about his lack of decisiveness. When he has to make a decision, instead of deciding for him, offer to be a thinking partner to draw out his ideas. 2. You are leading or facilitating a team in which you want to get a lot of different views and perspectives on the table in order to solve a problem. Team members are waiting for you to talk before they give their views and are reluctant to disagree with each other. What do you do? Make a speech on how you want to get different views on the table, but without directing anyone. Ignore it, assuming that as the group gets to know each other this behavior will improve. Acknowledge to the group that there is a problem with people giving their honest open opinion when asked and have a discussion about it. Start asking specific questions to specific people in the group with the intention of drawing them out. 3. You are going into a meeting with your boss and have some feedback that you want to give him. But you have a dilemma: you are afraid that if you give it to him straight there could be a blowup, but if you don't him the feedback there could be a real business problem that results from it. What do you do? You wait until your boss is in a good frame of mind and the timing is right to give him this message. You start the conversation by telling your boss some good news then ease into the discussion without putting it too hard. You speak very openly and candidly and put the cards on the table about the issue and share your feelings about it. You state the issue. Ask if he is available to have a conversation about that. Then give your views and the evidence for it, checking to see if he agrees or disagrees (if he has another view). 4. You have a person in your group who is underperforming. What do you do? Give him an ultimatum. Set higher goals and give him tips on how to achieve them. Find out what skill he is missing and send him to a course. State the issue. Try to figure out how the person is thinking about it. Be a thinking partner to help them discover what's missing. 5. Your team has a big project and you discover that people are not really very inspired or motivated. What do you do? Go to your boss and discuss offering a bonus at the end of the project or giving everyone a raise in pay. Bring in an well-known outside speaker who talks about motivation. Talk about why you're inspired and motivated by this project yourself and ask them to do the same. Ask people what are they passionate about, what are they motivated to do in their life and find a way to link that to the job. 6. You're on a team of people from three organizations. You found out that the team leader (who's not from your company) will be doing your evaluation and you feel uncomfortable with that. What do you do? Talk to your boss, asking your boss to act as an advocate to get you transferred to a different assignment. Do your best to stand out from the others by making key contributions and displaying leadership, assuming that the manager will recognize and reward you. Raise the issue at a team meeting for general discussion with the intention of clearing the air. Create a personal relationship with the new manager. Offer to be of service. Make clear that you are willing to be coached, mentioning your strengths and your development gaps with which you would like help. 7. You are trying to calm down someone on your team who is angry and upset about another person taking credit for their work. What do you do? Tell her to forget about it. That the value that she adds will eventually show up for everyone. Acknowledge her for what she does well. Join her in criticizing the person who took credit for her actions. Tell her the same thing has happened to you and how angry you felt until you learned that the person had been working on a similar idea. 8. You have identified four or five top potential people on your team that could go to a whole new level of leadership and performance. At the same time you are very busy and don't have a lot of discretionary time for development activities. What do you do? You choose one person and ask them if they're ready to develop faster, then spend the next six months coaching and mentoring. You contact your Human Resource or Organization Development department and direct them to create a leadership development program for this group that starts with 360 feedback. You tell this group that you have high hopes for them and help then create personalized development plans, make them responsible for their own development and provide some learning resources. You give everyone in the group a stretch assignment and ask them to find a mentor in the organization or external coach who can help them. 9. The people in your group have performed successfully and seem to be growing as well, but you want to challenge them to go to the next level or raise the bar. You think more is possible. What do you do? Tell them they've done a great job but need to take it to another level or the competition will kill them. Create a new theme for your department called, "Let's make it better." Acknowledge their success, but say that success is not enough. Declare some breakthrough goals for the group and look for buy-in. Hold a special celebration to acknowledge what's been accomplished then towards the end ask the group what's going to be the next mountain that they would inspire them to climb 10. You are leading a team in an established business that has to make the transition to the eEconomy. In the plain light of day, no one on the team wants to jeopardize the existing established business to go into the unknown of the Internet. What do you do? People want to get into some new things but every day they have to put out fires. You hold a special Internet business conference and brainstorming session with experts on the Internet as guest speakers. You also send everyone to an internet conference. You hold a special meeting of your team and ask, "Here is our business model today, how does it need to be different in light of the eEconomy? What is possible to do in our business today that was difficult or impossible to do before (the advent of the Internet)?" The idea is to open up and stimulate people's thinking about some new business models. You call your customers in and you find out what are their sources of frustration and dissatisfaction. Then, brainstorm together with them about how you how you solve those frustrations by taking advantage of eBusiness solutions.
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