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Mentoring Through Storytelling

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When your mentee asks you for your thoughts or advice, how do you respond?

Imagine you two are meeting at your regular spot, maybe your office during lunch, a coffee shop over the weekend, or (for those long-distance relationships) over the phone. Your mentee goes on describing a recent challenge they are facing and expresses that they are not sure what to do about it. Or maybe they describe a recently discovered leadership or skill gap and are trying to set a goal to address it. In either case, they end by asking for your advice. How do you respond?

For one, you can simply give advice. That’s why you’re their mentor, right?

Or you can guide the conversation to coach them through the issue, using questions to encourage their own self-discovery of what to do, rather than simply telling them what to do.

Or maybe you can just tell a story.More

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Do People View Your Organization as Just?

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In my previous job as a member of the West Point faculty, I had the responsibility of selecting a few cadets (of the 130 in the organization) for specific leadership positions each semester. This gave those selected cadets a focused opportunity to practice their leadership in a safe and supportive environment, while striving to improve the company they led. Of course, I could not pick every cadet for important roles over the semesters available.

But after a few semesters of managing these decisions, one of my soon-to-graduate cadets offered candid feedback during a one-on-one meeting with me. He said that many in the organization viewed me as a “puppet master,” selecting the cadets I personally preferred for these leadership positions, leaving the rest without opportunity to be considered.

Whoa. Definitely NOT my intent.More

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Two Important Developmental Tools Available to Every Leader (and Mentor)

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Have you ever hesitated to reach out to a boss or a mentor and ask for their time – maybe to seek out advice for a current challenge?

Do you feel like a burden when you do?

What about encountering distracted, seemingly aloof communication from a boss or mentor? Though likely unintentional, even the smallest signals can message that we are distracting our boss or mentor from more important things, or that we are not someone on their short list of people worth their time.More

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Leadership by Wandering Around 2.0 – Connecting & Communicating Through Presence

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3×5 Leadership Note: Leadership by Wandering Around was the first article we wrote and published when we created 3×5 Leadership. To date, it remains the most popular article. That tells us the idea resonates with many. So, to celebrate 3×5 Leadership turning 5-years-old this month, we want to revisit this essential idea and expand on the idea with what we have learned over these years. Enjoy!

The idea of presence remains a critical component to effective leadership. It is an essential ingredient to building trust, deepening connections, and creating shared understanding with those we work with and lead. And while physically being present is the foundation of this idea, it requires so much more like our attitudes, words, and behaviors during those times. Regardless of industry and organizational context, leader presence is necessary; it is something we can enact across physical and digital domains.More

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Creating Leadership Space for Others to Fill…and 8 Book Recommendations to Help

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In my decade-long journey of growth as a leader so far, I’ve come to firmly believe that one of the greatest impacts I can have as a leader (and a developer of other leaders) is to create leadership space for others to fill. Creating this space, enabling others to fill it, and supporting their growth throughout the experience truly is one of the best things we can do to nurture others’ leader development. This directly supports the 70-20-10 Model for Learning and Development (70% of learning occurs from challenging experiences and assignments), cultivates ownership and responsibility within those leaders, gives them experience to expand their perspectives, and creates rich opportunity for follow-on reflection and learning (even from failure).More

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Are We Simply Applying Psychological Solutions to Organizational Problems?

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In a recent WorkLife podcast episode I listened to, the host, Adam Grant, made a statement that resonated deeply. He said, “Let’s ban psychological solutions to organizational problems.” That sentence felt like a 100-pound brick being dropped in my lap! He went on to list common examples that may be all too familiar to many of us – organizations applying employee-based fixes like mindfulness activities, emotional intelligence training, or strategies to avoid personal burnout, when really the organization has deeper rooted issues like the need to remove an abusive boss or diagnose ineffective and inefficient systems. And while I have written on emotional intelligence and avoiding personal burnout on this platform, I think Grant’s idea is valid and warrants exploring.More

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Connecting with Your Most Junior Members

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In the duty assignment that I recently changed out of, there were five echelons of leaders between the most junior members of the organization and me, which is the greatest disconnect I have experienced in my career to this point. Over the year of that job, I unfortunately found how easy it was for me hardly see or interact with those junior members on a routine basis. Days of not interacting with them easily turned to weeks and sometimes months. Through this experience, I learned that as we move higher in the organizational chart or chain of command, the higher the power and relational distance becomes between the most junior members of our organization and us. Leaders can easily become disconnected from our junior members.

This is an issue because we can be seen as losing touch by those echelons down the organizational chart, which leads to lost trust in “senior leadership.” I relate this to John Maxwell’s idea where he states that, “People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.” Increased disconnection and decreased trust lead to severe negative impacts on organizational effectiveness. Leaders must deliberately find and practice routine ways to remain engaged with and connected to the most junior members in our organizations.

As former Secretary Mattis wrote in his book, Call Sign Chaos,

“If you can’t talk freely with the most junior members of your organization, then you’ve lost touch.”

More

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8 Ways to Be an Intentional Leader

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“No one sets out to intentionally be the ‘worst boss,’ but no one becomes the ‘best boss’ unless they are intentional.”

–J. Morgan, friend of 3×5 Leadership

Being an intentional leader and consistently deliberate in our approaches have become key to the few critical bedrock principles of effective leadership through more than a decade of pursuing my passion for leadership and developing other leaders. Intentional leaders who are deliberate in their approaches take ownership for their responsibilities and their team, are thoughtful in how they act and why, are careful in their decisions, remain considerate of the impacts they have, and ultimately are incredibly caring for those placed in their charge. As our friend, J. Morgan, asserts above, we cannot be the ‘best boss’ or the outstanding leader that people deserve without a consistent commitment to being intentional.More

Empathy & Leadership_3x5 Leadership

What We Need to Know About Empathy & Leadership

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I recently had a conversation with an organizational leader who expressed that “empathetic leadership” is one of the biggest threats to the performance of his team. He believed that team members simply sought for their leaders to be more empathetic to their challenges and circumstance (really sympathy), and that leaders felt called to be more nurturing of their people, leading to an inability to maintain high standards of performance. As I listened to this leader speak more on his unapproving perceptions on empathy and leadership, I realized the source of the issue – I think he has an inaccurate and limited view on the role of empathy in leadership.

This issue is not unique to this leader or case. We have an enduring problem in our understanding of empathy and leadership that tends to fall into one of three issues.More

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Inspired & Inspiring – 8 Ways Leaders Fulfill Their Responsibility to Inspire the Next Generation of Leaders

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When I think back to when I completed my Army company command in 2016 (for non-Army readers: this is completing my 18-month command of an Army company of about 120-Soldiers), there is one conversation that still resonates with me and continues to remind me of my “why” for military service. In the closing days of my command, one of my platoon sergeants (a senior enlisted leader in the company with 12-years of experience), known as a passionate leader and tactical expert across the entire battalion, made a casual comment to me. He said, “I just want to thank you for what you’ve done. You’ve reignited my fire and have made my job and being the Army fun again. I’ve been missing that for a few years now.”

I still get emotional when recalling that moment, even years later.

But through this and numerous other experiences, I continue to maintain that sometimes, the most important thing I can bring to the team is not some particular skill or ability, but energy and inspiration. Leaders must inspire, both our people today in what our team is doing as well as tomorrow’s future generation of leaders. We do that by being inspired and inspiring others. More

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