Background: As we have deployed more and more 360 assessments, many of our customers have requested that we include a reading list for participants who would like to explore ideas for increased management effectiveness.  I thought it would be interesting to ask clients and colleagues to share what they considered the best articles, books and online resources for the current business marketplace.  What I received was an amazing list of books, articles and websites.  We organized these into specific topic areas, and I will be sharing some of these resources in this blog.

Why Should Anyone be Led By You
Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
Product Description: Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that leaders don’t become great by aspiring to a list of universal character traits. Rather, effective leaders are authentic: they deploy individual strengths to engage followers’ hearts, minds, and souls. They are skillful at consistently being themselves, even as they alter their behaviors to respond effectively in changing contexts. In this lively and practical book, Goffee and Jones draw from extensive research to reveal how to hone and deploy one’s unique leadership assets while managing the inherent tensions at the heart of successful leadership…
Citation: Goffee, Robert, and Gareth Jones. Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?: What It Takes to Be an Authentic Leader. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School, 2006. Print
ISBN: 1578519713

Leadership Without Easy Answers
Ronald Heifetz
Editorial Review: Heifetz (Kennedy Sch. of Government, Harvard Univ.) presents a new theory of leadership for both public and private leaders in tackling complex contemporary problems. Central to his theory is the distinction between routine technical problems, which can be solved through expertise, and adaptive problems, such as crime, poverty, and educational reform, which require innovative approaches, including consideration of values. Four major strategies of leadership are identified…
Citation: Heifetz, Ronald A. Leadership without Easy Answers. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1994. Print.
ISBN: 674518586

Leadership on the Line
Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky
Amazon Review: …Leadership is always a risky business, but those risks can be understood and reduced. Effective leadership comes from doing more than the technical work of routine management; it involves adaptive work on the part of the leader, and a willingness to confront and disturb people, promote their resourcefulness, and engage their ability to adjust to new realities. But adaptive change always encounters resistance. Heifetz and Linsky examine four forms of resistance–marginalization, diversion, attack, and seduction–before presenting a number of practical resistance-response skills to nurture and employ…
Citation: Heifetz, Ronald A., and Martin Linsky. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School, 2002. Print.
ISBN: 1578514371

Leadership that Matters
Sashkin, Marshall and Molly Sashkin.
Product Description: Leadership That Matters promotes leadership that not only improves productivity and performance but also makes a positive difference in the lives of organization members. “Transformational leadership” is based on three personal characteristics, as well as on the organization’s culture. Using this new model of leadership that transforms individuals from subordinate followers into self-directed leaders, the authors discuss how to develop the required characteristics and construct an appropriate culture to bring about desired changes.
Citation: Sashkin, Marshall, and Molly G. Sashkin. Leadership That Matters: the Critical Factors for Making a Difference in People’s Lives and Organizations’ Success. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003. Print.
ISBN: 1576751937

Principle-Centered Leadership
Stephen R. Covey
Editorial Review from Library Journal: The great “angst” of life has seemingly gripped us all, and there seems to be no limit to the number of writers offering answers to the great perplexities of life. Covey, however, is the North Star in this field. Following his successful Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (S. & S., 1989), Covey now responds to the particular challenges of business leaders by applying his natural laws, or principles, of life to organizations. Covey explains these laws (security, guidance, wisdom, and power), and discusses how seven-habits practice and focus on these principles will result in personal and organizational transformation…
Citation: Covey, Stephen R. Principle-centered Leadership. New York: Free, 2003. Print.
ISBN: 671792806

Radical Leap:  A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership
Steve Farber
Product Description: The business world is ready for an entirely new approach to leadership. Steve Farber has written the perfect book to energize business leaders and help them make the leap into extreme leadership. In fact, taking a giant “”L.E.A.P.”" forward is exactly what Farber prescribes. What exactly is an extreme leader? One who cultivates love, generates energy, inspires audacity, and provides proof. In his exciting and innovative business parable, The Radical Leap, Farber explores an entirely new leadership model, one in which leaders are not afraid to take risks, make mistakes in front of employees, or actively solicit employee feedback…
Citation: Farber, Steve. The Radical Leap: a Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership. New York: Kaplan Pub., 2009. Print.
ISBN: 1427797927

Strengths-Based Leadership
Tom Rath and Barry Conchie
Product Description: In Strengths Based Leadership, #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of this research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others’ strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership…Filled with novel research and actionable ideas, Strengths Based Leadership will give you a new road map for leading people toward a better future.
Citation: Rath, Tom, and Barry Conchie. Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow. New York: Gallup, 2008. Print.
ISBN: 1595620257

On Becoming A Leader
Warren Bennis
Editorial Review from Publishers Weekly: Business consultant and University of Southern California professor of business administration, Bennis here deplores what he considers a dearth of leadership in the world. Although he provides solid, practical guidance in how to fill this vacuum, his philosophically and psychologically rich volume seeks primarily to define leadership–which, in his view, requires self-knowledge and clear personal goals… But while a leader may demonstrate talent, the author observes that its fulfillment depends largely on organizational response to the challenge.
ISBN: 3981031849

The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun
Wes Roberts
Product Description: Roberts’s sensational New York Times bestseller shows how the legendary military commander’s principles of leadership can be applied to contemporary business situations.
Citation: Roberts, Wess. Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. New York: Warner, 1990. Print.
ISBN: 446391069

Mavericks at Work
William C. Taylor
Amazon Review: In Mavericks at Work, Fast Company cofounder William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre, a longtime editor at the magazine, give you an inside look at the “most original minds in business” wherever they find them: from Procter & Gamble to Pixar, from gold mines to funky sandwich shops. Want to stop doing business as usual? Then take some lessons from the 32 maverick companies Taylor and LaBarre profile.
Citation: Taylor, William, and Polly G. LaBarre. Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. New York: William Morrow, 2006. Print.
ISBN: 60779616

The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders
Zenger and Folkman
Product Description: People can learn how to lead. This was the position John H. Zenger and Joseph R. Folkman took when they wrote their now-classic leadership book The Extraordinary Leader—and it’s a fact they reinforce in this new, completely updated edition of their bestseller…Now, Zenger and Folkman revisit the subject to address leaders’ most pressing concerns today. The result is an up-to-date, essential leadership guide for the twenty-first century that includes: Late-breaking research on the psychology of leadership, New information on leading in a global environment, A breakthrough case study on measuring improved leadership behavior, Studies revealing the importance of follow-through.
Citation: Zenger, John H., and Joe Folkman. The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
ISBN: 71628088

• Determining the Objective(s)
• Obtaining Commitment
• Determining the Deployment Method for the Survey, and
• Identifying the Survey Respondents
• Survey Construction
• Survey Administration
• Analysis and Reports

What happens after analysis?

Communicate the Survey Results

As stated above, it is important how you communicate the results of the survey to your stakeholders, and, depending on your agreement, to the respondents who participated in the survey. Communicating the results to the respondents reinforces that their input was used. Communicating the results to the respondents can also increase expectation as to improvements that might have been suggested and may affect future participation.

Create Action Plans

The point at which surveys prove their value is when the information that you have gathered is used in a constructive way to improve operations, products, programs, offers, etc. Developing an action plan helps implement those improvements. An action plan should include:

• An evaluation of survey data and consensus of what action needs to be taken, and with what priority.
• A listing of activities that need to be carried out for each priority item.
• The names of the people responsible for implementing the plan.
• A timeline for each plan’s accomplishment.

Once you put the action plan in place, it is important to periodically re-visit the plan. Be sure that the work is getting done. At some point, you can re-survey and evaluate if the areas identified as action items are actually improving.

Planning and commitment

Successful surveys require planning and a commitment from all parties involved. By following these nine steps you can make the process of designing, administering and analyzing surveys a positive one. In the end, you will obtain valuable and desirable information from your survey respondents that may be used as the foundation for decisions within your company. These steps will hopefully make your job less stressful and your life a little easier.

Optimizing Talent is an inventive and in-depth guide for companies to align business strategies with improving and managing talent.  Sharkey and Eccher’s extensive experience and research with various Fortune 500 companies teaches business leaders how to develop a plan of action to optimize talent.  The authors provide insightful tools and resources for any company who is seeking to pragmatically take action and attain results.

The system created by the authors is the Talent Optimization Framework (TOF), which provides a scrupulous scientific and systematic approach for leaders to improve and retain talent and sustain a competitive advantage.  Through extensive research with over 400 companies, the authors are able to provide detailed and insightful information that includes charts, graphs and tables so that this model can be used repeatedly.  “It should be the DNA of the company and be part of the strategic process that builds a talent optimization plan” (Sharkey and Eccher 2011).

The framework of the TOF is categorized as Key Enablers, The Talent Management System, and Results.  Within these categories, the TOF focuses on components such as Leadership and Culture (Key Enablers), Performance Management and HR Capability (Talent Management System), and The Best Talent and Lower Cost (Results), just to name a few.

To implement the TOF, a company must first identify what is not working with their talent management efforts by using survey questions for each aspect of the framework.   The authors provide six underlying causes of ineffective talent management, and bullet points on the highest and lower TOF items to assist in determining how to create an action plan.  Sharkey and Eccher continue to coach the reader on how to correlate the TOF scores with business performance and how to apply and manage the data collection process, and what to do with the data.

In addition, chapters are organized by individual components.  For example, Chapter 7 analyzes the component Performance Management.  Sharkey and Eccher challenge traditional forms of performance management systems and provide details on how to install a system that actually works.  In order to have meaningful conversations with employees so that they can be coached, businesses must use a system that avoids characteristics of what the authors call “performance management syndrome.”  There are five characteristics, one of which is to avoid using a system that focuses solely on compensation, and instead focus more on career aspirations. “One of the biggest reasons that employees leave is because they have no line of sight to their next career move” (Sharkey and Eccher 2011).

Optimizing Talent is sure to bring great value to any business leader and organization that is eager to move forward.  It provides a sustainable and an attainable methodology through extensive research of what does and does not work, and can be used over time.  By implementing this system, understanding the data, and creating a plan of action, any company can gain the competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive market.  A must have for any business leader!

• Determining the Objective(s)
• Obtaining Commitment
• Determining the Deployment Method for the Survey
• Identifying the Survey Respondents
• Survey Construction
• Survey Administration

Now it’s time to analyze and report on the collected data….

ANALYSIS AND REPORTING

Step #7: Analyzing the Survey Results

It is time to gather the data and understand what the survey respondents have told you. There are three sequential steps to this process: analyzing the answers of all respondents, analyzing the answers of subsets of respondents, and outputting the data.

Analyze the answers of all respondents

You usually want to see first how the total population of respondents answered your survey questions.  You will probably want to look at topic averages in addition to responses to the individual questions.

As you do your analysis, keep in mind the many statistical measures of dispersion and central tendency. Will the mean be enough information or will you need to know the standard deviation or range of the responses? Will you need the percentage breakdown of each response? Ask yourself what would be meaningful to you and your stakeholders. Think about the level of statistical understanding of the people being asked to use this data.

Using our Communication example, here are a few ways to show the results for the total population:

Analyzing subsets of respondents

Once you know how the total population responded, you will want to look at how subsets of the population responded compared to the total population. How did men answer compared to women? How did people in the 45-54 age group respond compared to those in the 35-44 age group? What quality issues are reported by first-time purchasers of your product?

Once again using our Communication example, here are a few ways to show the results for the subset populations:

Output the results

The ability to present data in easy-to-understand graphic formats is important. Charts and graphs allow you and your stakeholders to see and understand the data quickly.  If needed, write up an Executive Summary that provides the survey methodology, analysis, conclusions and recommendations.

Next time: What happens after you analyze the results?

• Determining the Objective(s)
• Obtaining Commitment
• Determining the Deployment Method for the Survey
• Identifying the Survey Respondents
• Survey Construction

Now it’s time to administer the survey…

Administer the Survey

Survey administration includes issues such as confidentiality and anonymity, timing, and notifications.

Confidentiality and anonymity are of utmost importance. You need to ensure an open and honest approach to these issues so that the integrity of the survey does not become compromised.  So, should you be able to connect survey respondents to their survey responses?  Whereas the premise of most internal employee-based surveys is anonymity, it is sometimes expected from a customer service survey that the sender collects some individualized identifiable information.

For all target audiences, there are good times and bad times to give surveys. For example, don’t plan to administer a survey during the last week of the quarter crunch if you want to reach sales executives.

If possible, tell the respondent group about the survey in advance. You have this chance to encourage survey respondents to complete the survey if they know why the survey is being conducted, how the information gathered will be used, and when and how the survey will be administered. Use memos, e-mail, meeting announcements or a combination of these methods to facilitate this key communication process.

In order to keep the survey on a reasonable schedule, you will usually want to specify and end date. Check the survey responses during the time that the survey is open. If necessary, communicate reminders to the survey participants to make sure that you get a reasonable response rate in the amount of time that you have specified.

Next time, Analysis and Reporting…

Customers occasionally ask for normative data for their 360 degree feedback deployments.  They want to see how the responses provided for their leaders compare to leaders in other organizations.  Is there consistency between their leaders and leaders in other organizations?  This analysis can be one step towards understanding their leaders’ strengths and opportunities in a competitive marketplace.

Over time, I too have been interested in understanding if there is some consistency in the 360 feedback ratings amongst our customers who deploy 360 assessments.  Since each of our customers designs their own assessments, the questions from one organization to another are always different.  There are, however, some common competencies that many assessments have in common.  I selected 168 questions used in various 360s, and rolled them into 20 competencies/categories (listed below):

I believe this information to be valuable as anecdotal information for companies trying to understand whether their competencies are comparable in nature to other organizations’ competencies.  My personal belief is that if Integrity is not one of the top three competencies, then that is a red flag for the organization.  Integrity generally equals trust, and it’s hard to work on any of the other competencies without having the trust of the employees.  I am pleasantly surprised by Resilience and Accountability being in the top three competencies, and not surprised at all at the fact that Customer Focus is consistently high scoring as well.

Vision/Strategy can be low because sometimes it’s hard for the message to flow through an organization, sometimes there’s not a consistent message on vision, and sometimes the organization can be lacking an enunciated strategy.  Conflict Management is also a tough set of skills that is not always focused on in organizations.  Managing People, on the other hand – low in both years – is somewhat surprising.  If an organization is willing to put the time, money and energy into deploying 360 assessments, then hopefully they would be paying attention to the people management skills within the organization.  From my individual de-briefs, I think that the first line managers are not always provided the skill training to go from independent contributors to managing people, and while the top managers can provide great leadership to the middle management team, sometimes managerial modeling does not flow down to the next level of supervisors/managers.

Does this analysis make sense from your own perspective?

• How many questions should an assessment have?
• How many of those questions should be open-ended?

Let’s tackle the first question.  I have seen assessments with as few as 12 questions and as many as 90 questions.  Most of the assessments we help to design run between 45 and 60 questions.

To determine the “right” size for the assessment, you should think about:

• What is (are) the objective(s) of the assessment?
• Given the objective(s) of the assessment, what topic areas should be addressed (e.g., leadership, decision-making, communication, negotiation, integrity)?
• How many questions will it take to cover each topic area?
• Will raters have to rate more than one participant (person being rated)?  If yes, how many?

Most of our clients use between 7 and 10 topic areas, with 4 – 6 scalable questions per topic area.  This generally provides enough breadth to cover the objectives, and enough depth to provide meaningful feedback.   An assessment of this size generally can be completed in less than 10 minutes, and is considerate of the situation where some raters may have to complete multiple assessments.  A word of caution: when writing questions, you should scrutinize each question according to the following guidelines. Continue rewriting each question as needed without altering the original purpose of the question.

• Keep each question simple and single-minded
• Keep each question as short as possible
• Use understandable and clear language
• Be specific

Do not try to make an assessment shorter by combining several questions into one – the rater may be confused on how to answer the question, and the participant may be confused by the feedback.

As to how many open-ended questions should there be, most clients do one of two things – they put comment questions after each topic area, and either one or two more general questions at the end of the assessment, or they only put the comment questions at the end of the assessment.

For the comment questions at the end of the assessment, here are four ideas on how to approach collecting this important information:

The Start/Stop/Continue Method:

• What should this participant continue doing?
• What should this participant stop doing?
• What should this participant start doing?

The Value Provided Method:

• I value the contributions of this person as a leader because…
• I believe this person could be an even more effective leader if…

The Do Well/Needs to Improve Method:

• What are two things that this person does exceptionally well?
• What are two things that you would like this person to focus on for improvement?

The General Method:

• This assessment is intended to provide useful information to the person who you are rating.  If you have any comments or examples that will help the person understand your feedback, please provide them here:

Some clients put comment areas after each question, but most of our clients feel that it makes the assessment too long, it will take the rater too much time to take the assessment, and raters may write comments on the first few questions, but get tired of writing feedback before the end of the assessment.

The length of your survey is governed by your objective(s). Always keep in mind that you have to account for people’s time and attention spans so be as succinct as possible.  Open ended questions provide valuable data, so think carefully about how you want to use them.

Rebooting Leadership

By: Meredith Kimbell, Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette

With the many challenges we face in today’s economic, political and business climate, Rebooting Leadership takes an honest and enjoyable approach to how front-line leaders can rediscover their leadership attributes to become more engaging and nimble in the business world.   Kimbell, Hadden and Catlette provide simple tools and exercises to remind leaders of the significance that their roles play in contributing to business success.

More often than not, business leaders have taken on the burden of additional responsibilities and are often placed in leadership roles without proper training.  With such an overwhelming increase in job responsibility, it’s important for leaders to adapt to a changing operational environment while continuously re-earning the trust of those they lead.

Rebooting Leadership revisits the fundamental characteristics leaders should possess (e.g., honesty, building trust, friending, and accepting failure), and teaches how to use these characteristics to re-energize themselves and build trust with their teams.  “Without trust, everyone operates at best deliberately, at worst protectively, and in either case, slowly” (Kimbell, Hadden, Catlette, 2010).

The exercises provided help to integrate the ideas in the book with the reader’s own environment.  In the chapter “Riding the Waves,” the authors ask the reader to write down a description of how they are at their best when in doubt or feeling discouraged, and how it physically feels.  Upon doing so, leaders will have an accessible resource to refer to and practice on a daily basis or when facing challenges.    The authors continue to write about the importance of creating friends in the workplace, accepting failure, and the importance of influencing the world around you.

In uncertain economic times and political uneasiness, Rebooting Leadership provides a simple and enjoyable read for those leaders who need to re-energize and rebuild their confidence.  It provides leaders with the crucial elements to achieve their goals in a difficult work environment and helps leaders be their best.

Most questions are scored using multiple-choice scales, and many times clients ask whether they should use an even-numbered scale (e.g., a four-point scale such as Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree), or an odd-numbered scale (e.g., a five-point scale such as Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither Disagree nor Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree).  Some administrators prefer not to have a middle ground such as “neutral,” forcing respondents to have an opinion, while others like that middle point.

While over 80% of our customers do use either a four or five point scale, about another 15% – 20% use three, six, and seven and ten point scales; this discussion is covering just the 4 or 5 point scale issue.

As with many things, over time I change my preferences.  For several years I supported the even-numbered scale concept, thinking that the middle point on a five-point scale can offer a ‘safety net’ for a respondent’s feedback.  I now have seen enough anecdotal evidence that says that when we use a four-point scale, respondents generally don’t use the lower half of the scale any more than they do with a five-point scale…in fact, some respondents have provided feedback that they wish they had a 3.5 option on a four-point scale (meaning they wish they had a five-point scale).  So although I understand and support customers who like the four-point scale, when clients ask I currently recommend the five-point scale.

Many administrators provide a “not applicable” response choice for respondents, but since this selection is not calculated in the scores, it is not included as a point when discussing four vs. five point scales.

Note: This discussion is based on our years of experience in conducting surveys and assessments (as opposed to statistical research), so please take this into account.

• Determining the Objective(s)
• Obtaining Commitment
• Determining the Deployment Method for the Survey, and
• Identifying the Survey Respondents

Now it’s time to construct the survey
Like most jobs, thorough and careful preparation of the survey will pay off in the end.  Design your survey based upon your objectives.  Be careful not to bias a survey to show the data that you want to see, but be certain to design it so you can get the information that you need.

Typically, there are several parts to survey question design: Topics, Questions, Scales, and Demographics.

Topics
Determine the survey topics. Think through the objectives of the survey when determining what topics of information to include in the survey.

For example, for an employee survey, your topics may include:

• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Supervision

Questions
Select questions that reflect on the topics.  Make sure that there are enough questions and consistency in each topic that a roll-up topic score will make sense.  If there are too many questions in any one topic, are there overlapping or duplicate questions? Is the survey too long for the respondents to provide focused attention and key insights?

As in all professional correspondence, thoughtful vision, clarity of language and semantics are critical to good communication.  Surveys may include closed-ended or scaleable questions (e.g., “My supervisor asks for input before making decisions.”), open-ended questions (e.g., “What do you like the most about using this service?”) or a combination of both types of questions.  Many times the answers to the open-ended questions will help clarify or support the ratings on the scalable questions.

When writing or editing questions, you should scrutinize each question according to the following guidelines. Continue rewriting each question as needed, without altering the original purpose of the question. Remember to:

• Keep each question simple and single-minded
• Keep each question as short as possible
• Use understandable and clear language
• Be specific

Using one of the example topics above, questions under the Communication topic could include:

Scales
Determine the response scales. Most questions are scored using a multiple-choice scale, such as a 1 to 4 or 1 to 5 Likert agreement rating scale.  Some administrators prefer not to have a middle ground such as “neutral,” forcing respondents to have an opinion. Many administrators provide a “not applicable” response choice for respondents.

If possible, limit response scales to two or three types to keep the survey simple and prevent confusion. The survey respondents should stay focused on the content of the survey questions, and not spend time trying to figure out how to negotiate their way through the survey. Nothing the survey designer does should get in the way of the ease of understanding of the survey; this will help both the respondent in taking the survey, and the survey administrator in the stakeholder “buy-in” of the survey results.

Using the Communication example above, this section of the survey would now look like:

Demographics
Another issue that needs to be addressed is determining if you want to include any demographic questions for the survey respondents.

With some survey technologies, demographic information can be pre-filled into the database so that the survey respondents will not have to answer these questions.  This methodology will work in some surveys where you know who the respondents will be ahead of time and where respondents will not mind logging in to the survey so that their demographic data will be connected to their survey responses.

With most surveys, the demographic questions are asked within the survey itself.  Survey respondents generally do not mind completing some demographic questions but will start to become annoyed if the perception of the survey is that too many personal identifiers are being requested.

The draft survey should be tested to ensure that the questions are understandable and that the survey takes a reasonable length of time to complete.

Next time: Survey Administration