Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

2 Keys to Being a Successful Leader Instead of a Doer

A production line worker is promoted to line supervisor, yet he is still running the line like the rest of his team.

A department Vice President is still solving day-to-day issues and is drowning in a to-do list that has nothing to do with leading the people in her department.

At every level of the leadership hierarchy, I see it often. Leaders not leading. Yes, they are busy doing, but they devote little to no time leading people.   And if they just led more, it would actually shorten their to-do list!

They were stars at their functional roles, so what do they keep doing even when promoted? The functions that they do well.

If you are making the transition to a leader of people, or if you are a part of HR trying to help facilitate successful transitions for people to be good at leading people, here are some things that can help equip you/your team to make the transition successfully:

1. Engage in/Provide leadership coaching and training. Pave the way to do this before making the transition to leader if possible. This will help equip you with mindsets and insights to practice before being placed in the role. When seeking someone to help you improve your performance, what should you look for? Here are 4 key things to look for in a coach.

Books: If you are taking the self-directed approach to this, start by picking up some great leadership books.

Classes: Enroll in a leadership classes that focuses on successful leadership principles and practices. These come from all types of providers and in all types of formats, costs, and time commitments. For a large organization, your company’s LMS should have a variety of resources and potentially structured, pre-arranged classes. For smaller organizations, reach out to peer organizations in your community and see what they would recommend.

Coaching: Reach out to a leadership coach internally or externally to arrange regularly scheduled coaching through your transition.   For more on vetting a coach, check out this post.

Mentoring: Seek out someone who is already established as a strong leader of people to meet with regularly. Your natural tendency may be to gravitate towards a mentor that is good at what you are- functional responsibilities. Resist the urge and find a mentor that truly is the best at leading people. We would suggest meeting at least twice a month to begin with and then less frequently as you transition successfully. Read more about mentoring here.

2. Practice Leadership Habits: There are certain things that almost, if not all leaders do, and that is spend a substantial portion of their time equipping others to be successful. Your calendar should reflect that you are a leader by how you spend your time. Habits should include:

Regular one-on-ones with each person that reports to you: These should be scheduled meetings that take place at intervals you feel are most appropriate. I’ve seen some work effectively as infrequently as quarterly and some occurring weekly in order to be effective. The frequency most often depends on how much development and guidance the person needs from you. If you are leading effectively, the amount needed should decrease over time. These meetings should be booked in advanced and only cancelled/rescheduled in an emergency.

Availability to everyone that reports to you: Meeting the needs of your people should be your first priority (as long as you aren’t equipping them to allow you to be their crutch).   You should pick up the phone when they call or return their call as soon as possible. You should also be responsive to emails and/or text messages. Going MIA to your reports breeds a feeling of not feeling valued. Be available.

Be a career agent.

And finally, read this post about how to move your goods to greats in order to be a leader

September 25, 2018
Does Your Team Talk in Metaphors?
One of my favorite things to do for companies is to help them understand what distinguishes high performers from average and/or low performers in their organization. The purpose of this could be for a variety of reasons, but oftentimes, it is to help companies create a profile and tools to select the right talent.

We ask the clients to provide us with the opportunity to talk to high, mid and low performers. We ask them a series of job analysis questions and watch them work for a bit. While we watch them work, we ask them questions about what they are doing, why they are doing it and ask them to explain what is going on in their head to understand what mental processes they are engaging in to complete their work.

Recently, we’ve been working on this type of project for a client. And we’ve uncovered one of the most interesting things I think I’ve seen so far in doing this kind of work.

Overwhelmingly, the high performers talk in metaphors. They explain things, often complex things, through metaphors instead of direct or literal language.

For example: “So, when we do this, it is like we are headed out on a trip from here to Nashville, and we decide half way through that we need to change our tires and our oil.” This was used to explain how poor planning hurts the company.

Another way this came out was high performers using song lyrics to describe what they were doing, how they were doing it, or why.

In this particular example as well as in other workplaces, people who talk in metaphors seem to be better teachers. (Think Jesus, arguably, regardless of your religion, one of the best teachers ever. How did he usually talk to his followers? In parables, which is simply another word for metaphor.)

Metaphors help us:
1. Make more than one point with less language. There is often the points and THE POINT that can only be expressed through metaphors instead of specific or descriptive dialogue.
2. Describe often complex things in simple terms.
3. Commit things to memory. We remember the song lyrices or the analogy more than we remember the work instructions.
In this instance, the behavior of talking in metaphors will be related to the overall competency of teaching. Teaching will be one of three to four competencies we will design selection criteria and assessment around for this client. The ability to teach in order share knowledge across employees is a critical competitive advantage for this organization.

So how can we assess for teaching ability? Well one way is to see if candidates talk in metaphors. Do candidates engage in the behavior that the high performers use?

To do this we will train hiring managers to pay attention to these things:
1. In interviews, using “tell me about a time” questions, does the candidate explain things or answer the questions and use metaphors to describe?
2. In interviews, ask them to explain the last time they described how to solve a problem to someone. Ask them to actually walk through the description. Are metaphors or analogies present?
3. In a work sample, we will ask candidates to teach someone how to do something. We will score this work sample, among other things, to see whether using metaphors was present.
Another way to look at metaphors is to more broadly see if people tell stories to explain things instead of simply describing what is. Assess if storytelling is present in your candidates.

Is your workplace full of metaphors? If so, your organization may be better at teaching than others.
September 11, 2018
Tua’s Performance Shows You What You Need to Consider When Assessing Leadership Skill

It was the debate across college football leading up to opening weekend. Or least in my house it was.

Who would start at quarterback for the Alabama Crimson Tide? Tua or Jalen?

Jalen led the Tide to one national championship and touts a 26-2 record as a starter. Tua came in and saved the day to help the tide defeat Clemson in the national championship last year when it seemed as though Jalen just couldn’t get it done.

They are obviously both exceptional players and leaders, but what would make the difference in Saban’s decision making on who would start in the season opener against Louisville?

Across this debate, Kirk Herbstreit may have summed up the decision of who to play best on Gameday:

“…you have a quarterback in Tua that has an ability to process information quickly… and when you have a quarterback that sees things quickly, that can get the ball to the receiver, tight end or the running back….(tennis racket interruption, if you haven’t watched Gameday, the tennis racket stuff was pretty hysterical)…. But deep down he (Nick Saban) has to know that Tua gives him a better chance…”

Basically, Herbstreit is saying that Tua’s cognitive processing speed gives him the edge.

According to Cognfit.com cognitive processing speed can be explained as:

Processing speed is one of the main elements of the cognitive process, which is why it is one of the most important skills in learning, academic performance, intellectual development, reasoning, and experience.

Processing speed is a cognitive ability that could be defined as the time it takes a person to do a mental task. It is related to the speed in which a person can understand and react to the information they receive, whether it be visual (letters and numbers), auditory (language), or movement. In other words, processing speed is the time between receiving and responding to a stimulus.

Processing speed implies a greater ability to easily do simple or previously-learned tasks. This refers to the ability to automatically process information, which means processing information quickly and without doing it consciously. The higher the processing speed, the more efficient you are able to think and learn.

Processing speed is the time that lapses from when you receive information until you understand it and start to respond.

Tua started the game. You can simply watch the highlight clip (especially the first touchdown pass) of Alabama’s 51-14 victory over Louisville, and you will see what superior cognitive processing speed looks like. Tua processes a variety of inputs/information rapidly and “without doing it consciously” to make the best decisions about where to put the ball.

Leadership in the business world isn’t much different than quarterback leadership on the football field. There are a variety of inputs coming at leaders quickly that need to be distilled down rapidly in order to make the right decisions- to put the ball in the right place.

This ability can be measured. It is measured in a variety of ways in kids in educational settings. And there are also tools that measure it for selection in the business world.

Here’s a short test from psychology today: Mental speed test
You can also check out: Pyrometrics

Work samples can also be a good way to throw a lot of information at a candidate at one time and see how quickly and how well they come up with a solution. Make sure it includes information in work samples that is irrelevant. Can the person discern what is and isn’t important and get work done in a quality manner.

In addition, there is a potential relationship between cognitive processing speed and time management skills, so this might be another assessment avenue to consider. Include in your work sample the requirement to prioritize a variety of tasks/decisions and then ask the candidate to explain their logic of prioritization.

And for those of you that could care less about SEC football, maybe Michigan lost because of a lack of cognitive processing speed on the part of their coach. Check out the first part of Jim Harbaugh’s interview on GameDay. A paper baggy? What the heck???

Next time you go to hire a leader take cognitive processing speed seriously. The presence of it in your leaders may help you win a national championship. The absence of it may cost you the game against Notre Dame.

September 4, 2018
4 Advantages to Hiring Workers Over 50
In writing about how to increase your candidate pool, multiple LinkedIn comments cropped up related to hiring workers over 50. For example, one comment read:

“Don’t practice age discrimination or you could miss out on some rock steady workers. Those who give thumbs down to the over 50 crowd really do miss out on some great employees.”

Through these comments, it was obvious I should have added a 5^th way to increase your candidate pool in the article: Include Older Workers.

Also through these comments, there were reasons included as to why hiring workers over 50 is a good idea. Overall, hiring “older” workers can:
1. Allow you to take advantage of skills and attitudes that are only really acquired over time. So much of what we learn is through experience and that can only be gained over time. Hiring those with 25-30+ years of workplace experience brings skills that are only gained through 10,000 plus hours of practice. Read Outliers for more on 10,000 hours of practice.
2. Provide mentoring relationships. Mentoring relationships can go both ways but having older workers mentor younger workers can allow for the dissemination of things learned through experience (#1) without a mentee having to experience the setback and heartbreaks of bad decisions. Not to mention the meaningful relationships that add value to any organization.
3. Help with perspective. I mean this in two ways. I have experienced workers that are older than I am that can best be described as “wise”. Meaning, they have a perspective that helps me, well, get some perspective. Teaching and demonstrating not to sweat the small stuff, enjoying the stages of life and acting with patience and perseverance are qualities older workers can instill in the workplace. And that brings me to the second view of bringing perspective in the workplace. In the larger context of diversity, hiring workers of all ages helps a workplace innovate.
4. Help you understand your customer. Chances are your customers are in all different ages and stages of life. Having a workforce that is pigeon-holed into just one demographic limits your ability to see multiple markets and angles, thus limiting innovation and revenue possibilities.
What advantages does your organization gain from “older” workers?
August 28, 2018
Forget the 401K Plan, Does Benefit Package Address Getting Rid of Debt?

“According to Make Lemonade, there are more than 44 million borrowers who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S. alone. The average student in the Class of 2016 has $37,172 in student loan debt,” sites a June 2018 Forbes article.

Furthermore, check out the consumer debt picture (this is separate from student loan debt) in America from Business Insider:

The debt issue is a problem on so many levels, but for employers, it is impacting thoughts and decisions about what a desirable benefits package looks like in order to recruit and retain employees.

Is the savings piece of your benefits plan, most likely in the form of a 401K, even desirable anymore? Can your employees even think about saving if they don’t ever see a way out of debt?

In addition, the financial stress your employees face is costing you money.   According to Forbes:,   “Across all generations — Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers — financial matters were the top cause of stress. Forty-six percent of workers spend three hours or more during the work week thinking about or dealing with financial issues, and 47 percent said their finance-related stress has increased over the last 12 months. And according to a new survey from Bankrate, which interviewed 1,003 adults earlier this year, 57 percent of Americans don’t have enough cash to cover a $500 expense.”

So what should you do? There are three routes/benefits I would suggest you consider to address the debt equation in your overall benefit plan:

1. Student Loan Repayment.   Offer your employees the benefit of paying off their student loans. Some companies do this as a simple benefit with no strings attached, but most require some length of service requirement in order to be eligible to receive this benefit.

Here is a list of some companies that are doing it and how they are doing it: Nerd Wallet.

A company that facilitates this benefit for employers and that I have heard good things about is gradifi.

2. Acting a money lender/payday advance.   Companies are cropping up that help employers act as lenders to their employees through payroll advances and other arrangements. Some arrangements charge the employee a flat fee while others charge an interest rate on the money borrowed.

Wal-Mart is advancing employee’s wages in this way through a company called PayActiv.

More on this subject from the Wall Street Journal can be found here.

3. Offering Financial Wellbeing Training. While the first two options are designed to offer access to capital to pay off debt, many employers are focusing on training employees to be better managers of their finances in order to reduce and eliminate debt. This seeks to solve the problem in the long run by changing behavior instead of putting a band-aid on it.

If this interests you, check with banks and/or credit unions in your area. Many offer free classes. In addition many employers offer the popular Dave Ramsey Financial Peace training to their employees at no charge.

How can you improve your benefit offerings to address the debt issue?

August 21, 2018