Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  •  Open the Door to New Perspectives

     Open the Door to New Perspectives

    The President of ATD Birmingham (and my friend) recently shared insights on The Leadership Pipeline with a room full of talent development professionals. I’m sure he said many, many great things, but the one thing I remember (and have talked about nonstop since then) was the idea that the first rung on the ladder of leadership is the hardest to climb. 

    The first time you shift from being an individual contributor to being a manager is like putting on a pair of glasses that no longer work. We know an upward move in our careers means upgraded responsibilities, but we don’t usually also upgrade our gear (glasses). So, even though we’re doing a new job, we still see our old job. 

    This got me thinking about other ways this metaphor applies to life. For example, if we are supposed to be brainstorming, or coming up with creative solutions, but we’re wearing the wrong glasses, we won’t even be able to see the new possibilities.

    We talked earlier this year about armored leadership versus daring leadership, and I think the same concepts apply here. Being a knower and being right is a totally different mindset (pair of glasses) from being a learner and getting it right.

    I think what I’m trying to say is it’s not so straightforward to shift from being a doer to being a learner, or getting stuff done to developing new ideas for how to do it. With our open the door theme this year, what I’m most excited about is opening the door to curiosity. Opening the door to new ways of working. Opening the door to different perspectives. Trying on new glasses. 

    Just last week, I talked with a group of HR professionals who are studying for the SHRM-CP exam. Our topic was learning and development in the context of an HR functional area. We spent a good amount of time defining a learning organization. Here’s a good overview via LinkedIn Newsletters written by Roopak Jain:

    According to Peter Senge, the five characteristics of a learning organization are:

    • Systems thinking: The ability to see the system as a whole
    • Personal mastery: A commitment to continuous learning
    • Mental models: The ability to challenge common assumptions held by individuals and organizations
    • Shared vision: A common vision that is committed to and shared by everyone in the organization
    • Team learning: The drive to continue the process of enabling the capabilities to deliver results as a team

    Source: The Learning Organization – An Agile Perspective

    Individuals, organizations, and communities can all benefit from getting new glasses. Or inviting someone to the table with a different lens. If we only see things the way we’ve always seen things, how will we know what’s possible? 

    This ties in with all DEI initiatives, because we do have a history of lack of representation at the highest levels of decision-making and influence. If we study who has been represented in Fortune 500 CEOs, U.S. presidents, down to state governors,  mayors, school board superintendents, small business owners, etc., we see how communities without diverse representation are less likely to thrive. At the core of many civic and business issues is a lack of perspective. It’s a great, big, complicated, beautiful, terrible, amazing world, and we all experience it differently.

    At Horizon Point, we try every day to keep the door open to perspectives or experiences that are different from our own. We challenge our clients to do the same. We ask questions. We remain curious about the world around us and the lives and needs of our neighbors. We volunteer and support community organizations that are trying to improve where we live, where we work, and where we play.

    If your door is already open to curiosity and new perspectives, how are you bringing others with you?

    If you are realizing that you need to take the step and open the door, there’s no better time like the present. If you’re not sure where to get started, take a look at What We Do, and maybe we can help.

  • Open the Door. Literally.

    Open the Door. Literally.

    It is 5:34 in the morning, and I am opening my front door to welcome a 17-year-old from Costa Rica.  She’s seen her parents and brother off at the airport to return home, but she is staying. She will be living with us for almost three months.  

    We first met her when she was a sweet seven-year-old who spoke better English than I will ever speak Spanish. Over the course of ten years, we’ve grown to love her family and the prison ministry work they do in Costa Rica. On our trip to Costa Rica last summer to visit, she mentioned she was interested in studying psychology, and I told her she was welcome to come stay with us and see some of our work at HPC before starting college in the Fall.  

    When I share with others our plans to have her live with us, I typically get one of two very different responses.  One: “That’s great!”  or Two:  “Why would you do that?”  The gut response most likely speaks to the person’s level of openness to experience or some other personality trait.  And I appreciate the candidness. 

    And if I’m honest, I feel both of these responses all at once as I literally open the door to my home-This is going to be great! Right along with, What the heck are we doing? All before the sun even comes up. 

    I think she feels the same things too. All at once. 

    And I think such is the way of opening the door to anything worth doing.  Worth learning from.  Opening the door takes effort.  There will be good and bad.  Mistakes and joys.  Excitement and exhaustion. All at once. 

    As we chose “Open the Door” as our 2024 theme at Horizon Point, we were trying to point to just this. The duality of so many things.  Each one of us will spend the next month writing a blog about what this theme means personally.  But I think we all agree opening the door is the way to let light in. And we are all about some light at HPC.  It is who we are and who we strive to be. 

    So today for me, opening the door literally means opening the door.  No metaphor, no hypothetical gesture.  Plan action. 

    And what a pretty morning it was, as the sky opened to light a few minutes after the door was opened. 

    Who or what do you need to open the door to today? 

  • Effective Delegation: Closed Doors Lead to Open Ones

    Effective Delegation: Closed Doors Lead to Open Ones

    As we begin our series on the theme for the year, “Open the Door”, we realized it was important to also consider that in order to open doors, you also need to know how to close them.  The first step in effective delegation is to identify where closing a door for one person or organization is opening one for another. 

    As we sat around a table brainstorming our 2024 theme at our annual company retreat, we realized we were all in somewhat of a state of transition and so were many of our clients.  

    We often work with people, organizations, and communities that are in a place of “what gotcha there, won’t getcha here,” and we help them make the necessary steps to move to the next level of success.  Whether it is coaching a middle manager to make the transition to an executive, working on organizational processes and culture to transition a company from a small one to a larger one, or helping a community understand things like wage rates and labor participation and how that is impacting their workforce landscape, we are often walking alongside people in the middle of a paradigm shift.  And oftentimes we have to remind them, you are going to have to say no to something to say yes to something else.  This is where growth lives.

    And so are we as a business and as individual team members- working to embrace growth by opening some doors and closing others.  Each of us are masters and some things, novices at others, energized by some tasks and drained by others.  Seasons come and seasons go, and as a team we sat at the retreat and realized some specific plans needed to be put in place in order to do so. 

    Delegation has to be intentional for everyone involved in order for it to work successfully, so we embarked on an exercise where we worked to get intentional with our transitions and delegation plans. If you or your organization is in a season of transition, here are steps to think through closing doors and opening others: 

    1. List all of your service offerings up on the wall (literally).  
    2. Have everyone identify the areas they feel fully skilled at doing, the areas where they want to grow, and the areas of work they would like to divest in doing. 
    3. Discuss things you aren’t offering that need to be offered and how you will go defining and executing them. For example, we’ve realized that we have been called upon to do one thing for clients that then turns fully into another.  We are calling this something along the lines of “Talent Development/Workforce Strategy” and we are taking the first half of this year to be able to fully articulate what this means and market it. 
    4. Identify a team leader for each line of business.  This is ideally someone who is both fully skilled at the area and also energized by doing it and teaching it to others or is drained by doing it and wants to offload it but is interested in teaching it to others. 
    5. Give the team leader the full reign to execute the line of business and equip others to get it done.  Identify a timeline for doing so.  Is it going to take three months, a year, etc. to allow enough time for the person(s) to open the door to the task so another person(s) can close the door to it?
    6. Capture the plan in a document or spreadsheet where you will remember who is doing what and can track progress.
    7. Use the document you created to check back in regularly on the transition of the skills from one door open to one door closed. 

    When we did this a​ctivity on our retreat, we identified a lot of opportunities for us all to learn from one another.  We identified ways to energize ourselves around work and transition things where people were fatigued or bored by certain types of work.  This doesn’t mean that we all don’t have to continue to do “laundry” as we call it- stuff no one really wants to do- to keep the business running and our clients happy, but it does mean that we are being intentional about opening doors and closing them, all for the sake of both individual and organizational growth. 

    How do you know when to delegate?  Do you have a process for doing so with intention? What are you looking forward to closing the door on in order to grow? 

  • Let’s Move Away from Cowardly Leadership in 2024

    Let’s Move Away from Cowardly Leadership in 2024

    I can’t think of one person I know that loves conflict. Let’s be honest, it’s uncomfortable. However, conflict is a crucial part of leadership. And there are ways to address conflict that provides growth to everyone involved in the situation.

    Last year, I had more conversations than I can count about cowardly leadership. These were not necessarily with HPC clients, but with people in general – family members, friends, colleagues, etc.

    As I write this post, I want to reflect on leaders I’ve encountered in my career, ones who avoided conflict at all costs. I’ll also offer tips for moving away from cowardly leadership.

    First, check out this article from RonEdmondson about 7 Characteristics of Cowardly Leadership.

    A family member who confides in me about his work environment has a manager who has great potential as a leader. However, he avoids addressing issues/conflicts. For example, one employee is suspected of making choices on the job that results in an unsafe work environment for everyone involved. It has been going on for years. I consulted Lorrie, our legal guru on staff, about the situation. She gave me the best tips to share with my relative. Number one was documentation and two was addressing the issue at hand, i.e., not avoiding conflict. These actions allow the leader to address the situation and make choices that show all employees they care about their well-being above the organization or avoiding conflict.

    The second leader I want to share about is someone I encountered in my work career. As a manager, “Hannah” seemed to have a personal conflict with a direct report. She just did not see eye to eye with the employee. She pushed for an assessment and feedback session in an effort that seemed to blindside the employee. As a result, nothing was resolved. My recommendation was to provide feedback, develop an employee action plan and work through the issues to help the employee thrive (and grow as a leader simultaneously).

    Leadership is hard, but it can be so rewarding as well. Here are some leadership blog posts from The Point Blog that offer great tips to growing your leadership skills:

    Caring About Someone You Can’t See-Empathy in Leadership

    Servant Leadership

    4 Leadership Habits to Schedule

    10 Books Leaders Need to be Reading

    4 Reasons Why Bad Experiences are the Best Lessons in Leadership

    Did you know we offer coaching for executives and managers? Reach out to us today if we can help!

  • Let’s Get Ready to Rumble! (Embrace the Suck)

    Let’s Get Ready to Rumble! (Embrace the Suck)

    Lorrie kicked off our series on Daring Leadership with her post Braving Trust and Vulnerability. Last week, Jillian discussed How to Be Perfect (Or Not) and the effect it has on Armored vs. Daring Leadership.

    This week I have the pleasure of presenting the topic of rumbling with vulnerability. I am going to need you to take a pause, a deep breath and embrace the suck. Wait, did she just say embrace the suck? Why yes, she did. How else can you describe the feeling of being naked in a room full of people while you bare your soul? In my professional as well as personal life, I have had first-hand experience in this department. I have always walked away from the experience as a better human, but at the time it can feel like anything but “better”. Unfortunately, we don’t grow in our comfort zones, so embrace the suck we must. 

    In Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead she says that you can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability.

    At the heart of daring is a deeply human truth that is rarely acknowledged: Courage and fear are not mutually exclusive. Most of us feel brave and afraid at the exact same time. We feel vulnerable. Sometimes all day long. During those moments, when we’re pulled between our fear and our call to courage, we need shared language, skills, tools, and daily practices that can support us through the rumble.

    To rumble with vulnerability, I will share part of my story (even as my mind gives me a million reasons not to). I am a woman who has entered the world of Human Resources at 39 years old, 17 years after graduating from college. I am 8 years into recovery and I took the road less traveled for many years. There are days when I show up for work and feel like a kindergartner, but nonetheless, I feel the fear and continue to take the action. 

    I am fortunate in the fact that I work with a team of women who know my story and have practiced acceptance and non-judgement from the very beginning. As an organization we show up and share the good, bad and ugly. We get in the ring, and we rumble. Since we don’t operate as a traditional 9-5, there are days when I shoot a text and say “for the sake of being vulnerable, I am having a hard time with _______.”

    Mary Ila leads us in a way that allows to grow together and to get curious about what could be the “why” underneath our behavior. We are encouraged to lean into our weaknesses and get honest about our struggles. This allows us to feel psychologically safe with one another and to know there is no doubt that we will be supported. Our team has monthly meetings and one on ones where we are led to share honestly about what fits and what doesn’t work for us and how we can grow as a team and invididually.

    Is your workplace a safe space that you can be vulnerable and if not, how can your organization embrace the suck and start to rumble? Need some help starting off? Take a look at this Rumble Language from Brené Brown.