Tactic 1: Arrive early
Tactic 2: Keep your energy high
Tactic 3: Greet your team with enthusiasm and humor
Tactic 4: Have a clear action plan
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
—Dale Carnegie
In this chapter we’ll continue our discussion of assertive ambition with an emphasis on how you as a leader can maximize the positive energy of ambition for everyone on your team.
In the past twenty years, there has been an explosion of books and audio programs on effective management. Dale Carnegie was one of the pioneers who set this process in motion. Today the Dale Carnegie’s success-building principles are more relevant than ever before, and if there’s one idea that continues to stand out, it’s “lead by example.”
Amid the thousands of leadership tools and techniques, the notion that you must “walk the talk” still stands above the rest. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the coach of a professional football team, the head of a multinational corporation, or the parent of a growing family. Every great leader knows this secret and puts it to use every moment of every day.
Leading by example not only instructs your team members but also inspires them to achieve greater results. In this way it ignites assertive ambition. If you show what needs to happen instead of just talking about it, you and your team will reach your objective much more quickly. This can present a problem for a leader who would rather have people “do as I say and not as I do.” It doesn’t matter what you want others to do. If you’re not willing to set the example first, you will be ineffective. Ultimately, if you’re really interested in improving the performance of your team members, the message has to come from the top down.
Here’s an example of what this means. When Mike was named the new head of his company’s marketing department, he knew he had his work cut out for him. The results in that department had been slowly decreasing, and the drop in results was crippling the company’s ability to improve and expand. Mike was assertively ambitious about improving that situation, and he wanted to kindle that same ambition throughout his team.
Before he stepped into his new role, Mike had been given a quick overview of the problem. Basically, the sales force was failing to meet reasonable expectations. If things didn’t improve fast, Mike was to remove the current employees and hire a new team. This was a very sobering thought. Mike understood that things needed to get better—not just for his sake but for the sake of all the people working for him.
Based on his knowledge of the marketing department before he took over, Mike knew what the difficulty was. Very simply, the previous head of the department had not been providing the right kind of leadership. There wasn’t a problem with the team as a whole. They were just echoing the message that they were being given, which was that talk was a worthy substitute for action.
By working as hard as he wanted others to work, Mike quickly improved the morale of the team. He let them know that he would never ask more of them than he did of himself. He showed up early, worked with focus and intent, and stayed late. He made it clear that he had high ambitions for the department, and he wanted others to feel the same way. Mike made himself the example, and he invited the team members to follow his lead.
In only a few weeks the marketing department looked like a completely different group. They were excited about their work, committed to their goals, and ambitious about their future. Results quickly improved and they were on their way to breaking company records.
What would have happened if everyone in the marketing department had been replaced in an attempt to solve the problem? The answer is that nothing would have happened—not unless there was a change in the leadership style of the department head. What was missing was not talented workers but the right kind of example for them to follow. When things began to turn around, the team members hadn’t changed, but the leadership and the expectations had.
This is the single most important principle for building assertive ambition in your team. Pay less attention to what you say to people and more attention to what you do. If there’s something you want to see in others, make sure they can see it in you first.
Now, keeping that first crucial principle in mind, we can look at some other very powerful techniques you can use to instill assertive ambition in your team members—and thereby get maximum performance from them both today and over the long term.
For example, be aware that the first few minutes of the day are always the most important time you’ll have with your team. You can set the tone for the rest of the day, inspiring everyone to achieve greater results, or you can lead them without ambition or energy. It’s your choice.
Recognizing the importance of getting each day off to a great start, here are four specific tactics for making that happen.
TACTIC 1: Arrive Early
First, arrive early. There’s nothing quite as frustrating to employees as seeing their supervisor, manager, or leader strolling in hours after the workday has begun. It’s very difficult to respect leaders who fail to give as much as they expect in return, especially when it’s something as basic as getting to work on time. So arrive at work before or with your team members, and let that action demonstrate your ambition for them, for yourself, and for the company.
TACTIC 2: Keep Your Energy High
Second, keep your energy level high. Moods and attitudes are contagious. The moment you first walk through the door, you’re sending out all sorts of messages. These messages are relayed by what you say, by how you’re dressed, and even by how you stand or walk. You can slump your shoulders and drag your way into the office and you’ll let everyone around you know that the day is going to be long and uneventful. If you walk in with a spring in your step and a smile on your face, however, you’ll bring the enthusiasm that will initiate a productive workday. Everyone has a vibe, and as a leader, your vibe can often influence that of your team members. So use this power to enhance the quality of each day.
TACTIC 3: Greet Your Team with Enthusiasm and Humor
Third, make it a habit to meet and greet your team with enthusiasm and good humor. Making this a personal goal is a great way to display assertive ambition as a leader. If there’s one key difference between leaders who inspire ambition and those who stifle it, it’s the direction they head when they first come to work in the morning. Some choose to walk straight to their own office or work area. Others take a more interactive path, and this quickly pays off with improved morale and productivity.
So start the day by greeting your team members. In this way, you can let them know through your actions that you see them as important assets to the company. If you just run to your office and don’t acknowledge people around you, you can only undermine the success of those who are relying on you for leadership.
TACTIC 4: Have a Clear Action Plan
The fourth point is most directly connected to our theme of assertive ambition. It concerns the level of expectations you have for your team members. Communicating these expectations can be done very simply. Just have a clear plan of action for what needs to be accomplished every day. Share that plan with your team when you speak with them each morning.
People need direction. They need to know where they are heading and why. So, as you greet your employees, let them know what results you expect to see by the end of the day and how they will benefit. Relaying clear ambitions and expectations each morning will point the day in the right direction. The key to this, of course, is to make your presence felt in a proactive and positive manner. Avoid positioning yourself as a boss in the old-fashioned sense, or as a taskmaster. As always, be confident and assertive rather than aggressive or passive. Most important, though, is to be there.
Along with our discussion of assertive ambition, it would be a mistake not to take a quick look at the opposite of ambition, and that’s laziness. To ignore the reality of lazy people in the workplace would be like refusing to acknowledge the presence of an elephant in the conference room. Lazy people are everywhere. They are people who are going half speed, three-quarter speed, or maybe at no speed at all. Bringing this issue into the open isn’t being negative. It’s just being honest. It’s recognizing what’s out there so it can be dealt with effectively.
Laziness, like everything else, has become more sophisticated in the twenty-first century. Lazy people have several tricks to make it look as if they’re actually accomplishing something. One of the most common might be called a “woolly mammoth.” During the Ice Age, primitive hunters and gatherers longed to find an animal that was so big and laden with meat that the entire tribe could live off it for a year—the woolly mammoth. But woolly mammoths also exist in the modern workplace. They’re rare, but if a lazy person can find one, it’s worth its weight in gold. You see, when a lazy person does something right, they love sitting on their success until it turns to stone. When they do something good, they take it to mean that they don’t have to do anything else for a few months. That’s the beauty of a woolly mammoth.
The problem is, lazy people themselves suffer the real loss. You can find a secure niche in an organization just by treading water, but you can never really move up. In the end, though, nothing is more difficult and draining than being bored all the time. And there’s nothing more depressing.
An amazing illustration of this principle came out of the Korean War in the early 1950s. When the North Korean forces captured a group of American troops, the Americans were offered a choice. If they signed a paper that accused the United States of war crimes and spoke highly of the enemy cause, their captivity would turn into a life of luxury. They could have whatever they wanted. They would be in no danger, and nothing they asked for would be denied. On the other hand, troops who refused to sign the paper would have to live in the worst possible conditions. They would be in constant fear for their lives, and they would be allowed only a bare minimum of food and water. Despite these threats, very few American troops agreed to cooperate with the North Koreans. But a few did agree to cooperate, with surprising results. Although their living conditions could not have been more different, the health of the turncoats very quickly declined. Some took their own lives, and many suffered from what today would be called clinical depression. Whereas those who had not opted for the easy way out seemed somehow to find energy and strength in the difficulties they faced, and the percentage of survival among these troops was much higher than for the others.
This reveals a very important point. Success isn’t just a matter of being comfortable. On the contrary, real success seems to demand a certain amount of discomfort. We need something to strive for. We want something to struggle against. We long for something toward which we can direct our ambition. In the absence of it, we may think we’ll be satisfied, but in truth we may become complacent and disappointed.
So when you encounter laziness in one of your team members, don’t be hesitant about confronting it and pointing out its dangers. This is what’s best for the organization, and it’s also best for the individual in question. The person may feel hurt or angry at first, but in the end they’ll thank you.
Even if you do a great job of imbuing your team with assertive ambition, however, there will be times when things don’t work out exactly as everyone had hoped. You should not only expect this but actually look forward to it. Why? If there isn’t a certain amount of so-called failure among your team members, the sights probably haven’t been set high enough. In other words, there hasn’t been enough assertive ambition.
Let’s look more closely at exactly what this means. You should not invite failure. Some falling short of brilliant success, however, will awaken you to the fact that millions of great ideas go to waste each year. It’s in your interest as a leader to make sure that your team wastes as few as possible. As a step in that direction, be aware of the thought processes in the minds of today’s corporate employees. Face the fact that the minds of your team members are a battleground, a territory in which negative and positive energies are constantly at war. Your job is to make sure that the positive side wins!
This positive energy is nothing other than the natural ambition of every human being to be successful. Each new day presents new opportunities to grow, learn, and progress beyond where they were the day before. Success means something different to each person, but the underlying idea of achieving dreams and goals excites and inspires us all.
The drive for success and achievement is powerful, but sometimes a negative force can battle it to a standstill. If left to its own devices, this negative force can win the war in a split second. What makes it especially dangerous is the fact that you can’t really put your finger on it. By its very nature, it hides behind the scenes.
What is it? The negative force in your team members can be simply the fear of failure. It’s not anything that they do. It’s what they’re afraid of doing. On an individual level, this fear stifles their ambition to assert their ideas in the world. Collectively, it erases a source of innovation that could improve the performance of the company. It drives people to keep still, keep quiet, and keep potentially great thoughts locked away forever.
Allowing the negative force of fear to dominate a team member’s workday robs both the team member and the company of something very valuable. It’s not so much the result that could come from taking a chance on the new initiative. It’s taking the chance as an end in itself. Sure, there will be many times when nothing comes of sticking your neck out. In fact, most of the time nothing will come of it. On occasion it may even cost the organization some money. However, the surest way to long-term failure is not risking failure in the short term.
So which force will win the day in the minds of your team members? The answer is really up to you. It depends on the energy and atmosphere you create in your team, and especially in yourself. Conventional wisdom might counsel avoiding failure at all cost, but assertively ambitious leaders expect and welcome it.
A quick example can clarify this. Suppose your team deals with a hundred clients and every one of them is perfectly satisfied. What could be better? You’re batting a thousand, aren’t you? Well, not exactly. Because what have you learned? What have you gained from those one hundred customers that can help you reach the thousands of customers whom you’ve never met? Almost certainly, you have no clue as to why the experience of the satisfied customers was positive. You just know that they transacted their business and moved on without a complaint. That’s very good in the short term, but what new opportunities is it opening up?
Let’s suppose your team decides to try something new. It could be a new product or service or a new way of making them affordable to your customers. In any case, suppose it doesn’t work. Customers are unhappy. They’re complaining like mad. True, this represents failure in one sense, but in the big picture you’re being offered success on a silver platter. The angry customers are telling you exactly what you can do to improve your business. No guessing, no assuming. You’re getting specific instructions on how not to do something, which is a big step in the direction of learning to do it right. These angry people are pointing to vast, uncharted territories. Now you and your team just need the ambition to go there.
When you give team members the freedom to try new things, to take chances, and even to accept a reasonable risk of failure, you will be amazed by the abundance of ideas that start arising. And some of them will work. Once again, most of them won’t, but a single big hit can make up for many misses. If you do the math, you’ll see that the odds are in your favor when you back some long shots. In fact, some of the most successful innovations come from lower-level employees who are given the chance to be heard. If you create an atmosphere in which 100 percent success is demanded at every stage of the game, you’ll short-circuit the ambition on which success and achievement really depend.
Looking again at our example of the angry customers, you not only get more ideas when you allow for short-term failure but also gain access to a detailed road map for success. When a team member fails, take steps to learn everything that’s available from that experience. This is valuable information. When you know why something didn’t work, you’re not far from learning how it can and will.
When we speak about creating assertive ambition in your team members, we need to make a distinction between theory and practice. It’s easy to see why it’s better to have an ambitious team than a complacent one. In practice, though, what specifically can you do to make that happen? To answer that question, let’s look at a three-step process that you can put into action starting today.
The first step is creating a culture of learning in your team. Create a program that consistently brings in the latest trends, research, techniques, and tools of your industry. You could, for example, assign a different team member each day to share something he or she has learned. It could be sourced from professional journals, internet websites, or hands-on experience in the workplace.
This will satisfy a very strong and very human need in your team members. It will answer to their need to learn and grow. Education is really a zero-sum game. If you’re not learning new things, it’s not just that you’ll be standing still. You’ll actually be falling behind, and fast, because new concepts and ideas are coming into play at a furious pace. You’ve got to stay in touch with them in order to keep up.
Countless resources exist to help with this process of ongoing education. Purchasing books and magazines is one of the easiest steps you can take. You can create a library in your workplace, or you can just have them lying around for people to glance at when they have a moment. Education doesn’t have to take place in a formal academic setting, and books don’t have to stay on bookshelves in order to be read. In fact, they probably shouldn’t stay there.
The next step is a little more time-consuming and expensive, but it too is hugely worthwhile. Send your team members to live seminars or training programs. They’ll come back with a heightened sense of professionalism and a wealth of new information. Needless to say, you should also attend these events yourself as often as you possibly can. Being an assertively ambitious leader means that you have to know your industry backward and forward. You should always be on top of where it’s been, where it is, and where it’s going. Don’t expect team members to get to that level of professionalism until you’ve gotten there yourself.
The third step relates to what you do with the ideas and information that have been learned. Any time or money you spend on education is wasted unless the lessons are put to use. Millions of dollars are spent each year to further the education, training, and development of employees, but upon returning to their companies, the ideas are soon forgotten. The investment was a waste. To prevent that from happening, you’ll need to create an atmosphere in which the new ideas your people learn are valued and shared. As always, this is really just a matter of being assertive. Get your team together and ask them about what they’ve learned. Find out how they think this information can improve the company. Have them share with the rest of the team the information they learned. There is potential success in their ideas, but you’re the one who has to bring it to the surface.
While not every idea will pan out, actually trying new things is the greatest benefit of employee education. The process doesn’t end there, however. Even if your company improves in the short term because of the new information, the greater benefit will be a long-term one. The type of team member whom ongoing education, training, and development create will far outweigh any monetary costs that you incur.
Think about how you would feel if you went to a seminar on reducing employee turnover, and when you returned to your company, you were never asked about what you learned. You were excited about the chance to grow. You learned some really useful ideas that would fit well with your organization, but everything you’ve done is wasted.
The situation would be so different if your supervisor had eagerly awaited your return, anxious to hear your ideas. You would feel needed, important, and ambitious toward the future.
By understanding how you would feel in that situation, you can grasp how your team members feel also. Trying out new ideas is a way of giving everyone a chance to move the organization forward. If your team is already being given opportunities to learn and grow, you’re headed in the right direction. If they are not, there are some changes that need to be made right away.
Before we close our discussion of assertive ambition, there’s one more point that needs to be made loudly and clearly. It’s one thing to say that everyone should be productive and ambitious and that you should do everything possible to foster productivity. The real meaning of assertive ambition, however, can be entirely different from one person to another.
Far too many people in positions of management or leadership try to motivate their teams using a “one size fits all” approach. The people on your team are as different as baked beans and apple pie. They each need an individual form of motivation, and it’s up to you to discover what that is in every case. What turns them on? What turns them off? It may take a little time and effort on your part, but uncovering the powerful motivators that drive your people will be the best thing you can do for you and your team. Be assertively ambitious about making that discovery!
ACTION STEPS
1. Do an honest review of your life. Do you always “walk the talk”? Where and when have your actions not matched your words? Make a list of the areas in your life where your words or actions are not consistent with your values. Once you have created that list, make a commitment to yourself and your team to model your messages.
2. In the example of Mike, as a leader he was held responsible for the performance of his team. Reflect on your leadership skills and make a list of at least three things that you can do to further motivate your team and boost morale, productivity, and initiative.
3. Listed below are the four leadership tactics. For the next week, go down this list and check that you have used all tactics to enlist the enthusiasm and productivity of your team.
Tactic 1: Arrive early |
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Tactic 2: Keep your energy high |
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Tactic 3: Greet your team with enthusiasm and humor |
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Tactic 4: Have a clear action plan |
ACTION PLAN NOTES