3-26-10 To Curse or Not to Curse

There is a bit of controversy here in the Midwest. Yea, I know, what could be controversial in the middle of the US, right? If you have been following the men’s NCAA basketball extravaganza, you will know that K-State is one of the teams that have advanced to the final 8. Of course, one controversy is that KU didn’t make it in the tourney --- but I’m not here to talk about that one today. The controversy I’m talking about centers around K-State coach Frank Martin. And the controversy is his cursing.

There has been a fair amount of coverage here relative to how much he curses during a game…. At his players, at the refs, at the fans, etc. In fact, one fan had made the trek to OKC to watch K-State in action…. And left at the half because he didn’t want to expose his family to the cursing anymore. Of course, it is hard for me to imagine anyone as bad as the infamous Bobby Knight, but apparently this guy really gets to some of the folks around here. His players, on the other hand, don’t seem to be phased by his choice of words. Heck, you even see news reports of them parodying his antics.

You are thinking, yea, so what -- I don’t watch basketball and I don’t care about K-State -- why the heck are you even bringing this up, Dr. J???

Well, here’s why. As an executive, how you speak IS important. It is one of the critical skills in the Executive Skills and Traits model that I discussed some time back (12-30-09 Morphing to a Model and 1-4-10 Let's Talk).

As an executive, is it ever okay to curse? Surprisingly, I think the answer is yes. Here are a few of my observations/experiences.

I noticed that when I was a factory executive, I tended to use more swear words in my everyday conversation. Frankly, I didn’t realize I was doing it until later. But upon reflection, I realize that I was echoing the language around me. When I was a staff executive, I tended to use swear words sparingly. Again, echoing the language around me. So one observation is that the use of swearing is situational. It depends on those around you, and of course, on your personality as well.

Another experience concerns one of my bosses in the past. This guy was truly a gentleman. He didn’t arm wave, he didn’t scream, he didn’t belittle people, and he didn’t swear. Most days. But when he did, it got everyone’s attention. Because it was so out of character for him, we all knew that something was very wrong or he was very upset when one small swear word would slip into his conversation. So another observation is that the judicious use of cursing can have an impact. In this executive’s case, it made everyone sit up and take notice. Once he had their attention and made them realize the criticality of the issue, he was able to lead the group to the solution required.

One final observation. Some words are NEVER okay. I’m not going to iterate them here because I try very hard not to use them, ever. But you know damn well what I’m talking about. (Get the point?) And it is NEVER okay to direct your cursing at a specific person. Abusiveness is not a hallmark that you want to be known for.

So as an executive, do you HAVE to use swear words? Nope, you just must do what is comfortable for you.

Cheers!

Morphing to a Model

After all the reading, surveying, analyzing, extrapolating, synthesizing, etc….. then what? Well the next step was to use the results of all this activity to update the conceptual model into a final model of executive skills and traits for use by new or aspiring executives.

If you will remember, the original conceptual model looked like this.

I took each of the functions and updated them, based on the results of my research.

The important communications skills for the new executive include: listen, network, and speak. The skill of establishing interpersonal relationships is combined into networking, as the participants tended to use these terms interchangeably. The skill of written communication is dropped from the model, as it is clear for this population that in-person communication skills are most needed by the new executive. This is perhaps influenced by the tendency of this group to debate and discuss as a prelude to decision-making. So now, this section of the model looks as follows.

For the people skills, the ability to hire and retain people is significantly less important than the other personnel-related skills, and so is eliminated from the model. Keep in mind, that isn’t unusual for the aerospace industry, particularly in downturns. This executive team was clearly focused on the team that they already have in place. If this survey had been conducted during an up-cycle in the industry, I’ve no doubt that the results relative to hiring would have been significantly different. So now, the people skills become as follows.

Within the vision skills portion of the model, the overwhelming (indeed, almost unanimous) response was for the skill of understanding the big picture. However, this didn’t seem to preclude the other vision skills. It did lead me to understand that the remaining skills weren’t as “crisply” defined as possible. The survey comments show that the new executive must be able to transition from a tactical view of the business to a more strategic view of the business. As one executive said, “setting the vision for the future”. Additionally, it was clear that this group of execs believe that a new executive needs to not only have the skills to set the strategy, but also to communicate and even “market” the strategy to get buy-in from the rest of the organization. As a result, the vision skills portion of the model looks as follows.

The execution function portion of the conceptual model provided the greatest number of individual skills, all important to this group of execs to one degree or another.

As a result of their input, the managing change skill is combined with the ability to deal with ambiguity. Also combined were the skills related to dealing with fragmentation and working at a fast pace. One participant observed that the business world moves at a rapid pace and doesn’t always throw information or even problems in a linear, logical fashion. As such, the executive must be able to keep up as he/she moves from fragment to fragment of information.

And finally, as a result of the survey input, the skill of delegation was added to the model. This is especially critical for the new executive. By delegating the day-to-day activities, the new executive no longer participates as closely in the latest “fire fight”…. he/she instead is forced to think in a more long-term, strategic manner.

As a result of these changes, the execution skills portion of the model now appears as follows.

And finally, the executive personal traits. Most of the original list clearly resonated with the survey participants. There was near unanimous support for the honest, ethical, and credible trait. This is likely due to the Midwestern location of this organization and its associated Midwestern conservative values. It was interesting to note that while the participants felt strongly about ethics and honesty; they were, at best, lukewarm about the need for the executive to be empathetic and nice. As such, that trait is dropped from the model. The final portion of the model, executive traits, is shown below. They are listed in priority order.

Bringing it all together, the final Executive Skills and Traits model is shown below.

Of course, I have a few more things to say about this model. Next time, a further discussion of the final model.

Cheers!

Participant Observations (or the inside skinny)

If you have been reading along with me, by now you know why I did the research, background for the research, what the research was, and some preliminary results. Today, I’ll take a look at some general observations made by the participants.

The participant observations came as I was analyzing the data by demographic category. For example, within the execution function, the only intersection of agreement between males and females was the ability to be decisive. As related by one executive, “many/most times decisions are elevated due to lack of a clear-cut ‘answer’. Being able to listen to opposing arguments and make a decisions is critical to executive leadership. If it was easy, the team would have already decided”. But I also learned that as important as being decisive is also to have the skill to delegate not only a task but also the decisions related to the task. So the “skill” isn’t a narrow focus on decision-making. It is expanded to acknowledge the need for the executive to understand when he/she should step up and make the decision as well as know when to delegate the decision to other levels.

When I analyzed the results based on the level of the executive respondent, I discovered that within the vision function, there is clear agreement that as a person moves into the executive ranks, he/she should must also move from the day-to-day (or tactical) management to a longer-term or strategic view. One executive told me, “in my first executive assignment, I focused on solving day-to-day problems and the organization I led did not have a clear, well-communicated strategy. This limited the effectiveness of the organization and sent the wrong signals about what was necessary for long-term success”. Clearly, it is important for the new or aspiring executive to figure out how to make the transition to strategic management.

Within the functional organization demographic, I found agreement that the new executive must have, and use, the skills of empowerment and teaching/mentoring. The responses relative to this went from the purely practical (if you don’t empower, you end up doing the day-to-day stuff), to the more esoteric idea of ownership and buy-in. One executive summed this up very well, “if you are the smartest (or busiest) person in the organization, you probably need to make some changes”. Wise advice, indeed.

One theme I heard, over and over, in the structured and in the open-ended questions was relative to the communication function. These executives could not stress enough the need to have the skill for establishing interpersonal relationships, which they tended to use interchangeably with the skill for development personal networks. In addition, they approached this need via varying avenues. For example, one executive discussed the need to create a sound network within his/her peer group -- “I wish I had been more incisive about the fragile egos and personalities of existing executives”. Solid peer-to-peer relationships would have allowed him/her to ask questions or challenge ideas without creating defensiveness. Another application of the networking skill concerns getting work done through the “right channel” within the organization -- or more specifically, getting the right support to get an idea moved forward. “At the executive level, decisions often get made based upon trust and relationships. There aren’t always policies, procedures, or protocols in place to drive decisions that need to be made. They’re based upon a mutual trusting relationship.” Clearly there is a need for the new and aspiring executive to carefully (and honestly) build his/her network of relationships. This idea of building your network is clearly a critical factor for the success of an executive.

Next time? How the conceptual model morphed from a concept to a final model for executive skills and traits.

Cheers!

The Research

Okay, so I’ve told you about the “burning question” as well as the background of where I came up with the conceptual model for executive skills and traits. But until you actually do some research, you can’t know whether your ideas (and others ideas) are valid, right? So now, we turn to “the research”. Whenever I type those two words, I always hear it in my mind as a deep, James Earl Jones, CNN-type voiceover. “THE RESEARCH”. Impressive, eh?

At any rate, one of the goals of graduate school and of a PhD program is to actually graduate, so the school is repetitive in making sure that you understand that your research should be of sufficient breadth to prove/disprove your point, while at the same time, sufficiently narrow that you can actually accomplish it.

To that end, I defined my research population as the executives of the largest tier 1 structures supplier in the commercial aerospace industry. This gave me a potential population of approximately 70 executives at all levels -- from CEO to newly-promoted directors. The survey itself was comprised of both set questions and open-ended questions in order to derive both qualitative and quantitative data. My end-goal was to validate the conceptual model as well as to add or subtract from it as required.

One cautionary note here. Because this was a small target population and because it was not randomly chosen, care should be taken in extrapolating the results to other populations.

In the end, I had just over a 65% return rate from the survey. A look at the demographics of the respondents provides some interesting information. For example, 13% of the respondents were female and 87% were male. Not a surprising distribution given the nature of the aerospace industry. A couple of other demographic bits of data…… The executive levels of the respondents were represented by: company officer/executive VP (4%), senior VP (11%), VP (11%), and director (74%). The functional orientation of the respondents included: operations/manufacturing (42%), engineering (27%), finance (11%), human resources (4%), and administrative (16%). Again, not a surprising distribution given the nature of the aerospace industry.

So what did I learn? For the most part, the conceptual model held up. Some examples of this.

In the function of communication, the participants clearly leaned towards the use of “in person” communication skills. Within the people functions, the slant was towards the retention of existing employees, not the hiring of new employees. Not surprising in a mature industry such as aerospace.

Within the vision function, the participants stressed the need for the new or aspiring executive to have the skill of understanding the big picture. This was significantly more important that having the ability to create the strategy or meaning for the organization.

Within the execution function, the respondents equally valued the ability to be decisive and the ability to gather, synthesize, and analyze data. And within the executive traits of the conceptual model, the respondents most highly valued the trait of being honest, ethical, and credible.

Of course, with all this data, I was able to come up with a host of information from categories such as age group, gender, functional area, number of years on the executive payroll, etc. Because of the sheer volume, I can’t cover it all here.

I did put in one “throwaway” question that produced some input for the new or aspiring executive. I asked these executives to indicate one of four methods by which the executive acquires these skills/traits. The four methods were: heredity, college education, on-the-job, and special training. Almost 60% of the respondents indicated that on-the-job training was the single most important avenue. And none of the respondents believed that it was heredity. So, there is hope for all of us.

As mentioned earlier, I also collected data from a couple of open-ended questions. The most revealing was, “Looking back to when you were first promoted to executive management, what is the one thing that you wish you had known about being a successful executive?” Of those that responded, over 31% said that the skill of building relationships was critically important. More about those answers in future posts.

So what does all this data mean for the conceptual model of executive skills and traits? The model held up fairly well…… however, as a result of the analysis of the data and the drawing of conclusions, I was able to make some important modifications to it.

Next time…… some observations from the research results and the final model for executive skills and traits.

Cheers!