Chapter 3: Gather Intelligence

Overview

You did the best that you knew how. Now that you know better, you’ll do better.
—Maya Angelou

Mike Silvers had no idea his loud voice made employees cringe in discomfort. After growing up the oldest of six brothers and working in a steel factory for a while, speaking loudly became a sort of code in his DNA. At 48-years-old, however, as the head of the largest branch of the Vista Federal Credit Union, which serves all of Disney’s 60,000 “cast members,” Silver’s loud voice made his employees think he was yelling at them, and this seemingly inconsistent miscommunication was causing some subtle discomfort among his team members and was affecting his leadership effectiveness. Silvers came to realize this through a formal feedback process in which he asked his team how he could improve as their leader. Now Silvers and his team are so comfortable with asking for and giving feedback that his staff simply will give him a downward motion with their hands if his voice level gets too loud.

Through anonymous 360-degree performance surveys, Silvers realized a lot more about how his staff perceived him as a leader, and he learned that by changing what were genuinely unintentional bad habits, he could vastly improve his relationships and effectiveness. For example, when the lobby is packed with customers—Disney employees—and Silvers sees

one of his service representatives working at her desk without a customer sitting with her, Silvers used to walk briskly to her desk and ask, “Are you ready to take another member?” Through his leadership coach, Karen Walker, a consultant with Atlanta-based Assessment Plus, Inc., who has a Ph.D. in psychology, Silvers learned that his staff felt he was micromanaging and that he did not trust them to do a good job.

“I talked with them, and we all came to an agreement,” he said. “I told them, ‘Okay, I’m going to trust that when a customer is in the lobby, and he or she is not sitting with you at your desk, it’s because you’re quickly finishing up paperwork from the last customer before inviting him or her over.’”

Silvers explained how letting go and giving them the decision making power was difficult for him, and Dr. Walker concurred: “He’s a real driver, and he’s very enthusiastic about his work.” However, Silvers managed to make the change, and in doing so, he saw an almost immediate decrease in the time between customers being serviced. “I showed by my actions that I trusted them, and production went up.”

Asking for feedback, informally and formally (through surveys), became status quo for Silvers, and consequently, he believes that his relationships with his staff, his peers, and even his boss have improved. Increased scores in a subsequent assessment survey certainly seemed to confirm his progress.

When we discover how others perceive us, we are better able to align our intentions with reality and develop a plan for improvement. In order to learn and grow, we must have self-awareness, which, ironically, requires input from others. “The paradox of self-awareness is that one cannot become self-aware through self alone,” wrote Deepak Sethi, director of executive and leadership development for the Thomson Corp., a $6-billion, 40,000-employee information publishing company ( Learning Journeys, Palo Alto, CA, 2000, Davies-Black Publishing, p. 85).

Asking others for their opinions about something conveys respect. When the subject is you, you practice a key aspect of transparency and show others that you value them, increasing your respect and credibility.