Influential Leadership 25 Research-Based Insights That Will Change the Way You Lead

Steve Meyer

Publisher/CEO

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Table of Contents

Coaching: How to Harness Peer Learning in Group Sessions ................................................................ 3

How to Help Employees Bounce Back After a Failure ........................................................................... 6

How to Use Failure to Achieve Success ............................................................................................... 9

Dealing with Mistakes: What High-Performing Teams Do Differently ................................................ 12

Framing Corrective Feedback in a Positive Way................................................................................. 14

Why Goal Setting Often Doesn’t Lead to Goal Achievement .............................................................. 16

Making Big Decisions: How to Uncover the Blind Spots that Can Sink Your Project ............................. 19

The Curse of Knowledge: Why It Hurts Training —and How to Overcome It ...................................... 22

Communication: How to Get Buy-In for Change ................................................................................ 25

The Science of Persuasion: Getting Employees, Bosses and Colleagues to See the Light ..................... 28

Managing Workplace Stress: How to Stay Productive Under Pressure ............................................... 31

Employee Onboarding: Why Too Much Emphasis on ‘Fit’ Can Backfire .............................................. 33

Onboarding – The Critical Importance of a New Hire’s First Assignment ............................................ 36

Reference Checks: How to Get Feedback That Predicts Future Performance ...................................... 39

Team Dynamics: Group Decision Making – The Early Consensus Trap ................................................ 42

Communication: How to Be an Idea Catalyst, Not an Idea Killer ........................................................ 45

Team Dynamics: Team Goals and “Social Loafing” ............................................................................ 48

Coaching: Your Mindset Makes All the Difference ............................................................................. 51

Coaching: How to Turn Around a Struggling Team ............................................................................. 53

Changing Behavior: Why Rewards and Punishments Often Aren’t Enough ......................................... 56

Empowerment and Accountability: How Much Rope Should You Give Your People? ......................... 59

Team Productivity: The Power of Brooks’ Law .................................................................................. 62

Employee Motivation: The Surprising Power of ‘Line of Sight’ ........................................................... 68

High-Stakes Problem-Solving: How to Get Crystal-Clear Thinking When You Need It Most ................. 71

‘Random Encounters’: How they promote team cohesion and boost productivity .............................. 74

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Coaching: How to Harness Peer Learning in Group Sessions

Compared with one-on-one coaching, group learning may seem like a compromise. It’s a time-efficient

way to get across basic concepts and need-to-know information, but it’s certainly not the same as an

expert working individually with an employee on high-level skills – right?

Right. It’s not the same. It’s often better.

Research suggests that group coaching can be more effective than one-on-one sessions. Which turns out

to be very good news for busy leaders who don’t want to short-change their people when it comes to

talent development.

In this chapter you will learn:

• What research says about the power of group learning sessions

• Why peers are often better coaches than bosses or other experts, and

• How to design high-impact group-learning sessions for your team

So how can group learning deliver better results than one-on-one coaching?

In part, it comes down to that thing your parents warned you about when you were a kid: peer pressure.

Your parents were afraid you’d jump off a bridge if all your friends did it, and they were right to worry:

Research confirms that people will do things as part of a group that they wouldn’t do on their own.

That’s bad for thrill-seeking teenagers. But it’s good for learners.

And there’s more to group learning than simply the pressure to perform well in front of your colleagues.

Consider, for example, an intriguing study from Stanford University.

Researchers gave two groups of people a complex puzzle to solve. Those in Group One — the control

group — were told they were working alone. Those in Group Two were told they had a partner in

another room working on the same puzzle.

Both groups were permitted to work on the puzzle for as long as they wanted. They could give up and

walk away at any time.

Several minutes into the exercise, Group One was given a tip from a researcher to help them solve the

puzzle. Group Two received the same tip – but it was scribbled on a piece of paper, which the researcher

said came from their partner in the other room.

After receiving the tip, people in Group Two spent an average of 48% longer on the puzzle, compared

with those in Group One. And more of them succeeded in solving it. Afterwards, people in this group

had a stronger memory of the puzzle and expressed greater engagement and enjoyment in the task.

THE RESEARCH

Carr, P. B. and Walton, G. M. (2014). Cues of working together fuel intrinsic motivation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 53, 169-184.

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In short, just the impression of working with a peer significantly boosted participants’ motivation,

performance and memory.

So why is working with others to solve a problem or learn something new so powerful?

One reason – which has been borne out in countless studies — is that people feel accountable to their

peers. They feel social pressure to perform well and carry their weight in front of their colleagues.

But that doesn’t fully explain the results of this study. After all, the participants had no social

relationship with the anonymous “peer” who was supposedly in the other room. And they were working

in isolation. So why did they work harder? And why were they more successful?

The researchers concluded that one reason was because the subjects put a higher value on the “tip”

they received when they thought it came from a peer rather than an expert. Subjects believed that

information from someone in the trenches, working on the same kind of problem, would be highly

relevant and useful, so they were more inclined to use it and keep plugging away.

In short, the source matters. People in a group-learning environment will be more likely to accept and

act on knowledge that comes from their peers than from you – even if it’s the same knowledge.

So what does this mean for how you can leverage the power of peers in your team sessions? Here are

some research-based recommendations:

Start by exploring what employees already know. For example, after introducing the topic of your

session, you might ask learners to share their existing knowledge and experiences. Sharing prior

experiences will get employees engaged in the discussion and allow them to identify the behaviors and

competencies that lead to improved performance.

In learning initiatives, you often get pushback from experienced employees. “I know what I’m doing; I

don’t need to be taught,” they say. Fact is, experienced people in particular often get stuck in bad

behavior patterns that hurt performance.

Peer learning allows you to turn that objection on its head. You might say, “I want you to participate and

share your knowledge to help us address the challenges we face.” The veterans will influence their

colleagues. Even better, their colleagues will influence the veterans.

Don’t teach; facilitate. Since your goal is to create learning through peer interaction, don’t position

yourself as the expert. Instead, be a guide. Facilitate the first meeting or two to model the way. Then, as

soon as possible, turn over meeting facilitation to the team members. Assign one person to run each

meeting. Have him or her prepare questions to kick-start discussions. Stay in the background. Let people

learn from each other.

Create active learning experiences. Instead of having people passively sit and listen, get them involved

in role plays, debates and idea sharing. Active learning creates more opportunities to interact with their

peers.

End with a recap. At the end of the session, ask employees what they learned and what they’ll do

differently. When you do this, all or most of the takeaways will come from the group, not you.

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Apply the Research

1. What are some things that you, as a manager, can do to facilitate peer

learning in a group session?

2. What might be some challenges for you, the manager, during group

coaching?

3. When using group coaching, what is the role of one-on-one coaching?

To review:

• Group learning harnesses the power of peer pressure – in a good way

• Learners will put a higher value on insights that come through peer interactions, versus

information that you, as an expert, tell them

• In team sessions, put yourself in the role of facilitator. Guide the group, but don’t dominate it.