TouchPoints

Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments

Douglas Conant, Mette Norgaard

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118075548
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Leadership

A fresh, effective, and enduring way to lead—starting with your next interaction

Most leaders feel the inevitable interruptions in their jam-packed days are troublesome. But in TouchPoints, Conant and Norgaard argue that these—and every point of contact with other people—are overlooked opportunities for leaders to increase their impact and promote their organization's strategy and values. Through previously untold stories from Conant's tenure as CEO of Campbell Soup Company and Norgaard's vast consulting experience, the authors show that a leader's impact and legacy are built through hundreds, even thousands, of interactive moments in time. The good news is that anyone can develop "TouchPoint" mastery by focusing on three essential components: head, heart, and hands.

TouchPoints speaks to the theory and craft of leadership, promoting a balanced presence of rational, authentic, active, and wise leadership practices. Leadership mastery in the smallest and otherwise ordinary moments can transform aimless activity in individuals and entropy in organizations into focused energy—one magical moment at a time.

Chapter 1

The Power of TouchPoints

The Action Is in the Interaction

It's nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. You're holed up in your office, trying to grab some time to finish a proposal that's critical to the future of your department—and your own career—when a team member knocks on your door to ask for advice with a tricky problem. How do you respond? Do you give in to the flash of irritation you feel at being interrupted and tell him to come back later? Or do you stop what you are doing and help him right now? It's your choice.

As a leader, you make those choices all day, every day. The “knock on the door” happens over and over again—phone calls, meetings, emails, and text messages, all with questions to answer, concerns to address, problems to solve, and fires to put out. There are big issues and small issues, planned sessions and surprises, and they come at you constantly and from every direction. You have to make decisions without having all the information, and you need to make them now. The workload is expanding, and the time you have to deal with each issue is shrinking. Some days it feels as though the information age has morphed into the interruption age.

But what if you could step back and look at all those interactions with a fresh perspective? What if, instead of seeing them as interfering with your work, you were to look at them as latent leadership moments? What if these moments were the answer to leadership in today's busy world?

In our experience, that is precisely what they are. Each of the many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone's day. Each is an opportunity to establish high performance expectations, to infuse the agenda with greater clarity and more energy, and to influence the course of events. Each is a chance to transform an ordinary moment into a TouchPoint.

TouchPoints take place any time two or more people get together to deal with an issue and get something done. A casual conversation with a colleague becomes a TouchPoint when the focus shifts to an impending contract. An email exchange with a team member turns into a TouchPoint when she tells you about a production delay. The chit-chat before an afternoon meeting shifts to TouchPoint mode when the last person arrives and someone says, “Everyone's here—let's get started.”

In fact, each day is an elaborate sequence of TouchPoints: interactions—with one other person, a couple of people, or a group—that can last a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, or a couple of days. Those TouchPoints can be planned or spontaneous, casual or carefully choreographed. They take place in hallways, on factory floors, in conference rooms, on the phone, and via email or instant messaging. Some deal with straightforward, relatively minor issues; others involve complex challenges with wide-ranging effects.

Sadly, leaders often see these interactions as distractions that get in the way of their real work: the important work of strategizing, planning, and prioritizing. But in our experience, these TouchPoints are the real work. They are the moments that bring your strategies and priorities to life, the interactions that translate your ideas into new and better behaviors. That is, providing you take these TouchPoints, no matter how brief, and infuse them with greater clarity and genuine commitment.

Three Variables, One TouchPoint

Although there are many ways in which TouchPoints differ, they all have the same three variables: the issue, the other people, and the leader.

The Three Variables of a TouchPoint

The issue is something important, such as a question, a problem, or a decision that affects the performance of individuals, teams, units, or the entire organization. Such issues come at you fast and furiously from every direction. In many cases you have to make a decision quickly, even without having all the necessary information.

The issue could be how to address a customer complaint, cross-train employees, reschedule a meeting so that the right people can be there, find resources for a project after the budget has been cut, or replace a key team member who has suddenly resigned. The issue may even be building a relationship. In fact, many leaders initiate a large number of brief interactions whose sole purpose is to make positive connections so that when the leader needs to make a tough call, people will know they are valued and will trust the leader's intentions.

The other people are the stakeholders who are involved in the issue. In this book we will focus on internal stakeholders, such as the individuals who report to you directly and indirectly, your colleagues, and the people with whom you have a straight or dotted reporting line.

In today's interdisciplinary and international workplaces, these stakeholders may have diverse norms and values, which means they often make differing assumptions about what it means to be on time, deliver quality, show respect, and be loyal. Consequently, you need to be tuned in, because the behaviors that turn one person on may turn someone else off completely.

The leader is the person who brings a little magic to the moment. Taking the lead in a TouchPoint is not a matter of title or position; it is a matter of behavior. The leader is the one who listens carefully, helps others frame the issue, brings a sense of urgency, and creates confidence about the next step. When you are the most senior person in the room, that responsibility will be yours. In many situations, however, you may want to use that moment as an opportunity to guide and develop others.

To take the lead in a TouchPoint requires dual vision. That is, you need to be able to address the most pressing need and do it in a way that makes the others more capable, ready to take on the next issue. In other words, you must zero in on the needs of the now, while being mindful of the next time.

My Issue, Your Issue, or Our Issue

Of course not every issue is your direct responsibility. That is why one of the first things you listen for in a TouchPoint is whether the issue at hand is “my issue,” “your issue,” or “our issue.” If you own it, you can make the calls. If they own it, you want to help them make the best possible decision and be ready to move forward. If it is “ours,” you share the responsibility with the other people.

When You Own the Issue

David has a visceral appreciation for the power of TouchPoints. When he was a plant manager for P&G, running sites with five hundred to a thousand people, he made it a habit to walk through the plant every day. In the course of a week, he would make sure he spent time with each of the four shifts. Among other things, he used his walk-throughs to deal with several of his own issues.

“I would routinely walk through the plant and connect with fifty to a hundred people in an hour. I always had a little slip of paper in my pocket with ten or twelve to-dos I needed to handle. They could range from getting an update on a safety issue to telling people about an award we had won.” In David's experience, the biggest mistake plant managers make is that when they get really, really busy, they stop doing these kinds of tours. They think they can get more done by staying at their desk. But the exact opposite happens. “Walking the plant,” David says, “you get so much done in a minute. You get little updates, you feel the pulse, you quietly reinforce the standards when you pick up a piece of trash and remind someone about ear protection. If people are busy, you just wave.”

The walkabouts not only gave David a chance to deal with his issues but also served as opportunities for people to bring up their own. One person might walk along for a few yards to tell him that someone's husband was in the hospital; another might stop him to discuss a concern. In this way, his tours would shift from dealing with his own issues to helping other people with theirs.

The merit of such walkabouts is that they create dozens of proactive TouchPoints. By being ahead on the issues, making yourself available, and setting the tone, you anticipate and prevent a number of problems. By making time for interactions, you can prevent unnecessary interruptions.

When Someone Else Owns the Issue

When a direct report owns the issue, the challenge for many leaders is to leave the responsibility where it belongs. This is particularly difficult for leaders who were promoted because others trust them to get the job done. That was Nancy's challenge. In her previous position as the head of a national accounts team, she had always been the go-to person. When the customer had a problem, she would do everything she could to fix it, and fix it fast! She would ignore the chains of command and go directly to the person who could get the job done.

The problem was that, having been promoted to VP, Nancy was now going around her own people. She kept forgetting that as a leader of leaders, it was no longer her job to fix the problem directly. Her role now was to help others figure out how to deal with it.

To curb her impatience, Nancy developed a small TouchPoint habit. When her team was addressing a problem, she would first go around the room and hear from each team member what he or she thought should be done. Only at the end would she add her two cents' worth. “It was really hard at first. I felt I was inadequate because I wasn't doing something. But it was also fulfilling, because soon I began to see people step up in ways they had not done before. Today, it's exciting to see how each individual is so much stronger. In fact, the whole team is becoming really impressive.”

What Nancy learned was that it is not enough to get the job done now. As a leader, you need to get the job done in a way that builds the individual's and team's capacity to do even better next time.

When You Share the Issue with Others

At other times, the leader and the other people are jointly responsible for the issue. That was the case when Jerry, a senior VP for public affairs, needed to bring Kim, a new director, up to speed.

Kim's role would be to lead an initiative to reduce childhood obesity and hunger in Camden, New Jersey, by 50 percent in ten years. “One Friday I took Kim and three other members of my team on a three-hour tour of the city,” Jerry said, “and we visited our partners at a day-care center, an elementary school, and a community garden. It was a really good morning. Most important, it gave her an affirmation that what we are trying to do is needed and doable.”

Bringing Kim up to speed was an issue that Kim and Jerry shared. By taking her on the tour, Jerry provided her with both a physical understanding of the city and a strong beginning to the relationships, which would help her get a head start on her new job.

The Potential of a TouchPoint

Every TouchPoint is spring-loaded with possibilities. Each one can build—or break—a relationship. Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and their future.

Doug had such an experience that has stayed with him to this day. When he was in graduate school, he had a professor who had extremely high standards. One day, after Doug had handed in a carelessly done assignment, the professor called him in and said, simply, “Doug, you can do better.”

“That's all he said,” Doug recalls, “‘You can do better,’ and of course he was right. Moreover, he never needed to say it again.” Now when Doug reviews work that doesn't meet his standards, instead of giving people negative feedback, he challenges them to do better in some specific way. As it did with Doug, the statement “You can do better” often goes a long way toward increasing people's confidence and encouraging them to stretch.

Mette, in contrast, remembers an experience of her own that shows the negative potential of TouchPoints. It happened when she was product manager for a midsize multinational company. After discovering that a new product was failing to meet the company's quality criteria, she recommended to her immediate boss, the director of marketing, that they stop production until they figured out what the problem was.

When Mette's boss took the issue to the vice president, however, he was told in no uncertain terms, “This is the fourth quarter. You've got to keep the line moving so we can make the numbers.” After that meeting, Mette's boss called her into his office and told her that her job was to keep the line moving at all costs. When Mette protested, he snapped at her, “If you can't do it, I'll find a real man for the job.”

Mette's boss got the job done—the production line kept moving—but he lost her respect. What was worse, she also lost respect for herself. She thought her superiors were making the wrong call and wished she had shown more backbone. This experience shows that when a leader goes for compliance instead of commitment, he may erode a person's confidence and damage the relationship.

Have you had these kinds of experiences—positive TouchPoints that increased your confidence and commitment, or negative interactions that left you feeling worse about others or yourself? If so, you already know the power and possibilities of a moment. You know the potential of a TouchPoint.

TouchPoints can inspire people to give the very best of themselves, and they can cause people to shut down. Like money, TouchPoints in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. What matters is how you use them. They are a resource that you can either invest or squander.

Like Doug's professor, we all have times when we say just the right thing. Like Mette's boss, we also have times when we botch it.

That's a fact of life. What is important is that you continuously strive to increase your ratio of “That went well!” to “I blew it.” If you reflect on the TouchPoints you've engaged in during the past few weeks, what is your ratio? What would you like it to be?

It's important to remember that improving that ratio is not about becoming nicer; it is about becoming more effective. It is about engaging people and moving forward faster, instead of tripping up and slowing down. It is about gaining commitment instead of settling for compliance.

Whether you are a manager, a mentor, or a parent, you want to touch others in a way that makes them want to do the right thing. You want to guide them in a way that helps them make good decisions, even when you are not in the room—which, if you are a leader of leaders, is 99.9 percent of the time.

The Exponential Effect of a TouchPoint

TouchPoint leadership capitalizes on the social networking effect, what we call the exponential effect.

Every person you engage with is embedded in webs of relationships. Whatever you say or do in a TouchPoint may be quickly transmitted to five or six people in that person's network—and then relayed to their colleagues, and so on. Therefore, when you impart a sense of urgency, people may pass that on; when you inspire confidence, that too may be transmitted; and when you blow it, everyone is bound to hear about it.

George, head of an R&D department with five hundred people, recalls a recent TouchPoint that illustrates the exponential effect. “It was one of those very contentious ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• More Praise for TouchPoints
• A Warren Bennis Book
• Books in the Warren Bennis Signature Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Editor's Note
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Power of TouchPoints: The Action Is in the Interaction
• Chapter 2: The Commitment to Mastery: The Choice Is Yours
• Chapter 3: Use Your Head: The Commitment to Inquiry
• Chapter 4: Use Your Heart: The Commitment to Reflection
• Chapter 5: Use Your Hands: The Commitment to Practice
• Chapter 6: Mastering the Touch: How Can I Help?
• Coda
• Recommended Reading
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Index