Got POISE?

One of the questions I often get asked from new managers and leaders on my team is "what are my expectations for them, and how can they be successful in the team?". There are certainly many aspects of leadership that can be critical for success in any organization and especially in engineering organizations - communication, accountability, planning, team work, collaboration, and so on. But as I thought about this more, there are some foundational behavioral traits that cut across a lot of these areas and are essential ingredients for success.

As such, I coined a simple and easy to remember acronym, "POISE" , to describe these:

Proactive

Open

Impact

Share

Execute

Proactive:

Being proactive means we are thinking ahead, taking action, and taking initiative, all of which are essential for success. It applies to planning, communication with our teams, peers and upper management, recognizing and rewarding our employees, reaching out and collaborating with our peers, and many other facets of our daily lives.

Open:

For us to continually learn and grow as individuals and leaders, openness is key. Change is the only constant in life. Being open to change and embracing it rather than resisting it can make or break our careers in many cases. Openness to receiving and giving feedback are also very important to grow ourselves and our teams.

Impact:

We should all strive to focus on the impact we are making on the organization, rather than the size of the team we lead or the management structures/hierarchies. Impact can be made and felt from many places, and virtually by anybody in the organization. Every organization has its share of problems to be solved. In many cases, top management doesn't necessarily even know some of these problems to the extent people closer to these know and understand them. With some focused thinking, proactiveness and openness, anyone can make an impact by being part of the solution for some of these problems. For people in the middle to higher levels of management, focusing on the impact of our communication on our teams is very important, as it sets the organizational culture.

Share:

Share your resources, knowledge and experience openly. Withholding information is an indication of insecurity. While being territorial about resources and teams can work in the short term, it will hold your success back in the long term from becoming a true leader.

Execute:

Ideas, vision and strategy are extremely important and nothing is possible without them. But, ideas are no good until they are implemented, and no vision and strategy can be successful without proper execution. Take action, execute, and get the most out of your ideas.

There you have it. Improve your POISE and success will follow!