Leadership Viewpoint

Effective leaders find ways to ensure that their team remains motivated and energized. For most people, that must include some ‘fun’ time. One of our clients went so far as to build a miniature golf course into their offices, including a hole to drop to the lower floor for the second nine! For most of us, it means keeping a sense of humor and encouraging the ‘office organizer’ to do their thing. Often there’s a person on the team that likes to plan an occasional party or outing. Let them do their thing, and provide them with support when it’s needed.

The bigger question that we often hear is about ‘boundaries’. What is appropriate? How do we know if they’ve gone too far? Here are the guidelines we use:

1. Fun activities during work hours are mandatory for team building reasons.
2. Fun activities outside work hours are optional, unless we’re on the road together.
3. No individual will be singled out for jokes or ridicule. Even if he or she can take it, it sets a poor precedent and may make others uncomfortable.
4. Sports or competitive activities must include a role for everyone. Different physical abilities must be accounted for so that everybody is comfortable and included. Scorekeeping, commentary, etc. can be part of the plan.
5. Sensitivity to corporate titles is minimal during fun activities. It’s the one time we’re all peers.

Let us know if you have ideas to add to our list!

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We are often asked to work with management teams to effect change. Whether we employ the Kotter model or the Moss Kanter model, or if we setup a Balanced Scorecard or some other set of metric is all beside the point. These are just the details; the real point of our efforts is what we call the ‘stirring of the pot’ to facilitate discussion. Many organizations actually use management consultants as the bad guys to help them wake up the troops. That’s our job, and as a result, we are both loved and hated by people in the same firms.

It can be very challenging for management to play the bad guy, since they intend to stay there and face people everyday. It is easier to bring in a hired gun to take the heat. They are usually there for the short-term, so their relationships with employees within the company are quite different. Management teams that need to effect dramatic change without outside assistance need to be prepared for personal rejection, high turnover and even short-term employment. Internal teams are often more successful with gradual change, which can be executed without significant disruption of normal business operations.

There are techniques to minimize the emotional distress that employees experience with dramatic change. A credible approach is termed appreciative inquiry. In this approach, a systematic series of positive questions, designed to elicit positive responses, are employed to lead people through each step of the thought process and change. Check it out if you find yourself in a major change leadership situation.

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Effective managers get things done. There are a million sayings about it. Perhaps my favorite is “walk the talk”. Our people follow our example. Once we have planned out our priorities, communicated our plans, and ensured that the management processes and tools are all in place, it is time to execute brilliantly.

Identify the top payoff activities that you need to do and schedule time to do them. This is much more than a “to do” list. This is actually scheduling time on your calendar to get the work done. Then treat that time as respectfully as if it were a meeting with senior management. Keep your appointment with yourself and do the specific work you have scheduled. The temptation will be to peruse email, make a couple ‘quick’ calls and take care of lots of fast little odds and ends. RESIST THE TEMPTATION!!! High performers do the important things first, NOT the easy things!

Remember that your team will follow whatever example you set. If they are to execute the important things, then it is absolutely fundamental that you do so first and consistently. Then hold them accountable for their end of the projects. What do you think will happen once you operate like this for a few weeks? Here’s what you might expect:

1. Your important projects will get and stay on track.
2. Your people will either step up their efforts, or look for other work.
3. You will have fewer ‘fires’ waste your time.
4. You will start to sleep better, because your mind will be at peace.

Go get it done!

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The most effective businesspeople have the ability to both lead and manage. If planning and communicating are primarily activities of leadership, little happens without management activities that sustain the talk. Management activities include getting the people and resources lined up for each project then and coordinated so that execution can be smooth and timely.

Effective managers also ensure that company systems are in place and set up properly to track and measure progress, challenges and successes. They assess and manage potential risks, and devise ways to avoid problems, such as taking the time to anticipate obstacles and ensure that those obstacles are addressed appropriately. As part of this, they consistently make certain that all company policies, directives and procedures are accommodated in project execution. Paperwork may seem like nonsense sometimes, but most of it serves a purpose for the organization. This sort of task is simply a routine part of business in the managing phase, and is never allowed to rise to the level of ‘issue’ when done well. Of course, in addition to the internal paperwork for projects, managing includes the external paperwork. Documentation and enforcement of contracts and agreements for work performed is all part of it.

All of this lays the groundwork for action, creating an environment for success to build and grow.

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Have you ever struggled with the right balance of humor and fun in the workplace? Clearly we want our people to be happy and enjoy their workday, so some humor is appropriate. In fact, there’s plenty of research indicating that laughter is good for our health, our energy, our mindset, personal productivity and maintaining a positive approach to challenges. It’s also a fundamental ingredient to creativity, which is highly valuable to all successful businesses in our knowledge based workplace.

Conversely, we don’t want the atmosphere at work to become sophomoric or offensive to anyone. The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is that some people will get it wrong on occasion. So what are the guidelines to getting it right? Appropriate humor in the workplace helps to bond people together, rather than separating individuals or groups. This is bad news for Don Rickles’ genre humor, which picks on individual idiosyncrasies. Further, it’s bad news for blond jokes, or anything that victimizes a specific group or type of people. A better approach is to learn to laugh at ourselves and the everyday things that happen. Once our people see their leader relax and laugh, they feel comfortable following suit.

Many organizations, ours included, struggle with email jokes, which have truly become pervasive. In addition to the time wasted, concerns about legal liabilities in the case of an action become worrisome. Speak with both your attorney and your HR team to strike the right balance in your company communications regarding email. The goal is to be legally covered without becoming a sterile workplace. It can be a challenging balance to strike.

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Determination is a trait that makes us crazy when we deal with it in others; yet every successful person has a healthy dose of it! Think about a determined child – how do they behave? Repeatedly going after the one thing that they are not supposed to have? Relentlessly asking for the toy that’s too expensive? Mercilessly poking their sibling until they get a rise out of him or her? In our efforts to encourage children to behave in socially acceptable ways, we sometimes go too far. Some kids wind up caving in completely and applying that learned behavior to all aspects of their life. Of course, that is rarely what the parents had intended. Different children respond differently to similar parental feedback, so one child may become passive, while his or her sibling may actually become even more determined.

Our workforce is comprised of these children, albeit a few years later, and whatever conditioning their parents did is ours to contend with, or reap the benefits of, today. Can we change their level of determination at this stage of life? The answer, of course, is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The odds of influencing a largely passive adult and turning him or her into an assertive, determined performer are slim. It is rare to see wholesale changes in people. More realistically, we can expect to see refinements in the behavior patterns that are typically exhibited. Think back to a parent conditioning a child. The key to altering behavior then was consistent feedback. Guess what? It still is!

This means that far more than annual reviews is needed. First, we need to hire people with the basic attributes the position demands. Then, to successfully mold our team, we need to provide each person with consistent feedback about our expectations, their current behavior and the gaps as we see them. Just as important, we must also consistently tell them where they excel, to reinforce their positive behavior. Just as it was with children, individuals will respond differently to feedback, so we must alter our feedback accordingly. It is, perhaps, the most important work that any leader does. After all, if we take care of and groom our people, they will take care of the business.

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Perhaps you’ve heard of learned helplessness. It’s a term that came out of psychology (Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism). Scientists conditioned a dog with electric shocks every time a bell rang. Once the dog was conditioned to expect a shock every time the bell rang, they put the dog into an open box, where it could easily escape. Then they rang the bell, and the dog just laid there, awaiting what it thought was the inevitable shock. Dogs that hadn’t been conditioned with the electric shocks simply jumped out of the box and ran off.

Sometimes it feels as if people around us have received similar conditioning. Often they just sit there, when the very things they want are easily within their reach. Something has squelched their natural drive for success. Great leaders seem to have the opposite conditioning effect on their people. First, they identify and hire ‘go getters’. Then they systematically pump them up, build their confidence and provide them with opportunities for small wins. Later, when a situation puts them in a ‘box’, they instinctively exhibit winning behaviors.

The beauty of being a person, rather than a dog, is that we have intelligence, self awareness and free will. We can actually go out and condition ourselves. Many of us do it in little ways, such as positive self talk, and asking good questions. It doesn’t have to stop there. We can do the same thing for ourselves that great leaders do. We can set ourselves up for small successes and build up to the bigger challenges. It takes a change in focus – from the things we cannot do, to focusing on the things we can do.

Imagine you are learning a new hobby. Would you start out with an advanced project? Of course not, you’d look for ‘Beginner’ on every project you considered. Then you would move up as your experience and confidence improved. Personal power is very similar. Find some ‘beginner’ projects and build yourself up to the ‘advanced’ level. I often recommend volunteer work for newbies. It’s a great way to build yourself up and poise yourself for greater challenges down the road.

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It used to be that you identified a job opening and hired somebody to fill it; simple, clean and efficient. Now we keep hearing about ‘talent management’, and executives want to know what it is and why they can’t just hire somebody if and when a need arises.

In fact, talent management starts with strategy and planning; it becomes a virtuous circle when done well. Start by assessing your current staff against your long term business growth needs. Identify where you anticipate each person will be in a few years. Then look for the gaps. Next, recruit today to fill any critical near term gaps, and develop your key people extensively. Finally, ensure that you have a serious plan in place to retain your people.

There are some excellent software solutions available to support this work. Since it is a highly collaborative and ongoing process, it is critical to systematically connect HR, line managers and senior management. Successful implementation demands a well trained, strategically oriented HR professional. Many organizations are finding that this is one of the key positions that needs to be filled!

Talent management has become critically important for a few key reasons. First, many businesses have become more knowledge based than production oriented. Ensuring that bright, talented people are in key positions is fundamental to success. Second, baby boomers are starting to retire, so there will literally be more openings than people to fill them. If businesses continue to wait for openings before developing their replacements, the situation will likely become untenable.

Remember that retention planning is fundamental to a true talent management strategy. If a business forgets this piece of the puzzle, it may find that its best people are picked off by competitors, just as they were about to produce a return on investment.

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Over the past couple of years, we’ve witnessed a very strange shift in the world of job search. We have received a number of inquiries from parents, looking for leadership development positions for their children. Can you imagine learning about leadership from a person with so little initiative and self esteem that he or she allows mommy or daddy to conduct his or her job search? We cannot.

In response to these requests, we inform the parent that the mere fact that the applicant is not inquiring personally disqualifies him or her from consideration. Most parents have been appreciative of the direct feedback. Yesterday, however, an irate mother fired back an angry letter quoting a leadership firm in Toronto that responded favorably to the same inquiry that we had rejected. Besides relief that we will not be involved with an angry and dysfunctional family, we are left to ponder reasonable standards for the workplace. As trainers and consultants, we place high value on “teaching others to fish”. Yet, in this case, an industry colleague has dropped reasonable standards.

As business leaders, it is incumbent on us to place high expectations on our people. We’ve heard rhetoric about the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’, typically from President Bush referring to students from poor areas. Politics aside, ‘low expectations’ are extremely damaging in the workplace. When we open the door to low standards for one person, it becomes too easy to rationalize it the next time. Clearly if you want to build a great business, it is critical to hire and develop a great workforce to run it. Aim high, and encourage your workforce to join you at the top!

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As youngsters, most of us try to be like everybody else. Our goal is to position ourselves as one of the gang, to fit in. Years later, in business, it is critically important to stand out, to position ourselves as unique or expert in some regard.

Let’s think about this with respect to a typical professional office. Some of the typical, positive positions include:

Strategist
Presenter
Idea Seller
Computer Geek
Numbers Person
Developer of People
Negotiator
Listener
Troubleshooter
Detail Person

The positions overlap, and most of us fill all of these to some extent. To assess your current positioning, ask yourself, “For which of these areas do my colleagues really on count me?” When someone comes to you for advice, in which area are they most likely to need support? If you are all over the board, either you are brilliant at everything, or you are not successfully positioned as much of anything.

If you are capable of excelling in all these roles, you may want to consider focusing your energies on the one or two areas you enjoy that are most highly valued at your organization. The key is to have management recognize your outstanding abilities. Take care not to be regarded as ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. That may prove a recipe for disposability. Just as the white Wonder Bread of years ago has been largely replaced by a myriad of specialty breads, generalists have also been largely replaced by a myriad of specialists. Be certain to position yourself well so an ‘expert’ doesn’t nudge you out of your workplace.

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