Dealing With Discouragement

August 30, 2014

Investment concept, close up of female hand holding stack of golOne of my favorite authors is Napoleon Hill. I have studied his work for many years, because my observation is that nearly all of the self improvement philosophers in modern times owe the basis of their techniques to fundamental truths uncovered by Hill back in the 1920s.

In 1908, Napoleon was commissioned by the great Andrew Carnegie to spend the bulk of his adult life working for him for a salary of zero. What Carnegie did offer to Napoleon Hill was to introduce to him all of the great leaders of that period for the purpose of learning and capturing their philosophies of life and leadership so that they could be made available to the common man.

The resulting book by Napoleon Hill in 1937 was Think and Grow Rich. Actually, Napoleon wrote a total of 11 books and did several audio tapes of his ideas. My favorite program is The Science of Personal Achievement: Follow in the Footsteps of the Giants of Success, available through Amazon and Nightingale Conant.

I have received infinite benefits from studying and applying Napoleon’s ideas in my life. One of the most useful is how to deal with discouragement. He wrote that when you have a time of great failure or disappointment, there is always a seed of equivalent benefit involved.

He said that our job is to find that seed of equivalent benefit and focus on that because soon our disappointment will turn to gratitude and joy.

What an amazing gift to have a specific process for turning our darkest moments into victories in our lives.

I continue to apply this technique, and while not yet perfect at it, I have found it works well in nearly every case thus far.

One example is when I wanted a particular job. The opportunity occurred after the completion of my main career, and I was doing some consulting and writing. The job was to work in a large organization helping to teach leadership to developing executives.

I really liked that idea and felt it was right for me to pursue the job. I worked hard at the application process, but in the end was not selected for the position. I felt deflated and depressed. Not only did I lose some welcome income, there was no opportunity to influence the leaders in that organization. I was miserable, but set out to find an equivalent benefit.

Reflecting carefully on the opportunity, it became apparent that I would have been extremely unhappy with the job. It would have required me to be away from home for about 30% of the time (which causes me great stress), and I would be forced to teach leadership from someone else’s script with firm orders to stick to the material.

I am an excellent teacher of leadership, according to my former students, and the reason is that I speak from my own experience and in my own tongue. In the past when I was forced to teach the materials provided by others, my performance was acceptable but not excellent. The inspiration was missing.

Shortly after my rejection, my elderly father needed to move out of his own apartment into an assisted living situation. It took me about 4 months working hard to accomplish the move and get dad situated for the rest of his life.

If I had gotten the teaching job, I would have been unable to serve my father’s needs and would have likely died trying to accomplish both tasks.

Looking back, it really was a blessing that I did not get the job. There were many benefits from not getting the position. The passage of time revealed them to me.

The tricky part of applying Napoleon Hill’s advice is to focus energy on the seed of an equivalent benefit at the time when we are down. That can be hard to do.

The genius of his advice is that by having faith that there is a benefit yet to be revealed, it takes our focus away from the depression and greatly accelerates the pathway toward feeling great again. It really works, and if you will just try this technique, you will find the quality of your life is significantly enhanced.

This method will not prevent unhappy things from happening in your life. The cosmos has a few curve-balls to throw at each of us every year. That is just the way things are.

When you follow Napoleon Hill’s prescription and look for the seed of an equivalent benefit, you vastly increase the chances of coming through the low times with less pain and more joy. What a blessing that is.

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Merger Double Duty

August 9, 2014

small babies twins on parental hands isolated on white backgrounThe announcement of a merger can send people scurrying to their offices to begin piling up sandbags of defense against the flood of change.

Many mergers are handled with all the sensitivity of a Gestapo raid. The story below may seem extreme, but it literally goes on in many organizations that rush into a takeover.

In the planning phase of the merger, top management has a gag rule on information because they are afraid people would panic if they knew what was going to happen.

They are convinced that to avoid sabotage, and other problems, it is best to keep things “under wraps” until the merger is ready.

Rumors start as a result of all the secret meetings. Layoffs are expected, because one primary result of a merger is to consolidate staff positions.

People are aware of this and hope they will be one of the survivors. In reality, some people are smart enough to hope they do not survive.

Top brass announces the merger, but it is really not a shock to the people in the organization. They are just glad to have the news out in the open. Being held in the dark is a most uncomfortable feeling. Now, at least people will know if they are “impacted” or not.

The dreaded day approaches and finally arrives. The boss calls the impacted people in one by one to tell them the bad news.

Guards walk them back to their area to get belongings and escort them out the gate. A quick handshake and the exchange of the employee pass is all it takes to complete the deal.

Oh sure, there is the promise of support from HR: “Go to a place off company property over the next week, and we will help you network in the community for another job.”

A packet arrives in the mail to sign up for COBRA Insurance to tide over the family. I would have thought they would call it BOA CONSTRICTOR Insurance rather than COBRA Insurance. At least that title would fit the reality.

A remaining employee, let’s say Mary, breathes a sigh of relief until the boss calls her into the office and says,

“As you know, we have let Jake go, so you will now cover his responsibilities.”

Mary says, “But I already have a full workload of customers, and I don’t know anything about Jake’s job.”

The insensitive Boss says, “Just do the best you can, and remember, as one of our most talented people, you still have a job here.”

In a daze, Mary wanders into Jake’s empty office. She looks around and shakes her head. “Well, I might as well dig in here and see what Jake’s job entails.”

She looks halfheartedly into Jake’s desk drawers, throws out an old can of shoe polish, and starts trying to make sense of the mess. She looks at the 4-drawer file of Jake’s former customers, now her responsibility.

Think about this scene. Have you ever tried to decipher someone else’s files with no crossover? It is impossible.

The sound of the phone ringing in her office wakes Mary up. She runs down the hall and grabs the phone in time.

It is the familiar voice of one of her own customers. Thankfully, she is able to answer the question and satisfy the concern. She does a double take and realizes that there are 14 messages on her answering machine from the past two hours.

She starts clearing out her backlog and becomes totally engaged in her old job – the one she knows and can handle.

Every day for the next several weeks, Mary goes to Jake’s office for a couple hours (usually including her lunchtime) in a feeble attempt to keep the most vocal customers in Jake’s area from blowing up.

There is little understanding or history to back up her actions, so she is not very effective. It is impossible to keep up with Jake’s workload in a couple hours a day, so Mary focuses most of her attention on the job she understands.

Customers eventually write nasty e-mails to the top manager who jumps all over the area manager. Customers are taking their business elsewhere because there is no service being rendered.

The boss rushes into Mary’s office and says, “Mary, you are not performing like your usual self. We have customers that are your responsibility who are defecting. I know you are super busy, but you simply cannot afford to ignore customers who are in need.”

Mary says, “You are right, Bill. I cannot. Another thing I cannot afford is to work here for you any longer. My family and my doctor tell me I am heading for a stroke, and I am simply unable to perform what is expected. Therefore, I am handing in my two week’s notice.”

Note the simple but inevitable consequence of a decision by top management to ignore transparency out of fear. The old saying, “penny wise and pound foolish” applies in this case.

The company lost valuable customers and one of its most valuable employees. In addition, this situation is going on multiple times in the work unit, because Mary was not the only one whose work load doubled with no training.

There is no way to make up for this damage. It is a major blow to the business; in many cases it is fatal.

The fault here is not the merger itself. It is the veil of secrecy around the planning that was the major culprit. That is silly because holding back information really did not prevent it from becoming common knowledge.

Limiting transparency made the damage much worse than it could have been.

I am not saying that mergers are a picnic if people are informed ahead of time, and there are legal restrictions on how much information can be shared.

Many of the problems will occur no matter how the disclosure is handled, but if we contrast the above scenario with a slightly modified one, the result has the potential of a brighter outcome.

The area manager calls all employees together on day one. He says, “We are contemplating a transition, and we are probably going to need a layoff in the next few months.

None of us are happy about this, but it will probably happen. The best thing you can do now is focus on your job. As we plan for how many people will need to leave, I will keep you informed and be available for questions.”

During the next couple of weeks, the need for a layoff becomes clear. The boss calls Jake into the office and says, “Jake, as you know we are projecting a layoff. It looks like you will be impacted and either be let go or have to assume a different role.

I would like to work with you to find the best option for you and see if we can keep you in the company in a different role. I will do my best.

You should begin networking now, both inside the company and outside. In the meantime, can you please work with Mary to introduce her to your customer base?

I will tell her that we are combining her job with yours, but we will reduce her report writing duties to allow her more time to accomplish the combined area.”

In the discussion with Mary, the boss stresses that she is a highly valued employee being called on to stretch her influence with the customer base. A reduction in paperwork will provide some relief in order to allow her more face time with customers.

She will also receive a modest bump in pay as a result of the increased responsibility. She will inherit Jake’s accounts and should get up to speed on them over the next two weeks.

I grant that this second scenario is far from easy or painless for all parties, but the consequences are far less debilitating for the business.

By treating all employees like adults from the start and leveling with them, many of the problems in the first scenario were prevented.

The most significant reason for the difference between the two cases is that the top boss or HR function allowed the local manager to operate with transparency.

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Why Some Bully Managers Last

July 5, 2014

aggressive businessman bullying colleaguesA student in one of my graduate leadership classes posed an interesting question. If bully managers cause so much grief, why are so many of them allowed to remain in power?

The question got me thinking of the many reasons bully managers, even the extreme ones, seem to hang onto their positions. Here are some of the reasons.

1. Weak Leadership Above – If a bully manager is allowed to remain in place, it means the leaders above him or her are not doing a good job. If those in charge look the other way while a manager is abusing people, then they are the real culprits.

It is rather easy to spot a bully manager when doing a 360 degree review process, so once one is identified, if the person is allowed to stay in a management position year after year, I blame the top leadership.

Also, weak leadership might look the other way because the bully has powerful allies. Bully bosses intimidate people at their own level and higher in the organization. They know the buttons to push or people to pressure in order to get their own way. If a weak leader is afraid of the bully, that can be a reason this person is allowed to continue.

If the bully is the top dog and not beholden to anyone, there is no force from above to curtail the negative behaviors. In this case, barring some kind of epiphany, the bully will keep on with the same conduct until he or she leaves.

Attempts from below to enlighten this person will usually be fruitless; they may even exacerbate the problem.

2. Sufficing –

A bully manager does elicit compliance because people are fearful. The unit reporting to this manager will perform at a credible level, even though people are unhappy and underutilized.

The crime is that the unit could be so much better, and the lives of the workers could be richer if the manager was replaced by someone with higher Emotional Intelligence.

Many units get by sufficing on a culture of compliance and avoidance and do not even realize the huge potential they are missing.

3. Being Clueless –

I have written on this before. The idea is that most bullies simply do not see themselves accurately. They would view themselves as being tough or having high standards of conduct.

My observation is that most bully managers are genuinely proud of their prowess at getting people to behave. They have no impetus to change, because their twisted logic reinforces the behaviors that elicit compliance.

They often view themselves as smarter than the people working for them and bark out orders because they sincerely believe they know best.

Another clueless possibility is that the entire corporate culture is stuck in this Ebenezer Scrooge mentality.

Hard as it is to fathom, there are still old style companies where management likes to terrorize. The same holds for family businesses where one generation intimidates the next.

4. Lack of trust –

A bully manager trashes trust on a daily basis without realizing it. When trust is low, all other functions in the organization operate like a car would run on watered-down gasoline.

The irony is that when the bully manager sees things sputtering and not working well, the logical reaction is to jump in with combat boots on to “fix” the problems.

That bullying behavior perpetuates the problem in a vicious cycle of cause and effect. If there is no external force to break the cycle, it will just continue.

5. Short term focus –

Most bully managers have a fixation on short term actions and do not see the long term damage being done to the culture. They would describe “culture” as some squishy concept that is for softies.

If you propose ideas to improve the culture to a bully manager, he or she will start talking about performance and accountability. Holding people accountable is a very popular phrase in management these days.

Imagine a world where there was less need to talk about holding people accountable because the culture they worked in was one that automatically extracted their maximum discretionary effort.

If the vast majority of workers in a unit habitually performed at the very peak of their potential because they wanted to, then accountability would take care of itself.

6. Lack of skills –

Bully managers often have not had good leadership capabilities built in through training and mentoring. You cannot blame a tyrant if he or she has never been shown a better way to lead.

Bully managers are often accused of having a “my way or the highway” attitude toward people, but I would contend that many of these misguided individuals simply feel “my way is the only way I know how to get things done.”

For these leaders, some intensive reprogramming can be an effective antidote only if they come to the table eager to learn new ways.

7. Fear means people will not challenge –

Most workers are not going to be willing to challenge a bully boss. The fear of getting their heads chopped off for leveling with the boss makes the prospect of telling the truth feel like knowingly walking into a lion’s den.

Every once in a while there is a person so foolish or confident that he will just walk into the lion’s den because there is little to lose. This person can help provide shock therapy for bully leaders by providing data on how the behaviors are actually blocking the very things the leader wants to accomplish.

These people might be called “whistle blowers” because they provide an errant manager, or the leadership above, with knowledge of what is actually happening.

Occasionally, a bully manager is so extreme that he or she must be removed and replaced by a more people-oriented manager. Unfortunately, it is also true that many bully bosses have the ability to remain in place for long stretches.

This adhesion to power is extremely costly to the organization in terms of current and future performance along with a prime cause of high turnover. If you have a bully manager reporting to you, get him or her some help through training.

If that does not work, move the bully out of a leadership role and put in someone with high Emotional Intelligence.

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Trust is Like Ice Cream

June 15, 2014

Ice creamMost people think of trust as one thing. We believe we know what the word means, but when I ask groups to define it, they come up with several different answers.

Groups typically come up with more than 20 different definitions of trust in about 10 minutes. All of the answers are correct, so it means that trust is a lot more complex than most of us realize.

Generic trust, meaning “assured reliance,” is easy to understand, but the complexities of the concept can boggle the mind.

If you are blindfolded, and you trust me enough to put some food in your mouth, you will easily identify it as ice cream.

You know the consistency, temperature, and creamy-sweet taste instantly.

Then, if I ask you what flavor ice cream you are eating, that may cause you to think a bit. When we cannot see what we are eating or drinking, our taste is not nearly as reliable as we might imagine.

For example, I cannot tell the difference between grape and orange soda when blindfolded. Before doing the test, I was 100% certain that distinguishing the two different tastes would be easy.

With ice cream, it is likely that I would be unable to tell the difference between cherry and black raspberry or perhaps even chocolate.

The metaphor works because while we know what trust is generically, the subtle distinctions between various types of trust may be harder to distinguish.

For example, I might trust you to feed my cat while I am on vacation, but not trust you to overhaul my car engine. That’s because I might not trust your competence in that area.

I could easily trust you to get change for a 20 dollar bill, but might think twice about giving you $10,000 in cash to deposit at the bank. That is because I put limits on what I am willing to risk, even though I trust you. Trust is never absolute.

I might trust you to admit you made a mistake, but not believe you are capable of discerning truth from fiction. Or I might “Trust” that you will get it incorrect every time. It can get pretty convoluted.

It is impossible to list all the kinds of trust in our lives. Clearly, trust is not just one thing.

Most of us have trust in abundance all around us every day. We have some level of trust with every person we know. We may trust the products we use, or we may not.

Hopefully we trust the organizations we work for, but that is not always the case.

For example, the Edelman Trust Barometer measurements show that in the United States, roughly 55% of people trust business to do what is right, but less than 20% of people trust their leaders to tell the truth when faced with a difficult situation.

We would find it hard to even go to a store if we did not trust the infrastructure of roads and bridges.

When we turn on the news, we find it difficult to trust the validity because we can dial up whatever flavor of news we want to hear at the moment.

Our trust in the media has consistently gone down for several years as we watch the various news outlets try to undermine each other. They have given up the pretext of being “fair and unbiased” and readily admit their news is flavored,  just like ice cream.

The complexity and variety of how trust is manifest in our lives boggles the mind, yet we need to trust in things and people every day.

The whole matter of trust becomes a kaleidoscope of images and textures that we interpret every day all day long without even thinking about it. The result is that we have confidence or not depending on what it all means to us at that moment. It is highly fluid and situational. It is also very fragile.

Although we use the word trust frequently, and it generally means one concept, we need to recognize the phenomenon is far more ubiquitous and complex than we realize. Take more notice of how trust is working in your life, and you will enhance the quality of your relationships.

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You Can’t Do the Best You Can

May 24, 2014

Lou HoltzLou Holtz, the famous football coach, did a video program in the 1980’s entitled “Do Right.” It is one of the most watched inspirational videos of all time.

In it, Lou suggested three little rules he had for every team he ever coached and also for his family.

1) Do Right,

2) Do the best you can, and

3) Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

Each one of these rules sounds logical, but each one can cause problems if applied literally.

I have challenged #3, the “Golden Rule,” in other articles by pointing out that not everyone would want to be treated the way I want to be treated. That problem has led some people to consider the “Platinum Rule,” which is “treat others the way they would like to be treated.”

The Platinum Rule is more flawed than the Golden Rule, because if we treat others the way they want to be treated, we would go broke giving them things that are not particularly good for them.

Rule 3 really boils down to treating each individual the right way. That also implies not treating everyone the same way, because each person has individual needs.

The #1 rule, “Do right,” seems straight forward until we try to make it operational. There are always conflicting forces in any decision, and it becomes a conundrum to know what the right thing really is.

Often we find that the “right” thing to do in the morning is not the best choice for the afternoon. Doing what is right is always situational, and each person’s analysis of that situation will determine the rightness of any particular action.

Therefore there is no absolute right thing to do in any circumstance.

We have to use our judgment.

The #2 rule, “Do the best you can,” sounds bulletproof until we stop and think about it. I have never done anything to the absolute best of my ability because when I think back, there is always something I could have done to improve my actions.

There is no way for me to be as smart as I am capable of, or as clever, or as sensitive. In any of my actions there is always room for improvement: sometimes quite a bit of room.

Striving to do the best we can is a formula for analysis-paralysis. With only a little more thought, we can always come up with something better to handle any situation. Therefore, if we follow Lou Holtz’s second rule to the maximum, we will spend all of our time planning and no time doing.

I am reminded of Edward Deming’s famous formula “Plan, Do, Check, Act.” By repeating this cycle over and over, organizations can learn from their mistakes and provide continuous improvement that moves in the direction of perfection without actually ever reaching it.

The irony is that many groups have found a way to modify Deming’s formula such that it looks like this: “Plan, Plan, Plan, Do, Hope.”

In order to make the most progress toward the goal of perfection, we actually need to jettison the ideal of reaching perfection and take up the cause of progress. That is how we can optimize our performance over time.

In retrospect, I think that Lou Holtz’s three rules would be more operational if they were stated,

1) Do good work,

2) Do the best you can with the resources available, and

3) Treat all people the right way.

These rules are pragmatic and allow us to be flexible as we seek to make each day better than the one before.

7 Comments | Candor creates trust, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Teamwork, Trust, Trust and motivation | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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Short Staffing

March 15, 2014

two doctors discussingA student in one of my MBA classes made a remarkable statement the other day. She wrote, “Short staff think only inside the box.” The unusual wording made an impact, and I decided to write on the concept.

Of course, she was not referring to people of lesser stature. She was commenting on the habitual practice of numerous organizations to run so thin on staffing that they compromise the viability of the business.

Knowing the “correct” level of staff is a tricky business for sure. I have done consulting for organizations where the employees are screaming that they are totally overloaded. Later on, working with these same groups, people would grumble about how most people are not pulling their fair share of the load.

In truth, most organizations get only a small fraction of the discretionary effort inherent in the workforce. My own unscientific estimate is that a typical organization these days manages to extract only about 30% of the capability of their workforce.

Some leaders use the amount of screaming for more resources as a guide to hiring. If the whining is not there, they figure the organization is running too fat.

If people are complaining but toughing it out, they conclude things are about right. If people are becoming ill and if turnover is sky high, they grudgingly agree to put on a couple more people.

Gauging the level of staff based on the complaint level is dangerous on both extremes.

If things get so thin for an extended period, the best people will just leave. If you wait until people whine to hire anyone, then you are probably running a Country Club.

Back to my student’s comment on the impact that running thin has on creativity. I thought her observation was spot on.

You can observe overworked people in numerous venues. According to many students, one typical place to see the stress is in nursing.

According to the Gallup Organization, the nursing occupation is the highest trusted occupation category of all every year since they have been measuring trust in organizations. Yet, nurses are normally so stacked up with critical tasks that they don’t find time to eat let alone try to figure out creative solutions to problems.

I am only singling out nurses because it is easy to observe this situation, in reality the problem occurs in numerous types of jobs.

In an effort to improve productivity, leaders stretch their resources like a rubber band. The problem is that if you do that, eventually you will exceed the elastic limit of the rubber, and it will permanently deform or just snap.

In those conditions, people are going to do the requirements as best they can and not be very engaged in improving the conditions. They become case hardened and bitter.

When people feel abused, they go into a survival mode, which severely limits productivity, so the managers get exactly what they deserve. It becomes a vicious circle.

The antidote is to work on changing the culture so that the current workforce is producing at a multiple of their prior productivity instead of just a tiny percentage higher than the prior year.

That means working on trust rather than forcing existing people to work in a constant state of overload.

It means investing in the resources you have, and maybe even adding some, rather than continually cutting back in an effort to survive. You may survive in the short term, but your long term prognosis is terminal.

When I suggest to leaders that they need to invest in their culture, I often get an incredulous or outraged look in return. “How can we possibly afford to work on our culture when everybody is already at the limit of their capability?”

Well, you cannot unless you change your attitude about how people work. If you would try the alternate path, it would quickly become apparent that the road to long term health and even survival is to have the right level of resources so that you can invest in the culture.

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How to Build Trust if Your Boss Doesn’t

January 25, 2014

AccountableIn my work with leaders who are trying to build higher trust within their organizations, I often hear mid-managers say, “I really want to build trust, but my boss seems intent on doing things that destroy trust almost daily. How can I be more effective at building trust in my arena when the environment I am working in doesn’t support it?”

This is an interesting conundrum, and yet it is not a hopeless situation. Here are six tips that can help:
1. Recognize you are not alone. Nearly every company today is under extreme pressure, reorganizations and other unpopular actions are common.

There are ways to build and maintain trust, even in draconian times, but the leaders need to be highly skilled and transparent.

Unfortunately, most leaders shoot themselves in the foot when trying to manage in difficult times. During the struggle, they do lasting damage rather than build trust.
If your boss is destroying trust with other people in the organization, chances are the bond of trust between you and your boss needs some work as well.

Let the boss know you are concerned with the level of trust within your own area and ask for his or her assistance in improving the situation. Open up the dialog about trust often, but do so using yourself as the example of the leader trying to improve trust.

This way you get your boss starting to verbalize the things that build higher trust as he or she tries to be a coach for you. This gives you the opportunity to ask some Socratic Questions about how broader application of the ideas might be helpful to the entire organization.

2. Realize that usually you cannot control what goes on at levels above you. My favorite quote for this is “Never wrestle a pig. You get all muddy and the pig loves it.” The best you can do is point out that approaches do exist that can produce a better result.

Suggesting your leader get some outside help and learn how to manage the most difficult situations in ways that do not destroy trust will likely backfire.

Most managers with low Emotional Intelligence have a huge blind spot where they simply do not see that they have a problem.
One suggestion is to request that you and some of your peers go to, or bring in, a leadership trust seminar and request the boss come along as a kind of “coach” for the group.

Another idea is to start a book review lunch club where your peers and the boss can meet once a week to discuss favorite leadership books.
It helps if the boss gets to nominate the first couple books for review. The idea is to get the top leader to engage in dialog on topics of leadership and trust as a participant of a group learning process.

If the boss is especially narcissistic, it is helpful to have an outside facilitator help with the interaction.

The key point here is to not target the boss as the person who needs to be “fixed,” rather view the process as growth for everyone. It will promote dialog and better understanding within the team.

3. Avoid whining about the unfair world above you, because that does not help the people below you feel better (it really just reduces your own credibility), and it annoys your superiors as well. When you make a mistake, admit it and make corrections the best you can.

4. Operate a high trust operation in the environment that you influence. That means being as transparent as possible and reinforcing people when they bring up frustrations or apparent inconsistencies.

This can be tricky because the lack of transparency often takes the form of a gag rule from on high. You may not be able to control transparency as much as you would like.

One idea is to respectfully challenge a gag rule by playing out the scenario with alternate outcomes.

The discussion might sound like this, “I understand the need for secrecy here due to the potential risks, but is it really better to keep mum now and have to finesse the situation in two weeks, or would we be better served being open now even though the news is difficult to hear?”

My observation is that most people respond to difficult news with maturity if they are given information and treated like adults.

If your desire to be more transparent is overruled by the boss, you might ask him or her to tell you the words to use down the line when people ask why they were kept in the dark.

Another tactic is to ask how the boss intends to address the inevitable rumors that will spring up if there is a gag rule.

Keep in mind there are three questions every employee asks of others before trusting them: 1) Are you competent? 2) Do you have integrity? 3) Do you care about me?

5. Lead by example. Even though you are operating in an environment that is not ideal, you can still do a good job of building trust. It may be tricky, but it can be done.

You will be demonstrating that it can be accomplished, which is an effective means to have upper management see and appreciate the benefits of high trust. Tell the boss how you are handling the situation, because that is being transparent with the boss.

6. Be patient and keep smiling; a positive attitude is infectious. Many cultures these days are basically down and morose.

Groups that enjoy high trust are usually upbeat and positive. That is a much better environment to inspire the motivation of everyone in your group.

If your boss is not good at leading in a way that enables trust throughout the organization, you can still help get the benefits of trust if you approach the situation correctly using the six tips above. In doing so, you will be leading from below and helping your organization rise to much higher productivity and employee satisfaction.

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Tips to Avoid Being Micromanaged

December 14, 2013

Stop doing thatMost of us have been in a situation where we have felt micromanaged. We were given something to do, but then badgered about exactly how to do it. This happens more in low trust groups, and it often creates a further degradation in trust.

We usually fault the manager for this problem because he or she is the one barking out the minute and detailed orders on how to do the job.

I have a theory on micromanagement. It is not entirely the fault of the leader who is intrusive into the workings of employees. I believe the employees are at least partly to blame in many cases.

Reason: I used to work for a leader who was known as the king of all micromanagers. He basically tried to run everything by telling people exactly how to accomplish their tasks. He was an excellent leader otherwise, but people always dinged him on being way too intrusive.

I learned about his reputation before ever going to work for him. During my first few weeks, I went way overboard in my preparation.

I would anticipate any potential question he might have and be prepared with data to support my conclusions. When he would suggest something to try, I usually could say, “it has already been done.”

I would communicate my plans to him every day (including weekends) and ask lots of questions about what was wanted.

He never had an opportunity to get to me because I always got to him first.

After a while, he basically left me alone and did not micromanage me very much for the next 25 years. We got along great, while he continued to micromanage others.

This experience led me to create a list of six tips you can use to reduce the tendency for a boss to micromanage you. Granted, this will not be 100% effective in all cases, but these steps can really help reduce the problem to a manageable level. Note: I will use the male pronoun here for simplification, but the same concepts would apply for both genders.

1. Try to anticipate what the manager will suggest

Work to understand the point of view of the manager, and figure out the suggested methods so when he says, “Do it this way,” often you can say, “That’s exactly how I am doing it. Or you might say, I tried doing it that way, but it created too much scrap, so I am now doing it a better way.

2. Be sure you are clear on the expectations

Often the manager has been somewhat vague on the precise deliverable. Before going off to do a task, take that extra time to verify what the boss really wants in the end. If it is a long or complex set of activities, see if you can get some sub-goals that you can deliver along the way.

3. Get to the boss before he gets to you

This technique really helps when you have a voice mail or text connection with the boss. Get familiar with the timing of communications and preempt the instructions with a note of your own. For example, if the boss has a habit of catching up on his micromanaging tasks during the lunch hour, simply provide an update to him at about 11 a.m. every day.

4. If the boss is getting intrusive, surprise him

It stops a micromanager dead in his tracks when he tries to tell you how to do step 3 and you tell him you are already on step 8. Step 3 was done yesterday, and the results were supplied to him in his e-mail inbox. The boss is blown away that you made so much progress.

5. Seek to build a trusting relationship with the micromanager

If the boss really trusts you, it means there will be less worry on his part that you will do things incorrectly. That means you are left alone to do things your way.

6. Call him on it

The boss needs to understand that for you to be empowered and give your best effort to the organization, you need to be free to use your own initiative. I knew one employee who brought a set of handcuffs into the office. Whenever his boss would try to micromanage him, he would just get out the cuffs and slip them on. The message was loud and clear, “if you want me to do this well, don’t tie my hands.”

My rule of thumb on micromanaging is that credibility and communication allow you to manage things as you see fit. Lack of credibility and communication often lead to being micromanaged.

3 Comments | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Transparency, Trust, Trust and breach of trust, Trust and motivation | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador

Five C’s of Accountability

October 27, 2013

Letter "C" - See all letters in my PortfolioAccountability is a very popular word these days. In my consulting practice, the word comes up on a daily basis. I have written articles on various aspects of accountability, from the attitudes that make it more constructive (not always negative) to how leaders should feel more accountable for their own actions before blaming others.

This article outlines five principles of accountability that can help any leader do a better job in this critical area of performance management.

The five principles are 1) Clarify Expectations, 2) My Contribution, 3) Care, 4) Comprehensive and Balanced, and 5) Collective Responsibility. Putting these five practices in play on a daily basis will improve the performance of any organization. Let’s see why that is:

Clarify Expectations

People must understand expectations to have any shot at meeting them. In some complex situations, a written document is required, but most of the time it is a matter of spelling out what the requirements are and gaining a verification that the employee has truly internalized them.

Often a failure to perform at the prescribed level can be traced to a misunderstanding between the supervisor and employee.

Supervisors sometimes make the mistake of assuming the employee understands what is required because he or she has heard the instructions. To verify understanding it is critical to have the employee state in his or her own words the specific requirement.

It needs to be framed up in terms of the specific action to be done by a specific time and with certain level of quality level. The employee can decide how to accomplish the task, but the deliverable must be crystal clear to avoid ambiguity.

Having the employee parrot back the expectation has the additional benefit in the event the deliverable is fuzzy. The supervisor can take the time to reiterate the specific deliverable before the employee attempts to do it. This saves time, money and reduces frustration.

My Contribution

Often the supervisor will attempt to hold an employee or group accountable when the reason for the shortfall was a blockage caused by the supervisor rather than the workers. Most people will do a good job if the culture and environment set up by management are conducive to working well.

When supervisors micromanage or otherwise destroy positive attitudes of the workers, they are contributing substantially to the shortfall they see within the workforce. They are quite often the root cause of the problem, yet they find it convenient to blame the workers for not toeing the line.

I recall one VP who lamented that “all my people are lazy.” As I dug into the situation, it was evident that the bully attitudes of the VP had caused people to become apathetic and perform only when beaten.

The VP blamed the workers, but he was clearly the source of the problem. He could not understand this connection of cause and effect. If this VP was replaced by an empowering leader, those “lazy” workers would quickly become productive and show high initiative.

Care

When giving feedback on performance, especially if performance is not at the level expected, be sure to treat the employee the way you would want to be treated if the situation was reversed.

The Golden Rule provides excellent guidance in most cases.

There are some exceptions where the Golden Rule breaks down (suppose I enjoy being yelled at and confronted), but they are rare. If the manager demonstrates real care for the individual, even when the feedback is not positive, the employee will usually respond well to the input.

Comprehensive and Balanced

This principle means that the leader must take the big picture of what is going on into account when deciding if an individual is meeting what is expected. There may be a specific reason for not living up to the agreed performance that is totally out of the control of the employee.

If a dog is left locked up in the house all day, it is entirely possible you will find a mess on the floor, even if the dog would have loved to have been let out.

Make sure that the feedback is balanced such that you account for the good things they do as well as for times they fall short. Since most people do things right far more than they fail, your holding people accountable should normally be a positive discussion.

Rapport and trust are destroyed when employees only hear from management when they are having problems.

Collective Responsibility

If the accountability discussion has the flavor of everyone, including the manager, being responsible, then that feeling of a family working together will permeate the discussions, and they will be more fruitful.

When the manager points the finger at a specific worker and fails to involve the other people who also make up the system, the employee feels picked on. This results in hard feelings and creates more problems than it solves.

These five C’s will help you create an environment where holding people accountable is more productive and effective. Try to remember these principles when you are dealing with the people in your life.

7 Comments | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Organization, Teamwork, Trust, Trust and motivation | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador

Trust versus CYA

October 19, 2013

Conflict3We are all familiar with the phenomenon of playing CYA at work. There is the potential for something negative happening in the future and we take care to document the problem and give our recommended solution to it.

We put the information in an e-mail that we send out to a manager involved in making decisions. The idea is that if the dreaded situation comes up at a later date, we can produce the e-mail and say, “I told them that this would happen and even suggested the fix, but nobody listened to me.”

This is just one form of CYA activity, and I offer it as an example to illustrate why this form on one-upmanship hurts an organization because it lowers trust. It is one thing to say what “they should do” about a potential problem. Words are cheap, and one can speculate that we should spend $100K to provide additional reinforcement to the foundation of our building in case of a future earthquake.

Putting that information in a note to the manager puts her in a difficult spot. Clearly we do not have $100K lying around with no purpose so we can just shell out the cash. The risk of an earthquake may be pretty low, but it can always happen.

The reason the CYA note lowers trust is because the manager realizes if she does not take the suggested action and there is an earthquake that results in several workers being killed, then she is going to be blamed, but if she does reinforce the walls and there is no earthquake, the money will be spent only for insurance.

The manager is in a no-win situation, and that lowers trust in both directions. The manager has less trust in the worker because he is trying to entrap or usurp the leader’s judgment. The worker has lower trust in the manager because there is perceived need to document the suggested remedy for future reference.

I have been in a situation where workers wanted me to purchase an entire new facility for close to $1Million because they believed the current one might someday fail. My response was to have the facility thoroughly inspected to determine if there was a real risk and how high that might be.

The engineers came back that the risk was real, but I could test for the robustness of the facility each year, and that would detect if things were deteriorating beyond a safe level. Having that inspection was better than nothing, but it was not totally foolproof, so the workers wanted to just scrap the old facility and purchase a new one.

That expense was difficult to justify because the product being made was near the end of its life, so a new facility would never pay off.

Caught between a rock and hard place, I asked the workers to understand that the minute risk was made manageable with the yearly inspection and they need not worry, but if anything ever happened in that facility, I knew I would be held accountable, so I tried to find another way to reduce the risk.

The engineers said that if we slowed down the equipment it would probably never fail or if it did, the failure would be detectable so nobody would get hurt. I decided to run the operation at a reduced speed as a compromise position, but the workers were not happy with it.

The series of discussions, notes, and meetings did serve to lower the trust that the workers had in me. Their point was that if I truly cared for them as people, I would spend the $950K to upgrade the facility even though there was no economic payback for it. It turned out that we shut down the complex less than a year later because the volume of demand for the product decreased, but the reduction in trust was something I had to live with.

The antidote for this phenomenon is to listen to the whistleblower and not ignore the request.

That was my approach in this case, but it was not an easy pathway to a decision. Trying to figure out what to do in a marginal case like this is what keeps managers up all night. Finding the right balance between trust in the system and protection from all forms of potential problems can be a very tricky area for managers.

Spending money to prevent any potential for disaster is a never-ending proposition. It is like buying insurance policies. You can never be fully protected from all hazards, but you can go broke trying. The best approach is to involve the impacted people in all aspects of the business, including protection from possible but highly unlikely scenarios.

If the workers realize that any tradeoffs made in the operation have a direct impact on them as well as the business, they can become part of the decision making process. This usually increases the level of trust for two reasons 1) it improves transparency, and 2) it lets people be part of the process so they are aware their managers care about them.

3 Comments | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Transparency, Trust | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador

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