No Comments

Dealing With The Badly Behaved

2011
02.28

I hear this speech by the Southwest flight attendants weekly,

“In the event of a loss of cabin pressure these baggy things will drop down over your head. You stick it over your nose and mouth like the flight attendant is doing now. The bag won’t inflate, but there’s oxygen there, promise. If you are sitting next to a small child, or someone who is acting like a small child, please do us all a favor and put on your mask first. If you are traveling with two or more children, please take a moment now to decide which one is your favorite. Help that one first, and then work your way down.”

There is some good advice in there.

1.    Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

2.    Treat people who behave like children as though they were – by teaching, showing and helping them do the things that will save them.

3.    Decide what your priorities are.

All these are necessary in order to deal with the badly behaved.

Take care of yourself – get enough sleep so you have some energy left over for patience.  Practice getting centered, grounded and present so that you recognize that bad behavior on the part of someone else is no reason to take it personally and it is not necessary for you to judge them.  You have many choices from a calm centered place, very few when you are “hooked”.

Treat the badly behaved like, well, like they are too immature to know better.  Whether it is an occasional outburst or continuous childishness, when a person is in the midst of it they don’t know better.  The most effective management of children is to let them suffer the consequences of their behavior, help them see better ways of managing their own life, and have empathy for their predicament.  Those things work with grownups acting like children as well.  In a work situation, that might look like a 3 step process:

1. Make the expectations clear. “For this job, you are expected to coordinate with Donna and get this task done by the last Friday of the month.”  “You are expected to be at work on time.”  “We treat each other with respect.”

2. Set enforceable boundaries. “If you are disrespectful, people will not want to work with you.  That means that you will have a hard time gaining their full cooperation.  More importantly, I cannot allow the people here to be treated with disrespect.  So, if you continue to express your frustration in disrespectful ways, I will ask you to take a break by going home for the day.  And, we will not be paying you for time you are not at work.”   Please note: consequences are the natural result of bad behavior and the only one who feels the pain is the offender.  Consequences are not punishment.

3. If the behavior occurs then enforce the consequences with empathy. Judgment about the person inhibits your ability to have empathy.  It takes a lot less energy on your part to empathize with the predicament the person has gotten themselves into than to judge and be angry.  “I’m sorry you felt so frustrated that you could not control your anger.  As I have said, we cannot allow people to be treated that way here.  You are dismissed for the day.  I know it will hurt to get a short paycheck this week, so I hope you can find other ways to deal with your frustration.  If you need help with that, let me know.”  Please note:  We don’t inflict our help on them, just offer it as a choice for them to consider.  When they are ready to accept help, they will ask.  If they aren’t ready, you are wasting your time.

It is amazing how fast bad behavior stops when the offender figures out that they are causing their own pain and that they can change that.  Consequences, delivered consistently and with empathy allow them to realize that.  Punishment no matter how delivered, only makes the person more convinced that someone else is responsible for their suffering and the other is the one who should change.  I have seen this step method work wonders in the work environment.  Once mastered, it is powerful and fast!

Decide what your priorities are.  If you want to know what your priorities are, then look to see what you are doing vs. what you want to be doing.  If you are spending a lot of time getting the badly behaved to get into line, comply with requirements, smoothing over conflict, working around people, then your priority is to get something, anything done and to make the badly behaved work the way you want them to.  If you REALLY want to change bad behavior to good – then your priority has to be to set enforceable boundaries and then enforce them.  That may mean that the badly behaved may or may not make it in your company.  So, just imagine what it would be like if you had 100% of the energy, creativity, and productivity from all the people the badly behaved are beating down every day.  What priorities do you need if you want that?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Category Leadership |

No Comments

Compassionate or Caretaking?

2011
02.05

What a fine line there is between being understanding and empathetic, and using those same attributes as excuses to avoid saying that which needs to be said.  If you are consistently underperforming in your job because of family or personal issues and I am your boss, should  I talk with you about the problems your underperformance is causing the company or should I look for other, less direct ways of addressing your non performance (like reassigning you)? Here’s a more subtle example; if you have repeatedly demonstrated your loyalty to me and the company through heroic acts of service and dedication but now, over time, the company has outgrown its need for your direct, forceful style, do I confront you on the impacts of your behavior or avoid doing so for fear of hurting your feelings?

The answers to both of these questions are obvious – a good boss, of course, confronts the problem directly with the employee.  But it’s not that simple, is it?  The longer our history with employees who have helped the company “grow up” the harder it is for many managers to deal directly and openly with the situation. I’ve seen leaders who have no problem dealing with emotionally uncomfortable conversations with customers or clients defer, avoid, redirect and downright deny issues with their closest or most tenured employees.

I have  lost count of  the number of  careers, relationships, or teams who have been negatively impacted by employees whose behavior or performance has not been dealt with honestly and directly.  I’m for giving these people what they deserve, the truth, even if the truth hurts. How?  By describing the impact of their behavior or attitude is having.  By setting limits over what is acceptable and what isn’t. By reminding them that they have a lot more capacity for contributing than they are currently using. Let’s give this group a little more credit; most of the time, they can sense they aren’t meeting objectives or goals. If they knew how to be more successful, they would be doing so.  They need help, and they need direct, honest feedback.  Caretaking them just prolongs the illusion that everything is fine when it isn’t, and they know it.

The saying…”the truth shall set you free, but first, it will make you miserable”, reinforces what I am talking about.  But even better would be this modification to the saying:  “You’re obviously miserable, so let me tell you the truth about things as I see them,  so you can set yourself free.” I have come to believe that caretaking isn’t compassionate, it borders on being cruel.  Compassion begins with the truth.  The art of feedback and the character trait of compassion make for a powerful combination.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Category Leadership |

32 comments

How Many Consultants Does It Take To Change a Light Bulb?

2010
12.16

…only one but it really has to want to change.

Mostly the processes consultants use and the practices we teach are not rocket science.  It is easier to see what might be helpful to practice from the outside but usually leaders can figure out what they need to do.  The hard part is that it takes practice and accountability.  The effort required takes a real desire to change.  Without true commitment, nothing changes permanently.

Like many consultants, Jim and I spend a lot of time on the road, in other people’s companies doing leadership development.  We both have to feel like we are spending that time wisely; therefore, we choose not to do training that is a “butts in seats”, “one and done”, no follow-up course.  If your company and you personally aren’t willing to make the commitment to really changing, then you won’t learn and grow.  We will not be able to change the light bulb unless you really want to.

Leadership development is an individual and group change process and the changes that we all have to make to grow and improve are mostly simple but not easy.  For example, a leader that wants to help people learn to solve problems rather than find out what happened (read, who to blame) must make some changes in his/her own beliefs/assumptions/attitudes first.  Simple to understand that blame isn’t productive and which words feel blaming.  Hard to feel that way when the stuff hits the fan and use the right words, attitude, and tone in the moment.

So, can we change the light bulb?  Not if you don’t want to make real effort and aren’t committed to changing yourself instead of “fixing them”.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Category Change Management, Leadership |

36 comments

What Difference It Makes

2010
10.14

If I have Curiosity, I can gain Perspective

If I have Perspective, I can choose Compassion

If I choose Compassion, I will adopt a Purpose that is bigger than me

If I follow my Purpose, Others will want to  Collaborate with me

If that Collaboration is for the common good, We will create Mutual Interest across departments, organizations, industries, countries, and ideologies

If there is Mutual Interest, the World Will Change

It takes courage to make a difference.  Are you exercising your courage?  To what end are you using your courage today?  What are you curious about now?  Where are you creating mutual interests?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Category Change Management, Leadership, Uncategorized |

1 Comment

Where to Begin with Social Responsibility

2010
09.14

We tout ourselves as a firm that helps clients look at issues of sustainability. More specifically, we say we design and deliver leadership training that helps leaders have impact for the greater good -not only in their work-a-day worlds, but also in their communities.  If you drill into reading our marketing collateral, eventually you’ll pick up on the fact that we’re very solid in our stance on social responsibility.  Our goal is simply to help our clients generate wealth and have more impact. Like so many expressions, “social responsibility” has been politicized along with everything that begins with the letters S-O-C-I-A-L. Maybe it’s time for a new term, or maybe it’s time just to re-clarify the old one.

Here’s our definition of “Social Responsibility”:

“…an ethical and ideological approach to business that assumes sustainable profit is best achieved by taking into account the well-being of society .”

In action, social responsibility is when a business takes full accountability for its impact on society through its influence on customers/communities, employees, its supply chain and the environment.

What makes our definition unique is quite simple, we believe sustainable profit is THE key outcome of acting in a socially responsible fashion.  It’s not as if we invented the notion that profitability is tied to doing what’s right, we didn’t; companies like Starbucks, Kellogg, the Gap, Herman Miller, Novozymes and Union Pacific are proving it.

Need more detail?  Try this on for size:

Environment – Would you consider a company that examines its operations in terms of waste generation and efficient energy usage smart?  I would, and apparently so do the thousands of companies who have decided to first understand and then reduce their impact on the environment as part of their social responsibility strategy.

Employees – Would you want to invest in a company that addresses issues of culture, employee engagement and working environment as a key cost to manage for profitability or quality?  Hopefully, you answered “Yes!” because as it turns out, companies whose cultures outperform the competition also out-sell, out-deliver, out-execute and out-produce companies with less effective cultures.

Supply Chain – If costs are equal, would you rather purchase products from a company that gets it raw materials or unfinished goods from a country or organization that exploits people and the environment or one that treats people equitably and works to preserve the environment?  Duhh. In actuality, the data shows that costs don’t even have to be equal, they just have to be close to equal for consumers to make a better choice. Not bad for a society that is coming out of its worst economic downturn since The Depression!

Customers/Communities – Customers like to know that the businesses they buy products and services from invests some of its profits back in to the community, or at least that its employees are active members of the community, but that alone isn’t enough to justify corporate community investment.  Investing back in to the communities from which profit is derived is simple ecology; if we feed that which nourishes us, it will grow and continue to nourish us. Neglect it or exploit it without caring for it and it eventually dies or becomes sick.

How do you decide where to begin?  Each of our clients has a different social responsibility entry point, and every one of them is making progress.  Our recommendation is this: begin where the greatest gains can be made in terms of profit.  If you’re in a business where there is market share to be won, go after top-line profitability (customers/community).  If the issue is quality, product or service performance, consider starting with employees.  Are costs creeping up faster than the market can bear?  Look for ways to increase efficiency, reduce the amount of stuff you send to the landfill or reduce your energy footprint. Let’s begin by calling “Social Responsibility” what it is – a mechanism to do well by doing good.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Category Uncategorized |

21 comments

Accountability and Engagement Demystified

2010
09.01

When I go into companies, I always hear that communication is an issue.  That’s because we humans are complex and the coding of ideas and thoughts into words is clumsy.  When, where, how and what to communicate is only clear cut at the extremes and most of our work is somewhere in the middle.  But communication is the key to employees who are excited, take responsibility, and look for ways to add value.

Telling – Many leaders tell their people what, where, how, and sometimes why.  That kind of telling encourages people to quit thinking and either comply or resist.  That is because workers like autonomy to do their job.  The kind of telling people do need is clear vision about what is supposed to be done and by whom, how their job fits into the big picture, what events are happening that might affect them and the company, what is working or not, and what your opinions are (while making it OK for them to have different ones).

Asking – Sometimes I hear questions like, “Why did you do that?” “What are you doing?” “Who did that?”.  The problem isn’t the question but the tone.  When questions are really statements or looking for who to blame, everyone knows it.  The tone is different than when you really are just looking for information to understand the situation.  Check your reasons before you ask your question.

Another kind of asking leads employees to think more deeply and broadly.  “What other options do you see?”  “What do you think will happen if you do that?”  “How can we avoid this in the future?”  “How should we look for better solutions?”  People want to be challenged and to get better.  These questions build resilience and perspective which allows employees to grow and learn.  A side benefit is that when these are the kinds of questions that get asked, people quit hiding things to keep out of trouble.

Involving – Involving people in things that are meaningless, like committees that have no power or programs that they don’t care about or taking on more responsibility because managers or teammates are underperforming, is a huge de-motivator.  Acting like they are somehow being recognized and appreciated because of it is even worse.

Truly involving people means giving them something purposeful to do – work on a problem that, if solved, makes a difference to the employees or the customer.  All of us want our work to mean something – to make something better that is connected to something bigger than ourselves.  Give employees the authority and resources to make a difference.  It doesn’t mean you don’t need to know what they are doing; you still have to help them think, stay focused, and move obstacles from their path.

Appreciation – Appreciating well leads employees to think like owners, they anticipate needs, innovate, care about your customers and each other.  They are accountable and engaged.  It isn’t really such a mystery about how to get people to that point.  The right kind of telling, asking, and involving leads you there – then you have to appreciate the added value your employees are bringing.  Giving bonuses and prizes only works if it is meaningful to the person and if you aren’t playing favorites, giving everyone a “trophy” thereby diluting its value, or institutionalizing your appreciation through employee of the month type recognition.

“Thank You” goes a long way.  Noticing when a person contributes and letting them and those around them know you noticed goes even further.  Being consistent about looking for ways to let people know when they have done well is how you get ownership.  That consistency allows people to see how what they do contributes to the whole and so they keep learning how to add value.  It doesn’t have to cost money but it does have to be personal.

Learning to tell, ask, involve, and appreciate skillfully is an ongoing practice.  Begin your practice today.  It will take courage to suddenly start communicating differently but if you do you have everything to gain.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Category Leadership |

68 comments

The Courage to Make a Difference*

2010
06.30

I’ve been thinking about the deplorable temper tantrums politicians are throwing over serious issues that need serious solutions.  Issues like climate change, oil spills, clean water, health care, the economy.  The issues are too big and too complex to be solved by legislation alone but legislators, business people, activists, NGO’s, and citizens alike could make a big impact if they would work together.  Here is a story about the CEO of Duke Energy, one of the biggest polluters on the planet, and how he is trying to make a difference.

Making a difference takes courage because there are always those who will say your intentions and actions are not good – especially if they think they have something to lose.  There are always those who will say because you are not 100% right, that you can’t possibly be doing good.  It takes courage because you could fail a lot before you succeed.  It is a long hard road and not for the faint of heart.  We need companions along the way for support.  We need coalitions for power.  We need every person willing to stand up that we can get.  That is where you come in.

Most of you are not the CEO of a huge energy company.  Most of us live our lives day to day doing the routines of life.  But we are the people who will make recommendations, invent technology, ask important questions, innovate within our field, raise children and grandchildren to be responsible citizens, and vote legislators in or out.  We are the ones who will write blogs, letters to the editors, the President, our senators.  We are the ones who vote as shareholders.  We have a voice and there are more actions to take than any one of us has time to do.  So, we need all of us.

I don’t want to hear how wrong the people who don’t believe as you do are.  We are all running out of clean air, clean water, healthy environments, dollars for basic needs such as health care.  Pollution doesn’t care if you are a Republican or Democrat.  Cancer doesn’t care if you have insurance or not.  Desperate people who live in poverty don’t care whether you are Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, or whatever.  It is time that we all quit acting as though we are somehow able to “have ours” at the expense of others and it won’t affect us.

I want to encourage you, whoever you are, to gather your courage and make a difference.  Just because you don’t run a big energy company–and especially if you do-doesn’t mean you can’t do something every day or every week to make a difference in the critical issues that we face.

It is time we support people like Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers and anyone else who is trying to make it better, whether they are doing a perfect job or not.  It is time for-profit businesses got together with government, activists, and NGO’s to create the support and power to change the world – one conversation, one letter, one law, one decision, one action at a time.

My next blog entry will be about simple actions in the workplace that eventually make a difference.  Stay tuned.

* For more on Courage, read The Five Insights Of Enduring Leaders, by Jim Morris

Tags: , , , , , , , , Category Change Management, Leadership |

20 comments

Legacy Employees- Bringing Out their Best

2010
06.07

In every organizational change effort in which we have participated, one of the most complicated elements of the transformation is what to do with legacy employees who have been passed-over by time and circumstance.  In their prime, they were key contributors to the business but as it changed – they didn’t. At this point, they are more often referred to as obstacles instead of as supporters.  Thankfully, we work for companies who don’t just dispose of their legacy employees when they are past their prime, but not doing so makes retaining or slowly transitioning legacy employees that much more complicated. Here’s what we’ve learned and what we have seen work:

  • Legacy employees whose performance is suffering know it. They may deny or hide their awareness of this because they aren’t sure what happened, but almost without exception, they know. Therefore, when you find the legacy employee a job that more suits their skills and interests, they are enormously relieved, even if the move is tough on their egos.
  • The people who are most impacted by legacy employee’s  performance problems are usually their successors.  Involve the successor in supporting and even sponsoring the legacy employees’ transition into a new role.  Don’t make the successor responsible for managing their performance but involve them in finding a way to move the employee to a more productive position. Too often, we have seen managers who are not close enough to the situation make decisions about where and how to move the employee, and it doesn’t work.
  • Most legacy employees are willing to take a pay cut, if doing so means also taking a position that has less stress or other non-tangible rewards.
  • Some legacy employees can become excellent mentors and trainers, but only if someone shows them how.  Give them additional experience and training in how to increase their effectiveness teaching and coaching others.
  • Don’t hide the truth from them.  Sugar coating or lying to them about why you are moving them to a different position does them and everyone around them a disservice.  Being honest doesn’t imply one has to be mean, but it is better to be direct that to create a false impression.
  • Finally and most importantly, don’t avoid dealing with legacy employees whose performance is impeding the rest of the organization. We have seen one solitary legacy employee  stall  change efforts for organizations of 500 people and larger simply because their senior managers or owners were afraid or uncomfortable dealing with them. Doing so creates huge animosity among other employees which causes even more problems.

Found other things that are important when dealing with legacy employees?  Have questions?  Leave a message – start a conversation!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , Category Change Management |

14 comments

The New Normal – Bring-On the Death of Organizational Development

2010
05.24

Here’s an  invitation to people who do what we do: Let’s put ourselves out of business by teaching our clients to do what we do. What do you say? C’mon, it won’t hurt anything but our pride to stop acting like experts and empower our clients. After all, they always were the experts.

What our clients ask us to do is to take a look at their organizations through a meta-lens – to see the forest through the trees, and decide how to intervene to make things better. Like the millions of other OD practitioners in the world, we’re  hired to optimize the best patterns of performance in an organization while minimizing or resolving the areas where performance is low.

But wait, isn’t that the job of every leader?  You bet!

Our work should be about helping leaders develop the traits that enable them to operate like organizational development experts.  Is this approach novel?  Not really.  Is it popular with businesses?  More so all the time. “Organizational Development” is being replaced by what we call “consultative leadership” .

Consultative leadership is the art of assessing what IS and knowing how to involve, engage and otherwise influence the people involved in the process to sustainably improve it. By implementing change in this way, the people involved learn new skills and develop the muscle that makes  the process generative.  Consultative leadership is the opposite of the leader-as-hero model where leaders parachute in to problem situations in their business and, through a series of expertly ordered dictates and decisions, singlehandedly transform  a process or problem.  Parachutist leaders work well and quickly – but no one learns or develops in the process.  Organizational Development doesn’t happen.

To bring about the death of OD in organizations, I recommend we start doing the following:

  • Measure a leader’s effectiveness as much for How they achieve results as IF they achieve results.  Are they mentoring , coaching and otherwise developing their replacements while simultaneously posting great results? It’s possible to do both. In today’s environment, it’s necessary.
  • Raise the bar on your expectations. Delighting the customer isn’t exceptional anymore.  It’s standard. Are teams able to work without the full time involvement of their leader, or are they addicted to having a heroic leader who wears a big parachute lead them? Hold your management team accountable to build capacity, not just solve problems or delight the customer.
  • Spend more time helping your leaders to see the meta-picture of your organization. Once their vision has improved, start encouraging them to develop management practices that engage their people in designing and implementing change.
  • Be ready to reassign people to play to their best strengths.  Some leaders won’t be able or even willing to make the change from an expert parachutist to a consultative leader. If they can’t or are unwilling to, help them find a role that will serve the business, and your customers, better.

Put us out of business. If you have your own OD department, put them out of business, too. Imagine how much you’ll save!  There are plenty of other things we can do with our time (like helping other clients learn how to do what you’re doing).  Who knows, you may have some highly capable consultative leaders in your OD department who are itching for a chance to manage a piece of your business.

The competitive advantage of having an agile and self-sustaining organizational culture will eventually be the new norm.  Between now and that undefined point in time when it is, the organization that develops OD capability  will have a huge leg-up on their competitors.  Ask Google. Ask the new HP. Ask Herman Miller. Ask IDEO.

Define the new norm. It won’t be cheap, but neither is hiring us.

Let me hear from you! – Jim Morris

Tags: , , , , , , , , Category Change Management |

3 comments

Whose Rules?

2010
04.29

I sometimes hear from Gen Y employees that their manager just doesn’t seem to care unless they make a mistake.  The rules of engagement for many of them is that “everyone gets a trophy”.  That means that if they aren’t “getting the trophy”, they don’t know if they did the right thing or if you care if they did.  Getting the trophy on a day to day basis means that you as their manager “should” be noticing what they do right and telling them they did a good job.  For some Boomer managers, the rule is “I’ll let you know if you aren’t on track.”  So, having to be consistent at letting people know when they are on track can be a hard behavior to change – as much because it goes against their rules as actually taking the time to say something regularly to the Gen Y employee.

Humans have a wide range of intensity of emotion and the most likely place for intensity to arise is when others’ rules of engagement are at odds with our internal set of rules. Intensity increases when a person breaks one of our “rules of engagement”.  The research is clear that emotional intelligence (EQ) is a better indicator of leadership success than IQ.  Personal mastery is one of the major elements of EQ.  Learning to let go of the intensity of negative emotion is a very useful personal mastery skill.  We all have different rules for how to be in the world and negotiating those rules is hard when we hold onto the feeling that the other person is just wrong.

The practice of Letting Go.  Lots has been written on this and so I am going to offer two practices.  I invite you to try them and let us all know what happens.

Practice one:  Try doing something that goes against your rules every day for a week.  It shouldn’t be something that has far reaching consequences – the point is to watch what happens to you, not what happens out in the world.  For example, my internal rule is that you clean the kitchen before you go to bed.  I could leave the dishes in the sink until morning.  Then, I would notice how that feels in my body, what emotions it evokes, what my self-talk is.  That is it.  Try a different one each day for a week.  Let us know what you notice.

Practice two:  See how often the intensity of your inner state rises and to what.  Write down a hash mark on a piece of paper every time you notice your body, your emotions, your self-talk, or any outward sign that you are feeling more intensely about something.  The trigger can be negative or positive but notice and make a hash mark.  See what surprises you.  Notice patterns.  Write a comment or two about your experience and let us know what your rules are that cause these reactions.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you,  Betsey

Tags: , , , , , , , , Category Leadership |

« Older Entries