Monthly Archives: January 2011
No matter how smart we are, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much leadership training we have, no matter how good our intentions, sometimes we are going to mess up. This is especially true when it comes to confronting unacceptable behavior. During leadership training, we carefully learn the three parts to an I-message, [1] how to respond after the other person reacts, what to do next, etc. We learn when to use them, what the consequences of using you-messages (blame, judgment, sarcasm, and so on) are, how to incorporate I-language into conflict resolution, performance reviews, appreciative messages and on and on. Many participants feel pretty confident after all that practice and feedback and many become quite skilled. Even those who are not quite so skilled become better than they were before. All in all, it is usually a very satisfying experience for the participants and for me. So, off they go. Typically, the first few times they try their new skills, they do pretty well. They may feel awkward or timid, but often they are pretty successful. The other person recognizes that they are trying something new and even though they may be a little suspicious, they often give the participants the benefit of the doubt. ...Read more
Several years ago I was working with a client who was very harried. His department was always behind. Everyone was scrambling to keep up and looked like they hadn’t slept for a week. The manager pushed his people pretty hard and they were responding by working extra hours and extra hard. He had a beef with one of his team members (We’ll call him Steve). The manager said to me, “Steve just doesn’t have a sense of urgency.” I asked him several questions, “Is he not working as hard as the other team members? Is he not doing his share of the unpleasant tasks? Is he not being productive?” He responded, “Well, no but he doesn’t look worried.” It was true. While everyone else was frowning with their heads down, clothes rumpled, Steve strode down the hall with his head up, making pleasant conversation with his colleagues. He looked fresh. He had a tan. In fact, Steve was more productive than most of the other team members. He just didn’t look as stressed. ...Read more
So the boss may say to the team member, “It’s not my decision to make. I’m just telling you what my boss told me. It’s out of my hands. It’s just our policy.” Or to his or her manager, “I just have a bunch of poor performers. Turnover’s too high. We just had a layoff. I don’t get the support I need from upper management.” We have all heard the excuses. We have all used them at times. Being responsible can sometimes be hard. In 1964, a woman was repeatedly stabbed, raped and, finally, murdered. The actions occurred over a 35 minute period of time and there were 38 witnesses. No one did anything to help. No one, it seemed, was responsible for helping, or even for notifying the police. People were outraged. They said, “I certainly wouldn’t act that way. Surely, I would have done something”[1]. ...Read more
How do you go about evaluating team members’ performance? At some level, doesn’t the leader have to judge the employee? If the team member is just not up to the job, that becomes a business issue. Of course, but this can escalate into a major headache with little promise of a useful outcome. Most large companies have some sort of performance review system and they all have their problems. Managers are often not very skilled at executing them. They have certain built-in inequities. They can be subject to manipulation. Frequently, they do not really reflect an accurate picture of the employee’s performance. And so on. To counter this, many companies have adopted ranking systems in which senior managers sit in a conference room and rank all of their employees from best to worst. This is making a bad situation worse. And if that isn’t bad enough, some allow anonymous input into the system. That way no one is accountable for anything they say. Wow! The consequences of this are too much to explore in depth in this article but I have yet to see such a system benefit the performance of an organization. And, in many cases, the resulting pain is highly destructive. Team member evaluation should, in any case, be about whether the employees are meeting their goals and objectives not about who is better than whom. Also, performance evaluation should be about behavior not about the individual. It should be done in the spirit of helping the team member improve and it should be done on a day-to-day basis, not “saved up” for the performance review. No surprises! Of all the things that you can do to ruin teamwork in your organization, short of outright criminal behavior or abuse of power, ranking systems top the list. ...Read more
“She’s a micromanager,” “He’s just lazy,” “My boss is totally unfair,” “My team member is not a self-starter,” and the list goes on. We all use these labels. We put people into categories. It is a shorthand way of understanding them and simplifying our choices about how to treat them. But, there are many dangers in overusing such categories. In leadership training classes, I conduct an exercise around a concept about GLOP = General Labeling Of People. I ask participants to name as many words or phrases as they can think of that describe, “people and the way they are.” I always get a similar list of words. “Lazy” is almost always listed (usually the first one named) along with irresponsible, rude, micro-manager, aggressive, pushy, and many others – some in the most colorful language you can imagine. The listing is followed by a discussion of the words and the possible risks of relying too heavily on “GLOPs.” It doesn’t take long for participants to note: ...Read more
A dilemma in any program or leadership training workshop that includes an intercultural component is the tension between finding common ground and appreciating differences. I once heard a respected colleague say, “The seminar was great. The facilitator got us focused completely on how people are alike rather than lingering on our differences.” I remember thinking, “That would be good only if you believe that anything different is bad.” Why bother traveling to another country or trying to create a more diverse workplace if differences are bad? It seems to me that the appeal of traveling to another culture is to learn something new; to experience something different. It is the same with teams. The power of diversity is that the team becomes stronger because people bring different ideas, strengths, points of view, values, and so on. ...Read more
“What could I have done differently? Is something wrong with me? I really thought s/he liked me.” Everyone of us has dealt with rejection many times in our lives – not getting jobs we want, not being accepted to universities we want to attend, not getting new clients we pursue, and the like. And as we all know, rejection is painful – it hurts. When we experience rejection, what’s important is how we choose to interpret the rejection and how we choose to deal with it. Because we’re already feeling vulnerable, it can be easy to blame ourselves. We might figure that the rejection is a sign of a flaw in our personality – something that’s deep-seated and we can’t be fixed. The latest rejection is simply more evidence of that flaw. ...Read more
Nobody likes to be typecast. Actors bemoan the limitations it puts on their careers. “I can’t get anything but light comedy parts. No one takes me seriously as an actor.” The same thing happens at work. “He’s a Type “A” personality.” “She’s an introvert.” “He’s just not a people person.” Such stereotyping can, of course, become an obstacle to our advancement at work. But, perhaps even more debilitating is the way we type ourselves. Some leadership training actually encourages this. Every one of us has taken a class called, “What is your leadership style?” or some variation of that. At the beginning of the workshop, you complete a questionnaire that explains that you are: amiable, assertive, extroverted, introverted, deliberate, adventurous, etc., etc. ...Read more
One of the biggest mistakes leaders and consultants have made is to create the impression that good teamwork means that everyone needs to like each other. While it is nice to like your teammates, it is not necessary. It is necessary to have mature, adult, working relationships–an achievable goal.
Like me, I’m sure you’ve had or now have, a colleague you’re not thrilled to work with, right? Someone who pushes your buttons or someone you’d prefer to avoid. Yet for you to do your job well, you need to be able to work effectively with him or her. You may need a very high level of technical expertise to do your job, but unless you can relate well with your co-workers–even your least favorite ones–your productivity and that of your company, can suffer. ...Read more
Every leadership training workshop mentions listening. “Good leaders are good listeners. You should listen more.” And so forth. Most of us think that we are pretty good listeners, at least when we really need to be. In fact, many organizational leaders try to do a good job of listening but in many cases sabotage their own efforts with bad habits that they have learned over a lifetime.
Here’s a short true/false pop quiz: ...Read more
- When an upset team member comes to me with a problem, humor is a good way to ease the tension.
- Most team members who come to me with problems just need a little reassurance.
- Team members come to me with problems only when they need a little advice.
- When a team member comes to me with a problem, the only way to find out what he or she needs is to ask questions.
“It wasn’t what she said, it’s the way she said it.” The words we use are only a small part of our communication. Most of the meaning of any message is communicated through the many nonverbal channels available to us. Since we cannot read minds or communicate telepathically (at least I can’t), we must rely on our voice and our bodies. Most researchers agree that 70% or more of the meaning of any message is communicated through nonverbal channels like eye contact, facial expressions, posture, hand gestures, etc. Twenty percent or so is transmitted through the tone of voice: pitch, timbre, inflection, rate, pauses, volume, and so forth. That leaves 10% or less of any message that can be attributed to the words. ...Read more
One hundred percent of the people are 100% motivated 100% of the time. You’ve surely heard, “I can’t seem to get Michelle motivated.” or, “How do I get my team motivated?” I’ve even heard managers say, “I’m going to fire a couple of people. That’ll get the rest of them motivated.” But motivation is not something that you can do to someone else. It is something that comes from inside. You feel motivated to do something (or to avoid doing something). It is the feeling that compels you to take (or avoid) some action. We are always motivated. I often receive requests from clients to give motivational talks. Or, to conduct a workshop or leadership training session to get their people motivated. But leadership training won’t motivate anyone. The question is, “What are people motivated to do.” The challenge for leaders is to create the conditions under which their team members are motivated to meet the objectives of the organization. ...Read more
After hearing the same lament about 100 times during exploratory interviews at a large electric utilities company on the East Coast, I was becoming very curious about the company’s big, new quality improvement program.
The company had spent millions of dollars implementing W. Edwards Deming’s 14 point Quality Improvement plan. This included a lot of leadership training, quality training, visits to Japan to see their famous Deming-based quality programs, etc. But, underlying the apparent management commitment to the process, there was a tone of skepticism.
Deming’s process required the company to do 14 things. If the company did all of those things well, they could expect good results. What I was hearing from interviewees was, “What we really have here is Deming’s 13 point plan. Ha, ha!” When I then asked, “O.K. which one is being left out?” they would always say, “Drive out fear.” ...Read more
Much of the mythology about leadership encourages managers to ignore the emotional side of relationship development. Many are admonished to “leave your feelings at home.” This is high-risk behavior for two reasons. 1) It is impossible and 2) even if it were possible, it would be extremely unwise. Effective leadership training will help participants understand the connection between dealing effectively with human emotions and creating high performance work teams.
Have you ever arrived at work in the morning feeling pretty good only to become grumpy, out of sorts, and aggravated by the end of the day? Has your supervisor ever told you, “You shouldn’t feel that way”? When you get home, has your spouse ever said, “Leave that stuff at the office”? At those moments, you clearly recognize the futility of such commands. It simply doesn’t matter that your manager, or your friend, or your spouse thinks that you should or shouldn’t feel a certain way. The way you feel is the way you feel. ...Read more
The collected wisdom of the ages tells us that to accomplish anything of worth, one must first “Know Thyself.” It was a guiding principle for Socrates. Shakespeare said, “To thine own-self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day. Thou can’st be then be false to any man.” Even Dr. Seuss has told us, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Sound advice!
Yet some leadership training workshops persist in advising participants to analyze their team members, colleagues, and managers. The assumption implicit in the diagnostic model is that the leader should assume responsibility for producing changes in group members. Therefore, it becomes a sort of test of the leader’s cleverness. The leader must come up with creative solutions for the team member he is trying to influence. ...Read more
Participants who come to leadership training often ask, “Isn’t this just that thing where you repeat what the other person is saying to you? That’s what my boss does when she is trying to manipulate me. It drives me crazy. Does she think I’m stupid?” Like any skill, leadership skills like active listening, constructive confrontation (I-messages), and conflict resolution skills can be learned and used effectively or misused. The misuse can be either intentional or unintentional.
Deliberate misuse leads to a climate of distrust and fear, hardly the sort of workplace most leaders would view as desirable. In such a place, little real work gets done, petty conflict is everywhere, game-playing is rampant, and grievances are commonplace. These are the kinds of organizations where highly adversarial labor-management relations prevent the company from thriving. Any tool can be used badly. A knife can be used to injure, a car to haul stolen goods, a word to humiliate. That doesn’t mean that the tool is no good. It is, rather, an indictment of the person abusing the tool. ...Read more
