Tag Archives: boss

Feed your team

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I am a card-carrying member of ASDT (Adult Survivors of a Dysfunctional Team). I am sure that it is just a coincidence (or the fact that I have been working for many, many years), but I’ve served on a few teams that were not productive.

Dysfunctional teams do tend to get attention, even if the intervention doesn’t always work. The teams that get short shrift are the okay, average and good ones. As long as the team isn’t hopeless or causing too many problems for others, it’s not likely to rise to the top of the boss’ priority list.

Too bad. Great teams are the drivers of amazing results, as reinforced by Harvard Business Review blogger, Judith A. Ross, in Make Your Good Team Great. Research shows that the qualities that drive top team performance can be described as group Emotional Intelligence. In other words, these teams know how to recognize and manage the emotions of their members.

Ms. Ross recommends making time for the team to connect both inter-personally and around their strengths. This will help them appreciate each others’ contributions and tap each person’s strengths. She also emphasizes the importance of teams recognizing and managing the emotions that are sure to arise – the conflicts and the joys.

Kim Kanaga and Henry Browning authored the Center for Creative Leadership’s Keeping Watch: How to Monitor and Maintain a Team. They recommend that leaders regularly monitor a team’s status in six dimensions of team performance:

Clear purpose

Empowering team structure

Strong organizational support

Positive internal relationships

Well-tended external relationships

Efficient information management

The authors suggest ways to evaluate each of these six dimensions, and also expand upon four key indicators, which they liken to the gauges on a car’s dashboard.

Effort – Extent to which members devote time and effort to the task

Knowledge and skills – Degree to which the team possesses the right competencies

Tactics – Using rational, logical and direct approaches to accomplish goals

Group dynamics – Extent to which the team works without undue friction or waste

People who lead teams must regularly “take the pulse” of the team and help them adapt to changing circumstances. Teams need a leader who can smooth the way, ensuring that the team has the information, resources, autonomy and management support that will ensure success. What can you do today to make the life of your team better?

Need help leading your team? Contact Humanergy.

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Evaluate results not time

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We all know the workers who are the first to arrive and last to leave. They don’t take time off. You wonder if their kids even recognize them anymore. Contrast that person with an employee who leaves early for parent-teacher conferences and usually walks out the door in time to have dinner with his family.

Which is the preferable employee? That question is being bantered about more than ever, as young workers in particular strive for a life that balances work, home and community.

Kate Rogers wrote “Might Be Time to Tell Your Employees to Get a Life” on foxbusiness.com. She notes that more top-level execs are embracing a flexible approach to when, where and how work is done. They hold themselves and others accountable for the quantity and quality of performance – because that produces business results.

Rewarding “face time” at the office encourages people to look busy and be present, even when they’re not giving it their all. For some, being busy becomes a way of life and a means of avoiding other brutal realities. Tim Kreider notes in “The ‘Busy’ Trap at NYTimes.com:

“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”

Think about how you use your  time and help your team create real success. Is it all about being busy, or are you zeroing in on the business results that matter?

Need to refocus on the right results? Contact Humanergy.

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Great expectations

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It may seem like common sense that when a teacher expects students to excel at a certain level, the students do. Grading can be subjective, after all. It is more surprising that studies of teachers have found that students’ scores on objective IQ tests correlated with teacher expectations.

Specifically,  if teachers are told that a randomly-selected student is expected to realize a large gain in IQ, that is exactly what happens. Why? Teachers begin to treat them differently. These “expectations affect teachers’ moment-to-moment interactions with the children they teach in a thousand almost invisible ways. Teachers give the students that they expect to succeed more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval: They consistently touch, nod and smile at those kids more.”

Transferring this phenomenon to a work setting, research by Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux indicates that the boss is often inadvertently complicit in the failure of an employee. This dynamic begins with an early mistake, lukewarm recommendation or personality clash and is set in motion as the boss questions the employee’s competence. Under increased scrutiny by the boss, the employee loses confidence. He freezes or over-reacts. The syndrome is then in full swing, and it is no surprise when the employee fails.

Think about the people you supervise, and ask yourself these questions:

What do you expect your people to accomplish?

How does that impact your behavior and thus, their achievement?

How should you change your thinking and behavior to remove the impact of unwarranted low expectations?

Need help managing your expectations and your people’s performance? Contact Humanergy.

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Can you fix people?

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We have heard it before. “You can’t change people.” Yet we persist with the idea that if we just use the right words at the right time, the other person will “get it.”

In “Leadership in the Age of Complexity: From Hero to Host” Margaret Wheatley (no relation to Humanergy’s co-founder, David Wheatley) talks about the myth of the heroic leader. One thing the heroic leader believes is that people will do what they are told, if they are given good enough instructions.

The problem here is the illusion that leaders control what they cannot, like what others do, think or feel. What you can control is your own actions.

Rather than jumping in to correct what’s wrong with their people, leaders can be a positive influence and provide support. They can:

Articulate a vision for the future

Be specific about expectations

Ask great questions

Give feedback on behaviors

Protect people from bureaucracy, politics and other distractions

Celebrate wins

When you feel the urge to jump in and fix a person, say, “I want to help. How can I best do that?”

Want to help your people navigate choppy waters? Contact Humanergy.

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Are you in danger of losing your high potentials?

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Retaining employees with high potential is essential to the success of your organization.

The Center for Creative Leadership’s High-Potential Talent: A View from Inside the Leadership Pipeline defines “high-potential talent as an employee who is assessed as having the ability, organizational commitment, and motivation to rise to and succeed in more senior positions in the organization.”

How are high potentials different from other employees? According to research by Ready, Conger and Hill (Are You a High Potential?, Harvard Business Review, June 2010), companies tend to describe high potentials this way:

“High potentials consistently and significantly outperform their peer groups in a variety of settings and circumstances. While achieving these superior levels of performance, they exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies’ culture and values in an exemplary manner. Moreover, they show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization—more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.”

To create a nimble strategy for managing your leadership pipeline, follow these steps:

Identify. Who are your high potentials? Though you may balk at creating a formal list of high potentials, many concede that identifying individuals with potential for growth is important for the organizations and the people themselves.

Engage and develop. Now that you have your list, create a plan to nurture your high potentials that includes both access to upper management and opportunities to grow. CCL’s research on high potentials notes that “high potentials receive more development opportunities – such as special assignments and training as well as mentoring and coaching from senior leaders – than other employees.” This gives them role models and advocates to develop those relationships that are the connective tissue within the organization.

Retain. CCL’s research indicates that people formally identified as high potentials have a higher retention rate than those not formally identified. Be aware, however, that identification as a high potential can trigger anxiety as well as excitement. Your strategy should manage for both, providing support to deal with the inevitable pressures as well as opportunities for development.

Deploy. High potentials want to understand the path that lies ahead, even if the specifics are a little vague. Provide answers to questions such as, What is the next step? What do I need to do or learn to get there? Communication, feedback and increasing levels of authority are critical to leveraging the talent pool, according to CCL.

Maximizing the potential of your organization’s future leaders requires planning and commitment. Allowing the “cream to rise to the top” on its own is not an option if your goal is converting raw talent into exceptional leadership for the long-term benefit of the organization.

Need strategies to engage your high potentials? Contact Humanergy.

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The best way to make your customers happy

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When it comes to making your customers happy, a recent blog post from our friends at Brains on Fire said it best. “Happy employees lead to happy customers. And that “shared happy” leads to positive word of mouth.”

So, how do you increase the happiness of your employees? Steve Cooper blogged at Forbes.com about Dr. Noelle Nelson’s book, Make More Money By Making Your Employees Happy.  It turns out that what people really want is for companies to “keep promises and show compassion for their employees.”

Paul Spiegelman, author of Why is Everyone Smiling?, suggests at Inc.com:

Recognize and reward. Give accolades to people who are doing a good job by publicly recognizing what is going well.

Make room for fun. Make time for people to do something wacky or unusual.

Walk the talk. Rules, ethics and consequences apply to everyone, regardless of position.

Implementing these strategies doesn’t mean that your employees won’t face problems. Your job as a leader is to enable true happiness – the ability to effectively confront and work through the difficulties that are inevitable in any workplace.

Need to boost happiness at work? Contact Humanergy.

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Is it worth coaching someone in job jeopardy?

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Coaching is a substantial investment that is generally offered to high potential leaders. So when is it worth the cost to coach someone who is in job jeopardy?

Whether you hire a coach or do the work with internal resources, coaching is not to be entered into lightly. While it is generally best to focus scarce resources on top performers, there are circumstances where coaching those in job jeopardy pays off.

The number one rule of thumb is to focus on performers with a single derailer that can be fixed. (Think of the person who continually falls over. Teach him to tie his shoes, and the problem is solved.)

Examples of fixable derailers that warrant an investment in coaching:

  • Having a hard time adjusting to a recent change in the organization
  • Difficulty dealing with a particular type of person or situation
  • A bad habit that the person is committed to changing

While overcoming a potentially fatal flaw is difficult, Joe Folkman advises several steps in his recent blog post, including acceptance, gaining a better understanding the issue and creating a plan for improvement. A coach can be a valuable resource at each of the steps outlined by Folkman.

Why go to the trouble to coach any struggling employee? First, it is absolutely cost-effective to retain your people when you consider the time and money involved in the termination and hiring processes. The organization also retains their knowledge, experience and connections with others. And the best outcome is you stand to gain an exceptionally dedicated, motivated employee who appreciates the investment. 

 

Need to focus your coaching resources? Contact Humanergy.

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Are you a bully boss?

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I saw these words on a t-shirt yesterday:

Humankind. Be both.

Full of warm feelings about the human family, this morning I read a Washington Post blog titled, Do jerks make better leaders? Geoffrey Nunberg concludes that jerky CEOs (he calls them A-holes) get more airtime from the media and attention in popular culture. “Every age seizes on one social miscreant to personify its deepest social anxieties,” and for the moment, it’s the bully boss.

New leaders can confuse the need for clear expectations or accountability with the need to be a jerk. I hope that everyone who reads Mr. Nunberg’s post will focus less on the Donald-Trump-like antics and more on these last two lines:

“True, every once in a while an A-word aspirant manages to percolate to the executive dining room on the strength of audacity alone. But the majority wind up seven job changes later, still in the company cafeteria, eating lunch alone.”

Bill Taylor sums up the importance of kindness (versus being smart) on Harvard Business Review’s blog:

“So by all means, encourage your people to embrace technology, get great at business analytics, and otherwise ramp up the efficiency of everything they do. But just make sure all their efficiency doesn’t come at the expense of their humanity. Small gestures can send big signals about who we are, what we care about, and why people should want to affiliate with us. It’s harder (and more important) to be kind than clever.”

Go forth and be an intelligent, demanding and nice leader!

 

Want to find better balance between kindness and accountability? Contact Humanergy

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Can you really say no to your boss?

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Even when you have a positive relationship, bringing bad news to the boss is something most people would rather avoid. This includes telling the boss, “no,” even when it’s the right thing to do.

Sure, the supervisor should welcome honesty and candor – and most do. However, when delivering a “no” message, it’s also important to know what to tell your boss, when and how.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis of Fortune wrote, “companies that foster a fear-free culture enjoy better decision-making, more ethical behavior and the ability to truly harness the collective brainpower of the workforce.”  Creating and maintaining a positive culture isn’t just the boss’ job. How direct reports share information and team with their bosses for mutual success contributes to a transparent culture as well.

How do you effectively tell your boss “no?”

Communicate when an important result is at stake. If a key project or outcome is at risk, you need to tell your boss. State the situation clearly and provide possible solutions. “The software integration is 2 months behind schedule and 40% over budget. Options include adding a person to the team or finding an alternative vendor.”

Be honest about what you can and cannot do. Speak up if your boss assigns you something that is outside your skillset and more than a stretch goal. However, don’t leave her holding the ball. Suggest what you can do and who might fill the gap. “My skills would be better utilized on the project management end, with Sean on the technical side.”

Prepare the boss and speak in private. Your boss may be less willing to be open to input if it comes out of the blue. Send him an email, letting him know that you have some ideas you’d like to share. Meet one-on-one to explore these ideas without an audience that could have an unanticipated impact.

Say thanks. Even if she doesn’t agree with your perspective, your boss took the time to listen (hopefully). No matter how the meeting goes, genuinely thank her for her time. You’ll build some relationship capital that may be helpful in the future.

When saying no, or delivering any message that might be hard to hear, use as few words as possible. There is no need to use giant words, spin, lecture or defend. Remember the advice of John Kotter. “Good communication does not mean you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.”

 


Get it done right the first time

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Refrigerator magnet spotted at a client’s office recently: “Of course I don’t look busy. I delegated it right the first time.”

While competent delegation won’t really take away all of your work, it will mean that you’re able to do what you can uniquely do – the functions that will bring business results. You’ll also be helping others develop new capabilities and enhance performance by giving them stretch assignments in a way that optimizes success.

Delegation isn’t giving others stuff to do. It is the effective transfer of ownership for work that equips people to get the job done right the first time.

Too often we don’t invest enough thought and planning to delegation. We pass along an assignment without helpful context or background information. We don’t always share enough about the desired results and how the work will impact the business.Then we  the person falls short of the objectives and we wonder why.

The worst-case result of incomplete delegation is failure, followed by redoing the assignment and/or extensive damage control. Save yourself the trouble by answering these questions as you delegate, so the job is done right the first time.

What is the expected impact? What effect will this work have on the team and/or the organization?

What results are expected? What key indicators will define success? What will be different once the work is done?

What are the boundaries on the work? Who must be involved? What should be communicated to whom and how often? Are there other parameters (“do this, not that”) regarding how the work should be performed?

What are our mutual responsibilities post-delegation? What information will be shared? How often and by what means will we communicate? How will assistance and support be sought and given?

Delegation requires discipline and a commitment to others’ development. If you wonder if it’s worth it, consider the spin-off effects of the assignment tanking. That might make today’s investment seem minute in comparison.

“Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted” (David Bly).