Posts Tagged ‘leadership. management’

One of my clients recently returned from the Baptist Leadership Conference and during his management meeting he was reporting back on his learnings from the conference and what he intended on implementing.

As he ran down the list there was one technique that is so easy to implement and when done effectively, can provided a leadership team with valuable information. The technique is “Rounding with a Purpose”, and I wanted to share it with my readers.  In essence, it takes the traditional “Management by Walking Around” and develops a structure using questions that are thought out in advance based on the current challenges management is facing.

How  would you take this idea into your organization and implement it?  What information today, are you not receiving because you aren’t asking the right questions of employees working on the front lines, the workers closest to many challenges a company faces?

Here are two typical business situations along with questions you may want to use that can help you learn more about what you, as a leader, can do to increase the success of your people as well as your organization.

Situation 1: There has been a recent increase in customer complaints

Questions:

• If you could change one thing that can improve customer service, what would you do?
• What complaints have you been hearing recently from customers?
• What service policy is getting in the way of improved customer service?

As you will note, the situations are specific to a certain business function but don’t let the situations lead you into a familiar trap. Don’t ask the situational questions just of those in that department.  For instance, if the issue is sales, make sure you don’t just ask the sales department.  Make sure to get a good cross section of input.

Once you start gathering this information, it is time to share it with your management team and teach them the technique so they can implement as well.

So what questions are you not getting answers to from your management team? And if these questions were asked to your line workers, what hidden gems may be mined?  Asking good questions, can unearth some uncut diamonds that may provide you with some long awaited answers.

I would love to hear your ideas of how you have used this technique to your benefit and institutionalize it within your company so all managers are consistently listening to employees. And, what particular questions have you used to obtain information that you might not have obtained otherwise?

And if you are in the health care industry and haven’t heard about the Baptist Leadership Institute, check them out by clicking on this link. http://www.baptistleadershipinstitute.com/

How much time are you spending in meetings on a weekly basis? Many companies have a “meeting” culture and as a consultant to many small and mid-size companies, I find myself spending  time observing leaders in meetings as part of a development planning process.

So often I observe meeting participants becoming disconnected during the meetings because the content is boring and often predictable. I recommend that you use the “Stir Fry” method to meetings. Stir Fry meetings require an ongoing change of ingredients—agenda items, extreme heat–excitement and passion, and a secret sauce–this is the ”why” of a meeting, the goal that brings all the participants together.

So, if you are going to be spending a lot of time in meetings implement the stir fry framework. For some ideas that other CEOs have used, read this article from Fast Company http://bit.ly/hBUWlq.

The term employee engagement has become popular over the last decade, but what does it really mean and should it be the ultimate goal of an employer?  I think not.  I would argue that employee passion should be the ultimate goal and here is why.

Employee engagement is the state of employees being committed to the mission and vision of an organization which results in a higher level of performance that generally is only seen internally to an organization. My belief is that an organization not only strive for a high level of employee engagement but also focus on creating a high level of employee passion which can be seen externally and is displayed to the company’s community, whether it be local, regional, national, or global.

Employee passion is much like the concept that Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles wrote about in their book “Raving Fans”. The goal being that your employees are so passionate about the company they work for that they are recruiting future employees and bringing in new customers.  Much of the process of creating employee passion can be found in the book, “Raving Fans”.  As you read the book replace the word “customer” for “employee” to create a plan for developing a high level of employee passion in your company.

So after several years of proving yourself, your company finally recognizes your potential as a future leader. The opportunity for promotion, however, comes with a risk.  You have made a number of friends at work during the past few years and now you will have to manage them. I was recently reminded of this dilemma when working with a leader who had recently been promoted from an individual contributor as a lead programmer to a manager of a team of eight technicians. She was struggling with her transition from friend to manager since three of her employees were friends.

How can you make a transition from friend to manager and at the same time not loose your friends? Here are seven tips on making this transition a success:

1. Once your promotion has been announced, schedule time with each of your friends at work and outline the future guidelines for your relationship with them. No longer will you be equals in the workplace. Define what will change in your relationship with them and what won’t change.

Some of the changes should include: no coffees, breaks, or lunches with work friends unless other team members are included. Potential disciplinary action if policies, procedures, or standards aren’t adhered to at work. And, you will be asking for their feedback of you as a leader, not as a friend.

Things that should remain the same will include: respect for each other and what you bring to the team, and caring about each other as an employee and a friend.

2. Schedule a meeting with your new team and be transparent and honest about your friendships with co-workers.  Share with the team that your work friends understand their relationship with you at work has changed and that they will be treated just like the rest of the team members

3. It will be important to demonstrate fairness and equality for all who report to you. All policies and procedures, as well as work standards, will be adhered to by all employees and the consequences for non conformity will be the same for all. Be careful with this and don’t over compensate by interpreting the guidelines more strictly for your friends than for others on your team. This can lead to your friend quitting or asking for a transfer.

4. There will be situations such as new policies and guidelines that will cause frustration for you in your new role.  You should not share your frustrations with your employee friend.  Your company has seen potential in you as a leader and leaders don’t gripe to employees about company policy or direction. Leaders do bring their concerns to their managers by communicating the potential implications changes could have for the company.

5. Confidential company situations must stay confidential even if it impacts your friends at work. The ability to keep confidences is important in building trust and respect in an organization. How do you think team members will view you if you’re breaking company confidences? It certainly won’t make them feel comfortable in bringing their own confidential situations to you in fear that you will share them with others.

6. Be careful about your behavior in social situations where other employees are observing your behavior.  Remember you are no longer an equal but a role model. You are now a leader and having executive presence will be important to your success.

7. Ask for feedback from your friends about your ability as a leader.  The questions you should ask them should be focused on your behaviors as a leader such as communications, fairness, motivation, praise and recognition, listening etc.

All these steps require great communication skills. Focus your efforts on honing your skills in the following areas: listening, questioning, and story telling.  All of these must be performed skillfully and in a timely manner for a leader to be successful especially when managing friends.

So why is it important to have a trusting workplace? And how do you know if you have one?

Studies show that a trusting workplace increases employees’ level of happiness, work effort, productivity, and engagement. It also provides an environment that encourages open communication and promotes people to share their ideas.  When people feel comfortable sharing their ideas, there is a greater capacity for innovation within an organization keeping a company current and relevant in the marketplace.

Evaluating the level of trust in your workplace

Below are eight factors that studies have shown influence trust in the workplace:

OPENESS: Do you as a leader display having an open mind? As a leader, when you show others around you that you are open to new ideas and encourage others to share their opposing opinions not only do you create an environment of trust but you are enabling innovation within the organization.       

VISION AND VALUES: Are both vision and values communicated and lived on a consistent basis?  Without a vision for your company and a set of values, your employees will not have a sense of direction.  When they understand where the company is headed and it will you get to there, they trust decisions that are being made in the organization because they understand them. The key is to make decisions consistent to your values. It isn’t enough to put values down on paper; they need to be demonstrated throughout the entire organization.

COURAGE: Do company leaders have the courage to do the right thing even if the decision or action could put them at risk?  It takes courage to stay the course when obstacles get in the way of your vision. Leaders often take the easy way out when faced with difficult challenges.  Those who are able to make the tough decisions which support the company’s values, build trust and respect amongst their team members. They do the right thing even if in the short term it impacts them in a negative way.

SHARED GOALS: Do employees understand how their individual goals impact the organization’s goals?  Goals that are shared build stronger and more committed teams. And when the goals are clearly linked back to the company’s vision, you are strengthening the understanding of your company’s journey and how you will get there.

COMMUNITY: Does your organization promote giving back to its community? Community service projects build relationships amongst employees and are viewed as not self-serving by employees. And, when employees are involved with the decision process of what projects the company should be involved with, they feel important and you show them that you value their opinions and ideas.

INTEGRITY- Do leaders keep their promise and commitments to employees?  Do they tell the truth to them?  When leaders are transparent and share information honestly, employees trust what is being told them. Promise and commitments are not just those that are made to individuals but to the organization as well. So what are those promises and commitments you make to an organization as a leader? They are things like stewardship of company resources including finances and human resources. They watch over the finances by making sound decisions and develop their employees’ talent to the best of their ability.

MANNERS: Are employees recognized for good work and thanked for their hard efforts? Companies whose leaders consistently thank, praise, and reward employees for their good efforts demonstrate good manners and increase the level of trust employees have in the company and their leaders.

CARE: Do employees feel like leadership cares about them? Companies with leaders who make all employees feel important and part of the team create a feeling of safety. They actively listen, are visible and accessible, and take an interest in people’s personal lives. Employees feel genuinely cared for by their employer.

If you really want to understand how your employees rate workplace trust, develop an employee feedback survey to determine what areas you and your organization need to improve on to increase the level of trust.  The sooner you identify the areas of needed improvement, the sooner you can put a plan of action into place to increase your employees’ productivity, engagement, and level of happiness.

Well it happened for the millionth time yesterday, when a client shared her frustration with me that she seemed to have to solve all of her organizations problems, yet the cause was her. Her impatience and desire to assist others created a dependency on her to solve all the problems.

Does this siutation sound familiar?  Your in the middle of work and one of your employees comes to you with a problem and you know exactly the right solution. So you immediately tell the person what he/she should do. “Well that was easy” you say to yourself.  But here is the problem you just created for yourself, you also made it easy for the employee.  The next time they have a problem they are going to come to you again and even quicker than the first time! You are the enabler and creator of your own problem.

So what do you need to do next time a person comes with a problem? Before you resolve the problem, inquire and ask them questions that will help them develop their own solution. The questions should be open ended, such as “what”,  ”how”  and “when”. Here are some examples: “What do you think you should do?” , “What other options have you identified?” And when they come to a solution, don’t forget this powerful question: “What else” This will get them to think deeper with the potential to come up with other options to their problem. This technique is used widely be executive coaches during coaching conversations and can be extremely effective to get someone to their own solution that they own, not you.

Who knows, it may be a better solution than one you planned on suggesting before you bit your tongue and “asked” versus “told” them what to do. Creating a path to a solution for an employee takes more time in the short term but it will free up a lot of time for you in the future. Having the employee create their own solution provides a learning opportunity for them and the potential that they won’t be back in your office with a similar solution the next time.

Most of us know that communication is made up of words, tone, and body language . In addition, these three components are not equal in their impact.  Words make up only 7% of a message’s meaning. while tone accounts for 38% and body language tops the list at 55%.

So why is it that many crucial communications continue to be by way of email? If we are using words only, we are creating the potential for a huge disconnect between ourselves and others. So why not pick up the phone? My theory is that email is easier and is favored by those who want to avoid a potential conflict. Yet, what generally happens is the conflict becomes much larger than what it would have been if a phone had been used in the first place. And in turn takes more time to resolve than if you had chosen a more effective means to communicate such as a phone call. Or better yet, have a face to face conversation.

So before you have to communicate by email think about how it will impact an employee’s:

1. perception by other employees
2. performance
3. understanding of their performance
4. role in the organization

If the communication will impact any of the above, then pick up the phone or have a personal meeting with the employee

We all have encountered this type of person: someone who talks excessively, may repeat himself continually, and can’t get to the point.

In this age of sound bites, texting and tweets, it has become harder to tolerate the motormouth.  So how can you manage these individuals in a team meeting and also coach them in a one-on-one meeting to become more succinct in their communications?

In a team meeting

Set a tight agenda and use a countdown timer that is visible to everyone.  I use a free countdown timer that can be found at http://www.online-stopwatch.com.  If you have regular weekly meetings, then at the beginning of each meeting institute a time limit of 3-5 minutes for each team member to give their weekly update.  It is important when instituting this new process that you explain your purpose for doing so.  It may be that you want to decrease the time spent in meetings or that you want everyone to learn and experience how to become more concise in their verbal communications.

Give the rest of the team the job of actively listening to each individual’s update and noting information that could have been left out as well as information that might have been repeated.  Typically the motormouth on the team will continue to talk after the bell rings signaling that their time is up.  There will probably be others in the group that has some difficulty with limiting their remarks.  

For those who struggle with the time limit, suggest that they prepare their remarks in writing in advance of the meeting.  If team members frequently use texting to communicate, have them think of their presentation as short texts or tweets.  If team members don’t typically use texting, then perhaps they are more comfortable with the concept of short bullet points.

After each presenter’s 3-5 minutes are up, each team member has one minute to share their feedback with the presenter – what items were important to the team member and what could have been left out.  The presenter’s job is simply to listen to each team member’s feedback and then at the end of the feedback thank the person without further comment.

Using this methodology allows the team to focus on an effective team meeting and not any one individual’s presentation.  The process can benefit all team members’ listening and communication skills, and for you the manager, this process will free up some of your time as meetings become more focused and succinct.

In a one-on-one meeting

If you know of a nonstop talker who is a peer, what can you do?

Make the motormouth feel self-conscious by staying quiet while they speak.  Being quiet includes not uttering any words or sounds like, um or uh-huh.  The more sounds they hear the more they will talk.

When you do speak to the motormouth, speak slowly.  Since most nonstop talkers speak at a rapid rate, your slower rate of speaking will create a contrast for the motormouth and will hopefully get them to become more self-aware of how much they are talking.

In addition, don’t restate what you heard as it gives a nonstop talker the opportunity to repeat themselves.  Just let them know you understand and then say good-bye.  Later, send them an email confirming what you heard and ask them to respond back by way of email.

If none of these techniques work during the one-on-one meeting, take the time to coach them.  Share your observations with them about how much they talk, how it makes you feel, and how it impacts you.  They can’t say you are wrong about your feelings.  If you are their manager/leader, ask them how they think their behavior may impact others on the team who don’t have the opportunity to talk and share their ideas with others.  With all their talking, ask them what they think they may be missing from others, both in the office and at home?

In summary: whether in group or individual meetings, the value of managing and coaching motormouths is huge!  Your meetings will be shorter, you will be able to focus on the important aspects of your job, and the nonstop talker as well as other team members will become more effective communicators.

One of the definitions of a “leader” in Webster’s Dictionary is “a person who has commanding authority or influence”.  I would argue that in the 21^st century it’s all about influence, not authority. If a leader only has authority and is unable to influence others, then his leadership will be short lived.

Think about those leaders in your organization, whether for profit or not for profit, who may not have the title of VP, Director, or Manager yet they have followers because of their influence with others. These are the people who others listen to and respect but don’t have the title providing them with the authority to lead.

So what if you’re a leader with authority, you’ve got the title, how do you know whether or not you have influence with the people you are leading?  And if you don’t have influence, can you build it?

I am interested in your thoughts and suggestions.

We’ve all been there. You’re working on an important project and one of your team members, co-workers, or even manager is the eternal pessimist. I like to call people like this, Eeyore. You remember Eeyore, the gloomy donkey from Winnie the Pooh. The words and phrases you often hear from pessimists are things like, “it won’t work”, “I can’t”, “why?” Not only can these people de-motivate others they can also derail a project.

So what do you do to assist the Eeyores in your life? Ignoring them is not the right answer although many of us choose this as the solution, thinking that they can’t be helped.

You first have to remember that they didn’t start being a pessimist last week. They probably came out of the womb looking at the world in a negative light. So any change that does occur is going to be small and slow. So be very alert to the smallest positive change and praise them for it when you observe it!

When I work with leaders who are focused more on the negative, the challenge is to get them to open their eyes to more options then what they initially see. In fact often they see no options. I will also challenge their beliefs that often lead them to a negative conclusion. For instance, if I hear “I can’t” from someone, the next questions are: What makes you belief this? What proof do you have? How solid and reliable is the proof? The goal is to get them to start seeing things in a more balanced realistic way.

The other part to the process of managing the pessimist is to get them to see how they are impacting others around them. A good first question when someone claims “I can’t” is: If you can’t do it, how do you think it is going to impact others on the team? What resources or assistance do you need so you “can”?

It won’t happen overnight but if you take action and don’t ignore the pessimist you will start to see some positive changes.