BestOfManagement Blog

The New Gold Standard of Leadership: A Counterintuitive Approach to Rising from Adversity

2009-02-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

By Steve Farber, Author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership

A while back, I received a distressed email from Ken, a young manager at a high-tech company.

Ken and I had never met, but he had read my first two books and had done his best to apply the ideas and practices of Extreme Leadership to the way he'd led his team. To their culture, their work ethic, their camaraderie. When necessary, Ken told me, they would band together and work hard -- 10 to 20 hours a day at times -- to solve a problem or meet a pressing need. Ken's wife would cook food for everyone and bring it to the office. They felt like a family, he said, committed to doing great work and devoted to one another's success. No one ever complained, least of all Ken. At one point, he'd even forgone his bonus so his employees could collect theirs.

And then something happened. A downturn, a re-org, a shift in the management structure -- we all know the drill. Ken still had a job, but his position was eliminated. New management full of old ideas came in to oversee the department's function and the emotional fibers that connected Ken's team to each other and to their work unraveled.

"Now," Ken wrote, "for the last 4 weeks I sat at my cubicle, web surfing for 8 hours a day at the same company where I once worked 39 hours straight with my team to make things right, never going home.

"I'm not a quitter; I don't want to leave. But -- just or unjust -- I feel stripped of everything we've done" he said. "So the advice I'm looking for is this:

"How do you get back up?"

Even though I've spent the last 20 years coaching leaders and consulting to management teams, I was still loath to respond. After all, I had only the sketchiest of details about Ken's situation, and it was just presumptuous of me to assume I could help him with a few pithy words of advice. Nonetheless, I did have an idea for him, and I instinctively felt that it could make a huge, positive difference in Ken's life -- and in the life of those he worked with.

And it wasn't the kind of management or leadership advice you'd expect.

It's already become a cliché to say that we live in unprecedented, challenging times. We all know it. But the truth is, the world of work is always challenging. That's why they call it "work."

No matter the industry, market, or type of company you work in, you've had to deal with some combination of the classic work-place obstacles, issues, and barriers to a successful leadership experience.

At some time or another, for example, you've reported to bosses or people in positions of "greater authority" who were self-centered at best, and idiotically egotistical at worst. They took all the credit and none of the blame and could care less whether or not you succeeded or failed. Or worse, they preferred that you'd fail, and took great pleasure in your struggles because they felt it made them look stronger.

Or perhaps you worked in a company that, even though populated by terrific human beings, was so obsessed with the bottom line and shareholder value that you were forced to make strategic decisions that compromised your own employees' abilities to serve the customer. And as your employees grew more frustrated, the customer sat levels plunged, which made you and your employees more frustrated. And so on.

You may have been in an environment that was hyper-competitive to the point of paranoid, risk-averse to the point of stifling, or so political that it made you consider running for local office just to get some relief.

We've all experienced some combination of these themes with varying levels of intensity. And we've all spent some amount of time and energy navigating our way through the challenges that come from trying to lead in those conditions. It's just the price we pay for being managers. And human beings.

Now, add to that the current, sucking implosion in the economy, and it's easy to see why, with all our efforts to be positive, productive leaders, we still get knocked down from time to time. Sometimes way down.

Our knee-jerk reaction in times of crisis is to hold on tighter, to be more cautious in our actions, and more protective of our resources. We think that our way out -- or up -- will come by virtue of shoring up and hoarding what we have.

There is, however, a much more powerful course of action, which -- though counterintuitive in these hyper-competitive times -- is based on a timeless reality of true leadership:

Your own greatness as a leader lies, paradoxically, in your ability to cause others to be greater than yourself.

Said another way, your (and my) best way out of a leadership challenge or crisis is not to focus on your own peril or rut, but, instead, to reach out and try to boost someone else over your head.

The idea should sound familiar. It's really just a variation on the "do unto others" sentiment of the Golden Rule, a philosophy that exists in virtually all religions, schools of thought, and philosophies on the planet. And in none of those versions -- not one -- will you find a footnote saying, "Does not apply Monday through Friday between the hours of 9 to 5 or in any situation where a paycheck is involved."
So the solution I offered to Ken was this:

Instead of wallowing in your own despair, pick someone at work to invest in, with the intent of making that person greater than you are. Be a coach, guide, or mentor in the truest, most personal sense of the words by choosing someone to be your GTY (Greater Than Yourself) project, and see what that does to your own predicament, your own state of mind.

Maybe it was out of desperation, but as surprised as he was by the curve ball I'd thrown him, Ken took my advice and agreed to the challenge.

Two weeks later, Ken wrote to say that he'd thought deeply about our conversation and had come to realize that before he could lift someone else up by sharing his knowledge and experience, he needed to be sure that he had learned the right lessons from the recent team trauma. So he'd met with his boss, and asked for feedback on how he could have acted differently, what he may have done to contribute to the problem, and how he could be a better leader in the future. "The 30 minute meeting turned into a 2 hour confessional," said Ken, which resulted in him learning some hard, "gold lessons" about himself.

"Now," he continued, "I've already started to work with a tech on my team who wants to be a manager. And I'm taking a vow," he said, "to make the people around me better -- as I continue to grow myself. I'm going to teach my children about this, too." Ken, it seems, has gotten his energy back, and he's well on his way to getting back up -- by lifting someone else.

We're all human, just like Ken. And just like him, we all get bashed down from time to time. Next time, try to resist the temptation to pull yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps, and reach out to pull someone else up, instead. Go find someone to be your GTY project, and ask them to do the same.

And don't be surprised if -- through your example -- your whole organization, company, or team rises to establish itself as the new gold standard of leadership.

Author Bio

Steve Farber, author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership, the president of Extreme Leadership, is a leadership consultant and speaker, and the author of the national bestseller The Radical Leap, and The Radical Edge. He lives in San Diego, California.

The “Vision Thing” -- Critical to Accelerating Women’s Careers

2009-02-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

By Suzanne Bates, Author of Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!

In today’s economic environment, companies need great leaders. Yet lately much public conversation has focused on whether our economic crisis has been partly the result of too much “leadership testosterone,” both on the trading floors and in the boardrooms of banks and investment firms. Would a more balanced male-female presence have made a difference in averting the current crisis?

Many, many experts agree that ideal corporate leadership teams and boards consist of a balance of women and men. Male and female traits, they insist, are essential to the success of an organization. Last year for example, in separate studies, Catalyst, an organization that supports expanded opportunities for women at work, as well as the venerable management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, have both concluded that companies with more female executives and directors perform better. For such reasons, women right now enjoy tremendous opportunities to move up to top jobs.

But the argument for more women isn’t simply about personality traits that impact the culture of a company. Judy Rosener, a University of California (Irvine) professor emeritus, reports that brain scans prove that men and women actually think differently. In her research, Rosener found that a company with a mix of male and female leaders, with their differing attitudes regarding risk, collaboration and ambiguity, will typically outperform a competitor that relies only on the leadership of a single sex. Today of course the vast majority of companies are dominated by men, although Rosener says they wouldn’t perform any better if they were dominated solely by women. Her point is that a balance is what companies need, with women bringing something to the table that companies absolutely need to thrive.

So it appears the likely way out of this economic turmoil could well include a better balance of men and women at the top. However, this doesn't mean that any and all women leaders will be capable of capitalizing on today’s developing opportunities. Women still have to have the “right stuff.” Women who develop and cultivate very specific skills will stand out and become top leaders in their organizations.
What “very specific skills” am I suggesting? How can you stand out if that’s your goal? Start by reviewing your strengths and personal areas for development. Perhaps you’re already good at motivating your team, inspiring people, fostering teamwork, encouraging creativity, building a collaborative atmosphere. These are all very valuable, and will help you because if you’re this kind of leader, talented people will want to work for you and will do great work. They will overcome obstacles, accelerate results, get the job done. This will be key to both your success and the success of your company.

One very important skill you also need to focus on is articulating a vision for your organization. You won’t get promoted to the top unless people ultimately see you as a visionary who can help chart a new course for the organization. In the January 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, a 360-degree feedback study by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru finds that female leaders are typically seen by all around them to be strong in such traits as tenacity and emotional intelligence. However, women seem to trail men in one important aspect: the ability to conceive and communicate clear "vision."

Thus to become CEO, a C-level executive or other top leader in your company, you need to be able to develop a talent for seeing and talking about the future, i.e., not just how things are but how things could be. This requires spending time developing a point of view, speaking not solely about tactical issues but strategic issues as well. You need to engage with your colleagues about the challenges faced by the whole company, a behavior that will require you to stretch and learn about areas outside your comfort zone of expertise. This will be accomplished by delving into all aspects of the company’s business including getting yourself appointed to committees, panels and projects that provide exposure to a wide variety of corporate and industry challenges.

As an example, I once worked with a client (“Jane”) who was a respected VP of technology in a large financial services organization, a women who was widely respected by the firm’s team of engineers, software developers and support staff. Yet when asked to join a cross-functional committee of her peers, Jane immediately became marginalized by the leader of the group who told their boss, “I don’t know what she stands for. She doesn’t belong here.”

To correct this, we went to work first discussing her experiences with the organization and her views on challenging issues. After 20 years in the organization, Jane did have strong opinions about how to move the organization forward but just wasn’t accustomed to expressing them. Initially she had felt intimidated by the group of extroverts in the cross-functional committee, folks who were never shy about broadcasting their own opinions. So we prepared and planned contributions to these meetings in the beginning, and then, as Jane learned how to think through a situation–what was, what could be, and how to get there–she eventually became a full and forceful participant. A mere year later, she was promoted!

Once you get comfortable speaking at a strategic level like this, you need to next make sure that you’re inside those circles where you can be heard by your colleagues and superiors. Do what you must to become highly visible in your organization and industry. Visibility is a strategy that women often ignore but today they do so at their peril because, while dutifully working away like a good “doobie” knocking off the tasks at hand, a counterpart may be sitting in the conference room giving his or her opinion to colleagues in a way that is going to help him/her move up. So you too have to be out there, being both seen and heard. Don’t be lulled into thinking that simply doing a good job and working your tail off is all there is!

A few years ago, for example, a prospective partner in a law firm came to us because she was, well, a great worker but apparently all but invisible to the firm’s managing partner. Though on the radar because of her brains, she lacked personal power or charisma. Thus most people didn’t see her as someone who could become a rainmaker for the firm. Realizing after working with us that visibility was vital to her career success, she began to get serious about taking on strategic roles, speaking at events, abd contributing significant ideas to the firm’s development. Today she is one of the best known, most highly regarded attorneys in her firm and her field as well.

But it’s not just about getting involved and becoming invisible, it’s about developing strong speaking skills as well. As a woman, it’s vital you be clear, direct, compelling… and concise. Combine powerful ideas with a comfortable, natural, authentic style. As a good (and, one day, great) speaker, you’ll be seen as a great leader too. You’ll soon be asked to contribute, to serve on panels, to speak about important issues to employees, the board and other audiences. This is where you will make your name so that the people who count will begin to appreciate your strategic mind and view you as uniquely qualified for top roles.
Overall, here are some tips on how to achieve all of this, not just survive today’s economic downturn but how to make a name for yourself, accelerate your career and get on the fast track:

Raise your visibility: Visibility is power– no matter what your role. When people know you and talk about you in a positive way, word gets around that you are a woman to watch! You can have the world’s most brilliant ideas but if you don’t make it a point to raise your profile then nobody will ever know.
Create a “Make-a-Name-Strategy”: The most effective way to make a name quickly is to give presentations to senior management, stakeholders and boards. Determine where the up-and-coming people in your industry are, where they’re meeting, what they’re doing, and how you can join them.

Make time for speaking and appearances: Put events and practice time on your calendar and prepare like mad. Don’t view the speaking role as an “after hours” activity but rather as part of your job and essential to your future. If you don’t set aside time to prepare and practice, you may as well not do it because you won’t shine. Get serious about it.

Put up your hand: Take leadership positions, join committees, give speeches, do brown bag lunches, join professional organizations, get on the boards of non-profits. You’ll also want to consider writing articles and books and doing media interviews. All of this gives you the aura of a leader and expert in your industry, and also helps you meet the people you need to know.

Speak up, speak well: Delivering a great presentation is about substance and style. You need to master the podium, appearing confident and well prepared and at ease and in control. Speaking is not a natural-born skill, you learn by doing. So start early and spend a lot of time perfecting this at-first awkward, hard-to-master activity. One main reason that Caroline Kennedy lost public support so quickly in her quest for the US Senate in 2008 was a silly little vocal habit – saying “you know” too much. In contrast, Sarah Palin almost became Vice President and Hillary Clinton almost became President in large part because both could speak smoothly and connect with voters. To become a polished, confident speaker, speak in public so often that you end up enjoying standing at the front of a room and connecting with an audience.

Find mentors and consult with them often: You need savvy male and female mentors, people who support you, believe in you and are able and willing to help you navigate the challenges of corporate life. They will teach you the inside story of your company, help you recognize key players, teach you how to communicate with them, and help you get the visibility you need. Also, they’ll help get you out speaking a lot, and in front of the right people.

Walk around the office and get to know everyone: It’s still true, unfortunately, that women tend to go into their offices, put their heads down and just work and work all day. We emerge only to grab lunch from the frig or to depart at the end of the day. Break this natural hermit-like tendency by moving around, getting to know people, developing relationships… and joining in.

Dress for the job you want: Nothing undermines a woman faster than wearing the wrong clothing. Often, in fact, the fashion industry is not your friend. Yet you can be very fashionable without succumbing to some of the mistakes that make men want to date you but not promote you. Find a wardrobe consultant or shop where in-store consultants understand the importance of “professional dress.” Purchase high quality, high impact pieces that fit into your business, your industry and your lifestyle. Maintain your clothes, hairstyle and makeup in a way that ensures your non-verbal communication says "leader."

Take professional development seriously: Women are still incredibly reluctant to spend the time and money in professional coaching and training. Yet I have yet to come across a male executive who doesn’t believe it’s worth it to invest his budget and time in executive coaching. Get with it, get help, go to seminars, find a coach… accelerate your career! Executive coaching today is regarded as a sign you’re on the fast-track, so you need the help of an outside professional who’s on your side with no agenda.

The central message here is to take your career development seriously by seeking out opportunities that can move you forward and keep up your momentum. By expanding your visibility, articulating the “vision thing” and speaking clearly and powerfully before the right people, you’ll move to the top. The choice is yours today, a choice that’s new and, if you do it right, here to stay.

Author Bio

Suzanne Bates is the author of two business best-sellers, Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act! and Speak Like a CEO: Secrets for Commanding Attention and Getting Results: Secrets for Communicating Attention and Getting Results
(both published by McGraw Hill). She is President and CEO of Bates Communications: www.bates-communications.com and she is author of www.thepowerspeakerblog.com Suzanne’s books and products include How to Make a Name in Business, and The Power of Adversity, Communicating with Clients and Customers in Challenging Times.

Tweet Etiquette

2009-02-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

by Joel Comm with Ken Burge, Author of Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

Every conversation has rules. We know not to interrupt someone when they're talking. We know not to use bad language when we talk. We know not to talk too loudly.

And we know too how and when to break all of the rules.

Exactly the same is true for a Twitter conversation. The site hasn't been around for long, but Twitterers have already tried to figure out something like a Twittering etiquette.

Some of those etiquette rules are smart, sensible, and should always be followed. Others are smart, sensible, and should usually be followed.

While it's important to know the rules, it's just as important then to know when to break them -- and what happens when you do.

1. Don't spam.

This is one rule you can't break. Spammers don't survive long on Twitter. They don't build followers. Any followers they do get don't read their tweets and the number of conversions they can generate will be so tiny that as a marketing method, you'd probably be better off printing a thousand flyers, folding them into paper airplanes and tossing them out of your office window.

There are all sorts of different ways to spam on Twitter.

As we've seen, one way is to follow lots and lots of people in the hope that some of them follow you in return. That's not just ineffective, it also turns up clearly in your bio.

Whenever someone's bio shows that they're following several thousand people but only being followed by a handful, that's a pretty good sign that they're looking to spam. They're trying to build up followers who will follow them out of politeness rather than because they have interesting content.

Twitterers often steer clear of people like that.

The spamming itself though is done by constantly sending out tweets that say things like: "I've just put up a new blog post -- check it out!" or "Sign up for my RSS feed!"

You can send out tweets like this occasionally. But as we'll see later in this section, they have to be mixed in with other tweets too. Otherwise, you're just spamming, and that's annoying.

Worse, it doesn't work.

2. Follow style rules.

Twitter's founders may have had mobile phones in mind when they designed the service, and plenty of users may be typing their updates from their handheld devices, but Twitter isn't exactly the same as SMS messaging.

That means the language needs to look more like real words than the usual SMS-style abbreviations.

It goes without saying that typing in uppercase letters looks like you're shouting, but in addition to avoiding all uppercase, you should spell out words completely and avoid using numbers instead of letters whenever possible. (For example, "late" is not spelled "l8" and "to" is two letters, not one number.)

That might mean more typing, but the reasoning is sensible. "Heading 2 town l8. Dont nowot 4" is hard for the reader to understand. It's only good manners -- and good marketing sense -- for you to put in the work so that your readers don't have to.

There are exceptions, of course. If you're really strapped for space, this is a rule you can break, but understand that you're forcing your followers to make an effort. What is permissible, though, is to use symbols such as @ and=and to skip some of the grammar. The question Twitter asks might be "What are you doing now?" but you don't have to begin your answer by saying "I am . . . "

Sentence fragments such "About to start watching the football. Can't wait." are fine.

3. Give credit for retweets.

One of the things that makes Twitter such a powerful tool is the fact that information placed on the site can quickly go viral. When one person spots a good tweet, they can pass that message on to their own followers, and soon it's spreading right across the Twitterverse and beyond.

For a marketer, that's like hitting the jackpot.

On Twitter, it's done by retweeting.

Twitterers can simply copy someone else's tweet and tweet it themselves . . . but they must give credit to the original Twitterer. The format for retweets, then, looks like this:

"Retweet @username: original tweet."

So if you wanted to retweet this post from my timeline:

"Spontaneous LIVE broadcast! join me now with special guest! http://tinyurl.com/jclive" then you would tweet:

"Retweet @joelcomm: Spontaneous LIVE broadcast! join me now with special guest! http://tinyurl.com/ jclive"

Any comments you want to add to the retweet can go at the beginning or in brackets at the end:

"Not missing this! Retweet @joelcomm: Spontaneous LIVE broadcast! join me now with special guest! http://tinyurl.com/jclive"

"Retweet @joelcomm: Spontaneous LIVE broadcast! join me now with special guest! http://tinyurl.com/jclive (Not missing this!)"

The etiquette is simple enough. Sharing tweets is easy to understand, too. It might not be original content, but if your followerswould find the original tweet interesting, why shouldn't you share it?

The tricky bit is to get other people to retweet for you. While you can ask specifically for retweets -- and some people do -- it's not really good form.

If your tweets are interesting enough, people will share them with their friends and followers -- and those friends and followers will come to your page to find out who you are.

4. Stick to 140 characters.

You have to stick to 140 characters, right? That's all they give you, and they do it for a good reason. Being starved of space stops you waffling and sparks your creativity. It's what Twitter is all about.

Well, yes and no.

Twitter gives you 140 characters because that's all that can fit through SMS systems. If mobile phone companies could handle messages of 200 characters, then that's probably how long our tweets would be.

Even though the limit is fairly arbitrary, it does make sense to keep to it as much as possible.

The alternative is to show half-complete tweets and offer links for people to continue reading or break messages up so that they're sent over several tweets.

You can see this happening sometimes on Twitter, and it rarely looks good. Readers expect the content on Twitter to be small. They expect to be able to read and absorb it in one bite. These are content snacks, not three-course meals with coffee.

Writing a thought that takes more than 140 characters and spreading it over three or four tweets is giving people more than they want. It also makes you look like you're dominating the conversation.

Chat with a friend, and you'll take turns speaking. You'll speak, your friend will respond, and then you'll continue. Keep talking without giving your friend a chance to offer his response and you'll start to sound rude.

Multiple tweets can have the same effect upon Twitter. Again, this doesn't mean you should never break up a long tweet. And it certainly doesn't mean that you shouldn't post one tweet after another.

What it does mean is that you should be aware of the effect you can create in your timeline when you do either.

5. Follow people who follow you.

How many people you should follow on Twitter can always make for a great discussion point. Follow thousands of people and you're not going to be able to read all of their tweets. Inevitably, you'll miss tweets you'd really like to read, and you'll look like someone who has lots of acquaintances but no real friends.

In practice, it doesn't alwayswork this way. I follow more than 1,700 people. That's a lot less than the 4,500 or so who follow me, and while I know I'm missing tweets, I love the fact that when I look at my Twitter page I can see a huge variety of different conversations taking place.

It's a bit like strolling through the lobby during a break at a conference. I can choose which conversations to join and which to walk past. I find it very valuable, but I also don't want to overdo it so I don't follow everyone who follows me.

That makes me a feel a little rude, but I do feel that I have to control the number of tweets that pass across my home page and keep them focused on conversations that relate to Internet marketing.

You might feel different.

You might want -- at least at the beginning -- to reward everyone who follows you by following them in return. There are plenty of top Twitterers who do this.

Similarly, you might prefer only to follow close friends and people you already know. That will make you look antisocial and cliquey, which is not the best image for a marketer, but it's possible.

Ultimately, I think this is one place where eventually you have to skip the etiquette and do what works. As your follower list grows, you'll have to start being a little bit choosier about who you follow in return -- and your followers will just have to understand that you're being selective, not rude.

Spend any time on Twitter and you're going to come across plenty of other rules too. Some purists, for example, argue that your tweets should only describe what you're doing, not what you're thinking or planning to do. I think that's far too restrictive: if it sparks a conversation and entertains your followers, it's a fair topic. If they don't like it, they should read someone else's tweets.

And that's really the ultimate test of tweet etiquette: how other people react and how you would react to the same kind of thing.

If you're building followers and they're responding to what you're writing, you're following the right rules.

The above is an excerpt from the book Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm with Ken Burge. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Author Bio

Joel Comm is one of the world's leading experts on strategies for making money online. He is an in-demand speaker at conferences on Internet marketing and business, and also the author of The AdSense Code and Click Here to Order.

Ken Burge is an eight-year veteran of Microsoft and is currently Joel Comm's business partner and President of InfoMedia, Inc. As an expert in online marketing and strategy, Ken is responsible for the direction and management of more than fifty profitable online properties.

For more information, please visit http://www.joelcomm.com/twitter_power.html

How the Best Leaders Build Trust

2009-01-29T10:08:00.000-08:00

By Stephen M. R. Covey,
keynote speaker at Linkage’s Eleventh Annual Best of Organization Development Summit in Chicago, IL, May 12-14, 2009

Almost everywhere we turn, trust is on the decline. Trust in our culture at large, in our institutions, and in our companies is significantly lower than a generation ago. Research shows that only 49% of employees trust senior management, and only 28% believe CEOs are a credible source of information. Consider the loss of trust and confidence in the financial markets today. Indeed, "trust makes the world go ‘round," and right now we're experiencing a crisis of trust. This crisis compels us to ask three questions. First, is there a measurable cost to low trust? Second, is there a tangible benefit to high trust? Third, how can the best leaders build trust in and within their organizations to reap the benefits of high trust?

Most people don't know how to think about the organizational and societal consequences of low trust because they don't know how to quantify or measure the costs of such a so-called "soft" factor as trust. For many, trust is intangible, ethereal, unquantifiable. If it remains that way, then people don't know how to get their arms around it or how to improve it. But the fact is, the costs of low trust are very real, they are quantifiable, and they are staggering.

In 2004, one estimate put the cost of complying with federal rules and regulations alone in the United States -- put in place essentially due to lack of trust -- at $1.1 trillion, which is more than 10% of the gross domestic product. A recent study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimated that the average American company lost 6% of its annual revenue to some sort of fraudulent activity. Research shows similar effects for the other disguised low-trust taxes as well.

Think about it this way: When trust is low, in a company or in a relationship, it places a hidden "tax" on every transaction: every communication, every interaction, every strategy, every decision is taxed, bringing speed down and sending costs up. My experience is that significant distrust doubles the cost of doing business and triples the time it takes to get things done.

By contrast, individuals and organizations that have earned and operate with high trust experience the opposite of a tax -- a "dividend" that is like a performance multiplier, enabling them to succeed in their communications, interactions, and decisions, and to move with incredible speed. A recent Watson Wyatt study showed that high trust companies outperform low trust companies by nearly 300%!

I contend that the ability to establish, grow, extend, and (where needed) restore trust among stakeholders is the critical competency of leadership needed today. It is needed more than any other competency. Engendering trust is, in fact, a competency that can be learned, applied, and understood. It is something that you can get good at, something you can measure and improve, something for which you can "move the needle." You cannot be an effective leader without trust. As Warren Bennis put it, "Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms."

How do the best leaders build trust?

The first job of any leader is to inspire trust. Trust is confidence born of two dimensions: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, motive, and intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, skills, results, and track record. Both dimensions are vital.

With the increasing focus on ethics in our society, the character side of trust is fast becoming the price of entry in the new global economy. However, the differentiating and often ignored side of trust -- competence -- is equally essential. You might think a person is sincere, even honest, but you won't trust that person fully if he or she doesn't get results. And the opposite is true. A person might have great skills and talents and a good track record, but if he or she is not honest, you're not going to trust that person either.

The best leaders begin by framing trust in economic terms for their companies. When an organization recognizes that it has low trust, huge economic consequences can be expected. Everything will take longer and everything will cost more because of the steps organizations will need to take to compensate for their lack of trust. These costs can be quantified and, when they are, suddenly leaders recognize how low trust is not merely a social issue, but that it is an economic matter. The dividends of high trust can be similarly quantified, enabling leaders to make a compelling business case for trust.

The best leaders then focus on making the creation of trust an explicit objective. It must become like any other goal that is focused on, measured, and improved. It must be communicated that trust matters to management and leadership. It must be expressed that it is the right thing to do and it is the economic thing to do. One of the best ways to do this is to make an initial baseline measurement of organizational trust and then to track improvements over time.

The true transformation starts with building credibility at the personal level. The foundation of trust is your own credibility, and it can be a real differentiator for any leader. A person's reputation is a direct reflection of their credibility, and it precedes them in any interactions or negotiations they might have. When a leader's credibility and reputation are high, it enables them to establish trust fast -- speed goes up, cost goes down.

There are 4 Cores of Credibility, and it's about all 4 Cores working in tandem—Integrity, Intent, Capabilities, and Results. Part of building trust is understanding -- clarifying -- what the organization wants and what you can offer them. Be the one that does that best. Then add to your credibility the kind of behavior that builds trust. (see the 13 high trust behaviors below). Next, take it beyond just you as the leader and extend it to your entire organization. The combination of that type of credibility and behavior and organizational alignment results in a culture of high trust.

Consider the example of Warren Buffett -- CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (and generally considered one of the most trusted leaders in the world) -- who completed a major acquisition of McLane Distribution (a $23 billion company) from Wal-Mart. As public companies, both Berkshire Hathaway and Wal-Mart are subject to all kinds of market and regulatory scrutiny. Typically, a merger of this size would take several months to complete and cost several million dollars to pay for accountants, auditors, and attorneys to verify and validate all kinds of information. But in this instance, because both parties operated with high trust, the deal was made with one two-hour meeting and a handshake. In less than a month, it was completed. High trust, high speed, low cost.

13 Behaviors of High-Trust Leaders Worldwide

I approach this strategy primarily as a practitioner, both in my own experience and in my extensive work with other organizations. Throughout this learning process, have identified 13 common behaviors of trusted leaders around the world that build -- and allow you to maintain -- trust. When you adopt these ways of behaving, it's like making deposits into a "trust account" of another party.

Talk Straight
Demonstrate Respect
Create Transparency
Right Wrongs
Show Loyalty
Deliver Results
Get Better
Confront Reality
Clarify Expectation
Practice Accountability
Listen First
Keep Commitments
Extend Trust

Remember that the 13 Behaviors always need to be balanced by each other (e.g., Talk Straight needs to be balanced by Demonstrate Respect) and that any behavior pushed to the extreme can become a weakness.

Depending on your roles and responsibilities, you may have more or less influence on others. However, you can always have extraordinary influence on your starting points: Self-Trust (the confidence you have in yourself -- in your ability to set and achieve goals, to keep commitments, to walk your talk, and also with your ability to inspire trust in others) and Relationship Trust (how to establish and increase the trust accounts we have with others).

The job of a leader is to go first, to extend trust first. Not a blind trust without expectations and accountability, but rather a "smart trust" with clear expectations and strong accountability built into the process. The best leaders always lead out with a decided propensity to trust, as opposed to a propensity not to trust. As Craig Weatherup, former CEO of PepsiCo said, "Trust cannot become a performance multiplier unless the leader is prepared to go first."

The best leaders recognize that trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives -- both personally and professionally. I am convinced that in every situation, nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.

Author Bio
Stephen M. R. Covey is the author of The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything and keynote speaker at Linkage's Eleventh Annual Best of Organization Development Summit in Chicago, IL, May 12-14, 2009 - the world-renowned meeting for OD practitioners, line leaders, as well as HR generalists and executives. The Summit will provide best-in-class tools, case studies, techniques, and skills to address the needs of practitioners at every level. Register by March 13th and SAVE $200! Simply mention Priority Code ODC09-XX. For more information or to register call 781-402-5555 or visit http://www.linkageinc.com/offerings/summitsandinstitutes/organizationaldevelopment/Pages/Overview.aspx

Strategic Presence: The Power that Fuels Leadership!

2009-01-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

By Tony Jeary,
Author of Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life

The goal of leadership is to produce superior results on purpose and that makes leadership a results contest. The challenge of leadership is to persuade and motivate those they lead to produce the results they want. When people voluntarily and enthusiastically do what their leaders ask them to do and the desired results are achieved, leaders are considered to be effective and successful! The question is how do leaders really get others to voluntarily and enthusiastically produce the desired results? There are many parts to this puzzle, but there is none greater than a condition I describe as Strategic Presence.

Here is a great story that illustrates Strategic Presence and also illuminates its effect. A student from a foreign country was enrolled in the middle of a school year. During the first day of class, the other kids in the class were doing what kids do. There was a lot of giggling and staring and posturing for the new arrival. The new student was dressed in a way that did not meet the expectations of a few of the other children and eventually one of them (the class clown) began to make jokes about the new student's appearance.

As the scene was progressing toward chaos, the teacher was about to intervene when a girl stood up and told everyone to stop picking on their new classmate. The girl reminded them that it was scary to be new in a school and they needed to be kind to the student and make them feel welcome She reminded them they should treat this new person as they would want to be treated if they were in a new country and a new school. After class, the teacher called the girl aside and said, "That was a very brave thing you did. Why did you do that?" The girl replied, "Because that is what my Mom and Dad would expect me to do!"

This story powerfully illustrates the essence and the effect of what I call Strategic Presence. The girl had merely done what she knew her parents would want her to do. Her parents had succeeded in creating a positive presence in her mind, which gave her the willingness and courage to do what she did. Most importantly, the presence of her parents was so authentic that they did not have to be physically present to inspire their daughter's good behavior.

Leaders create impressions that exist in the mind of every person they lead. It is a presence that defines the perceptions people have of their leaders and what they believe about them. It is this overall persona that I am referring to when I use the term Strategic Presence and there are two types: Positive and Negative. Leaders are constantly creating and presenting images of influence that produce both.

The most important fact about Strategic Presence is that it produces two possible reactions in others. It either produces voluntary cooperation or it produces various forms of resistance. If leaders generate positive Strategic Presence, people will be more likely to support what they want, most of the time. However, if perceptions of leadership are negative people will substitute resistance for cooperation. The possibilities of how people will respond to Strategic Presence are limited to cooperation or resistance. There is not much middle ground between them. As someone once said, "you are either for us against us!" It is easy to see why creating an authentic, positive strategic presence is critical for the execution of a vision.

Creating positive Strategic Presence is not a strategy of manipulation. The positive strategic presence leaders project must be authentic. Failing the test of authenticity means the very image leadership hopes to establish will be perceived as deceptive and disingenuous, or worse. People are very perceptive and they will see through efforts to project a phony persona for the purposes of manipulating their behavior. So, why shouldn't a leader's strategic presence just be allowed to be what it is?" That is a great question and the answer is simple. Many leaders are misunderstood and create perceptions that really don't match their intent. So, understanding how Strategic Presence is created will minimize the possibility of being misunderstood.

So, how is strategic presence is created? What are the things about leadership that speaks the loudest about it? What creates the perceptions that combine to produce Strategic Presence? There are two components that contribute to strategic presence: values and behavior.

Our values are established by what we believe to be right, wrong, true, false, acceptable, unacceptable, appropriate and inappropriate. Let's face it, we have all developed deep, strong opinions about many things as we live our lives. Our opinions spring forth from your values and your values influence what we actually do.

Our values and beliefs impact 5 categories of that drive our behavior, and it is our behavior that creates Strategic Presence. The five categories that drive behavior are:

Work ethic
Integrity
Judgment
Courage
Willingness to help others

So, if you want to be a great leader, you need to have great values and your values must be demonstrated in the action you take. This is the essence of Strategic Presence and it is truly the power that fuels leadership.

Author

Tony Jeary, author of Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life, has been and continues to be the coach to the world's top CEOs and high achievers for more than 20 years. His clients include the Presidents of Wal-Mart, Firestone, Shell, Samsung, New York Life, and the United States Senate, to name only a few. An advisor to many, Tony Jeary has invested his life and career in helping others discover new clarity for their vision, develop focus on direction, and create powerful execution strategies that strategically impact achievement and results. Tony is happily married and blessed with 2 great daughters.

Learn more about Strategic Acceleration at www.strategicacceleration.com
Visit Tony Jeary at www.tonyjeary.com

The "Communicator-in-Chief": What CEOs Can Learn from Barack Obama's Communication Style

2009-01-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

By Suzanne Bates (Author of Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!)

All indications are that our new President has in mind a "New Deal" when it comes to Presidential communications. He certainly knows his way around the technology. He fought with government lawyers and security agencies to keep his own BlackBerry for personal and private messages. He welcomes opportunities to meet the press. His rhetorical flair and unflappable confidence on the platform catapulted him onto the national stage four years ago; he just kept getting better. It isn't all about style -- it's the way he thinks about communication. Running a tight campaign ship (No Drama Obama) set a pattern that most expect will continue in the Oval Office. Mr. Obama even created something heretofore unheard of -- the office of the President-Elect -- complete with a media room and a presidential-worthy podium. As Gerald Seib, Capital Journal columnist for the Wall Street Journal observed, our Commander in Chief apparently intends also to become a "Communicator-in-Chief."

It would be easy to pigeonhole Barack Obama's style as charismatic. He certainly commands the room, no matter the venue, and connects with audiences in every situation. He adapts with ease -- a comfortable, conversational, hipster, down-home style for a reporter sit-down, which contrasts with his confident, motivational way of delivering the rhetoric of hope on the platform. He does have some annoying vocal habits -- I noticed after awhile that the phrases "as I've said," or "I've made it clear," frequently crept in, just prior to the answer to a tough question. Still, you cannot help but admire the way he can work a crowd into an absolute frenzy.

Having said all that, there is certainly more to Obama's effectiveness than charisma. The fact that he has carved out so much precious time for press conferences during the transition is an indication of how he sees his role. It isn't just his relationship with the press -- it's the overall message that communication and leadership are one. Sure, he always prefaced remarks on policy and news events by saying we still have one President at a time, and yet, by becoming so highly visible, Obama gained control of the national dialogue, anyway, filling the potential news vacuum during the Bush to Obama transition. Had Mr. Obama chosen to stay behind the scenes, the nation would not necessarily have expected him to be out there, but it would have made us feel restless and leaderless. Instead, there was this perception that someone was already in charge.

What can leaders learn from Barack Obama's approach to communication? It really isn't about style. Every leader has to develop his or her own style, from interpersonal to platform skills. You find a way of communicating with people that is honest, effective, and authentic to you. The real takeaway from watching Mr. Obama begin his presidency is that in challenging times, leaders know that communication is everything. Sheperding your organization through the turmoil our economic meltdown requires you to put yourself at the center of the communication universe. You cannot view the communication "function" as such -- something that "other people" manage and execute. You have to stand right there and make sure it happens -- position yourself in the middle of the loop.

This can be difficult on a personal level. It's hard to communicate when you don't have the answers. In times of stress we are inclined to retreat and wait. If you don't feel like you have something good to say, perhaps you think you should say nothing at all. Yet what is really required -- is a full court press. You have to communicate more often, with greater purpose and passion than ever before. While you don't have all the answers, you get an honest, open, creative dialogue goiung with your employees and customers, and keep it going. You look for real signs of progress and give them hope.

People are comparing Obama to FDR, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, and these comparisons are real and noteworthy. These were leaders who made people believe. They didn't come by it naturally -- Martin Luther King was a mediocre speaker who aspired to be great; Reagan fashioned his style in Hollywood; Winston Churchill practiced his speeches incessantly. All knew the importance of honing their skills to becoming great leaders. In addition they surrounded themselves with people who could help them - they hired great speechwriters who employed writing techniques such as parallel structure ("I have a dream", "Ask not what your country can do . . . ") and they practiced over many years to develop a highly effective style, using pace, pauses, and timing.

So leadership and communication go hand in hand, and in challenges times, you have to deliver a message of hope. You must motivate and inspire people by communicating with purpose and passion at every opportunity. Connecting people with a message of hope may be the highest definition of leadership. As a leader, you can change the course of your business by making people believe in themselves. People who are motivated and inspired will overcome the obstacles, defy the odds and accomplish more. And this will have a direct, undeniable impact on the bottom line of your business, and the future of your company.

What is the leader's challenge? It is to recognize first that you are the Communicator-in Chief. You must clearly communicate the mission, purpose and plan so that it inspires people. This allows them to connect with their own sense of purpose, to be a part of the solution. Just as Barack Obama intends to harness the power of communication to spark creativity, ingenuity and purpose, so too, must business leaders set this intention.

Author Bio

Suzanne Bates is author of Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act! (McGraw Hill 2009) and the best-seller Speak Like a CEO: Secrets for Commanding Attention and Getting Results. President and CEO of Bates Communications, www.bates-communications.com she also writes The Power Speaker Blog www.thepowerspeakerblog.com.

Coaching, managing, instructing

2008-11-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

by Matt Somers

Coaching v Managing

It is difficult to decide on a single definition of the word management and this is not helped by the modern trend in organizations to label almost everything and everybody as management in some way. Arguably, everybody in an organization is a manager to the extent that management is about deploying resources to get the job done, however, most would agree that a manager in an organization has some degree of responsibility for people and some say in how those people go about their work.

With this in mind it follows that managers are coaches and always have been; it's just that not all managers realize this and many would prefer it were not the case. However, if you are a manager with responsibility for people than you need to understand what good coaching is all about and should be congratulated for investing time in researching it!

The most prevalent management style - even now - is a command and control type approach. Management structures for most of the last century were modeled on the military and despite the advent of 'flat structures', 'matrix management' and the like; this is still the most common approach and feeds the appetite for command and control. Command and control - or telling people what to do and how to do it - work well in dangerous situations, emergencies or where there is no time for anything else. However, it does little for learning and enjoyment at work and thus becomes hard to sustain and causes resentment and poor performance in the end. Why does it persist? Because so many of our role models behave like this, reward structures are geared towards short term results and because, until recently, there was a lack of a viable alternative.

Coaching has changed all this and gives us great cause for optimism. Coaching is still about mobilizing people to get things done, but in a way that recognizes that people are complex, living, feeling human beings and that these factors cannot be ignored.

Managers are coaches and coaches are managers. It is perfectly possible to combine both roles though not always wise to do so. There is an imbalance of power with managers having more power and resources than the people in their teams. This is not an insurmountable barrier to coaching but it cannot be overlooked.

Coaching v Instructing

Within the manager's role lies the task of enabling the people whom they manage to do the job and further developing those talents so that they do the job well. This is most commonly achieved by a teaching, instructing type approach. By this I mean the manager will sit with their member of staff explaining what they need to do and how they need to do it. Perhaps this is so common because we are programmed from school to believe that telling and instructing are the most appropriate way of passing on skills. There is a time and a place for instructing of course, but in the modern world of work this orthodox approach has three flaws.

Firstly it requires that you, as a manager know how you get results yourself. You probably do for the technical aspects of your role, but what about subtle behavioural aspects of performance? If you're naturally assertive, intuitive, likeable, confident, bold or whatever it can be virtually impossible to identify how it is exactly that you're good at those things and frustrating to try and help others become adept at things you find easy. Some of the best football players become the worst managers.

The second problem to overcome is then finding words to pass that knowledge on. Let's say you can identify how exactly you behave in an assertive way or go about accessing your intuition, how do you communicate that in words? Imagine trying to explain snow to an Arab or sand to an Eskimo. The problem is that other people seldom share our frame of reference; sometimes referred to as our 'model of the world'. We have to explain things in a way that fits with other people's experience, but do so by drawing on our own unique experience. The chances of getting this right are slim, and the likelihood is that something will get lost in translation.

The third challenge is recall. There is a host of research that shows it's very difficult for people to remember what they have only ever been told or shown. One study suggests that people have forgotten almost all of anything only ever explained to them after about 3 months. This improves if we tell and show, but in order to demonstrate to our staff what we need them to do; we have to be able to do it ourselves. With the pace of change these days that's virtually impossible and is not the wisest use of our management time anyway.

Even if you are able to overcome these obstacles an instructing type approach to people development results at best in people who do it like you do. Who says that's the best way? Who says they couldn't find a better way, or at least a way more suited to their own particular skills and talents?

With the advent of coaching in the business world in the early 1990s things have got a lot better and many managers acknowledge the need for a coaching approach. However there is still more telling and instructing than we need and I felt it was appropriate to record the shortcomings of this approach here.

Matt Somers is a coaching practitioner of many years' experience. He works with a host of clients in North East England where his firm is based and throughout the UK and Europe. Matt understands that people are working with their true potential locked away. He shows how coaching provides a simple yet elegant key to this lock. To get your FREE guide "Coaching for an Easier Life" visit www.mattsomers.com

7 Ways To Save Money On Employees

2008-11-18T11:20:00.000-08:00

by Cash Miller

There are many ways for a business to save money. But because employees are so expensive anything that a business owner can do to save money on them can often have the most impact on the business. And when you implement money saving ideas you want them to have as much of an impact as possible. So here are 7 tips that you might consider using to save your business money.

1. If your business is seasonal or has occasional spikes in sales then you should consider hiring temporary workers to handle the load. You won't have the costs associated with hiring permanent staff and when the surge is over you can easily let them go. Plus you have the added benefit of seeing people in action. Just in case you need someone permanently afterwards.

2. Use independent contractors. This avoids the cost of paying extra taxes and employee benefits. But make sure they are independent contractors. The IRS is not too fond of them so make sure that you issue them a 1099 and make sure you check the IRS definition on what they consider an independent contractor first.

3. Use interns. Colleges often have programs to help people get internships with local businesses. This helps you to get the extra help you need and gives someone a chance to learn the ropes in an actual business environment. And just like with temporary workers you may find someone you'd like to keep.

4. Cross train your employees whenever possible. Often a surge in business might only last for a few days. Employees that work in other areas of your business can often be cross trained so that when this happens they have the ability to pitch in and help.

5. Get more from your employees. Use a performance system that offers some sort of a reward for an outstanding job. Although the perks may cost you some money the incentives are often well worth the boost in performance your employees will give you.

6. Lease your employees from another company. Instead of hiring your employees directly lease them from a leasing company. That way you can cut the cost of human resources and accounting by letting the leasing company handle the paperwork. You just pay the leasing company and they have to pay the employees. Plus all the headaches associated with having a human resources department including the people you would have to pay can go away.

7. Use manufacturer's reps to handle product sales. Instead of hiring your own sales force use an outside company to handle sales for you. They work on commission which avoids salaries and hourly wages for you and they only get paid for the products or services they sell. Which will provide an incentive for them.

Businesses are always looking for ways they can save money. And because employees are always such a large portion of your expenses cutting employee costs can have a huge impact. But these are just some of the ways your business can save money there are others you just need to take the time to look.

Cash Miller is an expert in small business affairs. To receive more tips that can help your business and let you to crush your competition you can sign up for his FREE Newsletter at http://www.smallbusinessdelivered.com/free-newsletter-signup.html. Once you've signed up you'll receive access to 5 FREE E-Books that can help your business prosper. And as a Bonus FREE Newsletter Members can expect to receive an additional FREE E-Book each week.

Terminating Employees Respectfully

2008-11-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

by Linda Finkle

One of the most difficult actions any executive has to take is to look an employee directly in the eye and tell them that they will no longer be working for the company. Knowing that termination will end the employee's current source of income, and undoubtedly affect them in a number of ways personally, makes it infinitely more stressful to address the task. In truth, although keeping the employee in question may be detrimental to the health of the company itself, many leaders keep people on longer than they should because they simply can't face firing them. Mass terminations can be even more stressful. In order to avoid facing the devastation and disappointment of their employees, many companies have resorted to pretty appalling means of letting their employees know the score.

Consider the company that allowed its employees to arrive at work one morning only to find that their key cards had been deactivated and the locks changed. Or the daycare where parents arrived to pick up their children on the Friday before Labor Day and were told that this was the last day the day care would be open. The staff hadn't been notified until that day, and the parents didn't know at all. Worse yet, the owner of the daycare did not bother to call parents or staff who had not been at the school on Friday to inform them that the school was closing. So they showed up with their children in tow on the following Tuesday to find the doors locked, lights out and a note on the door.

What brings leaders to this extreme kind of action? It's undoubtedly fear, stress, frustration and more significantly, a total lack of concern and caring for their employees. In the cases above, it's likely that the company had been having financial, legal, IRS or other problems for some time and the leaders had not shared this with the employees. Whether you're terminating a single employee who just isn't "cutting the mustard" or a mass layoff, it's crucial that a leader understands the importance of managing the termination in a respectful and responsible manner. What are the most common ways people are terminated?

Here are some examples:

- Depending on the size of the company, sometimes an HR designate handles the termination, either alone or in conjunction with the manager. This is more of a CYA tactic for the company than it is a helpful or caring attitude towards the employee.

- Many states are 'at will' states, meaning they can fire at any time without cause. Some employers interpret that to mean they don't need to provide feedback to employees who are not performing well, and therefore, whenever the mood hits them, they simply terminate.

- Larger companies have what's called a PIP - performance improvement plan. They give the employee in question three months to demonstrate improvement in specified areas and if they don't, they are told up front that they won't have a job. This allows the company to easily terminate someone if their performance doesn't improve, and gives the employee the chance to turn the performance issues around.

- Termination for cause is obviously a different situation than termination due to a company closing their doors, downsizing, reorganizing or merging/being acquired. Cause is anything from not showing up for work, poor performance or sexual harassment to simply not doing what is required. Cause related issues usually play out with employers sitting down privately with the employee and telling them that they are terminated. In most cases (though not all) it should come as no surprise to the employee as they have been warned and the issue has been discussed previously.

- Companies have been known to send an employee the news of their position being eliminated in an email. Some companies have actually sent blast emails (not individual ones) to staff letting them know they were no longer needed and not to come back to work.

Certainly, the only thing that could be considered worse than firing an employee who's not performing to requirement, dragging down co-workers and wreaking havoc with your business, is to avoid terminating them. Fear of an emotional scene shouldn't cause you to hold onto an employee who just doesn't fit your company.

That being said, there are ways to terminate an employee with dignity and respect:

- Communication is key. Explain the circumstances surrounding the decision for termination without sugar-coating the situation. The truth is still the truth, so be sure to be genuine and honest in your explanations. If the employee is not being terminated due to performance issues, let them know how valuable their work has been to the company and how much you've appreciated them.

- If the termination is performance-based, be sure that you give your employees clear and honest feedback. Discuss the performance issue with the employee and provide the specific improvements that need to occur including a time frame within which they need to turn things around - with the consequences of not improving to a specific level clearly stated.

- Be crystal clear about the reason for termination. Whether it's performance-related, a lack of "fit" in the company, a change in the needs of the organization or a mass layoff for financial reasons, the employee has the right to know why they are losing their job.

- Specifically explain the timeframe within which their departure will take place and what the company will be providing (if any) to the employee (i.e. severance pay, benefits) after they leave the company.

In order to show genuine concern and respect for your people, it's crucial to understand that most terminations are not the result of bad employees. Sometimes we have people where the job outgrows them and there is just no appropriate position in which to place them in the company. Sometimes the expectations or needs of the company change and the employee cannot adjust to the new expectations. And, at times, you may have people who simply cannot perform well. This may be skills-based rather than a problem with motivation or attitude. An employee may simply not fit the company. All of these circumstances are painful for the employee, and also for the caring employer.

Firing an employee is tough, and the territory comes with emotional fallout, but if it has to be done, you do both yourself and your business a great disservice by putting off the inevitable. Every company has to make tough decisions about staffing; it's the nature of business. However, if we forget that employees are people, with feelings, fears, concerns and families, we will simply dismiss them (both literally and figuratively). Perhaps it is easier for companies to forget that their employees are people. Certainly, not caring about the personal aspects of a termination builds a buffer zone that protects the emotions of the executive who is required to do the firing. Yet the only way to terminate productively is to treat your people with respect and dignity, regardless of the reason for termination.

Linda Finkle is a leading expert on organizational communication strategies and human potential development. As CEO of her executive coaching firm, Incedo Group, Linda has helped countless leaders build internal communication and conflict resolution strategies. She brings about changes in attitude and leadership style that yield dramatic results. Company profitability is an inevitable side effect. Learn more at http://www.IncedoGroup.com

Coaching Skills Training: Coaching v Training

2008-11-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

by Matt Somers

"You've done a bit of that coaching stuff; see if you can pull a bit of a training workshop together for the team"

"There's not much classroom training going on in the summer, so put yourself about and do some one to one coaching instead"

"I like that coach we hired, see if we can get her to deliver the customer service workshops"

Whilst I won't pretend that they are direct quotes, these senior management style comments do serve to illustrate the foggy understanding of the differences between training and coaching and suggest some of the difficulties that might be encountered in moving from one discipline to the other. They also suggest that those who commission or purchase training and coaching are unclear of the differences and risk using the wrong tool for the wrong job.

Coaching is not training one to one ("Sitting by Nellie") and training is not group coaching. While both are ultimately concerned with making people bigger and better at what they do, training is a teacher centred approach best deployed when a performance gap to do with a lack of knowledge or skill has been identified. A good example would be providing training to a salesperson with a poor record of upselling because he has a poor grasp of the finance options or has never been taught the various accessory packages his dealership offers. Coaching on the other hand is a learner centred approach that is best used in addressing performance gaps that are to do with attitude or state of mind. If our salesman knows his product range and sales techniques inside out and backwards more training is not going to help. If he is experiencing fatigue, boredom, stress, lack of focus, etc., coaching is what he needs.

Classroom trainers have always been asked to carry out one to one training when the need arises and that practice still happens. The problem is calling this activity coaching. I remember being invited to watch some coaching take place in a contact centre. This consisted of a sales trainer listening in on an adviser's call and afterwards pointing out the mistakes that had been made and the sales leads that had been missed. The adviser listened dutifully but didn't learn a lot and was left to raise his performance by "trying harder". This is not coaching. At best it is feedback, at worst it is destructive criticism.

What if we want our trainers to be coaches too? Trainers know about learning styles, differing speeds of learning, engaging the learner by asking questions and so on. The good news is that as coaches they will definitely need to be drawing on their skills in these areas.

The bad news is that a lot of other things they do as a trainer will be counter productive as a coach. The most obvious of these being telling and instructing. In training - particularly technical training - these are vital skills and we use them to pass on information and check that we have been understood. In coaching we're more concerned with helping learners find their own way forward and are probably best advised to avoid telling and instructing as far as possible. This is because when we tell or instruct we assume responsibility for making the learning happen, we deny our learners the opportunity to think for themselves and we end up simply passing on our recipe which is unlikely to quite as appropriate for our learner anyway.

A desire to help people achieve their own results is a useful starting point but the best advice for the trainer cum budding coach is to undertake some coach training. The options available for doing so are many and various and outside the scope of this article. My recommendation would be to start by articulating exactly what you want your coach training to do for you; as precisely as you can before looking at what the different providers offer.

What's Partnership got to do with Leadership?

2008-11-18T11:16:00.000-08:00

by Shine Consulting

Welcome to the second in my three-part series on Leadership, which I define as "holding the Vision, causing Partnership, and holding people to Account". In the last article I explored the area of Accountability. This time I am going to take a look at Partnership, which I define as: 'holding oneself to account for the success of each member of the team'.

But What do we Really Mean by 'Partnership'?

Perhaps you've heard the story: There was a man who wanted to see both hell and heaven. He goes first to a land where all the people have delicious food to eat. But they have spoons longer than their arms, so they go hungry and suffer horribly. Then he goes to another place where everyone has the same wonderful food and the same long spoons. But here, they use the spoons to feed each other! This is the nature of hell and heaven, and the hair's breadth that divides them.

We use this parable, which exists in many cultures, to demonstrate the difference between what people normally call 'partnership' and the partnership which could possibly exist in a team or an organisation of people working together. How would it be if you and everyone else in your team came to work committed to ensuring each other's success?

What Kinds of 'Normal' Organisational Behaviour Would You No Longer See?

- You would never fingerpoint (or be fingerpointed at!) over failure to deliver a promise

- You could not be at ease with delivering results and getting recognition, when other members of your team had struggled to achieve their targets

- You would never suffer from anxiety and overload, while other team members were happy, thriving and successful in their work

In a team where the 'long spoons' model of partnership exists:

- The whole team takes accountability for everyone's results - if one team member is struggling to produce results, the whole team feels it has failed

- The leader is a full member of the team, not set apart from other team members in any way, though he has a specific role to fulfil. And it is their job to have him succeed, just as it is his to have them succeed

- The satisfaction, motivation and well being of other members of the team is just as much a part of your job as is achieving your targets

Why Should You, as a Leader, Create Partnership?

You could argue that, in the presence of a powerful leader, partnership is unnecessary - you will get the job done with or without others' involvement. But in today's organisations, this is not sufficient. You might achieve the result, but at what cost? If you don't involve others, you leave them disempowered and demotivated. You don't train them in how to produce results. Your organisation is the poorer, and if you leave, your knowledge and skill leaves too.

Then too, many organisations these days are moving to a matrix structure, where it is increasingly difficult for any one person to get the job done without involving others. In fact it's often positively destructive to focus single-mindedly on your own targets when so many others' success depends on your cooperation and involvement.

Working in partnership maximises the chances of success for you, and for everyone else in the organisation. Leading the charge on a white charger is a very lonely position to be in, especially when you look round, and there's nobody behind you!

Step 1 - Change your Mindset

The foundation of the kind of partnership we are talking about here is Trust. If you don't trust someone, you won't want to contribute to them, and you won't want them to contribute to you.

The way most of us regard trust is that the other person needs to earn it. And if they do something that reduces our trust in them, they should do something to put it right. The problem with this is that the change in perception has happened in your mind. Very often 'they' don't even know there's a problem!

If as a leader you are committed to creating partnership around you, you need to make a fundamental shift in your own mindset around trust, and around who is accountable (see last article: "How can I be a great Team Leader?") for generating and maintaining it. In our model, you are accountable! Not for any moral or ethical reason, though some belief systems and religions would argue this, but because being accountable for generating trust and partnership with those we need to work (or live) with, works!

In fact, if we are talking about your work team colleagues, your boss, your customers, your suppliers, you are paid to be accountable for generating this level of partnership, and not to do so is a breach of integrity.

Step 2 - Take Action

Here is a series of actions to take if you are committed to creating partnership with others at work:

- Draw up a list of the people you deal with in every area of your work: include your immediate team peers, your reports, boss, customers, suppliers, and anyone in the organisational matrix whose work interacts with yours

- Mark against the names on your list any that you don't trust

- For each of these people, think about why trust is lacking. Usually something will have happened (or not happened) in the past that has led to this, though sometimes you will be surprised to find no concrete basis at all for your feelings of mistrust

- Taking each person on the list in turn, have a face-to-face conversation to resolve the issues and convert the relationship into one based on trust. Don't stop until trust and partnership are fully present in the relationship

Remember - it's your job to trust them and to create partnership with them. You are accountable, not them, for making it happen!

At Shine Consulting, we work with leaders who are consciously engaged in designing their organisations to be places where people:

- are consistently passionate, inspired and committed

- produce results well beyond the predictable norm

In short, organisations that really shine!

http://www.shineconsulting.co.uk

Hiring the Right Skill Set And Motivating the Millennials

2008-11-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

By Tony Wagner,
Author of The Global Achievement Gap

In an economic downturn, employers need to be even more careful with their hiring decisions. And recent graduates from some of the best schools may not have the skills that matter most in the new global knowledge economy. In researching my new book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach The New Survival Skills Our Children Need -- and What We Can Do About It, I have come to understand that there are "7 Survival Skills" for the New World of Work, and that employers must look beyond applicants' "pedigrees" to carefully assess whether they have the skills that matter most.

New Skills

Here are the Seven Survival Skills, as described by some of the people whom I interviewed:

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

"The idea that a company's senior leaders have all the answers and can solve problems by themselves has gone completely by the wayside . . . The person who's close to the work has to have strong analytic skills. You have to be rigorous: test your assumptions, don't take things at face value, don't go in with preconceived ideas that you're trying to prove."
--Ellen Kumata, consultant to Fortune 200 companies

Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence

"The biggest problem we have in the company as a whole is finding people capable of exerting leadership across the board . . . Our mantra is that you lead by influence, rather than authority."
--Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Cisco

Agility and Adaptability

"I've been here four years, and we've done fundamental reorganization every year because of changes in the business . . . I can guarantee the job I hire someone to do will change or may not exist in the future, so this is why adaptability and learning skills are more important than technical skills."
--Clay Parker, President of Chemical Management Division of BOC Edwards

Initiative and Entrepreneurship

"For our production and crafts staff, the hourly workers, we need self-directed people . . . who can find creative solutions to some very tough, challenging problems."
--Mark Maddox, Human Resources Manager at Unilever Foods North America

Effective Oral and Written Communication

"The biggest skill people are missing is the ability to communicate: both written and oral presentations. It's a huge problem for us."
--Annmarie Neal, Vice President for Talent Management at Cisco Systems

Accessing and Analyzing Information

"There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren't prepared to process the information effectively, it almost freezes them in their steps."
--Mike Summers, Vice President for Global Talent Management at Dell

Curiosity and Imagination

"Our old idea is that work is defined by employers and that employees have to do whatever the employer wants . . . but actually, you would like him to come up with an interpretation that you like -- he's adding something personal -- a creative element."
--Michael Jung, Senior Consultant at McKinsey and Company

Looking Beyond the Degree

The conventional thinking of many who make hiring decisions is that graduates from "name-brand" colleges are likely to be more intelligent and better prepared than students who have gone to second or third tier schools. But, in reality, what the degree may mean is that these students are better at taking tests and figuring out what the professor wants -- skills that won't get them very far in the workplace today. A senior associate from a major consulting firm told me that recent hires from Ivy League business schools were constantly asking what the right answer was -- in order words, how to get an "A" for the job they were doing -- and were not always very adept at asking the right questions, which was the single most important skill senior executives whom I interviewed identified.
So what does this mean for the interview process?

First, listen carefully for the kinds of questions the applicant asks. Are they probing? Insightful? Do they suggest that the applicant has really prepared for the interview by trying to understand your business? Do you feel as though you or your company are being interviewed? If so, that's a very good sign.

How a perspective employee asks these questions matters, as well. Does he or she listen carefully and engage you in discussions? Is the potential new hire both interested and interesting? In addition to the ability to ask good questions, senior execs told me that the ability to "look someone in the eye and engage in a thoughtful discussion" is an essential competency for working with colleagues and understanding customers' needs.

Finally, perhaps the most important question you might ask is, "what do you want to learn or how do you want to grow in this job?" This question is essential for two reasons: First, the quality of the answer will tell you how reflective this individual is -- and how intentional he or she may about his or her own development. More than any specific skill, individuals must want to learn, grow, and improve continuously to be successful in today's workplace.

Motivating the Millennials

The second reason why this question is important goes to the heart of the problem of how to motivate new hires to do their best. In asking the question, "how do you want to grow," you are signaling to a prospective employee that you and your company are committed to developing the talents of your workers. Many employers worry that this generation lacks a work ethic. But in my research, I have discovered that this generation is not unmotivated but rather differently motivated to learn and to work. Above all else, they want opportunities to be challenged and to make a difference.

Describing the different work ethic of this generation, Ellen Kumata, who is managing partner at Cambria Associates and consults to senior executives at Fortune 200 companies, told me, "They don't see coming into a company as being a career experience. They don't want to climb the corporate ladder and make more money and please the boss. And so you can't manage them the same way -- you can't just put them into a cubicle and expect them to perform." Tracy Mitrano, who manages the Office of Information Technologies at Cornell University, agreed: "You have to make the work more interesting and allow them to work in different ways. They are prepared to work just as much and just as hard -- but not at a desk 8 hours a day."

Andrew Bruck was finishing a law degree at Stanford when I interviewed him last year. "We want to feel ownership. We have a craving for an opportunity to do something really important," he told me. "People in my generation have been in a constant state of training. Now they're excited to go do something. The more responsibility you give people, the better they produce . . . There are more and more recent law school grads who are willing to take a lower salary in return for an opportunity for more meaningful work."

Ben McNeely, a journalist, described to me the difference between his former employer and his current one. "At the paper where I worked previously, the publisher would kill stories if they portrayed an advertiser in a negative light. At the paper where I work now, I have an opportunity to contribute something in a growing community. I was brought in to cover the new bio-tech research campus under construction nearby, where the Canon towel factory used to be, and to cover health care issues, as well. I have support from the editor and publisher who both have strong journalistic ethics. I like it that the editor pushes Windham, who us to dig deeper."

Carie Windham, who graduated from college in 2005, told me about the best boss she's ever had. "He asked me where I want to be in 10 years. He talked to me about creating the experience I want to have. He understood I wouldn't be there forever . . . Mentoring is a huge motivational tool, someone showing an interest in you and giving you feedback. We want to feel we have a creative, individual role -- that we're not just working on an assembly line. We want to feel like we have ownership of an idea."

Hiring the right talent, then, is only part of the problem employers face today. Equally important is how businesses create challenges and learning opportunities that motivate the Millennials to do their best. Google, which had more than one million applications for 5,000 jobs in 2006, is the number one pick of a place to work for many of the Millennials. Listening to twenty-two year old Matt Kulick talk about his work, one begins to understand how profoundly many companies will have to change in order to attract and retain the best talent: "First, they (Google) share ideals that I believe in -- open source software. And their products are solving important problems for people -- doing good in the world. I believe in what they're doing -- these values are very important to me. I wanted to help out, to make a contribution. The second reason I came to Google is because they give me the resources I need to accomplish major things that will really make a difference in world. The third reason is the responsibility they give you from the day you start. It is a winning combination. It makes me happy to go to work every day."

Author Bio

Tony Wagner is co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His most recent book is The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills -- And What We Can Do About It (Basic Books, 2008), and he can be reached through his website: www.schoolchange.org

The Diversity Leadership Imperative: The Need to Progress from Diversity Management to Diversity Leadership Competency

2008-10-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

By Al Vivian

I will start with two basic points that everyone can logically agree with: 1.) Every organization needs quality leadership to be successful in a highly competitive world, and 2.) Diversity is a reality that is here to stay, and its impact is increasing exponentially as our demographics continue to change. Further diversity's impact will broaden via globalization as the world continues to shrink and flatten. As a result, there is an automatic interconnectedness between leadership and diversity, yet this relation between the two has not been adequately and accurately explored.

This leads me to my third point, which some may debate. 3.) In order to truly maximize the effectiveness and potential of ourselves and our organizations we must develop some solid diversity leadership competencies. This is true for all of us, regardless of our cultural background; because you cannot maximize your effectiveness as a leader in an extremely diverse society without understanding diversity. In short, you cannot lead what you do not understand.

Some may debate this by saying " . . . America has always had diversity within its ranks and we've consistently been the leaders of the free world." That is true, however what's different now is that global competition is far fiercer; and our society is far more diverse than ever before. Additionally, the teachings and philosophies of every great leadership expert from Sun Tzu to Stephen Covey will confirm that the lion's share of leadership is motivation; and every major study on culture has proven that different cultural groups are motivated by different things.

Management -v- Leadership

If you were to compile a list of the traits and skills that you most admire about great leaders like -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Tony Blair, Mary McCloud-Bethune, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Margret Thatcher, and others; odds are you would list things like moral courage, their ability to inspire; their mastery of language; how they helped ordinary people tap into their greatness, etc . . . Your list would not include the statement, "They were great managers". Chances are they all are/were great managers; but in the end nobody cares. We don't follow other people because of their management skills. We follow them because of how they make us feel.

The masses remember great people not because of their ability to manage; but because of their ability to LEAD! The reality is that people don't want to be managed; they want to be led. They want to be inspired. They want to follow people that they connect with. The 21st century leader MUST have the adequate competencies to connect and build trust in an authentic way with people across a huge myriad of cultures and ideologies.

Diversity Management -v- Diversity Leadership

Management by nature deals with rules and policies. And let's face it, that's the easy part. Anyone can create a rule or write a policy statement. Leadership, on the other hand, deals with changing hearts and minds, and holding people accountable. This is a far more daunting and challenging task.

The unfortunate and regrettable truth is that we as a society have treated diversity like it is an inanimate "thing"; an object to be managed. But it's not. It is a collection of people; living, breathing folks with minds and emotions. For the past 20 years or so, organizations have focused a lot of energy on diversity management, and understandably so. To their credit, these efforts have helped many organizations move past just counting heads, dealing only with representation. Some of these organizations are now re-directing a portion of their energy towards creating an inclusive environment that supports diversity. The point that I am attempting to make is that the diversity management approach is not incorrect; but it is incomplete. Managers tend to look toward the most expedient (and often temporary) fix; while leaders are more apt to look down the horizon for the actual long range resolution to the problem. This type of leadership is woefully missing as it relates to building fully inclusive environments that not only allow all types of people to flourish and maximize their abilities; but encourages, grooms and develops them to do so.

Many feel that leaders have failed to aggressively take the lead on diversity out of a lack of desire. However, I, on the contrary think this failure to lead on diversity has less to do with deficient desire, and more to do with fear. Fear of making a mistake and being "labeled". The good news is that this fear can be eroded when leaders are equipped with some diversity leadership competencies that will build both their knowledge and confidence.

Trends That Make Diversity Leadership Competencies an Imperative

Developing these competencies is no longer a forward thinking innovation. We are actually running out of time. There are a large number of demographic and economic trends making the need to act an imperative. Among them:

* Labor Shortage -- As Baby-Boomers retire, America faces decades of talent shortages. A report by Development Dimensions International, as reported in a recent article, The New War for Talent by Michael Gregoire, "one-fifth of this country's large, established companies will be losing 40 percent or more of their top talent in the next five years." Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statics further predicts a 10 million personnel shortfall starting around 2008-2010.

* Global Migration Patterns -- As a result of the aforementioned talent shortage, the U.S. will need to increase its immigration numbers which will further increase our diversity, in the areas of race, culture and religion.

* Generational Issues -- We will continue to have four distinctly different generations working side by side in our workforce. The tensions that exist may intensify. Due to our increasingly challenged economy, some older workers who had intended to retire will be forced to stay in the workplace for financial reasons. Simultaneously, many talented, impatient, "up and coming" Generation X'ers may start to feel some resentment toward these more matured workers who are now impeding their progress be refusing to leave these jobs that the Generation X'ers want; thus creating what is known as "generational conflict".

A Few Required Competencies

In her book, Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace, Michalle E. Mor Barak talks about how ancient Chinese tradition divides people into categories based on four qualities: Shi (scholars), Nong (farmers), Gong (artisans) and Shang (merchants). The belief is that to be a fully effective leader, one must acquire the " . . . vision and ethics of the scholar, the appreciation and respect for basic human needs of the farmer, the creativity and drive for excellence of the artisan, and the ambition of the merchant (in order) to make a profit." The concept to grasp here is that cultural competency is not about learning every little nuance about every cultural group. It's more about learning the perspectives and big picture concepts that relate to various cultures. In short, diversity leadership competency is not focused on learning a long list of cultural "do's and don'ts". It is about establishing common ground with people from cultures other than your own by developing some simple tools. Some examples of these competencies are:

Being aware of your own biases
Developing cultural dexterity
Challenging false assumptions
Exercising moral courage
Embodying trust and fairness
Being consistent

Most of these competencies are not complicated or difficult to learn; and they tend to line up with our already accepted moral codes, and organizational values. All we have to do is put forth an effort until they become second nature.

In the words of leadership guru Warren Bennis, "Managers are people who do things right. Leaders are people who do the right thing." Take the lead, step up and do the right thing. Everyone will benefit; yourself included.

Author Bio
Al Vivian is the President and CEO of Basic Diversity, Inc. (BASIC). BASIC is a full service cultural diversity training and consulting firm that has been operating nationally for 34 years. Al has provided diversity counsel to civic and religious leaders, political officials, and television news personnel. He has provided diversity commentary to CNN, FOX, NBC, PBS, Atlanta Journal & Constitution, Chicago Sun Times, and WSB News Radio.

Linkage’s 10th Annual Summit on Leading Diversity in Atlanta, GA, March 16-18, 2009, is the nation's premier event on best practices in diversity and inclusion. At The Summit on Leading Diversity you will gain the practical solutions you need to build inclusive work environments and move your organization's diversity initiatives forward to achieve bottom-line results. Learn best practices while networking with 1,000 diversity practitioners and line leaders. This year's Summit will feature life-changing keynote speakers including Ruby Dee, Phoebe Eng, Juan Williams, and more. For more information or to register call 781.402.5555 or visit www.linkageinc.com/div.

Are you Worried About Motivating Top Employees During a Down Economy?

2008-10-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Copyright © 2008 Jennifer Selby Long

If you're not worried, maybe you should be. In a down economy, the core and bottom performers hunker down, fearful of leaving familiar territory, but your top 20% are still getting calls from recruiters and lucrative offers from competitors or even from other recession-resistant industries trolling for talent.

So what motivates key talent during a tough economy? It comes down to five things every leader and business owner can do. You should be doing all five on an ongoing basis, but particularly now.

1. Does each top performer and high potential leader know that, in fact, he or she is considered a top performer and/or high potential leader? In many companies, there are no formal programs to identify and develop high potential talent, so how can they know they are high potential if no one tells them? I can't count the number of times I have had confidential conversations with high potential leaders and have nearly fallen out of my chair when I realized that they had no idea that their boss saw them as high potential. Some people overestimate their talent, but others underestimate it. Never assume they just "know."

2. Are you ensuring a good mix of stretch assignments, formal development (training, coaching, etc.), and exposure to key decision-makers across the business? High performers and high potentials give a lot and they ask a lot in return. They appreciate an employer who invests time and money in their growth and they leave those who don't. Ninety-seven percent of coaches are hired by individuals. I am routinely contacted by go-getters who want to get ahead and are willing to invest their own money because their employers won't invest in them. It will come as no surprise that, to a person, these highly motivated initiative-takers have already decided to leave their current employer to find one that will take their ambitions seriously and support their growth with actions, not just words.

3. Do you recognize their work? If your company is too large for you to personally recognize each star employee's work, what are you doing to ensure that your managers recognize excellent work and never commit the ultimate sin of taking credit for their subordinates' work? No leader has ever said to me, "I take credit for my subordinates' work." It's the subordinates who tell me it's happening. But take extra care here, because even the overuse of the word "we" can be a form of theft, as in, "we compiled this data" when, in fact, you personally had nothing to do with the outstanding compilation; you're just the presenter of it.

4. Does everyone know his or her impact on the business? This applies to everyone, and doing it ensures that you give your top people the alignment they need in order to run the business smoothly. What are you doing to ensure that your team -- and everyone on their teams -- understands the company's vision, purpose, direction, and goals? What is your team doing to ensure that every employee understands his or her impact on the business? It's not enough that the senior leaders get it. Everyone needs to get it and be personally connected to it in order to feel motivated through good times and bad. This needs to be an agenda item on a regular basis, not just once, and you need to hold your people accountable for doing it.

5. Are you scrupulously fair? It's great to give extra attention and exciting assignments to your high performers and high potentials. That's actually fair, since you're getting more from them than from the core. Fairness here doesn't mean treating every single person exactly the same. It means objectivity.

For example, if your relatives work in the business, do you unfailingly hold them to the same standards as everyone else, or does there seem to be a disproportionate share of relatives on your high-potential list?

Do you scan your high potential and high performer lists for diversity? In this day and age, overrepresentation of any one group is a red flag that you may be failing to attract the best talent from the total population of qualified talent. Those high potentials and high performers who are not part of the dominant group will head to more welcome environments in which they are not always the odd one out.

Do you have someone inside or outside the business who will call you on it if you unwittingly show inappropriate favoritism toward a friend whose performance is just average?

Note that these tips are not costly to implement, which is also an advantage in a down economy!

Jennifer Selby Long, Founder and Principal of Selby Group, provides executive coaching and organizational development services. Jennifer's knack is helping clients navigate the leadership and organizational challenges triggered by change and growth. She knows firsthand that great plans often fail because companies don't take into account the human factors that come into play when implementing them. Visit Jennifer at: www.selbygroup.com

Leadership - Making or Breaking an Organization

2008-10-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

by Christine Casey-Cooper

Creating effective organizations through effective leadership - When a football team is losing more than it is winning, the team's owner looks to the team's leadership for accountability and usually fires the head coach. Likewise, when a company is failing, new owners will fire the top managers. Leadership will make or break an organization. Leadership can solidify a company's future through vision, planning, morale building, and teamwork. Leadership can also cause a company's demise.

General Hap Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Air Force during WWII, engaged technical experts to look into the future. This was not an over the horizon look but an in-depth estimation of what was needed 10-20 years in the future. Some of the things planned: supersonic flight, long range missiles, air to air homing rockets, long range bombers, air refueling, etc. All these were to arrive on the scene, even though the prognostication took place before the end of the war. He established early a sense of direction that long outlived him. Industrial leaders could learn much from Hap Arnold.

Morale - Those in leadership positions must create an environment for good working relations in business. Start by engaging good talent, give good direction, and then get out of the way. Employees will perform when the prevailing feeling is that they are trusted and confidently expected to deliver. Morale is encouraged when employees are supported by management in their requirements, and they are treated as members of an important team. Periodic newsletters from leadership give the foundation of good communications. Highlight good performers and timely accomplishments in the newsletter. This is also the place to include pertinent news relating to the business. Good communication is key to good leadership.

Financial Decision Making - It should go without saying that those in leadership positions should be able to make good financial decisions. Managers should be coached to make financial decisions such as periodic budget allotments, future facility improvements and expansions, hiring plans to meet work goals, and testing requirements. Testing can occur on a small scale or a grand scale, depending on the progress of product development. Some testing can engage large facilities, and this requires long range planning. Long range planning requires leadership and vision.

Motivation of Sales Force - Effective leadership means knowing that the sales force is the point of the interface with the customer. Sales should be technically adept to speak the language of the industry and the customer in particular. Sales can be partnered not only with internal resources but also with the customer. Responsive to the needs of the customer, the company salesman has an important role to play in the progress of the company and he must be supported by those in leadership positions. Salesmen convey needs of samples to the customer, technical performance information, and cost estimates in various quantities. The adept salesman finds ways to help cut costs rather than sell the highest cost product. They will offer configurations A, B, and C, and then let the customer decide. All pertinent information for the various configurations will be made available. Service to the customer is high on the salesperson's agenda and it should be high on the agenda of those in leadership positions.

Motivation of Operations to be Cost Effective - Operations can be labor intensive or truly automated to achieve economical production. Good business leadership requires knowing the balance. It takes courage on the part of management to decide that resources should be expended to automate the line. The best way to invest in automation is to make it flexible for present and future needs. This takes some experience on the part of operations talent and support from leadership. Stepwise automation of the manufacturing processes will give confidence to operations and cause minimal disruption. Automate the most obvious applications, and then proceed to other processes. When the headquarters plant has proven that economies can be achieved by automation, then duplicate the automated processes in new satellite plants for enhanced efficiency. Good leadership will enable operations to make a solid plan for the future.

Cohesiveness of the Organization - Sometimes leadership means that the organization has some fun. The organization needs exercises in partnering to gain mutual respect among the various operating functions and gain cohesiveness of the organization. An annual meeting in a resort location will give them a chance to learn about each other in morning meetings, and then they can relax together in the afternoon and evening. A northern operation can benefit from a meeting in a warmer climate especially during a winter meeting. These can be memorable events for all and the company leadership can learn a lot by interacting with people in a fun environment.

Working Together - An expert in interpersonal relations has said that the one thing that unifies a group is adversity. The difference between good leadership and bad leadership is how well a group works together when adverse adversity strikes. When adversity strikes, leaders must get the people together and plan for recovery. Learning to work together under adverse conditions can be a gratifying experience. How well employees work together is a direct reflection on the organization's leadership.

Christine Casey-Cooper is a leadership coach and the author of the satirical book The Crass Captain's Quick Guide to Management Dysfunction. Visit http://www.CrassCaptain.com for leadership and management advice and for some bad boss advice from the Crass Captain.

The Value of a Mentor for Employee Coaching - It can be a Two Way Street for Mutual Benefit

2008-10-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

by Christine Casey-Cooper

The manager is a mentor in one of the many facets of management. He indoctrinates the new hire in the operations and other functions of the business, and he works towards the development of all individuals. While a good manager is a mentor, a good manager can improve his employees' development by assigning an additional mentor. The benefits are many.

Assign a mentor for coaching - The mentor has the special job of day in and day out coaching of an assigned individual. He acquaints the new individual with the operating instructions of the quality company. One company even had a 'lessons learned' manual with numerous illustrations of before and after operations that have passed the test of time. A new hire can gain much from this coaching. It has the effect of coaching the new person about what tends to work and what constitutes a waste of time. The mentor is the 'go-to' person when questions arise.

Hire the very best - One particular new hire recently earned his master's degree, and his thesis was in a new area of interest to his colleagues. While his mentor was coaching him, he was also coaching and teaching his mentor. His mentor came up to speed and started applying the new technology. This got the attention of other experts in the company, a large Fortune 100 enterprise. In succeeding months, a major customer became aware of the new technology, who applied it in a greater application. This was synergy in action. The new hire has since earned his PhD, and he is a major factor in the company.

The mentor trains the new hire - There is much the new hire learns beyond the academics of the university environment. He needs coaching on the organization of work and documentation as a starting point. Another requirement is coaching on the landscape of the office and factory environments. The mentor answers questions about who are the key players in the plant. The mentor knows the layout of office and plant facilities. Another coaching area is on helpful resources in the office in terms of software and experts. One important element that the mentor can impart is a feel for the details of the type of work at hand. Research over the years by experienced coaches leads to shortcuts that can be imparted to the new person. 'Rules of thumb' are collected over the years, and the new person can learn from them.

With good hiring practices, a company with a mentor program can benefit by the two way street of mentoring and coaching individuals, who have shown good promise of bringing benefit to the company.

Christine Casey-Cooper is a leadership coach an author of the satirical book The Crass Captain's Quick Guide to Management Dysfunction. Visit http://www.CrassCaptain.com for leadership and management advice, and some bad boss advice from the Crass Captain.

Coaching Skills Training: What is coaching?

2008-10-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

by Matt Somers

Everybody is talking about coaching these days, but what does it mean? Isn't it what football managers do? Well it might be, but these days football managers seem to have an army of separate defence coaches goalkeeping coaches and so on, so that's not a helpful comparison. Perhaps you've seen a Life Coach on daytime TV or read a life coaching, self-help type book. There might be a useful definition to be extrapolated from life coaching, but in a business context we've rarely the time or the expertise to delve into personal, lifestyle issues. Becoming a manager who coaches must require us to use coaching in a very different context.

Before we can begin to develop our coaching skills we must have a clear understanding of precisely what coaching is, but this is not as easy as it may seem. Coaching is an emerging area of Human Resource Development (HRD), it draws upon a very wide range of influences from sport to psychotherapy and it is changing every day. We must arrive at a working definition which helps you to recognize exactly what coaching is and what it isn't and how you can weave coaching into your existing set of management skills.

I will not be inviting you to discard what you already know about managing people, but I do hope to offer concepts and techniques that give you fresh options and new ideas when things seem difficult or the going gets tough. Equally I hope to show you the way to take your team's development to new heights, in the words of one of my course participants:

"I've turned to coaching because I've taught them all I know, but I know they're still capable of more"

Coaching defined

My little Collins English Dictionary defines the verb to coach as 'to instruct by private tutoring, to instruct and train, to act as a coach'. This is too loose a definition to be useful, and is contaminated by references to training and instructing which might prove confusing as we'll see later on.

Let's instead turn to a couple of well known writers in the coaching field for their views:

"Unlocking a person's potential to maximise their performance" John Whitmore

From this definition we can see that coaching is an activity designed to help improve someone else's performance. A comparison can be drawn with the world of sport, where coaches try to get the best out of their team without actually being on the field of play. In modern organizations, coaching must also involve turning work situations into learning opportunities as this is increasingly seen as an important part of what it is to manage.

"Developing a person's skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to achievement of organizational objectives. It targets high performance and improvement at work, although it may have an impact on an individual's private life. It usually lasts for a short period and focuses on specific skills and goals" Jessica Jarvis

Some definitions suggest that coaching is purely the support and guidance provided for individuals to enable them to apply their existing skills more effectively and thus improve their job performance at work, but most include the learning theme by suggesting that coaching aims to enhance the performance and learning ability of people at the same time. A good number of definitions cite techniques such as motivation, effective questioning and deliberately matching our management style to the coachee's (person being coached) readiness to perform a particular task. We can conclude that coaching is based on helping coachees to help themselves, but that it does not rely on a one-way flow of telling and instructing.

It seems that coaching is a means of systematically increasing the capability and performance of people at work by exposing them to work based tasks or experiences that will provide relevant learning opportunities, and making sure that learning is accessible to them later on. It is about performing and learning.

As far as the learning part is concerned coaching is very different from teaching or instructing. The coach encourages people to learn for themselves; the coach usually takes a 'back seat' role, while still being able to give guidance and help when people really need it. Coaches help their teams to regularly review experiences so that they understand what has been learned.

There appears to be no universally accepted definition of the term coaching and, as described below, when it is placed alongside other development interventions an exact definition becomes even more difficult.

However, a synthesis of the numerous definitions out there identifies three elements that can constitute a working definition for further exploration:

Coach and coachee establish a relationship based on trust that has the intention of improving the coachee's performance at work

Coaching thus becomes a process that is centered on the coachee but focused on performance

Coaching is a learnt skill and an essential element of the managerial role in these changing times

Performance Reviews & Unleashing the Potential

2008-10-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

SuccessFactors, Inc offers a free eGuide entitled The Secret to Effective, No-Hassle Performance Reviews.

In it, you'll find out how you can eliminate the stress and headaches from your company's performance review process. This informative guide will show how an automated performance management system can:

Simplify your review process and dramatically reduce paperwork
Improve quality of feedback with writing and coaching tools
Make it easier to link and track individual goals against company objectives

They also offer an eKit called Unleash the Superstar Potential of Every Employee. The kit includes:

An Exclusive eGuide: "4 Proven Ways You Can Tap into the Full Potential of Every Employee."
An Online Video: "People Are Your Most Important Asset."
An Industry Report: How leading companies have used SuccessFactors to substantially increase revenues and reduce operating costs.

Changing The Game

2008-10-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

SuccessFactors, Inc is offering a free eGuide called Changing the Game: 4 Ways to Unlock Your Employees' Performance Potential.

You'll learn how you can:

Keep employees' daily efforts focused on key business objectives
Retain top performers and help those in need of a "performance boost"
Provide meaningful motivation and job satisfaction
Simplify your performance management process

How to Deal With an Employee With an "Attitude

2008-10-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

Copyright © 2008 Pat Brill

It doesn't take long for a manager to bump into an employee with an "attitude." Evaluating an employee as having an "attitude" also depends on what bothers a manager, as the same behavior may be just fine with another manager. Yet, there are certain behaviors that indicate that the employee is exhibiting behaviors that affect the working environment. So how do you, the manager handle this behavior in the most effective way?

==>Challenging Behaviors

The employee is constantly socializing
He/She is rude or inconsiderate to others
If you ask them to handle something additional to their normal responsibilities, they are resistant or upset.
Complains about the company or the job
Sloppy performance
Rolls their eyes or sighs when you or another person is speaking in your group.
Chronic lateness
Annoyed with the customers
Knows it all...is not open to input by you.
Is defensive

==>Create Clarity around the Issue

First, ask yourself how the behavior affects the business. For example, even if the employee is performing, chronic complaining affects you, co-workers and potentially customers. What you need to do is list the behavior, when the employee engages in it, and how it affects the business.

When managing your employees, you have to provide specific information to the employee, otherwise, they don't understand their behavior and how it affects the business.

How comfortable are you with perceived confrontation. Some managers are not willing to address the issue because they fear the discussion will demotivate the employee, don't know how to approach the subject or the employee will leave and the manager is left with unfinished work.

If you are a manager that feels uncomfortable with speaking to your employees about their behavior, take the time to find a solution to this issue.

Note: If the behavior elicited by the employee is new, then you need to handle this differently. Usually new behavior indicates a change in the employee's life or a change in the work environment. This is different then an employee who has a habit of negative behavior. Though in both cases, your goal is to understand and orchestrate the change in behavior.

==>Handling the Problem Behavior

Create a list of situations where you have noticed inappropriate behavior by the employee. This is so you can understand better how to deal with the situation.

--If the employee has several behaviors that need to change, I would be selective and choose the most important issue. If you present several issues at once, it is too overwhelming and the likelihood is nothing will change.
You need to be specific about the actual behavior because stating to the employee he/she has to change their "attitude" accomplishes nothing...they don't have tangible examples in order to change.
Present the issue as this is a problem for me and I need your support in creating a solution. It's a different way to approach the situation, one that elicits the employee's help in the solution.
If the employee becomes defensive, simply restate the issue. Here is where you need to exhibit calmness and clarity. If the employee continues to be defensive, then clearly state that this behavior has to change and you are willing to work with the employee to help them find a solution.
Find a way to allow the employee to take responsibility for the solution. If they don't, it is likely that this issue will not be resolved. Brainstorm on how they can change the behavior, but always keep the desired behavior as the goal.
If this is the first time you are discussing the issue with the employee, create notes for your files. If the behavior persists, then you will need to create a behavior improvement plan and formalize the process.
Always schedule a follow up meeting within a short period (no more than a few weeks). If the employee has altered their behavior, I suggest you have one more meeting to insure that they are consistent. If their behavior has not changed, then you need to put in place a formal improvement plan.

==>Final Note

Most employees want to perform well and behave in appropriate ways. In managing employees, your focus is to set the standards and support them in meeting those standards. Their job is to meet or exceed the standards.

Pat Brill is the author of the blog "Managing Employees" http://www.ManagingEmployees.net . You can reach her at pat@managingemployees.net.

7 Proactive Ways for Managing Resistance to Change

2008-10-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

A Breakthrough Leader must be equipped to integrate change in a way that it minimizes disruption and stress and enables productivity to be maintained.

What Are The Major Causes Of Resistance?

Team members often cite these reasons for resisting change:

Not completely understanding why the change is taking place
Complacency - people resist change because they don't see there's an urgent need to change
Discomfort with the time in which they must transition from one way to another of working
Not feeling as if they are being supported or listened to
Things they place a high value on being threatened
Being taken out of their comfort zone

Seven Proactive Ways For Managing Resistance To Change

Use these tips to help you and your team quickly adapt to the changing needs of the environment and your workplace.

Evaluate your stand on the change. Are you resistant? Do you have problems with the change? If so, it could be that the objection that you have to the change is coming out and is visibly apparent to the employees that you manage. Carefully evaluate how you feel about the transition that is being experienced in your business. If you find that you are resistant, discover why and correct the problem immediately. You will soon find that the more comfortable you are, the more comfortable your employees will be as well.
Once you are sure that you are comfortable with the change, and that your employees see your comfort level, it is time to create an atmosphere where you encourage your employees to be adaptive. The best way to do this is to gain a complete understanding of the change that is occurring, and then outline the main benefits to the change. Be sure to highlight the advantages of the change on a company level, as well as on an employee level. Be sure that you present this to your employees, and that you allow your employees to ask questions until they have a high level of understanding of the changes that are facing them.
For most people, any change is uncomfortable. Therefore, when managing change in the workplace, it is your job to help people to see that whatever they've been doing in the past can no longer take place. That neither they, nor the business, will be relevant without change.

Ignite the fire of urgency to change and do so without frightening people and destroying your teams' self-confidence and perceived ability to win. Create a belief that "We can do better!". You do this through finding compelling and real evidence that people can feel, see and touch that change must happen and happen now!
Now, it is time for delegation. Individuals everywhere work on purpose and intent in their lives. You should identify the strengths of the employees that you have and then delegate responsibilities that are appropriate to those strengths, as well as the interests of the employees. This will motivate them to take an active role in the changes that are occurring in the workplace.
Now that your employees are leaning more towards the change that is taking place, you should set up an evaluation program that works closely to ensure that everyone is on track when it comes to the transitions that they have to make. This system is a little different than a standard performance evaluation in that it is not working to ensure that metrics are being met, but to ensure that everyone on the team knows and understands their role, and to see if there are any questions that need to be asked, or concerns that need to be voiced. Allowing proactive communication with employees that are resistant to change is a very important aspect to managing these employees.
As time progresses, several changes will occur after the initial change has been adapted to. As these changes take place, your business grows and develops. It is absolutely vital that you allow the opportunity for your employees to grow and develop as well. One of the most effective means of encouraging this type of growth is through periodic training workshops. It is great to have little classes that are educational in basis to update employees regularly, recognize the efforts of your team, and supply any tools and resources that are necessary to perform a job appropriately.
Last, but not least, when you are taking a proactive role in managing resistance to change, it is absolutely essential to make sure that you recognize and reward your employees as appropriate. This will help to make the transition process for the next change that occurs in your business to be smooth, and even welcomed by the members of the team that you lead.

Managing change can be complicated. When you have team members who are resistant to the change, it is even more challenging. However, by following these 7 proactive ways for managing resistance to change, you are likely to overcome the obstacle with success!

For more on Managing Change and over over 150 pages of information for Breakthrough Leaders go the leadership-and-motivation-training.com website.

How to Increase Morale at Work

2008-10-02T07:05:00.000-07:00

Copyright © 2008 Drew Stevens PhD

Emerson states, "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm". A majority of the issues related to worker productivity stem from enthusiasm. Individuals simply go to work because they abhor their employer, the monotony, and the products. There is no passion or pride.

Much of this issue stems from issues embedded within organizational culture. We find that organizational Issues affecting morale and productivity include:

Leadership not serving as an exemplars - some leaders today are narcissists, demeaning and ruthful. More importantly, salaries exceed employee pay by 425 times the average work. Leaders need to harmonize with employees and treat all equally. Avatars include McDonalds, Fed Ex and UPS where employees and management are one.
Little or no accountability - The United States economic system is currently in financial turmoil and no one is accountable. Employees need to know that mistakes count for learning but criminals punished for repeat offenses.
Career planning and succession planning is null - Simply put there is no succession planning. Most CEO's and managers arrive from competitive industries and companies. Whatever happened to the mailroom climb?
Infighting amongst departments - When the fighting ends and all understand the reason for being employed perhaps harmony arrives.
Too many silos - Companies are in business for one reason- to create clients. End the infighting and focus on the most vital asset!

Causes of morale also correlate back to the organization, its culture, and its management. After 25 years of research in this area, we find five factors contributing to organizational morale. A study by the Corporate Leadership Council reveals managers have a tremendous impact on an employee's level of commitment. It is imperative to note that individuals do not leave companies they leave poor managers. Organizational management contributes to the negative morale. As recent as 2006 the Gallup Organization estimates there are 32 million actively disengaged employees costing the American economy up to $350 billion per year in lost productivity. Such loss includes absenteeism, tardiness, and poor work.

Helping to dilute the productivity issue, research depicts that taking time to build relationships with employees through personal interactions is a key step managers can take to keep morale high. Employees need to feel trust and respect from managers. Employees desire feedback to build management relationships to understand their work matters.

Ending the morale issue is not easy but there are cures.

Begin with talent acquisition - Start with the right people. No firm we work with ever hires on a proactive basis. Most firms conduct employment searches reactively. Seek employees that fit with the organizational culture and with the obligatory skills. Never wait!
Hire for skill - Talent is innate. Organizations hire for personality and behavior first and skill second. Skill is not interchangeable, behavior is. A great hire might have a wonderful temperament and lack the skill to plug a socket into an outlet. I recall a fire star hotel that sought advice to correct housekeeping flaws. After five minutes, it was easy enough to terminate staff and find those without flaws.
Look at best practices from best people - Management focuses on repairing those that cannot rather than improve those that can. Avatars exist in your organization. Discover what they do right and emulate it.
Passion - In the 1980's Sylvester Stallone appeared again as Rocky this time with a theme, "Eye of the Tiger". What a great metaphor for valuable talent. Seek to acquire talent that truly loves work. Passion too is innate. Employees must love what they do and how they do it. In addition, managers, the organization, and the employees must vehemently focus on the customer. When passion is high so too is morale. Remember Winnie the Pooh, try finding Eyeor amongst staff at Disney; Southwest Airlines and FedEx, all intensely focus on servicing the client.

Lastly, management must focus on vital areas for improving the success of morale and productivity. Managers must constantly strive to provide feedback to employees. Feedback is not an annual event- Performance Review. It is imperative that daily communication exists for good information and improvement. Coaching, counseling, and mentoring are components of organizational morale. In addition, many attend church and hear the words, "It is right to give thanks and praise". Many watch professional sports and view coaches coddling athletes. We can learn something here; simple words of thanks and praise constantly improve morale and employee relationships. Finally, the first item terminated during economic volatility is training. Research finds that employees are assets and require that treatment. Never stop training; this improves productivity and morale at all times.

Issues of morale and productivity are onerous, volatile, and difficult to control. There is a need for management, the organization, and the individual to assist with success factors. Much is dependent on the desire to change; methods chosen and consistent follow through. However, if you do nothing you still have a morale issue. Take the time, seek remedies, and keep morale high. Doing so, lowers attrition, improves productivity, increases profitability and most importantly- reduces stress.

Seeking to increase your income? Looking for easy and immediate methods to increase your income? Do you desire unlimited earning power? Let international sales and customer service expert show you how to pump up your productivity. You get three FREE e-books, a workbook, a sales effectiveness White Paper and access to a monthly newsletter that includes terrific advice so that you can SELL WELL. Visit http://www.drewstevensconsulting.com/freestuff and subscribe today for your FREE sales information and to get over $1400 of FREE sales advice that are guaranteed to produce the results you want.

Why Doesn't Leadership Training Produce Leaders?

2008-10-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

by Shine Consulting

Great leadership is one of the keys to long-term organisational success; so how come there seems to be such a shortage? In the corridors of political power, and in the boardrooms of large and small organisations, we regularly hear the questions: "Where is the inspired leadership we crave?", "Where is our next generation of leaders coming from?", "Where is the flair and inspiration we need to take us to the next level?"

If asked, you could probably say what 'leadership' is. Like everyone else, you've read the books and seen the leadership competency frameworks. You could clearly describe how it feels to be well and poorly led - you 'know it when you see it'. But how many current great world leaders can you name off the top of your head? How many great leaders are there in your organisation now?

Why do so many people, knowing what good leadership is, fail to demonstrate it themselves? The first place to look is in the learning environment where leaders are usually developed.

What They Didn't Teach You about Leadership

There is an imbalance in leadership training. There is not enough emphasis on the skills, central to great leadership, of inspiring others with beliefs, vision, values and attitude; and too much emphasis on the importance of systems, planning, measurement, budgets, controls and procedures - in short, on management! Does any great leader ever manage people into following him? No, he inspires them, motivates them, keeps them in touch with the bigger vision - he leads them.
As a business leader, you have probably been well trained in logic and analysis. But a key leadership skill is the application of 'emotional intelligence' - the ability to know when things are 'true' or when they are 'off', when people are truly inspired, or just paying lip service. As a leader you need emotional intelligence to manage your own and others' emotions, and you need skills appropriate to this task. Trying to do it by analysis and logic is about as effective as trying to drive a car by studying from a manual how the engine works.
People, especially in the business world, tend to avoid emotion - expressing it, dealing with it, looking at where it came from and its role in a situation. The rationale for not dealing with emotion, the very essence of leadership, is that all 'this emotion stuff' is 'not professional'! Not so: it's only 'unprofessional' to suppress emotion or express it inappropriately. When all 'this emotion stuff' is not explored and resolved in leadership groups, it always produces long-term tensions and political battles. These cause acute stress in individuals and cripple organisational effectiveness and efficiency. At the same time, they also destroy satisfaction, joy, fun, friendship, health, trust and a good night's sleep!
Leadership skills like vision, inspiration and emotional intelligence can be trained on training courses - but it takes a different kind of course. In most leadership training programmes you will see models of leadership discussed, followed by practical exercises that analyse logically what went right and wrong in a 'leadership game'. It's all familiar and fun, but what's being taught are the elements that underpin leadership, not the essence of leadership.

How Can You Learn to 'Do' Great Leadership?

You need to be coached in leadership skills, over time, in real situations - ones that matter to you and where there is a chance of meaningful success or failure - by coaches who themselves demonstrate the skills. A life skill like leadership can't be learned by numbers; you can't read a book about it, learn a model or play a game that simulates a real life situation, and say you know anything about leadership. The greater the 'distance' your learning experience is from your real world experience, the less likely it is that the learning will be transferred to your everyday performance. You didn't learn to drive by sitting in a classroom!

So you can only effectively demonstrate the skills of leadership when the situation calling for them is real. Get a coach who has the experience to produce leadership competence, and put yourself in a programme where you are guided through real-time experience to learn leadership skills over time. Only this kind of approach will finally get you to the point where your leadership competence is as natural and instinctive as your driving ability!

CRM is Not Enough: A Case for Action

2008-09-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

While consulting for a large multinational corporation, a senior executive uttered the overused phrase, "We need to collect more data on the customer." With enjoyment, I sat back and listened to an animated exchange during which the executives suggested information they would like tracked through their CRM database. As the idea-fest began to wind down, I simply asked how leadership was using the information they were currently collecting to directly enhance customer experiences. Alas, the room went silent.

Compare that to the role of CRM at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, where data is only as good as the action taken on it.

Inspired by renowned hotelier Cesar Ritz, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company has long been recognized as a leader in product and service excellence. Even though Ritz-Carlton has won two prestigious Malcolm Baldrige awards for service quality and maintaining a very loyal customer base, the company's leadership doesn't leave customer engagement to chance. Like many other great businesses, The Ritz-Carlton uses a CRM system. Coined "Mystique," The Ritz-Carlton database is used to track information such as guest preferences, frequency of visits and issues that have come up for guests during their previous stays.

While the data is helpful in understanding an individual guest's relationship with the brand, leadership measures the value of their data on how effectively staff leverage it to create ongoing, memorable and unique guest experiences.

For all the organizational initiatives directed at "putting the customer first," "driving customer loyalty" and "developing consumer evangelists," customer engagement remains elusive. In fact, according to NPD Group, a market research company, almost 50 percent of the consumers who described themselves as highly loyal to a brand were no longer loyal to that brand a year later. So how does a business maintain loyal customers? In a nutshell, by not leaving it solely to technology, but instead making loyalty and customer engagement an integral part of each employee's daily focus and communicating about it daily.

To drive behavior, leadership at The Ritz-Carlton begins a dialogue about the significance of "customer experiences" and "customer loyalty" that starts even before an employee has been selected for the job.

During the interview and selection process, Ritz-Carlton executives continually reinforce the message that they are looking only for individuals who possess the highest level of service talent. By "talent," they are referring to measurable personality characteristics that reflect the prospective employee's capacity to empathize, infer, communicate about and resolve the needs of others.

Upon being selected -- not hired -- new staff members are required to go through orientation before they can begin their job responsibilities. There are no exceptions -- no employee is ever allowed to start work without going through the orientation process. Senior leadership attends every orientation to welcome new hires into The Ritz-Carlton family. During the selection process, hiring managers note the preferences of every applicant. At orientation, directors of learning incorporate the preferences in a way that demonstrates the three steps of Ritz-Carlton service:

Extend a warm welcome
Anticipate and fulfill stated and unstated needs
Provide a fond farewell

"During the selection process," one new hire said, "they must have asked me about my favorite snack because at orientation I received my spicy nachos and freshly squeezed mango juice. I was wowed, especially when the chef delivered it. It was all so excellent, and then I realized how I can impact other people by just paying attention to details about them." In essence, the preferences of new hires were put into action by leadership to create a memorable experience for the staff member.

It is through such experiences that new hires appreciate the outcomes leadership wants staff to offer guests. Those outcomes are easily identified in the words of The Ritz-Carlton Credo which states:

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission.
We pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guests, who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambience.
The Ritz-Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being and fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.

Whether a staff member is the CEO or a bellhop, each Ritz-Carlton employee (referred to collectively as "the Ladies and Gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton") is responsible for driving customer engagement by offering "genuine care and comfort" in a "refined ambiance" by "enlivening the senses, instilling well-being and fulfilling unexpressed needs." Not only is this expectation communicated during the orientation process, but it is also reinforced daily through a twenty minute meeting referred to as "line-up." Functionally, daily line-up is attended by all Ritz-Carlton staff members worldwide and serves to reinforce the three steps of service, the credo and core corporate values. It also allows for the sharing of "wow" stories of customer service excellence, where staff have taken the information from the CRM and put it into action to engage guests.

In the end, The Ritz-Carlton enjoys world-class customer loyalty -- and guests enjoy world-class service -- because everyone in the company understands that it's not just about CRM technology. Customer engagement emerges from the creation of a service culture, continuous communication about the mission-critical nature of customer relationships and customer loyalty and reminding staff that all business is personal.

Author Bio

Joseph Michelli is the author of the newly released book, The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company (McGraw-Hill, 2008) and the best-selling book, The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary (McGraw-Hill, 2006).

Have You Considered Management Coaching...For You?

2008-09-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Copyright © 2008 Pat Brill

Today, there is so much managers need to know in business. You have to manage a constant flow of industry information each day. Besides being an expert in your business function, you have to manage your employees so they perform at high levels. You are responsible for the profit and loss of your department.

Can you do it alone? No, you need three separate support systems in order for you to be successful in your management role:

Your employees
Your manager
Your Coach

Maybe you are one of those fortunate individuals, who has a great manager...one who provides strong business direction and continues to acknowledge and help you build your strengths.

Or...is your manager challenging and demanding and isn't interested in you as a person, but rather as a means to move the business along. Whichever manager scenario you work with, you need additional support to continue to grow within your current position and further develop your career.

Coaching is the third component in developing strong management skills.

You work with your coach to create individualized goals. The role of the coach is to keep you focused and accountable to those goals. In order to maximize your coaching sessions, you will need to come with an open mind. A coach will provide specific feedback that will help you change and integrate your performance level.

Executive coaching has been around for a while now...because executives see the value in continuous development of their skills in their current roles. They focus on their current responsibilities and work with an outside skilled coach to further increase the value they can offer to the business.

Coaching is all about you. Your one-on-one sessions with your coach will help sharpen your skills and abilities to perform at higher levels.

==>When can coaching be beneficial?

If you are a new manager and you want to build a strong foundation of management skills.
Do you feel you are lacking a particular skill (i.e. presentation, writing, managing, building teams) you can work with a knowledgeable individual to help you build those skills.
Chronic problems with the business or employees and you need a fresh approach to a solution.
You want to go from "here to there" in your career and having a coach will help you develop a plan and keep you on track.
-Need to change your management style in order to be effective in motivating your staff.
You need to sort out something...need a sounding board...to help you organize your thinking.
When you have a limited working relationship with your manager and still need business guidance. You need to learn how to manage up...your manager.

You know when something is not working for you or if you are ready to move forward in your career. Be wise and use all of the tools available for your personal and professional growth. Coaching is a strong tool!

Pat Brill is the author of the blog "Managing Employees" http://www.ManagingEmployees.net . You can reach her at pat@managingemployees.net.