Are You Creating Disgruntled Employees?

Joseph Folkman | 6:00 AM July 23, 2012 blogs.hbr.org

You can't make every worker happy, surely, and should a business even try? Evidence from our recent research suggests, actually, that the answer is yes. Or rather, our evidence shows that managers are giving up far too soon on their disgruntled employees, making them less productive than they could be, exposing their companies to unnecessary risks from thefts and leaks in the process, and inflating turnover costs.
What causes employees to become disgruntled and what can be done to prevent it? To find out we zeroed in on the most unhappy people in our data. These were 6% in our database of 160,576 employees who displayed the lowest levels of job satisfaction and commitment on their 360 evaluations of their bosses. We were looking for those among them whose managers also oversaw the most satisfied employees. In this way we identified that group of leaders who were managing both the very unhappy and the very happy at the same time.
The results of the data were clear: There is most definitely such a thing as "the boss's favorites." And while, in any disagreement we inevitably find both parties bear part of the fault — that is, the disgruntled employees do certainly play some role in their own unhappiness — we consistently found in the analysis that their complaints were justified. Their managers were in fact treating the disgruntled employee differently than they treated their very satisfied employees. What's more, when the managers in question started to treat their disgruntled employees like everyone else, the employees' behavior quickly improved.
Our results suggest a clear path forward for bringing disgruntled employees back into the fold. In particular, the unhappy group in our survey strongly agreed on six major areas in which they felt (and we agree) that their leaders needed to improve:

• Encourage me more. When we asked the unhappy 6% to name the skill they thought was most important for their boss to demonstrate, the top response was "Inspire and motivate others." Too often, managers take a negative tone with disgruntled employees. Expecting that efforts to motivate will be ignored, none are proffered, and the expectations become self-fulfilling. But our data suggest managers should take the opposite view: Work harder to inspire this group. Keep the conversation positive. Expect the best, not the worst.
• Trust me more. It's probably not surprising that both parties — unhappy employee and boss alike — distrust each other. The key to restoring trust is to operate with the belief that the other party can change. Here we'd suggest the manager make the first move by making the effort to understand the employee's problems. Then, as both parties work on their relationship, they must strive for consistency —that is, the manager must strive to treat all employees equitably, and both parties must strive to reliably do what they say they will do. Over time, trust will grow.
• Take an interest in my development. If a person works hard and gets a pay check he has a job. But if a person works hard, gets a pay check, and learns a new skill, she has a career. Career development should not be focused only on the high-potentials. As counterintuitive as it may seem, don't leave the underachievers out when distributing stretch assignments.
• Keep me in the loop. Communication is fundamentally a management function, so this responsibility rests squarely with the managers. Great communicators do three things well. First, they share information and keep everyone well informed. Second, they ask good questions, inviting the opinions and views from others — all others. Third, they listen. And not just to the people they like.
• Be more honest with me. People want to know how they're really doing on the job — and the one's not in favor perhaps even more than the one's feeling the warm glow of approval. They want to know why they're falling short. They want a chance to improve. Too often, though, the bottom 6% felt their bosses were not giving honest feedback, glossing over problems with comments like "You're coming along fine," when clearly they were not. What's more, many reported promises being made ("if you finish this project on time then...") that were not kept. Honesty is the bedrock of good relationships.
• Connect with me more. Anything managers can to do improve their relationship with the disgruntled employees will have a significant positive influence. Here's where favoritism takes on its most concrete form: managers go to lunch more with people they like, our data show; they talk with them more socially (about children, sports, etc); they know them more personally. This is natural, surely, but so are the feelings of exclusion it creates among the less favored. A small effort by managers to spread their attention around more broadly can go a long way here.

As leaders, our knee-jerk reaction to unfavored (and disgruntled) employees is often — "It's their own fault!" Our research shows this is not always (and often not wholly) the case. Before you settle for letting your dissatisfied people go and cost your organization thousands of dollars in employee turnover, take a moment to consider how these performers need to be treated.
If not for their sake, then for everyone else's sake. Research by the University of British Columbia recently published in the Journal of Human Resources has shown that those who witness workplace bullying become equally disgruntled as the victims and just as likely to quit. All employees need leaders who know how to inspire and motivate them, give them opportunities for development, and treat them with the respect and dignity they each deserve.
A third of a person's life is spent in the workplace, sometimes more. When the environment is created by an extraordinary leader who cares about everyone's development, it leaves employees with little room to complain.

Timeless Success Recipes From Stephen Covey

by Lisa Nirell July 20, 2012 www.fastcompany.com

 
"Here, have an oatmeal cookie."
That is the disarming way in which my first interview with Stephen Covey began in 2004. In light of Dr. Covey's passing this week, his lessons are more alive than they have ever been. I'm certain that my experiences with Covey were consistent with many others. This is my attempt to summarize those life lessons.
I wish that I could say my first live interview with Covey went smoothly. Although FranklinCovey's press team invited me to their Long Beach, Calif., conference, they asserted that Covey's full schedule would not allow time for me to interview him. My expectations were very low. Suddenly, after the Day 1 main session, the reporter from the Los Angeles Times contacted Deb Lund, the director of PR, and cancelled his interview. She offered me his interview time slot.
I paused three seconds for dignity, then said yes. Here's the rub: I had seven minutes' notice to prepare for the interview.
As a rookie journalist and freelancer for The San Diego Transcript, I was panicking over my lack of preparation. I felt that I just didn't have enough time to make a strong first impression.
My hike to the second story of the conference center felt somewhat like the Bataan death march. I kept a stiff upper lip, looked him straight in the eyes, and spoke the truth. "Stephen, I apologize for not being prepared for this interview." He deftly offered me an oatmeal cookie, sat back in his chair, and proceeded to ask me about my life, my family, and my passions.
Needless to say, the interview is one of my most memorable. Our 15-minute interview spilled into 40. We covered a wide range of topics. Five years later, he graciously agreed to endorse my book and granted me another interview.
Many will remember Covey for his prolific contributions to the burgeoning self-help movement. Others will applaud him for his global impact through his nonprofit endeavors and his prolific speaking and writing abilities. I applaud him for something else.
Covey had an uncanny abililty to push his ego aside and make others feel included and valued. His book, The 8th Habit, outlines his belief that we must find our voice and inspire others to find theirs. Even though we only met three times, he inspired me year after year to weave that philosophy into my daily business activities.
These are the timeless Covey gifts that Stephen gave me:

1. Encourage critical thinking during meetings. I ask for evidence behind every opportunity or problem. I seldom allow hearsay or gossip to drive my own strategic choices or my clients'. When I stray from this philosophy and make irrational, knee-jerk choices, I lose clients and create unnecessary tension. Covey says in The 8th Habit, "between stimulus and response there is a space where we choose our response."
2. I constantly strive for deeper meaning and purpose. While some of my contemporaries become enamored with the latest marketing automation, performance management, or social media platforms, I strive to stay grounded in my life's true purpose. Generating more leads or driving higher EBITDA are not examples of a noble purpose. Automated performance management and stack ranking programs have proven to be a hornet's nest, because they often stray from a company's purpose and assume that some people will always be worthy of termination. Are these ideas holding your company back from reaching its true potential?
3. I strive to eliminate the hourly worker mindset forever. Covey opened my eyes to the foolishness of our Industrial Age thinking. In The 8th Habit, he described the four Industrial Age maladies:
   --"The belief that you must control people;
   --Our view of accounting (People are an expense; machines are assets);
   --The carrot-and-stick motivational philosophy; and
   --Centralized budgeting ... a reactive approach that produces 'kiss-up' cultures bent on 'spending it so we won't lose it next year.'"
4. I schedule time for self-reflection every day. This may mean a five-minute check in with a colleague or my husband, but it gets done. During my CMO peer meetings, I encourage each member to provide a "check in": What's different from our last meeting? What worked in your performance? What didn't work? What are you celebrating? Self-knowledge must take front and center position to text messaging, email, and tweeting. The majority of senior executives I meet confess that reflection is often rejected in favor of addressing the crisis du jour (the urgent versus the important). Picasso once said that "without great solitude no serious work is possible." Perhaps he and Covey conspired at some point to help us strike more balance in our lives.

Covey made this world a better place. I will savor that "oatmeal cookie" moment for the rest of my life.

6 Leadership Styles, And When You Should Use Them

www.fastcompany.com 05-29-2012

Taking a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the difference between management and leadership. According to writer and consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

Manager and leader are two completely different roles, although we often use the terms interchangeably. Managers are facilitators of their team members’ success. They ensure that their people have everything they need to be productive and successful; that they’re well trained, happy and have minimal roadblocks in their path; that they’re being groomed for the next level; that they are recognized for great performance and coached through their challenges.

Conversely, a leader can be anyone on the team who has a particular talent, who is creatively thinking out of the box and has a great idea, who has experience in a certain aspect of the business or project that can prove useful to the manager and the team. A leader leads based on strengths, not titles.
The best managers consistently allow different leaders to emerge and inspire their teammates (and themselves!) to the next level.

When you’re dealing with ongoing challenges and changes, and you’re in uncharted territory with no means of knowing what comes next, no one can be expected to have all the answers or rule the team with an iron fist based solely on the title on their business card. It just doesn’t work for day-to-day operations. Sometimes a project is a long series of obstacles and opportunities coming at you at high speed, and you need every ounce of your collective hearts and minds and skill sets to get through it.
This is why the military style of top-down leadership is never effective in the fast-paced world of adventure racing or, for that matter, our daily lives (which is really one big, long adventure, hopefully!). I truly believe in Tom Peters’s observation that the best leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders. When we share leadership, we’re all a heck of a lot smarter, more nimble and more capable in the long run, especially when that long run is fraught with unknown and unforeseen challenges.

Change leadership styles
Not only do the greatest teammates allow different leaders to consistently emerge based on their strengths, but also they realize that leadership can and should be situational, depending on the needs of the team. Sometimes a teammate needs a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching, someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal and the best tool for the job.
My favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’s Leadership That Gets Results, a landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line profitability.
The research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30% of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore. Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes, efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.

Here are the six leadership styles Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief analysis of the effects of each style on the corporate climate:

1. The pacesetting leader expects and models excellence and self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do as I do, now.” The pacesetting style works best when the team is already motivated and skilled, and the leader needs quick results. Used extensively, however, this style can overwhelm team members and squelch innovation.
   
2. The authoritative leader mobilizes the team toward a common vision and focuses on end goals, leaving the means up to each individual. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Come with me.” The authoritative style works best when the team needs a new vision because circumstances have changed, or when explicit guidance is not required. Authoritative leaders inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant enthusiasm for the mission. It is not the best fit when the leader is working with a team of experts who know more than him or her.
   
3. The affiliative leader works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “People come first.” The affiliative style works best in times of stress, when teammates need to heal from a trauma, or when the team needs to rebuild trust. This style should not be used exclusively, because a sole reliance on praise and nurturing can foster mediocre performance and a lack of direction.
   
4. The coaching leader develops people for the future. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Try this.” The coaching style works best when the leader wants to help teammates build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful overall. It is least effective when teammates are defiant and unwilling to change or learn, or if the leader lacks proficiency.
   
5. The coercive leader demands immediate compliance. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do what I tell you.” The coercive style is most effective in times of crisis, such as in a company turnaround or a takeover attempt, or during an actual emergency like a tornado or a fire. This style can also help control a problem teammate when everything else has failed. However, it should be avoided in almost every other case because it can alienate people and stifle flexibility and inventiveness.
   
6. The democratic leader builds consensus through participation. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “What do you think?” The democratic style is most effective when the leader needs the team to buy into or have ownership of a decision, plan, or goal, or if he or she is uncertain and needs fresh ideas from qualified teammates. It is not the best choice in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence for another reason or when teammates are not informed enough to offer sufficient guidance to the leader.

Bottom line? If you take two cups of authoritative leadership, one cup of democratic, coaching, and affiliative leadership, and a dash of pacesetting and coercive leadership “to taste,” and you lead based on need in a way that elevates and inspires your team, you’ve got an excellent recipe for long-term leadership success with every team in your life.



Robyn Benincasa is a two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, two-time Guinness World Record distance kayaker, a full-time firefighter, and author of the new book, HOW WINNING WORKS: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth, from which this article is excerpted. (Harlequin Nonfiction, June 2012)

People Want Jobs That Make A Difference, Even If It Means A Pay Cut

 Ariel Schwartz www.fastcoexist.com

A new survey comparing college students soon to enter the work force with current workers found that everyone wants an "impact job," and would do a lot to get one.
The job market may be bleak, but college graduates of all ages still have high hopes that they will eventually land "impact jobs" that make a difference socially or environmentally. So says Talent Report: What Workers Want in 2012 from Net Impact, which surveyed 1,726 college students about to enter the workforce as well as employed four-year college graduates (including Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers) on their life goals, job satisfaction, and desire to have an "impact job."
Here’s what the survey found.

• Somewhat surprisingly, current workers said that having an impact job was more important than having children, a prestigious career, wealth, and community leadership. The top two most important things to have for happiness: financial security and marriage. Financial security still matters more than making a difference, but wealth isn’t important for people if they can do some good.
• That’s especially true for students: 58% of student respondents say they would take a 15% pay cut to “work for an organization whose values are like my own."
• Almost 60% of students also expect to have multiple job offers to choose from (that may be a little overly idealistic); 37% believe they can make a positive social or environmental impact within five years.

 Half of current workers care if their job helps make a better world, but 65% of students care.

Among current workers, work/life balance is the most important aspect of an ideal job. A positive environment is the second most important piece (it’s most important overall for students), and interesting work is third. Having a prestigious employer is the least important piece.

There are a few big differences between students and workers: 50% of students say it’s important to have an employer that prioritizes CSR, while only 38% of current workers care. Half of current workers care if their job helps make a better world, but 65% of students care.

Overall, women care more about impact jobs than men: 30% of women say they would take a pay cut for an impact job, while 19% of men say the same thing. And 60% of employed women believe that working for a socially and environmentally conscious employer is important, compared to 38% of men.

In spite of the student population’s idealism, Boomers are most likely to vote (73% compared to 43% of students in the last year), boycott a product or company, or volunteer outside of work.

What does it all mean? Employers had better start taking action now to accommodate the burgeoning socially conscious generation of college grads (which paradoxically does not seem to be civically minded at all). And those new grads, in turn, might want to check out some of the new impact job resources that have started popping up.

Ariel Schwartz is a Senior Editor at Co.Exist.

How to Engage Your Customers and Employees

R "Ray" Wang www.blogs.hbr.org May 9, 2012

Most customers now ignore targeted marketing campaigns, avoid responding to offers, and provide minimal feedback when asked. Instead, potential customers interact with each other, bypassing sanitized corporate messages devoid of meaning or value.
Meanwhile, employees increasingly look beyond compensation to non-monetary factors such as advancement, recognition, and corporate social responsibility in choosing where to work. And with the retirement of the Baby Boomers looming, attracting, retaining, and growing the next generation of leaders is an essential task for any organization.
As a result, organizations around the world are rushing to engage with their customers and employees. It's easy to see why. Without engagement, the influence of brands will continue to decline and big organizations will lose out on the best workers. Our studies at Constellation Research have found that engaged workers — those who participated in a forum, helped out a colleague in a chat, or provided feedback on an enterprise initiative — are 37% more likely to stay with their employers. Meanwhile, engaged customers are three times more likely to recommend or advocate a product or service to a friend. Improved engagement creates business value and strategic differentiation, and technology is enabling a shift from transactions to engagement.
Haphazard approaches to engagement negate good intentions
Unfortunately in the rush to engage, many organizations have taken a haphazard and siloed approach. Based on hundreds of conversations, a common theme emerges of failing to learn from the last Web and ecommerce boom. For example, many organizations have created separate social divisions in the same manner that ecommerce divisions were established a decade back. The result — haphazardly designed customer engagement paradigms doomed to fail. Why? These design points optimize for the company and not for a frictionless and seamless customer experience.
Meanwhile other organizations have built their social strategy using Facebook as the keystone in the same way AOL and Yahoo! central to many companies' plans last century. The result is overdependence on (and enrichment of) Facebook at the expense of driving traffic and activity onto one's own platforms. When customers wake up and decide they are the product, they will stop trading privacy for convenience. The result — brands built on Facebook will face a backlash.
On an internal basis, the rush to deploy social business tools matches the hype of the past decade in installing collaboration tools and assuming one's employees would easily adapt if only the right tool was deployed. The recurring problem — culture always trumps technology in adoption of new tools.
Successful engagement requires nine key components
How do we ensure engagement and avoid the fatal fatigue engendered by every wave of new media adoption? How can an organization and their leaders make the shift? The first step is to think systematically about it, and understand that engagement requires a set of building blocks. I divide them into three categories: people-centric values, delivery and communication styles, and the right time drivers.
People-centric values are the starting point. An organization needs to genuinely understand and relate to its customers and its employees before it can engage them. The key elements here are culture, community and credibility. Culture is about societal norms, communication preferences, and global outlook. At the organizational level, this includes which leadership styles are most effective, and how workers interact with each other. In dealing with customers, it's about understanding customer segmentation, digital readiness, and inclination to participate. Community focuses on internal and external stakeholders. Each stakeholder may have different needs. For example how you share information with a supplier may be different than what you can tell an internal employee. The last component, credibility, involves earning trust through actions. Credibility is built through influence, reputation, track records, and accumulated expertise.
Values alone are not enough. To engage successfully, organizations also need an understanding of delivery and communication styles. These styles incorporate channel, content, and cadence. Channel refers to the means of engagement: face-to-face, retail, mobile, social, web, kiosk, virtual, and video. Content can be internal, user-generated, re-purposed, paid, news-driven, or analytic. Finally, cadence describes the frequency of engagement — whether it's ad hoc, scheduled, or continuous.

The last piece is choosing the right time drivers to provide a why, when, and where in engagement. The goal is to inspire action through context, catalysts, and currencies. Context means location, business process, role, relationships, and sentiment, all of which need to be considered to deliver the right offer to the right person at the right time. Catalysts are what inspire action and response: campaigns, offers, advertisements, direct rewards, indirect rewards, and loyalty programs. Finally, currencies influence behavior through an exchange of value. Monetary models include traditional cash, bonuses, rewards, and rebates, but non-monetary currencies such as virtual goods, recognition, access, and influence can often be more powerful.
The nine critical components of stakeholder engagement




















New models of engagement herald the death of B2B and B2C
The emergence of extremely viral people-to-people (P2P) networks has changed the notion of the customer and employee forever. Social media, social networks, and mobility also herald the death of B2B and B2C as we know them. A bad experience at work with a particular brand of laptop bleeds over into consumer choices. Great experiences with consumer products have driven the rise of bring-your-own-device-to-work — a key to Apple's new success in the enterprise.
As organizations master engagement, early adopters will shift to building experiences by filtering massive streams of information through context. Context — in the form of roles, relationships, location, business process, time, and other factors — will transform engagement to experience. Early adopters of augmented reality and gamification already apply these nine Cs of engagement to craft intuitive and natural customer experiences. The drive towards engagement will impact both the future of work and next generation customer experiences. The move to engagement lays out the first step to a P2P world.

R "Ray" Wang is Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research.

The Hidden Wealth Beyond Net Promoter

Bill Lee May 10, 2012 www.blogs.hbr.org 

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is perhaps the best known customer loyalty tool around today, based on the entirely sound principle that the more customer promoters you have (i.e., customers who say on surveys that they're highly likely to refer you to a colleague or friend), the more likely you'll be to grow your business and outpace the competition. That makes powerful sense, and the continued growth and success of Net Promoter is a testament to the idea's relevance and value.
But I have found in my years of experience working across industries and sectors, that firms who embrace NPS are often leaving tremendous sources of wealth creation on the table. That's because the focus of NPS is on creating promoters, but stops short of engaging them to actually promote the business through activities like referrals, references, blogging or tweeting, speaking at industry events, or any of the myriad ways that passionate customers can help build businesses these days. The implicit assumption seems to be that NPS is only about getting customers to buy, to keep buying and to buy more. But there are many other — often far more lucrative — ways that customer promoters can create value for your firm and help grow your business.

Here are some ways to tap this unrealized source of growth:

Be intentional about customer promotion. Many firms assume that because a customer says on a survey that he'd be highly likely to refer you, that he will in fact do so. That may not be the case at all: they need to be asked. Two studies of firms in the telecommunications and financial services industries showed that only about 10% of declared promoters actually do refer profitable new customers. That's not bad, of course, but what about the other 90%? Why not intentionally provide opportunities to such promoters and invite them to, you know, promote you?

By the way, not all referral customers are the same. Businesses that take the time to understand which customers are more likely to respond to a marketing campaign by buying, and which are more likely to respond by referring a colleague or friend — doubled the return on their campaigns, as opposed to those that treated everyone as a potential buyer.

Look for customer value beyond promoting. Loyal customers who are disposed to refer business to you probably like you a lot. Why limit the ways in which they can help you grow your business to referrals? They might enjoy helping with your sales and marketing efforts by providing references or testimonials. Or they might speak on your behalf at industry events. Or participate in your user groups or other customer communities. Or ... you get the idea.

Remarkably, even highly sophisticated firms miss these opportunities. When Coleen Kaiser took over SAP's global customer reference program, she thought it would be a good idea to have the firm's promoters — in addition to providing referrals — to provide sales and marketing references as well. (A referral occurs where a customer suggests your solution to her friend or colleague. A reference is where a customer affirms the value of your product to your prospect). As it turned out, only 20% of promoters were customer references. Indeed, very few references were identifying themselves as promoters on NPS surveys!

Kaiser took the obvious step of reconciling that anomaly — making sure that her team invited promoters into its reference program, which more than tripled their participation to 70%. It wasn't a hard sell. After all, these are customers who've said they'd be highly likely to recommend SAP. As a result, in post-sale surveys, sales people went from identifying customer references as a "neutral influence" on sales to identifying them as one of their highest rated competitive advantages.

Move beyond promoters to defenders. With the rise of social media and the ability of buyers to check out a business long before they engage with its marketing communications or sales people, the very idea of a "promoter" is looking dated. It's too passive. The concept that emerged at the 2012 Summit on Customer Engagement was "defender." That's a customer advocate who doesn't passively wait for you to invite her to promote your firm, but who is already active on the social media sites that are talking about your firm and vigilant about addressing and correcting negative comments as well as amplifying positive ones.

Salesforce.com (SFDC) and a growing number of other firms are cultivating such customers, who are often called "MVPs" (most valuable professionals). At the 2012 Summit, a panel of three such MVPs talked about their activities and wowed the audience of marketing professionals with their dedication to keeping the Salesforce.com brand strong. They blog, they attend live events, they present and sit on panels. In return, they're given front row seating and other benefits and platforms at SFDC events. And they do all this for free — any other arrangement would destroy their hard-won reputation for objectivity.

Defenders go way beyond simply being loyal customers. They identify their success with SFDC's success and both promote — and defend — the firm vigorously. In today's world, such passionate 3d party defenders can be among a firm's most powerful sources of wealth and sustained growth.

Bill Lee is president of the Lee Consulting Group, Executive Director of the Summit on Customer Engagement, and author of The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset (HBR Press, June 2012).

Are relationships really that important to teamwork?

Mike Rogers www.socialsuccesstelevision.com November 17, 2009

Relationships are the foundation of teamwork. Teams fail to execute when relationships are poor. Yet leaders often neglect and sometimes even completely ignore this foundational component of teams. There are many reasons for poor relationships, but my opinion is that lack of understanding each other is the number one contributor.
If I don’t understand you, I won’t fully understand your motives. My trust is initially built on what I have seen or observed about you, not on what I understand about you. Therefore if what I have observed about you is negative, then your intentions will always be questioned.
I had a final job interview many years ago in which this was evident. As is the case with many final job interviews, this one was with the team that I would be working with. I believed my interview was going great, but one particular person’s body language told me otherwise. She just blankly stared at me, kind of “freaky” like. When I was being funny, she didn’t laugh. When I was being engaging and looking for agreement, she didn’t nod her head. She just stared at me. When it was her turn to ask a question, I immediately believed she was asking the question to be malicious and that she wasn’t really that serious.
I got the job and later discovered that this person showed no emotion towards any interaction, personally, or in meetings. But I also found out that she was one of the kindest and sweetest people you would ever know. Once I understood her, my judgment of her motives changed. Being on the same team, this would be critical because of the nature of the projects we would work on together.
When team members don’t trust one another, issues that need to be resolved in meetings become personal, not task-oriented. In fact, some team members may not even fully participate due to the fear of conflict. As a result, issues are never resolved effectively or efficiently.
If there is one thing I tell teams over and over again, it is that they must spend time together. There are many other things team’s can do to develop relationships, but spending time together is one of the easiest. Go to lunch together, spend a half a day or full day with teambuilding, have regular effective meetings together face to face or plan department activities together. There are many ways teams can spend time together, but the most important thing is that they do.

How To Reverse Your Hard Wiring For Distraction

BY Expert Blogger Olivia Fox Cabane | 04-11-2012 www.fastcompany.com

If you want to be charismatic, your mind can't wander while you're one-on-one with a customer or colleague.

Here's a simple one-minute exercise to help you focus.     

Charismatic behavior can be broken down into three core elements: presence, power, and warmth.

These elements depend both on our conscious behaviors and on factors we don’t consciously control. People pick up on messages we often don’t even realize we’re sending through small changes in our body language.

In order to be charismatic, we need to choose mental states that make our body language, words, and behaviors flow together and express the three core elements of charisma. And presence is the foundation for everything else.

Have you ever felt, in the middle of a conversation, as if only half of your mind were present while the other half was busy doing something else? Do you think the other person noticed? If you’re not fully present in an interaction, there’s a good chance that your eyes will glaze over or that your facial reactions will be a split-second delayed. Since the mind can read facial expressions in as little as 17 milliseconds, the person you’re speaking with will likely notice even the tiniest delays in your reactions.

We may think that we can fake presence. We may think that we can fake listening. But we’re wrong. When we’re not fully present in an interaction, people will see it. Our body language sends a clear message that other people read and react to, at least on a subconscious level.

Not only can the lack of presence be visible, it can also be perceived as inauthentic, which has even worse consequences. When you’re perceived as disingenuous, it’s virtually impossible to generate trust, rapport, or loyalty. And it’s impossible to be charismatic.

Luckily, presence is a learnable skill that can be improved with practice and patience. Being present means simply having a moment-to-moment awareness of what’s happening. It means paying attention to what’s going on rather than being caught up in your own thoughts.

Now that you know the cost of lacking presence, try this exercise to test yourself and learn three simple techniques to boost your charisma in personal interactions.

First, find a reasonably quiet place where you can close your eyes (whether standing or sitting).
Set a timer for one minute. Close your eyes and focus on one of the following three things: the sounds around you, your breathing, or the sensations in your toes.

1. Scan your environment for sound. As a meditation teacher told me, “Imagine that your ears are satellite dishes, passively and objectively registering sounds.”
2. Focus on your breath and the sensations it creates in your nostrils or stomach. Pay attention to one breath at a time, but try to notice everything about this one breath. Imagine that your breath is someone you want to give your full attention to.
3. Focus your attention on the sensations in your toes. This forces your mind to sweep through your body, helping you to get into the physical sensations of the moment.

Did you find your mind constantly wandering even though you were trying your best to be present? As you’ve noticed, staying fully present isn’t always easy. There are two main reasons for this.

First, our brains are wired to pay attention to novel stimuli, whether they be sights, smells, or sounds. We’re wired to be distracted, to have our attention grabbed by any new stimulus: it could be important! It could eat us! This tendency was key to our ancestors’ survival. Imagine two tribesmen hunting through the plains, searching the horizon for signs of the antelope that could feed their family. Something flickers in the distance. The tribesman whose attention wasn’t immediately caught? He’s not our ancestor.

The second reason is that our society encourages distraction. The constant influx of stimulation we receive worsens our natural tendencies. This can eventually lead us into a state of continuous partial attention, in which we never give our full attention to any single thing. We’re always partially distracted.

So if you often find it hard to be fully present, don’t beat yourself up. Presence is hard for almost all of us. A study coauthored by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert estimated that nearly half of the average person’s time was spent “mind wandering.”

The good news is that even a minor increase in your capacity for presence can have a major effect on those around you. Because so few of us are ever fully present, if you can manage even a few moments of full presence from time to time, you’ll make quite an impact.

The very next time you’re in a conversation, try to regularly check whether your mind is fully engaged or whether it is wandering elsewhere (including preparing your next sentence). Aim to bring yourself back to the present moment as often as you can by focusing on your breath or your toes for just a second, and then get back to focusing on the other person.

One of my clients, after trying this exercise for the first time, reported: “I found myself relaxing, smiling, and others suddenly noticed me and smiled back without my saying a word.”

Don’t be discouraged if you feel that you didn’t fully succeed in the one-minute exercise above. You actually did gain a charisma boost simply by practicing presence. And because you’ve already gained the mindset shift (awareness of the importance of presence and the cost of the lack of it), you’re already ahead of the game.
Excerpted from The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane by arrangement with Portfolio Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright © 2012 by Olivia Fox Cabane.

Value Employees, Keep Your Talent

Jean Seawright March 14, 2011 www.lawnandlandscape.com

The tough economy has taken its toll on staff. Now, with a rebound on the horizon, stretched employees may get restless.
Here’s how to re-energize workers, build trust and keep turnover low as the turnaround hits.
As a result of the worst economic crisis in recent history, workers across the country have, undoubtedly, been shaken. When layoffs, pay and benefit reductions, salary freezes and restructuring first began to occur, employees everywhere seemed to understand the magnitude of the crisis and were happy to just have a job.
Indeed, the phrase “job security” took on an entirely new meaning for many – both the employed and the unemployed alike.
Unfortunately, these newfound feelings of job appreciation have now given way to feelings of burn-out, recession fatigue and self-preservation. This has led to declining levels of motivation, pride and trust in many workplaces.
For this reason, employees are beginning to take a close, hard look at their work life, and they’re asking themselves if they really want to stay with their current employer.
Although you may be blameless in the economic crisis and you may have made wise moves to maintain the health of your business, your employees may still want to jump ship. Why? Because it’s human nature for people to want to disassociate themselves with bad memories.
Unfortunately, if you found it necessary to deploy traditional belt-tightening labor practices to cope with your business challenges, your company may be that bad memory.

FLIGHT RISK.
Several recent surveys conducted by reputable firms suggest that anywhere between 40 to 60 percent of Americans plan to look for a job once the economy rebounds. The younger generations – the Gen Xers and Yers – are reportedly the most likely to abscond.
How do you know if your employees are among the percentage wanting to bolt? Well, the risk increases if one or more of these actions occurred at your company during the recession:

• Leaders failed to communicate what was going on strategically
• Employees have had to work double-time to make up for a slimmer workforce
• Wages were cut and cannot be or are not restored
• Permanent organizational changes were made, limiting employees’ future growth potential
• Employees perceive that they were treated poorly
• Employees lost trust in the organization as a result of how it handled cost cuts
• Employees are stressed out about money

So what can you do now to re-engage your employees and to minimize the temptation for talented employees to find a new job as conditions improve?
The answer lies in first understanding what factors make work gratifying today. A recent nationwide Society for Human Resource Management job satisfaction survey listed among top factors the following very important aspects of job satisfaction:

• Job security
• Benefits
• Compensation/pay
• Opportunities to use skills and abilities
• Relationship with immediate supervisor
• Management recognition of employee job performance
• Communication between employees and senior management
  

Two things stand out on this list:
First, job security rules. Of course, it’s not surprising that during an economic downturn employees selected job security as a very important aspect of job satisfaction. This is actually good news for small businesses since the perception among workers (and, frankly, the reality) is that mass layoffs occur more readily at large companies.
Secondly, three of the job satisfaction factors are directly related to management. This tells us that in the current climate, leaders play a vital role in the job satisfaction of employees.
Indeed, to your employees, the boss is the company, and the ability of your leadership team to encourage the development of your people through trusting relationships will impact retention. No doubt about it, as the market improves it will become even more important for managers and leaders to hone performance development skills and to enhance trust.

ASSESS YOUR MANAGERS.
As the economy rebounds, the most important ingredient in retention will be the strength of your leadership team. Now is the time to assess the interpersonal skills of your management team and to make necessary adjusments. Employees want and need leaders who can connect with them emotionally; leaders who are highly visible, who care about the well being of others, who encourage the development of talent in the organization and, most importantly, who are trustworthy.
According to a research study conducted by Linda Stroh, a professor at Loyola University Chicago Graduate School of Business, a trustworthy person:

• Is likely to respond in a healthy way when things don’t go right
• Admits and learns from his or her mistakes
• Is aware of how his or her behavior affects others
• Admits when he or she doesn’t know something
• Tells me when I do something wrong
• Helps me be a better person
• Sticks by others during tough times
• Speaks the same of everyone whether in their presence or not
  

I would add one more trait: Keeps commitments. This includes the small ones. For example, if you promise an employee that you will call him or her back before the end of the day, do it.
Failure to keep even the smallest of commitments can erode trust.
Bottom line: Retaining talent in the future is going to depend in large part on the skills and abilities of your leadership team today.
You must ensure that your management team can build relationships with your people on more than just money.
As the economy rebounds, regardless of your industry or the size of your company, the best formula for successfully retaining talent combines trustworthy leaders with a motivating work environment and a culture that recognizes and engages employees.

Jean Seawright is President of Seawright & Associates, a human resource management consulting firm in Winter Park, Fla. 3 or www.seawright.com.

The Illusion Of Competence: Multitasking Our Way To Mediocrity

Date: March 1st, 2012  by William Stinnett Ph.D. L.E.T. Master Trainer GordonTraining International

“Excuse me, I have to take this call.

I will be back to this article on multitasking right after I check my e-mails, see what updates I have on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Yelp, and order those materials for my upcoming team-building workshop, decide on which airfare is best for the trip, see what that “beeping” is, check to see if the laundry is done, and listen to my daughter explain how she just has to go to another all-night party with her friends.” No problem, right? “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah! The article on multitasking! Or was it team-building? And what about that new phone that lets me download my apps faster than ever? And that little, online TV news feed in the upper corner of my computer that is keeping me constantly up-to-date on world events.”
We don’t, technically, ever really “multitask.” We switch back and forth between multiple tasks. The faster we are able to do that, the more it seems like multitasking. Does the ability to do that, however, translate into more productivity or greater efficiency? The overwhelming conclusions from scientific research indicate “no.” In fact, most studies report a decline in effectiveness on most tasks when people try to multitask. As with most skills, some people are better at “multitasking” than others. But, overall, even those who are best at it perform worse than people who attempt the same tasks without the distractions encountered with multitasking. The danger of trying to do too many things at once is, of course, less when the tasks are relatively simple and have few consequences (walking and chewing gum). But, as the complexity of the task increases and the stakes become higher (making important business decisions, driving a car), the “multitasking deficit” becomes increasingly treacherous. Some of the consequences include:

• Poor recall. People simply do not remember as much or as accurately. Information “learned” while multitasking is often forgotten or recalled incorrectly. Much of this research was done on college students preparing for exams but also has considerable application to leaders in the workplace.

• Longer time to complete tasks. It may seem counter-intuitive but multitasking actually slows people down. It takes longer to get things done. A mundane example comes from an experiment in which people were asked to perform two tasks: the first, count to 10 as fast a possible, the second, recite the alphabet from “A” to “J” as quickly as possible. Each task typically requires about two seconds. So, a person can perform both tasks in about four seconds. Next, they were asked to switch between tasks (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc.). The time to complete the task increased tremendously (15 to 30 seconds or more). There is, apparently, a certain amount of time that the brain needs for “switching.” When you leave one task, then come back to it later, it takes the brain a little time to readjust. Those little bits of time add up and when you are constantly switching back and forth, it can add considerably to the amount of time devoted to each task as well as the total. Bottlenecks are created. This is, essentially, the same thing that happens to your computer when you have too many windows open at the same time. The time required for “switching” eventually accumulates to the point that the computer slooooooooowwwwwwws dooowwwwn and eventually you have to reboot.

• Less ability to understand concepts. In some experiments, participants performed relatively well on tasks while multitasking but failed to understand the task fully. They were less able to use the information that they had “learned.” “In 2006 a team of scholars led by Karin Foerde, reported on an experiment suggesting that distraction during learning can be harmful, even if the distraction doesn’t seem to injure students’ immediate performance on their tasks….Their “weather forecasts” [their performance] under distraction were roughly as accurate as they were during the other three trials. But when they were asked afterward to describe the general probabilistic rules for that trial…, they did much worse than they did after the undistracted trials. Foerde and her colleagues argue that when the subjects were distracted, they learned the weather rules through a half-conscious system of “habit memory,” and that when they were undistracted, they encoded the weather rules through what is known as the declarative-memory system—information that is encoded in declarative memory is more flexible—that is, people are more likely to be able to draw analogies and extrapolate from it.

• More easily distracted by new, incoming information. If you saw an animated movie called “Up,” there was a talking dog who could carry on a conversation with considerable skill until distracted. In the middle of the conversation, he would suddenly say, “Squirrel!” When he returned to the conversation, he would be on a completely different subject. The same thing happens at work. During a meeting, the cell phone beeps or a new e-mail comes in on the laptop or iPad (“Squirrel”) and suddenly everyone is off on a new tangent. The original thread of the conversation is lost. The team must start over.

• Younger people who multitask a lot are no better at it than those who don’t. (Carrier, L Mark, Cheever, Nancy A, Rosen, Larry D, Benitez, Sandra, & Chang, Jennifer (2009). “Multitasking across generations: Multitasking choices and difficulty ratings in three generations of Americans”, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 25, p483–489). Even though young, multitaskers believe that they are superior at doing many things at once, the evidence does not support that confidence. Clifford Nass, Eval Ophir, and Anthony Wagner in a classic study done at Stanford say, “We kept looking for what they’re [high multitaskers] better at, and we didn’t find it.” They say that heavy multitaskers not only are not as efficient as low multitaskers at almost everything, but they are possibly doing long term damage to their cognitive ability. They are actually becoming less capable of filtering out distracting, non-useful information than low multitaskers.

All of these ideas point to an organizational culture where there is less thinking, less understanding, less attention to detail, less mindfulness, and, ultimately, less productivity. Like many “new” things, multitasking seems desirable until it is better understood. Who wouldn’t want to get more things done in less time? But, like many gimmicks, multitasking doesn’t really deliver on its promise.
What, then, do we do with all of these devices that “help” us get more done. Like all technology, the utility of the tools depends on our ability to use them properly. Any parent who has watched his or her teenager do homework in front of the TV with the iPod attached and texting her friends at the same time understands that something has to change. Any facilitator who has tried to conduct a workshop while the participants are checking their e-mails and responding to “urgent” text messages understands that there must be a better way. There have been many articles written that give pretty good advice.

Some of the time-tested “truths” are summarized below. If you really want to get things done and produce good quality work, here are a few thoughts:

• Do one thing at a time. This doesn’t mean that if you have a project that requires twenty hours to complete that you need to work twenty hours straight. Break the task down into smaller chunks of a few minutes or a couple of hours and stay focused for that time. If it’s an article you are writing, finish gathering all of the reference material or complete the opening paragraph, etc. But, don’t stop and check your e-mail until that segment is done.

• Eliminate distractions. Don’t have the news going in the background. Don’t be carrying on a conversation with a new hire. Don’t write while you have the phone stuck to your ear. Close the door. Wear the sound reducing earphones.

• Rest occasionally. One of the reasons multitasking doesn’t work is that the brain has no time to recover. The brain is an organ that uses energy. It takes it at least a few seconds to refresh after intense usage. Sometimes even thirty seconds can go a long way toward preparing you for the next task.

• Eat right. Exercise. Etc. All of the things we have learned about fitness apply to the healthy functioning of the brain. The evidence suggests that too much multitasking not only lowers our productivity but actually reduces our IQ.

As the leader of your team, don’t encourage people to multitask. If they are going away to a training workshop, make sure that their work is covered by someone else. Don’t call them on the cell phone or send “emergency” e-mails. Don’t pull people out of meetings to ‘trouble-shoot” another project. Encourage them to plan ahead so that work doesn’t pile up. Don’t reward team members for doing a lot of things at once. When they come to you, listen to them and only to them. Don’t send the wrong signals by half listening and half checking your e-mails. Don’t make heroes of team members who work 70 hours a week. They are probably not getting any more work done than the team members who work 40 hours but set priorities and concentrate on the one or two most important things every day. It is also probable that the 70-hour-a-week team member may not be exercising the best judgment. Set the example. Learn to say “no” to new assignments once in a while. Don’t try to do everything and certainly don’t try to do it all at once.
You should also avoid the temptation to pack your leadership training with every topic you can possibly imagine. “Hey, let’s add a module on work-life balance. Great. Let’s add another one on benchmarking. Don’t forget networking and social media. We can work them all in and do it in a half-day.”
The workplace is becoming increasingly complex. In a way, the idea that we need to concentrate on fewer things at once seems counterintuitive. Shouldn’t we learn to think in more complex ways? It is seductive to believe that we will gain an “edge” by being able to do more things at once. But, so far, the evidence does not support that idea. No one knows if, in the future, we will learn to think about more than one thing at a time or at least reduce the “switching time” to near zero. But, there is nothing in the current research that indicates that as a real possibility. Human beings are just not designed that way.
© 2012 William Stinnett, Ph.D., L.E.T. Master Trainer for Gordon Training International

Do Your People Trust You?

Linda A. Hill & Kent Lineback March 2, 2012 www.blogs.hbr.org

When we talk to managers, we often ask, "Do your people trust you?"
Most are taken aback. It's not something they're often asked or a question they've even asked themselves.
After some thought, most eventually say something like, "Well, I think so. I hope so. No one's said he doesn't." In fact, as they ultimately admit, they don't really know for sure.
It's a question worth asking. Do your people trust you?
Chances are, you don't know for sure, either. If so, that's potentially a problem because your ability to elicit people's best efforts depends on their trust in you — their confidence that they can count on you to do the right thing. Your basic job as a boss is to influence others, to make a difference in what they do and in the thoughts and feelings that drive their actions. Yet, even as the person in charge, the one with authority, you can ultimately influence people only to the extent they are willing to be influenced by you. And that willingness will depend on whether they trust you. Without trust, why should people do what you ask, especially if you're asking something difficult? Why should they accept your judgment? Above all, why would they devote the care and extra effort that quality work requires? As the boss, you can demand compliance but you must earn commitment, and the coin of that realm is trust.
As we explore this topic with managers, we find it's a subject both familiar and unfamiliar.
Most people don't know how to think about it constructively. Why?
First, they often don't realize how context-sensitive trust is. Your people certainly wouldn't trust you, say, to do brain surgery on one of their children, and you would find that lack of trust completely understandable. You're not to be trusted in that context. So, when we ask, "Do your people trust you?" we're not asking about people's confidence in you as a person in general — whether, for example, they think you will repay them promptly if you borrow $10. Instead, we're really asking, "Do your people trust you as a boss?" For them to accept you as a boss, they must trust you in that context. When we delve later into the components of trust, you'll see why context is so important.
The second reason most managers feel a little lost when they think about trust is that most of us resist the idea that trust is something you can actively and consciously encourage. To say it can and should be fostered feels manipulative and self-serving. We instinctively distrust the person who exclaims, "Trust me!" We usually don't consider trust an outcome we can or should try to control directly. Sure, if we outright lie, cheat, steal, and fail to keep our word, others will consider us untrustworthy. But most of us don't consistently or purposely behave that way. We try to tell the truth, abide by the rules, honor others' rights and belongings, and if we cannot keep a promise, we explain why. For most of us, that's how we were brought up. It's who we are and so we think of trust as the outcome of simply being who we are. It's only when we occasionally — usually inadvertently — break someone's trust that we worry about it. Otherwise, trust just happens and we think that's how it should be.
But believing as a boss that trust will somehow take care of itself may not work out the way you want. You do need to think about it. And you may need to take conscious steps that make clear to others that you deserve their trust. None of those steps involves dishonesty or manipulation — on the contrary — but they do involve your being explicit about yourself, about what you know, and about the reasons behind your decisions and actions. In other words, it may require that you be more open as a boss than you might personally be inclined to be.
Indeed, the need for such openness may cut against the grain of many managers, especially new managers, who believe that as the boss they're able to take action without having to explain it to everyone involved.
What this means and how you do it will become more clear in the next two blogs, in which we will explore each of the two components of trust — competence and character. For people to trust you as a boss, they must believe you know what to do as a boss. At one time or another, we've all had bosses of whom people said, "He doesn't know the business" or "She doesn't understand what we do." No one would trust you to do brain surgery because you're incompetent in that context.
Character is equally important. It refers to your intentions — what you're trying to do, your goals and values as a boss. If, for example, people think you're only out for yourself, driven by blind ambition, and don't care about them, the group, or the work, they will distrust your character, no matter how much you know. You need competence and character both to earn your people's trust.
In the next blog, we'll explore competence, what it means to "know" as a boss and what you can legitimately do to demonstrate competence. (No, it doesn't mean you're supposed to be the expert.) And in the blog after that, we'll delve into character, a much more elusive concept that obviously can vary greatly with the context. But we'll try to say some constructive things about it, and how you can foster it, that apply broadly.

Don't take trust for granted, or believe it just happens, because virtually all you do as a boss begins with people's trust in you.

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Kent Lineback spent many years as a manager and an executive in business and government. They are the coauthors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader (HBR Press, 2011).

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Why Appreciation Matters So Much

Tony Schwartz January 23, 2012 www.blogs.hbr.org

I've just returned from an offsite with our team at The Energy Project. As we concluded, I asked each person to take a few moments to say what he or she felt most proud of accomplishing over the past year.
After each of their brief recountings, I added some observations about what I appreciated in that person. Before long, others were chiming in. The positive energy was contagious, but it's not something we can ever take for granted.

Whatever else each of us derives from our work, there may be nothing more precious than the feeling that we truly matter — that we contribute unique value to the whole, and that we're recognized for it.

The single highest driver of engagement, according to a worldwide study conducted by Towers Watson, is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their wellbeing. Less than 40 percent of workers felt so engaged.

Feeling genuinely appreciated lifts people up. At the most basic level, it makes us feel safe, which is what frees us to do our best work. It's also energizing. When our value feels at risk, as it so often does, that worry becomes preoccupying, which drains and diverts our energy from creating value.

So why is it that openly praising or expressing appreciation to other people at work can so easily seem awkward, contrived, mawkish and even disingenuous?
The obvious answer is that we're not fluent in the language of positive emotions in the workplace. We're so unaccustomed to sharing them that we don't feel comfortable doing so. Heartfelt appreciation is a muscle we've not spent much time building, or felt encouraged to build.
Oddly, we're often more experienced at expressing negative emotions — reactively and defensively, and often without recognizing their corrosive impact on others until much later, if we do at all.

That's unfortunate. The impact of negative emotions — and more specifically the feeling of being devalued — is incredibly toxic. As Daniel Goleman has written, "Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are almost as powerful as those to our very survival."
In one well-known study, workers who felt unfairly criticized by a boss or felt they had a boss who didn't listen to their concerns had a 30 percent higher rate of coronary disease than those who felt treated fairly and with care.
In the workplace itself, researcher Marcial Losada has found that among high-performing teams, the expression of positive feedback outweighs that of negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6 to 1. By contrast, low-performing teams have a ratio of .36 to 1.
So what are the practical steps you can take, especially as a manager, to use appreciation in the service of building a higher-performing (and more sustainable) team?

1. As the Hippocratic oath prescribes to physicians, "Above all else, do no harm." Or perhaps more accurately, do less harm, since it's unrealistic to do none. The costs of devaluing others are so great that we need to spend far more time thinking than we do now about how to hold people's value, even in situations where they've fallen short and our goal is get them to change their behavior for the better.

2. Practice appreciation by starting with yourself. If you have difficulty openly appreciating others, it's likely you also find it difficult to appreciate yourself. Take a few moments at the end of the day to ask yourself this simple question: "What can I rightly feel proud of today?" If you are committed to constant self-improvement, you can also ask yourself, "What could I do better tomorrow?" Both questions hold your value.

3. Make it a priority to notice what others are doing right. The more you work at it, the better you'll get at it, and the more natural it will become for you. For example, start by thinking about what positive qualities, behaviors and contributions you currently take for granted among the members of your team. Then ask yourself, what is it that each of them uniquely brings to the table?

4. Be appreciative. The more specific you can be about what you value — and the more you notice what's most meaningful to that person — the more positive your impact on that person is likely to be. A handwritten note makes a bigger impression than an email or a passing comment, but better any one of them than nothing at all.
We're all more vulnerable and needy than we like to imagine. Authentically appreciating others will make you feel better about yourself, and it will also increase the likelihood they'll invest more in their work, and in you. The human instinct for reciprocity runs deep

10 Things Great Managers Do

(MoneyWatch) August 18, 2011Steve Tobak www.cbsnews.com

There's all sorts of rhetoric about what good bosses should and shouldn't do these days. I guess that's a good thing.
Unfortunately, most of it's pretty basic, generic fluff that sort of blends together after a while.
Even worse, a lot of it's, well, utopian. It panders to what employees want to hear instead of giving truly practical and insightful advice on what makes a manager effective in the real world where business is everything and everything's on the line.

This list is different. It's different because, to derive it, I went back in time to the best characteristics of the best CEOs (primarily) I've worked for and with over the past 30 years. It's based entirely on my own experience with executives who made a real difference at extraordinary companies.

Some were big, some were small, but all were successful in their respective markets, primarily because of the attributes of these CEOs. Each anecdote taught me a critical lesson that advanced my career and helped me to be a better leader. Hope you get as much out of reading it as I did living it.

10 Things Great Managers Do

Maintain your cool and sense of humor, especially during a crisis. When our biggest customer - and I mean big - thought I leaked a front-page story to the press, I offered to resign to save the relationship. My boss, a great CEO, gave me a serious look, like he was thinking about it, and said, "You're not getting off that easy." Then he broke into a big smile.

Tell subordinates when they're shooting themselves in the foot. Sometimes I can be pretty intimidating and I've had CEOs who shied away from giving it to me straight when my emotions got the better of me. Not this one guy. We'd be in a heated meeting and he'd quietly take me aside and read me the riot act. He was so genuine about it that it always opened my eyes and helped me to achieve perspective.

Be the boss, but behave like a peer. I've worked with loads of CEOs who let their egos get the better of them. They act like they're better than everyone else, are distant and emotionally detached, or flaunt their knowledge and power. That kind of behavior diminishes leaders, makes them seem small, and keeps them from really connecting with people. They're not always the most successful, but the most admired CEOs I know are genuinely humble.

Let your guard down and really be yourself outside of work. You know, teambuilding is so overrated. All you really need to do outside of work to build a cohesive team is break some bread, have some drinks, relax, let your guard down, and be a regular human being. When you get to be really confident, you can be that way all the time. That's the mark of a great leader.

Stand behind and make big bets on people you believe in. One CEO would constantly challenge you and your thinking to the point of being abusive. But once he trusted and believed in you, he put his full weight behind you 100 percent to help you succeed. He'd stand up for you even when he wasn't sure what the heck you were up to. And he'd give you new functional responsibilities - something up-and-coming execs need to grow. Okay, he wasn't perfect, but who is?

Complement your subordinate's weaknesses. I often say it's every employee's job to complement her boss's weaknesses. The only reason that's even doable is because we've all only got one boss. But I actually had a CEO who did that with each and every one of his staff. For example, I'm more of a big picture strategy guy and he would really hold my feet to the fire by tracking my commitments. It felt like micromanaging at first, but I eventually realized it helped me to be a more effective and strengthened the entire management team.

Compliment your employee's strengths. It takes a strong, confident leader to go out on a limb and tell an employee what they're great at. Why? I don't know, but I suspect it's hard for alpha males that primarily inhabit executive offices. Anyway, it's important because we can't always see ourselves objectively. Twenty years ago a CEO identified how effectively I cut through a boatload of BS to reach unique solutions to tough problems. Today, that's what I do for a living.

Teach the toughest, most painful lessons you've ever learned. As a young manager at Texas Instruments, I once asked my boss's boss for advice about a promotion I didn't get. He told me a candid story about the hardest lesson he'd ever learned, the reason he was stuck in his job. He made himself indispensible and didn't groom his replacement. It was painful for him to share, but it opened my eyes and made a huge difference in my career.

Do the right thing. Just about everyone says it, but I've only known one CEO who both preached and practiced it to the point where it became a big part of the company culture. You'd walk the halls and hear people say it all the time. He meant two things by it. When he said it to you, it meant he trusted you to do just that. He also meant it regardless of status quo or consequences. He had extraordinary faith in that phrase. Now I do too.

Do what has to be done, no matter what. It's a rare executive who jumps on a plane at a moment's notice to close a deal or gives an impromptu presentation when a potential investor shows up unexpectedly. It's even more rare when he does it without asking questions or hemming and hawing about it. He just does what has to be done. That kind of drive and focus on the business is relatively common with entrepreneurs in high-tech startups. And it's the mark of a great manager who will find success, that's for sure.

The Days of "Manager Knows Best" Are Ending

Wednesday February 1, 2012 by Sujai Hajela www.blogs.hbr.org

To get a glimpse of what tomorrow's young global managers might be like as leaders, take a look at how today's young people think about communications.
For one thing, they are devoted to connectivity. In a recent survey of more than 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 countries, Cisco found that more than half said they could not live without the internet, and if forced to choose, two-thirds would opt to have an internet rather than a car. This intense desire to be connected leads to a demand for greater flexibility: Two out of five people said they'd accept a lower-paying job if the position offered greater flexibility on access to social media, the ability to work from where they chose, and choice on the mobile devices they could use on the job. Tomorrow's young managers will share these attitudes, and workplaces will inevitably become more flexible.
For another thing, social media is quickly overtaking phones and email and becoming the dominant form of communication. Young people are driving this change, with the one-to-one mode of interacting giving way to a one-to-many mind-set. Young leaders will use social media to create a running dialog with their employees and colleagues, issuing constant updates about their projects and ideas. Employees will use it to provide instantaneous input and feedback. Workers, via this medium, will insist on having a voice in shaping the company's vision and strategy.
The demand for increased connectivity and flexibility and greater use of social media will shape and change companies from the inside out. Companies will need to think hard about these questions:

• What is the appropriate level of openness? Should employees be prevented from slamming their bosses' ideas, for example? Should managers be restricted in the kinds of things they can say to or about employees?

• How much blurring of public and private life is too much? Social media encourages people to mix work- and nonwork-related communication, but some workers prefer to keep their social lives strictly off-limits.

• How can the company prevent abuse of social media? Things can get ugly quickly — all it takes is one thoughtless comment. Employees and managers need to know that there will be serious consequences for any misuse of this potentially combustible form of communication.

• When employees from VPs to interns are sharing company information on Twitter, on Facebook, and in blogs while your competition is watching, how do you ensure that your employees understand what information is confidential and what is public?

As companies resolve these issues, management styles will evolve. The days when a leader can confidently say "I know best" will come to an end. Managers will no longer be able to communicate with just a small circle of trusted advisers — they'll be expected to interact digitally with a much broader range of people both inside and outside the company.
Not every company will be pleased by this turn of events, of course, but those that embrace it will have new competitive opportunities. With knowledge flowing more freely throughout the organization and decisions being made more quickly, the company will be able to react more nimbly to the ever-increasing pace of change.