Some managers, especially executives who should know better, have two teams—one is the one to which they pay lip-service and talk about in public.

The other is the one that takes priority and stays front and center in all decisions.

Let’s use the CEO as our example, remembering that this attitude can happen anywhere on the management ladder.

CEOs are always talking about ‘the team’ and it’s taken to mean all the company’s employees.

But, for those the shoe fits, it actually refers to their direct reports and their pets.

Back when this attitude was common it was also honest. Managers were ‘us’, workers were ‘them’ and everybody knew where they stood.

Then organizations started to change. Volvo focused the world on the power of teams. Research showed that productivity increased when people were more invested and engaged in their work.

Academics, management gurus and the leadership industry introduced language that was supposed to be inclusive and empowering.

And it was when used by the CEOs who bought it, owned it and meant it; to the rest it was pap—good for keeping all those not on the ‘real’ team in line.

Now, with the severe downturn, more managers, from CEO to first line supervisor, are slipping back to the old mindset—often without even realizing it.

So the next time you’re preparing to speak to your team, take a step backward and ask yourself to whom you’re talking…

Who is your team?

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Do words really make a difference? Can just one word change people’s perception of a person or event?

I’ve read several items lately on the importance of influence in leadership. Several even make the point that it’s the ability to influence that marks a person as a leader.

Personally, other than socially acceptable definitions, I don’t see a lot of difference between influence and manipulation.

Both influence and manipulation seek to produce an effect without any apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.

But if you say someone has a lot of influence it’s a compliment; call the same person a master manipulator and you’d better duck.

It’s a good example of the real power that words have to inspire or crush even if their meaning is the same.

And it’s important to remember that words come with baggage that goes well beyond their actual definition.

That baggage was one of the main reasons corporate marketing departments made so many mistakes when moving from one culture to another.

• Braniff translated its slogan relating to seat upholstery, “Fly in leather” to Spanish; only it came out as “Fly naked.”
• Coors slogan, “Turn it loose,” means “Suffer from diarrhea” in Spanish.
• Clairol, introduced a curling iron called the “Mist Stick” in Germany and learned the hard way that mist is slang for manure.
• Gerber started selling baby food in Africa using US packaging with the baby on the label until they found out that in Africa the picture on the label indicates what’s inside since most people can’t read.

There are hundreds of similar mishaps. They made marketing departments a laughing stock, forced companies to hire locally, helped change the headquarters mindset and encourage global companies to be truly global.

The point of all this is to encourage you to take a few extra minutes to think through not only what you want to say, but also what your audience will hear when you say it.

That effort can make the difference between going up like a rocket or down like a falling star.

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See all mY generation posts here.

Greed is certainly in the news these days, from stories about it to tirades against it, so it seemed like a good time to offer up a few you may not have seen recently.

“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” –Erich Fromm (Hello John Thain and friends, I think Erich is talking to you.)

“It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.” –John Steinbeck (This is so true it makes you want to weep.)

“To make a business decision, you don’t need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.” –Bill Watterson (After listening to all the rationalizations and excuses for what’s happened this is the first thing that makes sense.

Finally, to round this out I’m adding something I said during a conversation. I can’t remember having read it, but I doubt it’s really original.

“Greed is the driving force in the pursuit of many things besides money.” Me

What about you? Any thoughts on greed—your own or someone else’s?

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A slightly odd combination today, but one I hope will prove of use to you.

A thought-provoking commentary from Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School and Andy Zelleke, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, discussing why a cap on CEO pay will have little to no affect of the rampant greed so pervasive these days in the corporate suite.

This CNET post last year regarding the legal implications of employee blogging is a must read. Granted it’s not an in-depth study, but it does give you a heads up on some of the concerns and legal implications.

Here’s an interesting item for those of you in companies of 50 or less employees. I’m a long way from knowledgeable so you need to talk to your experts, but I do know that insurance is a very tough road for small companies, especially in the current economy.

“Section 125 plans let companies and their workers pay for health insurance premiums with pretax dollars. Businesses and employees save 7.65% in FICA and Medicare tax, and workers save on taxes by lowering their taxable income.”

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One of the most popular series of articles at Leadership Turn was written shortly before I came. It’s about styles of learning and how they apply to you, your colleagues, your team and your kids. Written by my editor, Mary Jo Manzanares, they are well worth your time. In fact, you’ll find it useful to review them from time to time, it’s the kind of information that gets pushed to the side, but pays large dividends when kept in the active file.

For those of you who deal with products in one way or another, here’s an interesting interview with Alberto Alessi on how to sustain innovation over time. You may have to register (free) to read it, but you’ll find it a source of great information.

There are lots of articles out there about large corporations who spend millions to create environments that spark creativity, encourage teamwork and facilitate a generally happier, i.e., more productive, workforce.

Startups are known for their cool and or funky offices often done on a shoestring. But they aren’t the only ones. It’s not just the big guys or the upstarts that are jumping on the trend. Lots of small businesses create innovative environments. Take a look at Madden Corporate Services, a 15 year old branding biz that’s grown to 39 people and learn how their modest investment pays off.

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If you read any of the hundreds of how-to books written about good people management and leadership, you’ll find great similarities among them. So, what happens during implementation? Why can the de facto difference between managers be so enormous?

The answer goes back to one of two basic beliefs that are formed and held long before a person becomes a manager.

• People are intelligent, motivated, and really care about helping their company achieve its objectives.

• People are stupid, don’t care, and will screw up if you don’t watch them every minute. Variations of A are discussed, lauded, and underlay most “good” management practices. Variations of B are rarely admitted, infrequently discussed, and can be largely unconscious.

Do managers on the B side of the scale always fail while those on the A side are guaranteed success? Unfortunately no.

What does this mean to you? If you’re a current or future manager, you need to be aware of where you are on the scale and then decide if that’s where you want to be—information that is nobody elses business.

If you like where you are, do nothing, you’re all set.

But if you decide to alter your location on the scale, remember that change rarely happens when undertaken as a result of what “they” say, so be sure that it’s you who wants to change.

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Dan Erwin has a great guest post about delegation over at Slacker Manager. I strongly urge you to take a moment and click over, read it, print out his Three Keys to Effective Delegating and use them.

Dan accurately touched on one kind of control issue in his post, but my reference is in terms of politics,  MAP and abuse.

Political power stems from control.

The only two things worth controlling are money (obvious) or information (not so obvious).

Managers frequently control both, whereas non-managers are limited to information.

It’s pretty obvious how controlling of money gives someone power, but what about information? These stories are true—

The new engineering VP didn’t like a top performing manager. He cut the manager’s budget, but didn’t reduce his objectives. The manager was forced to lay-off, couldn’t meet his objectives and was fired for poor performance at his next review.

The damage from controlling information is more insidious and in some ways worse. It’s the ultimate micromanagement and destroys people a little at a time by undermining and tearing them down.

A VP of Marketing forced his marcom manager to come to him each time she needed competitive or marketing information, but worse, he berated her constantly for being over budget—but wouldn’t tell her what the budget was. He also complained to the rest of the senior staff about her “neediness” and how she couldn’t manage her budget to the point that they all lost confidence in her. She finally resigned, but not before a lot of damage had been done.

Although it’s more common for managers to use to on their people, I’ve seen non-managerial people wield it against their colleagues, often with devastating effect.

X has information that Y, or even the whole team, needs to do their share of a project. Y asks for the info, but rather than giving it all X gives as little as possible forcing Y to return over and over. Often when responding X uses the opportunity to make subtle comments about Y’s ability, undermining his confidence; X might even start rumors about Y’s competency to do the work.

Over the years I’ve used these and other examples with managers guilty of their own version of information control; some were horrified and worked hard to change their own action—and usually succeeded, but others saw nothing wrong.

It didn’t happen often, but it happened enough that it made me realize information control isn’t always an overt political move or even subconscious insecurities coming to the fore.

Sometimes information control is based in a malicious attitude that permeates the person’s MAP.

MAP can change, but the individual has to desire it and they don’t.

The fact that they spread pain and destruction every place they work doesn’t preclude them from promotions and if they find a position in a dysfunctional culture they thrive.

I call them destroyers.

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Richard’s recent posts (here and here) questioned what happens to culture and people as assets during a tanking economy.

Is culture anything more than lip service? Glib words to throw around during an expansion, but hollow and valueless otherwise?

Yes—and no

Unfortunately, too many executives still see people as an expendable resource—interchangeable and replaceable.

But not all.

The companies with strong, innovative cultures where executive action supports an environment that challenges and encourages growth will come out of this stronger and miles ahead of their lip-synching competitors.

They also know that keeping their people motivated and as happy as possible is the only option if they want to keep their customers happy.

Think Apple, Nucor, IBM and dozens of others, large, medium and small, where the execs practice what they preach.

But no matter how authentic the culture, the economy happens and companies have to deal with it—and even the best may face layoffs.

I received a call from a reader, I’ll call him Doug, (I love calls, you may reach me at 866.335.8054, 9 AM to11 PM Pacific time.) who wanted to know why I kept harping on the need for long-term this and long-term that. He said that he’s 26 and part of “the online generation” and used to “instant gratification.”

We talked for quite awhile and I found him to be intelligent, well-spoken and, in his own way despite what he said, thoughtful—but also impatient.

Influencing others is always stressed as a major trait of leadership—maybe the most important trait. But to lead on any level requires an understanding of the larger picture, along with strategic understanding of what’s coming down the road.

Neither one of those offers much instant anything.

I’m not saying Doug speaks for his entire generation, but in a post last summer I linked to several books and articles discussing changes occurring in brain functions as a result of the digital world.

One of the links is to an essay in the Atlantic Monthly by author Nicholas Carr in which he says, “the net is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation”. He cited other high-powered thinkers and online commentators: what if the way I THINK has changed? asked one. “I’ve lost the capacity to read War and Peace any more,” said another, whose current best effort was to stay with a three or four-paragraph weblog entry.”

Another article talks about Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of a new book, iBrain, “who cites a Stanford University study that for every hour a person spends on a computer, personal interaction with others drops by 30 minutes.

“With the weakening of the brain’s neural circuitry controlling human contact,” Dr. Small writes, “our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret, and even miss, subtle, non-verbal messages.”

You can think of it along the scale of Asperger’s syndrome, which is a mild form of it, where there’s not social connectiveness and difficulties with eye contact.”

And this isn’t just about the so-called digital generation, “Scans of the more practised internet users [55-78] during those search tasks showed increased activity in the front of the brain, where reasoning, complex decision-making, short-term memory and the processing of sensations and thoughts all originate. … Within five days though, the digital newcomers were showing the same neural activity.”

Along with greed, is it possible that this new style brain affected the people who ran the banks, hedge funds, and other businesses that played fast and loose with your money?

How will these new brains lead as they move into the workforce and the world?

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