Rumors are the fastest way to destroy trust and culture, not to mention your team’s morale, productivity, longevity—the list goes on and on.

Managers who stick their head in the sand in the hopes that the rumor will die a natural death are in for a rude awakening.

The only way to deal with rumors is head on and publicly.

Call your group together, state the rumor and tell them the truth. If something in the rumor response is confidential level with them and explain why it is.

For example, if there is a layoff rumor it’s either true or false. If true, admit it and explain as much as possible. If you can identify specifics—when, which departments, who, etc.,—and be honest! Or tell them when you don’t have information or that you can’t share it.

People aren’t stupid, if you say there is no layoff coming and it happens two days later they will know you lied and lies cast a long shadow. People will understand that you can’t give details, but lies are something else.

The only way to deal with the rumor mongers is privately and only if you are positive that you have the right person.

If you are sure start by asking why they said what they said.

You may find that it was innocent and actually started in another group or department. In that case make them feel safe in coming to you first if they hear something in the future.

If they deny it and you are still absolutely sure thank them and then watch them like a hawk. If they are real rumor mongers they do it for kicks; thinking they got away with it usually makes them careless and you will catch them the next time.

You need proof to act and that may take time, but the more confident they are the easier it is to catch them; just remember to document everything.

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Saturday an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal entitled The End of Management and I planned a commentary on it today.

Corporations, whose leaders portray themselves as champions of the free market, were in fact created to circumvent that market.

…

Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.

But when a blogger I respect writes an excellent post poking the same holes I would have poked, then it seems a waste of effort to reinvent that particular wheel.

So first read The End of Management and then click over and read Wally Bock’s comments.

Time well spent—I guarantee it.

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Pizzled is a cross between puzzled and pissed and it’s what people get when forced to work in a Triple A Culture.

RAT culture, on the other hand, leaves employees engaged, motivated and productive.

RAT means rational, authentic and transparent.

• Rational actions that make sense to your people and rational communication that doesn’t employ emotion to manipulate them.

• Authentic eliminates BS, yours and all those who report to you, and stays consistent, stabilizing everybody

• Transparent is saying clearly what you mean, doing what you say and holding everyone to the same standard—no exceptions.

RAT culture is always a top-down function imposed by any manager at any level on those who report directly or indirectly. Sadly, it is almost impossible to enable or enforce RAT culture up through the organization.

Assuming you have RAT MAP, RAT culture is satisfying to build, because it means

• doing what comes naturally;
• not having to remember what you said or did to stay consistent, because it was the truth;
• creating a working environment that’s full of sunshine instead of sh*t where people can grow and excel; and
• where fun, happy, productivity and success are the norm.

Finally, propagating RAT culture is profitable—not just for the company, because of high productivity, and your people, because of goals reached and dreams fulfilled, but for you as you’ll see from your reviews, the ease with which you hire and the pleasure you take in what you’ve accomplished.

So forget pizzled and go RAT, you won’t be disappointed.

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Most people hear ‘Triple A’ and assume that it is the best something can be, but it depends on what “A” stands for.

In this case they stand for anger, aggression and apathy.

Most managers create AAA cultures by accident and there are those who’s standard management style fosters it, but unintentional or not, the result is the same.

This post isn’t about those who intentionally rely on AAA culture to run their organization, they are destroyers (you can learn more about them here and here, although this one can also be unintentional) and the best thing people who work for them can do is leave.

But for the unintentional it works like this.

• Something happens that makes you angry; it may not even be work related but you are angry.

• Whether simmering or roiling, it drives you to act out with some kind of aggression making you short-tempered and abrupt or it can show as impatience, sarcasm, contempt, disgust, obnoxiousness, etc.

• When your management style becomes erratic the team becomes unsure on how to interact, not just with you, but with each other. Since people don’t know what will set someone off they start keeping their head down and getting the hell out there, breathing a sign of relief if they made it through the day safely.

As time goes by the trepidation settles into apathy—a Triple A culture has formed.

As to the cure, that should be apparent from the cause.

Please join me next Tuesday to see why RAT culture is so great, not to mention a lot more fun and profitable to build.

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In a recent column in the NY Times by Bob Herbert adds his voice to mine in condemning today’s wired, multitasking mentality, only he does it with far more flair. The part I want to share is near the end.

There’s a character in the August Wilson play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” who says everyone has a song inside of him or her, and that you lose sight of that song at your peril. If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it, you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied. … Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you.

Just as individuals have songs companies do also and both need silence to hear them.

The song is MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) set to music; values and culture that sing to you and mirror you.

Songs are elusive and the cacophony that often pervades life and work makes it yet more difficult to hear them.

Why do people keep adding to it and then complain bitterly about the noise.

When I was young I realized that I could have all the stuff I wanted as long as I owned the stuff and the stuff didn’t own me.

Technology is like stuff—you can’t let it own you.

There is a marvelous world outside the window and inside yourself just waiting to be explored.

No thunderbolt will strike if you put it down, turn it off, look out the window, smile and say hi to those you can literally reach out and touch, feel the magic, hear the song.

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I read a great post by Jennifer Miller on the ubiquity of ‘perfect’ in descriptions and the dangers of embedding perfection as a goal in corporate culture.

It reminded me that ‘perfect’ and ‘perfection’ are right up there with ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ on the overused/abused scale—more, actually, since they represent a condition beyond human abilities.

Humans don’t do absolutes particularly well.

They do better on a strictly personal level when they have absolute control over all parts of the equation, but even then their score leaves much to be desired—just consider the infidelity statistics.

Add to that the fact that the standards themselves are a moving target. Even those that seem to be absolute, like murder, have a definition that changes with societal attitudes towards what constitutes a victim.

Since humans so often fall short of perfection, society and corporations codify the definitions to make it easier to adhere to them. That’s especially important when it comes to ethical stances, which is why condoning deviations, as described yesterday, is so devastating to the organization.

The take-away is simple: never establish goals that set you or your people up for failure.

If you are prone to talking in absolutes, “we will always…” here is a simple rule to guide you.

“We will always” is acceptable if you are discussing well defined intangibles, such as ethics and values that apply equally to everyone in the organization, but isn’t applicable in setting tangible goals, such as quality rules for defects.

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It’s not just companies, these days branding is applicable on a personal level as never before, whether you are a rock star, a rock star CEO or a wannabe; a college student, new grad or a working stiff trying to improve your lot; everything is about “the brand.”

Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace has a good post on the value of first impressions, since research has shown that there may be a second chance.

Part of branding is the impression you make, so I thought I would share a multi-decade observation on the subject that applies to everything—interviewing, public speaking, personal relationships—the entire spectrum of human interaction. It is neither good nor bad, merely human.

First impressions are generally based on personal prejudices and chemistry.

I’ve found the former can change from negative to positive based on further interaction, but that chemistry only changes from positive to negative.

For example, years ago I spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco; afterwards a woman thanked me and told me that based on my appearance she almost left. (I am nearly six feet tall and although not model thin I wasn’t plus-size, either.) She assumed that I would have nothing intelligent to say on the subject based on my size, but instead found my material valuable and my presentation excellent. Obviously, I had crossed several of her visual prejudices.

Chemistry, however, is entirely different.

Chemistry is not grounded in anything rational, not even personal prejudices, nor is it irrational—it just is.

Think about it; you meet someone and have an instant positive reaction to the person for absolutely no reason you can figure out.

It isn’t sexual attraction, since the person can be of either gender; it’s a psychological reaction along the lines of I want to know that person better and then acting on the desire because the chemistry is so strong.

When the chemistry is mutual, you experience that heady feeling of instant connection, whereas with bad chemistry people can’t even hear each other. However, positive chemistry can change the minute the other person opens her mouth and every thought and word turns sours your initial reaction.

As your own brand manager, here are your three critical take-aways:

• First impressions do count and shouldn’t be neglected on the assumption that you can change them later because you suddenly decide it’s worth the effort;
• chemistry is chemistry and outside of your control; and, most important of all,
• don’t hide behind chemistry and use it as a rationalization for not putting out first impression effort.

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This is as true today as it was 38 years ago when Dr Robert McNeish first expounded on it.

1. As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an ‘uplift’ for the bird following. By flying in a V formation, the whole flock adds 71% more flying range than if each bird flew alone.
Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier when they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

2. Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to fly alone and quickly gets back in formation to take advantage of the ‘lifting power’ of the bird immediately in front.
Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we will stay in formation with those who are headed where we want to go. (If none are then we know we are with the wrong flock. Ed.)

3. When the lead goose gets tired it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies at the point position.
Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing the leadership interdependent with each other.

4. The geese in formation honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
Lesson: We need to make sure our honking from behind is encouraging, rather than making less helpful noises.

5. When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow him down to help and protect him. They stay with him until he is either able to fly or dies. Then they launch out on their own with another formation or to catch up with the flock.
Lesson: If we have as much sense and compassion as the geese, we’ll skip the politics and knives and support each other.

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For 30 years I’ve preached the power of culture to the managers with whom I’ve worked.

I believed that good culture was the difference between great companies and the rest.

As a Silicon Valley headhunter, I made it a point to recruit for companies with good culture and from companies with bad ones, which is why 75% of my placements stayed 4 years or longer.

These days everyone is talking about the importance of culture—the media, bloggers, academics, pundits, CEOs—especially CEOs.

People like me who promote culture know that it must be like stain, not paint, to work.

Unfortunately, many CEOs use “cultural paint,” believing their employees will think its “cultural stain.”

The difference is obvious; cultural stain is absorbed into the very fiber of an organization, thus affecting everybody’s thoughts and actions, while cultural paint sits on the surface where it is paid lip-service and its effects are grounded in convenience.

Cultural stain is the direct result of walking the talk and making sure that everybody else walks it, too. It’s intentional action and it requires paying attention.

It’s not the output of an underling, although it can bubble up from employees if the circumstances are right, but “I didn’t know!” is never an acceptable reason for anything when coming from the person who ultimately is supposed to be in charge.

The ideas and desires that do percolate up may be included in the culture, but only if the top person really buys into them (think ROWE)

But if they are included only to make the employees feel good the result is cultural paint.

Like real paint, cultural paint can hide the dry rot and structural weaknesses in the company, but in the long run it won’t hold the people, because no matter how much paint is applied and no matter what the CEO tells himself and his Board, people aren’t stupid and they will vote the culture with their feet.

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That the things I read influence what I write as is obvious from today’s post and yesterday’s companion piece.

It started with summaries of, and links to, five major leadership research articles in The Washington Post, one of which concluded that “increasing team cohesiveness” was a far more important leadership act than the traditional one of “driving results.”

Other of the studies focused on the need for leaders throughout the organization, not just in the C suite, and the growing need for decision-making that considers more than the bottom line.

Next, a post by Wally Bock led me to Mike Myatt’s excellent post on defining leadership and the ensuing discussion, which is well worth reading.

But I have a question that I believe goes to the heart of any effort to define leadership.

Does your definition of leadership require the leader to agree with you?

Let’s look at Mike’s definition, since it is one with which most people would be comfortable.

“Leadership is the professed desire and commitment to serve others by subordinating personal interests to the needs of those being led through effectively demonstrating the experience, wisdom and discernment necessary to leverage trust & influence to cause the right things, to happen for the right reasons, at the right times.”

Would you consider the person a good leader if the right things happened at the right time, but for reasons with which you didn’t agree, i.e., their ideology was different from yours?

This distinction is most obvious in political and religious areas, but is present in business, too.

For example, if someone provided a solution to the oil slick who espoused an ideology the opposite of yours would you welcome the solution or would the differing belief/philosophy cause you to respond negatively?

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