Back when I worked for other companies I was considered “difficult.”
When I was young I was fired from one job for not taking my 15 minute breaks twice a day and from another for being too honest with a customer.
I spent 12 years working for a manager who never understood that all I wanted was acknowledgment and/or appreciation—without having to ask for it.
“Good job;” “congratulations, hell of a deal;” “good to see you back, we missed you.”
I was one of the top producers in his office, but the only time he said anything was when I brought whatever to his attention.
As most anyone will tell you, positive feedback or compliments are worthless when you need to prompt the source for them.
Often small efforts yield large results. My boss wanted me to move to the next level, but gave me no reason to put out the effort—the money wasn’t enough, I wanted to matter.
I recently told this story to a manager with high turnover in his department. He responded that he didn’t have time to “babysit” and expected his people to act like adults.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
By now, everybody knows that the Jets management turned itself into a pretzel and spent big money to acquire Tim Tebow from the Broncos.
Notice I didn’t say “add him to the team,” because from what I read there is no team, just a series of “splashy acquisitions.”
That’s the difference between the Jets and the Giants.
…championship teams are built, not bought, not bartered. … The Jets have yet to learn what the Giants already know: championship teams are built, not bought, not bartered. The Jets lacked two important elements last season: roster depth and locker room cohesion. They built their roster as if playing fantasy football, certain Coach Rex Ryan could glean character from a locker room full of characters. But when this grand chemistry experiment blew up the Jets’ laboratory, with players arguing in the huddle and on the field, Ryan acted shocked.
In one form or another I and others have been warning that hiring stars is an iffy business and your energy is better spent building and maintaining an all-star team.
So which is your company channeling?
The Jets or the Giants?
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“The stakes are high. You’re dealing with volatility. There are often secrets. … You often feel confused, at odds with a least one of your people, out of control.”
Do you ever feel this way when dealing with team members who are at odds?
It’s actually a quote by Richard Simon, editor of The Psychotherapy Networker (article in the NY Times), addressing the extremely high stress of being a couples therapist. (I did change ‘patient’ to ‘people’)
The parallels between couples therapy and managing are amazing—and frightening.
Frightening because too often these days people are making guns their solution of choice, so ignoring stuff may not be the best option.
Even managers with fantastic teams working in great companies with excellent cultures often feel stressed when dealing with the daily squabbles of normal human beings.
Downgrade any of those components and the stress goes up accordingly.
When dealing with the situation and resulting stress you need to recognize is that it’s not unique to you or your organization; it’s normal.
The first thing to do is make sure that you aren’t the source, but if your MAP is contributing to the problem apply whatever corrections are necessary to change that.
The second thing is to recognize that you have little choice but to act as a therapist on occasion, take time to learn a few of the tools and add them to your management skillset.
Because as much as your team and company will benefit from that knowledge, there is no question that you will benefit more.
So very true. I once worked at a company where one of the Vice Presidents took obviously sadistic pleasure in torturing people below him in the company hierarchy.
He even said to me once in private, with a smirk on his face, “I love scaring the hell out of people. Watch how I can make them shake when I threaten their ability to support their family. It feels good to have this much power.”
Adult bullying—particularly in the workplace, where people are often terrified of losing their source of income—is a serious problem and society has to stop ignoring it. You may be “the boss” but that does not give you the right to brutalize and abuse the people who work for you. –Father and Husband, Seattle
This comment is from an NYT op-ed piece on about bullying and Lady Gaga’s official unveiling of her Born This Way Foundation at Harvard.
Sadly, the comment isn’t outlandish or even a recent phenomenon.
A memory dating back to the late Seventies is of a VP whose favorite pastime was forcing the managers under him to run layoffs a few days before Christmas; he really got off on that.
Last year Stanford prof Bob Sutton published Good Boss, Bad Boss about how power makes us focus more on our own needs and wants and less on others, also to act like the rules apply to others and not to us.
Based on new research Sutton has added more material on what he terms “power poisoning” to the recently released paperback version.
“Alas, recent developments suggest that staying in tune with the people you oversee is even more difficult than this book suggests. And the other disturbing effects of wielding power over others are even worse than I thought.”
Worse than Sutton thought? That, indeed, is a scary statement and one that should get your attention.
Bad Bosses are the source of bad cultures; there is absolutely no way to separate them.
Bad cultures are the source of bad results; there is absolutely no way to separate them.
This makes it simple for you to know if you have a case of power poisoning, as well as how severe it is.
Look at the results of your organization, whether team, department, division or company.
Just yours, not in combination with the rest of the company or in light of the economy or any other of the dozens of rationalizations available.
If you can actually do that you are at least half way to being able to counter the poison and reading Good Boss, Bad Boss will actually be worth your time.
Way back in 2006 Tom Rath wrote a book called Vital Friends, in which he discusses the vital role friends play in our overall health, happiness and well-being.
“A vital friend could halve your chances of dying of heart disease; speed healing; and reduce your chances of getting cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and certain cancers.”
Now fast forward to 2012 where for many loneliness is rampant in spite of having dozens, hundreds or even thousands of Facebook friends and a similar number of followers on Twitter.
The isolation that is a hallmark of loneliness impacts people at work; after all, human emotions can’t be turned on and off like water faucets and some researchers are finally focusing on that.
Executives and managers might be surprised to learn that employees who have best friends at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs — and, if they have at least three vital friends at work, 96% more likely to be satisfied with their lives.
Loneliness is easily fixed, unlike depression (they are not synonymous)—all that is required is a friend.
This is important to you as a manager, since loneliness affects productivity and creativity.
What can you do?
Encourage better communications.
Provide an avenue for your people to connect in a relaxed atmosphere, whether at work or a more social get together.
Create a buddy system as part of your on boarding efforts.
But the most important action you can take is to pay attention to your people and not assume the problem will fix itself.
Last Friday I cited HBS research that indicates that the best results are achieved when those in charge are both good managers and competent leaders and that the key factor is excellent communications.
Whether you think of yourself as a leader or a manager, communications is about more than talking clearly, it’s about providing all the background necessary for your people to understand why they are doing their jobs, as well as what jobs they are to do.
Think of it this way,
operational communications provide people information on how to do their jobs, while
management communications tell them what their jobs are and why they do them, giving form and purpose.
People need both.
Many of the problems that managers face daily stem from their own poor or inaccurate communications, often as a result of using jargon in an effort to sound sophisticated, knowledgeable and with it.
Jargon doesn’t work for several reasons.
You may not totally understand or be comfortable with the jargon;
your people may have their own individual understanding or be guided by their previous boss’ definitions that have nothing to do with your intended meaning. This happens often enough with words of one or two syllables, let alone multi-syllabic management-babble; or worse,
your people may shut down when they hear jargon.
You can create a relatively jargon-less environment by
keeping it firmly in mind that your goal is to provide your people with all the information needed to understand how to perform their work as correctly, completely, simply, and efficiently as possible; and
providing clear, concise, and complete communications at all times.
Follow these two steps religiously and the results will amaze you,
Productivity will skyrocket; which will
make your company more successful;
your employees happier; and
you a more effective manager with better reviews and an enviable reputation.
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Be sure to check out this months Leadership Development Carnival; it’s been broken up to run over several days, so I can’t repost it here.
Lynn Blodgett, president and C.E.O. of ACS, a Xerox company, believes that all 85,000 ACS employees should think entrepreneurs. He sees a direct correlation between accountability and great the performance—increase the former and the latter goes up. This includes pushing P&L deeply into the organization, which encourages people to spend as if it was their own money.
“So you give people control, hold them accountable, give them control of their resources, and then monitor what they do.”
He also believes the right kind of incentives fuel motivation and engagement.
“I believe that a really important management principle is that if you get the incentives aligned, people will motivate themselves far better than you’ll ever motivate them. But, again, you have to get the incentives right.
It’s not only financial. It’s being able to feel like they have a level of control over their destiny, that they are valued in what they do, that they’re being successful, that they’re contributing. Those things are actually probably more important than the money. But you’ve got to get the money right, too.”
An additional benefit of this approach is that people will “self-select,” i.e., if they can’t/don’t achieve the incentives they will realize much faster that they’re in the wrong type of work.
I especially like this because it is a better career development tool. Being terminated for non-performance allows people to rationalize, whereas missing incentives tied to viable goals offers the insight that they may need to find more fulfilling work and not keep making the same mistake over and over and that’s not a bad thing
Notice I said “viable goals,” which mean feasible, possible, doable; not goals that only one in a hundred can achieve them.
Goals that set people up for failure have a boomerang effect; they’ll return to their place of origin and smash a large hole in that manager’s reputation.
This is also not a bad thing, since “holey” managers seem to align with “holey” companies making it easier to avoid them.
It’s always surprising how often different sources address the same problems offering similar solutions, but in such different ways that at first glance you wouldn’t notice.
Within days of each other, both Fortune/CNN and BNET offered up good information on employee motivation. Fortune/CNN article was science-based, while BNET was experience-based, with a leavening of humor.
They both said essentially the same thing with one exception, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Motivating employees means providing real purpose in their work; it requires challenging them and encouraging them to learn and grow; and it requires clear communications, including well-defined plans, roles and responsibilities.
Pretty standard stuff.
Now for the exception; the science offered up a new twist that just might help your implementation.
Removing obstacles is not the flip side of providing purpose, challenge and clear communications.
In other words, this is not one of those times that removing the negative means the positive will automatically rush in to fill the void or vice versa, that having the positives will overcome the negatives.
In this case you need to address the two as totally separate subjects.
First, remove any obvious negatives.
Next, start implementing the positives.
Third, be on the lookout for new obstacles.
Fourth, and most important, be sure that you on the side of the angels and not one of the obstacles.
Are you one of the thousands of managers who spend your days trying to increase productivity and improve your company’s bottom line and you nights worrying that you aren’t doing it fast enough—if at all?
Does your company hire experts to teach motivation and employee engagement techniques?
Do you twist in the wind trying to implement complex, sometimes costly, approaches?
Why?
Why complex when some of the smartest CEOs, advisors and academics are all saying the same thing?
Simply put, in the words of Tony Hsieh, if your employees are happy they will make your customers happy; if your customers are happy they’ll spend more; if they spend more your bottom line will grow.
Saturday I gave you multiple links showing just how simple and inexpensive engaging your people can be—but not everybody reads Saturday.
So, instead of writing yet another post on engagement, I thought provide a video from Guy Kawasaki, who talks about how to “enchant” your employees.
His advice is simple and doable, although it does require the right MAP.
The only cost may be to your ego, since in order to implement it you need to change.
Tony Hsieh Has been beating the drum that happy employees provide the best customer experience and help assure success and sharing his wisdom on how to do it.
The other question I keep getting asked is how do you do it when you
aren’t the CEO or even a senior manager;
don’t have the budget for great perks; or
aren’t the touchy-feely rah-rah type (direct quote).
The short answer is in five words, you take time to care.
Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually.
$300 billion is a number that should get anyone’s attention.
The engagement issue is relatively simple and definitely cheap to solve.
The problem is that, as usual, employees and managers aren’t on the same page.
The research shows that for employees “the single most important [event] — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.”
Managers are another story.
“When we asked 669 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.”
What constitutes supporting progress isn’t rocket science, either.
Autonomy, meaning no micromanagement;
sufficient resources, meaning valid scheduling and enough of whatever to get the job done without having to beg or being left to fail without them; and
learning from problems, meaning understanding the why and how, not just the what.
If you find any of the three difficult to provide you need to look in the mirror.
The problem isn’t about having time to support progress; the problem is that your MAP doesn’t support the concept.
Back when I worked for other companies I was considered “difficult.”
Do you ever feel this way when dealing with team members who are at odds?
This comment is from an NYT op-ed piece on about bullying and Lady Gaga’s official unveiling of her 
Way back in 2006 Tom Rath wrote a book called Vital Friends, in which he discusses the 
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