See all mY generation posts here.

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

A reader called me to get some help with a problem she was having with her team. After dealing with the specific problem (too specific and too sensitive to address here) we talked generally about building and managing teams. She said she had searched ‘team’ on my blog before calling and found the information useful and asked it I could recommend some additional reading. Searching Google returned way too many results, so I promised to send her some links.

Now, it’s always nice when someone else does your work for you and I knew that in this case Becky at LeaderTalk would do mine for me.

I knew because her theme this month was about teams and so I thought I’d share that list with all of you.

First up is a post by Mike Henry, Sr. about the Lead Change group and their efforts to create a team of like-minded people who make a difference through leadership. The post includes a link to the team’s new free e-book.  If you are not familiar with this group, check them out; you can join the group on LinkedIn.

Tom Glover has written some fantastic content about teams at his Reflection Leadership blog. I couldn’t choose only one post to include here, so read them all.

Mary Jo Asmus encourages leaders to examine how their behavior could be affecting team performance in her post, “It’s Not Them, It’s You.”

Kevin Eikenberry shares the secret to improving teams in this post entitled “The Quickest Way to Build Your Team.” As a bonus, check out this post about how to nurture strong teams without allowing them to become divisive silos.

Have you met Siddharta Herdegen? I have enjoyed checking out his blog lately. Here’s a place for you to start, with this new post “Why Leaders Need Teams.”

Miki Saxon encourages team leaders to allow people to express their individuality in this post (it also contains a cool video.) Don’t miss it!

Speaking of building teams, one way to build strong teams, according to Tanmay Vora, is to mentor team members. Read more in his post “Eight Lessons I Learned on Being An Effective Mentor.”

Wally Bock draws lessons from the NBA in this post: “Leadership: Creating Teams that Create Great Results.”

Tanveer Naseer talks about how to use the concepts of employee engagement to increase the effectiveness of teams in his post “Employee Engagement is Not Just For Leaders.”

Here’s a post from last summer at the LeaderTalk blog about how to create alignment on your team.

This post from Steve Roesler is hot off the press, published last night. Be sure to read “What to Look For in Teams” for advice from Steve that is spot-on, as usual.

Mike Myatt is straight-up about an important component of team building in this recent post.

Image credit: HikingArtist on flickr

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

It’s always nice to have your opinion  reinforced by experts, which is how I feel about this guest post from Sean Conrad. Follow the advice and watch your people soar.

Performance management and performance appraisals are often dreaded by managers and employees alike. They can be perceived as an administrative burden that provides little benefit, and can even be destructive to morale and productivity. But done right, performance appraisals can be a powerful management tool that drives employee performance and engagement.

To make them effective, managers and employees need to view performance management as an ongoing, collaborative process and not a once a year, top down activity where the manager rates the employee’s performance over the previous period and sets goals for the next.

Managers and employees should be encouraged to keep a “performance journal” all year long that captures details on performance highlights and challenges. This makes it easier to write the annual appraisal because it captures details as they happen, not as we recall them later. But more importantly, it helps managers and employees to flag and deal with any issues or challenges early on, before they become big.

Employees should also be invited to complete a self-appraisal to share with their manager before their formal appraisal meeting. The form they use should include all the same sections as their formal appraisal form and even allow them to suggest development activities and goals for the coming period. This helps increase employee engagement in the process and gives them a voice. But it also minimizes “surprises” at review time; it’s a great way to identify differences in perception in advance so they can be dealt with effectively.

Another way we can foster this ongoing dialogue is by scheduling regular “mini review” meetings, where managers and employees touch base, review progress and performance, and make any adjustments necessary. Some companies formalize this with quarterly reviews.

Managers and employees also need to adopt a partnership mindset when it comes to performance management that says: “This is not a test. This is how you and I (manager and employee) work together to ensure your success, and the success of the organization.” Performance, goals and development activities need to be discussed collaboratively. Both parties need to be engaged and committed to each other’s success.

If we change the way we think about and approach performance appraisals and performance management in general, we can reap the significant rewards offered by these valuable activities.

Sean Conrad is a Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of performance appraisal solutions.

Image credit: jurvetson on flickr

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

A few months ago The Conference Board published a study that showed that US workers were more dissatisfied now than at any time in the previous 20 years. James Heskett, Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, used that study as part of the basis for a discussion about the growing dissatisfaction. Heskett poses intriguing ideas, but the greater value is in the comments he draws from his audience.

Speaking of American workers, do you know what their favorite new TV show is? A show that is a giant hit with young viewers and even beats Desperate Housewives? It’s Undercover Boss and I highly recommend it. Tomorrow is the season finale (I think) and it should be good. The company is 1-800-Flowers and according to the blurb the boss gets outed.

Next a little insight that could increase job satisfaction. Do you pride yourself on your poker face or are your emotions as obvious as a TV show? Or do you censor some and share the others? Research has proven that facial expressions are important to social interaction and current studies of people with facial paralysis offers some great insights for the rest of us.

Finally, some fascinating studies back up the premise discussed in Even Among Animals: Leaders, Followers and Schmoozers. Interesting reading and even better dinner conversation.

Enjoy!

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

See all mY generation posts here.

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

Have you noticed that all the stuff written about culture and how to create one that sparks innovation, attracts Millennials, boosts productivity, retains people, etc., consistently boils down to some pretty simple advice.

That lesson was driven home again in a Harvard Business Review post by Melissa Raffoni called Eight Things Your Employees Want From You.

Now think about the kind of culture created when the boss provides them,

Tell me my role, tell me what to do, and give me the rules.

Discipline my coworker who is out of line.

Get me excited.

Don’t forget to praise me.

Don’t scare me.

Impress me.

Give me some autonomy.

Set me up to win.

The descriptions change from writer to writer, but the underlying principles stay the same and have for decades. In fact, workers have craved these basics for centuries, long before the idea of business culture took form.

So, if the desire is that ancient and the pay-back that great why don’t more managers provide the desired environment—they certainly talk enough about it.

Both experience and observation tell me that the lack of implementation tracks back to the boss’ MAP—and the boss’ unwillingness to change it.

Image credit: Svadilfari on flickr

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

Who do kids follow?

For the last several decades study after study have shown that kids pay more attention to the opinions of their peers than their parents.

More and more they take information and process it on their own.

Sure, their opinions are colored by the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) of those who raised them, but not necessarily to copy them—sometimes they take the exact opposite position.

When it comes to working there is a belief that Millennials are different from all previous generations.

It’s not so much that what they want in their workplace is different from Boomers and Gen X; it’s that Millennials are more articulate in explaining it, more demanding in receiving it and faster to move if they don’t get it.

Last year I coined a new term, aMillennial, referring to someone who was chronologically of that generation, but without the entitled mentality—it’s the entitlement that irks most people.

In a recent survey new grads talked about staying in their company for 8.9 years, but HR assumes they will leave.

Razor Suleman, the 35-year-old CEO and founder of I Love Rewards, notes that U.S. Department of Labor statistics say most millennials will have 10 jobs by the time they’re 38.

“HR managers turn that around and say. . . . ‘That’s what they’re like,’ ” as if the employees only planned to stay for that long, said Suleman. “They don’t sort of turn it around and say, ‘Hey, wait a second, they wanted to stay 8.9 years and I missed seven years of retention.’ “

Most people look for a job, but hope to find a home.

Think about what you want in your home—great siblings who are interested and willing to help you succeed; great parents who understand that you need to make mistakes to learn and grow, who openly share their knowledge, but don’t expect you to be a carbon copy; who offer ways to stretch yourself with challenging tasks that contribute to the family’s success; a warm, safe physical environment—fancy or not; a fair allowance.

Translated in to workplace terms that’s what all generations want; aMillennials are just more willing to leave home to find it.

“Because if I was in a job that I was paid well, I loved what I was doing, I was empowered to make decisions, I was advancing, why wouldn’t I stay at a company?” — Rob Bianchin, college senior

Image credit: shirleybnz on sxc.hu

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

There is no dearth of information available and that is especially true when you are looking to improve your management skills.

My cyber buddy Elliot Ross writes an excellent blog about tech for tech challenged SMB managers.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote Self-starter Does Not Mean Self-managed and Elliot used it to discuss the same problem in IT.

In his post he hits the bull’s-eye with a phrase that any manager at any level in any size company would be wise to tattoo on their frontal lobe.

There is a big difference between delegating your IT services, and abdicating them.

Substitute whatever your group does for ‘IT services’ and you have one of the best and most succinct pieces of management advice I’ve ever seen.

But knowing it is not the same as applying it—every time for every person in every situation.

Image credit: Warning Sign Generator

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

Corporate culture is a big deal these days, often seen as the difference between success and failure.

Millions of words have been used by thousands of people to describe and explain culture, but it pretty much boils down to the following:

• How the people relate to each other professionally and personally; their personalities and interpersonal communications.
• The work environment/atmosphere/ethics/morale/people/style/etc.
• The company’s identity.
• Environment of interaction and judgment.
• The primary reason people join/leave the company/manager.
• The way things really are as opposed to how they’re described (the walk vs. the talk).

Money lures, but culture holds. Culture is why people join a company—and more importantly, why they stay. It is what motivates (or demotivates) them, and cultural changes are frequently why they leave. Additionally, people learn from experience and eventually will reflect the traits of the cultures in which they work; as with other relationships, people will continue to gravitate to the same situation they were in previously.

Cultural elements people want:

• The opportunity to truly “make a difference.”
• To be treated fairly.
• Positive ethics and values.
• To trust management and be trusted by them.
• To embrace the idea that work can and should be fun.
• Accurate prioritizing of company, team and individual goals while keeping them synergistic
• A positive “can-do” attitude (aggressive, but realistic).
• A conscious effort to stamp out “not invented here” syndrome (in all its varied forms), so as to not waste time reinventing the wheel.
• Continuing development and quality improvement in people, product/services and processes.
• Committing to employees, customers, and investors—and meeting those commitments.
• An open, accurate, company-wide flow of information starting from the top.
• An environment that encourages people to reach their full potential, professionally and personally.

What people don’t want:

• Politics: personal, group, or senior management
• Unfairness; favoritism; star mentality
• Unnecessary bureaucracy; inflexible process or bureaucracy masquerading as process
• Poor management practices such as: erratic management; micro-management; workaholism; intimidation; belittling or contemptuous treatment; no loyalty; poor scheduling; the attitude that “we don’t have the time to do it right but we have the time to do it over”
• Any form of harassment whether overt or covert
• A generally negative attitude, i.e., the glass is half empty
• Arrogance or an elitist attitude
• An unwillingness (at whatever level) to seek and implement the compromises necessary to meet organizational needs within the required timeframe

Obviously there are many more philosophies, attitudes, and actions that I could list, but most would fit the spirit, if not the specifics of the two lists.

In general culture comes from, or is enabled by, the top and rarely can be changed from below.

That said, every person in a management role from team leader up creates a subculture in their own organization.

If you are strong enough and believe deeply enough, you can become an umbrella to your organization and shield it from the toxic elements in the overall culture.

But don’t kid yourself; this is a difficult path to choose, so it is wise to make the choice consciously, instead of accidentally bucking your company’s culture.

Join me tomorrow when we look at how to create a culture—or sub-culture.

Image credit: HikingArtist on flickr

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content

“What’s more important to you, being right or winning?”

That is what I asked a caller today.

“Frank” has been sequestered on jury duty for several weeks and when he returned to work he found that right after he left his team was assigned a new project and they were just finishing.

Frank said that the project had gone well, was on time and in budget, but he was upset that they had used a different approach from the one he preferred.

That’s when I asked, “What’s more important to you, being right or winning?”

You’d think that was an easy answer, but I was met first with silence and then with multiple reasons proving his approach was better.

He agreed that on time/in budget was a win, but still felt they should have done it his way.

So I ask you, “What’s more important, being right or winning?”

Image credit: immrchris on sxc.hu

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Sphere: Related Content