There is much written about the importance of authenticity and trust when it comes to engaging employees and developing culture.

Enough, in fact, that you could spend years trying to digest it all.

So I thought it would be useful to offer up some very basic advice (often attributed to Frank Outlaw, the Josephson Institute can find no proof of him as the author).

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

This common wisdom is the kind of thing you can print out and keep as a mantra.

Best of all, it applies equally to individuals, companies and other organizations.

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“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” –Dr. Seuss

Many years ago when I was a recruiter a third-level manager I was good friends with was laid off. One day, over lunch, Roy said that another recruiter had called him about a position, but said that he would have a better chance if he shaved his beard and he wanted to know what I thought.

Roy’s wife didn’t like the idea; he’d had a beard since college days. When I asked him if he thought he would regrow it after getting hired he said definitely.

In that case, there was no question that Roy should keep the beard for the interview. If the company didn’t hire him because of the beard they would feel conned when it came out that he only shaved for the interview.

There are many ways to break trust, but one of the fastest is to be someone other than your real self at the interview and the real Roy had a beard. (He didn’t shave and still got the job.)

This is just as true for a hiring manger. If something is done a certain way and you present a different scenario in order to land the candidate don’t be surprised when your new hire walks after getting a taste of the actual reality.

Whether manager, company or candidate, trust starts before the first conversation.

It starts with a street rep. Not what they say about themselves, but with what others say about them.

Remember “what goes around comes around?” These days it not only comes around with a vengeance, but thanks to social media it never goes away.

Being yourself makes you authentic; being authentic makes you trustworthy; being trustworthy makes your street rep great.

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Do you agree with the following statement?

“The most fundamental job of a leader is to recruit, mobilize, inspire, focus, direct, and regularly refuel the energy of those they lead.”

I do with one glaring exception—the words “leader” and “lead.”

That sentence is just as valid if you substitute ‘manager’ for ‘leader’ and ‘manage’ for ‘lead’.

The quote is from a Harvard Business Review post called The CEO Is the Chief Energy Officer and although it’s a cute play on ‘CEO’ the lessons it imparts apply to every manager at every level in every company—even if that manager is the only person in the company.

If you are in a position where you manage anyone and you skip any of the actions mentioned above then you are doing a major disservice to your people and yourself.

Even more so if you are your own manager, which, in the end, we all are.

This is a great time to institute change—not with great fanfare, but through sustainable actions.

So every day get out there and “recruit, mobilize, inspire, focus, direct, and regularly refuel the energy.”

You’ll be glad you did.

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Well, what would you use on December 26 as the theme for Quotable Quotes? That said, I did try to put my own special spin on them.

Let’s get the worst part of Christmas—getting stupid—out of the way first. Stupid often makes it’s Christmas appearance at the office and if you don’t keep it under control you could end up parroting Phyllis Diller’s words, “What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day,” as you polish up your resume.

Authenticity is a big part of Christmas especially when it comes to children’s make-believe, such as Santa. Shirley Temple makes a poignant point in this brief 26-word story, “I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”

Edna Ferber offered a concise explanation of Christmas authenticity when she said, “Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.”

Bob Hope makes the same point a bit differently, “If you haven’t got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.”

Jesse Jackson reminds us that the most important gifts aren’t found wrapped under the tree, “Your children need your presence more than your presents.” I would add that your presence is also of more value to friends and family, too, and giving it doesn’t require cash, plastic or lay-away.

Even the Grinch, in the guise of Theodor Geisel, came to understand that, “Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.”

All of this means that you can incorporate Christmas into your MAP and make it an integral part of your approach to life and enjoy it 24/365; or as Bryan White says, “Christmas makes me happy no matter what time of year it comes around.”

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Once dismissed as smoke and mirrors or touchy-feely nonsense, corporate culture is not recognized as the key to success. Not just the success of the company as a whole, but sub-cultures define the success of each team as you moved down the corporate ladder.

Culture drives success more than money; culture attracts talented people and, more often than not, cultural change is responsible for their leaving.

Culture is now recognized as a necessary part of a company’s overall strategy; leaders and managers who ignore workers’ focus on culture do so at their own peril.

“Companies that will perform well will nurture the factors that make their employees feel happier and engaged at work, more connected to overall results, and more motivated to make a strong contribution,” said Eileen Habelow, PhD., Randstad’s senior vice president of organizational development. “Going forward, companies can’t ignore culture. Rather, it should be addressed as a critical component of their overall business strategy.”

No where is talk cheaper than when it comes to corporate culture. Trust and authenticity, critical to any good culture are lost when positional leaders don’t walk the cultural talk.

“You can clearly identify what makes organizations successful and what is expected, when you look at how the leadership acts and what they value. That is even more important than performance management.”

What’s important when it comes to culture? Do generations really differ in what they want in culture? Various studies describe similar desires from all age groups—the difference seems more in their patience for achieving what they want. The top craving across groups is having the flexibility to balance their life and work.

It has been long said that the new generations have different needs but I can safely say as a leading executive recruitment professional, that most candidates I’ve met over the past few years, no matter what age, have very similar personal desires and needs.

Finally, the big question that always comes up: does a focus on culture pay off? And if so, how well?

There have been multiple studies over the last decade proving a resounding ‘yes’ to the question. One of the most recent comes from Raj Sisodia, author of Firms of Endearment, who offers up compelling statistics.

The publicly traded FoE companies studied returned 750% over 10 years while the S&P overall provided a 128% return. What is even more telling is that over the last 5 years, these same companies provided their investors 205% return, when the S&P lost 13%.

Wow! If those numbers don’t get your attention your people would be wise to leave and if your boss doesn’t get it you should find one who does.

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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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There is a major disconnect for many managers between what they think others do, what they say they do and what actually happens. It is a disconnect that affects not just their own teams, but spreads like ripples in a pond when a stone is tossed.

Most managers are unaware of it and are horrified when it’s brought to their attention—once they stop trying to rationalize it.

‘It’ refers to deeds and actions they condemn in others, but practice themselves.

It the idea that when ‘they’ do it it is unfair, immoral, or illegal, but if ‘we’ do it it’s OK—and it’s happening everywhere.

We see it in

• political and religious leaders who preach high moral codes while practicing immorality;
• parents who demand better education and then condemn any teacher that doesn’t give their child a good grade;
• business leaders who preach ethics and practice them only as long as it’s convenient;
• colleagues we condemn for filching company supplies even as we use company time to shop, update Facebook and Twitter; and
• friends who, much to our dismay, share our private information even as we share someone else’s.

When managers do it it can damage, even destroy, the team, because it is a form of hypocrisy; hypocrisy kills trust and without trust there is no team.

A vicious circle that only the manager can break by listening carefully to the feedback she doesn’t want to hear.

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One reason I love the NY Times is that it runs great articles on new research about what makes us humans tick.

Most of us are aware that there are different forms of communications. Verbal, i.e., words, is the most common, but nonverbal, tone of voice and facial expressions, are often more potent.

And then there is touch.

For years, I’ve read about the importance of touch for infants.

In research with infants, it was shown that gently massaging premature infants three times per day for 15 minutes helped them gain weight, be more alert, and cry less. These infants were released from the hospital sooner than infants who were not massaged.

The latest research confirms the same positive response in adults.

Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.

Two attitudes make this work.

1. Sincerity; people will know if your actions are manipulative as opposed to authentic.
2. Appropriateness; to avoid a negative reaction from anyone use your observational skills and common sense; high fives and similar expressions are the safest, while hugs are the most dangerous. An employee who avoids physical contact with her team is unlikely to appreciate being touched by her boss.

There are many ways to inspire and show you care just as there are many clubs in a golf bag; and just as it is a fallacy to play the whole course with just one club, using only one form of communication to motivate your people is to shortchange them—and you.

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Did you watch the new reality show Undercover Boss on CBS Sunday after the Super Bowl?

The opening episode starred Larry O’Donnell, President and C.O.O. of Waste Management.

O’Donnell plays ‘Randy’, a new worker being filmed for training purposes. At one location he jams the trash line by not removing large cardboard; he is fired, for the first time in his life, for not being able to efficiently collect blowing trash at a landfill—unlike the worker he is with who has done the job for 19 years while spending three days a week in dialysis; he cleans porta-potties with a guy who’s attitude is every manager’s best dream; and he rides with a female trash hauler where he learns that to stay on schedule women drivers use cans from the trash as pee-pots.

He meets a 29 year old single mother who overcame five kinds of cancer by age 25, has taken in her brother’s family and her dad, is about to lose her home in foreclosure and is doing three jobs post layoffs for the same money she was getting before, but is still upbeat and even invites the new guy to dinner.

O’Donnell is surprised by the physical and mental exhaustion he experiences his first day, amazed by the people he meets, outraged by what he learns and shocked at the implementation of a policy he personally conceived to raise productivity by which workers were docked 2 minutes for every 1 minute they were late.

At the start of the show when O’Donnell tells his executive team that he is going undercover the reactions vary from surprise to incredulity.

When he meets with them at the end and talks about what he learned and changes he believes are needed and how he plans to use his new knowledge the look on guy’s face said it all—he might as well have rolled his eyes.

Sadly, that is often the reaction from senior leadership regarding intel that comes from front-line, bottom-of-the-heap workers.

The smartest managers listen to their all their people—not just the ones in suits.

The final scene includes and overlay update on what happened to each of the people who worked with O’Donell and changes, both made and ongoing, as a result.

I don’t watch reality shows; I’ve read that many are scripted, but I do believe that there are bosses of large companies who don’t have egos the size of Texas and are capable of learning from unfiltered feedback from the lowest rank and file.

Plus, it seems that changes were actually made.

As big a believer as I am in bosses talking to the troops, there is no way O’Donnell would get this kind of feedback from this level of employee if they knew who he was.

Go ahead and call me naïve, but in spite of everything I’d rather be a chump than a cynic.

And in case you missed Undercover Boss you can watch it here.

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Sports has long been used as an analogy to various business practices—the best sales training film I ever saw was done by Vince Lombardi explaining how selling was akin to the plays in football.

But using good business practices to motivate a sports team isn’t heard of as much, except when it comes to ‘leadership’, a subject that, in its current ascendancy, annoys me no end.

A couple of years ago I read a post by Mike Kavis in which he focused on how Giants’ coach Tom Coughlin turned around his own career and his team using best practice leadership techniques.

“He listened to the constructive criticism of his bosses and players and decided to make some changes. What he found was that his vision was not fully understood by all of the players on the team. So he formed a leadership committee made up of various players on the team who could help him clearly communicate the vision. Better yet, he let the players select the leadership team. Since the players participated in forming the leadership team, it gave them a sense of ownership in the process…”

The creation of the leadership team accomplished the following:

• Clear understanding of team’s vision
• Participation in overall strategy
• Constant feedback
• Clear communication
• Accountability
• Buy-in
• Shared goals
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities

And a Super Bowl trophy, I might add.

In his summary of what happened, Mike says, “If you want people to change, first change yourself.” which gave me a chuckle, not because it’s inaccurate, but because it’s so true that it’s the tag line of my company—To change what they do, change how you think.

A winning team is the goal of every person ever put in charge of an endeavor.

“Coughlin had a very rigid methodology that he followed to a T. It wasn’t working but he kept following it because it worked when he was with the Jaguars several years ago. By listening to his players, he made some minor tweaks to his methodology and the team responded.”

Those who are truly successful understand the importance of putting their egos in their respective pockets in order to listen and change themselves as needed.

The rest will continue to go their merry way, listening to no one, issuing edicts, and complaining when their people don’t buy-in or perform.

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