Office politics has many definitions, but one characteristic remains constant—your ‘voice’ is positional. In other words, your ability to be heard is based on your position in the pecking order. Ideas below X level are ignored, between X and Y are acknowledged, Y to Z are heard and sometimes implemented.

But to have a full voice you either need to be part of the C suite or a “star” (stars below the Y level are scarce as hen’s teeth). Some argue that star systems are merit-based, but that argument falls flat if only those at a certain level are heard.

Few people like office politics and its presence has always been responsible for a large percentage of turnover.

One way to substantially reduce office politics in your organization by making sure that everyone has a voice.

Even in highly political corporations individual managers can improve their team’s performance and retention by making sure ideas receive a fair hearing no matter who thinks of them.

It’s easier when you are a first line manager, because you have only yourself to blame if a pecking order establishes itself in your group. If it does happen have a candid talk with the mirror and decide what’s important to you and what you want your ‘management brand’ to be known for.

As you move up, with one or more layers of management below you, it becomes more difficult because you are working to propagate an attitude that may not be wholly shared by those who report to you.

Your success depends partly on how consistent your own actions are and partly on what procedures you create to reinforce the desired behavior.

One of the most successful approaches is to tie bonus compensation to measurable results for soliciting suggestions from all levels and let VSI do the rest.

Of course, as with health, it is better route to prevent office politics than it is to cure it once it gets a toe-hold.

Simply put, that means not hiring managers at any level whose past behavior reflects the wrong attitude. You have two methods to accomplishing this. Obviously, it is something to discuss when doing reference checks.

But more importantly, if you make it clear during interviews that part of the candidate’s compensation depends upon it. It’s amazing how quickly a candidate will withdraw when her pay depends on a behavior with which she doesn’t agree.

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How flat should an organization be?

How well do “self-starters” manage themselves?

Crucial questions for startups and small businesses, since how they are addressed can make or break the company.

Often the most important hires made when a company wants to grow are in sales.

Founders and owners often have technical, marketing or business backgrounds and many have a tendency to shrug when it comes to sales.

They see hiring salespeople as no big deal—there is an assumption that as long as they have a good track record in their previous sales position and understand the new product they can manage themselves.

If this sounds off base to you, you’re right, it’s not that simple. To use a real-life example, I had a client who thought that way.

The CEO hired “Jack” (before my time), a salesman with a fantastic record selling a parallel product to the same market.

The CEO personally taught Jack the product line and explained what the company was working to accomplish and then pretty much gave him free reign.

In the year Jack was with them he sold only two accounts, spent a good deal of his time on marketing and managed one large client; commissions totaled only $15K.

When he left he went to work in a field completely unrelated to anything he’d done before and in a market about which he knew nothing. In his first year at the new company he earned over 125K in commissions.

The difference was management.

Based on his track record both the CEO and Jack assumed that he could manage himself.

However, Jack didn’t have, and didn’t create for himself, the structure, accountability, etc., necessary to be successful.

During his exit interview he admitted that although he had no knowledge or training in marketing, he spent substantially more time than he should have because it was new and exciting.

After the CEO and I had fully analyzed what happened he concluded that the failure was 80-20, with the 80% his responsibility.

Hind sight is 20/20 and my client believes that if he had taken the time to do what was needed, instead of expecting Jack to completely manage himself, that he would still be with the company and doing a spectacular job.

The important lesson here is that “self-starter” does not mean “self-managed.” Even the best will need direction, structure, and accountability in order to perform brilliantly.

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Are you aware of the new teaching approach in middle school English classes that gives kids a say in which books they read?

The approach is known as “reading workshop” and “…students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading…”

I sent the article to my niece, who alternates between teaching and being a school librarian. She started as a teacher, was driven out of it by internal politics and unreasonable parents, got a Master of Library Science and spent a few years as school librarian and is now back to teaching.

She wrote back, “This is how I teach!  Cool!  Thanks for sending it.  It is controversial and some English teachers think I’m nuts but I love it!”

My niece, along with many others, is the type of teachers we need more of—they love reading and learning and work to pass that love on.

But there is a lot of opposition to moving away from the way reading has been taught.

“In the method familiar to generations of students, an entire class reads a novel — often a classic — together to draw out the themes and study literary craft. That tradition, proponents say, builds a shared literary culture among students, exposes all readers to works of quality and complexity and is the best way to prepare students for standardized tests.”

I bolded the last five words because they are the crux of the problem.

Is the purpose of school to prepare for standardized tests or to teach kids to think?

Are communities stronger and the workforce more cohesive because the people all read To Kill A Mockingbird in eighth grade? And what of those educated elsewhere?

What serves the future better, a love of learning and reading or the skill to ace a standardized test?

At which do you want your kids to excel?

Which skill set do you want to hire?

What do you think?

Your comments—priceless

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Yesterday I explained why I don’t like the term cult culture, although I agree that culture is the tao of (in today’s buzz words) employee engagement.

But I’ve always believed that if you reject an idea it’s your responsibility to offer up something else and I have just the thing.

Cultural Passion.

When you harness people’s passion you have a tiger by the tail. Passion drives creativity, innovation, productivity, retention and a host of other desired behaviors.

But you can’t request passion from your people nor wheedle or cajole and you certainly can’t order people to be passionate.

To enjoy the benefits of passion you must first build a culture that stimulates it; as people grow to trust the culture their passion will grow.

Creating a culture of passion where it doesn’t exist is a long-term project, not only do you need to identify and change various parts of the current culture you need to rebuild trust with a workforce that may have been badly burned previously.

Creating one in a startup is easier, because you start with a clean slate.

However, in both instances, it is imperative to make your culture a filter through which any new hire, especially managers, no matter how senior, must pass.

Whether a startup or giant enterprise, it is cultural passion that makes the impossible improbable and the improbable likely.

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Shortly after I started writing Leadership Turn I did a post about diversity, ending with this—

“Another way to look at it is that any increased spending on diversity development is an investment and will be more than offset by the increases in innovation, productivity and revenues. If spending $100 results in a bottom line increase of $1000, did you really spend the $100, or did you gain $900? $900 that wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t invested the initial $100.”

How do you define diversity?

True diversity isn’t just diversity of race, gender, creed and country, but what I call the new diversity—all those plus diversity of thought.

Think about it, if a manager really works at it she can create a rainbow-colored group who all think the same way—George W. Bush’s initial Cabinet was ethnically diverse, but their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) was homogeneous.

It’s far more difficult to put together a group of totally diverse thinkers. Managers tend to hire in their comfort zone, but more and more that refers to how people think, rather than how they look.

So what should you do to ensure that you’re building a truly diversified team?

Here are five key points to keep in mind when you’re both hiring people and managing/leading them.

1. Avoid assumptions. People aren’t better because they graduated from your (or your people’s) alma mater, come from your hometown/state or worked for a hot company.
2. Know your visual prejudices. Everybody has them (one of mine is dirty-looking, stringy hair), because you can’t hear past them if you’re not aware of them.
3. Listen. Not to what the words mean to you, but what the words mean to the person speaking.
4. Be open to the radical. Don’t shut down because an idea is off the wall at even the third look and never dismiss the whole if some part can be used.
5. Be open to alternative paths. If your people achieve what they should it doesn’t matter that they did it in a way that never would have crossed your mind.

Finally, remember that if you’re totally comfortable, with nary a twinge to ripple your mental lake, your group is probably lacking in diversity.

How do you hire and manage diversity?

Your comments—priceless

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In a comment Monday Denis asked, “What do the people you hire tell about your leadership style?”

The short answer has been around a long time in one form or another.

Good leaders (managers) hire people smarter than themselves and don’t feel threatened by people who are better at given tasks.

The people you hire tell more about who you are than just your leadership style; they are a reflection of  your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and your confidence.

No matter what the reality, the more insecure a leader/manager feels the weaker the people he hires.

At lower levels, you find that those less willing to delegate rarely hire people with skills similar to their own.

Just as your friends reflect your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and prejudices, so do those you hire. If you want to know who someone is, just look at who they hang with and who they hire, but not who they date and marry.

All bets are off when love/lust enters the picture.

Your comments—priceless

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Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: Henkster

I frequently disagree with Jack and Suzy Welch in their weekly Business Week column, but in The Connected Leader they offer up good insights as to the effect of the internet on leaders, i.e., bosses, in terms of what it can and can’t do as well as what the leader needs to do.

“The Internet…ushers in a whole new level and scope of employee engagement. Leaders should welcome this development, and most do, but it’s a mistake to treat it lightly. Once employees engage you by speaking out, albeit electronically, they expect to hear back. We would suggest that it can be just as damaging for a leader not to respond to feedback as it is not to ask for it at all.”

Well and good, no arguments. And most leader-bosses are trying to embrace this—even when it scares them silly—because if they don’t they can’t hire. That’s right, engagement is high on the list of employee demands and not just by Millennials and if it isn’t there, well, it’s available somewhere else.

But what I’m cheering is this.

“…one aspect of leadership we believe the Internet won’t change because it can’t. Real leaders touch people… They get in their skin, filling their hearts with inspiration, courage, and hope. They share the pain in times of loss and are there to celebrate the wins.”

It’s called face-to-face and it’s where many leader-bosses are not cutting it. I see too many of them who embrace the orderly world of digital communications as a way to avoid messy, in person interactions—but it doesn’t work.

Current and future technology isn’t the answer—shoe leather is.

That’s right, getting out there and talking face-to-face, knowing your people and giving them the opportunity to know the real you. Not now and then when there’s a special message, but regularly.

As to having the time, you do, because if you don’t your retention will sink like a rock as your turnover soars and you get a street rep that says, ‘give up hope all who join this company’.

How do you rally your troops?

Your comments—priceless

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