Originally this post was written for and about founders, but it is applicable to bosses everywhere, no matter the size or age of their company.

However, if one chooses to revisit a post from the past one must admit one’s errors — especially the glaringly obvious ones.

I wrote that “tolerance for bullying may be waning,” which, based on what has happened in the intervening five years was clearly off the mark.

What does seem to have happened is the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mindset has gained more followers, which is a sad commentary.

What hasn’t changed is that, sooner or later, believing your own hype will cost your company talent — or worse.

Bosses are known for the passion and drive that turns their vision into reality. While many are known for their technical brilliance or marketing expertise, fewer are known for their management skill.

Many harbor a secret dream of being hailed as the next Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Anna Wintour, Barry Diller or Martha Stewart.

If those names impress you then consider that they all are in Forbes Bully Bosses Hall of Fame (personally, I’d have included Jack Welch).

“At some point, those we consider ‘visionaries’ become puffed-up creations of their own imagination. When business executives stop looking beyond quarterly reports and stockholder dividends, they start ignoring internal stakeholders. We’re seeing that unravel now.” —Gary Namie, management consultant

American tolerance for bullying leaders may be waning.

There has been a real sea change in what’s conceptualized as good leadership. Americans have become disenchanted with power. Almost daily, they watch as leaders–in government, in business–fail to exercise appropriate restraint.” –Roderick Kramer, Stanford Business School professor.

In four decades I never spoke with anyone who liked being bullied and have watched tolerance for it seep away.

These days people vote with their feet; the question is not ‘should I leave’, but ‘how soon can I leave’.

The focus is how quickly someone can find a position that combines personal satisfaction with the ability to take care of their responsibilities.

Good management/leadership isn’t just about killer visions.

It’s about enabling growth by building up and never tearing down either the people or the enterprise for which you are responsible.

In short, take care of your people; without them there is no company.

Image credit: kowarski

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

As you all know, startups are 80+ hour weeks and pre-launch adds at least 10 hours.

However, I wanted to share John Buchan’s words (he was an historian and Canadian politician), because it’s the kind of thing that can easily fall through the cracks when you’re living with intense startup pressure.

But it shouldn’t.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

It’s what we, as founders, owe to those who dare to take the trip with us.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Are you suffering from high turnover? Are your people disengaged?

Do your stakeholders have high expectations of your next product/service?

Are you spending time and money competing for the same skills that your competitors — and everyone else — need, while trimming your current workforce through attrition or layoffs?

According to the Greek poet Archilochus, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”

Companies are swift to blame a talent shortage when they aren’t meeting market expectations, but are slow to invest in their own people. And when hiring they only want people with X years of direct experience in [whatever], even when whatever just launched.

Moreover, hiring someone to do what they did previously practically guarantees one of two results (or both).

High turnover and/or a lack of engagement due to boredom.

Very few people enjoy doing the same thing year after year (do you?) and that is the big danger of hiring someone who has been there/done that, especially if you don’t provide a learning environment and new challenges.

However, providing them goes directly against the prevailing attitude that only the young can learn.

If that describes your own mindset, I suggest you read Bruno Michel’s description of his 35 year career (and counting), currently an IBM researcher, who radically reinvented himself six times resulting in a total of 160+ patents and 250+ peer reviewed publications.

You may not care about the publications, but the patents should make you sit up and rethink your ideas about how you value your people.

Michel’s belief is that people should change jobs every seven years.

That means you have a choice.

You can supply talent to other companies.

Or you can supply training and opportunities internally and keep your people happy and engaged.

Image credit: Patient Care Technician

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

There are two lessons in this post.

The first is that managing at any level requires you to be present, conscious, and focused on your people — not on your social media, where you’re having dinner, or the work being done on your home.

The second, is that if you are one of the truly bad ones, who messes with your people’s heads and inflicts intentional hurt on them, you will get yours, because eventually what goes around does come around — no matter how long it takes.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

“Is there a single devastating thing I may do unconsciously that messes my people up the most and, if so, what are the effects?”

I’ve heard variations of this question from many managers over the years.

The answer is yes, there sure is and if you aren’t doing it unconsciously then you’re one of the really bad guys and I can only hope that your turnover soars and your reputation spreads.

The action is inconsistency and the primary effect is fear. Secondary effects include intimidation and insecurity.

The end results in the business world are distrust, low productivity, less innovation, abysmal retention and, on a more personal level, poor reviews, fewer promotions and less opportunity.

It doesn’t matter that the inconsistency is unintentional, arbitrary or whimsical the results are the same.

It’s not knowing that really gets to people—even more than expected abuse.

Think about it. It’s one thing to have someone who constantly criticizes (unconstructively) or disparages you, because you can learn how to turn a deaf ear if, for some reason, you can’t get out of earshot.

But when a zinger comes out of nowhere in what’s normally constructive, or at least neutral, feedback you’re caught unaware, thrown off balance and it really gets to you.

Actually, the more infrequent it is the worse it is when it does happen. And after it happens a few times people find themselves waiting for it, wondering when it’ll happen again and almost holding their breath to see if this is the time the other shoe will drop.

That fear grows exponentially once it takes root and distrust typically increases at the same rate.

Can you think of a worse scenario for people to labor under?

But when it’s unconscious, how do you know?

If you actually focus on the person with whom you’re talking, instead of checking your phone or thinking about something else, you’ll see the zinger hit and you should be able to identify what it was. If you can’t, then ask! Acknowledge the reaction, state that you know it was something you said, but you’re not sure what. Be gentle if you expect the person to open up, but you stand a better chance if you ask immediately, while they’re still in shock.

But if you did it on purpose, to enjoy the show and then get them to open up so you can twist the knife, I sincerely hope that all your teeth and hair fall out and Zeus’ thunderbolt strikes you where you stand and chars you into tiny little bits.

Image credit: sxc.hu

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

It’s been 10 years since I wrote this. Nothing has change and, if anything, it’s gotten worse.

Rigidity has gotten more rigid, if possible, and it’s far more prevalent up, down, and round and round the generations. And it’s still a total waste of time and energy.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

There’s a lot of talk right now about the resistance of mangers and older employees to Web 2.0 initiatives and the information-sharing that goes with them.

Kind of amusing that this big generational argument is happening during the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, the start of the biggest generational fight most of us remember—we weren’t around for the Roaring Twenties, the rise of jazz, let alone rebelled with the suffragettes.

The Boomer theme of, “you can’t trust anyone over thirty” is being reprised today by the wired generation.

The Boomers accused their bosses of being unwilling to change and when they became the bosses, they were accused in turn. Some things never change.

Generational differences have always existed, with the younger generation blasting into the future and screaming that the older ones are holding them back, but it’s ridiculous to paint everybody over a certain age with the same brush.

In May I commented that I thought a lot of the problem was grounded in insecurity and I still believe that, but I’ve done a lot of thinking because the subject’s so prevalent and have some further thoughts.

It should be remembered that managers’ rigidity has as much to do as much with the corporate culture as with the individuals involved. Openness is based on trust and if the culture doesn’t foster that then you should expect people to be ultra turf conscious, not interested in sharing, and prone to spending large amounts of energy fighting every new thing that comes along. In 2007 it’s Web 2.0; twenty-five years ago it was telecommuting (and still is in many companies).

But if we’re going to talk about rigidity, then it has to be recognized that it’s on all sides—there are a lot of pretty rigid twenty- and thirty-somethings (and no one in their right mind ever called a teenager flexible). If you have any doubts about this, try getting to your twenty-something co-workers to approach a subject from any position other than the one they advocate.

It’s not so much doing it differently, as it is doing it my way and, unhappily, that attitude has substantially worsened.

It seems that everybody has a group and while their group is OK, other groups, i.e., any that don’t agree with theirs, are rigid, inflexible, and standing in the way of progress.

There’s value to be found in most approaches and when that value is tweaked and/or merged with other methods the result is usually worth far more than the original.

I’ve written a lot on the both the why and how of face-to-face communications, so today will be a short post, with links to previous content.

Do you wonder why 69% of managers aren’t comfortable talking with their team?

Perhaps it’s because they aren’t comfortable talking period.

What’s going on? What happened to verbal communications a la conversation?

It’s not just tech, although tech has made it much worse.

Modern managers have avoided discussions with employees, especially about performance issues.

Before computers they tried to manage by memo; post computer by email and most recently by texting. None of them work.

Problem 1: screens kill empathy and empathy underlies all positive human interactions.

Solution: Turn off your screens. And if you believe everything will fall apart if you are unavailable for 20 minutes here and 40 minutes there each day then your organization is in far worse shape than you realize.

Problem 2: AMS; it stands for assumption, manipulation, self-fulfilling prophesy.

Solution: Build internal awareness of your AMS (we all do it), then work to control it. Don’t try to completely eradicate it; it’s a waste of effort.

Problem 3: Two-way street.

Solution: Learn to listen, not just hear. Active listening is at least 50%, often more; if you talk, but don’t listen it isn’t a conversation.

Good communicating is like writing good code.

You can study it forever, but eventually you need to get out there and just do it.

And the more proficient you become the more you will enjoy it.

Scary? Sure.

But not nearly as scary as stunting your future, both at work and in your wider world.

Image credit: Flickinpicks

This is one of the worst stats about managers I’ve come across recently.

… 69% of respondents [US managers] said that they found “communicating in general” to be the hardest part about communicating with employees.

If you are one of that 69% then you should consider the flip side of the equation — employees.

The percentage of US managers who say they don’t like talking with employees mirrors the 67% of US workers who say they’re not engaged at work. That figure comes from the most recent Gallup survey of the US workplace, the company’s annual in-depth report on more than 31 million workers across US industries.

Why?

…one of the primary things employees say they need to feel engaged and productive at work is regular, meaningful communication with their managers.

It’s black and white; cause and effect.

It’s a simple bottom line.

If you don’t make the effort and learn to be comfortable having face-to-face conversations with your people, then you lose the right to complain about their engagement, motivation, productivity, creativity, and turnover — not to mention damaging your own career path.

As usual, it’s your choice.

Image credit: Get Everwise

I love occasionally sharing Wally’s posts. I consider him one of the clearest thinkers on real leadership — he makes sense, as opposed to noise. In this one he uses Douglas MacArthur to illustrate something many so-called leaders have either forgotten or ignored.

Despite the moniker “Dugout Doug,” Douglas MacArthur was an exceedingly brave man who was often heedless of danger. In his book, American Caesar, William Manchester tells about the time MacArthur was asked about why he remained in dangerous circumstances instead of seeking cover.

The General replied: “If I do it, the colonels will do it. If the colonels do it, the captains will do it, and so on.” That’s the MacArthur Maxim, what you do sets the example for the people who work for you.

The people who work for you will watch you carefully. They will pay attention to the things you pay attention to. They will be as ethical or not as you are. They will work as hard as you do. What you notice and reward, they will value.

You must make sure that your actions and your words deliver the same message. Which brings us to the Lazarus Corollary to the MacArthur Maxim.

Shelly Lazarus is the Chairman Emeritus of Ogilvy and Mather and former Worldwide Chairman and CEO. Many people consider her a role model. She’s not entirely comfortable with that, but she takes her role as a role model seriously indeed and she works consciously to make sure her actions and her words match up. The following quote is from her pre-Emeritus days.

“I know that work-family balance is important … I choose always to go to the school play, and field day and all that [because] it gives other women in the company, or clients, the confidence to be able to say, ‘I’m going, too.’”

Your example is the most powerful tool you have to influence the behavior of the people who work for you. Make sure you set the example you want and that the example you set and the one you talk about match up.

Reading Resource

American Caesar is William Manchester’s excellent biography of Douglas MacArthur. Manchester’s experience as a Marine who fought in the Pacific side of World War II gives him some special insight and he manages to capture both the genius and absurd posturing of Douglas MacArthur.

Copyright © 2017 Wally Bock, All rights reserved.

Note: It’s imperative to recognize that culture has nothing to do with perks, such as free food, fancy offices, free services, etc.

Culture is about values and how they play out in both the internal and external functioning of the company.

But company culture isn’t the end game — micro cultures are.

Micro cultures are based on individual bosses’ values.

Both cultures are fundamental to that perennially popular subject, employee engagement.

HBS’ Jim Heskett recently asked his audience what’s needed to engender employee engagement given that engaged employees are 2.7% more productive.

Most of the responses talked about the need for managers to respect their people, listen to ideas from everyone, have better people skills, etc., and several mentioned the skills acquired with an MBA.

But, as I pointed out, and Heskett cited in his summary, “Respect and valuing employee input have little to do with education and much to do with personal values.”

Unfortunately, education is no guarantee of values.

Colleges are no different, with MBA students leading the pack. “56 percent of MBA students admitted to cheating…  In 1997, McCabe did a survey in which 84 percent of undergraduate business students admitted cheating versus 72 percent of engineering students and 66 percent of all students. In a 1964 survey by Columbia University, 66 percent of business students surveyed at 99 campuses said they cheated at least once.”

If scholastic success was based on cheating it’s likely that that lack of respect/get-ahead-at-all-costs mentality would carry over to their management style.

Yesterday’s post ended with this comment,

That [provide an environment in which people can learn, grow and excel] is what a good boss is supposed to do.

But it’s the great ones who actually do it.

In fact, they go beyond that and shelter their people from any kind of toxic culture coming down from above.

Image credit: thinkpublic

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Echo Chambers. They’ve been with us since humans first stood erect. We hear what we want to hear; listen only to those who agree with us. Seek out the likeminded with whom to spend our time. And, when all else fails, people have been known to go beyond the acceptable to prove they are right. But when this happens at work, what’s a manager to do?

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Last week I had a call from a “Rick,” marketing manager, with what he thought was a unique problem—sadly it’s not as uncommon as you might think.

Short version. “Chris” is one of his top producing marketing people and extremely valuable to the team and the company. Recently, the team had a vehement disagreement on a marketing plan, but finally decided to go with an approach different from the one that Chris had championed.

Since then, Chris has made a number of comments and suggestions that undermine the current effort and has privately said that she hopes it fails because the other approach was better.

The team was starting to notice and some were losing confidence—a sure way to guarantee failure.

Rick said he had talked a bit with Chris; she denied that she was sabotaging the campaign and if it failed it would be because the wrong choice was made.

When I asked if Chris was always such an ideologue Rick was startled. He hadn’t thought of her actions in those terms, but after thinking it over he decided that she was a bit, although normally not to this extent.

Rick went on to say that it was ironic, because during the election Chris had been adamant that the “hide-bound ideology on both sides was creating problems for the country” and that she thought Obama was less locked into a specific, narrow ideology than most politicians.

More recently, she had been furious with Rush Limbaugh’s comment “I hope Obama fails,” seeing it as destructive and unpatriotic.

And therein, as I told Rick, lay his solution. Here is what I suggested.

• Arrange a conversation without interruptions, such as an off-site lunch.
• Make a production of turning off your cell phone (if Rick isn’t answering his, Chris is unlikely to interrupt to answer hers).
• Keep the tone conversational; avoid anything that sounds like an accusation or makes the lunch feel like a confrontation.
• Remind Chris’ about her previous thoughts regarding ideologues.
• Once she confirms her thoughts gently draw the parallel between her attitudes and an ideologue.
• Use her own words and feelings to refute whatever defense she raises (again, without attacking her).
• Keep it conversational and take your time leading her to the recognition that her actions are the same as those she dislikes, just in a different arena.

Rick called today to say they’d had lunch that day and the conversation went exactly as predicted. It wasn’t perfectly smooth and there were some dicey moments, but when that happened he backed away and tried another route. He said that it would have been impossible to do in the office with interruptions and turning off their cells created a whole different mood.

He said that when Chris realized that she was doing a highly watered down version of Limbaugh she was openly shocked and very apologetic.

Instead of leaving it there, Rick took extra time to walk through the competing plans and why the team had chosen the one and not the other. He explained that it wasn’t that Chris was wrong, she just held a different opinion and that was OK, but it wasn’t OK do anything to undermine the program—even unconsciously.

With a more open mind Chris grudgingly agreed to the reasoning. She said that in spite of still feeling the other plan was better she would do everything in her power to make the project work. She said that the success of the project was more important than being “right.”

Rick was lucky because a critical member of his team was also a rational thinking person who could see a parallel when it was pointed out and not enough of a hypocrite to claim “that’s different…”

Chris was lucky because she worked for a manager who valued her and was willing to take the time to help her change and grow.

How do you control your inner ideologue?

Or do you?

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Last week I wrote Time To Get Off Your Ass And Lead (Yourself) and Ravi Tangri added some very intelligent thoughts in his comment. I hope you’ll take a moment to click over, read it and add your own thoughts to the conversation. It’s an important one for all of us.

Image credit: Gurdonark on flickr

This golden Oldie dates back to 2009 and includes a comment worth a click.