Dear Madeleine,

I run a commercial retail real estate firm in a big city in the Midwest. We have some seasoned senior brokers, all of whom have done well working with junior brokers, training them while also benefiting from their help.

The model has worked really well, except in the case of one senior broker. He does very well financially, but has developed a reputation in town of not following through. Also, he sometimes fails to show up for meetings with landlords and even prospective renters.

He has gone through several junior brokers in quick succession because he treats them like trash and does not properly share commissions. He was a lot of fun our first ten years in business, but as the business has grown and we have all matured, he seemingly hasn’t grown up.

I am the owner of the business, but other than overseeing legal compliance and providing basic guidelines, I have been hands-off—not really a boss. I have pointed out some of this person’s more extreme behavior to him, but it is getting to the point of no return. Everyone knows everyone in our town, so people know his antics are not a reflection on me or my firm, but it is getting out of hand.

How do I get someone in their mid-40s to stop behaving like a child? I really need him as a senior broker to develop the juniors so that they want to stay and grow. And I need to stop the gossip about his partying and the impression that our entire firm is filled with people who are not serious about their profession. I should mention that he and I are longtime friends. He has been with me since the beginning, which complicates things.

Man-child Mayhem

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Dear Man-child Mayhem,

It can be hard when you outgrow longtime friends—and when they work for you, it can make things downright impossible. I am struggling with finding a way to say what I want to say without offending you, so please forgive me in advance if I miss the mark. Here goes.

You need to face two essential truths:

1. You are the boss.
2. People don’t change until the cost of not changing becomes too high to bear. This applies to both you and Man-child.

Some food for thought based on these two truths:

You may not want to be the boss, but you are. The whole “not really the boss” thing can work as long as everybody behaves themselves, but not so much (as you are currently experiencing) when they don’t. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and that someone is going to be you. Again—you are the boss. The only way you are going to get the Man-child to grow up is to insist on it and enact appropriate consequences if he fails to comply.

There is a chance that he just doesn’t know how to be a grownup. If that is the case, you can give him very clear instructions on what is grownup behavior and what isn’t. And when I say clear, I mean literally put his dos and don’ts in writing so that you can pull up the document when you have to discuss it. Give him a few chances to get used to acting like a grownup at work.

If he does know but just doesn’t care, well, you have a choice. You can choose to tolerate the unacceptable or you can choose to part ways. If you need to part ways, you can certainly share that you hope not to lose the friendship—but you should be ready for that eventuality.

It is up to you. It is your business and your reputation on the line here. Way back when, people in your town were in the know and were able to separate the Man-child from you. But as you grow and he crosses paths with new people, they will absolutely wonder what kind of an operation you are running.

You have grown up—well, almost. You are suffering from the effects of not having completely grown up. Now is time for you to take full responsibility for your business or suffer the consequences. You know what you need from your people and you seem to be getting it from everyone but Man-child. You might consider taking it to the next level by checking out the work of Henry Cloud, an expert on boundaries. His book Boundaries for Leaders: Results, Relationships and Being Ridiculously in Charge might give you just the step-by-step direction you need to step fully into being a real boss.

Look, I hate making anyone comply with anything, so if you are having an allergic reaction to what I am saying, I get it. But part of being a grownup means accepting reality. And reality can be a harsh taskmaster.

Have the hard conversation. Don’t sugarcoat anything. Reward good behavior and do not, I repeat, do not look the other way when Man-child acts like an idiot. Give him a few chances and then—if he cannot or will not raise his standards—pull the plug exactly the way you said you would. Your business is at stake.

I’m sorry. I hope I am wrong about this. If you get a better idea from someone else, please share it with me.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services as well as a key facilitator of Blanchard’s Leadership Coach Certification course. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

This letter came to Lucy Dannewitz and me as a result of our podcast, “Leaders Who Influence,” in Blanchard Community. Blanchard Community is a space created for all who are interested in Blanchard, where you can sign up for groups that suit you, network with others, and access special events. Lucy’s and my podcast is designed to explore how generational differences affect leadership. I will provide my take on the question, and then Lucy and I will discuss it in our next podcast.

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Dear Mad and Lucy,

I find myself in a tough situation as a manager. There’s a person on my team who is a talented kid, but lately the quality of their work has taken a pretty serious nosedive. They’ve also been snapping at their coworkers. Someone told me that their father is in the hospital, so I’ve been trying to give them some room to sort things out. But yesterday they missed an important deadline, and I know I need to say something.

I’m at a loss, though. Here’s the kicker—this person has been open in the past about having serious struggles with mental health issues in their previous job.

I still need to keep them accountable, but I don’t want to push them over the edge. I want to support them. I guess I’m part of the typical Boomer generation—I have no idea how to talk about mental health. Am I even the one who should be doing that? If so, where do I start?

Not a Therapist, Just a Worried Manager

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Dear Not a Therapist, Just a Worried Manager,

It can put a lot of pressure on work systems when people’s lives blow up. I had a question similar to this recently, although the employee wasn’t a “kid.” I am trying to figure out how much of this issue is generational and how much of it is just regular manager stuff. I will address each separately.

Let’s talk about how this is a generational issue. You call the employee who is falling short of expectations a “kid.” To me, a Boomer like you, that could mean anyone under 35! So if this person really is a kid—just out of college, somewhere between 21 and 25, say—there is a good chance they are overwhelmed, afraid of losing their job, and not feeling equipped to sit down and have the hard conversation with you about what is going on. On second thought, this could be true of someone at any age.

Clearly, they felt comfortable enough to mention past issues with mental health to you, so at least they trusted you on what might have been a good day. They may have succumbed to magical thinking—and there is no age limit on this coping mechanism. It goes something like “I know things have slid downhill, but I am going to get it together soon and go back to being good at my job, and we can all pretend this never happened.”

I see two ways the generational divide might be at play here:

1. Your employee is young and inexperienced and does not know how to broach the topic with you about what is going on.
2. You, as a Boomer, are not comfortable navigating what may or may not be a mental health issue.

The first may help provide a little bit of context for you to be empathetic and let your employee know that your job is to help them be as successful as possible in their job.

The second, forgive me, is a story you are telling yourself. It’s probably based on what you have heard in the media, which, in my opinion, is a massive generalization and untrue. I would submit to you that your discomfort with talking about mental health is due to a lack of knowledge and experience with people who struggle with it. All that means is that you are lucky, not old. This particular instance is a perfect opportunity for you to educate yourself and expand your frame of reference.

One piece of good news about the changes since you and I were kids is that mental health issues are now, by and large, seen the same way as physical health issues. The secrecy and shame that used to be associated with mental health issues are simply no longer a norm. This is a positive generational shift, I think, because almost everyone’s life is affected by mental health concerns. Just ask people you know if they have a loved one who is affected, or if they are personally. You may be surprised. When I started speaking openly about a loved one who struggles with mental illness, it turned out that every single person I spoke to had more experience than I could have known.

Now, the manager stuff.

 I am a huge fan of the adage from Max De Pree: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” And the current reality is that your employee is not meeting deadlines and is unpleasant to work with. The worst thing you could do is pretend that nothing is going on. So an observation of reality might be “You have not been yourself,” and the questions are “What is going on?” and “How can I help?”

You don’t have to be a therapist, but this does involve being willing to talk about the human condition and how challenging it can be sometimes. It is perfectly acceptable for you to admit that you do not have experience with mental health issues and that you need your employee to help you help them. Teaching people how to help them is one of the first skills anyone with a challenge or disability needs to learn. You can admit that the last thing you want to do is to make things worse. You can state that your intention is to do everything in your power to help your employee get back to a place where they can bring their best. And you can do all of this without your employee having to share more than they are comfortable with.

Our company is a small one, and there are at least five pages of our employee handbook detailing how an employee should proceed if they need to take a short-term, flexible / intermittent, or long-term leave to deal with their own health issues or to care for a family member. I suspect yours is similar. Locate your company’s employee handbook and find out.

Detailed information about the health challenge is not required. There is always an emphasis on privacy. A note from a medical professional is required, however, so what is not allowed is employees who are not getting any help at all who claim they can’t work. You can consult with your HR representative to get clear on what benefits might be available to your employee, such as counseling, therapy, etc. Since there is such a large uptick in mental health issues among all generations, many companies are providing much more generous EAP benefits. If it turns out that your company isn’t, you can share the National Alliance on Mental Illness website and the NAMI Teen and Young Adult HelpLine. There is help available. You may want to use the website yourself to increase your understanding of and comfort level with mental health difficulties—not as a professional, but as someone who cares and seeks to be informed.

Be prepared to present the options to your employee and then help them craft a plan to get them back on an even keel. And (yay!) you can do all this without ever having to delve into the gory details.

Are you the one who should be talking about mental health with your employee? Good question. And no. Are you the one who should be talking to them about what steps they might take to take care of themselves and their loved ones, and how to keep their job and get back to the kind of performance they demonstrated they are capable of? Yes. That is a manager’s job.

If simply having the conversation about reality and how to make it tenable pushes your employee “over the edge,” as you say, then they are not fit to be working and you will have to consult with HR to figure out what to do next. If, in fact, the kid has put their head in the sand and is engaging in magical thinking, I suspect they will be grateful for the opportunity to tell the truth and for the help in making arrangements that will ensure their long-term success.

The next time an employee shares that they have had difficulty with mental health, you can take the opportunity to ask how it shows up, what the effect is on them, and how they want to deal with it if it happens again. You can create some clear agreements of how you should both proceed in the event that difficulties rear their head in the future, just as you might with someone who manages a chronic illness or neurological difference. It is all part of creating a workplace where people can bring their whole selves every day.

You are obviously compassionate and thoughtful. This is not a huge stretch for you—you can prove the stereotype about Boomers wrong.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

The hybrid/virtual work world presents many challenges for leaders. One of them is creating a culture of accountability.

Some leaders still think accountability equals “butts in seats.” But that outdated belief has become completely antiquated during the pandemic. People have proven they can succeed in a remote work environment.

Considering how quickly the workplace is evolving, creating a culture of accountability requires leaders to develop a new skill set. Here are things you can do to achieve this.

Psychological Safety is Essential

Accountability starts with psychological safety. People need to feel comfortable telling their leaders that they are struggling with an assignment without fear of being reprimanded. An atmosphere of trust is essential.

An environment that isn’t psychologically safe undermines a culture of accountability. If leaders don’t trust their people, they’ll micromanage them. If people don’t trust their leaders, they won’t share.

Leaders lay the groundwork for accountability by extending trust. This can be more difficult in a virtual environment where they may not be able to see someone’s body language. Then there are some leaders who are habitually cautious. They won’t trust their team members until their leaders demonstrate that they are trustworthy.

Considering our times, leaders must take extra steps to ensure their people feel psychologically safe.

Praise Often. Redirect Judiciously.

Accountability and engagement are interdependent. One way to create engagement is to praise your people when they do something well.

Most leaders believe they give their people plenty of praise. But research shows the opposite—people don’t think their leaders praise them enough. The ideal praise-to-criticism ratio is 5:1. We’ve evolved as a species to identify danger, so we are wired to dwell on the negative. When leaders criticize, it stings more than they might think. A generous amount of praise is needed to counteract this natural tendency.

How we give feedback should be even more nuanced. I recommend leaders use our SLII® leadership development model to determine what kind of praise will be most impactful.

When someone is new to a task and either an Enthusiastic Beginner or a Disillusioned Learner, it’s your job as a leader to recognize any progress the person is making. Celebrate progress. Praise them in front of the team. Confidence is a prerequisite for mastery, and by recognizing people’s victories you’ll help them develop the self-confidence needed to tackle even more difficult projects.

When someone has demonstratable skills and is either a Capable but Cautious Contributor or a Self-Reliant Achiever, giving them increasing autonomy will deepen accountability. The person has proven they can do the task and you want to recognize and reward their achievements. As they become more experienced, your job is to ask open-ended questions and listen to their responses. Be explicit about how proud you are that they have reached this level of expertise.

No matter who you are sharing feedback with, your mindset as a leader is critical. Never act in a way that can be interpreted as punitive or demeaning. Make sure your people know that your purpose is to help them win. This helps to maintain a culture of accountability.

SMART Goals Create Accountability

Everyone is more accountable when they have SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). People need to know what is expected of them and SMART goals can keep them on track. You can help your people attain their goals by showing them what success looks like for a specific job. This is particularly critical when you’re not in a face-to-face setting.

Regular check-ins are also a part of helping people achieve their SMART goals. If you and your team members are in the same place, you should have one-on-one check-ins at least once every two weeks. If your team is virtual, check in with each person more often—at least once a week. People working in a virtual environment need this. It ensures alignment, prevents feelings of isolation, and creates accountability.

Know Your Digital Body Language

Our digital body language, which is revealed in all our communications, affects accountability. The words we use reveal our intentions, our attitudes, and our feelings. But we often don’t take enough time to make sure we are understood. In fact, emotions in emails are misunderstood a great deal of the time. We need to be much more intentional about what we say and how we say it.

Try to make sure your communications aren’t just transactional if you want to drive accountability. Every communication should have a human element to it to demonstrate that you care for your people.

Here’s a tip I learned from experience. Don’t ever send a text message or an email without reading it through several times. Ask yourself, “Am I clearly saying what I want to say? Am I sharing my position and the thinking behind that position?” Doing these things helps ensure you have effective digital body language, which creates the psychological safety needed for accountability.

Be Available

Your availability and responsiveness are key to creating an environment of accountability. They are even more important in a virtual or hybrid environment than in a face-to-face workplace. People can see what you’re doing when you share a workspace, so they know when you’re busy. In a virtual environment, we don’t have this information and can come to any conclusion. For example, if you don’t respond to an email in three or four hours, the trust people have in you may take a hit, which can affect accountability.

One way to prevent these kinds of miscommunications is to set norms with your team. For example, discuss what constitutes a timely response. Get clear agreement and have everyone abide by it.

Good Leaders Create Accountability

Our changing workplace requires new ways of creating a culture of accountability—especially when so many leaders and their people are no longer in the same workspace. But the use of good leadership skills will inspire people to be accountable. And when that happens, your team will reach new heights of success!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a regional sales director for a company that installs gutters for houses. I have spent endless time training my people to map out exactly what is needed for each house. We created beautiful online templates so salespeople could provide the detail that the install team needs to show up with the right equipment and the proper product cut into proper lengths.

The install teams seem to ignore all the information we give them. They show up with the wrong products, install things haphazardly, and the customers all call to complain that their gutters are not what was promised to them.

It is ridiculous. My salespeople are so tired of all their hard work being disregarded, and of course the unhappy customers call them to complain.

The director in charge of the install teams refuses to admit any fault and won’t force his people to use the information we provide. At this point, he is not answering my emails or phone calls.

We have a sales quota to meet, but the morale of my folks is at an all time low. I have talked to my boss about it, and his attitude is basically that it is my problem and I should figure it out. I just don’t know what I can do to change this situation without his support.

Thoughts?

Powerless

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Dear Powerless,

This sounds so frustrating. And this is a classic point of tension in most companies—the disconnect between what is sold and what is delivered keeps a whole lot of people up at night. It sounds like you have hit a brick wall with your boss, which is absurd, because it sounds like an organizational problem. But short of tackling your counterpart in the parking lot, I think you probably are on your own.

The only thing I can think of is to somehow get the salespeople to create relationships with their install team leads. Instead of simply sending a bunch of information to an install team, a salesperson needs to actually communicate—by phone, zoom meeting, or a quick conversation. I think we have all the evidence we need that nobody can keep up with all of the communications coming at them. People need to talk to each other, and that is something you can work with. Possibly create an offsite meeting to do some relationship and team building. I do think that, absent support from anyone else, your best hope is making sure people on both teams meet, get to know each other, maybe even brainstorm how to solve the problem as a group.

Once relationships are established, install teams are much more likely to be open to influence from the salesperson.

We all tend to look to processes and systems to fix big problems—and long term, you may be able to influence enough to get those in place. But until you can get there, your problem is still people needing to work with people. And for people to work well together, they need to know and care about each other. So that may be a place to start.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Most people will agree that ongoing professional growth and development is important. That said, most people also know it can be quite challenging to establish new skills and behaviors. Competing priorities make it hard to focus, motivation comes in fits and starts, and there just never seems to be enough time.

There is a great way to improve your chances of working on your development—and that’s to enlist an accountability partner. What is an accountability partner? It is a neutral and supportive person who helps you stay on track with your development.

Time and again, it’s been shown that people are more successful when accountability measures are built into any self-development program. We just do better when we have support. An accountability partner can make the difference between someone who succeeds in their development and someone who loses focus.

So what could you achieve with an accountability partner in your corner? It could help you:

• Figure out what and who you want to be when you grow up. So many people are not fulfilled professionally and really have no idea what professional fulfillment might look like for them. An accountability partner can help you determine what makes you tick. Why is this important? Someone once said “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” But in order to choose a job you love, you first need to figure out what you are all about and what that job would look like.

You and your accountability partner can come up with questions to answer for clarification about who you are and what you want—such as What do I value? What matters to me? What’s interesting to me? What motivates me? What’s important to me professionally? It’s surprising how rarely people ask themselves these kinds of questions. Many seem to think they aren’t worthy of finding a job that honors their values or is interesting. An accountability partner can help them see not only that they are worthy, but that answering these questions can be integral to their well-being, given that work is such a huge part of life.

• Expand your options. When left to our own devices, most of us tend to see ourselves in a very limited manner. In other words, we aren’t very good at seeing our lives from multiple perspectives. We might think “I can’t figure out what I want professionally, I’m too busy making a living,” or “Who am I to think that I can do what I love?” An accountability partner probably won’t have those same limiting beliefs about you. They can get you to suspend reality for a time and dream dreams that may be big, but are also obtainable with some elbow grease. Often when brainstorming with others, we come up with ideas that may seem crazy but are actually seeds of brilliance. I can’t tell you the number of times someone has told me their professional dream and then immediately said it was unattainable—whereas from my perspective, their goal was not at all farfetched; it was, in fact, quite doable.

• Figure out where you go from here. Let’s say you did find answers to the questions above, and you suspended your self doubt at least for the time being. Now what? How does one make their hopes and dreams actionable? On your own, it can be challenging to figure out a course of action. But brainstorming potential actions with someone else can often spark big ideas you might not even have considered by yourself.

• Recognize accomplishments along the way. We often don’t recognize our own incremental changes—when we make progress and close the gap between where we are and where we want to be. But someone else can see our progress more clearly, help us recognize it, and keep us moving forward.

• Keep going when the going gets tough. Having a cheerleader is a very powerful thing—especially if it’s someone who will encourage you to take risks and do things that are uncomfortable. We’re much more likely to challenge ourselves when we have someone watching from the sidelines. Sometimes we will stumble, but we tend to get up much quicker when there’s somebody saying “Come on, keep trying—I believe in you.”

So where do you find an accountability partner? It could be your boss, a coworker, or a friend—or you could enlist the help of a professional business coach whose stock and trade is being an accountability partner. Many people have experienced how a professional coach has helped them by leaps and bounds.

Where you find your accountability partner doesn’t matter as much as getting someone in your corner to maximize results for you—or maybe your direct reports. You don’t have to go it alone!

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

“I don’t have enough hours in the day to get my work done.”

It’s a common complaint I hear from my coaching clients—especially those who are newer to a management role. Very often when we are talking about their workload I notice that they are taking on “monkeys” that aren’t theirs.

Monkeys? you might be thinking. What? Several years ago, Ken Blanchard coauthored a book with William Oncken, Jr. and Hal Burrows called The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. The “monkey” represents the ownership or responsibility for an unsolved problem or an incomplete task.

Let me give you an oversimplified example—one I sometimes share with my coaching clients—about taking on monkeys. Picture this:

A manager is in their office trying to work on their strategic plan for next year. One of their direct reports drops by. The direct report says, “Hey boss, I can’t get hold of Steve to get the numbers for the report I’m compiling for next week’s off-site meeting.” (This is the unsolved problem or incomplete task.) The boss says something like, “Well leave it with me and I’ll try to reach Steve.” In an instant, the boss has taken on the direct report’s “monkey.” The direct report skips down the hall with that monkey off their back. Over the course of a day, this happens with other direct reports. Soon the manager is weighed down with monkeys and no longer has time to work on their own strategic plan.

More often than not, the person I’m coaching relates to this and sees themselves in the story. The question follows: What to do?

Here are a couple of strategies I’ve developed with my clients as they learn to deal with their own office monkeys.

Slow down and reflect. When a direct report drops by with a problem, ask yourself whose problem, job, or task it is. Most of the time, the problem belongs to the direct report.

Ask a few open-ended questions. Help the direct report think through the situation. For example, ask, “How are you reaching out to Steve? Might there be another way?” Maybe the direct report is emailing Steve when it might be better to pick up the phone or go by and see Steve. Another question might be, “If you can’t reach Steve, what are other ways you can get the data?” If more help is needed, you could brainstorm with the direct report to figure out other options. Helping them think things through will often get things moving and keep the monkey firmly with its owner—the direct report.

Make sure your direct report knows their next move. Before the conversation is over, confirm the action the direct report is going to take with their monkey so you can get back to your own work.

I’m not proposing that managers abdicate their responsibility for providing direction and support. I’m just suggesting that managers help direct reports find ways to solve their own problems and tasks.

The reality is that consistently following this procedure will help your direct reports grow into self-reliance—which makes this a win-win situation for everybody!

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

In his work consulting with business leaders at top organizations around the world, best-selling author Ken Blanchard explains that for best results, leaders need to combine a focus on people with a simultaneous focus on results.  It’s this one-two combination that delivers the greatest impact.

Managers need to have a shared responsibility with direct reports for achieving goals, explains Blanchard.  As an example, Blanchard points to the philosophy of Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company and Blanchard’s coauthor on the book Helping People Win at Work.  At WD-40, if a manager is considering an unfavorable review for a direct report, the first question asked of the manager is: “What have you done to help that person succeed?”

One of the benefits of this mutual accountability approach is that it gives leaders permission to step in when tough love is called for—for example, when performance or behavior is off-track.

Colleen Barrett, former president of Southwest Airlines, shares her organization’s philosophy about joint accountability: “We are very clear in telling our people what our expectations are. We hold them and ourselves accountable for meeting those expectations every day. Sometimes this means having a real heart-to-heart with someone and reminding them what our values are. If we have been intentional and firm in explaining what our expectations are, that gives us the opportunity to point to specific examples where the person hasn’t exhibited the required behaviors.”

Blanchard believes that this approach to management requires a special kind of leader—a person who sees leadership as an opportunity to serve instead of being served.

“We have all seen the negative consequences of self-centered leadership,” says Blanchard.  “Today we need a new leadership model—one that is focused on accomplishing the goals of the organization as a whole, with an equal emphasis on people and results. The best leaders identify the hidden strengths in people and organizations and lead them to a place they couldn’t get to on their own.  In this way, they truly serve.  And when the leader’s work is done—to paraphrase Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu—the people will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’

“The most effective leaders realize that leadership is not about them—they are only as good as the people they lead. It’s what servant leadership is all about. Once a vision has been set for the organization, servant leaders move to the bottom of the hierarchy, acting as cheerleaders, supporters, and encouragers for the people who report to them.

“The best organizations don’t see relationships and results as an either/or proposition,” says Blanchard. “They know if they focus on both people and profits, success will follow.”

Would you like to learn more about creating an others-focused culture in your organization?  Join Ken Blanchard for a free webinar on September 12,

Servant Leadership: 4 Keys to Leading at a Higher Level.

The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

I head up one of several R&D teams at a global consumer goods company. My team is amazing—brilliant, eccentric, creative, fun people who are blowing away their goals. (It takes a certain type of person to be good at what we do.)

Here is my problem. Some of my folks are good at the basics—showing up on time for meetings, submitting expenses, dressing appropriately, filling out paperwork, etc. But the others not so much. I am constantly on them to comply with the bare minimum of what is required to operate in this large system. Case in point: conducting performance reviews.

I know some managers who can throw all the rules to the wind and allow their creatives to operate as they please, but I just can’t do it. I have spoken to my own boss and my peers to get some ideas about how to get people to toe the line, but they all just laugh and say I’ll figure it out. I don’t have kids but I am starting to feel like a parent. It is making me really…

Cranky

Dear Cranky,

Presumably, you manage these people because you are one of them.  Are you not eccentric and creative yourself? How did the person previously in your position handle this problem? You must have leadership skills to have been so attractive to the best. Your people are doing well because you have created an environment in which they can thrive—and yet, you have also led them to think that they can get away with, well, acting like children.

Something you are doing—possibly not having proper boundaries—is sending the wrong signal. Henry Cloud is an expert on this. You may want to take a look at his work.

I am married to an eccentric creative, I manage a bunch of wildly creative people, and I am a parent. And still, my least strong suit is getting people to do tedious stuff they have to do, so I really do feel your pain. I must be clear, concise and relentless about what is necessary. Repetition and reminders without judgment are helpful. And however strong the temptation might be, I do not shield other adults from the consequences of their choices.

Your job as a manager is to clearly inform your people of the consequences of not complying with requirements. Putting a time limit on getting the performance review done might work: if something isn’t done in a certain time frame, they don’t get a raise. You may have already thought of this. I know with my huge team, we have finally resorted to not paying expenses that are submitted more than 30 days after the event. That works for some, but others just don’t care about money.

Another idea is to go to HR and see what special dispensation you might be able to get for your team. It may not be possible, but I know a lot of the large global companies are trying to be more flexible about these things. Maybe you could be a pilot program for some new, easier methods in this area.

Finally, leverage the genius of your team. Put this conundrum in front of them to solve. This is not your problem alone. It is draining you now and will begin to drain the energy of your team soon as well. Let them apply some of their brilliance and creativity—maybe even some old-fashioned peer pressure—to shift this situation.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I have a business colleague—essentially a peer, although I am slightly senior to her—with whom I need to work collaboratively. We get along well on the surface but I am extremely frustrated with her work practices.

We set timelines and deadlines for large segments of projects that we need to pass to each other for additions and review.

She never, ever meets a deadline. She always has one excuse or another.

This slows down my work and forces me to reschedule my plans with my people. Interestingly enough, she always seems to be on top of, and on time with, her own projects that our boss sees. It is driving me crazy.

I have tried to talk to her about this, but she won’t own up to her behavior. It is always someone else’s fault. The last time this happened, she claimed she never got the handoff. I sent the email and I could tell that it was opened, so I knew she was lying.

She doesn’t do this with my other colleagues; only with me. My wife thinks she might be racist and trying to sabotage me. I really don’t know if this is true—but I am the only person on the team who is of a different race than everyone else. What do you think?

Sick of Excuses

Dear Sick of Excuses,

This does indeed sound extremely frustrating. And it does appear that you are being treated with a singular lack of respect by this colleague. I have some thoughts for you.

1. Stop trying to read minds. I have found that speculating about motives is an endless trip down a dark rat hole that solves nothing. You really have no way of knowing what the heck your colleague is thinking. It’s a natural impulse to think that her mistreatment is rooted in racism or sexism or any other bias, but I don’t think it is going to help you shift this situation.
2. Stop tolerating bad behavior. You have been putting up with her bad behavior for long enough—so long, it seems, that she has grown accustomed to getting away with it. This may just be run of the mill bullying—and bullies will almost always back down if you confront them. Get super clear with her and draw a boundary. Practice with your wife or a colleague, essentially saying “I don’t care what excuse you come up with for getting this back to me late—I will no longer tolerate it.” Document how many times this has happened and share the whole thing with your boss if it happens again.
3. Police the handoffs and exchanges. Sending an email, even with a return receipt, makes it easy for people to miss or forget—or at least claim to. Despite best efforts, everyone slips up on emails; the volume is just so intense. It is especially easy for someone to let things go by if they think there won’t be a consequence. So when you do a handoff, walk over to your colleague’s office, stick your head in the doorway, tell her you just sent her the next step, and remind her of the agreed-upon deadline. Leave her a voicemail or text if you are virtual. Is this fair? Should you have to do this as a professional? No, of course it isn’t, and you shouldn’t. But this is your reputation on the line here, so you have to take care of yourself. Go the extra mile to make sure everything is crystal clear.

If none of this works, you are going to have to tell your boss. Don’t whine or complain, but do clearly state your grievances with a complete and detailed list of instances in which your teams’ work has been held up because of the actions of your colleague.

Stand up for yourself. Very few of us are comfortable with confrontation, but it’s time for you to step up and take hold of this situation.

Good luck.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

“Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one is watching – even when doing the wrong thing is legal”. – Aldo Leopold

* * *
Ethical
adjective
Avoiding activities or organizations that do harm to people or the environment.
* * *
Examples of non-ethical behavior in business and leadership are all around us; and recent well-publicized ethical breaches in organizations have brought a great deal of attention to the issue of ethical behavior – from political campaigns filled with half-truths or outright lies, and distortions to support a viewpoint; to examples of business tax evasion; to politicians submitting fraudulent expenses. The lack of integrity around the world is alarming. Even Patricia Wallington writing for CIO identifies that 82% of CEO’s admitted lying about their golf scores.

Ethical behavior is essential in leadership – good leaders have integrity, honesty, and are inclined to do the right thing (which is not, necessarily, the easy or quick choice). Ethical leaders will display self-confidence, and the people around them will be more inclined to work for a leader they know they can trust to make the right decisions. A paper published by Johnathan K. Nelson, George Mason University explains that ethical leadership is associated with a number of desired outcomes related to employees at the individual and group levels, including willingness to exert extra effort and help others; better task performance; increased job satisfaction and commitment to the organization; perceptions of an ethical climate; optimism in the future of the organization and their place within it; perceptions of task significance, autonomy, and voice – including a willingness to report problems to management.
But how can we work to become ethical leaders?
Before we look at how we can become ethical leaders, we need to look at a bigger-picture approach of identifying ourselves as moral people. Jonathan K Nelson’s paper goes on to identify key traits of ethical people:

• Ensure that ethical behavior in their private life is consistent with the moral standards they publically promote. Ensuring that their actions are not hypocritical of their words.
• Take responsibility for their actions.
• Show concern for other people.
• Treat others fairly and with respect.
• Use personal and organizational values to guide their behavior and decisions.
• Implement decisions that are objective and fair, based on fact and not opinion.

Ethics in leadership, however, goes beyond simply acting as a moral person. Being an ethical leader includes recognizing that employees are looking for guidance in their decision-making, and they need to recognize that they have power of influence over the behavior of others. Ethical leaders:

• Demonstrate examples of ethical behavior and ethical decision-making.
• Explain decisions not only in making a business case, but in ethical terms as well.
• Discuss ethical issues in their communication with employees; and encourage ethics-centered discussions, where they can encourage subordinates to speak up about their ethics-related questions and concerns.
• Explain ethical rules and principles.
• Give subordinates a say in decision-making and listen to their ideas and concerns.
• Set clear ethical standards and enforce those standards through the use of organizational rewards, and holding people accountable when standard are not met.

EthicalSystems.Org also provides gives us some ideas we can apply to our leadership role to empower us to act more ethically on a day-to-day basis:

Make ethics a clear priority
Ethical leaders make ethics a clear and consistent part of their agendas, set the standards for those around them, set examples of appropriate behavior, and hold everyone accountable when those standards aren’t met.
Make ethical culture a part of every personnel-related function in your organization
Leaders need to work hard through the hiring process, training new employees, and continuing performance management to bring in the right employees in the first instance, and then help them to work within the organization’s underlying values on ethical business.
Encourage, measure, and reward ethical leadership.
Ethical leadership from the top down is very important – not only because it creates an environment in which lower-level ethical leaders can flourish and grow – but ethical leadership at the supervisory level will guide and encourage followers’ attitudes and behavior.
Ethical leadership, at all levels of an organization, not only encourages employees within a business to act with moral integrity and make the right decisions by providing the right guidance and support on decisions and empowering employees to raise concerns when they feel something isn’t right, but this in turn will support the ethical view of the business, both internally and externally. Ethical leadership has an associated positive effect on employees. Ethical leadership supports the organization in their stead within society ensuring that the business as a whole is able to operate ethically and fairly.
For further reading on ethics in leadership, the Community Tool Box has an article which clearly defines ethics and ethical leadership; and looks at further suggestions on practicing ethical leadership; and Jack Zenger, writing for Forbes looks at ways to prevent corruption (and in turn, develop ethical behavior) in the top leadership levels of an organization.

Pretty heady stuff.

He realized he couldn’t drive people to be more just, client focused, and service oriented. The only way a radically different culture would emerge was through employees working together and making their own decisions to find new approaches for managing people’s wealth.

This powerful executive recognized that only through the power of tapping people’s honest and authentic need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC) would he be able to achieve the results he was looking for—a high functioning, self-motivated organization.  He realized that any driving for adherence to new policies and procedures would undermine people’s sense of ARC—and his firm’s cultural evolution.

It was a great bit of insight on his part. And it’s something we can all learn from as we endeavor to build highly motivated work environments.

• When you pressure people to perform, the pressure you create has the opposite result of what you intended. Pressuring people erodes their sense of autonomy.
• When you focus on metrics as priorities, people fail to find meaning in the metrics for themselves. When people feel used as a means to your end, it diminishes their sense of relatedness.
• When you drive for results and declare you are holding people accountable for those results, you are also sending the message that you don’t trust people to perform or achieve their goals. You undermine their sense of competence.

Here are four alternatives.

1. Encourage autonomy by helping people appreciate the freedom they have within boundaries. What is within a person’s control? What options do they have? Identify areas for creativity and innovation.

2. Deepen relatedness by engaging people in conversations about their values and aligning their values with the company’s goals. For example, help an employee who has a value for service explore how his service might improve through the company’s new approach.

3. Build competence by providing opportunities for training, clarifying expectations, and illuminating the unknowns. Don’t assume people know how to cope with change. Don’t try to sell change by sharing how the organization will benefit. Focus instead on helping people deal with the personal concerns they have for how the change directly affects them.

4. Teach leaders the skill of conducting motivational conversations. If leaders don’t know how to facilitate people’s shift to optimal motivation, they will default to what they know: driving for results. Leaders also need to practice optimal motivation for themselves. Leaders with suboptimal motivation tend to drive for results from others.

If you want real, sustainable, high quality results, stop driving yourself crazy trying to hold people accountable for outcomes that are not connected to individual needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC.)  Instead, help people satisfy those needs. When people experience ARC, they thrive—and you don’t need to drive.

About the Author

Susan Fowler is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who heads up Blanchard’s motivation and self leadership practices.  Susan is also the author of the business best-seller, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work… And What Does.

I don’t like the word accountability. It’s always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. I think it’s because it assumes the worst about people. When we talk about accountability, it always seems the assumption is a person is incapable of, or unlikely to, follow through on his/her commitments. So we spend a lot of time and energy creating systems, processes, or consequences to make the sure the person is held accountable.

I prefer the word responsibility. To me, responsibility has a positive connotation. It’s starting with the mindset that a person will be responsible if he/she is given the necessary tools and training. If a person is responsible, you don’t have to worry about him/her being accountable. Responsibility breeds accountability. Whereas focusing on accountability is only treating the symptoms of a performance issue, addressing responsibility is treating the root cause.

So how can leaders help their people develop an inherent sense of responsibility? Here’s five steps to get started:

1. Create a motivating work environment – You can’t motivate anyone. (What? Did he just say I can’t motivate anyone? Isn’t that one of my primary responsibilities as a leader?) Yes, I just said that. You can’t motivate anyone. Every person is responsible for his/her own motivational outlook. What you can do is create a work environment that allows your people to maximize their sense of autonomy, increase their level of relatedness with others, and develop competence in their work. Autonomy, relatedness, and competence are the variables that allow a person to be optimally motivated and it’s our jobs as leaders to foster an environment that brings out the best in our people.

2. Let your people take the lead in goal setting as much as possible – Think about your own experience. When have you felt the greatest sense of commitment to a goal? When you created it yourself (or had a hand in it), or when a goal was assigned to you? Most likely it was when you were involved in setting the goal because you had a sense of ownership. It was your goal, not someone else’s. Your people will exhibit more responsibility for accomplishing their goals if they are involved in setting them.

3. Be clear on expectations – If people are going to be responsible, they need to clearly understand the expectations of their commitment. Many times our frustrations with people not being accountable is due to a lack of clear expectations. Make sure people know why the goal is important, what the deadlines are, and what constitutes success. If the situation requires you to follow through with negative consequences, do so. Don’t make hollow threats.

4. Use the right leadership style – Your people have different levels of competence and commitment on each of their goals. It’s your job as a leader to flex your leadership style to provide the proper amount of direction and support your people need to accomplish their goals. If you don’t set your people up to be responsible and successful in achieving their goals, that’s on you, not them. (Hold yourself accountable…errr…responsible).

5. Let go – I’ve written previously about balancing control and responsibility. It’s easy to grab control from people when you see them underachieving or shirking their responsibilities. That doesn’t help your people develop responsibility and it only adds to your stress level and workload. If you’ve properly trained and equipped your people, you need to let go and let them succeed or fail on their own.

Starting with these five steps puts the onus on your people to live up to their responsibilities. It’s up to them to hold themselves accountable…to be responsible. The leadership mindset underpinning these steps is one of trust. Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” Trust your people to rise to the occasion, to be worthy of your trust. Odds are they will prove themselves to be responsible and you won’t have to worry about holding them accountable.

Randy Conley is the Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies and his LeaderChat posts appear the fourth or last Thursday of every month. For more insights on trust and leadership, visit Randy at his Leading with Trust blog or follow him on Twitter @RandyConley.

So what’s going on? Well, leaders can sometimes be unaware of what they should and should not be doing. And this lack of awareness separates good leaders from great leaders. Great leaders know that leading is a never-ending journey that can be filled with treacherous obstacles.

So what do you need to know to become a great leader?
 

1. People are unpredictable

Your direct report may not necessarily react the same way each and every time to you. And you yourself may also change from day to day. So always using the same style of leadership may not always yield the best results. Instead, great leaders tailor their approach to each task, situation, and individual to effectively meet the direct report’s needs. So find out how your direct report is doing and what’s going on in his/her life, and then use that knowledge to better inform how you lead him/her.

2. It takes skill

It’s easy to fall into a routine. That’s why we have habits. But as people are unpredictable, you must also be flexible in your style of leadership to be able to match in each unique situation. The best way to do this is to have a learning-oriented mindset, by being on the lookout for new approaches, practicing other styles of leadership to be more flexible, and keeping up-to-date on what’s going on with your direct reports, your organization, and beyond. A great leader will always say, “I have so much left to learn in being a leader!”
 

3. It takes time

Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t able to immediately improve your effectiveness as a leader. Remember, it’s a life-long journey. As with anything, leadership takes time and patience to perfect. And this means you should constantly be trying to improve and grow as an individual. There’s no finish line, but instead a continuous evolution of who you are as a leader, being able to serve your direct reports more and more effectively with each passing day.
 
Image Credit: 1 | 2 | 3

Courage is a well-admired human trait; but when asked what courage is, what do you think of?

Is it a soldier, fighting a battle far from home against a fierce, unknown enemy?
What about a fire-fighting hero running in to save someone from a burning building?
Perhaps your imagination stretches to a fictional hero, rushing in to save the day?

All of these are an example of physical courage – someone’s life is in imminent danger, and our courageous hero puts everything right again.

But forget about your cape-wearing, pants-on the-outside, lycra-clad hero. What about normal, average people?  The British have a wonderful phrase for this: “The man on the Clapham Omnibus” – people going about their everyday business.
This could encompass individuals who blow the whistle on corporate corruption, at risk of losing their job; or – an example from one of my favourite books (Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”); a Lawyer, who stands up to defend someone who is innocent, even though society condemns them for doing so. Could these people be described as ‘courageous’?
In a word: yes!
The courage demonstrated by holding on to one’s own values – regardless of whether this is on the battlefield, or in the boardroom – is Moral Courage.
Lisa Dungate defines Moral Courage perfectly in her blog on Lions Whiskers, where she explains that: “Moral courage means doing the right thing, even at the risk of inconvenience, ridicule, punishment, loss of job or security or social status”.
Novelist, J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech for the Class of 2008 provides some moving examples. The  video of her speech, from TED.com, is 21 minutes long; but at 12 minutes she gives an emotional recollection of her time working at Amnesty International, with people who risked their own lives to speak out about the persecution, abuse, and torture taking place in their home lands.
Everyday moral courage often isn’t this extreme, but that does not mean that it is any easier to practice: moral courage might mean being different or disagreeing publicly.
As difficult as it is – displaying moral courage can earn respect, trust, and admiralty; and by practicing moral courage very day it gradually will become easier.
Let’s take moral courage away from the corporate setting, for a moment; and consider practicing in every day situations:

• You and your friends are deciding what movie to see, or where to get dinner, but you don’t like the choice they all prefer. Instead of going along silently, or pretending to agree, say, “Well, it wouldn’t be my first choice, but if you all like it, that’s OK with me.”
• One of your friends has gotten a tattoo, and everyone is admiring it, but you don’t like tattoos. Instead of letting everyone believe that you also think tattoos are really cool, have the courage to express a different view. “I’m glad you like his tattoo, but personally, I just don’t see the appeal.”

You don’t need to be being rude; or enforcing your own opinions on others, to demonstrate moral courage.
But, as professionals, how can we use these skills to make values-driven decisions consistently?
The Ivey Business Journal gives examples of moral courage in leadership: In August 2008, when Michael McCain, CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, stood in front of the press to accept responsibility for the contaminated meat scandal that resulted in numerous deaths, he undoubtedly needed courage.  Southwest Airlines CEO, James Parker, would have needed courage when he went against the industry job-slashing trend following 9/11 when he courageously announced that he would keep all employees
Why is moral courage important in leadership?
Moral courage is crucial in developing authenticity – it empowers individuals to discover and demonstrate what they stand for – even if this is at the disapproval of others. By developing self leadership through action in moral dilemmas, professionals and leaders can ensure both integrity and impact.
Actions speak louder than words.  Leaders at all levels need to act out their expectations, behave honestly and openly, and demonstrate loyalty. They need to establish and maintain open communications, so that those working with them know that their suggestions will be listened to – that they have a voice. People need to know that their leader isn’t going to act on a whim, just because it’s the majority decision. All of these qualities are facilitated by a leader who has courage.
Leaders with moral courage can be trusted by colleagues to do the right thing. It takes courage to tell the boss something that they do not necessarily want to hear; or to redirect an employee; or to make unpopular decisions.
An awareness of the importance of doing the right thing – which is not necessarily the popular thing – can help leaders demonstrate moral courage when they face ethical challenges in the workplace, and uphold ethical working environments and business standards.

• It doesn’t matter who made the sale, the client is your customer and you must help them – When Mark asked me who sold me the clubs, he said ‘he isn’t in today, but I can help you’. So often in sales roles we are concerned with ‘MY’ client rather than ‘OUR’. We look out for self interest rather than the company’s interest. It is vital that an organization creates a team culture, rather than an ‘I’ culture.

• You need to know what you are talking about – When Dan was swinging the golf clubs into the net, Mark was making notes. He could tell instantly what Dan needed, however he still followed the process of checking each detail to make sure that they altered the golf clubs just right. (If you are interested in the fitting process please see the below YouTube clip) 78% of customer satisfaction comes from a competent service rep.

• The manager needs to train you up and let you go –  I asked Mark how he had learned what he had. He mentioned that when he first started, his manager told him all he needed to know (direction). The manager then asked him to fit him with the right golf clubs following the process and equipment they had. He also mentioned that the manager encourages them to play golf and to always be on the lookout for opportunities of watching friends using their clubs.

When I was in American Golf the manager didn’t get involved once. He let his employee who obviously knew what he was talking about get on with it. This showed to me as the customer, that the manager trusted Mark to do a good job, and he did.
Why am I telling this story?
Customer service isn’t rocket science, yet it can create huge financial benefits to your company. 7 out of 10 people say they would spend more with companies who offered excellent customer service.
American Golf created a culture where employees feel empowered and trusted to do a good job. It also showed me there is a strong link between leadership and customer service. Without the right environment, Mark wouldn’t have been able to offer the great customer service that he did. The outcome of this great customer service is that I will always shop at American Golf and I will strongly recommend them.

All statistics are taken from helpscout . The American Golf store is in Guildford, UK.

Just as Shari was on the mend, her husband was in a car accident and as a result needed extensive back surgery. Shari still claimed she didn’t need time off and could handle her responsibilities while tending to her husband. Not wanting to add insult to injury, my VP still said nothing as more deadlines were pushed. At this point his team was really showing signs of frustration and resentment. My VP was at the end of his rope.

Finding a Balance

Life is hard. Parents, spouses, and children get sick. Backs go out. The stomach flu makes the rounds of the office and then goes home to the family. Cars break down, basements flood, and everyone occasionally gets out on the wrong side of the bed. And isn’t it great to have a boss who gives you the benefit of the doubt when you have to run out of the office to deal with an emergency? Don’t we wish we all had a boss like that?

But when deadlines and quality suffer, and the team is becoming aggravated that someone’s poor performance isn’t being addressed, things have gone too far.

As a manager, you really do have to be kind and understanding when people go through rough times. But you also need to balance sympathy for the needs of an employee with common sense about the needs of the team and the business.

Here are four ideas that may help:

• Be sure each person on the team has a complete understanding of their individual responsibilities, tasks, goals, and deadlines. The more clear these are, the more evident it is when one person is picking up the slack for another whose performance has dipped.
• If something happens three times, it’s safe to assume it is a pattern. Once you allow a pattern to develop, it’s hard to backtrack—so nip it directly in the bud. Say: “I notice your car trouble is becoming a pattern. Let’s talk and see if we can come up with a solution.”
• The company has rules for sick days or paid time off for a reason. Use these rules and involve HR before you get in over your head. If a rule doesn’t exist that covers your situation, create one. Come to an agreement with your employee that you both can stick to. For example, let’s say someone comes in late three times and then admits it’s because her family got a new puppy and she hasn’t figured out how to work it into the family routine. You could agree to have her come in an hour late a couple of days a week and make up that extra hour from home on those evenings. Everybody wins.
• Watch for resentment on the part of other team members if one employee is perceived as getting special treatment because of a family emergency. If this scenario crops up, put it on the table to discuss with the team. Brainstorm as a group how to best support the team member in need.

As leaders, we all want to be seen as compassionate and fair. But if a manager is too flexible, even a dedicated employee may perceive it as a weakness that can be exploited. Discuss the situation with the employee involved and include the whole team if necessary. Be clear with everyone about performance standards, what leeway is allowed in a pinch, and what the options are if a person’s situation warrants extra help, planning, or intervention. Don’t stop being nice. Just be nice—and smart.

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Her posts appear every Saturday as a part of a series for well-intentioned managers.

Previous posts in this series:

Delaying Feedback? No News Is Not Always Good News

Providing Clear Direction—You’re Not Being Bossy; You’re Being A Boss

Setting Boundaries: 7 Ways Good Managers Get It Wrong

The Well-Intentioned Manager’s New Year’s Resolution: Have More Fun

The Top Three Mistakes Good Managers Make

Managing Polarities: A Key Skill for the Well-Intentioned Manager

In the world of coaching, we know that how one responds to a mistake is as important as what one learns from it. Here are three guidelines along with coaching questions that may help you manage your response or coach someone in your organization through a mistake.

1. Own up. What have you done to be accountable? What apologies have you made? The key is to avoid defending the mistake. An explanation can be useful, but it must come with total ownership—throwing someone else under the bus is not advised. Avoid the “whyne” and stick with the facts. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s a values-led decision to take responsibility.
2. Learn something. What did you learn from this mistake? Is a process broken? Does communication need to improve? Is a new skill set needed? Learning from mistakes is actually a great way to identify gaps in organizations. Think it through and close those gaps where you can. How can you avoid repeating this mistake in the future? While mistakes may be inevitable, repeating mistakes isn’t useful for you, for others, or for your organization. Get a plan in place to ensure repeat offenses don’t occur.
3. Move on. What will help you move forward? Momentary agonizing may be part of the process by which we think through mistakes, but it isn’t useful long term. Mistakes often generate emotion, and it can be important to recognize what you are feeling. But berating yourself or others about a mistake won’t accomplish anything and might even cause harm.  Recognize the emotion, name it, and maybe even discuss it a bit. Then move forward.

Jules Verne said, “Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make because they lead little by little to the truth.”

Humans aren’t perfect. As much as we strive to do well, to succeed, and to be on top of our game, we will make mistakes. How we respond to those mistakes is the true measure of our character.  Own them, learn from them, and move on.

About Coaching Tuesday

Coaching Tuesday is a new weekly feature devoted to ideas, the latest research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.  Coaching Tuesday is written by Coaching Services Partners from The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, our 130 coaches have coached over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

• We don’t do politics very well. We haven’t quite navigated the whole office politics thing at all. You may see that as naive, but chances are, we may never actually master office politics. Truth be told, we are just not that into it. Our office politics are more like “The Office” and less like a scene from “House of Cards.”
• Yes, we were the age that grew up with MySpace and “the” Facebook. We crave information and can read through it very quickly. We have the ability to look at a large amount of information and sift through the minutia to get what we need out of it. We actually embrace vulnerability as long as we are kept in the know about things. We hate to be blindsided or caught off guard.
• Once we’ve earned it, stay out of our way! (In a good way). We are not a big fan of being micro-managed and want opportunities to be creative and innovative. We’ve grown up with technological innovation happening constantly around us and so that has nurtured our own creativity. And we want to show that off in our work.

To all non-millenials, remember, we are the generation that saw our parents lose their jobs, pensions, and futures during the economic downturn. We watched the news as the unemployment line was packed with people looking to stay afloat. We heard many say, “I lost my job and that was the only thing I knew how to do.” So we are diversifying our biggest portfolio by investing in ourselves. We are getting as many skills as possible, and although we may be accused of “coming for your jobs”, we are really just in survival mode. And we probably always will be.
Gus is a Learning and Performance Professional at the Ken Blanchard Companies and is currently finishing his PhD in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

• In the weakest teams, there is no accountability
• In mediocre teams, bosses are the source of accountability
• In high performance teams, peers manage the vast majority of performance problems with one another

If you are on the first two teams, look for a trade or try to resolve the problem. None of these options are really that easy, but the latter option is probably the most feasible. Here’s what you need to know about accountability. Don’t be scared of it. If accountability is seen as negative and punitive in the office, do what you can to change that perspective for everyone. Put up a challenge for the various task goals that everyone has and create accountability for one another.
Here’s a distinction that you need to be aware of: there is a critical difference between “holding someone accountable” and “creating accountability” in your team. The first creates a culture of fear and brings potentially significant, negative connotations and impact. The second allows the team to be mutually invested in the success of oneself and others. Decide for yourself what environment you want to create in your office and see what outcomes you get as a result.
Gus is a Learning and Performance Professional at the Ken Blanchard Companies and is currently finishing his PhD in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

1. Start with the open door policy: Hopefully, you’ve heard of this term. If not, the basic idea is that your door is always “open”. If someone you lead has an issue they need to discuss, they can come by your office, email you, call you, etc… at just about any time of the working day. Having this policy can remove a major hurdle and allow the people you lead to get past problems faster than having to waiting until you’re available.
2. Draw a boundary with your open door policy: While it’s great for your people to be able to discuss issues or get direction at any time, it may not always be feasible for you to maintain this policy at all hours of the day. If you have approaching deadlines or your own workload is starting to pile up, block out some time on your schedule. Set a ground rule with the people you lead that you can’t be disturbed during this time unless it’s absolutely critical. Be sure to follow up with step 3 below after establishing your boundary.
3. Find your second-in-command: You’ve established your boundary, but now what? Your people need a backup plan for time-sensitive issues. After all, customers will only wait for so long before an issue gets out of hand. If you work in an organization with a large workforce, perhaps there’s another manager in the same department as you who can be your backup (also allowing you to reciprocate the favor).
   If you work in a smaller organization and there’s not an immediate manager who can cover for you, perhaps there’s someone you lead who is an expert in their role who can be groomed to take on this responsibility. Not only will it allow you to keep your boundary, but it allows you to tackle another management responsibility of developing your people.

Finding the right balance between being available and completing your own work will always be a juggling act, and you may find yourself needing to adjust and readjust your boundaries depending on the needs of your work and the needs of your people.
Leave your comments!

“Image courtesy of Stuart Miles, / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”.

Chances are that you work with one or more people who have quit & stayed.  They are people who show up just for the paycheck.  They aren’t passionate about their job.  They don’t have the motivation to go above and beyond.  In a perfect world, everyone would get paid handsomely to do what they love, but unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.  Almost every company and organization has employees who fit into this category.

Amazon recently listed this trend in the annual letter to shareholders from company CEO Jeff Bezos along with a plan to deal with employees who have quit & stayed.  The idea behind this plan is that once a year, employees will be offered a payout to quit.  Depending on how many years you’ve been with Amazon, you could make anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 for handing in your resignation.   The idea isn’t to create a high turnover rate, but instead, bring in new blood and energy where existing employees may have no interest in maintaining their career with Amazon.
Personally, I’d be curious to know what this does to their turnover rate.  Will they see an uptick in the number of employees who move on to other companies?  More importantly, are they paying adding unnecessary costs by paying employees to resign who might resign in either case even if they weren’t getting a bonus to do so?
Jeff Bezos says it best: “In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”  That is one statement I wholeheartedly agree with.

Be sure to take a look at The Ken Blanchard Companies Quit & Stayed Leadership Livecast.  You can even view 17 minutes of the Livecast for free.
Leave your comments!

• Be careful about getting wrapped up with what the seagull manager brings and be prepared to diffuse the situation.
• What to watch out for:  He’s not really your friend, unless he needs something from you.

Managers:

• Play in the weekly football pool, but never accept his trades on fantasy football.
• What to watch out for: Don’t get wrapped up in his management style. It may look effective and envious, but it’s not an efficient way to manage long-term.

Executives:

• They are gimmicks. He might “get the job done”, but he will lose some of your best talent.
• What to watch out for: Pay attention to turnover in this department. It might be a red flag for a dysfunctional team.

The Peacock:
Don’t be confused with the peacock. He’s a deceiver. He looks like he’s doing a bunch of work but he’s really lazy. His favorite management tool is the “delegation.” He’s too busy with everything he’s got going on so he gives away everything he’s supposed to do. He is tangential with his speech because he’s not really saying anything but words continually spew out of his mouth. No one understands him, but somehow we hear him. You may think its Armani but really the suit is a hand-me-down from his late, great Uncle Cornelius.
Peacocks don’t play well with direct reports but tend to get along well with same level managers. Executives aren’t fooled.
Direct Reports:

• Prioritize the tasks given and don’t be afraid to get clarification.
• What to watch out for: He will task you to death, so don’t get burned out.

Managers:

• Don’t be a Peacock. For the sake of those who work for you, please don’t be a Peacock.
• What to watch out for: 3 Piece Suits aren’t that great.

Executives:

• Please send to remedial leadership training.
• What to watch out for: Take a second look before you decide to promote.

The Chameleon
This guy. He’s quite the charmer and is generally liked in the office. He brings donuts on Fridays and loves puppies. These are all good things, but those that know him best are not sold on him. He has a tendency to say one thing and do another, over-commits to projects, and rarely delivers on what he promises. He tries to please too many people and has mastered the art of the fake smile.
Chameleons generally get along well with everyone, except those closest to him.
Direct Reports:

• Have a conversation with him about how you feel; it might actually go better than you think.
• What to watch out for: Stay away from the donuts.

Managers:

• If you have this tendency, then don’t be afraid to say no every once in a while.
• What to watch out for: If you know other managers like this, be careful in conversing with them. They may gossip and take up too much of your time with unnecessary conversation.

Executives:

• May not be the best to run day-to-day operations.
• What to watch out for: You may see signs of disorganization and lack of process in their department.

If you happen to run into one of these types of managers, just be sure to steer clear as much as you can!
Gus is a Learning and Performance Professional at the Ken Blanchard Companies and is currently finishing his PhD in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

Accountability tops the list of management challenges in many organizations.  But most leaders are approaching the issue from a compliance standpoint instead of as a motivational issue. That’s a mistake.

As Scott Blanchard, principal and executive vice president with The Ken Blanchard Companies shares in the company’s January Ignite newsletter, “You cannot crack the whip enough, or hold someone accountable enough, to achieve the kind of results you can if, instead, you focus on helping people understand the vision, care about it deeply, and see themselves as a part of it.”

In Blanchard’s experience, leaders who create that kind of alignment don’t have to worry about accountability. Instead, employees will start holding the leader accountable to clear the way and help employees get things done.

Alignment Can Be A Challenge

In Performance Management: Putting Research into Action, author and consultant William Schiemann shares the results of a Metrus Group survey that identifies six gaps that get in the way of organization alignment. While each factor on its own contributes to a portion of the problem, the cumulative effect is staggering—only 14% of the organizations Schiemann polled reported that their employees have a good understanding of their company’s strategy and direction.

Strategies for Closing the Gap

For leaders looking to close the alignment gap in their organizations, Schiemann recommends seven key steps:

1. Develop a clear, agreed-on vision and strategy.
2. Translate the vision and strategy into clear, understandable goals and measures.
3. Include and build passion for the vision, strategy, goals among those who are implementing them.
4. Provide clarity regarding individual roles and requirements and link them across the organization.
5. Make sure that people have the talent, information, and resources to reach the goals.
6. Give clear, timely feedback on goal attainment.
7. Provide meaningful incentives to encourage employees to develop or deploy sufficient capabilities to achieve the goals.

Impact Mapping

One of the tools that Blanchard uses to begin closing the gap is an “impact map” that creates a clear line-of-sight between an individual employee’s work and the overall goals of the organization.

“When people understand where their organization is going—including the role they play in it—they step up, work less selfishly and they tend to make better business decisions on behalf of the company. That’s because they can see the impact of every decision and how it impacts overall results.”

For managers looking to set and achieve goals more effectively in the coming year, John Hester, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, recommends a three-step process.

• Approach goal setting as a partnership. This is something to be done in partnership with your team member. It should be a collaborative process. So the manager needs to know what the employee’s key areas of responsibility are, what is expected in the role, and what they want to see in terms of performance. The key is to have that discussion with the employee.
• Identify why a particular goal is motivating. What difference does it make in the organization, or to the team, or to the individual employee? Sometimes all people need to know is why the task is important. The “why” explains how the person’s task fits in with overall job performance and the goals and objectives of the unit, division, organization, and customer. It clarifies how the task supports higher-level outcomes.
• Diagnose competence and commitment levels. It’s important that a manager find out about experience with a specific task and then partner with the employee to determine what they need in terms of direction and support to be successful with this particular assignment.

To read the entire article, check out Rethinking Accountability.  You’ll find some additional ideas by motivation expert Dr. David Facer on Six Alternatives to an Accountability Discussion, plus a link to a free January 30 webinar on 3 Keys to Building Alignment and Accountability, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. You represent your employer outside of work – I’ve mentioned this before, but even if you’re partying away from your place of employment, and even if you’re “off the clock”, anything negative you do outside of work can reflect badly on your employer, along with affecting you directly.  Be sure to think ahead before you act.  You might not be “working” at a company event, but your employer will treat bad behavior the same way they would during normal working conditions.
2. Be careful with the booze – This can be the biggest reason for a loss of employment.  Some companies don’t allow alcohol at company events, while others do.  If your company allows it, just remember that alcohol affects your judgment.  I’ve personally seen more than one employee get fired (at different places of employment, nonetheless) for doing or saying something foolish because they drank too much at a company event.  If you’re going to drink in front of coworkers, be sure you drink in moderation.
3. Don’t be a “Don Juan” – Maybe you have a crush on a coworker.  The company party may seem like a perfect time to make a move since it may be more informal, but it can actually backfire and create a nightmare with HR.  If the target of your affection doesn’t reciprocate that affection, they might claim harassment, and you might be escorted to the exit the next day.
4. 

   Image courtesy of pat138241 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

   
   Watch the gossip – Again, the less informal setting can give you a false sense of security.  You might think that you are free to say more than you normally would about your coworkers or boss, but be ready to pay for each negative comment.  You might not be fired, but your comments could earn you a label you don’t want.  At a minimum, it could jeopardize future promotions and/or merit increases.
5. No unnecessary use of the copy machine –  Ok, maybe people don’t do this as much as you see in a stereotypical 80’s movie that shows a holiday company party, but don’t use the office copy machine to take images of certain parts of your anatomy.    Just don’t.

What other traps exist at a company party?  Leave your comments!

I didn’t really know what that all entailed, but after having to get up on the first day at 4:00AM, I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. Picking strawberries in the summer in Oregon sounds pretty romantic, but cold mornings, long days, and PB&J for lunch every day is a less than thrilling experience. Plus, I was horrible at picking strawberries; I was the worst strawberry picker they had hired that summer and probably the worst one in the history of that farm. After a few weeks, one of the farm managers said, “Hey Gus, we like you, but we don’t like the way you work.” Yikes!

Working hard- A skill worth having

Aside from the fact that I almost lost my job at 12 years old, I made $180.00 dollars that summer and to this day, I still don’t think I’ve spent it. I always make sure my bank account doesn’t go below $180.00. But really, I earned a lot more than the money I made that summer. I earned a sense of the importance of hard work. And that is what I truly feel is not being communicated to the older generations. I say communicated because I feel that while Gen X and Y are truly hard workers, the message they communicate is perceived much differently. The younger leaders of today are quite frankly a lot more demanding. They want more time off to spend with their family, want a work-life balance that allows them to work from home from time to time, and want autonomy in their roles.  These are the same people who saw their mothers and fathers work for a company their whole lives only to be laid off and left on unemployment. So, I don’t blame them (myself).

Established leaders in the organization want to hear this: “I will work for it.” That’s what they were told as young leaders and it embodies the values they hold on to dearly. So give it the good ol’ college try. You will be surprised at what opportunities may be given to you if the boss knows you’re going to give it all you got.

Gus is a Learning and Performance Professional at the Ken Blanchard Companies and is currently finishing his PhD in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

1. Don’t doubt yourself. Doubt can be quite the speech-killer, so believe that you can overcome and succeed. The brain can make surprising connections under high pressure situations. Or, in my fellow instructor’s case, make no connections… and then, you just might put yourself and/or someone else in an awkward situation.
2. Take everything as a learning experience. This mindset can help you get more from your best moments, as well as really understanding your worst ones.
3. Just go with it. Never think that something is ruined if it doesn’t pan out the way you thought. Be creative. Sometimes, things can turn out better than how you’ve planned.

You never know when a moment of unexpected leadership will strike next, but these tips can help you turn things around and make the outcomes a bit more… expected.

Eventually people get there—but it comes with a cost, says Ann Phillips in an interview for The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Ignite newsletter.

“It’s one of the toughest types of issue to address because on the surface everyone’s putting on a brave face and pretending that everything is okay. But if you scratch a little underneath you’ll see the level of dissatisfaction that’s costing organizations billions of dollars in untapped productivity, creativity, and innovation.

The biggest problem getting in the way of managers delivering the direction and support people need is an overestimation of their current skills.  As Phillips explains, “Leaders often believe they are providing direction when they tell people to ‘Do this, and then do that, and be sure to get it done by this date,’ but that is only part of providing direction—and probably the lowest form of the behavior.”

The same is true when it comes to supportive behavior, says Phillips. “Managers feel as if they know what supportive behavior is and usually have their own ideas about what it looks like. But without instruction, most people default to behavior that consists mainly of encouragement.

“People are good at encouraging others with phrases such as, ‘You can do it. We’re glad you’re here. We believe in you. Use your best judgment.’ But they miss out on all of the other supportive behaviors that are just as important such as listening, sharing information, and facilitating self-directed problem solving.”

“So folks are good at telling people what to do and then cheerleading them on to accomplish the task. And that is the one-two, ‘I want you to do this, and I know you can handle it’ combination that most people are getting in terms of direction and support from their managers. On the surface this may seem reasonable, but it is a style that only works well for direct reports who are already accomplished at the task. For people who are new to a task or are running into problems or are unsure of themselves, it’s a style that actually hinders progress—and can be damaging to overall growth and development.”

For managers looking to increase their ability to offer direction and support for their people, Phillips has three key recommendations.

Recognize your own default settings. Most leaders are unaware that they have a default setting when it comes to leadership even though assessments show that 54% of managers use only one style when it comes to providing direction and support for their people—either Directing, Coaching, Supporting, or Delegating. Each of these styles is great if it is a match for what a direct report needs. Each is also a hindrance if it is the wrong style for the situation.

Expand your repertoire of directive behaviors. Leaders need to think beyond just issuing directives and holding people accountable. Phillips encourages leaders to become more skillful at goal setting and putting in the time to provide day-to-day coaching as needed..

Expand your repertoire of supportive behaviors.   Leaders need to improve listening skills and be willing to share information to facilitate self-directed problem solving. This includes listening with the intent to learn, to be influenced, and to understand—not just respond. People recognize that information is power, yet many managers still try to maintain control by keeping information to themselves even though it undermines employee development.

Start today

Phillips notes that, “Managers have the ability to bring out so much more from their people. Find out where your people are at with their tasks. What do they need from you in terms of direction and support? Improve your skills in both of these areas and see what a difference it makes.”

To learn more, read Phillips’ original article on Direction and Support: It’s harder than you think! or check out her free on-demand webinar, People Management 101: Providing Direction and Support, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

In an extreme case, maybe they actually punished you for offering an opinion that they didn’t want to hear. In fact, at some point in the “conversation” you actually wished you could close that open door, because with it open, the whole world could overhear the public flogging you were receiving for voicing your honest opinion.

Ever been there?

For starters, decide that you are not going to behave that way. Decide that you are not going to be the kind of leader whose door may be open, but that’s the only thing that is.

People are understandably uncomfortable dealing with opinions different from their own. It is an unusual person who looks forward to hearing what they didn’t want to listen to in the first place. And we all learn that it just isn’t worth the risk of being candid with others, particularly if they’re more powerful than we are. In short, political behavior trumps productivity improvement.

So what can you do to address this? Here are three recommendations:

1. It’s about opening your mind, not your door. Force yourself to listen to what people are telling you. As they’re talking, keep telling yourself that there is at least something correct in what they’re saying. Listen for it. Unfortunately, many of us do the opposite: we listen for the weak link in the logic chain of what people are saying. It’s fun, isn’t it, to suggest an improvement to someone else’s viewpoint or plan. It makes us feel good about our contribution, our value added, our incredible wisdom, insight, and—now that you mention it—genius. But are we reducing the personal commitment level of the person we’re talking to? And is a 5 percent improvement of the strategy worth a 20 percent reduction of the activation energy it will take to get the idea off the ground?

2. Your door may be open, but you don’t have to know everything about what’s going on.  The only thing worse than not having an open door policy at all is having one, and there are people standing in your threshold all the time. Make it clear that you want people to take responsibility for doing the right thing, not sharing it with you. Decisions should be made at the lowest operational level, by people who are closest to the action. You’re not protected by a policy that was made by someone who isn’t involved in what’s happening right now. If you are executing on something that you think is bad, even though the order came down from the top of the organization, you are abdicating your moral responsibility. Napoleon said such a leader should be seen as a criminal.

3. Tell people you really do want their best. A strategic use of the open door can be quite helpful. But you want spontaneity and candor. You want it with the bark on. Political correctness is of course appropriate, but it should be used sparingly. The focus here is getting the job done, to specification and on time.

Open doors should prompt people to collaborate appropriately, not abdicate their responsibility. These should be occasional opportunities to give and receive feedback and suggestions. Properly used, they can expedite progress. But improperly used they can be more trouble than they’re worth. As Drucker said, more or less, “So much of what we call leadership consists of making it harder for people to do their work.”

About the author

Dr. Dick Ruhe is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read his posts here on LeaderChat the fourth Saturday of each month.

The question they were asking was, “How do we keep our people motivated?”  I asked why they think they have an employee motivation problem.  They explained that while same-store and company-wide performance has been terrific, it is slowing, and some employees are becoming less enthusiastic.   Those employees are becoming more frustrated when they do not delight a customer and earn a sale.

“What do you currently do when an employee gets upset that they did not fully satisfy a customer?” I asked.  One regional sales manager explained that they talk with the employee about things the employee could have been done better.  After all, I was told, “the employees need to be accountable for the results.”

The most important detail here is that the employee in that example works in a successful store, and is already disappointed to have not delighted a customer.  The sales associates—often in their late teens and early twenties, and highly skilled—take great personal pride in delighting customers.  The managers said they work hard to make the in-store experience fun for their child customers and their parents.  So, the motivational question here is: What are the best ways to help a salesperson (or any employee) who is already eager to delight a customer do it better in the future after they fail to meet a high standard held by both their organization and themselves?

First, let me say that the accountability approach is the last appeal you want to make.  No matter how skillfully we parse it, and no matter how sweetly we explain the situation, the accountability discussion is a thinly veiled form of control.  It says very clearly: You are responsible for this and I need you to really get that. Do you understand?  I have met very few employees who walk away from accountability discussions feeling good about themselves, their managers, and the company.  Instead, try using a less controlling, autonomy-supportive approach.

Here are some methods you might consider.  Research shows these approaches are much more likely to stimulate positive motivational responses than emphasizing accountability.

1. Take the employee’s perspective.  Listen carefully to the employee’s experience so you understand it deeply.  In this case, recognize that the employee is already disappointed and desires to do a great job.
2. Encourage initiative and choice.  Help the employee discover several new options for future action.  Be careful not to tell them everything they need to do.  Encouraging initiative means listening and guiding first and foremost, not pushing your formula.
3. Help the employee take on more challenge—but not too much.  One or two more challenging steps at a time will generally work well.
4. Provide a logical rationale for any direct requests you have.  They need to make their new actions their own.  The more you push the less likely they will experience optimal motivation. 
5. Minimize use of pressuring language and controlling tone of voice.  Dialing down fear, concern, and pressure is vital to tapping into the employee’s natural desire to improve, grow, and perform at high levels.

All of the above approaches have been shown to result in positive behavioral responses because they help people feel validated, safe, and free from unnecessary controls.  They are like honey to accountability’s vinegar.  After all, which would you prefer?  Honey or vinegar?

About the author:

The Motivation Guy  (also known as Dr. David Facer)  is one of the principal authors—together with Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.

So, of course, they decided to sleep in and didn’t do any physical training for the day.
And of course my team was upset that they didn’t get to sleep in and come to work at 9:30. The last thing I wanted to create was resentment across the two teams. I thought that maybe a “team building” exercise was in order, but I didn’t carry it out because I felt I would probably screw that up too.  I was upset about the whole situation, but mainly I was irritated at myself.
After looking back on the incident, here’s what I learned:

• I never really gave him full autonomy

Here’s what I really said: You can have full autonomy unless you do something I don’t want you to do or something that I disagree with you on. What I told him he could do and what I wanted him to do were two separate things.

• I shouldn’t have given him full autonomy

Giving full autonomy over everything is not really leadership at all. I thought I was doing the right thing by giving him autonomy, but what I should have done in that situation was to give him more direction as to what is expected and necessary. Autonomy has its place and limitations; using it correctly is when it’s the most impactful.

• My communication was not aligned with my expectations

I was never clear on my expectations. What was standard and status quo for me was not necessarily the same for him. Talking through each other’s expectations would have been helpful for minimizing conflict and building trust.
For any further information or questions contact me at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

***

Cheryl DePonte is a Human Resources Learning and Performance Specialist at The Ken Blanchard Companies and has over 15 years experience in the fields of organizational effectiveness and human resources development.

Most challenging conversations are more effective when we take the time to prepare for them. I’d like to suggest five things you can do to be better prepared to guide your next challenging conversation to a successful outcome.

Gather the relevant information.

First of all, collect the relevant information pertaining to the topic of the conversation—the who, what, and why. Ask yourself:

• Who do I need to talk to?
• What is the problem?
• Why might this problem be occurring?

Envision the desired outcome.

Imagine the best possible outcome. If the conversation goes well, what will be the result? Be specific as you visualize this. Being keenly aware of your intentions will make preparation easier—and keeping those intentions in mind will guide the conversation in the direction you want it to go.

Anticipate the other person’s reactions and your response.

Think about ways the other person might react to the conversation to guard against the possibility of being blindsided by their words or actions. If you have considered their probable reactions and determined how you will best respond , you will be ahead of the game. Remember, though, that you can’t predict every reaction—even from someone you know well.

Pay attention to logistical issues.

The environment surrounding a difficult conversation can affect its outcome. A bit of forethought and preparation can have a significant positive impact. Here are some best practices for handling the logistics of the conversation.

• Schedule more than enough time – 30 minutes more than you expect.
• Hold the conversation in a private, safe, neutral location if possible.
• Make sure you will not be interrupted.
• Turn all phones and devices off.
• Have tissue available if tears are a possibility.
• Have a glass or bottle of water handy.
• If the conversation is with a direct report, be prepared to give the person the rest of the day off if needed—and do not have the conversation at the end of the day on Friday.

Decide if the conversation is worth having.

Note that I put the decision about actually having the conversation last.  Sometimes you find that the conversation itself is not as important as the deliberations you went through to prepare for it. What you really needed was to sort out your own thoughts and feelings. After all of your preparation, if you determine that you don’t need to have the conversation, you will lose nothing by changing your mind.

What other ideas do you have for preparing for challenging conversations?

About the author:

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in performance and self-leadership.  You can read John’s posts on the second Thursday of each month.

 “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” —William Shakespeare

When recently opening a package of Green Tea, the quote, “It’s not a privilege to know others. Know yourself. That’s a privilege,” was attached to the string. Perhaps the tea manufacture was having a caffeinated paraphrasing of a Lao Tzu philosophy to push the notion that you’ll some how be more enlightened when you drink this potion.

Self Reflection?

They also look at why some leaders inspire people to work together effectively, while others cannot.

The pivotal ingredient in both cases?  Trust

Drawing from Ken Blanchard’s latest and brand new book, Trust Works! Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships (co-authored with Cynthia Olmstead and Martha Lawrence) Blanchard identifies four components that either build—or bust—trust with people.

The four attributes are:

• Able—does the leader Demonstrate Competence
• Believable—does the leader Act with Integrity
• Connected—does the leader Care about Others
• Dependable—does the leader Maintain Reliability

Blanchard identifies that, “The ability to build trust is a defining competency,” and he recommends that leaders take a two-step approach to evaluating their trustworthiness—beginning  with a self assessment.  To make this easier, Blanchard provides a link to a free online tool www.trustworksbook.com

The self-assessment gives leaders a chance to see if their actions might be contributing to low-trust relationships through behaviors that are seen as less than Able, Believable, Connected, and Dependable.”

Second, Blanchard recommends that leaders ask colleagues and direct reports to evaluate their behavior as well.

“What you learn about yourself can be eye-opening,” says Blanchard. “Many of us are unaware when our behavior is eroding the trust of others around us. What seems like acceptable behavior to us may be causing a friend, spouse, boss, employee, or significant other to feel downright wary.”

As a case in point, Blanchard shares a story about his own experience using the assessment and how he discovered that his staff scored him low on being Dependable.

While Blanchard knew he had trouble saying “no” to requests and liked to say yes to others as much as possible, he didn’t realize it was a problem until he learned that, because he said “yes” to so many things and overcommitted himself, he was sometimes regarded as undependable.

Using the assessment and the Able, Believable, Connected, and Dependable framework, Blanchard and his team were able to discuss Ken’s “trust buster” trait. Together the team was able to develop solutions. As a result, today—in addition to being careful about not over-committing himself—when  Ken goes on trips he doesn’t take his own business cards. Instead, he gives out the cards of his executive assistant, who can make sure Ken has the time and resources to follow through before he makes commitments.

How are you doing on trust?  Are your behaviors consistent with your intentions?  To read more about Ken and Scott Blanchard’s thinking on this topic, be sure to check out, Do Your Employees Trust You?

Here’s the reality.  If you need super-vision, you are not leading, you are babysitting.

How to really lead remote employees?  Start by shifting your mindset.

• Know your role. You are not an Olympic judge holding up signs to rate a performance. Your job is to help employees contribute to your organization’s success today and develop them to contribute more tomorrow.
• Recognize that over monitoring leads to malicious compliance, not enthusiasm and extra effort.

Second, look for ways to improve the measurement and tracking of contributions.

• Make sure you are monitoring outcomes and results instead of activities.
• Consider setting targeted, shorter goals.  Explore work planning concepts like Agile Strategy. Use two to four week goal sprints to provide prompt recognition and spur innovation to increase productivity and results.
• Seek out data sources where employees can monitor their own results.   Try to model the automated school zone boards that report your speed as 34 in a 25 mph zone. Build in systems so both you and your employees receive automatic feedback for recognition and improvement. Don’t make them wait for their quarterly review to get feedback.
• Develop your measures collaboratively.  Even if you previously performed an employee’s job, some aspects of the role have probably changed.  Work together to identify what real success looks like.  It builds commitment and increases the accuracy of performance measures.

Work—particularly virtual work—requires us to re-think our notion of leadership and re-imagine our performance management systems. None of the recommendations provided here are easy to implement.  The alternative, though, is for our leaders to struggle and our employees to be hampered by that struggling.  In the long run, relying on super-vision gets us nowhere.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

Recently, I decided to try some new ways to be more productive and less stressed:

1. Spa water – in a scientific study, those who were fully-hydrated had improved mood and were less sleepy. So, I decided to try drinking spa water (sometimes called “infused water”) and I’m hooked. You get your water in for the day and it’s flavored without all the calories and chemicals. Refill as needed and enjoy. Here is a wikihow on how to make spa water:

How to make spa water

2. Concentration Music – it is said that listening to baroque classical music has been scientifically shown to improve mood, productivity, and concentration. So, I decided to give it a whirl and wouldn’t you know, it works! I get more work done faster and more precisely while being relaxed the entire time. Gotta love classical music! Here is a sample for your listening pleasure:

3. A Timer – scientific studies also show we have a limited attention span for tasks. This time has varied in studies anywhere from 10 minutes to up to 40 minutes. So, I set a timer and only worked on a task for a specified period and then took a break. I also used a timer to go back and forth between tasks. This has worked wonders for getting many more things done in a day than I could have imagined. A link to a fabulous, easy-to-set online timer:
Online Timer
These tips for containing the crazy work well for my own personal work style and help me to be a more calm, productive, and focused leader.
Share with us your tips to contain the crazy, increase productivity, and reduce stress. No matter how unique they may be, please share! What works for you?

In the workplace as well as other areas of our lives, we sometimes encounter people who apparently are stuck in the mode of complaining and unwilling to move toward resolution.  I have discovered a simple process to help complainers move from whining to action.

1. Hear them out. First, hear them out one more time. When they complain again—and you know they will—take the time to listen to them, giving them your full attention and energy. It is best to do this in a private setting where neither of you will be distracted.

2. Summarize their issue. Next, when you are sure that you understand the problem at hand and the other person feels heard, interrupt them if necessary and gently say, “Let me make sure I fully understand.” Restate the situation and their frustration as you see it. For example, if they have been complaining about being micromanaged, you might say, “What I’m hearing is that you are frustrated because your boss is micromanaging you.” Get their agreement to your summary—but do not let them continue with their rant.

3. Help them consider their options. Now ask this magic question: “Understanding that this is the situation, what are your options?” In a best-case scenario, they will have some ideas and you can help them come up with an action plan. Chances are, however, that they are too stuck to think of any options. If so, lead with some ideas of your own and solicit their feedback. Either way, help them consider their options and decide on their next steps.

4. Make them accountable for next steps. To add an element of accountability, at the end of the conversation summarize the agreed-upon action plan. Ask the person when they plan to take the first step and set up a date and time to check in with them

What do you do if, despite all your efforts, the other person refuses to move on and seems as if they want to stay stuck?

At this point, I suggest a few options:

• Try to help them understand the effect being stuck is having on them and on those around them. Hopefully, you can stir them to action.
• Refer them to someone else for counseling. Perhaps the HR department has some options for them.
• Remember to take care of yourself. It may be time to ask yourself: Is this relationship worth the emotional drain I experience each time we are together?

I hope these thoughts help you to move others to action. Let me know any other ideas you have to help others get unstuck.

About the author:

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in performance and self-leadership.  You can read John’s posts on the second Thursday of each month.

Ok, so we like to watch a little TV and play video games, so what’s the big deal? We live life on the edge (of reality) and love to surf (the web) and socialize (on Facebook) all day. We are the doers. We seek not war, but peace. We love reality television and hang on every word they say (even the illiterate ones). We are not better than any of you, but we are special. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are just extensions of our inner self. We love rap music, iPhones, and Dancing with the Stars (my wife made me put that in here). We are not all about ourselves; everyone is just all about us.
This is our motto.
Tom Brokaw accurately named the World War II generation as the Greatest Generation. After reading the book, watching the Band of Brothers series, and hearing the stories from WWII vets themselves, I can’t deny this. These men and women were some of the purist of Americans—hard-working, dedicated, and loyal to their values. I remember visiting Normandy about 10 years ago and seeing the crosses of the buried soldiers neatly displayed—such a beautiful display of sadness and pain. In my own experience as a captain in the Army and a combat veteran serving in Afghanistan, I hardly saw any sense of entitlement among the troops. There were men and women who were generally unhappy to be there (I admit even sometimes I wondered why we were there),  and hated everything about the war, but they still wanted to fight. There was a sense of pride about them and they fought long and hard. While in Afghanistan, I had a West Point Captain tell me about his 18-month deployment. He said the length of the deployment really hit him hard at the first Thanksgiving dinner. They were just about to start eating when one of his soldiers said, “Hey sir, don’t worry about saying grace. I’ll do it this year and you can say grace next year.”
I don’t claim we are the Greatest Generation but I do think Gen Y has contributed significantly more than just TV and video games. We are a young generation, but like many others we adapt, overcome, and move on. I never liked the label, “entitlement generation” because frankly I don’t think we deserve it. I hope this generation can rid ourselves of this brand and demonstrate the core American qualities that have been delivered to us from previous generations.
For any further information or questions contact me at gus.jaramillo@kenblanchard.com

Can you determine at least three important take-aways in this story from a plant manager in India who recently learned the skill of conducting Motivational Outlook Conversations?

On his first day back after his training, the plant manager noticed a Technical Service Executive in the lab having a discussion with an external contractor. While she was wearing safety glasses, the contractor was not. The manager has a no tolerance policy as far as safety is concerned and his normal response would be to call the technician to his office and in his words, “read her the riot act.”

According to the manager’s self-assessment: “I am known to blow a fuse (or two) when safety rules are flouted, however, I managed to keep my cool and decided to test my training.”

He asked the technician to his office and could see that she was worried about his reaction. But instead of leading with his dismay and disappointment, he started by explaining that he had just received some training on motivation. He shared key concepts with her. He then asked her if she thought that the rule to wear safety glasses, even when there was no experiment on, was “stupid” as there is no danger to the eyes. Did she feel imposed upon to wear safety glasses as she had no choice?

Since the technician was invited to have a discussion rather than “dressing down,” she was open and candid. She explained that she had a two-year old child and she was extremely concerned about lab safety as she wanted to reach home safe every evening. To the manager’s great surprise, she also shared that in certain areas, she would prefer even more, not less, stringent safety measures. For example, she suggested that safety shoes should be required for lab experiments that are conducted at elevated temperatures.

But when it came to wearing safety glasses when no experiments were being conducted, she just could not understand the rationale and did, indeed, resent the imposed rule. As a result, she didn’t feel compelled to enforce it, especially with an external contractor. The manager said he understood her feelings and went on to provide the rationale that the intention was that wearing glasses would become a force of habit, just like wearing a safety belt in the car.

The manager said he saw the light dawn in her eyes.

When it comes to your leadership and the motivation of those you lead, consider:

1. Self-regulation is a requirement if you want to lead differently—and better. Challenging your natural tendencies and patterns of behavior provides you with more options on how to lead. The new choices you make can be rewarding and productive for you, but especially for those you lead. As the plant manager reported: “I am sure if I had just followed my normal instincts and given her a piece of my mind, I would have been met with a hangdog look, profuse apologies, and a promise not to ever do this again. And it probably would have happened again. She would have gone away from my office with feelings of resentment and being imposed upon and I would also have had a disturbed day due to all the negative energy.”

2. Admit when you are trying something new. Be honest about expanding your leadership skills. People will appreciate your sincere and authentic efforts. Says the plant manager: “Suffice it to say that in my view, my little experiment was a success. I have since shared what I learned with many of my team members and plan to have more Motivational Outlook Conversations with them in the coming weeks.”

3. Remember that as a manager you cannot motivate anyone. What you can do is create an environment where an individual is more likely to be optimally motivated. Ask (and genuinely care about) how a person is feeling, help them recognize their own sense of well-being regarding a particular issue, and provide them with rationale without trying to “sell” it.

Other take-aways? Please share!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

About the author:

Susan Fowler is one of the principal authors—together  with David Facer and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.  Their posts appear on the first and third Monday of each month.

• Your potential is limitless only you set boundaries on your success
• Always assume full responsibility of your actions
• Seek to be the best at what you do
• Find a role-model who exemplifies the skills and character you aspire to possess
• Nothing ever goes as planned so stay flexible
• Stay in the present moment
• Develop a warm-up routine that prepares you mentally and physically for any challenge ahead
• Seize the opportunity in front of you, it may only show itself once
• Push yourself and your team beyond what is believed to be possible
• Listen to your teammates with an open mind but act on your final instincts
• Wins and losses are a byproduct of the process; focus on the process
• Learn from a loss;  do not dwell on it
• Celebrate success and find a way to replicate it

If you believe in yourself have dedication and pride and never quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.
-Paul “Bear” Bryant

Interested in learning how some of leaderships top thought leaders manage to accomplish more tasks in less time? Visit www.leadershiplivecast.com to register today for The Ken Blanchard Companies next free event “Doing Still More with Less” on April 24^th.

Beyond absolutely loving that visual, the question really caught me. How often to do you hear someone ask you why you do what you do?

My “whys” are straightforward.

First, I think all employees, from today’s new hires to the most seasoned top execs, long for a more fulfilling work experience than they have.  Most can’t, or won’t, say it like that—not in such blatant terms.  But their words, body language, mental and physical exhaustion, dry business approach, and chronic complaints about other people (seldom about themselves, of course) offer some evidence of this assertion.

Second, the need is widespread. I have never had less than one individual from a consulting, coaching, or training program in any organization come up and tell me during or afterwards, “You need to get my boss to learn this stuff.”  They explain that the motivational culture they currently work in consists mostly of pressure and demands for ever greater accountability.

My third reason is the most potent of them all.  It helps make the entire world a better place.  In essence, this is optimal motivation as moral agent.  Huh?  Moral agent?  Well, I believe people long to do good work.  They long to be part of organizational cultures that are psychologically healthy, intellectually vibrant, and purposefully productive. Motivation research shows we thrive with such vitality and well-being.  And don’t you think employees also have a right to it, too?

In the end, my biggest why is that enriching the work environment by teaching others how to leverage the most up-to-date science of motivation in practical ways is the morally right thing to do.  It’s one small action that offers the fresh possibility of making life more fulfilling for everyone.

When asked how well the traditional mantras of, “Results, results, results!” and, “People need to be held accountable,” helps them thrive at work, most employees report, “They don’t—not really.”  We have enough old approaches like that. Instead, what we need now is actionable individual, interpersonal, and systems-focused tools that help all employees—individual contributors and management alike—to rejuvenate their stale and pressure-filled work environments.  We need psychologically healthy ways to bring employees alive, and to make work—and our entire lives—better.

About the author:

The Motivation Guy  (also known as Dr. David Facer)  is one of the principal authors—together with Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Optimal Motivation process and workshop.  Their posts appear on the first and third Monday of each month.

As a leader, how do you judge which learning modality will lead to the most effective, quality learning experience? How do you appeal to learners on your teams at differing levels of technological savviness without discouraging their development? Or, worse, avoid humiliating anyone who is not as technologically savvy while simultaneously avoid disengaging your digital learners? Preventing yet more training materials being set up on a shelf never to be used again is key!

Steps you can take to lead your team to effectively use technology to learn include:

1. Understanding how your team learns – Become intimately familiar with how your team learns. Do you offer a learning product on a flash drive only to find you run out before you can order more or are you scheduling face-to-face classes on their behalf with little resistance? Are your most productive employees viewing recording links from live stream workshops because they want to learn in their own time in the comfort of their office? How your employees learn will help you intuit in what form content should be delivered to increase learning. Don’t discount your own observations regarding what your employees seem to gravitate toward.
2. Determine their favored modalities – Fit how the content is offered to the learner by offering it in various forms such as audio, video, face-to-face, and asynchronous. Have a workshop that you know learners on your team will love but know it’s in a format they won’t be interested in learning from? Encourage your employees to determine if they would be interested in learning the same content in a different modality. If the content is off the shelf, inquire as to whether it is offered as mp3, asynchronous, and face-to-face format. Purchase and offer multiple forms and see which format your team seems to prefer. Learn from your purchases and take note of what your employees want more of and most often request.
3. Then…limit options – mp3 audio books, asynchronous learning groups, virtual book clubs , CDs, DVDs, hard-copy libraries, face-to-face workshops…the list goes on as to how employees learn and you could potentially intimidate and confuse learners by creating modality overload. Most important after determining how your team learns is to introduce new technology and options slowly by choosing their favored modality. Then, let them get comfortable with change by limiting the options offered to those two or three favorite modalities the team gravitates toward. Don’t get caught up with the new, shinny technology if you know your employees will most likely not be interested in learning in that particular format. Perhaps you have determined your team enjoys reading hard-copy books, listening to CDs, and asynchronous learning. Invest in these three modalities by allowing your employees to show you this is how they most feel comfortable learning. If the content is then offered as a webinar with live chat, don’t spring it on the team. Wait to allow them to lead you in their own learning.
Understanding how your employees learn will help increase the benefits derived from learning in modalities that best fit the learner and resultantly most benefit the organization.
***

Cheryl DePonte is a Human Resources Learning and Performance Specialist at The Ken Blanchard Companies and has over 15 years experience in the fields of organizational effectiveness and human resources development.

It’s important to remember that you have a choice to control who, what, and how you let the world affect you. It is vital that you develop a daily routine so you can find the time you need to shut out the world for a few minutes and focus on yourself.
Use these three times during your work day to create a productive routine:
The first 30 minutes at the office:

• Be social with work colleagues. Ask people how they are doing and be prepared to dive deeper into their answers.
• Write out your top-of-mind tasks and prioritize them for the day. Be sure to revisit and check them off the list as they are completed.
• Most Importantly, DO NOT CHECK YOUR EMAIL OR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS. Don’t seek out additional tasks first thing in the morning – more often than not, they will only overwhelm you more than you already may be.

The Lunch Hour:

• Read for recreation to put your mind at ease. Distract yourself with non-work related material so that when you go back to work you have a clean, fresh perspective.
• Go for a walk outside. Connect with nature to clear your mind and re-connect with the world outside of the office.
• Work on a home project. If you have a list of to-do’s, use a portion of this time to schedule service appointments or plan out your home project.

The first 10 minutes of your drive home:

• Praise yourself on your accomplishments. Take a few moments to think about what you achieved during the day. This act emphasizes the importance of mindfulness.
• Formulate a mental outline of tomorrow’s task list. Once you have a picture in your mind you can come in the next day and write it out.
• Prepare to be fully present for your spouse and children. Separate your work and home life by embracing the time you spend with your family. Give them your full attention.

Finding the time for yourself requires dedication and directed focus. Once you hone your prioritizing skills you will find a sense of relief and satisfaction. Your productivity will increase while your stress levels will decrease because you are organized, optimizing your ability to lead yourself.

“This is the key to time management – to see the value of every moment.”
– Menachem Mendel Schneerson

 
If you are feeling overwhelmed and inundated with more and more tasks at work, you are not alone! Visit www.leadershiplivecast.com and register for The Ken Blanchard Companies next livecast, Doing ‘Still’ More With Less, where some of the most respected leadership experts will share their thoughts on the topic!

In a special presentation on Performance Planning: 5 ways to set your people up for success, Hester will be exploring how leaders can improve performance by identifying potential gaps that trip up even the best of leaders.

Participants will learn:

• How to set clear goals
• The lazy leadership habits to avoid
• The 3 keys to “connecting the dots” and diagnosing development level

The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 500 people expected to participate.

Immediately after the webinar, John will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes.  To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

• Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
• Type in your question
• Push SUBMIT COMMENT

It’s as easy as that!  John will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received.  Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.

We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Click here for more information on participating.

I started experiencing back pain around the time I turned 50. When I went to the doctor she told me, “John, you are at that age where every morning you will wake up with pain somewhere.” Wow! Talk about a wake-up call. Luckily, she didn’t leave it at that. She also gave me some specific stretching and strengthening exercises to help with the pain—and when I take the time to do them, they do help.

The reality is that without care and attention, things break down – our bodies, our minds, and our relationships. As we start this new year, I suggest that we each increase our capacity by taking time to regularly renew ourselves in each of the four dimensions of life – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

• Increasing or maintaining your physical capacity includes getting regular physical activity, taking time for rest and relaxation, eating a balanced diet, and doing other activities that revitalize the body and give you energy. For many, getting too little sleep is a culprit. Remember what Andy Rooney said: “Go to bed. Whatever you’re staying up late for isn’t worth it.”

• To increase your mental capacity, consider activities such as keeping a journal, reading, taking up a hobby, or continuing your education—anything that broadens and strengthens the mind. Be a student of whatever field you choose. Read voraciously. Mark Twain stated: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

• Activities that increase your emotional capacity can include regular social activity with friends and family, learning to listen with empathy, valuing the differences in others, increasing your circle of friends, and forgiving yourself and others. Forgiveness can be a power tool for increasing emotional capacity. As Lewis Smedes said: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

• Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, authors of The Power of Full Engagement, define spiritual capacity as “the energy that is unleashed by tapping into one’s deepest values and defining a strong sense of purpose.” Your spiritual capacity is a powerful source of motivation, focus, and resilience. You may build your spiritual capacity by connecting with nature, reading inspirational literature, living in integrity, listening to uplifting music, engaging in meditation and/or prayer, or other activities that nourish the soul.

Author Rumer Godden may have said it best: “Everyone is a house with four rooms:  physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.  Unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”

What are some things you plan to do in the new year to renew yourself?

About the author:

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in performance and self-leadership.  

Wondering if you might be making some of these common mistakes in your own goal setting with employees?  Here’s what Hester warns against.

• Goals are not realistic. Stretch goals are great, but if they are out of reach they become demotivating and can even cause some employees to engage in unethical behavior to achieve them. In addition to making sure a goal is attainable, goals should be monitored and adjusted as needed during the year.
• Setting too many goals. When employees have too many goals they can easily lose track of what is important and spend time on the ones they “want” to do or that are easier to accomplish whether or not they are the highest priority.
• Setting goals and then walking away. Goal setting is the beginning of the process, not an end in itself. Once goals are set, managers need to meet regularly to provide support and direction to help employees achieve their goals.
• Setting a “how” goal instead of a “what” goal. Goals should indicate “what” is to be accomplished—the end in mind—not “how” it should be accomplished.

3 Ways to Improve Goal Setting

For managers looking to make their goal setting and performance planning more effective, Hester recommends focusing on three key areas.

Approach goal-setting as a partnership. Recognize that performance planning is not something that you should do alone. This is something to be done in partnership with your team member. It’s a collaborative process. So the manager needs to know what the employee’s key areas of responsibility are, what is expected in the role, and what they want to see in terms of performance. The key is to have that discussion with the employee.

Make sure the goal is SMART (or SMMART). Anytime you set a goal, objective, or an assignment, you need to make sure that it meets the simple SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound). Hester also believes that there should be a second “M” in the SMART acronym to account for employee Motivation. This means the manager needs to additionally ask, “What is it about this goal that is motivating? What difference does it make in the organization, or to the team, or to the individual employee?”

Diagnose competence and commitment levels. Finally, managers need to consider an employee’s individual competence and commitment level for a task. It’s a common mistake to assume that because a person is a veteran employee, they will be experienced at any new task that might be set before them. This is often incorrect. It’s important that a manager find out about experience with a specific task and then partner with the employee to determine what they need in terms of direction and support to be successful with this particular assignment.

To learn more about Hester’s advice for improved goal setting and performance with your people, be sure to check out the article Goal Setting Needs to Be a Partnership.  Also be sure to check out Hester’s January 23 webinar on Performance Planning: 5 ways to set your people up for success—it’s free courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). Challenge yourself at the end of each day to focus on and write about three reasons you were thankful that day for people or things in your personal or professional life. Having to come up with three reasons to be thankful

each day requires you to be aware of, and even seek out, positive experiences.

 
Praise the People: Now that you are documenting your gratitude, take the next step and praise your people. When an employee believes his or her superiors are grateful for his or her work, the employee will benefit by having an improved sense of worth to the organization (Kerns, 2006). As a leader expressing your gratitude to the people you lead will be both beneficial for you and them. You will be amazed to see the positive outcomes produced by this simple action.
Remember, leaders are there to serve the needs of the people they lead. What better way to serve than to lead with positive praises?
Take the last few days of 2012 to develop a “praise plan” for 2013 that includes mindful meditation, keeping a gratitude journal, and praising people around you. It will increase the level of positive well-being in all aspects of your life and the lives of those you touch.

“It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.”
-Robert H. Schuller

• We live in a society of constant change.  Technology is a great example because it rapidly changes and affects our daily lives.  We find ourselves interacting with one-another in new ways and using new tools.
• Businesses have to constantly adapt and evolve in order to beat the competition.  That means that the employees are the ones that are actually adapting, and more specifically, learning and doing something new continuously.
• We are all human.  We have emotions that affect us inside the workplace and at home.  Personal issues with friends, family, pets, bills, or even issues in the workplace, all take a toll.

The second bullet above is one of the biggest reasons for performance challenges.  Give your people something new to do that they’ve never done before and you’re likely to see a few cases of hitting the wall.  
If my leader came to me and said “You know, Matt, you’re an expert in what you do.  I have something new for you to take on.  The company has decided that we’re going to build a robot and have you take charge of programming it to do our bidding.”  I know nothing about robotics!  I can guarantee that I’d hit the performance wall, especially without the proper training and support.
Ok, that example might be a little out there.  However, think about anytime your company or IT department decided to do an upgrade or even change a key piece of critical software that your employees use.  Is your company moving to Microsoft Windows 8, soon?  Windows 8 doesn’t have the “Start” menu anymore (at least not without a workaround).  Think about your longtime Windows users, all familiar with that key Start menu, no longer having access to it.  How badly do you think their performance will suffer as they struggle through learning to navigate Windows all over again?  
To help your people through performance issues, you need to start by asking the right questions.  Just as a doctor diagnoses a sick patient, you need to diagnose your employees by thinking of the following questions:
 1. What is the specific goal or task? – This should always be the first question that comes to mind.  It doesn’t matter that an individual may be an expert in their field.  If they’re doing/learning something for the first time, that “expert” is really a novice.
2. Has this person demonstrated task knowledge and skills? – Based on the goal/task, has this individual shown (not just told you) that they have the skills to complete the goal/task?
3. Does this individual have transferable skills, and if so, how strong are those skills? – Let’s go back to my example of switching to Windows 8.  Your employees have used some version of Windows, previously, so they do have some transferable skills.  Those employees are better off than someone who has only been a Mac user, or better yet, someone who has never used a computer, previously. 
4. Is this person motivated, interested, and/or enthusiastic about the goal or task? – Does this individual actually want to learn how to do the goal/task?  Let me add that even if they don’t want to learn how to do this goal or task (example: they don’t have the capacity to take on something new; completing the task is monotonous; they just aren’t interested; etc…) there is a difference between “can’t” and “won’t”.
5. Is this person confident or self-assured in completing the goal or task? – Are the confident they can get the job done, or are they having a problem learning how to do the task and feel like they’re stuck?  This one can be tricky, because if it’s something I want to learn, I might have a false sense of confidence in the beginning where I say “Sure, I can learn this!  No problem!” – not realizing how difficult learning the task may be.
Finding out the answers to these questions allows you, as a leader, to write the prescription.  The prescription needs to be a proper mixture of direction and support.  Just as the same as a medical prescription, if you don’t apply the correct mix of direction and support, your patient (your employee) may experience adverse reactions. 
Think about a time in your life where you weren’t given the correct prescription, such as being given too much direction from your leader.  You probably thought of it as being “micromanaged”.  How did that make you feel?  Did you feel more or less motivated by it?  How did it make you feel about your leader?
These key diagnosis questions are based on the Situational Leadership^® II model.  There’s a lot more to this model than just performance challenges, so if you’re not familiar with the Situational Leadership® II concepts, be sure to click on the link to get a better sense of the positive impact that Situational Leadership^® II can create.
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A best-selling business book (and one that I had never heard of until earlier this month) addresses a key piece of the accountability issue.  Leadership and Self-Deception was first published in 2000 and then re-issued as a second edition in 2010.  The book has sold over 1,000,000 copies since it was published and sales have grown every year since it was first “discovered” by HR, OD, and change practitioners.

What makes the book so different (and hard to describe) is that it looks at work behavior as fundamentally an inside-out proposition.  We basically act out externally what we are feeling inside.  Bad behavior externally—doing just enough to get by, compliance instead of commitment, and putting self-interest ahead of team or department goals—are justified because of the way that that colleagues, managers, and senior leaders are acting in return.

The folks at The Arbinger Institute, the corporate authors of the book, call this “in the box thinking” and they believe it is the root cause of many of the problems being experienced at work today.

Is your organization stuck “in the box?”

Wondering if negative attitudes inside might be causing poor accountability on the outside in your organization? Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself.

• Where are the trouble spots in your organization?  Where are people getting the job done but it seems to always be at minimum level of performance—and with a low sense of enthusiasm and morale?
• What are the possible attitudes and beliefs among members of that team or department that make them feel justified in their behaviors?  Why do they feel it is okay to narrow the scope of their job, focus on their own agenda, and do only what’s required to stay out of trouble—but not much more?
• What can you do to break the cycle of negative thinking that keeps people “in the box?”

Climbing out of the box

Surprisingly, the answer to breaking out of the box starts with expecting more of yourself and others. People climb into the box when they decide to do less than their best.  The folks at Arbinger describe this as “self-betrayal” and it sets in motion all sorts of coping strategies that end up with self-focused behaviors.  Don’t let that happen in your organization.  Here are two ways that you can help people see beyond their self interests.

1. Constantly remind people of the bigger picture and their role in it.  Set high standards and hold people accountable to them.
2. Second, and just as important, provide high levels of support and encouragement for people to do the right thing.  Make it easy for people to put the needs of the team, department, and organization ahead of their own.  Look at reward, recognition, and compensation strategies.  Look at growth and career planning.  What can you do to free people up to focus on the needs of others instead of themselves?

Change behavior by changing beliefs

Accountability is a tough issue to address because most people feel justified in their actions and opinions.  Don’t let your people self-justify their way into lower performance.  It’s not good for them and it’s not good for your organization.  Lead people to higher levels of performance.  Help people find the best in themselves.

“What?” you may be asking. “No, it’s about my client.” True … kinda. But it can’t be about them until it’s about you.

The service experience begins and ends with you. That experience is primarily within your control. You get to decide the kind of experience you want it to be. It’s your vision, values, and behavior that drive the service experience.

A case in point

Many years ago, on February 14, I was flying from Chicago back home to San Francisco. I remember the day not only because it was Valentine’s Day, but because I had a reason to be excited that it was Valentine’s Day. (HA!—a rare occasion at that time in my life.)

I arrived at Chicago O’Hare Airport in what I thought was plenty of time to catch my flight, only to discover that I had misread my flight time as my boarding time. Now, instead of being early, I was running late. Once through security, with my briefcase and coat in one hand and my purse in the other, I started running to my gate. As I was running, a felt someone take my briefcase.

I stopped, looked up, and a guy with his hand on my briefcase said, “Where are you goin’?”

I said, “To Gate 75.”

He said, “Let’s go.”

He then took my briefcase and coat and ran all the way to Gate 75 with me. Once we arrived, he handed me my briefcase and coat, wished me well, and left.

Thinking beyond the job description

I don’t know who he was or what he did at the airport. From the jumpsuit, my guess is that he worked in engineering, facilities, or something of that nature. My guess is also that no place in his job description did it say,  “When you see a woman running frantically through the airport with a coat and briefcase in one hand and a purse in the other, stop whatever you’re doing, take her coat and briefcase, and run to Gate 75 with her.” I would wager big bucks those words did not exist in his job description anywhere—but he did it anyway.

Service experiences are visceral. What will that experience feel like, look like, and sound like, with you? As a trainer, facilitator, speaker, and consultant, I want to leave participants feeling inclined, compelled, perhaps even inspired to act—to learn more, share information, try something new, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

So, decide:

•             What’s your goal for the service experience?

•             How do you want to leave people feeling?

•             What do you want people saying about you?

Since decisions can become behaviors and behaviors can become instinct—decide  carefully.

About the author:

Ann Phillips is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read Ann’s posts as a part of our customer service series which appears on the first and third Thursday of each month.

The way NFL leadership has handled the referee lockout and the use of replacement referees offers several interesting lessons for leaders in any industry or organization.

Talent trumps – The NFL underestimated the gap in skill levels between their regular referees and the replacement referees, most of whom have only worked low-level college games or even just high school games. The replacement referees have had excellent attitudes and a willingness to work hard, learn, and improve. Those are critical traits for any successful employee. However, the simple fact is that they are literally out of their league when it comes to having the skills and knowledge to work in the NFL.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins emphasizes the importance of “getting the right people on the bus” and then leveraging their strengths to “drive the bus” (your organization) to its destination. Because of the way the NFL managed the lockout, the most qualified college referees were already locked into their conference schedules, so the NFL had to utilize people who weren’t qualified for the job, and as a result, their performance has been sub par. The number one rule for a leader is to hire the right people for the job and the NFL clearly deserves a penalty flag for this violation.

Training is necessary, but it shouldn’t be used to “fix” people – The NFL invested a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money in training the replacement refs on how to work in the NFL. They conducted rules clinics, refereed pre-season games, and have had weekly conference calls to evaluate their performance and work on improving their weaknesses. People can learn new skills and sharpen their existing abilities, but the purpose of training isn’t to “fix” people. Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller share a wonderful saying in their book The Secret – What Great Leaders Know and Do: “No matter how long the runway, that pig ain’t gonna fly.” Many leaders invest an incredible amount of time and resources into giving flying lessons to people who are never going to fly. Leaders have to be willing to accept the fact that there are some things that certain individuals will never learn to do well.

Your people are your brand – NFL leadership prides itself on managing its brand image. They are fond of talking about their efforts to “protect the shield” (the NFL logo) through efforts such as controlling illegal drug usage, player health and safety, and encouraging upstanding player conduct off the field. Yet they’ve willingly compromised their brand integrity by using under-qualified referees which has put player safety at risk and resulted in a sub-par product on the field. The individuals that operate your organizations and interact with your customers are the living embodiment of your company’s brand image. The focus must always be on serving the customer and delivering on your brand promise.

When people don’t perform, leaders need to look in the mirror – Whenever you have an employee who is failing in their job, you need to examine what you did or didn’t do to contribute to the situation. Referencing back to the previous points, did you hire the right person? Have you provided the correct amount and type of training? Have you clearly established the goals and performance standards and provided the specific direction and support needed? Too often we rely on our ability to make the right hiring choice and then just turn the person loose to do the job. People may have very relevant transferable skills, but there are always new things to learn or new ways of doing familiar tasks that have to be mastered. NFL leadership has no one to blame but themselves for the performance of the replacement referees.

The Monday night debacle ended up being the tipping point that drove the NFL and referees to reach a tentative agreement late last night that will end the lockout. The NFL may have succeeded in exerting their power and proving to the referee’s union who is really in charge, but in the process the league fumbled this leadership opportunity and damaged their brand integrity.

Randy Conley is the Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies and his LeaderChat posts appear the last Thursday of every month. For more insights on trust and leadership, visit Randy at his Leading with Trust blog or follow him on Twitter @RandyConley.

Some organizations see mistakes as opportunities to learn.  These are the organizations that create innovative environments where people grow, develop, and improve.

Other organizations respond to mistakes by finding fault and assigning blame. As the Blanchard’s explain, “It’s a negative approach that assumes neglect or malfeasance that requires punishment. This type of attitude produces a risk-averse organization where people play it safe instead of stepping out and trying new ideas.

“Now your organization takes on a culture similar to the classic arcade game, Whac-A-Mole, where most employees keep their head down except for the unsuspecting novice who pops his head up only to have the oversized mallet pound him or her back down if their initiative fails. Once an organization develops that type of culture, it is very difficult for innovation to take hold.”

What type of culture do you have?

For organizations looking to improve, the Blanchard’s recommend a three-step process:

1. Examine your current attitude toward mistakes. As a company, what’s your typical reaction to mistakes and failures? Are they seen as an opportunity to learn or to assign blame?

2. Consider your impact as a leader. What you are personally doing to encourage people to take risks and try something truly innovative? Keeping new ideas alive is hard work. Are you recognizing the efforts of people who take risks in spite of the threat of failure?

3. Find ways to engage in positive practices as a discipline. It’s so easy for things to turn negative—both internally, inside your own head—and externally as a corporate culture. As a leader, it’s important to shift from a backwards looking attitude of fault and blame to a more forward-focused approach of identifying cause and responsibility.

Give your people the benefit of the doubt.  Assume the best intentions.  Instead of assigning blame, look to assign responsibility for moving the organization forward given what was just learned. Leaders who take this more constructive approach can begin eliminating the fear and negative inertia that plagues many organizations. With practice, you’ll see the difference you can make in the creation and adoption of new ideas.

To read the complete article, check out To Encourage Innovation, Eradicate Blame at Fast Company

Imagine going into a job interview or pitching a new project with the premise of retaining an individual’s services through the commitment to a steady dose of procrastination and indifference toward key tasks and reasonabilities. It’s an absurd notion. That organization would be foolish to hire for such a promise. It would be foolish for a person to settle for being average as an employee.
So then, why do organizations hire for excellence and settle for mediocrity? Why do teams within organizations get away with doing just enough to “get the job done?” Why do so many individuals settle for coming to work and being average, at best?
While modern thinkers like Jim Collins, in Good to Great, have evolved the meaning of the word “good” to mean something less than great, ancient writers, teachers, philosophers like Aristotle defined “good” as something extraordinary – exceedingly great. The classic notion of good is manifest excellence—actively pursuing behavior that excels beyond the normal, everyday basics of our mere existence—encouraging us to thrive, rather than simply survive. The pursuit of excellence has led individuals to a greater happiness in living and working throughout history.
The Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most important books in the whole history of philosophy and certainly the most influential works of Aristotle. It is a collection of his most profound thoughts and was based on an exhortation to his son to live the best possible life.
Though taught thousands of years ago, Aristotle’s thoughts on excellence—becoming exceedingly good, still serves as a call to action for those who desire and are willing to lead themselves at a higher level. Although there are many narratives that can be culled out from Aristotle’s epic work, there are a several broad narratives that have practical application in our modern workplace.
A Greater Good
For an individual to perform exceedingly “good,” they must believe that “good” is something beyond just their own need, but also the good of the community, organization, or society they live in. According to Aristotle, excellence is a mindset rather than just a set of activities. Most activities are a means to a higher end, or at least they should be, and our work is no exception.
When individuals start showing up to work just to pull a pay check or organizations get too focused on the profit margins, they loose site of why they exist—to serve a greater good. Excellent employees focus on using their skills and knowledge to serve a purpose greater than themselves and in the process meet their basic needs while achieving excellence.
Virtue, Vision, and Values
Excellence depends on living in accordance with appropriate virtues, vision, and values. A virtuous individual is naturally inspired to behave in the right ways and for the right reasons, finding happiness in behaving according to a set of higher standards of excellence—personal standards as well as the standards expected of them by their community.
The Excellent Employee performs all of their duties with clear expectations of their role and responsibilities, in alignment with the core values of the company. Aristotle is not referring to some imaginary notion of perfection, and neither should organizations expect that of employees. But striving for higher levels of behavioral excellence, creating a greater value in products and projects, should be the goal of every employee.
Know Thyself
The phrase, Know Thyself was inscribed above the entrance to the Lyceum that Aristotle attended as a young man in Athens. Most historians attribute the phrase as an admonition to those entering the sacred temple to remember or know their place before entering into the learning process. Modern philosophies and leadership theories have expanded the notion of self awareness as a means to become more in tune with one’s own personal strengths and weaknesses, beliefs and behaviors.
Excellent employees are committed to knowing themselves through a daily process of understanding the vision and values of the organization, and then aligning them with their own Key Areas of Responsibility. They are also keenly aware of their own assumptions about the organization or a project that may be holding them back. They are aware of where they are at in their own learning process, and what they need from others to successfully complete their daily tasks. Most individuals struggle to move beyond periods of disillusionment and conflict, settling for something less than exceedingly good. The Excellent Employee is equipped to understand their own needs and move through those periods of doubt and disillusionment efficiently and effectively.
Relationships
Aristotle believed that the bonds that tie citizens together are so important that it would be unthinkable to suggest that true happiness can be found in a life isolated from others. This understanding applies to the modern workplace as well. But excellent employees aren’t just good at building effective social and professional networks on Facebook and Linked In, they are dedicated to building intimate and meaningful relationships through personal one on one communication. They’re also aware of the fact that there are more ways to getting a job done by gaining the support of people in positions of power, but rather influencing peers and colleagues through other types of personal power in order to meet the needs of the greater good and do an exceedingly good work.
Action
Aristotle did not think that virtue could be taught in a classroom down at the local Lyceum or simply by means of a “good” argument, but rather by applying virtue and values to your daily actions. His claim that virtue can be learned only through constant practice implies that there are no set rules we can learn from in just a workbook or a presentation alone; rather we must find a means of transferring that knowledge into action. The Excellent Employee is committed to training in the skills sets that will help them excel beyond average. They are consumed with creating solutions and meaningful results, rather than wallowing in the challenges, setbacks, and conflicts that arise in the workplace.
Become Excellent
The Excellent Employee has a strategy to consistently align their vision and values to the organization’s vision and values, through a clear understanding of themselves and their needs. They also utilize key relationships and apply their knowledge and skills to their everyday workflow, aligning it with the greater good of their company and their clients.
Life is short. Be activly committed to living and working at a higher level, for yourself and the greater good. Aristotle would challenge today’s modern employee to become excellent by doing excellent acts.
Jason Diamond Arnold
Co-Author of Situational Self Leadership in Action

Here are the top reasons Fournies heard most often and which he described in his book, Why Employees Don’t Do What They’re Supposed To and What You Can Do About It.  As you review the list, consider what you believe might be some of the root causes and solutions for each road block.

In Fournies’ experience, the root cause and solution in each case rests with the individual manager and employee.  Fournies believes that managers can minimize the negative impact of each of these potential roadblocks by:

1. Getting agreement that a problem exists
2. Mutually discussing alternative solutions
3. Mutually agreeing on action to be taken to solve the problem
4. Following-up to ensure that agreed-upon action has been taken
5. Reinforcing any achievement

Are your people doing what they are supposed to be doing?

What’s the level of purpose, alignment, and performance in your organization?  Do people have a clear sense of where the organization is going and where their work fits in?  Are they committed and passionate about the work?  Are they performing at a high level?  Take a look at the conversations and relationships happening at the manager-direct report level.  If performance is not where it should be, chances are that one of these roadblocks in getting in the way.

PS: You can learn more about Ferdinand Fournies and his two books, Why Employees Don’t Do What They’re Supposed To and What You Can Do About It, and Coaching for Improved Work Performance here at Amazon.  Both books are highly recommended for your business bookshelf.

“It is always my choice: to change what I cannot tolerate, or tolerate what I cannot—or will not—change.”                     

“If only…”—you fill in the blank. It is a frequent comment I hear from clients as they are engaged in our Situational Self Leadership workshops:

• If only my manager would take this training (or would apply it) …
• If only my organization supported this …
• If only I had more time …
• If only …

The first time I hear any sort of “if only” remark in a workshop, I stop and introduce the concept of choice. We all have choices, no matter what our circumstances. The challenge is acting on those choices.

For example, imagine you are feeling oppressed by a micro-manager. (Maybe you don’t need to imagine too hard.) What are your options? I believe Self Leaders—people who proactively take responsibility for getting what they need to succeed at work—look at three options that are always available:

1. Influence. What can you do to influence your manager to provide a leadership style that matches your development level on your goals and tasks? First, communicate your status on a regular basis so your manager doesn’t feel the need to micro-manage. If that does not work, have a direct, respectful conversation where you ask for the leadership style you need.

Remember—in the end, managers have the choice to be influenced or not. That leads to our second option.

2. Accept. Acceptance means we give up the right to moan, groan, or complain to others. Acceptance means “I am willing to let this go – for now.” It does not need to be a permanent choice, but for now, you are willing to accept being micromanaged because you love your work, the people you work with, your paycheck, etc.

A warning: Acceptance of a less-than-tolerable work situation is difficult to sustain, especially for a long period of time. At some point you may try to influence again. If that doesn’t work, you may have to resort to the third option.

3. Remove. No, you cannot remove your manager—all you can remove is yourself. This means you make a choice to leave the team or the organization.

Don’t choose to be stuck

When we refuse to choose from these options, we are actually making another choice: to be stuck. Many people don’t recognize that being stuck is a choice we make, not a circumstance we are put in. It means we are unwilling to pay the price to either influence, accept, or remove. What happens when we are stuck? Not only are we miserable, but we bring everyone around us down with us—our team, our friends, our family.

The foundation of Self Leadership is to take responsibility for our lives and our choices. I encourage each of you to get unstuck and choose your response to your circumstances.

About the author:

This is the first in a series of posts by John Hester, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read John’s posts on the first Monday of every month.

—If by Rudyard Kipling
Work is hard! If it’s not, you’re probably not working hard enough. Every good employee who pushes to higher levels of success goes through major challenges in the pursuit of worthwhile work. There are dreams and shattered dreams, hopes and hopes deferred, projects launched and projects crashed. The one easy certainty in today’s workplace is that nothing is certainly easy.

Lead Up

Respondents could assign responsibility for each factor to either the senior leaders in the organization, their immediate manager, or themselves.  Surprisingly, in six out of the 12 categories, respondents identified themselves as the person most responsible for impacting that factor in their work environment.

Here’s the breakdown by factor.

Chart 1: Who in your opinion has primary responsibility for influencing and improving the following JOB factors?

.

Chart 2: Who in your opinion has primary responsibility for influencing and improving the following ORGANIZATIONAL factors?

.

Chart 3: Who in your opinion has primary responsibility for influencing and improving the following RELATIONSHIP factors?

.

Implications for Organizations

The good news is that employees see the creation of a passionate work environment as a partnership between themselves, their immediate managers, and their senior leaders.  While some factors (Growth and Distributive Justice for senior leaders and Feedback, Performance Expectations, and Procedural Justice for immediate managers) are clearly seen as leadership’s primary responsibility, all of the other factors are seen as a joint responsibility.  Senior leaders can take advantage of this partnership attitude by encouraging conversations at all levels in their organizations.

Getting started

What can you do to encourage the people in your organization to begin discussing these factors and working together at ways to improve conditions in each area?  Give people a chance to share what they know about  improving their work environment and the environment of others.  Tap into that knowledge and experience.  You’ll be surprised at the small things you can do that will make a big difference.

To learn more about the survey and to access the complete results, be sure to check out Employee Work Passion Volume 4: What’s important in creating a motivating work environment and whose job is it?

Mud Time

Circles of Work and Play

–Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time

About the Author: Jason Diamond Arnold is a Consulting Associate with The Ken Blanchard Companies, and Co-Author of Situational Self Leaderhip in Action

Scott Blanchard referred to this book and the importance of making sure everyone in your organization understands its prime objective as I interviewed him for an article that will be appearing in a leading business publication later this summer.  Scott is an Executive Vice President with The Ken Blanchard Companies and the co-founder of Blanchard Certified, a cloud-based leadership development program.

During the interview I asked Scott about accountability and a leaders role in it.  It’s an issue that comes up often, especially for new leaders.  They find it difficult to hold people accountable for results and to call them on it.

Blanchard caught me by surprise when he suggested that accountability is often a by-product of an alignment issue.  In his experience, accountability issues usually stem from an employee not truly understanding  the role that they play in helping the organization achieve its prime objective. He explained that the best leaders are the ones that make an organization’s prime objective crystal clear and then make sure that everyone knows how their individual roles tie-in.

One of the tools that Blanchard likes to use is an impact map that creates a very powerful line-of-sight where people can understand the results they are being held accountable for, the behaviors that achieve those results, and how those results contribute to the success of the organization.

Accountability

In Blanchard’s experience, accountability rears its head when people don’t have line-of-sight alignment and aren’t bought into the bigger picture.

As Blanchard explains, “We’ve been exploring extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation and what we’ve found is that holding people accountable pales in comparison to creating conditions in an organization where people are intrinsically motivated. You cannot crack the whip enough, or hold someone accountable enough, to achieve the kind of results you can if people understand the vision, care about it desperately, and see themselves as a part of it.

“Create that kind of alignment and you won’t have to worry about accountability.  Instead, employees will start holding you accountable as a leader to clear the way and help them get things done.”

Accountability issues?  Check alignment first

Cries for accountability are usually a clear indicator that things are out of alignment within an organization. Is accountability an issue in your organization?  If so, double-check for alignment first.

When people understand where their organization is going—including the role they play in it—they step up, work less selfishly and they tend to make better business decisions on behalf of the company. That’s because they can see the impact of every decision and how it impacts overall results.

Alignment helps people attain a sense of accomplishment. That’s a foundational concept and a key aspect of a satisfying job and a satisfying life.

What’s your approach to accountability?  In the organizations Blanchard works with that are outperforming competitors, they are not talking about accountability.  In these organizations accountability comes naturally from inside each of their employee’s hearts and heads.  You can do the same. Get the alignment right and you’ll get the accountability right.  Start today!  It’s good for the company and good for the individual.