Dear Madeleine,

I am a professional office manager. I happily managed a medical practice for many years until I was let go when it was acquired by a large national entity.

I recently went for an interview to manage a new practice after having several promising interviews. I arrived early for the interview and was sitting in the waiting room when I overheard one of the doctors speaking to a PA, a nurse, and the desk staff. He was just awful. He called people names and was overbearing and condescending.

It turned out that he is the managing partner, and my interview was with him. He had no idea I had been sitting and waiting for a while, and he could not have been more charming. I started to get the idea that he really wanted to just hire me on the spot because they keep losing their office managers.

They have offered me the job. The pay is competitive and the benefits are fine. I am just not sure I can deal with this person being my boss. And I don’t think it would be fun to manage a staff that is so browbeaten.

At my last office, the doctors were kind and treated the staff with respect and consideration. I didn’t even realize what a difference that makes until I got a shocking view of the exact opposite.

What do you think? Jobs that fit my skill set in my area aren’t that plentiful. Should I just bite the bullet? I have money saved, so I am not desperate for a job, but I also wonder if I am being too picky. Are my standards too high?

Thanks for any ideas you may have for me.

Too Picky?

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Dear Too Picky?

No. You aren’t too picky. You are right to carefully assess the quality of the work environment you are considering. There is so much research showing that incivility in the workplace affects the quality of life and even the health of workers. You can read an example of some here.

Here is the thing. You are basing your initial assessment on one experience. You don’t actually know if the doctor in question behaves that way all the time. Maybe he was having a terrible day. And what about all the other doctors?

You might think about getting in contact with some of the staff members and asking what it is like to work in the office. That will give you a lot more information. If your first impression is corroborated, that will tell you what you need to know. If you still aren’t sure, you might suggest a three-month trial period. If the practice lead and the other doctors are awful all the time, you can leave and tell them why. So it isn’t all or nothing. You might have an opportunity to influence and make the practice the kind of happy place you were accustomed to.

Your instincts are good, Too Picky. I just don’t know that you need to make a snap decision. Explore the opportunity a little more. Maybe it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

I hope you find the right place!

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I am the COO and founder of what is now being called a “mature” startup. We have been around for 12 years but have not yet exceeded 100 employees or reached our revenue or valuation goals. The company still feels like a startup because we have been experimenting with our business model and the pace of innovation, and the constant pivots are relentless.

Some of our business leaders are tired of it. They are expressing attitudes that are not helpful, such as “If we were going to make it, we’d have made it by now,” or “What’s wrong with things the way they are? We seem to be doing fine.”

We are fine, but we have not achieved our full potential—nor are we as profitable as we need to be to attract investors. My original business partner, who is our CEO, has recently taken a leave of absence to deal with a family matter. He was exhausted. The last few years have been a slog and Covid was a massive setback for us. It seemed like the right time for him to take a break.

I am covering for him and struggling with the Eeyore-like outlook among some of my key people. I’ve been working on finding ways to inspire them. We put a lot more focus on self-care than any other startup I know. I’ve given feedback to some who are resistant to change and to what feels (to them) like risky ideas. It does not seem to be making a difference.

I still know in my heart that we are going to figure things out and break through, but I need everyone to be all in for this last push. How do I get my leaders on board?

Just About There

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Dear Just About There,

I’m a battle-worn veteran of a couple of startups myself—and now that I am nearing the last phase of my own career, your situation only confirms to me that startups are best suited for the young. I say this not to discriminate, but simply to point out that when the slog goes on for longer than anyone wants or expects, it can be hard to hold on to the giddy, cockeyed optimism required to stay in the game. The relentless pace of change can be exhausting, and you are going to need to find a way to tap into some of that initial startup energy you had at the beginning if you want to reach your goals.

I have a couple of ideas for you.

• Pay attention. Ask your people what specific concerns they have and listen in a way that makes them feel heard. I recently heard someone say “Clear communication is the oil that reduces the friction of living.” If your key people are turning into Eeyores (for the uninitiated, Eeyore is a character in the Winnie the Pooh stories who is depicted as having a bleak outlook on life), they probably need some attention. You may remember that Eeyore’s catch phrase is “Thanks for noticing me.” I wonder sometimes if leaders are afraid that listening and acknowledging people’s concerns means you have to do something about those concerns, when, in fact, simply listening often can make all the difference. You may think you are a good listener, and you probably are when you aren’t worn down by resistance. So if you want some technical tips on how to listen, you can find some here. For tips on managing constant innovation and change, you can access an excellent webinar here.
• Tap into personal motivations. It sounds like your leaders have run out of steam. There were specific things that drove them at the beginning, and anything you can do to help them get back in touch with those drivers will help. Maybe it was the promise of a big payout, or the ability to make an impact in the world, or the desire to be part of something cool and sexy. Whatever it was, help them remember it. Or maybe what matters to them has changed. If they are not going to be able to find it in their current role, it could be time for them to find another place that suits them better.
• Reclarify and rearticulate the vision. You and your partner had a big vision when you started. It is normal to assume that everyone has heard it and doesn’t need to hear it again, but that is incorrect. People need to be reminded of the big fat WHY all the time. It gets buried under the rough and tumble of the day-to-day slog. So dig for buried treasure, find the stories that will inspire, and tell them a lot more than you think you need to. This will undoubtedly bore you, because the vision is still so clear to you that you forget it is not as clear to others. Do it anyway.
• Stop giving feedback and start making clear requests. Feedback is tricky. We think if we do everything right when we give feedback, people will hear it, internalize it, and do something about it. That simply is not true. If you want your leaders to do things differently, you have to make a direct request. It needs to be crystal clear so that you don’t run the risk of it sounding like a suggestion. It is a request. For example: “Even if you disagree with the strategy, I need you to commit to supporting it and to make sure your team knows that you support it—even if you have your doubts.” You can point out specific dos and don’ts if you have examples. The kind of clarity you achieve with a direct request will help your leaders decide if they can commit or if they need to leave. This, of course, means some people may leave. But all you have is your people, and if your leaders aren’t with you, you need to replace them with leaders who are. This is harsh, I know. But it is true.
• Catch people doing things right. This is a classic bit of genius from Ken Blanchard and there is literally no situation in which it doesn’t apply. At the end of a long, grueling journey, it can be easy to pounce on every little thing that isn’t perfect. This can lead to an over-focus on pointing out what’s going wrong at the costly expense of directing focus on what is going right. You must make everyone feel that they are winning, even if it isn’t as fast or as evident as you would like.

It really does all rest on your shoulders, my friend. That is what leadership is. If it all goes sideways, everyone will blame you. And if you pull it off, you won’t get nearly the credit you deserve. If everyone could do it, everyone would be doing it, but it is the rare soul who has what it takes.

Put on your listening ears, share the inspiration, find and call out the best in people, and pray the gods will smile upon your efforts. Good luck to you.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I work for a giant real estate company and have been selling houses in a big metropolitan city for a long time. Over the years, I’ve been heavily recruited and this is my third company. I never wanted to be in management as I really like working with clients. I’ve had terrible managers, decent managers, and everything in between.

My company has always received a percentage of the commission, which is standard. Recently the company made a change—and now my manager will be getting a small percentage of the commission on everything I sell. It is hard to say this without sounding like a jerk, but I do very well and my manager stands to make a substantial amount from this arrangement.

I guess I wouldn’t mind, except I’ve been doing this for a good twenty years longer than she has. Any time I ask my manager for any help at all, she says she is too busy. She either doesn’t respond to emails or she promises to get back to me with answers and then doesn’t. Almost all my questions are related to the inner workings of our organization, publicity budgets, etc. I do all my own research and stay abreast of the changes in local laws, so I learned early not to depend on anyone for that.

I am furious. I’ve done fine on my own for 25 years. Now this little weasel is going to get some of my hard-earned commission for doing exactly nothing. What the heck? I’m certain this change is designed to make managers engage more with their brokers, but it isn’t working.

I was thinking of talking to my manager’s boss (with whom I have a long-standing relationship) but that seems a little whiny. Or I could start looking at other companies that don’t engage in this practice. What do you think?

Working Harder, Making Less

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Dear Working Harder, Making Less,

This sounds awfully frustrating. If your manager added some value you might be able to come around to this change, but as it stands, the anger you feel is likely to grow.

Senior executives are much more likely to want to help when you have already tried to fix a situation yourself, so I think your first line of defense is to have a candid conversation with your manager. It is human nature that when there is more to do than is possible, we pay attention only to the people who insist on it. Most managers are perfectly happy to leave high performers alone to, well, perform.

This would mean insisting on a time to meet, either on the phone or in person, having prepared your request to create a more effective working relationship moving forward. It sounds as if all you’re really asking for is that she answer your questions or reply to your emails with the information you need. Even if this person weren’t making extra money off you, this would be a low bar.

It is fair to explain that you didn’t mind flying solo before having to pay her for her support, but now that you do, you really need her to help you when you ask. Stick to the facts and keep emotion out of it. Be clear, concise, and neutral. Practice beforehand if you need to.

One of these things is likely to happen:

• You can’t even get a meeting scheduled, or
• She disagrees that your requests are fair, or
• She agrees that your requests are fair, makes promises and becomes more responsive for a short period, and then reverts to her old ways.

Following any of these scenarios, you can then escalate and at the very least get the commission sharing decision reversed. Or start looking at alternatives. Only you will know if this is a trend that is happening among other companies—in which case, maybe you can find another company with a more helpful manager.

Of course the hope is that when you share your thoughts, your manager will see your point and change her ways for good. Ideally, you build a relationship, she takes your calls, answers your emails, and generally acts as if she has your back, which may add enough value that you don’t resent sharing a little money with her. This is best-case scenario.

Real estate is a notoriously difficult business. If you have managed to stay in it, build a reputation, and make a lot of money, you must be good at it. You probably are exceptionally good at building relationships with people and helping them to manage all the emotions that are invariably unleashed when selling or buying a home. This is not nothing. It makes sense for you to protect yourself and not let anyone take advantage of your decades of experience.

If you can’t get what you need to stop your resentment from building, you can escalate. If that doesn’t work, you can take your prowess elsewhere.

I am crossing my fingers that just being a squeaky wheel—albeit a kind and polite one—will get you what you need.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I read your last blog Not Sure How to Address Burnout? with interest. I work in consulting with one of the big five consulting firms. We hire go-getters and work them hard. The competition is fierce and only the most driven get promoted. The rewards are, shall I say, significant—but I won’t lie, the workload is intense. We never pretend otherwise.

We hire kids straight out of the best business schools because we know they’re the brightest and are used to brutally hard work. Yet, in the last few years, I have noticed a lot more complaining about workload. There seems to be an expectation among our newbies that they should get to have lives outside of work. WTH?

Frankly, that just isn’t the way it works. I keep referring them back to what was shared with them before they signed on:  There is quite literally—I mean, in writing—the expectation set that, at least for the first couple of years with us, people should expect to not be able to do much other than work. I don’t know how we could be more explicit.

I find this very tiresome. What happened to paying your dues? What happened to sucking it up and devoting oneself to high performance? What happened to dedication? I know I should be more empathetic, but when I try to empathize I always go back to feeling resentful. The voice in my head says, “Well, I worked like a dog for umpteen years, I figured it out, I never whined like a big baby, which is why I make the big bucks and get to boss your sorry ass around.” I know that attitude is not getting me anywhere, but I am not sure what to do with it.

Any insight around this?

Exasperated

________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Exasperated,

If you found my blog, you must have an interest in leadership—which is good, because ultimately it is your job to figure out how to lead these young people. Your long-term success and the continuation of the big bucks, as you say, depends on it.

At the risk of offending you, may I point out that you sound like every boomer and Gen Xer who complains about millennials and Gen Zers? To be fair, you sound like every member of every generation who has reached middle age and complains about “kids nowadays.” You probably have trouble getting your head around their music, their fashions, and the way they use social media. And I can just hear you rant on the topic of gender politics. But that’s okay. It is only human.

Let’s take a look at your industry. Like high finance, medicine, and the law, many people were attracted to your kind of work back in the day because of the promise of status, money, and material success. Most of the millennials I know today are attracted to professions that are likely to afford them some stability and a shot at achieving or sustaining what you and I once thought of as middle class, let alone the opportunity to build generational wealth. The specter of student loans is big, dark, and chilling. That is how radically the world has changed.

The generations you now manage are also much more interested in meaningful work, personal fulfillment, and life/work balance, possibly because they witnessed their parents work like dogs and take very little pleasure in life. Just to provide some clarity about what younger people today don’t want, envision someone watching their dad devote thirty-five years to paying down the mortgage and trying to put something away for the kids’ college tuition only to see him drop dead a week after retiring. It’s a bracing cautionary experience.

These generations have also grown up with constant one-upmanship and unrealistic expectations set by the fairytale lives they see on social media. By the time they arrive on your doorstep, they’ve been under absurd amounts of pressure since middle school. If you are exasperated by their behavior, imagine what it must feel like to them to be judged and found wanting at every turn.

You say they are complaining. To whom, I wonder? About what? Did you never complain when you were in their shoes? I’ll bet you did. And I’ll bet that if your superiors heard about it, they ignored it. It is a normal thing to do, it is a way of letting off steam, and in no way does it indicate burnout. Complaining vociferously about how hard you work is a time-honored form of boasting—what the kids call “humble bragging.” If you are actually worried about burnout, watch for symptoms such as a radical reduction in productivity in someone who was once a star performer, unusual amounts of absenteeism, or an uncharacteristic lack of civility.

I appreciate your attempt to be empathetic. That is a great impulse. You are right that the voice in your head (which made me laugh btw, thanks for that) isn’t helping you. But if you think people can’t hear that voice, you are dead wrong. They hear it loud and clear, and it is eroding their trust in you. I encourage you to find another talk track for the voice. Perhaps a curious voice; one that asks “What might be motivating to this person? What are they looking for that they aren’t getting?”

Seek to understand what your people are really saying. Ask questions like:

• Can you tell me more to help me understand what is really going on right now?
• What exactly would you want to be different?
• What would work better for you if we could make changes?
• What does it mean to have a life? How is that different from what you have now?
• What is missing that would make a big difference to your quality of life at work?
• What strengths do you bring to the table that you might be underutilizing?
• What else do you want me to know?

Listen for what is real. There is a good chance you will find it much easier to empathize. It is entirely possible that, like most young people, your employees are perfectly happy to work incredibly hard as long as they have the flexibility to do the other things that are important to them. It is possible that just being asked the question and having a chance to talk out the answers will be all they need to go back out there and crush it.

One thing every person from every generation has in common is that no one wants to be judged. Chris Argyris, a Harvard professor and an influential authority on organizational behavior, said in the 90s that the secret to the success of the big five consulting firms—including yours, presumably—was that they identified and hired “insecure overachievers.” (I can’t find the exact quote, so it might be an apocryphal anecdote I heard from someone who worked at Boston Consulting Group.) You’ll know if that was true when you were a newbie, and if it is still true now. The reason it matters is that there is a fine line between harnessing anxiety and fear of failure to drive successful behaviors and letting it reduce you to a quivering mess. If it is still true, your job is to help your people walk that fine line to ensure their own success and, therefore, your own.

Your job as a leader is to influence your people; to help them connect to the meaning of what they are engaged in and what matters most to them. If they are in it for the money, that is an easy motivator. But many of your people may be driven by other things. Find out what they are and have conversations in which you brainstorm how to connect the work with what drives them. Listening without blame or judgment will send the signal that you care. Wait till you see how people perform when they think their manager actually cares about them. You may see a radical turnaround. Ask yourself the question “What do these kids bring that we didn’t have, and how can we leverage that?”

If you resent that nobody ever cared about you, and you had to soldier through with horrible bosses, well, okay, I am very sorry about that. But isn’t that all the more reason not to inflict those experiences on anyone else?

So suck it up, Exasperated. Cut out the judgment, get curious, and see what there is to learn in all of this. There is a good chance you could become an expert at this approach and even influence others in your company. Wouldn’t that be something?

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a small team in a big company. Here is my problem. I start my day at 7 a.m. with a meeting, and then my entire day is back-to-back meetings. Almost every meeting generates work for me to do or to delegate to someone on my team—which requires another meeting.

When am I supposed to get all my work done? After ten hours of meetings, I feel like that’s when my real workday starts. But by then, I’m fried.

Thoughts?

Meeting-ed Out

__________________________________________________________________

Dear Meeting-ed Out,

This is a perennial problem for almost everyone. Unfortunately, substantially changing anything will probably require a shift in company culture. There has been so much written on this topic. You might think about collecting the facts and presenting them to HR to see if you can garner support for changing the collective habits in your company. If you are suffering, everyone else probably is, too.

But hey, trying to shift culture will result in—more meetings. Just what you don’t want or need. So what could you do short of that?

Some of what is required in your situation is a shift in mindset. Right now you are accepting any and all meetings. You might need to harness your courage and take control of your time. No one can do that for you. Here are some ideas that might work for you:

• Review your meetings and take a hard look at which ones are yours or your team’s. Those are the ones you have the most control over. Challenge yourself to see if any of them can be consolidated, shortened, or moved to bi-weekly.
• At the very least, you and your team could agree to implement “no-meeting Fridays.” We have implemented this in our organization, and it has made all the difference.
• Another thing you can do with your team is to make all meetings 30 minutes. It’s very easy to fill time, but there’s no law that says meetings need to last an hour.
• Patrick Lencioni wrote a great book called Death by Meeting. In it, he says there are four kinds of meetings: Daily check-in meetings, which should last 10 minutes max. Weekly tactical meetings: 45 to 90 minutes, max. Monthly strategic meetings: 2 to 4 hours. Quarterly off-site reviews: 1 to 2 days.

I’m not saying these rules are the only ones to follow, but at least Lencioni provides a framework that can show how some meetings are not necessary or could be better run.

• Look hard at all the meetings you are in. Do you really need to be in all of them? Can you send someone else on your team? If you are delegating, is it possible that the person you are delegating to should be in the meeting instead of you? If so, make sure they send you the bullet points about any decisions made in the meeting or actions to be taken as a result of the meeting. If you’re worried about perception of others, or being judged, share your reasons. You might start a trend.
• Request that any meeting you are invited to have an agenda sent out in advance. If there’s nothing on the agenda that requires your input, decline—and request that you be sent a transcript of the meeting.
• Block off focused work time on your calendar, and don’t accept meetings that are scheduled over that time period. You don’t have to explain to anyone (except your boss or their boss) why you aren’t available. If people really need you in a meeting, they will find a time that works for you. (Note: This may require some re-training of people who have become used to your being available all the time.)
• Finally, challenge yourself to use technology. Zoom now has a feature that can transcribe meetings. Almost all companies have technology you can use to have a quick chat, delegate tasks, etc. Not everything has to be a meeting.

This situation probably crept up on you over time. And it will take some time to unwind it. Be bold, be fierce, and be relentless, so you can get your brain and your life back.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I work on a team where I am the only member who is remote. Pre-Covid we all worked together at the office, but during the shutdown I took advantage of my company’s remote-work option and moved back to my hometown to be closer to my parents who need help.

Many of our meetings are still on Zoom because several team members still work from home a couple of days a week. But other times, everyone is together in a room and I am the only one on Zoom. There are often several side conversations going on at once, as happens when people are together in person. I have trouble hearing everything, and the group often forgets I am there. This past week, two people left the room and had a conversation about a situation that I should have been a part of. I know it wasn’t intentional, but it still doesn’t feel good.

What can I do about this? I am worried I am going to start missing more important things and my contribution may start to seem less important as time goes on.

Feeling Left Out

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Feeling Left Out,

Well, this sounds like no fun. You are suffering a bit from a collection of natural human unconscious biases. Primacy or recency bias, in-group favoritism, and others can easily add up to an effect that might be summed up as “out of sight, out of mind”. It isn’t personal, so the first thing you can do is try to not take it personally.

There are two specific avenues for you to consider. The first is to discuss your experience with your manager and enroll them in helping you to change this dynamic. It is incumbent on your manager to arrange things so that you feel included; but of course, they may not see it that way. So you may need to make it easy for them to help you.

To do that, you need to let your manager know that you frequently feel excluded during the meetings where everyone is face to face except you. You will want to be prepared with ideas about how the manager, the team, and you can all navigate these meetings differently. Any changes will require discipline—and your manager will need to role model any behaviors that will make a difference. If it is feasible given the situation with your parents, you might also propose coming to the office for a few days every month or every six weeks. The company may be willing to pay the cost of travel or split the cost with you.

The other thought is that it wouldn’t hurt if you could engage in regular one-on-ones with everyone on the team. The thing that happens when people are together in person is a natural water cooler-type informal connection. All the human stuff: “How are you doing? How are the kids? Is the puppy house-trained yet? Did you complete the marathon? Hey, is that a new car I saw you getting out of?” You know—just the small talk that results in people bonding. Even a 15-minute coffee break with each of your team members on a regular basis would make a difference. This practice helped virtual teams get through Covid and was naturally dropped when people felt the one-on-ones were no longer needed. But you do still need that connection, so you will need to be proactive to nurture your relationships in this “new normal” time.

You might consider asking someone on your team to be your in-room partner, who can take responsibility for actively including you in the meeting. Having an active advocate for you will always help. If that isn’t feasible, you will have to do it yourself. Don’t be shy about reminding people that you are still in the meeting when it becomes apparent that they have forgotten. This used to happen back in the days before video meetings, when there was one lone person on the speaker phone.

I can’t imagine you are alone in dealing with this situation. There are more hybrid teams today than ever before—and managers need to up their game to make sure everyone feels like part of the team. But you can also rise to the challenge by getting help, making requests, and piping up even when it might be uncomfortable.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a senior sales manager in a mid-sized company. I love the company, the work we do, and the people. I have been identified as a high potential. My team always hits goal, I get consistently excellent performance reviews, and I have every expectation that I will have a shot at chief revenue officer.

The company positions itself as family-friendly, which has been my experience. We all have a lot of flexibility. As long as people are available and the work gets done, nobody really cares about how. I have one child in preschool and am expecting another one. I am a fairly private person, so I didn’t share the news with anyone until it became obvious. The next thing I knew, a very senior woman in the company—a person I respect who has been a bit of a mentor to me and (not incidentally) who has a lot of influence—walked into my office and said, “I thought you were serious about your career.”

I was floored. What the heck? All I could think to say was, “Of course I am. What makes you think I’m not?” She expounded on how having one kid is fine, but having two means you will never be able to give the job everything you have. Then she said I was “signaling a lack of commitment” by having another kid!

I am so mad. I mean come on, are we still living in 1958? Many people on our executive team—all men— have multiple children. I really thought I had enough of a track record to be taken seriously despite my desire to have a family. I should note that this woman does not have children.

I find myself spiraling, constantly reliving the conversation and having pithy comebacks. I don’t know if others on the executive team have the same attitude. Now I am worried that I am sabotaging my career goals.

What should I do?

Angry and Worried

___________________________________________________________________________

Dear Angry and Worried,

I am floored along with you. And I am sorry that someone you trusted thought that sharing their opinion at all, let alone in such a hurtful way, was a good idea.

What should you do? I have some thoughts.

First: Let. It. Go. You are obsessing, going in circles, and engaging in rumination. Rumination is defined by neuroscientists as “a form of perseverative cognition that focuses on negative content, generally past and present, and results in emotional distress.”  The more you do it, the more you create neural pathways in your brain that can become entrenched and self-perpetuating. I don’t think you need to worry about having a disorder—something was triggered in you, and you should be able to manage it. How to let it go? You can read more about rumination and how to stop it here. Most people I have worked with on this (including myself) have had success with a few different methods.

• Get a reality check. Talk to your boss—maybe even your boss’s boss. Check out the woman’s assumptions and assess the extent to which they might be shared by others. Take the opportunity to reiterate your commitment to the company, to the work, and to your own career advancement. Just doing this may very well put your mind at rest.
• Fight back. Meet with your HR business partner or even the CHRO if that makes sense. Get crystal clear about your rights. Share your experience and test out the possibility of lodging an official complaint against the woman for creating a hostile work environment. This may be going too far for you, and could impact you negatively if the woman has as much influence as you think—but you may get support from HR to keep this person’s assumptions from influencing others.
• Write a letter to the woman, including all of your pithy comebacks, that you don’t send. Take the time to write it all down and get it all out of your head. This should help you to stop going in circles. There is something about writing out your thoughts that can be incredibly therapeutic.
• Finally, remember who you are. One of my favorite quotes, attributed to multiple people, is “your opinion of me is none of my business.” Just because someone has an opinion about the ability of women to be both excellent parents and strong contributors at work doesn’t mean it is true. There are literally millions of examples that prove she is wrong. And you know yourself. You obviously believe you have what it takes.

You have allowed yourself to fall into the trap of taking something personally. It is totally normal—we all do it, and we are particularly susceptible when the offender is someone we respect. You must remember, however, that everything your former mentor said is 100% about her, and absolutely not about you. As a sales professional, I submit that you might simply turn this challenge into motivation to prove her wrong. I guess that might not be high quality motivation, but it sure works for a lot of people!

You’ve got this. Will it be easy? Probably not. Can everyone do it? Not everyone has the stamina, the ability to manage chaos, and the flexibility any woman needs to be a great mom while having a robust career. But I suspect you do.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I work for a national mortgage company and recently took over a team from a leader who had led it for 37 years. Every single person on the team is more experienced in the business of the team than I am. And every one of them is very disengaged because their former leader clearly had checked out a long time before he left.

A lot of the processes—some of them possibly of no use whatsoever—are outdated and labor-intensive. When I ask why things are done the way are done, the answer is always a variation on “that’s just how we’ve always done it.” There are some time- and labor-intensive tasks where the owners aren’t clear why they are done or who cares about them.

All of my questions seem to be making people nervous. I am confused as to how this happened. The other parts of the company I have worked in are well run and up to date, and we were always asked to look for efficiencies. My manager has no explanation for me, and precious little guidance.

I am intensely frustrated with the condition of the team. It feels like everyone is lost in the land that time forgot. It needs a massive overhaul. I am pretty sure we don’t even need half the people on the team. I don’t want to scare anyone, but as the team leader, I can’t let things go on like this.

Any suggestions for how to approach this mess?

Need a Reboot

_______________________________________________________________

Dear Need a Reboot,

I understand your frustration and your confusion. It is uncommon these days to uncover parts of a business that have not been forced to slim down or to leverage technology to do more with less. For reasons you may never know, your predecessor was left to his own devices with little to no oversight. The people he left behind probably are either delighted to have a job they can coast through, completely burned out, or too bored and worn down to care.

I think you have a great opportunity here to rebuild your team from the ground up. At Blanchard, we define team leadership as an influence process focused on helping the team reach and sustain high performance. We define a team as two or more people working interdependently to achieve a common purpose with shared accountability for results. Let’s not call this group of people a “team” until they actually behave like one. You can find more detail on our thinking about teams here.

The thing that will trip you up is a deadly combination of too much, too soon, too fast. Slow and steady wins the race. It doesn’t sound like your manager is paying attention anyway, so why rush?

You might start by sharing your vision for the team with the team. This will be personal and sound something like, “Our team is an energetic and creative group that adds value to the organization by providing x, y and z.” You can share your plan to make some changes, but that you are committed to carefully planning each step so that all points of view are considered, nobody feels overwhelmed or left behind.

Next, outline some high-level goals—the first of which is to really understand all critical deliverables, who in the organization wants/needs them, and the purpose of each one. Once you have that figured out, you can brainstorm ways to go about delivering on them.

Then, get to know each individual on the team. Get detailed information about what they do, what they are good at, what they like to do, and how they see themselves contributing moving forward. You can assign specific tasks like research around software or updated ways to accomplish things to match skills and interests.

Create a first draft of a plan, get input from everyone on the team, tweak, and refine. Once you have a plan, you might think about creating a Team Charter.

A Team Charter is a co-created document that outlines:

• Your company’s vision
• Your company’s values
• Your company’s purpose: What does the organization do? For whom do they do it? Why do they do it?
• Team Purpose: What do we do? For whom do we do it? Why do we do it?
• Team Goals: What are the measurable outcomes the team is responsible for in order to achieve the team’s purpose?
• Team Roles: What are the key responsibility areas of each team member for achieving the team goals?
• Behavioral Norms: What are the behavioral expectations and team practices (strategies and processes) that the members agree the team should follow? What are the ground rules? These can include but are not limited to: communication, decision making, problem solving, and accountability.

Along the way, your group of employees will either be excited by the opportunity to make a tangible contribution to your company or they won’t. If you are vastly overstaffed for the work required of the team, this process will make it easy to identify the people you can probably get along without.

Stay focused on moving forward and let go of your distress about the past. Make a concerted effort not to criticize anyone or anything done in the past—the person responsible for it is gone, and it will just make people feel like you blame them. Let people know you have the backs of those who are all in on creating a future together. Put a road map together and move deliberately, step by step, toward your milestones. You will definitely have some bumps, but at least you will be acting as a team and creating a landscape that makes sense.

It will be an adventure, but it sounds like you are ready for one!

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I have been working for a company for a few years now. They moved to an Unlimited PTO policy just as I joined. It was heavily promoted in the recruiting stage.

Things went fine the first couple of years. I took the typical PTO breaks—December holiday time, a couple of days in the spring when my kids had a break, around 10 to 14 days in the summer—nothing that exceeded the number of vacation days I would have taken in the old model.

I work on a great team. We have always talked about time off and who would cover for the person who was out. We also have generally checked in and made ourselves available when we’ve been on PTO if there is potential for a problem. There has never been an issue.

 We got a new boss about a year ago. He is a stickler for clearing PTO, which is fine—except that whenever I put in for time off, he denies my request. This has happened a couple of times now.

He always has a different reason—the launch of a new project, heavy workloads, someone else had already requested that time (even though no one said they had). Everyone on our team has experienced this. It’s getting to the point that instead of asking, some colleagues are simply calling in sick when they need to be out.

This is stressing me out. My mother-in-law is planning a big family reunion late this summer, and my wife has made it clear that attending is not optional. But now I am afraid to even ask. Help!

Denied PTO

__________________________________________________________________

Dear Denied,

This sounds frustrating indeed. Some managers get very anxious at the prospect of a team member being out. If I have this right, it sounds like you would be asking for this time about two and a half months beforehand. It would be absurd for your boss to deny you.

So, I say, ask now. The longer you wait, the greater the risk of being denied. Make it clear that you need the time for a family event and that it will create a real problem if you don’t attend. Explain that the team has always been super cooperative when it comes to covering for each other when they take PTO, and that you will make sure to cover all contingencies before you go.

If that fails, the next step would be to have a conversation with your manager to understand the reasoning behind the denial. If he claims that somebody has already asked (unlikely), ask who it is, and maybe you can negotiate the dates with that person, if their plans aren’t set in stone.

If that gets you nowhere, it will be time to go to HR. The statistics show that employees tend to take less time under the new Unlimited PTO policies than they did under the old model that set the number of days off. The fact is that people need to take vacation. Not just taking time away from work but still checking in; I mean a real don’t-even-think-about-work vacation. Any decent HR group will know this and should offer proper guidance and support to your manager.

It is possible that your manager doesn’t understand the PTO policy or he worries that if his team appears to take too much time it will reflect badly on him. We can speculate all day long, but it would be up to the HR business partner to get to the root of your manager’s reluctance to let anyone take time off.

Based on what I have read, asking for time off with plenty of notice should work to get you the time you need. You can read here about your rights, but remember that every state and country has different laws.

Don’t let your previous experience delay your making the request. Ask now and get HR involved quickly if you are denied. Lean on the recruiting promises if you need to. If you get no joy, you might consider working for a company that sees their employees as human beings, not machines.

There are already enough reasons to get stressed out these days. Adding the potential wrath of your spouse and her family to it just makes no sense at all. If your company will not support your need to take care of yourself, find one that will.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I live and work in a third-world country. I got scholarships and completed a master’s degree in business and computer science and have an excellent, high-paying job. I have built a strong team of people who work for me. My problem isn’t them, it is the culture we work in.

Many of my employees are very late or miss work completely because the public transportation system is terrible. When it rains, buses get stuck in mud and many of my people don’t even try to get in. One very dependable woman always got to work because she rode a bicycle, but someone stole it so now she walks the six miles to work. The people who have cars often must lend them to family members or must save up to have them fixed. I have tried to set things up so that my employees can work remotely, but the internet is often spotty or nonexistent.

I keep setting goals that I think I should be able to meet, but I can’t seem to make any headway with employees who often can’t get to work. My boss understands the situation, of course—everyone has the same problem. But nobody seems to care much about doing anything to fix it. I was wondering what you would say.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

_________________________________________________________

Dear One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,

I very much appreciate that you asked, and I wish I had a magic wand for you. I can hear your frustration; it sounds like you are swimming upstream. My question is: do you care about doing something to fix it?

As with any deep frustration, you have three choices:

1. You can decide to do something and act.

For example, you could gather your team (on a good day with no rain) to brainstorm possible solutions. You might lobby to have your company provide transportation for its employees or pay for upgraded, more reliable internet service so your people can work remotely when needed. If your boss doesn’t care about your inability to achieve your goals, this might be tricky. It sounds like he might be resigned to the status quo. If you try some creative problem solving with your team and your boss, perhaps convince your company to make some investments, you might be able to affect some improvements.

2. You can choose to do nothing and accept things as they are.

This is a legitimate choice. Ultimately, you must discern what is within your control and what is not. Then choose how to respond to the inconveniences and vexations that arise.

3. You can leave the situation.

You can look for another job that would not require you to depend on people who can’t get to work. It sounds like the issue is widespread and you like your job, so this may not be a solution for you.

I encourage you to do anything you can to improve the chances of your people being able to do their jobs. Then keep your plans flexible and let the rest go.

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.

Dear Madeleine

I work at a large global company. I was recruited right out of college.

I was homeschooled, went to college early, and completed my undergrad and masters in four years. I only mention this to explain how I am a senior manager at 30. The only people who know my age are in HR. I keep it quiet.

It was incredible at first. Just telling people where I worked got that raised-eyebrow “I’m impressed” look. I was totally bought in and I took full advantage of all the training programs. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I have become a very good manager. I know this because the company regularly provides us with 360 feedback and it appears that my team thinks I can do no wrong.

So what is the problem, you might be wondering. Weirdly, I seem to be the only one who tries to practice what we learn in our leadership training. The higher I go in the company, the clearer it is that the leaders have zero interest in anything but stock price.

Leadership at the level I have reached is all about squeezing the most out of the lowest headcount. That’s how people are referred to: headcount. The level of burnout and mental health issues is staggering. The values are all for show, and the only thing that matters is profitability.

It took me a while to see it, but at this point I am thoroughly disillusioned. I tried to get a reality check during a conversation with my mentor of several years—a seasoned senior person in the company. He all but laughed in my face and told me to grow up. He was surprised at my idealism. He wasn’t trying to be mean, but it kind of crushed me.

I have devoted the last eight years of my life to this company. Most of the time I’ve felt the sacrifices were worth it. I don’t have any close friends who don’t work here. I have missed countless family events, to the point that my parents and sister have kind of accepted that they will never see me. I have nieces and nephews I have never met. I don’t feel like I can talk to my family because they will only tell me “I told you so.” I have never even had a serious romantic relationship.

I literally have no life other than this company—and in a very short stretch of time, I have realized that I have been hoodwinked into giving everything to the equivalent of the death star. I have stashed away quite a tidy nest egg, but a lot of money is tied up in stock options which won’t vest for several more years. I feel like an idiot.

What do I do?

Disillusioned

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Disillusioned,

I am sorry. Disappointment on this scale is terrible—just the neurochemistry of unmet expectations is debilitating. And you are also probably dealing with grief: the loss of a dream is, to use your word, crushing.

I don’t want to insult you, but there is some very good news here. You are thirty. There is a good chance you will live to be a hundred. You have decades, not to mention a nest egg, to reinvent your life. I personally made a complete pivot at your age, and my first professional chapter provided invaluable life experience for me to build on. Many of the people I’ve worked with who reached the top of the ladder only to find that it was leaning against the wrong wall were in their fifties, with big fat mortgages and private school tuitions they were on the hook for. You are young and you are free. It is hard to see that at the bottom of the pit of despair you have landed in, but it is true.

I can’t tell you what to do, but you are obviously super smart and you know that already. What I can do is propose some options for you to think about. Your first move might be to hire a good therapist or coach to help you through this crossroads, because finding your way out of this dark moment of the soul will be a journey.

It will serve you to do some deep thinking about what changed in you that caused you to now see things so differently. What is it about you that kept you from seeing it sooner? What is it that made you so enthusiastic about your job? What can you jettison and what can you keep as you move forward?

In the end you always have a choice.

• You can stay in the situation and suffer. You can’t unsee what you have seen, so staying in the situation will almost certainly lead to severe depression.
• You can try to change your situation. Is it too crazy to think you might be able to stay and change the system from the inside? Keep rising in the company and change the culture to be more aligned with the stated values? That sounds like a long shot, but certainly is a worthy goal. If you go that route, you will need to make a plan for how you might do it and then find ways to stay strong as you execute on the plan.
• You can leave the situation and seek to create a new one.  You could easily pull a full Jerry McGuire—and if you don’t know what I am talking about, watch the movie and you’ll see. Essentially, you will want to get some solid support to catalogue what you have learned from all of this and plot a course of action that makes sense. Make no sudden moves that you might regret.

The choice ahead of you deserves some real thought. You might want to take a long sabbatical—it sounds as if you haven’t stopped to take a breath and look around at the world outside of your bubble in a very long time or even, well, ever. Maybe go spend some time with your family. Go meet your nieces and nephews. Maybe travel a little bit, see the world—it is big and beautiful. Go meet some people and find some new friends who aren’t prisoners of the death star and don’t have Stockholm Syndrome. Take some time to ponder what your purpose is and what you might be able to accomplish with that big heart and extraordinary intellect. Now that you have seen what you don’t want, maybe it will be easier to see what you do want. Maybe you could take a leave of absence—take a break and then gut it out to the next vesting period. Or just walk away. With your experience, you know you will be able to get a job anywhere you want when you decide to go back to work.

With the right kind of help, you can consider all of these options and many more I haven’t thought of. I look forward to hearing what you decide to do.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I manage three large global teams. They do similar customer service, but for different product lines. They all have very seasoned team leads and produce excellent results.

Our business really took off because of the pandemic and we implemented a data-driven way to measure results that has worked well. For a long time there was friendly competition among the three teams, but we always felt like one department. People would cover for each other and even go out of their way to help colleagues on other teams when appropriate.

Recently, though, it seems that the competition has gotten less friendly—to the point that one team lead just accused another of sabotaging his team’s big push for the end of Q2.

It is very hard to assess whether or not the accusation is true. To really get to the bottom of things I would have to mount an inquiry, interview people, and probably get HR involved. I don’t know if I really want to do that. I’m not sure I have the skills or want to spend time on it. I also wonder if something else is going on here. All three teams had excellent Q2 results, regardless.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Out of My Depth

_________________________________________________________________             

Dear Out of My Depth,

You can never underestimate the capacity of human beings to find ways to create tribal conflict with groups perceived as “other.” In the paper Tribalism is Human Nature, the researchers state: “We conclude that tribal bias is a natural and nearly ineradicable feature of human cognition and that no group—not even one’s own—is immune.”

Without knowing details about the actual accusation, any evidence that was provided to support it, or any harm done, it is hard for me to formulate an intelligent response. I wonder, for instance, what exactly the accuser wants you to do about the allegations. What redress is sought?

The whole thing puts you in an untenable position of referee—or worse, judge and jury. If, in fact, the accuser is expecting some kind of retribution, you will have to get HR involved. You could be at risk of a lawsuit.

If it is more at the level of he-said-she-said petty squabbling, perhaps you can choose to pull all three team leads together. Do a big reset in an attempt to get past this and back to the more cooperative all-for-one, one-for-all culture you had before. You might take the time with your leads to walk through the tenets of trustworthiness. Here is a terrific article on the behaviors you could all commit to moving forward: The 10 Commandments of Communication to Build Trust.

Another thought: I learned a long time ago from a pair of gifted coaches, Paul and Layne Cutright, that people are never upset for the reason they think they are. This means your accuser may be upset about something his co-lead did that he either hasn’t admitted to himself or is having a hard time articulating. To get to the bottom of it, you could ask questions like:

• What upsets you most about what happened?
• What do you think might be done to prevent something like this in the future?
• What do you think was going on that caused things to go the way they did?

Just keep asking questions until something useful is revealed. When people perceive a lack of fairness, they often behave irrationally. You might learn that the accuser felt he was being treated unfairly in some way.

The one thing you don’t want to do is ignore the situation. You will have to assess whether things are ugly enough to bring in the professionals (HR) or whether it would make sense to have both team leads engage in dialogue to find a way to get back on an even keel. The Cutrights developed an excellent process to use for a heart-to-heart conversation that can help both parties get all thoughts and feelings out on the table. I will put that process at the end of my response.

Once you have addressed the situation, you will need to rebuild with your team leads and make clear that anything other than cooperation will not be tolerated. That is your job as a leader.

Good luck!

Love Madeleine

PS: Here’s more on the Heart to Heart Process by Paul and Layne Cutright.

Heart-to-Heart Talks, adapted from Layne and Paul Cutright’s book Straight From the Heart

If the participants are committed to the health and success of the relationship and approach this process with a desire to be authentic and vulnerable, this can be a powerful way to discuss difficult issues and allow everyone to be heard.

The process involves three rounds of discussions and the speaker and listener have very specific roles. The speaker has to use a series of lead-in statements that structure the context of how they express their thoughts and emotions. In order to let the speaker know they have been heard and understood, and to allow additional information to be shared, the listener can only respond with the following statements:

The first round involves a series of Discovery statements designed to create openness among the participants and to learn more about each other’s perspectives. The speaker can use the following sentence starters:

The second round comprises Clearing statements that allow for the release of fears, anxiety, and stress, and to increase trust. The speaker can use the following sentence stems:

The third round involves Nurturing statements that create mental and emotional well-being in the relationship. These statements allow the participants to put closure to the difficult issues that were shared and to express appreciation for each other that sets the stage for moving forward in a positive fashion. The speaker can use the following phrases:

The facilitator can structure the process in a number of ways, but the important thing is to establish a rhythm for each round where the speaker gets a defined amount of time to share (using the lead-in statements) and the listener responds after each statement. It’s important for the listener to respond each time because it sets the proper rhythm for the discussion and validates the thoughts being shared by the speaker. The speaker should be encouraged to share whatever comes to mind without censoring their thoughts or saying what they think the other person wants to hear. If the speaker can’t think of anything to share, they can say “blank” and then repeat one of the sentence starters. Encourage the participants to keep the process moving and the thoughts will flow more quickly. At the conclusion of the three rounds, it’s important to close the discussion with a recap of the desired outcomes and any action items the participants want to pursue.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a small team for a startup health and wellbeing subscription platform. I was super excited at the beginning—the founders seemed to have the right values and care about their employees. As time has passed, though, the competition has increased and none of the strategic targets have been met. With every all-company meeting, the strategy changes and we all feel like pinballs.

Many of our competitors are laying people off in droves. In the meantime, our company has brought in a lot of investors and heavy hitters from our competitors who bring their favorites with them, so there is a very weird dynamic of factions in the company now. We’ve got the old-timers, the Team X people, the Team Y people, etc. All the new groups seem to think they are special and are downright rude to the original folks. At a recent in-person team building retreat, no effort was made to integrate the old with the new. It was poorly planned and a colossal waste of time and money.

My original boss, who I loved and who was a great manager, recently left. It was not made clear why. My new boss came from a competitor. She can’t remember my name and is making it obvious that she wants to replace me with one of her pets. She keeps cancelling our one-on-ones but my team keeps hitting its numbers, so she can’t really fault me. Still, I can’t help feeling like my days are numbered.

None of the promises the company made at the beginning have been kept. A lot of the attraction at the beginning was having equity in the company, but now that it feels like the ship is going down, I can’t see that it will be worth much.

I am torn between the loyalty I felt at the beginning and the disillusionment with leadership I feel now. I would hate to walk away from the equity I was promised, but I just don’t know how much longer I can hang on.

Torn

_______________________________________________________________________

Dear Torn,

Startups are notoriously messy and many fail. There are a lot of reasons for this, outlined nicely in this article. The competition in your space is particularly fierce as companies try to attract members and retain them. The overwhelming tone of your letter is disappointment. Disappointment is one of the most unpleasant emotions and can be very hard to face head on. But burying it by putting your head in the sand won’t save you.

I have a few thoughts for you, and you aren’t going to like any of them.

I think you need to honor your own intuition that the top leadership has lost its way. Where are the values that were discussed at the beginning? Are they in writing somewhere? Are they being used to onboard the new people? Are they being used to manage leadership performance? If not, they are an idea that was never executed and might as well never have existed.

I can’t tell if you have actual equity (a.k.a. a written contract) or if it was a verbal promise. If you don’t have anything in writing, I hate to say it, but you’ve got nothing. And even if it were in writing, if you really think the ship is going down, part of nothing is nothing.

Now this new manager situation. If it is okay with you to work for a manager who doesn’t seem to care one iota about you, it is your choice. But, again, you have a very strong intuition that it is only a matter of time before you are ousted. So unless you have a history of being suspicious of dubious behavior and being proved wrong, you are probably right.

I am a big fan of loyalty but it sounds like the vision that captured your heart is gone and the people that built that loyalty have already left. So what and who exactly are you loyal to now? I also love optimism. As someone who has led several startups myself, I can tell you that optimism is critical until it blocks out reality, at which point it becomes toxic.

It really sounds like you know what you need to do but don’t want to admit it to yourself. No one would blame you for feeling torn—you have all of those initial relationships and you worked hard through the first couple of startup phases. No one wants to walk away from what felt like an investment.

Ask yourself “If one of my best friends outlined this situation and asked for my advice, what would I say?” And there, my disappointed friend, will be your answer.

There is a lot of opportunity out there. I highly recommend you go find some leaders worthy of your loyalty, your work ethic, and your hard-won experience.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I was recently promoted to lead a team I’ve been on for over a year. We started out with a very good team leader, but it became apparent that he was leading too many teams and didn’t have the time. He recommended to his boss that I take it on. He asked me if I was interested and I said yes, and the next thing I knew it was a done deal. Normally in my company, jobs are posted, people apply, and it all feels equitable. But this time, probably because we are growing so fast and there is so much going on, they skipped that step and just made the announcement. I guess because I am not getting a raise or a title change, they thought it would be okay to just cut to the chase.

Well, I wish they hadn’t. My peers—or I guess I should say former peers—are not happy about the way things went down. As I grapple with trying to find my footing, all I see on Zoom is a bunch of glum faces. When I ask questions, ask for ideas, or try to get discussion going, I get crickets. I used to have great relationships with everyone on the team and now I feel like they all hate me.

I feel very alone and there is so much work to do. I am afraid the team, in protest, will sabotage all of the good things we had going on. I am a nervous wreck. Help.

Thrown to the Wolves

__________________________________________________________________________

Dear Thrown to the Wolves,

This sounds really hard. I’m so sorry.

There are a couple of things here. It is clear that the process your former lead used to replace himself skipped some critical steps—like giving you the job description and the terms of your agreement, for starters. I wonder if you would have agreed to take on that much more responsibility without a pay raise. I am raising one eyebrow here and wondering if you might want to revisit that decision. Perhaps you should have a conversation with your old team lead (if he is still your boss) or your new boss.

Now. How to get your team onboard with you as their leader? It will take some guts, but if you don’t create a space to talk about the herd of elephants in the room, I don’t know that you will be able to get past it. Start with the truth: you were barely consulted and were tossed into the deep end. It will be hard to tell the truth without throwing your former team lead under the bus, but if you just stick to the facts about how things went down, you should be okay. You can call out that you understand how the process was unfair and that although you had no hand in creating the situation, you recognize how it must feel. Call out the weirdness of now being the boss of people who were your peers five minutes ago. If it feels right, go ahead and share the silver lining of having been peers with everyone on the team by noting the superpower of each member of the team. Say whatever you need to say about how awkward your position is, but keep it short and sweet. Give everyone on the team a chance to say whatever they need to say about it. The more you make it about them, the better off you will be.

Then share that you care about the whole team, you want success for everyone, and you can’t do it without them. Ask for their input on what it would look like if you did a good job. Listen carefully, take notes, and commit to anything that sounds reasonable. You might take their feedback, give it some thought, and create a list of commitments you feel confident you can keep.

The more you choose to come from a place of serving both the greater good of the team as a whole and the success of each individual on the team, the more they will be willing to accept you in the role. For more on servant leadership, click here. Share your vision for how great the team can continue to be. Share the values you lean on as a leader, if you know what they are. Share your expectations of yourself. Lay out a list of all the cool things the team is working on and connect each one to the goals of the organization so they are reminded of the importance of the work you are all doing.

In the next meeting, get input from the team on what has been working well and what they might want to change in the team culture, so that you all have an opportunity to build the team anew.

As you go, you will want to set up one-on-one meetings with each member of the team. Ask questions and just listen to the answers. Questions might be something like:

• Other than your feeling betrayed about how the transfer of leadership happened, is there anything I have done that has broken trust with you?
• What can I do to gain your trust?
• What else do you want me to know?
• Is there anything you see that you think I should start doing, stop doing, do more of, do less of?
• Do you have any specific interests or strengths you have not been able to leverage as much as you’d like that I should know about?
• What other advice do you have for me?

Meeting one-on-one with you will give team members an opportunity to vent their feelings more candidly than they might have in the group. Just really listen, reflect back what you hear, ask clarifying questions. Don’t defend yourself or get into a discussion. If you feel compelled to discuss something, make a note and loop back and do it in a subsequent conversation.

The more you are willing to be vulnerable and listen, the quicker your team will get over themselves and get back to work.

If you weren’t capable of managing this very difficult situation, your former team lead wouldn’t have chosen you. Remind yourself of what you are best at and trust yourself to be smart, caring, and attentive. You will have a cohesive wolf pack before you know it.

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.

Dear Madeleine

I am fairly new director in a large global organisation. We are a liaison team designed to work in tandem with product development and marketing.

I have a great team—all inherited and all very skilled and experienced. Their former boss (who was let go) was very rigid and very focused on process and details. He was not able to accomplish what the organization needed his team to accomplish.

I appreciate that the department runs like a well-oiled machine but I have been tasked with getting this team to innovate, try new things, and experiment. How can I get them to loosen the reigns and stop being so wedded to “the way we do things”? They were all initially hired because of their creativity, but it seems to have been beaten out them. How can I bring them back to life and help them get their spark back?

Catalyst

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Catalyst,

My first thought is that it has to be easier to get people to loosen up than try to corral a bunch of creatives to stay in their lanes. But I guess we’ll see if that’s true. Somehow the former director managed to create order and compliance, but he left the critical deliverable for the team on the cutting room floor. He probably used fear and intimidation to do it. So the first thing you need to do is make sure your people feel safe. They spent years trying to figure out how to make their last boss happy and therefore retain their jobs, and now here you are telling them that none of that matters anymore. It is bound to fill them with fear. So remember to tell them that you know the transition will be messy, you are committed to helping, and no one is at risk. Be ready to repeat it. A Lot. Don’t assume they will remember, because they won’t. Once the adrenaline and cortisol released in the face of big change stops pumping through their systems, they will calm down.

You might want to start with context. Explain where things went off the rails and what all of you, as a team, need to do to get yourselves back on track. Simply tell the truth without criticizing anyone or badmouthing the former boss. Just state the facts and clarify your mandate.

Then, so you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, ask the group what they think works really well about their current processes. Managing the chaos that innovation and creativity invariably causes will be easier if you can maintain some of the well-oiled-machine aspects of the team.

Take some time to meet one on one with each member of the team so you can ascertain what each person’s strengths are and what they love to do most. You will be able to use your insights to put small groups together to work on projects.

From our research, we know a team leader’s role is to:

• set clear goals for the team;
• ensure the team’s purpose is clear;
• communicate how the team’s purpose is aligned with the organization’s vision, values, and strategies;
• track progress on deliverables; and
• hold team members accountable for their commitments.

For more detail on this, click here.

You might think about working as a team to create a team charter. This is defined as a set of agreements, developed through a collaborative team effort, that provides a framework for what the team wants to accomplish and how the team will work together to achieve results. A charter will help establish the team purpose, the team’s goals, who plays what roles, and the agreed upon behavioral norms. If you create the charter together, you will have a lot of buy-in from the team as they try on new ways of operating.

This covers all the basics—but I know you also want to find a way to encourage everyone to find their way back to their creative selves. Consider leading your team through a twelve-week program laid out in the book The Artist’s Way at Work. It is based on Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, now almost 30 years old and, honestly, as fresh as ever. I have been using concepts from these books with clients for decades. I’ve also used them myself when I have lost my mojo, so I can attest that they always make a difference and provide powerful results. Working through the program as a team will help everyone to bond—but, more important, it will help your square pegs find their way back to who they were before they were jammed into round holes. If it feels like too much to do the whole program, maybe choose a couple of chapters to work through. Or do the whole program over a longer period of time. It can only help—and will definitely get the wheels turning!

Tell the truth. Be crystal clear about how the expectations have changed. Keep the stuff that works. Help your people reconnect with themselves.

It is a lot—and it sounds like there is a lot riding on your being successful. Your team is vulnerable, but if you can earn their trust and make them feel safe, they will blow you away.

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.

When we think of innovation, people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs tend to come to mind. The lone hero in solitude has a hold on our imagination, but the truth is that innovation is rarely the result of an inspired genius toiling away in a garage.

Groundbreaking innovation takes lots of people. Consider that more than 1,000 engineers worked on the first iPhone. More than 7,000 people worked on Curiosity (the rover on Mars). The takeaway? Innovation is a team sport.

Innovation doesn’t have to be splashy either. Call it micro-innovating. In fact, small and incremental changes can have an oversized impact on your work life. When to innovate? Anytime you feel your work isn’t serving the greater good. Micro-innovation can be extraordinarily powerful.

So how best to micro-innovate? Let’s take a closer look at what gets in the way of doing it and how you can harness your power.

Micro-Innovation Killer #1: To-Do Lists, Tunnel Vision, No Vision

A typical day: Most of us create a to-do list and strike items as we finish them. I know I personally feel a sense of completion and satisfaction when I click my task off my calendar. To-do items can become so ingrained in our routine. At its worst, checking off items becomes mindless, and we don’t even think about it. When that happens, our to-do lists have more meaning than the tasks themselves. Over time, the work loses significance, and we question why we do the things we do in the first place. Our perspective narrows and our thinking becomes siloed.

Purpose? Process improvement? Innovation? Forget about them because we’re so focused on completing a task—even if the task no longer serves a need. It’s easy to have tunnel vision and wear self-created blinders. And to be fair, we must make so many decisions in our personal life, it’s easy to turn it off at work. But, when our work is filled with tasks, we lose sight of our larger goals.

Micro-Innovation Killer #2: Fear Kills Creativity

Recently, I was speaking to one of my peers, a manager of individual contributors. She manages the leadership development at a large company and was making some updates to a program. She had asked one of her people for their honest opinion, wondering what they might change and how they might improve it. She loved the suggestions and wondered why the person didn’t share these great ideas sooner. The answer was disarming. The individual assumed that the choices were made for a reason and who was she to question those choices. She did not feel empowered to share her fresh perspective; there was no psychologically safe space to share her opinions.

How many people remain silent because of a fear? The majority. In fact, McKinsey found that just 26% of leaders create psychological safety for their teams. Where there is fear, there is little innovation.

Five Tips for Micro-Innovating

Innovation is one of those words that can be intimidating. But it’s inherent in our nature—or else we’d still be living as hunter-gatherers. We are attempting to improve our lives every day and innovate in the smallest ways. Whether it’s preparing meals on a Sunday before a busy work week, optimizing schedules with a planner app, using Microsoft Teams or Slack instead of email, we are always trying to improve our status quo.

Here are five tips to ignite your creative spark and start micro-innovating.

1. Give others permission to speak: Those ubiquitous “If you see something, say something” signs in the airport are relevant for innovating. A leader’s job is to make sure their people feel safe to say, “This task doesn’t feel helpful to what we are trying to achieve. I’d like to understand more about the importance of the task to the overall process—what do you see that perhaps I’m missing?”

Don’t expect your people to have an answer at the ready—and be clear that it’s okay they don’t have one. Pointing to areas of improvement is NOT complaining! They may not know how to fix the situation, but they have at least diagnosed that something needs improvement. They have ‘seen something and said something.’ And that can short-circuit a potential problem before it becomes a monumental one.

2. Ensure systems exist for people: Processes are supposed to streamline tasks, but often they become workplace handcuffs. When a process creates unnecessary administration or you get hints of malicious compliance, it’s time to rethink the process and suggest ways to streamline. Ask yourself these questions: “What are we trying to solve with this process? Are these actions having the desired impact on the experience we want to achieve? Does the system support us and the customer or slow us down?”

3. Always be learning: Innovation requires experimentation. This also means the willingness to fail. We learn through mistakes, bumps in the road, misalignments. It’s where we improve how we work together and how we meet the needs of our customers/business. The words of Thomas Edison, on the painstaking task of inventing the lightbulb, are a good reminder: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

You can speed innovation by having a learning mindset. Ask your people: “What do you see that I’m missing?” Then remember the iPhone and how it was an iterative invention driven by thousands of people. It takes time and patience. So be easy with your people and yourself.

4. Adopt the right mindset: Throw away your preconceived notions about innovation and focus on fostering a culture of innovation for yourself and your team. Be mindful of your emotional reactions and others by pausing before you respond. Be curious and open-minded and you will bring in multiple perspectives. Have courage to push through your fear of failure. Be resilient to overcome challenges you will face while converging and diverging along the innovation process.

5. Take needed downtime: Ever take a shower and a great idea comes while you’re shampooing your hair? Ever wake up in the middle of the night with a “eureka” moment? The brain needs downtime. When it gets a break, it can make new connections and serve up inspirations. So instead of relentlessly hammering away at the task, take a purposeful break. See what brilliant ideas spontaneously arise.

Micro-innovation is something for the ambitious and courageous. It requires the willingness to be wrong; to fail; to be resilient. All this can be humbling. And it likely will undermine your self-confidence at times. But what’s the alternative? Doing the same old thing over and over—even if it’s no longer useful.

Ready to rally your self-confidence, resilience, and fearlessness to create a small revolution?

Dear Madeleine,

I have always really liked my job even though the workload is oversized and the hours are long. I provide expert advice and coaching around diet and weight management in a community medical clinic. I have a master’s degree in nutrition and am a registered dietitian. We are government funded and located in an under-resourced community so I know I am providing a much-needed service, which makes me feel good.

About nine months ago I got a new boss. Her voice is weirdly high pitched and grating and all she does is find fault, but I thought I would give her a chance. To be fair, under my last boss (who was super nice) things weren’t very well run, so I thought it would be good to get a fresh perspective.

I have very high professional standards. I am always up on the latest research, always on time, and go the extra mile. I have taken classes that I have paid for myself to get better at communicating. (People get defensive about health and weight—it is a tricky topic.) I complete all of my paperwork on time and have never had a complaint.

My new boss criticizes everything I do and seems to try to make me feel terrible in small and large ways. If I arrive early or work late, she says something like “well, I guess you have no life.” If I help a patient apply for extra services (which they always need), she dings me for putting extra pressure on the system or hogging resources.

She comments on my looks, my clothes, and the age of my car. I am always neat and clean and have tried to always look professional but not overdo it. (This isn’t hard—I have no discretionary cash in this job and am a single mom of two.) I know I am petite and have been told I’m pretty. She calls me a “beauty queen” if I wear a little bit of a heel, and a “preppie” if I wear a button-down shirt.

I find myself second-guessing my perfectly reasonable work clothes and feeling panicky when I get dressed in the morning. It feels personal—except she pretty much does the same thing to everyone else.

I have tried asking her if she is unsatisfied with my work and how I might improve, to which she replies that I am too needy for always seeking positive feedback. I wish I were the kind of person who could draw a boundary, but the way she behaves is so erratic, and sometimes outlandish, that the only thing I can think of to say is “leave me alone!”

I am shy, introverted, and would pretty much rather die than confront anyone. I live in a state of dread and I hate going to work now. This bullying combined with the low pay and long hours is making me think it isn’t worth it. I am at a loss. Is it me? Help!

Dread Going to Work

_________________________________________________________________________

Dear Dread Going to Work,

Yuck. What a bummer. I can feel your dread.

One has to wonder, does your new boss want you to quit? Or is she simply oblivious to how her petty, nasty, mean-spirited way of going about her day affects people? She is probably one of those people who tells their children they are stupid, bad, and ugly. In my years living in New York City and riding the subway everywhere, I was astonished at the way people talked to each other and corrected their kids. One can only assume she was raised in a family of people for whom it was normal to belittle and criticize.

It is possible she is tough and thinks she is funny, and what feel like jabs to you are her idea of relating. I actually know someone—a smart, competent guy who runs his own business—and his way of connecting to his employees is to walk around flicking them on the arm, on the back, on their heads. I really do mean flicking, as in he uses his thumb as resistance to propel his index finger to produce a sharp little tap. He told me that is how he connects to his people at work!

My point here is that you just can’t really know what people are thinking unless you raise the issue. It’ll be hard, but I encourage you to draw a boundary. To do that, you would have to think through all of the things she does that are out of bounds and prepare for the next time she pokes you verbally. Practice saying things out loud so you are ready. Examples might be:

• Please don’t comment on the way I dress, it makes me feel self-conscious.
• Please don’t tease me about my car, it runs well, and a new one isn’t in the budget.
• It is my understanding that part of my job is to help patients access the resources they need. If that isn’t the case, please help me understand how the policy has changed.
• Please don’t speak to me that way.

Of course, when you feel ready for anything she might do, she will probably do something unexpected—or she might just pile on the meanness. So this may not be your best option.  

You might think about escalating. Maybe chat with your co-workers and bring a formal complaint as a group to your boss’s boss. Best case scenario, she hears the feedback and tries to improve or gets fired. Worst case scenario, she gets a reprimand and then comes back and is way worse.

If you really feel that you can’t take it anymore, and you don’t feel you have it in you to defend yourself, your next option is to get out. With your qualifications, I’ll bet you could get a job coaching for one of the many online weight loss/wellness companies that are popping up like crazy. And they all need qualified professionals. All the coaches work from home, so you wouldn’t have to worry about what to wear or anyone paying attention to your car. It’s a thought. There are also, I’m sure, many other clinics where you might do the kind of work you are doing now. It does sound like you get a great deal of satisfaction helping the underserved who so need your care.

I think dread, like many of the uncomfortable feelings, is a great gift in that it tells you something or someone is more awful than you have admitted to yourself. So your facing this situation head-on is a good first step. Now you are going to have to decide just what you will do to take care of yourself.

You wouldn’t be the first person to leave a job because of a hideous boss. It happens all the time. You can tell who the worst bosses are because they are always complaining about how hard it is to keep good employees.

It is up to you, DGtW. It sounds to me like there may be a really nice boss out there who will feel lucky to have you.

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.

I recently announced the February 1 publication of my new book with longtime colleague and trust expert Randy Conley, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust. Now I’d like people to know what inspired the book and why I’m so excited about it.

The beginning of my mission statement is “I am a loving teacher and an example of simple truths.” From the time I was a young college professor, I have always looked for simple truths that reflect commonsense practices people can use to make their work and life—as well as the lives of the people they care about—happier and more satisfying.

Simple truths are not complicated but they are powerful. An example would be “All good performance starts with clear goals” or “Praise progress!” When I talk to audiences about these simple truths, I often add, “Duh!” because what I’m saying is so obvious. The audience always laughs because it’s common sense. The trouble is, too many people aren’t applying commonsense leadership principles in the workplace. When was the last time your leader took the time to review your goals with you? When was the last time your leader praised you, in specific detail, for a job well done? If it was recently, you’re one of the lucky ones.

Effective leadership is about implementing everyday, commonsense practices that will help your organization thrive. Yet so many leaders get caught up in the next urgent task that they forget to “walk the talk” and apply these basic good principles. That’s why we organized our book into 52 simple truths—one for each week of the year—which leaders can implement on the job. Each simple truth is described on a single page and can be read in about a minute. That’s brief enough for even the busiest leader!

The book also includes a discussion guide with twenty-four questions that touch on topics related to the 52 simple truths. You can use these questions to prompt discussions in a group setting or use them for independent study. Either way, the guide is intended to stimulate your thinking and help you become a wise and trusted servant leader.

When commonsense leadership is put into practice, everybody wins—leaders, their people, their organizations, and their stakeholders. If you’d like to know more, my coauthor Randy Conley and I will be talking about these common-sense practices in a webinar on Wednesday, January 26 at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time. To sign up, click here: Simple Truths of Leadership: Becoming a Trusted Servant Leader. You won’t want to miss it!

Trust is the foundation of success, and the pandemic is putting enormous pressure on it.

COVID has created a historic amount of stress and anxiety, which is testing the bonds of trust we have with each other. Making things more difficult is how seldom leaders and team members meet face to face these days, combined with how often the nature of technology causes us to misinterpret each other’s intentions. All this makes us liable to arrive at incorrect conclusions about trustworthiness.

Trusted leaders who have quality relationships with their team members are thriving. But leaders who have a trust deficit with their people are having a rough ride—and any chinks in their armor are being magnified.

Trust Comes from Behaviors

The challenge with trust is that most of us don’t think about it until it’s been broken. Trust is based on experiences—our interactions with individuals and leaders in an organization. It’s personal and fluid. We have to pay attention to it.

As a leader, consider whether you could be inspiring trust or eroding it. Now, take into account how the pandemic has made trust even more essential—and more fragile.

Four Ways to Build and Restore Trust

How can leaders diagnose their relationships and improve them? We teach the four elements of trust: Able, Believable, Connected, and Dependable (ABCD).

• Able: Can you do what you say you can do? Do you demonstrate competence? Do you have the skills, knowledge, and expertise to be good at what you do? Do you have a track record of success? Does your performance inspire trust in others?

• Believable: Do you act with integrity? Do you walk your talk? Do your behaviors align with your values? Do your values mirror your organization’s values?

• Connected: Do you really care about your people? How much care do you demonstrate in your relationships? Do you have your people’s best interests in mind? Or do you have a hidden agenda? One of the simple truths of leadership Ken Blanchard and I discuss in our new book, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, speaks to the importance of connection in building trust: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Our level of interpersonal connection with others is what fans the flames of trust in those relationships.

• Dependable: Do you honor your commitments? Are you reliable? Will you do what you say you’re going to do?

Leaders who study these four elements are able to build and restore trust. It’s common sense, but not common practice.

Here’s what I tell leaders when I give talks and run workshops: Keep it simple. Start with the basics. Demonstrate behaviors that align with the ABCDs. You’ll build trust and be viewed as trustworthy. It’s not complicated.

Trust, Psychological Safety, and the Extraordinary

Trust and psychological safety go hand in hand. Psychological safety is feeling safe enough to speak up, take a risk, or share ideas without fear of the consequences. And psychological safety translates into improved employee engagement, increased productivity, more collaboration, and behaviors that are required for corporate success.

The ABCDs of trust create an environment where people feel comfortable being vulnerable. That’s essentially what psychological safety is. Do you feel safe enough to be vulnerable in expressing ideas, sharing information, and speaking your truth without fear of punishment?

When people feel trusted and safe, the extraordinary can happen.

Look at it this way. There’s no need for trust if there’s no risk involved. We’re certain the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. That’s a sure thing; a guarantee. Trust isn’t required. 

But what if I’m in a group meeting with my boss, who says something that I know is wrong? It might be risky for me to speak up and tell the boss that they’re incorrect. Do I trust my boss to hear the feedback dispassionately? Are contrary opinions welcome? Or even encouraged?

Trust and psychological safety create a virtuous cycle. They foster safe environments, which allow people to flourish and accomplish the remarkable.

The ABCDs: Guideposts for a Tumultuous Time

The pandemic is a great trust experiment. It is forcing organizations and leaders to extend massive amounts of trust in new and different ways.

Just think back to March 2020, when organizations were rushing to get their people set up to work remotely and were scrambling to keep the lights on. Literally overnight, organizations extended massive amounts of trust to their employees to do whatever it took to keep the business afloat. In 2021 we started to settle into a weird new normal of hybrid work as some organizations started bringing people back to the office. The new COVID variants in 2022 are the latest gut-punch to trust between leaders and their people. But no matter what the pandemic throws at us, we have to continue building and restoring trust.

The pandemic is running its chaotic course and the great trust experiment continues. But there is good news in the midst of the tumult. The ABCDs of trust are lampposts that light the way to a brighter tomorrow. Use them and you’ll be better prepared to meet any challenges in your path.

Editor’s Note: Interested in learning more? Join Randy Conley and Ken Blanchard for a free webinar on January 26. Randy and Ken will be sharing key concepts from their new book, Simple Truths of Leadership. Use this link to register!

Dear Madeleine,

I work for a company that required everyone to come back to the office the second week of November. I thought it was too early, and was proven right by Omicron. The company is a traditional, conservative kind of place, and the CEO lost patience with the whole remote thing. I was happy to come back to the office because I was tired of not seeing people in person. We are a government contractor so we all had to comply with the federal vaccine mandate. I didn’t care—I was first in line to get my first vaccine, and then again when the booster became available. We all had to submit pictures of our vaccine cards.

I recently overheard a conversation I shouldn’t have heard, and now I have an ethical dilemma. I heard someone I know tell a friend that she got a fake vaccine card and hasn’t been vaccinated. They were laughing about it and ridiculing our HR department, which has worked really hard to manage our return to the office. (I only know because I have a friend in HR.) It makes me so mad that people think it is OK to play fast and loose with other people’s health and safety.

I am really torn about what to do. I haven’t said anything or tried to get advice from anyone I know. This is a company town where everyone knows everyone, and it could blow up in my face.

I am losing sleep over this. What do you think?

Blow the Whistle?

_____________________________________________________________________

Dear Blow the Whistle,

Well, this is a bracing question! And such a perfect representation of these very weird times.

Let me start by clarifying that I am no expert on ethics. I read a regular column on ethics and am constantly learning and reminded of my lack of expertise. I am also forced to examine my own unconscious biases and how my politics might sway my response. (Note: Anyone who wants to see an incredibly cool compilation of unconscious biases, click here). Unfortunately, this issue has become so political and divisive that it is breaking up families. I might lose a little sleep myself over this one.

Because I tend to think in the context of organizations, my first thought was that if you are a manager, especially the person’s (shall we call her Vax Card Faker? VCF for short?) manager, you would be obligated to confront VCF and escalate to HR because managers are de facto agent of the organization and owe a duty of responsibility as such. But it doesn’t sound like this is the case in your letter. It sounds like VCF is a peer, not even a close co-worker.

Because this felt so far over my head, I consulted our CHRO, Kristin Brookins Costello, who has impeccable integrity and is brilliant. She said:

“Everyone in the workplace shares responsibility to keep each other safe. Companies can and should look at the cards to ensure that they appear to be valid. That being said, there is no incredibly effective way to ensure card validity beyond the eyeball test, and there can be no expectation that the company can or should confirm the validity of every card. In the end, this is where trust and corporate citizenship come into play. It’s a team effort to keep the workplace safe.” 

I also googled a little and stumbled over this very interesting article: How Can Employers Recognize Fake Vaccine Cards? It gave me the distinct impression that it is really up to the authorities in the organization to monitor authenticity of vaccination cards if they feel strongly about it. I know plenty of people who work in companies that are not at all committed to the enforcement of mandates. Of course, when people got their initial vaccine and were given a flimsy, hastily created card, who ever thought it would become a legal document?

Ultimately, though, I keep coming back to your description of the conversation as one that you “shouldn’t have overheard.” That leaves me to wonder if you could have made more of an effort to make your presence known. But then, I recall a moment long ago in a ladies’ room when I was in a stall minding my own business only to overhear participants in my training session (I was the facilitator) rake me over the coals. Once I realized what and who they were talking about, I couldn’t for the life of me think of any benefit to drawing attention to my presence. So I can understand how this can happen. Still, it was an accident that you overheard something potentially compromising.

Deciding to be a whistle blower is a huge, sometimes life-altering, decision. Most people who do blow a whistle on bad behavior wish they could do it anonymously. But it is almost impossible to avoid consequences of standing up for what you think is right. You must weigh the worst-case scenario of escalating what you heard. The last thing you want is a reputation for lurking around, listening to conversations you weren’t invited into, and then tattling. In my Googling, I found some research on what motivates people who report lying: Nobody likes a rat: On the willingness to report lies and the consequences thereof. Fascinating stuff, really, and far too involved to dissect here. But it does raise the questions about your motivation.

Even if you could report the violation anonymously in a way that would never blow back on you, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What would your intentions and motivations be to report what you heard? Is it your anger at someone who feels differently than you do about how our government is handling the pandemic? Is it your sense of protectiveness for your pal in HR?
• Does the part of you that feels morally superior (and let me be clear, I am not judging you on this) want to see VCF punished? Are you 100% certain that one unvaccinated person will truly put everyone at risk? (Lately, it seems to me that everyone in California is getting COVID regardless of vaccination status!)
• What consequence do you expect might be imposed on VCF? What if she were fired and that caused any number of hardships that you can’t anticipate? Would her family suffer? Would her team be left shorthanded in the middle of a talent shortage? Would that make you feel good?

Whatever opinion you might have about the approximately 38% of unvaccinated people in the US, it is really not up to you to impose your viewpoint on others. If your organization were to directly ask all employees to report on scofflaws, it might be one thing, but no one has appointed you to be a compliance officer.

I keep coming back to tried-and-true principles that have stood the test of time:

• Judge not lest ye be judged.
• Mind your own business.
• Keep your own counsel.
• Don’t gossip.
• Nobody likes a tattletale.

If you were to follow these principles, you might decide to confront the speaker you overheard. Tell her you accidentally heard what she said, that you are going to keep your mouth shut, but that you have concerns. Even as I write this, it seems like a terrible idea. Why would anyone want to step into that bear trap? But it is an option, and at least it’s direct. I ran your question by several people and a couple of them said this is what they would do.

You have followed the rules and have done what you think is best. VCF is not following rules she doesn’t agree with. But who is to say who is in the right? Certainly not me. I would submit that it is the 100% conviction of being right that is causing strife, not just in the US but all over the globe. And I think you actually know this, or you wouldn’t be so torn.

So, here we are. I can’t tell you what to do. I am not at all sure what I would do.

I know two things for sure:

1. It is a good idea to hum or whistle as you go about your merry way so that you never accidentally overhear anything you shouldn’t, ever again. After my horrifying experience in the bathroom, I always clear my throat or shuffle my feet when people might think they are alone.
2. Every little thing a person does gives you one data point about their character and trustworthiness. Now you know a lot more about VCF than you ever wanted to, and if you ever must work closely with her, well, you know what to watch out for. Remember it is just one data point. No one is all good or all bad. We are all just muddling along trying to figure it out as we go.

I hope this helps.

I hope this will all be over soon.

I hope no one around you, or you, God forbid, gets desperately ill.

I hope we can all give each other a little more grace.

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.

What’s keeping L&D professionals awake at night? How has the pandemic affected our ability to learn? What awaits in 2022?

We asked these questions to 800+ L&D professionals in an October 2021 survey. Jay Campbell, senior vice president of product development, and David Witt, program director, analyzed the data.

They arrived at three key insights:

1. People are overloaded, tired, and “too busy to learn”
2. The level of connection is dropping
3. L&D is stretched and dissatisfied with the converted offerings

Campbell shared the findings in a November webinar. Here’s a summary of them.

Insight #1—People are overloaded, tired, and “too busy to learn”

People are exhausted and professional development has suffered because of it—that is the key takeaway from the survey findings. Here are some comments by survey respondents that support this:

• “Understaffed and overworked. With our team on scattered hybrid schedules, team members are doing extra work.”

• “Burned out leaders who are struggling to effectively manage hybrid teams.”

• “Feelings of overwhelm and anxiety seem to be crippling our ability to get and stay focused enough to identify what learning is actually needed, learn, and apply learning.”

Respondents’ comments reflect the depth of distress across the country. About four in ten adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder during the pandemic, compared to one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from January to June 2019.”[1]

Our mental state effects our ability to learn. Someone in the throes of anxiety or depression will struggle to incorporate new information. With the country in the midst of a pandemic, leaders at all organizations are fighting to meet their daily responsibilities and setting professional growth to the side—something L&D professionals have witnessed.

Longer workdays is another culprit behind our weary state. The average workday lengthened by 48.5 minutes in the weeks following stay-at-home orders and lockdowns across the U.S. in March.[2]

The weight of the pandemic, psychological distress, longer hours at work—it’s no surprise that L&D professionals say that their people feel overloaded, tired, and “too busy to learn.”

Theme #2—The level of connection is dropping

An organization’s culture is like a tapestry. It is a weaving together of relationships based on shared values and norms.

The pandemic is starting to unravel organizational cultures.

“The tapestry is fraying. It’s weakening our feelings of social cohesion and teamwork. It’s disconcerting to see this happening,” noted Campbell.

Comments from survey respondents echo Campbell’s insight:

• “Learning how to be more connected when some are here some of the time, some are never here, and others are here all the time.”

• “Emotional disconnection, loneliness and lack of purpose…people are on a lone journey with little support and feeling very vulnerable.”

• “Weak relationships due to working remote”

Third-party data provides additional evidence of the phenomenon. An analysis of emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls, and workweek hours of 61,182 US Microsoft employees over the first six months of 2020 found “a decrease in synchronous communication and an increase in asynchronous communication.”[3]

What does that really mean?

“We are connecting less frequently, working in silos, and have smaller networks. The computer screen is the only place where we do connect. Isolation is the emotional state of the moment. It’s a strong word, but it’s the right one. At the same time, though, people like the flexibility of remote work, which has so many benefits,” Campbell shared. “We are all in the middle of a huge experiment.”

Theme #3—L&D stretched and dissatisfied with converted offerings

­When the pandemic struck, L&D professionals leaped into the breech and converted face-to-face offerings into virtual ones. Yet, they are dissatisfied with what they accomplished in 2022.

“L&D professionals all share a difficult challenge: converting a growing backlog of material to virtual delivery while lacking the resources to do it. And not knowing how to make the material engaging. This is a pressing need, but many are struggling to meet the challenges of the day,” said Campbell.

Learner engagement is another pervasive problem. Findings in the survey bolster this. In fact, some 59% of respondents said more learner engagement is needed in their virtual and digital designs, with concerns about ‘engagement’ appearing in one out of six responses across this large population.

Take a deeper dive into the findings of our L&D Trends for 2022. Watch the webinar here.

[1] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/#:~:text=During%20the%20pandemic%2C%20about%204,June%202019%20(Figure%201)

[2]  https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/04/remote-work-longer-days/

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4

COVID-19 has been a major disruptor, forcing countless organizations to innovate and make a rapid shift to the virtual world. In some ways, this has been a good thing. Many businesses—including ours—have expanded operations and found new revenue streams online. People working from home have gained more flexibility in their work day and are saving money and time they used to spend on commuting to the office.

A Troubling Trend

Yet the negative impact of the pandemic on people has been significant. For example, those working remotely are dealing with the stress that comes from having no physical difference between the workplace and their personal space. They are discovering that it takes extra effort to maintain meaningful work relationships. Perhaps the most troubling trend is that people in organizations around the world are experiencing the loss of a sense of community.

In our recent interview with Chief Executive, my wife, company cofounder Margie Blanchard, talked about the sense of community that has slipped away during the pandemic—and what people could do about it.

Why Should People Come to the Office?

“We have a challenge right now about why people should come to the office when they can do their work at home,” Margie said. “We need to be a lot more intentional about what’s good about coming to the office.”

A major good thing about coming to the office is that it can spark creativity.

“I was in the office not too long ago,” Margie shared, “and I noticed that when I was able to interact with people between meetings—when they’re relaxed, more casual, and maybe thinking thoughts that are more creative—I had some of the best conversations I’d had in a year.”

In short, breaking away from our home office work routines and interacting with colleagues at the office can boost our creativity—and sharpen our collaborative and social skills.

The Power of Gathering Together

At its best, a workplace is a community, a group of people inspired by a shared vision and guided by shared values. The advantage of a community is that it creates a collective energy even greater than the sum of its individual energies. The problem is that many leaders don’t know how to foster this collective energy by making the best use of time when people are gathered together.

“I’ve just finished this book called The Art of Gathering,” Margie said. “It’s about taking responsibility to make the most of coming together. Don’t just assume that by bringing people together, they’ll take care of themselves. If you’re having a meeting, make sure that meeting is facilitated well.”

 The key is to be intentional about fostering community.

“Left to their own devices, people will spend time with the people they already know,” Margie said. “They won’t even get the richness of belonging to an organization. You need to take care of people knowing each other better—not just dip right into the work that needs to be done.”

Good things can happen when people connect in a common physical space. When planned safely and well, these gatherings can bring joy and fulfillment that simply isn’t possible in the virtual world.

Community as an Antidote to Loneliness

Margie Blanchard sees a purpose for organizations and businesses that goes beyond simply accomplishing the organizational mission or making a profit.

“There’s so much loneliness out there today, so much isolation,” she says. “The workplace may be the one spot where people can connect. Connection is happening less often in churches and a lot of other places, even families. Maybe there’s a supreme purpose for having a boss that cares about you, for having work that’s meaningful, for feeling good about the work you’re doing and the progress you’re making.”

The workplace is where we can cheer each other on and get in touch with our shared humanity.

Create Community through Servant Leadership

The coming year will see a shift toward more compassionate leadership as leaders continue to adapt to people’s shifting needs and circumstances. But whether it’s in the office or online, leaders must learn to foster greater community. The first step is to become a trusted servant leader, focused on the growth and well-being of your people and your community.

On Wednesday, January 26, 2022, trust expert Randy Conley and I will be giving a special online presentation called Simple Truths of Leadership: Becoming a Trusted Servant Leader. If you’re interested in learning how to become a trusted steward of your workplace community, we invite you to sign up for the webinar here.

Dear Madeleine,

I have just been promoted to a very big role in an organization I have been with for two years. I came from another highly respected, very successful company. One of my mandates when I joined was to change some entrenched outdated processes and create a new strategic plan for my business unit.

Ever since I joined my new company, anytime I mention something we did at my former company, people roll their eyes, and say stuff like, “Yeah, well, you aren’t at that company anymore,” as if my previous experience has no value at all. And it just shuts down the whole conversation.

Matters have gotten way worse since the company hired a new CEO from another big successful company and he brought in a whole crew from his former company. Essentially, almost everyone who has been here for more than three years is a member of Team Legacy (my labels) and almost all of them are hostile to anyone on Team New People.

Team Legacy is left over from the glory days of the company, which are over. Although our products and services are still super relevant, almost every business system is outmoded, inefficient, and clunky. I am forced to communicate with certain Team Legacy people using email because they refuse to step up to using systems like Slack and Teams.

Many people from Team Legacy are still convinced that they can’t get anything done in meetings held using web conference and are waiting to make some critical decisions until people can meet in person again. We were almost there, and then the Delta variant reared its head. Now another six months has gone by and there is no end in sight. All the folks on Team New People had already been using web conferencing before the pandemic to avoid the cost and wear and tear of travel.

My mandate is to make a lot of big changes fast, but I am constantly running into walls put up by the folks from Team Legacy. We have shared all the positive impact in terms of cost and time savings from all the new platforms we are trying to embed. I have used everything I know about proper change management, but we still have more people digging their heels in than not.

When I try to have the conversation with influencers from Team Legacy, all I get is, “You’re not from here, you just don’t get it.” I am tearing my hair out. I would like your perspective on this.

Not From Here

______________________________________________________________

Dear Not From Here,

This sounds so tough. And I can’t think of a single client who isn’t up against this kind of thing in one form or another. All the change in personnel and in requirements to comply with new systems and processes has left people feeling inept and unsafe. When people feel unsafe, they tend to lean on the people and ways of bygone days when they felt safer. People just want to be able to do their jobs well. Company cultures are built over time, and you’re attempting to shift one where you’re the new kid. As Stan Slap once said, “Never underestimate the ability of your culture to bury your strategy.” He is the master of stating the sad, scary truth. You can read up on his definition of culture here. Your challenge is huge and I have nothing but respect for what you’re attempting to do.

The job of a culture is to protect itself. Until the people steeped in the culture can see how what you bring to the table will help them, they will resist with every fiber of their being. The only thing that will save you is building relationships. One at a time. Person by person. Relationships in which you are vulnerable, are willing to show yourself, and, most important, willing to do so in a way that demonstrates that you intend no harm and have people’s backs.

My own team recently got a new leader who has been a huge proponent of using Teams—and it has been a long, hard road, let me tell you. She has had to loop back and teach all of us multiple times how to do things properly. She has had to be patient, generous with her time, and kind. I’m sure she thinks we are all a bunch of hopeless Luddite technophobes, but if she does, she has never let it show. She redirects—kindly—when we make mistakes or admit we don’t know how to do things even though she has shown us several times. I have been really impressed. The thing about culture is that it isn’t rational, so trying to effect it using rational arguments will get you nowhere. You’ll have to win hearts before you can win minds. It takes so much time—way more than you want it to take and probably more than you think you have. But you aren’t going to get where you want to go without making that investment first. Take a deep breath and a big step back and know you’re going to have to slow down before you can speed up.

Your first move is to examine the ways you and other members of Team New People (TNP) feel superior to members of Team Legacy (TL). Then you must look at the teeny, little things you say and do that telegraph that sense of superiority. Your first reaction will be that you don’t do any such thing—and I guarantee you’re mistaken. So cut it out. You can’t control the behavior of others on TNP, but you can sure control yours. You’re probably revealing a lot more judgment than you realize, and nobody likes to be judged. Nobody.

Then it’s time to get to know everyone on TL whose buy-in you need. Schedule one-on-one meetings where you both answer questions that are designed to increase connection. Check out this old chestnut from The New York Times: The 36 Questions That Lead to Love. Yes, I know these questions are designed to facilitate a romantic relationship, but there are some great ones that would be perfectly reasonable to repurpose in a professional setting. This will allow you and each of your people to begin seeing one another as an actual human being instead of a member of TNP or TL. It will give you insight into what is important to each person, how they want to be treated by you, and what will make them feel acknowledged and successful. You can then tailor your communication style in future 1:1s and even in moments in team meetings.

As you’re doing that, you’ll want to articulate your vision for your department: a clear vision of a possible future for your group and how it makes an invaluable contribution to the success of the company. Ken has excellent advice to get you started here. Once the vision is articulated and shared, you can work with your team to formulate the goals and action steps that will help you move toward it. Don’t worry, you’ll still have final say on the goals and the action steps, but if your team is involved in shaping the plan, they will be much more likely to get behind it.

It’s entirely possible that some folks on TL won’t be able to make the transition needed to be successful in the new culture you’re forming. That’s okay; eventually, they will self-select out and find an organization they will be more comfortable in.

As you go, the next time someone says, “You’re not from here, you just don’t get it,” instead of letting it shut the conversation down, try saying, “You’re so right, I’m not, so please help me get it.” Stop trying to persuade and convince people. Just ask questions and listen, listen, listen. People will talk if you listen, and when they talk they will provide clues for where you can find openings. People will have great ideas about how to effect change—then, when you implement those, it will have come from someone on TL. This is the age-old strategy of letting people think something was their idea. It’s still around because it works.

Stop talking about your expertise and how great things were at your old company. Instead, talk about the expertise of the people on your team and how to leverage it. Talk about things that are going well in your new company. Especially, share examples of how people on TL are supporting and benefiting from the changes. Your previous experience does have value, but nobody will care about any of it until they care about you. I once worked with a wonderful speaking coach who said, “They won’t buy the message until they buy the messenger.”

Leadership is hard and getting harder every day. Stan Slap also said, “If leaders could get where they needed to go by themselves, they would go there and send a postcard.” It’s funny because it’s true. You won’t get anywhere without your people.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t what you were expecting. And it’s probably going to be a lot more work than you signed up for. But I guarantee you’ll be successful, eventually, if you try even some of this.

At that point, you’ll be an experienced technical expert and a true leader. So go forth and win some hearts. You will be amazed at what you can all accomplish together.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a small group of what we call WMS professionals—Website Marketing Specialists. They all work remotely, and the group has developed into an extremely effective team.

I am very proud of our work; together we have found a way to really add value to sales and to the company. Taken individually, each woman (the team is all female, totally randomly) is delightful, professional, and easy to work with.

My problem is that, together, they fan the flames of their worst instincts, and—there is no other way to say it—they are a group of “mean girls.”  I have gotten several complaints; from other marketing teams, from salespeople, even from our service representatives, who are responsible for serving the contracts when we land them.

On our weekly team calls, the WMS women talk smack about other people in the company. They have nothing nice to say about anyone. As a group, they send out rude emails when colleagues don’t do things the way they think things should be done. Several have been forwarded to me with “WTH” and multiple question marks.

On a recent call with our head of sales—who is my boss—they were goofing around in the chat and paying no attention at all to the presentation. I was amazed—this was their boss’s boss. He mentioned that he noticed it and was put off.  It was just straight up bad behavior that none of these women would tolerate from their children, let alone colleagues.

I don’t want to de-motivate anyone by criticizing, but the reputation of the team is starting to suffer and undermine our excellent work. I need to do something; I just don’t know what. Where would you start?

Mean Girls Running Amok

_________________________________________________________________________

Dear Mean Girls Running Amok,

Although the Mean Girl reference made me laugh, I would argue that you have a slightly different problem. A little research on the Mean Girl phenomenon revealed that the term defines the behavior as “relational aggression” or using friendship as weapon. So, if a couple of bullies on the team were terrorizing one of its members, that would technically be a Mean Girl situation. The good news here is that you have a powerful intact team versus a potentially trickier situation, where some of the women on the team are ganging up on other team members. The bad news, of course, is that your team has closed ranks against other teams. I would describe your phenomenon as one where a team has formed such a strong, even tribal bond and feels so great about itself that it sets itself apart, above and beyond other teams and others in the organization. This is the dark side of strong team bonding. You may think I am splitting hairs here, but I believe the distinction is important. Plus, most adult women would object to being called girls, regardless of the context.

You are right not to criticize—the last thing you want is for your team to gang up on you, which is a very real risk.  But you must have the hard conversation—with the whole team. If there is clear ringleader, you might be tempted to start with her. But that could backfire by undermining the cohesion of the group—which you want to continue to maximize. So that means having the conversation with the whole group. For that you will want a model for how to have a challenging conversation, and my favorite one comes from Conversational Capacity by Craig Webber.

Blanchard’s Conversational Capacity program defines conversational capacity as the ability of an individual or a team to engage in open, balanced, non-defensive dialogue about difficult subjects and in challenging circumstances. It is also the sweet spot where innovation happens.

Craig says that to get yourself into the right mindset, you need to find the sweet spot between minimizing behaviors and winning behaviors. Minimizing in your case might sound like: “Hey team, I think we have a pattern that might be hurting us,” while winning might sound like: “Team, you are all behaving badly, and you need to fix it or else.” You are going to want to find that sweet spot between the two that might sound something like: “Team, I have observed some behaviors—and have gotten feedback from others—that some things being done are tarnishing our reputation and undermining our great work. I want to share those with you and think through together what we might do differently.”

You will want to strike a balance between candor and curiosity. You can rely on candor to outline the problem as you see it and the potential negative consequences you all face. Then, you can apply your curiosity to understand the underlying reasons for the damaging behaviors and really hear all points of view on the topic. Craig says we can achieve this balance by:

• Stating our clear position
• Explaining the underlying thinking that informs our position
• Testing our perspective
• Inquiring into the perspective of others. (pg. 78)

Some sample inquiries might be:

• How do you guys see this situation?
• What is your take on this?
• What is your reaction to what I have just laid out?
• Does what you are hearing sound like the way you want to be perceived as a team?

There is a good chance that some members of your team will be appalled and embarrassed, and you will need to be okay with that. You will also need to be okay with the person who minimizes by getting defensive and claiming that people are too sensitive and should get over themselves.

Once you have gotten some input and allowed your team reflect a little, you will have to make an official request for a change in behavior. You may be able to lean on the company values, if they exist. In our company we have a value we call Kenship (I know, isn’t it adorable?), which is defined as: “We value Ken [Blanchard]’s spirit of compassion, humility, and abundance. Kenship describes a sense of connectedness, a commitment to serve others, and a desire to have fun.” We also have the value Trustworthiness, which is described as: “We do the right thing. We are fair and ethical and do what we say we’re going to do.” Values like these make it easy to call out behaviors that are not aligned and help to keep the conversation objective. If your company doesn’t have stated values, now might be the time to craft a team charter, working together to define team values that will serve to guide everyone’s conduct moving forward. You obviously have a lot going for you already, so this could be a great way to develop the team into something even better.

Trashing everyone outside of the team is a way for the team to build connection; it is a habit the group has formed together. It is also a form of unhealthy entertainment. The key will be to help them shape new, good habits to replace the old bad habits, while continuing to nurture their connection.

What you can’t do is nothing. It is up to you to work with your team to repair the damage that has been done and lead them to become a team whose success is celebrated across the whole organization. It sounds like your team members are all fundamentally good and decent people. Once they see their dysfunctional behaviors reflected back to them, they will probably be willing to change. Lead on!

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I am an EVP for a major insurance company where I have been leading a large team for five years. I was just getting the hang of things when COVID hit, and since then it has been a mad scramble to keep up with all of the changes. I have a hybrid workforce now, with over 50% of our employees working from home most of the time. Our CEO resigned and we have an almost completely new executive team.

We are just now getting back on an even keel, but I’ve noticed something unpleasant happening. I am lucky to have relationships all over the company so I hear things through the grapevine—and I’ve been hearing weird gossip and crazy rumors.

One rumor was that we are selling an entire section of the company. Another whopper was that I am planning to leave. None of it is true—but what is true is that my people are on edge and the gossip mill isn’t helping.

How can I stop this nonsense?

Hate Gossip

______________________________________________________________________

Dear Hate Gossip,

So do I—unless I am the one doing it. It’s so much fun to gossip! I spent a full year a long time ago abiding by a “no gossip ever” rule and it was excruciatingly difficult. I defined gossip as talking about anyone who wasn’t in the room, or repeating news that I wasn’t 100% sure was true. In an organizational setting it wasn’t sustainable, but my experiment certainly shed some light on where the fine lines are.

Gossip itself isn’t all bad, all the time. It’s the way humans seek to understand the world—what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior in the shared culture. Anyone who is the parent of a middle or high schooler can see budding gossips at work as their kids seek to get their arms around the unspoken rules.

Evolutionarily, gossip is a survival mechanism—a way for us to manage uncertainty and plan how to navigate our own path. Gossip is the way to spread information (and, of course, misinformation) across large social networks. And it is one of the ways we create relationships and connections—bond with others. Our brains absolutely love gossip because it releases little bursts of dopamine that hit the reward center just like chocolate, shopping, alcohol, and drugs—in short, gossip can become addictive.

Humans tend to share information that provokes strong feelings, even if we’re not sure it’s true. It’s fun and entertaining to provoke strong feelings in others and it deepens relationships. In fact, just receiving gossip can make us feel like we’re part of the “in group.” It’s simply the way we’re wired. So shutting down all gossip is probably an unachievable goal.

But here’s what you can do: you can tackle the situation head on. Tell your team it has come to your attention that some people, both inside and outside of the team, are spreading rumors that are not true—and that this is triggering negative feelings for no reason and causing enormous distraction and damage. Then make a clear request, something like:

“When you hear something, please…

• Notice how it makes you feel.
• Check it out with someone who knows the truth. Feel free to start with me. If I don’t know, I will try to find out.
• Don’t spread information that you are not 100% certain is true.
• Be a force for bringing us together, not creating division.”

Then, when someone does come to you, thank them for checking it out with you. Don’t shoot the messenger!

You could also make a commitment to being a role model by noticing how and when you engage in gossip yourself. You may be inadvertently condoning gossip by sharing questionable info with your own team members or peers without even realizing it—after all, you’re only human.

Finally, gossip (especially the whopping, tall-tale type) tends to increase when people are stressed by extreme and rapid change. So you can probably take it all with a grain of salt knowing that it will subside. Your being a role model for telling the truth and holding a safe place for people to share their fears will help them feel more settled and focused on what matters most.

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.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a senior executive at a fast-growing regional bank. One of our employees (I’ll call her Mae), who doesn’t report to me but on whom I rely on for several big deliverables on a regular basis, is driving me nuts. We are all very “nice” around here and no one gives anyone feedback, so I don’t know what to do about this.

All of Mae’s communications are delivered like a firehose of information: five-minute voicemails or three-page emails. She works in compliance, so most of what she is doing is CYA stuff.

It takes me way too long to hunt through her communications to figure out what I need to know and what I need to do. I am not alone. There is a joke around the branch that when you see an email from Mae, you can’t hit delete fast enough. She is oblivious. Help?

Stop the Firehose

___________________________________________________________

Dear Stop the Firehose,

Look. Just because the culture of the organization is that no one gives anyone feedback doesn’t mean you can’t. This is about your quality of life of work—and Mae’s ineffective behavior. You could chicken out and talk to her boss. That’s what most people do in “nice”—a.k.a. indirect, passive-aggressive cultures. Or you could act like the senior executive you are and make a request. After all, you must rely on her for work product. You have every right to do so.

Be kind, be gentle, be clear and direct. Take Mae aside, making sure you have privacy and won’t be disturbed. Tell her you find her communications hard to follow and too time consuming to digest. Then request that any and all communications to you follow this format:

Brief Hello,

A – Action: Exact action needed. Clear, concise, with deadline.

B- Background: Purpose for action, context for request. Use bullet points, numbers, or section headings if very detailed.

C- Close: Next steps and thank you.

This ABC model comes from The Hamster Revolution by Mike Song, Tim Buress, and our own Vicki Halsey. Our company has been using this format since the book came out, and it really makes a difference. People use it mostly when they are sharing critical information that requires action from the recipient. I can tell you that it takes a great deal of time and focus to write this way, because it forces the sender, not the recipient, to do all the organizing of ideas and thinking.

It works just as well for voicemails (who is still using voicemail?) and is excellent for texts and for Slack or Teams.

Tell Mae that if she sends you a communication that doesn’t follow the ABC format, you will return it to her and ask her to format it properly if she wants you to pay attention to it. I don’t know much about banking, but I imagine that being on top of compliance probably matters.

After your meeting, send her an email with the format you want—whether it is this one or another you prefer.

If you have an HR person, ask them to announce the new communication norms for the whole office as well. This would get everyone onboard with higher professional standards.

People aren’t born knowing this stuff, so you really do need to tell her. It is the fault of her manager and anyone else who is senior to her that she is oblivious. You will be doing Mae, yourself, and everyone else a big favor when you teach her how to craft effective communications. Don’t be critical or tell her that others are making fun of her. Just make a request and make it clear it is not optional.

Step up on this one. It is the right thing to do.

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.

Now that public health initiatives are controlling the pandemic, the return to the office is a hot topic.

The Ken Blanchard Companies wanted to know what leadership, learning, and talent development professionals felt about the return. In a June 23 poll, three questions were asked as a part of a webinar series exploring the hybrid work environment. 195 HR / L&D professionals responded.*

1. Which of the following best describes the business environment you are returning to?
2. Which of the following best describes your organization’s response to this environment?
3. What does “return to the workplace” look like in your organization?

BUSINESS DISRUPTED

Which of the following best describes the business environment you are returning to?

Some 77% of the 195 respondents experienced moderate to major disruptions to their business environment. 7% identified their environment as completely disrupted. 44% described their business world as substantially to severely changed.

MORE CHANGE COMING

Which of the following best describes your organization’s response to this environment?

Covid sent a shock through the world. Businesses are still experiencing the aftershocks and are reimagining how they’ll operate in a post-pandemic world.  Some 68.9% of respondents are making “moderate” to “major” changes in their strategy.

Covid compressed a decade’s worth of change into a year. What will the new workplace look like?

HYBRID WINS

What does “return to the workplace” look like in your organization?

The pandemic redefined the role of the workplace. Leaders must now establish the post-pandemic office. What will the post-pandemic office look like? According to the leadership development professionals polled, a hybrid arrangement where employees come in two/three days a week. (Of note: 20.8% still aren’t sure what they’ll do.)

One thing is certain. Post-pandemic work policies are evolving. Still working on yours? Check out helpful articles, blog posts, upcoming webinars and an infographic summarizing the survey results courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies. Access all resources at https://resources.kenblanchard.com/hybrid-work-environment

*195 HR / L&D professionals polled by The Ken Blanchard Companies on June 23, 2021

Now that we’ve dealt with the initial implications of leadership and development in a COVID environment, L&D professionals are increasingly turning their attention to what the future will look like in a post-COVID world.

Remote working will not go away after COVID—in fact, many research firms predict that 2021 will see the number of employees permanently working from home double from pre-COVID times. If these predictions are correct, organizations will need to transform how they manage their workforce in several important areas.

For example, from what I understand from client sessions as well as research I’ve been reading, at least half of employees may look for other jobs if their current employer doesn’t provide a work-from-home option in the future. It doesn’t have to necessarily be full-time, but it must be an option. That’s going to require a major shift in the day-to-day leadership practices of managers worldwide. Although the immediate need to keep doors open and lights on has been met, there is a lot of work to do to keep working from home a viable alternative.

In some ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the need to implement a lot of policies that should have been in place before COVID. For instance, people who worked remotely used to feel like second class citizens who often were forgotten about when it came to development opportunities, being informed on what was going on in the organization, and, of course, social gatherings. Once nearly everyone was working from home due to COVID, this situation drastically improved. Many people report that they know their team members much better now than they did before.

But there are still issues to be resolved. A majority of at-home workers feel overworked and have trouble setting boundaries when there is no explicit end to the workday. Solving this problem may require more discipline around how, when, and how often we meet using online platforms.

Managers also need to be more aware of each individual’s home office setup. One colleague of mine is working out of a 400-square-foot apartment in Hong Kong with his wife and two children. They both work and homeschool their kids. That’s radically different than my home setup with a separate office and two monitors.

For managers, this means recognizing if somebody’s kids aren’t able to go to their physical school, there may be a certain time during the day when they’re in class and need their parents’ attention. That parent won’t be able to attend a meeting during that time. Kids will end up back in the actual classroom, of course, but it will still be important for remote managers to be aware of people’s personal environments.

Performance management will also change. Measuring an employee’s productivity by the amount of time they sit in an office chair was never the right thing to do. The future of work is to measure by outcomes. That means managers will have to become even more skilled in proper goal setting—clearly identifying what is to be accomplished by when, and having reporting processes that are transparent to everyone.

Management now will be seen as more of a partnership. Good managers will check in with their people instead of checking in on their people. These new post-COVID leaders will make regular one-on-ones a priority just to see how people are doing, and will ask questions such as “How’s it going?” and “What do you need from me?” In the future, we will see more shared scorecards that everyone can access and keep up to date so all members of the team can see what their teammates are up to.

L&D has an important role to play in this future. We’ve made great strides in converting content to virtual and digital formats over the past 12 months. The next step will be refining our content to address the new skills needed for leading in a virtual world.

Training can help. In addition to goal setting, performance management, and day-to-day coaching, we will help future leaders build awareness, trust, and community. You can learn more about the complete list of 12 skills The Ken Blanchard Companies has identified here.

As we all step into this new virtual world together, leadership qualities such as being available and being responsive are more important than ever. These characteristics will be valued more highly than were some of the qualities we thought we needed from leaders in the past. Successful companies will work on equipping their virtual leaders to excel in more areas like these.

To learn more about some of the ways The Ken Blanchard Companies can help you on your post-COVID leadership journey, visit the Leading Virtually homepage on the Blanchard website.

Dear Madeleine,

I recently logged into a web conference meeting a few minutes early. Some of my direct reports were already on and they didn’t notice I had joined. I heard them talking about one of their colleagues who also reports to me, and I was shocked. They were talking about their political beliefs, which it seemed they all shared, and were trashing their colleague whose politics are different from theirs. They were calling her names, questioning her intelligence, and actually wishing violent things on her. They were brutal.

I was so upset that I clicked out of the meeting and logged back in as if I hadn’t been there. Now I feel like a coward. What they were saying was completely inappropriate. It was 100% hate speech—racist, sexist, and ugly. I don’t know if they know that I had joined and heard them. I feel like I need to report them to HR. I am confused and upset. Even though I disagree with them politically, I don’t hold that against them. I simply had no idea these three men were so angry and mean. They have hidden it very well.

I wish I had never heard what I heard. I will never see any of them the same way again. But based on what I heard, I am literally afraid to bring up this matter with them.

What should I do now? I have talked to a couple of friends and none of their advice was useful. One actually suggested keying their cars! You see the problem.

Confused and Afraid

______________________________________________________________________________

Dear Confused and Afraid,

Wow. This is really hard. I am so sorry you stumbled into learning things about your direct reports you wish you hadn’t. You can’t pretend it never happened, much as you may want to.

You must get input from your HR business partner; I am sure there are company policies about acceptable/unacceptable behaviors at work. The men were, in fact, talking on a company web conferencing platform and could have been overheard by anyone. If you had heard them talking on a private channel or gathering, you would not be responsible—but since it was a company platform, on company time, as a leader in the organization you are duty-bound to address the situation.

If the employee who was being talked about is a member of a protected minority, you may have a separate problem to address as well, since it would potentially involve legal repercussions. Some states have zero tolerance for hate speech against or harassment of a protected class. The company could be held liable and it could be grounds for dismissal. If, in addition to laws, the behavior you witnessed is explicitly prohibited in published company values, that may also be grounds for sanction or dismissal.

Either way, I suggest you enroll your HR representative to provide you with guidelines on what to say and to attend the meetings with you. I also suggest you speak with each person individually, not as a group—and schedule the conversations one right after the other to reduce the possibility of offline cross talk among the group.

I understand how hearing talk of violence against a fellow worker might make you afraid. No one wants to attract that kind of attention. If it turns out that there are real consequences to be enforced—for example, that the incident will be written up and kept as part of each employee’s file, or that you must actually fire all of them—you may have valid reason to be concerned for your own safety. Again, this is something you will have to discuss with HR. Your boss also will need to be told.

I know you wish you hadn’t heard what you heard. So do I. And you probably feel like you could ignore it and get on with things. But you did hear it, even if the nasty guys didn’t know you were there. They will accuse you of spying on them—but, again, they were on the company platform, so they left themselves open to being overheard. You may also be tempted to convince them of the error of their ways. But let that one go—you have no obligation for their moral development. And of course you are right that it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to engage in retaliation. Keying cars is out of the question. Nastiness begets nastiness and eventually catches up to people.

Your job as a leader is to call out bad behavior when you see or hear it. Period. So get step-by-step instructions, then stand up and do what needs to be done firmly, clearly, and kindly. Bullies with big mouths often back down quickly when they are called out on unacceptable behavior.

On second thought (actually, I have thought about this so much it is more like 37^th thought) you really could pretend it never happened. Only you will know, ultimately. It wouldn’t be for anyone else to judge. Only you can decide what your personal standards are and assess whether or not you have the mettle to rise to the higher ones. Not everyone is signed up to be a warrior. However, it is my experience that it is the secrets we keep that erode the spirit. This may be a crossroads moment for you. It is a choice you have to make. What I want for you is to have no regrets down the road.

I am sorry you are in this bind. Truly, I am. I wish you strength and courage, either way.

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 am a division leader for a family-owned manufacturing company. The family members have somewhat antiquated views and are not particularly socially sensitive. My challenge is how to respond to the pronouns I’m seeing on recent email. For example, I am now seeing She/Her or He/Him on email signatures and video conference meetings with people outside of our company. One of my peers in our industry in another company just put xe/xem on xer email (which is correct usage).

My question is this: as a manager, should I add pronouns on my communications to make it safe for my team members to do so also? I have one person on my team who I think would appreciate it, but what about other people who might roll their eyes and see it as a political statement?

What is my responsibility with this issue?

She, He, Xe, Ze, What?

Dear She, He, Xe, Ze, What?

I appreciate your sensitivity to something that seems like a new wrinkle for you. People who are members of or who know and love members of the LGBTQ community have a head start on this trend. And it is very much a work in progress, as is all human evolution.

Your responsibility is to your own leadership values and to your organization’s values, in that order. (If you’ve never thought about your leadership values, a process to do that can be found here.) It is possible that, antiquated as it may be, your company does have stated values. If your desire to role model inclusion flies directly in the face of your company’s stated values, you are going to be in for some pushback. You may even already know that the stated values are pure lip service and that the real but implicit values are another thing altogether. Eye rolling notwithstanding, the real challenge will come when you get a cease-and-desist order from above. I hate to say that you might find yourself well served by dusting off your LinkedIn profile and resume. You will know based on your experience in the organization.

If you feel that it is part of your job as a leader to role model fairness and inclusion, then that is where your responsibility lies. But let’s not kid ourselves—it takes an awful lot of courage to stand by your values and standards for yourself. Not everyone is cut out for the fight. You need to make a conscious choice about just what you are signing up for. Maybe your answer is “Yes, that is what I need to do, but not right this minute; I will get my ducks in a row, educate myself, make a plan, and go for it at some future date.” Or you may decide it is not your fight to fight. I am not judging, but that doesn’t mean that others aren’t.

Some thoughts if you do decide to take the next step:

• Would you be comfortable contacting your peer who is already using the pronouns to ask if they might be willing to talk to you about their experience and point of view on the topic? Call me crazy, but I think if people are putting it out there, they are probably open to talking about it.
• You could speak with each of your team members individually or as a group. Maybe start with just introducing the topic, sharing some questions, and inviting conversation. Not everyone will want to speak up, and that’s okay. Focus on creating an environment of curiosity and openness vs. driving for definitive answers and positions. Many folks are in the exploration stage of this topic, so if your team can explore together, wouldn’t that be grand!
• One of my colleagues puts her pronouns on her email signature and provides a link to information for people who are mystified right next to it, like this: Pronouns: She/Her (learn more). This is a cool way to join the conversation while also inviting others to be curious.

It seems that pretty much everything can be interpreted as a political statement these days. We could allow the current climate to shut us down and crawl into a safe little hole—and again, I wouldn’t blame you; things are complex enough. But because you care enough to ask, I suspect you are a person who also cares about the experience that others not like you are having in the world. All I can say is that you will have to let your heart be your guide.

It is quite a can of worms, isn’t it? But you are clearly aware and thoughtful. I trust you will find your way to the right thing for you, right now.

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!

The quality of a company’s customer service affects its reputation as well as its bottom line. Customer service done well raises an organization’s image in the public eye and attracts new revenue. Customer service done poorly does the opposite.

When an organization delivers with such excellence and consistency that its service reputation becomes a competitive edge, that’s Legendary Service. It starts with leaders serving their people at the highest level, so that people on the front line can in turn serve their customers at the highest level.

We call these types of leaders service champions, because they create passion and momentum in others to better serve their customers. These champions follow up their inspiring words with actions, creating systems and processes that support their belief that service is vitally important.

Creating a culture of service requires a focus on four basic elements. In our book, Legendary Service: The Key is to CARE, Kathy Cuff, Vicki Halsey and I describe this as a CARE model, which is fitting, because great customer service hits people at an emotional level and creates a connection.

With a caring mindset in place, you can turn that mindset into action. In our book, Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service, Sheldon Bowles and I share three steps for turning your customers into raving fans—people who are so blown away by their service experience that they brag about you to others.

Decide what you want your customer experience to be. If you want Legendary Service, you don’t just announce it. You must plan for it. You must decide what you want to do. What kind of experience do you want your customers to have as they interact with every aspect of your organization? Understanding what your customers really want helps you determine what you should offer them.

Discover what your customers want. After you decide what you want to have happen, it’s important to discover any suggestions your customers may have that will improve their experience with your organization. What would make their experience with you better? Ask them!

Deliver your ideal customer service experience. Now you must help people deliver the ideal customer service experience, plus a little bit more.

When leaders empower and train people to deliver Legendary Service, customers become raving fans—leading to reputable, profitable, high performing organizations. I hope this helps as you look for ways to continue serving your people and your customers. For more ideas on how to create an organization where service is the norm, be sure to check out the 60-page summary of Leading at a Higher Level we’ve posted on our website. It’s available for free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a large team of creative professionals in a US-based advertising firm. My company went to an unlimited PTO plan 18 months ago. Covid-19 weirdness aside, I am finding that my people are not taking time off and seem burnt out. I am confused by this.

I talk to each of my direct reports on a regular basis about how critical it is for them to take time when they are not on the hook for work. Back when PTO was a liability for the company, we would force people to take at least two days around normal holidays to reduce the load. Now when I encourage my people to take time, they make excuses like “it’s so hard to come back from time off,” and “project overload.”

I tried to get all team members to commit to taking time this summer and submit dates so I can manage workload and project flows, but no one is committing. Some say they aren’t comfortable traveling, but still.

Last year, I tried to institute the second Monday of every month as a mental health day with no meetings so that people could use the time to clean up email and task lists, organize, or take a slow morning. Although my group was enthusiastic, no one ended up doing it.

The research shows that people who take time away from work are more creative and productive. I can’t force people, obviously, but I really believe in vacation and downtime. How can I encourage people to take better care of themselves?

All Work

Dear All Work,

I am so accustomed to letters about how to get people to work harder that this is a breath of fresh air! There is a lot of interesting research about the unlimited PTO experiment now that it has been around for about ten years. Here is an article I found that might be helpful to you.

Your concern about your people does you credit, but you must let them be adults and figure this out for themselves. As a manager, the only way you can make proper energy management an issue is if you can objectively call out that an individual’s performance is suffering. In this case, you can request that the person take a couple of days or even a week—but even then, it will be up to them to get their performance back to standard in the best way they see fit.

The other big influencer on this situation is whether you are role modeling the behavior you are seeking. Are you taking time off? And I mean really taking it? Or do you answer emails and take phone calls when you are supposed to be off? My favorite is the email that comes in that says “I know you are on vacation, but I was hoping you might ….” If you actually respond to those, you are literally training your people that there is no such thing as real vacation. You are also sending the message that you don’t trust people to make decisions or to operate without your supervision for a week.

I am not saying it is easy to take time off—of course, the more committed and invested you are, the more challenging it is. Take it from the woman who goes to Mongolia, where cell phones don’t work, to unplug—I know. But I agree with you that getting away is important, so I have made a big effort to make myself do it. You send a strong message about what you expect from your team by setting the example.

Some other ideas might be:

• Talk to other managers in your company. What are they doing? How are they handling the unlimited PTO thing? Counterintuitively, it does seem that the biggest problem with unlimited PTO is that people take less time off because they are worried about peer competition and perception. Possibly there needs to be a cultural message from senior leadership that people are expected to take a certain amount of time.
• Guidelines from HR? Have you received any? Maybe they were sent out and you missed them? There may be some help there.
• Make sure your people know they won’t be punished for taking time off.
• Conversely, don’t reward the martyrs who make a big, heroic show of long work hours. That would send the wrong message. I don’t mean there won’t be the occasional big push for the odd, unusual project. Constant heroics in this area means the team member either is not equipped to do the job or they have too much work. It was all fine and well to boast about all-nighters in college, but that just is not reasonable in real life.
• The two things most employees (especially parents) really want are flexibility and autonomy. They want to know that as long as they get their work done on deadline at quality, they can do what they need to do to take care of themselves and the logistics of life. I recently heard about a manager who requires her people to put on their Out of Office notice when they take a bathroom break and post on their IM exactly what they are working on at any given moment. Who wants to have someone breathing down their necks like that? Not me!
• Is performance suffering? If your people are crushing it in terms of creativity and they seem happy, maybe this isn’t even a problem; it’s just you looking for problems to solve that don’t need solving.
• Do some research on sabbaticals. You may be passionate enough about this topic that you want to propose a sabbatical program for your organization. We provide coaching for individuals who participate in a highly structured but way out of normal work paid sabbatical for a global software company. Each individual who participates reports that it is an exceptionally fun and impactful experience. Many companies provide paid time for sabbaticals. It seems to be a very effective way for employees to refresh and renew.

You are right to care about the personal sustainability of your people—but, ultimately, it isn’t your responsibility. You can only create the safest and most inspiring environment for your people. The rest is going to be up to them.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Dear Madeleine,

It has recently become apparent that one of my newer direct reports is lying. In one instance, he told me a presentation was proofed and ready to go and I found out it wasn’t when I went into the document on our shared drive to make a change. In another instance, I learned from a colleague that he had claimed to her team that we were further along with a deliverable than we actually were. And there have been other, less impactful, little red flags.

The crazy thing is that the lies are so easy to uncover—especially the shared drive documents where anyone can see the last time he was in the document. When I confronted him, he claimed he had completed the deck but the changes weren’t saved. We are a technology company so claiming technical failure can work when a whole system crashes, but this is just bald-faced lying—on top of unforgivable technical ignorance. It is one thing to be caught and apologize, which is what I would expect, but now it is adding insult to injury.

I am very clear about my expectations when new people join my team, but it never occurred to me to tell people they are not allowed to lie. I am so mad that I’m having a hard time thinking straight about this. I don’t know what to do. What do you think?

Liar Liar

Dear Liar Liar,

My first thought is no. Nope. No, no, no, no. Zero tolerance for lying. Then I thought about it some more, and guess what? Still no.

It is true—you wouldn’t think you’d need to tell people they can’t lie. But then something like this happens and you realize that what is obvious to you just is not obvious to everyone. It is fair to say that all implicit expectations need to be made explicit. That way, when someone does something you simply don’t anticipate, you have your explicit expectations to fall back on. Black and white. No grey area, no confusion, no discussion.

Potential expectations and grounds for dismissal might be:

1. No lying
2. No cheating
3. No stealing
4. No drinking on the job
5. No showing up to work in a bikini top
6. No showing up to in-person client presentations in bare feet
7. Do not bring your dog to a client meeting
8. No smoking in the restrooms

Numbers 5-8 are examples of expectations I wouldn’t have thought I needed to set. I’m not that creative. Just when I think I can no longer be surprised by human beings, I am surprised!

Now, there are the little fibs that many people tell to boost their egos, hide a minor infraction, or just entertain themselves. The thing is, if it doesn’t interfere with work or create static in the system, you probably don’t even notice it. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

You sound like a sensible person. You must have hired this man for a reason—presumably, you thought he was going to bring something worthwhile to the table. You may be considering the high cost of hiring, onboarding, and training someone new. In case you’re motivated to try to salvage this employee, and if you think this could help, you might share our extraordinary Trust Model with him. This model does what all truly brilliant models do: it clarifies and simplifies a deeply layered and complex issue. You might even share this step by step guide to rebuilding trust with him. It can be helpful for people who need to break lifelong trust-busting habits.

Or you may just be fed up enough to not want to take the time. It’s up to you.

Before you go firing anyone, though, I suggest you get HR involved and start documenting. Call out the behavior every time you see it and make a note of exactly what happens. Work with your HR person to decide in advance how many (more) chances you will give Pants on Fire. People lie for all kinds of complicated reasons, many of which would evoke your compassion. So you don’t have to be mean about it, but you must refuse to tolerate it.

Prior to his final chance, you can literally say “lying will not be tolerated.” If you feel like you just don’t have the heart, I can recommend the work of Dr. Henry Cloud, an authority on setting boundaries. His book to check out is Boundaries for Leaders.

Don’t get mad. That just hurts you. Stay calm, point out the lies, and your liar will either clean up his act or lie his way out of a job.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

I had an upsetting experience yesterday. Amid our current environment of chaos, confusion, and uncertainty, I find that people are generally behaving pretty well. I’ve noticed this at the grocery store, which I now visit only about once every ten days. Social distancing is in effect, with dots or X’s every six feet marking where customers should stand—and yet, there is still a great deal of humanity to be found. One shopper helps another reach something on a high shelf; a woman encourages the person behind her with fewer items to go ahead of her in the line; friendly clerks smile behind masks and plexiglass in spite of working long hours.

So what was the epic failure that was so upsetting? A clerk who stuck to the rules—and I mean stuck!

A shopper with 19 items inadvertently stepped into the “15 items or fewer” line. Upon discovering this, the clerk refused to ring up the last four items and told the customer she would have to put everything back in her cart and go to a different line. The woman apologized for her mistake and politely asked the clerk to make an exception (meanwhile, the lines were getting longer). He again flatly refused—rules, after all, are rules—and repeated that she could not be rung up in his lane and would have to move. No other solution was possible; he was entrenched in upholding the 15-item rule.

The woman burst into tears. The stone-faced clerk still wouldn’t budge. Finally, the frazzled customer turned to the lines of captive shoppers witnessing the scene and cried, “Does anyone think this is right?”

A solution suddenly appeared in the form of a fellow customer who took the four offending items, paid for them in her lane, and handed them back. The total? A whopping $4.32. The woman walked out crying, leaving the customers around her dumbfounded that the clerk couldn’t or wouldn’t find a reasonable solution. In fact, he seemed a bit grumpy that another customer had stepped in!

Now you may be thinking: “Rules are rules, and they are in place for the common good.” Well, yes, that’s true. But think about the purpose of the rule—in this case, customer convenience and speed. Did it make sense to upset a customer? To hold up the people in line behind her? To harm the reputation of the store, lose that customer for life, and generally anger everyone else within 30 feet of the woman? Of course not.

Would it have been a better decision to keep the line moving, thus letting people exit the store and speeding up the experience for the 20 people waiting outside to get in? Of course. Wouldn’t it also have been better for the clerk to say “I see, you made a simple mistake and I’ll ring you up—but in the future, please pay attention to the 15 item rule,” thereby meeting the underlying purpose of the rule? Yes, that would have been better.

When someone bursts into tears, empathy is certainly better than hidebound insistence on following an arbitrary rule meant to keep things speedy. That transaction took 14 minutes. The customer could have been happily out in seven, if a bit chagrined at her miscount. Now the store has lost at least two customers—I doubt she will be back, and I’m done. For good.

What’s the culture like in your organization? If customer-focused decision making on an issue this simple is absent like it was in this woman’s experience, then innovation, adaptation, creativity, and customer service are in real jeopardy. Don’t let this happen in your organization. Rules, yes—but use a little common sense and compassion, please. Especially during these trying times.

About the Author

Patricia Overland is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Marcus Buckingham believes some basic assumptions about work are simply no longer true in today’s business environment. He shares his insights in his latest book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, coauthored with Ashley Goodall.

Lie #1: People care which company they work for.

Many companies use their corporate culture as a recruitment tool. Although it is true that people will join a company for their projected culture, people will stay—or leave—because of the team they work with every day. Team members who truly care about one another and have each other’s backs create their own culture. Leaders who observe and understand what makes teams perform well, and then encourage that behavior in other teams, will create a stronger organization.

Lie #2: The best plan wins.

Executives spend months developing a strategic plan, getting it approved by the board, and then disseminating it through the entire organization. The more rigorous and detailed the plan, the longer it takes to develop—and during that extended amount of time, reality probably changes. Planning is a good way to scope a problem, but what leaders really need is intelligence. Smart leaders empower their frontline people to deal with situations immediately and then check in regularly to see how they can help. Buckingham’s research indicates that this method lowers turnover and improves productivity while it builds an intelligence system that outperforms a complicated planning system.

Lie #3: The best companies cascade goals.

It has been common practice for a CEO to have annual goals that are cascaded first to the executive team, then through each department structure, to the individual level. The problem? Things can change over a year—but fewer than 5 percent of people go back to look at the goals or recalibrate their need. Truth be told, goals work only if you set them yourself. Freethinking leaders know what they need to accomplish, take the responsibility to explain it to team members, and then set goals they can achieve. The best practice is to cascade meaning—not goals.

Lie #4: The best people are well rounded.

Companies spend time defining competencies they want employees to develop—and then spend more time trying to improve people’s weakest competencies. This practice creates employees with just-average performance. Freethinking leaders look for the skills that people do well and leverage those skills. High performers usually do something a little differently than others—and that difference, when used intelligently, can be a competitive advantage.

Lie #5: People need feedback.

Feedback is a tricky subject. On one hand, if you don’t give any feedback and ignore someone, it destroys them. On the other hand, if you approach someone saying you want to give them feedback, their brain pattern looks almost exactly like fight-or-flight brain waves. The person feels like they are being attacked. Many times, feedback isn’t helpful because it isn’t delivered in a way that helps the person learn how to change a behavior. When freethinking leaders see someone doing something that works, they ask the person what they think worked well and why. This line of questioning as a method of feedback serves as the learning moment. The interrogation of the action—good or bad—is the most important conversation.

Lie #6: People can reliably rate other people.

Forty years of research shows that ratings of the performance of others is more a reflection of the person doing the rating than the person being rated. We simply can’t rate other humans on things like strategic thinking, creativity, business knowledge, or overall performance. Accurate rating of other people’s performance takes a much deeper conversation based on observations—it’s not about selecting a number on a scale.

Lie #7: People have potential.

Of course people have potential. The danger comes in identifying certain people as high potential, because doing it presupposes that others are low potential. By creating these designations, we are deliberately not seeing 85 percent of our people. The truth is that everyone has potential—but we have never found a way to measure just how much potential they have.

Lie #8: Work-life balance matters most.

Work-life balance is a great aspiration, but it is important to remember that balance is stationary. So, if you feel like you are totally in balance, you are probably stagnant. The trick is to find activities that give you strength in work and in life, and then spend as much time as possible on those things. Of course, none of us can spend 100 percent of our time being happy. But if we are deliberate about spending time doing things that invigorate us, it lessens the chance of us burning out and increases the chance of us being happier and more productive.

Lie #9: Leadership is a thing.

The main thing Buckingham wants leaders to know about the power of human nature is that each human’s nature is unique. If we see this as a problem that needs to be fixed, that’s a shame. But if we make a home for the unique individuals, we can build work environments where people are seen and challenged to become a better version of themselves.

You may completely agree with what Buckingham has to say in this book, or you may question some of it. Either way, once again, he’ll give you something to think deeply about.

To hear host Chad Gordon interview Marcus Buckingham, listen to the LeaderChat Podcast, and subscribe today. Order Nine Lies About Work on Amazon.com.

For more information on Marcus Buckingham, go to www.freethinkingleader.org

Dear Madeleine,

I have been working for the internet arm of a retail company for almost twenty years. When I started, we were truly innovating with the speed and fierceness of a startup. I was given carte blanche because the internet business was growing more quickly than that of the actual stores. The website has really always been my baby—with my vision, my art direction, and my ideas about functionality. About a year ago, the person who had been my boss during my time here left, and a new head of retail marketing was hired. I’ll call her IG.

IG is making my life hell. She paid a branding company a ton of money to do a re-brand for us and the work is just terrible. She did not involve me in any of the decisions and is now presenting me with a whole new branding direction that I know will not work for our online buyers. She pays no attention to my opinions or even my data. She calls me at all hours and sends me nasty texts when I don’t pick up. When we do talk, all she does is berate me for anything new we are doing on the website. She questions every little thing, even though I am executing the plan she signed off on prior to the big re-brand, which definitely isn’t ready for prime time.

For a while I thought she was merely mean, but now I am beginning to think she is just plain nuts. She is all over the place with her ideas and she changes every plan we make. I say black, she says white, and then when I agree that white is the way, she says purple. She criticizes me for something and then when I do it the way she wants, she doesn’t like that either. It almost feels like she is trying to keep everyone off balance so that nobody notices she has no idea what she is doing.

I love this company and I have a big stake in making sure it continues to be successful. At this point, though, I am so beaten down that I have lost my confidence and my motivation. I am thinking about bailing.

What do you think?

My New Boss is Nuts

Dear My New Boss is Nuts,

Don’t bail. Yet. Fight first. Then bail, if you have to.

This sounds so stressful. I am sorry this person has upset what sounds like a great job. You are going to have to stand up for yourself and do something about this. Normally, I would recommend a difficult conversation with your boss that included a request for change—but it doesn’t sound like your boss is someone who can be reasoned with. It’s possible she actually may be nuts—or she could be trying to make you quit so she can hire the person she wants in your job. Or, as you point out, maybe she is in over her head and is using the crazy behavior to cover it up. It is astonishing how long some people get away with that kind of thing. I have seen people use the strategy of sowing chaos many times, and you would be surprised how often it works.

Don’t let yourself get beaten down or become a victim of this situation. If you really care about the company, which you seem to, you owe it to yourself and others to at least try to fight back. Go over your new boss’s head to her boss, or go to HR. You have twenty years of stellar work behind you—if all of a sudden you’re unable to perform, I just can’t believe you wouldn’t be taken seriously.

To the best of your ability, document the instances in which your boss has behaved irrationally in the past and in which she behaves oddly in the future. Note all of the times you felt or feel bullied. Keep every single text, as they show the date and time of events. Write up the facts about any interaction that seems suspect to you, and time and date all notes that record the facts. You can get more information about how to document appropriately here. Remember that the more rational you sound and appear, the more unreasonable she will seem.

Keep your wits about you and document, document, document. You may even be able to sue for a hostile work environment—although lawsuits are the last resort because they drag on forever, they are expensive, and you could lose. But, if your boss’s boss and your HR representative are on notice that you could make a case, that gives you a little more power.

You can allow yourself to just fold. You really can. And I’m sure that option seems quite appealing right now. That’s the long-term effect that lack of safety and constant turmoil can have. But what will happen the next time someone tries to intimidate you? If you fight now, you will be ready for the next time, and maybe the next bully will know you are not an opponent to be messed with.

I know you didn’t ask for this. We rarely ask for the trials that test us and make us grow. But I think you will continue to feel beaten down and unmotivated if you let IG win. Fighting back will restore your sense of self and your confidence. And even if you lose, you will know you tried and you didn’t make things easy for her.

Can you tell I really hate bullies? I just hate them. I am not very objective about it, and I can’t claim to be, because I feel so strongly that we can’t let them win. So feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Good luck to you.

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!

Drawing a page from his newly released third edition of Leading at a Higher Level, bestselling business author Ken Blanchard asks senior leaders, “Have you set up your organization to be high performing?”

Blanchard identifies seven focus areas to make sure that a company is positioned to be the employer of choice, provider of choice, investment of choice, and corporate citizen of choice.

1. Information and Open Communication—people have easy access to the information they need to do their job effectively. Plans and decisions are communicated so that they are clearly understood.
   
2. Compelling Vision: Purpose and Values—leadership is aligned around a shared vision and values. People have passion around a shared purpose and values.
   
3. Ongoing Learning—people are actively supported in the development of new skills and competencies. The organization continually incorporates new learning into standard ways of doing business.
   
4. Relentless Focus on Customer Results—everyone maintains the highest standards of quality and service. All work processes are designed to make it easier for customers.
   
5. Energizing Systems and Structures—systems and structures, are integrated and aligned. Formal and informal practices make it easy for people to get their jobs done.
   
6. Shared Power and High Involvement—people have an opportunity to influence decisions that affect them. Teams are used as a vehicle for accomplishing work and influencing decisions.
   
7. Leadership—leaders think that leading is about serving, not being served. Leaders remove barriers to help people focus on their work and their customers.

Blanchard also offers a quick 14-question quiz and a link to a 60-page Leading at a Higher Level eBook summarizing the key points.

You can access both here at Blanchard’s recent blog post.

The first edition came out in 2006 and featured the best thinking from 18 different authors, summarizing the key concepts from all the Blanchard programs at the time.  The new edition continues that tradition. Now featuring the work of 25 authors, this edition includes four new chapters: Building Trust, Mentoring, Collaboration, and Organizational Leadership.

“The umbrella concept,” says lead author Ken Blanchard, “is servant leadership—the idea that people lead best when they serve first.

“There are the two parts of servant leadership,” explains Blanchard.  “First, the strategic or leadership part of servant leadership is identifying the target: the purpose of your business, your picture of the future, and the values that will guide your decisions.

“Once a target and vision are set, how do leaders execute or accomplish that vision? They must turn the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside-down to begin the operational or servant aspect of servant leadership. This is when you diagnose the individual or team in terms of their skills and motivation to get the job done. You identify the competencies and commitment that need to be developed.  Now your role as a leader is to provide the direction and support people can’t provide for themselves.

“Using a situational approach to leadership through SLII®, leaders must diagnose development levels, says Blanchard. “If individuals or teams are new to a task, the leader needs to provide direction.  If individuals or teams are lacking confidence or commitment, the leader needs to provide support.”

Blanchard points to the new chapter on Organizational Leadership, where the same concept can be applied to an organization as a whole.

“Organizations, like people, can be at different levels of development.  As a new C-level leader, you need to identify the organization’s development level, so you can apply the right leadership style.  We’ve seen too many situations where new CEOs—wanting to make a quick impact—enter organizations and immediately go to their favorite leadership style rather than to the one that is needed. We include two well-known case studies in the new chapter that show the benefits of a good match and the negative consequences of a misdiagnosis and bad match.

“We’ve all seen the negative consequences of poor leadership. Our goal with this book is to provide the next generation of leaders with a road map and curriculum for great leadership.

“This involves focusing on both people and results,” says Blanchard. “You cannot sustain performance over the long term with an either/or approach. The market demands innovative, agile solutions. This requires a both/and approach to management that places equal emphasis on results and the needs of people.  That’s the success formula today’s top companies are using to attract the best and brightest.

“When you lead at a higher level, people work together in a way that excites customers and gets results. Leadership is something you do with people—not to people,” Blanchard continues.  “And profit is the applause you get for creating a motivating environment for people so they will take good care of your customers.

“We hope to inspire leaders to go beyond short-term thinking and zero in on the right target. We want to teach leaders to empower people to unleash their incredible potential. Finally, we want to encourage leaders to ground their leadership in humility and focus on the greater good. It’s a tall order, but we think this book provides everything a leader needs to get started.”

Would you like to learn more about creating a higher level of leadership in your organization?  Join Ken Blanchard for a free webinar on January 23!

Ken Blanchard on 4 Keys to Leading at a Higher Level

January 23, 2019

9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 p.m. Eastern / 5:00 p.m. UK Time / 5:00 p.m. GMT

In this webinar, best-selling business author Ken Blanchard shares key concepts from the newly released third edition of his book, Leading at a Higher Level. Ken will share a four-step approach to building an organizational culture that leads to engaged people and improves long-term business results.

Participants will explore:

How to set your sights on the right target and vision. A compelling vision tells your organization who you are (purpose), where you’re going (picture of the future), and what guides your behavior and decisions (values). Ken will share how a compelling vision creates a strong organizational culture where everyone’s interests and energy are aligned. This results in trust, customer satisfaction, an energized and committed workforce, and profitability.

How to treat your people right. Without committed and empowered employees, you can never provide good service. You can’t treat your people poorly and then expect them to treat your customers well. Ken will explain how treating your people right begins with good performance planning to get things going. It continues with managers who provide the right amount of direction and support that each individual employee needs to achieve those goals and performance standards.

How to treat your customers right. To keep your customers coming back today, you can’t be content with simply satisfying them. Instead, you must create raving fans–customers who are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to tell everyone about you. Ken will share how companies that create raving fans routinely do the unexpected on behalf of their customers, and then enjoy the growth generated by customers bragging about them to prospective clients.

How to have the right kind of leadership. The most effective leaders realize that leadership is not about them and that they are only as good as the people they lead. These leaders seek to be serving leaders, not self-serving leaders. Ken will explain how once a vision has been set, leaders move themselves to the bottom of the hierarchy, acting as a cheerleader, supporter, and encourager for the people who report to them.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to create a culture where leaders who are grounded in humility and focused on the greater good can create organizations where both people and profits grow and thrive. This both/and philosophy, Blanchard contends, is the essence of leading at a higher level.

Use this link to register for 4 Keys to Leading at a Higher Level.  The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Dear Madeleine,

I work for the tax collector’s office at my local county tax agency. The bulk of my efforts go to facilitating change into that environment. I am a career-driven person and I am finding it very difficult to influence others.

My job is under the umbrella of a state agency and I recently have been voted to be on a leadership board for my county. This organization has been plagued with old traditions and scandals of misuse of power. I’m optimistic and believe that I can change the environment—but at times it exhausts me.

When the HR department selected me for a grievance board committee recently, my boss asked me “Why don’t you let someone else win for a change?” I don’t know how to interpret that. What should I do differently?

Trying to Make Change

Dear Trying to Make Change,

The good news here is that it sounds like you are having quite a bit of success—but it also sounds like you are stepping on some toes to achieve it. Although a little toe stepping is probably inevitable, there might be some ways to soften your approach and make more friends than enemies.

Forgive me for generalizing, but in my experience people who have worked in local government a long time don’t love change. Government work tends to attract folks who seek predictability and stability. Even if they start out with the best of intentions—and of course, many do—if a system is in place that protects their job and benefits them in specific ways, they are loath to give that up.

You have stepped into the role of change agent, which will immediately cause others to suspect you if not outright hate you. You must realize that the role of change agent requires some advanced skills. If your boss is experiencing you as wanting to win at all costs, causing others to lose, somehow it appears that you are engineering things as win/lose.

To ease your path, you are going to have to develop more diplomacy. You’ll need to have conversations that will help people see the changes as a win/win. It is relentless, hard, and, yes, exhausting work. You sound like a logical person, so it is probably difficult for you to see why someone wouldn’t automatically understand why a change might be needed. Because it is so obvious to you, there is a good chance you may not be sharing all of the detail that might help others see things the way you do.

It wouldn’t hurt for you to be aware of Blanchard’s change model. At its core, it breaks down the kinds of concerns people have when change is needed and imminent, and it helps leaders understand the approach they need to use with each individual affected by change. In this recent blog post are ideas for some steps you might consider.

You also might be interested in Angeles Arrien’s work on change agents. In her book The Four-Fold Way; Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary, Arrien researched leaders and change agents in indigenous cultures. She found that, despite radical differences in culture and customs, they all did four things in common.

1. Show up and choose to be present
2. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning
3. Tell the truth without blame or judgment
4. Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome

This alone is worth the price of the book. However, Arrien also provides some excellent ideas on how to develop oneself if one identifies with any of the roles in the title. I would say you probably at the very least are a warrior and a visionary. These are extremely difficult roles to play in the world, and you will need to create a long-term personal development program to sustain your efforts.

In the meantime, work on developing and deepening your relationships, gathering input from stakeholders, listening, overcommunicating, and being kind. I am sure you are right about the old traditions and the bad behavior, but no one likes to feel judged. The past is the past. You represent the new. Let the new be characterized by drawing on what is best in people and what people are doing right.

And, I am sorry to say it, you’ll need to develop a thick skin because no matter how hard you try, some people are still going to hate you. It just goes with the job.

Fight on, change warrior!

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 been assigned to handle a new team and we are currently in the developmental stage.

Yesterday as I did a few one-on-one sessions, one of the new hires on my team (let’s call her Laura) mentioned that one of my tenured team members (let’s call her Carol) was cold to her.

Laura said the only interaction she has had with Carol was when Carol told her in person that she is not allowed to use a term of endearment when talking with another woman in the office. Both Carol and Laura are LGBT. Laura said she apologized to Carol by saying she was sorry if Carol thinks it was inappropriate for her to call another woman by an endearing term but Carol did not answer.

Although I have heard rumors that Carol is interested in the woman whom Laura called by an endearing term, I have advised Laura to not magnify the situation because it might be just her imagination, and to give Carol the benefit of the doubt. I also asked her to let me know immediately if Carol starts displaying harassing behavior. 

In the meantime, as a supervisor, I know I need to extinguish whatever ember is under the rug that might turn into fire. I have not yet spoken to Carol. She was part of my team before this, and we never discussed personal matters. I am scheduled to talk to her next week. Could you give me tips on how I can best nip this situation in the bud? Thank you so much. 

Need to Avoid a Fire

Dear Need to Avoid a Fire,

Welcome to management. Isn’t it fun? People are the wild card, every time. Their needs, their desires, their wants.

First, let’s eliminate the static. I think the LGBT issue is a red herring, as well as who may or may not be attracted to whom. Rumors are—well, rumors, and you can’t depend on them to be true. And even if you could, it really doesn’t matter. The key is for everyone to have clear rules for interacting regardless of orientation or interest.

As a manager, since this could blow up, it would be smart for you to keep a clear record of every single thing that comes to your attention as this drama unfolds. Hopefully it will stop before it gains any steam, but you have to cover yourself.

In terms of the bigger picture of forming a new team, I highly recommend that you do two things:

• Share the laws of your state or country around what constitutes harassment. In California, harassment is essentially in the eye of the beholder. Based on this, you can share what is most relevant, such as:
  • Avoid any and all personal observations; i.e.: “you look so pretty in that skirt!” It is always safer to keep compliments impersonal; i.e.: “that skirt is great looking.”
  • Avoid terms of endearment under any circumstances.
  • Keep your hands to yourself at all times.
  • Keep humor clean and light and always be mindful of anyone you may be insulting.
• Work with everyone on your team to come up with norms for the team that everyone can live with. Examples include:
  • We agree that we are on time
  • We treat each other with respect
  • We give each other direct feedback
  • We talk things through when there is conflict

Speaking with Carol is going to be critical. One thing to do is request that she have a heart-to-heart talk with Laura to accept the apology and move on. Creating the norm of having your team members give each other direct feedback and talk things through when there is conflict is ideal, if difficult to achieve.

Be kind, be firm, and stop paying attention to anything that doesn’t matter.

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!

I work in sales in a large medical device company. I kill my numbers and have been number one in my region for the last six quarters.

I need your advice. My company continually makes errors in creating inventory of the devices we are selling. I just don’t think that I, in good conscience, can continue to sell my heart out when I know that the company will not deliver on its promises of continual customer service and care.

I am at the beginning of my career so maybe I’m just being naïve—but I would like to think that a company like ours understands that when it’s a life or death situation for our customers, keeping some inventory would make sense.

I mentioned this concern to my boss and she looked at me funny and said, “Well, I’m not sure everyone would agree with you.”

I understand that holding inventory is seen as a liability on the books, but it’s becoming clear to me that in the name of better quarterly numbers and shareholder value, the company is literally okay with putting lives at risk.

Am I being a goody two shoes? Should I look for another job?

Outraged

Dear Outraged,

No, you’re not. Yes, you should.

Oops, I’m letting my own moral outrage color my coach approach here, so let’s back up.

The good news is that you’re killing it despite having serious reservations, so it sounds like you really could find a job elsewhere if you decide you can’t stand the situation you’re in. However, big public pharmaceutical and medical device companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and must manage the numbers for the Wall Street optics—so I’m not sure you’ll find a different company with customer service as its honest-to-goodness number one priority. Exceptions might be found in privately held firms.

You could look for a company, a product, and a go-to-market strategy with less problematic integrity issues. Or, because your values are such a strong driver for you, you might think about how to apply your sales skill set, brains, and stamina to an organization that does something you believe in deeply.

What you’re seeing is probably the tip of the iceberg. Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I have been working in organizations for long enough to know that people at the individual contributor level only see about half of what’s really going on. So if you’re outraged now, you would probably be incensed if you knew everything.

You say you’re young, so maybe you’re not already wearing the golden handcuffs that come with a big mortgage and children who will require a college education—so the time to make the big decision is probably right now.

Nobody’s perfect and companies make questionable decisions all the time, so you’ll need to decide what you can live with and what is unacceptable. What I do know for sure is that people who spend too much time working in situations that force them to act in direct opposition to their own values eventually run out of steam. Somebody else might say, “Oh for goodness’ sake, grow up and get over yourself.” If you were supporting a family and had no other choice at all, I might say that. But it sounds like you do have a choice, and you have personal agency.

So here we are, back at the beginning. Yes. Get out. Go find yourself a situation where you can make a significant contribution to something great. You will never look back.

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!

If you are a leader looking to improve your organization’s current culture and work environment, here are five steps used by change practitioners that can help with your next change initiative.

1. Look at what needs to change. Ideally, a leader should do this collaboratively with the organization’s leadership team or the entire management team. Examine culture and behavior norms as well as strategic goals. Ask these questions: “How big is the gap from where we are today to where we need to be?” “What cultural behaviors do we want to keep?” “What behaviors do we need to get rid of?” Describe the ideal state. Now ask: “What will people be doing differently?”
2. Create a scorecard. What are the leading—and lagging—indicators of success? Prioritize short-term as well as long-term goals. What are expectations within the next six months? By year one? By year three? A scorecard allows everyone to see the targets as well as the progress.
3. Get feedback. Leaders need to embrace feedback to understand where they may be helping or hurting the change process. Leaders set the tone for organizational culture. When the culture isn’t working, the leader must look in the mirror and ask “What am I doing that may be either serving or not serving our culture?” It may be time for a 360° leadership assessment.

A good 360° assessment is one that gets specific. The best ones I’ve seen have the leader  work with a coach to create questions for the leader’s direct reports, peers, and boss. The coach conducts the interviews, pinpoints themes (similar responses from three or more people), then prepares a report and delivers it to the leader.

4. Be a role model for receiving feedback. A best practice for receiving feedback is for the leader to share with their team what they learned and what they are committed to improving, and then to ask the team to help keep them accountable. This is where the shift in culture begins to take shape. The leader is demonstrating that they are serious about the change and that they personally believe it “starts with me.” Leaders who take responsibility for what’s working and what’s not, and for the behaviors they personally need to embrace, will be the ones who can look back months or years later and be proud of the culture they helped create.
5. Get a coach. You’ve heard that behavior change, no matter how small, can be difficult. Habitual behaviors are often years in the making. Regular coaching sessions help leaders not only make needed behavior shifts but also practice those new behaviors. Some coaches will even shadow a leader and give them timely feedback.

Today’s companies need to be agile and reinventive to keep up with the changing demands of their clients—and the organizational culture plays a significant role in whether those demands will be met. The culture can determine whether people will embrace a change or block it.

The leader sets the tone for leading the change to create a new culture. When implementing change in your organizational culture, use these five steps to get management and employee commitment to making a difference!

About the Author

Joni Wickline is a Vice President with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Wickline’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a senior leader in a large nonprofit. My big struggle is with one employee who seems emotionally unstable. One day she is completely reasonable and easygoing, and the next she is reactive and flying off the handle for no apparent reason.

I’ve learned to expect it, but her behavior is affecting the rest of the team. They are walking on eggshells and one of them recently came to me for help on dealing with the situation.

It feels really personal to talk to someone about this, and I don’t know where to start.

Walking on Eggshells

Dear Walking on Eggshells,

It is your job as a leader to make sure everyone feels safe. It is not okay that your direct report is freaking out other employees. So, I am afraid you are going to have to get personal here.

• First, since you are in a large organization, involve HR and start documenting. Document every complaint, every outburst, and every disruption.
• Your employee may be going through a rough time personally. If so, encourage her to avail herself of counseling through your Employee Assistance Program.
• If it is a self-awareness issue, work with your training department to find her a class or some coaching.
• If it is bigger than a rough time, she might be suffering from a mental illness. I am not a doctor but I can tell you that one of the books about Borderline Personality Disorder is called Stop Walking on Eggshells.

In any case, you have to set some distinct boundaries by clearly stating to her which of her behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Be direct, be concise, be clear, and keep the tone neutral. Tell her you will be paying attention and will let her know when you see behavior that is over the line. Be strong and fierce.

If she can get it together and behave herself at work, great. If she can’t, she gets a couple of warnings and then she’s out. Just because you can let her behavior roll off your back doesn’t make it acceptable. It would be one thing if your employee weren’t disrupting others, but she is—so you are obligated to do something to make it stop.

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!

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!

“In this model,” says Blanchard, “Leaders assume a traditional role to set the vision, direction, and strategy for the organization—the leadership aspect of servant leadership. After the vision and direction are set, the leaders turn the organizational pyramid upside down so that they serve the middle managers and frontline people who serve the customer. Now the leader’s role shifts to a service mindset for the task of implementation—the servant aspect of servant leadership.”

Many organizations and leaders get into trouble during implementation, warns Blanchard.

“When command-and-control leaders are at the helm, the traditional hierarchical pyramid is kept alive and well. All of the organization’s energy moves up the hierarchy, away from customers and frontline folks who are closest to the action. When there is a conflict between what customers want and what the boss wants, the boss wins.”

Blanchard suggests that leadership, learning, and talent development professionals correct this situation by philosophically turning the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside down—putting customer contact people at the top of the organization and top management at the bottom.

“This philosophical mind-shift reminds everyone in the organization that when it comes to implementation, leaders serve their people, who serve the customers. This change may seem minor, but it makes a major difference between who is responsible and who is responsive.”

The next step, according to Blanchard, is to align policies, practices, direction, and support to remove barriers for the people who are taking care of customers. This high-investment approach to talent management is designed to bring out the best in everyone.

“Servant leaders are constantly trying to find out what their people need to perform well and live according to their organization’s vision. In top organizations, leaders believe if they do a good job serving their people and showing them they care, the employees will, in turn, practice that same philosophy with customers.”

The Biggest Barrier to Servant Leadership

In looking back at all of the organizations he has worked with over the years, one of the most persistent barriers to more people becoming successful servant leaders is a heart motivated by self-interest, says Blanchard.

“As a leader, you must ask yourself why you lead. Is it to serve or to be served? Answering this question in a truthful way is so important. You can’t fake being a servant leader. I believe if leaders don’t get the heart part right, they simply won’t ever become servant leaders.

“Managers who somehow have themselves as the center of the universe and think everything must rotate around them are really covering up not-okay feelings about themselves. This is an ego problem that manifests as fear or false pride. When you don’t feel good about yourself, you have two options. You can hide and hope nobody notices you, or you can overcompensate and go out and try to control your environment. I always say that people who feel the need to control their environment are really just scared little kids inside.”

“I learned from the late Norman Vincent Peale that the best leaders combine a healthy self-acceptance with humility.  As I learned from Norman, “Leaders with humility don’t think less of themselves—they just think about themselves less.”

An Old Model for a New World of Work?

Blanchard explains that leaders with a servant heart thrive on developing people and helping them achieve their goals. They constantly try to find out what their people need to perform well. Being a servant leader is not just another management technique. It is a way of life for those with servant hearts.

“When I first began to teach managers back in the late 1960s I met Robert Greenleaf, who was just retiring as a top AT&T executive. Bob talked about servant leadership—the concept that effective leaders and managers need to serve their people, not be served by them. It was entirely new thinking then. In many ways, Bob is considered the father of the term servant leadership.”

It is much easier for people to see the importance and relevance of servant leadership today than it was back then, says Blanchard.

“Today when people see you as a judge and critic, they spend most of their time trying to please you rather than accomplishing the organization’s goals and moving in the direction of the desired vision. ‘Boss watching’ becomes a popular sport and people get promoted on their upward-influencing skills. That role doesn’t do much for accomplishing a clear vision. People try to protect themselves rather than move the organization in its desired direction.

“Servant leaders are constantly trying to find out what their people need to be successful. Rather than wanting their people to please them, they want to make a difference in the lives of their people—and, in the process, impact the organization.”

Servant Leadership: The Power of Love, Not the Love of Power

A few years ago, Blanchard received a letter from a man in New Zealand with a line that he believes sums up his leadership philosophy.

“The man wrote that he felt I was in the business of teaching people the power of love rather than the love of power.

“I believe the world is in desperate need of a different leadership role model. We need servant leadership advocates. Spread the word to everyone who will listen! And remember: your job is to teach people the power of love rather than the love of power.”

Would you like to learn more about creating a servant leadership culture and leading at a higher level?  Join us for a free webinar with Ken Blanchard!

Servant Leadership: 4 Keys to Leading at a Higher Level

Wednesday, September 12, 2018, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time / 12:00 p.m. Eastern / 5:00 p.m. UK / 4:00 p.m. GMT

In this special event for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals, best-selling business author Ken Blanchard looks at servant leadership and how to create an others-focused culture in your organization.  You’ll learn how to:

• Set your sights on the right target and vision. Great organizations focus on three bottom lines instead of just one. In addition to financial success, Ken will share how leaders at great organizations measure the satisfaction and engagement levels of their employees as well as their customers.
• Treat your customers right. To keep your customers today, you can’t be content to just satisfy them. Ken will share how to create raving fans—customers who are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to tell others.
• Treat your people right. You can’t treat your people poorly and expect them to treat your customers well. Ken will share how treating your people right includes setting clear, meaningful goals, providing day-to-day coaching, and finally, setting up performance reviews so that there are no surprises.
• Develop the right kind of leaders. The most effective leaders recognize that leadership is not about them and that they are only as good as the people they lead. Ken will share how servant leadership principles can guide the design of your leadership development curriculum.

Ready to take your organization to the next level?  Don’t miss this opportunity to explore how to create an others-focused culture and leadership development strategy based on the principles of servant leadership. The event is free courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

REGISTER USING THIS LINK

“Part of effective communication between manager and direct report is a mindset and part is a skillset. Both are required,” says Phillips. “It’s easy for managers to convince themselves they don’t have time for quality conversations, especially when they aren’t particularly interested in having them and don’t really know how to do it.

“Every manager I’ve worked with has so much of their own work to do all day, every day, that some can’t see their way clear to spending time with the folks who work for them—other than performance reviews, rushed interactions, or crises,” explains Phillips. “Conversations between these managers and their people are mostly manager-led directives of ‘this is what I want you to do; here’s how to do it.’ The manager is focused on getting stuff done and on what needs to happen—not on their direct reports’ career growth or needs.

“Unfortunately, when individual contributors in this scenario become managers, they treat people exactly the way they were treated. Sub-quality conversations become a cultural norm.”

The good news, according to Phillips, is that managers can learn to be more effective in their work conversations.

“If a manager has the right mindset and training, it’ll drive the right behavior,” says Phillips. She recommends focusing on three specific conversations to get started.

The Goal-Setting Conversation

“All good performance begins with clear goals. Effective goal-setting conversations begin with clarity—what to do, by when, and what a good job looks like,” says Phillips. “Be specific—and don’t be afraid to ask questions. It’s critically important to take the time to make sure both parties are interpreting the same words in the same way to avoid misunderstandings.

“Conversations and relationships can go sideways when people interpret things differently but don’t have a conversation about that interpretation. Never assume!”

This leads to the second important conversation at which managers need to excel—giving feedback.

The Feedback Conversation

“A friend of mine recently told me I tend to hijack conversations,” says Phillips. “The funny thing is, I was just about to tell her she does the same thing! We discovered that what I interpret as hijacking and what she interprets as hijacking are two different things.

“We talked about how, when she’s talking and pauses to think, I rush in to fill the empty space.  It goes back to my experience at home. In my family, you talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and there are no pauses. So when my friend goes silent, I fill in the gap and start talking about something.

“Then I explained to her that I feel she hijacks the conversation when I tell her about something happening in my life and she immediately turns it into a discussion about something that’s happening in her life. It’s related, but it still feels to me like she is making it about her.

“Because we are committed to our friendship, we’re willing to discuss things that are uncomfortable and to consider each other’s point of view. That’s important at work, too. Managers and direct reports need to have the type of relationship where they can talk honestly. When a manager cares about a direct report as a human being—and vice versa—they build up an emotional bank account they can draw from.  That allows them to have difficult conversations when they need to.”

Sadly, the word feedback has a negative connotation in business today, says Phillips.

“People seldom think of feedback as praise or recognition. When people hear that word, they think at best it’s going to be constructive criticism. But it rarely feels constructive—it just feels like criticism.

“It’s another area where most managers don’t have the skills they need—especially feedback around performance improvement and redirection. Managers are so concerned about how someone might respond to feedback, they tend to avoid it altogether.”

One way managers can be more successful when preparing to give feedback is to make sure they are coming at it from the right place.

“Your feedback can’t be based on your own personal agenda,” says Phillips. “It has to be about helping other people be successful or otherwise improving the team. If you come from a personal agenda, your feedback will come across poorly.

“In my conversation with my friend, she gave me the feedback about the way I hijack conversations because she wanted our conversations to be better.  I knew that, and it gave me a chance to think about my behavior and run it over in my mind. That was a good learning for me—to recognize that behavior I picked up from my family might be misinterpreted when I’m dealing with other people.”

The One-on-One Conversation

Listening and focusing on the other person’s agenda is especially important when managers conduct one-on-one conversations with their direct reports, says Phillips.

“It’s easy to fall into the manager’s agenda, where one-on-ones can turn into a review of how the direct report is doing on each of their goals. At The Ken Blanchard Companies, we teach managers to schedule semi-monthly one-on-ones, where the agenda is driven by the individual contributor and what they need.”

The manager’s primary role is to listen and provide support, says Phillips.  Senior leaders are generally better at this than are new managers.

“At the senior levels of an organization, a VP typically will have more experience asking a direct report how things are going and finding out what the direct report needs to succeed. As you move down to the frontlines of an organization, managers are less experienced at taking the lead in a conversation like that.”

Especially at the frontlines, Phillips observes, managers and supervisors need training in how to have effective one-on-one conversations. Otherwise, the direct report is likely to default to the manager and ask the manager what they want talk about.

“It’s important to teach managers to ask open-ended questions about what an individual contributor’s needs are. Suppose the direct report comes into the meeting with a blank piece of paper and says, ‘What do you want talk about?’ The manager should take that opening and say, ‘Let’s talk about some things you are working on. Let’s list the three or four tasks, discuss your development level, and talk about how I can help you.’ Eventually, that direct report will become more proactive and learn to take the lead in those conversations.”

It’s a process and a joint responsibility—one where everybody benefits, says Phillips.

“Leaders influence through the power of their conversations. Train your managers—and your individual contributors—in the skills they need for more effective conversations at work. It’s one of the best ways to improve performance and satisfaction.”

Would you like to learn more about improving the quality and frequency of conversations in your organization?  Then join us for a free webinar!

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT 101: 3 CONVERSATIONS ALL MANAGERS NEED TO MASTER

Wednesday, August 1, 2018, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Managers influence and lead through the words they use and the communication skills they apply. In this webinar, Blanchard senior consulting partner Ann Phillips will share the three types of conversations managers must know how to conduct.

1. The Goal-Setting Conversation—how to set goals collaboratively with a focus on motivation.
2. The Feedback Conversation—how to praise performance when it is aligned and how to redirect performance when it is off track.
3. The One-on-One Conversation—how to set aside time to hear from direct reports using high levels of inquiry and listening.

Don’t miss this opportunity to evaluate how your organization is currently addressing performance management. Learn the elements of masterful performance management and how to apply these principles in your own organization. Ann will share tips and strategies you can put into practice immediately. The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Register today!

Dear Madeleine,

Our company went to “unlimited PTO” about 16 months ago.  The idea was to try it out for a year and re-evaluate.  The re-evaluation period was moved to the 18-month mark, so it hasn’t happened yet.   

You would think the problem would be people abusing the policy but I have the opposite one: my people are not taking any vacation.  Back in the day when we had a “use or lose it” policy, I had to stay on people’s cases to take their PTO and they would, but now that time off is at the employee’s discretion, I can’t get people to take their vacation. 

I have a team of nine folks and every single one of them seems to feel worried about taking reasonable time off. I am worried that people are going to burn out.  Can I make my people take time off?  What to do? I feel like I need to call a…

Time Out

Dear Time Out,

This is certainly an interesting and trending topic, and you are not alone trying to navigate the dynamics that come with such a big change.  I found an interesting post on this that may help you.

Based on my experience with clients and my own team, I would have anticipated that people not taking time off would be the problem with unlimited PTO.  In fact, the first time I heard of it a couple of years back, I thought, “Oh God, people are never going to stop working! They’re just going to work themselves into an early grave.” In some cultures this is literally true, but that is because of a cultural expectation that people work massive amounts of overtime.  

In Western cultures at least, it would seem that giving people the option to manage their own workload, get their jobs done in the agreed upon timeframe, and take care of their personal lives with flexibility could only be a good thing.  Such an approach treats people like responsible, sensible adults.  But in some organizations many people are burdened with unreasonable workloads.  Some employees are poor judges of how long certain tasks will take, so they take on too much.  Other employees burden themselves by taking on more than they should.  The very ambitious sometimes seek to assure their promotability by simply outworking their peers.  It is up to the manager to figure this out and gauge the proper workload for each person.

In certain sectors people are going to be more affected by high performance pressure than others, making it feel unsafe for people to take time off.

People avoid taking time off for many reasons: For example, they:

• Feel they are indispensable and believe nobody else can do the job they do.
• Worry their customers will be upset by their absence.
• Succumb to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)—they don’t want to miss getting in on an exciting project.
• Fear being judged—they don’t want to be seen as a slacker.
• Bank their hours for a “rainy day”—rather than taking a big vacation, they save their hours in case an unexpected illness or emergency requires them to be out of the office

You, as the manager, need to discuss PTO with every person you lead.  Each individual is going to have a different concern and you can work with them to alleviate those concerns.  You can also work as a team to assure that plans are made in advance and people are properly covered during their time off.

The benefit of the unlimited PTO policy is that it provides people with flexibility in their work day to attend to family or other personal matters without having to submit paperwork.  The danger is that people won’t take the time they need to rest, play, and get a change of scenery—activities that research shows are critical to mental and physical health.

You are the leader of your group.  Make it clear to your people that you expect them to take vacation time, rest time, time to go to doctors’ appointments, and other kinds of self-care. Show them you mean it by doing these things yourself. Have you planned your own vacation?

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,

My long-time boss recently left and I finally got a chance to be a manager. But soon after I stepped into the role, upper management informed me I needed to cut at least three people from my team as part of a massive company restructure.

I messaged my old boss and she told me this kind of situation was one of the reasons she left. She advised me to do the same thing!

I feel betrayed by my old boss. In four short months I’ve gone from being ecstatic over my new role to being in despair and exhausted. Should I just quit like my boss suggested and try to find another job? What do you think?

Completely Overwhelmed

Dear Completely Overwhelmed,

What a cruel disappointment. That just stinks. The first thing you need to do is calm down and reduce the amount of adrenaline racing through your system. Take a big step back and a lot of deep breaths. I know you feel terrible right now, but you are going to figure this out.

If you just throw in the towel because you feel betrayed and disappointed, I know you will regret not having given this your best shot. Am I projecting? Possibly. I personally have a high tolerance for risk—and I have some whopping failures to show for it. But I’ve learned an awful lot from them.

I suggest you tighten your shoelaces and show up for this challenge. If that is what you choose, here are a few things you can do to stay grounded.

• Get your new boss on your side. Find out what is most important to him or her and in what order. This person must know you are not equipped to deal with this situation, so be honest about it and ask for very clear direction.
• Get to know your HR partner. Take her to lunch. Get him on autodial. If you have to let people go, get all the help you possibly can. It is a terrible thing to have to learn to do, but as a manager it is essential. The best advice I have for you is to be kind, clear, direct and brief. Do not waver. Take personal responsibility to the extent possible. Decide what needs to said and say only those things. If you can get your HR partner to join you—or even to lead the meetings—all the better.
• Figure out who else in the organization you need to have on your side. Relationships are going to be what gets you through this. You can read an article on that here.
• Get smart about change. Start with this great blog post and go from there. You will need this information to manage yourself and your people.
• See if the company will provide you with a coach. If they won’t, find one and pay for it yourself. Make sure the coach has experience working with new managers who need to ramp up fast. If there was ever a time to get help, this is it. Get as much help for yourself as you possibly can.
• Put your sanity and self-care first. This is going to be a marathon and you need to take care of yourself to go the distance. So go to the gym or take a walk. Leave work at a reasonable time. Get your sleep, stay hydrated, and lean on your friends.

Surprise! Things change quickly. Life can throw insane curve balls. Sure, you could decide to leave, brush up your LinkedIn profile, and start networking. But wouldn’t you rather try to rise to the occasion and either win or go down fighting? I won’t judge you if you wouldn’t. I promise.

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!

Topping the list of servant leader attributes was empathy, closely followed by being selfless and humble.  Also mentioned multiple times were being authentic, caring, collaborative, compassionate, honest, open-minded, patient, and self-aware. The word cloud pictured above features all of the attributes that were identified.

When it came to the top three behaviors servant leaders demonstrate, the leadership and learning professionals identified listening, followed by asking questions and developing others.

For leaders looking for ways to be more others-focused in their work conversations with direct reports, coaching experts Madeleine Homan Blanchard and Linda Miller suggest taking a LITE approach by learning four essential communication skills that form the acronym LITE.

Skill 1: Listen to Learn

Listening is one of the most essential skills any manager can have. Good listeners focus on what the other person is saying and respond in ways that make others feel heard and valued. In any interaction, managers should:

• Listen with the intent of understanding the other person
• Set aside distractions
• Focus on the person and give their undivided attention

Skill 2: Inquire for Insight

Great managers draw their people out. They ask questions that allow employees to share insights and ideas that can benefit projects, tasks, and the team as a whole. And it helps the manager to understand the underlying motivations in regard to what drives behavior. Managers should:

• Ask open-ended questions
• Emphasize what and how rather than why
• Encourage the direct report, once the conversation comes to an end, to recap in order to check for understanding

Skill 3: Tell Your Truth

Being honest builds trust and authenticity; it allows managers to share information that’s needed to help their employee move forward. Many managers are afraid being honest will hurt others’ feelings, but in all actuality, a truthful exchange can empower others. When telling their truth, managers need to:

• Be brave, honest, and respectful
• Be open to other perspectives
• Avoid blame or judgment while they focus on forward movement

Skill 4: Express Confidence

When managers express confidence in their people, it builds employees’ self-assurance and enthusiasm. In conversations with others, managers should:

• Highlight relevant qualities or skills
• Point out previous successes
• Offer support as needed

If you want your managers to deepen their leadership skills, you must teach them to use coaching skills and encourage a strong coaching culture within your organization. Help your managers develop the mindset of an effective coach by familiarizing them with the coaching process and providing effective coaching skills that will help their teams accelerate their performance.

Madeleine Homan Blanchard explains, “When you take the LITE approach, people walk away from the conversation feeling heard, validated, and ready to take action on what was discussed. These skills will help managers interact with their people more effectively and promote clarity and positivity.”

Interested in learning more about adding a servant leadership skillset into your existing leadership development program?  Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a free webinar on June 20.  Use this link to learn more about Creating A Servant Leadership Curriculum.  The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

*Special thanks to research interns Casey McKee and Hunter Young for compiling data and creating the word cloud graphic which accompanies this post.

You have to resist the temptation to treat a servant leadership initiative as just a training intervention and instead see it, ideally, as a gradual way of being—a slow, consistent approach that embraces hiring practices, vision and values work, and teaching and encouraging the skills that allow leaders to enter into a deeper trusted partnership with their people.

“A mindset of partnership and safe conversations are the cornerstone of any successful program—but you need to have the vision and values in place first,” says Freytag. “You also need alignment at the top.”

In developing a holistic approach, Freytag points to research conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies that looks at the connection between leader behaviors, impact on the work environment, and the way employees make decisions about whether or not they will support the mission of the company.

“People always have a choice —we call it discretionary effort,” says Freytag. “Compliance may work in the short term, but if you truly want the type of commitment and effort that sustains high performance, you have to tap into something more. You have to meet people’s needs. You have to make it safe for people to tell you what they need. It’s about reciprocity. If you can identify and help others take action on what they hold most dear, they will do the same for you.”

Freytag believes a partnering approach—managers and direct reports working together to achieve goals—is best.

“A partnering approach requires higher skill levels in conversation, listening, receiving and delivering feedback, and coaching—but it’s the only way I know to consistently deliver sustainable results and achieve high levels of performance with the workforce,” says Freytag.

Turning into people’s needs

Freytag says servant leadership is a partnership that makes it safe for people to express their needs on the job. It’s about leaders being approachable and turning toward their direct reports in a spirit of partnership to discuss those needs and provide support.

“As a leader, you must realize you don’t have to know it all. You must listen to learn—and make every person you talk to feel heard. When you do that, you set up a sense of approachability. People start bringing their concerns to you because they see you are not only well-intentioned but also available to listen. Your focus must be more on them and less on yourself. This is an essential of coaching. Servant leaders understand that they are always leading by example. Servant leaders also choose and behave so that they reflect the very behaviors they wish to see in the workforce.”

“When having discussions with some leaders in my past, I’ve had some give me their full attention and acknowledge my position only to let my suggestions fall on deaf ears and go nowhere. As a result, I didn’t really feel heard. The leaders I have had the highest affinity and respect for are those who were willing to have a discussion and to do more than just acknowledge my point of view. They got their arrogance and pride out of the way so they could hear my comments. They didn’t have to agree but they certainly made me feel heard.”

“As a servant leader, you have to raise your hand and show others it’s okay to raise their hand if they don’t know the answer. Leadership is about leading by example. You’re always doing that—it’s your choice whether the example is a good one or a bad one.”

Once you give yourself a heart check and are working on being more open, approachable, and available, Freytag says you’re ready to return to the basics of performance management—goal setting, coaching, and review—but with a different mindset.

“So what does it mean to serve—and what do you do differently? We use an operational leadership model called Situational Leadership^® II (SLII®.) SLII® teaches leaders first that people have needs and how to diagnose the different levels of needs people go through on various tasks and goals, and then how to help their people with those needs at their level.

“When aspiring servant leaders take a situational approach, they learn how to help their people grow and develop by meeting their needs for competence and autonomy. It’s a great model that lets leaders know where they are in a conversation. Using this approach puts the leaders focus on the needs of their people first and foremost.”

Freytag asks himself a simple question at the end of every performance related conversation to make sure he stays focused on meeting the needs of others.

“I ask myself: is this person more or less dependent on me on this topic as a result of this conversation? If they are more dependent on me, I’ve missed an opportunity. If they are less dependent on me, I’ve helped them grow and develop competence—which meets a basic psychological need. Now they feel more viable and are able to thrive. That’s a practical, real time, conversation-based perspective. It’s how you stay valuable to others.”

For leadership, learning, and talent development professionals considering a servant leadership initiative in their organizations, Freytag offers some caution on going too big at first.

“Don’t start with the training initiative right away. Start a little smaller—begin with vision and values. Where are you going? What’s important and why? Where are the gaps? I always guard against going too large or too fast with the aspiration of a large-scale training intervention, especially at the beginning of the conversation.”

Freytag also encourages senior leaders to walk the talk.

“It can be as simple as catching others doing things right. Develop recognition programs that recognize when others exhibit behaviors that serve the needs of others. Demonstrate that you value both relationships and results. Slowly you will plant the seeds and prepare the soil for a larger initiative. Once that gets rolled out through the ranks, you can focus on feedback, listening, and accountability.

“Now, piece by piece, you are building a servant leadership culture—and creating a work environment where people can grow and thrive.”

Would you like to learn more about creating a servant leadership curriculum for your organization? Then join us for a free webinar!

Creating a Servant Leadership Curriculum

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Join Blanchard senior consulting partner Bob Freytag as he explores how to create a servant leadership curriculum in your organization. In this special session designed for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals, you’ll learn:

• What servant leadership is—and what it isn’t
• Research on self-oriented vs. others-oriented leaders
• The power of vision, values, and purpose
• Identifying your Leadership Point of View
• Taking a 4-step head, heart, hands, and habits approach to skill development

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to apply servant leadership principles to improve satisfaction, performance, and engagement in your company. You’ll walk away from this session energized and encouraged with fresh ideas to apply in your organization.

Register using this link!

Editor’s Note: This guest post is by Hunter Young.

Think about this past week. Did you go to a business where you received below average customer service? Did it make you feel unwanted? Did you feel like leaving right then? If you answered “yes” to these questions, you’re not alone. Thousands if not millions of customers receive poor customer service every day.

Customers should always be the top priority for every business. Whether you are selling cheeseburgers or Louis Vuitton purses, your main focus should be your customer. Why? Because customers fuel your business—in fact, without them, there is no business.

In her webinar Taking a Top-Down, Bottom-Up Approach to Service in Your Organization, Vicki Halsey explains the importance of Legendary Service®—the title of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ customer service training program as well as the book coauthored by Halsey, Kathy Cuff, and Ken Blanchard. The focus of the webinar is the importance of caring for your customers. Halsey and Cuff use the acronym CARE for qualities needed in a service provider: Committed, Attentive, Responsive, and Empowered. These four elements of Legendary Service® are the core values everyone should follow when dealing with customers—whether you are a manager behind the scenes or a customer-facing service provider on the front lines.

First, you must have a clear goal in mind, Halsey explains. “All good performance starts with clear goals.” Your goals give you a service vision that sets the stage for how you will treat your customers. And remember: you must Commit to serving both your internal and external customers.

Although it is extremely important to give your external customer the best experience possible, serving your internal customers—your peers and direct reports—is just as crucial. Because as a manager, if you don’t demonstrate a sense of caring for your employees, how can you expect your employees to care about your customers? “You have to treat your people the way you want them to treat your customers,” says Halsey. It starts with the top leaders and goes all the way to the front line.

Attentive is the next element in the Legendary Service® model. Once you have clear goals in mind for your service vision, you must identify your customers’ wants and needs. Attentive service providers ask questions, actively listen, and then confirm that they understand.

The next step is to be Responsive. Actions speak louder than words. Doing what you say you’ll do will exceed a customer’s expectations and increase the chance they will return. And don’t forget to express your appreciation to the customer. After all, they could have easily gone to one of your competitors instead of to your business.

The last element in the Legendary Service® CARE model is Empowerment. As a manager, you should empower people to take initiative, ask for the help they need to succeed, and share innovative ideas. You will unleash the full extent of your power when you empower others. Even when it seems impossible, turn that “I can’t” into “How can I…?”

Halsey explains that the best leaders are situational. The Situational Leadership® II model can help a manager identify the amount of direction and support an employee needs at their current development level on a particular task or goal.

Here are some takeaways from Halsey’s webinar:

• The most effective leadership is a partnership.
• Work together with your employees to set a service vision.
• Teaching is very different from telling.
• Set goals, stay connected, and give feedback.
• If your employee does not know the most effective way to complete a task, first work with them to find the best way to do it effectively and then build a platform for them to be able to work through the task in the future.

Following these simple guidelines with your employees will go a long way for individuals, customers, and the business as a whole. Providing Legendary Service will have a more positive impact than you can imagine.

If you would like to learn more about Legendary Service® and Situational Leadership® II, follow this link to view Halsey’s webinar presentation.

“Every time, in more than six years of asking that question, almost every hand would go up,” says Rognlien. “Then I would tell them, ‘Great, now it’s your responsibility not to mess it up.'”

In his new book, This Is Now Your Company: A Culture Carrier’s Manifesto, Rognlien shares that every person must own their contribution to the organizational fabric of a company, no matter what role they are stepping into. It begins by owning your role.

“If the definition of culture is the sum total of all of our behaviors, then you can start tipping the culture in another direction by changing your behavior.”

To help with that, Rognlien suggests organizational leaders encourage higher quality conversations between managers and direct reports. He says most companies don’t have an environment that allows people to sit down with their managers and ask, “How are we going to get through this together?”

Rognlien describes this relationship as a 50-50 partnership, meaning the direct report has just as much responsibility for clear goals and performance feedback as the manager.

“You are half the relationship. If you know more about something, or if something specific requires special care or attention, then you’d better be willing to have that conversation.”

Rognlien goes on to discuss personal branding, feedback, and leveraging your strengths. He closes the interview by discussing a hot topic in today’s organizations—unconscious bias. He explains that bias exists in every organization—and that some biases can actually be helpful and support organizational values.

“At Facebook, for example, we had a bias for moving quickly. When interviewing or working at Facebook, if you were moving slowly, you would feel it—the bias for speed was ever present. That’s an example of a conscious bias that is useful and has served Facebook well.”

Rognlien explains that the unconscious form of bias accumulates over time without being recognized and it can lead organizations to act in ways that go against stated values. While he believes organizations can’t completely eliminate bias, he suggests steps can be taken to bring it out into the open.

“Our goal is to create people and organizations who are comfortable talking about unconscious bias. We have to stop being afraid and we need to have those conversations.”

In closing, Rognlien encourages listeners to step into their fears.

“The only way you will know if something isn’t going to work is to try and fail. If you can learn something from it, was it really a failure?”

Be sure to listen through to the very end of the session, where Ken Blanchard shares his key takeaways from the interview!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a sales leader in charge of half of the US and I have a counterpart who runs the other half.  We have a good relationship. We support each other and share ideas and information.

I recently figured out that our newish boss, the EVP of sales and marketing, is playing us off each other—or at least he’s trying to.  He seems to think we will work harder if we are competing.  He tells me things about my counterpart that I don’t think he should be telling me, which makes me wonder what the heck he might be telling her about me.

Do you think I’m crazy? What’s up with this?  How do I make him stop?  Everything has been going well and I don’t want him to ruin it.

Feeling Off Balance

Dear Feeling Off Balance,

I guess you might be crazy—but if you are noticing this and you aren’t usually paranoid, you probably aren’t crazy. I always regret it when I don’t pay attention to my instincts, and so does pretty much everyone I know.

The most obvious option is to talk to your boss about this. Explain that you and your counterpart work well together and thrive on your collaborative relationship.  Do you feel like you can trust him enough to have that kind of conversation?  Again, trust your instincts on that.  You can use our handy TRUST model to assess how much you trust him.

If talking to your boss is not an option, you might consider bringing up the subject with your counterpart. Make a pact to create a united front and stick together by not allowing your boss to drive a wedge between you.

Now, I would be remiss to not mention a potential political reality that I have seen too many times: it’s possible your boss is doing this because he either wants, or is being pressured from above, to eliminate one of you.  This tactic of creating competition could be a way to help him decide who the proverbial best man is. It may cause some real static for the two of you to try to stick together if this is the case—so you are going to want to pay attention to the way the wind is blowing here and assess the situation carefully before doing anything.

This sounds stressful.  I’m sorry.  Pay close attention, keep your eye on the ball (your goals and your people), and see what happens next. And take notes—it will help you ascertain if you are crazy or not.  Stay grounded and don’t let your boss throw you off kilter.

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!

That’s a big mistake, say Kathy Cuff and Vicki Halsey, co-creators of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Legendary Service training program.

“Every organization knows they need to focus on the external customer—the person who buys their products or services—but they forget two other important groups of people who need care and attention,” says Cuff.

“Before you can care for your external customers, you need to take care of your own people,” says Halsey.

Taking care of your people means providing your frontline service personnel with the direction, support, and authority they need to serve your external customers.

“This starts with a clear service vision at both the organization and individual level—a vision that spells out who you serve, how you serve, and for what purpose. Surprisingly, 19 percent of the 500 people we recently surveyed told us their organization had only some degree of a defined service vision and an additional 14 percent said they had little or no published service vision to guide the actions of employees.”

“Once you have that vision in place, you need to train your people how to deliver on that vision. We teach the CARE model: being Committed to service, Attentive to customer needs, Responsive in providing service, and Empowered to take action.”

Halsey and Cuff also reinforce the importance of getting managers involved in a customer service initiative. Why? Because frontline service people usually care for customers the same way their managers care for them.

“We teach managers to use the same CARE principles in their approach to their people: to be Committed to serving their people, Attentive to their needs, and Responsive in providing direction and support, with a focus on Empowerment,” says Cuff.

“The final person you need to take care of to provide great service is yourself. We’ve all experienced  service providers who didn’t have a service mindset. You can usually trace this back to something happening in their work environment. We teach frontline service personnel and managers how to speak up for themselves and take initiative to solve company problems and improve processes and policies instead of complaining about them.”

Halsey adds, “We also teach people the importance of self-care on a mental, physical, and motivational level to help them bring their best selves to work every day. It’s a holistic approach that brings out the best of everyone in the organization so that they can better serve the customer.”

Interested in learning more about Halsey and Cuff’s approach to improving service in your organization? Check out our customer service resource page at The Ken Blanchard Companies website where you will find eBooks, white papers, and interviews with both program authors. We also invite you to attend a complimentary webinar with Vicki Halsey on May 23: “Taking a Top-Down, Bottom-Up Approach to Service in Your Organization.” The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Halsey points to some natural connections between The Ken Blanchard Companies’ flagship training program, Situational Leadership® II (SLII®), and the newly released Legendary Service® training program:

Set clear goals. “Goal setting is a key component of both our Legendary Service and SLII program offerings,” explains Halsey. “We are firm believers that, at both the organizational and individual level, all good performance begins with clear goals. In Legendary Service training, we teach the importance of having clear organizational and individual service visions. This spells out who you serve, how you do it, and what the benefit is to the customer. In our SLII training, managers learn how to take organizational goals—such as a customer service vision—and turn them into meaningful individual goals and tasks that inspire direct reports.

“With both programs, managers need to be as clear as possible about what a good job looks like. This can be a little more difficult than it seems on the surface—for example, when there are conflicting priorities. Managers are often asked to hit output quotas at a high-quality level and under a certain budget. In a call center, this might translate into solving each customer’s problem the first time, with current staff who must maintain a call volume of more than 20 calls answered per hour. That can be a challenge. The best organizations get clear on what is most important and set specific, trackable, and attainable goals while maintaining motivation and avoiding burnout.”

Once goals are set, be attentive. In Legendary Service training, Halsey teaches the importance of attentiveness—focusing your attention on the needs and wants of the customer. In SLII, the focus is on the needs of the direct report who is working with the customer.

“You have to treat your people the way you want them to treat your customers. In Legendary Service, we teach people how to uncover the spoken and unspoken needs customers bring to the interaction. We teach service personnel how to ask questions, actively listen, and confirm that they understand what the customer is looking for. In SLII, we teach managers how to be attentive to their employees’ needs by diagnosing their development level on a specific goal or task. From there, the manager can offer different levels of direction or support.”

Halsey explains that most organizations don’t give managers the time to properly diagnose an employee’s level on a given task. Instead, they use a tell-and-do approach. “Managers simply assign tasks such as, ‘Be sure to ask each customer if they’d like to sign up for a credit card, you must maintain a certain call volume, or process a certain amount of claim forms.’

“What’s missing is the manager taking the time to assess each employee’s development level on each task. Is it new to them? Have they done it before? Are they committed to it? Or are they just going through the motions?”

Be situationally responsive. “Every new task requires an assessment of an individual’s competence and commitment to carry it out successfully. If the person is new to the task, you have to respond by providing direction. If their commitment isn’t there, you have to focus on providing support and rationale.

“In Legendary Service, this is taught as being responsive to customers by acknowledging feelings, offering solutions, and gaining agreement. The goal here is to treat the customer the way they would like to be treated—the Platinum Rule,” says Halsey. “When working with direct reports using SLII, this means identifying the amount of direction and support the direct report needs on that task and then gaining agreement on providing it.”

“This part is critical,” explains Halsey. “If we don’t diagnose and we don’t use the right leadership behaviors, we are not giving people what they need to serve customers at the highest level. As managers, we are not modeling a serving mindset.”

Be empowering. Empowerment is the final element in the Legendary Service model—and it is all about teaching people to take initiative, ask for the help they need to succeed, or to share innovative ideas.

“You want to help people step into their power,” says Halsey. “A big part of that is taking a look at the policies, processes, and procedures being used in your organization. Are they helping your people serve your customers or getting in the way?”

Managers must take a measured approach, says Halsey. “Empowering isn’t about delegating the responsibility for service to others. Instead, it is working together to set a service vision, providing training on being attentive and responsive to customers, and then consistently asking for ideas on how to improve the process.

“There is a big difference between telling someone what to do versus teaching them how to do it. It’s taking the time to identify what needs to done and then taking the time to diagnose development level of both internal and external customers and provide the direction and support people need to succeed.

“As a manager, you have to make a conscious decision to slow down and discover where your people are through skillful questions and listening. Then you have to show you care by adjusting your style to respond in a way that provides what they need.”

“It all adds up to showing people you CARE—you are Committed to service, Attentive, Responsive, and Empowered,” says Halsey.  “It’s a great model for creating a service culture internally with your direct reports—as well as externally with the people who purchase your products and services.”

Would you like to learn more about combining Legendary Service and Situational Leadership® II to create a culture of service inside your organization? Join us for a free webinar on May 23!

Taking a Top-Down, Bottom-Up Approach to Service in Your Organization

Wednesday, May 23, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

In this webinar, Dr. Vicki Halsey, coauthor of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ new Legendary Service program, will show you how to take a top-down, bottom-up approach to customer service that will engage everyone in your organization.

Vicki will show participants how to apply Legendary Service concepts to create a customer mindset for all associates in the company, and then layer on an additional level of training for managers with SLII to bring the learning full circle.

Participants will learn:

• How to apply Blanchard’s 4-step CARE model (Committed, Attentive, Responsive, Empowered) to interactions with internal and external customers in a way that improves teamwork, collaboration, and performance
• How leaders can supercharge performance by improving their goal setting, day-to-day coaching, and performance management skills using SLII principles
• How to turn the organizational hierarchy upside-down so that everyone is focused on serving customers first

Don’t miss this opportunity to create an organizational culture that is aligned, integrated, and focused on the customer!

Register Today!