Effective leadership is an influence process where leaders implement everyday, commonsense approaches that help people and organizations thrive. Yet somehow, many of these fundamental principles are still missing from most workplaces.

In their new book, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, legendary servant leadership expert Ken Blanchard, whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and his colleague Randy Conley, known and recognized for his many years of thought leadership and expertise in the field of trust, share fifty-two Simple Truths about leadership that will help leaders everywhere make commonsense leadership common practice.

The book covers a wide-ranging list of leadership skills certain to bring out the best in people. One of the things that make Blanchard and Conley’s approach different is the down-to-earth practicality of what they recommend. Instead of outcome or trait statements, the authors share leadership behaviors that get results.

How about you? What day-to-day leadership behaviors have made a big difference in your effectiveness as a leader?

Below are five examples from Blanchard and Conley. Are any of these on your list of simple leadership truths? Which of these have been powerful in your life as a leader? Which do you wish you would have learned earlier? What else would you include?

1. See Feedback as a Gift

Giving feedback to the boss doesn’t come naturally to most people, so getting honest feedback from your team members may be difficult. They may fear being the messenger bearing bad news, so they hesitate to be candid.

If you are lucky enough to receive feedback from one of your team members, remember—they’re giving you a gift. Limit yourself to three responses. Make sure the first thing you say is “Thank you!” Then follow up with “This is so helpful,” and “Is there anything else you think I should know?”

2. Help People Win

It’s hard for people to feel good about themselves if they are constantly falling short of their goals. That’s why it’s so important for you as a leader to do everything you can to help people win—accomplish their goals—by ensuring the following:

• Make sure your people’s goals are clear, observable, and measurable.
• As their leader, work together with your people to track progress.
• When performance is going well or falling short of expectations, give them appropriate praising, redirecting, or coaching—or reexamine whether your leadership style matches the person’s development level on a specific goal.

3. Admit Your Mistakes

If you make a mistake, own it. Admit what you did, apologize if necessary, and then put a plan in place to not repeat the mistake. Here are some best practices you can follow:

• Be prompt. Address the mistake as soon as possible. Delay can make it appear you’re trying to avoid or cover up the issue.
• Accept responsibility. Own your behavior and any damage it caused.
• Highlight the learning. Let your team know what you’ve learned and what you’ll do differently next time.
• Be brief. Don’t over-apologize or beat yourself up. Mistakes happen.

4. Extend Trust

Many leaders are afraid to give up too much control for fear that something will come back to bite them. They think it isn’t worth the risk to give up control. Are you willing to give up control and trust others? If you struggle to relinquish control and trust others, start with baby steps:

• Identify low-risk situations where you feel comfortable extending trust.
• Assess a person’s trustworthiness by gauging their competence to handle the task, integrity to do the right thing, and commitment to follow through.
• As you become more comfortable giving up control and learn that others can be trusted, extend more trust as situations allow.

5. Rebuild Trust When Broken

Leaders inevitably do something to erode trust—and when that happens, it’s good to have a process to follow to rebuild it. Trust can usually be restored if both parties are willing to work at it. If you have eroded trust in a relationship, follow this process to begin restoring it:

• Acknowledge. The first step in restoring trust is to acknowledge there is a problem. Identify the cause of low trust and what behaviors you need to change.
• Apologize. Take ownership of your role in eroding trust and express remorse for the harm it has caused.
• Act. Commit to not repeating the behavior and act in a more trustworthy way in the future.

Blanchard and Conley’s new book is being released on February 1. Would you like a sneak peek? Download this eBook summary of Simple Truths of Leadership.

Interested in learning more? Join Blanchard and Conley for a special webinar on January 26 where the authors will be highlighting key concepts from their book. The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies. Use this link to register.

Presenting the results of our 2021 Blanchard HR / L&D Trends Report in a recent webinar was a surprisingly moving experience for me.

More than 1,000 L&D professionals participated in this year’s survey, which included questions about your response to COVID in 2020, the challenges you experienced converting face-to-face designs in a disrupted business environment, and your plans for developing people in 2021. One section of the survey included an open-ended question about the greatest challenge your L&D team faces going into the New Year.

Your responses and comments painted such a vivid picture of the past year. Reading them was like stepping into your lives—and it made me proud to be your colleague.

The Hero’s Journey

It’s clear that so many of you took the hero’s journey, overcoming challenge after challenge in 2020.

One finding from our survey shows how much terrain you covered: 85% of you converted face-to-face training to virtual and digital offerings in 2020. That is astounding. Classroom training—the most common delivery method for training—abruptly stopped. But developing your people couldn’t be put on hold.

So you pivoted at a stunning speed.

You worked valiantly to turn your F2F offerings into digital learning modalities. And most of you did it with limited experience, with inadequate resources, and under the most difficult of circumstances.

I say this with absolute appreciation because your comments and struggles reminded me of what our team had to do to convert our F2F offerings. Their efforts were nothing short of heroic and their output level was unprecedented. Sound familiar?

The hero’s journey ends with personal transformation. Perhaps you discovered something admirable about yourself and your colleagues. Our team discovered they can accomplish a year’s worth of work in two to three months when they know people they care about are relying on them.

Perfecting Accomplishments

Product developers consider three fundamental trade-offs when creating project plans: scope, budget, and timeline. All three are interdependent; each variable affects the others. For example, increasing the scope requires a larger budget and/or changing the timeline.

Normally, a team can adjust these variables to fit the project. The pandemic, however, did away with this freedom for L&D teams. Budgets were slashed so we couldn’t just shovel money at the problem. Timelines were unyielding because everything was in crisis. Scope, as a consequence, had to be reduced. Functionality, interactivity, and engagement were just a few of the casualties.

Not surprisingly, 51% of respondents in the 2021 Trends Survey felt their new digital/virtual offerings were less effective than F2F solutions. This is nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, you may have unknowingly applied a best practice of agile development by releasing minimum viable products to your users.

Now—what to do going forward?

When setting priorities for 2021, you’ll likely want to address some of the shortcomings in the solutions your team created. Recognizing the need to revise these offerings to boost learner engagement and quality is an important step. Instead of rushing off to build new products, consider enhancing the ones you developed when resources were scarce.

A Caring Group

The L&D field tends to attract people who are concerned about the welfare and development of others. I was reminded of this again and again as I read your comments in the survey responses. The common theme was helping others—and this greatly overshadowed your personal struggles.

Here are some empathetic words your peers shared when asked about the main problem they faced during COVID:

• “Keep people engaged in times of fear”
• “Employees feeling isolated and disconnected”
• “Overworked and overwhelmed employees”

What you wrote is even more striking when you consider that Learning & Development was often considered a nonessential function during COVID downsizing. Countless organizations slashed their L&D budgets in 2020, leaving many L&D people feeling marginalized, overworked, and underappreciated.

But you remained true to your calling. You felt compassion for the people you develop. And you expressed concern about their emotional health. What a caring and dedicated group!

Your Turn

Now you can take the same journey I did: listen to the webinar, read the report, and come to your own conclusions.

I’m confident that you’ll be as proud and inspired as I am!

About the Author

Jay Campbell is SVP of Products & Content at The Ken Blanchard Companies, overseeing research and development activities. Holding degrees from Vanderbilt University and Boston College, Jay is currently pursuing a doctorate in leadership and organizational change at USC.

About The Ken Blanchard Companies

For more than 40 years, The Ken Blanchard Companies has been a global leader in management training, consulting, and coaching. Its solutions inspire leaders at all levels to create cultures of connection, unleashing talent to deliver extraordinary results. Its flagship leadership training program, SLII®, is the solution of choice for more than 10,000 organizations. Blanchard also offers a suite of other award-winning leadership solutions and coaching services to support them.

Best-selling business author Scott Blanchard says managers who are effective at goal setting with their people keep two things in mind:

1. The big picture—why we are doing it and what matters about it?
2. The short term—what do we need to do now to move forward toward the larger goal?

Blanchard gives an example of this process:

“I just finished some work with a fairly large organization that has sixteen general managers. I asked if I could interview two of the GMs who were achieving the best results. Even though I interviewed them independently, their approach to goal setting was remarkably similar.

“Both of these GMs set big goals and have clear expectations with their people that the goals will be met. They also stress the importance and discipline of a weekly Monday meeting to discuss with their team what’s in front of them this week, what they can handle, and what they need to do to accomplish the larger goal. They succeed in the long run by focusing on the short run and connecting the two.”

Blanchard says another important key for successful goal setting is resilience—the ability to adjust when things don’t progress as planned.

“Rarely do things go exactly as planned. But too often when things go awry, instead of talking about what can be done to get things back on track, people come to a full stop.

“My clients referred to what they call “mental toughness”: the ability to keep performing when things change, go sour, or take longer than planned. Early in the process, teams are primed with the mindset that things aren’t always going to go smoothly—and they are given ways to respond in the moment to achieve the best possible result. Goal setting is not meant to be static. If the team is stuck or heading in the wrong direction, the manager works with them to restate the goal and make adjustments.”

Blanchard also emphasizes that regular check-ins are especially important when the goal is new, difficult, or one the team has not achieved successfully in the past. “When a team is focusing on something new or challenging, frequent check-ins with the manager are essential. As the team gains confidence and demonstrates competence, these meetings can be scheduled further apart.

“In both our SLII® and our First-time Manager programs we teach that once goals are set, managers need to check in with team members on a regular basis to remind them what they are trying to accomplish and why it matters. Managers also need to take opportunities to have praising conversations when things are going well and redirection conversations when things deviate from the plan.  

“Over time, as people become more confident and trusted, the manager can delegate more and pull back on the frequency and intensity of these conversations. As people become self-reliant, the manager can turn over the responsibility for achieving the goals to the individual or the team.”

It’s all part of seeing the leader/direct report relationship as a partnership, explains Blanchard.

“It’s about working side by side with people—providing direction and support in a way that lets them grow into their autonomy. For example, when a salesperson is working for a sales manager, their goals are interdependent. As the salesperson demonstrates an increased capacity to achieve the goal, the manager can direct a little less and use more of a coaching style. Instead of telling, the manager is asking and listening.

“Setting goals is a foundation for success,” says Blanchard, “and having clear agreements about performance expectations, with regular check-ins, is the process for getting there. Obstacles that can undermine relationships and results are a lack of clarity and a lack of clear agreement.

“When things really matter, effective managers make the effort to ensure the team is crystal clear on goals and procedures. This takes extra time at the beginning of a project, but it will pay dividends in the long term. Plus, it sets a process in place that the team can use on future projects.

“That’s a win-win for everybody,” says Blanchard.

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Would you like to learn more about helping your managers develop their goal-setting, direction, and support skills? Then join Scott Blanchard for a free webinar!

3 Steps to Building a Purposeful, Aligned, and Engaged Workforce

February 20, 2019, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

In this webinar, best-selling business author Scott Blanchard will share a 3-step process for creating a focused, purpose-driven, and engaged work environment. Blanchard will show participants how to

• Set clear goals at the individual, team, department, and organizational level
• Identify motivation and competency for identified tasks
• Ask for—or provide—the resources needed to get the job done

This webinar is designed for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals charged with improving leadership skills and overall organizational performance. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to create a focused, purposeful, and aligned work environment in your organization.

Use this link to register today!

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.

10 industry experts have identified some of the key trends that will be influencing strategies—read on to see how they might impact your organization’s planned initiatives.

Each trend includes a link to its full original article—be sure to click for the full story. And don’t miss the opportunity to join us for a free Trends Webinar—details after trend #10!

The coexistence of workers and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A recent Gartner survey found that 59 percent of organizations are in the research stage of building out their AI plans while the rest are either piloting or adopting AI solutions.

The global workforce may have a reasonable fear that the introduction of AI will eliminate jobs from the economy. Nevertheless, next generation workers will eventually have to work side by side with these technologies in order to become more productive and free up time to do emotional labor, says Dan Schawbel, New York Times bestselling author and partner/research director at Future Workplace.

“There are many conflicting reports about robots having a net positive, neutral, or negative effect on the labor market. The one certainty is that the workforce is getting incrementally used to both using and communicating with robots in and out of the workplace, whether they realize it or not.

“We use voice technology outside the workplace, such as Alexa and Siri, so we are more likely to desire the same technology in the workplace,” says Schawbel. “Companies are starting to implement AI in order to add to the human experience.”

Source: The Top 10 Workplace Trends For 2019

Using mindfulness to relieve stressed workers

A shocking 94 percent of workers are stressed out at work, with 33 percent reporting that their level of stress is “high to unsustainably high,” which impacts their health and productivity. Schawbel notes that, in the same study, more than 50 percent of employees say work stress impacts their home life at least once each week. In response to these accounts of high stress and anxiety, which can lead to burnout and high turnover, companies are investing in mindfulness programs for their people.

“Mindfulness and meditation is set to become a $2.08 billion industry by 2022, with an annual growth rate of 11.4 percent,” says Schawbel. “McKinsey, Nike, Google, P&G, Intel, Adobe, Apple, and General Mills have already implemented programs for employees.” Schawbel cites a seven-week employee mindfulness and meditation program hosted by General Mills. Results of their post-program survey show 83 percent of participants taking time every day to optimize their productivity, 80 percent of senior executives improving their decision making process, and 89 percent becoming better listeners. According to Schawbel, there is clear demand for mindfulness solutions and apps such as Insight Timer, Headspace, and Calm, many of which have already amassed millions of users.

Source: The Top 10 Workplace Trends For 2019  

Making better use of existing employees

In their 2019 Human Capital Management Trends report, authors Ben Eubanks and Trish McFarlane point to how large organizations such as GE, IBM, DXC, and Dutch Royal Shell are beginning to focus on elements of jobs, such as specific skills, instead of looking at jobs as whole chunks. These companies examine the granular skill sets of the workforce to improve their understanding of how best to place people into available roles.

“In tight labor markets, employers must find ways to keep their people engaged. Development consistently shows up as one of the top items for driving employee engagement and retention,” says Eubanks. He adds that as new technology solutions have entered the market to help employers better utilize existing employees, more companies are balancing outsourcing with insourcing by using available internal talent to do project-based work.

“We are now seeing technologies with the ability to connect employees and skills in a way they have never been connected before,” adds McFarlane. “Watch for companies like ProFinda in this area. They are one example of how technology can map a new hire’s skills, expertise, and knowledge and follow those as the employee progresses and is looking for challenging opportunities internally.”

Source: 2019 HCM Trends Report

Providing skill gap training as a part of recruiting efforts

In the same report, researcher George LaRocque identifies several initiatives where learning content and capabilities are being offered externally, particularly for entry-level and more junior-level positions, to candidates who identify themselves with interest in a career path but lack core skills to qualify for a job.

According to LaRocque, by providing access to learning content incrementally, employers are not just investing in the training of a new candidate and the development of a candidate pool, they are also getting a glimpse of candidates’ individual levels of commitment. Some may be worthy of consideration for internships, apprenticeships, or employment in areas that offer a ladder to their desired career path. “This investment by employers and staffing solution providers [in] the general talent pool is an incredible opportunity to positively impact both the employer’s brand and the candidate experience.”

Source: 2019 HCM Trends Report

Company culture steps into the recruiting spotlight

More companies will focus on making sure they attract, hire, and retain people who really understand their business. Matthew Hamilton, people partner at Neueda, says, “One of the best ways to do this is by getting your company values and ethos into the public domain. This allows applicants to either select or deselect themselves by getting a better idea of what it is you do and, more importantly, how you do it.

“Not every applicant is going to be thrilled by lots of teamwork and collaboration, for example, so if your organization promotes a high degree of this style of working, make sure that message gets across.” Hamilton says self-aware candidates, especially, will think carefully about their organizational fit before applying.

Source: Three HR trends to watch for in 2019

Developing RQ (Robotics Quotient)

Robotics quotient (RQ) will be a core learning and measurement fundamental for people working alongside digital workers and artificial intelligence, says Priya Sunil, journalist at Human Resources Online.

Sunil shares Forrester research that 2019 will be the year where transformation in the business world will go pragmatic to address the scarcity of available talent in the area of harnessing the power of robots.

Source: Pragmatic transformation for 2019: 3 trends for HR to watch

More aggressive recruiting using marketing tactics

“You don’t pick talent anymore,” says Kristina Martic in a recent article for TalentLyft. “Talent picks you.” This change of paradigm brings a whole new set of challenges and recruiting trends.

The current job market is 90 percent candidate driven. Research by LinkedIn states that more than 75 percent of job seekers now investigate a company’s reputation and brand as an employer before applying. Companies with poor reputations struggle to not only attract candidates but also retain employees.

Martic says to look for companies to begin “recruitment marketing”—the process of nurturing and attracting talented individuals using marketing methods and tactics. “Your goal in inbound recruiting is to attract, convert, and engage candidates.”

Source: 15 New Recruiting Trends You Should Implement in 2019

Equal pay and unconscious bias

According to Terry Salo, senior HR consultant at strategicHRinc.com, the issue of equal pay and unconscious bias will continue to impact the workplace in 2019—and will require HR professionals and business leaders to stay ahead of the curve.

A recent Harvard Global Online Research study that included more than 200,000 participants reports that 76 percent of people—both men and women—are gender biased and tend to think of men as better suited for careers and women as better suited for homemakers.

Gender bias—and numerous other unconscious biases—spill over into the workplace every day. Look for more companies to implement employee training programs to show how bias can affect the success of employees as well as organizations.

Source: Emerging Trends in HR for 2019        

Predictive analytics and virtual reality

“The percentage of companies using predictive analytics and advanced reporting has nearly doubled since 2014,” says Adam Rogers, CTO of Ultimate Software. “I expect to see predictive functionalities in future recruiting and learning platforms. I’m also excited about analytical benchmarking, where organizations can compare themselves to their peers and competitors in terms of L&D spending, recruiting, organizational design, and other talent measures.”

Virtual reality is the next frontier of employee training, adds Rogers. “Think about flight simulators. It’s far too dangerous and expensive to risk training pilots in real airplanes, so they train repeatedly in these digital simulations, honing their muscle memory and ingrained reactions.

“This is essentially what VR can bring to everyday corporate training. These simulations may not be necessary for every role, but many organizations will benefit from the opportunity to teach employees how to handle crucial, hard-to-replicate scenarios such as managing unruly Black Friday crowds or containing and disposing of hazardous substances.”

Source: What HR tech trends will we be discussing in summer 2019?

Refinements to digital and mobile learning

Employees today are used to YouTube and Netflix algorithms that provide content based on their consumer behavior and viewing patterns. If you want to engage them on their level you need to start doing the same, say researchers at Knowledge City Learning Solutions.

To do this, you can either provide training materials on platforms like YouTube that already use these algorithms or build similar ones into your current digital training materials to customize learner experiences based on levels of engagement.

Source: Six Learning and Development Trends You Need for 2019.

Industry expert Josh Bersin expands on this topic. “Remember, corporate learning is very different from music and TV. We don’t watch learning to be entertained; we watch it to really learn something. We don’t want people to [become] addicted to the learning platform—we want them to learn something, apply it, and then go back to work.

“What we ultimately want to do is embed learning into the platform in which [people] work, so the systems can coach and train [them] to be better on the job.”

Bersin believes that by providing the principles of spaced learning, designed repetition, practice, and competency-driven recommendations, tools like Salesforce, Slack, and even Outlook can deliver conversational interfaces right into employees’ work environment.

Source: A New Paradigm For Corporate Training

Looking ahead—share and learn!

2019 looks to be an exciting year with technology advances, a tight labor market, and an increased need for skill development-shaping plans and strategies. What about you?  What are your plans for 2019?  Please share them by taking the 2019 HR/L&D Trend Survey. It’s a short, three-minute survey—and all participants will receive a copy of the results when they are published on December 13 as a part of the webinar below.

2019 Leadership, Learning, and Talent Development Trends

Thursday, December 13, 2018, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

In this free webinar, Blanchard program director David Witt will share the results of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ 2019 HR/L&D Trend Survey.  Witt will detail responses received from leadership, learning, and talent development professionals who participated in the November trend survey to identify the #1 new initiative L&D professionals anticipate addressing in 2019.

Attend the webinar and see how your planned initiatives stack up against those of your peers! Together with L&D professionals from around the world, you’ll learn:

• The #1 new L&D initiative identified for 2019
• Other top initiatives and how they rank order against existing priorities
• How to build a business case and present your recommended solution for budget approval

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn what your peers are focusing on for 2019 and how to get funding for your initiative.

Register Today!

“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

Researchers from The Ken Blanchard Companies teamed up with Training magazine to poll 456 human resource and talent-management professionals. The purpose was to determine whether established best practices were being leveraged effectively.

The survey found gaps of 20-30 percent between what employees wanted from their leaders and what they were experiencing in four key areas: Performance Planning (setting clear goals), Day-to-Day Coaching (helping people reach their targets), Performance Evaluation (reviewing results), and Job and Career Development (learning and growing.)

Use this link to download a PDF version of a new infographic that shows the four key communication gaps broken down into ten specific conversations leaders should be having with their team members.

Are your leaders having the performance management conversations they should be? If you find similar gaps, address them for higher levels of employee work passion and performance.

You can read more about the survey (and see the Blanchard recommendations for closing communication gaps) by accessing the original article, 10 Performance Management Process Gaps, at the Training magazine website.

Would you like to learn more about improving the quality of management conversations in your organization? Join Ann Phillips for a complimentary webinar on Performance Management 101: 3 Conversations All Managers Need to Master. The event is free courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can learn more and 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!

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.

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!

Take an Inside-Out Approach to Improving Customer Service Scores

Customer service expert Kathy Cuff believes that organizations need to take a look at how their culture impacts service. That starts by recognizing that everyone has internal customers. “It’s about looking at the relationships and mindset within the organization.”

You can check out the entire April issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

In a sense, developing a servant’s heart is a lifelong journey. It is my belief that you finally become an adult when you realize that life is about what you give rather than what you get. The shift from self-serving leadership to leadership that serves others is motivated by a change in heart. Servant leadership is not just another management technique. It is a way of life for those with servant’s hearts.

When some people hear the phrase servant leadership, they associate it with soft management—they think you can’t lead and serve at the same time. Yet you can, if you understand that there are two kinds of leadership involved in servant leadership: strategic leadership and operational leadership.

Strategic leadership has to do with vision and direction. This is the leadership aspect of servant leadership. The responsibility for this visionary role falls to the hierarchical leadership. Kids look to their parents, players look to their coaches, and people look to their organizational leaders for direction.

Once people are clear on where they are going, the leader’s role shifts to a service mindset for the operational leadership task, which is all about implementation—the servant aspect of servant leadership.

How do you make your vision happen?  In a traditional organization, all the energy in the organization moves up the hierarchical pyramid as people try to be responsive to their bosses instead of focusing their energy on meeting the needs of their customers. Bureaucracy rules, and policies and procedures carry the day.

This creates unprepared and uncommitted customer contact people who are trying to protect themselves, and it leaves customers uncared for at the bottom of the hierarchy. This scenario doesn’t do much to move the organization in the desired direction toward accomplishing a clear vision. Servant leaders, on the other hand, feel their role is to help people achieve their goals. To do that, the traditional hierarchical pyramid is theoretically turned upside down so that the frontline people, who are closest to the customers, are at the top. Now the frontline people are responsible—able to respond—to the needs of the customers. In this scenario, leaders serve and are responsive to their people’s needs, training and developing them to accomplish established goals and live according to the vision.

Servant leadership is not soft management; it is management that not only gets great results but also generates great human satisfaction.

Interested in learning more about the relationship between servant leadership, customer service, and the role of managers and senior executives?  Join me for a free webinar on Creating a Culture of Service.  I’ll be sharing thoughts, strategies, and tips on how to create an organization with a servant leadership mindset and a servant leadership skill set.

Servant Leadership: 20 Tips & Strategies from Today’s Top Leaders

In a recent Servant Leadership in Action Livecast, over 3,200 leadership, learning, and talent development professionals had an opportunity to hear from 20 of the contributing authors in a new book co-edited by Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell. The book, Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results features 44 short articles that take a fresh look at servant leadership principles and how they can be applied in today’s organizations.

You can check out the entire March issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

David Marshall at Berrett-Koehler Publishers recently posted a Reading List for Servant Leaders. It’s a great mix of titles beginning with Robert Greenleaf’s The Servant as Leader (the book that started the modern servant leadership movement) and then continues with books by authors, CEOs, and thought leaders from all walks of life explaining how to use servant leadership concepts in today’s work environment.

Here’s the complete list:

1. The Servant as Leader by Robert K. Greenleaf
2. Servant Leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf
3. The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse
4. The Secret by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller
5. Dare to Serve by Cheryl Bachelder
6. The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner
7. The Serving Leader by Kenneth R. Jennings and John Stahl-Wert
8. Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
9. The Servant Leader by James A. Autry
10. Give and Take by Adam Grant

I’d like to add two more books to this list that I’ve found to be helpful.  Number 11 will help aspiring leaders get it right on the inside by examining beliefs and behaviors that might be getting in their way.  Number 12 will help people get it right on the outside by sharing practical strategies leaders can use in their day-to-day management practices.

11. Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts–Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith is the #1 executive coach in the world and his client list reads like a Who’s Who of the Fortune 500.  In this book, Goldsmith shares six engaging questions he uses with his clients. The questions provide a daily touchpoint to keep leaders on track with their intentions.

12. Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge

Ken Blanchard is the best-selling business author of 21 million books and Garry Ridge is the CEO of WD-40 Company.  In this book, Blanchard and Ridge teach leaders how to focus less on performance review (akin to grading people’s papers) and spend more time on providing the direction and support they need to succeed (helping people get an “A”.)

Those are my suggestions. How about yours?  What books would you add to a recommended reading list for aspiring servant leaders?  Use the comments section to add your recommendations.

PS: Interested in learning more about servant leadership and how an others-focused approach could work in your organization?  Join Ken Blanchard and 20 other authors, CEOs, and thought leaders for a complimentary online conference February 28. The Servant Leadership in Action Livecast is free and open to leadership, learning, and talent development professionals wanting to explore servant leadership and how it is used in today’s organizations. The event is free courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Learn more here!

That surprises some people who might expect him to point to his company’s flagship leadership program, Situational Leadership® II, or his best-selling business book, The One Minute Manager®.

Blanchard explains he is proud of the concepts within those products and how they have been widely accepted around the world. But over the last decade, he’s realized that the reason the concepts are well recognized is that they are examples of servant leadership in action—which he believes is the only way to achieve great relationships and great results.

“The world is in desperate need of a new leadership model,” explains Blanchard. “Too many leaders have been conditioned to think of leadership only in terms of power and control. But there is a better way to lead—one that combines equal parts serving and leading.”

In a new book, Servant Leadership in Action, coming out in March, Blanchard has invited more than 40 leaders from diverse backgrounds and industries to share their experiences with servant leadership. Here are a few of their stories.

Southwest Airlines

Colleen Barrett, president emeritus, Southwest Airlines, explains how servant leadership has been a key principle of success since the airline’s founding.

“For more than 40 years all of the leaders at Southwest Airlines have tried to model servant leadership. Herb Kelleher, our founder, led the way clearly—although I don’t think he knew what the expression servant leadership meant until we told him. Herb and I have always said that our purpose in life as senior leaders with Southwest Airlines was to support our people. At Southwest, our entire philosophy of leadership is still quite simple: treat your people right and good things will happen.

“We try in every way to let our employees know they are important and empowered to make a positive difference on a daily basis. Servant leadership isn’t soft management—it’s simply the right thing to do.”

That level of support manifests itself in many different ways at Southwest.  Barrett tells a heartwarming story of servant leadership in action that happened at Southwest a few years ago when a grandfather had to make last-minute reservations to be with a dying grandchild.

“The man was away from home in an unfamiliar city when he learned his grandson was dying and had only a couple of hours to live. The grandfather was desperately trying to get to him.

“Without any managerial intervention, our reservation agent directed the grandfather to head to the airport while she started working to clear obstacles from her end,” Barrett said. “She called the ground ops station at the airport, got hold of a ticket agent, and explained what the situation was. The ticket agent bought the grandfather a ticket with her own money, then went to the TSA checkpoint and told them she would be escorting a passenger who needed to make a flight. She then contacted the gate and explained the situation. The gate attendant, in turn, notified the captain on the flight.

“When it was time to push back, the pilot asked the ticket agent how close the grandfather was to arriving and learned the man was still about ten minutes away. The captain thought about it for a moment, then walked out of the cockpit to the front of the airplane and explained the situation to the passengers. He said, ‘We are going to wait for this gentleman. I think it’s the right thing to do.’ After listening to the captain’s explanation for the delay, the passengers broke into applause. When the grandfather arrived ten minutes later, he couldn’t believe the captain had held the plane for him. The captain’s response was, ‘Sir, this airplane wasn’t going anyplace without me—and I wasn’t going anyplace without you.’”

Synovus Financial

James Blanchard (no relation to Ken Blanchard) is the former CEO of Synovus Financial—a company whose servant leadership culture goes all the way back to 1888 when the founders of Columbus Bank and Trust Company were in the cotton mill business.

One day when a woman was working on a loom in the mill, her skirt got caught on the machine. The hem ripped and her life savings came spilling out on the floor. The hem of her skirt was the safest place she knew to keep her money. That day, the founders decided they could do better for their employees—so they started a bank that would serve as a trusted place for their workers’ life savings. The Synovus culture of service began the moment that woman’s savings spilled onto the floor.

“Over the years our name changed and we grew,” says Blanchard, “but our servant leadership culture endured and became even stronger. A few criticized us, saying the approach was too soft and permissive. So we had to prove it was the exact opposite—that people who were loved, respected, and prepared would perform better. Servant leadership led to higher performance and there was nothing permissive about it. We loved our people and we expected high performance. I believe when you truly care about someone, you not only love them but also expect the best from them and hold them to it.”

That approach has paid off for Synovus. In 1999, the company was named Fortune’s No. 1 Best Place to Work in America. They were on the list so often, in fact, the magazine asked them to stop entering and made them the first inductee into the Best Places to Work Hall of Fame.

“It was a great validation of our aspirations and our actions,” says CEO Blanchard. “I have been retired from Synovus for years but the pursuit of a servant leadership culture at Synovus was my greatest and most favorite satisfaction.”

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

When Cheryl Bachelder accepted the role of Popeyes CEO in November 2007, the company had been struggling.  Relationships with franchisees were not at the level they needed to be. Even so, a comment from a veteran franchisee caught her by surprise: “Don’t expect us to trust you anytime soon.”

Bachelder and her team decided to focus on servant leadership principles for turning around business performance.

“We began calling the franchisees our ‘number one customer.’ More important, as servant leaders, we began treating them that way. Our first principle was to respect and admire our owners’ passion for their work. Next, we listened to their needs and we accepted our roles and responsibilities in making things right. Finally, we put our owners’ interests above our own.”

The approach was a huge success. Relationships and business outcomes flourished. During the period from 2007 to 2016, under Bachelder’s leadership, Popeyes became a prosperous enterprise again. Franchise owners were served well: 95 percent rated their satisfaction with the Popeyes system at good or very good and 90 percent said they would recommend Popeyes to another franchisee.

“When we started, we didn’t know servant leadership would drive our success. We didn’t have a plaque in the office that stated our purpose and principles. What we did have was a team of leaders who were willing to put the success of the people and the enterprise before their own interests.”

The Power of Love, Not the Love of Power

A few years ago, Ken Blanchard received a letter from a man in New Zealand with a line that he believes sums up his leadership philosophy. The man said, “Ken, you are in the business of teaching people the power of love rather than the love of power.”

Servant leaders are constantly trying to find out what their people need to perform well and to live according to their organization’s vision. Rather than wanting employees to please their bosses, servant leaders want to make a difference in their employees’ lives and in their organizations. In top organizations, leaders believe if they do a good job serving their employees and show they truly care about them, the employees will, in turn, practice that same philosophy with customers.

Blanchard says, “We need servant leadership advocates and I nominate you. Go forth and 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. After all, servant leadership is love in action.”

Would you like to learn more about servant leadership principles and how to apply them in your own organization?  Then join us for a free livecast on February 28!

Servant Leadership in Action Livecast

February 28, 2018 from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Join best-selling business author Ken Blanchard and 20 other successful leaders for an in-depth look into the concept of servant leadership and how it can transform the culture and performance of your organization.  You’ll explore:

• What is servant leadership?
• How does it work in today’s organizations?
• The role leaders play
• How to get started
• How to keep it growing

You’ll hear personal and powerful stories from 20 of today’s most inspiring servant leaders. You’ll be motivated to act after seeing how others have achieved great relationships and results in their organizations through servant leadership.

Attend this online event to:

• Gain a clear understanding of this proven leadership model
• Learn the fundamentals of servant leadership
• Discover how other companies have achieved results
• Acquire ideas of how servant leadership could look in your organization

People lead best when they serve first.  Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how servant leadership principles can take your organization’s performance to the next level.

The event is free courtesy of Berrett-Koehler Publishers and The Ken Blanchard Companies. To learn more, visit the Servant Leadership in Action Livecast registration page.

Leadership Training—3 Challenges When Making the Business Case

Senior executives instinctively know that the quality of leadership in an organization impacts that organization’s performance. But leadership, learning, and talent development professionals still have to make the business case if they expect their training initiatives to make it through the budgeting process.

ON-DEMAND WEBINAR!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

ROI expert Dr. Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact joins David Witt of The Ken Blanchard Companies with help on budgeting and proposals. Includes link to interactive Leadership Training ROI Worksheet!

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Here are the three biggest challenges L&D professionals face—along with some resources to successfully address each challenge.

Adding Credible Numbers to Your Proposal. The first challenge is how to quantify the bottom-line impact of improved leadership behaviors. There are three areas to focus on, says Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact. “Key in on performance indicators that produce revenue, cut costs, or avoid future costs.”

When measuring programs designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders, Leone reminds practitioners to focus on improvements made by the direct reports of the leader in question.

“A leader’s productivity is really an accumulation of their direct reports’ productivity. I measure the impact of leadership training performance by looking at increases in direct reports’ performance and productivity.”

Leone shares more in his interview and webinar on Measuring the Impact of Training.

Convincing Others. Once you have your numbers together, you need to practice your financial presentation skills. “It shouldn’t be an adversarial meeting,” says Craig Spitz, chief financial officer at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “It’s about connecting the dots. Anytime learning and development professionals come prepared with models, numbers, and rationale that help make the case for training, they make the CFO’s job easier. If a training professional can show the impact of training, everyone is going to be interested in that.”

Spitz shares more in his interview and webinar on Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO.

Getting Out of Your Own Way. Finally, it’s important to recognize that there is a certain amount of guesswork when making assumptions about the impact of training. L&D professionals are often their own toughest critics, says Leone.  “Maybe it’s because we come from the social sciences or a more academic background. Maybe we tend to be harder on ourselves or hold ourselves to a higher standard—almost as if we think we need to write a thesis or a dissertation. That’s not the case. We just need to show value.”

But as CFO Spitz reminds L&D professionals, “Even the most thorough proposals are based on assumptions. Present your proposals confidently.”

Are you getting ready to submit a leadership training proposal? Don’t let these three challenges hold you back. For more on calculating impact, refining your presentation, and making the business case, check out these free resources available at the Blanchard website.

Blog Posts

Measuring the Impact of Training

Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO

Getting Buy-in for Leadership Development Training

Webinar Recordings

Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to a CFO

Leadership Training: Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

Making the Business Case for Leadership Training

Measuring the Impact of Training

“Productivity is the best and most immediate indicator of training impact. If you send someone to training, increased productivity can happen as fast as the next week or the next month. That’s where your business case should focus,” says Paul Leone, senior ROI consultant at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact.

FREE WEBINAR!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact
November 29, 2017

ROI expert Dr. Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact joins David Witt of The Ken Blanchard Companies for this free online event!

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But this isn’t true, says Paul Leone, senior ROI consultant at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results. In Leone’s experience, financial executives are receptive when anyone in an organization shows that money being spent is producing a return.

“Senior executives just want to make sure money is well spent. They are not necessarily looking to reject the proposal. If it will generate results, it’s in everybody’s interest for the organization to do it.”

It’s important for HR and L&D professionals to realize that they are not the only ones coming in with proposals based on assumptions, says Leone. Even the most tangible projects are based on best-guess scenarios.

“Let’s suppose marketing is proposing spending budget making a commercial. They have to ask for budget just like any other department. So they do some predictive analytics and some research, but in the end they are making an educated guess that the commercial will produce an uptick in sales.”

L&D professionals shouldn’t feel that everyone else is going in with rock-solid assumptions and metrics, says Leone. Everyone is in the same boat more than they realize.

“Maybe it’s because we come from the social sciences or a more academic background. Maybe we tend to be harder on ourselves or hold ourselves to a higher standard—almost as if we think we need to write a thesis or a dissertation. That’s not the case. We just need to show value.

“I can honestly say that I think it’s safer to bet on a training experience to improve performance than to take a chance on a commercial. We are adding bottom-line value with training—it’s just that we never measure it.”

When Leone looks at the typical measurements organizations can use to measure the impact of leadership training—employee retention, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity—he recommends a rank order on how to use each of these common measures to make the case for training.

“Productivity is the best and most immediate indicator of training impact. If you send someone to training, increased productivity can happen as fast as the next week or the next month. That’s where your business case should focus. Key in on performance indicators that produce revenue, cut costs, or avoid future costs.

“Customer satisfaction is also good to show, but it’s second down from productivity. In many organizations, there’s not a dollar value assigned to customer satisfaction.

“Employee retention is number three because it is long-term. By the time you show that your training had a positive effect on employee retention, so many other things over the same period of time could’ve happened in the business that could take credit for that.”

When measuring programs designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders, Leone reminds practitioners to focus on improvements made by the direct reports of the leader in question.

“A leader’s productivity is really an accumulation of their direct reports’ productivity. I’m not talking about the leader’s ability to make better presentations, better speeches, or better contributions to teams—even though those things could be counted as gains in productivity. I measure the impact of leadership training performance by looking at increases in direct reports’ performance and productivity. I look to see how these leaders are impacting their frontline people who have the tangible Key Performance Indicators we are tracking every day—sales, repeat calls, phone-ins, customer satisfaction, and the like.”

Leone is also passionate about what he calls Level Six measurement—identifying factors that lead to high levels of ROI.

“After a training event, certain factors in a training participant’s immediate work environment can make or break your training initiative’s overall impact. These factors have nothing to do with your training content, or your trainers, or with how well you planned out your delivery. This is about the manager that the training participant is returning to in the workplace.

“We conducted a recent training where the overall return on investment was about 6 percent—a modest positive return.  But when we focused on a subgroup of 50 people who reported to one specific manager, we found that group had an 1800 percent return on investment! This was directly attributable to what the manager was doing with participants after the training—things like bursts, boosts, contests, and sit-downs, with the manager shadowing people to see if they were handling the calls in the way they had been trained.”

For leadership, learning, and talent development professionals still on the fence about including projected impact numbers in their training proposals, Leone offers encouragement.

“You always get the biggest bang for your buck with leadership training, because you’re sending one person through and influencing the ten people who report to that person. You’re paying for one person and influencing so many others.

“Don’t be afraid to measure the impact of your training. If you don’t, people will never know the value you bring to the organization. Speak up and show your value!”

Would you like to learn more about calculating ROI and measuring the impact of training?  Then join us for a free webinar!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

November 29, 2017, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Improving leadership skills is one of the best ways to impact your organization’s bottom line. Still, many leadership, learning, and talent development professionals struggle to identify the expected return on investment for training expenditures and to measure impact after an initiative.

In this webinar, David Witt, program director at The Ken Blanchard Companies, teams up with Dr. Paul Leone, author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results to show you how to identify anticipated fiscal impact of a leadership training initiative and how to measure it in a cost-effective manner after the training is finished.

You’ll learn:

• How to calculate the return on investment for your leadership training initiative using Blanchard’s Leadership Training ROI Worksheet. (The worksheet will be provided to all registrants.)
• How to measure the impact of training using the methodology outlined in the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact
• How to improve the adoption of new leadership practices from the classroom to the work environment

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to quantify the impact of leadership training in proposals—and how to set up your training to deliver on expectations.

Register today!

Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO

Leadership, learning, and talent development professionals are sometimes a little nervous talking with chief financial officers. CFOs ask hard questions and want to see demonstrable bottom-line impact for training initiatives being proposed. It doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, says Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

FREE WEBINAR
Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to a CFO

Get coaching on how to build a sound financial rationale to go along with a proposed training agenda. Join Craig Spitz, CFO of The Ken Blanchard Companies for this special hands-on webinar!

In this episode of the Blanchard LeaderChat podcast we speak with Susan Fowler, coauthor ofSelf Leadership and The One Minute Manager^®. Fowler shares key points beginning with challenging assumed constraints and recognizing your points of power.

You can check out the entire October issue here. Want Ignite delivered to your InBox each month?  You can subscribe for free using this link.

It doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, says Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“As gatekeeper of the financials, the CFO asks the questions. The learning and development professionals provide the models and numbers that make the case for a training expenditure. It’s about connecting the dots. CFOs love to have that kind of help during the budgeting process—it makes their job much easier.”

Connecting the dots is especially important for discretionary budget items such as training, says Spitz.

“Budget-wise, a lot of expenses are pretty standard from year to year. But purely discretionary items such as travel and training are the ones CFOs need to look at more closely. For these items, we use a zero-based budgeting approach.”

That means identifying not only what the money will be used for, but also some of the reasoning and rationale behind the request.

“If we can quantify some ROI and demonstrated impact through lowered expenses or increased revenue, we can examine the request further. The bottom line is, if you’re going to spend these dollars for training, you need to show a positive financial result.

“The only time this wouldn’t apply is when we have a directive from the top that says we are going to target a specific culture problem or engagement score. That’s a mandate where the board or CEO says, ‘We need training in this budget to address those issues.’  In that case, we are dealing with an untouchable budget item and will have to find cost savings elsewhere. But most of the time, discretionary spending like training needs to be connected to financial impact.”

Learning and development professionals can increase the odds of CFO approval if they identify the expected bottom-line impact ahead of time. And having the VP of human resources on board with the proposal is key.

“That’s your first person to convince,” says Spitz.  “Training initiatives will funnel up to budget discussions through the VP of HR. As CFO, one of my first questions is going to be to ask the VP of HR what they think. If that person is not on board, the training initiative is going to be a nonstarter.

“Ultimately, everybody is held responsible for delivering the identified operating profit. If the CEO believes an important expense or revenue item will be positively impacted by a training initiative, then that initiative will be part of the plan.”

It’s about connecting the dots, says Spitz. Anytime learning and development professionals come prepared with models, numbers, and rationale that help to make the case for training, they make the CFO’s job easier.

Would you like to learn more about successfully communicating to your CFO?  Then join us for a free webinar!

Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to the CFO

October 27, 2017, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

One of the biggest challenges learning and development professionals face is making the business case for a proposed training initiative. It’s easy for a CFO to cut or delay funding when they don’t have a clear sense of the positive business impact a proposed initiative will provide.

In this webinar, leadership, learning, and talent development professionals will have a chance to ask questions and get coaching on how to build a sound financial rationale to go along with a proposed training agenda.

Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies, will share some of the elements he looks for and some of the common pitfalls HR and OD professionals encounter when proposing new projects.

Participants will learn:

• How to enlist senior executives as champions
• How to calculate return on investment
• How to present information
• What to focus on—and what not to focus on

Participants will also have an opportunity to ask Craig questions and get the valuable perspective of a seasoned and successful CFO.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, together with peers, how to tackle the budgeting and approval process—and give your next training initiative its best opportunity for approval!

Register today!

Without a clear sense of the positive financial impact, it’s easy for a leader to dismiss a new proposal as being too disruptive, too expensive, or too time consuming.

An analysis of more than 200 organizations by The Ken Blanchard Companies found that every year of delay in improving leadership skills costs the typical organization an amount equal to 7 percent of their total annual sales.  This represents millions of dollars each year—because poor leadership behaviors not only increase the loss of high potential employees, they also lower the employee work passion and productivity of the people who remain with the company.

Employee Retention

Research originally conducted by Leigh Branham, a leading authority on turnover and retention and author of The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, identified that at least 9 percent and possibly as much as 32 percent of an organization’s voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills. Branham, who partnered with Pricewaterhouse Coopers in conducting the study, identifies that trust, hope, worth, and competence are at the core of most voluntary separations.  When employees are not getting their needs met in these key areas, they begin to look elsewhere.

Employee Work Passion

Research conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies using its Employee Work Passion Assessment has found significant correlation between positive work intentions and a leader’s ability to build trust, use coaching behaviors, and create an engaging work environment. This environment includes high levels of Meaningful Work, Autonomy, Growth, Fairness, Collaboration, and Feedback, along with six other factors (see complete list here.) Failure in any of these areas on the part of the leader leads to lowered intentions on the part of employees to perform at a high level, apply discretionary effort, remain with an organization, endorse it to others, and act as a good corporate citizen.

Employee Productivity

Providing employees with the tools, resources, direction, and support they need to perform at their best is the key to creating a high performance work environment. Research conducted by Dr. Paul Leone with a large Fortune 100 financial services company involving 300 managers and 1,200 direct reports found a 5 to 12 percent increase in productivity among direct reports of managers who attended leadership development training and immediately began using the new skills they had learned.

Leadership Impacts the Bottom Line

Leadership matters! After all, leaders help employees set goals. Leaders make sure those goals are in alignment with overall corporate strategy. And leaders are responsible for providing the direction and support employees need to succeed on a daily basis.

Even though a leadership development initiative—like any change—can be disruptive, difficult, and financially challenging, taking no action is often the most expensive option of all.

Most executives instinctively know that strong leadership is essential for overall organizational success. By evaluating and improving leadership practices throughout their organization, leadership, learning, and talent development professionals can remove a persistent drain on financial performance and allow their organizations to grow and thrive.

# # #

Want to learn more about quantifying the impact of leadership training?  Join us for a free webinar!

Making the Business Case for Leadership Training

Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 9:00 am Pacific Daylight Time

Organizations lose millions of dollars each year due to poorly trained leaders. In this webinar, David Witt, researcher and author of The Ken Blanchard Companies eBook 7 Ways Poor Leaders Are Costing Your Company Money, will share how poor managerial behaviors negatively impact engagement, alignment, productivity, and employee retention.

Drawing on original research conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies, Dave will explore:

• The 7 biggest gaps between employee expectations and leader behaviors
• The 3 ways to measure the bottom-line impact of leadership training
• The 5 keys to leadership training that works

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to evaluate your current level of leadership readiness, how to measure the impact of your leadership development, and how to get started on deploying training that makes an immediate difference. The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Register here!

Is your organization experiencing heart trouble?  This can be not only frustrating, but also damaging to performance in today’s fast paced business environment that requires a lean and agile approach.

Blanchard explains, “Managers working in the heart of the house play a couple of different roles. First, senior leaders look to middle managers to put goals and action plans in place to achieve strategic results.  But that is just one side of the coin.  Middle managers are also responsible for the environment in which the work is accomplished. So the middle manager’s job is twofold: to get things done and also to manage people’s emotional relationships to their work, their company, and their coworkers. Middle managers set the tone for the workplace.”

Blanchard says that to be successful, middle managers must be skilled in communicating what is expected and how it is to be achieved.  That means connecting the dots from the boardroom to the frontlines. If middle management is ineffective, the staff both above and below this level suffers.

This can be a challenge if managers don’t get the training and support they need.

“If managers are not getting the support they need from the organization to grow and to meet challenges, they can feel stuck in the middle. When this happens, mid-level managers can become disengaged and fall back into transacting business with their people in a way that causes the people to not care as much, to not understand as much about the importance of their work, and to not be as connected to the mission and vision of the company as they could be.”

The good news, according to Blanchard, is that there are approaches organizations can use to help mid-level managers get things done and build commitment in a way that creates positive regard and advocacy from employees.

Blanchard points to a couple of programs in The Ken Blanchard Companies portfolio as examples.

“It’s important to take a foundational approach when helping managers develop skills. The goal is to provide a framework managers can use to guide performance. Two of our training programs can help: Situational Leadership® II, which is our flagship product and the most widely taught leadership framework in the world; and our new First-time Manager program, which is designed specifically for people stepping into leadership for the first time. Both programs teach managers important skills including how to effectively set goals, how to provide day-to-day coaching and support, how to engage in a partnership with direct reports, and how to have effective discussions around performance.”

On the emotional side of the equation, Blanchard refers to the Building Trust and Optimal Motivation programs as examples of content designed to help managers create a safe and engaged environment where people thrive.

“It’s about having useful conversations.  Leadership is about getting things done with and through people. Performance and results are one side of the coin and environment and commitment are the other side. You can’t do one without the other.”

You can read more of Blanchard’s thinking on taking care of your middle managers in the May issue of Ignite.  Also, check out a complimentary webinar he is conducting on June 1, Designing a Leadership Curriculum for the Heart of Your Organization.  It’s free—courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Using the acronym UNITE, the authors explained that the creation of a collaborative work environment rests on five foundational principles.

Utilize differences. Organizations need to appreciate and be open to people and ideas that may seem at first to be outside of the mainstream. The best companies seek out creative thinking from all corners of the organization. The focus for leaders is to make sure that all ideas are surfaced for consideration.

Nurture safety and trust. New ideas will flourish when people feel safe to share them freely without fear of judgment. Leaders need to give people space to experiment and innovate, view mistakes as learning opportunities, and encourage risk taking. Trust is also generated through transparency—when leaders share knowledge about themselves and are clear about expectations.

Involve others in crafting a clear purpose, values, and goals. Instead of seeing purpose, values, and goals as something always originated by senior leaders, the authors recommend that everyone be involved in the process. Doing it this way encourages a sense of camaraderie and ownership in the group. Leaders follow through by reinforcing what was agreed upon, demonstrating supportive behaviors, and walking the talk.

Talk openly. Underlining the importance of utilizing differences and creating an environment of safety and trust, the authors shared the benefits of people talking openly without worrying about upsetting the status quo. There are benefits to creative conflict—but only when people can vigorously debate ideas without getting personal.

Empower yourself and others. Some leaders need to learn how to let go. True collaboration can never exist if people constantly look to the leader to solve problems. So don’t wait for someone else to decide it’s time to collaborate—everyone is responsible for creating a collaborative environment.

When people are busy, it’s normal to want to focus on getting individual work done. To combat this urge, the authors remind us of an old adage: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster shows the way. The book is now available online and in bookstores. You can learn more on the book’s website—or, if you’d like to listen to the author webinar I attended, be sure to access the full recording.

Interested in getting your team together for a live event? The authors will be conducting a second live webinar on October 21 as a part of the monthly webinar series from The Ken Blanchard Companies. The event is free. You can learn more or register using this link.

Surveys have helped organizations to identify areas that need to be addressed, but an inability to “move the needle” when it comes to improving scores has turned optimism into cynicism in many cases.

Organizations need to shift their focus says Bob Freytag, Director of Consulting Services for The Ken Blanchard Companies. In an interview for Blanchard Ignite, Freytag says it’s time to take action.

“Stagnant or declining engagement scores tell you that leadership fundamentals are missing,” explains Freytag. “Putting those fundamentals in place requires time, focus, and a strategic shift.

“Engagement surveys create a dynamic tension between what is and what is possible in an organization. The best leaders lean into those needs and become sponsors and champions of change.”

The Ken Blanchard Companies’ ongoing research into the factors that create a passionate work environment has identified three major areas of focus—Organizational Factors, Job Factors, and Relationship Factors—that leaders at different levels in organizations need to address to bring out the best in their people.

Organizational Factors include Fairness (as measured by Distributive and Procedural Justice), Growth, and Performance Expectations.  Job Factors include Meaningful Work, Autonomy, Task Variety, and Workload Balance.  Relationships Factors include Connectedness with Leader, Connectedness with Colleagues, Collaboration, and Feedback.

At an Organizational Level, senior leaders can begin looking at ways to shape the organization’s systems, policies, and procedures. At a Job Level, managers and supervisors can begin to explore the degree to which their direct reports feel their needs are being met in each area–and once identified, look at ways to set up the conditions that are more favorable for each factor. The scores on the four Relationship Factors can—and should be—addressed by leaders at all levels to understand how to improve the connections between people in the organization.

“But leaders need to address issues directly and not be vague or ambiguous,” cautions Freytag. “Help people see a clear path ahead and address what is possible. Also recognize how important you really are as a leader. Leaders often get in the groove like anyone else and they come to work, they execute against their list of responsibilities, and they forget the importance of their role.

“It’s important for leaders to remember that they are always having an impact—you have no choice in that. The only choice you have is what that impact will be.”

You can read the complete interview with Freytag in the November issue of Ignite.  Also be sure to check out the information about a free webinar that Freytag is conducting on The Leader’s Role in Creating an Engaging Work Environment.  It is a complimentary event, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

That’s the question I was looking to answer when I asked 700 webinar participants what they experienced most often in their organizations.

I showed them a 2×2 grid with Plan along one axis and Execution along the other. I asked the participants to identify where they saw initiatives ending up in their organizations. More than 375 people responded. Here’s where they located most initiatives in their experience:

Bad Plan – Good Execution (13%) 
Good Plan – Good Execution (4%) 
Bad Plan – Bad Execution (8%) 
Good Plan – Bad Execution (74%)

The problem, as this group saw it, was execution.

Are these numbers unusual?  No. In Navigating Change: How CEOs, Top Teams, and Boards Steer Transformation, authors Donald Hambrick, David Nadler, and Michael Tushman reported similar research numbers with 70 percent of their respondents also falling into the category of Good Plan – Bad Execution.

What does it mean?

Planning and strategic thinking get things started, but it’s in executing that we find the greatest opportunities for improvement. When you look at organizations, you frequently see the vestiges of prior intentions—evidence of previous flavors of the month. But execution is what it’s all about.  Unexecuted plans are a waste of time … they accomplish  squat.

Execution is people. It’s fixing little things in the plan, and sometimes big things. People are the implementers who can see those things.

But how do you get people on board with embracing a plan and working with it, or refining it as necessary, to bring it through to a successful conclusion?   People—particularly powerful people—may be sensitive to others suggesting changes.  Conversely, people might be reluctant to rock the boat when dealing with a plan put forward or supported  by a senior executive. But that is exactly what is necessary if you want to successfully beat the odds identified in the grid above.

3 ways to improve execution

Here are three ways you can improve the odds of successful implementation with your next initiative:

1. Include street-wise operators in the planning group. We need real-world thinking when we plan. Lack of reality = little to no execution.
2. Hold people accountable for making the plan work. Measure against standards that are appropriate for the initiative.
3. Establish crystal-clear norms around communication. During execution there is no such thing as “better left unsaid.” People who feel threatened by a change may hold back on giving critical feedback or recommending fixes. Make sure people speak up, and make sure you listen hard when they do. Peter Drucker said that, “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”

Think about an initiative currently underway in your organization.  How would you evaluate it in these three areas?  If you can see that conditions are not where they need to be to provide a decent chance for success, encourage people to share this message with others.

On your own teams, recognize someone who identifies a fly in the ointment. Help identify ways to improve implementation of an existing plan. Remove an obstacle to execution.

From a personal perspective, apologize when someone identifies something that should have been included in the original idea. Involve them in helping to fix it. Thank them when they do. Plan how you’ll incorporate what you learn in the next initiative.

Encourage still other people to share the same message. Wash, rinse, repeat. You’ll be glad you did—and the improved execution will show it.

About the author

Dr. Dick Ruhe is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.

PS: You can experience the entire original webinar by using the following link: http://webex.com/web-seminars/enroll_recording/662336164?sid=KBC081109rec.

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

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

• Click on the COMMENTS link above 
• Type in your question for Carmela
• Push SUBMIT COMMENT 

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

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