Hi Madeleine,

I work in the health profession and I’ve just accepted a position in management at a new facility. I don’t know the staff at all. All I know is that the senior leadership wants a change in the management at the facility.

What advice would you have on how to tackle a new job at a new place with a heavy agenda? What should I do first???

 New Healthcare Leader

Dear New Healthcare Leader,

Well, congratulations! Isn’t this exciting? It sounds like you have a great opportunity here! I can’t tell from your letter if the facility is new overall, or if it is just new to you. If it is actually new, this could be good because you won’t have the burden of history—it can be hard to make changes when it’s “always been done that way.”

If it is just new to you, you will need to spend some time asking questions and listening to understand the culture of the organization. Working with people to change things begins with understanding and meeting them where they are.

In terms of change, you will want to press senior leadership to understand what exactly the prior management did wrong, so you don’t repeat those mistakes. If they won’t tell you, it was probably something illegal, immoral, or both. I imagine this won’t be a problem for you.

What they must tell you though is what a good job looks like. This answers the question, “How will you know you are successful?” You say “heavy agenda” but you have to make sure you know what it really is. Ask them for crystal-clear goals, and if they don’t provide them, come up with your own and present them for approval. Some senior leaders simply don’t have the skills or the patience to articulate the vision or the goals of the organization, so if they won’t do it, do it for yourself.

Once you have your goals set, work with your people to get their goals super clear. Also, spend as much time as you can getting to know your people and assessing their strengths. Work with each of them to ensure that their goals leverage their skills, interests, and talents.

Once everybody knows what they are supposed to be doing, make sure they are getting the proper direction and support they need to do it. Make sure everyone, including you, has a short-term goal that they can achieve so that you all have the experience of early success together. Share stories of any and all wins. People will remember stories and it will feel good.

Finally, we have a lot of books here at The Ken Blanchard Companies, but the definitive one on this topic is not by Ken or any of us. It is The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins and I have worked through the book with many clients. Google it, read summaries, and be sure to look at the templates of what to do in your first 30, 60, and 90 days. I highly recommend it.

Best of luck in your new role!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

As a professional coach, I work with leaders on various skills such as increasing leadership effectiveness, motivating team members, and accomplishing team goals.  The coaching discussions often center on how leaders can get team members to do what they need them to do.

Consider these serving leader approaches to five common leadership situations. Would direct reports identify you as a servant leader? (Keep in mind that people can only see your behaviors—not your intentions.)

Providing direction.  Servant leaders take responsibility for providing people with clear direction on goals, expectations, and tasks. They recognize next steps that may be clear to them may not be as clear to others.  They take the time to explain or reset vision, mission, and goals as needed.

Offering ongoing support. Servant leaders recognize that implementation is achieved through partnering and collaborating with others. A serving leader makes time to provide the day-to-day coaching people need to succeed.

Giving credit where credit is due.  Servant leaders recognize that effective leadership is not about them—it’s about giving others what they need to succeed.  As Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale stated in their book The Power of Ethical Management, “People with humility don’t think less of themselves; they just think about themselves less.”  Be quick to give others credit and praise when it is deserved.

Valuing both results and relationships. Servant leaders keep results and relationships in balance.  Through strong relationships, clear goals, and high performance standards, they lead at a higher level.

Making growth opportunities available for direct reports. Servant leaders use their position power to provide growth and advancement opportunities for others. They develop team members by bringing out the best in them.  They also provide feedback on a regular basis, which leads to continuous improvement for increased effectiveness.

Servant leadership is about serving others. Behaviors that align with a servant leader approach create enthusiastic followers, ethical conduct, high quality customer service, individual growth and development, and company success.

I challenge you to ask your direct reports for feedback on your leadership approach.  When leaders serve others, everyone succeeds!

About the Author

Terry Watkins is a coaching solutions partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies Coaching Services team. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Done well, performance management is a partnership where managers and direct reports work together to set goals, work through challenges, and celebrate accomplishments.  A leader provides increased direction when a person is new to a task, extra support when they are learning, and gradual autonomy as they become skilled and experienced.

A short 3-minute video just released by The Ken Blanchard Companies shares that this idea is much easier in theory than it is in practice. Drawing on the Blanchard Companies’ experience of working with hundreds of thousands of leaders over a 30-year period, the video identifies that 54 percent of leaders use only one style with all members of their team—regardless of an individual’s demonstrated competence and commitment on a task.

As a result, these leaders are very visible to the impacted direct report, who either experiences a micromanaging leader who provides too much direction on tasks where the person is competent or an absentee leader who is never around when challenges come up on tasks where the person is inexperienced.

When asked how they feel as a result of being either oversupervised or undersupervised, people say they are angry, disappointed, frustrated, sometimes overwhelmed, confused, resentful — reactions that can get in the way of someone showing up as the best contributor they can be.

The Blanchard video makes the case that a good leader is able to accurately diagnose a team member’s needs for direction and support and then apply the right leadership style for that person, in that moment, on that specific goal or task.

It’s a good thing to be front and center in the minds of your employees during those times when they are unfamiliar with a task and need extra direction and support. But it’s also a good thing to be able to fade into the background and give people autonomy when they have earned it by showing competence at a task. It’s great way to help people grow and develop in a self-directed, satisfying, and enduring manner.

Know when your people need you to be in the spotlight with them—and when it’s best to take a step back and let them shine on their own.

• It’s not personal, it is just ________.
• The purpose of business is to _____ _______.
• We need to hold people ___________.
• The only thing that really matters is _______.
• If you cannot measure it, it _________ ________.

We have embedded these beliefs so deep in our collective psyche that I bet you do not even need to check your answers. However, just because these belief statements are common, does not mean they are legitimate. I encourage you to consider that holding these beliefs may be undermining your ability to effectively cultivate a motivating environment for those you lead.

In this blog we will explore the first eroding belief: “It’s not personal, it is just business.”  We will tackle the other belief statements in upcoming posts.

Are You Kidding?

As a manager, you deliver information, feedback, or news to an individual that affects his or her work, livelihood, opportunities, status, income, mood, health, and/or well-being. How is this not personal?

On average, employees spend 75% of their waking hours connected to work—getting ready for work, getting to work, working, returning home from work, and decompressing. Oftentimes, employees spend more time interacting with coworkers than family members. Yet managers believe their actions are not personal and just business? Are you kidding?

Getting at the Root of the Belief

Trust me, what you say and do feels personal to the people you lead! Therein lies the issue. The new “F-word” in business, it seems, is Feelings. Is this because we hold a belief that expressing feelings does not belong in the workplace? If so, where did this belief come from?

I welcome your opinion. Here is mine: Feelings are discouraged in business because managers do not have the skill to effectively deal with them. True, some employees do not self-regulate well and may let their emotions get the best of them from time-to-time. But the fear of unruly emotions is disproportionate to the occurrence and severity of emotional outbreaks.

Research shows that even though people judge their work environment both emotionally and cognitively, emotions are the primary determinant of their sense of well-being[1] As a manager, your actions strongly influence the outcome of an individual’s appraisal process that results in a sense of well-being—or not. If you do not notice, acknowledge, and deal with a person’s emotions, you may unwittingly be undermining that sense of well-being that is the vital link to a person’s intentions and behavior.

Try this for the next month: Instead of holding on to a traditional belief that potentially undermines people’s motivation, listen to your heart and acknowledge the crucial role that feelings play in work and life. Try changing that traditional belief to an Optimal Motivation belief: “If it is business, it must be personal.”

Watch how your leadership changes as your belief changes. Then notice the positive affect your changed belief has on those you lead.

About the author:

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

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

Ever been there?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the author

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

Once everyone had boarded the plane and we were all getting settled in our seats, expecting to hear the flight attendant start making their welcoming and safety comments, the captain himself got on the intercom and started talking to us.  He didn’t stand behind the little wall that tends to hide the flight attendant from the passengers, but instead stood halfway down the aisle of first class and addressed the entire plane.

He welcomed us all on the flight and thanked us for our business and choosing to fly United.  He acknowledged that we have a choice in airlines, and he hoped that this flight would be a great experience for all of us.  He then went on to introduce  the rest of his “team” as he called them,  his co-pilot and flight attendants, saying that they all work together to make the flight enjoyable and safe.  He encouraged us to ask the flight attendant if we needed anything during the flight and thanked us one more time before he handed it off to the attendant to finish all of the safety messages.   As I sat there, I couldn’t help but smile to myself and think how a simple gesture like personally welcoming the passengers set the tone for a pleasant flight and put the customers in a good mood.

So what can your organization learn from this?  Here are three simple ways to create a stronger team and build customer loyalty:

1. Always look for opportunities to practice what you preach to your employees about making their customers feel welcome by talking to customers, saying a simple hello, asking how their day is, or if there is anything else to help them with.
2. Remind your employees to look for the 1% better concept—the little things you can do while interacting with customers that may not be a huge thing, but may be huge in the eyes of that customer.
3. Constantly look for opportunities to praise your team members when you see them delivering great service to their customers.  They will feel valued and acknowledged for their efforts and want to continue to serve their customers in a positive way.

I actually was a little sad getting off the plane at the end of the flight knowing I may not see that pilot again on another flight, but happy that he had restored my faith in the airlines  and knowing there are leaders out there that really do want to make a difference.

About the author:

Kathy Cuff is a senior consulting partner and one of the principal authors—together  with Vicki Halsey—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.

They are a Division II football program that went undefeated last season and were ranked #1 in the nation for Division II schools at the end of the season.  Pretty good, huh?!

Although that is pretty impressive, what impresses me even more is the coaching staff—the leaders at the top of the football program.

I went to visit Head Coach John Wristen to drop off a couple of Ken Blanchard’s books that I thought he would enjoy, and ended up spending 45 minutes chatting with him about his philosophy as a coach and what he is trying to teach these young men.  In addition to running a top-notch football program, just as important to Coach Wristen is preparing these guys for life and real world circumstances that they will encounter.

He is very clear about the importance of having clear goals and re-evaluating the goals often to make sure they are on track.  He also wants the players to know what the values are of the program, since he strongly believes that values guide the specific behaviors he is looking for from his players.  His job, he says, as the Head Coach is to be very clear in sharing his goals and values, and then making sure that he and his staff do everything they can to help the players be successful throughout the year.

He and his fellow coaches truly care about the development of these young men–not  only their abilities on the field–but off the field as well.  He says that he thinks of each player as his son and he treats them in the way that he would want a coach to treat his own son.  Needless to say, as a parent of a player, this warmed my heart and confirmed in my mind my son’s decision to come and play for this coach.  I know that he is in good hands.

A lesson for all leaders

I believe all leaders in organizations can learn a lesson from Coach Wristen.  Let your team members know you care about them by being clear on what the goals are, what specific behaviors are expected from them, and what are your values that will help guide those behaviors.  Remember, your direct reports, just like the football players, are part of YOUR team and you, as their leader, are only as effective as the rest of the team is.

Thanks, Coach Wristen for being a great servant leader to your team!  Now it is up to YOU to be a great coach to YOUR team! Maybe you, too, can take “your game” to the next level like Coach Wristen did this past season.

P.S.  Coach Wristen was named the National Coach of the Year by American Football Monthly magazine, a leading publication for football coaches.

Here are three ways to honor the spirit of Dr. King’s message in your corner of the world.

Be inclusive. It’s never a good idea to create artificial divisions between people even though, as humans, we seem to love to do it.  People have a fundamental need, and a right, to be included in decisions that affect them.  No one likes to be left out.  Go out of your way to bring people into the process.

Listen.  Once you’ve brought people together, make sure that you take the next step and truly listen to them.  One of our favorite reminders for leaders is to occasionally stop and remember the acronym WAIT—Why Am I Talking? And one of our favorite recommendations for leaders is to “listen with the intent of being influenced.”  Use both in your interactions with people.

Act with integrity. Even though people may not always agree with the final outcome, it’s important that we always agree with, and respect, the process.  Leaders need to be especially conscientious in monitoring the ways that decisions are reached.  Resist the tendency to cut corners.  Ken Blanchard recommends that leaders hold themselves to a high standard by using a 3-step ethics check with all major decisions.  Start with the basics—is it legal and is it fair?  Then hold yourself to a higher standard by asking, “Would you be proud if your decision-making process and result was published and widely known?”

As you go back to work this week, take a minute to review the way you are interacting with people.  Are you including all stakeholders in the process?  Are you truly listening to everyone’s ideas and concerns?  Are you being fair and ethical in the way you are making decisions and allocating resources?

Today, more than ever, we need a process that includes, instead of excludes, people.  See what you can do in your areas of influence this week.  You’ll be surprised at the difference you can make.

To get at that, they shared five key questions from WD-40’s annual engagement survey and asked the audience how many of these statements they would personally agree and/or strongly agree with.  Here are the questions (and the percentages of positive responses.)  See how this stacks up with your experience.

In my organization/company…

1. I am treated with dignity and respect. (78% agree/strongly agree)
2. Employees work passionately toward the success of the organization. (52% agree/strongly agree)
3. I am allowed the freedom to openly discuss an alternative point of view concerning issues at our company/organization with my supervisor. (71% agree/strongly agree)
4. My supervisor respects me. (77% agree/strongly agree)
5. I know what results are expected of me. (68% agree/strongly agree)

Then Ken Blanchard asked one additional question to highlight the connection between performance management and culture.  After the initial results were shared, he asked, “Do you believe that you, as an employee, benefitted from your last review with your supervisor?”

Over 58% of the 500 people in attendance said “no”.

Blanchard and Ridge used this final question as a springboard to share their thoughts on what makes up a successful performance management system for employees.  They identified three key components.

1. Clear, agreed-upon goals.
2. Consistent day-to-day coaching designed to help people succeed.
3. No surprises at performance review.

The core of their message was that it’s all about trust and respect.  Organizations that treat people as valued team members by taking the time to structure jobs their properly, provide direction and support as needed, and focus more on helping people succeed instead of evaluating them, are the ones that create engaging work cultures that bring out the best in people.

What’s possible?

But does it work?  That’s where Garry Ridge’s experience at WD-40 really caught my attention.  After working at this for the past 10 years, Ridge answers, “absolutely” and he has the numbers to back it up.

Check out these responses from WD-40’s most recent survey on the same questions Ken Blanchard asked the audience.

1. At WD-40 Company I am treated with dignity and respect. (98.7% agree/strongly agree)
2. Employees at WD-40 Company work passionately towards the success of the organization. (98.6% agree/strongly agree)
3. I am allowed the freedom to openly discuss an alternative point of view concerning issues at WD-40 Company with my supervisor. (98.3% agree/strongly agree)
4. My supervisor respects me. (98.0% agree/strongly agree)
5. I know what results are expected of me. (97.7% agree/strongly agree)

The numbers at WD-40 are at least 20 points higher in all categories and an eye-popping 46-points above the audience survey response when it comes to question number two, “Employees at WD-40 Company work passionately towards the success of the organization.”

Ridge also has the bottom-line impact numbers you’d expect with the company experiencing consistent growth over the time period and record sales for the most recent fiscal year.

How about your organization?

Strong performance management is a basic key to success but its implementation is very uneven in today’s organizations.  Some companies have strong processes in place while others leave it up to the discretion of the individual manager. 

What’s your company’s approach to performance management?  How is it working? 

If you could use a more consistent, proven approach, check out the process that Blanchard and Ridge suggest in their book Helping People Win at Work.  It can be implemented at any level in an organization.  To see the complete presentation Blanchard and Ridge conducted check out the webinar recording posted up at Training Industry by clicking on this link.

Good performance management is a basic to better performance.  Don’t let an uneven approach create inconsistent results.  Your people deserve better.  Conduct a performance review of your performance management system today.

Employees are always concerned about how their boss will react when he or she finds out about a situation. This uncertainty keeps people unwilling to step out of tightly defined roles for fear that they will do something wrong. People shouldn’t have to guess how their leader would respond. Leaders can improve the situation—and open up a little playing room for employees—by clearly sharing their expectations.

Have you shared your leadership expectations with your people—or are you expecting them to figure it out on their own from your actions? If your work relationship could use a little more clarity, here’s a three-step process to help you get started.

1. Identify your leadership values. What do you believe about leadership? Where did you pick up those values? For most leaders, beliefs and values about leadership are picked up from influential people who have played a role in their early development. Who are the people who influenced you? What did you learn from them? Surprisingly, most leaders will point to someone outside a traditional leadership role as a key influencer in their life. Many times, for example, people will point to a parent, grandparent, or teacher as someone who most influenced their views.

2. Define your leadership point of view. This answers the question, “A leader’s role is to ….” How would you fill in the rest of this sentence? Your answer provides the background for the action you’ll take in step three.

3. Share and set expectations. Turn those internal thoughts into a communication plan by sharing your thinking with the people who report to you. People shouldn’t have to guess what you are thinking. Make it easy by clearly spelling out what people can expect from you as a leader—and what you expect from them in return.

Setting clear expectations is a great way to reduce the amount of time people spend wondering how the boss will react to a certain situation. It provides some clarity and definition of the playing field that gives people the peace of mind that they can step out boldly and confidently knowing that they are working in accordance with the direction their boss wants them to go. You shouldn’t be a mystery. Your leadership values should be an open book. To learn more about developing and sharing your leadership point of view, check out the free on-demand webinar with Ken Blanchard, Developing Your Leadership Point of View. It’s available courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Trust in relationships is comprised of four elements: Ability, Believability, Connectedness, and Dependability (TrustWorks!® ABCD Model). Part of being an able, competent leader is knowing how to get things done. Yet with today’s flat organizations and wide span of control, it’s impossible for a leader to know the answer to every problem that crops up.

A leader has to rely on problem-solving and decision-making skills to facilitate work getting done in the organization. Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, who recently announced his candidacy for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, has said that he succeeded in business for over 40 years by asking the right questions of the right people about the right problems to get to the right solutions.

Trustworthy leaders also make sure employees receive the right amount of direction and support to be successful in their jobs. The leader owes it to the employee to set clear goals and performance expectations up front, and then give regular, timely, and meaningful feedback on performance along the way so the employee stays on track to achieving the goal.

If you feel like you have room to develop your facilitation skills in order to get things done in the organization, consider the following:

• Work on developing your meeting management skills. Encourage participation from others, solicit ideas, incorporate suggestions, record action items and hold yourself and others accountable to following through on commitments.
• Develop your coaching and leadership skills. Make sure you’re setting clear goals and giving frequent feedback to team members, not just at their performance review. Learn and use Situational Leadership® II so that you’re giving employees the right amount of direction and support they need to achieve their goals.
• Utilize problem-solving and decision-making techniques such as brainstorming, SWOT, or Force Field analysis.
• Perform an After Action Review of a recent problem-solving or decision-making situation. Ask these questions: What did we set out to do? What actually happened? Why did it happen? What can we do better next time?

Building trust is a process that takes time and effort, but can be accomplished through the use of specific behaviors. Continued focus on developing your facilitation skills to get work accomplished in the organization will help you create a track record of success and will earn you the trustworthy reputation of someone who can “Git-R-Done!”

This is one in a series of articles on the TrustWorks!® ABCD Trust Model and building trust in relationships and organizations. Be sure to “like” TrustWorks!® on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @TrustWrks.

Although most managers agree with the importance of setting goals, many do not take the time to clearly develop goals with their people. As a result, people tend to get caught in the “activity trap,” where they become busy doing things, but not necessarily the right things. In his book Leading at a Higher Level, business author Ken Blanchard recommends that managers set SMART goals with their people. SMART is an acronym for the most important factors to remember in setting quality goals:

Specific and measurable. You don’t say to somebody, “I want you to improve.” You have to be specific about the area that needs improvement and what good performance looks like. Being specific reinforces the old saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Therefore, goals have to be specific, observable, and measurable.

Motivating. Not every job people are asked to do will be super-exciting, but having motivating goals helps. Sometimes all people need to know is why the task is important. The “why” explains how the person’s task fits in with overall job performance and the goals and objectives of the unit, division, organization, and customer.  It clarifies how the task supports higher-level outcomes. People want to know that what they do makes a difference. That’s motivating.

Attainable. It’s a false assumption that to motivate people you have to set goals that are unattainable. What really motivates people is to have moderately difficult but achievable goals.

In a classic research experiment on achievement motivation, researcher David McClelland asked people to throw rings at a stake from any distance they chose. McClelland found that high achievers positioned themselves the appropriate distance from the stake through experimentation.  If they threw the rings from a certain spot and made most of their tosses, they moved back. If they missed most of their tosses, they moved forward. Why? McClelland found that high achievers like to set moderately difficult but attainable goals—that is, goals that stretch them but are not impossible. People who set goals that are too easy or too difficult don’t want to be judged or held accountable.

Relevant. Eighty percent of the performance you want from people comes from the 20 percent of the activities they could get involved in. Therefore, a goal is relevant if it addresses one of the 20-percent activities that make a difference in overall performance.

Trackable and time-bound. As a manager, you want to be able to praise progress or redirect inappropriate behavior. To do that, you must be able to measure or count performance frequently, which means you need to put a record-keeping system in place to track performance. If a goal consists of completing a report by June 1, the chances of receiving an acceptable, even outstanding, report will increase if interim reports are required.

Goals energize people when they are set correctly. Make sure your people know what they are being asked to do (their areas of accountability) and what good performance looks like (the performance standards by which they will be evaluated). It’s a great way to get your people off to a successful start!

Be clear on goals and tasks.  People need different levels of direction and support depending on the task they are facing.  As a leader your job is to clearly identify each of the tasks an employee has on his or her plate.

Know your people. Most employees are good at some of their tasks and still developing skills in others.  A good manager tailor’s their direction based on what an employee needs and their level of experience.  For example, a salesperson might be great at booking appointments but not so great at using the new conferencing technology to demonstrate the product.  A good manager will recognize the difference and trust the salesperson to book appointments their own way while at the same time using a more directed, hands-on managerial style, when it comes to using the new software.

Provide the right level of direction and support depending on the task.  In this case, the manager needs to take a very hands-off approach when it comes to appointment setting, while at the same time using a very hands-on approach to learning and using the new software.  As long as the manager uses the right style with each task, it won’t feel like micro-managing to the employee.  It will just seem like active, helpful leadership.

Very few employees are experts at all of their tasks these days.  Most people are good at some and still learning in others.  By adjusting leadership style to fit the task at hand, managers can move their people to higher levels of performance without the danger of being labeled a micromanager.

What gets in the way of managers making the shift from knowing to doing?  In their book Know Can Do! authors Ken Blanchard, Dick Ruhe, and the late Paul Meyer, identify three big reasons why people don’t put more of their good ideas into practice. See if any of these rings true for you.

• Too much knowledge
• Too much negativity
• Bad habits

To overcome these roadblocks, the authors recommend three strategies—a “less is more” approach, positive—instead of negative filtering, and spaced repetition with active coaching.

• Less is More. Before you can take a step, you have to decide on a direction.  Don’t become paralyzed wondering if there might be a slightly better idea out there.  The key is to move from analysis to action.  Which diet works best for you?  The one you stick to!
• Avoid Negative Filtering. While it is important to evaluate an idea from different perspectives, make sure that you are not letting a “why that won’t work” mentality keep you from moving forward.  What’s easier for you?  Seeing the reasons why something will work, or the reasons why something won’t work?  If you tend to see the negative first, practice seeing the positive side as well.  It will help you get started with taking action.
• Repetition, Repetition, Repetition. There is no substitute for just doing it.  Take action—evaluate the outcome—adjust accordingly—repeat.  You’ll be surprised how much you will accomplish once you set yourself in motion. 

At its core, behavior change is a personal process. Any real change has to start by addressing the beliefs, limitations, and thought processes going on inside of a person.

Today, the gap between knowing and doing is probably wider than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.  Close that gap in yourself and your organization by identifying and resolving the three challenges.  Make the shift from knowing to doing.

• Providing reports with too much “helpful” advice.
• Trying to show confidence by refusing to admit weaknesses or mistakes.
• Missing the mark with recognition through overdone or meaningless kudos to staff.
• Working 12-hour days to complete all work individually, instead of delegating.

You can read the complete second posting—plus see up-to-date additional comments by readers, at Readers Diagnose “New Management Syndrome,” Offer Cures

For additional thoughts on the challenges new managers face and some of the ways to meet these challenges successfully, be sure to check out two past articles featuring The Ken Blanchard Companies Madeleine Homan-Blanchard.  Madeleine is co-founder of Coaching Services and she shares her thoughts on the challenges new managers face in an article entitled First Time Manager: It’s Not Just about You Anymore and is featured in a second article for new managers on Providing Feedback and Direction.

It’s been a great week devoted to identifying all of the wonderful leaders around us today and to explore some of the traits that make them special.  We’ve looked at the people who push the edges, inspire us, and lead us to places we may not have been able to get to on our own.

We also looked at a special group of people who we called the unsung hero, or the everyday leader.  These are the people who may not be household names, but who have had a powerful positive influence on our lives.  Here are a couple of more unsung hero/leader nominations from Ken Blanchard’s Twitter page that I wanted to share:

• My favorite leader as a coach: my mother-she understands me, keeps me grounded, pushes, backs-up.
• Innovation, courage, and caring make 8th grade science teacher Sandy Willmore my choice for Top Leader.
• My unsung hero is my cousin Chris an army helicopter pilot who will be leaving for Afghanistan.
• Susan Baldwin. For maintaining relationships with previous employees to use for training and back-up.
• This may sound like a cliché, but my boss is one of the best leaders I have ever met. He never has to ask for respect.

If you haven’t had a chance to see everyone who was nominated, go over to www.Twitter.com and type @kenblanchard in the search box.  You’ll see everyone who was recognized.  Thanks again to everyone who participated over this past week.

To participate in the online discussion, stop by www.leaderchat.org  beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time. Try to arrive early because it may be crowded–over 1,200 people have registered for the event!

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

If you have a question that you would like to ask Dr. Halsey, just click on the COMMENTS link above.  Then post your question and push SUBMIT COMMENT.  Vicki will answer as many questions as possible during the 30-minute online Q&A.  (Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.)

If you can’t stay for the entire 30-minute chat, but would like to see all of the questions and responses, you can always stop by later.  You can also click on the RSS FEED button in the right-hand column to receive updates automatically through email.

On this final day, the role of the leader as coach seems to be the aspect of leadership to highlight.  In addition to inspirational, unsung, and visionary leaders, the leader as coach has been the fourth most popular nomination.

Nominees have ranged from sports coaches, like Tony Dungy, John Calipari, and Pete Carroll, to business coaches, like Marshall Goldsmith, Stephen Covey, and John Maxwell, and finally to life coaches like Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, and Tony Robbins.

What’s the one thing they all have in common?  They see something special in others, and they use a combination of encouragement and accountability to bring it to full development.  By setting high standards, providing direction and support as needed, and always believing in their people, these types of coaches help their clients and team members get to places they might not have been able to get to on their own.

Who are the people that have believed in you?  Who has held you to a higher standard of performance—and always believed in your ability to achieve it?  Let us know by posting your top coaching leader at www.twitter.com/kenblanchard  Remember to add @kenblanchard in the body of your tweet so you’ll be entered into tomorrow’s drawing for one of two gift baskets of Ken Blanchard books.

Survey/Contest Details

LeaderChat is partnering with Ken Blanchard on Twitter to conduct a fun and interesting survey/contest.  Through October 13th, we’d like you to Tweet the name of the person you think is today’s top leader.  In order for us to know who your selection is specifically for this contest, just include “@kenblanchard” in your Tweet.

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: John Smith”

By doing that, you will be entered into our Twitter contest. After October 13th, we will randomly select two submissions for this contest on Twitter, and we’ll send each of these winners a gift pack of 7 of Ken’s best books, including best-sellers together with some of his newest releases. If you win, Ken will send you a direct Tweet to get your contact info, and we’ll also post the winners here.

 As you look over the latest group of people who have been nominated, consider who is the most inspirational leader you have ever met.  What was it about them that caused you to be inspired?  Was it something they said?  Something they did?  Or was it something harder to describe?

Once you’ve identified that inspirational leader, let us know about it.  Post a tweet with @kenblanchard in the body of the message.  That will get your message posted at Ken Blanchard’s Twitter page and also enter you into our raffle on Tuesday for one of two gift baskets of Ken Blanchard books. 

This weekend’s new nominees:

• USC football coach Pete Carroll
• Social visionary, Eboo Patel
• Steve Irwin, famed Australian “Crocodile Hunter”
• Croatian tennis player, Marin Cilic who reached the quarterfinals of this year’s US Open
• Pastor, and best-selling author, Rick Warren
• Jack Stack CEO of SRC Holdings Corporation
• Jack Canfield, best-selling author of Chicken Soup for the Soul

Who’s inspired you?  Let us know, and check back here at LeaderChat to see who is inspiring others.

Survey/Contest Details

LeaderChat is partnering with Ken Blanchard on Twitter to conduct a fun and interesting survey/contest.  Through October 13th, we’d like you to Tweet the name of the person you think is today’s top leader.  In order for us to know who your selection is specifically for this contest, just include “@kenblanchard” in your Tweet.

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: John Smith”

By doing that, you will be entered into our Twitter contest. After October 13th, we will randomly select two submissions for this contest on Twitter, and we’ll send each of these winners a gift pack of 7 of Ken’s best books, including best-sellers together with some of his newest releases. If you win, Ken will send you a direct Tweet to get your contact info, and we’ll also post the winners here.

People felt that there were plenty of leaders in all walks of life who weren’t necessarily famous, but were still having a big impact on the people around them.  One example was a parent’s nomination of a teammate on a son’s high school baseball team. As the parent noted, “He (the teammate) is the leader without anyone telling him he is the leader. He is a model player who gives the credit to his teammates. No vote was needed.”

Another nomination was for a retired U.S. Navy captain.  This nominee’s leadership traits?  “He knew each person’s name in our command of over 400+ people. Never looked at your name tag–looked you directly in the eye so you knew he knew your name.”

The takeaway from today’s postings?  As one Facebook fan identified, “To be a great leader you must see something…and I’d like to add, that something can be a special trait in another, an idea for doings things a new way, or a vision for a better future.   

Who’s your nominee as one of today’s top leaders?  Let us know by posting your nominee. Be sure to check back again on Monday to see the results from this weekend.

That’s the question that might surface for you as you look at the following list of people who have recently been nominated as one of today’s top leaders in our Top Leader Survey.  As you scan the list below, you’ll probably see some names you immediately recognize.  Others will seem vaguely familiar, while others will be completely unknown to you. 

Tony Dungy—John Calipari—Edward Phillip—Chris Alexander—Ken Wilber—Ron Paul—Fred Cuellar—Serena Williams—Bill George—Jessica Watson—Robert Iger—Orrin Woodward—Stephen Harper—Al Gore—Amma—James Parks Morton—Pete Seeger—Gary Cook— Angelina Jolie—Donald Neal Walsh

The one thing that all of these people have in common is that they are a great leader in someone’s eyes.  Who are the leaders in your eyes that no one else might know about?  Let us know by “tweeting” about them.  When you do, you’ll automatically be entered into our survey/raffle for one of two gift baskets of Ken Blanchard’s classic best-sellers and new releases.  To participate using your existing Twitter account, just follow this format

My choice for today’s top leader?  @kenblanchard: John Smith

That will allow us to see your nominee and also enter you into the drawing which will take place on Tuesday. 

If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, just follow the instructions at www.twitter.com  It’s easy, fast, fun, and free.

McCain is part of a young generation of writers and columnists covering everything from current events to the latest in entertainment and fashion. She first began to receive media attention when she documented life on the campaign trail with her father Senator John McCain.  You can read McCain’s latest posts at The Daily Beast.

Hendley is a great example of a young man who, beginning at the age of 25, travelled to Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, working with local communities to build clean water wells and sanitation systems.  Upon coming home and returning to school, Hendley continued working for clean water in developing nations through fund-raising at bars where he worked. By hosting wine tastings and providing information about the clean water crisis in other less-developed parts of the world, Hendley was able to later launch Wine to Water, Hendley’s organization that provides clean water to people in developing countries.  You can learn more about Hendley and Wine to Water at www.winetowater.org

Who are other examples of non-traditional leaders that you would like to highlight?

Let us know by posting your nominee on Twitter.  When you do, you’ll also be entered into our drawing for a specially chosen selection of Ken Blanchard best-sellers and new releases.

To participate, go to Twitter.com and “tweet” the name of the person you think is today’s top leader.  In order for us to know who your selection is specifically for this contest, just include “@kenblanchard” in your Tweet.

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: John Smith

We’ll keep posting the latest nominees and keeping the survey/ book raffle open until October 13 when two random winners will be chosen from among all of the people who have participated.

Join us in this opportunity to recognize leaders who are making a difference .  Also, be sure to check back every day for updates, and to see who people are talking about!

For example, your Tweet could read: “Today’s top leader @kenblanchard: David Witt”

Okay, that may be a stretch… but pretty simple, huh?  By doing that, you will be entered into our Twitter contest. After October 13th, we will randomly select two submissions for this contest on Twitter, and we’ll send each of these winners a gift pack of 7 of Ken’s best books, including best-sellers together with some of his newest releases. You can read them all, you can give some away as gifts, whatever you like! If you win, Ken will send you a direct Tweet to get your contact info, and we’ll also post the winners here.

The second phase of this LeaderChat/Twitter partnership is right back here at LeaderChat. Each day, I’ll be posting some of the latest Tweet suggestions. Then, we can discuss here on the blog why those people are top leaders (or why you think they aren’t).

What is the criteria for a “top leader?” It’s whatever you think it should be… it could be your parents, a teacher, a local business owner, a sports star, a politician, etc. Really, its about what YOU think makes a top leader. Stop back here each day to talk about some of the Tweet suggestions, and the factors that are important about that particular person and leaders in general.

So start right now and go to Twitter, or directly to Ken’s Twitter page at www.twitter.com/kenblanchard, Tweet out your top leader suggestion with “@kenblanchard” included in your message, and come back here to discuss.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun… check back tomorrow to see what leaders come up!

Based on their best-selling book The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, Blanchard and Miller (who is VP of training and development for quick-serve restaurant chain Chick-fil-A) will share five keys for being more effective in this dual role. 

• See the Future: Start by setting a clear vision for your organization. Leadership is about taking people from one place to another.  
• Engage and Develop People: Once the vision is set, you have to turn the organizational chart upside down.  Great leaders move themselves to the bottom of the hierarchy, acting as a cheerleader, supporter, and encourager to the people who report to them. 
• Reinvent Continuously: Does your organizational structure serve the business, or are the people serving the structure? Great leaders understand that their organizational structure should be fluid and flexible to meet changing needs.  
• Value Results and Relationships: Great leaders value both results and relationships. Both are critical for long-term survival. For too long, many leaders have felt that they needed to choose.  
• Embody the Values: All genuine leadership is built on trust. The leader, above all, has to be a walking example of the vision and values of the organization.

As you think about the great leaders you’ve known, which of these characteristics most define them in your mind?  As you think about developing leaders, which of these characteristics is probably the most difficult to learn or change?

The first hat of leadership is self leadership. This is a hat for all seasons! Self leadership involves developing the skills and abilities to set goals for yourself, to recognize the points of power you have to help you accomplish your goals and influence others, and to recognize and move beyond the assumed constraints, or self-limiting beliefs, that you’ve created for yourself over the years. Self leadership is independent of any formal position of leadership. If you can breathe, you can be a self leader!

The second hat of leadership is leading others. This hat utilizes various styles of leadership to influence others in order to help them accomplish their individual goals or the goals of the organization. This hat is often used when a leader is in a formal position of authority with direct reports, but it can also be worn by an individual contributor who has to collaborate with and accomplish work through others. A leader in this context needs to flex his or her style to meet the developmental needs of the followers. A second hat leader uses a combination of directive and supportive behaviors to bring out the best in his or her people.

Leading teams is the third hat of leadership. When two or more people are mutually dependent and accountable for achieving a particular goal, you have a team. Wearing the hat of team leadership involves not only using second hat leadership in your 1 to 1 interactions with team members, it involves managing the productivity and morale of the team as a whole. The team leader has to monitor team dynamics and modify his or her leadership style to keep the team moving to higher levels of performance.

The fourth hat is leading organizations. Leaders in this context have to be acutely aware of their own leadership points of view, setting the vision/mission of the organization, the nuances of managing other leaders, and how to implement and manage change within the organization. Competencies of fourth hat leadership involve strategic thinking, innovation, creativity, and having a global mindset.

Any one particular type of hat isn’t appropriate for every social situation. Nor is any one particular type of leadership appropriate for every organizational context. You wouldn’t wear a top hat to a baseball game would you? No! A baseball cap would be much more appropriate. The same is true with the hats of leadership in organizations. You have to develop the skills and abilities of each of the leadership hats so that you can quickly switch between them as the situation demands.

So which hat are you wearing? Is it the right one?

Pat will be stopping by right after she finishes her WebEx sponsored webinar on Leading People Through Change.  This is a special government-focused webinar that looks at the unique challenges encountered when leading change in a government setting. Over 200 people will be participating in the webinar and most will be gathering here to ask follow-up questions. 

If you have a question that you would like to ask Pat, just enter this thread or click on the COMMENTS hyperlink near the title of this post.  Type in your question in the space provided and hit SUBMIT COMMENT.  Pat will answer as many questions as possible until she has to leave at 10:30 a.m. Pacific. 

And if you can’t stay, be sure to stop by later and see all the questions that were asked.  Or better yet, hit the RSS FEED button on the right-hand column and receive updates on a weekly basis.

How do we protect ourselves from such failures? It’s a complex issue that is influenced by a person’s spiritual, mental, and emotional makeup, but we can ask ourselves a few simple questions that will help us to evaluate the impact of our decisions. Is it legal? Will this decision break any civil laws or company policies? Is it balanced and fair? Will this decision or action promote win-win relationships for those involved and is it fair to everyone in both the short-term and long-term? How will it make me feel about myself? If this decision or action was published on the home page of CNN, would I be proud? What would those closest to me think about it? Of course these simple questions won’t completely resolve all the moral and ethical dilemmas we face, but it certainly can put us on the right track.

In Zigarmi’s experience of working with clients on organizational change initiatives over the past 20 years, a couple of common mistakes keep popping up when organizations go about launching large scale change in their organizations.   

What causes change to fail in most organizations?  Here are three that Zigarmi recommends keeping an eye on: 

1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it.  So much energy in organizations is spent preparing to communicate the change and the reasons behind it, but not nearly the same energy is spent planning for the successful execution and rollout of the change after the announcement.
2. People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed. If leaders do not take the time to specifically address individuals’ needs and fears near the beginning of the change process, they will find themselves fighting an uphill battle later on in the process.
3. Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change.  Leaders need to gain the buy-in and cooperation of the people who are being asked to change. Without that, resistance smolders. This is because people feel that change is being done to them rather than with them. 

Interested in learning more about Zigarmi’s thoughts on leading people through change in your organization?  Be sure to check out interviews with Pat in the May 2008 and May 2009 issues of Ignite or Pat’s webinar recordings on implementing change. 

To learn more about Who Killed Change? including access to the first chapter, follow this link, Who Killed Change?

A couple of us are doing presentations (including yours truly.)  I’ll be talking about engageable moments and specifically what rank and file employees can do to help maintain commitment and productivity during a down economic cycle.

My focus will be on what each of us can do individually to keep ourselves and others upbeat, focused, and positive.  That’s because all plans, no matter how well thought out, eventually work down to an individual level—to you and me.  And to a large extent, how you and I respond—and act on the initiatives that have been proposed will determine our company’s overall success.

Here’s the three points I’ll be making.  See what you think and how this matches up with your own experience.

Get clear on what you need to do

Today, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by bad economic news, become distracted, and lose focus. There are so many things that each of us want to do, what we need to do, and that the organization wants us to do. You need to sort through these competing priorities to create one list that you can focus on.

Ask for help

Don’t try to go it alone.  You don’t have to, no one expects you to, and it’s not going to generate the best results.  All of us are being asked to stretch ourselves, either in terms of doing more with less, or generating new and innovative ideas to help increase sales. Do you have the information, tools, equipment and resources to get the job done? You need to be able to ask for help.

Cheer each other on

Especially in tough times, we have to make sure that we take the time to pat each other on the back.  And don’t wait for big results before you praise.  Remember to recognize the small stuff too.

In the first article, Focus on Individualism Creates MBA “Monsters”? Dr. Peggy Cunningham identifies that “Too much focus on individual success and competition between companies makes people forget that they’re part of a larger social system to which they are accountable.” 

In the second article, Are You a “One and Done” Leader? authors Steven Smith and David Marcum ask, “If two people were debating or competing, and one was egotistical and the other was humble, who would win? The majority of people answer, “The egotistical person.” Why? Because while humility is an admirable trait, there’s suspicion about its weaknesses—who wants anything to do with humility if it’s incompatible with winning?”

I think that both of these articles raise questions about the wisdom of seeing business as an individually focused quest for short term goal accomplishment.

While leaders can be successful in the short run by emphasizing goal accomplishment, what tends to fall by the wayside is the condition of the human organization. Those leaders don’t always take morale and job satisfaction into consideration—only results.

This type of thinking is too short-sighted and will not position a company for long term growth or success.  To succeed long term you need to have a both/and philosophy. The development of people is of equal importance to performance. The leader of the future will need to balance a focus on results together with respect, care and fairness for the well-being of all involved.  The result is an organization where people and profits both grow and thrive.

If you’d like to learn more about a more balanced approach to leadership and a more thorough explanation of what we mean by the “triple bottom line,” check out our article on Leadership: The Key To Organizational Vitality.

Ben had spoken at our company a couple of years ago at our annual Week of Excellence all-company meeting and encouraged all of us to replace “downward spiral thinking” with “possibility thinking” instead.  Ben also cautioned us not to fall into the trap of thinking that leadership is just for those people at the top of the organization.  For an organization to truly move forward together, everyone has to be involved and feel that they play a role.

To illustrate his point, Ben told the story of an accomplished cellist who joined the Boston Philharmonic but who was disappointed when she found herself ranked as the 11th cellist among the twelve seats available.  Still, she persevered and at Ben’s urging, she volunteered an idea of how to play a certain section of a symphony the Boston Philharmonic was scheduled to perform.

The piece was performed the following week to rave reviews.  After the performance, the cellist came up to Zander excitedly and asked, “You played the piece the way I suggested, didn’t you.”  Ben nodded in agreement and saw the woman’s whole attitude change. 

“From then on,” he continued, “this cellist who sat in the 11th seat played like a completely different person.”  Instead of just being technically correct, her playing took on an added dimension that she hadn’t displayed before.  When Ben asked her about this, she explained that ever since that night when she first saw the possibility that she could influence the orchestra from her modest position in the 11th chair, she felt like she had been leading the orchestra every night since then.

But can a person sitting in the 11th chair of your organization really make a difference?  You bet.

I found this out for myself when I talked with a co-worker who said Ben Zander touched her heart and reminded her that each one of us is important to the bigger goal.

“It creates a feeling in me of my worth in the workplace,” she said. “What I like about this idea is that it makes me feel like I might have an idea that would contribute and that I have value to the company,”

Madeleine will be stopping by right after she finishes a webinar being hosted by our friends at WebEx on More Survival Skills for First-Year Managers.  Over 600 people will be participating in the webinar and many will be gathering here to ask follow-up questions.

If you have a question that you would like to ask Madeleine, just enter this thread or click on the COMMENTS hyperlink near the title of this post.  Type in your question in the space provided and hit SUBMIT COMMENT.  Madeleine will answer as many questions as possible until she has to leave at 11:00 a.m. Pacific.

And if you can’t stay, be sure to stop by later and see all the questions that were asked.  Or better yet, hit the RSS FEED button on the right-hand column and receive updates on a daily basis.

Part of the reason may be that people see trust as a “nice to have” cultural issue to work on once you have everything else in place. This is a fundamental mistake because the level of trust in your organization is a hard-edged economic driver that will impact just about every aspect of your organizations performance.

I’ve just been re-reading Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust where he describes this impact as either a high trust dividend that can add 40% to your organization’s performance or a low trust tax that can subtract up to 80% by adding to your costs.

 .

This dividend or tax impact occurs because trust is the ultimate determining factor whether individuals will be good team players, will make the commitment to change, and will work beyond minimum requirements to achieve desired outcomes. 

All relationships, personal and professional, are based upon trust. And there is a big difference between the way people work together when they trust each other versus how they work when trust is low or nonexistent. 

How’s trust impacting performance in your organization?  

One of the things we talked about was the situation new managers find themselves in as the deal with managing through their first recession.  In most cases, these new managers don’t have any past experience to draw from since they were not in a managerial position during the downturns of the early 80s and 90s.  

So how do these managers chart a course without the benefit of past experience?  Madeleine recommends that they take a moment to step back and reflect on some of their own best managers.  Who were the people that provided direction and support for them in the earlier days when these new managers were direct reports?

One of the traits that she thinks people will rediscover through this exercise is the power of consistency.  Not that these managers acted the same with every single employee, but instead that they used systems and processes consistently so that people knew what to expect and also what was expected of them.

Colleen wasn’t worried.  Why? Because she knew that the power of what she was doing wasn’t in the concept—it was in the execution.  In Barrett’s case, she knew that most executives wouldn’t take the time to write 4,000 personal notes a year to employees like she did.  And that was why she wasn’t worried that they would duplicate the culture.

The idea of writing notes wasn’t the magic.  Actually doing it was.  What’s waiting in your idea queue?  Make the shift from knowing to doing.  That’s where the power is.

Providing inappropriate direction was the second most highly cited leadership mistake. Giving direction without involving others in the process, not seeking the feedback of others, and not empowering direct reports can cause frustration and lack of focus. In addition, using a generalized approach to direction rather than considering the person, task, and situation was cited as a key mistake made by leaders.

In today’s highly charged work environment, leaders have to provide a clear vision for people and then follow-up with the direction and support that people need to succeed. Failure to address these two important issues negatively impacts the performance and productivity of the people working in the organization. If you want the people in your organization to meet or exceed their annual goals, be sure that you are setting them up for success by establishing clear goals upfront and then providing the direction and support they need to achieve those goals throughout the year.

The most fascinating thing that I found in watching Kitchen Nightmares is all of the different human resource issues that are being addressed.  It’s almost like a series of Harvard business school case studies presented in a fun, entertaining format.  For example, in the first episode Ramsay works with a family-owned Italian restaurant.  The question?  How do you tell the manager of the restaurant, who also happens to be the son’s owner, that he is the biggest problem holding back the business?

In another episode Ramsay works with a downtown Manhattan restaurant that is absolutely filthy.  The problem here?  Apathetic employees and incompetent managers.  Ramsay’s solution?  Fire the general manager and instead turn to the floor manager to run the restaurant while he simultaneously brings in a new chef.

In all of the episodes you have the opportunity to watch a wide variety of real life human resource problems solved on a practical basis.  I was struck by the complicated nature of the problems that each of these businesses faced and how it ultimately fell back to a people problem in all cases.  Certainly, in some of the episodes the issue also turns out to be poor promotion, a too-complicated menu, or an unfocused business plan, but in the end you can always trace the problem back to an individual. An egotistical owner, an incompetent manager, or apathetic employees who just don’t care anymore.  The result?  A poor experience for the customer, and of course, poor results at the cash register.

The series gives you a chance to see the subtle people issues that managers have to deal with on a daily basis and how, if neglected, ultimately cause the business to suffer. 

If you have ever wondered whether good people management matters, tune in. You’ll see real life examples of the difference that good leadership makes. Look for it under popular TV shows at www.hulu.com.   

What’s the main reason for failure?

Leaders don’t involve or address the concerns of the people affected by the change.

I was thinking about all of the change that is on the drawing boards of companies—including ours—as we look for ways to stay profitable.  So I went back into my notes to an interview that I conducted with Dr. Patricia Zigarmi, our change expert here at the company.  What Pat shared with me was that if leaders would just focus on three concerns that all people have, they could greatly enhance the probability of change succeeding in their organizations. 

• The first area to address is around information concerns. People want to know what the proposed change is all about, what you are seeing, and why things have to change.
• The second area involves personal concerns. People want to know how the change will be good for them personally—not just good for the company.   They also want to know if they will be able to master the new skills the change requires.
• The third area is around the nitty-gritty implementation concerns such as system alignment, best practices, and the daily mechanics of making the change happen.

 If you’re interested in exploring this a little further, check out the free Change Readiness Quiz at our website.  Once you take the quiz, you can also download the Top 15 Reasons Why Change Efforts Fail

Ken identified a couple of key points about leading during times of change that I wanted to call out.  See what you think and consider how each of these recommendations is being played out in your organization.

1. Make your people your business partners. During challenging economic times it might seem like you need to be careful about what you say and what information you share.  This is misguided according to Ken.  Instead of communicating less, leaders need to be communicating more.  Share what you know so everyone in the organization is seeing what you are seeing.
2. Be a bearer of hope.  What’s your intended role as a leader in your organization?  Realist? Pragmatist? Strategist?  Ken’s recommendation?  Leaders need to be bearers of hope. Once you’ve shared the situation with people, share your positive plans for moving forward.
3. Be a servant leader.  Having a good, solid plan is only half of the story.  The real work begins when you turn the organizational pyramid upside down.  Now your job as a leader is to support your people, providing the tools, resources, and authority that allows them to take action.

If you have a question that you would like to ask Ken, just enter this thread or click on the COMMENTS hyperlink near the title of this post.  Type in your question in the space provided and hit SUBMIT COMMENT.  Ken will answer as many questions as possible until he has to leave at 11:00 a.m. Pacific.

And if you can’t stay, be sure to stop by later and see all the questions that were asked.  Or better yet, hit the RSS FEED button on the right-hand column and receive updates on a daily basis!

I was reminded how comforting a message from your leader can be after listening to a 10-minute internal podcast from our VP of Marketing.

It was the third in a series of recordings with senior leaders in our company that are being captured and distributed on our SharePoint site.  Approximately once a month we hear from a different leader sharing their take on the business outlook and what our current strategies are.  It’s a great tool that many other organizations may want to adopt.

What it did for me was define a direction.  By listening to the plans our Marketing VP outlined I was able to see the direction we were moving in and I could reevaluate how my own personal work goals aligned with the organizational goals. It was a simple, but powerful way of keeping me—and everyone else in the company informed about how things were going and most importantly, what our plans were for moving forward.

One of the challenges that organizations are facing these days is how to create alignment between departments and teams so that everyone is working from the same sheet of music.  Communicating more frequently is a great place to start.

1. The power of vision.  What’s your picture of the future?  What are the values that will guide you?
2. Peaks and Valleys.  It looks like Ken will be talking about a new book from Spencer Johnson that is coming out in March.  Spencer is the best-selling author of Who Moved My Cheese and was Ken’s co-author on the One Minute Manager.  (I read an early review copy of Peaks and Valleys and it talks about how to deal with the ups-and-downs of life.  Specifically how to prolong the peak periods, and how to minimize—and learn from—the valleys that we all experience.  It is very applicable to today’s economic environment and I think it will be another best-seller for Spencer.)
3. Focus on people and results. Pointing to research from Jim Collins’ Built to Last and Good to Great books, Ken will emphasize the importance of resolve and humility in today’s leaders and talk about “turning the organizational pyramid upside down” to become a servant leader.

Ken will also be trying something new after this event.  He will be stopping by this blog space immediately after the webinar to answer questions.  For those of you already signed up to participate in this webinar, be sure to stop by.

For those of you who haven’t registered yet, there is still time.  The event is free and you can register at http://www.webex.com/web-seminars/view_event/663894866?sid=KBC021109

First, talk to your frontline employees. People will come up with all sorts of innovative ways to cut costs and increase revenues beyond what can be dreamed up in the corner office.  That’s not a knock on senior leadership, but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that the people closest to the work can see things that escape the eye of those farther removed.  

Second, people who have a say in determining what should be cut and what new plans should be implemented have a higher degree of buy-in when it comes time to actually implement those plans.  In other words, “People who plan the battle, rarely battle the plan.”

Don’t go it alone.  You’ll get better ideas and more cooperation when you involve others in the process.

It was also comforting to see that some people—marketers especially—are still working hard.  It was fun to see them adjusting their messages to fit the current economic situation.  No panic—just a necessary adjustment.  It’s probably something we can all reflect on.  What’s the approach in your organization?  Are you adjusting, moving forward, dealing effectively with the situation, or are you holding back, unsure of how to proceed.  That’s a sure recipe for failure.

The Ken Blanchard Companies faced this question (as many other companies did) in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks back in 2001.  In our case, we lost $1.5 million that month. To have any chance of ending the fiscal year in the black, the company would have to cut about $350,000 a month in expenses.

One of the leaders suggested that the staffing level be cut by at least 10 percent to stem the losses and help get the company get back in the black—a typical response in most companies. After all lot of discussion, we ended up deciding to have everybody take a salary cut, except for people making under $50,000. In the end, this strategy worked well for us.  We pulled together, managed costs, and after things bounced back, we were able to put together a string of some our best sales years.

It made me wonder why more companies don’t use the same strategy instead of resorting to layoffs.  In searching the web, I found that there are two camps beginning to develop.  One is suggesting that layoffs are the answer, while the other is recommending that pay cuts across the board are the better response.

Surprisingly, both camps point to the negative impact on turnover, morale, and productivity that the opposing choice will cause.

For example, in the layoff camp, proponents like economist Arnold Kling of George Mason University argue that when you cut pay for everyone across the board, you risk losing your best people first. If you are going to lose people, he argues, wouldn’t it be better to lose low performers instead of high performers? 

In this same camp, other economists like Yale’s Truman Bewley explain that “The advantage of layoffs over pay reduction was that they ‘get the misery out the door.’ “

In the other camp, you have organizations who believe that every job is worth saving, and who do not want to break up groups that have worked together for a long time and that have developed emotional bonds.  For these groups the impact of layoffs will only create a break in trust and leave the remaining members of the company with “survivor’s guilt.”  In this camp, people believe that spreading the sacrifice over the entire organization is the better option.

In the end it seems like the deciding factor may be the type of culture present in your organization. Some organizational cultures are more of the “we’re in this together” while others have developed more of a “Sorry, but business is business” type of attitude.

Which way would you decide if you had to choose?  Which camp best typifies your organization’s approach to cutting costs? 

This week in LeaderChat we are looking at some of the qualities that make up a great leader.  Many of you are coming to LeaderChat after participating in Scott Blanchard’s January 21 webinar on Managing People’s Energy: The Power of Alignment where he outlined three key tasks for leaders in moving forward—acknowledge reality, define a direction, and manage people’s energy. 

Others of you are visiting here for the first time in preparation for a February 11 event by Ken Blanchard on Leading in Uncertain Times.  Between both groups, I think we have the opportunity to start a lively discussion that can help all of us as we begin to formulate strategies that can help our respective businesses get through the tough times ahead.

For this week, I’d like to focus on the points that Scott raised first. There was a lot of emphasis in the webinar on the importance of senior leadership keeping people informed on what is happening in the business environment—even if it isn’t good news, and even if they don’t have complete answers.  What are your thoughts on that?      

The second question I want to raise is your response to a question I asked Ken Blanchard during an interview a week ago for the upcoming February 2 issue of our Ignite newsletter.  I asked Ken what he felt were the characteristics that people were looking for in leaders these days given all of the gloom and doom that is surrounding us.  Ken’s number one response?  Leaders need to be hope champions. 

What are your thoughts on hope as a key ingredient in helping people move forward?  I’m usually suspicious of simple answers to complex questions. I had always heard that “hope is not a strategy” but now I’m beginning to wonder.  Given the present mood in most work environments, is hope one of the most important things that people are looking for from the leaders in your organization?

What are your thoughts?  Drop me a line.  I’ll print your responses and we’ll use it as the starting point for our conversations going forward.

Dave