Editor’s Note: Madeleine is on summer break this week, but don’t fear! We’ve rounded up the five standout themes from the first half of the year, complete with top examples you won’t want to miss. From navigating toxic bosses to setting coaching goals that actually stick, Madeleine addresses it all with wisdom that’s equal parts practical and powerful.

Check out the top themes here, then dive into the full columns. Be sure to come back every week—you never know when the advice you need is just a scroll away!

1. Leadership Transitions and Succession Planning

Madeleine frequently addresses the complexities of leadership transitions in “Not Sure When to Let Your Boss Know You’re Leaving?” She offers guidance on timing and communication strategies for departing leaders, emphasizing the importance of succession planning and organizational continuity.

https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/not-sure-when-to-let-your-boss-know-you-re-leaving-ask-madeleine

2. Navigating Toxic Work Environments

In “Am I Working for a Toxic Leader?” Madeleine discusses strategies for setting boundaries, maintaining professionalism, and deciding when it may be necessary to seek employment elsewhere. She also provides insights into recognizing and managing toxic leadership.

https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/am-i-working-for-a-toxic-leader-ask-madeleine

3. Coaching Practices and Professional Development

Madeleine addresses a common concern among professionals new to coaching in “Not Sure What Your Personal Development Coaching Goals Should Be?” She offers practical frameworks including Pierce Howard’s model that encompasses Flow, Fit, Goal progress, Relationships, and Altruism.

https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/not-sure-what-your-personal-development-coaching-goals-should-be-ask-madeleine

4. Managing Change and Uncertainty in the Workplace

Madeleine looks at the challenges leaders and employees face when navigating organizational changes and external disruptions along with the associated emotional and operational impacts. In “Need to Interrupt the Downward Spiral?” she addresses a situation where a company is experiencing significant stress due to industrywide changes and personal tragedies among staff.

https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/need-to-interrupt-the-downward-spiral-ask-madeleine

5. Workplace Culture and Generational Perspectives

In our final top theme for 2025, Madeleine explores the dynamics of workplace culture and generational differences. Her column on “Tired of Your Friend Complaining about ‘Entitled Workers’?” challenges stereotypes about younger employees and encourages understanding and maximizing generational strengths.

https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/tired-of-your-friend-complaining-about-entitled-workers-ask-madeleine

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

About Madeleine

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

2024 was certainly a time of change. Readers of Madeleine’s Advice for the Well-Intentioned Manager continued to adapt, grow, and improve their skills to bring out the best in others. From navigating hybrid work complexities to tackling burnout, Madeleine’s insight and practical advice made the road a little easier.

Here is a countdown of this year’s top five most-viewed columns. Madeleine will return on January 4 with a new year of questions—possibly yours?

Working from Home and Feeling Left Out? Ask Madeleine

A remote worker reached out with a familiar concern: as the only remote team member, they felt left out of important conversations and worried their contributions were losing visibility. Madeleine’s advice? Be proactive—schedule regular check-ins, and suggest inclusive practices for your team.

Daily Back-to-Back Meetings Have You Fried? Ask Madeleine

“Help!” wrote a reader stuck in an endless cycle of meetings. Madeleine empathized, noting this is a common issue in today’s hybrid work environments. Her solution? A step-by-step plan to reassess priorities, block focused work time, and diplomatically decline unnecessary meetings.

Not Sure How to Address Burnout? Ask Madeleine

Helping people cope with stressors is a good start, says Madeleine in her third most-read column of the year. But it is far preferable to address the origin of the stressors that cause burnout in the first place. Madeleine shares some recommended resources and strategies.

Hired the Boss’s Son? Ask Madeleine

Regretting a hiring decision? A reader sought advice after realizing the boss’s son might not have been the best fit for the team. Madeleine offered two pathways—depending on the reader’s level of influence and job security—to address the situation constructively.

Team Member Is Overusing PTO? Ask Madeleine

In 2024’s most-read column, a manager sought advice on handling a team member’s excessive PTO usage. Madeleine suggested a compassionate yet firm approach: initiate a conversation about the impact of their choices and explore ways to balance individual needs with team dynamics.

Do you have a question for Madeleine? Send an email to madeleine.blanchard@blanchard.com. Please note: although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each email personally. Questions will be edited for clarity and length.

Wishing you a Happy New Year filled with growth, connection, and success!

The year 2023 will be remembered as a time of high managerial expectations from an in-demand workforce. Readers of Madeleine’s Advice for the Well-Intentioned Manager continued to adapt, grow, and improve their skills to bring out the best in others. Here is a list of this year’s top five most viewed columns. Madeleine will be back on January 6 with a new year of questions (possibly yours?) from well-meaning managers.

Trying to Stop Interrupting Others? Ask Madeleine

A reader asks Madeleine for help with a common problem in today’s fast-paced world—how to stop interrupting people. Madeleine shares four triggers that might be causing the problem, along with strategies for improvement. https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/trying-to-stop-interrupting-others-ask-madeleine 

Not Sure How to Exceed Expectations with Your Boss? Ask Madeleine

A reader shares that in their last performance review they were asked to “find new ways to add value to the organization.”  The reader asks Madeleine for help decoding what that means—and how to address it. https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/not-sure-how-to-exceed-expectations-with-your-boss-ask-madeleine

Just Promoted—and Drowning? Ask Madeleine

Madeleine helps a recently promoted manager who is struggling with the demands of their new high-profile job. Madeleine shares that half the battle of being a senior leader is choosing what to pay attention to and what to ignore. https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/just-promoted-and-drowning-ask-madeleine

Does Every Hire Need to Be a Rock Star? Ask Madeleine

A reader raises an interesting question about hiring for a position that requires someone to simply keep their head down and get the job done. Their boss is advocating for a young, ambitious candidate. The reader believes it makes more sense to hire someone who will not be disappointed with the lack of a career path. https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/does-every-hire-need-to-be-a-rock-star-ask-madeleine 

Want to Be a Better Mentor? Ask Madeleine

In the most read column of the year, a reader asks Madeleine for advice on how to be a great mentor.  Madeleine shares a roadmap and strategies for the mentor-mentee relationship, and how mentors can know at the end that they have done a good job. https://resources.blanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/want-to-be-a-better-mentor-ask-madeleine

Do you have a question for Madeleine? Send an email to madeleine.blanchard@blanchard.com. Please note: although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each email personally. Questions will be edited for clarity and length.

Best wishes for the New Year!

About Madeleine

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

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

2021 will be remembered as a year of change and it was certainly reflected in the questions Madeleine received from her readers. Here is a list of the top five most-viewed columns. They tell a story of the year we’ve been through. Madeleine will be back next week with a new year of questions from well-meaning managers—possibly yours?  Best wishes for the New Year!

Losing Your Temper and Don’t Know Why?

A column from the very start of the year from a manager concerned about a lack of patience and emotional outbursts.  Madeleine looks at seven possible causes. https://resources.kenblanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/losing-your-temper-and-don-t-know-why-ask-madeleine

Feel Like an Impostor at Work?

A March column from a recently promoted manager haunted by the feeling that he just lucked into his position and doesn’t really deserve it.  https://resources.kenblanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/feel-like-an-imposter-at-work-ask-madeleine

Boss Talks Over You?

A May column from an EVP of Marketing concerned about correcting her highly opinionated and authoritative CEO who thinks he is an expert on everything.  https://resources.kenblanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/boss-talks-over-you-ask-madeleine

Return to the Office Making You Crazy?

A mid-summer column when people were beginning to return to the office and managers found themselves dealing with all sorts of new issues. https://resources.kenblanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/return-to-the-office-making-you-crazy-ask-madeleine

People Aren’t Stepping Up?

A very recent column from a manager looking for help in moving her people towards more self-reliant behavior. https://resources.kenblanchard.com/blanchard-leaderchat/people-aren-t-stepping-up-ask-madeleine

PS: Do you know other well-meaning managers who would benefit from reading Ask Madeleine?  Like, share, or invite them to subscribe!

About Madeleine

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

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

Of course, I am a fan of Leading at A Higher Level, which outlines a lot of The Ken Blanchard Companies content. And then of course there is the brand new Servant Leadership in Action.  I love both of these books and recommend them highly.

My son also got me thinking about some of the attributes a great manager should either have or be working on.  Here is a list of 15 attributes that serves as a good starting point—these suggestions are taken from notes our Blanchard coaches have made about what they focus on during coaching calls.

Attributes/Practices of Great Managers

1. Be interested and curious
2. Do no harm (or don’t be a big jerk)
3. Admit when you are wrong and apologize when appropriate
4. Keep your eye on the ball – don’t waste time on what doesn’t matter
5. Surround yourself with the best people you can
6. Be a role model from the behaviors you are holding your people accountable for
7. Have at least one bright person you trust who challenges you even if it is annoying
8. Exercise iron clad personal discipline when it comes to self-care
9. Practice self-control so that you can respond instead of react
10. Do the hard things first
11. Mean what you say, say what you mean
12. Do what you say you are going to do
13. Be crystal clear about your expectations
14. Listen more than you talk
15. Keep learning and growing

What am I missing?  Please do add your thoughts!

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

But actually measuring the impact of leader growth can be tough. For example, how does an organization measure the potential improvement of a leader’s influence on her team if she learns to stop belittling them? Or how a leader who elevates his executive presence will make a bigger contribution to the organization? Or how much improving communication will affect the profitability of a company?

Can the true impact of coaching be measured?

The answer is: it depends. Here are three key steps organizations can take to simplify the measurement process.

1. Be specific. What exactly does the organization want to change? Now be more If that change is successful, what will be the quantifiable outcome? Now put a dollar amount to the change.
2. Be clear with the leader/coachee about expectations. Specify the new behaviors and outcomes desired. It’s not enough to say improve communication. With whom? To what end? What would the improvement look like? What specific behaviors are necessary? How will the organization know that the change has been made?
3. Follow through. Engage appropriate people in the organization to observe and report on behavior change. An observer could be an HR business partner, a mentor of the leader being coached, a supervisor, or a member of the board. Ensure these observers are clear on expectations and outcomes. Provide tools, resources, and information on how to measure outcomes. Leaders need eyes and ears in the organization, as well as their coach, to help ensure changes made are on target to meet expectations.

The cornerstone of coaching is confidentiality—but this does not mean the leader being coached is left on their own to grow, learn, and develop without organizational insight. Being explicit on the front end about outcomes and ensuring all parties are in agreement about goals helps with measurement and evaluation when coaching is finished; i.e.:

• Here is the specific target that was set.
• Did the coachee meet the target?
• Has the impact of that outcome been observed?
• Has it been sustained over time?

Paying more attention at the beginning of any coaching engagement will make it simpler to measure and evaluate at the end.

About the Author

Patricia Overland is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 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.

To be effective, coaches at every level need to follow five principles. Failure in any one of these five areas can quickly take a positive coaching experience and turn it negative.

1. Confidentiality

Even if they don’t mention it openly, people often are concerned about whether details of their conversations with coaches will get back to their managers with potentially negative effects. Some hesitate to be vulnerable or to share their real issues until they are convinced that the coaching relationship is safe. Being crystal clear about what is confidential (and what isn’t) is critical. A breach of confidentiality will harm not only the coaching relationship, but has the potential to harm ALL coaching in an organization. Word gets around.

2. Defining Success

As an external coach and subject matter expert, I often work with clients who are building an internal coaching capacity or hiring external coaches to work with their senior leaders. One of the key conversations I have with organizational sponsors is how they define success measures. It’s disappointing when a client makes huge leaps and gains, only to find out that the boss or others don’t feel the right targets were hit.  Identifying success measures can be hard work.  It is surprising how often the boss says “I’ll know it when I see it” but can’t articulate the change. (Note: this should be a warning sign to a coach.) If success measures can’t be defined, it is even more important to ensure that the boss or others stay informed throughout the process about coaching impact and outcomes.

3. Clear Agreements

A skilled coach never walks away from a coaching session without ensuring that their client is clear about what happens next. A good guideline is to follow the old journalistic rules of what, who, when, and how. It is also important that both the client and the organization are clear on agreements to ensure everyone is on the same page. Who gets informed of what, and when? What reporting will be done? How will vested parties know the coaching is working? What is the organization’s responsibility in supporting the client being coached?  For example, examine assumptions to ensure everyone defines the experiences the same way. Getting agreements in place before coaching starts increases the likelihood of successful outcomes.

4. Permission to Give Feedback

While it’s often assumed that a coach has full permission to give feedback, it is important to check in with the client. Asking “May I give you some feedback?” signals to the client that useful information is coming. There is an art and a science behind giving good feedback. One of the reasons feedback works so well in a coaching relationship is that the coach has no other agenda other than to serve the client.

5. Managing Multiple Agendas

It is a naive coach who thinks the client’s agenda is the only one that needs attention. If you are an independent coach working with a client who has come to you for support, you must manage at least two sets of objectives:  to serve the client’s desired outcomes and successfully run your business.  As an internal coach, you must balance the needs of the client with the needs of the organization.  As an external coach working for a company that provides coaching to other organizations, you must meet four sets of objectives: the client’s agenda, your own need to schedule and complete the coaching, the needs of the organization you work for, and the needs of the organization who is bringing in the coaching.  Making sure you know what weight to give each and how to blend each seamlessly takes thought and practice.

Set Everyone Up for Success

Effective coaching requires that a coach be strong in all five of these areas. Missing any of these critical factors will negatively impact the coaching outcome. Take a minute to check your own coaching agenda.  Make sure you are setting yourself—and your clients—up for success!

About the Author

Patricia Overland is a Coaching Solutions Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 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.

#5

Working for a Boss Who Isn’t Knowledgeable? Ask Madeleine

Dear Madeleine,

I belong to a human resources team and have been facing situations where my boss either doesn’t give the right answers or doesn’t give an answer at all. I am constantly disappointed as I am very passionate about my field…  READ MORE

#4

Faked Out by a Direct Report? Ask Madeleine

Dear Madeleine,

A long-time employee I really liked and respected recently left for another opportunity. Surprisingly, while training her replacement, I was stunned to find an avalanche of work never done, errors concealed… READ MORE

#3

Boss Setting You Up to Fail? Ask Madeleine

Dear Madeleine,

One of my peers was made an EVP and is now my boss. He has been shutting me out of big decision making meetings regarding projects I am running. It is becoming really clear to me that I am being set up to fail… READ MORE

#2

Shocked by 360° Feedback? Ask Madeleine

Dear Madeleine,

All 14 of my people—not just 1 or 2— see me as a micro-manager. I have always thought it was good that I’m on top of things—I just don’t understand why the feedback is so negative… READ MORE

#1

Boss Keeps Interrupting You? Ask Madeleine

Dear Madeleine,

Both my boss and his boss constantly interrupt me when I am speaking. I am often the only woman in these meetings. I have tried to convince myself that that doesn’t make a difference, but I wonder… READ MORE

About Ask Madeleine

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

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

IMPROVING LEADERSHIP ONE CONVERSATION AT A TIME

Executive coach Madeleine Blanchard held the phone to her ear, listening attentively as her newest client explained the problem she was having communicating with her direct reports. “They say that I’m not a good listener. I’m trying to connect, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. Any suggestions?”

Blanchard thought for a moment and replied, “Well, I can hear you typing right now, so I suspect you are actually answering emails while we talk. Do you do that when you are with your people? What would it be like if you actually gave each person your undivided attention?” READ MORE 

MANAGING IN A BUSY WORLD

Managers are struggling to find the time to have needed conversations with colleagues and direct reports. Ann Phillips, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, knows this firsthand.   “I always ask leaders ‘How many of you have enough of your own work to do each day?’

The leaders in class typically tell me that every day they have 8 to 12 hours of their own work that doesn’t include addressing the needs of their direct reports.  Lack of time kills many good intentions.” People want to be better leaders, says Phillips, but they don’t have the open space in their schedules. READ MORE 

CREATING A DEEPER CONNECTION AT WORK

You have to put yourself out there if you want to create an authentic connection with people. Sharing your Leadership Point of View is one of the most powerful ways to accomplish that, according to coaching expert Joni Wickline.

“Your Leadership Point of View is about the people and events that have shaped who you are. It also speaks to your values, your beliefs, and what drives you as a leader.” Wickline says creating a Leadership Point of View is an emotional journey and a lot of leaders play it safe when first given the chance to share. READ MORE

MID-LEVEL MANAGERS: TAKING CARE OF THE HEART OF THE HOUSE

Scott Blanchard, principal and EVP at The Ken Blanchard Companies, likes to use the phrase heart of the house to describe the important role middle managers play in an organization. In Blanchard’s experience, if mid-level management is neglected, the result is a slow-moving organization that doesn’t respond well to feedback.

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. READ MORE

ALL GOOD PERFORMANCE STARTS WITH CLEAR GOALS

The ability to set goals effectively is a key managerial skill. It’s also the key to being a successful individual contributor, according to leadership expert and best-selling author Ken Blanchard.

“All good performance starts with clear goals. If people don’t know what you want them to accomplish, what are the chances they will be successful? Not very good. “Peter Drucker used to say, ‘If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.’ Measurements are important to give both managers and direct reports more clarity when assessing performance.” READ MORE

This post is by Paul Murphy, Director of Channel Sales, Asia-Pacific.

Since China really started opening up to inbound investment over the last 30-plus years, there have been numerous stories of how challenging it can be for foreign executives to lead local staff in China. We have created a certain mystique about this concept and the belief that it is simply something that non-Chinese must struggle with.

Given the importance of China in the world economy and for many multinational corporations, this belief is hugely important. Is it really accurate though?

Just as an executive from the United States would notice differences in workplace norms in Germany or an Indian manager would need to develop new skills when leading a team in Brazil, there are inevitably differences to be found between China and other countries or regions around the world.

However, the fundamentals to leading a team in China do not differ in any significant way from leading in any other country. Simply put, these are

• Set clear goals that are easily understood.
• Identify the level of competence, motivation, and confidence of your direct reports for each of these goals.
• Adjust your own leadership styles and behaviors to best support the above.
• Check in frequently with your individual team members to assess their progress with these goals and adjust your own leadership styles where appropriate.

Although the fundamentals are the same, the ways your team members work with you might differ. Their comfort level in communicating their needs and concerns is often a challenge. You may find they are less willing than Western staffers typically are to highlight problems or a lack of motivation they are facing. As a result, patience and a need to interpret more nuanced messaging are definitely valuable, but it does not change the need to follow the above process in order to successfully lead your team.

Ultimately, whether you are heading to China and are concerned about how you can lead your team or you are in another part of the world and work with Chinese colleagues, do not worry. If you are a good leader in your home country, you will be a good leader in China. Follow leadership best practices, listen, learn, and be patient. You will see great results.

About the Author

Paul Murphy is the Director of Channel Sales, Asia-Pacific, responsible for all aspects of the indirect channel business within APAC for The Ken Blanchard Companies. Paul is based in Hong Kong and can be reached at paul.murphy@kenblanchard.com.

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.

Here are ten blunders organizations typically make when implementing telework.

1. Let everyone telework. Employees who are effective teleworkers have strong organizational skills, self-discipline, and comfort with a lack of frequent social interaction. Select good or great performers with the right skills and attitudes to ensure success
2. Provide no orientation to life in a virtual office—assume they’ll figure it out. Working virtually requires clear agreements on how and when communication happens and how to keep aligned to goals and motivated by the “esprit de corps” necessary for true teamwork.
3. Provide inadequate technology support. Make sure teleworkers can conduct basic troubleshooting of their own system, and ensure quality IT support is available when needed. Continually monitor issues such as bandwidth and ease of access to systems.
4. Assume your managers know how to lead virtually. Many leadership practices we have learned work only in a face-to-face setting. Leading people you don’t see requires a more sophisticated level of leadership—new skills are needed.
5. Have no structure to ensure collaboration and team spirit. One day every week or two should be set aside when everyone needs to be on site to enable collaboration, the sharing of best practices, and good old-fashioned face time. Though we often are not aware of its importance, the informal team building that happens naturally when people work together needs to become a priority now.
6. Insist on frequent conference calls to share information. Conference calls are for collaboration, decision making and involvement. One-way communication in conference calls interrupts real work and leads to multi-tasking and disengagement.
7. Hold meetings where some are in the room and some are calling in. These types of meetings increase disengagement and feelings of isolation. If you must have these meetings, use our tips from previous blogs: 3 Ways to Put Life Into Deadly Virtual Team Meetings, 4 Tips to Make Your Next Virtual Meeting More Compelling, to maximize their effectiveness.
8. Have no plan for monitoring performance or recognizing effort. Rewrite your performance measures so you monitor results instead of activity. Although this can be a challenge, everyone benefits when accomplishments are clear and recognized.
9. Promote people based on visibility. This is a secret, and often valid, fear of many who agree to telework. Individuals who are seen in the hallway often are selected for special projects, recognition, and promotion. Make sure visibility happens for work results, not just for showing up on site.
10. Implement it and forget it. Telework, whether routine or in response to a crisis, is a change for leaders, workers, IT departments, and customers. Continuously monitor how well it is working for all stakeholders, and build in strategies to both recognize success and improve processes.

Work is what we do, not where we sit. If implemented effectively, telework can empower employees, increase innovation, improve customer service, and save money and time for everyone. Use this list to ensure your effort succeeds in every way.

About the author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the author:

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

You demonstrate you are fully present by the use of attending behaviors. One of the simplest ways to learn these attending behaviors is to observe others who model these behaviors. Think of someone in your life who makes you feel as if they are fully present during conversations. What do they do? Please share in your comments.

The movie Dead Poets Society contains a critical scene in which Robin Williams’ character, Mr. John Keating, gets a visit from Neil, a young man in his English class who comes to him with a problem. I encourage you to rent this movie and watch how in this scene Mr. Keating beautifully models the following attending behaviors:

• As Neil comes into his office, Mr. Keating stops what he’s doing and gets up from his chair.
• He makes his guest comfortable by getting him a cup of tea.
• There is an appropriate distance to show interest—but not too much interest. Personal distance is cultural, but you can tell if a person is uncomfortable.
• He squares up. By facing the person directly, you show your focus is on them.
• Mr. Keating gets the conversation started but then stops and listens.
• He makes good eye contact throughout the conversation.
• He lets his emotions show without calling attention to himself when he observes the young man’s pain.
• During pauses, he remains focused while waiting for Neil to continue. Note that Mr. Keating doesn’t look like he’s thinking about what he should say next.
• He leans in. Leaning back can appear defensive, evaluative, or disinterested.
• While you can’t see it in the frame, you can tell from Mr. Keating’s posture that his arms and legs are uncrossed. This is a universally recognizable sign of openness.
• When there is a good opportunity to say something, he asks a question rather than immediately handing out advice.
• He keeps his comments short and to the point.
• Mr. Keating keeps his voice down—not monotonous, but without dramatic fluctuations in tone or pitch. A voice that is higher pitched than one’s normal voice denotes tension. A lower tone is calmer. Calm is good. In fact, he becomes even quieter when things get emotional, but he never loses focus.
• He waits for the answer. Note that he doesn’t make a point until the answer comes back empty.

Demonstrating that you are fully present is critical to challenging conversations. Not only does it show that you are interested and that you care, it also provides you with a wealth of information from the other person’s nonverbal behaviors—body language, facial expressions, and tone. It involves engaging both your eyes and your heart in the conversation.

About the author

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in performance and self-leadership.  This is the third in a series of articles on Challenging Conversations.  For more on this subject, be sure to read John’s first two posts, Preparing for a Challenging Conversation  and  6 Ways to Get Rid of Emotional Baggage BEFORE a Challenging Conversation.

How do you save people from this arduous task? How do you get them think of you and their last interaction with you before surfing out into the land of other possibilities? Easy—just follow the PATH.

My friend Renee was just telling me a story of her recent stay at The Galleria Park Hotel in San Francisco. As she was checking out, the front desk person, Bina, asked her how her visit was and if there was anything they could have done to make it even better. Renee paused as she thought about the black spot on the back of the shirt she was wearing under her jacket. Seeing Renee’s hesitation, Bina said, “Please—share anything.” So Renee said, “Well, I realized too late that the iron I used last night had a black substance on the bottom and it melted onto my shirt. I wasn’t going to mention it as the shirt wasn’t expensive.” Immediately, Bina said, “Oh no! You must have felt just terrible. I’m so sorry. We have to make this right. I’ll take the price of the shirt off your bill at once.” She followed with, “We are so grateful that you stayed here and want you to always think of The Galleria Park Hotel when you come to San Francisco.”

What was the PATH to ensure that Renee will come back to The Galleria Park?

P: For Bina to take charge and make the situation right without checking with anyone meant that she knew her level of authority and autonomy. A clear playing field obviously had been established by hotel management up front. She had been taught what to do, when.

A: Acting in Renee’s best interest meant issuing a refund to pay for a new shirt so she would leave with a smile on her face and in her heart. Bina went the extra mile when she noticed Renee’s hesitation and immediately checked to see what that hesitation meant. Because Bina was able to fix the problem without manager intervention, the issue was handled quickly and efficiently so it didn’t waste a minute of Renee’s precious time.

T: Bina shared gratitude for Renee’s business and reinforced a neural circuit in the brain to “Come back to The Galleria Park Hotel!” Now every time Renee tells this story to someone, the neural pathway is strengthened.

H: Hopefully, Bina or her supervisor huddled with the housekeeping staff afterward to ensure that the problem was taken care of and no future guest would have a similar experience.

The PATH to the door of your organization is filled not only with distractions but also with possibilities. In every company that provides a product or service, our work is to embed in our customers a memory of care, thoughtfulness, and follow-through to ensure their return. By following the PATH, all roads will lead back to your business.

About the author:

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

For example, even if you are familiar with the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, it hits home when you see examples of how setting intrinsic goals not only gives you a greater probability of achieving them, but also experiencing self-actualization and sustainable vitality.

On the other hand, extrinsic goals, more often than not, lead to depression and unhealthy physical symptoms. Regretfully, the goals most of us set are extrinsic goals–both personally and professionally.

What can you do differently?

Focus on setting intrinsic goals such as…

• Personal growth (improving listening skills or practicing mindfulness)
• Affiliation (nurturing a mentoring relationship or enhancing relationships with others)
• Community (contributing to something bigger than yourself or making a difference)
• Physical health (losing weight as a means for increasing energy or changing your eating habits as a way of lowering blood pressure)

Avoid extrinsic goals relating to…

• Social recognition such as increasing Facebook friends or LinkedIn contacts to improve your social or professional status
• Image and appearance such as losing weight to look good at your reunion or losing weight to be more attractive
• Material success such as earning more money, buying a powerful car, or moving to a prestigious neighborhood

Prompt intrinsic goals for others

Managers, teachers, and parents need to gain goal setting skills that prompt intrinsic goals based on optimally motivated, higher-level values. Individuals will benefit, but more importantly, it is a way to immediately begin shifting the values practiced in our organizations, educational systems, and communities.

If you find yourself challenging these notions, it is probably because most of us are conditioned to believe that setting goals for things we want (or think we need)–such as obtaining more money and the stuff we can buy with it–are part of “the secret” to success.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of research studies by the family of Self-Determination Theory thought leaders are proving that conventional thinking is simply wrong-headed. The real secret is that extrinsic goals do not provide the energy, vitality, and sense of positive well-being required to achieve most goals. And even if you happen to achieve the extrinsic goal, it doesn’t yield the sustainable joy, happiness, satisfaction, or energy you thought it would.

But perhaps more importantly, there is an undermining effect with extrinsic goals. In other words, extrinsic goals (social recognition, image and appearance, material success) tend to extinguish a potentially intrinsic experience. What we really yearn for is something we cannot buy or achieve through extrinsic goals.

As I sat in dozens of research presentations, I was thrilled with the compelling evidence demonstrating how the quality of the goals you set determines the quality of your experience. As a leader of others, if you remember that the value behind the goal determines the value of the goal, it can open up a distinctly different approach to setting goals that becomes a powerful and sustainable mechanism for positive well-being, engagement, and employee work passion.

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.

The more that virtual teams become our normal way of working, the more we realize how difficult it is to build the positive relationships so critical for team success.   A face-to-face meeting for team building is best, yet most teams can’t afford that luxury.

So how do you build team spirit when you can’t have a retreat or even just meet for coffee at the end of the day?   The key is tapping into the creativity and lighthearted nature buried within our business minds.   Here are three enjoyable activities to build relationships and team spirit.

How do you celebrate?

• If you search world holidays on the web you’ll find that almost every day is a holiday somewhere in the world. Holidays are culturally important, and how we celebrate reveals a lot about us as individuals.
• Ask one or two team members to share a few photographs and chat for five minutes in your next team meeting about how they celebrated their latest holiday.  What foods did they eat, what were the activities, what was being celebrated?

Guess the desk. 

• Ask team members to send in a photograph of their office (or home office) desk.  Show the photo and discuss what the desk reveals about its owner.
  • Does a bowl of fruit mean the person is health conscious?
  • Are there family photos?
  • How many technological gadgets are on the desk?
• After the discussion, ask team members to guess the desk owner’s name.   The owner then gets an opportunity to reveal him/herself and to clarify or explain anything noticed by the team.   

The most unusual thing …

• Use this as a conversation starter for the team.  When you send out the meeting agenda ask them to be prepared to answer a question. For example:
  • The most unusual thing I ever ate …
  • The most unusual place I ever visited …
  • The most unusual event I witnessed …

When building a virtual team, encourage that fun-loving side of you to emerge. Relaxed creativity can provide just the lift needed to build the positive relationships and esprit de corps that are the keys to successful virtual teams.

About the author

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

One time my wife asked me if I had tried one of the new purple beans with the green flecks. I couldn’t have tried them; I never really saw them. But how does this happen?

There is a switch in our brains called the Reticular Activating System. A tangle of neurons and fiber in the spinal cord, the brain stem, and the mid-brain, it helps us reduce all incoming data down to a few chunks of information. We don’t feel it happening, but all day the RAS is making subconscious choices. Should we focus on this or on that? And we have a lot of decisions to make. In one second, we experience over 100 million bits of data. They are constantly coming in through our senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling.

As you are viewing this blog, other things are also within your range: the wall, outside noise, the odor of fresh coffee, the light level, an itch, etc., and perhaps a fire in the room. You can’t possibly make go/no-go decisions on all of these distractions. Filtering incoming information is a big part of why the human species has survived. Our forebears stopped etching pictures on the cave wall if they heard or felt the presence of a tiger. They didn’t go through a logical search for a solution. They moved. And if your RAS senses a fire in the room, you move too.

The good news is that you can help “set” the RAS: your own and others’. If you are consciously considering the purchase of a Corvette, you will automatically notice them on the highway. You actually see other cars, but you won’t remember them, just as I saw the purple jelly beans with the green flecks, but didn’t recall them. If you’re in a store looking for a certain color of clothing, you filter out the other colors and immediately connect with only one. Hundreds of choices, but few of them get much consideration.

The challenge is that we do the same thing at meetings. When people are talking about something that captures my attention, I can stay focused on that subject matter for quite a while. On the other hand, other agenda items may not make it into my conscious thinking at all. Have you ever “zoned out” for a while and realized that the last five minutes were a total mystery to you? So the trick is to decide what your RAS should select.

Here are ways to help the Reticular Activating System enhance your capacity to lead and be led:

• Balance thoughts and emotions. “I don’t like the current strategy, but other people apparently do. Even though I am skeptical, I will actively listen for the benefits of going the other way.”

• Be there. “When I let myself be distracted, I miss out on important issues.” Daydreaming effectively shuts down your RAS.

• Take action. “Let’s put a stake in the ground.” The RAS takes notice of tangible data. It is more convinced by early wins than by opinions. Franklin Roosevelt used to say that we can’t do everything, but we can do something.

• Reinforce incoming data. “This matches up with other information I have.” Our brains can only hold about seven chunks of information, and for less than a minute. Memories are volatile. We have to repeat and connect in order to retain.

The Reticular Activation System is real. Take advantage of it to help yourself and others move forward.

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.

Here are a few creative ways to get the emotions out. Any number of these may work for you—so pick one you like, or try them all.  (Preparation is also important—if you could use some help in that area, see my earlier post on Preparing for A Challenging Conversation.)

Fast Writing

This is a 30-minute “brain dump” in which you simply write down anything and everything that comes to you. This stream-of-consciousness style keeps you from making a real discourse out of your thoughts, and frees you to just “get the emotions out,” regardless of how incoherent they may be. Most authors suggest doing this writing longhand as opposed to on a keyboard. The purpose is to clear your mind.

Write whatever your head says and don’t edit yourself. If you go blank, write dots on the page until something comes into your head, and then write whatever shows up. Keep writing. Then, when you’re done, throw it away. Physically destroy the paper. Sometimes the more physical action feels more “real.” Burn the paper, if it helps.

The process is the important thing, not the product. The point is to do something that gives you enough relief that you can have the conversation without the distraction of strong emotions that you haven’t addressed yet.

Email to No One

This is similar to fast writing in that you won’t be keeping it, but here you are writing the email intentionally and specifically—as if you were saying all the hard things you need to say to this person or telling your best friend how you feel. Having those thoughts and feelings out where you can look at them helps dissipate the emotional impact of them. It may also clarify any still-foggy areas.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you don’t put anyone’s address in the “To:” box!

The good thing about email is that if you don’t save it, and you don’t send it, it goes nowhere. Once you’re done writing and you feel some relief, delete the email permanently. Then when you have the actual conversation, you can set these feelings aside, knowing you’ve already gotten them out and dealt with them.

Journaling

When you can take the time to write down your thoughts on paper, sometimes they become clearer. Even a little bit of this can be useful. The difference between journaling and fast writing is that the journal is intended for future review. You may find it useful to reflect later on what you were thinking before the conversation and how things changed afterwards.

Your journal entry doesn’t have to be shared with anyone. This can be especially helpful for more introverted people who really aren’t comfortable letting others in on their personal thoughts and feelings.

Talking to a Trusted Friend

All of us get by with a little help from our friends. This is one of those things a good friend can do for you. Make sure the friend isn’t entangled in the issue you need to talk about—just someone you trust to help you get your emotions out without judgment. What you need is a chance to work things out verbally. If you want advice, that’s fine, but if it’s not useful at this point, let your friend know what you need before you start.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

Even if you believe you have no artistic talent, making a picture of what you’re feeling can go beyond trying to talk about it. You may just be scribbling, but you can express your feelings deeply by scratching out lines or painting colors on a receptive surface. If it feels dark, make it dark. If it feels sharp and angular, make it sharp and angular. You can make it look angry, hurt, frustrated, afraid, concerned—whatever you’re feeling.

Then, when you’re done, once again, leave your emotion there. Now you can set the art aside, or destroy it—whatever feels best.

Physical Activity

Lots of people feel great emotional relief when they do something physical. A good workout can help clear your head before a difficult conversation. Go for a run or a bike ride, or shoot some hoops. Swimming always helps me clear my head.

I hope these ideas have helped. What other ideas do you have to let go of the emotional baggage prior to having a challenging conversation?

About the author:

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

When the stars line up perfectly, you have a great boss and your growth and success seem assured.  You have a person who guides and directs you, supports you, listens to you, laughs with you, shares disappointments with you, and brainstorms solutions with you. You have a leader who sets your goals and career path, opens doors, shares insights, paints the future picture and provides hope.  As the country song goes, “You’re gonna miss this.”

What can you do when you learn you will lose your best boss? Here are some actions you can take to keep an element of control and keep your career on track.

Download. Proactively set up time to gather important information and advice from your boss. What is the big-picture plan? What are the important projects, steps, and details? Ask for career advice relative to your company. The short term left for your boss may create a safer space to share more openly and honestly.

Mine. I have always believed that there is opportunity in chaos and churn. With some digging you may uncover new ideas, vistas or needs. There may be a promotion for you in this wave of change.  Are there projects you can take over? Could a conversation be had about reorganizing your department? Discuss possibilities proactively with your boss’s boss.

Interview. Ask to be part of the interview process to find your next boss. Prepare a list of benefits to your being on the interview panel. For instance, you know the makeup of the team and the projects in process. You have a unique ability to gauge cultural fit.  You deserve to be part of the process. Believe it—and ask for it.

Stay positive. As a manager, it is your job to soften the blow of the news for your team. If you admired your boss, it is likely others did too. Steer the ship through this choppy sea. Model confidence in the future, keep people focused, and provide hope.

Emulate. If your boss is someone you will remember ask yourself what made her so special. What did she do or say that brought out the best in you? How did he navigate the system for the good of the team? How did she break through obstacles while maintaining positive relationships? What made him wise? Remember and emulate the impressive characteristics, habits, relationships and style your good boss had.  Notice, learn, emulate, repeat.

Losing a terrific leader can shake up anyone. If you accept and manage the new normal, you’ll survive, New Manager, and so will your team.

About the author:

Cathy Huett is Director, Professional Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies.  This is the fourth in a series of posts specifically geared toward new and emerging leaders.

Feeling a little overworked and under-resourced yourself?  Check out what the experts recommend.

Make time to think. Mark Sanborn, president of Sanborn and Associates and best-selling author of eight books including The Fred Factor and You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader, suggests a simple ritual.

Whenever Sanborn is in his office in Denver, he’ll schedule some time to visit his favorite coffeehouse with one intention in mind–some quiet time to think. In Sanborn’s experience, most executives don’t think as much as they react to their environment.

It’s harder than you think, says Sanborn. “Within the first 10 seconds, you’ll think of a phone call you need to make or a meeting you need to attend or something else you need to do. You will find, as I do, that proactive thinking about your business and your life is far more difficult than it seems.”

In Sanborn’s experience, taking the time to think and evaluate your progress will almost always turn up a couple of areas where you are spending time on projects and activities that are not generating much in the way of return. The question now is what to do about it.

Learn to say no. Charlene Li, author of the New York Times best seller Open Leadership and founder of Altimeter Group, says that achieving focus means knowing what you will do and also what you won’t do to achieve a particular strategy.

As Li explains, “In so many ways, it’s the very first and most important thing. In order to get more done, you actually have to do less things but–very importantly–the most important things.”

Leadership coach, speaker, and writer Tanveer Naseer shared that this can be tough, especially when there are so many seemingly important tasks in front of today’s leaders.

For Naseer, the answer to maintaining his focus is to discipline his attention. In addition to getting more done, Naseer has also noticed a great side benefit: consistency, because everything he does is centered around a common objective instead of a reactionary response.

Communicate efficiently. Elliott Masie, an internationally recognized futurist, analyst, researcher, and organizer who heads The MASIE Center think tank recommends frequent—but shorter meetings. Masie believes that leaders often default into 30 or 60 minute meetings when something much shorter would suffice.

“When was the last time you scheduled a five-minute–or better yet, four-minute–meeting with a colleague or direct report? At first it might feel as if there’s not enough time to collaborate, but in a busy organization, five-minute conversations might work well. Used correctly, that five minutes could focus on working on a theme or a title for a new product, or talking about the upcoming meeting you are going to.”

Avoid organizational anorexia. Finally, consultant, speaker, and multimedia designer Steve Roesler recommends that leaders take a closer look at the whole concept of doing more with less to make sure they haven’t slipped into a distorted view of what’s normal. Roesler believes that many organizations have reached a stage of organizational anorexia—basing their success on just being as lean as possible. That might make them appealing to Wall Street, but it’s shortsighted and potentially dangerous to their long-term health.

Roesler’s advice?   If you’re a manager, next time the phrase “do more with less” pops into your head as you begin a meeting or make a speech, pause for a moment. Consider what your objective is. Then, instead of simply reacting with a doing more with less shrug, say:

“Here’s our situation. This is what our strategy is all about and here’s what our company is all about. How can we achieve the goal that goes along with this strategy and be as satisfying to our customers as we possibly can, make this as profitable for ourselves as we possibly can, and [yet] keep our costs down?

“While we’re doing all of this, who can be included and what can we do with this particular situation or project so we’re building talent at the same time?”

As Roesler sums up, “If you’re the person in the room who stands up and does that instead of using the [doing more with less] phrase, people are going to know that you’re the one who is the leader.”

To read Scott and Ken Blanchard’s complete column for Fast Company (and their archived columns also) check out Doing More With Less: 4 Ways to Cope (and Even Succeed) in a Downsized World.

That’s a missed opportunity.

Reports can be emailed, updates can be left on voice mail, but conference calls are our opportunity to pool knowledge, build enthusiasm and move forward. Great conference calls are productive, interesting, and highly participative.

Want to make sure that your next virtual meeting is more than just a chance for people to catch up on their work?  Begin with a compelling agenda.  Here are four ways to get started.

1. State your agenda items as questions.   Change “Project Implementation Update” to What have we learned so far from the project implementation? or What is—and what is not—working in our implementation?  A question stimulates thinking and prepares your participants to reflect and anticipate.
2. Clearly state who is leading each agenda item. For example, “Fred facilitates brainstorming on the challenges we might face with this implementation. (10 minutes)  Bring your ideas.”  Be sure to include how long that item is expected to take and how meeting participants will be involved.
3. Ensure your agenda addresses important issues that sound interesting and engaging.  Instead of “Regional Updates” try, What are we doing that’s new? What new barriers are we discovering?  Email the spreadsheet monthly reports later if necessary.
4. Build continuous improvement into your meetings.  End your meetings with a very quick poll.  Go around the room (if using a seating chart) or call roll and ask each person for a few words of specific feedback on what went well or what the group could do better next time. Hold people accountable for providing specific feedback.  Instead of “good meeting,” push for a specific comments like, “It was helpful to hear the perspectives from finance on our plan.”  Letting people know they will be asked for feedback at the end encourages participants to pay attention, which improves interaction and ownership in the success of the meeting.

Conference calls and virtual meetings are how we build teams and accomplish work in the virtual world. Compelling agendas make the times that we work together more interesting and enjoyable.  Use these four tips to get the most out of your next meeting. There will always be more emails to answer.

About the author

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

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

Gather the relevant information.

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

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

Envision the desired outcome.

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

Anticipate the other person’s reactions and your response.

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

Pay attention to logistical issues.

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

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

Decide if the conversation is worth having.

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

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

About the author:

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

The Doing More With Less challenge was explored from several angles. Several speakers encouraged us to stop and think about our work before rushing headlong into the fray while others reminded us of the power we have to redefine our view of what doing more with less really means. Tips on preventing burnout, time management, communication, and employee relations were offered as well.

Here’s just a few of the thoughts that stood out to me:

• Busyness doesn’t equal productivity. Take time to think and plan. (Mark Sanborn on the importance of taking time to think, focus, and learn)
• You have a finite amount of time and energy. Prioritize what you want to do and relentlessly focus on high value work. (Mike Alpert on disciplined planning spells success)
• Work-life balance assumes one suffers at the expense of the other. We need to integrate the two and find ways that one supports the other. (Fons Trompenaars on integrate, don’t balance)
• Don’t suffer from “brain lard” – wasting your mental energy by focusing on unimportant stuff. (Dick Ruhe)
• Get the right people with the right motivation in the right place with the right tools. (Jack – 13 year old student)
• Your work isn’t just a job. Your work is a series of promises you make. (Susan Mazza on delegating less and negotiating more)
• Leaders need to focus on providing daily inspiration, breeding accountability instead of blame, and balancing self-confidence with humility. (Kate Nasser on being a buoy of inspiration and balance)
• Don’t let what gets your attention drive your focus. Focus on what needs your attention. (Tanveer Nasseer on the power of focus)
• Lean times require a lean approach. Work less and focus on the most important and highest ROI tasks. (Jason Diamond Arnold on the lean approach to working)
• Shift your mentality from “I have to do this” to “I get to do this.” (Margie Blanchard on I have to versus I get to)

I shared that leaders need to eliminate the phrase “do more with less” from our vocabularies. It erodes trust whenever we tell our people they have to do more with less. They feel like we “just don’t get it.” Instead, we need to communicate the reality of our business situation with our team, solicit their involvement in creating strategies to deal with the challenges we’re facing, and dial-up the amount and type of support we offer our folks.

Did you attend the Doing <Still> More With Less Leadership Livecast? If so, what were the nuggets of trust you discovered? If you happened to miss it, you can purchase access to the recording and/or program notes here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the author

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

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.

You may need to think again.

It seems that using these enticing incentives to motivate yourself results in a suboptimal motivational outlook that ultimately leaves you without the energy to follow through on your weight loss plans—especially if you are a man.

We now have significant proof that financial motivation does not sustain changes in personal health behaviors—and, in fact, may undermine them over time. What’s more, financial motivation negatively affects men’s efforts over time more than women’s. Rewards may help you initiate new and healthy behaviors, but they fail miserably in helping you maintain your progress. Shortly after the incentive is gone, you revert back to your old ways.*

So why do over 70 percent of wellness programs in the U.S. use financial incentives to encourage healthy behavior changes? Here are three potential reasons:

• If you are not pressured into losing weight, but invited to participate in a weight-loss program that offers small financial incentives, there is a likelihood you will lose weight—at least initially. But studies reporting weight loss success were conducted only during the period of the contest. They didn’t track maintenance. But recent studies show that just twelve weeks after the program’s incentives end, most or all of the weight is regained.
• Financial incentives are easy (if expensive).
• We haven’t understood until recently the true nature of motivation or how to effectively use the latest science of motivation to help people shift to an optimal motivational outlook that sustains effort and results over time.

It turns out that rewards and incentives are the fast-food of motivation—they give you a kick and then send your energy plummeting. To initiate and maintain a healthy lifestyle, you need the equivalent of motivational health food. Satisfying your basic psychological needs for A-R-C (Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence) is more likely to help you achieve your goals and feel good enough about the results to maintain them.

Great! But how do you shift from a suboptimal motivational outlook—and the ease and enticement of motivational fast food—to an optimal motivational outlook where you flourish by satisfying your healthy psychological needs? Part of the answer lies in learning the skill of Optimal Motivation. Here are three ways to start:

1. Notice when you use phrases with the words have to in them:  I have to lose weight. I have to eat healthy. I have to have a salad instead of fries. I have to is a subtle but significant sign that you are feeling a loss of freedom. Your need for choice—your perception of Autonomy—is being undermined. When you have to do what the diet demands, the thing you crave is autonomy. Ironically, the way you exercise your autonomy is by eating the fast food you had restricted yourself from eating. The act of banning the bad stuff makes you want it even more!
2. Realize that you love yourself and your health more than you love the fast food. This is the power of Relatedness. In this case, you can consider fast food either literally or symbolically (winning the mini-iPad).
3. Recognize the sense of positive well-being that comes each time you make a choice to do the best thing for your health. This positive feeling comes from your mastery over the situation—experiencing your Competence.

So the next time you are invited to join a program, lose weight, and win a mini-iPad, go ahead and take up the offer—but don’t do it for the iPad. Instead, do it for deeper values and the sake of satisfying your Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence. The iPad is no longer the carrot, but simply a symbol of your flourishing.

What do you have to lose? Weight. What do you have to gain? Health and a positive sense of well-being. Oh, and that mini-iPad!

References

* Moller, McFadden, Hedeker, and Spring, “Financial Motivation Undermines Maintenance in an Intensive Diet and Activity Intervention,” Journal of Obesity, Volume 2012, Article ID 740519.

Deci and Ryan, “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior,” Psychological Inquiry (2000) Vol. 11, No. 4, pp 227-268.

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.

For those of us who work at home or remotely, or even in an office, it’s a great time to refocus on what we do—consciously or subconsciously—that looks like work but often isn’t.

Here are three ways that people pretend to work.

Attend meetings

Our egos tell us that it is critical to stay fully informed on any project that has the potential to even slightly impact us. Even though meetings are largely ineffective, attending lots of them keeps you very busy. When you attend lots of meetings your calendar stays full—and yet you accomplish very little. This is perhaps the best way to pretend to work without really working.

Be hyper-responsive on emails and phone calls

Don’t read or think too much about each email, just respond quickly. In fact, responding to emails while passively attending a meeting can ensure that neither activity is truly productive. When you keep your email up all day and respond immediately, you can feel a great sense of “pretend” accomplishment. Since sending emails results in receiving more emails, you can honestly say, “I got 150+ emails today. I am exhausted!” This is probably very true.

Focus on speed and quantity, not quality, of communication

The accepted best practice around emails is this: If the third email hasn’t clarified the issue—pick up the phone. Ignoring this rule means you can have long strings of emails that show activity without really accomplishing work. Make sure you have an email trail that recaps every action taken. This ensures that you can always justify your lack of productivity by pointing to a flaw in someone else’s email.

Have you been caught by any of these strategies? Although I don’t know anyone who deliberately uses these strategies to avoid work, I suspect we have all had extremely busy days when we questioned our productivity and accomplishments.

Just in case you want to be very productive (which you do), here are some tips:

• Carefully choose which meetings, and how much of each meeting, you will attend.
• Focus on the quality of your communication, including reflecting or researching before you respond.
• Let others know your priority to set aside times for focused concentration, professional development, process improvement, and idea generation. Let people know when you will and won’t be available to respond quickly.

Using these strategies will require less energy, less activity, and fewer emails, and therefore will result in higher productivity.

Well, okay … you can still pretend to be tired, even if you‘re not!

About the author

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

Similarly, when I’m traveling overseas, I actually look for a very recognizable quick service restaurant chain.  Why? Because I know what I’m going to get (and depending on where I’ve traveled, sometimes I just want food I recognize, HA!)

I’ve come to realize that this restaurant isn’t primarily in the food service business at all…they’re actually in the CONSISTENCY business. They just happen to sell fast food.

Consistency in delivery will keep customers coming back

How’s your company doing when it comes to delivering consistent service?  It’s so important to get it right because it is the foundation upon which the service event rests. Think about your own experience.  Why do you patronize the stores you do?  Isn’t one of the reasons because you know your expectations will be met?  You may say, “I just like shopping there, eating there, staying there,” but behind those words is consistency in delivery.

Process and People

A consistent delivery experience has two components—a clear process, and people to implement it.  You need both to be successful.  Here’s a simple five-step model that will help you to begin identifying where you’re at when it comes to having a process and the people in place to deliver a consistent customer experience every time.  Put it together and you’ll see it spells out “I CARE,” which is a great reminder also!

• Ideal Service—what’s your picture of the ideal experience you want your customers to have?
• Culture of Service—is your environment focused on the customer?
• Attentiveness—do you know your customers and their preferences?
• Responsiveness—do you and your people demonstrate a genuine willingness to serve? What specific behaviors do you want to see?
• Empowerment—are you taking the time—and providing the training—to empower your people to implement the service vision?

Organizations are only as good as their people.  This is especially true in any environment where you are directly dealing with customers.  Remember the I CARE model to improve your process and provide a model for your people. It’s one of the best ways to get started with creating the consistent experience that keeps customers coming back time and time again.  Get started today!

About the author:

Ann Phillips is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read Ann’s posts as a part of our customer service series that appears twice montly.

The Power of Autonomy

In complementary terms used in the Optimal Motivation program, when we experience high quality autonomy at work (as well as relatedness and competence), we are more likely to be more creative, more positively energetic (as opposed to relying on stress energy) and more easily focused on accomplishing any task or goal, no matter how short-term, tactical, and mundane—or long-term, strategic, and magnificent.  While leaders repeatedly report they want such creativity and focus from employees, employees repeatedly report how difficult leaders often make it for employees to feel those things.

For example, during a recent keynote presentation, several frustrated participants offered detailed examples of policies, procedures, and both overt and tacit cultural rules that make it difficult for them to feel free, creative, and positively energetic as persistently as the work demands.  Nonetheless, a traditional leader response to such frustration is to tell the employees to stop complaining and adjust in some way so they feel less frustrated.  Of course, by all means let’s all learn how to source our own sense of autonomy no matter what we are faced with.  As if on cue in that conversation, one participant made precisely that a point by citing Viktor Frankl’s experience in a concentration camp as evidence of the kind of transcendence that is possible even in the most extreme environments.  It’s a story to live by, to be sure.

Leaders Stepping Up

But, I think we also should be talking about the extent to which managers and executives actively step up to the challenges of changing policies and procedures—and organizational systems—that foment such frustration.  Too many executives take a “deal with it” stance, rather than a stance of “let’s look into how we can modify or change this so you don’t have to spend so much mental and emotional energy coping with it like that anymore.”

Willing executives could see such a response as adding moral substance to their leadership, since it would shift from focusing only on what the executives want from employees (to just deal with it and get on with the work) to focusing more on what they want for their employees (a work environment that makes it easy for employees to autonomously commit themselves to meaningful, high quality, and high volume work.)

Leader, Would You Like to Shift?

Blanchard research shows that employees generally respond positively to this leadership upgrade with greater intentions to work at above average levels, to endorse the organization, and to stay with the organization longer.  So, with such employee and organizational advantages, managers and executives, what have you got to lose?

About the author:

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

The world is indeed getting flatter. Like many organizations, at The Ken Blanchard Companies we regularly interact with coworkers and clients around the globe. In my workshops, cross-cultural communication is frequently cited as a significant challenge for leaders who have teams spread throughout the world.

Communication involves an exchange of meaning through sending and receiving of verbal and nonverbal messages, either consciously or unconsciously. For a message to be understood correctly, there needs to be a vast amount of common ground between the sender and receiver. This makes cross-cultural communication difficult, because two culturally different individuals tend to have less in common than two people who are part of the same culture.

Many variable factors get in the way of mutual understanding within cross-cultural communication—differences in language, in communication styles, and in the interpretation of nonverbal behaviors. Within each of these differences are numerous subcategories that add further difficulty.

However, effective cross-cultural communication is possible. I suggest four approaches to increase understanding:

1. Start with the assumption that you may not understand the situation or message and that cultural differences may get in the way.
2. The most accurate way to gather information is to observe and describe what is actually said and done, not to evaluate or interpret words or actions. Evaluation and interpretation are influenced by each person’s own culture and background.
3. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes, boots, or sandals. Try to see the situation from the other person’s cultural perspective.
4. Treat your explanation or interpretation as a best guess. Then, when you think you understand, check with the other person to see whether you’re on the right path or whether you need additional clarity.

What other suggestions do you have to increase understanding in cross-cultural communication?

About the author:

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

That was the task I faced as I headed to the mall.  I wasn’t expecting much even as we walked into a high energy store totally geared for kids his age. In spite of the great selection of clothes, I was still surprised when Nathan told me, “I think I’d like some jeans.”

“Jeans,” I replied.  “You haven’t worn jeans since you were four.”  But Nathan chooses a pair of jeans, and then spots a long-sleeve shirt he thinks he might also like.

”Hey dude, you want to try on that shirt? I’ll get it man.”  A customer service associate spots us.  Steven (I can see from his name tag) has on skinny jeans, a beanie, and a great smile.

For the better part of the next hour Steven helped Nathan choose clothes saying, “Here’s a shirt you might like man. Did you see this pair of jeans? How’s that size dude?” And, “I don’t have that in your size, but how about this one?”

I noticed that while Steven was talking to Nathan and bringing him things to try, he always acknowledged me also, silently passing things by me—just a “what do you think” look before proceeding to the dressing room.

It was magic—all the awkwardness of adult/teen shopping was gone! Nathan made his own choices, (which he felt great about) while Steven made sure that everything he picked would look good and fit well.  He also made sure that it was something that his secondary customer (me), would also go along with.

Takeaways for your company

Most of the things that Steven said and did with Nathan are pretty standard for any good retail store.  But what really set this experience apart for me was an employee who:

• Really knew his customers
• Could size up a situation and respond to any situation quickly
• Worked brilliantly with multiple customers and differing expectations
• Was well-trained and knew what to say and do

How are your people doing in these four key areas?  Are you providing the direction and support that builds knowledge, develops skills, and gives people the opportunity to shine?

Take care of the people who take care of your customers.  Do you think Steven is well-trained, well-rewarded, and respected at work? I’m sure he is all of that—and it shows!  Does it translate into bottom-line impact and a legendary service reputation?  You bet!  Just look at the five shirts, two jeans, and a pair of shorts we purchased and the stories that Steven is generating from people like me!

About the author:

Barbara Notre is Director of Corporate Communications and Initiatives for The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read Barbara’s posts as a part of our customer service series which appears twice a month here on LeaderChat.

“It’s where we choose our behaviors and then act according to how we choose. But in order to keep our brain operating effectively for ourselves, we have to keep our prefrontal cortex nourished and well-rested,” explains Homan-Blanchard.

“Our prefrontal cortex is a resource hog in terms of glucose and rest. Its performance is also impacted by hydration, exercise, and sleep. In some ways it’s like a gas tank. Every decision we make—from the mundane to the most critical—uses up a little bit of gas.”

“That’s why it is so important to know yourself and know how to schedule certain kinds of activities when your brain is going to be at its best. You want to schedule planning, brainstorming, and other creative activities while your brain is fresh. What you don’t want to do is schedule a meeting or a challenging conversation where you’re going to have to use a lot of self-control at the end of a brutal day.”

The one time when no answer is the best answer

Roy Baumeister, professor of psychology at Florida State University and co-author of the best-selling book, Willpower, says that the people who are known for making the best decisions are usually considered the most well-balanced and the smartest people. But, he notes, what may be really be true about those people is that they just know when not to make to make a big decision.

Homan-Blanchard echoes that opinion and also has some advice for couples.

“You know the old adage that in marriage, you shouldn’t go to bed angry? Well, that’s wrong—especially for couples who work a lot, have kids, and have bills piling up. Having a serious discussion, and trying to reach resolution to an argument, late at night, is really a bad idea.”

So is forging ahead when someone comes running into your office demanding a big decision at 6:30 in the evening when you’re packing up and walking out the door, explains Homan-Blanchard. “The only decision for a leader to make in that position is to wait until the morning, because, chances are, you are not capable of making a good decision in that moment. Unless you’ve previously thought about it, made the decision, and just haven’t reported it back, that’s different. But if you actually haven’t made the decision yet, it is unwise because it simply won’t be the best decision.”

Three strategies for better decision-making

For leaders looking to improve the quality of their thinking and decision making, Homan-Blanchard recommends a couple of strategies.

1. Set limits. Identify your best times for creative, innovative, and challenging work situations. Create, protect, and utilize those times for your most difficult tasks.
2. Create processes and routines. The more routine that you can create for yourself, the more “gas” you can save for other decisions.
3. Practice extreme self care. Don’t underestimate the importance of proper rest and good nutrition.

Clear, calm, well-reasoned thinking is a hallmark of all good leaders. Don’t forget the physical dimension of mental processes. Take care of your brain so it can take care of you.

To read more of Homan-Blanchard’s thinking and advice check out her complete interview here.  Also take a look at a webinar that she is conducting on April 3, The Leader’s Guide to the Executive Brain.  It’s free, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other take-aways? Please share!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

About the author:

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

What many don’t realize is fewer opportunities means more control over perceptions.

When you work in the office, people see you every day.  They see you when you didn’t get much sleep, when you got stuck in traffic, and when you have a seasonal cold.  They see you when sick, crabby, tired and anxious.

Wise virtual workers ensure that everyone who interacts with them stays positive about them and their work by controlling how they present themselves.

When you work virtually, you can show up in every interaction, positive and professional.   

• On the phone: Before you answer the phone, take a minute to breathe, smile and choose a positive vocal tone.
• If you must have uncomfortable conversations over the phone, (better than via email!) you can prepare notes in advance scripting exactly how you want to communicate the message.  And you can read those rehearsal notes while on the call.
• You can also listen and make notes while others are venting.  Good notes mean you can reflect and show empathy toward their feelings and thoughts without eye contact or having your facial expressions and physical reactions give you away.
• Via email: Consider using the “delay delivery” setting rule on your emails for 10 minutes.  This way, after you hit send you have one last chance to review or reword so you don’t regret later the tone your email communicated.  (I am sure you didn’t mean it that way!)
• Video-conferences:  This is my favorite.  Go ahead and wear those pajama pants when telecommuting, just make sure you computer camera only shows how nice you look from the waist up.

It’s a rare gift to be able to show up with our best selves all the time.  Consider telecommuting or virtual work a gift for your career and life.

About the author

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

The first common characteristic focuses on relationships and support. People say that their best boss cared about them, gave them opportunities, and created a great working environment.  They made work fun and they were supportive.

Second, there is the performance and expectations aspect. People will share that their work was demanding, meaningful, and that their boss expected a lot from them.  They also share that their best boss saw qualities in them that they didn’t necessarily see in themselves.

In an article for Blanchard’s Ignite newsletter, I share some examples from Gallup, Southwest Airlines, and  WD-40 Company to make the case for adopting a high support—high expectations workplace. You can read the complete article at this link, but in the meantime, here are some takeaways for creating this dual focus environment.

1. Set challenging goals. Expect the best from people by setting goals that stretch their abilities. Look beyond what people can currently do and set a stake in the ground at the next level of achievement. Hard goals encourage growth, demonstrate trust, and develop competence. Be sure to set these goals as a partnership—it conveys respect and garners buy-in.
2. Meet regularly. Conduct brief, focused meetings on a weekly basis to discuss progress against goals, identify roadblocks, and brainstorm solutions. Demonstrate your commitment to an employee’s success by sharing one of your most precious resources—your time and attention.
3. Provide feedback. Celebrate and recognize achievements. Provide redirection when necessary. Feedback shows that you are paying attention as a leader, consider the work important, and are invested in the employee’s development.

Leaders become “best bosses” by expecting a lot from their people AND also providing high levels of support along the way.  Look back at your own experience and you’ll probably discover that your best boss brought out the best in you because he or she expected a lot and also supported your growth and development. That’s the one-two punch that creates high levels of engagement and performance!

That has turned out to be very good advice over the years, and I find the same is true for leaders in organizations.  Managers can only get away with so much before their team members are going to start believing their leader’s actions more than their words.  When it comes to serving customers, I have found the best managers are the ones that not only praise and acknowledge their employees when they serve their customers well, but are also role models of the behaviors they would like others to emulate.

A case in point

A perfect example of this happened recently when I went with my college age son to open an account at a bank.  His primary bank did not have any branches where he is going to college, so this was going to make it easier for him to access his money (all $250.00 of it.)  Once we sat down and he explained his situation to the young woman helping him, she proceeded to explain the various options available to him as a college student with limited funds.  After agreeing on the type of account that would best fit his needs, she then asked if he was interested in opening a credit card.

At first he said “no,” explaining that he didn’t want to be tempted to spend money he didn’t have. But after we discussed it for a few minutes and I shared that I thought it was a great way for him to start establishing credit, he agreed and the young woman started processing the credit card as well.

Now, I could stop at this point with the story (it had already been a very nice experience) but what happened next was what really impressed me.  You see, at that moment, another woman walked into the cubicle, introduced herself to my son (not me) and said, “I am the Branch Manager here and I just wanted to thank you for opening an account with us today.”

She then went on to tell him that she overheard our conversation about whether or not he should open up a credit card, and she complimented my son for his consideration of NOT getting a credit card—she was impressed with his thoughtful decision instead of just rushing into opening a credit account.

She also went on to praise the young woman that was assisting my son and told him that he was in the best of hands with her taking care of everything.  I was impressed to see that the Branch Manager—while acknowledging me as she spoke, was really there to welcome my son (a new customer).

3 takeaways for leaders

So what can we learn from what the Branch Manager did that day?  Here are three takeaways that I found valuable for leaders:

1. Be a good role model of the behaviors you expect from others in the workplace and demonstrate them through your actions.
2. Be a cheerleader for your team members—acknowledge their efforts not only to them, but to the customer.
3. Always remember to thank the customer for their business and don’t let their age discount them as a customer.  Customers have choices and when they choose to do business with you, you want them to know you appreciate it.

I know my son felt special and taken care of by all of people at the bank starting with the Branch Manager.  Remember, people are always watching when you least expect it, so make sure your behaviors are following your good intentions.

About the author:

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

Their conclusion?

“Cutting yourself off, or choosing not to focus on the people side of the equation, can—and will—be a problem that will impact your development as a leader.”

Have you inadvertently cut yourself off from your people?  Many leaders have.  It’s usually because of time pressures, or a single-minded focus on results—but sometimes it’s also a conscious choice to create “professional distance” that allows you the emotional room to make tough choices.

That’s a mistake say the Blanchards. “The best working relationships are partnerships. For leaders, this means maintaining a focus on results along with high levels of demonstrated caring.”

They go on to caution that, “The relationship foundation has to be in place first. It’s only when leaders and managers take the time to build the foundation that they earn the permission to be aggressive in asking people to produce results. The best managers combine high support with high levels of focus, urgency, and criticality. As a result, they get more things done, more quickly, than managers who do not have this double skill base.”

Don’t limit yourself—or others

Don’t limit yourself, or others, by focusing on just one half of the leadership equation.  You don’t have to choose.  In this case you can have it all.  Create strong relationships focused on jointly achieving results. To read the complete article—including some tips on getting started—be sure to check out Getting Your Team Emotionally Engaged Is Half The Leadership Battle. Here’s How To Do It

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As a virtual team member, unequal access to information and a feeling of being left out can erode your trust and lower your emotional commitment—two critical factors for overall team success.

Yet when you are a dial-in participant, pushing for inclusion without sounding like a whiner usually isn’t worth the effort. As a result, unless they are called on to participate, many virtual team members give up and simply listen to the meeting while they read and answer their email.

Don’t let this happen to the virtual members of your team. Here are three ways to keep your virtual teammates engaged:

1. Go completely virtual. Meetings where everyone is virtual will force better habits such as “around the room” input and sending reports in advance so everyone has access. Make sure each meeting agenda deliberately includes time for everyone to participate in the lively chat necessary for this social team approach.
2. Use a buddy system. If you must have some in the room and some out, assign every virtual team member a “buddy” in the room. Set up additional communication modes such as instant messaging or chatting between buddies. This way, the virtual team member can ask questions without disturbing the whole group and each person calling in has an advocate who can send last-minute documents, describe what is happening, or intervene when necessary for clarification.
3. Consider creating a cardboard Carl/Caroline. One creative team leader I worked with created large, cardboard-backed photos of each virtual team member. The visibility of a cardboard Carl or Caroline in each meeting provided great humor and increased engagement. “Caroline looks like she has a question.” “Let’s ask Carl what he thinks!” These are fun and natural ways to ensure all team members stay visibly engaged and emotionally committed to the team. Other teams use an empty chair with a name, or a name tent—but there is something about a photo that adds life to the meeting. Be aware, though, that your virtual team member may ask for a cardboard photo of you and the rest of the team—that’s a good thing!

We all have attended deadly team meetings, and most of us probably have neglected a virtual team member, inadvertently, at least once. Keep your virtual team members engaged. Try one or more of these strategies and bring life and energy to your next virtual engagement!

About the author

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

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

Participants will learn:

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

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

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

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

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

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

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

The total program included modules around personality, values, organization vision and alignment, leadership style, high performing teams, change management, and motivation—the gamut.

This final module consisted of five one-hour-long group presentations about various aspects of their learning journey and its impact on people, process, and results. We asked about personal insights, how they applied their learning to real work, and what the human and economic impacts were of such application. And finally, in terms of their development, we asked them what they wanted to do next.

In terms of roles, the “what’s next” question revealed an array of ambitions. One wants to be CEO within 10 years. Another wants to lead the expansion of engineering capabilities in the African subsidiaries. And a third sees a future in corporate strategy with the aim of improving how global change initiatives are conceived and executed.

What was most beautiful was not the ambitions themselves, although I often feel their gravitational pull compelling me to double-check my own goals and velocity toward them. Instead, the most heartening aspect of their ambitions was how they promised to approach them.

Reduce Pressure to Go Fast

Whereas in the past, on their way to greater roles and responsibilities, these executives would have passed the pressure they received from their bosses to others in direct proportion—or even amplify it—now they realize that pressure often does more harm than good. The motivation research shows that pressure is easily internalized as a form of control, which then undermines a person’s eagerness to perform an act voluntarily and with an optimistic sense of purpose. In other words, pressure creates a negative Motivational Outlook, which slows the pace and quality of work in the moment and in the long run.

These executives also described how they helped even very senior employees build additional competence faster than before, and how those employees then displayed increased confidence that they could handle even more-complex projects. It was nice to hear, too, how the quality of their relationships improved as a result.

Executives take a lot of heat—much of it deserved—for leading as if people do not matter much. So, I decided to share this with you because I wonder what you think when you read about executives who have dedicated themselves to leading in challenging times with boldness, grace, warmth, ever-increasing skill, and maturity. How does it inspire you or catalyze new thinking about how you lead?

It was a privilege to watch these leaders commit to a truly human—and humane—approach to leading others, and to see that by actually doing it things are already improving for them and everyone around them. Sometimes it is nice to take a break and simply enjoy watching people flower and shine right in front of our very eyes. I thought you might enjoy that, too.

About the author:

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

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

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

3 Ways to Improve Goal Setting

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

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

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

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

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

Which of the following statement(s) best describe(s) you when it comes to New Year’s resolutions at work?

1. Don’t set them—it is a waste of time
2. Set them—and it is a waste of time because I don’t take them seriously
3. Set them, take them seriously, but am regularly disappointed in myself
4. Set them, take them seriously, and have figured out how to make them work
5. Set them for personal matters, but not professional or workplace situations
6. Refuse to live my life this way, and/or …
7. Sick of hearing about them—enough already!
8. Other (There may be other categories. Let me know what you come up with so I can add it to the list.)

No matter how you feel about resolutions, one thing as inevitable as the arrival of the New Year is the advice forthcoming about how to write resolutions. For example: Write resolutions more like SMART goals that are specific and measurable, motivating, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, making them more achievable.

Resolution-setter, or not, I encourage you to consider a different focus this year. Let’s say you have notions for workplace resolutions such as …

• Be more timely when it comes to _____ (fill-in-the-blank with expense reports, budgets, performance reviews, etc.)
• Provide better customer service
• Make a greater contribution
• Achieve greater work-life balance
• Speak up in meetings
• Be more upbeat in the office

All of these so-called resolutions might benefit by being written as a SMARTer goal statement. But before you even attempt that, try shifting your focus to the question of “Why?” Ask yourself this key question: “Why did I create this resolution?”

Can you answer with one or more of these answers?

1)      This resolution aligns with important values I have established.

2)      This resolution helps me fulfill my work-life purpose.

3)      The mere pursuit of this resolution brings me joy.

Any one of these three answers is going to result in a more resolute resolution. So before you start following the good advice about rewriting your resolutions as goals (or the less-good advice to incentivize yourself with rewards or perks) consider first asking “Why did I create this resolution?” and tie it to your values, purpose, and sense of joy.

At the end of the day (or week or year), you are more likely to experience an optimal Motivational Outlook and positive results when you channel energy to those things that have a meaningful why behind them.

Here’s to an optimally motivated New Year!

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.

Service in the airline industry is kind of a wash in my opinion, but I want to tell you about an exception—Southwest Airlines.  Here’s a recent travel experience that I think speaks volumes about the service focused culture that Southwest has created.

The line at curbside check-in was very long and the baggage handler didn’t have a moment to spare, yet he made his way inside the terminal and found me.

He said, “These fell out of your purse when you checked your bag and I was sure you’d want them back. I’m so glad I found you.” He handed me two $20 reward certificates from Nordstrom that indeed had been in the outside pocket of my purse.

And then he was off—I didn’t even get his name.

Is it something in the water?

What do companies do to instill this type of caring in their employees? What kind of service culture nourishes this type of behavior?

This experience with Southwest Airlines reminded me of when I worked at Walt Disney World.

At Disney, we were unconditionally empowered to do the right thing by the guests at our theme parks and hotels. We realized that people came to visit us because we had “magic”—and bad things don’t happen in the midst of magic.

We couldn’t make a mistake when caring for a guest, and that was constantly reaffirmed. Our mission was to create a great guest experience—period. This philosophy was bolstered by the fact that we were treated with respect, supported, and trained, and that we fully understood the mission. The same is true at Southwest Airlines.

Are your people set up to succeed?

If you are the leader of a team, department, or organization that delivers service to customers, here are some questions for you to consider in this new year:

• Is your service philosophy clear to all of your employees? Can they repeat it?
• Are your people empowered and trained to deliver on that philosophy?
• Have you asked your employees for their input on serving customers?  (The front line always knows what customers expect.)
• Is support in place for them to execute? (The Southwest employee left his position to run into the airport and find me—he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble for going the extra mile for a customer.)
• Are your people recognized for creating the stories that people will write and talk about?

The beginning of a new year is a great time to revisit the merits of your organization’s customer service philosophy.

About the author:

Barbara Notre is Director of Corporate Communications and Initiatives for The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read Barbara’s posts as a part of our customer service series which appears on the first and third Thursday of each month.

Typically this time of year people are feeling more emotional than usual. This is an opportunity for us to bring a little peace to people that we care about and help them relax and enjoy the holiday season versus being overwhelmed by it. It is important to know that the emotion zone in the brain is the same as the memory zone.  You can leverage emotions to create lasting memories.

So, how do you bring a little peace?

P stands for Prioritize and focus. Help people (including yourself) prioritize and focus on the tasks and goals that are truly important. When people are overwhelmed they are usually taking on unnecessary tasks, producing worry that keeps their brain on spin. Creating laser-like focus reduces stress.

E stands for Energize to act. Help those around you with the one or two steps that they need to take in order to get started on their task or goal. Getting started is half the battle and task completion will increase as people just take that first step.

A stands for Acknowledge emotion. What happens when we don’t acknowledge emotions? They can get bigger and bigger and less manageable. Sometimes just the mere acknowledgement of someone else’s emotion, or even your own, can provide relief and support. Remember the last time someone did this for you and you said, “Phew, so glad to get that off my chest!”

C stands for Cherish Successes. Try to notice where others are doing things right and call it out. Listen to people and really make them feel special for who they are and what they have achieved. Cherishing success can be a wonderful gift that you can give to those around you this holiday season.

E stands for Enjoy the holidays. Don’t forget to stop and enjoy the moments and the people that matter. Be grateful for all that you are blessed with by doing random acts of kindness. Sometimes it’s the little things we can do for people that really make a difference.

So give the gift of peace! Happy Holidays!

About the author:

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

After the training was completed, Dr. Paul Leone, an OD expert within the American Express organization, measured the impact of the three delivery methods.  He found that the self-paced virtual model produced a 5% boost in productivity which was good, the traditional classroom produced a 10% boost in productivity which was better, and the blended approach produced a 12% boost in productivity which was best.

The one difference that made all the difference

In looking at why the blended approach produced the greatest impact, Leone discovered that it was because the blended approach built the training into the student’s work life by including the immediate manager in the process, tying the learning to real work, and providing a way for feedback along the way.  Leone’s conclusion was that it was these design factors that made all the difference.

Want greater ROI from your leadership training?

For years, instructional designers have known that adults learn best when they see how the learning impacts their work priorities and is in alignment with their work goals.  Without this, it can be difficult to find the time for training. Learning—especially in the context of a work setting—has to be relevant, impactful, and produce results.  If you don’t have that, people won’t find time in their schedules, and senior leaders won’t push for people to attend.  People have multiple priorities these days.  They have to focus on the things that help them get their work done.

Here are three ways to make sure that any new training you’re considering generates the bottom-line results you’re looking for.

Alignment—use impact maps to connect training to a student’s existing work goals.  Have the manager and student identify the student’s key areas and then map how the training will help the learner meet those goals.

Modularize content delivery—deliver the content in small, bite-sized chunks over time. This allows students to receive the information in manageable segments that are much more conducive to learning.  It also provides an opportunity for ongoing feedback.

Follow-up—involve immediate managers to check in on progress. Make sure immediate managers are on-board with the new behaviors and that they schedule time to interact and have discussions with learners as they begin to use their new skills.  Nothing demonstrates the importance of a new skill learned in class than a manager checking up on its adoption.

People learn best when the information they are learning is relevant to what they are working on, when they see how it will help them improve, and when someone is checking on their progress and encouraging them to adopt new behaviors.  Make sure that you are following these three steps to get the most out of your next training initiative!

In a special presentation on Motivation as a skill: Strategies for managers and employees, Facer will be sharing some of the research underlying Blanchard’s new Optimal Motivation program and workshops.  Participants will explore real-world examples and learn pragmatic strategies that can help managers and individual employees make progress in important areas such as engagement, innovation, and employee well-being. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 1,000 people expected to participate.

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

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

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

It’s as easy as that!  David 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.

Managers met with their direct reports every two-weeks to discuss issues that the direct report wanted to discuss.  At the end of six months, surveys were conducted to see if the more frequent meetings impacted perceptions.

They did, but the results were mixed.

The leaders in charge of the managers who were being studied noticed a positive change in the performance of the managers and the people who reported to them.   From the senior leader’s perspective, more frequent conversations were having a positive impact on performance and morale.

The managers who were being observed had the opposite reaction.  They scored themselves lower than they had before the experiment.  The managers felt ill-prepared and somewhat ineffective in trying to solve many of the difficult issues that employee’s were facing.

The direct reports were the last group surveyed. Their reaction?  Overwhelmingly positive.  How could this be when the managers saw themselves as performing so poorly?  Hand-written comments added by the employees provided a clue, “My manager might not have all the answers, but they listen and they try.  I’ve never felt so well-supported.”

Getting started with One-on-Ones

So why don’t more managers conduct regular one-on-ones?  The top three reasons cited most often are time, lack of perceived skills, and a lack of training.  Don’t let that hold you back from spending more time with your direct reports.  Here are three ways to get started.

1. Maintain a regular schedule.  Start off meeting at least every two weeks. The meetings do not have to be long—30 minutes is a good way to begin.
2. Remember that this is the direct report’s meeting.  Your job as a manager is to listen, support, and see how you can help.
3. Be easy on yourself.  People know that you have limitations.  You don’t have to have all of the answers to be effective.  Work together with your people to identify options, access necessary resources, and plan a course of action.

Partner with your people to provide the direction and support they need to succeed.  Working together to solve issues is a great way to build relationships and improve performance at the same time. Even if you feel that you are not very good at solving all of their issues, you’ll still be having a positive impact. Don’t wait. Begin today!

One day I noticed that Sue left at 1:30 in the afternoon without saying a word. The next day, she left at 2:00. The next, 1:30 again. I started to get a little annoyed and, despite all previous evidence to the contrary, I began to wonder if Sue was slacking off. Unfortunately, I let this go on a few more days until another employee came to me to report that Sue was leaving early each day. Now I needed to handle the situation.

I called Sue into my office and said, “I noticed you have been going home between 1:30 and 2:00 every day for the last week. Help me understand.”

Notice the language. I did not say, “I noticed you have been leaving early.” That is a judgment. I simply said what I had observed. Note that a neutral tone is critical in this type of conversation.

Sue’s response: “I’m so sorry, John. I forgot to tell you that I have been coming in at 5:00 a.m. each day for the past two weeks to let our trainers into the building and get them set up. I let Julie (our admin) know, but I forgot to tell you.”

Can you imagine how that conversation would have gone if I had assumed the bad—that Sue was slacking off and leaving early? What impact would that have had on our relationship and the trust we felt toward each other? Instead, I assumed the good— that there had to be a reasonable explanation for her behavior.

The next time you encounter behavior that does not fit what you expect—an unfriendly grocery clerk, a colleague who doesn’t return your call, a senior manager who passes you in the hall and doesn’t say “hi”—assume the best. There’s a good chance that the clerk is having a difficult day, the colleague has been so swamped they have not listened to their voice messages, and the senior manager was distracted and didn’t see you.

Give people the benefit of the doubt as you would have them do to you—a good relationship may hang in the balance.

About the author:

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read John’s posts on the second Thursday of every month.

“CEOs whose personalities and dispositions were more competitive had a direct influence on the degree of competitiveness and fear experienced by members of their senior leadership teams. This resulted in a greater degree of siloed behavior within the organization and less cooperation among sub-units. The net results were less integration across the business, less efficiency, poorer service, and ultimately lower economic performance.

“A woman recently told us her CEO believed that a little bit of fear was good and that moderate to high levels of competition between people and business units were beneficial and kept the company sharp. This attitude of friendly competition inside the company permeated the culture, flowing out from the boardroom and cascading throughout the organization.

“This approach had worked for this technology company in the past, but began to become a liability as customers asked for more cross-platform compatibility. Because customers were asking for everything to work well together, these internal divisions needed to cooperate more effectively. This required the different business units to think beyond self-interest to the whole customer experience. It proved difficult to change the mindset of this historically competitive culture.”

Drive out fear

What type of culture is operating in your organization?  Is there a spirit of support, encouragement, and cooperation?  Or is a culture of fear, protectionism, and competition more present?  Today’s more sophisticated and integrated work requires a collaborative mindset.  Make sure that you are not inadvertently creating a competitive, fear-based mindset that gets in the way of people working together effectively.

As W. Edwards Deming famously reminded us, “Drive out fear.”  Fear is counter-productive in the long term, because it prevents workers from acting in the organization’s best interests.

To read more of Scott and Ken Blanchard’s thinking on creating a more engaging work environment and what top leaders can—and cannot—control check out Why Trying To Manipulate Employee Motivation Always Backfires.

Innovation also requires collaboration.  Very few ideas can be successfully implemented without the cooperation and buy-in of others.  Unfortunately, innovators often struggle in this area–especially if they fall in love with their idea and become defensive about feedback.

In an upcoming Leadership Livecast on Un-Leaderlike Moments I share a story about the way this sneaks up on unsuspecting innovators.  See if this has ever happened to you.

The birth of an idea

You come up with an idea—it’s one of your best ideas—and you can’t wait to share it with the other people on your team. So you do. And you know what? They’re just as excited about it as you are. You decide to go in together and make this idea a reality.

But soon after, something you didn’t plan on starts to occur. Your teammates like your original concept, but they have some thoughts for making it better.  They begin to share their thinking and give you some feedback.  How do you react?

Dealing with feedback–two typical paths

If you are an experienced innovator, you take some time to really listen to what your team is sharing with you.  You explore what they are saying, you ask for details, and you draw out the essence of their ideas.  You realize that no matter how good your original idea may be, it’s always smart to treat feedback as a gift and to listen closely with the intention of being influenced.

If you are a relatively new innovator—and you are really attached to your idea—you may see feedback from your team in a completely different light.  Ego can often get in the way and now you become defensive when others suggest changes.  You dismiss their feedback as uninformed, uninspired, or just plain limiting. Instead of listening with the intent of being influenced, you listen just long enough to respond and remind everyone why the team should stay on course with your original concept.  You become so focused on leading change that you don’t notice the energy, enthusiasm and participation of team members falling off as you march to the finish line.

It’s not until you get there and turn around for a group high-five that you see their weary exasperation with your leadership style.  They congratulate you on your project.

A better way

Don’t let that happen to your next idea. Here are three ways to innovate and collaborate more effectively:

• Create space for other people to contribute. Take advantage of everything that people bring to a team.  Utilize their head and heart as well as their hands.
• Listen to feedback.  Explore and acknowledge what people are suggesting.  Listen in a special way—with the intent of being influenced.
• Recognize that no matter how good your idea is, it can always be made better through the input of others. As Ken Blanchard likes to say, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

True innovation requires passion and collaboration.  Create some space for others. It will make your ideas stronger, give you a better chance for success, and create needed buy-in along the way.

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PS: You can learn more about the 40 different thought leaders presenting in the October 10 Un-Leaderlike Moments Livecast here.  It’s a free online event hosted by Ken Blanchard.

Learn more.

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Now, let me be clear that the job of taking ice cream orders really is pretty easy. But imagine being new at the task of scooping rock-hard ice cream into cones without breaking them, or remembering the difference between a shake and a malt—let alone knowing where the heck to find all 31 flavors in the case. It took a bit of time to memorize all of this information.  Then imagine the store full of people on a hot day or after a sporting event, and you have mayhem!

One night during that learning period stands out in particular—not necessarily because of the reasons stated above, but more because of how my manager made me feel during one of those crazy, busy times.

A man came into the store with his daughter, a girl I had met before who went to a rival high school.  She and I said “hi” as I began to help her dad with his order.  He was a very direct sort of guy and started rambling off his order, getting frustrated if I asked him to repeat things along the way.  The last item on his list was a quart of French vanilla ice cream.

After making sure he had everything he needed, I went to the cash register to ring up his order.  Just as I totaled it up, I realized I had charged him for a quart of regular vanilla ice cream instead of French vanilla, which was more expensive.  I immediately called over the manager on duty to help me, since I didn’t know how to delete an order and start over.  As she came over, the man started yelling at me and calling me names because I had made a mistake and was taking too long.  As I was apologizing to him and doing my best not to cry (although my eyes were not cooperating), my manager did the most amazing thing.  She turned to the man and very politely told him that this was my first week on the job, I was still in training, and there is a lot to learn when first starting.  She went on to say it was a very innocent mistake and would be taken care of quickly, but there was no need for him to yell at me.

Even though her words didn’t stop my tears from coming, it was so reassuring to hear her stick up for me.  I actually felt sorry for his daughter—she was so embarrassed by his obnoxious behavior that she put her head down halfway through his order. As they were leaving, she just walked away with a glance at me as if to say, “I am so sorry!”

A lesson for leaders

What my manager did for me that night, and throughout the rest of my training period there, is a great lesson for all leaders.  Without realizing it then, I learned three valuable tips to help leaders build the skills, as well as the confidence, of an employee in training:

1.  Never reprimand a learner.

2.  Let the employee know it’s okay to make mistakes—that you “have their back.”

3.  Praise progress.

My manager showed me she believed in me when she stood up for me at a moment when I really needed it.  She knew the importance of both the external customer and the internal customer.  Her belief in me and willingness to work with me through that interaction with a difficult customer really strengthened our relationship and made me want to work harder for her.

Maybe the customer isn’t always right, but they still are your customer. My manager was a great role model that night for how to treat both external and internal customers with respect.

About the author:

Kathy Cuff is one of the principal authors—together  with Vicki Halsey—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their customer service focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

It was their once-yearly, twenty-five-percent-off-anything-if-you-donated-five-dollars-to-charity day, and by the time we got to the shoe part of mom’s outfit it was late in the day.  The place looked like it had rained shoes.  Shoes and stacks of shoeboxes were everywhere. A long line of customers waited outside the mysterious “back room” for a salesperson to come out and help them find the right size. Unfortunately, even after viewing this scene with the knowledge that getting someone to help would be a long shot, mom found the perfect shoes and wasn’t leaving until she got to try them on.

I found her a place to sit and dove into the fray.  First of all, even though there were at least seven people working in the department, no one could get anywhere near them. With chins down and arms piled high with boxes, each of them had a purposeful desire to avoid eye contact and keep moving.  Just when I thought, This is SOOO not happening, a young woman popped out from behind a huge pile of shoeboxes, looked me in the eye, gave me a megawatt smile, and said, “Just one minute and I’ll be right with you—it’s kind of a zoo today!”  She zipped off to deliver the boxes to an elderly woman sitting near my mom, taking a moment to open the first box of shoes and say to the customer, “These are a half size larger than you wanted, but they were the only pair and run small so I brought them to you, too.”

She turned and smiled at my mom, looked at the shoe she was holding, shared that those were her favorite shoes in the store, and asked what size she needed. She then said, “I’ll get them as soon as I can—we have only three people finding shoes in the back, two on the floor, and two at the cash register, so it might be a few minutes.” WOW!  What a way to inform and delight a customer!  She looked like she was having fun, delivered personal service, and proactively soothed a frustrated customer who had to wait.

How did she do this—and how can you do this with both internal and external customers to make them feel valued?  By putting the FUN into customer service:

F:  Focus your attention: Step one is to focus your attention. Look up and see who is there. Acknowledge their existence. Describe three things about them in your head so when you open your mouth to speak, you are all about THEM. Be sure to notice the small details.

U:  Understand their world: Step two is to understand their needs.  Do a little detective work. Check in—ask them what they are looking for.  If you are not exactly clear what they want, double-check by reflecting back what you heard or add value by suggesting something they may have not thought about.  Sometimes a person’s needs are very subtle and if you capture them accurately, you will have a customer for life.

N:  Nurture them: Step three is to nurture—to celebrate who they are, respond to what you now know they need, and let them know you care.  It is sharing—either overtly or covertly—that they have value and are important, and that you want to improve the quality of their life for the time you are together.

So put the FUN back into serving and create lasting memories! Now more than ever, people need reminders about why to show up wholeheartedly, believe in themselves, and enjoy their lives.  Take pride in the small things can you do to get big responses out of people. Make every moment magical by realizing that every day you have the power to create smiles and touch lives.

PS: And yes, my mom did get the shoes!

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

About the author:

Vicki Halsey is one of the principal authors—together with Kathy Cuff—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their other-focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

This might keep the line moving, but it is not going to do much in meeting a person’s need to be heard.

Could your listening skills use a brush-up? 

Here’s a three-step model designed to help managers slow down and focus on what people are sharing. The magic in this process is remembering to take the time to explore the issue raised by a direct report by asking clarifying questions, then acknowledging what is being said and the emotion behind it, before going on to the third step of responding.

Explore—ask open-ended questions such as “Can you tell me more about that?” and “How do you think that will go?” and “What does that really mean?”

Acknowledge—respond with comments such as “You must be feeling …” or “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re saying is ….”

Respond—now that you have a good understanding of the direct report’s point of view, you can carefully move forward with a possible response.

Use this EAR model to stop and take an extra minute to make sure you really understand the situation before responding.

You also need the right attitude

In addition to a good model, you also need the right attitude when it comes to listening.  Otherwise, you end up going through the motions but not having anything truly penetrate the noise in your own head.

To combat that, quiet yourself and focus.

Now, listen in a special way. Listen with an expectation of learning something you didn’t know and possibly being influenced by what you find out.  This is especially important if someone is sharing a new idea or feedback with you.  Remember to WAIT and ask yourself, “Why Am I Talking when I should be listening?”

Managers have to be open to being influenced and surprised by what they might hear. Sometimes it’s hard for managers to listen—especially if they have been doing the job for a long time—because they are sure that they already know what the direct report is going to say.

Remember: Listening means remaining silent. This will create a little space where you can explore and acknowledge before responding. Be sure to think about whether your thoughts are really needed, or whether a direct report just needs “air time” to process his or her thoughts. With a combination of the right attitude and the right skill set, you’ll still get to the answers, but you’ll do it in a way that allows you to make the best decisions and in a way that allows everyone to be heard.

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

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

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

What type of culture do you have?

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

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

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

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

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

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

People make the difference

One of the main reasons our experience was so enjoyable was the attitude of the many volunteers placed strategically around the Zoo to help customers. At every turn, there was a volunteer standing nearby with a big smile on their face and a willingness to help.  I was so impressed with the consistently positive attitude from every volunteer that I started watching the volunteers interact with other customers to see if they were that pleasant to all customers—and they were.

A leader’s role

Let’s be clear that this type of behavior doesn’t just happen—it takes leaders to create this positive experience by training and empowering volunteers to serve guests.  Wondering what you can learn from this zoo tale? Here are 3 quick tips to learn from our friends at the San Diego Zoo.

• Hire people with a positive attitude. You can tell that the San Diego Zoological Society works hard to find people who like interacting with others.  Are you matching people’s strengths to appropriate positions in your organization?
• Set people up for success. Remember, they ARE your organization to each customer they come in contact with. Make sure your people have the training and authority to serve and delight customers.
• Catch people doing things right.  A simple acknowledgement or a pat on the back goes a long way.

It’s all happening at the zoo

Next time you are visiting San Diego, be sure to visit the Zoo. And not just to see the animals.  Be sure to also check out the volunteers.  I guarantee you won’t be disappointed in either—and you might just learn something to take back to your organization!

About the author:

Kathy Cuff is one of the principal authors—together  with Vicki Halsey—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their customer service focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

Current research points to the benefit of employing people’s hearts as well as their hands. But to do that skillfully, managers and team leaders have to be prepared for all of the situations that occur when you truly engage people.  If you want everything that people can offer, you have to deal with everything that people will bring.

Eryn Kalish, a professional mediator and relationship expert believes that there are two keys to successfully negotiating the emotional workplace.  In an article for Blanchard’s Ignite! newsletter, Kalish identifies staying centered and open as the key skills.  But what she has been seeing more commonly is an unbalanced approach where managers and organizations go to extremes.

As she explains, “Organizations are either taking a ‘confront everything, address it, and do it now’ overly intense approach, where there is no time or space to reflect, or they are taking a ‘let’s wait and see’ tactic, in hopes that the situation resolves itself, but in reality not dealing with difficult issues until it’s way too late.”

The wait and see strategy works occasionally, according to Kalish, although most of the time things get worse. “Plus, when something is left unaddressed, there is a cumulative organizational effect where everyone starts shutting down, living in a place of fear and contraction.”

That is a huge loss, from Kalish’s perspective, because most issues in companies are resolvable.

“If issues are handled directly, clearly, and in a timely manner, something new can emerge. That’s what I see that is so exciting,” she shares. “When people normalize these types of conversations, it is amazing to see the transformations that can occur.”

Next steps for leaders

For leaders looking to get started in improving their abilities, Kalish recommends assessing where you are currently at.

“It all depends on whether you have the skills to conduct a sensitive conversation. If you have the skills, take a cue from Nike and ‘Just do it!’ See what happens. If you do not have the skills, then it is important to get additional coaching or training.

“In any case, openness and transparency is the key. Many times it helps to just be candid with staff and saying, ‘I think that we have been avoiding this and I’d like that to change’ will help.

To learn more about Kalish’s thoughts on dealing effectively with emotion in the workplace, check out Dealing effectively with emotion-filled work environments in the August issue of Ignite.  Also be sure to check out a free webinar Kalish is conducting on August 22, A Manager’s Guide to the Emotional Workplace: How to stay focused and balanced when dealing with sensitive issues.  It’s a free event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

A few seconds later, just as we feared, the deer jumped out into the road.  Paula shouted, “The deer!” and the next thing I knew we crashed into the animal (or he crashed into us), which damaged the front end of our rental car. Amazingly, we were not hurt. The same cannot be said for the poor deer.

As we were waiting for the tow truck, we discussed what happened. It was a classic case of not being specific in our communication. When I asked Paula if she saw the deer, I was referring to the one in the median in the middle of the highway. When she responded “Yes, I do,” she was referring to a second deer, which she saw ahead in the lane to our right.

A better, more specific form of communication would have been:

JOHN:       “Do you see the deer in the median?”

PAULA:     “No, but I see the one on the right side of the car about to jump into our lane.”

Too many times we are not specific in our communication, make assumptions, and don’t double-check for understanding.  While not as traumatic as hitting a deer, here are a few examples where not being specific enough can lead to hurt feelings, unnecessary conflict, and negative outcomes.

• “I need your report as soon as possible.”  What does that mean? The manager asking for the report might be expecting it within the hour. But the other person may already have a full plate and “as soon as possible” is sometime next week.
• “I would like you to be a better team player.” What does that look like? This manager may want the person to attend all team meetings, show up on time, actively participate in team discussions, and support team decisions. The person receiving this message may think that being a good team player means hanging out with the team after work.
• (To a teenager): “I would like you to go and clean your room.”  What is the definition of clean? To you, it means picking up clothes and putting them away, making the bed, vacuuming, and dusting. To the teenager, it may mean shoving everything under the bed and calling it good.

Being more specific

One simple way to be more specific is to add the phrase “…by that I mean…” to the end of the request.  For example:  “I would like you to go and clean your room, and by that I mean…” and then include the specific details.

The level of specificity needed is dependent on the person and the task, so think about both as you clarify the request or assignment.

As you become more specific in your communication, you will be amazed at the corresponding decrease in interpersonal conflict, increase in fulfillment of expectations, and positive outcomes for yourself—and for deer—everywhere.

About the author:

John Hester is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  You can read John’s posts on the second Thursday of every month.

Why are managers and supervisors so stingy with their recognition?  Especially when we all know how important it is to be appreciated. As William James, one of the pioneers of modern psychology said, “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”

My guess is that most managers don’t realize how little praise they give employees—or more importantly, what their praise-to-criticism ratio is.

John Gottman, a Harvard psychologist who focuses on marital relations, is famous for identifying that to maintain a healthy relationship, it is important to have a praise-criticism ratio of at least 5:1.  That means five positive mentions for every negative.

How are you doing with your level of praise in the workplace?  If you’re out of practice, here are a couple of tips.

Be timely.  Here’s one time when it is okay for a manager to “shoot from the hip.”  As soon as you notice someone doing something worth mentioning, take the next step and actually call them out for it.

Be authentic.  Don’t go overboard, just honestly express your feelings.  You are not trying to “do” something, or manipulate the person or experience.  Instead, you are just showing that you noticed and appreciate what they are doing.

Be frequent.  Don’t worry that all this praising will go to their head—or that they will feel like you are overdoing it.  Remember Ken Blanchard’s experience asking thousands of people his favorite question. No one has ever said they were praised too much and they just wish their boss would cut it out. That’s not to say that it won’t seem like a lot of praising in your mind.  But remember the 5:1 ratio necessary for a healthy, positive relationship.

Don’t be stingy

Everyone loves to be recognized and appreciated for who they are and the good work they do.  (Don’t you?)  As long as it is honest and from the heart (and free of any ulterior motives) you really can’t overdo it.

Try it this week—and as an added bonus, I think you’ll find that giving others praise, recognition, and appreciation will make you feel better too!

Of course there isn’t a “leadership” event in the Olympics, but if there were, I think there are four essential traits, qualities, or characteristics that leaders would need to master in order to have a shot at the gold.

1. Be a trust-builder – Leadership is about relationships, and all successful relationships have one thing in common: a foundation of trust. The ability to build high-trust relationships is the most important leadership competency in the 21^st century. Our fast paced, highly networked world requires leaders to build effective relationships across time zones, countries, cultures, organizations, and stakeholders. With trust a leader has a chance. Without it they’re doomed.
2. Have a high EQ – In the old days we use to say that someone had “good people skills,” meaning they had an ability to understand people and get along well with them. Today we’ve expanded and rebranded that concept under “emotional intelligence (EQ)” which means you have a high degree of self-awareness (your motivations, beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral patterns), are able to regulate those behaviors to meet the needs of the situation, and that you are also able to perceive and understand the behavioral needs and patterns of those you lead. That’s a tall order, but it’s a critical skill for leaders if they want to be successful in managing themselves and others.
3. Be a change agent – The only constant in today’s world is change. Technology has changed the speed at which we work, and gold medal winning leaders know they have to be the ones leading organizational change. Leaders can’t afford to be caught snoozing on the sidelines when it comes to change. They need to have their finger in the air to detect changing wind conditions and then be able to respond by getting their teams on course to meet the needs of the business.
4. Be other-focused – The most successful leaders have learned that it’s not about them; it’s about the people they lead. Gold medal leaders have discovered that they succeed when their people succeed, and in order for that to happen, leaders have to recruit and hire the right folks, train them, equip them with the proper resources, and then get out of their way. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when a command and control leadership style may be needed (you don’t form a committee to formulate recommendations on how to evacuate a burning building; you point people to the exits and tell them to get out!), but it means that people thrive on having a sense of autonomy in their work and a leader’s job is to make that happen.

If I were to equate leadership to an existing Olympic sport, I would have to say it’s like the marathon. The marathon requires stamina, endurance, dedication, and mental fortitude to finish the race, and you have to pace yourself over a great distance and time period, not just for brief intervals. Focusing on these four keys will help leaders run the marathon – go the distance – and have a good shot at winning the gold.

I’m sure you can think of many other keys that define a gold medal winner in Leadership. Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

This is one in a series of LeaderChat articles on the topic of trust by Randy Conley, Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies. For more insights on trust and leadership, visit the Leading with Trust blog or follow Randy on Twitter @RandyConley.

In a special presentation on Don’t Let Your Ego Hijack Your Career: 4 Warning Signs, David will be sharing some of the latest research on ego, personality, and its impact on leadership behavior.  You’ll learn four warnings signs of an overactive ego and three ways to keep your ego in check. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 500 people expected to participate.

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

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

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

It’s as easy as that!  David 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.

The best managers learn how to tailor their management style to the needs of their employees.  For example, if an employee is new to a task, a successful manager will use a highly directive style—clearly setting goals and deadlines.  If an employee is struggling with a task, the manager will use equal measures of direction and support.  If the employee is an expert at a task, a manager will use a delegating style on the current assignment and focus instead on coming up with new challenges and future growth projects.

Are your managers able to flex their style?

Research by The Ken Blanchard Companies shows that leadership flexibility is a rare skill. In looking at the percentage of managers who can successfully use a Directing, Coaching, Supporting, or Delegating style as needed, Blanchard has found that 54 percent of leaders typically use only one leadership style, 25 percent use two leadership styles, 20 percent use three leadership styles, and only 1 percent use all four leadership styles.

Recommendations for managers

For managers looking to add some flexibility into the way they lead, here are four ways to get started:

1. Create a written list of goals, and tasks for each direct report.
2. Schedule a one-on-one meeting to identify current development levels for each task.  What is the employee’s current level of competence and commitment?
3. Come to agreement on the leadership style required of the manager.  Does the direct report need direction, support, or a combination of the two?
4. Check back at least every 90 days to see how things are going and if any changes are needed.

Don’t be a “one size fits all” manager

Leading people effectively requires adjusting your style to meet the needs of the situation.  Learning to be flexible can be a challenge at first—especially if you have become accustomed to using a “one size fits all” approach.   However, with a little training and some practice, you can learn how to accurately diagnose and flex your style to meet the needs of the people who report to you.   And the best news is, even while you are learning, your people will notice the difference.  Get started today!

Other recent articles you may be interested in:

Most employees performing significantly below their potential—but does anyone care?

How important is good management? This McKinsey research might surprise you!

Figure 1: Output increases associated with improved management practices. From Management Practice & Productivity—Exhibit 4.

The results are detailed in the white paper, Management Practice & Productivity: Why they matter.  The research team scored companies on 18 topics in three broad areas: performance management; talent management, and shop floor operations.

Surprising disconnect in most companies

The researchers were surprised to find that even though good management practices are well known and the correlation is clear, the reality is that many firms are still poorly managed.

To examine possible causes of this disconnect, respondents were asked to assess the overall management performance of their firm on a scale of one to five.  The researchers found that part of the problem was an inflated opinion of current management practices. In most cases, respondents over-estimated how they scored on the objective management measures.  This situation applied in all regions and across all firms.

The researchers found this lack of self-awareness striking. It suggested that, “…the majority of firms are making no attempt to compare their own management behaviour with accepted practices or even with that of other firms in their sector. As a consequence, many organizations are probably missing out on an opportunity for significant improvement because they simply do not recognize that their own management practices are so poor.”

How would you score the management practices in your company?

Here are three well-known manager behaviors essential to good performance.  Consider the degree to which these practices are used in your own company. Remember that the key is not knowing about these practices, but actually using them.  How would you score your organization when it comes to actually implementing these performance management basics?

1. Performance Planning: Employees have written goals that clearly identify their key responsibilities, goals, and tasks.
2. Performance Coaching: Employees meet with their supervisors on at least a twice per month basis to discuss progress, identify roadblocks, and get the direction and support they need to succeed.
3. Performance Evaluation: There are no surprises when it comes to annual reviews. Managers and direct reports are “in-synch” because performance against goals is being measured on a regular basis instead of once a year.

Don’t let an indifferent attitude toward implementing good management practices keep you and your organization from performing at a high level.  Take action today.  Good management matters!

To read the entire report, check out Management Practice & Productivity: Why they matter

Sometimes it’s just the opposite.  The long term looks so confusing and unclear you decide that maybe it’s best to just focus on something you know and can control.

Both of these approaches are damaging long term for individuals and the organizations they work in.  When people become so task-oriented that they lose sight of the bigger picture the result is misaligned work, the creation of individual and departmental silos, and poor teamwork and collaboration.

This is especially true with long-time employees.  Business authors Scott and Ken Blanchard highlight this in their most recent leadership post for Fast Company.  As they explain, “Leaders and organizations generally do a good job of clarifying goals as they are getting new people up to speed. With long-time employees, however, leaders often assume that the employee instinctively knows what’s important. As a result, leaders generally don’t spend the same amount of time and energy communicating clear objectives to seasoned employees that they do with new hires.”

The result?  A high level of misalignment in most organizations.

“We did a study a number of years ago with a large petroleum company in North America that shows how rarely this clarity occurs. We asked more than 2,000 employees and their managers to share their goal expectations with us. To begin, we asked the employees to rank the top five things they felt they were responsible for. Then we asked the managers to list and prioritize the five things they were actually holding each of their direct reports accountable for. We saw only a 19% agreement across the population of 2,000 people!”

Is misalignment holding you back?  Here are three strategies for creating more alignment in your organization:

1. Make sure clear agreements are in place. All good performance starts with clear goals.  It’s a process of creating clarity about why we’re here, what we’re doing, and how we’re going to work together.
2. Make sure everyone’s eyes stay on the ball. This includes regular one-on-one conversations with direct reports that include feedback and evaluation of how each person is doing against established targets.
3. Catch people doing things right. Help people notice and experience the incremental successes they are having. It’s easy to slip back into old habits.  Provide clarity and encouragement on a regular basis.

Don’t let a short term focus keep you—or your organization—from long-term success.  Take a minute this week to lift your head, look around and check for clarity and alignment.  Also, to learn more about the impact that misalignment can have on performance, be sure to check out Scott and Ken Blanchard’s post at Fast Company, If Your Employees Are Squabbling, Your Company’s Probably Standing Still.

In a special presentation on Leading from Any Chair in the Organization, Bob will be sharing three actionable steps on creating a culture where everyone feels a sense of ownership, empowerment, and ability to make a difference.  The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 500 people expected to participate.

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

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

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

It’s as easy as that!  Bob 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.

He shares that fact and some of the causes as a contributing author in Performance Management: Putting Research into Action. Using the results of a Metrus Group survey he identifies six gaps that get in the way of organizational alignment. While each factor on its own isn’t enough of a problem to explain the overall poor alignment figure, Schiemann believes that it is the cumulative effect of each gap that explains the overall misalignment.

How would you score?

Take a look at some of the key alignment factors that Schiemann identifies below.  As you look at the numbers from other companies, ask yourself, “How many of these alignment factors could I cumulatively answer “yes” to on behalf of my company?”

From Performance Management: Putting Research into Action (2009) page 53, Figure 2.2 “Why Strategies and Behavior Disconnect: Percentage of Rater Agreement.” The percentages represent the cumulative agreement of raters for each element and for the ones above that element.

Strategies for closing the gap

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

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

All good performance begins with clear goals

No organization can perform at its best with only 14% of its people rowing in the same direction.  Take some time this week to check in with your people.  Are their key goals and work objectives in line with the overall strategy of your organization?  Do they see how their work fits in and do they have the tools, resources, and authority to get the job done?

Take the time to set (or reset) a clear direction today.  It can save a lot of time, work,  and wasted effort down the road.

My first realization that this was not a “business as usual” situation was encountering Troy at the front desk.  He immediately welcomed me to the Hyatt, shared his name, and told me to remember it in case I needed anything while I was visiting.

While checking me in, he asked the purpose of my visit to Denver and when I said it was to speak at ASTD, he said, “Then we must get you a quiet room.”  He listened to a special additional request I had and immediately took care of getting my friend a room a few doors away from mine which made my trip incredibly meaningful.  In addition, he made sure that I knew where I was going, had instructions for the elevator  (it required a room key to access the floor I was on—did he know how many times I have exhaustedly stood in the elevator waiting for it to go to my floor and after five minutes  or so realizing it hadn’t moved?)  Lastly, he asked if I needed a wake-up call (I said I would call down later) and said he would take care of my friend when she was due to arrive in an hour.

Just the start of a Legendary Service experience

Troy was just the start of an amazing visit to the Hyatt.  Here are a few other highlights.

When I called for a wake-up call, the lovely person on the line asked me if I would like to order breakfast, schedule a massage, or if she could help me in any way.  WOW—instead of feeling a bit like a pain for asking for help, I was treated like royalty.  I left a note for the housekeeper to leave a few extra decaffeinated green tea bags and she had them arranged in a cup like a flower for me when I got back to my room.

My wake-up call the following morning was a gentle woman who shared it was time to rise and shine and the weather was 57 degrees and she was sure I was going to have a wonderful day.  Within a few minutes, Bob, a young, friendly in-room dining staff member brought me my breakfast and inquired about my day.  He carefully set up the tray and inquired if there was anything else I might need.  He had a vibrant personality that started my day out with hope.

My last interaction was leaving my suitcase with the bellman downstairs.  He exclaimed, “What?? You have to go so soon? We will miss you but we’ll take good care of your bag until you come back later for it.” To my amazement, he even remembered which bag was mine when I came back to retrieve it!

A clear sign of great leadership

Being next door to the convention center, this hotel is probably always packed with people, which could cause many employees to become tired and frustrated.  Instead, they demonstrated an ownership and pride as they served each and every customer at the highest level.  They were personable, friendly, interested, and did things for me that I could have done for myself, but gladly, let someone else do.

To me, this is a sign of excellent leadership at the top of the organization in training employees how to treat their customer and make them feel welcomed.  Great leaders recognize the importance of getting all employees trained on the company’s standards of what excellent service is and then (hopefully) praising the employees’ great efforts!

I know that I felt loved and cared for during my stay at this hotel, and would gladly stay there again and recommend it to others.  That is a sign of Legendary Service—when the service is so good, that your customers are doing the selling for you!

About the author:

Vicki Halsey is one of the principal authors—together with Kathy Cuff—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their other-focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

But most leaders don’t know how to create that environment, explains Bob Glaser, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. “Many leaders would prefer to deal with what they know instead of taking a risk with what they don’t know. As a result, leaders don’t think outside the box to look at other options. They know things are not where they need to be, but they are not able or willing to deal with it, or move in a new direction.”

The result is sub-optimized performance, says Glaser. “If you don’t have engaged employees, then they are not really going to take care of customers….they just do what they need to do, day to day, and not much more.”

“It’s normal behavior during economic downturns,” shares Glaser. “But it causes people to focus more on protecting their turf as opposed to looking for innovative new ways to contribute to the organization. It’s a self-serving, ‘circle the wagons’ type of attitude that is counterproductive to the organization.”

Breaking the cycle

While you may not be able to influence the organization as a whole at first, most managers have a sphere of influence where they can make decisions and where they can impact results and outcomes. Inside of this team, group, or department, managers can change the environment that will allow employees to be more engaged. For leaders up to that challenge, Glaser recommends a three-step approach.

1. Create a micro-vision. Leaders need to have a vision of what they want their team, their department, or their group to look like when they are performing at a high level of excellence. Focus on both results and the behaviors that will drive the results.

2. Get everyone involved. Next, involve people in shaping that vision for the department, group, or team. When it’s done right, it’s not just the leader’s vision, but it is the collective vision of where the group wants to go. Work together to create solutions where everyone feels that they can contribute, that they can make a difference, and that they are owners of at least that part of the organization.

3. Reward and recognize desired behaviors. Everyone is operating under a huge scarcity mentality. That takes its toll. People are stressed, working hard, and they’re trying to do the right thing, but their efforts just seem to maintain the status quo. Without explicit rewards and recognition to move in a new direction, it’s not going to happen. Be sure that you explicitly define expected behaviors and then measure alignment with the expectations.

Are your people growing—or just trying to survive and get by?

Ready to start growing again?  Begin by putting fear on the back burner and focus instead on moving in a positive direction encourages Glaser.  “Rally people around an organizational vision and show them how they contribute to the vital work the company is involved in.

“When everyone understands how they contribute and how their work makes the organization better, when leaders can put their own self-interest aside and focus on the needs of others, it can have great impact on morale, engagement, and results.”

You can read more of Glaser’s thoughts in this month’s main article of The Blanchard Companies’ Ignite newsletter.  Also check out a free webinar that Glaser is conducting on May 23, Leading from Any Chair in the Organization, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies

Saying “yes” and sometimes “no” to customers

Christina is 100% about the student athletes—her customers—and ensuring that they are getting the best care and attention needed. And part of that is sometimes saying what the customer DOESN’T want to hear—“You are not ready to play yet.” You see, taking care of customers is knowing when to say “yes” and when to say “no” because, in this case, it is about getting the athlete better and keeping them healthy.

Although she is known for playing it safe vs. taking risks—which can frustrate players, coaches, and even parents at times—her code of ethics and responsibility always wins people over in the long run. Many a time has a coach, parent and player thanked her for her dedication and thoroughness after the fact.

Working in the best interests of the customer

Christina never loses sight of who her customers are—the student athletes—and does whatever it takes to make sure that they feel cared for. In fact, she often calls a parent or student over the weekends, as well as check in with doctors to see how her patients are doing! In return, the sign of her customer loyalty is displayed by the number of athletes that show up in her office to eat their lunch and chat. They know they are always welcome there and feel comfortable just hanging out.

As a parent of two student athletes over the years at this high school, I am so grateful to have her as our athletic trainer and thank her for her professionalism and servant heart. And I know from having two sons that have been in her care, that her “customers” appreciate her as well!

About the author:

Kathy Cuff is one of the principal authors—together  with Vicki Halsey—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their customer service focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

In my mind, that is the ultimate service one can give—dedicating one’s life to serve and defend others.  And behind every serviceman or servicewoman is (hopefully) a strong servant leader who is guiding them.

I recently attended a good friend’s change of command from the position he has held for the last three years as Command of the Tactical Training Group, Pacific in the Unites States Navy.  I had never been to something like this before and thought it would be fun to see what it was all about!  I will tell you, it was an honor to attend this event, not only because I was so proud of my friend and his accomplishments, but also to be reminded of the sacrifices that all of the men and woman who volunteer to serve their country make for the sake of others.

My friend, Captain John S. Mitchell, III, held numerous leadership positions during his Navy career, most involving high level operations that required strong leadership to ensure the safety of his team. Although his resume impressed me very much, what inspired me to write this article about him was what his colleagues, peers, and his “manager” had to say about him.  One of his colleagues said that Mitchell’s biggest accomplishment was building a strong team. He said that, “Captain Mitchell never had an us vs. them mentality—it was always WE.”

I couldn’t help but compare this to leaders in organizations around the world, and wonder if they truly understand how important it is to create a strong team and to get team members to feel like we are all in this together.  It is pretty clear to understand the importance of teamwork when lives are in danger, but what about in our daily interactions with our own teams?  Would your team say those same things about YOU and YOUR leadership?

Achievement and humility

What was also very telling to me, after all of the accolades my friend received from his peers and leader, was how humble he was about his accomplishments.  He made a point of passing the credit on to his co-workers, team members, and leaders that helped make his job “easy” and made him “look good.” Mitchell said, “I was just doing my job.”

Humility and praise for others—great qualities of a leader who believe their job is to serve their team so that the team is able to do their jobs better.  How I wish that leaders in organizations understood the importance of their role as a leader and their ability to make or break someone’s self esteem, confidence and even career.

I left reminded that there are so many lessons we can learn from the military service and this day was no exception.   I left the event feeling very proud of men and women in uniform, and the work that they do.  I was also proud of my friend who so modestly impacted the lives of so many in a very positive way.  He made me want to be a better leader…how about you?

About the author:

Kathy Cuff is one of the principal authors—together  with Vicki Halsey—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their customer service focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

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.

“For example, if my dominant temperament craves variety, action, and a freedom to act without hindrance, I may devalue and see as obstacles people who are peacekeepers and more team focused, collaborative, and harmonious.

“While I may be very comfortable with change, and open to it, and even drive it most of the time, there are other temperaments that come from a place that is more cautious and wary of change. There is nothing wrong with either disposition—they are just different. Still, it’s very easy for someone who is more ‘change able’ to judge others who are not as ready. Conversely, it is very easy for someone who is more careful and guarded to turn around and judge someone who likes change as being less than rigorous in their thinking and not very respectful of achievements in the past.”

Dealing with your shadow

This is especially true when you are working with someone who is least like you. Blanchard refers to this as your “shadow” temperament.

“This is often experienced as an initial reflexive allergic reaction to someone, but you can’t put your finger on why,” explains Blanchard. “Often, the culprit is that the person’s dominant temperament is your shadow. That’s an incredibly important and helpful realization. Now you can manage your feelings. It’s also helpful when you notice that someone’s having an allergic reaction to you for no apparent reason. You can explore that you might possibly be their shadow.”

Understand yourself to better understand others

Recognizing the way you are helps you to understand how you are different from other people. Using this as a starting point, you can begin to modulate your communication style to be more effective with people who are different from yourself. It also keeps you from defaulting to a lazy, “Well this is the way I am, I can’t change,” attitude.

Blanchard’s advice for better work relationships?

• Job one is to understand yourself as best you can.
• Next, empathize and understand that people come from diverse perspectives.
• Finally, be able to engage in strategies that can foster better communication between people who may have profound differences in the way they see the world.

To read more about what Blanchard has to say about temperament and personality at work, check out the full text of Understanding Others Begins with Understanding Yourself.  Also see the information about a free webinar Blanchard is conducting on March 28, Temperament at Work: Understanding yourself and others.

Instead of telling you everything they knew about creating an energizing work environment, you’d be surprised by how many questions they would ask instead. There are a couple of key reasons for this and some best practices for anyone looking to help others improve.

Don’t assume you “know.” It’s easy, especially when you are an expert, to only half-hear what others are saying on a subject you’ve studied.   Your brain’s ability to match up what you are hearing and connecting it with past information can get in the way of really listening.  Experts have the hardest time hearing things and seeing them with fresh eyes.  It’s a condition called educated incompetence and you have to be on your guard and listen especially close or you’ll miss things while you’re processing and making connections.

Find out “why.”  Make sure that you have a complete understanding of what people are telling you.  Do you understand the nuances of what they are saying and why they feel the way they do?  Is there any part of their thinking that you still have questions about?  Be sure to ask.

Listen with the intent of being influenced.  This can be the biggest challenge for an accomplished consultant.  So much value is placed on the ability to assess a situation quickly and figure out what’s wrong.  This is a very useful skill in many situations but not so good when you are trying to understand someone else’s experience.  Instead of driving for closure, look for possibilities.  How does their position make sense?  Under what conditions could their recommendation work?

A case in point

If you keep yourself open, you might be surprised at what you learn.  Early in his career, Ken Blanchard did some consulting work with a manufacturing company that was having a problem with employee retention.  Every summer, employee turnover would spike and cause a major upheaval as the company struggled to find qualified people to replace those who were leaving.  Blanchard was brought in to get to the bottom of the problem.

After meeting with the executives, Blanchard asked if he could tour the plant.  His intention was to discuss the problem with people on the shop floor to see what was happening.

The executives were confused.  “Why do you want to talk to them—they’re the ones that are leaving.  Besides, we told you what the problem was.”

Blanchard insisted on touring the facility just to double-check some of the assumptions.  He conducted several interviews and started to hear the same thing over and over again.

• “It’s too hot in here during the summer.”
• “The heat is just unbearable.”
• “The air conditioning is useless.”

The biggest culprit causing turnover in this plant was the physical working conditions.  Employees on the floor knew it, but management didn’t have a clue.

Do you really know what’s going on with your people?  Take a second to double-check this week.  It never hurts to ask a few questions.  You might be surprised at what you find out.

I once took my sons to a large, soon-to-be-out-of-business, toy store where we planned to quickly zoom through and get birthday gifts on our way to a party.  We grabbed tons of things from a “50 percent off” table.  (I thought we could stock the gift cupboard!)  But when we checked out, the total was much higher than I expected.

When I looked a bit shocked, the cashier said, “I’ll bet you thought all those items were 50 percent off.”

“Yes,” I said, “because they were all on the ‘50 percent off’ table.”

Then she said, “I don’t know why they keep doing that, but they keep putting things that are not 50 percent off on that table.”  I then asked if she could please take out the things that were not half price and leave in only the ones that were.  (If she had been able to do that, the situation might have been salvaged.)

But with an eye roll and a sigh, she said, “OK, but I will have to call the manager.  And if you look over there, that is the line for her.” She pointed to a line of customers several feet away.

Needless to say, we were late to the party. The organization’s stupid policy of not letting cashiers take out items on their own authority caused them to lose a customer. (And because that person is a keynote speaker, has now told this story to thousands of people.)

Revisit policies that aren’t serving you, or your customers

Many organizations have policies and procedures in place that should be revisited in case the policies are outdated, frustrating to employees, or are alienating customers.  What if the store I visited had held a team meeting occasionally where people were asked, “What stupid policies keep us from delivering a legendary service experience that creates raving fans?”

One of my favorite clients, Avnet, a Phoenix-based technology solutions company, has exactly these types of meetings and goes a step further by setting up “action learning” teams to fix problems and find the solutions.  All around the Avnet campus of buildings there are pictures of people who have solved real problems by using action learning.  These people have:

1. Focused on the problem and rallied a small team.
2. Asked, and then researched:  What do we need to get smart at to solve this problem? (Rather than just trying to solve the problem immediately.)
3. Shared their research with each other. (With everyone getting smarter.)
4. Used their new knowledge to solve the problem.
5. Documented their solution and shared it with the organization—including information about money saved or generated due to their brilliance.

Do you have stupid policies at work that are holding people back?

Ask people what stupid policies might be keeping them from serving at the highest level.  Remember, it is the last impression, not the first, that remains the strongest in the memory of customers.  Be sure that a stupid policy isn’t keeping one of your people from creating that lasting impression of competence, care, and accuracy.

About the author:

Vicki Halsey is one of the principal authors—together  with Kathy Cuff—of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their customer service focused posts appear on the first and third Thursday of each month.

__________________________________________

PS: What stupid policies drive you nuts as a customer?  Share some you’ve seen in the comments section below.

Wow—now is your chance to be the one who CAREs about service!  Here are three places to start being the one who leads the charge so everyone in the organization has a customer service mindset:

1. Declare “legendary customer service” as an imperative. Put it out there. Say, “We want to be #1 in our space for delivering Legendary Customer Service.” Show any metrics you currently have and set new targets /metrics for success by showing what a good job would look like.  Explain the business imperative for service and have a kick-off meeting where senior leaders model the service they want others to emulate—greeting people at the door, shaking hands, valuing them for all they do, etc.  In this meeting, actively involve people in activities, get them fired up about the initiative, and have them challenge each other to rally to serve customers and contribute to the vitality of the organization.
2. Establish a service champion team who will go out and walk in the customer’s shoes.  Do some action learning.   Map the flow of customers and research positives and negatives by asking customers, employees, suppliers, and anyone who is in the service chain for their thoughts on what is working and what could be improved. Put them on the agenda at all company meetings to share their findings and use time to brainstorm options, set goals, create first steps, and assign roles.
3. Immediately showcase individual employee customer success stories and create images for everyone of the optimal service you are looking for. Remember that the brain stores in images and not words, so to create momentum, be sure to highlight ideal service successes and let people see their outstanding peers in action.  Show examples of customers singing praises to demonstrate the impact of great service. Share any improvements such as fewer complaints, improved referrals, or more repeat business.

As a leader, it’s important that you demonstrate a service mindset and show others how to accomplish it.  By following these three steps, you can get your organization off to a good start on a path that will lead to better performance.

“Creating an environment where goals are clear, where success can be seen, and where learning is encouraged will help employees engage customers with a true sense of meaning.”               

– Garry Ridge, President and CEO, WD-40 Company

1. Either-Or thinking

Executives are asked to make decisions—and they get more difficult the higher up you are.  People or profits?  Centralized or decentralized?  Frontline decision-making or command and control?  Leaders will often have to choose from among opposing viewpoints and the people supporting those viewpoints will be expecting and asking you to endorse either Plan A or Plan B.

Always consider a Plan C first.  While opposing camps argue for why their plan will work while the other point of view won’t, see if you can find a solution that incorporates the best of both proposals while minimizing the downsides.

For example, should we empower our frontline people to make decisions? Yes.  Is there the possibility that they will make mistakes if we do?  Yes.  Does that mean we have to choose between all decisions being made at the frontline, or all decisions being made at headquarters?  No.  There is a better decision that allows frontline decision-making and maintains accuracy and consistency.  Find it.

2. Confusing decision-making with taking action

As a leader, it is easy to think that your job is primarily to make decisions.  Decision-making is only the first step.  The purpose of leadership is to take action and move.  If five frogs are sitting on a log and one decides to jump, how many frogs are still sitting on the log?  The answer is five until the decision to jump is actually acted upon.  Don’t confuse decision-making for taking action.  Take action!

3. Making announcements with little follow-through

If good decision-making is hard—taking action is even more difficult.  The biggest trap for leaders is focusing too much time on getting things started and too little time on following through to achieve results.  Legendary former chairman of Herman Miller, Max De Pree once likened leadership to being a third-grade teacher when he said that it oftens means repeating things over, and over, and over again until people get it right, right, right.  As a leader you need to keep the vision alive—even after the newness wears off.  You also have to provide people with the tools and resources they need to get the job done.  Remember that there is a strategic and a tactical side to leadership.  To be effective, you have to be good at both.

Resources to help you get started

There are a lot of great resources available to help leaders get started or stay focused on making decisions and taking action.  Here are three that focus specifically on each of the points above.

• To help combat either-or thinking, check out Polarity Management by Barry Johnson.  It details a step-by-step process for finding the best solution when faced with seemingly opposite choices.
• Who Killed Change?  A great book which identifies the “usual suspects” that kill good ideas in companies and keeps decisions from turning into action.
• Helping People Win at Work  Identifies a clear, 3-step process for setting goals, providing resources, and following up effectively.

Make 2012 your best year ever.  Exercise your decision-making power.  Strive for the best solutions, take action, and follow-up.  You’ll be surprised at what you can achieve when you do!

A big part of it is the memory your business has created in the minds of your customers.  Were you easy to do business with in all of the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping?  Were your employees friendly and inviting and patient with the customer?  Did you welcome returns and exchanges and use that time to chat about people’s best memories of the holidays? It is not too late!

I worked for many years with a number of ski resorts in Colorado and the biggest message I needed to impress upon the employees was that by working in  a seasonal business, there was only a small window to make a great impression on their guests so that they would remember their positive experience and want to come back again next season.  The same is true for all companies and businesses.  Even during your busiest times, that’s when your customers are watching for, and expecting, great customer service.

I have read countless of comments on my Facebook from friends sharing their frustrations of horrible customer service they received over the holidays.  They were mad and frustrated and couldn’t wait to post it on Facebook for the world to read!  Research shows that people don’t make buying decisions anymore based on only their experiences.  They  make those decisions on friends’ and family members’ experiences, and now with the help of social media, based on thousands of strangers’ experiences as well!  That one bad service story spreads like wildfire and can ruin your reputation very quickly.

So what do you do as a business owner, manager, or even as an employee of a company to start a legendary story of service?  Remember that customer service is ALWAYS important and should never be discounted like your prices! Make each interaction with a customer so memorable, that the product becomes the by-product.  Remember that great service with external customers starts with great service to your employees or internal customers. Praise employees when you catch them giving great service, and  constantly keep “serving others” front of mind.  If you do this and stay focused on serving people, your customers will reward you with their devotion and loyalty.

This guest post by Kathy Cuff is the latest in a series looking at exceeding customer satisfaction and loyalty.  Kathy, together with Vicki Halsey, are the principal authors of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  Their posts will appear on the first and third Thursday of each month. 

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.

But that is not why I really shop there.  What stands out for me and why I love to shop at this store has to do with the people that work there.  Sure, the products got me in the door originally, but when I started shopping there and interacting with the employees that work there, I quickly realized this store was different than many other stores because of the way I felt when I was in the store.

The moment you walk in the door, you are greeted (in a sincere way, not the phony tone you so often hear) and asked if you need help locating anything.  There is always somebody nearby to ask a question, say hello to me, or asking how your day is going.  I feel welcomed, like when you go to a friend’s house.

I recently went to this store to have a key made for my car. Now, there are numerous places to have a key made these days, so I had lots of options to choose from.  Again, I chose to go to Ace because I like the way I feel when I am in there, knowing that the employees really care about me and want to serve their customers.

And it isn’t just one or two employees—it is everyone in the store that works there.  As I was waiting for the guy to make my key, two different employees walked by me, aware I was waiting, but took a moment to just make small talk with me, letting me know that they noticed me, which made me feel good.  So often an employee walks right by you, not even acknowledging you standing there.  Ace management has obviously trained their employees to recognize customers and make sure each and every customer feels taken care of.

It’s about the feelings you create

So why does this store have such an impact on me?  It is not the products or services that they provide, since they aren’t really unique from other stores or businesses.  It is not the price of the items, since they are definitely competitive with others but not the cheapest deal in town.  It boils down to the people that work there and how I feel when I am in the store, whether purchasing something or not.

What’s the experience customers have when they interact with your people?

Your competition can replicate your products and services, but it’s your employees that really make or break that shopping experience.  Getting them to understand and believe that serving people is their job is the winning ticket.  When the customer feels like the employee cares about them, it will bring your customers back and also have them share their experience with others.

Editor’s Note: This guest post by Kathy Cuff is the first in a series looking at exceeding customer satisfaction and loyalty.  Kathy, together with Vicki Halsey, are the principal authors of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Legendary Service training program.  It will appear on the second Thursday of each month.

In the December issue of the Blanchard Companies Ignite newsletter, I discussed some of the initial findings from an analysis of the 200+ companies that shared their current and desired levels for customer satisfaction, employee retention, and employee productivity in their organizations.

That analysis found a 14-point customer satisfaction gap, a 16-point employee productivity gap, and a 45-point employee retention gap which translates into over $1 million dollars for the average organization.

The role of leadership

Strong leadership and management practices can close the gap in all three of these areas.  Academic research has established a strong correlation between employee satisfaction scores and subsequent customer satisfaction scores and in both cases these have been tied back to leadership practices. The bottom line is that leadership practices matter. Companies that have good leadership practices outperform companies that don’t.

Organizations that do not address leadership practices suffer a persistent drag on performance that keeps results down. When times are good, this drag on performance can be manageable, but when times are tough, it’s critically important that everyone perform at their best—especially in terms of creativity, innovation, and breakthrough thinking.

Join me for a webinar on December 7

On December 7, I am going to be presenting a more in-depth look at the Cost of Doing Nothing analysis and sharing some strategies for addressing it.  This is free webinar courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Over 500 people are registered and I hope you’ll join us also. You’ll see some information about the webinar below.

PS: If you would like to read more of the Blanchard article, Don’t Underestimate the High Cost of Poor Leadership, just click here.  (You’ll see my recommendation for a first step that all leaders can take right away.)

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The High Cost of Poor Leadership: The three performance gaps you have to address Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 9:00 a.m. Pacific, 12:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. UK and GMT

Poor leadership practices cost companies millions of dollars each year by negatively impacting employee retention, customer satisfaction, and overall employee productivity. In this Webinar, Blanchard Program Director David Witt helps you take a closer look at the effect that leadership has in each of these three areas and what you can do to improve performance.

You’ll learn that

• Less-than-optimal leadership practices cost the typical organization an amount equal to as much as 7% of their total annual sales
• At least 9% and possibly as much as 32% of an organization’s voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills
• Better leadership can generate a 3 to 4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and a corresponding 1.5% increase in revenue growth
• Most organizations are operating with a 5 to 10% productivity drag that better leadership practices could eliminate

Drawing on proprietary original research, you’ll learn which management techniques generate the best results and also look at some of the common cultural roadblocks that keep companies from implementing them. You’ll also learn how to overcome these obstacles and make the shift from knowing to doing.

Organizations need to make sure that they are getting the best out of their people by providing strong, consistent, and inspiring leadership. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to evaluate and improve leadership practices throughout your organization.

Register today! http://www.webex.com/webinars/The-High-Cost-of-Poor-Leadership-The-three-performance-gaps-you-have-to-address

This is a dilemma for most managers according to Scott Blanchard in a recent blog post for Fast Company magazine.  Blanchard explains that it is only natural to assign tasks to the most accomplished people on your team. The challenge is to balance a short-term need for immediate results with a long-term view for the growth and development of your people.

Finding the perfect balance

Drawing on some of the core concepts from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Blanchard explains that managers need to balance routine work that is easily accomplished with challenging new tasks that provide variety.

How can managers find the right balance?  Here are three strategies that Blanchard recommends:

• Become more aware of your goal-setting habits.  Have you optimized the challenge inherent in each person’s goals or tasks, or have you fallen into the habit of overusing and under-challenging your best people? Have you focused more on your own needs instead of theirs by giving them routine work you know they can accomplish successfully with little intervention on your part?
• Focus on both the long and short term.  Manage the urge to assign a task to a proven winner to ensure quick completion versus assigning the same task to someone who is brand new and may require some direction and support. But don’t go overboard. You don’t want to focus solely on employee development and compromise organizational effectiveness. Balance is the key.
• Create variety for yourself and others. According to Warren Bennis, the most effective managers are the ones who actively engage in clear periods of reflection as well as action. Balancing task variety is one of those projects that requires some discipline and awareness to think through.

Blanchard also reminds readers that most people become bored because they’re doing boring tasks—not because of a character flaw. Instead of moving away from a person you might see as a complainer, see that person instead as someone who is not really “in flow” and work with him or her to find out what the right mix could be. It’s a management basic that creates the long and short term impact that works best.

PS: To read more of Blanchard’s thinking on creating the right mix in your work environment, check out, Helping Your Employees Find Their “Flow” at Fast Company.

• Are you an Avoider, unsure about how to deal with feelings so you retreat from the situation? 
• Are you an Ice Man, and believe that feelings don’t really have a place in the work environment?
• Are you an Over Indulger and tend to get a little too wrapped up in emotional situations?

Going too far in any of these three directions can lead to problems at work.  The best approach is to find a balance.  Make sure that people are clear on performance expectations, but at the same time let them know that you are there to help and support them when necessary.

Looking for a way to do this regardless of your personality type?  Here’s some good advice from Ken Blanchard, best-selling author of more than 50 books on management and leadership.  When asked what he hopes people remember most from his body of work, Blanchard identifies one concept that goes back to his best-selling book, The One Minute Manager, written together with Spencer Johnson. 

“Catch people doing things right.”

Take the time to notice when someone who reports to you is doing something right.  This one simple gesture says volumes.  Imagine it for yourself.  How would your day be impacted if your boss stopped by and shared a kind word about something you’re working on? How would that make you feel, impact your morale, and subsequent performance? 

Now, imagine what a kind word from you would do for your direct reports.  No matter what your personality type is, a kind word is always appropriate and appreciated.  Try it today.  You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.

Why? 

Changes in technology, attitudes, and the nature of work eliminate the need for supervisors who only see their job as telling people what to do and then evaluating performance at an annual review.

If that is what’s happening in your organization, consider asking senior leadership to create a higher standard for managers.  Setting goals and conducting performance reviews are just the beginning of a middle manager’s job.  Their real value is in their ability to access resources, remove obstacles, and provide day-to-day coaching for the people who report to them. 

If your manager is not providing you with the support that you need to succeed, here are three things to ask for (and a proven way on how to ask for it.)

What to ask for

1. A clear sense of how your job impacts key departmental goals. Everyone needs to know that their work is meaningful and to have some clear alignment between what they do and what the organization is trying to accomplish.  If you can’t point to a key departmental objective and how your work is impacting it, you do not have the alignment that should be in place.
2. A well defined job that includes some routine and some challenging tasks. In a healthy work environment, you will typically have 3-5 goals that you need to accomplish.  If your job is structured properly, some of those tasks will be very achievable with your present skills while others are more of a stretch that you cannot accomplish with your current skill set and resources. This mix is an essential component of a satisfying job that also encourages career growth.
3. A clear agreement with your boss about where you are at and what you need to succeed.  For tasks where you are self sufficient you need an agreement with your boss to give you the autonomy you deserve to accomplish the task as you see fit.  No one likes being micromanaged on tasks they are capable of achieving on their own.  For tasks that are beyond your current skill level and immediate resources, you need an agreement for the direction and support that will help you access the budget, training, and expertise you need to get the job done.

How to ask for it

• Use “I need” statements.  One of the most powerful ways you can get the help you need to accomplish your work goals is to use “I need” statements.  For example, “In order to process customer orders more efficiently, I need a higher level of access into our customer database,” or “In order to create the type of social media campaign and metrics that we are talking about, I need some additional training.”  For best results, pair any “I need” statement with three possible solutions.  Very few bosses will turn down this type of request—especially when it is in pursuit of legitimate departmental goals.

A good middle manager or front line supervisor takes strategic directives and turns them into results.  Is that the role your immediate manager is playing?  If not, expect more.  Use “I need” statements to make sure that your job is aligned,  that you have a mix of routine and stretch goals, and that you have an immediate supervisor committed to helping you access the resources you need to succeed.

Good middle managers will never be obsolete.  That distinction is only reserved for managers who see their role as assigning tasks and evaluating others.  That truly is obsolete, not just for the next generation of employees, but for all employees.

One area where companies often run into trouble with this is sharing information about employee compensation. Most companies keep actual salaries confidential but that doesn’t mean that the process of determining salaries has to be confidential also, explains Blanchard.  “If you have a good reason for paying at the level you do, let people know. Keeping it a secret doesn’t help things. It just causes unnecessary discontent.”

A Case in Point

To illustrate his point, Blanchard shares a story about the experience of a CEO who serves on the company’s board of directors.  This CEO went through something just like this when an internal employee survey showed dissatisfaction about the fairness of pay in his company. This was really frustrating to the CEO, who believed that the company’s pay scales were well above industry averages.

“It was purely an openness issue,” explains Blanchard. “The company had been operating fairly for a long time but leadership had not taken the time to fully disclose the way they were making decisions. When they eventually did disclose the process, perceptions went up.”

For this company, the first step was to conduct a highly visible and transparent study with an outside firm to analyze the company’s whole compensation system.

“What it showed was that the company’s base pay levels were almost exactly at the 50th percentile for organizations of a similar size and with the same demographics. It also showed that the company had a generous bonus plan in place available to all employees. The bonus plan, together with the base pay, resulted in employees being compensated at the 75th percentile–well above average.

“Armed with this information, the leadership team went on an organization-wide campaign to talk about the procedure they used to determine pay scales and the rigor they used in applying it. As a result, they were able to change people’s perceptions of the level of compensation in the organization and its relative fairness. Because people had a greater understanding about the way pay scales were determined, they had a better capacity to understand and accept the results, even though they still wished—like all of us—that they were making a little more.”

How open is your company when it comes to sharing information about how decisions are reached? 

Are you more of an “open book” or a “closed book” culture?  Remember that your approach will have a definite impact on employee’s perceptions of fairness.

As Blanchard concludes, “When people aren’t able to point to a process that is known, published, and understandable, they start to make up their own stories. If there isn’t clarity about the way decisions are made, the stories people make up are typically a lot worse than reality.”

You can read Scott Blanchard’s entire column in Fast Company, The Just-Right Approach To Social Media And Transparency, And What It Says About Your Company and also check out Blanchard’s other thoughts on compensation at The Role Money Plays in Engaging Employees.  To read more about money’s role in creating an overall engaging work environment, download the new Blanchard white paper, Employee Work Passion: Connecting the Dots

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, coauthor of Coaching in Organizations and Leading at a Higher Level will be discussing three strategies for getting people off to a fast start in a new role in a special presentation of On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees.

The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 600 people expected to participate. Immediately after the webinar, Madeleine will be answering follow-up questions over at our sister blog, The Coaching Source for about 30 minutes.

We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

8/22/11 update: Recording of this event is now available online. To learn more, visit On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees

How are you doing with the double challenge of accomplishing your own work while still managing the work performance of others?  If you’re afraid you’re seeing a little seagull behavior in yourself lately, here are three ways to get back on track with a more helpful approach:

1. Make sure you know what your people are working on.  Manager’s shouldn’t be surprised at what their people are working on but this often happens because goals are unclear, or are not in alignment with overall department objectives.  Make sure that everyone in your group has a clear set of 3-5 objectives and that they are mapped to a specific organizational objective.
2. Identify everyone’s development level for their specific tasks. A good group of goals will include tasks that are familiar and routine to an employee plus one or two stretch goals that will require some growth on their part. Review each of your direct report’s goals.  Which tasks can they easily accomplish on their own—and which tasks will they need help with?  Their development level on each task will determine the proper amount of input you’ll need to provide.
3. Schedule regular meeting time.  A weekly check-in for 20-30 minutes can do wonders for putting out all of the small daily brush fires that occur before they turn into raging infernos.  A little bit of structured time to review how your people are doing in each of their key areas is a great way to get started.   Don’t turn this into a weekly evaluation though.  Let the employee guide the conversation.  The idea here is to create a safe space for employee’s to ask for help when needed.

Even when people work together in the same building, it is still surprising to see how little conversation can occur between managers and their direct reports.  With today’s increased workload, it is often easier to keep your head down and your door closed.  Don’t let that happen to you and your people.  Schedule some time to meet with your direct reports on a regular basis.  It can save a lot of screeching and wing-flapping later on.

In a recent article entitled Three Keys to Effective On-Boarding, Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, cofounder of Coaching Services at The Ken Blanchard Companies identifies three ways managers can help new employees (or existing ones in new roles) get off to a fast start.

• Explain the local culture. There are many subcultures at play in any organization, and it’s the manager’s responsibility to explain how this particular team operates. Whether managers share it formally or informally, the existing culture and values need to be made extremely clear to new people.
• Share expectations.  A second strategy that Homan-Blanchard recommends to speed up the individual on-boarding process is for managers to spell out very clearly what the expectations are for the new employee. This gives new people a sense of safety because they know exactly what they are dealing with and what they will be evaluated on.
• Map relationships. Finally, Homan-Blanchard recommends that managers help people understand who the people are inside and outside of the department that they can go to for help if they need it. As she explains, “Many times this won’t be obvious on the organizational chart so it is very beneficial for a manager to say, ‘It might look like these three people are the ones to go to for that type of question—but if you really want to get this done here’s the person you want to talk to.’”

With a little extra time at the beginning of the process, managers can help eliminate some of the “deer in the headlight” hesitancy and confusion that trips up a lot of people when they first start a new role.

To learn more about Homan-Blanchard’s advice for getting people off to a fast start in your organization read Three Keys to Effective On-Boarding.  Also check out a free webinar that Homan-Blanchard will be conducting on August 17, On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees

If learning is important to success in today’s complex business environment, why don’t more organizations take the time to train people in the skills they need more effectively?

It’s because most managers and leaders are not trained how to teach according to Dr. Vicki Halsey, Vice President of Applied Learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies.   Most leaders are more accustomed to telling instead of teaching—and are often disappointed when they check back to see how people are doing with applying new skills.

If you want your people to pick up new skills more quickly, Halsey recommends addressing six areas when rolling out a new initiative.  Have you got a new program that you are getting ready to launch?  See if you you’ve covered these six basics to maximize learning and application.

1. Energize learners.  Set the context for learning before anyone steps into the classroom.  What can people do to get up-to-speed on this subject?  What can they read, or who can they talk with, to become as excited about this topic as you are?
2. Navigating the content.  Is the presentation learner friendly? Have you put together a good structure that includes breaking the content down into bite-sized chunks that people can easily digest?  Or have you designed this as a lecture type presentation where you will be doing all the talking and it will be a challenge just getting through the content—let alone actually retaining anything?
3. Generate meaning.  Have you connected the dots so people see why learning this new content is important?  People need to see why they should take the time to invest in learning new skills.  Your job as a leader is to provide that meaning.
4. Apply the learning.  What does this new skill look like in the real world?  Have you included some opportunities to practice the real life application of this new skill—or is that something you are leaving up to individual learners to figure out for themselves?
5. Gauge and celebrate.  How will you measure if people are really doing something different with the content?  Don’t be vague on this point.  What is the business metric you are looking to impact?  ROI is something you need address at the beginning of a new initiative—not after the fact.
6. Extend the learning.  How will you keep the initiative alive beyond the initial rollout?  New habits take time to develop and a lot of support in the early days.  What is your follow-up plan?  How will you ensure that skills learned in the classroom are applied back on the job?

A 2010 Bersin report shows that organizations that successfully create strong learning cultures are more likely to be strong innovators in their markets, more likely to get to market before competitors, and more likely to be a market-share leader.

Learning new skills is an important necessity in today’s work environment.  Don’t leave it to chance in your organization.  Take a proactive approach to teaching people new skills.

As soon as they found out, the board would call Blanchard in to explain himself.  As Ken describes it, the exchange usually went something like this:

Ken: “I’m confused.”

The Board: “You act like it.”

Ken: “I thought we are supposed to teach these kids.”

The Board: “You are, but don’t give them the exam ahead of time.”

Ken would never listen and would actually spend the entire semester teaching the students the answers to the questions.  Ken’s belief was that his main job was to teach students the content they needed to learn, as opposed to worrying about evaluating them properly with the final exam.

Dr. Vicki Halsey, VP of Applied Learning for The Ken Blanchard Companies uses a similar approach when it comes to teaching. Instead of using tests to identify what people don’t know at the end of leadership training, she uses tests to help people claim and celebrate what they do know.  A recent example is work she did with pharmaceutical representatives who needed to learn a new skill in collecting information from doctors.  Halsey’s approach helped the learners to feel confident in what they knew and successful when they walked out the door and returned to their jobs.

How do you want people feeling when they finish a class?  Do you want people focusing on what they don’t know, or ready to put into practice what they do know? It’s a subtle difference that makes all the difference.

You can read more about Halsey’s unique approach to adult learning at Leaders Need to Be Teachers.  Also check out Halsey’s free July 20 webinar on 6 Keys to Creating Learning Experiences that Inspire and Engage courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

The problem, according to Dr. Vicki Halsey of The Ken Blanchard Companies is that leaders confuse telling with teaching.  In a recent article for the Blanchard Companies’ Ignite! newsletter, Halsey explains that, “If leaders want people to develop new behaviors, they have to become better teachers of what to do and how to do it.”

For leaders looking to get started, Halsey recommends three strategies:

1. Break Learning Down into Manageable Chunks

Leaders need to give people an opportunity to learn the new skills over time, using a variety of different modalities that go beyond a one-time exposure to the content.

2. Create Meaning to Embed Learning

Executives need to generate meaning for the new learning. They need to answer the question “Why is this important for me to learn?” Generating this meaning and connecting it to learning the new skill helps people retain the skill over the long term because now they can see the importance of the task.

3. Remember the 70/30 Rule

According to Halsey, “When people are getting ready for a presentation they focus 70 percent of their time on what they are going to say.” Halsey believes this time would be better spent thinking about how to create a learner-centered environment that helps people learn. As she explains, “Leaders need to shift their focus and spend only 30 percent of their time worrying about what they need to say and 70 percent on how to create the greatest transfer of learning to their participants.

According to Halsey, “The biggest thing is to teach, not tell. Very often leaders think that because they are telling people what they want them to do, people are turning around and doing it. We need to realize that teaching, not telling, is a discipline at which all leaders need to become effective—because the more you teach, the more people will learn and the more successful they will be.”

You can read more of Halsey’s advice to leaders at Leaders Need to Be Teachers.  Also check out Halsey’s free July 20 webinar on 6 Keys to Creating Learning Experiences that Inspire and Engage courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

As a leader, it’s important to make sure you’ve set your people up for success before you transfer responsibility and accountability. Here are some of Blanchard’s key points to make sure you’ve done your part.

Share what to do, with clear guidelines

A big part of being a manager is saying, “I’ve done what I can do, and now I need to turn it over to people so they can be accountable and responsible for their own performance.” The reality is that managers can’t watch their people all the time, so at some point their people are going to have to act on their manager’s behalf, consistent with the way that their manager wants them to act. This requires the manager to provide a clear picture of the desired outcome.

Make it a gradual process

Autonomy, when correctly implemented, is a gradual and appropriate empowering and loosening of the reins on people to enable them to take responsibility for what they are doing. For example, if you are a parent, you know that sooner or later your children are going to be out in the world, living and making decisions outside of your expressed views.

If parents don’t let their kids do anything independently and develop their own skills before they turn 18 and leave for college, then they’re asking for trouble. Parents, as well as managers, need to slowly loosen the leash and give more autonomy over time. Otherwise they’re going to see some real disasters because they haven’t built up a person’s capacity to be autonomous.

Employees aren’t children, of course, but this example provides some context that all of us can relate to.

There is a big difference between providing autonomy and abdicating management responsibility. If managers just let people loose without skills, abilities, and boundaries, then they are abdicating responsibility and setting people up to fail. Autonomy needs to be a slow and steady process. Your goal as a manager is to help people learn their job inside and out through thorough training, and then, as they demonstrate competency, give them the autonomy to be flexible. Autonomy without competence is really risky and dangerous, and lack of autonomy when someone is competent can be insulting and demotivating.

Look for the right time

The challenge for a manager, then, is to identify the point at which to turn the job over to the employee. This is the leap of faith when supervisors move from a coaching role to a more consultative role with their people. Parents, again, are familiar with this when they watch their kids drive away to college–they take a big gulp and hope that they’ve prepared their kids to take care of themselves when they get to the campus.

In my own case, I have been known to give people responsibility too soon–sending them out before they really have all the competence and skills necessary. Other people I know have a tendency to hang on too long–then they miss the opportunity to give people a chance to really spread their wings and succeed or fail on their own merit. When managers hang on too long, they can create either dependence, or a sense of frustration, anger, and resentment in employees because the employees feel they are being micromanaged. As a manager, you want to get it right as often as you can, but be aware of the possibility that you may be either too slow or too fast in turning people loose.

In matters that aren’t life and death I would recommend a bias toward turning people loose early. In more critical circumstances you may have to hang on for a more extended period of time, but eventually you still need to let them go off on their own.

To read more of Blanchard’s thoughts on empowering your employees, check out his complete post here at the Fast Company Leadership Experts blog.

Minding your A,B,C, and D’s—Ability, Believability, Connectedness, and Dependability

Trustbusters are behaviors that erode trust among direct reports and colleagues.  Some common examples are when we don’t demonstrate expertise in our jobs, and don’t achieve results which causes people to lose faith in our Ability.

We also “bust trust” when we break confidences, tell lies of convenience, or gossip about others.  This impacts our Believability.

Another trustbuster is when we don’t listen. It’s hard sometimes to pay attention when we’re in conversation with people. Your mind starts to wander, or you find yourself thinking about the next meeting.  When we don’t listen, or show interest in others, or recognize others, that erodes trust by eroding our Connection with people.

Finally, as leaders we sometimes bust trust when we don’t follow through on commitments by being disorganized or unreliable which undermines people’s perception of our Dependability.

 How can you go about rebuilding broken trust?

There are five key things that we can do to rebuild trust, says Conley. Conley calls them the 5 “A’s.”

1. “The first thing is that we need to Acknowledge that there’s been a breach of trust,” says Conley.  “It’s like they say in a twelve-step program, the first thing you have to do is acknowledge that you have a problem. You’ve got to acknowledge the situation exists.
2. “Second you have to Admit your part in the breach of trust. You have to own up to whatever you did that caused that loss of trust with that individual.”
3. “Third you have to Apologize for it—and if I were to add another key, I would say that you also have to make amends, so apologize and make amends for whatever you did to break the trust.”
4. “Fourth you have to Assess. And that means using the ABCD model to assess what you did and what were the core elements of trust that you broke and what can you do centered around those behaviors to help rebuild trust?”
5. “And then finally, you have to Agree on an action plan with the person that you broke trust with. You have to agree on what you’re going to do differently moving forward to help rebuild trust.”

Trust is a very delicate thing that takes a significant amount of time to build and can be broken in just an instant. But it is possible to repair and rebuild trust. But you have to address it immediately.  Don’t let a mistake in judgment turn into an indictment of character.

Conley likes to quote a Chinese proverb to help leaders understand trust and timing.  The proverb says that, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”  Don’t let trust issues fester in your organization or in your relationships.  Address them today.

To learn more about Conley’s thoughts on improving trust—including the one behavior that all leaders can address immediately—read The Leader’s Role in Building Trust.

Or listen to a recording of a free webinar that Conley conducted on June 15, Four Leadership Behaviors that Build or Destroy Trust.  (Over 800 people attended this free webinar courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies and Cisco WebEx.)

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.

When that happens, the net result is competing priorities, wasted effort and diminished engagement.  If that’s what you are experiencing, here are a couple of strategies to explore depending on your level in the organization.

Senior Leaders—as a senior leader, you should be in the best shape when it comes to alignment.  If you are feeling a little adrift, make sure that you know where your organization is going and what specific strategies have been put in place to get there.  Senior leaders play a key role in setting the overall vision for the company.  Without a bigger vision to serve, people will default to focusing on personal needs.  As a senior leader, make sure that people have something greater than themselves to align with.

Middle Managers—you’ve got the biggest challenge—but also the most experience—in dealing with multiple priorities. Keep one eye on senior management for new directions, while also keeping an eye on direct reports to make sure they know what is expected of them.  Your challenge here is to avoid falling into an either/or trap.  Who do you serve?  Both groups.  Ask questions of senior leaders to make sure you understand strategic directions clearly.  Encourage questions from direct reports to make sure they have the direction and support they need to bring those plans to life.

Frontline Contributors—you share some of the same challenges as middle managers wondering if you should focus on your boss’s agenda or meeting customer needs.  In the best organizations, these goals should be one and the same.  If they are not, don’t fall into the either/or trap yourself.  Find a way to serve both groups.  And if you find yourself feeling out of step, talk to your immediate manager about connecting the dots between your work and department initiatives.  You don’t want to find yourself spinning your wheels on low value work that doesn’t make a difference.

The bottom line

At all levels, people need (and want) to be a part of something bigger than themselves.  When the organization isn’t aligned, self-serving behavior starts to seem like a reasonable alternative to fill the gap.  Don’t let that happen in your organization. As a leader it is important to create a strong vision and show people how their role contributes. Nip any either-or thinking and remind people that it is possible to focus on customers, supervisors, and yourself at the same time.

When people can’t put their finger on other aspects of the work environment that are troubling them, they will often look to pay increases as a short term fix to make up for it. This impact never lasts very long and pretty soon you’re back to your same levels of dissatisfaction.

If you want to create a compensation plan that works for most people, be sure to address these needs identified by authors David Sirota, Louis Mischkind, and Michael Meltzer in their book The Enthusiastic Employee. People want—and expect:

• A decent wage that allows them to live the lifestyle they feel they deserve
• A fair return for the work they provide
• A signal from the organization that it values them

Just a little bit above the prevailing rate does the job 

The good news according to the authors is that people are generally reasonable when it comes to pay and do not expect compensation wildly beyond what others receive for comparable work. You only need to pay a little bit above the prevailing wage to create high levels of satisfaction with pay. A small premium above perceived prevailing rates will do wonders for attracting better candidates, keeping the good people you already have, and encouraging people to live up to their above average pay scales.

At all costs, what you want to avoid is the perception that your organization pays slightly below the prevailing rates. When that occurs, you are sending the wrong message to your employees. Now it looks like you are trying to obtain their services at a discount, and are putting your needs over theirs. Don’t be a cheapskate when it comes to compensation. People always have the ability to dial down their work performance to the level they feel is commensurate with the pay they are receiving. You don’t want below average performance. Don’t insult people with below average pay.

What if you are paying above average rates, but nobody thinks so?

First, remember that reality is in the mind of the perceiver. If you are paying slightly above prevailing rates and employees don’t perceive it that way, take a moment to see what you can do to help employees accurately understand the total value of their compensation package. Sometimes employees will compare base pay rates without taking into account the value of other compensation elements such as medical, dental, 401(k)s, etc. Help employees understand how your total compensation package measures up against other companies in your industry and in your area. Make sure that employees understand the total value of the package you are offering. Show people the numbers, and respectfully challenge the misconception that you are paying below industry averages.

Get compensation right and then move on

Finally, once you’ve made sure that you’re slightly above industry averages with your total compensation and that you’ve done a good job communicating it to employees, do everything you can to put the issue to bed and get on with other things. Money should not be the primary reason people come to work. It needs to be a foundation, but it shouldn’t be an incentive in most cases. Pay people fairly and then move on to some of the other items that make a motivating work environment. Remember that compensation is just one of the factors that people look into when evaluating a work environment. Don’t make it the sole focus.

In her new book, Brilliance by Design, Vicki Halsey explains that if organizations want participants to be as knowledgeable and excited about the content as the teacher, they need to shift the focus from the teacher to the participants.

In any good design 70 percent of the total learning event time needs to be the learners practicing new skills, working with them, and teaching others. Only 30 percent of the time should be devoted to the teacher teaching the skills to them.

That means that instructors need to focus less on what they are going to say and instead devote a full 70 percent of their time and energy on creating activities that embed learning.

As Halsey explains, “Active involvement with concepts—versus passive listening—enhances learning and application. The more active, rigorous practice the learner does with your content, the more automatic and natural it will be to use that content.”

To help presenters make the shift, Halsey suggests a six-step ENGAGE Model to replace the old “sit ’n’ get” model with “woo ’n’ do” so learners are actively drawn in and perform activities that reinforce the learning.

Energize learners by challenging thought patterns with pre-reading before session

Navigate content by presenting it in small chunks with interactive experiences  

Generate meaning by helping learners determine the significance of the content in their lives

Apply to the real world by helping learners put into practice what they’ve learned

Gauge and celebrate by creating ways to assess and celebrate what has been accomplished

Extend learning to action by following up and helping learners create action plans

Where is your training focused?  Is it on the material and your role, or is it on giving students a majority of the time to practice and engage the new skills?  Shift the focus for greater success and application.

To learn more about Halsey’s new book, visit her book page at Amazon.  To see Vicki in action with engaging content check out her recorded webinar on Managing and Developing People to Be Their Best: The three keys to becoming a smart, flexible, and successful leader

That is the advice that Herb Kelleher, legendary founder of Southwest Airlines, offers readers in the foreword of a new book, Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success that looks at the leadership practices that have made Southwest a benchmark for great management.

As Kelleher explains, “…an infusion of love is an essential, but oft overlooked, ingredient in any business organization that wants to be superlative for a long period of time, rather than just “successful” for a limited time.

“Most people are looking not only for monetary security but also for psychic satisfaction in their work. That satisfaction is provided in our personal lives by the love and affection of family and friends. Why shouldn’t a business simply be an enlargement of our circle of family and friends?”

A large part of Southwest’s success is the servant leader attitude of its top executives as well as leaders through all levels of the organization.  And a great example of that philosophy in action is Colleen Barrett, president emeritus and coauthor of the book. 

“For more than forty years,” says Kelleher, “in her relationships with the People of Southwest Airlines, Colleen Barrett has ensured that no grief goes unattended; that no joy goes unshared; that each achievement is celebrated; and that those requiring help receive it.”

The result has been a corporate culture where Southwest’s employees feel the love and in turn, share the love, with customers.  And customers have responded with Southwest generating the same types of legendary customer service stories in their industry that Nordstrom’s generates in retailing.

Where does love fit in your organizational culture?  Do your people feel that someone has their best interest at heart—or are they just another cog in the machine?  Try a little caring.  You might be surprised at the difference it makes!

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To learn more about how Southwest has made love a part of their operating system, download the first chapter of Lead with LUV here.  And if you know of an organization that exemplifies love in action when it comes to treating employees and customers right, be sure to let others know at Spread the LUV –a special blog site for success stories.

PS: On January 26, Colleen Barrett will be presenting a free webinar together with Ken Blanchard, her coauthor on Lead with LUV.  The event is free and over 2,000 people have already registered, but there is still room for others to attend.  To learn more visit http://www.webex.com/webinars/Lead-with-LUV-A-Different-Way-to-Create-Real-Success

A new white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies identifies key strategies for leading successfully in the new business reality. Here are four of my favorites to get you started on positioning your company for success in 2011.

• Change the organizational mindset. In many companies people have been focused on the short term for over two years. The emphasis has been on cutting costs, holding down expenses, and weathering the storm.  One thing that leaders can do now is share a vision for the road ahead, indicate that growth is a goal again, and let people know that they can try new things that have some risk involved.
• Give people behavioral examples. What does “try new things that have some risk involved” really mean? The best organizations define the values, attitudes, and practices they desire in clear behavioral terms. Make sure people are clear on what the desired behavior looks like and what they should be doing now. The more specific and granular the examples are, the better.
• Stay open to change. Constant adaptation is a key for thriving in the new business reality. As a leader, it’s important to be a role model when it comes to embracing new ways of thinking that can breathe new life into old practices and generate innovative new ideas.
• Involve everyone. Smart leaders look for good ideas everywhere. This means checking in with people who are informal leaders in the organization as well as the people who are in formal positions. By listening to everyone—including people with divergent points of view, you increase the odds that the organization will be more responsive, adaptive, and successful in the face of change.

Make 2011 your best year ever. To learn more ways to increase your organization’s ability to succeed in the coming year, be sure to check out the complete white paper, Thriving in the New Business Reality.

The result will be an excited group of executives leading a detached group of employees according to corporate visioning expert Jesse Stoner.  In a new article entitled Creating A Vision Statement That Works Stoner explains, “If you want the entire organization to be as excited about the vision as the senior leaders, you have to involve them, allow them to put their thumbprint on it, and have shared ownership. The people who create the vision understand it and own it because it is in their hearts and minds.”

According to Stoner, anytime a leader—or a group of leaders—develops a vision independently and then announces it to the organization, it almost always ends badly. Yet it happens more often than not because leaders think they are expected to have the answers and to set direction. For leaders looking to create a compelling vision, Stoner recommends using a collaborative, involving process that engages people in real dialogue about the vision and provides an opportunity to give feedback.

Some questions Stoner suggests leaders use include:

• What do you think about our vision?
• What is exciting about it to you?
• What would make it more exciting?
• What could we do differently going forward?

 “The best way to get people to buy into something is to give them an opportunity to participate in its creation,” says Stoner. “You will always end up with something better than if you did it yourself.”

Get everyone involved for best results

When people have an opportunity to share their hopes and dreams, are involved in the discussions shaping the vision, and are included in making decisions, they have a clearer understanding of the vision, are more deeply committed to it, and move quickly to implement it.

Don’t miss the opportunity to include everyone in the process. Remember, it’s not the words that will stick in people’s minds—it’s the experience.

•  Lack of a sufficient charter
•  Unsure of what requires team effort
•  Lack of mutual accountability
•  Lack of resources
•  Lack of effective and/or shared leadership
•  Lack of planning
•  Lack of management support
•  Inability to deal with conflict
•  Lack of focus on creativity and excellence
•  Lack of training

How do you avoid these pitfalls? Make sure that your next team identifies and monitors the group’s performance in seven key areas. To help you remember the seven characteristics of a high performing team, you can use the acronym PERFORM.

Purpose and values. Does the new team have a compelling vision, strong sense of purpose, and a common set of values?

Empowerment. Does the team have the authority to act and make decisions? Have clear boundaries been set?

Relationships and communication. Do team members feel they can take risks and share their thoughts, opinions, and feelings without fear?

Flexibility. Are team members adaptable to changing conditions—including both the outside environment and within the team itself?

Optimal productivity. Is there a commitment to high standards and quality? Do team members hold each other accountable and strive for continual improvement?

Recognition and appreciation. Do team members give and receive positive feedback and recognition that reinforces behavior, builds esteem, and enhances a feeling of value and accomplishment?

Morale. Are team members enthusiastic about their work, proud of their results, and feel pride in belonging to the team?

The Journey to High Performance

All teams are unique and complex living systems. High performance is a journey—a predictable progression from a collection of individuals to team members who begin to think in terms of “we” rather than “you” and “me.” Identify and monitor these seven characteristics to get the most out of your next team.