Dear Madeleine,

I manage a team of mostly young people, all of whom manage internal communications for a global manufacturing company. A few years ago the company went to an unlimited paid time off policy. I have read a lot about the effects of unlimited PTO, and note that the biggest risk is that people don’t take enough time off, whereas in the past they were required to take their PTO or risk losing it.

My general approach has been that if your work is done to the expected standard, taking PTO is fine. I guess it never occurred to me that anyone would take off more days than what I consider to be reasonable unless they had medical issues or were taking care of a family member. It also never occurred to me that my idea of reasonable is not necessarily what others may interpret as reasonable.

My problem is that I have one person who takes entirely too much time off. And it isn’t to deal with problems—she is off larking about with her friends. (Note: this is not my opinion; she shares openly.)

Her performance is excellent, so I can’t really make the case that she shouldn’t take PTO—except other team members are noticing and judging. She often is not available to discuss work assignments or to help others on the team when they need something from her.

I think she would be eminently promotable if it weren’t for the fact that she never seems to be around. How do I tell her that it just isn’t a good look? Her overuse of PTO is causing me, and others, to question her commitment to the job. Do you think that is fair?

Questioning Judgment

___________________________________________________

Dear Questioning Judgment,

Boy, isn’t this interesting? It highlights what happens when rules are open to interpretation and when we make assumptions.

My first thought is if Larking About can get her work done with plenty of time left over, she could be doing so much more if she buckled down and put some elbow grease into it. But I suspect that would be interpreted as old-school thinking. And we all know that the reward for excellent work is—more work.  This is how we have collectively created the hamster wheel we all perpetually bemoan. So my second thought is wow, Larking About might be on to something. My third thought, based on my experience that you never know what hard thing is coming at you, is that we should all save up as much goodwill as we can regarding PTO for when we really need it.

But seriously, as her manager, it is up to you to help LA understand the impact of her choices on her career, as well as the impression her choices are having on both her reputation and her options when it comes to optimal work assignments and advancement opportunities.

I imagine your employee handbook has some guidelines about how people should use “unlimited” paid time off. For example, my own company requires that all team members submit their time-off requests in advance to their manager for approval, collaborate with their team to ensure proper coverage, and limit their consecutive out-of-office days to no more than 15 at a time. It might be useful to find the handbook and see what is laid out in black and white that might support you when the time comes for a conversation.

Because that is where this is leading. A conversation. The first order of business is to find out what LA’s hopes and dreams are when it comes to her career. She may not think of her work as a career; she may simply think of it as a job. If that is the case, other than making sure she complies with whatever rules do exist, there may not be much you can do. LA may be just fine having a job and doing it well. No harm in that.

However, if LA does want a career, which would mean development projects and advancement, she needs to know how the intangibles—what I think of as “personal public relations”—are going to affect her future.

You can keep personal judgment out of it and simply share that perception is important and taking excessive PTO can create an impression of a lack of commitment to work. When it comes to advancement, it’s a fact that HR and leadership teams tend to favor those employees who exceed expectations over those who simply meet expectations. So if LA has ambitions to advance, she might consider taking on volunteer roles or more work for the team, which would limit her PTO and bring it in line with expectations. This, of course, would require you to define what you believe to be reasonable. I suspect what is reasonable in your mind is roughly the amount of vacation time that employees were afforded before you went to the new model. If your company does not provide guidelines, you might find some in this article: Paid Time Off Practices Around the World.

Do I think it is fair that LA’s behavior is causing others to question her commitment? It doesn’t matter what I think. That’s what is happening, fair or not. Perception is everything, and LA needs to understand that. Once she recognizes the impact of her choices (with your help), she can decide to change them. Or not. And she will reap the consequences of those choices.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I manage an operations department for the headquarters of a large media company. I have six direct reports and about 70 workers who report to them.

One of my direct reports recently left, and I was absolutely shocked at the things he told HR in his exit interview. He worked for me for three years, and in that time I thought we got along just fine. I regularly asked him for feedback. Other than a few requests for clarification on some tasks, I didn’t get any. He did a good job and his people seemed to like working with him.

He told HR that I had created a hostile work environment and that I was the worst kind of toxic leader he had ever worked for. They asked for examples, and he didn’t have much to offer—so I am none the wiser as to how he came to his conclusion.

I have regular one on ones with all of my people. Everyone knows what their goals are and we have a very open and transparent culture on my team (or so I thought). We don’t have big goals in my department, just regular tasks and fulfilling requirements for the physical plant. It is all very straightforward.

I am absolutely mystified by this feedback, and extremely upset. I have asked my HR partner to help me understand and figure out what to do about it, and she is as mystified as I am. She said that I should just shrug it off as a disgruntled employee and leave it at that. Normally when HR gets complaints about those kinds of things they do a full investigation, but they are not going to do that on this one; maybe I should just let it go. What do you think?

What Am I Doing Wrong?

_____________________________________________________________________

Dear What Am I Doing Wrong,

Gosh, don’t you just hate getting such awful feedback, second hand, with no explanation? It is the worst kind of surprise. I feel very bad for you. And I appreciate your willingness to do some soul searching as a result.

If your HR team is not inclined to give the feedback any credence, I think that is a good indicator that you shouldn’t either. It is always true that feedback says more about the person giving it than the person it is directed at. And I think when you ask people for feedback and they don’t give it to you but they complain about you behind your back, they are unhappy. And they are responsible for creating their own yucky reality. Some people are simply not inclined to trust others, no matter how hard others try to be trustworthy. An article by Blanchard’s trust expert, Randy Conley, might be helpful for exploring that idea.

There seems to be a crisis of trust in organizations all around the globe. One recent study found that 86% of employees feel people at their workplace are not heard fairly or equally. It is always possible that your own blind spots, world view, and/or unconscious biases contributed to your employee’s experience.

I always ask clients to do one thing with feedback that is hard to hear or that they don’t expect: ask themselves “What if this were true?”

So. What if what your direct report said was true? The questions that present themselves might be:

• Is it possible others feel that way?
• How might I find out?
• What would keep anyone from giving me feedback directly?
• Is there anything I do that might make others feel unsafe?
• Is there anything I do that might make others not trust me to hear feedback without retaliating if I hear something I don’t like?
• Is it possible that I treat people differently depending on my biases? Might I have unconscious biases that I need to address?

For one of the most amazing tools that outlines all of the possible cognitive biases, click here.

You should absolutely speak with each of your remaining direct reports to see if anyone else feels the same way. You can certainly ask questions like:

• Is there anything I do or don’t do that ever makes you feel unsafe?
• Would you tell me if I did?
• Do you feel like I have your back?
• Is there anything you think would make me a more effective manager?

You can give people the option to not answer right away, but to take some time to think about it and get back to you. It can be hard for a direct report to be put on the spot. The most important thing when receiving feedback is to not argue. There are exactly three responses to use when getting feedback: (1) “Thank you for telling me that,” (2) “I understand,” and (3) “Tell me more.”

Another option is to ask your HR group to use some kind of multi-rater 360 degree feedback tool. There are many options; they should have something. The ones we use and love are the Tru-Score, for fundamental management practices, and the ECR, to assess Emotional Intelligence. The anonymous nature of these tools might provide individuals with a safe way to share their thoughts and allow for more candor.

As a leader, it is your duty to engage in some self-reflection and ask what part you may have played in creating the situation. It does inspire confidence that your HR group did not take the exit interview seriously, but if you have any inkling at all that there might be something for you to examine, you should honor it.

Do a little due diligence. Take a long hard look in the mirror. Ask some questions and listen carefully to the answers. You will know if there is work for you to do, or if you can let the whole thing go.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I work in the communications media studio for a large company. I’m kind of entry level here, but I have a lot of experience directing video. I often end up working with very senior people to get short videos made for client work, proposals, stuff for the website, etc.

Many high level people who come in are—how do I say this?—terrible on camera. They don’t know what to wear, they are almost always unprepared, they haven’t read the script beforehand. Often they ask to use a teleprompter but don’t know how to use it, so it is obvious they are reading. If they choose not to use a teleprompter, we then get the dreaded “umm” which diminishes the authority of the speaker.

As a very junior person, how do I help these people help themselves? I’m not shy but I’m very aware that these people could get me fired if I cross the line.

Trying to Help

_____________________________________________________________

Dear Trying to Help,

Umm…

Just kidding, haha.

I can’t believe this is a new problem, so I would say your first stop to get help with this situation is your boss. There must be a precedent. In theory, when a video shoot is booked, people get a list of guidelines so they will be prepared. These should include ideas for what looks good on camera and what doesn’t. You might suggest to your boss that you invest in some clothing in a range of sizes so you have options for people who show up wearing something that doesn’t work.

If your experience is like that of many clients I work with, it’s possible that either your boss is AWOL or so many people have been laid off that these systems exist but no one is around to tell you. Find out. If you do have a functioning boss, they can give you some pointers on just how directive you can be with people. If you don’t, well, you are on your own.

 It sounds like it is your job to set people up to win and make the best possible video they can make. The thing you have going for you is that nobody wants to look bad on camera. Tell people that your job is to make them look and sound great—then ask them if they mind if you give them some pointers as you go.

Many senior leaders are overbooked, and lack of preparation is not unusual. It might help if you print out scripts so that people can read them out loud several times before trying to shoot. You can give them the script and say something like, “Why don’t you take a moment to read through this out loud while they are getting the lights right?” The more practice they get, the better they will sound.

Using a teleprompter is wildly unnatural and takes a lot of practice to get right. Here is a link to an article I found that makes a lot of sense. It offers good tips you can share with people who are struggling. I’ve found a good way to settle into using a teleprompter is to run through the whole thing five times really fast. Then try it normal speed. There is something about doing speed-throughs that gets the words settled in the brain—and then the speaker can just be themselves, use their hands, and sound relaxed.

Filler words are probably the most common issue for everyone. Filler words aren’t just limited to umm. They include “so,” “you know,” “like,” “and,” etc. Some folks get stuck on phrases especially during transitions, such as when moving to a new topic, and they have trouble with an abrupt ending. “It’s really interesting” is an example of this. For folks who use a lot of filler words, here are several tips to help eliminate them:

• Most people are not aware of their filler word habit. Tell your talent they are using too many filler words and their delivery will be stronger without them. You can let them know this is very common and can easily be fixed.
• Most people are terrified of pauses and silence, so let them know pauses can be edited out if need be. Let people know a little moment of silence is OK.
• Ask the person to raise their volume just a notch above normal. This tends to help people eliminate filler words.
• Allow for multiple takes, with several practice takes so people can raise their comfort level with what they are saying and how they want to say it.
• Encourage the speaker to breathe. Everybody must, and taking a quiet moment to breathe will help your speaker stay centered.

I think you might be overfocused on—or at least unnecessarily freaked out about—hierarchy. Yes, your customers here are extremely senior to you. But you still have a job to do, and it is to make them look and sound great in every video you are responsible for.

It might help to refocus on what your job is. Setting the stage at the beginning of a shoot and getting permission to offer direction and pointers will give you the leeway you need to help. Stay super positive—each time you need to stop and redo something, you can say “that was great, let’s try it a couple more times.” The more you make practice and repetition seem normal, the more normal it will feel. The more practice and repetition people get in a supportive environment, the better they will get. Only trained performers who have practiced and prepared get things on the first take. Set the expectation that great finished videos require lots of takes.

Worst case, you will have a cranky person who is too harried to care and will not allow you to give them the help they need. You do need to be sensitive to that and let the chips fall where they may. If people refuse help, it is on them if they show up badly in their videos.

It sounds like you have the best of intentions. Practice asking for permission and being concise with pointers. Don’t be shy about asking for several takes. Stay positive and point out what is going well. Your speakers will thank you. And those who don’t will have no one to blame but themselves.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a team that has been working together for a long time, although one person recently left. Her replacement is a new high performer who is settling nicely into the job. He has all the experience and skills we were looking for, but he hasn’t quite figured out our culture or the accepted communication norms in our organization.

When I give him feedback on his communications to make them more aligned with expectations, he gets really defensive. The last time I did this he said, “I do good work; I think you’re too picky.” I was taken aback and didn’t say anything, because nothing I could think of saying would have been appropriate. I am not used to an employee talking to me that way.

Ultimately, it is my job to give him feedback to help him be successful here, and I don’t think it is appropriate for him to make personal observations about me. I am not picky, really, but I know my boss and the executive team are. They have expectations about the way my team does things that they have made clear.

How do I approach this? I am not sure quite where to start.

Dealing with a Defensive Direct Report

_________________________________________________________________________

Dear Dealing with a Defensive Direct Report,

You are right on both counts: it is your job to give your people feedback so that they can be as successful as possible in their jobs, and it is not appropriate for anyone at work to make personal observations about you.

Shut. It. Down.

It is your job to swiftly and clearly put up the hand and make clear that you will not tolerate that kind of response in the future. If you don’t, your new team member will assume that what feels normal to him is okay with you.

You were wise not to get defensive right back. (I can’t believe you didn’t say “excuse me?”) You are obviously thoughtful and have good self-regulation.

Now leverage that thoughtfulness to prepare for a conversation with your direct report. Think through the messages you want to get across. Choose the most important points and start with them. In your case, it might look something like this:

1. My job is to give you feedback so that you can be as successful as possible in your job. I need to be able to offer you the guidance you need to be successful without being worried that you are going to get defensive and make personal observations about me.
2. If you are not willing to take feedback and use it, we may have a problem.
3. You are certainly allowed to disagree with me, but you must treat me with respect.
4. Of course you do good work—if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be working here. But there is a difference between my giving you feedback on details and my giving you a wholesale critique of your work in general.
5. The feedback I give you is directly related to the expectations and standards of my boss and the executive team. Yes, I am picky around things that I know others in the organization are picky about.
6. Our team’s purpose is internal customer service, and it is important that we all use a consistent approach with all of our communications.

I am sure I got some details wrong in these examples; suffice to say the more to the point and succinct you can be, the easier it will be for you to get through the feedback and for him to understand it. It might also be a good idea to write it all out and send him the summary in an email, so you begin a record of the interactions.

If it turns out that your direct report refuses to use feedback to meet expectations and continues his defensiveness and hostility, you will want a clear trail of evidence. No matter how good someone’s work is, there is no reason to tolerate disrespect.

You could take another approach entirely, of course, and go in with questions to get to the bottom of the defensiveness and possibly get insight into what is prompting the behavior.

Questions:

• How might I frame feedback for you in a way that makes it easier for you to accept?
• Clearly it is important to you to do good work; how can I help you to make sure it is exceptional?
• Help me understand what makes you think I am too picky.

But on second thought, no. I think the questions might be the continuation of point #2:

• If you are not willing to take feedback and use it, we may have a problem. We can talk about what I can do differently to make that easier for you.

I really think the first order of business is to be unequivocally clear about what is and what is not okay with you. You are the boss and no one else can do it for you. If you don’t do it now, your new DDR will just keep pushing you around until you have no influence over the quality of his work. And you will have allowed it to happen.

Harsh? Probably. There are very few things we have control over in life, but this situation is one of them.

Good luck.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I get no feedback.

I like my job, my boss, the team I work with, and my company. At every annual review I write my own review first and my manager adds her two cents, always pointing out ways I contribute that I hadn’t thought about or had forgotten. So I do get feedback, and it is always positive, which is nice.

I realize this sounds crazy, but I want more constructive feedback so I can grow and get better. I guess I want to be more challenged.

How can I go about getting more feedback without seeming dissatisfied?

Wanting More

__________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Wanting More,

You don’t sound crazy. You sound lucky. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate your position, because it is a rare one: Your boss obviously thinks you are great and is totally happy with the job you are doing.

And—I get it. It sounds like you might be a little bored.

I think your first stop is your boss. Tell her you are looking for a challenge and you either want to get better at the job you are doing or maybe take on something new. You can be crystal clear that you aren’t unhappy or dissatisfied, just wanting to shake things up a little. The ideal time for this is at your annual review; but if that seems too far away, you can ask for a meeting. I am surprised your manager hasn’t checked in with you about your dreams, your job satisfaction, your career aspirations.

Another thought is to ask your colleagues, teammates, and internal and (if applicable) external customers for feedback to see if there is anything you could do that would make working with you easier. You could simply ask:

• Is there anything you wish I would start or stop doing?
• Is there anything you wish I did more or less of?
• Is there anything you think I should know that could make me more effective or help me add more value?

You never know what you might find out.

I guess it is always possible that there is something you do that stops people from offering suggestions or developmental feedback. Is it possible that in the past you have become defensive? Only you can know the answer to that, and it will serve you to admit the truth to yourself. If you think this might be the case, make sure you go into asking for feedback with an open mind. It takes some grace to accept feedback that might be a surprise or feel personal.

Prepare to respond to anything you hear with one of three options:

• Thank you.
• I understand.
• Tell me more.

This will ensure that people who have the courage to tell you something they think you need to hear will feel heard and won’t feel punished for going out on a limb.

There is also a big difference between seeking/hearing feedback and making a decision to actually do something with it. One way of rewarding people for giving you feedback is to loop back with them and let them know what you are doing with their advice. If you choose not to do anything, you can just tuck it away for future reference.

Remember also that feedback always says more about the person giving it than the person getting it. So write everything down. Give yourself some space and time to absorb, process, and decide what is going to make a difference to your success and what isn’t. Resolve to take nothing personally.

You might be opening a can of worms here, so you will want to be prepared for that. Or maybe you are like Mary Poppins—“practically perfect in every way”—wouldn’t that be grand? If that is the case, your next step will be to figure out if you are, in fact, bored and what goals you might set next to create your next challenge.

Thanks for asking such a surprising question.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

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

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

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

Stop the Firehose

___________________________________________________________

Dear Stop the Firehose,

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

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

Brief Hello,

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

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

C- Close: Next steps and thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I am a manager at a fairly new and fast growing software-as-a-service company. I have been managing people forever and nothing like this has ever happened to me.

I recently gave some feedback to a new employee I’ll call LK. Despite having received step-by-step directions on a certain task, she had done it completely wrong. The feedback was standard and simple—specifics on how to do the task: “Do it this way, not that way, for these reasons.”  She seemed to take it fine.

The next day I received a call from HR saying LK had complained that I am micromanaging and mean. It was like she had been part of a completely different conversation. I am a big user of SLII®, so after she was hired I let her know I would be giving her lots of specific direction and re-direction over the first few months until she got the hang of the job. Also, I made it clear if she ever has an issue she should come to me right away.

I am just blown away that instead of coming to me to talk about it, she went straight to HR. Is this a generational thing? I have always received good feedback from my people and have never had a complaint. I feel like she must be nuts, or maybe she has some kind of vendetta against me. What should I do now? If I try to talk to her, who knows what she might do? This has left me shaken.

Thrown for a Loop

_____________________________________________________________________________

(Note: For the uninitiated, SLII® is my company’s flagship management model that helps managers figure out what combination of direction and support an employee needs to competently achieve a specific goal or task.)

Dear Thrown for a Loop,

Wow. I can see how this would be upsetting. I am not going to give you a primer on giving feedback—it sounds like you know what you are doing. But somehow, things have gone sideways.

It is always my job to ask what part you might have played in creating this situation. It is easy to think someone might be “nuts” when they experience a shared event differently from the way we do. And I guess that is possible—there are, in fact, people with mental health problems who wreak havoc in the workplace. I have had a front row seat to some spectacular wreckage myself. But that isn’t going to be helpful as a starting place for you. Assumptions can be such a trap. You might assume that you look and sound like LK’s Mean Aunt Mabel and she got triggered. Or maybe she’s having issues at home, wasn’t sleeping well, and the conversation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or maybe she was just having a spectacularly bad day. It happens. Is it possible that you missed some signs? Did you, in fact, ask “Hey LK, is now a good time to go over the process for …”? I know sometimes I get so task focused that I blow right by the signs that now is not the moment to offer a re-direction.

It is also true that some people simply have a really hard time receiving feedback. People who are perfectionists and expect themselves to do everything perfectly right out of the gate can really suffer when getting feedback. Younger people who are entering the workplace and are used to getting straight As in school may experience any feedback as a personal attack. Be sure when you do re-direct, the critique is of the actions, not the person; for example, “This way of doing it can cause inaccuracies” vs. “You are causing inaccuracies.”

Before you do anything, you probably need to loop back with HR to find out exactly what LK’s complaint was and what they think you should do about it. But, in the long run, if you are going to salvage the working relationship, you are going to have to have the hard conversation. I am a fan of our Conversational Capacity program, and you can also check out this book by Craig Weber. The whole idea is that you have to balance candor with curiosity. And remember, the person who has the power (you) has to create the safe environment.

Prepare for the conversation by parking your defensiveness and assumptions. Make sure you have privacy and enough time for the conversation. Get grounded however you can: take a walk, do some deep breathing, pray. Prepare to listen—and by listen, I mean NO TALKING. You can say your initial piece to set up the conversation, ask a few questions, and then just listen.

Start with candor:

My job is to do everything possible to help you be terrific at your new job. That’s what is important here.

• I am sorry you were so upset.
• I am sorry you didn’t feel comfortable coming to me to tell me you were upset.
• I really care about you and your success.

And then move to curiosity:

• Help me understand what I did that made you so upset.
• Please tell me what would make it easier for you to accept necessary direction from me in the future.
• What can I do to make it easier for you to trust me?

Make sure to share what you hear LK saying—not only so that she knows you are really listening, but also to make sure you are getting it right. Hopefully, you can both commit to some shared practices moving forward.

If you don’t feel safe, if she doesn’t feel safe, or if you believe there may be some underlying issue, you can certainly ask someone from HR to sit in on the meeting. You will need to take the high road at every possible choice point. If she truly is unbalanced and emotionally unable to function at work, it will reveal itself. Or—best case scenario—if it is all a big misunderstanding, you and LK could end up with a great working relationship and laugh about this someday.

Don’t you just love being a manager? Just when you think you know what you are doing—BAM, it turns out there are new adventures to learn from.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I get no feedback. I have done well in my career. I have some big goals and I think I am doing OK at my job. My manager is a big-picture person who is constantly on the move and is only interested in my results, not in me. I think if I asked her about my long-term prospects here, she would roll her eyes at me. (She rolls her eyes any time anyone digresses from the numbers and the key results.)

Recently, my spouse went through a program with her company where they sent out a questionnaire to the people she interacted with at work. She got a ton of insight into how she is perceived. There weren’t a lot of surprises, but she learned some useful info.

They don’t do that kind of thing in my company—but I was thinking it might be a good idea to ask some key folks I work with for some feedback, just to see if I might be missing something. Could it be risky? Would people tell me the truth? What if I find out something I wish I hadn’t?

If you think it might be a good idea, how would you suggest I go about it?

In the Dark

Dear In the Dark,

There is a school of thought that says “no news is good news.” Then again, Ken Blanchard says “feedback is the breakfast of champions.” I say that it never hurts to really see the full landscape—your playing field, if you will—to make sure you understand the exact game being played, the rules of the game, and how to win it. Too many folks who don’t pay attention are surprised when they find out they were playing the wrong game or they missed the memo about the rules changing.

I don’t think ignorance is bliss; I think it is a naïve choice. So, short answer: Yes.

• Yes, I think it is a good idea to make the effort to get some insight.
• Yes, it can be risky, but there are ways to mitigate the risk.
• Some people will tell you the truth and some won’t, and that’s OK.
• You will almost certainly find out some things that will make you uncomfortable.
• And yes, I have some ideas about how to go about it.

Long answer:

Why feedback? It sounds like you think it may be useful to simply get the lay of land so that you have the information you need to move toward your big goals. You’ll want to assess for yourself where you think insight would be helpful. Is it something specific, or are you going for a more general picture? It’s a good idea to clarify your own intent and motives, such as:

• Are you seeking insights to help you achieve your goals? Asking for feedback can help you build support for your long-term goals.
• Do you want to build or protect your ego? There’s nothing wrong with that; just be ready to hear some things you wish you hadn’t.
• Do you want to enhance or defend your self-image and your image in the organization? Again, information on how you are perceived is fine and often useful.

Getting clear on your intent will help you to shape what you decide to do with the feedback you get. Remember—feedback says more about the person giving it than it does about you. So understanding someone else’s perspective is a useful window into where they stand and what they see from that vantage point. It also tells you what is important to them, which may be the most illuminating insights of all.

The whole mission to get feedback can also be an opportunity to create an environment in which you signal that you are accessible and open to feedback, which will increase the likelihood that people will offer it without your having to ask all the time. This also means you will get feedback you don’t necessarily want—but if you know how to deal with it, that’s OK.

Who to get it from? You’ll want to decide who to ask. 360 degrees is upward, sideways with functional peers, and downward with your direct reports, if you have any. The more thorough you are, the clearer a picture you can get of your whole landscape. You might also consider approaching customers, internal and external, who depend on you. You can approach your boss via email—not to discuss your brilliant career (which she doesn’t seem to care about) but to give her the opportunity to provide input should she choose to do it. What you don’t want is for her to hear that you are asking around for feedback and didn’t include her!

Method: My favorite cut-to-the-chase method of asking for feedback is to ask for a meeting. Clearly state that you are seeking intel on how to improve all of your working relationships and that you want answers to the following questions:

In your opinion,

• What should/could I do more of?
• What should/could I do less of?
• What should I start doing?
• What should I stop doing?
• Is there anything else you think I should know?

This gives some direction without too many guard rails. My big beef with the exhaustive online multi-rater 360s is that they are so in-depth that respondents are mentally exhausted before they get halfway through it. Provide the questions prior to the meeting—it gives people time to think over their answers. It is always nice to have these kinds of meetings over a coffee or a beer, but these days it will probably be web conference.

Risks: You only really make yourself vulnerable if you signal your intent—which you don’t need to do. All you have to say is that you want to be as effective as you can be in all of your working relationships, which is probably the truth and totally plausible. But yes, you do make yourself vulnerable, because you will expose yourself to anyone who has an axe to grind and takes advantage of the moment to give it to you right between the eyes. But my experience is that is much more common when people can hide behind a screen of anonymity.

How to receive feedback? This may be the hardest part. The whole exercise will absolutely backfire if you get defensive or attempt to explain or justify your position. Doing so will guarantee that the person will never give you feedback again. You must absolutely, positively practice almost superhuman self-regulation in response to all feedback.

You have a choice of the following responses. (Do not deviate from this plan.)

• Thank you.
• Tell me more.
• I understand.

Do: If you hear about behavior or an event in which someone’s feelings were hurt or the apple cart was upset in some way, you can apologize for your part in it. Just say “Wow, I am sorry. I didn’t know and I am so glad you told me.” THAT’S IT. Don’t explain, don’t fall apart, don’t make a big deal out of it.

Don’t: make promises about changing. You are going to want to collect all of the feedback before deciding what you want to do with it. Making promises without really thinking through what you are willing to commit to will box you in. Only make promises you are certain you want to keep and can keep.

Will there be moments of discomfort? You bet there will, and that’s OK. You won’t die from it. You are going to need to be tough to achieve your big goals, and the key to toughness is practicing not taking things personally. Take notice of what makes you defensive—it gives you information about your own secret vanities and insecurities. That’s OK, too. We all have them, and the more aware you are of your own, the less they will drive your behavior and sabotage you when you least expect it.

What to do with feedback: You have to think of feedback as data, not the truth about you. Ask yourself: what does this tell me about this person that is useful? What does it tell me about our systems and processes that I hadn’t considered? What does it tell me about myself that is valuable? What might be true and worth taking under advisement?

Only after some deliberation and analysis will you decide what to do; and even then, you will want to choose only two or three things to focus on. Start small, with one thing—something you can do without getting a personality transplant—one thing you think will make a real difference. Maybe it is to stop interrupting. Or to start consulting others when making decisions. Something simple and doable.

Still up for it? I applaud your courage. It will be quite a journey, but one I think you will find worthwhile.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

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

Dear Madeleine,

Every time I hear the word “feedback” I have a strong, negative response. This comes from a recent experience with a manager. Going into the relationship, I had always been someone who asked for feedback. This manager, however, gave me feedback so often there was no need to ask for it. She seemed to enjoy it—like wielding power over me—and would sometimes mockingly comment “feedback is a gift!” She also would share gossip she had heard about me and call it feedback.

On a couple of occasions, this manager’s feedback about how she felt I was showing up at meetings—the way I sat, the fact that I read from the slides too much—caused me to cry. I am not sure if it was because in the beginning I felt safe to let my guard down, because she was a woman and we had been considered friends before I reported to her, because I was feeling shame, or because it has always been very important to me to show up well. It was likely a combination of all of the above.

A few months ago, this manager was passing along feedback from my skip-level. When I asked for some clarification and suggested that I might talk with him directly, she told me that he didn’t feel comfortable giving me direct feedback because he was afraid it might make me cry. Ouch! He could have known about this only if she had shared it with him. Essentially, my manager had labeled me as a crier. To her boss. Fantastic.

This experience taught me that processing my emotions with this manager wasn’t safe at all—and that she wasn’t as comfortable with my emotions as I thought she was. In that conversation, I told her that never in my 20 years at our large company had anyone given me the kind of harsh feedback she gave. But rather than hearing the feedback I was now giving her, her response was “Wow, you really haven’t received much feedback, have you?” Total deflection on her part.

I have since moved to a new company. I am in a senior role where I am expected to give feedback to my direct reports. Needless to say, I am now gun-shy about giving feedback. In fact, if I were to hear someone ask “May I give you some feedback?” I fear I would run down the hallway, screaming “No thank you!!”

I don’t feel everyone necessarily wants or needs feedback, and I’m looking to find a balance so I am not traumatized by this forever. I want to be a manager who gives helpful feedback, but I don’t want to upset anyone in the process. Also, I want to continue to ask for and receive feedback from my own supervisor in order to continue growing—but what if I cry again and am further humiliated?

What advice can you offer on how I might (1) develop some comfort with giving feedback? and (2) speed this healing process along?

Traumatized by Feedback

__________________________________________________________

Dear Traumatized,

I hope you found my response to your first question useful. For anyone who might have missed it, in the last post I addressed how to develop some comfort with giving feedback. In this (Part 2) post, I will address your second question: How do you speed the healing process of wounds received by a psycho manager so you can ask for feedback in the future? Clearly, you once trusted others to provide useful input to help you grow. So how can you find your way back to that?

“Why bother?” you might ask. Well, that’s a good question. After all, you have risen to a senior position in a new organization. You could just try powering through with a bulletproof protective shell.

But here’s the thing: research shows that feedback becomes less frequent and less consistent the higher people go. So if you aren’t actively seeking feedback, you’re probably not going to get much. The only problem with this is that if you’re doing things that aren’t effective, you might not know until it’s too late. You could end up being surprised in a bad way. It won’t serve you to live in a vacuum—and no (wo)man is an island.

First, take some time to heal. Shame, regret, and humiliation feel poisonous—and once you get a negative thought loop in your brain, it can be hard to interrupt that pattern. As neuroscientists say: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” That’s why it takes so much repetition to build and embed a habit.

Here are a couple of excellent techniques that have been shown to be effective at interrupting negative neural patterns.

Labeling: There is a misconception that talking about a difficult experience will only rub salt in the wound, but this is only true if you ruminate—revisit events with no tools to transform their impact. One way to change your response to past experience is to articulate how events made you feel, and then label the emotions. You can do this with a therapist, a sympathetic HR professional, or a friend who is a good listener. You’ve already started doing it by writing your letter. That’s a good first step.

The more detailed you can get and the more specifically you can label how you felt, the less sting you will feel over time. It might sound something like this: “In my last job, I had a manager who I thought was a friend. She started belittling me by saying mean things about my looks, body language, and competence. I was really hurt—but even worse, I felt betrayed and abandoned.” You can loosen the grip you experience instead of feeling like it has power over you.

Distancing techniques: Another tool to diminish the emotional turmoil you’re dealing with is to tell yourself the story of the events that happened but do it in the third person, as if it happened to someone else. For example, you might start the story with “I once knew this person who was badly bullied by her manager. Because she thought they were friends, she didn’t really know what was happening until it was too late and the damage was done. Here’s what happened…” It may sound hokey, but it really works to help you not only get some perspective but also rewire the circuits in your brain.

Reappraisal or reframing: Right now you’re still seeing yourself as the person who had an inappropriate emotional reaction. It’s really important to get your head wrapped around the fact that in the circumstances you described, anyone would have had that reaction. In fact, your emotional reaction was entirely appropriate. So in this case, I would encourage you to take your newfound labels—and your little bit of distance—and use them to look at your situation and see how you might reframe your interpretation of events. Consider how your nasty manager contributed to the situation, set you up to be vulnerable, and manipulated you.

These techniques, by the way, are useful for dealing with all kinds of deeply felt negative emotions that get in your way. Do not skip this step. This step puts you back on an even keel and sets you up to take charge of how you ask for feedback in the future and what you do with it. I guarantee it will not include tears or running down the hallway screaming “No thank you.”

Once you have done some processing, find your people. Identify those in your new workplace who will be on Team No Longer Traumatized, Now Healed. Find people you respect who have a stake in your success and who share your interests—the ones you like and feel you can trust. Click here for some information on our Trust Model – it may be my all-time favorite—that makes something layered and complex stunningly simple. Make a pact with these folks that they will come to you with input—and that when you ask for feedback they will give it to you straight, when it matters.

Ask your boss to give you very specific feedback having to do with how you are progressing on your goals and how to be most successful at influencing in the organization. If and only if you think you can trust her, share your negative experience with feedback. Ask her to be especially kind but not hold back when it’s something she believes will make a real impact on your success.

Encourage your direct report team to give you feedback, especially when it comes to creating an environment that brings out their best. You can make an explicit request of each person that you expect them to tell you if you have done something that has had a negative impact on them.

As a senior leader, you can create the feedback culture in your department—so it’s up to you to be clear about what is expected and what is out of bounds. Go back to last week’s post, write up your own rules concerning feedback, and share them with your team. Examples might be:

• Go direct: Give each other feedback. Don’t complain to others or go to the boss until you have tried to have a conversation.

• Ask yourself: Do I need to say it? Do they really need to hear it?

The thing you couldn’t do in your last job was set boundaries. It’s time for you to be ready to push back when someone crosses the line. When someone says something mean, you are allowed to say: “That’s mean, and my feelings are hurt.” If you get feedback that hurts from someone you trust, sit with your feelings about it, ask yourself “What if this were true,” and then take what you can and move on.

Finally, never forget that feedback says more about the person giving it than anything else. Take it all with a grain of salt. When in doubt, check it out with your people, then take what you can and let the rest go.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

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

Dear Madeleine,

Every time I hear the word “feedback” I have a strong, negative response. This comes from a recent experience with a manager. Going into the relationship, I had always been someone who asked for feedback. This manager, however, gave me feedback so often there was no need to ask for it. She seemed to enjoy it—like wielding power over me—and would sometimes mockingly comment “feedback is a gift!” She also would share gossip she had heard about me and call it feedback.

On a couple of occasions, this manager’s feedback about how she felt I was showing up at meetings—the way I sat, the fact that I read from the slides too much—caused me to cry. I am not sure if it was because in the beginning I felt safe to let my guard down, because she was a woman and we had been considered friends before I reported to her, because I was feeling shame, or because it has always been very important to me to show up well. It was likely a combination of all of the above.

A few months ago, this manager was passing along feedback from my skip-level. When I asked for some clarification and suggested that I might talk with him directly, she told me that he didn’t feel comfortable giving me direct feedback because he was afraid it might make me cry. Ouch! He could have known about this only if she had shared it with him. Essentially, my manager had labeled me as a crier. To her boss. Fantastic.

This experience taught me that processing my emotions with this manager wasn’t safe at all—and that she wasn’t as comfortable with my emotions as I thought she was. In that conversation, I told her that never in my 20 years at our large company had anyone given me the kind of harsh feedback she gave. But rather than hearing the feedback I was now giving her, her response was “Wow, you really haven’t received much feedback, have you?” Total deflection on her part.

I have since moved to a new company. I am in a senior role where I am expected to give feedback to my direct reports. Needless to say, I am now gun-shy about giving feedback. In fact, if I were to hear someone ask “May I give you some feedback?” I fear I would run down the hallway, screaming “No thank you!!”

I don’t feel everyone necessarily wants or needs feedback, and I’m looking to find a balance so I am not traumatized by this forever. I want to be a manager who gives helpful feedback, but I don’t want to upset anyone in the process. Also, I want to continue to ask for and receive feedback from my own supervisor in order to continue growing—but what if I cry again and am further humiliated?

What advice can you offer on how I might (1) develop some comfort with giving feedback? and (2) speed this healing process along?

Traumatized by Feedback

Dear Traumatized by Feedback,

Wow. Ken Blanchard does say “Feedback is the breakfast of champions” but this is not what he means.

First, let me say how sorry I am that your former manager was just mean. You aren’t really traumatized by feedback per se; you are traumatized by the fact that your manager used the idea of feedback to bully you. And she masqueraded as a friend and then used your vulnerability against you, which is manipulative and probably a sign of a personality disorder. (Wait, let me get out my DSM-5 for a quick diagnosis! Just kidding, but it is tempting.)

It sounds like you left your former company, so at least you got away from your very nasty manager.

I’m going to share with you our Coach Approach to Feedback. Linda Miller and I developed it as a special add-on to our Coaching Skills course because so many people equate coaching with feedback. (They are not at all the same thing, but that distinction is for another time.) For now, it might be helpful to read Marcus Buckingham’s take on it, which I agree with.

A couple of universal principles to get us started:

Feedback says more about the person giving it than the person receiving it. (I learned this from What Did You Say? by Charles and Edie Seashore—an oldie but goodie.)

The job requirement “give feedback” is not the same as “declare open season to share any personal opinion, no matter how potentially hurtful, that comes into my head.”

It is part of a manager’s job to share observations and information that will help people be as successful as possible.

The best managers always have as their intention “to do no harm.”

The manager must decide exactly what kind of feedback is being given, and the purpose for giving it. The more clear the manager is going in, the more clear the employee will be on what to do with the feedback. There are five distinctly different types of feedback:

1. Celebration Feedback: Acknowledgment of superior performance or marked improvement on a critical, difficult task.
2. Positive Feedback: Information about what is going well when performance meets expectations.
3. Observation Feedback: Information shared without any attachment to change.
4. Performance Request: Information in proper context with a clear, specific request for change.
5. Performance Demand: An escalation of a request to a demand for change with clear, specific consequences for lack of compliance.

Any feedback should be carefully crafted to meet the following criteria. Feedback must be:

Immediately relevant. All feedback should be grounded in a specific task, goal, or development area. Feedback is most relevant to performance needed for success when individuals:

• need to move to a new level of performance
• are new to a task or goal
• are not delivering on tasks or goals
• have conduct that is not aligned with policy

Managers may also want to give feedback to support development; for example, when someone is doing well and ready for the next steps or wants to be more fully rounded in their current role.

General or random feedback that is unrelated to the job at hand or the long-term success of the employee is just noise (e.g., the way you’re sitting at a meeting). At best, it can feel inappropriately personal and cause confusion. At worst, it makes the employee feel picked on.

Timely. The manager should take the time they need to think through the purpose and form of the feedback, but not so long that the moment passes and it gets lost in the scrum of the next big project. If the feedback will make a difference to a deliverable coming up soon, the manager should share it in plenty of time so it can be processed.

If you as the manager are angry, resentful, incredulous, or otherwise emotionally lit up, STOP. Stop, breathe, step back, step away, sleep on it, write (but don’t send) an email, don’t pick up the phone. If you are storming off, looking for the offender to give them a piece of your mind, STOP. It takes hundreds of teeny positive interactions to build trust and only one misstep to break it. Make sure you have your facts straight and are totally calm before going into the fray.

Thoughtful. Think long and hard about how important it is to give feedback. Ask yourself: Is this likely to resolve itself on its own? Did my team member already suffer the pain of their error and will probably never make the same mistake again? If the answer is no and the employee is likely to continue or even double down on something that is hurting them, go ahead and take the plunge. If you have to say something really difficult, write out what you want to say and practice with someone neutral. Getting the language right can make all the difference.

Non-judgmental. Feedback needs to be delivered with a neutral tone and behaviors must be separated from the person. When you want to say: “Wow, you were unprepared and under-rehearsed for that presentation—you seemed disjointed and lost credibility,” flip it and say: “In the future, it would be good to spend more time preparing. Run your content outline by me or some other trusted team members to make sure you are covering all the bases. And do a couple of dry runs with a safe audience—you’ll gain confidence with your material, which will vastly enhance the credibility of your presentations.”

Focused on the future. We can’t go back and fix the past; we can only learn and improve in the future.

Specific and descriptive. We tend to think people know how they have fallen short when that is often not the case. The more specific you can be, the better.

Based on personal experience. In our coaching team, our motto is go direct. We all commit to giving each other feedback as it relates to working together or how a colleague might be more effective. It isn’t always possible—it depends a lot on the culture of the team and the organization—but I think it’s unfair to expect a manager to give a direct report someone else’s feedback. If someone comes to you with feedback for one of your direct reports, consider whether the message is important to your person’s success. If you think it will really matter, encourage the source to go direct. Let them practice with you if they want—and you can help them make sure their feedback matches the above criteria.

Under no circumstances should gossip ever be shared as feedback. Gossip is toxic and should be stopped in its tracks. Gossip, fun as it may be, is never good, always bad. The best thing you can do as a manager is become an anti-gossip bulwark.

Finally, if you have any doubt about whether or not you should share an observation, ask yourself, “Do I need to say it, or do they need to hear it?” If you need to say it, stop. If they need to hear it, go. It is fiendishly difficult to keep our opinions to ourselves, but I have found that exercising that discipline has vastly improved my quality of life. At least I have to apologize a lot less.

Stay tuned for next week, where I will tackle your question about how to receive feedback and offer some ideas about how to heal from your experience with the nasty manager. The first step to healing is dedicating yourself to being the polar opposite of the meanie. If you follow the guidelines, you will probably not traumatize any of your people. It does take practice—which will take time—so cut yourself some slack.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

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

Dear Madeleine,

I have a long-time employee who is very smart, understands his job, and gets things done. He manages a small but powerful team of individual contributors and his people really like and respect him.

We recently invited him to join an elite group in the company to do visioning and strategy work. It was believed his experience would give him valuable perspective.

He is not doing well. He starts talking and we can’t shut him up—and worse, no one can follow what he is saying half the time. He does not seem to notice when people’s eyes glaze over. He talks in circles and repeats himself. It’s almost like once he gets the floor, he is afraid to give it up.

I have never seen this side of him. He is not impressing anyone and I am worried that this opportunity will backfire for him. I am not quite sure how to help him without shutting him down completely.

Stymied

_______________________________________________________________________

Dear Stymied,

I am so sorry that your protégé is not rising to the occasion. It is amazing that a person can be so good at so many things and then—well, not at all good at others.

My guess is that he is nervous and inexperienced with these kinds of meetings. As his manager, it is your job to intervene, unfortunately; but better to shut him down completely now than to let him continue to alienate people and possibly do irreparable damage to his reputation.

I think you need to just tell him. Be brief and to the point. You can open the conversation with a warning that you need to share an observation that might be hard to hear. Then tell him exactly what you told me. “You are talking in circles, you are repeating yourself, your points are unclear, and you are not adding value to these meetings. I need you to take a step back and stop speaking in the meetings until you can do it effectively.”

Yes, this is harsh—but you aren’t doing him any favors by letting him ramble on. Ask him to hold off on speaking until he can develop some self-awareness and restraint. That will be the first step. Next, he will have to experiment with participating appropriately.

Most of us are not born being able to do this—it takes experience and lots of practice. I spend literally days in meetings like the ones you describe, and I am often at a loss for how to make points I think will matter, when to make them, and how to be concise and impactful. It is fiendishly difficult. Writing is so much easier because you can back up and delete the ten sentences it took to get you to a clear thought! But it will be a big favor to your rambler if you give him an alternative to try. Perhaps you can work on a signal to share with him when he goes off track?

I recently learned a model that is part of our new Teams program—it’s called Conversational Capacity and it has rocked my world a little bit. I’ve been using it and it’s making a big difference in my own confidence and, I hope, my effectiveness.

The idea behind the Conversational Capacity model (which is nicely laid out by Craig Weber, a contributor to the program, in his book Conversational Capacity) is that when communicating, there is a sweet spot between candor and curiosity.

When using candor, one must:

• State a clear position
• Be direct and to the point
• Explain the thinking that supports your position
• Use a relaxed tone and body language

In my experience, even excellent communicators have a hard time stating a clear position—most people need to speak their ideas aloud to even have a clue about what they are thinking. I use note taking and mind mapping to try to figure out what my position is so I can be clear. Stating a clear position briefly and then explaining the two or three points that show how you got to the position will hold and keep people’s attention and move the conversation forward.

When practicing curiosity, one must:

• Ask thoughtful questions
• Listen attentively
• Consider other perspectives openly
• Have an attentive, non-defensive body posture

People can be big contributors to meetings simply by listening well and asking questions that reveal more insights. We don’t all have to have strong positions all the time to add value.

Contributing effectively in big meetings where abstract ideas are being discussed is a skill that can be developed. Self-awareness is the first step—and, uncomfortable as it may be, you will be doing your employee a real favor by helping him take that first step.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

How do you guide a recent graduate—someone new to the work world—to not be so confident of his own work? How do you convince him to check his work, question his solutions, and search for the best answer instead of the first one?

I don’t want to tear down anyone’s confidence, but this person’s cockiness seems to be a surefire recipe for disaster. Plus, you really can’t learn if you think you already know. I appreciate your thoughts on this.

Want to Guide

________________________________________________

Dear Want to Guide,

You have to love it when a young new employee is an enthusiastic beginner and is cheerfully ignorant of the massive amount he doesn’t know! I’m not sure how long this newbie has been in your care, but of course there is no way to go back to the beginning to set the expectation that you will be watching carefully and giving feedback. (Note: It is always much easier to closely supervise a new hire and then loosen up as they demonstrate competence than to start loose and later attempt to tighten up. Tuck that piece of advice away for future reference.)

For your situation right now, I would suggest you go at it with subtlety. Next time the recent graduate turns work in, set up fifteen minutes to go over it with him. Call out what works with his first draft and then ask him some questions that will help him go deeper for the second draft. This way, it isn’t so much that you are criticizing as acknowledging the positives of his work so far and now asking him to go deeper.

Here are some examples:

• What don’t you know about this topic? Is there a way to find out what aspects of this topic you might be leaving out?
• What if you were to question the assumption in your first point?
• Let’s try looking at this from another point of view.
• What if you were to take nothing as face value?
• What arguments might you use to support your point here?
• How might you expand on the implications of this?

Hopefully, your new hire will gain some ground in the discussion and you can ask him to put himself through the same list of questions for his next presentation.

You can also proofread his work, track your changes, and ask that he proof his own work in the future. (He must have had to proof his work in school, no?) Here are some fundamental rules you can remind him of.

• Leave time between a first draft and subsequent edits. It is much easier to see errors with fresh eyes.
• Ask a peer to do the proofing. It’s always much easier to catch errors in work that isn’t your own.
• In a slide presentation, first go through it in “presentation mode.” Errors will stick out like a sore thumb in that format, and it is much better if there isn’t an audience for the discovery!

If you need to go at it directly, start by sharing your regret that you didn’t set the expectation up front that part of your job is to develop your people and that you would be giving feedback. You can also share that it isn’t your intention to demotivate him or shake his confidence, and that your input is designed to help him to grow and to achieve his full potential.

The key is to be clear that it’s fine for him to be where he is in terms of his development in the new job—but now it’s time to sharpen his skills. Make it all about the work, not about the person. Be kind, clear, concise, and relentless. Don’t let anything egregious get by you—this way he will know you are paying attention, and pay more attention himself.

Most employees report that they don’t get enough feedback. You would be doing him no favors by letting him skate by. Eventually, he will have to clean up his act, so he might as well get started now. Someday he will thank you for it.

You can do this!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

As a professional coach, I often give feedback to my clients. I also give feedback to coaches I work with who are delivering coaching to our Blanchard clients. I’ve learned four valuable lessons that can make feedback something to be treasured rather than feared.

Lesson 1: What you believe is as important as what you say. If I’m annoyed with someone for flubbing up in front of a client, and now I’m in the hot seat hoping to save an account, I’m likely to rain down on my team with fire and brimstone. Oops! I’ve just terrified everyone into flight or freeze. On the other hand, if I genuinely believe people don’t make mistakes on purpose, I’m more likely to explore with my team what happened and how we might recover—and treat the mistake as a learning moment. In this way, we have participated together in a genuine learning experience that will help the team grow and keep them from making the same mistake again.

Lesson 2: Assume the best. This is a riff on lesson 1. Assume your team wants to perform well. Assume mistakes will be made. Help your team understand when to get you involved and give them the autonomy to make course corrections without you.

Lesson 3: Be specific in your redirection.  It’s not enough to point out a mistake. The mistake is often obvious. What’s sometimes not so clear is exactly what you want them to do differently in the future. For example, I recently told one of my team members that it wasn’t necessary to send a long introductory communication to a new client. But then he kept doing it.  I learned he interpreted my “not necessary” as meaning “Okay to do if it makes you feel good.”  What I should have said to him was “Don’t send an email with the same information that has already been sent. Let’s craft together a better message for you to send.”

Lesson 4: Water the flowers. You read that right. Watering the flowers is a metaphor for recognizing the hard work your team is putting in. Thank them often, and publicly. Be specific here, too—acknowledge what’s going well. As Ken Blanchard says, praise is free. And, like flowers in the rain, we thrive when we get enough.

How do these four lessons support a coach approach?  Because to be a great coach you have to know your own mind and adjust, flex, and control your thoughts (some would call this emotional intelligence). Giving feedback is life’s blood to a coach. Without the ability to do so, we would simply be cheerleaders for our clients—which would be fun but not nearly as effective. And as coaches, we are in service to our clients. We do what needs to be done in order to help the client grow, learn, and achieve desired outcomes. Don’t we owe that to our teams, too?

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.

One element within the feedback conversation—redirection—tends to be especially challenging for managers. It focuses on those times when a manager must provide feedback that a direct report’s current performance is off-track.

In their book The New One Minute Manager, coauthors Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson lay out a time-tested approach to help managers deliver needed feedback. Here are 4 key takeaways you can use to improve your feedback skills.

1. Do your homework

Before you rush to deliver feedback, make sure clear agreements about goals, norms, roles, and expectations have been established. Often the root cause of poor performance is a lack of clarity around goals. Verify with your direct report that the two of you are operating from the same set of expectations. Many performance issues can be rectified at this stage.

2. Focus on behavior

If goals are clear but there is a gap between expectations and observed performance, talk about it with your direct report. Describe their behavior in specific, not general, terms. Use a neutral tone to ward off any sense of blame or judgment—remember, you are addressing the behavior, not criticizing the person. The goal is not to tear people down; it is to build them up. As Blanchard and Johnson explain, “When our self-concept is under attack, we feel a need to defend ourselves and our actions, even to the extent of distorting the facts. When people become defensive, they don’t learn.”

3. Let it sink in

After giving feedback, pause for a moment so you both can process the situation. Let your direct report feel your concern as well as their own.

4. Move on

When it’s over, it’s over. Don’t dwell on the experience. Be sure to reaffirm your belief, trust, and respect for your team member so that when your meeting is over they are thinking about how they can improve their performance, not about how you mistreated them. Expect that the feedback will be received and acted upon. And be ready to endorse and praise performance when you see improvement.

Giving performance feedback is a critical job responsibility of any manager, but it can be a daunting task for many people—especially when the feedback is less than positive. Managers don’t want to generate negative emotions, damage relationships, or make a bad situation worse. As a result, managers often delay or avoid giving necessary feedback, allowing poor performance to continue.

Don’t let that happen to you or to the people in your organization. With a little practice you can develop the skill of delivering feedback in a way that changes behavior while keeping the relationship intact. Feedback is an essential managerial skill. Take an extra minute to improve your skills in this important area!

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

Our company recently instituted an internal survey designed to measure employee experience and asked business units and departments to give feedback on each other. Our business unit got the results from the first survey and the news was pretty good. We got a total score of 4.4 out of 5, which means that on average everyone who interacts with our team is more than satisfied with us.

One thing my team and I did get marked low on was being “slow to respond.” My people were upset about this and I am, too. We often need to research, think about, and discuss our responses when we are asked for help, so it is rare that we can just fire off a solution right away.

I didn’t think the survey was the place to call out individuals and I feel embarrassed and exposed. I have no way of knowing who said what or defending myself and my team.

What do you think I should do?

Got Dinged

Dear Got Dinged,
Nothing. Don’t do anything right now. You can do something once you have had a chance to cool off, calm down, and notice how defensive you feel. Feedback that makes us feel judged and found wanting can cause the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, which generate the “fight or flight” response. No one is thinking clearly when that is happening.

Once you are feeling rational again, ask yourself the question that will help you to stay open and curious about the topic: “What if this feedback were true?”

The truth is that even if you could explain yourself, nobody is really interested in why you are slow to respond. The better place to focus your energy is to ask yourself a second question: “How important is this to my success and the success of my team?”

If your organization has a norm where everyone must respond within 24 hours, you’re going against company norms—which may or may not be OK with you. If you’re going to march to your own drummer, you will need to be OK taking a little flack for it. If you’re not OK with taking flack, you can make a commitment to changing your ways. The one thing to consider is that even if you can’t get a full answer to someone, you can respond by saying, “Got your request, need to do a little footwork and think it through. Expect an answer by ____.” That is a response, and it only takes four seconds to do it.

Then check in with your team. Say, “We can see in the survey that some folks experience us as slow to respond. Are there instances where you can see that they might have a point?” Discuss. Walk through the same progression you already put yourself through. Decide how important it is to the team to change the perception. If it seems to be important, let the team brainstorm solutions toward that outcome.

The survey was a jolt from left field. Take the data and decide how it may be useful to you. Decide what, if anything, you might want to do about it. If you decide to do something, make a plan and commit to it. Otherwise, let it go.

Love, Madeleine

PS: You might also want to consider giving feedback directly to anyone you might have dinged on the survey to ensure you don’t perpetuate the behavior that has made you so unhappy. Just because technology makes it easier to give feedback anonymously, doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do.

Just sayin’.

About the author

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I am a trainer in a call center. It is fast, loud, and chaotic—and I love it. I take total newbies and train them to start at the most basic levels.

Once they leave me, they go on to other trainers who train them in more specialized work. They all have managers who, in theory, are supposed to give them feedback. The problem is that managers have anywhere from 20-30 direct reports at any given time and there is no way on earth for them to monitor everyone.

As I walk around, I hear my former students making basic errors and I can’t stand it. My problem is that my desire to correct them is almost out of my control. I heard one big error happening the other day, so I stuck my nose in and gave some feedback, nicely. The next thing I knew, that person’s manager (a peer, technically) was upset and complained to their own boss … well, big mess.

Should I just let people make mistakes? I trained these people in the first place, so I feel a certain pride in their performing well. Am I too much of a perfectionist? How should I handle this?

Once a Trainer

Dear Once a Trainer,

As a person who often calls in to call centers, I thank you for your commitment! I could tell you to let it go, that it isn’t worth the hassle, but I am not sure you could live with that.

The other option is to try to shift the training culture in the organization. The first step is to discuss your concerns with your own boss. See if they can use their influence to position you and other basic trainers as roving monitors 100 percent of the time. I can’t imagine that the senior leaders in the organization would object to all employees keeping an eye on quality at all times. You can also socialize the idea with other managers who are your peers, making it clear that your intention is not to step on anyone’s toes but to maintain the quality of the customer experience.

Even if you can’t get buy-in, you could position your role as basic trainer and giver of feedback for all operators always. Tell your newbies that even when they leave you, if you overhear them you will give them feedback—either praising or redirection—for the duration, as that is your job. That way, all of your trainees will expect feedback from you and won’t go running to their managers when you give it. The biggest problem will arise if you give feedback that is different from what another manager would give—so make sure the processes and procedures are clear and consistent. If your feedback is based on your opinion and the person’s manager’s opinion is different … well, big mess.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I manage a large team in Silicon Valley. My peers and I recently went through a 360 degree feedback process and I received a big report with everyone’s opinion about how I can be more effective. The feedback was fine; nothing too negative.

Here’s my problem.

I know I need to work on some areas, but I am completely overwhelmed by this report. How do I choose what to focus on? We have internal coaches in the company, but it takes weeks to get an appointment. And how will they even know how to help me? Right now I am just kind of stuck.

What do you think?

Stuck

Dear Stuck,

Those reports are indeed overwhelming. Many organizations provide 360 recipients with a coach to help process and debrief the reports and build an action plan for exactly this reason. You didn’t mention which assessment was used so I can’t give you detailed instructions, but I do have a few ideas.

Does your report provide you with any information on how to read and interpret the results? Some competencies are more critical than others for your particular job role, and the report should point those out to you. You might have to read through the report a couple of times and get used to how the data is laid out. Here are some key places to look:

• Blind spots: The areas where you rate yourself higher than everyone else may indicate a blind spot where you may think you are more effective than anyone else does. The bigger the difference in how you see yourself and how others see you, the more attention you may want to pay to narrowing the gap.
• Hidden strengths: Similarly, the areas where you rate yourself lower than all of the other raters may indicate hidden strengths. These are areas where you are doing well and aren’t that aware of it. Hidden strengths are good to understand—these are areas to lean on and possibly build on for your future career.
• Trust your gut: I would submit to you that before you did the 360, you already knew where you might need to focus to be more effective. Most of us know what we need help with and are hoping nobody notices, and a 360 feedback report will confirm what we probably already knew.
• Low hanging fruit: Perhaps there is one area you could work on immediately that wouldn’t be that difficult. The one thing I know for sure is that no one succeeds at giving themselves a personality transplant no matter how hard they might try, so I suggest you choose something to work on that you can actually do. To figure out what that might be, make a short list of things you know you should be doing or you should stop doing and then choose one of those things you can commit to. Maybe it is as simple as stop interrupting people, or more complicated like spend 15 minutes of dedicated time per week with each direct report.
• Ask your boss: Put a short list of all the different things you could work on and ask your boss which of those things he or she thinks is most important.

As you read through your report again—slowly, while breathing—one or two things will present themselves as possibilities to you. If you stay calm you will notice them. Don’t choose more than three things to work on; that’s about the limit of what you will be able to do. Ultimately, no matter how much help you get, you will have to be the one who decides where to put your focus and energy.

Finally, don’t worry too much about it. Take what you can from the experience and leave the rest. A person can only do so much.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I run a small team for a large nonprofit. One long-term member of the team really knows the ins and outs of the organization and can be really helpful.

The problem is, he does a couple of things that drive everybody crazy. He often decides to do things—presentations, publications, project plans—differently from the way the team has decided or I have instructed. He over-focuses on details and tends to go off on tangents that take up valuable time in meetings and add no value.

He doesn’t report to me, but everybody is looking at me to stop his behaviors because his direct boss is a big softie. I don’t feel it’s my place to reign him in or give him feedback. And if I went out on a limb and gave him feedback, I might damage the relationship and lose the value he does bring to the team.

Do you agree?

Annoyed

Dear Annoyed,

I understand that you are not this person’s direct boss, but you are his superior and he does in fact create work product for you. Your team members are going to lose respect for you if don’t at least try to change the behavior that is annoying everyone. You need to take control here. Forget his actual boss—you can give him feedback on what you observe and the work he does for you and your team.

Many leaders are skittish about giving feedback. I understand it is uncomfortable, but it is part of the job. There is no shortage of advice out there about how to give feedback—and it is often belabored so I will keep it simple.

• This will help you to cut out unnecessary words and get to the point. Think about the offending behavior, the impact it has on you and the team, and the change you are requesting.
• Be brief, clear and direct. Don’t give vague second-hand feedback such as “People on the team think that…” Take responsibility. Share your own observations and leave everyone else out of it.
• Keep your tone warm, friendly, and neutral. The idea is not to criticize, it is to be clear and increase your chances of catalyzing change.
• Tell the person you are asking for the meeting so that you can give them some feedback and make a request for a change.
• Meet in private. No one wants an audience when being taken to task.

Now for the actual meeting.

• Share that giving feedback makes you uncomfortable, that your intention to is help him be more effective, and that you see it as your job to have the conversation.
• Ask if this is a good time for him to have the conversation. Most people say yes, but if he says no, schedule another time to do it. You never know when someone is having a terrible day, has other things on their mind, or just needs to prepare themselves emotionally. It can really derail the hard conversation when you find out that your direct report’s dog died that morning and they are ready for the teeniest thing to push them off balance and fall apart.
• Share your observation and make a request; e.g., “In the weekly planning meeting you are always well prepared, but often, like yesterday, you go off on a tangent and tell elaborate stories that are not relevant to the task at hand. It is my job to keep the meetings short and efficient, so I must ask you to stop doing that.”
• You may want to limit it to no more than 3 items—presumably, they will all be related. If you see the person getting overwhelmed, tell him you have more feedback but you will save it for another time after he has digested what he has heard.
• Share how you will respond the next time you experience the offending behavior; e.g., “The next time you go off on a tangent in the planning meeting, I will politely ask you to stop and refocus the conversation.”
• Give the person a chance to respond. They may act defensive, hurt, or otherwise emotional. Or they might be perfectly even keeled. They will ask questions and want more information. Do not elaborate—if pressed, repeat what you have already prepared and do not deviate. The more you go off script, the more you may seem to be negotiating the request, which you are not willing to do. This is not a negotiation, so do not let the person think it is. You may be a dotted line, but you are still the boss.

Sound like a lot? It is. Being a manager is hard—I am sorry.

You may lose the relationship. This is always a risk, but frankly it may be worth it to increase the effectiveness of the team. And if you are kind, clear, and direct, the person getting the feedback can choose to get upset and take it personally—but you are just telling the truth, not being a big meanie. Your actual direct reports will know that you give feedback when it is warranted and will trust you more. They will also be grateful, because who wants to be regularly annoyed? Life is hard enough without having to dread the planning meeting because one person is oblivious. So make it stop.

Be strong. You can do it. Or, do nothing and continue to pay the price.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

Dear Madeleine,

I am a VP of international sales in technology. We are a fast-paced and very lean startup, so we barely have any HR department and no employee manual yet—certainly no one who can help me with this.

I recently hired a young woman who is just great. She is smart, quick, she goes the extra mile, and she’s crushing her numbers and making friends in the organization. She is quickly becoming my secret weapon. But she has no idea how to dress.

Her taste in work clothing is wildly inappropriate. She dressed perfectly for the interview phase, but now the heels are sky high, the skirts are too short and tight, and the necklines are way too low. People’s eyes literally go wide when she walks by.

I am no fuddy-duddy. I don’t care how she dresses on her personal time. I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea about her. She is so smart and talented and I want to keep her from hurting herself professionally. But I feel the need to reel her in before clients start judging us for her lack of judgment.

What can I say and how can I say it without hurting her feelings or having her think I am somehow judging her or harassing her? I know people in the company have begun to talk about her. I need to do something about this fast.

Victoria’s Secret Not Welcome Here!

Dear Victoria’s Secret Not Welcome Here,

Well, there is some good news: she dressed appropriately for the interview, so you know she has some sense about what is suitable. You have that going for you.

You absolutely must give her feedback and make a clear request. Be clear, direct, and nonjudgmental, make a direct request, and give her a timeline for compliance. Let her know you think her work is terrific and this is not a reflection on her overall professionalism. If you have enough of a relationship, you might go so far as to note that you are partially motivated by your desire to see her succeed and grow as a professional and that you don’t want her choice of clothing to undermine others’ perceptions of her credibility and competence.

You have to have someone else with you in the meeting—preferably someone from HR, even if they are in benefits. If you really don’t have anyone, try to find a trustworthy female peer. This conversation needs to be private, but not hidden.

Your new star may very well have only one or two appropriate outfits and may be trying to get by with her regular wardrobe. Clothes are expensive, and it is time consuming to shop. You may consider offering her a wardrobe allowance so that she can get herself up to snuff quickly.

She may also be trying to express herself and build a brand, which is a thing these days. In this case you can acknowledge her strong sense of style, but say that you need to ask her to channel it. It is hard to get it right for women, but there are excellent sources for guidelines.

If you Google images of “professional attire for young women” you will find lots of helpful photos. You can suggest she find a couple of looks that suit her and build from there. You might also suggest a role model in your organization—a woman who dresses appropriately—if there is one.

Timeless rules of thumb exist for women who want to look impeccable at work. When I was first starting to work in the corporate environment, I had almost no professional clothes and I got feedback from my boss. “Your blouse has to have sleeves; your skirt needs to be no higher than 2 inches above the knee and your heels no higher than 2 inches.” I still remember it because it was so specific, and I have used it ever since. My boss was kind and nonjudgmental. I was embarrassed but I was grateful because I just didn’t know.

She may get defensive and that’s okay—just let her vent. Don’t get caught up in any drama. But you must be clear, direct, and neutral. Remind her that you are on her side and want nothing but success for her. Decide exactly what you are going to say in advance—and do not fall into the trap of discussing it. You will only get yourself into trouble. Tell her you are only going to give her this feedback once and you aren’t going to be the wardrobe police because you didn’t sign up for that job—but you expect to see some changes.

I expect this will do the trick. I sure hope so.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

A core concept of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Situational Leadership® II model can help leaders and managers get over this hurdle by making sure that feedback is focused on a specific task or goal, not on the person themselves.

Focusing solely on the task will pinpoint the type of feedback that is needed and help to keep an individual’s personality out of the equation.

For example, managers who use Situational Leadership® II begin by setting clear goals with employees—they identify each specific goal or task and what a good job would look like. With these clear goals in place, during a feedback session the manager can provide redirection if they see a gap between the direct report’s development level on the task and the agreed-upon ideal.  Focusing on the task itself helps the manager determine what the direct report can do to move toward closing that gap. Feedback is then focused on finding solutions to close the gap instead of blaming or attacking the direct report.

There are many benefits to framing feedback this way.

• Feedback is more easily given, since it is not a personal criticism of the receiver. The giver can be specific about the goal or task and paint an image of the ideal that the receiver can work toward.
• Feedback is more easily heard. Instead of the receiver feeling they must defend their position or blame others, they are more likely to hear and appreciate the feedback. This improves the chance that they will make a positive change.
• Feedback presented this way fosters further dialogue. Giver and receiver can fully discuss the task and what a good job looks like so they can walk away with clear agreement of what that ideal is.  When both manager and direct report know what the target is, they are much more likely to partner together to hit it.
• Providing feedback this way has the receiver witnessing the giver being honest and direct, which often accelerates higher levels of trust, performance, and development.

Have you been avoiding a feedback conversation? Focusing feedback on goals and tasks lessens the pressure on both the giver and receiver.  We’d love to hear your thoughts on providing feedback this way!

About the Author

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

I once conducted interview-based 360-degree assessments with three executives in the automotive industry.

Coming in as a third party consultant, I perceived a cautious skepticism from the leaders under review.

I decided, right at the onset, to create an environment conducive to their learning from the feedback they would be receiving. My goal was to help them be receptive to the comments and to avoid the thought that often comes by default when reading negative feedback: Who could have said that?

My clients and I worked together during the first meeting and agreed to navigate the process while bearing in mind the following three principles:

1. The feedback you will receive is not you. It is how others observe you. As Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson discuss in their book The New One Minute Manager®, when giving negative feedback—a re-direct, as they call it in the book—you want to get rid of the bad behavior but keep the good person. As soon as I said this to my clients, their sense of relief was noticeable even over the phone. I even pictured them nodding in agreement as they thought about the separation between who they are and how others may perceive their behaviors. I could feel them becoming more relaxed as they began to open up and ask vulnerable questions.
2. Intention + observable behaviors = impact. I developed this equation as a simple illustration for myself and others of how, by aligning our observable behaviors with our intention, we can generate the impact we desire. Interestingly, after I shared this equation, the leaders identified on their own the behaviors they needed to improve to increase their impact and performance.
3. Don’t waste energy trying to identify who said what. Although the 360-degree assessment is a tool for development, not for performance review, it is natural to respond with some emotion when receiving the feedback. It often triggers a fight-or-flight response. To help my clients avoid worrying about who said what, I asked them to focus instead on thinking: If this feedback were true, what could I learn from it? The leaders found this thought very liberating. They realized the exercise was not about finger-pointing. This way of thinking reassured them that the process was for them to learn about and become aware of areas for improvement.

After looking at the feedback with these principles in mind, the leaders expressed their enthusiasm for the process and saw it as an opportunity to further develop their leadership skills. Because of their positive attitude, the debriefs went smoothly—even though the feedback included acknowledging some hard truths.

One client stated, “This has been the best feedback exercise I’ve experienced. I now know the behaviors I need to work on when crafting my development plan.”

I have used and shared these three principles with many clients, with great results. I’m certain you’ll find similar success in feedback sessions you are facilitating. Have you used similar principles in the past? Try it! And please share your experiences in the comments section.

About the Author

Antonio Estrada, MBA, Engineer and Certified Professional Coach is a member of Blanchard Coaching Services network of executive and leadership coaches.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Dear Madeleine,

I work in an open environment type of setting, and for the most part it works. I manage a large team and I recently hired a new team member. She interviewed well and had great references, but now that she is settled in she never shuts up and we are all going insane.

You can’t ask her how she is because she will stop and tell you in exhaustive detail. She gets going and can’t stop. We all know more about her parents, her siblings, her cat, and the guy who just apparently dumped her (we all know why!) than we want to.

Anyone within earshot cringes when she starts talking—and that is a lot of people.

Everyone avoids her now, including me. I try to have regular one on ones with her, but I can’t seem to get them done unless I have an hour and half. She can’t just answer a question—she has to give the whole back story, going back to how a customer reminds her of her second grade teacher.

She gets her job done, but she is driving us all nuts and every single person on my team looks at me pleadingly with “do something” in their eyes. I know I have to do something, but what?

She Never Shuts Up

Dear She Never Shuts Up,

I am sorry for you. I am sorry for your team. Most of all, I am sorry for your chatty employee. Generally, people who are that oblivious to social cues are in the grip of some huge need that they are not able to get met. She might be going through some kind of personal crisis that has thrown her off balance, or perhaps she has always been this way and no one has ever told her she needs to cut it out.

I am sorry for you because you are the one who’s going to have to either do something or risk losing the respect of your team. It stinks. I think you need to go at it head on—don’t soft-pedal or pull any punches. This is one of those extremely difficult personal things you have to deal with as a manager. It will require all of your courage, patience, and kindness. And you may not be able to fix the situation.

Set up a meeting with your chatter box, maybe in another part of the building or at the end of the day. This conversation is going to be hard enough without an audience.

Before you go into the conversation, get very clear on your motives for giving the feedback. Are you making a suggestion that she change her behavior for her own good, or are you making a non-negotiable request? When people get defensive they have a hard time hearing, so it will be up to you to be brutally honest and crystal clear. Consider supporting yourself with some kind of process. I am a big fan of Susan Scott’s process outlined in her book Fierce Conversations.

1. Name the Issue – She simply talks too much, shares too much personal information, and goes on sharing long past the point where people are interested. Make sure you are clear that it isn’t personal, and that you want her to be successful and will support her in changing her behavior.
2. Select a specific example that illustrates the behavior or situation you want to change – It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 examples.
3. Describe your emotion about this issue – You are avoiding her because every interaction takes longer than it needs to, you find it distracting, and you don’t want to be mean but you are going crazy.
4. Clarify what is at stake – Be very clear about this—are you going to let her go if she doesn’t change? It sounds like you might have to. Also let her know that this behavior may impact her future career no matter where she ends up. You might mention the long term ramifications of her inability to read when people’s eyes glaze over.
5. Identify your contribution to this problem – Is it possible you have let this go on too long? You should own that you have taken too long to say something, if that is the case.
6. Indicate your wish to resolve the issue – and be specific about what “resolved” looks like to you. This is critical and will provide both of you with a measure so that you will both know the fix is successful. If she stops the verbal barrage, what will that look like? Really paint the picture of what a good job looks like—give her examples of appropriate ways to respond to questions like “how are you?” and “what did you do over the weekend?” Be clear that the problem is that she doesn’t realize when she has lost people’s interest. For many people, when they notice they’ve lost someone’s interest, they keep talking to try to get it back—which is of course, the worst thing she can do.
7. Invite her to respond. Chances are she will be stunned, so be ready for her to be defensive and upset. She may start talking and not be able to stop. You will need to be prepared for that. You will need to put your hand up and say “stop.” She may reveal that she has heard this feedback before but doesn’t know what to do about it. So you will want to offer her help and solutions. There are plenty of good articles with tips out there. This is not an uncommon problem. Maybe print out some articles with some suggestions. If at all possible, you might be ready to offer her a coach to work with on this one thing. Perhaps your organization offers counseling through the employee assistance program.

If you have a strong HR group, get some support from someone there as well so that you will be extra prepared. Practice what you are going to say and be ready to repeat the same things several times. And for love of Pete, don’t let your discomfort drive you off track to a place where you end up babbling! Be a role model for clarity and brevity.

Best case scenario: she hears you, gets it, and gets to work changing a terrible habit. She might even thank you some day (but probably not). Worst case scenario: she is mortally offended and quits. Either way, you will have stepped up and done your job.

Good luck to you.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

Ken Blanchard likes to say “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” But if this is true, why is this meal avoided by some as though it consists of rotting fish and raw eggs?

Most of us have a similar reaction when we hear the words “I have some feedback for you”—a feeling of dread in the pit of the stomach; a fine sheen of sweat that forms at the brow. Feedback may be breakfast, but nausea often follows.

I am now a self-professed feedback junkie, but trust me—I have not always loved feedback. I can still remember the first bit of really tough feedback I received in my professional career. I fought it with a vengeance, sought excuses to explain it away, and railed against the person who delivered it.

I didn’t change—and I didn’t care—until several weeks later. That’s when, during a meeting, I heard the exact type of comment come out of my mouth that I had been given feedback about.

It was a watershed moment for me. I committed to voraciously seeking feedback from others and to treating pieces of feedback as compass points for professional and personal expansion. Over time, I learned to love it.

How about you? What’s your response to feedback? Here’s what I learned:

Be proactive in asking for it. This is the most critical step to harnessing the power of feedback: take the initiative to seek it out frequently from people you interact with. Be transparent about your desire to learn and improve—and express your gratitude to them for helping you grow. By doing so, you make it safe for others to share observations—and for them to perhaps feel brave enough to ask the same favor of you!

Choose the right questions. When requesting feedback, avoid questions that are broad or vague. Consider the areas where you would like to grow and craft thoughtful questions that will garner an equally thoughtful response. Some of my favorite questions are:

• How can I be a better partner to you?
• How do you feel about my communication style? Am I giving you everything you need?
• Is there anything you’d like me to understand about how your job works?
• One goal I am working on right now is (insert goal here). Would you be open to providing me with ongoing feedback about my progress toward this goal?

Take time for reflection. Sometimes, even when we ask for it, feedback can be tough to digest. That’s okay. Give yourself time and grace to process these types of responses and unpack your feelings. Compare your own beliefs to the feedback and talk to a trusted friend or family member about it. Remember: we all have blind spots about ourselves and there is power in discovering them so that we are blind no more. Knowledge is power—and information on how others perceive you is invaluable.

Incorporate the feedback into your goals. Once you have processed the feedback, brainstorm concrete behaviors or actions you can adopt that will allow you to address the areas at hand. Perhaps you can take a class, begin steps to break a bad habit, or incorporate a new practice into your workday. Share your intentions with your manager or a trusted colleague and ask for their help in accountability tracking your progress.

Feedback doesn’t have to be something to be avoided. On the contrary; it can be a great gift from one person to another. Take control of feedback: actively pursue it and make it work for you!

Dear Madeleine,

I have been asked to participate in a 360 degree feedback program.

My boss and the HR team will see the results—and I think the results are going to be used to make promotion decisions.

I have a bad feeling about this. I’m not that worried about someone giving negative feedback, but the whole process feels very unsafe to me.

My participation seems to be optional. What do you think?

Unsafe

Dear Unsafe,

Well, this is a can of worms if there ever was one. There are entire books on this topic!

The best practice in most organizations is to give the results of a 360 report only to the person who is the subject of the feedback, and to offer the support of a trained professional to debrief the report with the participant and create an action plan based on the results. I have heard of organizations including 360 results in personnel decisions, but it is not a recommended practice. The problem with any feedback is that it usually says as much about the person giving it as it does about the person receiving it, so the results can be tricky to interpret. You can’t always be certain about anyone’s agenda, especially if that person has an ax to grind or is competing for a job with the subject of the feedback.

In your situation, I would say get more information to help you make the decision about whether or not to move ahead with the program. Questions to ask include:

• What is the assessment, and is it a validated tool? (We have seen some 360 tools created “in house” that are really poorly written and confusing! This can invalidate any results.)
• What does the assessment measure?
• How will your raters be chosen and will you have input on the choice?
• Will you get to see and learn from the results?
• Will you get help to interpret the results and create an action plan based on them?
• Who else will be doing this process?
• Who exactly will be seeing the results?
• How will the results be used to make decisions?
• Just how optional is this opportunity?

Ultimately, declining a development opportunity never makes you look good. And properly sourced feedback can be a gift, so I am inclined to say go for it. But if you feel unsafe, I suspect there is a good reason for it.

Sit down with your boss and get answers to your questions. Share your uncertainty and ask your boss what he or she thinks you should do. A candid conversation about the whole thing will increase your confidence and ability to make the right decision for yourself.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

I am a COO in a multi-national import business. Our founding CFO has a foot out the door and we want to promote our comptroller, Bridget, into the job. She is lightning fast, ahead of the curve on international issues, articulate, and can really stand up for herself in what is—let’s face it—pretty much a man’s world. She has her MBA and she seems to be ambitious.

The problem is, Bridget has no idea how to dress. This may seem superficial, but we are all charcoal-suit- with-the-white-shirt guys. She dresses like she buys her clothes at Victoria’s Secret and she wears way too much makeup. Her unprofessional appearance totally distracts from her good qualities.

So far she has worked behind the scenes so no one has said anything. But if she were promoted we would need her to take part in client meetings—including in Asia and the Middle East—and she would need to look professional and upscale.

No one knows how to approach Bridget about this. We are actually considering just passing her over and starting a search. What do you think?

Buttoned-up Suit

___________________________________________________________

Dear Buttoned-up,

I think it would be sad for both Bridget and you—not to mention expensive in both time and money—to pass her over and launch a new search before making an attempt to solve this problem. What a waste if you have someone already on staff who is almost perfect.

I have to wonder: where is your HR department in all of this? I can only assume they are also buttoned-up suits and don’t even see this as their problem since you are the one writing. You obviously believe in this woman and want to see her succeed, so I encourage you to make the effort—but you will need to tread lightly.

It would be absurd to overlook someone who knows and gets along well with all of you, who will have zero learning curve about the company, and who is incredibly competent. But I understand the dilemma and I believe Bridget needs to hear the feedback and act on it. This is no small feat, but it can be done. It is not that unusual a situation but there are some big hurdles here—so you have to decide if they are worth the effort.

Have the talk.

It would be ideal if you could find a female executive who could have a talk with Bridget—but it sounds as if that might not be an option. So someone—maybe your HR person, maybe you—is going to have to man up and sit down with your whiz kid. In the conversation, make it crystal clear that her current way of presenting herself may well be holding her back—and that she needs to literally show the executive team that she is willing and able to up her game to be considered for this promotion.

This needs to be handled sensitively, but if it is clear to Bridget that the person giving the feedback really has her best interests at heart, it could work. I am speaking from experience. I went from being an actress to working in the corporate world and had no idea how to dress. My new boss, whom I trusted, gave me feedback after my first client session: my skirt was too short, my heels were too high, and I shouldn’t wear sleeveless blouses. I was truly embarrassed, but I knew it wasn’t personal and I was grateful because I knew my boss had my back. I went shopping and started a collection of what I considered work uniforms.

Be specific.

When talking to Bridget, use neutral language to describe the problem. Be very specific without adding value judgments. An example: “We think you are great at your job—but in order to consider you for any promotion, we need you to dress more professionally. You’ll need to wear blouses that have short or long sleeves and that fit properly, are not revealing and do not gape. Your heels should be no higher than 3 inches, and the length of your skirts and dresses should be no shorter than 2 inches above the knee.” (I would say no higher than fingertips of extended arms, but some people have short arms and anyone over 50 really should not be using that rule anyway.) Emphasize that clothes should fit properly and not be tight.

If you aren’t really sure, consult a website—there are tons. Here is one: What Is Professional Business Attire for Women?

Offer assistance—and understanding.

You might consider offering Bridget a wardrobe budget so that she can quickly and completely rebuild her work wardrobe. This process takes years for most of us. It would help to suggest a personal shopper as well, and equip Bridget with pictures of what you would consider to be appropriate. Also, think about gifting her with a lesson from a professional makeup artist to help her find a daytime appropriate work look.

Dress and presentation are rooted in culture and deeply personal. Many people see how they dress as a fundamental form of self expression. You can have conversation about this. Women who dress provocatively in the workplace are often following a role model that makes sense to them; or they really enjoy making an impact; or they simply believe it is what is expected of them. I have worked with many employees over the years who see the way they dress as a political statement and feel, therefore, that clients should be okay with it. But nothing will ever make it okay for an outside consultant to wear Birkenstocks to a meeting at Goldman Sachs. I often compare dressing for success to wearing a costume to make the right impact on a specific audience.

Present rationale—and time line for the shift.

Make it very clear that this is not personal—it’s because you believe she will be more effective if she is able to match the way she presents herself to the culture of the organization. Certainly remind her that in her personal life she can, of course, wear whatever makes her happiest.

Set a reasonable target date for when you expect to see a substantial change in how she presents herself. Expect that you will need to give her a few second chances—and when she shows up at work wearing something unsuitable, gently but specifically point out to her what is inappropriate.

Be realistic about the outcome.

Finally, keep in mind that she may not be able to make the shift. I have seen it happen a couple of times. This would also be sad but at least you will have made the effort, and she will have been given the  opportunity. Some people will never compromise their self image for any reason.

This is a tricky situation. It touches on gender equality issues, personal identity, and the compromises we all make to fit into our tribes of choice. But it is not as if you are a nasty boys’ club asking her to wear tighter, shorter skirts. That would be a real problem. You want to invite her to be in your executive level club—where you know she deserves to be. But to get that invitation, she needs a costume change.

Let me know how it goes—and good luck!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

This guest post is by Michael Glazer.

If only I had a dollar for every time I heard leaders say they want the people in their organizations to “tell me what I need to know, not what I want to hear.”

Speaking truth to power is easier said than done, but people who can do it well earn respect from their managers and help their own careers in the process.

The same principle applies when leaders want to develop professionally.

Sure, many leaders I work with appreciate having a safe, supportive, and nonjudgmental environment to experiment with new ideas and explore aspects of their own leadership styles. But the same leaders tell me that what they want most is constructive challenge from the people around them, whether it’s on the job or in a formal learning setting. The reason, they tell me, is that constructive challenge pushes their thinking and their emotions in a way that drives positive action and growth.

And the more senior the leader, the more this seems to be the case. I see this often here in Asia, where cultures can be more hierarchical and relationship-focused than in the relatively egalitarian and task-focused cultures of many Western countries (leaders tend to receive less upward feedback in hierarchical cultures).

So, what does it mean to give someone constructive challenge? I ask this question regularly in conversations and leadership workshops I facilitate. And over time I compiled a list of common requests I hear leaders make. Here are a few of them:

• Ask pinpointed questions
• Prompt me to consider new options
• Ask for the facts behind my statements (don’t take my word for everything)
• Give me a point of view different from my own
• Ask me to consider others’ points of view
• Give me quick responses to keep me alert
• Help me visualize and consider the future
• Tell me if I am speaking too much
• Point out possible assumptions and biases
• Give me candid feedback about how I come across to you

Similar to the advice given in the HBR article “Connect, Then Lead,” my experience is that first offering warm support and then showing strength through constructive challenge works best. I’ve seen firsthand how doing this earns respect, strengthens relationships, and propels people to take action to develop themselves.

Now I’ll ask you. What have others done to constructively challenge you? And how did the experience impact you or your relationship with the person who gave it? I look forward to hearing your stories and experiences.

About the Author

Michael Glazer is a senior consultant with People Focus Consulting, a Blanchard Global Partner based in Tokyo, Japan.  Michael specializes in talent development, leadership development, and change management.

Dear Madeleine,

I am a director in a large retail organization. Recently everyone at my level received an online 360° feedback. My report shows that my whole team is very unhappy with my hands-on style. All 14 of my people—not just 1 or 2— see me as a micro-manager. In the open-ended comments were phrases like “in the weeds” and “breathing down my neck.” Also, my peers and my boss perceive me as being “not strategic.”

I was blindsided by this. I am upset and confused. Right now I have no idea how to do my job. I have always thought it was good that I’m on top of things and I head off errors and problems before they can even start—but it turns out that all this time I have been de-motivating my team! I am at a total loss. I just don’t understand why the feedback is so negative.

My wife thinks I am taking this too much to heart and I should ignore it and move on. What do you think?

At a Loss

Dear At a Loss,

I think your wife is wrong—you should not take her advice to ignore this feedback. She is right, though, in the sense that you can’t take it too personally. But you have to take it seriously. Your job and future are at stake here. Feedback is often more a reflection of the person giving it than the one receiving it, but the one useful thing about the multi-raters—especially if you had a large group filling it out—is that it shines a light on something you are oblivious to but everyone else sees.

It is surprising that you have never, ever heard this type of feedback before and that you are so gob smacked by it. Has no one ever mentioned to you that they didn’t need you to supervise them as closely as you do? If you think about it, you may have had hints about this but chose to ignore them. We all do it.

Now is the time for you to pay attention to this very real situation and make a change. You must make use of the feedback or you will never grow as a human being (or be promoted). You don’t want to look back on this moment and regret it. Create some space in your brain to process the feedback by asking yourself What if this were true?

Research shows that successful people are naturally good at seeking out feedback and making changes based on that feedback. You can choose to develop this quality.

So what to do? The first person to talk to is your boss. Ask her what it would look like for you to be more strategic.  Get specifics on what you should stop doing and what you should do differently. Challenge her to give it to you straight. Tell her about the feedback from your team and enlist her help in adopting a less controlling style. Make a list of all the ways you can improve and brainstorm with her the ones that are the most doable and will get the best results. You can’t get a personality transplant, so find changes you can make that are realistic for you.

You could also ask your boss to arrange for some training—our Situational Leadership® II method is ideal for just this problem. You can read about it in the book Leadership and the One Minute Manager. It explains how to give each employee just the right amount of direction and support so you aren’t breathing down anyone’s neck or, conversely, abandoning them when they need you.

Then swallow your pride and go talk to your team. Go ahead and tell them how shocked you are at the feedback. Explain that you want to be a better boss and that you want to give them the direction and support they need, when they need it, and not more than they need. Give them permission to tell you when you are overdoing it and to come to you for help when they need it. Once you decide what behaviors you want to stop or start, tell your people what you are working on and ask them to give you in-the-moment feedback as you go. Leadership is a relationship between you and the people who follow you. Develop that relationship and improve the communication channels. Use your strength—the one that makes you good at staying on top of things and anticipating problems—to monitor your own behavior.

This feedback is not an attack on your character. It is an opportunity for you to become a better leader. Was any of the feedback good? Did you even notice the good feedback? Probably not. Most people are hyper-focused on the criticism. Go back and read through the report again and focus on the good stuff. It drives me crazy that your company thought it would be a good idea to give you a feedback experience without offering support from someone who could help you talk it through and come up with an action plan for what isn’t working.

Stay in touch and let me know how it is going.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

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

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

Did he think I was fat? Did he not love and admire my beautiful self anymore? Or was it something else entirely?

Turns out he saw how hard I work, putting long hours in the office and then even more hours in the evening, all sitting at a computer. He’s read the studies about sedentary lifestyles and has been thinking about being an empty-nester.

Turns out he wants to spend time with me doing fun things that are going to take some physical strength—like hiking Half Dome in Yosemite!

Constructive feedback can be hard to give and hard to receive. Here are 3 ways  to make giving feedback a bit easier.

Be aware of your own feelings and intentions. Are you angry? Frustrated? Worried that your feedback will derail the receiver? Nervous about giving feedback? There are lots of reasons we avoid giving feedback—and our own mindset plays a big part in how the feedback will be received. Be aware of this and manage it effectively. Trust me; my husband would never say “You look fat in those jeans”—but he does notice if I complain about being out of breath when I take a quick walk around the block with the dog.

Here are 3 lines to say to yourself in preparation for giving feedback.

1. Describe your feelings about the upcoming feedback: “I’m feeling…”
2. State how you want to feel: “I want to feel…”
3. Be clear about your intentions: “I’m giving feedback because…”

3½. (Bonus tip): take a couple of deep breaths before the feedback conversation.

Be authentic. Yes, it’s an overused word, but that’s because it’s effective.  Even though feedback isn’t all about you, your feelings and thoughts do play a critical role in the conversation. My husband bought the membership but never said “Hey, let’s plan a romantic getaway to Yosemite. I want you to enjoy it, and I’m concerned that right now you won’t be able to.”

Share what you are feeling, but sparingly. Try variations of these 3 statements:

1. “I care about you, and I’m a bit (feeling) about giving you feedback.”
2. “I want (desired outcome) for us in this conversation.”
3. “I think (a thought about  giving feedback).” Example: “I think this feedback will help us work together more effectively.”

Listen, listen, listen. The person receiving feedback may have an emotional reaction. They may want to process their feelings by explaining context, or they may just need to talk through the feedback.  Ask these 3 questions—and follow with deep listening.

1. “Can you say more about that?”
2. “If you were to do something differently in the future, what would it be?”
3. “What can I do to help us avoid this in the future?”

When I didn’t act excited about the gym membership, my husband was surprised—until he listened to my thoughts and feelings about it.  The more he heard from me, the more chagrined he was.  His ability to listen gave us the opportunity to have a really great conversation. Now we are on the same page—and Yosemite was fabulous!

About the Author

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

Dear Madeleine,

I am a newly promoted senior VP of sales for the North American division of a medical devices manufacturer. My boss is a new COO brought in from the outside. He lives in Germany and I live in Colorado, although I am on the road constantly.

I’ve met this guy only once and he shared almost zero information about himself. I went to LinkedIn to find out more, but there’s not much information there, either.

I have no idea what his plans are for sales—all he told me is to keep the numbers up and it’s all good. I don’t have a clue how I am doing in his eyes. I’ve asked for feedback but his response on the last monthly report I sent him was—I am not kidding—one word: “Good.” What should I do? The silence is killing me.

Need Feedback

Dear Need Feedback,

Welcome to senior leadership—the land of no feedback. You’ve heard it’s lonely at the top? This is why. The only feedback you may get is how your people are doing vis-a-vis goals. Everything else you’ll have to provide for yourself.

Just like you, your new boss has a big new job and he’s trying to figure out how to win. You’re keeping your numbers where they need to be, so right now you’re the least of his worries. I would say the fact that you got a response at all is positive—and the response itself is probably high praise coming from someone who plays his cards that close to the vest. You are a warm, extroverted communicator; he is a private, introverted, analytical type. Don’t take his style personally.

What exactly are you worried about? Did your old boss give you a lot of feedback? If you need to know how well you are doing, check in with your people. Ask them what you could do more of or less of. Ask them what they think you should start doing or stop doing. Ask them if there is anything they think you should know. Ask them what you could do to help them be more successful.

If you need more affirmation, develop a relationship with your counterparts in other regions. Build your network of peers so that you have a sense of how you are doing in relation to them. It’s not that I am big fan of comparison per se, but this will give you at least a bit of a reality check.

Finally, do anything you can to spend more time with your new boss. Include him in your travels. Show up at any and all leadership team meetings. Keep communicating with him, and keep up the good work. And relax. When he has feedback for you, you’ll hear it.

Love Madeleine

About the author

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

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

I recently read an interesting Zenger Folkman white paper on feedback. What caught my eye is that more than 50 percent of people whom they surveyed said that corrective feedback has helped their career more than positive feedback has.

Ken Blanchard loves to share former colleague Rick Tate’s assertion “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” To me, this statement implies feedback is a gift—if both giver and receiver are open to seeing it that way. The hope would be that the feedback would give the receiver new insight in service of their growth and development, not immobilize or anger them. And yet, as they move up in their career many people find they receive less and less meaningful feedback of any kind. Why would that be?

A clue can be found in the aforementioned survey on feedback. Many of the respondents who said corrective feedback has helped their career also said they themselves were resistant to giving it. I get that—no one wants to be the bearer of bad news or to de-motivate someone else. But my take on the situation is that a lot of people crave honest feedback, and it’s courageous to offer it—as long as it’s done with compassion, thoughtfulness, and no ulterior motives.

In an effort to identify skills and methodologies used by business coaches, the International Coaching Federation has defined eleven core coaching competencies. One of those competencies is direct communication—and part of that competency encourages coaches to be “clear, articulate, and direct in sharing and providing feedback” to their clients. I think we all need to do this more often, remembering that feedback is a beginning step, not an end in itself.

In addition to courage and compassion, here are a few things to keep in mind if you choose to give the gift of corrective feedback.

• Focus on observable behaviors, not personality traits. People are more able to change or develop a behavior than to alter their personality. When you gear your feedback toward suggested behaviors such as listening better, taking time to build relationships, or enhancing presentation skills, it gives the feedback recipient something concrete to focus on. Also, be prudent with your feedback by focusing on just one or two topics at a time.

• Keep a positive end goal in mind. Think about the positive change you would like the person to make, and paint a picture for them that gives them a vision to work toward. This is far more effective than focusing on what the person is doing wrong.

• Offer to be an accountability partner. Changing in isolation is hard. If your recipient is open to change, offer support. This might include helping them devise an action plan or scheduling a weekly or monthly check in. Also, catch them doing something right—keep your eye out for when they make positive strides and praise them. It’s great reinforcement.

Can you find the courage to gift someone you know with clear, articulate, and direct feedback? Are you willing to be a support system for someone else’s development? If your answer is yes, great! My advice is to start small, in a low-risk situation. For example, practice with someone you feel safe being a learner with. Tell them providing corrective feedback is a skill you want to develop. You can agree to reciprocate, with them offering feedback and accountability support to you as well.

Giving corrective feedback effectively is a skill worth having. Give it a try and let us know how it goes!

About the Author

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

Dear Madeleine,

What’s the best way to give correction to a sensitive top performer?

I have a senior person on my team who is good at her job and takes great pride in performance excellence.

But when I try to give her anything less than positive feedback she’s practically in tears and proceeds to beat herself up for days: “Oh, I should have known better! I’m such a loser! You should just get rid of me!”

I’ve become hesitant to say anything that hints of criticism because of the emotion it produces. –Withholding Feedback

Dear Withholding,

This is a tough, but fairly common, situation when dealing with top performers. Many are driven by a need to avoid being criticized.

But before putting this all on her, let me first ask you a question: Is it possible your feedback comes across as harsh? The distinction can be as subtle as “You were late turning in that brief” vs. “That brief was late.” Using you can make people feel defensive, as can asking why.

If you are confident your delivery is not the problem, plan for the conversation thoughtfully. Be sure to broach the subject when things are going fine—in other words, strike while the iron is cold. Now be clear, concise and forward-focused. Here are some guidelines:

1. Identify the pressing concern. For example, “When I give you redirection or make suggestions for possible improvements, you seem to take it to heart, and very personally.”
2. Clarify the issue. Cite specific examples of the behavior in question. Keep things neutral by sharing only your observations.
3. Tell her how you feel the current situation affects both of you. Share with her that her behavior has caused you to become hesitant to give her important feedback you believe would be to her benefit.
4. Find out if she believes the problem lies with you. Ask her if she has any observations on how you might be contributing to the situation.
5. Determine the future implications. Have a discussion about what may happen if nothing changes.
6. Commit to making a request. Think about what you want her new behavior to look like and then ask for exactly what you want. Offer to support her in making the change.
7. Describe the ideal outcome. Talk about the difference it would make for both of you if her behavior were to change.
8. Reinforce her value. At the end of the discussion, it’s essential to endorse the things she does well and share the ways in which she is an asset to the team. This step is even more important when you are dealing with a high performer.

One caveat, though: following these eight steps doesn’t guarantee a quick change. Her behavior could be a lifelong habit born from a need to protect herself. But by following the eight guidelines above, you should find yourself in a better position to offer necessary redirection while avoiding most of the emotion. It’s worth the effort. Let me know how it works out.

About the author

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

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

In The New One Minute Manager, just released this week, authors Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson lay out a time-tested approach to help managers deliver needed feedback. Here are some key takeaways you can use to improve your feedback skills.

Do Your Homework

Before you rush to deliver feedback, make sure clear agreements about goals, norms, roles, and expectations have been established. Often the root cause of poor performance is a lack of clarity around goals. Verify with your direct report that the two of you are operating from the same set of expectations. Many performance issues can be rectified at this stage.

Focus on Behavior

If goals were clear and there is a gap between expectations and observed performance, talk about it. Describe the behavior in specific, not general, terms. Use a neutral tone to ward off any sense of blame or judgment—remember that you are addressing the behavior, not attacking the person. The goal is not to tear people down, but to build them up. As Blanchard and Johnson explain, “When our self-concept is under attack, we feel a need to defend ourselves and our actions, even to the extent of distorting the facts. When people become defensive, they don’t learn.”

Let it Sink In

After giving feedback, pause for a moment so you both can process the situation. Let your direct report feel your concern as well as their own.

Move On

When it’s over, it’s over. Don’t dwell on the experience. Be sure to reaffirm your belief, trust, and respect for your team member so that when your meeting is over they are thinking about how they can improve their performance, not about how you mistreated them. Expect that the feedback will be received and acted upon. Be ready to endorse and praise performance when you see improvement.

Take an Extra Minute with Your People

Blanchard and Johnson like to say, “The best minute I spend is the one I invest in my people.” Feedback is an essential managerial skill. Take an extra minute to improve your skills in this important area.

To learn more about the authors’ approach to performance feedback, check out The New One Minute Manager book page. You’ll learn more about the book and see what others are saying. You can even download a free chapter!

You cycle through the loop by observing the results of your actions, reviewing and revising your initial decision, and moving to your next action. It needs to be a smooth, continual process, and the faster you can move through each stage the better. In fact, if you were to sit down and map out each step, it would slow down instead of speed up.

The initial concept was based on military combat operations. Consider a fighter pilot trying to shoot down an enemy aircraft. Before the enemy is even in vision, the pilot considers information of the enemy pilot (level of training, cultural traditions, etc). When the enemy aircraft comes into the radar, our pilot gets more information on speed and size of the enemy plane. A decision is made based on the available information. Our pilot can then loop back to observation: is the attacker reacting to the action of our pilot? Then to orient: is the enemy reacting characteristically? Is his plane exhibiting better-than-expected performance? Based on these, he can cycle back through the loop to making a decision on his next course of action, and carry it out.

If you’re looking to work on your leadership, and become a better leader, your first step might be to create an action plan. “In order to be a better leader, I want to do this, this, and this”. Whilst this action plan might focus your efforts, and provide a roadmap; it is just that: a plan.
When it comes to leadership, the way to produce the change of mindset – to improve the skills you require to become a better leader – is to act differently, rather than just think about it.
In fact, acting differently is more likely to make you think differently.
Someone once told me that, if I act like someone that I would like to meet, in time, I’d become a person that other people want to meet (and this is now written on a piece of A4 paper, stuck on the ceiling above my bed, and I read it every morning when I wake up). This is Boyd’s OODA Loop theory applied to being a ‘nicer’ person; but the same can apply to leadership. Act like the leader that you would like to have leading you, and in time, you’ll become the kind of leader that others want leading them.
You can try something new and, after action, observe the results – how it feels to us, how others around us react – and only later reflect on what our experience taught us.
In other words, we “act like a leader” and then “think like a leader”.

Managers often find delivering less than positive feedback to be difficult because they are worried that negative feedback may de-motivate people, damage a relationship, or will not generate the desired results.

Guidelines for Giving Feedback

Madeleine Homan Blanchard, co-founder of Blanchard Coaching Services recently outlined seven best practices in a January 24 post for well-intentioned managers facing this task.  For manager’s looking to improve their ability to deliver sensitive feedback successfully, Blanchard recommends:

• Before giving feedback, be sure clear agreements have been established about goals, norms, roles, and expectations.
• Make sure the relationship has sufficient trust. Ask the direct report for permission to give feedback, or at least prepare them if you need to share something that might be delicate or hard to hear.
• Use a neutral demeanor to eliminate blame and judgment. Be aware of your nonverbal communication and tone. If this is a challenge for you, practice using neutral language.
• Be timely and give feedback immediately or as quickly as possible, but not in the heat of the moment. If you can’t control your emotions, wait until you can before giving feedback.
• Be relevant. Feedback needs to be focused on moving forward—not about something in past that will never happen again. Giving feedback about past events that are unlikely to recur serves no purpose and can damage trust.
• Focus on behaviors that are within the employee’s control. Beating people up for things outside of their control is unreasonable.
• Be specific and descriptive. Describe the behaviors or data rather than giving generalizations.

Critical Responsibility

Giving feedback is a critical job responsibility of any manager. With some practice and preparation sensitive feedback can be delivered successfully.  And the good news is that  the more thoughtful you are with feedback, the less of it you’ll have to give!

________________________________________

About Coaching Tuesday

Coaching Tuesday is a weekly feature at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching. Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have coached over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

However, you aren’t doing anyone any favors if you don’t give feedback. The employee suffers, and in the end so does the whole organization.

I recently spoke with a leader in a company who wanted me to coach a director-level person who had been with the organization for nine years.

As he explained, “Her first manager was a wimp and no one has ever given her any feedback. All of her bad habits just got more ingrained. When she finally came to work for me, I gave her some sorely needed feedback and her response was ‘No one has ever told me that before. It must be you.’

“We have to shift this situation,” he concluded.

I had to laugh because it was the perfect scenario of what happens when managers don’t give feedback right out of the gate. The employee in question goes along unaware thinking “no news is good news,” and gets transferred—or promoted—to other managers who are too freaked out by the person’s obliviousness to say anything.

And the problem just grows and grows. Each manager solves the problem by foisting the employee onto someone else. This can go on for years. When the time comes to cut the person loose, you have the perfect recipe for a lawsuit because the employee had no reason to believe they weren’t the perfect employee all along. Michael Fertik, founder of Reputation.com, calls this “The Long Linger” in a recent Harvard Business Review blog post The Problem with Being Too Nice.

Is this you? You know who you are. Cut it out. Give the feedback. Use a neutral, nonjudgmental tone of voice, make an observation, offer redirection, and make a clear request for a change. Make sure you are clear about what the change looks like and that you find ways to measure or track whether the change is being made. If you are a manager, this is your job.

Need more help? Here are some expanded guidelines for giving feedback:

• Before giving feedback, be sure clear agreements have been established about goals, norms, roles, and expectations.
• Make sure the relationship has sufficient trust. Ask the direct report for permission to give feedback, or at least prepare them if you need to share something that might be delicate or hard to hear.
• Use a neutral demeanor to eliminate blame and judgment. Be aware of your nonverbal communication and tone. If this is a challenge for you, practice using neutral language.
• Be timely and give feedback immediately or as quickly as possible, but not in the heat of the moment. If you can’t control your emotions, wait until you can before giving feedback.
• Be relevant. Feedback needs to be focused on moving forward—not about something in past that will never happen again. Giving feedback about past events that are unlikely to recur serves no purpose and can damage trust.
• Focus on behaviors that are within the employee’s control. Beating people up for things outside of their control is unreasonable.
• Be specific and descriptive. Describe the behaviors or data rather than giving generalizations.

Feedback given soon, fairly, and within the bounds of a trusting relationship can be a gift. The other person now has the opportunity to examine and make changes in their behavior, knowing their manager has their best interests at heart.

About this column

Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned 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.

Previous posts in this series:

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

Setting Boundaries: 7 Ways Good Managers Get It Wrong

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

The Top Three Mistakes Good Managers Make

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

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
2. “No news is good news.”

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• 35% of respondents consider lack of recognition the primary hindrance to their productivity
• 16% of respondents left their previous job based on a lack of recognition
• 17% of respondents stated that they have never been recognized at their place of employment
• 69% of respondents stated they would work harder if they received increased recognition

In other words, if only the squeaky wheel is getting the grease, you might look down one day and find that some of your wheels have simply disappeared while your ride is sitting up on blocks.
It takes effort, but intentionally finding people doing things right can have a positive outcome on your work environment, such as lower turnover and higher productivity.  If you can train yourself to also be on the lookout for the positives, you can turn it into a habit.
Leave your comments!

Click the image below for a simple demonstration of flow (use the mouse to move and remember to return when you’re finished):

The creator of this simple game used Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow to develop the game elements. Since you can decide when to move further, you are always in control of both the level of challenge and skill, meaning you can always keep yourself in a state of flow.

Now think about your direct reports and their tasks. Are they in a state of flow? If not, is it due to the task being too difficult, or the direct reports not having high enough skills? Or perhaps the challenge isn’t increasing proportionately with their skills? And think about your own tasks. Are you in a state of flow? Why or why not? What can you do to improve your workplace and encourage more flow?

It’s clear that employees can become more engaged and productive, while constantly developing and growing, by applying this simple model to the workplace. So the next time you’re at work, try adjusting the level of challenge to match the level of skill. You might be surprised to find how much fun you can have while in flow!

Image Credit: 1

• Conduct weekly or biweekly one on one’s. Depending on how many direct reports you have, it is absolutely imperative that you meet with them one on one to discuss their needs. Make this a formal time; there are a number of informal meetings, chats by the lunch room, and discussions about projects. A formal one on one with a focused discussion on the needs of your direct report will open up communication. From a practical stand point, make it 30 minutes or an hour if you can swing it. Let your direct report create the agenda and don’t use this time to “dump” projects or work on them.
• Ask them about their lives outside of work. This is really important if you have a new or newer employee. Chances are they may be nervous, hesitant, and a little insecure about their new environment and work. Nothing eases that pressure  more than a manager who is genuinely invested in the lives of those who work for them. No one wants to work for a robot…
• Be invested in them professionally and personally. Not everything is a competition and not everyone is a competitor. Many times, we are our own worst enemies. Supervisors should be people who care about other people. On my boss’s wall, for example, is written, “Every person has intrinsic value.” Employees work best when they are respected, valued, and heard.

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

With this knowledge of the power of thought, you can become a better leader and, as well, motivate your employees to become better workers. Imagine successfully navigating through a difficult conversation. Imagine making your employees feel cared for. Imagine implementing positive change. The more you imagine, the more successful you can be when it comes time to act.

The same holds true for your employees. Let them know that visualizing success can have a huge impact on actual success. Share this video with them. Encourage them to use imagination as a tool for practicing on a new task when hands-on time is limited.

About the author: Hart is an HR Data Analyst at The Ken Blanchard Companies, finishing his Ph.D. in I/O Psychology. He can be reached at hart.lee@kenblanchard.com.

whine.

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

From what I’ve experienced, being around a group enhances the effects of the smile test. Why? Because happiness is contagious. And by smiling, you encourage better moods in the people around you, which can even circle back around and improve your own mood further.

So share your smile and laughter with those around you as much as you can every day. You’ll be regarded as a more positive leader, someone who uplifts and inspires anyone and everyone. You may even find, as Brent did in his experiment, that your day becomes a lot brighter!

Smiling Girl

I recently watched a TED Talk entitled

I once had an interesting experience on an assignment. I was in a leadership position and was faced with situation that required an immediate decision—okay, I’ll admit that the word required is a little strong. It wasn’t a crisis, but I didn’t see any reason not to make a decision in the moment. Although I had never encountered this situation before, I made a decision that I thought was within my decision-making authority. Turns out, it wasn’t.

To add insult to an injury I didn’t even know I was inflicting, I acted on that decision. No surprise—I shouldn’t have done that either.

And to make it a true “hat trick,” I went ahead and got a few other people involved, including the client! Ugh!

Fortunately, a couple of people in positions senior to mine found out about my decision, intervened, and disaster was averted. You don’t have to know the decision, the actions I took, or who else was involved to imagine what happened next. Yeah, I got invited to a phone meeting. And I had no idea there was a problem until I was on the call.

As I was being given feedback about the entire situation—the decision not being within my decision-making authority; the potential negative impact of the decision; the implications for our client relationships; the legal, regulatory and compliance problems my decision could have caused; and what I should have done—all wrapped up in a delivery tone of “you should have known these things”—I kept thinking, “How could I have known this [what I was being told in that moment]?”

How could I have known exactly what to do in that situation? How could I have known what to ask or who to ask in that situation? I didn’t even know I needed to ask anyone anything.

I’d never been in this situation before. Based on the variables, my analysis, my experience, my past decisions, and the outcome we were trying to achieve—value-added service to the client—I made what I thought was a good decision. A few other things went through my mind, most of them unproductive and none of them appropriate for this blog. But you get the picture.

My natural inclination was to express the aforementioned thoughts to the person I was meeting with as a way of presenting my case and defending my actions. Instead, I decided to do something different.

I decided to shut off my own background noise and listen.

I decided not to defend, blame, or protect myself, but to listen for something specific: I decided to listen for a solution. Because at the end of it all, a solution was the only thing that was going to help us learn, grow, and most importantly, avoid being in this situation again.

So I let the person I was meeting with continue to speak. As they were speaking, I focused in on the points they were making that would help formulate a solution. When they were finished, I presented back to them the points I had heard that were the solution—and not just the solution to what I should have done in that situation. By listening with a clear and open mind, I was able to formulate the parameters for my decision making which I could now apply to a variety of situations—not only that one.

In the end, we agreed that the decision-making parameters would be as follows;

• CAN DO: If clearly in the Scope of Work.
• CAN’T DO: If not within compliance, regulation and/or legal.
• If not clearly a CAN or CAN’T DO, then CHECK WITH ________ (fill in the blank).

When I focused on the solution vs. the problem, not only did the person I was speaking with agree and express appreciation, they actually verbalized what they had done that caused the problem. Then they apologized, and committed to acting differently going forward.

We have a favorite saying at The Ken Blanchard Companies: “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” This is a saying that Rick Tate, who used to be a consulting partner with our company, often said.  By being open to feedback, I was able to focus on a solution and turn a potential negative experience into a positive one.  I think you will too if you open yourself up to the possibility.

About the author:

Ann Phillips is a Senior Consulting Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies where she specializes in consulting and keynoting on customer loyalty, employee engagement, leadership, organizational change, and team building.

Employee Oversupervision by Manager

Communicating to Determine the Optimal Amount of Supervision

1. Talk with your direct report. He/she knows best how much supervision you should provide. Ask about any areas of a task where he or she would like more supervision and if there are any areas where he/she would be comfortable with less supervision.
2. Show that you care. Remember that your goal is to learn how to better tailor your supervision to your direct report needs. And by meeting these needs, he/she will be more satisfied, committed, and better prepared to work well. Describe to your direct report how much you want these things for him/her.
3. Follow through. Don’t you hate when you trust someone to do certain actions (especially for something that impacts you), and he/she lets you down? Your direct report is trusting you to follow through with what you agreed. Be sure to prioritize this, as trust is easy to lose and difficult to gain.

Image Credit: 1 | 2

A collaborative approach

• It’s effective. Real, true behavioral change has been proven in organizations that utilize peer coaching. There are no gimmicks with this approach; if implemented correctly and sustained, it is a great tool for development.
• It’s free. Although executive coaching has its place, not many of us can afford coaches and most organizations won’t have the resources to supply everyone with a coach. Peer coaching is a free coaching experience that is results-based and is grounded in the interaction with people you know and trust.
• It’s an easy process to implement. Set up a recurring time and place within your organization to meet and discuss your current goals. This might be a perfect place to discuss your performance management goals or individual development plan (IDP) that your manager has set for you. If your organization isn’t ready for you to use working hours to implement this, than a 1 hour lunch break will work perfectly. It will probably be the most effective lunch hour you will have that week!

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

But leaders still play a vital role. The next advance needed in today’s organizations is to develop motivation into a strategic leadership capacity. When leaders treat employee motivation as a strategic issue, they create a distinctive advantage that is not easily matched by competitors. This strategic approach results in higher quality individual performance on everyday goals and projects, more “out of the box” thinking, faster innovation, greater acceptance of change, and greater “idea velocity.” Sustaining high quality motivation as a strategic capability also creates a magnet for talent.

Where to start?

The path to competitive advantage is paved with autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Focus on honoring employees’ legitimate needs for a sense of freedom in their work, their natural desire for warm relationships that are free of manipulation, and the natural striving for ongoing competence and growth.

One powerful place to start is with what you write and say to employees.  Here are three simple upgrades that you can make to your communication style to build more autonomy, relatedness, and competence in your interactions:

1. Offer as many options as possible when making requests for action, and make them true options. Employees need to feel a sense of freedom and control over their work. Try to avoid false options that really pressure them toward the single outcome you think is best.
2. Highlight the extraordinary learning that everyone is doing, particularly when times are tough. People are less afraid of difficult challenges when they realize they are successfully learning their way through them.
3. Balance focus on final results with focus on team, community, and collective effort. Be sure not to bang the table for results without expressing your gratitude for individual and team effort along the way.

Distinctive motivational capacity across the entire organization, in all functional areas, and among every level of executive, can be built by more carefully cultivating the work environment. Optimal motivation is fostered when you upgrade the quality of the language used in everyday meetings, in email, and even in how senior leaders speak to the financial markets. Such improvements tell employees what matters most—and whether employee well-being is really a central management focus.

The more you show that you genuinely care about your people as human beings, and are thankful for all they strive to achieve every day, the more likely you are to set your organization apart from the rest.

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.

A very accomplished friend and colleague of mine presented for our table group and when she sat down the first thing she did was ask us, “How’d I do? Was that okay? Did it make sense? I didn’t make a fool of myself, did I?” (Okay, she actually said, “I didn’t look stupid, did I?)

Well of course she did just fine, it was better than okay, it made sense and, no, she didn’t make a fool of herself. Nor did she look stupid. We all chuckled and didn’t think much of it. But apparently, it was a bit more serious to her.

During the break, which followed shortly after her presentation, she told me she’d seen a snippet of the commencement speech Oprah Winfrey made at Harvard this year (May 30, 2013). Oprah talked about one thing her interviewees had in common: one of the first questions they asked when the interview was over was a version of “How did I do? Was that okay?” Interestingly, this question cut across all categories represented by her interviewees—Heads of State, business moguls, entertainers, criminals, and victims alike. They all wanted to know: “How did I do? Was that okay?”

I was so intrigued, I went online and read the entire speech. Oprah said the common denominator she found in every interview is that people want to be validated. People want to be understood, “I have done over 35,000 interviews…and as soon as the camera shuts off everyone always turns to me and they all want to know: Was that okay? Did you hear me? Do you see me? Did what I say mean anything to you?”

Think about these questions being in the minds of people you encounter—people in your community, in your workplace, and at home. In some ways the nature of the relationship doesn’t matter and in other ways the more intimate that relationship, the more important the answers to these questions become.

Was that okay? / Do you see me? / Did what I say [or do] mean anything to you?

The world is full of messages that tell us we’re not okay. All the devices we use to stay connected disconnect us in so many ways. Take the opportunity to let someone know that they’re better than okay; you know they’re there; and yes, what they say and do does mean something to you.

Never underestimate the power of validation.

About the author:

Ann Phillips is a Senior Consulting Partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies where she specializes in consulting and keynoting on customer loyalty, employee engagement, leadership, organizational change, and team building.

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More than 700 of the magazine’s subscribers were asked what they wanted out of their individual meetings with their managers and how that compared to what was really happening.

Questions were asked on a wide variety of issues related to one-on-one meetings—including frequency, duration, and topics discussed.  In three key performance management areas—goal setting, goal review, and performance feedback, employees identified a serious gap between how often they discussed these topics versus how often they wish they were discussing them.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Goal Setting Conversations—Some 70 percent of people want to have goal-setting conversations often or all the time, but only 36 percent actually do. And 28 percent say they rarely or never discuss future goals and tasks.
• Goal Review Conversations—Some 73 percent of people want to have goal review conversations often or all the time, but only 47 percent actually do. And 26 percent say they rarely or never discuss current goals and tasks.
• Performance Feedback Conversations—Some 67 percent of people want to have performance feedback conversations often or all the time, but only 29 percent actually do. And 36 percent say they rarely or never receive performance feedback.

IMPLICATIONS FOR LEADERS

The performance management literature is clear on the importance of setting goals, providing feedback, and reviewing performance on a frequent basis. How is your organization doing with helping managers get together with direct reports to set goals, provide feedback, or discuss direction and support where needed?

If people haven’t been meeting as regularly as they should, use this survey data as a starting point to encourage managers and direct reports to schedule their next one-on-one soon. People want and need to have conversations with their immediate supervisors. It’s one of the foundations for strong, productive relationships that align people with the work of the organization in a satisfying and meaningful way. Don’t wait—your people and better performance are waiting!

PS:  You can see all of the data and charts by downloading the article PDF from the July/August issue of Training magazine.

Here’s a question I have asked in numerous workshops over the past few months: How many of you have had formal training in listening?

It never fails to stun me when only about 10 percent of the attendees raise their hands. Listening is such a critical skill—and yet so few have been trained in how to do it. Here is a short course.

What does it mean to really listen?

Dictionary.com defines the word listen as follows:

lis·ten [lis–uhn] verb

1.  To give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing

2.  To pay attention; heed

Yes, it means to hear; but it also means to pay attention—with our ears, our eyes, and our hearts.

Listen to more than the words

True listeners look beyond the words themselves—they search for meaning in the speaker’s tone and body language. This is especially important when the communication has an emotional component.

A study done by Dr. Albert Mehrabian at UCLA looked at the degrees to which emotional messages are sent through words, tone, and body language. Regarding the true meaning of an emotional message, Dr. Mehrabian found:

• 7 percent of meaning is in the words that are spoken
• 38 percent of meaning is in the tone of voice—the way the words are said
• 55 percent of meaning is in facial expression

If what we are hearing is different from what we are sensing from the tone or the facial expression, guess which one is correct! 

Show You Are Listening

Part of really listening is responding in a way that shows the other person we are paying attention. We can demonstrate we are truly listening in four different ways. For example, if a coworker comes to you and complains about their micromanaging boss, you could show you are listening by:

• Reflecting back the content

Example: As you see it, your boss is micromanaging you…

• Reflecting back the feeling

Example: So you feel frustrated because…

• Reflecting both content and feeling

Example: You feel frustrated because your boss is micromanaging you…

• Being silent and attentive

A helpful phrase to show you are listening might be:

So you feel ___________________ because ______________________.

Other helpful phrases might include:

• You seem…
• You sound…
• What I’m hearing is…
• As you see it…
• Tell me more…
• Is there anything else…

Not only is listening to others a key life skill, it can also have a tremendous impact on building trust in a relationship. When we take the time to listen, we show the other person that we care—that we are interested in understanding their perspective. That can go a long way toward building, or rebuilding, a relationship.

“The purpose of life is to listen – to yourself, to your neighbor, to your world and to God and, when the time comes, to respond in as helpful a way as you can find …  from within and without.”          ~ Fred Rogers

“A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.”               ~ Wilson Mizner

About the author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start today

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

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

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.

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

• I never really gave him full autonomy

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

• I shouldn’t have given him full autonomy

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

• My communication was not aligned with my expectations

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

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.

But what happens if the environment is altered and obstacles are added? Researchers experimented with just that by lowering a glass barrier into the aquarium separating the pike on one side from food fish on the other. When the pike goes after a nearby minnow, it runs into the invisible divider. And after a while, the pike stops trying.

But this gets even more interesting. The observers next remove the glass, and the pike continues to avoid going after its natural food.  The learned behavior is so strong that some pike have actually died of starvation during the experiment even while minnows continue to brush up against them.

This same type of learned behavior can sometimes be seen at work. It’s a learned helplessness that occurs when you, or someone with influence over you, decides that something can’t be done, or perhaps in the case of business, can’t be done right. In short, the Pike Syndrome is a debilitating situation.

For example, if someone approaches you for feedback on a project or job they’ve been working on, and rather than emphasizing what was done well, you point out what could have been done better. Even if you were right in your critique, almost inevitably there are potential negative consequences.

Or, possibly you are the type of manager who tells people, “If you’re doing your job, you’ll never see me.” When that’s the case, good work goes unrecognized and it is only shortcomings that draw a response from the supervisor.

When good performers experience that type of environment, they learn to avoid their leader’s dissatisfaction rather than risking new behavior that might lead to better results. In the longer term, it may be difficult for them to unlearn that.

So avoid being part of the problem. Give your people their best chance to succeed by removing barriers to performance.  Next, acknowledge them when they are making progress. One more thing … it’s critical to get your own behavior in line, before you can help others to do the same.

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.

That’s a limiting perception. The job of managing people includes managing roles, goals, and day-to-day performance. Redirection is a part of that process.

In some ways it’s like flying airplanes where flight plans are set and frequent corrections in the air keep the airplane on course. The goal is a smooth flight that will arrive at the desired destination safely. But a surprise bout of turbulence may force the plane to change altitude to find smoother air space.

The same is true in the workplace. We all hope for a smooth ride in the course of achieving our goals but people sometimes experience turbulence and need “in-flight” corrections, too. This type of correction is what I call redirection.

A Closer Look at Redirection

A redirection is used for learners in a “can’t do” situation, not in a “won’t do” situation. With constantly evolving priorities, technology, and demands, many a worker is learning something new every day. Add in unclear vision, goals, or roles, and a worker can fall behind or make mistakes.

How should a new manager approach a person who needs redirection? Ken Blanchard shares a five-step process in his bestselling book, Whale Done! The Power of Positive Relationships.

Here are Ken’s five steps for redirection:

1. Describe the error objectively, without blame and without drama.  Example: “Your report was two hours late.” No eye-rolling, desk-pounding, or sarcasm. Just the facts.
2. Describe the negative impact of the error.  Example: “As a result, I had to cancel an important meeting because I did not have the data I needed in time.” Again, no emotion. Just the facts.
3. If appropriate, take the blame for not being clear.  Example: “I was giving you a lot of direction about several projects at once. Perhaps I wasn’t clear about the absolute deadline for your report.” This is an important step and can be a powerful, face-saving, loyalty-building action to take. It’s entirely possible that a new manager was not clear or specific enough.
4. Go over the task or goal again.  Example: “To be sure that I am clear this time, let me review with you what I need and when I must have it. I need….” It’s important to give very specific information and also to get agreement that what you are asking for is possible.
5. Express continued trust and reaffirm your belief in the person’s abilities.  Example: “Now that we have talked about this, I’m sure we’ll have no problem next time.” People need to know that an error will not permanently taint them.

It’s normal to occasionally get off course—especially when you are learning a new skill or taking on new goals and projects. Redirection is a natural part of the process even though it can be uncomfortable at times.  As Winston Churchill said, “I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught.”  When a correction is required, this 5-step redirection can get things back on track.

About the author:

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

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

Gather the relevant information.

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

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

Envision the desired outcome.

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

Anticipate the other person’s reactions and your response.

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

Pay attention to logistical issues.

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

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

Decide if the conversation is worth having.

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

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

About the author:

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

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

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

Self Reflection?

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

The pivotal ingredient in both cases?  Trust

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

The four attributes are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The quick answer is:  It’s about both you and your team. There are two ways to look at your new role.

First, it’s about you. It’s about you in terms of your ability to show the way, provide hope, stay optimistic, and be a positive role model. It’s about your willingness to listen well to your people and hear their concerns and new ideas. It’s about you having the courage to say what needs to be said—to your people, your peers or your boss—on behalf of your team.  It’s about you using your corporate machete to create career paths for your people through your company’s jungle. It’s about teaching and explaining (again) and supporting and encouraging (always).  It’s about noticing the true condition of your most valuable corporate resource—the people under your care.

Second, it’s about them. Are your people’s roles and goals clear?  Do they have a voice and a forum with you to express themselves? Your direct reports are ambitious. They want to know they can trust you with their careers and that you have their best interests at heart. They want to know their time with you is well spent. They want to know the vision and the plan. They want to learn and grow. It’s about them and whether they stay—stay working for your company, stay with you in your department, stay loyal, stay engaged, stay positive, stay current, and stay successful.

No one says becoming a good manager is easy. But it’s not so tricky if you believe at your core that your job is to help others succeed and that, by so doing, you too will succeed. Ken Blanchard asks this question to those who aspire to leadership: “Are you here to serve or to be served?”  Your response to Ken’s question will set the tone for your new management career.

For new managers, there are many ways to leave a positive mark.  Look at what your people need from you and look inside yourself for ways to meet their needs. Ironically, meeting their needs will, in turn, meet your needs as a new manager.

About the author:

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other take-aways? Please share!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

About the author:

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We are so caught up in the “busyness” of life, that practicing Mindfulness appears antithetical to producing the results and productivity required in our roles.  Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

When you notice and are aware of what is happening without judgment, you release yourself from patterns of behavior based on past experience, your dispositional tendencies, and your prejudices that limit your response.  When you do this, you have a myriad of choices for how to respond or react.  When mindful, you are able to choose a higher quality experience from your now unlimited choices.  The benefits to your own health, success, and productivity are rewards enough.

Practicing Mindfulness

Ready to practice some Mindfulness in your own life?  Here are three ways to get started:

1. Consider an important goal, task, or situation you currently have on your priority list.
2. Notice the physical sensation in your body that occurs just by thinking about it.  Does your stomach turn, your jaw clench, your chest tighten, your forehead frown?  Do you break into a smile, have butterflies in your stomach, or feel your pulse race?  Your body notices how you feel before you do!
3. Now notice the emotion attached to the physical feeling.  Is it positive or negative?  That’s judgment.  An emotion is your opinion of the physical sensation you are experiencing.  What if you were to let go of it and simply notice?  This would present you with a myriad of more choices than the one that so automatically came to your awareness.

Ripple effect with others

Donna, a participant in a recent Optimal Motivation workshop, told me that a major action step she committed to at the end of the session was to practice Mindfulness at work.  Being a woman in a leadership role in a manufacturing environment, Donna described herself as extroverted, strong, vocal, and quick to react.  She began taking a breath before calls and meetings; rather than immediately reacting to people and situations, she observed what was happening as “data.”

Donna reported that after a month of this practice her 17-year-old daughter said to her, “Mom, you seem really different; calmer.”  Donna was amazed that her practice had filtered throughout her life and that even her teenage daughter had noticed.

I hope you will experiment with Mindfulness.  Google it.  Check out the research by Kirk Warren Brown.  Travel to India and study with a yogi.  Or better yet, join us for an Optimal Motivation session and discover how Mindfulness can help you experience greater energy, vitality, and sense of positive well-being.

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.

Have you been asked to help someone change?

Here are five suggestions from Homan-Blanchard that will give you your best chance for success.

1. Begin with data and dialogue. Business leaders live and die by the numbers. One of the only ways a leader will agree that change is needed is by being presented with unequivocal data and feedback.

2. Make it relevant. Leaders need to understand how their efforts to make and sustain any change will pay off. For instance, the investment is worth it because it will increase their business results or make their work days easier.
3. Mix it up and customize. Because each leader is growing and learning at a different pace across a spectrum of skill sets, learning leaders need to be prepared with a blended approach that uses all available resources, including online learning, classroom experiences, cohort or peer coaching, professional coaching and mentoring.
4. Consequences matter. Culture also plays a substantial role in effective leader development. Be clear that certain leadership behaviors are non-negotiable and even cause for dismissal.
5. Respect must be earned. Learning leaders who seek to support leaders’ change efforts need to be role models for growth and change, too.

Helping another person change requires clear direction, support, and accountability over time.  It also requires a proven process.  In an upcoming virtual workshop for leaders looking to identify and change unwanted leadership behaviors Homan-Blanchard outlines three key strategies individual leaders can use to manage their own change.

1. Identify behaviors that need to change.  Articulate the gap. Put words to where you are now, and where you want to be. This helps you to understand the nature of the shift you need to make and keeps it real.

2. Practice your new behavior. Start in a safe environment with people you trust.  Tell people that you are trying something new.  Ask for help in tweaking your new behavior. Ask for support in identifying triggers, and in holding yourself accountable. Remember that you will not be good at your new behavior. Try on new things one at a time. You can make a lot of changes, just not all at once. Give yourself a chance to master one thing first—then you can move on to the next thing.

3. Try on your new behavior in a real-life setting.  Promise yourself to do it ONCE, either once a day, once per opportunity, etc. Define a minimum for yourself and reward yourself every time you do it. Be kind to yourself throughout the process.  Real change is hard, but worth the effort.

Coaching is an act of service

Helping someone change requires a service mindset.  The process can be challenging, but also very rewarding when you can help people identify and modify behaviors that may be holding them back in their careers.  To learn more about Homan-Blanchard’s advice for facilitating change, be sure to check out her article, How Do You Get Leaders to Change?  Also, be sure to check out her upcoming online workshop, Taking the “Un” Out of Your Un-Leaderlike Moments.

In Blanchard’s experience, all leaders can benefit from examining some of the mindsets that might be operating just below the surface of their consciousness.  It can be as complex as a formal 360-degree assessment, but it can also be accomplished through less formal methods.  As Blanchard explains, “Sometimes all a person needs to do is get on the phone with a completely objective person who has their best interest at heart. Someone who is going to say, ‘Hey, what’s up with that? What’s going on?’”

“And they learn about themselves by talking. It is like cleaning out your closet and getting rid of all the old stuff that doesn’t fit anymore or that you never really liked in the first place.”

3 ways leaders hold themselves back

In an interview for the October edition of Ignite, Blanchard identifies three ways that leaders often hold themselves back.  See if any of these might be hampering your effectiveness as a leader.

Limiting self-beliefs—people often self-impose rules and expectations on themselves that don’t serve them—even when they know what to do differently.  It’s a matter of giving yourself permission. When Blanchard asks, “What keeps you from doing those things?” clients often reply, “Absolutely nothing. It just didn’t occur to me.”

Playing small—Blanchard shares another story about a client who was very comfortable in her own playing field but wasn’t seeing her own potential—or taking steps toward it—the way that others in the organization were seeing her. As a result, she wasn’t building the relationships or networks within the organization that would make her more effective.

Time orientation—finally, Blanchard often works with clients on expanding their time orientations. As she explains, “Each of us has a preferred and habitual time orientation—past, present, or future. Aspiring leaders are often very good at being in the present and focusing on what is right in front of them, but to take it to the next level, they also need to develop skills for future planning.”

Be yourself—only better!

People can and do change. And it almost never requires as big a shift as you might think. Blanchard likes to use the metaphor of a ship on a long sea voyage. If you make even a two-degree change in your direction you completely change your destination.

Where are you headed? What are some of the behaviors that might be holding you back as a leader? To read more on Blanchard’s thinking, be sure to check out Three Ways Leaders Hold Themselves Back.

Interested in learning more about identifying and changing limiting leadership behaviors?

Also check out a special Leadership Livecast on October 10.  Over 40 different business thought leaders will be sharing examples of “un-leaderlike behaviors” and how they—or others—overcame them.  The event is free courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies. Learn more at www.leadershiplivecast.com

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.

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.

What would happen if your direct reports “secretly shopped” you as a leader?  What would they report back?  Here’s an exercise to help you find out.  You are going to “meta-cognate” or watch yourself by designing a personal secret shopper scorecard.

Identify your ideal self

First, take a few minutes and think of your vision of yourself as a leader. On your best day—the one you would like to be recorded for the nightly news as a model for leaders everywhere—what do you see yourself doing? In interactions, are you focused on the other person? Are you listening to their world and trying to help them succeed in the important work they are doing? Do you recognize their effort and courage?  Do you help your people gain clarity around their purpose and goals? What exactly is your vision of YOU at your best?

Create your secret shopper questions

Second, reframe a few of your observations (no more than three) into your own secret shopper questions, such as:

1. To what degree did the leader use the word you versus the word I?
2. Were listening strategies used to enhance communication?
3. Was specific praise or recognition used to build the relationship?
4. Did the leader make the individual feel important?
5. Did the individual leave the interaction ready to act?

Create your scorecard

Third, create a small, written assessment that you can use to remind and assess how close you are behaving to your ideal self in your interactions with people. This self-assessment should include four items—the top three things you intend to do, your self-assessment of your success, the level of care the individual felt as a result, and the chances that they will come back again for a similar experience.  Here’s mine so you can see an example:

My Secret Shopper Leadership Scorecard

Upcoming interaction:  Discussing goals with Lisa

Three things I want to observe myself doing:

1. Taking some time at the beginning of the meeting to reconnect
2. Keeping the conversation focused on goals, tasks, and the work we need to accomplish
3. Reviewing agreements and letting Lisa know that I am available for direction and support

Self assessment of this interaction: (on a scale of 1 to 10)

Level of CARE the individual felt: (on a scale of 1 to 10)

Chance s/he will want to come back for a similar experience: (on a scale of 1 to 10)

Being your own secret shopper is a great way to begin the task of creating and becoming the leader you want to be. Use this scorecard  to purposely plan and notice yourself in action.  Self-reflect on each interaction with an employee.  Ask yourself the questions you generated and strive toward higher and higher ratings. With a little bit of practice, you’ll soon notice the impact that being “customer focused” can have on your performance as a serving leader.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lead Up

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
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Ask most bosses what their management style is at work and you’ll hear them talk of a supportive style that features active listening, coaching, and problem solving.  From their point of view, they feel that they are very active in providing high levels of direction and support to their people on a regular ongoing basis.

However, ask most employees what type of management style they are experiencing and they will tell you it’s more like concentrated periods of attention at the beginning and end of a cycle (think goal setting and performance review) with long stretches of time in between where they are basically left on their own.

This isn’t a problem if the employee is a self-directed, self-reliant high achiever on a task.  For employees with this level of competence, clear goal setting and an occasional check in to evaluate progress may be all they need.  But what about employees who are new to a task, developing new skills, or pushing to stretch themselves?  For these employees, goal setting and evaluation isn’t enough.  They also need direction and support along the way.  It doesn’t have to be a lot, but it does have to be present in some degree if you want them to make progress toward goals and feel cared for along the way.  Otherwise they can feel alone, abandoned, and on their own.

How are you doing with meeting the needs of your employees?  Here are a couple of things you can do this week to open up lines of communication and provide people with the direction and support they need to succeed.

1. Talk to them.  Set up time this week for a quick one-on-one to discuss where your people are at with their goals and tasks.  Even though the context of the conversation is being framed by what they are currently working on and how it is going, be sure to provide some room for them to share obstacles they may be facing and how you can help.  Watch for non-verbal signs—especially if you get an “everything’s fine” initial response from them.
2. Evaluate their development level with each task.  As they discuss each of the tasks they are working on, consider if this is something that is routine for them or a bit of a stretch.  If it’s routine, listening and support are all that is necessary.  If it’s a stretch, listen even more closely and consider how you can provide additional resources that can speed their progress.
3. Repeat on a weekly basis. Close out the meeting by setting up some time to meet again the following week to do it again.  Better yet, make it a recurring appointment on your calendar.  It doesn’t have to be a lot of time.  15-20 minutes will usually get the job done.

Time matters

Very few employees will tell you that they meet too much with their supervisor to discuss their issues.  (Micromanaging to discuss the needs of the manager is another story.)  But many will tell you that they haven’t had a discussion with their boss in weeks or months.  Sure, time is precious, but it is also the way that we signal interest, importance, and value in what people are working on.  Don’t let your relationships at work atrophy.  Set up some time to talk with your direct reports today.

The same thing can happen when it comes to matching your leadership style to the needs of the people you’re leading. In this case, leaders often overdress by over-supervising (providing too much direction and support) or under-dress by delegating (providing too little direction and support) when their help is most needed.

How do you make sure that you’re always in style in both instances? Here are a few tips:

Make sure that you understand the situation. Being in style starts with information. What can you find out about the event that would give you clues to what would be most appropriate? When it comes to clothing choices, ask yourself: Who is going to be there? What is the situation? Where is it being held?

When it comes to leadership style, the same questions, slightly altered, can help in a management situation.

In this case, ask yourself: Who am I meeting with today? What are their specific needs in this situation? Where are they at in terms of competence and commitment for the goal or task? Find out as much as you can about the situation so you can match your style to the needs of the person you are working with.

Develop some flexibility—give yourself some options. Knowing that you need a certain style doesn’t help you if you don’t have that available in your wardrobe. The same is true when it comes to your leadership style. You need a variety of options that you are comfortable wearing. Most leaders play only one note—in essence, they wear the same style regardless of the situation. As a result, they are only in style a portion of the time.

This means that they might be on track when it comes to delivering a high direction style to someone new to a task, but completely off-track when they try using that same style with a highly-experienced, long time employee.

The best leaders have a full wardrobe at their disposal and are comfortable suiting up in a variety of styles to match the occasion.

Double-check that you’re on track. Once you’ve identified what you think is the perfect choice for the situation, be sure to double-check. Ask others, “Here is what I’m thinking would be appropriate in this situation, how does that sound to you?” Watch for a positive response. It might be subtle, so watch carefully. Some visible signs such as a release of tension, return of a confident look, or even a smile will tell you that you are moving in the right direction. If you don’t see that, return to step one—maybe you need some additional information to understand the situation more completely.

Creating a comfortable, natural leadership style takes work. But if you focus on the situation, develop your skills, and work together with people to make the right choices, you’ll find that you can develop an authentic, lasting style that will serve you well in any situation.

My wife has started a new job recently.  Like many people, it involves working in a cubicle interacting with customers primarily by telephone or email.  Even though she works in a large office setting, she is by herself for the most part and doesn’t see her boss in person very often except for a short weekly meeting. Most of their conversation between those times is via email only.

A recent customer issue she was working on was something new she hadn’t done before.  She did her best to figure it out but couldn’t come up with a solution that satisfied the customer.  In the end, the customer spoke those dreaded words, “Can I speak with your manager?”  Maybe that was best, my wife thought to herself, and so she transferred the call to her manager’s voice mail.  She also sent her boss an email documenting some of the supporting information.  Maybe her boss would have some additional resources or ideas on how to handle the situation.

The next morning my wife had an email waiting for her from her manager.  Her manager had sent the customer issue back to my wife with the reply, “Didn’t you see the recent company memo regarding the procedure for escalating customer service calls?”

A pretty standard (if slightly cryptic) type of response that goes out from bosses thousands of times each work day.  A simple reminder to review some earlier policy memo detailing the steps for handling situations like this.

Off to the races

“What did this mean?” my wife thought to herself. “What was her manager trying to say?”  She had seen the memo and it described how to evaluate and escalate calls to supervisors when necessary.  She felt she had followed the procedure.  She reread the memo, looking for details she might have missed.

By the time she talked to me about it that evening after work, the issue had escalated in her mind.  “Why do they make this so hard?” she asked me.  “Can’t they see I’m just trying to help the customer?”

“Maybe I’m not a good fit for this company,” she finally told me.  “This just isn’t the way that I work.”

The solution

“Have you talked to your manager?” I asked.

“I sent her a second email, but I haven’t heard back yet.”

“Okay, let’s wait and see what she says before we get too far ahead of ourselves,” I responded.  “Give me a call when you find out.”

I never did get that call, so at dinner that night I asked how it was going.

“Oh, that’s all set,” my wife replied.  “My manager stopped by and we talked about it.”

Managing By Wandering Around

Time is a precious commodity at work these days.  Everyone has a lot on their plate.  Still, managers can do a lot of good for their organizations by occasionally getting out of their offices for a little stroll.  In addition to regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings, check in with the people who report to you at least one other time each week by stopping by their desk, checking in with them via telephone, or just making yourself accessible.

Don’t let small things blow up into big things.  Nip them in the bud and make it easy for people to get back to work. It will make your company more productive and it will increase your connection with your people too!

What are you probably thinking while they are talking?

A. What you were doing before the person ran in, even though it means only half-listening to their story?

B. Internal brainstorming on how you would handle X?

C. Preparing to respond with all the things others have done in a similar situation so you can share them as soon as the person is done talking?

D. Carefully listening to the situation to be sure this person gets the help he or she needs on X?

Answers A, B, and C are SELF-focused, and answer D is OTHER-focused.

Now, ask yourself, “Which one do you think will best meet the needs of this person, over time? Which one might make them a ‘customer’ who feels cared for?”

Yes, answer D.

Changing your focus

To improve your ability to focus on the needs of others instead of your own, here are four questions to consider when someone comes to you with an issue or situation.

1. What is the issue/focus for this person?
2. What is their understanding of the situation? Who, what , when, where, how, etc..
3. What does he or she think should be done—or what is the help he or she needs?
4. How can you help them follow through with their solution, or deliver what is needed?

Let’s replay the scenario and see how this works in practice.  Once again, someone runs into your office (or calls on the phone) and says, “I need help with X.”

Step 1: Understand the Focus—You immediately stop what you are doing, becoming present and focused on that person. Then, as the person is sharing, you are listening carefully to ensure that you understand what the issue is. When he or she is done talking, you say, ”Ok. Your situation/issue is….”

Step 2: Get Information—Before generating a list of what to do, the next step to empowering this person over time is to get him or her to share the background or other pertinent information about the situation so all are clear. Before jumping in with your solutions ask what he or she thinks is the best possible outcome for the situation.  (This is not as easy as it seems!) Reflect back what you hear.

Step 3: Identify Options—To get the best possible outcome, now you ask what options can be considered.  What does the person think or feel should be done? What does he or she need to do that? What learning is necessary? Who could help? By when could it be done? What else?

Step 4: Follow up—Your final job is to follow-up to help the person deliver the solution that’s been generated. Your follow-up is to ensure that he or she acts on his or her best intentions.  Checking in within 24 hours to see how it is going is an uncommon practice that will generate a lifetime of gratitude.

First, you engender collegiality. Second, you act as a catalyst to help the person move on his or her idea—or revisit the situation, in case the person needs additional help to move forward.  The important thing to remember is, it’s all about them.

In these days of rapid communication and overload of tasks, it is easy to forget that people like to be smart, and they like to know that others trust them to do their best work.  By being a sounding board, instead of a solution board, you inspire others to feel powerful and claim their greatness.

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.

However, there are three times when it is not appropriate to praise someone.  In fact, praising in any of these three instances will often end up doing more harm than good.  In all three cases the deciding factor isn’t the situation, but instead, it’s the attitude of the manager.

When you don’t really know what’s going on. Offering general praise without any specific examples highlights the fact that you aren’t paying attention and you aren’t really sure what someone is working on.  Instead of being a positive, this type of “you’re doing great” praise only serves as a reminder, and not a good one.

When you’re using praise as a way to get something in return. This can be as obvious as buttering someone up, or it can be as subtle as using praise as a reward.  You don’t want to use praise as a carrot, and you don’t want to withhold praise as a punishment.  Praise when it is used like this is a form of coercion.  People will smell this out and resent this type of backhanded control. Eventually it will come back to bite you.

When you are hoping to use praise as a substitute for something else—a pay raise for example. People want to be recognized and know that you care, but they also want to be paid.  You need to address each separately.  Praise can enhance the good things that are going on in a work environment but it won’t cover over issues such as pay, growth opportunities, and workload balance.

Praise when it is done right should be fun, light, and spontaneous.  It should be as natural as breathing.  If you find yourself over-thinking praise, wondering how it will be received, or what the person will think and do as a result, take a minute to double-check your motives.

Genuine praise focused on the employee is always welcome.  Using praise as a means to your own ends is a subtle form of manipulation.  Don’t cross the line.  Use praise the right way.  Show genuine appreciation and let people know that you really care.