Communicating Like a Leader: Are You Freaking-Out Employees?

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

(Reprinted from “You Have to Say the Words” An Integrity-Based Approach for Tackling Tough Conversations and Maximizing Performance)

As a leader, your ability to set an appropriate tone for performance conversations is critical to supporting your message. This is where many managers stumble, especially when they are anxious about confronting an employee. A serious message can get lost or watered down if the tone of the conversation is too light or the language is soft and indirect. I call this “candy-coating” your message; setting a lighter tone for a serious message in the hopes that the message will be more readily accepted and to avoid confrontation with employees. If you candy-coat your message too much, they may dismiss your message entirely or perceive it as being unimportant when in fact that may not be accurate.

When it comes to setting the tone, the opposite problem of candy-coating your message is also a concern. You can unnecessarily “freak out” employees by sending signals that convey a more serious issue than you are actually discussing. The employee becomes so worried that she is about to be fired that she fails to hear the more benign message you are actually sharing.

If there are others involved in your meeting with the employee, make sure in your pre-meeting that you discuss the overall tone you want to convey and ensure that each participant is supporting that message. Setting the appropriate tone for the conversation helps to emotionally prepare the employee for the message you are about to deliver.

There are several things to think about when setting the tone of a conversation.

Formality of language—You can use formal words when setting up the meeting or your language can be casual and nonthreatening. For example, you can send the employee an ominous email requesting a meeting to discuss “performance issues” or you can stop the person in the hall and ask, “Do you have a minute? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.” The method of delivery and language should match the ultimate message you intend to deliver.

Body language—Research shows in face-to-face communications we communicate 55 percent of our message through our body language, 38 percent through our tone of voice, and only 7 percent through our word choice. That means that 93 percent of our message will be received by vehicles other than the words we select. Hopefully now you can understand how important body language is to that equation.

What are you communicating with your body language when the employee arrives for the meeting? Are you sitting relaxed in your chair or are you sitting up straight with such perfect posture the Queen Mother would be envious?

Think about the room setup for the meeting as well. Are participants already in their seats or is everyone milling about with people taking a seat as the meeting begins? Are you sitting across from the employee behind a desk or next to her in a chair?

Be aware of your facial expressions and gestures as well. Eye contact is very critical. Be careful that you do not actively avoid eye contact when the employee arrives or during the meeting as this can communicate that you are uncomfortable with the situation or the message. Many people also associate eye contact with trust, so make sure you are meeting and holding her gaze without staring.

By matching your word choice and body language to the overall tone you want to convey, you will help ensure you do not down-play an important message or exagerate a simple one.

You can learn more about my book and order your copy at www.achievementpress.com or anywhere books are sold. Paperback and E-Book formats are available.

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Social Network Passwords – Have Employers Gone Too Far?

Posted on March 21, 2012 by

Could your Facebook page or Twitter feed prevent you from getting a job? It seems for some employers it isn’t enough to do reference and background checks as part of their pre-employment screening, they also want to review candidates’ social media sites before making any offers. While it has become fairly common for managers to check out a candidate’s public profiles, some are now demanding the passwords for email and private social networking sites in order to gain further access.

This trend has become popular for positions in the public sector, but it also seems to be gaining traction with private companies as well. Managers want to know they are hiring people of good character who are not engaged in illegal activity, and social networking sites such as Facebook can provide a unique glimpse into a candidate’s life away from work. Companies who don’t ask for passwords are still finding creative ways around this issue such as having candidates use a company computer to log into their profiles so the hiring manager can review them, or asking the candidate to “friend” the HR Manager.

As a former HR Manager, I find the practice of demanding passwords excessive and well over the line. While I certainly understand a company’s desire to screen out potential problem employees, I find requiring the disclosure of passwords for consideration of employment to be overly intrusive. At least two states agree, Illinois and Maryland. They are currently proposing legislation to make it illegal for public agencies to ask for social networking access. In the meantime, the private sector can do what they want.

I have been cautioning people for some time to show restraint and to be smart about the information they share on social networking sites. Bashing your company, complaining about your boss, sharing photos of your drunken exploits may be good fodder for your friends, but understand that somehow that information usually makes its way back to your employer. I know of one situation where a manager was shown a Facebook post from an employee who bragged that they had been drinking all night, had just finished their last beer and they were on their way to work, late of course. The employee arrived with an excuse about car trouble. Can you guess what the manager did? Yep…sent him for a drug test which resulted in the termination of his employment for being under the influence at work. As Jeff Foxworthy says, “Here’s your sign.”

As an employer, it is difficult to know for sure that you are making the right hiring decisions and hiring the wrong person can be an expensive mistake. With that being said, any information that you as a hiring manager can glean through public channels is fair game as far as I am concerned. Asking for passwords feels like the beginning of a very slippery slope to me. What’s next, demanding copies of medical records so companies can keep their healthcare costs down?

What do you think? Should employers be allowed to demand access to a candidates social networking sites as part of the pre-employment screening process?

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Resignations – Should You Listen to What They have to Say?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by

In the last week two prominent companies, Goldman Sachs and Google, have been very publicly slammed by former employees. James Whittaker, an ex-Google engineer and currently a Microsoft employee, posted on that company’s blog his reasons for recently leaving Google. In his post, he criticizes Google’s change in corporate culture and their lack of innovation.

Last Wednesday, Greg Smith wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled; “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs” where he calls the company’s environment as “toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.” Smith stated his reason for resigning as “I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.”

Could these attacks be the rantings of disgruntled former employees who didn’t get the recognition or promotions they thought they deserved? Sure. But even if they are disgruntled, does that mean everything they have to say should be immediately dismissed? Probably not.

Human Resources professionals have long known that there is gold to be mined in the last words of people who are leaving their organization. It’s why many organizations conduct “exit interviews” when an employee resigns. I personally have conducted hundreds and sure, some of the comments seem to be motivated more by sour grapes than altruism, but it is foolish to totally dismiss all the views and opinions of people who are resigning. If you can objectively sift through the exaggerations and unique experiences, you are usually left with a handful of valuable information nuggets that are worthy of further exploration.

Employees who have resigned will often feel more at ease, free from the fear of retaliation, to share the honest day to day reality of employment within your organization. They will tell you if your policies are inadequate, your working environment hostel, or your management team inept. If you make it a practice to speak with everyone who resigns, you can begin to see patterns or trends that would not otherwise appear to you. It will also be clear if you have a leader who manages “up” well but is a terror to those who work for him.

People have criticized Smith and Whittaker for the public way in which they chose to air their feelings about their former employers. Maybe the critics are right, there could have been a better, less PR damaging way for them to share their opinions. I don’t know if they were given a chance to express their opinions directly to the organization or if this was the only way they felt their feelings would be heard. Either way, it’s done; you can’t lock the barn door after the horse has left. But within both Smith’s and Whittaker’s final words, I can see valuable information for their former employers. Shame on Goldman Sachs and Google if they can’t find those nuggets of gold and improve their organizations.

What do you think? Do you care what people who have resigned have to say?

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Follow Through – A Leader’s Achilles Heel

Posted on March 12, 2012 by

Doesn’t it drive you crazy when someone makes you a promise and then doesn’t follow through with it? It’s even worse when that person controls your salary and plays a major role in your career.

I have found that many managers take a rather cavalier attitude towards follow through. They don’t understand how their credibility can be damaged if employees can’t rely on them to keep their commitments. If you make promises to an employee, especially during performance coaching sessions and then don’t follow through, your employee may never say anything to you directly about it but they will feel let down. Their trust in you will wane and the relationship will suffer. You may think because they come back to you that they forgot about the original commitment you made and that you are somehow safe. Not so. Employees remember every time you disappoint them, even if they seem to shrug it off, and over time it can accumulate and cause real problems for you.

I have seen numerous situations where managers had a performance conversation with an employee, pledged their support or warned them of escalating consequences, and then dropped the ball after the fact by failing to follow through. This is an instant credibility killer. You absolutely must follow through on everything you commit to during a performance discussion because the stakes are so high.

For instance, you state that profanity is not tolerated in your workplace. You warn the employee that the next time he uses foul language in the workplace you will place him on a final warning, which could lead to the termination of his employment. Then two weeks later, the employee uses profanity again in front of you and others in the department. This time though, you are in the middle of a deadline and you don’t feel like you have the time to deal with it, so you just verbally tell him to knock it off rather than following through with the final warning.

That shortsighted decision, made in a busy moment, makes it very difficult for your words to carry any weight going forward. How is your employee supposed to know you mean what you say? And if you make a habit of this practice—threatening dire consequences and then pulling back the next time the situation presents itself—your words will carry little meaning with the individual or the rest of your team. Your disciplinary warnings will be seen as exactly what they are, hollow threats.

When it comes to performance coaching and counseling here’s the golden rule:

Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.

Don’t promise to send employees to a class to increase their skills during their annual review and then later say you can’t afford the expense. Don’t say you will terminate their employment if they do a certain behavior again and then let them off the hook the next time. Don’t say they will see their salary increase in their next paycheck, then drag your feet and fail to submit the paperwork.

You need to be prepared to follow through with everything you commit to as a leader, but in the area of coaching and counseling, the consequences can be particularly devastating if you don’t. I’ve said a number of times that you should treat people fairly and with respect, and that includes following through on what you say you will do even if it means terminating your favorite employee’s employment because she can’t get to work on time. Any positive created by initiating a tough conversation and addressing an issue head on, can be totally undermined by a lack of follow through on the back end.

As a leader, what challenges do you encounter to following through on your commitments?

 

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Leadership Land Mine: Hidden Personal Bias

Posted on February 15, 2012 by

We are all human, and as much as we might try to be objective as leaders, we are going to bring our own set of biases into the workplace. I am using the term bias here to describe any belief, tendency, or preference you may have toward a particular perspective that interferes with your ability to be objective and impartial. It is not uncommon when you hear the word bias to immediately think about the very serious forms of ethnic, racial, and gender bias. These forms of bias are insidious, and there is obviously no room in a healthy workplace for any of them.

But in addition to these biases, I’d like you to think about some potentially less obvious ones that may be part of your belief system. They could be hiding just under the surface and they can be as destructive to your credibility and the productivity of your team as overt prejudice. Your biases are part of who you are, and you bring them into each and every decision you make. You may already be aware of how some beliefs might interfere with your objectivity, but others may be so deeply ingrained that you are not conscious of them.

To illustrate this, here are a few statements I’ve heard over the years that indicated to me at the time that the person making the statement might have a potential bias that could interfere with his or her ability to be objective.

  • “I will never again hire a woman manager in her child-bearing years because she will end up getting pregnant and going out for six months.”
  • “He’s from the South so I am concerned he won’t be able to keep up with how fast we move here.”
  • “I would have hired him, but he takes public transportation to work so I don’t feel he’s reliable.”
  • “I don’t like to hire young mothers as their kids will make them late all the time.”
  • “I will get rid of anyone who has an affair. If a wife can’t trust her husband because he cheats, why should I?”
  • “I feel he deserves more money; he has a family to support and she is single.”
  • “He’s not a candidate for this job. Realistically at his age, he’s just looking to coast to retirement.”
  • “This guy is really a drain on the department and I should let him go, but I feel bad, he just had a baby and he needs the job.”

I believe that none of the managers making these statements meant to be unfair or to discriminate. Whether these beliefs were conscious or unconscious, the result was that it affected their judgment, their results were compromised, and people were adversely affected in the process. The more ingrained a bias or belief, the more likely we are to passionately defend it if challenged and the less likely we are to question it.

Be honest with yourself. Do you believe any of the following?

  • Single mothers are unreliable.
  • Men with families need their job protected more than single women.
  • Older workers are less productive than younger ones.
  • Minority employees will immediately claim discrimination if you try to give them negative feedback.
  • A woman would never lie about an incident of sexual harassment.
  • Anyone placed on a performance plan will eventually lose their job.
  • A certain group or class of people can’t be trusted.

Take an honest look at your strongly held beliefs and become aware of how they might impact your decisions. Be cautious that they don’t inadvertently influence your decision making process when hiring, determining compensation, applying discipline, and terminating employment. Increasing your awareness of the areas in which you may have a bias now will help you to head off trouble down the road.

What do you think? Does every leader have some hidden bias?

Excerpted from my book, “You Have to Say the Words: An Integrity-Based Approach for Tackling Tough Conversations and Maximizing Performance.”  Available from Achievement Press and everywhere books are sold.

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How a Professional Coach Can Help You

Posted on February 5, 2012 by

While the advantages of working with a professional coach are becoming better known, there are still many people who may be hesitant to engage in the process or are unclear about what coaches actually do.

This week is International Coaching Week, a week long worldwide celebration of the coaching profession. The focus this week is to increase the public’s awareness of the benefits of working with a professional coach and to highlight the results and progress made through the coaching process. To that end, let me see if I can share some information that will help to take some of the mystery out of coaching.

What is coaching?

According to the International Coaching Federation, (www.coachfederation.org) coaching is defined as a partnership between a coach and client to engage in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires the client to maximize their personal and professional potential. The fundamental basis of the coaching relationship is that the client is the expert in his or her life and that they are creative, resourceful and whole.

What should the coach do?

If you work with a coach, you should expect them to:

  • Help you to identify and clarify your goals
  • Take you through a process of self-discovery
  • Encourage you to identify your own solutions and strategies
  • Hold you accountable
  • Celebrate your successes
  • Create a safe space for you to realistically explore your limitations and fears
  • Challenge you to identify and break through any limiting beliefs or self-imposed obstacles

Your coach can achieve this by actively listening to what is being said, (and sometimes not said), reflecting back to you what they are hearing and seeing, asking probing questions, and eliciting creative solutions and commitments from you. Coaching is designed to help you produce positive results in your personal and professional life, improve your performance and enhance the quality of your life.

What are the benefits of coaching?

When you work with a coach you can expect to gain fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision-making skills, improved relationships and interpersonal skills, increased confidence, better alignment of your behaviors with your goals, and an accountability partner to encourage you to take action and follow through on your commitments. Often working with a coach can help you to achieve greater results in a shorter period of time than you could by working alone.

What can a coach help me to do?

There are many different reasons for working with a coach; here are just a few of them:

  • Improve job performance
  • Enhance interpersonal skills and relationships
  • Discover life purpose or better align direction
  • Increase self-awareness
  • Improve self-management skills
  • Reach a specific goal (such as lose weight or improve communication skills)
  • Achieve life balance and enhance quality of life
  • Remove obstacles, address fears and identify limiting beliefs to success
  • Increase confidence and self-esteem

If you are interested in learning more about coaching and how a coach can help you to improve your results, visit the International Coaching Federation’s website or you can go to my website at www.PinnacleCoachingGroup.com .  I would be happy to answer any questions you may have or to discuss how coaching could help support your specific needs.

If you’ve successfully used a coach in the past, please share your experience with others here by adding comments. Your story could help them to be more open to this valuable and life-changing process.

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Leadership Toolbox: Communicate Your Expectations

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

(Excerpted from my book, “You Have to Say the Words“)

While people are motivated to effectively perform their job duties for a variety of reasons such as money and career advancement, successful leaders also understand that many people are equally as driven by the desire to please their boss. The trouble is some leaders are not very clear about which behaviors make them happy or do not communicate to their team when their priorities have changed. This can lead individuals to feel like they are running in circles trying to please their boss.

One of your essential responsibilities as a leader is to clearly and frequently communicate your expectations to team members. By clearly defining and communicating performance standards and expectations, you are giving people a road map for success and showing them exactly what they need to do to make you happy. Your consistent feedback lets them know when they are on target and when they have fallen short of your expectations. Some people, once they know their target, are naturally driven to succeed and will self-correct when they get off-track. These individuals may seem like they do not need a lot of feedback from you, but what happens if you don’t give them feedback and their assumptions are wrong?

I’ve always coached leaders that an absence of any feedback is the same thing as giving positive feedback. For most people, unless told otherwise, they assume that their performance is acceptable and that their manager is happy with them. Unfortunately this is not always the case, and when there is a disconnect between perception and reality, it can lead to devastating consequences.

In order to achieve outstanding results, you must provide your team with plenty of feedback, both positive and constructive, as it relates to your standards and expectations. Lack of honest and timely feedback leads to all kinds of problems for everyone involved, including the following:

  • Team members can’t improve their performance because they are unaware that there is an issue.
    Managers can’t get the results they need because they are allowing unsatisfactory performances to continue.
  • The HR manager gets cranky when a department manager finally decides to remove the under-performer because the employee was never fully informed of the issues and given a chance to improve.
  • And finally, the company may face an increased chance of legal exposure as a result of the lack of documentation and is hampered in its efforts to defend a lawsuit.

Your role as a team leader is to achieve results through the efforts of other people and you will be judged on that ability. Effectively articulating your standards and expectations while addressing performance issues as they arise allows you to be fair to your employees, achieve results, maintain morale, and protect the interests of the company.

Leading is an active process, not a passive one. You need to actively monitor performance and develop your people every day or you will not achieve results. If you choose to ignore issues rather than address them too many times, eventually someone will wonder about your results and your effectiveness as a leader. And if that should ever happen, I’m confident that you would want your manager to give you honest feedback in a timely manner so you can correct the problem: so pay it forward.

As always, I welcome any feedback or comments you’d like to share.

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Great Leaders Share Their Inspiration

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

Today is “Inspire Your Heart with the Arts Day.” I think back to when I was a kid, there were so many opportunities to enjoy the arts as a normal part of my school day. I took art classes where I was able to express myself by drawing, painting, and creating pottery. And yes, I did make an ashtray for my dad. I also had music class where I learned to appreciate classical music and even a little opera. You could rent instruments from the school and take music lessons. I took up the guitar and played for nearly twenty years. I had shop class where I learned to make jewelry, and yes, an ashtray for my dad. In gym class I learned to waltz, square dance and polka. All of my appreciation for the arts came free as part of my public education.

Too often today we hear about schools dropping their music or arts programs due to a lack of funding. It breaks my heart to think our children will not have the same opportunity we did to experience the arts and to tap into their unique creativity. For me, art and music allowed me to express feelings that I never communicated otherwise. Later in life, photography provided me with that same opportunity, which is why I share my photos with you in my blog and on my Facebook page.

Do something today to help you reconnect with the arts and be inspired. Visit a museum, read a poem, pull out that old paint set and dabble a little, or listen to your favorite piece of music. Better yet, dance down the office hallway! Experience the beauty in these works and get inspired. Then share that inspiration with a young person, help them to learn about the classics. Supplement their education where the school systems have left a gap so they too can develop a love of the arts.

I’ve talked in previous posts about how great leaders inspire their teams. Well, you can’t give what you don’t have. To inspire others you need to be inspired yourself. So take a few minutes today to rekindle your fire and inspire your heart with the arts!

Let me know what you did today to rekindle your fire.

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Leadership Toolbox: We Reproduce What We Are

Posted on January 30, 2012 by

I was listening to the free CD this morning that comes with each issue of Success Magazine. Part of the CD was an interview with John Maxwell about his most recent book, The 5 Levels of Leadership. During the interview John said something that has stayed with me, tickling the back corners of my brain all morning. He said, “We teach what we know, but we reproduce what we are.”

I’ve been thinking about this not only in terms of leadership, but also as it relates to our educational systems, parenting and relationships in general. Think of a time in your life where you invested in someone by sharing with them what you know; your wisdom, your knowledge and your life experiences. If you had ongoing access to this individual, you probably hoped that their future behavior would be influenced by your teachings. But according to John Maxwell, that may not be the case, especially if your teachings are not in alignment with who you are and how you behave.

It brings to mind a manager I worked with many years ago. She was a very nice woman, in fact, that was usually the way people described her. She got along with everyone and because she was a seasoned manager, she often supervised and mentored younger managers who were just starting out in their career. She spent hours with them sharing her experiences and words of advice. I was often around her when she’d impart one of her leadership nuggets and the words were perfect, almost like she was reading them right out of a leadership handbook. Her advice to them was to be assertive, confident and strong, encouraging her eager listeners to take risks and make something happen.  The problem was, that was not who she was as a leader.

Her leadership style was actually passive, laid-back, and accommodating. She earned her reputation as a nice person in part, by allowing performance issues to continue unaddressed, by stopping short of delivering directed and honest feedback, and by never pushing people to work harder than they already were.  While she knew exactly what a great leader should do, she fell short in the actual execution of her teachings. As a result, her management team followed who she was rather than what she said. The department appeared to function well on the surface, but failed to exceed goals or expectations, always played it safe, and the individuals she managed never lived up to their full potential.

Her words and her behaviors were not in alignment and she was totally unaware that there was this disconnect. Because she was such a nice person, none of her staff or her peers wanted to give her feedback that she could be a more effective leader. They didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Her managers never addressed the issue because there were more urgent problems that demanded their attention, and in the end, she was achieving her goals.

We reproduce what we are, and I believe this philosophy is true for anyone who is in a position to influence others on a consistent basis. Whether you a leader in an organization, teacher, parent, mentor, or big sister/brother, people will be more influenced over the long-term by what you do rather than by what you say.

So time for a gut check…look around you at the people you are hoping to positively influence in your work and your personal life. Are they where you want them to be? If they are truly a reflection of you, what do you need to change in order to positively alter their behavior?

I would love to hear about any of your success stories or challenges, so please leave a comment.

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It Takes Courage to Lead

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it’s the quality that guarantees all others.”

Winston Churchill

I thought of this quote when I read that today is the 45th anniversary of the death of astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Edward White. They perished on January 27, 1967 when a fire engulfed their Apollo 1 command module during a simulation test on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.  It was one of the worst tragedies in the history of spaceflight and as a result of the investigation into the accident, numerous changes were made to the module design and the materials used which led to safer, more reliable spacecraft.

In remembering the fate of Apollo 1, I am reminded of the tremendous courage it takes to be a leader, and not just in the field of space exploration.  All leaders face difficult situations every day that challenge their fortitude.  While most of these are not life threatening, they still require a high level of mental and emotional strength to overcome.  It is not easy being the one out in front leading others through change, when opposition is strong, or during times of crisis.

It is easy to see why our astronauts are considered heroes, they certainly deserve our admiration.  But let’s not forget to recognize those every day heroes at work who embody that same courage.  These leaders feel the same fear and anxiety as others, but they distinguish themselves by their response to it.  They:

  • Stand behind their values and beliefs and are not afraid to make decisions based on them
  • Take action where others hesitate
  • Take risks and accept the consequences
  • Say what needs to be said, even if it is uncomfortable to do so
  • Share their opinion, especially when it is a solo voice of dissention
  • Maintain a confident and calm demeanor during a crisis
  • Accept responsibility
  • Do what is right, not what is popular or easy
  • Aren’t afraid to be authentic
  • Go first

 

In all my years of coaching and developing leaders, I found that people consistently underestimated the amount if courage it takes to be an exceptional leader.  It seems easy from the outside looking in, but then, the best leaders make it look easy.  Most people focus on the perks and the rewards of the position, but exceptional leaders know the true courage and sacrifice it takes to do the job well.

So today, as we remember three men who had the courage to pay the ultimate price to be leaders in space exploration, let us also give thanks to those unsung heroes who lead us every day.  They quietly demonstrate the courage of their convictions and character in a hundred different ways, often without formal recognition, but they’ve earned the respect and affection of their teams as a result of it.

How do your leaders demonstrate their courage?

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