Courage in the workplace

A leader must have courage; a leader must act in a courageous manner and so on.

While this is true, it is only part of the story about courage and the workplace. As we shall see, the virtue of courage must run throughout an organization or company – from bottom to top – in order for it to function at the highest level. 

Courage defined

Courage comes from the Old French corage, meaning “heart and spirit.” In other words, courage is an innate, internal quality that resides within the core of your being.Courage is further defined as: “The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.” Again, we see the word spirit. 

Courage is foundational

Courage is associated with such words as fearlessness, grit and power. It is experiencing fear, yet pushing through it to achieve your desired result.  Some say courage is the thing that underlies every other human quality. Without it, we cannot rightly be honest, dependable, generous or trustworthy. Courage is the foundation upon which all other virtues are built.

Courage and fear of reprisal

Why is so little courage seen in so many companies these days? In my estimation, it is because the leaders of those companies have fostered a culture where dissenting voices are discouraged and opinions that threaten the status quo are thoroughly silenced. With this climate of possible retaliation before them, team members are fearful of speaking up, sharing their thoughts and voicing their values. Fear of being the first one out the door at the next downsizing has stopped many ideas dead in their tracks in the workplace.

Courage, vision and openness

The first step in harnessing your courage is to develop a vision that represents your authentic self and goals, and aligning that vision with the business and its goals. This is true for the executive, manager and employee in the workplace.  Development of a vision that all members of the team can buy into depends on the openness of a company or organization. An open-minded company allows for discussion, sharing, brainstorming and even dissenting views. An open leader sees the value of the knowledge and experience of everyone in the room, including managers and employees. The leaders’ openness allows for others to work from a place of courage. They can step up without fear and lend their thoughts to the discussion. The ability to have that courage becomes transformational, both for the person sharing and the company or organization.

Openness leads to the ability to shape and form a vision. It is a vision wrought in courage which gives it power. That vision, brought about by the courage of the people involved in its development, will be the driving force carrying the company forward into new and exciting areas.

Benefits of courage in the workplace

Some of the benefits derived from demonstrating courage in the workplace include: high morale; commitment to the group mission; ownership; responsibility; momentum; effective; and stronger sense of purpose.

Here’s few questions that all members of your team can ask themselves regarding courage. Use these questions to help you determine what you can do to step up, step out and find your courageous voice.

-          What is your vision for the business/group/department?
-          How, specifically, can you be more courageous in your role at work?
-          What communication skill would help you become more courageous?
-          What tangible benefits will arise from your courageous action?

Can Corporate Culture be Changed?

Organizations seek out my assistance in helping them make their organizations better. “Better” might mean more effective leadership, higher performance, improved employee retention, effective compensation plans, improving team performance or simply creating a more cooperative, positive work environment.

After a thorough assessment of a client’s current operation and needs assessment, I am in a better position to present solutions that will address their gaps. Some of those solutions involve  policy changes, process changes, some involve personal coaching, and some involve proactive culture refinement — culture change.

When considering culture change, many senior leaders believe that corporate culture cannot be changed. I’m not surprised at this belief.  In my experience most senior leaders, throughout their entire careers have not lived through successful culture change. Even fewer have led successful culture change.

But here’s the question: Can you change how an organization performs?  Absolutely! By changing how individuals perform, leaders can change how the organization performs.

Leaders can change the way individuals perform by:

• Setting clear performance goals.
• Directing, supporting, coaching and delegating where needed.
• Measuring progress and accomplishment.
• Celebrating progress and accomplishment.

These activities, done consistently with a service approach often lead to increased employee performance which almost always affects service quality and commitment which leads to happier customers and growing profits. This is the service profit chain at work.

Changing your organization’s culture is no different from changing how your organization performs. It requires intentional definition of, communication of and accountability for your company’s:

• Purpose: The reason you are in business.
• Deliverables: Your committment to high-quality products and services.
• Culture: Values you stand for and live by daily with stakeholders, peers and customers.

Corporate culture is the most important driver of what happens in organizations, and senior leaders are the most important driver of their organization’s corporate culture.

To change an organization’s culture, leaders must change how they spend their time and what they communicate and reinforce on a daily basis. They have to change what they pay attention to.  Their focus shifts from great performance to great performance WITH great citizenship.

Creating a Culture of Smarter Thinking

Innovation has always been a business necessity.  How many times have you worked with individuals or teams that work really hard, but not always in the most effective way.  I am sure you heard the mantra “work smarter, not harder”.  Art Markma, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas and director of the Human Dimensions of Organizations program recently published a book “Smart Thinking”.  In the book he discusses several straightforward things leaders can do to help everyone in an organization think more effectively. The more you know about the way your mind works, the more that you can improve the thinking of the people around you. Here are some things you can do to get the ball rolling toward a smarter organization.

• Stamp out multitasking. This is one that has been debated quite a bit and we are all guilty of it,   virtually everyone today does some type of multitasking.  Markma says “The human mind simply isn’t designed to do more than one kind of complex thinking at a time”. When people are working on complex material, give them permission to ignore the phone, shut off the e-mail and shut down instant messaging. When you bring everyone together for a big meeting, get them to “be here now.” Ban smartphones and Internet browsing during meetings.
• Encourage openness. You never know where the next good idea is going to come from. So encourage people to try on new ideas for size before deciding whether to pursue them. Too often, people assume that the fiercest critic in the room is the one who looks smartest. But if you criticize before deeply understanding an idea, you won’t be able to use that knowledge later when you need it. Set an example by focusing first on the positive parts of a new proposal before finding potential flaws.
• The company succeeds when “we” succeed. Our culture is one that prizes individualism. Ultimately, we reward people who make important contributions. Credit and publicity tend to go to particular individuals who make important contributions. History rewards great people, but rarely great groups. But an organization cannot succeed without a group contributing deeply to that success. Lead by promoting the value of group success and reward groups for their achievement. In the long run, that provides everyone with the incentive to learn and grow.
• Create desirable difficulties. We use technology to make things easier for us. And, of course, there are lots of things that ought to be easy. It is wonderful that we can send documents across the globe in seconds and that we can get research papers with the click of a link. But technology cannot make learning easier. Gaining true understanding of complex situations requires effort. Don’t just provide summaries of key concepts to group members. If there is something that people need to understand, encourage everyone to dig in and work on it.
• Support smart habits. There is a lot that we do mindlessly each day. We don’t have to think about where the light switch is in our office or how to find the gas and brake pedals in the car. Those habits are smart, because they allow us to focus our mental energy on more important matters. Similarly, don’t disrupt the habits of people in your organization without careful planning. Open workspaces, for example, don’t allow people to develop habits for where their desk supplies are and can cause disruption. Changes in internal websites and forms cause people to think about tasks that should be mindless. And remember change for the sake of change costs more time and mental effort than it is worth.

This book provides simple yet valuable advice that can be applicable to anyone and any situation. I would recommend it to anyone with a curiosity and desire for living a smarter and more efficient life.

Informal Recognition: A Powerful Tool!

Formal employee recognition programs can be effective, but many formal programs only pay lip service to recognizing employee performance.

Real praise should reward effort and accomplishment, reinforce positive behaviors, build self-esteem and confidence, and boost motivation and enthusiasm.

Do your formal recognition programs accomplish all that? I’m guessing maybe not.

Here are four informal and powerful ways to praise your employees:

Ask for ideas. Don’t just ask, “Do you have any ideas for how we can help you do your job better?” (Certainly ask that, but sometimes go farther.) Build off skills or insights they possess to use them in other ways.

Say a production employee is incredibly organized. Say, “I am always impressed by how organized you are. I wish there was a way to clone you.” Then ask if she has thoughts about how to streamline order processing, or ways to reduce the flow of paperwork, or how another department could more efficiently collect data.

Not only will you get great ideas, but you also recognize skill and ability in powerful way.

Ask for help. Asking another person for help is one of the sincerest ways to recognize their abilities and value. Ask employees for help and you show you respect their skills and you extend a measure of trust.

The key is to ask for help partly or totally unrelated to their function, and to make the assistance relatively personal to you. Early on in my career I attended a meeting to talk downsizing; by the time I got back to the office word had already spread that layoffs were coming. One of my employees said, “So, layoffs, huh?” I didn’t have to confirm it; she knew. I said, “I’m struggling with what to tell our employees. What would you say?”

She thought and said, “Just tell everyone you’re doing your best on their behalf. Then talk about where we go from here.”

Simple? Sure, but powerful too. She later told me how much it meant to her that I had asked for her opinion and taken her advice.

Create informal leadership roles. Putting an employee in a short-term informal leadership role can make a major impact. Think how you would feel if you had a boss and she said, “We have a huge problem with a customer. If we don’t take care of it we may lose them. Can you grab a few people and handle it for me?”

Informal leadership roles show you trust an employee’s skills and judgment. The more important the task, the higher the implied praise and the greater the boost to their self-esteem.

Team up. You and your employees are on unequal footing since you’re the boss. A great way to recognize an employee’s value—especially to you—is to take on a task together.

What you choose to do together doesn’t have to be outside work, of course. The key is to do something as relative equals, not as boss and employee. Unequal separates, while equal elevates.

Verbal praise is great, but at times implied praise can be even more powerful. Ask for help or ideas, put an employee in charge, drop hierarchical roles, and work together. Each is a powerful way to recognize the true value of your employees—and to show you trust them, which is the highest praise of all.

Undercover Boss

Every CEO should be an undercover boss for the day.  The information your managers never give you would amaze you.  On a recent episode of “Undercover Boss” a CBS reality show, the head of a US drive-through food chain broke his cover during filming and shut down a restaurant on the spot, because of how employees were being treated by a manager.

Early in the episode an employee named Todd told the CEO, Rick Silva that his manager treated staff badly and once threatened to take him outside and beat him for not working hard enough.  Todd said he was worried that Stevens would terminate him if he stood up to him, and he needed the job to support his mother.

Checking into these allegations CEO, Rick Silva went undercover.  After doing a little observation on his own Mr. Silva raised allegations to the manager, known in the show only as “Stevens”, about verbally abusing his employees.  The manager retorts that if he didn’t scream at the employees they would not listen to him. What training did he take? 

“I’m not going to let you continue telling me I’m disrespecting my crew. Have you been in the fast food business before?” the manager says.  Mr. Silva tries to maintain his cover, saying “no I haven’t”, but cracks when the manager continues to prod him over his supposed lack of experience.   He finally says to the manager that he does have experience.  Mr. Silva admits “I have been in the restaurant business for over 20 years and I’ve been in the fast food business for over 20 years. I’m the CEO for this company.”

Stevens’ jaw drops as Mr. Silva says: “Right here, right now, we’re going to shut the restaurant down.”

Mr. Silva reopened the store with a new general manager the next morning and sent the offending manager away for more training.  Personally, I would have fired the guy.  No employee should have to deal with a lack of dignity and respect.  But unfortunately, this manager’s style is more common than we would like to believe.  So think about doing your own internal observation, you may learn more than you want to know.

Workplace Satisfaction Article by Ana McGary

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/best-hospitals-content/universal-laws-workplace-satisfaction

Trust and Service

Two elements of leadership,” trust” and “service” unfortunately, aren’t always obvious to analytical types whose focus is primarily on metrics and results.

A leader however isn’t the person with all the answers. Rather, a leader is the catalyst for influencing others to overcome obstacles, find solutions, and seize and create opportunities. Leadership begins with trust, and leaders are most successful when they combine trust with a challenge to look outward.

People will not remain motivated, growing and achieving at high levels of performance if they are insecure about their place on your team. As leaders, we can create greater levels of creativity when we build an environment where employees and teams are encouraged to share ideas and where courage and risk-taking are complemented with both reward and safety.

Encourage vulnerability. Ideas that are proposed today may not work today. However, experimentation will develop a culture of creativity and lead to better ideas in the future. When employees can count on your support, it creates an environment where there is honest and proactive conversation about what’s working and what’s not. People become comfortable with risk, which, in turn, encourages them to move into uncharted territory, expect problems along the way and find ways around obstacles. It becomes natural to learn from mistakes.

Continually looking for the perfect employee can be an ineffective and exhausting exercise. Experience has taught me that bringing in the next “great guy or gal” often exposes me to a different set of weaknesses. A better approach is to know your people — what motivates them and makes them tick. You’ll find great success and earn tremendous loyalty and trust when you leverage employee strengths by putting them in the right role rather than painfully focusing on their weaknesses.

As the leader, you are responsible for a healthy team. As a role model, you owe your team consistency between your walk and talk. And you owe them an environment that is free of politics, backbiting and ill will. You need to be fair, consistent and diligent about how you treat, respect and encourage each other. What you value will get done.

You are creating a culture — whether deliberate or not. Your employees have to feel safe, appreciated and encouraged if you expect them to make your customers feel that way.

 

Is speaking the truth in your best interest?

Hey, boss! Remember how you asked me what I really thought? Well, I thought about it and decided I really don’t think it’s in my best interests to tell you.  In my role it has always been critical for me to tell my boss the truth and it isn’t always pretty and I do provide suggestions, recommendations and solutions during these times.  However, I will admit it has sometimes been at my own peril.  Would I go back and change it?  Not on your life!

In a recent survey almost half the professionals surveyed (48%) indicated this is precisely the reason they keep from speaking their truth at the office much of the time. Note, this wasn’t a scientific survey, but 155 respondents’ gave pretty consistent answers that look like meaningful indicators as you plot how to manage your employee base to stellar business success.

And this data is consistent with a recent study by Corporate Executive Board with even scarier results.

• Companies whose employees were afraid to speak up suffered 5.8% lower total shareholder return than those with cultures that encouraged open communications.
• Where fear was more prevalent, fraud and misconduct were higher.
• 59% of companies surveyed said that $1 million worth of harm would have to be at stake for employees to share honest negative feedback (29% said $10 million).

Why? You make my life miserable for weeks, that’s why.

Eighty-two percent of respondents to the first survey said at some point in their careers they’d been penalized for speaking their truth, penalties ranging from being passed over for promotion, pushed aside and fired. Get this, 70% said it was the boss’ fault because his/her ego got in the way. So even if you’re not a jerk, your employees are probably walking on eggshells around you anyway because their last jerk-boss made them wary.

Want scientific backup for this point? CEB found it was a “fear of retaliation” was the most important driver for employee discomfort in speaking up.

So what? I’m outta here, that’s what.

Many people report that being penalized for speaking their truth made them quit or seek employment elsewhere. Speaking truth isn’t just another career skill — like negotiating a salary package — it really hits people at their core and is related to feeling like they’re being true to themselves as human beings. Seventy-six percent said when they withheld their truth they regretted it later. So if almost half your employees aren’t comfortable speaking their truth to you, and the majority of them regret having to bite their tongues, it’s logical to think that this issue is contributing to the increased levels of job dissatisfaction and loyalty we see reported lately.

There was also some indication that women are rewarded less often for speaking their truth than men (68% and 82% respectively). Sure, there may be many reasons for that, but if you have a goal to reach the 30% tipping point of women in leadership at your organization so you can reap the market rewards, then you might want to look into whether this issue is driving some of your best women leaders away.

Sure, I’ll listen if you’ve got a plan.

We all know that plenty of people think they’re speaking their truth when they’re really not. Speaking truth to power – the skill that will help your employees tell you what’s really on their mind in a way that is productive and meaningful – is a career minefield judging by the high numbers of people who’ve experienced severe penalty (82%) and high reward (72%), but an important one if you want to make your employees feel valued and find out what they’re not telling you. For that matter, are YOU good at speaking truth to power? Your truth matters too and the CEO or the board should want to hear what you have to say just as much as you need to hear from those below you.

Speaking truth to power effectively means you have to resist buying into our cultural myths about truth-telling – that the truth that matters most is the first thing in our minds or hearts – no matter how deeply felt – and that the opposite of True is always False, for example. You and your employees need to learn to speak truth to power effectively and work to make it part of your corporate culture. Only by focusing on it will all the pains of past penalties be overcome in your workspace.

What do you think? What’s your personal experience with speaking truth to power? Have you been penalized? Rewarded? How does that factor into your willingness to speak your truth in your current situation? Come on – we all have a story!

 

Trust in Leadership declines

The shaky economic and employment climate in the U.S. continues to make headlines.  In a recent poll of 1,857 U.S.-based employees identified another issue for employers to worry about: a lack of employee trust in management.

Among the findings:

Only 14 percent of respondents said they believe that their company’s leaders are ethical and honest.

Just 12 percent believe their employer genuinely listens to and cares about its employees.

A small 10 percent of employees said they trust management to make the right decision in times of uncertainty.

And just 7 percent said that senior management’s actions are consistent with their words.

Poor communication, lack of perceived caring, inconsistent behavior and perceptions of favoritism were cited by respondents as the largest contributors to their lack of trust in senior leaders.

It seems that a strong indicator of management mistrust is lack of shared values.  If a company truly wants to engage its workforce, drive trust and gain loyalty, it must implement a culture that recognizes individual behaviors that contribute to the company’s values and goals, and sadly, this isn’t common practice. … Only 8 percent of employees say they are frequently recognized for demonstrating behavior consistent with their company’s stated values.  And I hate to add that simple Thank You’s and other types of simple acknowledgement of employee efforts is sorely lacking in todays workforce.  Are we all so busy we forgot the fundamentals?

 

 

Does your executive team act like a team?

Over the years I have worked with dozens of executive teams in several industries. One interesting thing I discovered is often those “teams” aren’t teams at all.

They are a group of individual senior leaders who meet on a regular basis to battle each other for limited resources: funds, people, time, praise, etc. They leave their meeting and evaluate how they did in the game: did I “win” today? Did I secure the resources I wanted and beat out my senior leader colleagues today? Each individual senior leader tracks his/her score and the game begins anew the next meeting or more accurately, the next day.

But I have seen the success when the executive team is truly committed to each other and the organizations success.  I have been lucky enough to be part of teams that were willing to put all their differences aside (even if temporarily) for a common goal.  I am a big believer in respect and values that are demonstrated by action at every level. When organizations don’t create value systems and then live and breathe them daily, values create themselves and not the good ones.  If the executive team or senior leadership does not act with “one voice, one heart,
and one mind,” the culture effort is doomed from the start.

To unlock the potential of your organization’s executive team, consider these four best practices:

1. Clear Purpose:
   The executive team must define its reason for being – beyond their relationship as direct reports of the president/CEO. The purpose statement clarifies why the team exists, who their primary customers are, and what they’re trying to accomplish as a team (provider of choice, employer of choice, etc.).
2. Team Goals:
   What strategic goals is the executive team trying to accomplish? Clarifying executive team goals helps define what a good job looks like at the end of their fiscal year. Performance goals might include employee work passion targets, customer service excellence, financial success, etc.
3. Values & Norms:
   Values defined in behavioral terms describe HOW team members should behave as they pursue their team goals. All effective teams create agreements around what a good citizen of the team looks/acts/sounds like. Values are typically too vague and lofty to guide day-to-day actions, so behavioral definitions solve that issue. Team norms emerge from the valued behaviors – norms are practical guidelines that ensure values are lived in team member interactions.
4. Values & Norms:
   With the team’s purpose, goals, and values formalized, the most important practice comes into play: holding team members accountable for these agreements. Accountability is not the sole responsibility of the executive team’s leader (typically the president/CEO) – it is every team member’s responsibility. Accountability conversations are not drawn out conflicts – they are conversations that inquire about a valued behavior or norm, asking for insights about demonstrated behavior that seems to be outside those agreements. They are sincere efforts to understand behavior and guide members to embracing their agreements

When these four agreements are in place, decision-making is easy. Executive team members easily understand their role in furthering the team’s purpose by cooperating, communicating, and focusing on the greater good.  Change your executive “group” to an aligned executive team and you’ll reap the benefits: less drama, less conflict,  more aligned action, better  productivity, and more fun!