Criticism: Use it Sparingly

We’ve all been there, either directly or indirectly experienced a leader who was or is extremely critical. These leaders like to pull things apart, critique, and figure out what can and did go wrong. Even when things go well, they constantly nitpick, finding the errors and fixing, or anticipating fixing things. Criticism can help in that it’s how we learn and do better the next time.

It’s unfortunate that sometimes the things we want to fix can’t actually be fixed, especially when it comes to the people who report to us and surround us at work. A common refrain is (often said with sarcasm) “Work would be great if it weren’t for the people”.

I think in many cases leaders mean well and they want things to go well and be successful including their people.  But when was the last time you changed when you received a criticism? It’s generally not a great strategy to help others improve without some attention to what’s going right.

One of the most common things I hear from a leader’s staff is that they don’t feel the leader is giving enough praise and encouragement. It’s time to balance your criticisms with some positivity.

Notice: Your critical demeanor may have clouded you from seeing what’s good. I believe you can “practice” and train yourself to look for things that are going right by the people around you. It isn’t easy, but it can be done. And it can make a world of difference to your ability to lead others to do the “right things”. Start today. What if you spent the entire day looking for what’s right?

Let them know you’ve noticed: No matter how small the “right” thing you’ve noticed is, say it out loud to the person you’ve seen doing it. Put yourself in their shoes. A little bit of noticing and letting them know what you observe can go a long way, especially if you have a habit of being critical.

Don’t forget to give credit where credit is due, especially for the big triumphs. Make sure that those who matter (the rest of the team, the “higher ups”, your peers) know that you are cognizant of the fact that you can’t lead alone. It takes followers who are doing the right things for a leader to be successful. Call out these “right things” by name to others, and be specific.

Find ways to celebrate. We are all too serious and professional for celebration – or are we? What keeps you from having a little fun in honor of the right things? Most people enjoy recognition, and celebration is a great way to do so. Ask the people who are doing the “right things” what celebration might mean to them (within appropriate boundaries) ok that’s my HR background stepping in☺.

Even those with critical tendencies can find things that are going well with others so take a few moments to notice and compliment them out loud.

The talent you bet the house on is not worth the money!

Late last year one of my clients was recruiting for a senior level marketing manager.  They decided to use a recruiting firm with a
hefty price tag I might add.  It was down to three candidates and they selected what appeared to be a “superstar”.   The candidate promised to deliver, the company paid high dollar and expected a big return on its investment.

However, from the start it didn’t seem that this individual was doing what they committed to do.  No new ideas, no new customers, and the company did a better job of creating marketing campaigns on their own.  They couldn’t understand how all the references, background checks and conversations indicated this person was going to be a real superstar for them and yet it wasn’t working out that way.

This is where I came in.  They explained the circumstances leading up to the employment offer and the lack of performance since the start date.  After some research, I determined that although their new hire had been a superstar in the past it had been under very specific circumstances and this company’s requirements were a little more demanding.  My recommendation, make a change now before too much time passes.  They may also want to look at any guarantees the recruiting agency offered.

So, what can you do when your own star performer suddenly loses his/her luster?

Ask yourself these three questions:

What is the upside to keeping him on board? Talented performers are the spice of every organization. It is not merely that they are good at their jobs. They deliver exponentially, that is, they deliver in multiples – ideas, productivity and results. And often they do it with ease. But the upside lasts only as long as the star shines.

What is the downside to keeping him?
Just as stars perform well, when they fail, they often do so spectacularly.  Often their performance carries the team, so when star slips, the team does, too. Also, there is the issue of maintenance. The effort managers must expend coddling star talent can cause discord in a team or  organization. Less gifted, but still productive, employees resent the favoritism bestowed on the superstar.

Is this situation going to change? You need to evaluate the performer’s resiliency.   Successful leaders face hardships and emerge better for the experience. Many superstar performers have fragile egos; one setback – a failed project or a denied promotion – can set them back forever.
They may never recover. Such people are talented but they have not learned what it takes to succeed when the odds are stacked high.

Not just once a year – Performance Coaching

A critical part of the manager/employee relationship is open communication between the two.  What is  expected from the employee and how well are they accomplishing their responsibilities.  How should they expect you to lead them. Most Companies have a formal Performance Management Program used to evaluate performance on an annual basis, but informal, on-going performance coaching is critically important.  Reviewing performance should not just be an annual event, but rather a continuous cycle.

More specifically, performance management:

• is a shared responsibility between you and each individual who reports to you; some of us forget this
• provides mutual understanding between the manager and employee regarding what is expected of the employee and how well the employee is meeting those performance standards;  Employees can’t meet expectations, if they don’t know what they are.
• empowers the employee to perform a variety of tasks, and face new challenges for growth;
• sets and monitors progress against clear goals;
• includes regular documentation of performance;
• includes timely feedback on performance between the manager and employee;
• includes discussion on professional development;
• recognizes hard work and success; not just areas for improvement!

An effective performance management program provides many benefits to the organization and to its managers and employees.  Good performance management results in:

• focused movement towards organizational goals;
• informed employees;
• more successful and productive employees;
• more meaningful work for employees;
• better working relationships between managers and employees;  Mutual respect
• increased communication;
• legally defensible management decisions;
• all around better quality of interaction.

Remember regular communication and feedback doesn’t need to be complicated or a long process, it just needs to be regular. Some simple steps and commitment is all you really need.

Keeping you remote team focused and engaged

Employee engagement is at an all-time low, which means managers are at risk for lower productivity, higher turnover and spending more time putting out fires. When that team is scattered all over the place, it’s even harder to keep your team focused and engaged. What are some of the things we need to be thinking about?

Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick are the authors of “The Orange Revolution- How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization.” Using research from some of the best companies in the world, they have identified some tips for managers of remote teams.

During a recent interview on The Cranky Middle Manager Podcast, the perpetually upbeat authors answered some questions specific to managing remote teams:

What are the challenges of trying to build teams remotely and why does it matter that we get it right?

First, remember that managing remote employees is not a recent phenomenon. Leaders have been trying to inspire and provide direction to remote followers since ancient times. Genghis Khan quite effectively led a team spread across thousands of miles, and he did it without telephones, the Internet, or even a Facebook page (imagine!). We have less excuses than past generations to do this right, and many more tools at our disposal.

Now, with that said, we work with enough companies to know the challenges. First, remote employees feel isolated, undervalued and out of touch with what matters most at Corporate. Remote leaders feel their employees on the fringes don’t listen to them, don’t follow directions, and have too much latitude in how they deal with clients or in the hours they work. But for managers who get this right there are tremendous benefits for both sides: retaining and getting the most out of talented employees who work in diverse parts of the country or world.

What are some proven ways of recognizing employees when they only know each other virtually?

How long does it take for a manager to connect with a remote employee who has done something wrong? About a minute. How long does it take for that manager to connect with a remote employee who has done something right? Maybe never. The most important way for a manager to begin the process of recognizing great work is to shoulder the burden.

Great managers send handwritten notes to employees, they recognize their people via Social Media, they bring remote people together often and when they do they present tangible awards to those who have done above-and-beyond work. These managers also ensure teammates have online ways to send thanks to each other—ecards for instance—and also provide each person with a stack of simple recognition notes and other inexpensive awards to send to each other.

What is the same or different about remote teams versus co-located teams?

Remote teams are similar to other teams in that they can provide tremendous value if we engage them appropriately. The sad truth is, however, that remote employees can do more harm than good to the company’s reputation if they are not living the company’s values. Thus, it takes much more training and conscious effort to help remote workers understand and live your values every day.

Can you share a couple of unique, real-life approaches you’ve seen work?

A few great things we’ve seen to get remote teams to feel more like a team (and if we remember, the places we heard them): 1) A virtual bulletin board online where remote employees can chat, post cartoons or pictures, and stay in touch. 2) A happiest remote employee of the week award (Budget Rent A Car), where employees nominate co-wokers and vote on the winners every Friday. 3) Bring the entire team together for training, and invite their families to come along (Pella). 4) Guess the Oscar winners for a prize (KPMG). 5) Play work bingo together online by filling in a square each time a team member completes a task.

The authors make a very simple point: great teams care, and great leaders care about their teams by making the effort to keep them in touch with the organization and each other.

Share your successes in keeping your remote team engaged and productive.

Organizational Culture and Recruiting

It’s one thing to articulate organizational culture, it’s another to live and breathe it.

One of the exciting aspects of being an external business partner is the ability to peer into the inner workings of client organizations. One can almost predict the eventual success of a new employee based on his/her fit within the established culture. When a company “walks the walk” their true working culture matches the messages they send to their internal and external markets.  They will encourage engagement between candidates and many different people within the organization. The search process doesn’t just focus on the group with whom the successful candidate will be working with, but also with those with whom the candidate will need to engage, depend on, persuade, etc. If the company’s true culture is spread throughout the organization, the search process will act as a sieve to not only highlight candidates who can do the job, but those who will fit in and be cultural representatives for the organization. The search process may take a little longer, but the outcomes will likely lead to choosing the right person.

Empowering HR drives business success

Cover via Amazon

A recent research study released by Bersin & Associates in January confirmed for me something I have believed and lived by throughout my career.  It’s not the quantity of your HR team; it truly is the knowledge and skills they bring to the table and the empowerment and support given by the organizations CEO and other senior leaders that makes it successful.  You can say I have been lucky enough to work for extremely dynamic CEO’s.  In some cases it’s true, I have worked with great leaders, but I have also had my share of the closed mindset CEO who doesn’t know or care what HR does as long as people get paid and have benefits.  It was up to me and my staff to demonstrate the value they were missing out on.  

This study looked at 720 organizations globally and found that the days of bloated HR organizations focused on administrative tasks is over.  This is great news for HR Leaders, who are often so tied to all those administrative tasks that they can’t look at technology and other options that will enable them to get to the business and people needs.  It proves that lean, technology-enabled, well-trained HR teams are able to take advantage of modern talent practices and partner with business leaders to drive impact.

These findings emerged from a two-year global benchmarking study that looked at 14 talent management and HR effectiveness measures across global businesses.  Among the measures examined include a company’s ability to:

• Source the best talent.
• Hire and onboard top candidates.
• Identify and develop leaders.
• Build a culture of learning.
• Allocate compensation effectively.
• Drive high performance through coaching and feedback. 

The research determined that Companies that empower key HR professionals to take on a strategic business partner role create HR teams that outperform the average HR organization by 25 percent or more.  This means these HR leaders are working closely with line executives on hiring the right people, coaching, leadership, succession planning and yes process improvement.  

HR still needs to continue to excel at the basics. Payroll, benefits, and administration are still critical factors in business success, and today these functions must be modified to be able to deal with a highly contingent workforce.

The report, The High-Impact HR Organization: Top 10 Best Practices on the Road to Excellence, includes benchmarks, tools, case studies, operational frameworks and proven service models that define best-practice human resources organizations.

“Our company’s greatest asset is our people!”

How many times have you heard this?  It’s a nice saying, but it’s meaningless without introspection and application. And the truth is, people aren’t your greatest asset, unless they’re in position to leverage their greatest strengths – those things they do well consistently and energetically.

Years of research have proven that individuals and teams playing to their strengths significantly outperform those who don’t in almost every business metric. In fact, the single best predictor of a consistently high-performing team is the answer to this question: “At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?” Teams with individuals who do, massively outperform teams with people who don’t.  They are more profitable, more productive, less likely to quit, less likely to have accidents on the job and the list goes on.

That’s compelling, but this is confounding: Research reveals that only 12% of people in the workplace play to their strengths “most of the time.” Could it be we take strengths for granted?

At a time when organizations are trying to do more with fewer people, it’s critical to engage each person’s strengths, and do it at all levels across the organization. The strengths movement isn’t about making people happier; it’s about making organizations more productive. It’s about yield. The best companies are made up of great teams. And those teams have individuals who know their strengths, take them seriously and offer them up to the organization.

Not all Leaders are CEO’s

Not every leader can be a CEO, just like not every CEO is necessarily an effective leader. However, even if an employee doesn’t have the potential to become the next CEO it does not mean that their leadership skills can’t be developed and nourished.

 Successful organizations seem to have ability and a passion for leadership development throughout their organization. One recurring theme in this type of organization is the fact that they hire well and they fire better. Generally their managers have been trained on the interviewing and hiring process.  Unfortunately, not a common practice. Ask yourself how many of your managers have really been trained on the interviewing and selection process? Companies that actually do train their managers have a high success rate for finding and keeping good employees is above average. Recruitment and retention becomes part of their culture and the responsibility of everyone. Leadership is more than just a word in these companies and leadership potential is sought out, encouraged and developed.

Every successful leader I have ever known has taken direct responsibility for the development of leadership in others and some have not had  official leadership roles.

It’s never too late to accept the responsibility for your personal leadership development or the development of leadership skills in your subordinates. One of the biggest needs today in the majority of organizations is the unique leadership ability to transform the organization to win in tomorrow’s environment. This is not just the responsibility of the CEO. Leaders at all levels of the management hierarchy need to develop this type of leadership. Then and only then can an organization create and maintain a competitive advantage.

An effective leader must be able to interact with employees, peers, seniors and many other individuals both inside and outside the organization. Leaders must gain the support of many people to meet or exceed established objectives. This means that they must develop or possess a unique understanding of people. The ability to coach-mentor and teach leadership skills to others is the driving force that will create a winning organization. Being an effective leader requires the understanding of the principles that govern employee behavior. Accomplish that and success is imminent.

If you can teach and develop leadership in your employees, your personal leadership effectiveness will improve. That old saying; “If you want to learn something fast — teach it.” holds true for leadership development.

There has been much debate about being a “Born Leader” vs. “Learned Leader”.  I won’t get into that, but I will say that either way, effective leaders go through a never-ending development process. You never stop learning, you never stop growing and you should never stop teaching and developing leadership in others. So read, attend classes, hire a coach, do whatever you can do to develop yourself and those around you.

Creating a productive culture during tough times

During tough times, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep yourself and others focused. Our brain’s reaction to fear kicks in and we pursue a variety of options just in case.  Despite our brain’s insistence that we look at multiple opportunities and constantly explore new things, tough times are not the time to diffuse your energies. Focus, focus, focus!

Get clear on what excellence looks like for the next six months.  Define it, so all employees can relate to it and can make the right decisions moment to moment.  Once you have gotten yourself focused on the right things including prioritizing where you should spend your time and other resources, there are some core things you can do to keep employees engaged and aligned. To start, at the company or team level, make sure you have reconsidered the culture necessary to achieve quality based on the changes around you. Culture helps people know what to do and how to act. Remember that actions speak much louder than words, so it is the apparent behaviors that get translated into beliefs and drive behavior throughout the organization.  If you say one thing to employees, yet your action represents the opposite, you hinder a successful culture.  An aligned and positive culture can contribute significantly to an organization’s success and even more so in tough times. The behaviors of everyone can contribute to moving forward and reaching your destination points or they can slow you down at the worst possible time. An unaligned (usually unintentionally developed) culture gets in the way. 
 
Cultures poorly aligned to the elements of your strategic framework (why do we exist, how will we behave, what is our value to key stakeholders, where are we going, where are we today, where will we focus our energies) can be damaging and distracting. For instance, when a company needs all employees to become obsessive about excellent customer service due to tighter markets, increased competition or ever higher customer expectations, the culture has to support the employee behaviors necessary to achieve this obsession. This includes building policies and practices that allow employees to make decisions and take risks about satisfying customer requests immediately. For example, if a customer service agent is only allowed to operate ‘by the book’ in addressing customer requests, she/he risks losing a customer when they have a unique need and it requires three levels of approvals to have that need met. 
 
Leaving culture changes to chance is like abandoning one half of your strategic planning framework. It is like pretending that those darn employees and the way they get things done do not really matter to achieving success. There are some core practices and beliefs that drive high performance cultures:

• Clearly define what winning looks like at your company
• Measure what matters and what employees can relate to
• Develop an ownership mentality
• Enable and reward educated risk taking by employees that satisfies and retains customers
• Nurture trust, by involving your employees

These are just a few.  I’d like to hear what your company does to create a culture of success during tough times.

HR – Are you the Management Advisor or the Surrogate Manager?

A friend of mine who is the head HR for a multi-location 3,000+ employee company gave me some feedback on my July 14th blog concerning the power of knowledge as it relates to the Human Resources profession. She (I’ll call her Angie) explained how frustrated she felt as she read it. She described her day as having been particularly hectic and, at the end of the day sought out my blog for some inspiration and motivation, but that instead it frustrated her. As she read it, she couldn’t help thinking how hard it can be to even get to ‘the table’ much less find a seat, when you are consumed with extinguishing the fires created largely by those who are at the table. Having been there myself, I could certainly empathize with her. Too often HR serves as the surrogate manager – acting on behalf of the manager when the heat is on to make a tough, risky decision. There are lots of reasons this happens and occasionally they are legitimate. However, for the most part, HR acts for the manager because we think it will take too much time to teach and guide the manager through owning the resolution. Our intentions are always good – we usually move in to protect the company against a potentially serious and costly mistake. No doubt, our actions are driven in part by self-preservation, since HR will likely have to face bigger problems arising from a manager’s failure to completely and properly resolve the problem. Inevitably, however, doing the manager’s ‘dirty work’ simply results in HR doing more and more dirty work, while managers lose an important opportunity to grow and learn. And, of course, there’s that seat at the table….yours..the one that goes unfilled while you do someone else’s job. Angie’s company is growing rapidly – an enviable problem to have in this tough economic climate. The company has hired or promoted several new managers and directors. Angie has quickly gained the respect of her colleagues by her responsiveness and skill in dealing with tough issues quickly and effectively. However, some of her peers have begun to forfeit their management responsibility and by sending their employees directly to Angie when problems arise rather than dealing with the problems either directly or seeking out Angie’s advice on how to deal with the problem. When this cycle begins it’s usually not a big deal. In fact, if we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes it’s even flattering. But, with several new managers, limited training and a rapid rate of change and growth, it can quickly become a bad habit – one which we helped create and which we also must break. I suggested to Angie that she meet with her colleagues, explain her role and encourage them to tap into her expertise (knowledge) to help them increase their effectiveness as leaders. Importantly, she must also convince them that neither her value to the company nor their future growth potential is well served by her acting in their place. Rather, is her knowledge and ability to be a strong support partner combined with their courage in stepping up to the plate during tough times that will yield the greatest return for the company – and for their careers. So, if you find yourself frustrated and distressed at being left behind to do the manager’s job, ask yourself how much of the issue you are responsible for creating, and what can you do to change it? You’ve got the knowledge, and therefore the power to turn this situation around – and empower the managers to learn and grow.

I would love to hear from HR leaders who successfully turned this situation around in their organization.