Dear Santa,

I have been a good employee all year and wish that you could help my manager bring me the following gifts this season. They would help me become happier and more productive next year.

1. Give me the gift of clear expectations – help my manager become more clear in what he or she expects of me. I am tired of guessing the expectations and getting limited direction.
2. Give me the gift of regular feedback – rather than wait until my performance review, I wish my manager would give me feedback regularly – daily, weekly and monthly. If he or she gave me regular feedback on what I was doing well or needed to improve, I would do my best to improve.
3. Give me the gift of feeling part of the team – like everyone else I have the need to belong and feel part of the team. Help my manager build a stronger team by treating people fairly, not playing favorites and not talking about people behind their backs.
4. Give me the gift of better communication – help my manager keep me better informed about what is going on. If communication is so important, why does my manager do so little of it? Sure they are busy – typically doing things that we the employees could do if only they would delegate and stop trying to make every decision themselves.
5. Give me the gift of praise and recognition – it’s natural to find faults but please help my manager notice all the good things we are doing and tell us about them more often. We will be more likely to repeat the good things if they are mentioned to us more often. On the other hand when our manager focuses on the negative, we tend to give him more of that. Human behavior is funny, eh Santa?
6. Give me the gift of a challenge to grow my talent – My manager finds it easier to keep giving the same assignments to the same people. He thinks it makes his job easier but it really hurts our flexibility and we want something new to do every once in a while. One of the reasons I will stay in my job is because I can learn something new.
7. Give me the gift of training (and train my boss too!) – Show me I am important by investing in me to do my job better. My manager could benefit from some training too – making my wishes come true. I think even my manager’s manager needs some training because my boss behaves the way his boss expects. In fact most of the behaviors my boss wants to change come all the way from the top!

I will remember to leave out the milk and cookies!

I had the pleasure of attending a social event connected to a convention I was attending in Calgary. The organizers had planned an entertainment-packed evening at a “cowboy ranch” with gun slinging cowboys, a comedian, a live auction, and for those who were brave enough, a mechanical bull. All the proceeds were to go to the organization’s foundation.
 
Unfortunately, many members of the audience were happy just to sit and socialize and then get back to the hotel for some rest before the next day’s program. So when the host announced that the first bus had arrived, half the group left, making the auction a dud.
 
The organizers were ticked. They spent all this time and energy to plan a great outing and the attendees had the gall to leave early!
 
They fell into the trap of “blaming the customer” and I hear variations of it in many of the organizations I work with. I’ve done it myself – blame the customer for not buying, blame the participants for a mediocre session (this happens rarely!).
 
Don’t Blame the Customer
 
You have heard the expression, “the customer is always right.” Now we know that the customer isn’t always right, however it could be said that, “the customer is always right in his/her own mind.”
 
This distinction is important because right or wrong, when the customer decides to vote with her feet and money, the impact is felt on your organization. Similarly in a “discussion” with my wife Robin I can choose between being “right” and spending quality time on the couch or allowing her to be “right” which makes for a cosier bed time.
 
No amount of “marketing” can push a bad product or service onto a customer and expect to last in the long term. Many organizations think they know better what the customer wants, when in reality the customer isn’t buying it.
 
Be Thankful for “Challenging” Customers
 
Customers with high expectations help challenge your organization to achieve more.  One group of customer service reps was complaining about how disorganized their customers were. I pointed out that those disorganized customers were placing even greater value on the service provided by their company. If the customers were better organized they would place less value on the service provided and profits would decrease.
 
There will be customers who you are better off without. The ones that cost you more than you make. Before writing them off, consider how to provide the level of service they expect at a profit.
 
Reflection Questions
 
Does your organization blame the customer for it’s challenges? Are you an accomplice to this act? How could your organization be more customer-focused and earn record profits?
 
Action Items

• Listen for signs that your organization is blaming the customer for its woes.
• Ask questions that move your organization forward, “How can we win the business and maintain profitability?”
• Stop complaining about customers and start finding ways to make them happy at a profit.
• Remember that the ultimate antidote to having difficult customers is having no customers at all…

I was teaching a session to front line leaders this past week on how to coach, confront and correct employees when there is a gap between expected behavior and performance and the actual behavior and performance.

Understandably, confronting and correcting conversations are not easy on the leader or the employee which can result in procrastination, being too heavy handed or too vague in the feedback.
 
What if we were to apply the same coaching, confronting and correcting method to the leader who is not doing what is expected of him or her? By definition, should a supervisor, manager or executive who doesn’t carry out his leadership responsibilities effectively be expected to suffer the consequences of his action or inaction?
 
Most managers, supervisors and team leaders think of themselves as being better bosses than they really are. This lack of self-awareness means that leadership faults are not corrected. Most bosses have the best intentions but their behavior is inconsistent with those intentions.

Leadership Malpractice
 
Think for a moment about all of the employee behavior and results problems you have experienced in your career. The list will likely include tardiness, absenteeism, not following procedures, too much socializing, personal use of company resources, too many mistakes, customer complaints, and not being respectful to co-workers.
 
When I ask supervisors and managers if they can honestly look at the list of transgressions and say they have never committed any of them, virtually everyone in the room has, at one time or another, broken every rule themselves.
 
I point out that they are still employed and in many cases earned promotions. I ask them to view employee performance issues with curiosity instead of accusation. While there will be some hopeless cases, many employees can overcome a behavior or performance deficiency to become productive, capable and reliable.
 
Now comes the challenging part and you might find yourself getting a little uncomfortable…
 
If we were to list all of the expectations of a leader (manager, supervisor) and then evaluate the current level of behavior and performance to those expectations, what would we find?
 
The fact is that many managers and supervisors are negligent in their leadership duties. And in some extreme cases, it could be considered malpractice. Whether it is a deliberate act, or more likely, an omission (not acting as you should), the results are the same: below potential performance, stagnant careers, higher absenteeism, more grievances/complaints, etc.

Reflection Questions
 
Do your leaders clearly understand what is expected of them in terms of leadership behaviors? Do they have the skills and knowledge to fulfill those expectations? By not addressing this need are you contributing to leadership malpractice?
 
Action Items

• Describe the expected behaviors of managers, supervisors and team leaders. Go beyond the tasks, and think about how they are expected to interact with employees.
• Assess the degree to which current behaviors are in sync with expectations.
• For individuals who are not meeting the expectations of a leader decide on the best corrective action: Would coaching work? Training? Confronting and correcting?
• Have one-on-one conversations with those leaders and be explicitly clear what you expect from them and the areas they need to improve. Better yet, ask them to reflect on how they are doing and then offer to help close the gap.