Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with a manager in advance of some leadership training that kicks off this week.
 
We were discussing how his management job had changed over the years. More automation, more communication, more regulations and fewer staff on the team to get the work done.  Sound familiar? If you allow it to, all this activity can draw you away from the time to lead your team.
 
No Time to Lead
 
As workload increases, managers trap themselves behind their computers and Blackberries, firing off emails instead of building relationships with their peers and their employees. Instead of one-on-ones, the manager uses group meetings as a convenient way to get the word out. Employees become disengaged, feel the manager doesn’t care about them and become less productive. This in turn causes more work for the manager and the problem snowballs.
 
Just like busy parents who think that “quality time” is more important to children than “quantity of time”, there is no substitute for face to face time between a manager and team member.
 
There is no magic bullet or ultra-concentrated leadership formula. In fact research of highly effective people leaders shows that being a good leader requires approximately 20% more time. The reason is that touching base with employees, providing regular feedback and getting to know them as people can’t be rushed.
 
What do you gain from investing this time with your employees? You get greater commitment, accountability, improved business results and a greater likelihood for promotion and advancement.
 
Reflection Questions
 
Are you caught in the hamster wheel of endless tasks, to-do’s and emails? Are you neglecting the needs of the people around you?
 
Action Items

• Reflect on your time spent on tasks versus time spent with people.
• Even if it means deferring some of your tasks, take time with the people who work with you.
• Observe the impact of spending more time communicating with your peers and team members in terms of morale, productivity and results.

This past week I had the opportunity to read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book What The Dog Saw. Gladwell wrote the best sellers Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers.
 
What I like most about Gladwell’s books is that they are fueled by a curiosity about things that most of us don’t think twice about. In What The Dog Saw, Gladwell turns commonly held notions on their head including homelessness, panic vs. choking, what makes a good teacher and many other myths.
 
In organizations, curiosity fuels innovation and the solving of stubborn problems.  We’ll examine how to foster curiosity in yourself and others to get breakthrough results.
  
Culture of Curiosity
 
Curiosity is the root of innovation and creativity and being curious is a constructive leadership characteristic. Organizations and their leaders can snuff out curiosity by implementing rigid rules, having sacred cows and dismissing questions that could lead to new discoveries.
 
A leader who is curious will handle employee performance problems more effectively. Instead of punishing or berating an employee, the curious leader is interested in why the employee chose to behave the way he did and how it can be prevented.
 
Being curious in a conflict situation allows you to see the other person’s perspective so that you can propose mutually acceptable alternatives.
 
Being curious in negotiations allows you to understand the other party’s needs and wants so that you can achieve win/win outcomes.

Curiosity is what will create the next EBay or Google or Microsoft and curiosity will lead your organization to a breakthough opportunity.  
 
Reflection Questions
 
How curious a person are you? Is curiosity encouraged in your organization? How many things are taken at face value without being more open minded to seeing new opportunities?
 
Action Items

• Be curious about long standing problems in your workplace.
• Ask questions that inspire curiosity in others, “How could we serve our customers better and generate better results?”
• Avoid crushing other people’s curiosity when comments like, “We’ve always done it that way, ” or “That will never work.”

What do people really think of you? Do you even care? Do you care too much?
 
Many of the managers and executives I coach and train start off by being surprised and maybe even slightly insulted to think that they need to improve their leadership skills. After all, they wouldn’t have been promoted if they weren’t competent… or would they?
 
It kind of reminds me of the 1992 movie A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson, playing the role of Colonel Jessep, defiantly states, “You can’t handle the truth!”
 
The term 360 degree feedback has become much maligned because most of the people who are subjected to this feedback are not open to receiving it in the first place. 360 feedback refers to getting feedback from your boss, your peers and your direct reports, a full circle of feedback.

Self-Deception
 
Let’s examine two patterns of thinking that get in the way of an executive or manager accepting and acting upon feedback from peers and direct reports:

1. The individual giving me feedback isn’t credible or qualified to evaluate me. (What do they know!) 
2. I’ve achieved success by being the way I am so why would I want to change?

Let’s tackle each of these.
 
First, any person who interacts with you is qualified and capable of giving you feedback about your people skills. The feedback might be related to how clearly you communicate, how responsive you are, whether you are approachable or not and if they feel encouraged and supported by you. If they work with you more closely they can also speak to your technical skills related to completing assignments both accurately and in a timely fashion.
 
And that brings us to the second point. High achievers can hit a plateau where the same skills and approaches they used to achieve their current level of success often work against them in getting to a higher level of responsibility.
 
The most common term for this is “The Peter Principle” where individuals are destined to be promoted to their level of incompetence. Once you reach that level, you are no longer promotable and in fact, your days may be numbered.
 
While the incompetence could be technical, most likely it has to do with your people skills. At higher levels in an organization your success has less to do with your own output and more to do with mobilizing a team to achieve the required results.

Unaware of Strengths
 
In addition to being unaware of our weaknesses, we can also be unaware of our strengths. Without an appreciation of what we do well, we might inadvertantly stop and lose the benefit of that strength. Feedback can reinforce what we are doing well.
 
Confronting Reality
 
When you get to a place where you recognize that no matter how successful you have been, there is always room for improvement, you can begin to make adjustments. In every single coaching situation I have encountered there are only 3 or 4 leadership behaviors that the individual needs to change in order to unlock greater success. The challenge is to discover what those behaviours are and get help to correct them.
 
Reflection Questions
 
Do you actively solicit feedback from the people around you as to how effectice a leader you are? If not can you become vulnerable enough to ask for that feedback and use it to grow as an individual?

Action Items

• Ask for specific feedback from the people you work with and those who work for you if you are in a leadership position.
• While you can use more sophisticated instruments to measure leadership style and management capability, you can start with these four simple questions:
• What do you think I do really well and would like me to continue doing?
• What do I not do as much as I should and you would like to see me do more of?
• What do I do that you think it best that I stop doing?
• What do I not do now that you think I should start doing?
• When you get the feedback, even if you find it difficult to swallow, be thankful because you are on your way to greater success.

Do you have some employees or co-workers who think of themselves as extra special, indispensible and untouchable? Their superior attitude often ticks off the people who work with them. So today we look at the right and wrong way to deal with prima donnas in the workplace.
 
Dealing With Prima Donnas at Work
 
Employees and co-workers with superior attitudes see the world revolving around them and expect everyone else to bow down and kiss up (or kiss butt) to get something done. While saying “pretty please with sugar on top” might be nice, it really shouldn’t be necessary to get the person to do their job.
 
A misguided view: Often the prima donna forgets that his or her job function exists to support another job function. A classic example in a manufacturing plant is that the maintenance department will act as though they are doing production a favor by fixing something that is broken down. In fact the maintenance department’s customer is production. They are supposed to keep the line running and improve flow and cycle time.
 
In the office, a prima donna might work in accounting, reception, engineering, sales, marketing or quality. The prima donna is often a good performer who has let his or her special talents inflate the ego instead of focusing on serving others.
 
Managers are reluctant to address this behavior because they are lulled into a sense of complacency and fear a backlash. Plus the manager likes the work done by the person. Overall performance is usually less than it could be because the prima donna doesn’t share information or expertise very well, preferring instead to use it as a competitive advantage.
 
Reflection Questions
 
Who are the prima donnas in your work group? How does this behavior impact you as the boss or co-worker?
 
What NOT to do

• Knock them down a peg. It really isn’t helpful to criticize or point out the person’s flaws or jump with glee when they make a mistake.
• Over inflate the ego. While it’s positive to provide praise, avoid use of the words, “You’re the best!”, “We couldn’t do it without you!”, “Too bad everyone else can’t be more like you!”

Action Items

• List the destructive consequences of having prima donnas in the workgroup.
• Recognize that low self esteem might be behind this behavior. The person may be compensating for a feeling of inadequacy by acting superior.
• Point out the specific behaviors (in private) that you want the person to stop doing. In many cases the person is likely unaware of how they are perceived.
• Encourage the individual to share his or her knowledge and skill with others and then provide positive feedback when they do that.
• Remind the individual who the customer is, their role in supporting the customer (internal or external) and that the overall success depends not on his or her individual talents but the overall capability of the group.

For some clients we have facilitated “team building” sessions to help groups realize that success depends on working together. If the prima donna is in a management or supervisory role then often one-on-one coaching is part of the solution.

• To get buy in from senior level decision makers, link leadership issues to the bottom line. Ask questions such as, “How much of that problem can be linked to leadership?” or, “It’s no wonder Bill is struggling, did we ever give him training on how to be a good supervisor?” 
• Confront the unacceptable leadership behaviors and offer either training or coaching. We’ve found that only a small number of leaders are unsalvageable. Most can be turned around.
• Measure your existing culture versus the ideal culture and develop a game plan to be more constructive. (We offer a great measurement tool from Human Synergistics to do this.)

Being the boss isn’t as glamorous as it used to be. For a little extra pay, a little extra flexibility and an elusive sense of control, managers take on the stress of being accountable for the performance of the workgroup and leave behind many of the activities that used to create job satisfaction.

One of the most frustrating parts of the manager’s job is balancing the need to get results with the unpredictability of human behavior. It turns out that human behavior is not that unpredictable.

In fact, the greatest epiphany we see in the managers, supervisors and team leaders we train and coach is that the behaviors (good and bad) of the workgroup often reflect the approach taken by the leader. After learning how to be more constructive, supervisors will say that employees are being more positive, helpful and accountable. The leader changed first – then the employees changed!

Reflection Question

How are you contributing to some of the employee behaviors that are frustrating you?

Action Items

• Tell employees what you expect as clearly as you can and be prepared to repeat yourself dozens of times until it sinks in.
• Be positive and in a good mood more of the time – it is contagious. A foul mood will spread to employees… and… gulp… customers.
• Build on positives. Seeing mistakes is helpful but focus on the gains being made in order to motivate for greater achievement.
• Encourage people to help them recognize their own strengths. A lot of employee misbehavior is caused because of low self-esteem. Build them up.
• Be approachable – smile more often and employees will bring problems to you more quickly, before getting out of hand.

Do these things for the next few days and let me know what the changes are.

Chances are that you have at least two or three significant and aggravating people issues that you know you SHOULD do something about and haven’t.

A few examples:

• An employee or peer who complains constantly and is “high maintenance.
• A manager who is completely lacking in leadership skills and treats his peers and/or employees with disrespect.
• A supplier who consistently disappoints in delivery or service.
• A customer who is so difficult to keep happy that they are costing you all of your profit margin just to keep them.
• A sales person who will not change his habits, go after new business or hit targets consistently.
• Excuses and reasons for why things cannot and are not being done (even simple things).
• Endless meetings that don’t resolve anything and take up valuable time that could be spent doing something of greater value.
• feel free to add in your own examples here.

If you are a supervisor, manager, executive or business owner you have the ability to resolve these issues. And as an added bonus, when you do resolve the issue, chances are a number of other positive benefits will become evident.

Why do we delay doing something about situations that bug us? The number one reason is that we feel that the effort and aggravation to resolve the issue is going to be worse than simply living with the problem.

See Something, Say Something

When a leader notices a behavior or result that is unacceptable and then proceeds to ignore or defer mentioning it to the individual, they are condoning the behavior and supporting its continuation. Untrained managers and supervisors lack the leadership skills to resolve these issues effectively.

A problem is easiest to resolve when you first notice it. The longer it continues, the deeper the roots grow and the more effort and time you will expend to correct it.

Tips to Tackling the Things You Are Putting Up With

1. Imagine what it will be like to NOT have to put up with it any longer. How much happier will you be? How much happier will the people around you be? How much more money could the organization be saving or generating?
2. Plan out what you need to say, how to say it, when you should address it, if you need someone else to help you and even consider practicing or role playing the conversation ahead of time. If you think resolving the situation could result in termination, strategize with HR in advance and get the support of your manager.
3. Think about the likely objections, excuses, deflections or reasons the other person will use to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. Determine what your response will be.
4. Have the conversation. In all cases, discussion in private is warranted. The person will be defensive enough in private, let alone if you attempt to correct them in front of others.
5. For future aggravations, follow the See Something, Say Something rule and address issues earlier.

In many cases you will discover that the discussion is much easier than you expected, the situation will tend to improve almost instantly and you will be wishing you had done it much sooner.

I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about business when I was supposed to be enjoying a meal out with my wife and daughter. We headed down to the closest location of a national italian restaurant chain. Based on previous experiences, it wasn’t my first choice.

I should have trusted my gut. The men’s washroom was littered with paper towel, the service was slow and the staff were frazzled. This wasn’t an isolated incident; previous visits had exposed similar poor performance.

Another location in the same chain had a totally different feel. Staff were happy, service was fast and as customers we were happy. While I didn’t have actual data, one outlet certainly looked busier than the other.

How can it be that two locations of the same chain in different cities could have such a different customer experience? Sites are selected using strict criteria and there are standard operating procedures. So what would explain the difference? Leadership.

In our experience a weak manager or supervisor will cause differences in profitability, sales, costs, cleanliness, morale and turnover. This variation doesn’t just show up in restaurants. It applies to retail stores, factories, production lines and engineering groups.

What leadership behaviors lead to these variations in performance?

1. Expectations: A weak manager doesn’t make his or her expectations known clearly to all staff. Without clear standards, performance tends to drop to the bare minimum.
2. Hiring: A manager will contribute to his or her own demise be being less selective in hiring decisions, poor interviewing skills and deviating from standard procedures and guidelines.
3. Training: Weak managers will either omit training or delegate training to staff members who are not qualified to teach the company system.
4. Monitoring: Managers need to personally observe performance and make sure staff are doing what is expected, correct unacceptable performance and provide encouragement.
5. Communication: Weak managers spend less time speaking with staff one on one and in team meetings.