Employee Keepers

On an unrelated topic.

I just had a guy tell me one way to e-mail him was his phone number.com.

Which begged the question. How did you do that?

He just registered his cell phone number as a domain name on Go-daddy and pointed it to his email server.

Thought I would pass this along, because it’s a great way to give someone your e-mail when you are having a phone conversation with them.

They probably already have your number captured on caller I.D.. Just tell them to add a .com to it.

You can usually get coupons at registration services that make it cheap…like under $5.00 per year.

Let us know what you think

Curt

So many people have been asking me about this lately, I thought it would be a good idea to make it easy for you to view. Here it is. Talk about changing a culture…

P.S. if you see a little red x in the upper left hand corner of a white box instead of a picture, put your mouse pointer on it and right click and select “view or download picture”

Today we begin to look at how we can create a constructive culture. We have taken a fresh look at the term Micromanage and this is a great place to start. The focus of our new definition of micromanage was to make small changes close to the core. We do this for a couple of reasons.

First of all these changes are usually easier to make than going way out of the surface. Because of this you will be more efficient and effective.

The most important reason however, that we must stay at the micro level, is because changes at this level have a tendency to be more permanent without constant reminders or layers of accountability.

You can see how managing at this level will lead to higher degrees and profitability by reducing your costs. And that’s only part of the picture. A huge payoff is quantum increases in productivity as your followers use more of their potential. It really is a winning formula.

So where we start? The best place to start is to get your perspective properly lined up. A big part of your role as a leader is that of an educator. You must teach your people about themselves and about life at the micro level. To accomplish this you have a couple of choices, hire someone like myself to come in and teach your people the principles on your behalf; or you can do the research, learn the principles and teach them yourself. I usually find that a combination of the two is the best formula for success. But this is really about you and your organization, so you do what’s best for you.

The best place to start is with conditioning and beliefs as they effect everything, but most importantly,the use of your potential.

Did you know that if whole group of people believes that something a certain way they will all act in a certain way? Psychologists and sociologists call this a cultural trance. An example of a cultural trance that all of us can relate to is about 500 years ago when nearly everyone thought the Earth was flat.

I’m going to leave you with that thought for today and an assignment.
Think about the behavioirs that were created by the belief that the Earth was flat. Stretch your imagination a bit. Do not limit it to just the obvious explorers and sailors, but think about business people, farmers and anyone else your imagination can come up with.
Then think about one example of a flat world in your organization.

Have fun with this, and let us know what you think.

Curt

Yesterday I left you with this thought, our ability to be successful as leaders depends not only on us being able to employ the latest in leadership strategies but also in our ability to create a medium for people to reach their full potential.

Actually, we should only consider employing leadership strategies that support our people reaching their potential. This gets back to us and our comfort zones.

You remember when we took the Leadership Survey way back on the 24th of May? A big reason we took that survey was to identify our natural leadership tendencies. Once that was established, we were able to determine what we needed to do to adopt a leadership style that was appropriate to meet the needs of our follower.

As leaders we must always be acutely aware of what is comfortable for us versus what our followers need from us. If a choice has to be made, always choose the needs of the follower.

When it comes to building a culture that will allow you to excel as a leader, leadership strategies serve as support functions. To build such a culture you really need to become an “micromanager”.

Did we get your attention with that one?

I hope so, because micromanager really has a negative connotation. So, let’s redefine the term for you.
When we speak of micromanager, in this series, we are will be talking about managing at the core level.
Specifically, making small fundamental changes at the core of our culture that will lead to huge changes in behavior and thus productivity.

So, what is at the core of any organization’s culture? By our definition, it’s behaviors.
Well then, what’s at the core of behaviors? It’s beliefs.
Well then what’s at the core of beliefs? Conditioning.
And conditioning? Experiences.

And, why did we just go through this Q&A? Well, tomorrow we are going to begin to show you where to begin to build your culture.

Let us know what you think

Curt

Yesterday we started to bridge the gap between leadership and culture, today we will continue building that bridge.

The aggregate of all the behaviors of the members of an organization is how we defined the culture of the organization. It literally is how things “are” in an organization.

As leaders, we are always interested in productivity and results because that is how we are measured as managers. In fact, the definition of management is your ability to impact the hard measurables of your business.

To help tie things together, please allow me to draw on another definition, this time from foremost cognitive psychologist, Albert Bandura. In his book, Self-efficacy The Exercise of Control, he states that all productivity is behavior based.

Now we can build a bridge between the the two definitions. The common word here is behavior. If, in fact, the culture of an organization is the aggregate of the behaviors of all the members of that organization and all productivity is behavior based, well, there is our bridge. The productivity of our organization is literally controlled by the culture of the organization.

A large part of what we do as leaders should be growing the culture of our organization.

Do you recall the quote from George Clemens? He spoke about spending 90% of your time as a leader making sure that your direct reports are successful.

Hopefully, you can now see why we presented that quote for your consideration.

Our ability to be successful as leaders depends not only on us being able to employ the latest in leadership strategies, but also in our ability to create a medium for our people to reach their potential.

We will continue tomorrow.

As always, let us know what you think.

Curt

In the last article I made mention of going way beyond the paycheck when it comes to knowing what people need to take home from work.

This knowledge serves a dual purpose when it comes to leadership.

The first, and more obvious one, is that if you are able to line up the goals of your organization with the goals of individuals in the organization will be able to “speak the language” of those individuals a lot more easily.

I can’t tell you how many times in my travels I see people “butting heads” as it realates to the effort spent on task performance, when the leaders and the followers want the same thing.
Most often, when the heartfelt goals of the follower are communicated to the leader the “headbutting” vanishes, the effort increases and the goals are achieved more quickly and easily.

This observation begs the question, who’s responsibility is it to communicate these goals, the follower or the leader?

To those of you in leadership this should almost be a rhetorical question.

100% of the time, it is the leader’s responsibility to find out the professional and personal goals of your followers. This knowledge is at the core of the relationship that you have with your follower. The relationship that you have with your follower is at the core of your ability to lead that follower. Your ability to lead in a user friendly fasion will dictate the speed, quality and ease with which any given task is performed. This is called productivity.

The second purpose of knowing and understanding the personal and professional goals of your follower gets to the heart of your organizational culture. In past articles, I mentioned one of the best definitions I’ve ever heard of a culture of an organization is this one. “The aggregate of all of the behaviors of the members of that organization”, we give credit to Lou Tice of the Pacific Institute for that one.

So how does knowing someone’s goals help us create the culture of our organization?

Quite simply put, people will always behave in a manner that will help them achieve their goals. This is a great spot to start tomorrow.

Let’s continue this conversation tomorrow.

As always, let us know what you think.

Curt

Without question, the most important factor in your ability to lead your people is the relationship that you have with each individual in the organization. This factor is so overwhelmingly important that there really is no 2nd place.

We are getting into one of the “core” areas of learning about leadership. This has a lot to do with Dombecky Theory of Micromanagement.

More about that topic at a later date, but right now let’s get into the relationship you have with your followers.

Let’s begin with a quote from a book by Stephen D. Sample entitled “The Contrarians and Guide to Leadership”. In it, he is quoting George Clements on leadership. “Steve, let me give you some basic advice about leadership. You should spend a small amount of your time hiring or directory ports, evaluating them, exhorting them, setting their compensation, praising them, kicking their butts and, when necessary, firing them. When you add all that up, it should come out to about 10% of your time. For the remaining 90% of your time you should be doing everything you can to help your direct reports succeed, you should be the first assistant to the people who work for you.”

This all gets back to what we were discussing a few days ago, and that is, in order to be an effective leader we need to be able to diagnose what our people need from us to perform the tasks that we asked them to perform.

Another part of this relationship formula is, in fact, the personal relationship we have with our employees. The more we know about our follower’s personal goals and what they need to receive in return for the time they spend with us in the workplace, the better we are able to determine what is they need from us at any given moment to perform any given task. When we talk about receive in return, we go way beyond the paycheck.

Beyond that, it gives us greater insight into how to communicate what we need to communicate with them, in order to support their efforts.

I know for many of us, this might be a huge shift in the way we look at life as a leader. If we are going to maximize our effectiveness as a leader, maybe it’s time to make huge shifts. Not to mention the fact it is infinitely easier to make a huge shift in the way we think, than it is to make huge shifts in personnel, which is usually the result of ineffective leadership.

Let us know what you think, and have a great Fourth of July weekend.

Curt

It is a proven technique to give someone some basic information about using a new tool, let them use it for a while (play with it), and then revisit on a more formal basis. That is exactly what we’ve been doing for the past couple of days.

Consider play time over, for just a bit.

The acronym we have been using to determine a follower’s ability to perform a task on their own is like the old tennis shoe “KEDs”.

K=Knowledge of the job or task to be performed. The test I like to use here is a flight instructor technique. Have the follower describe the task in a step by step fashion. If they can say it, they can usually do it. Provided they have the physical skills and equipment needed.

E= Experience. Has the follower done this task before? Look for: closely related similar experience, closely supervised experience and satisfactorily performed experience in the exact task.

Exact task experience is an easy yes or no.

Closely supervised? Back to the flight instructor. When a flight instructor is preparing a student solo, the two of them perform landing after landing after landing. The goal is for the instructor to do less and less with each successive landing, until the student can perform several landings “solo”, that is with no instructor assistance. Here your task as a leader becomes asking the question, “has my follower performed this task by themselves without any assistance from me?”
If the answer is no, it does not necessarily mean you answer the experience part of this tool no. But you might give it a qualified “yes”. Understanding that you may have to provide some close “hands-off” supervision.

As far as the closely related similar experience, that is really a judgment call on your part as a leader. The critical question here is, “how close?”.

Ds=Demonstrating skills, the emphasis here is on currently demonstrating the skills. We all have followers who have done a similar, or the same task in the past, but can they perform the task right now? Observation is your best tool here. If observation is impractical or impossible the next best thing might be for you to resort to the flight instructor technique of having the follower describe in detail what you’re about to have them do.

In yesterday’s case studies, there was a tremendous impact on how we answered the experience question. A wrong answer here with us in the wrong leadership quadrant and reduce their effect this is a leader tremendously. The point being, we need to spend some time and careful consideration with this diagnostic tool. In fact, this is the essence of the adaptive leadership model. If done properly it helps you “draw, aim, shoot”. In our busy day to day duties, we often develop a reflex of “draw, shoot, aim”.

Tomorrow we will explore the most critical factor in your ability as a leader.

Let us know what you think,

Communicating properly is the multiplier of your leadership efforts. Proper communication will increase your leadership efforts. Improper communication will cause you to be much less effective as a leader. Communication also forms the foundation of the constructive culture you are trying to create for your organization. Did I say trying? Everything you do is a piece of the culture, so let’s make it constructive.

The examples of the Counter Person and the Technician illustrate a classic example of you having to make a choice about what to communicate and how to do it. Let’s say that the Counter Person, like the Technician, does not show a lot of “want to” for carrying out his task. The difference is in the motivation. The Counter Person is de-motivated from lack of experience and fear of failure. The Technician has had a major attitude shift that has de-motivated him.

Communication with the Counter Person will be more like that of a teacher and mentor. Your role as a leader is to get him up to speed. Your tone is reassuring and helpful.

With the Technician, your communication is direct and pointed to the task. You adopt a no compromise and an expectancy of compliance tone.

Big difference, but you are operating in the Player Coach quadrant in both examples: High time spent on the task, low time spent on the relationship.

Please do not confuse the tone of the conversation with your tone of voice. A tone of expectancy of compliance does not mean yelling, for example.

One more diagnostic tip: Look at the E (Experience) in the KEDs diagnostic tool. The Technician is a yes, the Counter Person is a no. The answer to that question changes the communication, which, if you adapt, makes you more effective as a leader.

Fascinating stuff and it will make all the difference in your effectiveness and efficiency as a manager. This will also make a difference in how things are in your organization, or your organizational culture.

Tomorrow, let’s take a quick look at the diagnostic tool in more detail.

Let us know what you think.

Curt