Leadership Trends and Realities

When Trust is Broken - Lessons Learned

Reposted from Lead Change Group blog.  

When it comes to people working for my company, I made a promise when I first started to be true to myself and my values and to model “loving and kind” actions in dealing with my staff.  We became the company of “loving and kind” people.  And no, we’re not a bunch of “touchy feelys.”  We simply believe in the value of every individual and in honoring what they bring to our company. We don’t all think alike nor do we have the same skills or knowledge, but it takes a well-rounded, cohesive team to succeed.

So what does this mean?

Your employees are watching… They see what you do every day.  They read your emails, corporate memos and hear your hallway, bathroom, and lunchroom conversations with others.  They listen intently to see if what they were told is the same “line” being told to everyone. People yearn for truth and want to trust their peers and leaders.  And just as important, they want to trust that “what they see is what they get.”  I’ve always told my employees that “I’m not that deep.  Take what I say at face value and know that you can bank on it.” After all, life is way too long and my memory is way too short to remember different tales of the same incident. Better to be transparent and honest all the time!

This sounds good, huh?

Well, there was a short time in our company history where I was deceived by a leader who was keeping up appearances but wasn’t modeling the loving and kind behavior defined in our core values.  All had been going well.  Business was clicking along, and I thought we were winning on the “happy employees” scale. Unfortunately with growth comes hiring new people – and sometimes they just don’t fit with your culture.

We had hired a new instructional design manager – let’s call her Mary.  She was uber qualified with degrees, experience, and a smile in the interviews that drew me in.  She knew the right words to fill my trust meter. I believed what she told me was truthful and that what she was saying to me was the same as she was telling/instructing her direct reports – our talented, committed employees and contractors.

Here’s how it played out:

Mary was business-like and very organized. After only a short time, she attended our 1-on-1 meetings prepared with all the appropriate paperwork completed and ready to bring me up to speed on the projects in her area.  She said all the right words that led me to believe that everything was fine with the projects and our people. I’m a type A, get to the bottom-line kinda gal, so I was feeling very comfortable with how our meetings were going.

Unfortunately, after a few months went by, the unspeakable happened.  I realized that I had stopped walking among the troupes to keep communication open among us! I was just listening to Mary.  Luckily, on the Friday of Mary’s last day of PTO, her direct reports felt “safe” to come and speak with me.  Whew – glad they still believed in me!  Yep, NOT just one, but EVERYONE from the instructional design department lined up in the hallway next to my office waiting for their turn to tell me how the “real Mary” was nothing like I thought. In their own words, they explained that Mary was verbally abusive, unforgiving of mistakes, rude, and just plain mean. She didn’t have a sense of humor and simply didn’t fit in with our cultural morals.

A person of action, I immediately called an emergency meeting of all employees.  I knew everyone in that meeting well.  They were honest, hard-working professionals that liked working in our “loving and kind” company.  They would not have chosen such a dramatic way to get my attention had they not tried to solve the issues on their own. Yep, they had talked with Mary, pleaded and even cried in her office, but Mary was just a tough nut to crack that didn’t believe in “loving and kind.”

Our HR Director and I took care of her firing – with Mary screaming and threatening us as we walked her out of the building. Let’s just say she showed me her true colors – enough that I called the authorities to make sure my employees were safe!

Don’t ding us for this quick fire…

• It was the right decision for keeping our company healthy.
• We ALWAYS play by the rules and it was a legal fire.
• We’re a small, limber company that is fair to a fault.
• It would have done more harm to keep Mary around.
• We could have given her time to try and change her ways, but we have lost many of our esteemed colleagues as they would not work for her any longer.
• Mary’s management style just didn’t fit.
• She was simply a bad hire.

The moral of this story:

Stay true to your values and trust your employees.  Keep your doors open and keep communication two-way with as many people in your company as possible. Provide an environment that PROVES it’s safe to speak up. If you model the behavior you want, your people will thrive and help you keep your corporate values alive and well!

Jonena

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TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization, create a Lean Academy, or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961.  Email Jonena today!

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Transparent Leadership is a Way of Life – Not a Flavor of the Month

Reposted from Lead Change Group blog.

Transparent leadership has been a life-long goal of mine, even before it was a buzzword.  Listen in to what I’ve told my employees and contractors for nearly 22 years:

How would you answer these two questions?

Q 1: Do your employees know the direction your company is heading? (Aka: should be the same trail you’re “leading” them down…)

I hope you’re sure about this one.  If not, you need to immediately revamp your personal and corporate communication!

Q 2: On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your personal transparent leadership or that of other leaders within your company? (5 being highest)

That’s a tough question, but hopefully one that you don’t answer with, “It depends…” For sure, transparent leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s a way of thinking and behaving every day with every action, reaction and transaction.  For a company’s leadership to be transparent, ALL the leaders must be humble, open, honest and forthcoming. They also need to “let them see you sweat” once in a while.

Free tip:  None of us is perfect and we can all learn from other leaders…yep, even our employees.

Being a transparent leader means allowing your employees and customers to know where you stand and where your company stands. As my mama used to say, “Honesty is the best policy.” You knew that when she said something, she meant it. There was no mistaking what she wanted done or NOT done and what the consequences would be for success or failure in following her requests. While that was my upbringing, now as a transparent leader in training, I still live by that motto.

Transparent leadership also requires that when your associates generate ideas to help your company or your customers’ businesses thrive, you give credit where the credit is due – not keep the glory for the C suite. Remember, mamas brag about their kids. They don’t take away their glory of a job well done!

Oh yeah, and if you or your employees do something that has a negative impact on a project, your customers and employees know that the buck stops with you, the leader. You’ll take the responsibility for making “it” right. That doesn’t mean that you won’t hold your employees privatelyaccountable, but it does mean that you “NEVER throw them under the bus.”  If you’ve known our company for a while, you should know that we refer to this behavior as being “loving and kind.” It’s the only behavior we should accept – all the time!

Loving and kind doesn’t mean glossing over the tough conversations. It just means that transparent leaders need to treat everyone equally and in a manner that is respectful, yet honest. It also means delivering the message without leaving out the parts that, if delivered without taking into account their preferred communication style and feelings, could shut them down and possibly ruin relationships.

One last thought about leading with transparency: We’ve always had the “rumor mill.”  I think we would all agree that it is still alive and dangerous. However, it’s faster than a speeding bullet now because of texting, free long distance, Twitter, Facebook and all the other social media venues. We can no longer hide behind corporate newsletters “telling people what we want them to hear.” The days of brick and mortar walls are a thing of the past. If something is known by one person, you can be pretty darn sure that MANY people know it now or will “know some version” within a very few minutes. I choose to have people hear things directly from me or our company’s leaders – how about you? We all know how much communications get distorted the farther they are from the source!  (Ok, I’ll stay off the subject of the media.)

I’d really appreciate hearing how you or your organization feels about transparent leadership. Comment here or send me an email. I answer every email myself – my note of transparency here!

Jonena

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TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization, create a Lean Academy, or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961.  Email Jonena today!

 

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Become a Transparent Leader - I Dare Ya!

Jonena Relth, TBD Consulting

Our leadership bloggers, Mike and Jan from PeopleTek, posted an article that really resonated with me so I’d like to elaborate. The post, Top Companies - Top Leaders provides the list compiled by Fortune Magazine surveying 277,000 employees who were asked to rate management credibility, job satisfaction, camaraderie, pay and benefits, hiring practices, communication, recognition, and diversity. 

The 10 most common answers were no surprise to any of us who follow transparent leadership methodologies, but my favorite “extra” was learning that one CEO posts his/her personal development plan for all employees to see and track results. 

This leader ROCKS in my world!

So, are you brave enough to post your personal development plan for all your employees to see:

• What you don’t know now but are trying to learn? 
• How they are being led by someone who might not be as knowledgeable as they presumed?
• What you feel is important for you to become a better leader?

And…oh yeah…

• That you’re not perfect, all knowing, etc.?

Trust me, most leaders would be scared to death to let their employees and peers reach into their secret little minds and learn the real truth about them.  But folks, we need to become more transparent so the people around us will do the same.

Once we all become transparent, we can begin helping each other grow and our companies and people will benefit socially, personally, professionally and financially.  Can’t beat that!

Drum Roll Please:  Who will be the first person to step up and comment below to say, “Yes, I will post my personal development goals for all to see.  I will begin the process encouraging transparency within my organization.”  I dare ya!

BTW: We've done this at my company, and no one left because they thought their leaders were dummies! The opposite is true. We all know that it is safe to let others know what we need.  By helping each other, we all grow into a more cohesive team.

Jonena

Other Reading of Interest:

 7 Steps to Transparent Leadership - Creating a Culture of Trust by Maynard Brusman.

Jonena

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TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization, create a Lean Academy, or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961.  Email Jonena today!

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Is This a Bad Attitude or What?

Jonena Relth, TBD Consulting

Wow, what a Flash Back reminder I got this morning from a current webinar being advertised on employee attitude adjustment. 

The promo states that, "If they don’t get the rewards most of us associate with stardom, they whine and complain. When you see this kind of behavior, look beyond the individual employee. The real problem is probably the employee’s boss, who has most likely been sending all the wrong messages to employees, tolerating negative attitudes, turning a blind eye to bad behavior and fostering an entitlement mentality. All of which damages your company’s culture, spirit, productivity, profitability and competitiveness." 

This might be true of some employees in some companies, but most of us have encountered many more reasons causing poor employee attitudes than "self-absorbed employees and lousy bosses."

I used to teach a workshop on Attitude for state government employees. It was a fun class with lots of "ah ha's" going on, but it was also one of the most challenging subjects I ever taught.  One of the requirements SHOULD have been that employees attend with their supervisors, but I wasn't able to pull that off.  That would have helped on more than one occasion, for sure! 

One day I had a grumpy, middle-aged gentlemen sitting in the back.  His chair was tipped back against the wall and his hands were behind his head as if to say, "OK, just try to fix my attitude!"  You might guess -- his boss sent him to my class that he obviously didn't want to attend.  He was told that he must learn skills to change his poor attitude or he would be fired. This is no joke!  At the first break, I had to escort the man out into the hall and call his supervisor.  I asked that he be removed from the class because his negative behavior was disrupting the class.  Yep, he won -- he got to leave the class!

I have no idea if or when he was discharged.  After all, he was a government employee with years under his belt at a public servant, so he might have remained in his job until he reached retirement.  That's a whole other subject I might tackle in another blog...

And sadly, I have no idea what triggered this employee's poor behavior (bad attitude) in my class.  It might have been because of an ongoing issue with his job, his boss, or even that he was a burned-out caregiver for a terminally ill relative.  He may have even been suffering from an illness himself.  As managers and leaders, we have to be careful to protect our employees' privacy, but sometimes it helps to just reach out and show the person some compassion.  I wish I had the opportunity to do so with this gentleman, but the situation just didn't lend itself to it.  I had to protect the environment of the class for the rest of the participants to learn the skills they felt important enough to take the day off from their regular jobs to learn.

Much psychology goes into successful leadership.

Understanding adults and what make them tick, is a plus. Understanding the theories behind DiSC tells us that people are similar in some ways and very different in many others.  We act and react differently to our environment and communication -- verbal and non-verbal. 

For instance: If you want to see a High "D" Low "C" react negatively [perceived: poor attitude], just keep spewing details without taking a breath.  She's jumped to the solution way before you mentioned the type of creamer in your coffee that day. She doesn't really care how you take your coffee. She wants you to get to the bottom line of your issue so she can guide you in figuring out the problem.  Or if you want to frustrate a High "C" who needs lots of details to make an informed decision, tell him only the high level information, no details.  You'll get your answer, but it might come with a huff and scowl.

As leaders, I hope we give all our employees the benefit of the doubt. 

Most people want to do their best for our companies.  Most leaders want to do a good job, too. Perhaps we see negative behavior (poor attitudes) not because of self-absorbed employees or lousy bosses, but rather because of a myriad of underlying issues that we simply need to uncover and try and resolve.

Jonena

*******************************

TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization, create a Lean Academy, or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961.  Email Jonena today!