Encouraging Your "Grasshoppers"

"If you can snatch  the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to go Grasshopper." (1970's TV Series Kung Fu)

At some point, if the teacher is a good one, the student will surpass the teacher's ability. At that point, it will be time for the student to find a new teacher because the student has achieved Excellence.

So what is the excuse of your organization? How come you don't have a continuous parade of students (employees) who are surpassing the abilities of their teachers (managers)?

The modern-day manager is supposed to be more than a policeman who passes out memos and enforces the rules. The modern-day manager is supposed to be a coach, teacher, motivational speaker, family therapist, conflict diffuser, ally, inspirational mentor and thoughtful friend. Didn't you get the memo on this?

If you're a manager, have you read a book in the last 90 days that will help you be better at any of it? Look, as a manager, you need to lead by example. If you won't do the work to improve, then don't complain when your staff won't do the work either. And, don't be surprised when their ability surpasses yours. You're standing still while they continue to grow every day on the job - regardless of whether you hold them back or not.

Here's the thing though: the moment the student surpasses the ability of the teacher, the student achieves Excellence. That means that the teacher, by comparison, is mediocre - until they learn something new.

C'mon managers, encourage your Grasshoppers. Force them to be better than you - more excellent than you. You will be doing an excellent thing for your organization.
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Kevin Burns - Excellence Attitude/Culture Strategist
Speaking Web Site http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity
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Bad Management Creates Disengaged Employees

Employee engagement is already a big enough challenge. And as many solutions as there may be to fixing the employee (since it is widely believed that it is the employee who needs to be engaged - after all it is called "employee engagement"), I believe that an employee will focus and engage when the external forces are right. That means, if there is poor engagement in one department over another, you likely have a management problem. Your managers are disengaging the very people you want to be engaged.

Here's what I mean. A well-meaning and engaged employee shows up to work each day and is constantly pestered by:

• Unnecessary meetings,
• "can you come into my office?"
• "what are you doing for lunch?"
• too many surveys,
• talking loudly outside the office or cubicle doorway,
• random verbal announcements (can I have your attention for a minute),
• Christmas party planning,
• managers who really take the MBWA (Management By Walking Around) far too literally,
• and more.

Add to that the chatter of co-workers, gossip and useless social planning meetings and you have a recipe for, at best, a four-hour workday of productivity. Each interruption requires an employee to have to collect his or her thoughts and re-focus on the original task.

Look, I'm a man. I understand that we're not the greatest multi-taskers so why are you interrupting? (Yes, I know the ladies are snickering here.)

Interruptive and ego-driven managers cause attrition to rise. Want to find your own company's worst offenders? Check your own company's attrition numbers by department. The highest attrition usually means the worst managers.

People don't abandon a good manager; a great boss. People leave lousy, awful, terrible and inept managers.

So if you want to engage your employees, give them a manager that encourages engagement. If you've got high turnover in one department, stop listening to the excuses from that manager and do your own due diligence, before you lose more good people. Change your attitude and engage yourself in solving a recurring problem.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Why People Leave Their Jobs

People don't leave the work. They rarely leave the work. Contrary to what you might think or might even hear from the employee who chooses to leave ("this job sucks") it isn't the work that they're leaving most times. They leave the rest of the staff, the managers, the people and the culture - which is largely created by the people. Its almost always a people issue when people leave.

Only 12% of people who leave a job for another job leave for more money. (A survey of managers thought the number was 89%. Oops.) 88% of workers end up leaving because the job was less exciting than advertised, their manager turned out to be a jerk, there were personality conflicts or the culture didn't fit. Everyone of those reasons for leaving is "people" created.

So if you're trying to figure out why your attrition numbers are high and your retention numbers are low, it's because of your people - the rest of your people. They're creating a culture that doesn't work, which gets managers promoted that shouldn't be, which creates personality conflicts and turf-wars which means you have to over-promise your job excitement/reward levels to try to get people to come and work for you. That means that your fibbing will be found out, someone will leave, someone will have to pick up the slack in the short-term, some people will get angry and frustrated because the culture is lousy and they'll end up leaving too.

Are you catching on here yet? It's an Attitude thing. You need to fix it before you lose more people.
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Psych Minors and Leadership

Years ago I enrolled in a college Psychology course in the hopes of getting a little bit more information on how the brain processes information. I had no intention of becoming a Psychologist. I just wanted the introductory course information on the mechanics of the brain.

While attending the course, there was a great notion passed around: there is nothing scarier than a Psych minor. Yep. Bang on. Being lumped in with a bunch of other first year Psych students made for some interesting discussions: especially from those who, in their first year, already fancied themselves a Psychologist. Nothing scarier than a Psych minor - except maybe a weekend Leadership grad.

Companies who send their middle managers off to weekend leadership courses need to be open and transparent about why they are sending a middle manager to the course. Is it because you think that a particular middle manager lacks some basic people skills and could use some of the personal development skills found in the course? Or are you actually sending your middle manager to leadership school because you believe that either he or she has the potential to do great things with themselves, to be a great leader of others and potentially achieve top spot in senior management?

No really. Be honest. Tell the truth.

Because if you let a middle manager believe that the reason they are going to leadership school is because they have a shot at becoming CEO one day, then that middle manager could return to work Monday morning and with an ego trip as big as the second coming of the messiah. You will have created the perfect recipe for a staff revolt - putting further distance between management and employee.

Here's why. Just like the notion that there is nothing scarier than a Psych minor, the same is true about many first-time leadership-course grads. If you are not clear why you wish someone to attend the course, they may perceive themselves to be higher up the food chain than they actually are - which means they return full of self-importance. Because that is how they would have attended the course, what they got out of it may not be what you wanted them to learn. They might be thinking themselves a future senior manager. You might be seeing them as a last chance to improve some basic skills or be fired. So be honest.  

If you don't think that your middle manager has some basic people skills then don't send them to leadership school to get it. If you do, make sure you are completely forthright in discussing why they are going: to get some basic people skills to be a better person - not because they are being considered for promotion.

Better yet, consider sending your people who lack basic people skills to a personal development course. Save leadership for those who would one day lead. But remember, you don't become a leader overnight in exchange for money no matter what the course-offering claim might be. That leadership course is simply a starting point to a life-long commitment to self-improvement. If you think you can buy your way into leadership then you, after three whole days, still don't understand the Attitude of Leadership - and you wasted your money.

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Choice of Managers or Leaders - Pick Managers

"Leadership" is becoming an over-used and under-defined buzzword that has created more fly-by-night companies to come crawling out of the woodwork with promises of turning idiots into leaders. Don't buy it. The whole "Leadership" trend will only last another few years and then we're going to be looking to the rock-solid managers to manage us out of the implosion of the "leadership" industry.

Get ahead of the trend - become a good, competent and solid manager.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ilk892DBB4
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The Separation Of Leadership

Can leadership survive without values? How can leadership takes so many big bonuses for themselves while throwing people out of work? Why is leadership always looking out for themselves?

These are questions that are asked a regular basis on the bulletin boards, articles and blogs. Personally, I think it's just a bunch of people with titles on their business cards that are hoping to be considered leaders purely by their position but they have to lower the bar first so that it's possible for them to slide into a leadership position. They don't want to be called managers anymore. Managers are boring. Managers have to get their hands dirty doing that icky management stuff. Eeeew (yes that's the sound of a 15-year-old girl).

And no matter how many times these questions get asked, the answer is still the same: you don't get to be considered a leader by your position. Yet, so many of the so-called leadership experts are still referring to senior executives as leaders. It's muddying the waters. It's becoming a point of confusion for the average person to try to better understand what leadership really is. Leadership is not a title on a business card.

If it were simply a title on a business card, then we could call up and make appointments for morning coffee with Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, Bernard Ebbers of Worldcom, Tyco 's Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, Computer Associates International's Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia 's John and Timothy Rigas, Daewoo founder Kim Woo-choong or Dynegy's Jamie Olis. Oh, but we can't can we? I almost forgot, these guys are in PRISON. Imagine that, leaders in prison. Based on the widely accepted model of leadership, all of the above listed former CEOs would qualify as leaders because they led their organizations.

Look, if you conive, cheat and steal while you are running the place then you're not a leader. If how you run your organization is illegal, illicit and immoral can you still be considered a leader? No you can not!

These people weren't leaders. They were just greedy CEOs. It was greed and a thirst for power that caused them to let go of what they knew to be right and instead embrace what they knew to be wrong. If you are purposely letting go of your values, morals and ethics in the daily performance of your job duties can you be considered a leader? I would say no.

In fact, the vast majority of the world would agree that the CEOs listed above were not leaders but were criminals: a truth proven once they were caught. When a person knowingly engages in illegal activity in order to advance their own career then they are no longer leading but stealing. As you can see, from this list of CEOs, leader is not a title that should be afforded these criminals.

It's time to start separating the word leadership from those in positions of power. Managers are not leaders even if they have returned from a weeklong leadership course. They are still managers. Elected officials are not afforded the title of leadership simply by the number of votes cast for them. There are as many crooked politicians as there are crooked CEOs. But if you call one politician a leader you must call them all leaders. If you call one CEO a leader you must call them all leaders. There are no sort-of leaders. Leadership is an on-off switch: you either have it or you don't. And you don't get it by achieving a certain position within an organization.

If your organization, during the recession, is choosing not to grow but instead battening down the hatches and pulling in your horns, then you are by the very definition of the word not leading. You are managing. That makes you a manager. Managers manage. (You know, it really pains me to have to explain this. I would have thought that even the worst manager could figure this one out on his own but apparently not.)

It's a real insult to real leaders to have them lumped in with the list of crooked CEOs above. Besides, leader is not something you call yourself: leader is something your followers consider you to be. Leadership is an attitude. Management is a position.

If you are attempting to fleece the company for as much as you can then you're not leading, your "greeding" (I'm not sure if that's even a word but we will go with it). There is a huge difference between a manager or senior executive and a person with leadership ability. Let's not confuse the two. They are not interchangeable. So take down the Jeffrey Skilling poster in the executive washroom and get back to managing the place. We'll see over time whether or not you will be considered a leader.
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Stop Leadership Training Now

A 2-3 day leadership workshop is dangerous to staff morale. The term "management" should not be allowed to be sullied by using the fancy new "leadership" buzzword and by re-branding management workshops to make people think that are going to be anything more than managers anyway. We need managers - good managers. We don't need any managers who "think" they are leaders.

Nothing is more dangerous than a barely-competent manager who fancies himself a leader (except maybe a 1st year Psych minor). It's distressing when staff have to endure the arrogant "past-manager" who now thinks that as a result of his participation at a 2-3 day leadership course, he doesn't have to actually get his hands dirty doing that icky, hands-on manager stuff. Ugh. Trust me, allowing your manager to think himself a leader is going to create big staff problems.

We need managers - good competent managers. And management skills are something you CAN learn at a 2-3 day management workshop. You can derive tremendous benefit from that - if the focus is on target: management. Training companies would do well to stop lying to corporate America. Leadership is not management. Making organizations believe that they should stop management training and start Leadership training is a deception. Leadership is a personal skill. Management is a corporate skill.

If you're really speaking of leadership, you have to define "leadership" to get any benefit. And since there are 350,000 books alone on Amazon, that means there are 350,000 differing opinions on what leadership is. No one person has it right. It is all open to interpretation.

You can not transform a barely-competent manager into a leader in 2 or 3 days. That's ridiculous. And any training company that says they can do it is seeking only your checkbook. Leadership workshops are mostly "management" workshops re-branded anyway - which is a disservice to real life-long leadership commitments and it is insulting to think that a lifelong commitment that someone has made can be taught in 2-3 days.

Leadership workshops would have to change a person's context (the way they see the world), their philosophy (how they think about the world), their personal mission (what they are here to do in the world) and their contribution (what they offer the world). In addition, things like vision, values, ethics, morals, attitudes, opinions and beliefs will all have to be challenged. Leadership operates at that level. Then there is the impossible question to answer: why do people follow some people and not others? You can not have a leadership workshop without addressing these issues and there is no way it can all be covered in-depth, findings concluded and sufficient time allowed for participants to reflect on their lives thus far and where they wish to see themselves in relation to a world contribution (the big picture) in 2 or 3 days.

If you want your managers to be better managers, then send them to management workshops. Don't pretend that you're doing leadership. You can't teach someone how to be Gandhi in 2-3 days. You can't teach someone how to be Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill in 2-3 days. The best you can do is teach someone how to imitate these leaders. But imitation is fake. It is not real. And if it is not real it is not leadership. Leadership is internal - deep in the psyche. The rest is management. Call it what it is.

In every organization, there is ONE leader - the rest are managers. Get used to it. That's the way it is. The barely-competent manager who returns from a 2-3 day leadership course believing that people will follow him now because of his learning after a couple of days training course is not only still barely-competent, but he is now borderline arrogant as well. Yep, let's all line up behind that guy.

What you want are better managers. Stop pretending it's leadership because that is a real insult to real leaders - people who have spent their lifetimes garnering the respect that makes people want to follow them. You can't teach that in 2-3 days.

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Three Qualities Necessary In Hiring Managers

Behavior and personality instruments need to go out the window when picking people at the top. When choosing quality managers, don't go by a metrics checklist - you can't measure instincts or unflappability from a checklist. Use your own good instincts to select your managers. Trust your hunches and your gut. Use your head - not a computer printout. Are you buying a car or hiring a manager? You wouldn't buy a car from a brochure so why would you hire a manager that way?

Since the position involves managing people, your manager had better be adept at the "people" part of the equation. So here is my list of personal qualities that I believe are critical for the successful selection of middle or upper managers:

1. Knowledge of the difference between leadership and management. Simply achieving a position does not entitle you to be called a leader. Leadership is an on/off switch - either you have it or you don't. And you can't get it in a week by going to a course. Don't kid yourself - it's a life-long commitment to self-improvement. Management skills however, can be taught in a week. Management basics are constant. Style is different. Each manager is expected to put their own personality on their management style.
2. Integrity and Values. Without them, the work environment will become toxic. Attrition will rise, morale will plummet and customers will scurry. With integrity and values, everyone is treated equally and the rules apply to everyone - that includes the manager. If you have integrity and values, you know your position does not entitle you to a free pass on the rules.
3. Courtesy and respect. As a manager, you will only get the respect you earn - you are not entitled to it by your position. You serve your people in the same way you expect them to serve both you and your customers. You will get what you give when dealing with your people.

I have yet to find any instrument capable of measuring decency, respect, compassion, charity and fortitude. So I encourage you to trust your hunches more than a readout. Let's get people-skills involved in the selection of the people who will deal with your people.

You might also consider my Lunch Menu Test for potential managers. It is fun and yet, incredibly revealing. It is outlined in a previous Blog post here.

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The Annual Performance Review

Why do people have to wait until there's a performance evaluation to find out how they're doing? Why would any organization torture their own people like that? What's wrong with talking to your people informally and having conversations instead of remaining arm's length from the people who do the work? Oh that's right, the department manager recently went to a leadership course and now he's no longer a manager, he's a "leader." (You are required to make the quotations marks with your fingers when you read that word "leader." Go ahead. Try it.) Their graduation to "pretend-leader" (finger quotes again) is supposed to preclude managers from doing any of that icky, hands-on managerial stuff. They're apparently above that now.

"We're leaders, not managers," the old manager/new leader might say armed with their fresh, new (fingers) "pretend-leadership" attitude.

(Cue the harp music) "We don't have to manage anymore. All we have to do is lead our people and they will magically follow us to where we want them to go. If we lead, people follow. No really. We learned that in the course. We're leaders so people HAVE to follow us. I don't have time to give "my people" feedback. I've got people to lead. Let someone else work on that employee's performance. I'm too busy (fingers) leading."

The truth is too many employees stress over performance evaluations. When people are stressed they are not productive. When they are not productive they get poorer performance evaluations. So why not simply get rid of them - the performance evaluations not the people. Instead, open up your communications and have good two-way conversations on a regular basis. Any manager who doesn't want to do this would FAIL my performance evaluation. I don't care that he/she is a recent pretend-leadership course graduate. Get your head out of your .... er ... uh ... clouds, and get back to managing. Get over yourself. It's real people you're dealing with.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Look, the way I see it, if you can talk to your neighbors over the fence, you can talk to your people over the cubicle wall. They'll do better work for you if they don't think that every little screw-up is going to be entered into a file to be unleashed at the next performance review. All people want to know is if they're doing it right, if their work quality is OK and that their efforts are being noticed and appreciated.

Talk to them. If they're not doing a good job, they'll get the idea right away. They'll probably just move on before you have to force them to. Seriously, if you want to accurately assess an individual's performance, then daily communication is a far better way to do it than to spring the annual "surprise" on them. In fact, most managers end up scrambling to put something together for an annual performance review anyway. It's not like they've been keeping notes. So, if you haven't been keeping notes then manage them - don't scare them.

Oh, and for the recent pretend-leadership course graduates, leadership is not something you get in exchange for money. If you're a manager, manage. Now get back to work. Your own annual performance review is coming up too.
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Can't Tell Good Without Bad

In order for you to claim to be "better" you have had to experience something worse. Without the comparison point, the exercise is futile.

But unfortunately, the vast majority of organizations who claim to have better service have never really put themselves in the customer's shoes. They have never really actually experienced their own service. The vast majority of companies have never really taken the time to individually assess the service model of their competitors. They think, in their mind, that they know the service model their competitors are using but they really don't. So they believe that a few minor tweaks and adjustments on their own service will allow them to claim "better service."

Recently, I had a face-to-face heated discussion with a hardware store manager. After being under-serviced by many of his staff I took my complaint directly to his office. He jumped out from behind his desk and began running all over the store as though he was my trained servant. This is not what I wanted. I simply wanted to be served well by the people who stand in the aisles of the hardware store and whose job it is to serve people.

When I arrived at the front checkout counter, I was asked by the cashier, "did you find everything you were looking for?"

I did not find everything I was looking for. I was looking for service. But by the time I get to the front counter, it's too late to address that issue.

I'm sure that in the manager's mind his own store service was adequate. But from my perspective, the service was mediocre. It was ordinary. It was average. Maybe even below-average.

Attitude Adjustment: If you, as a manager, have to jump out from behind your desk and run all over the store to serve the customer that your customer service people should have already served, then you have a service problem. And this doesn't just apply to retail locations. If the customers are asking for a manager or supervisor, then your customer service reps are not doing it right. If your clients are asking for a manager to intervene in sales, you're not doing it right.

You are creating a "bad service" experience for your customers. These are exactly the kinds of stories your customers take to your competitors. In fact, your competitors will probably build a customer service model based on that experience and claim that their service is "better." And they would be right.

Service By Inquiry or Insanity?

Did you know that there are only TWO types of service? I was finally able to nail down these two types of service this past weekend. As with most things in life, you usually only ever have an opinion on one type of service without something to compare it to. This weekend, I found the comparison.

Service Model #1 – Service By Inquiry: As the name suggests, inquiry is the key here. How can I help you? What is it you’re looking for? What specific model/brand are you looking for? These are all questions usually asked by a clerk/service personnel as you wander around their store with a lost look on your face or when you have finally decided to approach the Customer Service counter as a last resort. Then there are the questions posed by the customer: Where do you keep your …? Where would I find …? Do you carry any …? These are simply inquiries which should normally be met with simple answers.

Service Model #2 – Service By Insanity: As this name suggests, the customer has to lose his mind, his patience, his good mood and his common courtesy before he gets the service he should be entitled to. Sending a customer across the store to the Customer Service counter to be helped when there is a perfectly good in-store phone at your fingertips drives a customer nuts. Getting a clerk to help a customer only after they have hit “desperation” is not good service.

However, the worst question in any retail setting is usually asked just before you leave the store if you’re making your way through the checkout line: Did you find everything you were looking for? That’s really a dumb question that makes unhappy customers crazy. Yet more and more retail operations are hell-bent on asking it. Most people simply answer “yes” and silently vow to never come to the store again.

But what if the answer is “no?” Are you going to hold up all of the other disgruntled customers who are also standing in a long checkout line? Answer “no” and the clerk gets a look of terror on their face. Who fixes the problem with you only ten feet from the door? I’ll tell you right now, if you answer “no,” you get the pat-answer, “Oh sorry.”

Look, if you want me to find everything I’m looking for; don’t place your cashier in an embarrassing situation. Put more people on the floor to help the customers. Jeez, it’s really a simple idea. Don’t try to fix my problem when I’ve already gone through your whole store and no one helped me there. Now you think you’re going to help me once I've already decided to leave? It doesn’t work that way. Besides, if I didn’t buy anything, no one asks the question. I’m not in the right line (checkout line) to see if I’m satisfied.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: When a manager has to help a complaining customer with two or three qualified staff standing around doing nothing means your people don’t own a Service Attitude. If you’re a manager who feels compelled to respond to customer concerns, it usually means that your staff is unmotivated. If so, your management style needs a lot of work. Obviously, if as a manager, you have to help, it’s because your people aren’t helping enough. Either get rid of these people or move them to where they don’t deal directly with customers. A manager should be doing PR on the floor. Clerks and customer service reps should be ensuring that a manager never has to actually help customers find things. By the time a manager speaks with a customer, it should be all smiles and chuckles – not complaints.

If you’re a manager who deals with complaints, then your people aren’t doing it right. If you’re a service representative and you’re not looking for ways to help a customer in every moment of your day, then you are not doing enough to ensure you become the most valuable person in your organization.

Help me, the customer, on the floor so that when I get to the checkout line and get asked, “Did you find everything OK?” I can answer “yes” and take the pressure off of the cashier. Your cashier should not have to be the last line of defense of ensuring customer satisfaction. Besides, if I’m on my way out, how are you going to fix it now anyway?

The Résumé Is Dead

What is a résumé? It’s nothing more than a collection of things you’ve done in your work life – a sort-of “eulogy” at work. Oh sure, it may also point out some skills that you were allowed to use while on the job but it really gives no indication of your aptitude, your natural talents nor your values and attitudes toward the work world.

Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor, once said, “You are not paid for what you have done in the past. You are paid for what you’re about to do in the future.”

Isn’t it interesting that you (boss or HR professional) decide who you want to interview is based purely on what your candidate may have done in the past – not what they are about to do in the future.

Why is the résumé dead?

• There is no indication from a résumé of what heights could have possibly been reached – only what someone has been given the opportunity to do.
• There is no indication from a résumé of what a candidate is capable of learning – only what they have learned in the past, what school they graduated from and what pieces of paper (degrees) they may hold (relevant or not).
• There is no indication from a résumé that a particular candidate could be the next great leader for your organization – especially if never given the opportunity to lead.
• There is no indication from a résumé of how brilliant a mind may be when hidden behind average grades and average positions in an organization – especially if the candidate was kept down by a tyrant boss.
• There is no indication from a résumé of values and ethics being paramount – especially if only ever given a lowly entry-level position and no opportunity to provide input.
• There is no indication from a résumé that a candidate is a decent human being – credentials on a wall don’t make you decent.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The workforce is changing. Baby Boomers are retiring and Gen Y is here to stay. In a few years, Gen Y will be taking over management positions and leadership roles and the organizational structure that we know today will be dead – along with the résumé.

The great leaders of tomorrow and those who will change the world, including your organization, will be the people with ideas and those who will challenge the standard workforce strategy. They won’t be hired because of their résumés. And as long as you continue to believe that the résumé is the best way to find a suitable candidate to fill a position, you will be eating the dust of the organizations who have found a way to attract people with brains, ideas, values, ethics and a shared-effort philosophy. These people are found in chat rooms, blogging, e-networking, texting and hanging out with those of like-mind.

Who do you think would bring your organization a higher degree of greatness: a person looking for a job (armed with a résumé) or one who is already sharing ideas with others (armed with a Blog, followers and a huge network)? Which of the two choices do you think would give you better results in the future?

The résumé is dead.

Featured Expert in Safe Supervisor Magazine

Safe Supervisor magazine is a monthly publication dedicated to helping Occupational Health & Safety managers, supervisors and foremen become more effective in their jobs.

Last week, Dave Duncan of Safe Supervisor, interviewed me on a host of topics related to safety in the workplace. Primarily, our discussion centered around how to get non-complying workers to come around and to embrace the on-the-job safety procedures.

Safety Naggers Need a Bag of New Tricks
This is a two-part series on how supervisors can deal with workers who have an “attitude” and resist working safely. The first segment will look at how supervisors can approach such workers in a manner that doesn’t involve nagging. Part two will examine what supervisors can do to rein in workplace “cowboys” and what can be done when words aren’t enough to budge a bad safety attitude.

The interview is a two-part series that will be published in both the February and March 2009 editions of Safety Supervisor.

Safety IS an Attitude!

The Attitude of Leaders As Hosts

Leadership is an attitude. Management is a title. You don’t need to be in management to be a leader.

So what does leadership look like in your own life?

Let’s say you are having a social gathering at your house. That would make you the host and those who attended your party would be guests. When in someone else’s house, the guests all defer to the host as being the leader. In other words, you are not managing the party, you are hosting it. The guests will join the host (the leader of the party) even sometimes begrudgingly if the host wants to play a game of charades. It’s the host’s party. We, as guests, will follow along. When there are followers, there must be a leader.

I read an interesting article recently about the concept of “hostmanship” as opposed to the concept of customer service.

There are six fundamentals to hostmanship:

1. Serving others
2. Perceiving the whole
3. Taking responsibility
4. Being caring
5. Searching knowledge
6. Practicing dialogue

The hostmanship web site describes hostmanship as the following:

Hostmanship without pride is empty and cold. In contrast to service, Hostmanship is focused on practice, on people as hosts, on the cultures of businesses, and on the capacity of organizations to tie it all together. Being a host is much about having the courage to let loose your talents and express your personality – to be brave enough to serve every person as she is and to listen to the needs she expresses. Hostmanship also differs from service in that it’s not about treating others as you yourself want to be treated. Hostmanship is to treat a person as she wants to be treated.

Seth Godin, in his Blog, wrote this past week:

If I pay $1000 extra for a first-class seat, odds are the flight attendant will be nice to me. If I pay $2000 extra for the presidential suite at the hotel, odds are the front desk clerk will be nice to me. If I give the valet $50 to park my car, odds are he'll be nice to me as well.

So, here's the question: if all I want, the only extra, is for someone to be nice to me when I visit your business, how much extra does that cost?

I think there's a huge gap between what people are willing to pay for nice (a lot) and what it would cost businesses to deliver it (almost nothing). Smells like an opportunity.

Attitude Adjustment: Is it your right to host your guests or to serve your customers? Or is it a privilege? Shifting your attitude away from customers simply being dollar signs to a nicer approach, that they are your guests, will go a long way to providing you with customer loyalty, better employee engagement, a more courteous and considerate way of dealing with those who choose to support you and, finally, a solid foundation upon which you can build your business and business relationships. Change your mind. Change your attitude. And serve your “guests” as you would wish to be “hosted” at their places of business or even their homes.

Arrogance vs. Attitude

Question posed this week: What would you do from your own professional perspective to overcome an arrogant attitude in management and encourage to them in being proactive in accepting the necessity, convenience and relevance of an organizational change?

Let's be clear. In most instances, it's not "management" that is arrogant. It is the individual people who hold the title "manager” who may be arrogant. Some managers have come to believe that their title carries with it a deluded belief that they are superior to those who work for them. Change the attitudes of the individuals and you can begin to successfully change the culture throughout the organization. But without acknowledging the existence of the arrogance attitude within oneself, there is likely to be little change in this regard.

Management is not the same as leadership. Management is a title. Leadership is an attitude. I doubt that a true leader, one who genuinely wanted his or her people to become better, smarter and more efficient and to become the best people they could become, would operate from a place of arrogance. But one who chose to try to keep his or her minions down would be operating from that arrogance place.

Here’s a self-test for managers: have you met every single person in your department and had at least one conversation with each of them? If not, what is keeping you from doing that? I can guarantee that employee engagement will increase when the employee begins to feel that their contribution matters. Leadership is encouraging performance that perhaps even surpasses the abilities of the leader. Leaders are selfless. It’s impossible to be arrogant when an individual is selfless.

In any organization, it is not only leaders holding management positions. In fact, arrogant managers actually fear employees who are perceived by their peers as leaders within the ranks. Employees with leadership abilities are influencers. Arrogant managers fear influencers who could undermine their position.

But a real influencer may also be able to influence the arrogant manager by having a private conversation, away from prying ears. It takes courage but it is possible.

Also, it takes courage from consultants and speakers to say what needs saying instead of plying platitudes to ensure the check gets signed. This is an all-too-sad truth in our industry – saying what is safe to say instead of saying what needs to be said.

Attitude Adjustment: There is good news on dealing with arrogant managers. As the market changes (customers expecting better service, expectations of quality products, purchasing patterns, economic forces, etc.,) so will the attitudes of managers ... eventually. All is not lost. This transition time, as Boomers leave the workplace and are replaced by Gen Y's or Millenials, the dynamics of the relationships between those at the top and those who actually do the work will begin to change. The one saving grace is that the customer (us) can tell the difference. We customers vote with our dollars. When the polls (dollars) start to swing away from those organizations with arrogant leadership, the shareholders of those same organizations will correct the problem in short order. The market always has a way of correcting itself.

One Person Makes Every Decision

Here’s a question that was posed to me this week: what do you think is the major cause for an organization suffering unnecessary employee attrition or turnover?

I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people would point the finger at: bad hiring, bad management, poor wages, stifling organizational culture, not keeping promises, misrepresentation of the work involved or failure to align with the corporate vision or mission statement.

There are a ton of possible reasons, most of them pointing the finger at a nebulous position or something else. Have we lost sight of the prime component here? Don't we undertsand that as long as we blame an entity or a position that we can’t quantify, that we will continue to face the same issues?

What about the employee who “needs” daily ego-stroking? Is it management’s job or the responsibility of “culture” to ensure that needy employees get their daily dose of Vitamin “Ego?” Not every single employee is cut from the same cloth. Just because they may have attended the same school doesn’t mean they have the same qualities and values as the next person.

HR needs to stop considering candidates for interview primarily from resumes. The world is changing. The new generation of worker bounces around from job-to-job looking for a fit. The new generation of workers doesn’t interview as well as older workers (unless they can interview by text message). The new generation of worker doesn’t even think like their interviewer (generational gaps). Can your HR department figure out what makes this worker tick?

Ask yourself this question: when your place of business has an opening, does it simply hire a body or does your place of work see the value and skill-set in a potential candidate and make a place for that person? There's a difference. Discover what your people are really good at and encourage them to do what they do best. Then hire someone else to do the work not being done but make sure they want to do it.

Want to change the culture? Change the people. I’m not talking about firing the lot. I’m talking about providing tools that employees could grow as people, could get better, more confident, build their individual self-esteem, improve their decision-making capacity, improve their communication skills and improve their daily dispositions and attitudes. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know. It’s soft skills training. But if you really want to grow your organization you will first have to grow your people.

Organizations work fine. It’s people who screw them up. Fix the individual and you will fix the organization and the performance of the organization. But unfortunately, we’ve become a society of finger-pointers and blamers. And in doing so, it’s easy to blame an entity or a title (department) for the results.

In fact, some will actually argue with me that it’s got to be harder than just making the people better. My response is; have you tried it yet? Have you fully experienced poor results from actually implementing some sort of personal-development culture within your organization and can, from a place of experience, say it doesn’t work because you’ve actually tried it?

Attitude Adjustment: If you don’t make a change on the focus of the problem, you will never solve it. Every decision, every success and every screw-up in every organization can be traced back to just one person. Improve the person and you improve the decision. Improve the person and you improve the work. Improve the person and you improve the performance. Improve the person and you improve the attitude towards the job. Improve the person and you improve the attrition rate. Simple huh? Now stop blaming “management” for not allowing this to happen and go talk to the one person who can make the decision. It all boils down to one person – always.

The Leadership Philosophy

“How many people have actually read the ‘Belief’ Statement?” I said as I pointed to the large Belief Statement banner which stood upon the stage next to me.

A single hand out of almost two hundred attendees was raised. That hand, funny enough, belonged to meeting planner who had hired me.

“Are you serious?” was my incredulous response.

The one item out of the seven listed on the Belief Statement banner that I was drawing attention to made reference to each staff member being responsible for their own ongoing, continuous self-improvement and learning. I personally think that the responsibility for self-improvement should be on the individual and not the employer, no matter what.

So over the course of the hour that I addressed this group, I continually referenced the importance of self-improvement and a dedication to continuous learning.

I believe that taking fifteen minutes a day, a single coffee-break, to learn something today that may improve you personally or professionally, will show results exponentially down the road. Reading a chapter in a book that can improve your job performance, your willingness to stretch yourself, to learn a new skill or to enhance your skill set will, down the road, affect your paycheck.

The more you learn, the more valuable you become, the more likely you will be rewarded for your value.

Your employer is likely to see little reason to invest more resources or more money in you if you have not demonstrated a return on investment by investing in yourself first. And the truth is that if your employer is not able to see the results of your self-improvement strategy, it is likely that another employer will see it and offer you more to come to work there instead.

You don’t have to be in a management position to continually upgrade yourself. Just because someone has the title “manager” doesn’t mean they are a leader. Sometimes, and contrary to what many employers believe, people who could lead a revolt against management have much more leadership ability than the managers they themselves work for.

Attitude Adjustment: Leadership is an attitude. Management is a title. You can possess one without the other. The two do not necessarily go hand in hand. The person who continuously self-improves puts him or herself in a much better position to influence others than does the manager who stops learning one he or she gets the title. Just because you’re not the boss doesn’t mean you’re not a leader. And just because you’re not a leader doesn’t mean you can’t be the boss. I mean, c’mon, we’ve all worked for bosses that had little leadership ability. The leader is the person who has demonstrated that he or she could always improve and makes a plan to make sure they are ahead of the pack. If you’re ahead of everyone else and they seem to be following you, then you must be the leader right? Open a book and start learning how to get in front.

Boss Tip #8 - The Credit Score

Is this column about financial background checks and credit scores? Well, not in the way you might think. This column is about credit scores but not about qualifying for credit as a consumer. It’s about how much credit you give as a boss.

Take a survey of your people and ask them what they want from their work and their boss and you will find this answer in the Top 5 every single time: recognition. People want to be acknowledged for the work they do – not just when they need to be raked over the coals for a screw-up.

People want to be recognized for their contribution, their diligence and the quality of their work. If the only time you talk to your people about the quality of their work is when you dump on them, well then you’re the village idiot aren’t you? Don’t believe me? Just ask your people. No better yet, secretly listen to what they’re saying about you in the coffee room.

Just because you’re the boss, don’t believe for one second that your people are doing everything in their power to make you look good. That’s just not true. People are doing a great job likely because of the personal satisfaction they get from doing a great job. If you overlook this fact, and regularly steal the credit for a job well done, you will be spending more of your time training new people to replace the people who left than you will on having the spotlight shone on you.

If you want the spotlight and the credit, then take the credit for attrition numbers being on the rise, training budgets being escalated because you have to train more new people and also poor morale.

Nothing knocks the morale out of people faster than stealing the credit from them after they poured their heart out on a project. People want a reason to take personal pride in their work and if you’re going to steal it when they do go above and beyond for you, or at the very least not acknowledge their effort, you are going to be a very lonely boss working by yourself.

If you work by yourself, well then you’re really not the boss are you? You’re just an employee who no one wants to work with. And that would be no surprise either. You brought it on yourself.

Are you giving someone credit for their work daily? I’m not referring to just a “Good job” in the hallway, but something public and heartfelt. The more you let your people know they will get the credit for a job well done, the more you will have a job well done from your people. What goes around comes around.

Publicly acknowledge and privately criticize. Make sure the rest of the staff know when someone has done a good job. Don’t play favorites and don’t blame someone else for a shortcoming in your department. More on that next time.

Boss Tip #5 - Lunch Menu Leadership Test

There have been a lot of questions this past week on what the Lunch Menu Leadership Test is all about. No one, it seems, is able to find any reference to it on-line anywhere. That’s because it’s MY test. So stop looking. This is the only place you will find that information.

So whom is the test meant for? The test is applicable if ever you are in the position, or even on a selection committee, to hire for any of the following positions: CEO, CO, Mr. Big, VIP, administration, administrator, baron, big brother, big cheese, big man, big wheel, boss, brass, businessman, chief, commander, director, directorate, don, entrepreneur, exec, godfather, government, governor, head, head honcho, head man, heavyweight, hierarchy, high priest, higher-up, industrialist, key player, kingfish, kingpin, leader, leadership dude, management, manager, meal ticket, number one, officer, official, point man, skipper, supervisor, top, top brass, tycoon or any other position in the upstairs upper echelon.

The test is relatively simple. Hey, it would have to be. I thought of it.

Take your management/leadership candidate for lunch, nothing really fancy just a place where the menu wouldn’t be too foreign to an average Joe. Once seated, either your host/hostess or a server will swing by with menus and say something like this: “Good afternoon and welcome to the Monkey Bar & Grill. My name is Peter and I will be your server today. Can I start you folks with a couple of beverages before I tell you about our fantastic luncheon specials today?”

(Jeez, did you order a story? I don’t remember ordering a story.)

Anyway, back to the test. Once Peter drops the menus on the table and rattles off the luncheon specials for the day, once he turns his back and runs to fetch your beverages, start the clock and say nothing more. Simply open your menu, pretend you’re looking at it and observe what transpires next. This IS the test.

If the candidate closes his/her menu in under sixty seconds with a decision made for lunch, you have a winner. Here’s my thinking, if someone about to be moved into a leadership position can not make a decision for themselves in under sixty seconds, a simple decision about what to eat, then how in the world would they be able to make far more important decisions affecting the entire organization?

The key to the Lunch Menu Leadership Test is the following philosophy: How we do one thing is how we do everything.

If the candidate can make quick decisions on unimportant stuff, then he/she can likely make quick decisions on important stuff.

If the candidate takes more than sixty seconds with a simple luncheon menu, you’re going to have problems with him/her.

If the candidate says, “I’ve never eaten here before, what’s good?” I hear, “I’m not comfortable with new surroundings. I might be able to become comfortable with a little help from someone who’s experienced this before, but right now, I don’t know what to do (have).”

“Hmm, I’m not sure what to have. What are you having?” means I will be making the vast majority of my decisions based on consensus. That means I will be polling people so I can decide what I should do next.

Studying the menu and flipping pages back and forth several times means they can’t decide. They are indecisive.

During the meal if I hear “Maybe I should have ordered what you did,” he/she spends too much time on second guessing their decisions. Likely, direction will change like the wind.

There are many more things that can be translated from the test but the key here is if you are going to place someone in a position of leadership, they had better be able to stand on their own two feet, accepting the results of their decisions and not afraid to make them.

This test never fails, unless the candidate knows about the test in advance and knew where they were going to be eating.

Want to find out what your boss is really like? Take them for lunch. You’ll see what I mean.