Jan 11 2012

The GenX Myth

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The Gen X Myth

I was listening to a webinar about how to work with Generation X and was surprised and appalled by the Xer hosts diatribe about other generations. She said she absolutely hated Baby Boomers and wouldn’t work with them. She also felt Millennials were inept. She talked about her own generation’s hatred of working in groups.

Every generation develops a reputation. Usually, that reputation is developed early in the generation and sometimes manages to survive through the following decades. Unfortunately, that reputation is usually based on the actions of a subgroup of the entire generation. For instance, some Baby Boomers spent their early years in a drug induced state, but not all of them did. All generation’s grow, mature, and change, often leaving behind those habits or traits that defined them in earlier years.

That dynamic has changed a little with Generation X. As with all things, the internet began to play a role in the development, and reputation of a generation. While in the past, anyone could write a book that, no matter how long it stayed on the best seller list would only be read by a fraction of the population, the internet allows anyone to spout off about anything with a much larger, and more instant audience. The ubiquitous internet has allowed members of Generation X to tell everyone how bad their life is.

Unfortunately, this high-speed dissemination of information has also allowed opinions to become fact and isolated cases to become main stream. There have been a number of articles and opinion pieces circulating that lament the lack of leadership ability among Xers. These “woe is me” commentaries bewail the future of corporate America as Boomers retire and Xers just aren’t ready to step up.

Let me put all this to rest. I’ve worked with, and supervised many members of Generation X and have never had any problems. They worked well in groups, they made fine leaders, and they definitely had valuable input. In fact, when I left my last leadership position, responsible for a large and very complex organization, I had no compunction about leaving “my” organization in the capable hands of an Xer.

Leaders must realize that generations are made of people and each person is different. Yes, some Xers had bad experiences growing up and yes, in general the generation tends to be a bit skeptical. That’s not all bad though. Something to consider as a leader is that Xers can be a bridge between the old and new. They tend to have a foot in the Baby Boom Generation and the Millennial Generation.
Before the internet, the blathering of a few malcontents was usually seen as just that. Today, the speed and reach of information gives those malcontents a new venue. Leaders must still see this for what it is. Your own experience is still one of your best guides.
Get Balancing the Generations: A Leader’s Guide to the Complex, Multi-Generational, 21st Century Workplace.


 

 

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Dec 28 2011

New Year’s Resolutions or Goals

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New Year’s Resolutions or Goals

Every year I advise people to forgo the usual New Year’s resolution process. Few people ever actually stick to their resolutions even though I often hear something like “I’m really going to do it this year.” I heard that last year though, and the year before. Here’s a better idea.

If your fiscal year corresponds to the calendar year, review your strategic plan (or develop one) and evaluate your goals. Are you on track to accomplish those goals? Perhaps you have accomplished some of the goals you set last year. Another essential question to ask is whether your goals are still valid. It is not unusual to find that a goal that was set last year has been overcome by events and is no longer important. This happens sometimes, especially with today’s pace of change. Even though you have resources invested in that goal, it’s best to cut your losses early and move on.

If your fiscal year does not start on January 1st, then enjoy the new year and keep working your plan. When your new fiscal year starts, look at the plan and evaluate your goals.

When you follow a good goal setting process, and regularly track those goals, they are much better than any New Year’s resolution. There’s one more thing you can do to start your year off right, no matter when that year actually begins. Tell everyone in the company about the goals that you accomplished and make sure they know that you know those accomplishments were because of their hard work. That’s a key step in starting the year off right!

If you really want to make resolutions, be my guest. Like so many other people, you can resolve to get in shape and pay upfront for that one-year membership at the fitness club. But, ask yourself why they ask for a whole year up-front. It’s simple – they know they won’t see you past the end of February, but they will still have your money.

Good goal setting isn’t like that. When you have a good goal setting process there is an organizational effort to meet the goals and move the company forward.

Have a happy, resolution free New Year.

Learn more about goal setting.

 

 

 

 

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Dec 14 2011

Speak and be Heard!

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Speak and be Heard!

Are public speaking skills essential to being a good leader? It’s a question I read recently and at first, it was one of those things that make you say, “Well, obviously.” But as I read a little more of the question, I began to understand the person was really asking if good public speaking skills were essential to the effectiveness of a good leader.
To answer this question, you have to understand that good public speaking is part of the overall communications equation. It is important for leaders to learn to speak well. But the other part of the communications equation is important too, and has more to do with the impact of the leader in the long run, and that’s the ability of the leader to listen. An important part of listening is the ability to understand what people are telling them. This is especially important for new leaders.
It’s important for new leaders to develop the ability to listen to, and understand their workers needs and concerns. If a leader doesn’t do that, listen and gain understanding, then when they do speak, they won’t have a lot of credibility because, frankly, they don’t know what they are talking about.
There’s another element to credibility. Workers expect their leaders to represent them, to understand their concerns so when they go to those meetings that the workers never attend, they will be able to express the workers needs and concerns to everyone else. That’s what workers are looking for in the effectiveness and impact of a leader.
As a leader grows and develops and reaches more responsible positions, the ability to speak becomes more and more important. At the senior executive and CEO level, the ability to speak well, and use those slides, becomes even more critical. But always remember, speaking skill is nothing if you haven’t first listened so you know what you’re supposed to be saying.

 

 

 

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Dec 07 2011

What Books Should Leaders Read?

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What Books Should Leaders Read?

This is a question I hear a lot. It’s a good question; leaders should be avid readers on a variety of subjects. But, as one who has read a lot of leadership books, and even written a couple, I warn you they can be dangerous!

What! Dangerous? How can that be?

Leadership books provide a great source of information to help leaders improve their skills and there are many different types of books available. Some, like those written by Jim Collins are based on careful analysis of detailed research. Others, like those penned by John C. Maxwell, who has written more books than I can count, also contain careful research but rely more on his and other’s individual experiences rather than large population studies. Some books concentrate on the success or failure of one particular individual or company. But no matter how they are written, all leadership books contain the point of view and experience of the author. That’s not bad.

The problem is that while most authors study their subject extensively and have at least some expertise, many readers unfortunately do not. Those readers often have never learned the basics of leadership and so don’t really know how to apply the concepts that the books present. One leader I know read a leadership book that presented some fairly advanced ideas and he decided he would implement those ideas. While that was a noble thought, he completely lacked the fundamental leadership skills necessary to actually apply those techniques and he really just looked silly.

Compare leadership books to a cookbook. I like to occasionally dabble in the kitchen. A chef I’m not, but I like to attempt new creations. I usually succeed without major catastrophe, but I still have to keep it relatively simple because I have never had training in the basics of cooking. I often have to learn what specific terms I see in recipes mean and figure out how to do that particular technique. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. But when cooking, I can’t really hurt anyone but myself and my wife is very good about giving honest and immediate feedback.

The office environment isn’t that way. When a leader tries to apply a specific technique, without a clear understanding of the underlying leadership basics, the organization can suffer, people can suffer, and chances are good that the boss won’t get the necessary feedback until the damage is done.

Don’t misunderstand. I want leaders to read and learn from the vast pool of knowledge and experience that’s available at the bookstore. But if they don’t have a basic understanding of leadership fundamentals, that’s where they should start.

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Nov 30 2011

Those Slackers

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Those Slackers

One of the biggest problems for team leaders is dealing with team members who don’t want to do their share. These slackers are always a problem for leaders, but I’ve found there are some basics of leadership that will significantly reduce that problem.

Since much of my leadership experience comes from a long career in the military, I’m often asked why the military, seems to have more dedicated people. There are exceptions, but on the whole, I firmly believe they do. There are two basic reasons.The first is a feeling of membership in something important and much more than just the individual. That’s instilled into a young recruit from the first day. Civilian leaders have pointed out that they don’t defend the nation or anything nearly as high sounding. True, but it’s a leadership challenge to make employees understand why what they do is important and how they are part of something bigger than themselves. If a leader can’t do that, they need to ask why.

The second is again something the military instills from the first day. That is the necessity to do your job right because others are relying on you. Your failure to perform can have dire consequences for others just as their failure can affect you. That’s easy to translate to non-military situations, especially in an industrial setting. Quite simply in any organization, if you fail to do your job, you will cost the company money and everyone suffers.

Another effective technique is to train and empower lower level leaders to take action to correct slacker behavior. This, along with a healthy dose of peer pressure, often brings the slacker in line and can even turn him or her into an asset. But it doesn’t always work and sometimes saying good-bye is the best option. Which is another lesson leaders must learn. I’ve been guilty of holding on too long, thinking I could fix the individual. Leaders must remind themselves that fixing people who don’t want to be fixed is not their job. Helping everyone else make the company succeed and excel is.

Helping everyone understand that they are part of a team, that their contribution to that team is important, and that the team is relying on each member for everyone’s success are vital steps to dealing with the slacker in the organization. But the most important step is to make sure everyone understand that they are part of something important and bigger then themselves. This belief has to be genuine. When it is, you’ll have significantly fewer issues with slackers.

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Nov 23 2011

Who’s in the Planning Process – and When?

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Who’s in the Planning Process – and When?

Should we involve our team in the planning or should they only be involved in planning the implementation rather than the plan itself?

Some years ago it was popular to include worker level people in executive level planning. The thought was to “get their buy-in.” I never saw this work. In most cases those people did not have enough knowledge about what was being discussed (I’m not referring to their intelligence, just their knowledge and experience) and felt out of place. Also, many workers don’t want to be involved in that level, though that’s open for a whole different discussion.

But, I’ve also learned that those worker level people have something that the executive level often either doesn’t have or has lost, and that’s direct knowledge of what it takes to accomplish a goal.

With that in mind, I found the most success when leaders who are on the planning team solicit, and seriously consider input from their workers. That input is critical in the strategic planning process I’ve developed. That input provides a basis for the elements of the plan that come before goals and objectives.

Goals and objectives are set by the planning team; however, they are not finalized until the planning team members have taken them back to their own areas and received the input of those who are actually going to do the work. Without that input, the planning team is very likely to miss necessary steps and underestimate the time and resources necessary for success.

Now, I know someone will say that the workers will tend to pad the requirements to make it easier on themselves. That’s why I emphasize that planning is a leadership activity. That sort of thing may happen and can’t be eliminated completely, but with leaders who have established trust and good communication, the problem is much less likely to appear.

One more thing. If you have a small team that works very closely together, then it probably is wise to include them all in the planning process. If you do, additional caution is warranted because that extra check and balance for goals is not there. It’s a little easier for the members of the team to agree to things that are not possible just to avoid looking like they’re not “on-board” in front of the rest of the team. Again, leadership!

You should involve the workers in the planning process, but at the right time.

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Nov 16 2011

Push Buttons, Email, and Videos

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Push Buttons, Email, and Videos

I’m late with this blog because of technology. You see, I’m from a generation that was impressed when push button phones appeared. Those phones had two extra buttons; a pound sign and an asterisk. We were told that those didn’t do anything, but someday they would provide wonderful new capabilities. But the techno world was not happy with a couple of extra buttons. Not at all. First they took away the phone cord. Then they figured out how to make the phone small enough to fit in our pockets. Then they gave us email so we might not have to use the phone at all. Or maybe not as much. And that’s where the trouble started.

I’m not completely backward and have become pretty familiar with email and consider myself to have some expertise with Microsoft Outlook, which I’ve used for years. So, when I realized that it was time to clean up and archive, I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. Somewhere along the line, I managed to lose all my calendar and contact data. Fortunately, that phone that fits in my pocket has all that stuff too, but it took me several hours to straighten out the problem; time I could have been using to figure out the next technical issue.

That’s video blogs. I’ve decided to try this latest thing (well latest to me anyway) but it hasn’t come easy. It’s taken awhile to figure out the details and get this far. I do have an advantage though. My son, who comes from a generation that never really knew phones didn’t used to have buttons, understands all this stuff and is usually available to bail me out when I’m in over my head. Which is way too often.

And that brings me to the point of all this. The world has changed, and along with it the workplace. No longer does the old guy with all the corporate knowledge have all the answers. In fact, that guy may actually be getting in the way. He’s seen more real change than anyone in the younger generations, but he hasn’t seen the current pace of change. So, those of us who have been around a while need to be open to the capabilities of the younger folks who understand the technology that is so vital these days.

But, before the younger generation gets their heads too swelled, remember that older guy does possess the corporate knowledge and definitely still has much to contribute. It’s something of a new paradigm to many, but we have to learn from each other. That means people my age can learn from people my son’s age, but people my son’s age can still learn from the old guy.

There’s a lot more like this in my book, Balancing the Generations: A Leader’s Guide to the Complex, Multi-Generational 21st Century Workplace.

 

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Nov 09 2011

The Christmas Tree Tax

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The Christmas Tree Tax

The government has decided to charge consumers a 15 cent per live Christmas tree tax this year. This Christmas tree tax is to help fund an effort by the Department of Agriculture to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees. They say this is not a tax, but whenever the government takes money from citizens, it’s a tax. Of course part of any government’s purpose is to do things that cause the citizenry to alternate between laughter and tears. But there’s often a lesson for leaders as well.

How many times do we as leaders come up with Christmas tree tax type ideas? This particular example of government buffoonery points out two common mistakes leaders make.

First is an idea that just doesn’t make sense to the organization’s rank and file. Is there really a large group of people in this great land who have a negative image of Christmas trees? Is there a need for the government to help with tree marketing? Apparently the tree industry and the Department of Agriculture think so. But I’m not sure the people who buys trees, and would ultimately pay the fee would agree. Any day now, I’ll start seeing little tree lots sprouting up all over town like crocuses in the spring. Where once only weeds grew or vehicles parked, families will be tying trees to the roof of their cars and handing over ever larger sums of money. Others will be trekking into the nearby mountains armed with a saw to cut down some unsuspecting yearling. Obviously, the Department of Agriculture thought this was a good idea, but one has to wonder if they went through any kind of decision analysis. Sometimes leaders will make a decision based on incomplete information or simply a knee jerk reaction to some perceived problem or passing complaint. To paraphrase a common mantra during the rationing of World War II, “Is this decision really necessary?”

Second, is inept communication of the idea to the organization at large. A leader may have a change that seems a little odd or doesn’t quite make sense on the surface but is necessary anyway. (I doubt the Department of Agriculture’s idea is really necessary, but stick with me here) In that case, how the idea is communicated is essential. Forever gone are the days when the boss could just say something and, no matter how ridiculous, the people would bow and say “yes, it is good as our paychecks depend on complete subservience.” Today people question things, and we’re better for it. So if a change must be implemented, it must be communicated with complete honesty. Though not everyone will jump on board, support will greatly increase when the people understand why the change is necessary and the explanation makes sense to them. At the same time, call it what it is. In this case, saying the fee isn’t a tax, seems kind of disingenuous.

In case you think I made this up, the new not-a-tax policy is spelled out in excruciating detail in the Federal Register of November 8, 2011. You can see the whole text at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-08/html/2011-28798.htm.

 

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Nov 01 2011

Customer Service, Attitude, and Leadership

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Customer Service, Attitude, and Leadership

If you had been hovering over the store that day, you would have thought you were watching some sort of live video game. My wife and I were in a large store looking for a particular item. We had walked around a while with no luck so we decided to ask. The hunt was on! We moved from aisle to aisle in search of a store employee and finally, as we turned down the curtain aisle there he was! But he saw us and scurried over to the next aisle. Not to be deterred, we reached the end of the curtain aisle and turned towards the next aisle, sheets. There he was again, this time talking to another employee. They both saw us at the same time and scurried off in two different directions. This cat and mouse game continued until we decided to split up and approach the next aisle from both ends.

I’m not an expert in customer service although as a customer I know good and bad customer service when I see it. My expertise is in leadership development and I’m amazed at how seldom businesses connect those two concepts. One of the most important aspects of leadership development is understanding the needs and motivations of those being led. Quite simply, it’s very difficult to have good customer service when inept leaders do not understand these critical factors.

Now I’m not saying that managers are intentionally sabotaging customer service. In fact they are often the ones reciting the mantras they learned in the last training session. The problem is that a good bit of customer service is attitude. When employees are enduring bad, or at least unskilled leadership, it reflects in the attitude that is very evident to customers.

Bad leadership doesn’t necessarily mean a manager who is tyrannical monster, plotting ways to ruin worker’s lives. More commonly, bad leadership is simply untrained leadership resulting from the all-to-common practice of moving employees into supervisory positions for which they are not trained and have not developed the necessary skills. It’s interesting that we require specialized training for the worker who operates the forklift, but not for the person who is responsible for leading that forklift operator.

Our hunt for a store associate was successful that day. We cornered another one who, with a startled look on her face realized she had nowhere to run. The experience had an effect on how much money we spent in that store. How much better would our experience have been if those employees had been led by a manager who understood leadership and not just some platitudes about customer service?

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Oct 24 2011

Mixed Messages

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Mixed Messages

Are your workers clear about who they report to and what they’re supposed to do? Especially in new companies, it’s common to have a less than clear chain of command in the interest of an “open” office. One company even has everyone take turns being in charge. I wonder who will be responsible when real, long-term issues arise. In too many organizations employees are often confused – not because they aren’t intelligent, but because as leaders, we make their world difficult to understand.
As leaders, we sometimes put our workers in different situations that lead to confusion. It’s all too common for an employee to have too many bosses. While it’s sometimes necessary to assign people to projects and teams that are led by different people, who the decision maker is must be clearly defined. The more senior leader must always make the arrangement clear. There may be times when a boss needs to assign a worker to a team, led by someone else, with explicit instructions regarding what that worker is to do for that team. In that situation, the boss must also make this arrangement clear to the team leader. It isn’t fair to put an employee in a position that causes conflict with the team leader who doesn’t know what the worker was told to do.
Of course the direction must be clear to start with. When it isn’t, employees are often confused about what they are really supposed to be doing. Leaders are often unaware this is even a problem. They know everyone’s assignment and assume the workers do too. There are two ways to address this problem. The first is a general description of a worker’s responsibilities. I’m not a big proponent of detailed job descriptions. They often cause more problems than they solve. A better approach is a job description that spells out responsibilities in general without going into minute details. I know many don’t like that approach because it gives management too much leeway to abuse their workers. While that may be true, an incompetent leader will do that anyway. This sort of job description works when it is accompanied by a good strategic plan.
When that strategic plan is well executed there are two benefits. First, every worker has a clear understanding of the company’s mission and what they do that is essential in accomplishing that mission. Second, it provides concrete goals and objectives and tells employees their part in accomplishing those goals.
Employee confusion is a real problem in many organizations, and one which many leaders don’t see. It’s a problem that may not manifest itself until a crisis happens and things start to fall apart. By that time, the damage is already done. Being clear up front can avoid a lot of pain later.

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