In today's economy business leaders can't afford to accept under-performing personnel in their companies. Yet, in a recent survey 44% of them reported being unhappy with the performance results of their employees.

In order to solve a problem such as this, employers need to first identify the cause and then create viable options for applicable solutions. There can be many reasons why employees under-perform and some leaders may point to poor attitudes, low motivation and individuals' inability to work with others, or accept and adapt to change.

Although those reasons may be absolutely valid on the surface, there are always underlying issues that have led to the causes identified by the business leader.

There are only two aspects to evaluate with under-performing employees. It's either due to an individual's:

 1) ability, or

2) their attitude.

In either instance, the employee is not at fault.

There are three primary mistakes business leaders make that prevent employees from being engaged in their workplace and contributing at higher levels.

1) The organization has not given the employee a reason to be engaged and motivated, or to contribute more than minimum effort.

2) The organization has created an environment that is actually de-motivating and dis-engaging.

3) The employer failed to hire the right person for the job or to ensure the person hired is working in a role that fits their talents, skills and interests. 

Business Leader Mistake #1 - Not Giving Employees a Reason to be Engaged, Motivated & Contribute 

Many business leaders mistakenly believe that providing someone the privilege of a steady income and certain quality of life via a paycheck should be enough to create a motivated employee. 

Yet, studies continue to show that salary and benefits, although important for providing base levels of motivation, is not enough to generate higher levels of engagement. 

Many managers and leaders say they are frustrated with the feeling they have to continually find ways to light a fire under their people to get them to do what needs to be done. Instead they should be investing energy in connecting to their employees on a personal level to instead find ways to light a fire within them.

One extremely effective way to do this is to apply the Employee Motivation Equation.

The Employee Motivation Equation begins with creating an inspiring vision for the company that employees at all levels will be excited to contribute to. Daniel Pink, in his 2010 book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us identified "Purpose" as one of the key motivating components for a 21st Century workforce. 

Business Leader Mistake #2 - Creating a De-Motivating Environment

In any new relationship there is always a honeymoon period where all the parties involved have good feelings about the possibilities moving forward. It's the same when a new hire joins a company.

Unfortunately, a survey of about 1.2 million employees at mostly Fortune 1000 companies in the early part of this century conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence, and revealed in 2005 that in 85% of companies, employee morale sharply declines after an employee's first six months on the job, and continues to fade in ensuring years.

In a significant number of companies, as this Sirota research shows, something is occurring in these work environments that causes an enthusiastic and engaged employee to change their attitude.

Many factors can be attributed to this drop off, some of which include:

a) Poorly communicated job descriptions and responsibilities causing uncertain performance expectations for the individual,

b) Inequity in managers addressing inappropriate behaviors and poor performance of co-workers,

c) Managers that play favorites and communicate disrespectfully in the workplace,

d) Lack of positive feedback for contributions made

Business Leader Mistake #3 - Making a Wrong Hiring Choice

In the haste to fill positions, often those making the hiring decisions fail to invest enough time in making sure the new hire is a good fit for the position. A "good fit' includes assessing skills, talent and job experience perspective, plus checking into the potential new hire's personality, including beliefs, attitudes and motivations.

Additionally, sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances employees are asked to fill roles not originally intended, and for which their skills and talents are not the best fit.

In these situations, despite the employees best efforts they are unable to meet desired performance expectations, and both the employee and the employer become disenchanted with the relationship. Yet, the onus must be on the employer to get it right when inviting someone into his or her work culture.

Before proclaiming employees are unmotivated, and/or unwilling, to perform to expectations and bring positive attitudes to the work environment start evaluating these three workforce mistakes from an organizational leadership and communication perspective to see if there is room for improvement.

About the author:

Skip Weisman is The Leadership & Workplace Communication Expert. Skip works with the leaders and teams in small to medium sized businesses and not-for-profits to improve communication, collaboration and teamwork in a way that delivers champion level results. You can find out more about Skip’s work at www.HowToImproveLeadershipCommunication.com .

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Information-sharing meetings, also known as staff meetings, are one of the most common meetings held by organizations, and for good reason; communication is the lifeblood of any organization. When everyone within an organization knows the same key information, then there will be alignment and synchronization between different members of the organization (Davis 2001). Meetings can be a tool used to codify strategic objectives, posturing teams for organizational effectiveness. Meetings are held by managers at various levels of an organization to disseminate pertinent information to subordinates or lower-level managers. Staff meetings are a great venue for discussing organizational changes, collecting updates on complex projects and communicating organizational expectations with employees.

In many cases, new managers are unaware of when meetings are appropriate. Some never hold meetings and just communicate electronically, whereas others hold multiple meetings per day or per week. Holding ineffective meetings cultivates a disdain for meetings and stagnates productivity. Ineffective meetings can cripple operations and organizational effectiveness, leading to potential profit losses, eclipses in project timelines and poor organizational morale. Below are keys managers can utilize to drive staff-meeting success.

Key #1 - Know if a meeting is required: If you get a reputation for conducting useless meetings, the busiest and best people won’t show up (Booher, 2012). Managers should establish open-door policies and promote an environment where communication is free and unhindered. Managers shouldn’t use meetings as the only source of communication with team members. A manager who holds meetings to communicate information that’s not applicable to the team displays a lack of concern for others’ time, creating a negative perception of meetings. This eventually leads to lack of participation, absenteeism or subordinates wanting to provide written inputs to the meeting instead of attending. Hold a meeting when collective feedback is warranted.

Key #2 - Create an agenda: Organization is the cornerstone of meetings. Agendas are a key ingredient to the recipe of successful meetings. There may be criticism that an agenda will make the meeting too formal and that participants may not have the opportunity to freely express their thoughts but that’s not true if the meeting is facilitated effectively. An agenda is an outline that helps the facilitator to keep the meeting focused and on target. When a meeting is focused and targeted, it facilitates problem solving and information dissemination. Always make a list of agenda items according to their importance (Parker 2006). Listing items according to their importance helps the facilitator ensure there is sufficient time to discuss the most important items. It is highly inefficient for subordinates to leave their desk and convene around a table to discuss items of low importance that could have been discussed via electronic correspondence. The agenda should be sent out as far in advance as practical so participants can contribute appropriately.

Key #3 - Ensure that participants know their roles: Often times multiple representatives from a department will attend a meeting and it’s not clear who is speaking on that department’s behalf. This can degrade the quality of the meeting experience as the ambiguity of who officially represents a department can distract from the main points and throw participants off track. There should be a person identified to record outcomes and solutions as meetings are often used to assign tasks and distribute information. The minutes are a solid method of identifying who is accountable for the outcomes and suggestions made during the meeting.

Key #4 - Select an Appropriate Venue: The venue of the meeting is imperative to its efficacy. When a meeting location is conveniently located and properly prepared, it’s easy to overlook the logistical planning and effort applied to it. Ineffective meetings are partly the result of poorly planned logistics, location and preparation. Handling logistics is like a backdrop to a play; few notice unless something goes wrong (Davis 2001). The chair of the meeting should select a place that’s centrally located to all participants and annotate it on the agenda. The room should be equipped with all the appropriate equipment and media i.e. climate-controlled room, projectors adequate lighting, meeting table and comfortable seats. A proper venue postures all involved for success.

Key #5 - Get everyone genuinely involved: Most meetings are considered boring which drives low participation and effectiveness. To make meetings productive, the participants should be engaged and the team leader or facilitator should bring everyone into the discussion.  The facilitator can accomplish this by empowering members of the team and earnestly soliciting their inputs. Develop a thought of the day to open the meeting and rotate that responsibility among team members. This increases engagement, provides members with a stake in the meeting and makes the meeting fun.

Key #6 - Chair with balance: An effective chair will demonstrate the ability to articulate the principles of fairness, equality and common sense in a clear and compelling manner (Mina 2000). Set clear ground rules for participation at the inception. Meetings can be derailed when participants talk out of turn and endlessly debate.

In today’s fast paced business world, it’s become increasingly challenging to work and communicate across organizational structures and operational demands. Managers must be highly skilled practitioners of time management, by ensuring they facilitate meetings that are highly productive and not detested by team members. These six steps can help managers ensure that the team gets the most out of staff meetings.

 References:

Booher, D., & Booher, D. (2012). Tip 1. In Leading effective meetings 72 tips to save time, improve teamwork, and make better decisions.

Davis, J. H. (2001). Planning and leading productive meetings.

Mina, E. (2000). The complete handbook of business meetings.

This is a short story about a small high tech company that in spite of some developing employee relations issues has been very successful. In order to protect the guilty, we will call this company Wacko Technology.

On the surface everything at Wacko appears to be rather calm. They are making money so little else seems that important. Oh, there are one or two tell-tale signs of trouble brewing beneath the service such as Wacko’s rising 18% turnover rate.  Also Wacko’s break room is filled with “toxic gossip” as well as the not too small matter of constant employee gripes and complaints. To say the least, all was not well at Wacko.

While considering Wacko’s situation, I began to get those same uneasy feelings you get when watching a documentary on volcanoes. In the program’s opening scene you are speeding in a helicopter towards a tropical island paradise, surrounded by clear blue water and white sand beaches, covered in softly swaying palm trees and beautiful tropical flowers. But just before the first commercial break your dream of this island paradise becoming your next vacation destination is totally destroyed by the shattering forces of an exploding volcano. The shock is so great to your senses you grab the remote and quickly begin searching for an escape, but you end up settling on another disaster by watching the Red Sox blow a seven game lead in the AL East.

It has not been that good a day. After having spent your entire day fighting fires at work and now to see you vacation dream being consumed by smoke and ash followed by watching another year of the Curse of the Bambino play out on ESPN has about pushed you over the edge.  

If you are experiencing pre-volcano anxiety concerning your organization, this may be a good time to intervene with an employee driven organization development program that is based on the principle that, "the person closest to the problem is the best expert on the problem". Don't worry, this solution is not going to replace you. In fact, it will contribute greatly to strengthening your position of leadership at all levels of the organization. The leadership principle at work here is simple. Give your employees a voice by “asking employees their opinion, listening to what they have to say and acting on it”.

You begin by first asking your employees in confidential one-on-one interviews; “What three things, if done extraordinarily well, will have the greatest impact on the quality of work and the quality of work life for you, your fellow employees, customers and your company?” These interviews are best conducted by your HR department or an outside consultant. Once you have completed interviews with each of your employees (or a representative percentage), organize their suggestions in order of importance and provide your employees access to your listing through feedback meetings or by email. This lets employees know you value their opinion.  On the front end, if there are any suggestions you will not be implementing, it is very important to let your employees know what you will not be doing and explain why. Don't be afraid to say no as long as you explain why.

Next go to work on a “quick start plan” by announcing and implementing any suggestions that can be put in place quickly and that you feel are critical to addressing employee dissatisfaction. In order to address the remaining employee suggestions create an Organization Development Committee (7 to 9 member committee) made up of a cross section of employees, which should include two or three well respected front line managers.  This committee will be responsible for developing, for management’s approval plans and programs that address employee concerns and suggestions taken from the employee OD interviews. The manager’s involvement in the committee is to act as the “boss interpreter” directing the group’s recommendations towards plans that will be accepted by management.  Allow the committee to own the process and the chairperson of the OD committee to be responsible for communicating to employees all aspects of the committee’s activity including announcement of action plans and programs developed as a result of employee input. An OD Plan of this type has a six month shelf life so I strongly suggest someone in senior management take responsibility for championing the OD committee work.

By asking your employee’s for their opinion you begin a participative process that will change the culture of your organization.  But what is so remarkable about an employee driven OD program is not only will your employees effectively address issues that threaten employee morale and productivity but the program will also empower employees companywide by giving them a voice. Your employees’ voice will be expressed by:

*Creating a belief that they can make a difference by seeing their ideas are valued and implemented.

*Taking greater initiative and action to make things better.

*Taking responsibility to do the right thing and not always waiting for management direction.

*Taking leadership by being willing to help others move in the right direction.

*Becoming self-correcting by making themselves accountable to the standards they set.

*Becoming more confident and proud of the work they do and the organization they work for.

*Working in a more collaborative way to help assure the best thinking and employee support made part by the critical plans as they are implemented.

*Taking responsibility for developing and maintaining a positive employee culture.
Strengthening relationships that are built on trust.

*Expanding of the social circle within the organization where employees feel like they belong to something bigger them themselves.

Creating peer pressure for the majority who are no longer willing to accept difficult, nonproductive employee behavior. These problem employees then become isolated and their counterproductive attitude and behavior will be minimized. These employees will either slowly change for the better or will become so uncomfortable they will leave the organization. This is how you create positive turnover.

Volcanologists tell us that the study of volcanoes is not a perfect science and that there is much more to learn before they are able predict a volcanic eruption. The same may be true for predicting the eruption of employee relations problems, but there is a way to prevent these nasty employee eruptions …. simply give your employees a voice.

 About the authors:

Michael E. Hackett is a retired Human Resource executive and management consultant based in Brentwood Tennessee. www.hacketthrconsultant.comj Michael has distinguished himself in the field of Human Resources Management and Organizational Development, with more than 40 years of human resources consulting, management and executive level experience in business, industry, government and healthcare. Michael has served as an Adjunct University Professor for more than 25 years, where he has taught a variety of management, leadership, customer service and strategic planning courses. Hackett has authored a number of management articles; and as conference leader, he has conducted training programs for business, industry, government, hospitals, universities, and professional associations. Michael’s academic credits include a BS and MS degrees from The University of Memphis. You may reach Michael at mehackett@comcast.net

 P. Daniel Hackett is a Construction Project Engineer with J. E. Dunn Corporation in Brentwood Tennessee. Dan’s academic credits include a BS degree in Building Construction Science from Auburn University and a MS degree in Sustainable Practices from Lipscomb University in Nashville. Dan was also a intern assistant with Hackett and Assistant while attending Auburn University.

 This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Mainly because a great many among us continue to misunderstand the far reaching implications of effective leadership, I find myself amazed at the number of middle and senior level managers who are dying and desperate for results and through poor planning and time management,  find themselves too busy to lead. That leadership is one of the most valuable assets any manager could bring to the table would seem lost on a mentality that looks upon leadership as little more than a word and with the enthusiasm that most of us reserve for a dental appointment or a colonoscopy.

The obvious and immediate human concerns that would arise out of this reluctance to engage and challenge staff members aside, the very real business impact is tangible and decidedly negative. If you can imagine a boat in the middle of a stormy ocean without a compass, you can visualize a business or organization lost, floundering and at risk of disaster. Leadership is the compass for any business or organization and as such provides direction toward that safe port in a storm or, more hopefully, allows us to plot a course toward strength and prosperity.

I have worked for more than one organization that goes to great lengths to engage senior managers in all aspects of the business, which should be a great thing but when hours and days are taken up with meetings and the preparation of reports and discussions of strategy, forecasting and results, there is no time left to engage staff members, check progress or verify the great and wonderful things we had thought were being done were actually taking place and more importantly, there is no time to lead.

 Human beings are highly complex creatures, who at their best can astound you with their initiative and ingenuity but at their worst can thwart your best intentions and frustrate you with their failings and unpredictability. They are just very needy as compared to a printer or a web site and this in particular if you are not there to lead them.

A former client of mine, not one I would describe as entirely successful, once described leadership to me as his creating a new policy and his posting it on the wall. As far as he was concerned the very second he tacked a policy on the wall, his job was done and it was up to his staff members to follow the policy or get out. I would tell you that over time an awful lot of his staff members chose to get out and when I suggested to this business owner that his approach might be the problem, he told me that to him it was obvious that he had hired the wrong people and he just needed better people. He maintained that attitude until the day he sold the business, never once entertaining the idea that it was his lack of leadership that kept his policies from being fully implemented and his unwillingness to engage his people that led to constant turmoil and staffing turnover. People need to know what is expected of them, they need to know that their efforts matter and they need to be encouraged along the way. In short, people need to be led.

Organizationally the greatest threat to effective leadership is too many senior level meetings, discussions, demonstrations, brainstorming sessions and policy round tables. It doesn’t matter the quality and urgency of these events, if they are consistently pulling managers away from their teams and consistently creating a separation between the task at hand, the team members and the leader, they are a detriment to the tasks we are performing and a threat to the success of the organization.

Standards should never be arbitrary, quality and excellence never just happen and productivity is much more than the perfect process. Leadership and the oversight it provides assures our standards are met, verifies the quality and guarantees our process. If our leadership is buried in meeting on top of meeting, our leadership is absent and unable to deliver the excellence we had expected and had been looking for. Leadership is that critical ingredient in moving us from good to great. If it a choice between meetings and success, fewer but better meetings might be the more prudent choice.

Leadership is a very intimate interaction between us as leaders and our staff, giving us the opportunity to reinforce the many good things we are doing toward accomplishing our goals but also giving us the opportunity for mid-course corrections toward that same end. Plans and projects rarely go entirely as conceived and an important aspect of leadership lies in our taking counsel and adjusting the things we are doing to assure success and our hitting our goal. In the same way, the meetings, discussions, brainstorming sessions and round table discussions are designed to review progress and communicate where we are to our various stakeholders but when this gets in the way of effective leadership, we have to make a choice between talking about what and how we are doing something and actually leading us toward doing something and accomplishing something. Without the leadership, accomplishment becomes a less likely outcome of our efforts, no matter how good the plan or process, no matter how good our staff. Visible leadership is that important.

Action in the absence of leadership may or may not be supportive of our organizational goals but more often than not, it occurs out of confusion over what is or is not expected and ignorance about what we are trying to accomplish. It cannot rightly be called initiative or going above and beyond what was expected because the leadership has not been around to set those expectations. In too many of these cases we have no idea of what is wanted or where we are going. Too often it is a sign of a motivated staff, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Quality leadership would provide that direction and move us toward accomplishment.

In the end leadership is not about the perfect plan or process. It is not about the latest analysis or the most up to date intelligence. It is taking the people assigned to you, letting them know what is expected and when and letting them know what success looks like. It doesn’t matter that you accomplish this in a huddle around the coffee maker in your office or in a teleconference covering three time zones and two territories but you need to connect, you need to expect and you need to inspire.

As Colin Powell said “Leadership is solving problems. The day your people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership”.

Not being there is a great way to show that you don’t care and an ever better way to lose your people’s confidence. Maybe we should have a meeting to discuss all of this. Or maybe not…

Leadership is about accomplishment and being there for your staff. It’s not about meeting, it’s about leading!  

 About the author:

Brian Canning is a regular contributor to weLEAD and a business analyst working in the federal sector. For the past thirty years he has worked in the automotive repair industry, most recently as a leadership and management coach with the Automotive Training Institute in Savage, Maryland. After serving as a tank commander with the 1st Armored Division in Europe, he started his career as a Goodyear service manager in suburban Washington D.C., moving on to oversee several stores and later a sales region. He also has been a retail sales manager for a large auto parts distributor, run a large fleet operation and headed a large multi-state sales territory for an independent manufacturer of auto parts. His passions are history, leadership and writing.

 *image courtesy of pakorn/freedigitalphotos.net

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

When we drain power from a car battery it runs down. If we do this long enough, the battery will eventually become totally dead. In physics we call this “entropy”, which means that anything left to itself will eventually disintegrate until it reaches its most elemental form. Entropy happens when there is neglect. Neglect your body, and you will deteriorate. Neglect your car battery, and it will eventually die. Anything that is not attended to and renewed will deteriorate over time. That is why we have an alternator in our car. The alternator recharges the battery. It combats entropy. All things need caring for—and your employees are no exception. Nothing neglected will remain productive over time.

Employees are like car batteries. If you are always taking from them, but never “charging them up” emotionally, eventually they will run down. Stephen Covey and others use the metaphor of the Emotional Bank Account (EBA). Negative actions and neglect can become withdrawals against a person’s EBA. On the other hand, courtesies, celebrations, and affirmations are deposits to the EBA. If there are a lot of withdrawals, and few or no deposits, a person’s EBA will become so overdrawn that the relationship will become bankrupt.

 Effective leaders understand this concept and recognize the importance of giving encouragement and positive feedback on a regular basis. Such feedback should not be manipulative in nature, but should flow from a genuine appreciation and belief in their people. Effective leaders are obsessed with finding something good about an employee. They are very alert to opportunities to celebrate the achievement of others. These acts of encouragement are a real key to releasing the potential in people and promoting the use of their gifts and talents.

Few employees receive more affirmation from superiors than Southwest Airline employees. Southwest Airlines is recognized year after year by Fortune magazine as one of the best companies to work for in America. They are also famous for recognizing employees and celebrating their achievements. One token of this is a giant T-shirt hanging in the headquarters building of Southwest Airlines at Love Field. Imprinted on the shirt is this message:

“How many Southwest employees does it take to change a light bulb?” At the bottom of the shirt is the answer: “Four. One to actually change the light bulb and three to design the T-shirt to celebrate it!”

Southwest Airlines says that it uses thousands of small gestures to send big messages. The halls of their corporate headquarters are literally covered from floor to ceiling with photos, plaques, certificates, awards, honors, and various memorabilia that capture the spirit of their culture. Some have even accused Southwest executives of constructing more office space just so they could gain additional wall space in the halls to hang photos of employees and their families.

In the fall of 1999, I was selected as the Honor’s Seminar faculty member at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. I had proposed teaching a course entitled Personal and Organizational Leadership, with an emphasis on studying the top companies on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list. That year Southwest Airlines was the number four company on the list.

Toward the end of the semester the class took a field trip to visit the number one and number four companies on the Fortune 100 Best list (Synovus Financial and Southwest Airlines). Southwest had donated four round-trip tickets for our trip. We also used two round trip tickets from my Southwest Airlines frequent flyer program. We still had to buy tickets for one leg of the trip. I called the Southwest Airlines reservation number and got a very nice and helpful young lady on the line. I explained that making the reservations would be complicated since we had frequent flyer miles, free tickets from Southwest, and we also needed to buy tickets for one leg of the trip. However, I didn’t know which flight to buy, since we wanted to purchase tickets for the least expensive flight—applying the free tickets to the more expensive flights.

She searched diligently to find the least expensive flight of the trip. There was just one problem. That flight did not have enough seats left at the rock bottom fare. We needed two additional seats at that fare. She suggested that since I was working with the executive office at Southwest to arrange our tour that I should call and ask if they could authorize her to sell all the tickets at the lowest fare!

I was so impressed with this reservationist and her attitude of service. She had worked almost a half-hour to book all the flights and now she would hold the two seats until I asked the executive office to release the seats at the lower fare! She was truly working to save us money and I really appreciated that. I got her name and phone number. I discovered that she was working at a phone center in Oklahoma. I thanked her and hung up.

I then called the executive assistant to the executive office at Southwest and told her the situation. She said there would be no problem lowering the fare for the two seats and that she would take care of it immediately. I gave her the reservations’ name and phone number. Then I mentioned that the reservationist had done an outstanding job helping me. I suggested that someone should mention this to her supervisor.

About ten minutes later my phone rang. It was the reservationist in Oklahoma. She sounded very excited and said, “You can’t believe what just happened to me! I just received a call from Colleen Barrett. She personally thanked me for giving you such extraordinary service!”

For those who don’t recognize her name, Colleen is the Executive Vice President of Southwest Airlines, and the Chair of the corporate Culture Committee. Within five minutes of my suggesting someone should recognize the fine work of this reservationist, the Executive Vice President of Southwest Airlines—a company of over 29,000 employees—had made a personal call to express her appreciation to the reservationist! I can tell you for certain that this reservationist received an incredible deposit to her Emotional Bank Account that day! This affirmation was like a powerful charge to her battery.

Such small gestures certainly do send big messages at Southwest. They can also send big messages within your organization. Do you look for opportunities to celebrate employee accomplishments, both great and small, or do you focus on finding fault and criticizing? Are most of the transactions you conduct with your employees considered “deposits” or “withdrawals” to their Emotional Bank Accounts?

Too many organizational cultures are still driven by criticism, fear, and punishment. (The floggings will continue until morale improves!) Celebrations and affirmations inspire, motivate, and reenergize people. Isn’t that what effective leadership is all about? Are you a “battery drainer” or a “battery charger”?

Comments to: jhb001@juno.com

About the author:

Dr. J. Howard Baker is Assistant Professor of Computer Information Systems at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.  Last year Dr. Baker taught an Honors Seminar at ULM, which included a field trip to the top servant leadership companies in America. Dr. Baker has been a Franklin Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People certified facilitator for seven years, and has served the University of Texas at Tyler as their facilitator for four years. During the summer he offers a graduate and undergraduate course at U. T. Tyler in personal and organizational leadership. He holds a B.S. in Management from Samford University, a Master of Accounting (MAcc) from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Arlington.

The frequency at which the word "engagement" appears in any discussion about employee communication has begun to make me wonder whether we clearly understand what the term means. More importantly, do we understand what it means to our clients, particularly CEOs, when they talk about engagement? We have engagement tools, but can we really say that these tools actually engage employees in the process of change? Or are employees merely engaged with the tool itself?

There is only one question that you need ask yourself to find out whether your employee communication strategies are going to engage employees, rather than simply inform. That question is: Can you establish whether the tools and methods you are using to communicate with employees are changing attitudes and behavior or providing information?

Employee engagement is a shared understanding of the issues that affect the business, and that understanding leads to changes in employees' attitudes and behaviors. Unless employees truly understand the issues and make a meaningful connection between their jobs and those issues, their attitudes and behaviors will not change. To achieve engagement, three things have to happen: The business issue has to mean something to the employee personally, the employee has to understand the issue (and I mean truly understand it, not just read about why it is an issue), and most important, each employee must be made to feel a part of the change process.

As communicators we have the opportunity to become creative in how we communicate and engage employees. The ultimate aim in employee communication has to be to create the "Aha!" moment. This is the moment when employees have the necessary information and can say, "Now it makes sense," "Now I understand, " "Now I can do something about it."

Tools are important in this process but generally they just communicate information. What we need to strive for are creative communication methods to engage employees in the process of change.

There are five steps for identifying what the "Aha" moment is and they include the following:

1.  Focus group research. Ask employees about their thoughts on the organization and its competitors.

2.  Identify the largest gap between what customers think and what employees think customers think.

3.  What would create a paradigm shift in employee's thinking?

4.  Can you measure the impact of the change in thinking?

5.  How significant is it to achieving the business objectives?

So let's look at an example that would be familiar to communicators: the annual report announcement. Typically an online annual report would be made available to employees via the intranet. Some employees read it, but most tend to scroll down to the last pages to check the annual salaries of the senior executive staff and then close the document.

Let's imagine that the results in this annual report are very poor and the CEO is determined that employees understand the issues surrounding the poor results and become fully engaged to help turn the company around. Here's how one organization accomplished this.

The company held four brown bag lunch meetings over four weeks where employees could attend for free for one hour and hear from an outside professional about how to invest in the share market. Importantly, there was no obvious link between the meeting topic and the organization the employees worked for. At week three, they were analyzing annual reports and generally deciding whether they would invest in a particular company based on the information contained in the report. By the fourth week they were given another annual report and asked the same question, "would you invest in this company?" The answer was overwhelmingly no. And of course this last company was the one they all worked for, which brought them to the "Aha!" moment. Now the organization's employees understood and were engaged and ready to become involved in turning the company around through teamwork and new initiatives.

Here are some steps you can follow to ensure that you can come up with creative ways to communicate with employees and engage them in the process of change.

To challenge beliefs that your employees have about your organization, you need to have facts. The marketing department is an excellent source of facts about the business, with research on brand image, customer satisfaction, customer and non- customer views on competitors and information about market segments. Each of these areas provide valuable information on opportunities to link employees with business issues that can be measured. For example, the organization should have facts about how customers feel about the service provided by the organization's call centre. Employees will also have an opinion about how the believe customers perceive their service. By taking the results of the customer feedback and presenting it to staff this often creates an "Aha moment" because customer feedback is typically better than what employees anticipate. Once you have shared this information, the objective is to then explore ways that employees can become engaged in further improving that customer feedback. Focus groups are another excellent way to find out what employees think about different aspects of these areas and how their beliefs can be challenged as you need to help them better understand the issues that affect the business.

Key sources of business data are customer experience data, business results by product or service stream, competitor customer feedback, and measures of the attributes of your brand. These are sources of data that you can use as a measure of improvement as a result of your employee engagement strategy.

When selecting business outcomes as a measure for your employee communication strategy, you need to be quite certain that the strategy you implement can actually affect the business outcomes you have decided to focus on.

Finally, when it comes to any employee engagement strategy, whether it be total transformation of a business or improvement in one aspect, you can rarely go it alone. Partnering with other areas of your organization including marketing and human resources will ensure that the optimum outcome is achieved for your organization.

About the author:

Marcia Xenitelis is a recognized authority on the subject on change management and has spoken at conferences around the world.  For access to case studies and more information on the types of strategies you can implement to engage employees visit http://www.communicationatwork.com for a wealth of free informative articles and resources.

*image courtesy of franky242/freedigitalphotos.net

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Success factors in business can be divided into two major categories:  those that deal with things and those that deal with people.  Although many organizations spend millions of dollars on capital equipment, human capital has the highest potential of value for the organization.  Teamwork and the role it plays in dealing with people within an organization is a top priority for many leaders.  This thesis will explore the positive and negative effects of teams, the value of teams in various venues, and both positive and negative issues that can influence adaptation of teamwork culture. 

Understanding what a team is and how it works is the first step to implementing teamwork culture into your organization.  According to Modern Management website (2003),

A team is two or more employees who are organizationally empowered to establish their objectives, to make decisions about how to achieve those objectives, to undertake the tasks required to meet them, and to be individually and mutually accountable for their results. (n.p.)

Teams are organized so that appropriate talents and skills are pooled together to accomplish a specific goal.  This pooling of human resources requires team members to have an array of skills that individual or routine jobs do not demand.  The benefits of pooling these resources include increased productivity, improved customer service, more flexible systems, and employee empowerment. The goal is that the sum total of the team is greater than the individuals themselves. 

Building a team begins at an even more basic level than just choosing team members.  The team environment is best served when the persons selected for the team have some similar and some diverse characteristics.  Some similar characteristics to look for when forming a team are an ability to communicate with various people, share knowledge, collaborate, generate ideas, respect other persons, productivity, flexibility, commitment, and be enthusiastic.  People must be able to think on their own before they can think as a team.  Also, a level of self-confidence must exist for the team members to feel safe in the team environment to express ideas that may be discarded by the team.  A type of safe zone must exist within the team to avoid stifling creativity and ideas.  Treatment of team members as internal customers should be the norm.  The diversity is best displayed in skills, critical thinking, and a “thinking outside the box” innovative focus.  Members having a variety of job titles and seniority, and white-collar and blue-collar employees can also be a diversity factor.  Diversity can also involve the technical and human needs of the team. 

The best business strategy requires the best people strategy.  For an organization to be successful, the skills needed by the employees are the behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge needed to be successful both on the job and as an individual.  These personal management skills are the building blocks for good morale, a focused worklife, and greater organizational productivity.  The employees drive an organization’s success.  Employee’s skills must be aligned with the organization’s goals in an increasingly competitive market.  As each organization is unique, customization of the specific requirements (hard skills) is needed, but the generalities remain the same.  Soft skills are important to the success of the team and organization itself.  This skill set involves proper communication, team building, conflict management, good supervision, internal and external alliances, relationship building with stakeholders, working with others to generate creative ideas and solutions, participatory management, and performance evaluation.

The individual employee may need some additional education and training to perform well in the workplace.  Continual technological advances cause training to be an ongoing function in business. The ability to apply more efficiently new knowledge and skills will aid the organization in meeting and exceeding its strategic goals and competitive challenges.  Seminars and corporate training sessions are convenient, relatively inexpensive ways to update needed skills.  The education and training are important factors for increasing organizational performance. 

Opportunities for lifelong learning should be provided to all levels of employees that will promote and increase organizational performance directly.  Learning should become a habitual activity rather than an occasional event.  Training must be tied to the organization’s strategic business requirements and maintain the organization’s core competencies in every field at every level.  Workers should be held accountable for learning new skills.  Many organizations are building the accountability into performance evaluations as a method of emphasizing its importance.

Some employees will shy away from or staunchly refuse training and learning.  Reasons can be varied.  According to Sparks (2004), learning requires vulnerability.  It involves self-disclosure and risk taking.  High-quality connections produce all three of these qualities.  High-quality connections also enable individuals and the collective to grow in unanticipated directions. (n.p.) Learning is more than acquiring information.  It is a social activity that leads to more complex ways of thinking.  Professional development leaders can increase learning by actively cultivating richer, more positive connections among people.  This would have a higher yield of professional learning than the importation of experts who dispense lots of information.

Enhancing the competency of the project managers and team members gives the organization more opportunity for success.  Organizations need to leverage and build on the knowledge, skills, and competencies available within the organization.  Competent people must be assigned to the team.  The term competent means that the team leader or member is operating at acceptable levels of performance in his or her areas of training and experience.  It does not mean that each member has perfect knowledge of all areas.  Competence also involves acknowledging what you do not know and having the courage to express these concerns.  The key is to know when to obtain assistance and expertise.

Communication skills are imperative in today’s workforce environment.  Many business leaders estimate that deficiencies of communication skills cost employers millions of dollars of lost productivity and errors.  The communication skills include interpersonal, teamwork, and negotiation skills.  An employee interacts with other people to perform his/her work emphasizing the need for skills such as the ability to handle stress, interact easily with others, listen to others, and cope with undesirable behavior in others.  Anyone who has been in the workforce for any period of time can attest to the fact that there is almost always at least one employee that is difficult to deal with and work around. Effective teams find that when positive talk exceeds negative talk, there’s a quality of connection among team members. This leads to the accomplishment of collective work that none of the individual team members thought was possible. 

According to Zolgio (2003), a cohesive work team can add value to the organization if it pays attention to the ongoing development of three important connections:  to the larger work organization, to team members, and to other work teams. (n.p.) Building the right team is as important as the teamwork culture itself.  The culture must support and encourage teamwork for it to be successful.  According toMontebello (2004), the work itself must be conducive to teams, a culture of cooperation must be crafted, and organizational systems must be engineered to reinforce collaboration. (p. 541)  The work must be such that completion by a team can result in a better end product.

Before a group of co-workers can develop into a team, it must first be a team.  Teams are a reasonably stable unit with a shared responsibility for a defined piece of work.  Members develop  familiarity with one another and with the task, so they can get to work more quickly.  They learn who is skilled or knowledgeable in different aspects of the project.  According to Hackman (2002), the National Transportation Safety Board found that 73% of all mishaps occurred on the flight team’s first day of flying together, before they’ve had the chance to learn through experience how to best work together. (n.p.) Stability of the membership allows for growth of commitment to the team and to each other.  Competent teams learn fairly rapidly how to work together. 

Another key element to the team’s success is the team members.  According to Mason (2003):

The team leader seeks to attract all the people who really know something about the issue and bring their ideas together as a way to structure discussion.  At their best, these leaders make scenarios a way for people to work new ideas into the planning and decision making system with out-of-the-box ideas and inputs. (n.p.)

Teamwork culture can be defined as a network of skilled employees who support each other in the achievement of corporate goals, and the delivery of exceptional products or services.  According to Teambuildinginc.com (2003):

Whether we realize it or not, a workplace is a community.  A team is also a community.  The town has a culture, a common language, a process of operation, rules for order, and a purpose for being, i.e., safety, security, and efficiency in living.  In the same way, a workplace is a community.  (n.p.)

As I have worked in Accounting for 20 years for several companies, I have experienced first-hand the workplace community.  Accounting has its own common language such as P&L or 2290.  Only a few outside the department know the vernacular used within each department.  I have also personally noticed a culture among staff members. Culture can include similar hobbies or sports, such as golf, or similar taste in clothing or choice of restaurants.  The rules for order and a purpose for being have also been identified.  Accounting rules of order and purpose for being include producing monthly financials and tasks accomplished in a specific method.  Personally, I would conclude that not only does the business itself become a community, but also the departments within the business are a segment of the community.

It is hard to find work places that exemplify teamwork.  A teamwork environment tends to flatten the traditional pyramid-style hierarchy.  This step can foster a more collaborative staff.  It can also be a threat to managers that tend to place their personal value in their job title. The isolation of the hierarchy and its power is being replaced with partnering, team relationships, common goals and visions, and a large change in the organization’s dynamics.  Teambuilding is a work culture that values collaboration.  In a teamwork environment, people understand and believe that thinking, planning, decision-making, and actions are better done collectively.  This is an exception to the way most business has been done in the past.  According to Mason (2003), rank-and-file employees expect management to set the direction the organization is taking, but resent detailed task planning.  If given some direction, they expect to be trusted to get it done. (n.p.) This is the very root of teambuilding. According to Chien (2004):

Performance is one of the key terms of modern organization.  Performance means the transformation of inputs into outputs for achieving certain outcomes.  Performance is the equivalent to the famous 3 E’s of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness.  Some elements of successful organizations doing total development work include selection of cohesive teams based on sentiments of mutual liking and respect for each other’s expertise, controlled convergence to solutions that everyone understands and everyone accepts, organize vigilant information processing and encourage actively open-minded thinking, avoid the facile, premature consensus, maintain the best balance between individual and group work, and initiate generation of new concepts. (n.p.)

According to Plato (427-347 B.C.), “The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”  Polarity between employers and employees can occur without proper presentation of the goals and rewards of supporting a teamwork culture.  Opposition to the teamwork culture surfaces in a variety of ways through various stages of life.

One of the negative points to consider when teambuilding or promoting teamwork culture begins in childhood.  According to Grazier (2003):          

Most of us in the workforce today were taught that teamwork is associated with play, while achievement and work were associated with individual performance.  Overcoming ideas gained in childhood can be a challenge.  Old paradigms die hard.   Another negative point is that changing the work group structure without changing the organization’s culture to support this, it will not work. (n.p.)

Individual achievement is almost an American ideal.  We are taught that ideal from early childhood.  Much of our educational processes are based on individual learning and achievement.  In school settings, teamwork is considered cheating.  After 12 years or more of this type of conditioning, buying into a teamwork setting will probably take change management and transitional thinking.  In order for this change to succeed, we must first understand the dynamics of change.  Three basic elements in creating successful change are both personal and organizational.  The elements are: the desire to change (personal), the ability to change (personal), and the permission to change (organizational).  Many organizations consider their people as expenses, rather than assets with intellectual property.  This idea must be among the first to change.  According to Grazier (2003), the reasons we resist change are very personal and unique, so changing the thinking of many people in an organization will probably require a variety of approaches.  The three elements involve motivation (desire), ability (skills), and authorization (permission) by the organization. (n.p.)  According to Bateman (1999), management must enlist the cooperation of its people to implement a change….with education, communication, participation, and involvement. (pp. 613-614)  With successful change management, teambuilding can begin.

So just what is teambuilding? Teambuilding is a process of awareness building.  It’s helping people become aware that they are greater collectively than individually.  People become aware that our decisions and their results can be better with collaboration and an honest appreciation of each other’s interaction.  The simplistic definition of teambuilding is helping people understand this.  We must shift our thinking and perception of others to an honest value of other’s skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Some advantages of teamwork culture are promotion of talents, skills, and creativity of diverse people.  It also utilizes skills, time, and resources for benefit of the employee and employer.  According to McGraw (2004), “without creativity we are nothing.”  (p. 30)  A trait common to creative thinkers is their perseverance in solving a problem.  Teamwork encourages collaboration, which, at its core is co-labor or working together toward a common, meaningful goal.  It combines collective knowledge so that the sum total of the collaboration is greater than what could have been achieved individually.  People who understand the power of collaboration seldom make a unilateral decision willingly.  These people know that any decision they make will be improved in some way by the thoughts of another.  According to McGraw (2004), the need to work in teams seems to be an essential part of the creative process. (p. 30)    According to Chien (2004), teams, which are increasingly being used, are organized in the workplace so that appropriate talents and skills can be pooled to accomplish vital tasks and goals.  (p. 289)

According to Dyer (2002), another advantage is with the increasing pressure to be “first-to-market” with a new product.  First-to-market organizations with dedicated team structures were quantifiably faster while maintaining a measurably higher percentage of quality in their products. (p. 16) Competitive arenas require quick decisions by knowledgeable employees who work close to the source of problems. Teams enable knowledge-based and innovative decision making in a much shorter time period.  This reduces product cycle times. 

Some of the negative impact of teamwork culture remains that asking people to work together while simultaneously placing them in a competitive system often results in inaction rather than action.  If it is a team in name only, it will not be successful.  According to Grazier (1999), in that situation, inaction occurs rather than action.  There will be little energy to move forward.  (n.p.)

References:

3M  (2004). Home page. Retrieved July 23, 2004, http://www.3m.com/us/office/postit/learn_history_players.jhtml

Ariss, S. S. (2003, Fall). Employee involvement to improve safety in the workplace: An ethical imperative. Mid-American Journal of Business, 18, 9. Retrieved January 12, 2004, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pqdweb?index=6&did=000000431586071&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1090368873&clientId=4683

Bateman, T. S., & Snell, S. A. (1999). Management: Building competitive advantage (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Cherney, J. K.PhD. (2002). Appreciative teambuilding: Creating a climate for great collaboration. Retrieved January 13, 2004, www.teambuildinginc.com/article_ai.htm

Chien, M.  (2004, Mar). A study to improve organizational performance: A view from SHRM. Journal of American Academy of Business, 4, 289. Retrieved February 15, 2004, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pdqweb?index=0&did=000000526439381&SrchMode=5&Fmt=3&ret

Dyer, B. Gupta, A. K., & Wilemon, D.  (1999, Mar/Apr). What first-to-market companies do differently. Research Technology Management, 42, 16. Retrieved December 20, 2003, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pqdweb?index=2&did=00000039557153&SrchMode=5&sid=-1&F

Grazier, P.  (1999, March). What is teambuilding, really?. Retrieved January 13, 2004, http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_teambuilding.htm

Grazier, P.  (2003). Teams finding it tough? Maybe the culture is wrong. Retrieved January 13, 2004, http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_toughculture.htm

Grazier, P. B. (1997). Overcoming resistance to employee involvement. Retrieved January 13, 2004, http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_overcoming_resistance.htm

Hackman, J. R. (2002, July). New rules for team building. Optimize, , 50. Retrieved August 3, 2004, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pqdweb?index=92&sid=1&srchmode=1&vinst=PROD&fmt=4&startpage=-1&clientid=4683&vname=PQD&did=000000160463831&scaling=FULL&ts=1092189838&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&TS=1092189852&clientId=4683&cc=1&TS=1092189852

Levine, S.  (2002). Creating team agreements for results. Retrieved March 12, 2004, http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_createagreement.htm

Mason, D.  (2004). Tailoring scenario planning to the company culture. Strategy & Leadership, 31, 25-26. Retrieved January 12, 2004, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pqdweb?retrievegroup=1&index=10&sid=-1&srchmode=5&vinst=PR

McGraw, D.  (2004, Summer). Expanding the mind. ASEE Prism, 13, 30. Retrieved July 18, 2004, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pqdweb?index=7&did=000000643442101&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1090367800&clientId=4683

Modern Management (2003). Teambuilding. Retrieved January 13, 2004, http://ollie.dcccd.edu/mgmt1374/book_contents/4directing/teambldg/teambldg.htm

Montebello, A. R. (2004, Summer). The collaborative work systems fieldbook: Strategies, tools, and techniques. Personnel Psychology, 57, 541. Retrieved July 18, 2004, http://academic.bellevue.edu:2058/pdqweb?index=1&retrievegroup=1&sid=-1&srchmode=5&vinst=PROD

Parviz, F. R., & Levin, G.  (2003). Is your organization friendly to projects?. AACE International Transactions, , PM41. Retrieved January 12, 2004, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:pqd&rft_val_fmt=ori:fmt:kev:mtx:journal&genre=article&rft_id=xir:pqd:did=000000423234001&svc_dat

Random House (2004). . Retrieved August 3, 2004, www.randomhouse.com

Sparks, D.  (2004, Summer). Look for ways to ignite the energy within. Journal of Staff Development, 25, 38. Retrieved June 18, 2004, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqd&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&genre=article&rft_dat=xri:pqd:did=000000650850501&svc_dat=xri:pqil:fmt=html&req_dat=xir:pqil:pq_clntid=4683

Yandrick, R. M. (2001). Managing smart. Retrieved March 12, 2004, http://www.shrm.org/managingsmart/1001d2.asp

Zoglio, S. W.PhD. (1997). 7 keys to building great workteams. Retrieved January 13, 2004, http://www.teambuildinginc.com/article_ykeys_zoglio.htm

Comments to: editor@leadingtoday.org

About the author:

Debbie Garrison is the Controller for Lesco, Inc., a regional truck leasing firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  She is a graduate of Bellevue University, Bellevue, Nebraska, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Management as well as an Associate’s Degree in Accounting and Business Administration from Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, making the Dean’s List at both schools.  She currently resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband and their two dogs.

To communicate effectively, we must be thoughtful and look closely at the unique attributes, attitudes and behaviors of people before making predictions about them. In other words, we must listen and understand from where the other person is coming.

Many of our communications are habitual as we hardly pay attention to our communication behavior. However, when we face a new situation, such as a cross cultural encounter, we seek clues to guide our behavior.  As we become comfortable in the new situation, we revert back to more habitual communications, and are no longer mindful of the other. We often categorize people with whom we communicate based upon physical and cultural characteristics, or their attitudes and beliefs. The problem with categorizing is that it creates blinders in us that prevent us from truly hearing and knowing the people with whom we are communicating.

To improve the effectiveness of our communications with all people, in particular, people of other cultures, we need to be aware of how we communicate – we must be mindful. Awareness of our communications and the related competence can be described as a four-step process: 1. unconscious incompetence – we misinterpret others’ communication behavior but are not aware of it; 2. conscious incompetence – we are aware that we misinterpret others’ communication behavior but choose not to do anything to change; 3. conscious competence – we are aware of what we think about communication behavior and modify our behavior to make the communications more effective - we become mindful of our communication behaviors; and 3. unconscious competence – we have practiced the skills of effective communication and it becomes second nature to us.

Cultural Considerations in Communications

Low and High Context Cultures

Some cultures are low context and some are high.  This refers to the communication process.  A high-context communication process is where most of the information being communicated is in the physical context or in the person and not in the message. A low-context communication process is where the information being conveyed is in the communications – clear and direct.  The United States is a low-context culture, where communications are direct and complete. We have sayings such as “get to the point” or “say what you mean” that clearly demonstrate the low-context.  On the other hand, Japan, China and Korea are high-context cultures where people make a greater distinction between insiders and outsiders and where the individual communicating expects the hearer to know what is bothering him without being specific.  There are advantages to high context cultures in that people raised in high-context systems expect more of others than do the participants in low-context systems.  For us low-context communicators, we want things clear and out on the table, and we get annoyed by communications done in an indirect fashion. 

The point here (and I will get to the point for us low context people) is that it is important to understand the form of communications that predominates in a culture in order to correctly interpret and understand the behavior of those with whom we are communicating.

Monochronic and Polychronic Cultures

A monochromic culture is one where people have involvement in one event at a time.  A polychronic culture is one where people are involved in two or more events at the same time.  In extremely monochronic cultures, people focus on a single task or project and see anything outside of the task or project as an interruption.  Conversely, in more polychronic cultures, people have involvement in several activities, moving back and forth between them easily.  In a polychronic culture, an unexpected customer dropping in would be considered part of the normal flow of tasks and not considered an interruption.  In Arab nations, it is common for a leader to have several people in his office discussing and working on separate and unrelated tasks. 

For us monochronic Americans, we have our agendas and work through each item, one at a time.  It would be a large distraction to be in an office where we have business to discuss with someone and there are five other people transacting different business, and all happening at the same time.  Again, the point here is that it is important to understand the predominate mode of operation in the culture in order to correctly interpret and understand the behavior of those with whom we are communicating, so we can adjust ourselves.

Most Needed – Organizational Glue and An Environment of Trust

Edward Hall says that culture is communications and communications is culture.  Whether a husband-wife relationship, a friendship or in an organization, success is dependent in large part by the effectiveness of communications.  As can be seen above, adding a cross cultural dimension makes effective communications more challenging. 

What can leaders do to encourage effective communications?  First, they can make sure that their organization has in place a core ideology which brings its people together – the glue that holds its people together.  Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book, “Built to Last,”, define the core ideology as “that which provides the bonding glue that holds an organization together as it grows, decentralizes, diversifies, expands globally and attains diversity.” The core ideology is made up of two things: core purpose and core values. The core purpose is the fundamental reason for being – the importance people attach to the organization’s work. It is the organization’s identity. Core values are those essential and enduring tenants that have intrinsic value for and are important to the people inside the organization. The core ideology holds the organization’s people together, like glue, no matter from what culture they are, by unifying people toward the achievement of the organization’s purpose.

A second thing leaders can do is to create an environment of trust.  Trust is the first and foremost leadership attribute, as determined in the GLOBE Study of 17,000 people in 62 countries. Trust comes from being in relationship, where people see us in action and see that we are not in this leadership thing for ourselves, but that we are pursuing a higher purpose. It is determined by the leader’s communicative and supportive behaviors, as the amount of information received about the job and the organization helps build trust in top management and direct supervisors.  Trust takes a long time to build, and it can be lost in a moment by one significant and selfish act. People watch leaders. People are looking for leaders who do what they say they will do – this is integrity. They look for leaders who do the right thing at the right time for the right reason, as stated by . Bruce Winston in his book, “Be a Leader, for God’s Sake.”

Trust theory has established that leader behavior has a great deal to do with creating a culture of trust. It has also established the importance of trust in organizational effectiveness. An important role of the organization’s leaders is the establishment of relationships characterized by confidence, trust and reliance.  As determined by Jeffrey Cufaude in his 1999 article entitled “Creating organizational trust”, the following factors are associated with a culture of trust in an organization: the depth and quality of personal relationships; clarity of roles and responsibilities; frequency, timeliness and forthrightness of communications; competence to get the job done; clarity of shared purpose (core ideology); direction and vision; and honoring promises and commitments.         

Conclusion

Edward Hall concluded that his many years of study convinced him that the real job is not understanding the culture of another, but that of your own. Culture has a huge impact on how we live our lives.  If we are to relate effectively with people from other cultures, then we must know how our culture impacts us.  One of the most effective ways to learn about ourselves is to take seriously the cultures of others.  By doing this, it forces us to pay attention to the details of our lives and what differentiates us from others. It gives us a sense of vitality and awareness.  It keeps us continually learning and growing as people.  Effective communications results when we walk in the shoes of another.  This means making ourselves vulnerable with other people, something people are more willing to do when they work in a culture of trust.

(In writing this article, I relied heavily upon the works of William Gudykunst and Young Kim entitled “Communicating with Strangers,” Edward Hall entitled “The Silent Language” and W. Howell entitled “The empathic communicator.”)

About the author:

Paul Dumais is Director of Asset Management and Investment Planning at Iberdrola USA, a family of electric and gas utilities serving customers in New England and in the State of New York. He is second year student in the Doctorate of Strategic Leadership Program in the School of Global Leadership and Entrepreneurship at Regent University.  Mr. Dumais holds an MBA from the University of Southern Maine. He lives with his wife Kathleen in Webster, New York and may be reached for comment at paul.dumais@iberdrolausa.com

 This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

The greatest victory any leader can enjoy is mission or task accomplishment. That is what we are here for and the standard by which we will be measured but before we achieve that lofty goal, before we get to celebrate that success, we have to do something toward getting our people to do the things we want them to do. That, of course, is what leadership is all about but too often that is where the seeds of failure are sewn and where we miss the opportunity to assure a complete and overwhelming success.

For good or for ill our people are a reflection of our leadership and if marginal successes and marginal victories are what we are celebrating and what we are accepting, I can promise you the paradigm will hold true and that staggering collapse across the finish line that you use to mark the successful completion of a task or project, will show itself in how your people mark their own milestones and wins. Not begrudging any success but aiming just a little higher, pushing just a little further, both assures the win and sets a standard for something just a little better. Excellence is nothing more or less than our not accepting the norm or commonplace and holding out for something better. As leaders we get to define success, though too often we are not taking that time or insisting on anything beyond the ordinary. If you are asking for ordinary I am guessing that is just what you will get. I am suggesting that as long as we’re asking, we might as well ask for something better.

One of the scariest and most challenging things any leader will ever face is putting the fate of a task or project in the hands of another human being. As leaders we are tasked with delivering results every day,  in every task, project or mission we take on and in the final analysis we are either effective leaders and deliver the goods, or we are something else. Our success or failure will always be tied to how effectively we lead, empower and motivate our staff. If we are finding ourselves in that “something else” category, maybe it is time to take a look at how we lead.

The very best staff member you could ever ask for is one who will do all the things you would ask, with the initiative to go one better and do the extra things that would assure a quality result delivered ahead of our expectations. There is no doubt that this is a rare bird in most work places but that is more a reflection on our failures as leaders than it is testament to the rarity of the species. Our people are what we make them. Behaviors like initiative only occur in work places that support and empower their staff members. Initiative only exists where it is encouraged and when there is enough confidence to act and to step beyond what is expected. It is not the responsibility of a staff member to show initiative, it is our responsibility as leaders to encourage and reward this type of behavior when it occurs. Extraordinary is always the result of leadership that empowers people toward something better, with the confidence to act.

In our setting expectations for something better, it is very important that we paint that picture for our people. In training, in planning and in communicating, we do everything possible to support their efforts toward this new frontier, correcting our course as necessary and celebrating our victories along the way. George Patton once said “Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results”. Initiative and the courage to act we had talked about only comes in an environment that encourages innovation and imagination in finding solutions. There is a risk in delegating responsibilities to other staff members. To whatever degree we are able to train them, to whatever degree we are able to communicate our expectations, we mitigate that risk and create an environment that goes beyond what is expected, assuring success, time and time again. A side benefit to our empowering our staff members is in their confidence. A confident worker is one who displays that initiative we had talked about and one who will make suggestions and share ideas and grow and learn and become more productive. There is no doubt that there are risks through all of this but that journey from good to great is never without challenge or setbacks but it is always worth the effort. Effective leadership is the key.

In staff surveys I have seen over the years and in productivity studies I have participated in, I am amazed and astounded at how often I run into whole populations of staff members who don’t know what is expected of them. Nearly as often I hear from business owners and senior managers that they are frustrated with the lack of initiative and willingness to act they observe from their staff members. As a leader it is easy to blame your staff when things are going wrong but if you are failing to set expectations for excellence and if you are failing to train and encourage their efforts, any shortfalls or failures rest squarely on your shoulders. If you, as the leader, are not defining success, how can you reasonably expect your people to deliver the results that you were looking for? When I ask this question I am nearly always presented with a “common sense” argument that seems to say that our people should know what is expected and that ‘we shouldn’t have to babysit them’. Really?

I am one of those old dogs that happen to believe in people. I believe that if we do a good job in defining our expectations for our staff members and if we train them in such a way as to assure their ability to perform the things we are asking of them and encourage them and celebrate their successes, most people will go beyond what you had wanted and deliver that high end success we should all be looking for. There are exceptions; those rare and misguided individuals that, despite the explanations and training and encouragement, just don’t ever seem to get it. Another important aspect of leadership is in our recognizing those among us who are not willing or not capable of delivering on the tasks and responsibilities we have laid in front of them. As painful as it might be, they have to go. I would tell you to be patient and give them every reasonable chance to succeed but if they are not contributing to your success, for whatever the reason, then they are hindering it and you need to move on. Remember, the leader’s greatest responsibility is task or mission accomplishment. Nothing or no one can stand in the way of that. People always need to be given the opportunity to do the right thing and if you have helped them define that, they might just surprise you.

In ‘Leading Change’ John Kotter said “Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.”

Who have you motivated or inspired today?

 About the author:

Brian Canning is a regular contributor to weLEAD and a business analyst working in the federal sector. For the past thirty years he has worked in the automotive repair industry, most recently as a leadership and management coach with the Automotive Training Institute in Savage, Maryland. After serving as a tank commander with the 1st Armored Division in Europe, he started his career as a Goodyear service manager in suburban Washington D.C., moving on to oversee several stores and later a sales region. He also has been a retail sales manager for a large auto parts distributor, run a large fleet operation and headed a large multi-state sales territory for an independent manufacturer of auto parts. His passions are history, leadership and writing.

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“Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.”  ~Gary Hamel

According to a 2014 Gallup poll less than one-third (31.5%) of U.S. workers were engaged in their jobs in 2014. While that is up from the previous year and the highest since Gallup began tracking engagement, the flip side is that the majority of employees are not engaged and according to the poll 14.5% were “actively disengaged”.

The Gallup poll went on to say that the highest engagement was amongst managers and executive officers and had increased over 2013 from 34.7% to 38.4%. This means that 61.6% are either not engaged or actively disengaged. So what is the effect of this disengagement on front line employees?

A 2013 survey by recruitment agency Staffbay.com found that 87.2% of employees wanted to leave their current role within 12 months and a study by Harris Interactive indicated that 74% of people would consider leaving their job.  While these studies were done in 2013 they are still relevant considering the economy and job market is considerably better now than it was then. It is important to also keep in mind that talented employees are always in demand and those are the ones who will leave first.

Where does manager engagement fit into this picture? If we look at the Staffbay survey, 52.6% of their respondents said they would leave because they did not trust their boss. A CareerBuilder survey said that 37% had poor opinions of their boss, and a recent Gallup study reported that about 50% of the more than 7K surveyed said they left a job “to get away from their manager.” Clearly there is a problem with today’s management, but what is the solution?

Identify & Select

“I think that if you ask what's made us successful, it's because we've been fortunate enough to identify, in a number of cases, great people early. Then we throw all the resources behind them and are aligned with them.”  ~Dan Levitan

Poor or bad managers cost companies billions because they directly impact employee engagement and turnover. The first problem is that companies tend to select individuals to manage instead of lead. Anyone can be a manager, but being a leader takes a completely different skillset. Getting the work done and making the numbers are important but they are not the end all be all because those costs are easy to measure. What is harder to measure is the lost potential productivity by employees who are disengaged by their poor manager and the staggering cost of turnover. Instead of selecting managers based solely on their ability to get the work done or make the “numbers”,  companies need to define what skills make for good leaders and select based on a mix.

Train & Develop

“You can work really hard, but if you're not training in the right way you're not going to improve and get to the level that you want to.” ~Michael Chang

Once the individual with the right mix of leadership and management skill is identified and hired the work must continue with robust training and development.  Too often, after hiring a manager the individual left to their own devices and then senior management wonders why they have so many problems or their great hire failed. It cannot be assumed just because someone knows how to land the sale they know how to lead other people. Leadership is learned and if a person has never had good leadership they can’t be expected to know what it looks like. New managers need to have a structured process to develop them into strong leaders.

Accountability

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” ~Stephen Covey

It seems simple but it holding people accountable seems to be one of the biggest challenges for organizations because accountability really starts with setting clear expectations. Setting clear expectations involves more than just stating what you want the end result to be, it also involves clarifying the how, when, and what happens if the expectation is not met. Finally it involves actually following through and holding the individual accountable. This should be truer for leaders as they set the example for everyone else.

Metrics

“Not everything that can be measured matters and not everything that matters can be measured.” ~Einstein

Metrics are important but only if value and action comes from them.  Something must be done with the data that is collected. Their tends to be two extremes when it comes to metrics, either nothing is being measured and thus opportunities for improvement and re-alignment are being missed, or everything is being counted but nothing is being done with the data because there is either too much or it has just become an exercise in collection for collections sake.

When it comes to leadership metrics the first step is to define what counts and then separate them from other business metrics like financials etc.  The second step is to define how they will be used. Here it is important not to fall in the trap of collecting data for collections sake but actually using it.

 Results

All of these things should yield results in the form of employee retention and satisfaction. Those things will in turn result in greater productivity and a better bottom line. It all starts with identifying the right leaders. Develop them so that they are actively engaged. Expect them to set the right example. Establish metrics that count and hold them accountable.

*Image courtesy of cooldesign/freedigitalphotos.net