Category Archive: Staff Development

Conflict Management

Posted by on March 18, 2009

At times we all have difficulty working with other people especially in stress charged environments.  It is very easy especially as leader to fall into the bad habit of making negative comments about people especially when they are not present.

This type of conflict resolution will do nothing but add to the problem and ultimately destroy your leadership credibility.  When anyone hears you making destructive comments about another person who is not there, they too realize that one day they will not be there either.

The principle that I have adopted is that if I have something negative to say to another person I will go directly to them and talk about it privately.  If it is not a big enough deal for me to go and talk privately then it should not be a big enough deal to talk with others.

This one discipline has eliminated at least seventy-five percent of my need to make negative comments  to other people and almost completely stopped the destructive habit of public personal criticism of others.  Now when I do need to talk with someone about a real performance issue my motives are right and my methods are positive.

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Character Matters

Posted by on March 10, 2009

I have hired a lot of people over the years from working in the corporate world to being involved with several different large churches.  I ultimately take all of the factors involved and put them into one of two categories, character or competency.

Competency is the possession of the skill set, experience or aptitude to do a particular job with excellence.  This can be accessed through a variety of performance evaluation tools and talking with references.

Character is the sum total of the moral and ethical qualities of an individual that is based on their core beliefs about life.  This takes quite a bit longer to evaluate and many times references will give you only one side of the story.

I make sure I am able to spend a lot of informal time with the person so that I can eventually move beyond the interview script and hear their heart.  I also never hire a key person without meeting their spouse.

The priority of evaluating this part of the person must take first place over all other qualifications.  As a matter of fact, character has moved to the top of the list in the corporate world.

The first test in hiring anyone at General Electric under the leadership of Jack Welch was the character quality of integrity.  He wrote, “people with integrity tell the truth and they keep their word.  They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes, and fix them.”

Someone has well said, your ability may help get you to the top but it will be your character that will keep you there. 

 

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Teamwork

Posted by on February 6, 2009

Most leaders agree that we have moved from a leadership model that prioritized the positional power of the leader to one that involves the input of others included on their team.  However, there is still a lot of misunderstanding about the changing role of the leader and the appropriate role of the team members.

One of the best books I have read on this subject is The Performance Factor by Pat MacMillan.  The book not only deals with all of the philosophical issues involved in this major leadership transition but goes into great detail about practical execution.

The critical characteristics of all high performing teams are:  clear and common purpose, crystal clear roles, accepted leadership, effective team processes, solid relationships and excellent communication.

As in all current accepted leadership theory, they place an extremely high priority on getting the right mix of people on the team.  The key here is diversity of skill sets and experience so that the combined synergistic effect will reach its maximum potential.

The leader’s role is still very critical because they have to be able to draw everyone into the project at hand with passion and then be able in the end to reach a decision that works best for bottom line.  This is not a personality contest or group therapy it is still about producing outstanding results that accomplish critical priorities.

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Community

Posted by on January 28, 2009

In the book Good to Great the author makes a big deal about getting the right people on the bus, in the right seat on the bus and also getting the wrong people off the bus.  Hopefully by now everyone gets the importance of this concept to the success of any organization.

Another interesting point that often gets overlooked is that he also states the people who are on the team are more important than what they do together.  This goes far beyond the truth that if you have the right people they will figure out what you need to do.

He even says that one of the keys to having a great life is to genuinely enjoy the team of people that you are working with on a daily basis.  He uses words like love and respect to describe these relationships.

This week I was speaking at a conference where a departmental group of employees were having an annual getaway event.  As I watched them for over two days and listened how they responded to each other I was extremely impressed with the community they have developed over the years.

I left with the clear impression that the relationships within that department were far more important to them than the specific jobs they accomplished on a day to day basis.  Oh by the way, because of their strong sense of community their performance metrics were outstanding.

Building a team spirit that highly motivates people because they care about and enjoy the people they work with should move to the top of any leader’s agenda.   This also may be the key factor in attracting and retaining the top performers in any industry.

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Resignation

Posted by on January 12, 2009

If you are an A player as defined by Jim Collins in Good to Great you are a character driven leader.  This means that you are willing to set aside any personal agenda for the good of the team and the organization.

It also means that as a leader you are by nature a change agent.  You want to deal with the brutal facts facing your team and find new solutions to old problems.

In some situations the people that you report to are not as open to change.  This is where your character must lead you to deal with this situation in the right way.

The right way is to approach you boss directly and openly share what you are recommending to do and why.  The absolute wrong way is to talk about your superiors to someone else in any negative way that would be disloyal.

If after a long period of respectful dialogue you are not sensing any openness to change within the culture of the organization then your decision is clear.  What you must not do is to try to change your boss, that is not in your job description.

A players realize one fundamental truth about organizational culture.  You will over time help be a part of a team effort that will change it for good or if you stay too long in the wrong culture it will change you.  That is an unacceptable price to pay and that is why it’s time to leave.

 

 

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People Skills

Posted by on December 20, 2008

When you are evaluating any leader’s effectiveness you tend to look at two major categories that summarize everything else.  They are the character that defines the core values of the person and the competency or skill set that they bring to the position.

Marshall Goldsmith is one of the top Executive Coaches in the market. His latest book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There is a great read for all leaders who want to reach their maximum potential.  He identifies twenty habits that can completely destroy your influence as a leader.

The amazing thing that he confirms for all of us is that the most critical problems related to executive leadership have very little to do with core industry specific competency or even the expected qualities of productive leadership.

The overwhelming majority of smart, disciplined, experienced and passionate leaders are failing in the one major area of basic people skills.  They do not relate well to their superiors, peers, subordinates and sometimes even customers.

They do not listen, make negative comments about people when they are not in the room, and always tend to punish the messenger when bad news is delivered just to list a few.  Almost always these potential fatal flaws are obvious to everyone but the leader who does not even see them as an issue.

An absolute necessity for any effective leader is to establish a culture within their organization where the truth can be told and they will get the feedback they need or these extremely negative blind spots will never be revealed.

 

 

Categories: Career Development Personal Leadership Staff Development | Comments Off on People Skills

Hire Winners

Posted by on December 18, 2008

In the old days of the Industrial Age model of leadership everything was pretty simple.  The leaders made all of the decisions and the followers did all of the work.  There were very clearly identified lines of authority and policies and procedures for everyone.

The major goal of the company culture at the end of the day was to prevent failure.  Therefore if you had a problem with two people that were chronically taking too long for lunch breaks then you would design a system where everyone would have to sign out and sign back in.

Then it became some middle managers job assignment to monitor the system until it became a part of the new and improved culture for the company and that would solve the problem with lunch breaks.  This cycle was repeated over and over again and the best people in the organization were always assigned the duty of cleaning up the mess produced by the worst ten percent of workforce.

Today you better have your best people working on your biggest opportunities or you competition will eat your lunch and you will not need to sign out and in anymore.  You must move from a culture that tries to prevent failure to one that ensures success.

This means that you define success not by how the process is managed by what type of results your people are achieving.  The leaders number one responsibility now is to hire great people and set the vision for the organization.

The winners will take care of the strategy and it will produce results but you will probably have to live without your weekly employee lunch report.  You will not need it any more they fired the two people.

 

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Termination

Posted by on December 5, 2008

This is not a pleasant subject either for the person who needs to go or for the person who made the wrong decision to bring them on the team.  It requires courage and it must be done well or the moral of the entire organization can suffer.

I always feel to some degree as a leader that I have failed when we finally get to this point.  I want to make absolutely sure that I have given this person the right amount of leadership, specific feedback and the necessary resources and training to be successful.

After this due process, how do you know the timing is right?  The two questions that are listed in Good to Great offer some incredible perspective.

 The first is would you hire this person again?  If the clear answer is no, then you know it is time to act.  The second is if they were to go on their own would you be disappointed or relieved?  If the answer is relieved, then you know what you need to do.

Leaders must have the character to act and make the hard calls.  There is clearly one thing worse than  having to deal with an appropriate termination.  The later realization that your entire team had reached this  same conclusion six months ago and were beginning  to wonder why you could not see it.

 

 

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