Carrier’s talk was about how they instilled in every employee’s mind and in every corner of their operations their core values that inform how the company operates, what they call, with great fanfare, “Our Big Three”:

1. Happy, professional team members who demonstrate aggressive friendliness.
2. A clean, crisp, safe property where everything works.
3. Guests and team members receive all that they expect…plus a little bit more.

Essentially, they apply the principles of traditional branding and direct it within the organization. With the aid of a recognizable logo and a variety of strategies, they have been working for five  years to gradually have all of their employees living the brand experience.

Here are a few of the many ways they do this:

• Their company mascot, “OB3 (see photo), appears at company gatherings, from shareholder meetings to employee parties.
• Each new manager receives a high quality pen with logo and is asked to use it whenever signing their name in the course of their work.
• Every new employee receives a pocket size laminated card with ten guidelines to work behavior that reflect the “Our Big 3″ values. For example: know your hotel, present a polished image, details make the difference, create a “wow.”
• The performance review document (which by the way, they call the “Big 3 Report Card,”) groups performance items under the Our Big 3 categories.

On face it struck me as a big hokey and over the top but, when you think about it, good marketing involves repeated messaging in a number of delivery formats. Besides, wouldn’t you be inclined to come back to a hotel where you experience aggressive friendliness, a clean/crisp/safe facility, and a bit more than you expect? I would.

Of the group that said their boss focused on strengths, 61% were “engaged” in their work. 45% of those reporting a boss who attended primarily to their weaknesses were engaged but, at the same time, 22% were “actively disengaged.” Except for the appearance of the actively disengaged group, focusing on areas to be development or turned around didn’t do too much damage.

But here’s the shocker. Look at the right hand column, reflecting employees whose boss essentially ignored both strong and weak points, in other words, giving no meaningful feedback at all. Virtually none of these (2%) were engaged and the rest were either neutral or disengaged.

“But, wait a minute,” you say, “maybe engaged employees, the keeners, are more inclined to see their boss as noticing and commenting on their strengths. Besides, since they are engaged, they probably are demonstrating their best talents on the job anyway. Their boss is just noticing what’s clearly evident.” This, of course, is the classic question with a correlation between two variables: which one is influencing which?

Let’s not go there. Instead, just consider the consequences of not giving your people any concrete feedback to speak of. It can severely dampen your employees’ level of engagement in their work. With all the data out there linking employee engagement to business results, we are talking lost productivity and creativity–big time!

25% of that “ignored” group of employees had a boss who gave no feedback. I hope you wouldn’t have been one of them.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

As John mentions, sometimes leaders foster a culture that asking your boss for help is a sign of weakness or failure. This can have really negative consequences for the organization because employees will not tap into the experience and wisdom of their boss when it is appropriate. In the end they risk making poor decisions that can cost a lot.

But the real issue here involves, as is so often the case with the art of management, a paradox:

• On the one hand you want your people to take full accountability for their job, including making decisions and taking action without always running to you to solve their problems or provide cover by endorsing decisions they are about to make.
• On the other hand, you want your staff to come to you when they are truly stymied, the cost of a bad decision is too high, or they need information that is understandably beyond their reach.

The “art” here is, when an employee brings a problem to your doorstep, to be able to differentiate between a problem that they should be able to handle on their own and one on which it is appropriate to consult with you.

Make a point of clarifying with each of your direct employees what sorts of issues or situations should trigger their talking with you first. You can do this as part of a larger conversation about the performance expected from them. Part of their performance, after all, is bringing their independent judgment to bear in their job. These guidelines, of course, may need to be adjusted as you go forward, so be sure to revisit them periodically, as needed.

Finally, having done such a good job clarifying decision boundaries, resist the ever-present temptation to break these guidelines by taking the “monkey” and solving a problem that clearly belongs to them.

]]> http://buildbestbosses.com/2010/02/22/the-paradox-of-who-makes-the-decisions/feed/ 0 http://buildbestbosses.com/2010/02/15/are-you-a-director-or-an-informer-2/ http://buildbestbosses.com/2010/02/15/are-you-a-director-or-an-informer-2/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:00:44 +0000 Ian Cook http://buildbestbosses.com/?p=1541 Here’s an easy way to notice how you communicate when you want to influence someone to do something. It is a simple, practical model that comes from Interstrength Associates and we cover it in our Understanding Yourself and Others workshop.

We all have a place of comfort along a continuum that extends from purely “Directing” all the way to purely “Informing” others. Take a look along the line and see which phrasing feels most comfortable to you and sounds like how you would express your need to others.

There are times when speaking from either extremity of the continuum is appropriate and not disconcerting to those who receive your message.

• When you choose speak from the directing end, it is usually because of a time pressure and/or the need to focus laser-like on the task at-hand. This context enables your demand not to come across as inappropriately bossy.
• Totally informing language works well when you want to motivate people to choose to do the action or when you want to enroll them in a wider process.

Those situations aside, a problem arises when a manager needs to get greater buy-in and participation from his or her people but is habitually directive in his/her speech. I encounter problems more often, however, in bosses who are looking to come across more assertively but continue to speak in a strongly informative style. Words do make a difference. Usually, if a non-assertive manager consciously adopts a more directive delivery, over time he/she will become comfortable with how that sounds and will incorporate it into his/her default speaking style. As a result, he/she will come across as more assertive and confident in situations that call for this.

Does what you say when influencing your staff project the “you” you want them to experience?

During the facilitated debrief discussion an interesting issue emerged. One woman said that, when the process seemed to hit its highest point of chaos, she sorely wanted to get up, grab a marker, approach the flip chart, and start leading her colleagues by capturing what they were saying and organizing it into a coherent strategy to solve the problem more quickly.

I asked her, “Why didn’t you do that?” She replied, “Because I didn’t want them to think I was being too controlling. I wanted them to see me as a team player.” Notice the assumption she had made about how they would perceive her well-intentioned act to contribute her particular strength (organizing) to the success of the group effort.

I turned to the group and asked them, “If she had stepped up and done this, (1) would you have seen it as controlling and not being a team player and (2) would it have helped you solve the problem faster than you did?” They all agreed that they would have appreciated, not resented or judged, her action and that it would indeed have helped them perform better.

This was what we in the training field call a “teachable moment.” The woman who had hesitated to step forward in the exercise learned to question her assumptions and, if her spirit of intent is genuine, to take the risk of contributing where she has a skill. The group learned the importance of making it OK (i.e. safe) for individual members to step forward and take such risks. Both innovative thinking and improved group performance requires this.

Have you made it clear to your staff that will support them when they bring their particular skills and perspectives forward when they have an idea or a better way to proceed? You may think you have but don’t assume that they have received the message!

Now take this concept micro, down to the one-on-one relation between you (the boss) and one of your employees who is listless, sloppy, and clearly underperforming. You want him to change…to a new way of working: doing the job asked of him. If this individual is, in fact, capable of doing the job well, the problem is one of attitude, of lack of motivation.

The best leaders at the mid level are able to turn around this commitment thing. They:

• Clearly lay out what they expect from their under performer
• Raise for discussion current gap in his performance
• Express their belief in his ability to do the job well
• Lay out the benefits, to both the employee and the organization, of a solid job performance
• Involve him in identifying the obstacles to his performing better
• Get him (i.e. not the boss) to come up with a plan to turn around his performance
• Reach agreement on the plan, with specific actions, measures and time frames

Going deeper, the leader might probe into what the employee wants from his job, what motivates him, and what’s missing for him as a motivator in his current work. All the while, in the background hangs the potential for consequences if the staff member chooses not to change. The leader brings tough love to the situation.

The best bosses foster a mindset of high performance in their unit. They get all of their people to want success and want to perform at a level of which they can be personally proud. Almost all of your people want these–success, pride, accomplishment. You can count on this because they are human beings. When you first confront a poor performer, however, they just don’t realize that they do.

I am encouraged by some key revelations:

1. The two leadership behaviors cited most often were (1) Inspiring and (2) Defining Expectations and Offering Rewards, by 48% and 47% of respondents, respectively.
2. The good news is that these same two were at the top of the lists for behaviors needed both during the crisis and after the crisis AND actually being used most frequently right now, during the crisis.
3. The only other behavior identified as being used frequently by managers coping with today’s prevailing economic challenges was that of Monitoring Individuals’ Performance.

So, managers these days do seem to be providing that precious motivational commodity, inspiration. I have ofter wondered about this, since fear and uncertainty can easily distract an organization’s leadership from attending to the mental and emotional well being of their staff. Furthermore, through clear expectations and rewards, they are providing at least a degree of stability, something I’m sure we will all agree is in rare supply in 2009 and into 2010.

I suspect that the parallel focus on their employees’ individual performance is the result of potentially having to make decisions about who can be retained and who might have to be let go. It’s understandable.

What is heartening from the data, however, is that even in these infuriatingly rough waters, managers continue to demonstrate leadership that addresses the state of mind, the core needs, and the ongoing motivation of the most critical strategic element of all, their people.