Susan Stamm

Rule 14: You’re Still the Boss

admin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:22:41 +0000

What’s the minimum percentage of decision making authority leaders should maintain in any decision making process?

This week I met with an executive leadership team that wanted to begin a developmental leadership process. A proposal containing 360 feedback had been delivered and the entire team was invited to come and discuss it before the process was to begin. One member of the leadership team raised concerns about past experiences with 360 feedback indicating he did not see value in what his direct reports thought about him. I found this comment both interesting and surprising, and suspected this leader was concerned about the feedback his team might offer him.

I was not prepared, however, for the CEO to shut down the process because of this manager’s concern. I was even more surprised to learn that this manager’s direct reports had recently complained to HR, indicating he portrayed a different side of himself to those he supervised than to his peers around the executive table.

Rule 9, you will recall, suggests it is important for you to let go so your team can grow. It has been well documented that employee involvement fuels engagement while providing numerous benefits to the organization. It is important to note, however, that even though you create engagement by getting the team involved, you are still the boss. If a project goes south, or if someone makes a decision that creates legal trouble, who is ultimately accountable? You are, of course. So how do you balance this idea of letting go with having enough personal involvement to be a responsible manager? In situations like the one above, where you collaborate with a team member to reach a decision, you participate in a simple authority formula that looks like this:

% Team Leader Authority + % Team Member Authority = 100% Decision Making Authority

In leadership workshops we often ask team leaders, “What’s the minimum percentage of decision making authority you should maintain in any decision making process?”The answers range from 1% to 100%, with many suggesting that somewhere around 60% of the decision-making authority should stay with the team leader. The answer, however, is a little bit different:

Team Leader Minimum Amount of Authority = 51%

We suggest approaching decisions as equal partners while tucking the one percent veto power away, just in case it’s needed. If the decision is not in the best interest of the organization, you use the one percent, carefully explaining to the team member (or team) why you must override the decision.

In my example above, the CEO, as the top leader of the organization, might have exercised his one percent veto power and suggested that the need to examine and develop leadership skills was central to the organization’s success. This leader obviously deferred this decision to the team member. Did the leader engage his team? Maybe. Was this the best decision for the overall organization? Maybe not. Being the leader is never easy. Engaging your team means involving them as often as you can, but it does not diminish your responsibility for results. By reviewing outcomes regularly, and asking yourself how things would have worked if you had chosen another path, you can improve the quality of results while building a culture of teamwork and engagement.

Action: Reflect on the amount of authority you carry into the decision making process. If it is significantly less then 51% you may be running a social club. If it is significantly more than 51% you may be running a dictatorship. Plan now to use the next opportunity to make an adjustment that brings more balance to you and your team’s decision- making process.

Rule 3: Begin at the Very Beginning

admin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:20:51 +0000

Imagine a candidate receiving a half-dozen personal notes in the mail from their future teammates.

”Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…” The words Julie Andrews sang in ‘The Sound of Music’ turn out to be pretty good advise for engaging your team, too. I am talking about the place the relationship ultimately begins: the hiring process. Used strategically, the hiring process can offer an opportunity to begin the onboarding process and evaluate the candidate for culture fit.

How often people are hired by the manager, or worse yet HR, and totally absent from the process is the team that will work along side this new person. Taking this approach misses two great opportunities.

The first missed opportunity is with the team itself. They may be the biggest stakeholders in such a decision and they are totally divorced from the process. This not only sends a message that they do not have the skills to make this decision, but that they are not valued enough to participate in critical decisions that impact their team. So they watch and wait and rely on the “powers that be” to bring them a great teammate and hope for the best. But regardless of the end result, they are stuck with it. Being absent from a critical decision that affects them so deeply is not a path to engagement.

The second missed opportunity is with the candidate. Through the hiring process, the applicant can develop a sense of connection to the team and some excitement for the work of the team. She begins to see how she will fit in as a member. To accomplish this, the candidate needs some team time. Ideally, this time would extend beyond the team interview to include an opportunity to be in the work area for a period of time to feel the culture of the team and begin to build relationships and connections. The team can tap into the candidate’s outside perspective by involving her in the team’s work to see how it feels to work together and to help give the candidate a real sense for the work.

One local business in my community has taken this step very seriously. According to a senior trainer at this firm, this particular organization provides qualified applicants a full workday with pay in their call center environment as part of their hiring process. Such a day can provide a solid look at the job for the candidate, and help to answer some of the job fit questions that are difficult to determine in an interview process. Members of the team are in a strong position to provide input after such a day and their observations can carry a lot of weight in the hiring process.

After an interview, a best practice is to follow up with an candidate. After all, the hiring organization is in a selling role and a talented, qualified applicant is likely looking at several options. This is another great opportunity for team participation. The team could send personal notes to qualified applicants to whom they will be making job offers, expressing their good wishes and appreciation. Imagine a candidate receiving a half-dozen personal notes in the mail from their future teammates. Whose employment offer are they going to accept? Begin at the very beginning by engaging your potential new hires during the hiring process. This team approach to hiring will also produce the highest quality hiring results.

Action: Meet with your team to discuss this idea. Consider some training on team hiring to help them participate in this important task effectively. Use DISC (Rule 15), or another behavioral model with the team immediately after new team members join your team. It will help everyone get to know each other quickly and build connections on the team.

Flight 1059 and Other Mysteries of Life

siyam — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:28:29 +0000

I stood in the long line waiting to board flight 1059 and eventually shuffled my way toward the gate. When I got close enough, I was able to observe the mechanical way customers handed their pass to the attendant who quickly scanned the ticket and handed it back. No interaction, eye contact or conversation seemed part of this routine. I tried to break the rhythm as I handed my pass to the attendant. “Thank you,” I proclaimed with as much enthusiasm as I could generate. No response was returned, not even visual contact. The attendant was already searching for the next pass being extended toward him.

I boarded the airplane in search of the next employee I might engage in conversation. As I stepped aboard, I asked the attendant “How are you?” “Much better today” came the reply followed by a spontaneous interchange related to yesterday’s bad weather, spilled drinks, and assorted travel woes. Our brief conversation ended with laughter as my turn to move toward my seat arrived. As I settled into my cramped coach seat I tallied up the experience from a customer perspective.

True, it hadn’t started out too well with conflicting information related to a delay, and general confusion among passengers at the gate. Then the boarding pass ‘incident’ occurred followed by a delightful exchange with the greeting attendant. The score was stacked against the airline 2 to1. Yet, I was feeling so positive about my experience, I had to wondered why. As I considered the quality of the interchange with the welcoming attendant, it seemed it had overcompensated and erased the previous negative experiences for me. Could it be if just 1/3 of your customer interactions are truly positive they could wipe out at least a portion of your negative encounters? I’ll be monitoring my customer experiences in the coming days to see if this theory can hold true. I hope you will too.

How Much Autonomy do you Have on your Job?

siyam — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:39:43 +0000

It seems that encouraging autonomy would be highly desirable in today’s lean workplaces…and it certainly would support employee engagement. Yet many leaders struggle to give employees autonomy on the job.

I’ll be asking about this issue during my interview with author Lee Colan on Bookends this week. Lee is the author of “Engaging the Hears and Minds of all your Employees” and my featured guest this week on Bookends. To register to attend this (free) interview follow this link:http://www.teamapproach.com/bookends/engagingheartsandminds.asp

I Hate My Job!

siyam — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:47:28 +0000

I was driving to a client site yesterday when I got behind a pickup truck with a bummer sticker that said, “I hate my job.” Now there’s a message if anyone is actually paying attention. It flashes like a neon sign as this employee pulls in and out of the employee parking lot, but I’m guessing it shows up even stronger in the employee’s behavior.

Let’s consider this “message” from the employee’s perspective first. He knows that during this economic downturn, jobs are evaporating everyday. He also knows that if you loose a job, accidentally or on purpose, finding a new one may be more difficult then before. Yet, the he openly communicates his frustration through his actions and perhaps also through his inactions: a pretty good indicator of the severity of the problem.

He is willing to risk his job because his dissatisfaction is so high. He does not seem to care if anyone notices. I’d like to think he cares enough that he wants to be heard, otherwise, why would he advertise his feelings.

Now let’s consider what this might look like from the manager’s perspective. Let’s call the employee Harry and the manager Mira…

Mira: “Harry is at it again. This is the fourth Friday he’s left his team hanging in the middle of this critical project by not showing up. How is it he always gets sick on a Friday? If we didn’t need him so badly right now, I’d fire him. “

A while back, Jan Carlzon, who was President of Scandinavian Airlines, wrote a great little book called: “Moments of Truth” He was talking about the thousands of “moments” that add up to the customer’s total experience. This is a very good way to understand employee engagement too. There are numerous interactions, organizational systems and other workplace factors that impact employee engagement. One of these factors is leadership’s ability to manage complaints.

A bumper sticker that says, “I hate my job” is a pretty serious complaint. My guess is that it represents a collection of complaints because no one has been paying attention for a long while. Even so, as the leader, you can begin to build engagement anytime you are committed to doing so.

Many leaders shy away from complaints because they are “unpleasant.” But having an employee who moves into active sabotage mode out of sheer frustration is far more unpleasant. Having to continuously spend time interviewing, hiring and retraining is also unpleasant. Manage complaints when they first show up; this will create engagement on your team. Don’t allow complaints to mature into full-blown workplace crises.

Microsoft Woes? Try Apple for Support!

siyam — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:25:04 +0000

We’ve run our company on Apple computers for 23 years…long before the world discovered what we’ve always known: Macs are cool. As much as we’ve loved our Mac’s, we’ve always had one or two applications that required a PC. Since the newer machines now have Intel chips, we easily can run Windows right on our machines without the need for a PC in our office. This, however, is exactly when all the trouble began…

As we were preparing for a presentation using a Window based applications we could not get this application to project. After a few days of doing everything short of calling Microsoft we had made no progress.

Have your ever actually called Microsoft for help? This is kind of a touchy subject in our office after Intuit was purchased by Microsoft. The amazing support we had grown accustomed to seemed to disappear overnight. We dreaded that phone call and headed out instead to the Apple store with our Mac that was resisting behaving like a PC.

We knew this was not Apple’s problem so we disguised the visit with a different need and then casually brought up our frustration over the Window’s concern. Nothing quite like watching an “Apple Genius” thinking about a Window’s problem- these folks aren’t called “geniuses” for nothing. They seem unable to stop themselves when a “challenge” is brought to them. They are relentless. After about 15 minutes of web searching and trying different avenues our genius unlocked the solution to our problem. He seemed pretty pleased with himself, but not nearly as pleased as we were.

Rule 1 suggests that sometimes you have to break the rules to serve customers. I am guessing Apple prefers that their employees help customers with “Apple” applications that run on the “Apple operating system.” That makes good business sense, but offering “outrageous” customer support (when you can) produces goodwill that can never replicated by even the most creative Apple commercials.

Rule 1: Rules are Meant to be Broken

siyam — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:09:07 +0000

To develop a fully engaged team, everyone in your organization needs to be a leader. This means the entire team needs to be able to exercise judgment on the day-to-day challenges and opportunities that present themselves. Whether or not this happens has a lot to do with your approach to managing.

Think about it. How can any organization win without everyone’s full participation? Participation is a key indicator of engagement. In some organizations, however, rules, policies, and procedures are designed to cover every possible contingency so employees do not need to think. Have you ever written to your Senator or Congressman and received a form letter response that barely addressed your concern? Have you ever complained about a product you’ve purchased and received what appeared to be a memorized response from an employee? Contrast this to IKEA, where a prominent sign in their Philadelphia area store was used to recruit employees who would “think for themselves.” This enlightened approach will attract top talent and build engagement.

Sometimes organizations create policies for the masses the moment an individual employee (or customer) slips up. Creating policies may seem easier than coaching and managing performance, but the results are dramatically different. When coaching, you clarify misunderstandings about performance and usually discover that few employees try to do poor quality work on purpose. Rules and polices are usually perceived by employees as an expectation of future poor performance- generally not the best way to build an engaged team.

Following memorized sequences and prescribed patterns such as “thank you for shopping at …”, is counter to a team approach which actively solicits the input, ideas and good thinking from every member of the team. If your organization has rules, you may find that sometimes it is necessary to break a rule in order to provide extraordinary service or to go around a system that is not serving the customer. You and your team should actively discuss these rules to determine their impact on customers and desired results. By inviting discussions around rules and policies you send a message that sometimes the rule may not be the most effective approach. Such discussions increase engagement.

Shortly after our youngest daughter began dating, there was a surge in her text messages; but we did not discover this until our bill arrived from AT &T. In addition to the monthly service for her phone, she had over $90 in text message charges above and beyond her monthly allotment. As we discussed this situation with our representative, we were surprised and delighted that she was empowered to remove the charge entirely and help us secure a plan that would prevent this from occurring in the future. True, AT&T was out our $90, but as new customers who had left another supplier only months before due to poor service, we were feeling really good about the new relationship. And, considering the long term monthly increase in our fee, AT&T was not out anything at all. Yet the customer representative skillfully positioned the increase as a great service to us, which of course it was.

Yes, rules may be necessary, but they often prevent people from being actively engaged. Rules will never take the place of directly dealing with performance issues on your team. They certainly cannot replace excellent service skills and they should be scrutinized regularly to evaluate how they are helping to promote success for the team and organization as well as their impact on engagement.

Action: Make a list of all the rules and policies that are active in your organization for both employees and customers. Discuss these with your team and begin to analyze their impact. How are they serving employees, the customer, and the organization?

Are you Spamming your Family?

siyam — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:36:39 +0000

I was having lunch with a group of women attending a conference where I was presenting who were engaged in a lively discussion about far-off family members who attempted to stay in touch by sending occasional pictures of family happenings through email. They were lamenting that they did not care to get these photos of these sisters or cousin’s children or vacations and they really wished they’d not send them. As they got caught up in their collective complaints about annoying family members who insisted on staying connected, one of them went off on a tirade of her extreme hatred for Christmas letters. Why anyone in her family would ever think she’d want to know about their past year was simply beyond her. These letters were a nuisance that were simply unforgivable!

I sat and listened with such fascination that I was unable to speak. What could possibly bring us to the point that we no longer care about relationships. Gosh, what else is there? Am I missing something? If some of us have burned out to this point that we are willing to forget our own families, what are we like with our work peers and customers? Was this a freak encounter with some folks needing to work with mental health experts, or is this an emerging trend? How would such a perspective impact engagement on the team?

Managers Should Think Like Squirrels

siyam — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:23:29 +0000

It is spring in Pennsylvania which means things are coming up. Tulips, Daffodils and Johnny Jump Ups are everywhere. As are dozens of little trees that were planted by “our squirrels.” I watch them each fall running everywhere planting walnuts from the crop of trees found in our neighborhood. But today I decided they never could have really intended to eat all the walnuts they planted- there are just way to many. I’d like to believe they intended for some to become trees to enjoy later- much later.

This got me thinking about managers and the patience needed when coaching and mentoring their team. Coaching and on-the-job (OTJ) training need adequate time to grow and develop before a new behavior or skill is born. It takes time to see the rewards of such a process. Have patience when providing OTJ training, coaching or mentoring with your team. Be like the squirrels and be sure to plant when it is time to plant. Ensure the seed is planted deep enough to take root, nurture the seed as may be needed, and allow the time needed to master new skills.

Parking Garages without Attendants

siyam — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:42:29 +0000

Last weekend we visited Pittsburgh, PA- what a great town! After parking we found one of those pre-pay machines on the way out of the parking garage that “asked us” to insert our ticket. My husband promptly pulled what he through was his ticket from his wallet and inserted it into the machine. The machine immediately froze up and refused to spit his ticket back out so we could pay and get on with our business.

There we were, cold and needing to get to our appointment when we saw a bell to ring for an attendant. Yes, the garage actually had an attendant, but this employee was kept safely hidden away from the customers who were forced to conduct their business with these machines. How glad I was to have the opportunity to meet this wonderful gentleman who opened the machine and laughed as he handed the previous evenings theater ticket back to Rick asking him what it was he had put into the machine. We all had quite a good laugh as Rick complained about the number of tickets he seemed to have accumulated in his wallet over our trip.

As we walked through Pittsburgh to reach our appointment, I wondered why the parking authority would hire such a great humored employee and then only allow him to connect with patrons when there was a problem. If cities had folks like this who could create a favorable impression of their town, wouldn’t it make more sense to have them be more hands-on with customers? Silver bullets solutions (see rule 5) separate customers from helpful people who can make their experiences memorable and positive. Where have you run into a silver bullet lately? Look around your community, organization and team to see what you find. I’m eager to hear your experiences.