Michael Timms's Blog, page 3

3 Ways to Attract, Engage, and Retain Employees in any Market Conditions

Finding employees has never been harder than it is today. The US and Canadian unemployment rates are at or near record lows, and virtually every employer I speak to is struggling to keep up with work demands because they don’t have enough of the right people.

Perhaps the alarmingly high inflation rates will eventually cool the economy and the demand for employees. Even so, it will likely only be a blip in the demand for employees since North American demographics indicate that more employees will be leaving the workforce than entering it over the next decade.

What can business leaders do to find, engage, and keep talent to meet their organization’s demands in the coming years?

The following story provides some insight.

The Real Problem

Cindy is the nurse manager of an ICU in a busy hospital. Her unit is chronically understaffed, and turnover is higher than she’d like, which is understandable given the current national shortage of nurses.

Hospital management has spoken to Cindy several times about her unit’s staffing and turnover problem and made it clear that fixing this problem must be her #1 priority.

Shortly after her boss spoke to her again about her staffing issues, Phil, one of the best nurses on Cindy’s team, walked into her office and told her he was leaving to take a position in a different unit at the same hospital. Cindy’s heart sank.

After she got over the initial shock, she asked Phil if there was anything she could have done to keep him. “No,” he replied. “The other unit has better hours, so I won’t have to work as many evenings and weekends. It’s a work/life balance thing and has nothing to do with you.”

Cindy was already short staffed and under pressure from management to fix her staffing problem, and one of her best nurses was leaving her for something she had no control over.

If you are a manager, perhaps you can empathize with Cindy.

Here’s the rest of the story.

Later that day, Cindy told Jen, the senior nurse on her team, about Phil’s resignation. Jen asked Cindy if Phil told her why he was leaving. “He said he’s leaving for better hours,” Cindy said.

Jen gave Cindy a knowing look and said, “I guarantee you there are other reasons why he’s leaving.”

The next day Cindy hauled Phil back into her office. “Phil, I need you to be honest with me. Is there any other reason why you’re leaving? I really need to figure out my turnover problem.” Phil thought for a moment, then decided to take a risk.

“Some of the nurses and I feel that you micromanage us. For instance, you send us emails at two o’clock in the morning to ask us to justify decisions we made during our shift, and it makes us feel like you don’t trust us to do our job.”

“Well, Phil,” Cindy replied, “you don’t understand the pressure I’m under from my boss. If I don’t . . .” That’s when Phil tuned out. It was obvious that Cindy didn’t want his feedback, and her response assured him that leaving was the right decision.

If you have ever lamented how difficult it is to keep good people, consider this question:

Is it possible that you have more influence over your people-related problems than you think you do?

Despite all the market conditions that are outside your control, three key factors are within your control and are certain to increase your organization’s chances of attracting, retaining, and engaging employees.

When you boil down what all the labor surveys and exit interviews are telling us, people want three key things from their employer:

To feel that their employer cares about themGood leadersCareer development opportunities

Here are three questions business leaders should ask themselves before they attribute their staffing challenges to a tight labor market.

1. Is Employee Wellness Your First Priority?

I recently read an article by an author who provided the following career advice to millennials and gen-Z’s: “Don’t try to love your work. Your work won’t love you back.”

While I don’t agree with the first part of that advice, the sad truth is that the second part is probably accurate.

A recent Gallup survey showed that only 24% of US employees feel strongly that their organization cares about their well-being. However, when employees feel that their employer truly cares about them, they are 69% less likely to search for a new job, 71% less likely to experience burnout, and three times more likely to be engaged at work.

 

If we want employees to care deeply about their work, then we must first care deeply about our employees.

 

This means we must care about our employee’s whole self, not just their work self. It means going way beyond the obligatory “How was your weekend?” and being aware of:

How things are going at homeChronic health problemsAny physical or mental health challenges their kids are facingTheir kids’ interests and activitiesIf they are caring for an elderly parentIf something at work is bothering them—and if that something is you

When you care about someone, you try to be in tune with what’s going on in their life. Why? So you can help ease their burdens, if possible.

The business of leadership is caring deeply about those you lead—caring about their whole self, not just about their work self.

2. Are You Serious About Improving Your Leadership?

I don’t know any CEO who would say they are not serious about improving the leadership of their management team. However, 75% of Americans say their boss is the most stressful part of their workday, and more than half say their boss is mildly or highly toxic. Clearly, there is a massive gap between what CEOs think they are doing to improve leadership within their organization and the impact it’s having on employees.

One reason for this gap is what I call “the leadership paradox,” which is:

 

Many of the attributes that get people promoted are the exact opposite of the attributes that make great leaders.

 

Here are a few examples of the leadership paradox:

The first step to increase the quality of leadership within your organization is to identify the leadership behaviors that you want people to demonstrate and then only promote people who do. This is not as difficult as it may sound, but it takes:

the will to do a thorough analysis of the behaviors that have the highest positive impact on people and results,the discipline to make those behaviors the primary promotion criteria, andthe humility to make promotion decisions by committee.

Until organizations articulate what good leadership looks like and promote people based on those criteria, we can expect managers who are poor leaders to continue to dominate our workplaces.

3. Are You Serious About Developing Others?

Over the past decade, countless surveys have repeatedly cited “lack of career development opportunities” as one of the top reasons employees decided to leave their employer. Most employers are clearly not doing enough to develop their people.

Even worse, if internal opportunities exist, only one third of employees are looking internally first, and only 17% of employees feel their manager helps them apply for internal openings.

 

You are never going to have enough people if you don’t prepare the ones you have for greater responsibilities and help them attain them.

 

Here are a few questions to help you assess your career development program:

Is career development the glossed-over last page of the performance review, or are career-development discussions held separately?Do managers consider career development as important as performance management?Are career-development activities focused on taking courses or providing new experiences?Do managers have several in-depth career-development discussions with their staff each year?Can employees choose who will help them advance their career within the organization?

Becoming a world-class people developer is possible, and it’s within reach.

The Secret Formula for Attraction, Engagement, and Retention

There are a lot of things that are outside employers’ control when it comes to attracting, engaging, and retaining employees, but the things that matter most in any type of labor market are:

Is employee wellness your first priority?Are you serious about improving your leadership?Are you serious about developing others?

Employers who can say yes to those three questions are 40% more productive with 30–50% higher operating margins than the rest. More importantly, leaders who answer affirmatively to these questions are far more likely to achieve their goals, and to make a positive impact on the lives of those they lead.

 

The post 3 Ways to Attract, Engage, and Retain Employees in any Market Conditions appeared first on Michael Timms.

5 Steps to Provide Feedback That’s Helpful, Not Hurtful

What one skill do you think has the greatest positive impact on workplace culture and performance?

From my years of helping leaders create a culture of accountability, I have found that the ability to provide feedback directly and respectfully makes the biggest and most immediate positive difference to individuals and organizations.

Contrary to popular belief, most people want to hear how they can improve, as long as that feedback is delivered well. Regrettably, only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive is helpful. This means most managers are failing at providing feedback. That’s a huge risk given the Great Resignation we are experiencing. When managers don’t provide feedback well, it prompts four out of five employees to start looking for a new job.

Managers can’t afford to wing it or rely on an outdated feedback model when delivering tough messages. They need to learn a better way.

Feedback Improves Performance When Delivered Well

Whatever you’re good at, it’s likely that receiving feedback on your performance helped you get to where you are now. The overwhelming preponderance of research shows that well-delivered feedback improves performance. Indeed, 94 percent of people agree that corrective feedback improves their performance when presented well.

Here’s why feedback works.

Behavior That Gets Praised Gets Repeated. Don’t make your employees wonder what it takes to please you. If you want your people to perform at a high level, provide a steady stream of reaffirming feedback. We are all addicted to the chemical dopamine, which is released in our brains when we are praised. We repeat behaviors that we have been praised for because we instinctively want another dopamine hit.

You Get The Behavior You Tolerate. If you don’t address problematic behavior, expect it to get worse because employees take their manager’s silence as tacit approval.

When Feedback Fails

Notwithstanding the benefits of feedback, research has shown that feedback can hurt performance when delivered poorly or when it comes in the form of a year-end review. Year-end reviews should be about reviewing successes and lessons learned and discussing how to make next year even better. It should not be about rubbing employees’ noses in their mistakes and providing negative feedback to justify a less-than-desirable raise.

Feedback often fails for two other reasons.

Too Indirect. In an awkward attempt to spare an employee’s feelings, I have seen managers soften their improvement feedback so much that employees walk away thinking they’ve just been praised, completely oblivious to the problem their manager was trying to point out.Too Harsh. When people feel disrespected by feedback, their brains interpret it as an attack, which triggers the fight-or-flight response. This shuts down the problem-solving part of the receiver’s brain, and they tend to either aggressively challenge the feedback or appear contrite and then quietly plot their revenge.5 Steps of Providing Helpful Feedback

These five steps will substantially improve your ability to deliver tough messages directly and respectfully.

Ask for Feedback Before Giving It. Improvement feedback is sure to land badly if the people giving it never ask for feedback themselves. You must demonstrate that feedback is a gift, or everyone else will question your motives and associate it with punishment. Regularly requesting feedback gives you the moral authority to provide it.Begin With a Question, Not a Statement. Managers are rated four times more effective at providing feedback if they listen to the other person’s views before providing theirs. Asking about the situation in question allows the other person to share important facts that you may not know about.Share Observations, Not Conclusions. Most feedback methods encourage managers to prepare a monologue. This is the number one reason why feedback fails. Feedback is a dialogue. You do not have a monopoly on the truth. All you have is a perspective, so make sure to state it as such.Ask For Clarification. Your perspective may not be 100% correct. After stating what you are observing, ask for their perspective to get all the facts on the table. If you give others the opportunity to share additional facts before you draw a conclusion, you might learn something that changes your perspective. You’ll also avoid jumping to conclusions and looking foolish.Focus on Improving the Future. Perhaps employees will provide some additional information about the situation that explains their actions, which may be the end of it. If, however, you still feel they could have done something else to produce better results, acknowledge the new information and then ask “What else could be done to prevent this situation from happening in the future?” No matter how the conversation unfolds, the key is to come to an agreement about what one or both of you can do differently to produce better outcomes.

Following these five steps will make the feedback you provide work for you instead of against you.

This article first appeared in Fast Company.

The post 5 Steps to Provide Feedback That’s Helpful, Not Hurtful first appeared on Avail Leadership.

Putting Profits Before People Is Killing Your Company

Like many others in the midst of the Great Resignation, Tom is leaving his company. Tom has worked as a top-tier project manager for an IT services company for over 5 years. He wasn’t looking for a new job, but when an acquaintance at another IT services company told him about where she worked, Tom thought it sounded too good to be true, so he decided to investigate.

Tom has been managing a challenging project for many months and has finally reached the end of his rope because his leaders aren’t giving him the resources he needs to succeed. Tom and other experienced staff members are being stretched beyond their limits while junior staff are underutilized because nobody is available to train and mentor them.

Tom’s boss was slow to relay his request for more people up the chain of command because she, too, is running at a frantic pace. When she finally made the request, her bosses only provided Tom with junior staff, who couldn’t help until someone brought them up to speed, which nobody had time to do.

Profit-First Approach Drives Turnover

What’s driving this gong show? “There is a big culture of achieving bonuses here and tremendous pressure to sell and achieve financial targets,” Tom said. Every week or two, employees receive a message notifying them about how close the company is to achieving its financial targets, and they are encouraged to bill more hours so the company can meet its revenue goals and everyone can achieve their bonuses. “I think their singular focus on achieving bonuses is driving a lot of good people out the door,” Tom remarked.

The executives at Tom’s company have made it clear that the company’s primary objective is to make money. Of course, the company has a purpose statement posted on the lunchroom wall with fluffy words and lofty ambitions, but everyone knows the executives only care about one thing: profit.

Mediocre companies think of their strategic priorities this way:

Profit. “Our overarching goal is $______.”Customers. “We will target these markets, customers, and projects.”Products, Services & Processes. “We need to introduce these products and services and streamline our processes.”People. “Oh, and I guess we’ll need a lot of people to do all this.”A Proven Alternative

Thinking this way about strategic priorities is completely backwards from what research and experience have proven. Countless studies show that focusing on improving the employee experience drives tangible business results. One of the most comprehensive studies of its kind shows that higher employee engagement leads to a 10% increase in customer engagement, 22% higher profitability, 25–65% lower turnover, 48% fewer safety incidents, and 41% fewer quality defects.

Leaders of great companies have known the secret formula for success long before the research proved it. Herb Kelleher, celebrated founder of Southwest Airlines, described his success formula like this: “Employees come first, and if employees are treated right, they treat the outside world right, the outside world uses the company’s product again, and that makes the shareholders happy.” Disney’s “Chain of Excellence” begins with focusing on their purpose and providing great leadership, which leads to employee engagement, quality service, loyal customers, and sustained financial results. Costco puts people first by providing industry-leading wages and benefits and a culture of caring for employees.

Mediocre leaders try to motivate and retain employees with financial incentives. Great leaders give employees a compelling purpose to strive for that focuses on improving customers lives, and they put employee’s needs first, like this:

The Strategic Priority Cycle

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Engaged employees produce innovative products and they engage customers through exceptional customer service. Engaged customers provide greater and more sustained revenue, which helps the company achieve its purpose.

Exceptional companies are purpose-driven, people-first, and profit-fueled.
Click To Tweet

Employees are not more important than customers or profit, but their needs must be met first for the cycle to work. It’s a natural sequence of events.

So, what is it about Tom’s new opportunity that sounded too good to be true? His new company expects employees to be 75% utilized (billing 30 hours a week instead of 40) and to spend the other 25% of their time on personal development, mentoring others, and improving internal programs and processes. His new employer is also willing to accommodate his request to work a four-day week. Instead of trying to squeeze every possible nickel out of their employees, his new employer is willing to sacrifice some short-term profit for a healthily workplace culture and a sustainable workforce.

“Oh,” Tom said, “and they pay 25% more than my current employer.” It’s interesting that Tom mentioned the pay increase as an afterthought. Mediocre companies use money to manipulate their employees, whereas the way exceptional companies allocate money is an expression of their people-first approach.

Mediocre leaders are profit-driven.  Great leaders are purpose-driven and people-first.  Which one are you?

 

Originally published on CEO World on March 14, 2022

 

If you are an executive that would like help rethinking your company’s strategic priorities, book a call with Michael to discuss how he may be able to help.

The post Putting Profits Before People Is Killing Your Company first appeared on Avail Leadership.

5 Ways Leaders Can Build Trust No Matter Where Their Teams Work

Originally posted on Fast Company on March 10, 2022

You can either fight it or accept it, but you can’t deny that the new hybrid work model is here to stay. According to the latest data from Gallup, 67% of white collar workers currently work from home at least part of the time, and there is no indication this will change in the future. What’s more, 49% of remote workers say they’d look for a new job if their employer forced them back into the office full time.

Although many employers and managers are leery of this change, the success or failure of the hybrid work model comes down to trust. Managers must trust their team members to stay on task, and team members must trust that their managers have their best interests in mind when making decisions. Unfortunately, only one in three employees trust their leaders. Lack of trust in the workplace reduces productivity and substantially increases employees’ flight risk, which is undoubtedly contributing to the Great Resignation that many organizations are currently experiencing.

Let’s face it, it’s easier to trust people we see more frequently. As such, the hybrid work model is certain to exasperate the trust problem between managers and their staff unless managers proactively work to increase trust.

Here are some of the most powerful ways you can increase trust with your team members and improve the odds of getting the right results regardless of where they work.

Agree on Expectations. Trust is established when people consistently meet their expectations of one another. When trust is broken, and relationships fail, it’s usually because expectations were unspoken and not agreed to. The first step toward building a foundation of trust is to agree on the most important things each party needs from the other to be successful and enjoy their work. For example, managers and their team members may want to set expectations around work quality and timeliness, taking accountability for mistakes, providing each other with feedback, and rewarding employees’ good performance with praise and career-development opportunities. When expectations are established and mutually agreed upon, leaders and employees know for certain what they must do to build trust with one another—and what will break it.Meet Regularly (in person or virtually). Regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings are an essential leadership tool that builds trust and enables managers to help their team members stay accountable. One-on-one meetings are dedicated time to review assignments to ensure follow through and to ensure employees have what they need to be successful. Studies have shown that regular progress meetings increase goal attainment by 95% and that employee engagement is highest when employees meet weekly with their managers. Commenting on the profound impact regular one-on-one meetings have on reporting relationships, one executive told me, “If your boss isn’t meeting with you regularly, you start to make up stories in your head like, ‘Does my manager not like me?’ If you’re not holding regular one-on-one meetings with the people who report to you, you’re eroding trust and confidence, not creating it.”Request Feedback and Accept It With Gratitude. One of the quickest ways to increase mutual respect and trust with another person is to ask them for advice on how you can improve. Asking for feedback sends the message, “I respect your opinion, and I trust you won’t take a cheap shot.” This demonstration of vulnerability by a leader creates an environment where everyone feels safer to admit weaknesses and ask for feedback. However, asking for feedback only creates the psychological safety necessary for trust to thrive if managers accept feedback with an attitude of gratitude instead of defensiveness. Employees who give you honest feedback are taking a big risk and are trusting you not to punish them for it. Employees will interpret any defensiveness in your response as punishment and a betrayal of their trust.Don’t Blame. Nothing kills trust quicker than blame. Blame triggers the fight-or-flight response. This inhibits the release of the neurotransmitter oxytocin, which is essential to forming trusting relationships. Blame also shuts down the part of the employee’s brain that controls problem solving. The irony of blaming people for problems is that doing so shuts down their ability to solve the very problems for which they are being blamed! When things go wrong, poor leaders ask, “Who’s at fault?” Good leaders build trust by resisting the urge to blame and instead ask, “Where did the process break down?” Employees trust leaders who consider other factors that contribute to problems instead of simply blaming the person closest to the mess.Admit Mistakes. When things go wrong, it takes tremendous confidence and courage to look in the mirror to see how your actions or inaction may have contributed to the problem. However, the courage to take accountability for problems is the price of leadership. In fact, it is quite possibly the most powerful way to earn the trust and respect of others precisely because it is so difficult. Leaders who take accountability demonstrate that they won’t look for a scapegoat to save their pride. Taking accountability for problems creates an atmosphere of trust that makes it safe for everyone to follow suit by admitting how they contributed to problems and focusing on solutions.

Leaders inspire trust not by bumping into their staff at the water cooler or passing them in the office hallways but by taking specific actions to establish the conditions on which trust is built.

The post 5 Ways Leaders Can Build Trust No Matter Where Their Teams Work first appeared on Avail Leadership.

Blame Culture Is Toxic. Here’s How To Stop It.

Originally posted on Harvard Business Review on February 9, 2022

Picture this: Your team is racing against time and working weekends to submit a new client proposal. You finally manage to put all the documents together, and just in the nick of time, you press “send.” You take a deep breath and thank the team for their hard work. The proposal looks great and you’re confident that you’ll probably win it.

A week later, you get an email from the client: “We really liked your bid. We would’ve love to go ahead with your company, but we found a mismatch in your numbers and the supporting documents. We’re pressed for time, so we’ve decided to move forward with someone else. I’m sure we’ll be able to work together in the future.”

You’re upset, frustrated, and angry. You call your team in, give them an earful about not checking the package correctly, and storm out of the room.

What kind of an impression did you leave? Your team probably thinks you’re thankless and unkind. They put a lot of work into that proposal and may even feel like they hate you in the moment. Your relationship may be irreversibly damaged.

A landmark study published in 2001 shows that the brain responds more strongly to bad experiences than good ones — and our memories retain them longer. The authors concluded that, “Good can only match or overcome bad by strength of numbers.”

How much good can overcome bad? Five positive experiences are about equal to one negative one. This five-to-one ratio, discovered by psychologist and relationship researcher John Gottman in the 1970s, still applies to our present-day workplace. A study published in 2005 measured employees’ moods at work and found that when they reported a negative event, it “affected their mood five times as much than if a positive event had occurred.”

No matter how nice you think you are, every unkind word or angry tone that escapes your lips undoes five times the amount of good your kind words and actions may have done.

What is to blame?

Gottman argues that the most destructive behaviors in relationships are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. My work helping organizations create a stronger culture of accountability has led me to conclude that the most lethal behavior is actually blame. Blame encompasses the four behaviors listed above, and in my experience, it’s what we must tackle first.

There are two big challenges to overcoming blame:

Humans are wired to blame.

We are all naturally wired to blame other people or circumstances when things go wrong. These propensities are partially psychological, driven by something called the fundamental attribution bias. We tend to believe that what people do is a reflection of who they are, rather than considering there may be other factors (social or environmental) influencing their behavior.

This is why when major workplace disasters are reported in the news, “human error” is often the first, and sometimes only, explanation provided, ignoring the systemic factors that led to the failure. It also feels the most satisfying. If someone else is to blame for our problems, then they need to change — not us.

There is also a biological explanation for our inclination to blame. Recent brain imaging research out of Duke University shows that positive events are processed by the prefrontal cortex, which takes a while and tends to conclude that good things happen by fluke. Negative events, on the other hand, are processed by the amygdala, which controls our fight-or-flight response. The amygdala usually concludes that bad things happen on purpose, and it comes to this conclusion lightning fast. So fast, in fact, that we don’t even notice we’re making an assumption; we just know that the person closest to the problem must have done it on purpose!

We blame more than we think.

This leads to the second problem with blame — we don’t notice how often we do it. Even the best executives I work with confess that they initially thought my “don’t blame” message was important for their team members to hear, but not them. However, once they began tracking how often they blame other people or circumstances for problems, they were shocked at how frequently they caught themselves in the act.

This behavior unfortunately leads their teams down a negative spiral. Our brains interpret blame the same way they interpret a physical attack. When we’re blamed, our prefrontal cortices effectively shut down and direct all our energy to defending ourselves, which, ironically, sabotages our ability to solve the problem for which we are being blamed.

Blame also kills healthy, accountable behaviors. Nobody will take accountability for problems if they think they’ll be punished for doing so. Furthermore, learning and problem solving go out the window in workplaces that tolerate blame. Instead of learning from mistakes, blamed employees tend to hide their mistakes.

So what can we do?

Eliminate blame culture on your team.

Now that we better understand the psychology behind blame, here are two simple changes you can adopt to promote a blame-free culture on your team, especially as a manager.

Switch your mindset to “We’re all still learning,” and share your mistakes.

We all make mistakes from time to time. It’s what makes us human. No good comes from blaming and shaming each other for our imperfect nature. You benefited from learning from your mistakes, so allow others to do the same. Use problems and mistakes as teaching moments, not shaming moments. If you’re a manager, discuss your own mistakes and the lessons learned from them. Doing so creates a psychological safe space that will encourage others to follow suit. When a problem surfaces, teammates will be more likely to acknowledge their part in creating them and stop passing the buck.

For example, you could conduct regular lessons learned debriefs at the end of a project with your team to understand what went wrong, what it is attributed to, and how you will use that information to move forward with a stronger strategy. This is how you teach others to approach problems from a place of kindness and compassion. Remember that just one negative outburst can set you five steps back.

Focus on what you can change.

You can’t change other people. In fact, attempting to do so will only encourage them to resist your efforts. When we blame others for our problems, it kills accountability in ourselves by making us passive victims, and it kills accountability in others by encouraging them to pass the buck.

Before passing on the blame, consider a system’s approach to your problem — that means,  defining the problem taking into consideration the entire problem as a whole, not in parts. Weak leaders might ask “Who’s at fault?” but strong leaders, using a systems approach, would ask, “Where did the process break down?” The solutions to your organization’s problems are more likely to be found by examining what’s wrong with your systems than by examining what’s wrong with your employees.

Once my team member accidentally deleted a survey template. We didn’t have another copy saved, so my assistant and I felt frustrated and annoyed with this employee. Instead of blaming this person, we asked ourselves, “How did we contribute to the problem?” On putting our heads together, we realized that there were no safety protocols in place to protect templates and files. A simple solution was to create a folder to store copies of all our templates.

We may not cause all our own problems, but our past actions or inactions often contribute to the problems of our future, the ones that we are most likely to blame on others. Anytime you encounter a problem — even one you are certain was caused by someone else — ask yourself question: “How may I have contributed to this problem? How can I approach this situation, this person, and myself, with a generous mindset?” Asking these questions will give you ideas around how to prevent this problem from reoccurring, and how to discuss it in a way that promotes trust as opposed to fear or contempt. 

Eliminating blame will improve employees’ morale and well-being and also promote kindness on your team (and who doesn’t want to work for a kind manager!). Help make your organization a place where compassion, trust, and therefore, people can thrive by putting these two strategies to practice.

The post Blame Culture Is Toxic. Here’s How To Stop It. first appeared on Avail Leadership.

5 Steps to Provide Feedback That’s Helpful, Not Hurtful

What one skill do you think has the greatest positive impact on workplace culture and performance?

From my years of helping leaders create a culture of accountability, I have found that the ability to provide feedback directly and respectfully makes the biggest and most immediate positive difference to individuals and organizations.

Contrary to popular belief, most people want to hear how they can improve, as long as that feedback is delivered well. Regrettably, only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive is helpful. This means most managers are failing at providing feedback. That’s a huge risk given the Great Resignation we are experiencing. When managers don’t provide feedback well, it prompts four out of five employees to start looking for a new job.

Managers can’t afford to wing it or rely on an outdated feedback model when delivering tough messages. They need to learn a better way.

Feedback Improves Performance When Delivered Well

Whatever you’re good at, it’s likely that receiving feedback on your performance helped you get to where you are now. The overwhelming preponderance of research shows that well-delivered feedback improves performance. Indeed, 94 percent of people agree that corrective feedback improves their performance when presented well.

Here’s why feedback works.

Behavior That Gets Praised Gets Repeated. Don’t make your employees wonder what it takes to please you. If you want your people to perform at a high level, provide a steady stream of reaffirming feedback. We are all addicted to the chemical dopamine, which is released in our brains when we are praised. We repeat behaviors that we have been praised for because we instinctively want another dopamine hit.

You Get The Behavior You Tolerate. If you don’t address problematic behavior, expect it to get worse because employees take their manager’s silence as tacit approval.

When Feedback Fails

Notwithstanding the benefits of feedback, research has shown that feedback can hurt performance when delivered poorly or when it comes in the form of a year-end review. Year-end reviews should be about reviewing successes and lessons learned and discussing how to make next year even better. It should not be about rubbing employees’ noses in their mistakes and providing negative feedback to justify a less-than-desirable raise.

Feedback often fails for two other reasons.

Too Indirect. In an awkward attempt to spare an employee’s feelings, I have seen managers soften their improvement feedback so much that employees walk away thinking they’ve just been praised, completely oblivious to the problem their manager was trying to point out.Too Harsh. When people feel disrespected by feedback, their brains interpret it as an attack, which triggers the fight-or-flight response. This shuts down the problem-solving part of the receiver’s brain, and they tend to either aggressively challenge the feedback or appear contrite and then quietly plot their revenge.5 Steps of Providing Helpful Feedback

These five steps will substantially improve your ability to deliver tough messages directly and respectfully.

Ask for Feedback Before Giving It. Improvement feedback is sure to land badly if the people giving it never ask for feedback themselves. You must demonstrate that feedback is a gift, or everyone else will question your motives and associate it with punishment. Regularly requesting feedback gives you the moral authority to provide it.Begin With a Question, Not a Statement. Managers are rated four times more effective at providing feedback if they listen to the other person’s views before providing theirs. Asking about the situation in question allows the other person to share important facts that you may not know about.Share Observations, Not Conclusions. Most feedback methods encourage managers to prepare a monologue. This is the number one reason why feedback fails. Feedback is a dialogue. You do not have a monopoly on the truth. All you have is a perspective, so make sure to state it as such.Ask For Clarification. Your perspective may not be 100% correct. After stating what you are observing, ask for their perspective to get all the facts on the table. If you give others the opportunity to share additional facts before you draw a conclusion, you might learn something that changes your perspective. You’ll also avoid jumping to conclusions and looking foolish.Focus on Improving the Future. Perhaps employees will provide some additional information about the situation that explains their actions, which may be the end of it. If, however, you still feel they could have done something else to produce better results, acknowledge the new information and then ask “What else could be done to prevent this situation from happening in the future?” No matter how the conversation unfolds, the key is to come to an agreement about what one or both of you can do differently to produce better outcomes.

Following these five steps will make the feedback you provide work for you instead of against you.

This article first appeared in Fast Company.

The post 5 Steps to Provide Feedback That’s Helpful, Not Hurtful first appeared on Avail Leadership.

10 Ways Great Leaders Show Gratitude All Year Long

*Adapted from the original article published November 24, 2021 in Fortune magazine.

The holiday season is a natural reflection point for many people that reminds us to count our blessings and express our gratitude more freely. However, others may not perceive us as being very grateful if our kind words and gestures are prompted by a season.

Regularly practicing gratitude through journaling or meditating on the positive aspects of your life has been shown to improve physical and mental health, make you happier, and enhance your relationships. However, those in leadership positions have even more reasons to routinely express gratitude to those they lead.

Why Leaders Should Show Gratitude Regularly

Expressing gratitude is one of the best retention tools for leaders. Unfortunately, only one in three employees receive enough recognition. The other two thirds are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year, which may partially explain the Great Resignation we are experiencing.

When teaching a group of managers about the critically important leadership behavior of recognizing employees’ effort and good work, at least one manager invariably will ask, “Why would I thank employees for simply doing their job?” Here’s why: behavior that gets praised gets repeated.

When we are praised, our brains release a chemical called dopamine, which improves mood, decision-making, memory, and focus. In a sense, everyone is addicted to dopamine because it feels so good that we are inclined to continue doing whatever will give us our next dopamine hit. For instance, when a manager thanks an employee for taking the initiative, the employee’s dopamine addiction makes it more likely that they will take the initiative again to earn another hit. One study even showed that employees were 50% more productive when their managers began the day by thanking them for their effort. On the flipside, when employees don’t get enough dopamine from positive behaviors, they turn their attention to less productive activities for their dopamine fix, such as counting their “likes” on Instagram.

Effective leaders know that if they want their people to continue working hard and producing results, they must recognize good behavior whenever they see it and express their appreciation. If you don’t thank people for their contributions, you’ll breed resentment, and they’ll stop contributing.

When the pandemic hit, an employee at an oil and gas company stepped in to broadcast his company’s monthly town hall meetings. Nobody asked him to do it; he was just a Zoom super user and could do it, so he did. After a couple of months, he noticed that nobody in management acknowledged or thanked him for doing so. He wasn’t looking for a pat on the back, but he began to feel resentful, thinking, “Why am I doing this if nobody cares?” Your employees will feel the same if they are being helpful when they don’t have to be, but nobody acknowledges it.

Employees’ performance isn’t suffering from receiving too much gratitude from their employers, but it certainly is from receiving too little.

How To Make Gratitude A Leadership Strategy

Be Specific. Managers who run around saying “good job” may be doing more harm than good if employees don’t know which behavior to continue.Recognize Behavior and Impact. After thanking employees for the specific behavior you want to see repeated, highlight the positive impact the behavior made on other people or the organization.Schedule It. One-on-one meetings are a critical accountability tool and a perfect time to acknowledge the positive things employees did the previous week and thank them for it.Praise Teams. Managers who recognize team accomplishments in addition to individual efforts reduce internal rivalries and improve collaboration.Thank Often. Praise has a short shelf life. We need a regular stream of positive reinforcement to keep us focused on what matters most and to keep the dopamine flowing.Align Recognition with Values and Mission. Whenever possible, tie recognition to living the organization’s values and achieving its mission.The CEO Should be the Chief Gratitude Officer. Gallup found that the most memorable praise comes from an employee’s direct manager, followed closely by praise from the CEO.Rarely Give Money. Money can cheapen the experience. Make expressing gratitude about appreciating effort and contributions, not a transaction.Write a Note. Handwritten notes are often the most meaningful and memorable.Be Genuine. Of course, make it authentic and honest. People’s internal radar is finely tuned to detect forced gratitude.

 

 

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The Embodiment of Personal Accountability

A hero has left us.

General Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away on Monday, October 18, 2021.  The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell overcame racism and segregation to become the first Black American to hold several top positions in the US government, advising four different presidents from Reagan to Bush.

Colin Powell led the US military through a nearly flawless execution of the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait and had a strong hand in shaping US foreign policy for decades.  However, despite his many achievements, Powell’s legacy was tarnished after his infamous speech to the UN convinced the world that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that the United States was justified in going to war with Iraq.  No WMDs were ever found, and his case to the UN is regarded as one of the worst intelligence failures in US history.

Although the media coverage of this mistake may be justified, it grieves me that his extraordinary response to his mistake was largely overlooked.  In today’s society where media pundits regularly castigate people in leadership or high-profile positions for not being accountable, Colin Powell’s example will be sorely missed.  Nobody took accountability as well as Colin Powell did.  We can all learn something about accountability from his great example.

In the summer of 2002, Powell caught wind that President Bush was planning to invade Iraq because of intelligence claims that Saddam Hussein was manufacturing WMDs. However, Powell hadn’t heard very much discussion about what the president planned to do after the invasion. Powell famously told the president “If you take over a government, guess who becomes the government and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.”

Instead, Powell convinced Bush to try to resolve the WMD issue diplomatically through the United Nations. From that point on, Bush gave Powell that responsibility. The primary source of Iraq’s WMD program was a partially completed national intelligence report. This report was circulated around Washington and was accepted by America’s military commanders and most of Congress, but the evidence contained in the report was mostly circumstantial and inferential.

On January 30, 2003, President Bush told Powell that he wanted Powell to present their case against Iraq to the UN on February 5, just a few days away. However, Powell’s staff didn’t have a copy of the report. When they received it later that day, they discovered it was a disaster and completely unusable. They had four days to prepare their case to the UN, essentially having to start from scratch!

Powell moved his staff to the CIA to work with the CIA director and his team to piece together the report from the raw materials on which the original report was based. They worked day and night trying to come up with solid evidence and discard any items that seemed like a stretch. They finished their case the night before Powell was to present it to the UN, and the CIA director stood behind every word of it.

Powell presented a powerful case to the UN, and the war began six weeks later. The rest is history. No WMDs were found.

Powell calls this part in his personal history “One of my most monumental failures, the one with the widest-ranging impact.”

How did Powell respond? He could have blamed the shaky sources the CIA passed off as reliable intelligence. He could have blamed Vice President Cheney for pressuring him to use less than credible sources. He could have blamed the unusable intelligence report he was given or the lack of time he had to prepare his case. Instead, Powell blamed himself. “I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem,” he said. “My instincts failed me.” Powell didn’t stop there. Acknowledging your role in problems is next to useless unless you also extract lessons learned. “I learned from this experience,” he writes. “I learned to be more demanding of intelligence analysts. I learned to sharpen my natural skepticism toward apparently all-knowing experts.”

Powell provides the following recipe for dealing with failure: “Learn from it. Study how you contributed to it. If you are responsible for it, own up to it. Though others may have greater responsibility for it than you do, don’t look for that as an escape hatch. Once you have analyzed what went wrong and what you did wrong, internalize the lessons learned and then move on.”

Powell’s example teaches the rest of us a great lesson. You only have power to overcome your problems to the degree that you believe you contributed to them.  If you believe that your problems are 100 percent caused by other people and bad circumstances, then you are completely at the mercy of other people and fate. However, the more you notice how you contribute to your problems, the more influence you can have on your outcomes.

Rest in peace General Powell knowing that your legacy of integrity and accountability is the legacy I choose to remember.

Much of this article is an excerpt from the book How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability .

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Developing the Superpower of Systems Thinking

The following article is an abridgement of chapter 3 from the upcoming book How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability.

Wouldn’t it be great to possess a superpower? Perhaps when you were a child you wished you could fly, have super strength, or be invisible. I’d like to show you how you can develop the superpower to see things that other people can’t so you can solve your most challenging problems. This superpower is called systems thinking.

Distinguishing the Forest from the Trees

Most people standing in a forest can see the trees that surround them, but often they don’t notice the decayed trees they are standing on that constitute the forest floor. Nor do they think much about the glacier that created the river and the aquifer that provide life to the forest.

I have hiked through forests and past lakes and rivers right up to the top of mountain peaks where I could see such glaciers. I remember the first time I noticed a small pool of water forming under a melting glacier as I stood perched above it on a rocky summit. My eyes followed the movement of the small stream that flowed from that glacier all the way down one side of the mountain. Once it reached the bottom, the stream banked around the base of the mountain and down a valley. Around the corner and partway down the valley, the small stream met another stream that was formed by a glacier I could see across the valley. It dawned on me that these two small streams flowing from the two glaciers formed the river that fed the large lake that channeled the water down the raging river I had hiked along for three hours that morning.

That was a beautiful “Aha!” moment for me. It thrilled and amazed me that within this epic, sprawling view laid out before my eyes, I was witnessing the birth of a river! The water melting from the glacier appeared to be flowing at a pace and volume not much greater than the water running from a bathtub faucet, but by the time it got to where I began my hike, the water had become a raging river strong enough to pulverize a log into toothpicks. When I began my hike that morning, I simply noticed the raging river I was hiking beside and hadn’t given a second thought about where it came from.

We tend to notice the relationship between things only when they are physically located close to each other and when the interaction between them happens within a short period of time. In other words, cause and effect are often obscured by distance and time.

The river I was walking beside all morning was physically located beyond my view of its source, the lake, and beyond the source of the lake, the glacier. This is the “distance” part of the equation. The water within that river had come from the glacier several days before I walked beside it. This is the “time” part of the equation. Only when I walked past each part of the river-making process in a single day and then elevated my vantage point so I could see several parts of the process in a single glance was I able to piece it all together in my mind.

This is the essence of systems thinking. To see how the individual components of our lives and the world around us interact with one another, we must elevate our thinking to see past the obstructions of distance and time. Until we do, many of the solutions to our problems will remain obscured.

Systems thinking is elevating your thinking to see the relationship between things that are separated by distance and time.
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Systems Create Their Own Behavior

Sometimes we unknowingly create systems that produce behaviors in others that we don’t like.

For example, a simple but all too common system in the workplace is managers who unwittingly encourage their staff to bring all problems to them to solve instead of empowering employees to solve their own problems.

Virtually every manager on the planet wishes his or her people would solve their own problems more often, or at the very least offer some possible solutions to the problems they bring to their boss. But here’s the issue: most managers are good problem solvers, and they know it! That’s what got them promoted to manager in the first place. So, when employees bring problems to their managers, most managers simply can’t help themselves from blurting out a solution. It’s as though most managers think their job is to play whack-a-mole all day. See a problem over here? Whack it with a solution. See a problem over there? Whack it with a solution. Since managers keep solving employees’ problems for them, employees don’t learn how to solve their own problems or even how to come up with possible solutions.

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Solving problems might be what gets someone promoted to manager, but most managers fail to notice that by solving their people’s problems, they are training people to bring their problems to the manager without first searching for a solution. What rational person would do all the extra legwork required to solve their problems when the fastest way to solve the problem, and the surest way to solve the problem exactly the way the boss wants it solved, is to ask the boss?

Systems create their own behavior. Now here’s a systems solution to that problem. Once someone becomes promoted to manager, his or her job should change from being a problem solver to being a teacher of problem-solving skills. Many managers must have missed that memo when they were promoted into management. Managers are responsible to build the capacity of those they lead. Rather than providing solutions when their staff bring them problems, managers who understand and accept this responsibility ask questions of their staff that empower them to think and solve problems for themselves.

Here are some questions that good leaders ask people who come to them to solve their problems:

How do you think we should fix this? What are some possible options?What similar challenges have you faced in the past? How did you solve that problem?Where can you get the information you need to solve this problem?Who or what will your solution affect? Who should you talk to before you implement your solution?What is your plan B if the solution you implement doesn’t work?

Managers who become frustrated that their employees only come to them with problems should take a close look at the system they have created that may be reinforcing this undesirable behavior. On the other hand, managers who embrace their role as teachers of problem-solving skills create a virtuous cycle of learning and capacity building within those they lead.

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As management consultant Edwards Deming discovered, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”  In other words, if you are getting undesirable results, there is likely a system at work producing those results, and quite often, managers unwittingly created that system!

Most People Don’t Notice the Systems That Are Pulling Their Strings

A big part of my work is helping organizations establish an ongoing leadership development process to help them become less dependent on recruiting to fill management positions. In a very real sense, many organizations’ dependence on recruiting has turned into a full-fledged addiction. My job is to help organizations kick their addiction to recruiting.

Virtually every time these recruiting addicts have a vacancy, they are forced to look outside the organization to find top talent because they don’t have qualified employees who can step up. Why not? Because employees have witnessed time and again that the best positions go to outsiders, so they have learned that “If you want to advance your career, you need to go somewhere else.” So, many of the most ambitious employees do go elsewhere. Those who stay tend to check out mentally and resign themselves to the likelihood that they will never move up in the organization, so they don’t even try to develop themselves.

Subsequently, when such organizations need to fill a key position, they have so few internal candidates to choose from that they feel compelled to look outside the organization again, which perpetuates the vicious cycle.

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On the contrary, organizations that invest in developing their employees are flush with talent. Not only do they create their own internal pipeline of leaders, they also get far more stellar external applicants because a) word gets out in the labor market that “if you want to fast-track your career, get a job with ______” and b) since most management positions are filled internally, the organization can focus its recruiting on entry-level positions, and it is far easier to recruit entry-level candidates than experienced candidates.

The first time that managers experience the lightning-fast fill time resulting from qualified internal promotions, they say, “I think we need to do more development,” which perpetuates this virtuous cycle.

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Organizations that are addicted to recruiting can’t see any way out of their addition. They only see what’s right in front of their noses: the short-term problem (a vacancy) and a short-term solution (recruit a replacement). They can’t see the system they created that got them into this mess because the cause is separated by distance and time.

Cause: Deciding not to invest seriously in employee development.Distance: The problem of not having enough qualified candidates to fill job openings didn’t originate in the recruiting department; it originated in the executive boardroom. Senior managers made employee development a low priority.Time: This decision was made a long time ago, but the vacancy needs to be filled now.

I’ll say it again: we have a tough time seeing the connection between cause and effect when cause and effect are separated by distance and time. This is the essential problem that systems thinking addresses. You must elevate your thinking beyond the here and now, so you can see the big picture to solve your most difficult problems.

Change the System, Influence Your Outcomes

Systems are all around us, but usually we are blissfully unaware of these systems, how we influence them, and how they influence us.

There are many types of systems. The examples provided above are “reinforcing systems,” which are commonly referred to as “vicious cycles” or “virtuous cycles,” depending on the outcome they produce. But really, a system is any type of structure through which results are produced. “Structures” can include habits, processes, or the physical layout of your environment.

You make decisions every day about how to structure your workspace, your living space, your routines, and your habits to get the results you want. If you believe drinking eight cups of water a day is good for you, you will likely put a water bottle on your desk to make it easier for you to accomplish that goal. If you believe that walking for thirty minutes a day will help you maintain a healthy body weight, then you might purchase a watch that can count your steps. These are examples of simple systems that we consciously design to help us get the desired results.

Have you considered the structures you live and work within that you haven’t consciously designed? Probably not. Whether you know it or not, whatever outcomes you receive, whether good or bad, there’s a good chance they are the result of a system. Here’s the good news: you can usually influence the systems that are producing your outcomes!

The gateway to solving your chronic problems is to ask this question: “Is it possible that other, less obvious, factors are causing my problems?” Asking this question will allow you to rise to a higher level of thinking, so you can begin to notice the true cause of your problems that are separated by distance and time. Once you enter the path of systems thinking and begin noticing the subtle factors that are causing your problems, the next question you must ask is “How can I influence these factors to produce better outcomes?”

As you develop this superpower of systems thinking, you will increase your capacity to solve your most vexing personal and organizational problems.

Be the first to know when the How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability book is released!

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The Most Frequently Missed Step in Problem Solving

Throughout history, giving birth was a risky business. However, in the early nineteenth century, deaths of mothers during childbirth suddenly and inexplicably skyrocketed.

An epidemic known as childbed fever swept through the western world in the 1800s, and it was only getting worse. By the mid-1800s, about one out of every ten women who gave birth in hospitals could expect to die an excruciating death from childbed fever within a week of delivering their child.

At this time, the largest maternity hospital in the world was in Vienna, Austria. Within the maternity hospital were two clinics. One clinic was staffed by doctors and medical students, and the other clinic was staffed by midwives. Hospital staff began to notice a disturbing trend. Patients in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical students died 2.5 times more often than the patients in the clinic staffed by midwives.

This didn’t make any sense. This was the golden age of medicine when doctors were beginning to abandon their superstitious traditions and embrace science.

One doctor at the hospital, Ignaz Semmelweis, decided to find out why this was happening. After isolating all the variables, he discovered that the only real difference between what the doctors were doing and what the midwives were doing was that the doctors would conduct autopsies in the morgue before doing their rounds of delivering babies without washing their hands! Semmelweis discovered that the doctors were transmitting the diseases from the mothers who had died from childbed fever to the healthy mothers in the maternity ward.

Once he made this discovery, Semmelweis insisted that all doctors at the hospital wash their hands and instruments in chlorine water before attending the maternity wards. Within months the mortality rate of the two clinics became comparable.

Armed with incontrovertible proof, or so it would seem, Semmelweis tried to convince the medical community that they, the doctors and medical students, were the problem. Far from being hailed as an important discovery, Semmelweis’s message landed like a lead balloon. Nobody likes to hear they are causing their own problems. When Semmelweis told doctors they were killing their patients, the doctors were highly motivated to reject his message—so motivated, in fact, that the medical community made it their mission to shut him up. They called Semmelweis crazy and locked him up in an insane asylum, where he died in short order.

“Mission accomplished,” the medical community must have thought. “Now let’s get back to fighting this childbed fever epidemic our way.”

Childbed fever continued to kill countless young mothers for more than fifty years before sterilizing instruments and washing hands became standard practice, at which point childbed fever essentially vanished.

Obtaining Power to Overcome Our Problems

The lesson in this avoidable tragedy is that the doctors were the carriers of the very disease they were battling every day. They were the problem! When this fact was pointed out to them, they refused to believe it. They refused to look in the mirror to find the solutions to their problems. The medical community’s failure to take a hard look in the mirror resulted in the needless, excruciating deaths of thousands of young women.

Do you know someone who is obviously contributing to their own problems but refuses to see it? Of course you do. We can all see when others are contributing to their own problems, but can we see it in ourselves?

Is it possible that we are like those doctors who are creating our own problems, but we can’t—or won’t—see it?

To discover the solutions to your problems, you must train yourself to look in the mirror before looking elsewhere for answers. By looking for and acknowledging your role in problems, you obtain greater power to overcome your problems. Only when you see how you are contributing to your problems will you discover what you can do to improve your odds of getting better results in the future.

If you don’t look in the mirror for answers, the solutions to many of your problems will continue to elude you. If you don’t discover how you are contributing to your problems, you are doomed to remain mired in your problems, hoping that, by some miracle, something will change to improve your circumstances.

 “Remember, every time you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.”
– Stephen Covey

The Golden Question of Problem Solving

The reason we often fail to notice that we are part of the problem is because we don’t ask the following question often enough: “How may I have contributed to this problem?”

Looking in the mirror for the solutions to your problems can be painful, but doing so gives you greater power to overcome your problems.

The next time you encounter a problem—even a problem you are convinced was caused by someone else—ask yourself “How may I have contributed to this problem?” As you ask this question with a sincere desire to uncover the truth, you will begin to notice what you could have done differently to prevent or lesson the impact of that particular problem. This will inform you about what you can do next time to get better results. But most importantly, you will likely discover solutions to your problems that would have otherwise remained undetected.

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For more information on accountability, check out the Creating Accountability Workshop Series:

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