Thursday's thought

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." - Jack Welch

Thursday's thought

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson

Like a Tiny Boss

A little humor before the holiday...

Judgment

One of the ways by which your boss measures you, whether he’s told you or not, is how you exercise good judgment. This holds true regardless of your position within your organization. Your ability to make sound decisions based on available information, and more importantly your choice to act on the best decision, says a lot about you. Demonstrating that you can figure out a solid plan speaks well of your intellect; carrying through with it can reveal much about your character as well.

The best way to develop a good sense of judgment, in my humble opinion, is through experience. It’s easy to make plans and test them on paper, but until you find yourself in a real world scenario you can’t know 100% how everything is going to work out or even how you yourself are going to react to everything happening around you. There’s nothing wrong with being intelligent or possessing natural talent for whatever it is you’re doing, and a dose of common sense doesn’t hurt either. But there’s a reason why people respect the opinions of tested veterans, whether in the boardroom or the war room.

Good judgment is something that is not developed overnight; wisdom and understanding come from having “been there and done that.” You also need to make mistakes, and your supervisor needs to let you make them. Hopefully you can avoid negligent mistakes that get people hurt or cost a lot of money, but you and your boss both should not expect you to be perfect every time.

Your judgment is something that you can improve and hone like any habit. Start by simply thinking things through! Be aware of how others will perceive your words and actions. Don’t shy away from risk, but try really hard to figure out the potential safety, financial, or social consequences of your actions before you move on them.

I don’t know the safety and financial risks associated with your particular work environment, but I have some suggestions for mitigating social risks. When all else fails, remember these: Don’t do something in public you wouldn’t want your parents to see, don’t send a text message you wouldn’t let your significant other read; don’t say anything at work you wouldn’t say in front of your boss; in short, don’t manufacture drama in the workplace. From the stories I’ve heard, these should keep you out of most trouble!

I’ll leave you with an example of a time I personally exercised poor judgment -- and it ended up costing me my job. In the late winter of 2001, I was employed in retail and worked a night shift. Back then I was living in the mountains near Lake Tahoe and thought I would kill some time before work by going four-wheeling in the snow. With proper planning (and preferably the buddy system), you can avoid most catastrophes, but you can’t predict everything. Someone had knocked over a signpost and it was buried in the snow. When I ran over the ripped-off tip of the signpost in my Jeep, it shredded my tire.

Stupidly, I did not have the proper tools to change my tire with me. I managed to make it back to a payphone, since back then cell service was spotty in the mountains. It was several hours before I could call for help, get my tire removed and my spare put on, and get back to town. I’d missed the start of my shift by several hours, and being a no-show was a big no-no! The next day, my boss made it very clear that not showing up for work was unacceptable. One could argue that what happened wasn’t necessarily my fault, but if I’d used better judgment at any point in the situation, I could probably have avoided losing my job.

I should have realized that four-wheeling in the snow wasn’t a great idea just a few hours before work; I should have had the proper tools to remove my tire; perhaps I even should have left my Jeep overnight and gotten a ride to work from someone else so that I wouldn’t miss my shift. If I’d thought things through before taking action, I wouldn’t have had to learn that bitter lesson the hard way. On the plus side, no one was hurt, and I like to believe that I’m a little wiser for the experience and think things through more carefully now. Most of the time.

What tips do you have for developing a better sense of judgment? Ever learned a lesson the hard way and feel like sharing your new wisdom? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's thought

“Your leadership depends on you. You can only be a great leader when you can lead yourself well first.”

- Richard Norris

Lunch break link

I often remind newer managers how important it is to take initiative and constantly seek to improve their environment, team or performance. In this article from Leading with Trust shared on LinkedIn by one of my mentors, the author poses an odd but accurate question using Thermometers and Thermostats as metaphors for leadership:

“Thermostat leaders, however, constantly have a pulse on the morale, productivity, stress level, and environmental conditions of their team. When the temperature gets hot because the team is under pressure of a heavy workload, resources are scarce, or pending deadlines are causing stress, they cool things off by acting as the calming influence with the team. They take time to listen to the concerns of their team members and provide the necessary direction and support that’s needed to help the team achieve its goals. Thermostat leaders also alleviate pressure on their team by mixing in some lighthearted fun at opportune times.”

He goes on to explain what’s basically the difference between being proactive or reactive with respect to influence on your team. Are you setting the tone and driving the climate in your department or organization? Or are you just reflecting the current atmosphere?

Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

A reader with a difficult employee

This week I've got another real-world topic to discuss that’s not pulled directly from my own experience. One of my readers (I’ll call him Kevin) has asked for some suggestions for handling an employee he supervises. To give a little bit of background, Kevin is somewhat new to the management group in his organization, although it isn't the first leadership position he’s held. He’s been with his current company for a while now and had a chance to show off his technical expertise and organizational skills.

After demonstrating an ability to positively influence the performance of other employees, his role has evolved to include directing their activities. One of those employees has been frustrating him, though. Kevin writes that one of the junior employees in his department, who I’ll refer to as John, has a tendency to get extremely defensive in the face of perceived criticism from Kevin and other managers, even when it’s in the form of constructive feedback.

Kevin will observe John doing something he knows is not the best use of time or most effective way to perform, a task and John doesn't respond well. He insists with alarm that he didn't know any better, and will point to other employees as having dropped the ball or taught him how to do things incorrectly. John also sometimes continues to insist that what he’s currently working on is more important than other tasks that may be asked of him, regardless of whether the other task may be a higher priority.

From what I can see, it sounds like there are two main issues here. One of these is a little bit less complicated, and that is that John might be having difficulty setting priorities. Granted, we could probably all use better decision-making abilities, and I’ll be touching on that in a future article. While we can’t force an individual to develop good habits as far as prioritizing, we can teach them some basic techniques. If you’re not a regular reader, you might not know that I’m a fan of the easiest way of choosing priorities - is it important or not, is it urgent or not - and that method is easy to explain to an employee.

Where this breaks down is at the organizational level. Perhaps John doesn't understand which clients’ projects are the most important to address, or how the hierarchy of his supervisors can help determine whose instructions to follow. It may also be true that John doesn't have visibility on project timelines, and may not know that an email from a smaller client requires a response today while the request from the bigger client can wait until Monday. He may benefit from an explanation of not just how to set priorities, but who and what are important and urgent in his specific department and company.

The second issue is a little bit touchier to address; John does not take feedback well, and he’s about to get feedback on his own personality. Further, he needs to take ownership of his actions and decisions, and not place blame on other employees. These issues are not only relevant now, but may continue to be relevant if John doesn't improve after receiving feedback. Kevin tells me he’s already spoken with John about it, explaining how how his behavior is what’s affecting his interactions with others and distracting from doing his job.

That first meeting went well because Kevin kept it professional and not personal. For a while, John improved and was able to take direction without becoming defensive. After some time passed, however, he reverted to his old ways and once again began to deflect blame and refuse to accept responsibility for his performance. At this point, Kevin needs to keep his message consistent and remind John that he’s lapsing. Kevin and John work for an organization that values professional behavior, and it would help Kevin to explain to John that his behavior doesn't meet the criteria for that.

Kevin should make sure that he has clearly communicated his expectations for John the first time, and again in this next conversation. He will also need to validate that John understands those expectations. This will help ensure that John stops blaming others when Kevin provides constructive feedback. He can no longer say that a job that didn't get done was someone else’s responsibility, or that he didn't understand his duties.

John’s behavior and performance improved for a while, and to keep him from getting down when receiving criticism, Kevin should acknowledge and praise that improvement. If he continues to become defensive and ignore feedback or deflect blame, however, Kevin may eventually need to use a stricter form of performance management. If it comes to that, the same rules apply. Kevin needs to explain clearly and objectively how John’s attitude is negatively impacting his performance, and why any disciplinary measures may be taken at that time.

It’s worth Kevin’s time to try and help John change, and not just because of the good it will do for John. It will not only be less stressful for Kevin to interact with him, but also he may find that his employee is better able to do his job when he’s more focused on the task at hand than the criticism he may receive.

Do you have someone on your team who doesn't respond well to feedback or criticism from their boss? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you've enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's thought

“Don't ever get comfortable when you have the ability to achieve more.” -Kishon Prince

Lunch break link

I frequently make mention of outstanding examples of leadership that I encounter, and being sort of a list junkie I’m going to share with you an article from LinkedIn that I ran across this past weekend called “The Essential Hallmarks of a Good Leader.”

As you can probably imagine, the author goes into a description of traits which he’s learned to look for in himself and others throughout his successful career. No list of traits or principles can ever exhaustively define what makes a good leader, of course, but I really enjoyed this one. In addition to sharing some of the values of an effective leader, he also takes a moment at the beginning of the article to explain the importance of good leaders in business. I may be a little biased, perhaps:

“At many of the best companies throughout history, the constant creation of good leaders is what has enabled the organizations to stand the true test of greatness – the test of time. Look at our great military. We love hiring veterans – more than 5,000 in the past couple years. These veterans are outstanding employees and team members.”

The author, CEO Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, also shares a few final thoughts on what he calls the grey area of leadership, which come across as common sense but perhaps aren’t always first on your mind when looking to fill a management or leadership role. Even if you aren’t expecting to interview for CEO anytime soon, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to go read his article.
Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Justice

I consider myself extremely fortunate that I grew up in a country whose people have a strong sense of justice. There exists in our government, in our schools, in our professional sports, and in most workplaces, a system by which people are treated more or less consistently. This is not an absolute, of course, and there will be people in your life who will be subjective or display favoritism to the detriment of their team. This value is strong enough in our society, however, that many of us grow up not only expecting to benefit from just treatment but also, when in a position of authority, to be just in our treatment of others.

A sense of justice is one of the more subtle leadership traits that the Marine Corps taught me. When I think of great leaders in history or even simply great bosses I’ve had, it’s not the first thing that comes to mind if I were to describe those individuals. And yet, it’s one of the traits that those being led may appreciate and respect most when all is said and done. In particular, when times are tough and no one is really feeling great about the mission in front of them, it’s crucial to assign work or administer discipline or rewards in the most fair manner possible. This applies in the military and in civilian workplaces.

Sometimes things are just going to suck and no one particular decision is going to seem fair. In situations I’ve encountered like this in the past, I’ve always tried to take the “least unfair” route. In one management role, I found myself writing annual performance appraisals for employees who I hadn’t personally supervised during the review period. I had to go with the input of their assistant managers and my colleagues who had interacted with the employees, in addition to any formal recognition or counseling performed by my predecessor.

It was true that it wasn’t extremely fair to any one employee that I was the one who would be writing their reviews. There was no one else who could have done it, though. So I came up with the most unbiased system that I could. While most of the employees didn’t like it, I was able to communicate to them why it was our best option, how justice was still being done. No one disputed their review scores that year.

I’m human, but I sincerely try to take personal preference and relationships out of merit decisions in the workplace. I’ve promoted the most qualified individual from amongst their peers, despite it being an unpopular or awkward decision. I’ve also been in a position where I had to select which employees got their work hours cut to save on payroll -- at more than one company now. I don’t pick the employees I like to stay, and the ones who frustrate me to go home. I keep the top performers based on their performance alone, and make the tough call to furlough the ones who aren’t necessarily as productive or as effective.

I’ve been on the receiving end of justice in the past, of course. This has benefitted me at times and left me holding the short end of the stick in others. In the fall of 2002 I had an opportunity to attend additional technical training and obtain a secondary MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty. There were many more senior Marines in my unit who wanted to go, and several of them were better known to our commanding officer. I had demonstrated a passion for this additional skill in the past, and in addition to pursuing it as a personal hobby I’d also taken time on the weekends to train other Marines in my unit in the same skill set and share my knowledge of the subject. So when it came time to send a couple of representatives to training, it made sense that I was one of them.

I’ve also been denied additional training for just reasons in the past, and I didn’t hold a grudge about it. In 2007 when I was an assistant manager in a retail environment, I wanted to attend a two week leadership development course my organization was putting on at our corporate office. I was ambitious and performing well in my duties, and desperately wanted to go. We could only send so many people from our district, unfortunately, so another assistant manager who was closer to being ready to become a store manager got to go instead. Because my boss was able to explain to me the reasoning behind the decision, I was okay with it. Eventually I was able to attend two quarters later.

The Marines taught me a lot, and they’re a tough organization that isn’t for everyone. At the end of the day, though, the finest fighting force in the world is absolutely a meritocracy where the best of the best are rewarded and recognized. The same should be true of your leadership and management style regardless of where you work... but don’t feel obligated to be quite as gung-ho about it.

Have you ever communicated the results of a justly-made decision and found it received better than you expected? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's thought

"Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives." - Russel Honore

Doing the hard things

You’ve been working hard and smart, putting in long hours and making the right calls. You’re doing whatever it takes to get the job done, and don’t think upper management hasn’t noticed! Sooner or later though, the day is going to come your when your job requires you to do something with which you are not entirely comfortable. I'm not talking about cleaning the bathrooms, and I'm not talking about making your first major sales pitch.

Unless you’re extremely lucky, there’s a big possibility that at some point in your career you’ll be expected to carry out orders you may not be happy about. You may not always see eye to eye with your boss, or buy into your company's new strategy, but you DO have to do your job. Assuming that you’re otherwise a good fit for your position, what do you do when directed to carry out activities that make you uncomfortable?

It depends a lot on what exactly you’re doing. If you’re in a position to impact the job security of other people, this can weigh heavily on your heart. It might be that you have new standards for productivity that you have to roll out and don’t feel your team can live up to. Possibly you’re in charge of conducting SOP audits on your former peers and you know that your findings will hinder your colleague’s career progress. Maybe you’re in the unfortunate position of letting someone go based on their performance and you don’t agree with the standards you’ve been given for rating them.

Good leaders are usually open to feedback on their processes and decisions and you may have a say in whether or not this uncomfortable mission goes forward. It’s just good stewardship of the organization to only roll out processes that make sense, standards that aren't arbitrary or unreasonable, and rate employee performance on the fairest possible system. Hopefully if you’re a manager you’re doing what’s best for your company; hopefully if your manager is the one requiring you to execute on something you don’t agree with, he or she is willing and able to explain the reasoning behind it. Even after you understand where your expectations are derived from, however, you may still not feel good about imposing those expectations on your own team. And after pushing back, you may still be expected to move forward with your duties.

Exercising sound management principles is important. Even more important, however, is doing what you feel is right. When all is said and done, you alone are the judge of what will sit well with you. If you're not able to reconcile your duties with your values and absolutely cannot go through with this task, what are you going to do about it? Are you in a position to effect a change, and instill your own values on this process? If not, are you willing to suffer the consequences of being held accountable for your inaction?

Are you willing to look for a different role or position, or even a new job, where you don’t have to be put in this position? Again, you are the person best suited to answer those questions. Please understand that I’m not advocating for running away from tough choices, but sometimes recognizing that your current role is not the best fit for you is better not just for your organization, but yourself.

Have you ever found yourself struggling to get on board with a tough decision? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's thought

"In every business, in every industry, management does matter." - Michael Eisner

How to juggle - like a boss

Whether or not your job requires you to supervise others, you’ll often find yourself caught up with multiple projects or tasks that all seem to have a high priority assigned to them. Sometimes that’s true, and it doesn’t help if your boss keeps lumping stuff onto your plate -- it can make managing your time difficult and affect the quality of your work. Every now and again this can become a little overwhelming.

The problem is compounded if you’re responsible for the activities or performance of other employees. As they wait on you for directions or feedback and you’re now getting pressure from above and below to finish your to-do list, being stuck in the middle quickly becomes no fun at all. Situations like this are occasionally further complicated when your boss doesn’t set you up for success by giving you the tools or resources you need.

An example of this scenario might be having quarterly production reports due to your corporate office, a monthly safety huddle to plan and conduct with your entire staff, manufacturing goals for that same staff to meet coming up shortly, a meeting with your director to report on those production numbers, a VIP visitor needing a tour, and a coaching session with a struggling employee. Also, maybe your HR office hasn’t provided you with last month’s lost-time injury numbers yet for your safety meeting. Sound familiar? Competing demands for your time and the stress that you experience are just the nature of the business for many jobs.

I have a suggestion for you: Be cool.

Easier said than done, right? I know, I know, I probably just lost some of my readers over that. Let me explain. It’s probably not time to freak out unless you’ve demonstrated complete and total negligence in managing your time. First of all, understand that your boss probably expects you to ask questions, not only to clarify expectations but also (infrequently, we hope) to push back and ask for more time or more reasonable goals if you can make a legitimate business case for such. Similarly, if you’re in a leadership position, your employees most likely understand that you’re incredibly busy and haven’t forgotten about them. Or you didn’t mean to, if you already have!

I’m not going to go into depth here about basic task prioritization - is it important? urgent? et cetera - since for the sake of this article we’re going to have some fun and assume that all of your tasks are critical with imminent deadlines. How to keep your cool in this case, then?

Let’s stick to the scenario laid out previously. Although you won’t always be able to make everything fit into your agenda, you can get a little creative and save yourself some headaches. Consider asking the VIP to sit in and observe your safety huddle; perhaps you’re able to delegate conducting this meeting to another employee, to get the team more engaged? While preparing your quarterly reports, shoot an email over to your director and explain that the VIP visit has necessitated pushing back your meeting. Although it’s not ideal to delay performance management for too long, save your coaching session with your employee for later on. If you’re going to be giving constructive rather than positive feedback, you don’t want to set the tone for your day by criticizing someone.

There will be times when you just aren’t able to complete every project on your plate, though. In these situations you need to think about how to accomplish those tasks which will have the greatest or most immediate impact. If there are heavy fines associated with not holding a safety meeting on time, then focus on that before you conduct any other meetings. No one wants to compromise safety anyway. If your tasks involve settling matters that affect employee job security, don’t delay on those more than a day or two. You don’t want to hold off on giving employees feedback on their performance for too long, if you have an employee producing defective brake rotors into mid-May but you’ve known they were using the wrong set of moulds since early April.

The bottom line is that being smart about it will help you resolve many of your time management issues. There will be times when you won’t be able to complete all of your tasks in the most desirable amount of time. As long as this is due to circumstances outside the individual’s control and he or she is taking the initiative to prioritize intelligently, I don’t usually punish managers under me for not getting every single thing done when I’m the one adding tasks to their checklists. Do be diligent however; times like this are not for malingering or dawdling.

Finally, try not to let your stress drag down your peers or the people who report to you. Juggling multiple projects successfully sometimes just means getting the most impactful things done first. Keep your cool, get organized so you don’t lose track of the things you need to get done, and you’ll be all right.

Do you frequently find yourself piling up with tasks from every direction? How do you decide what’s most important or most time-sensitive? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's thought

“Effective management always means asking the right question.” - Robert Heller

Lunch break link

Ever written down your thoughts about a tough experience or situation you’ve been through and found it to be cathartic? That’s the focus of this article about expressive writing. In it, the author shares some surprising study results about people that go through negative experiences and write about their feelings afterward. The results indicated that it didn’t just make people feel better, it actually made them perform better:

“Both groups wrote for five days, 20 minutes per day, describing the emotional challenges of searching for a new job, relationship problems, financial stressors, the immediate experience of being fired, losing their coworkers and feeling rejected.

Three months later, in the control groups, less than 5% of the engineers were reemployed. In the expressive writing group, more than 26% of the engineers were reemployed.”

Adam Grant, the author of the article, continues to go into some really specific detail in similar studies, and in every situation they learned more about how people feel and perform better after writing about their stressful events. We all occasionally feel stressed out by traumatic events in life or in the workplace. Maybe keeping a journal like Richard Branson isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's thought

"The smaller the function, the greater the management." - C. Northcote Parkinson

Lunch break link

I’ve gotten spoiled with my current employer -- we don’t have an email inbox size limit. I can store as many emails as I want for as long as I want, or at least thus far that’s the case. With past employers, however, I’ve run up against fairly strict limits where there was a clear need to be picky about what got to stay and what had to go. In today’s link, Randi Zuckerberg shares a few tips for managing one’s inbox, and a really fun way to get it manageable in the first place:

“It’s hard to motivate yourself to take on such a daunting, overwhelming task on your own. I procrastinated for months cleaning out my garage at home. But this weekend, when my husband turned to me and said, “Let’s have a garage cleaning party!” it suddenly became a fun, social thing. We drank beer, played music, and laughed about random old stuff we found. Just like that, cleaning our home and getting rid of our junk didn’t feel like a chore anymore.

So why not apply that philosophy to taming your inbox?”

I won’t ruin it for you here; you’ll just have to go read her article for yourself. Obviously this week’s link isn’t as relevant for everyone. For those who do face a daily deluge of emails, keep in mind that the less time you spend sorting through your inbox, the more time you free up to lead and serve your team.
Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

What does my boss want?

I am not a mind reader. I never expect to become one. Fortunately so far, none of my roles have required this or listed it in the job description, although some have certainly felt like it. It wouldn’t be fair to expect that of me, and I certainly wouldn’t expect it from my own employees. I’m sure there are times when you felt like your own boss wanted you to be a mind reader. I can’t give you that particular superpower, but I can give you some insights. Although the specific daily needs of each business are different, there are basic principles and behaviors that every manager loves to see in his employees.

I’ll explain some of them here based on my leadership style and those of the men and women who’ve managed me. These won’t address every situation in which you may find yourself, but they may come in handy. This goes double for those of you with bosses who are just plain hard to get a read on. Although there’s no real hierarchy to this list, I suspect I’ll probably be writing them down more or less in order of importance to me personally. I want to point out that these examples of what your own boss might want from you apply whether you’re currently in a management position or not.

Act with integrity. I know what you’re thinking -- okay, I’m wasting time reading this, that goes without saying. This goes beyond simple ethics like “do not lie, cheat or steal” though. Do the right thing for the right reason all the time. In any functioning business where you would actually want to work, earning the trust of your peers, employees and leadership goes a long way.

Look very hard for the big picture. Now, at the end of the day, you should work to live and not the other way around. We fully understand that you’re in this for your own best interests and would be worried if you weren’t. What we want you to get is that what’s good for your personal career are your long-term goals and development within the scope of the business needs. If your personal needs aren’t compatible with those, you’re wasting your time working there. If your supervisor is asking you to do something you don’t necessarily agree with (or stop doing something you prefer to do), open your mind and think about the part you play in things before you push back. You might be surprised by how important your success is to his plans.

Give 100% while you’re on the clock. You don’t always have to have the right answer for every situation, as long as you earnestly attempt to get that answer before all is said and done. You’re not going to get every task done every day, and we know that. Demonstrate that you’re doing your due diligence and don’t be afraid to leave us a little evidence to that fact. We don’t always know that you’re working on a response to our last email, or making progress on a project, so if you’re doing all you can then make sure you’ve got something to show for it.

On the other hand, you may find yourself done ahead of time frequently, or that your job is too easy and you get bored. While we really have no concerns for who you are or what you do after work, while you’re on the job we want to see you give it your all. In this economy there are a dozen people willing to put forth everything they’ve got even when it exceeds their requirements, and you don’t want to get a reputation for coasting along. This is not to say you should be stressed out or running at full speed all the time. No boss wants you to hate your job. Even if it takes you half the effort to do your job when compared to your peers, you should always be looking to contribute more. True leaders are those who improve the people around them, and believe me when I say we recognize those who expend their “extra” energy helping the people around them.

Pay attention and follow directions. Let’s face it, not every manager out there is great at communicating expectations all the time, and sometimes you may have to read between the lines. While your boss should be explicit about what he wants from you, this won’t always be the case. Either way, simple or unclear, be alert for potential “action items” in each conversation, verbal or otherwise. It’s frustrating when we want something done and feel we’ve expressed that, only to find that it’s not being done accurately or at all. Help your boss help himself in this situation -- ask for clarification or takeaways. Just like we restate customer requests by repeating back and restating their issues to confirm we understand their needs, you want to be sure you’ve got all the information you need to do your job. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Trust in our intentions. A lot of managers occasionally articulate their thoughts poorly or don’t handle problems as perfectly as they’d like. Every supervisor I’ve ever had, and every supervisor who’s ever worked for me, has had the best of intentions for their own direct reports. I didn’t always realize it at the time (Lance, I’m looking at you) but in the end getting onboard with the vision shared by my boss almost always worked out better for me than if I’d just gone all cowboy about it.

Similarly, I frequently see managers who work for me trying to do right by their customers by enabling and supporting their own employees. The employees don’t always believe it, but I don’t keep supervisors under me who don’t bust their behinds for their employees day in and day out. I can’t necessarily explain that to their employees. The truth is that, while there will always be bad apples, most managers don’t get to be in a leadership position without understanding that they only rise to the top on the success of their teams, not themselves. Finally, sometimes business needs aren’t so great for the employee. No manager enjoys delivering bad news; please understand that a good boss will carefully consider any decision that adversely impacts an employee and it isn’t personal.

That’s it for today; there are more things your own leadership would probably want from you, but let’s save that for another article. Are you in a position where you’re managing people or teams? What do you want most from your employees? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"Success in management and success in sport are derived from the same basic principles." - Will Carling

Lunch break link

Today's link is to an article called 7 Simple Rules to Being a Leader, No Matter What Your Experience that showcases an organic, demonstrated leadership with the always-engaging sports metaphor:

"The Redskins season is a perfect demonstration that regardless of circumstance, anyone and everyone can be a leader. It’s not about age, gender or title. It isn’t even about being the best communicator or being the most popular. Many will argue that the characteristics that make up a leader are something you’re born with, but I disagree wholeheartedly. These skills can be developed at any time throughout your career and leaders can and do come in all different personality types. There is only one truism - You never become a leader through a job promotion, you become one only through your own actions."

This Rajat Taneja article is short but sweet. A young rookie steps up and earns his respect by showing the principles outlined here. Will you step up? Will you prove yourself? True leaders are those who improve the people around them, not just by raising the bar, but by lifting up their team.

What your interviewer wants to tell you but won't

Over the years I’ve interviewed many people for a wide variety of roles ranging from entry level to management. It’s a facet of my job that I truly enjoy, because I not only get to meet new people but I frequently see people at their best, their most positive and animated. Recently I had the opportunity to conduct several for my employer and it reminded me of one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place, which was to help people prepare for job interviews. A lot of it is what we would now consider common sense, such as dressing appropriately or maintaining eye contact and good body language. I’m going to skip those for today and share with you the things that I, as a hiring manager and interviewer, wish candidates would take a little more seriously.

There are thousands of questions you might encounter during a job interview; even if you narrow it down to the most likely to be asked, there are still hundreds you might expect to hear. There are numerous books out there with great ideas about how to answer these, but you’re not going to have time to read them all. If you did have time to read them all, maybe that’s time better spent researching the companies and jobs you’re applying for. Which brings me to my first point...

Do your homework and understand the nature of the job you’re interviewing for. This includes learning as much as you can about the specific responsibilities for the position. In addition to reviewing the job description, talk to anyone you can, and read anything you can, about it ahead of time. Try and find out what the actual hiring manager is looking for in a successful candidate.

During the interview itself, pay attention to cues from the interviewer that may give you some insight to the duties and expectations for the role. If you give off the impression that you don’t really know what you’re getting into, the hiring manager may well decide that you’re not a good fit for the job. If you have no idea what your potential future employer does at all, you’re giving off the clear sign that you don’t put a lot of effort into important tasks (like landing a job).

Listen to the questions being asked and make sure you address their points. This may sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed how often job candidates start formulating their response before the question is even fully asked. There’s a reason Jeopardy doesn’t let players hit their buzzer until Alex is done reading the clue.

I’ve heard lots of very interesting stories, and of course some of these have showcased great skill sets. However, if I’m asking you to give me an example of a time when you went above and beyond for a customer, and you simply tell me how many customer service awards you’ve won, that doesn’t actually answer my question. It does tell me you’re not an effective listener, though. A follow-up to this point is to make sure you ask some questions of your own. Intelligent, non-redundant questions let me know you were in fact listening and engaged in our conversation.

Speaking of examples, try to be as specific as possible. You won’t always have a perfect anecdote to share with your interviewer that’s 100% relevant to the job you’re interviewing for, especially when you’re changing career fields. But the person interviewing you isn’t asking just to hear the sound of his own voice. Rather than just list your job responsibilities - he’s already seen your resume after all - show off your decision-making ability as well as reinforce that you’re not just making things up by telling a story with humanizing details. Your interviewer wants to know your thought process and how you handle yourself. Giving specific examples suggests that you’re not merely being hypothetical about your ability to do the job; it suggests you’ve been there, done that, and proven yourself.

Finally, for your bonus tip, timing is important. Familiarize yourself with the location where you’re going to be interviewed ahead of time, and know the traffic patterns - there are very few excuses for arriving late to an interview. Although it goes without saying that you should arrive early, you don’t want to get there too far ahead of time. When I was in the Marines, we took the “15 minutes early IS on time” thing a little bit too far -- I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say my platoon once showed up over two hours earlier than we were required to for a routine event.

That’s ridiculous. In today’s world of smartphones and GPS, so is showing up half an hour early to a job interview. Honestly, if you arrive more than about 10 minutes early (especially if you request to see me right when you arrive) it makes me feel like you don’t know how to manage your time, and you don’t respect mine. Your appointed time was most likely set for a reason. In many situations, if you arrive too far in advance there will be other employees - store associates, receptionists, and the like - who will observe your behavior and report it to the interviewer. You’re better off waiting around the corner or down the street. Take that time to review the job description, your resume, or work samples once more, and please, just try and relax.

Got any great interview tips you want to let people know about? Please feel free to share them in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success." - James Cash Penney

Who works for whom?

One of the bosses I’ve worked for who had the greatest influence on my leadership style happened to be someone with whom I spent the least amount of time. In early 2007, my methods of managing others were still based mostly on having worked lots of retail and directing the efforts of Marines in fast-paced working environments. My communication and decision-making was usually very straightforward and based on my first instincts. It would also have been fair to say I could be somewhat abrasive at times toward the people I supervised. Still, a senior manager at my organization saw some potential in me, and took a chance on promoting me within his group.

I sincerely think of that year as a major turning point in my professional development. Up until then, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with my life, or even of my upward path at that company. Working for this particular boss changed that. His guidance and mentoring style not only made me a more effective leader, but gave me the confidence in myself to narrow down the direction in which I wanted to take my career.

This senior manager was what many people would consider a servant leader. He embodied a lot of the principles which I strive to continue to develop and abide by in my leadership roles to this day. He led by example, he empowered me and the other junior managers to do our jobs as effectively as possible, and he was responsive to our needs. Not all of my peers responded well to his style, but boy, I sure did! He pushed us out of our comfort zones and constantly gave us as much responsibility as he felt we could handle. He would always show us, or ask us for, a better way of doing things. He loudly celebrated our successes, and quietly after-actioned our failures to see where would could turn them into wins the next time around.

I learned better ways of talking with my employees while working for him, as his communication style was always very warm and friendly. He was so consistently positive with every situation, every team member, that I could tell he was sincere about it, and I wanted to be that way, too. Although I’ve never developed the easygoing style that seemed to come so naturally for him, I nevertheless learned to lighten up on my employees and colleagues. I also learned to stay optimistic and think constructively regardless of how frustrating a situation (or subordinate) was getting, and to continually look for, and enjoy, the positive things in my environment. This optimism has carried over into my personal life as well.

Most of all, he removed every obstacle to our success. This absolutely did not mean cutting us a lot of slack or letting us get away with anything we wanted. Instead, he listened to what we had to say and collaborated with us in improving our performance, audit scores, and customer experience. He asked what we wanted out of our time working for him or for the organization, and found creative ways to focus our growth and energy such that it always seemed to fit our business needs.

This particular boss enabled me and others to bring forth the best within ourselves -- for our own good, for each other, and for our customers. I decided I wanted to be like him, even though at that time I didn’t fully appreciate why we were such a high-performing team. The reason our group was was so successful was because all the time we thought we were working for him, he was truly working every day for us.

Have you ever worked “for” a really amazing boss? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Accepting tough feedback

Ah, feedback. That magical all-encompassing word we use to justify advice, observations, opinions, judgements, words of encouragement, and criticism both constructive and otherwise. Personally, I’ve received audience feedback on presentations I deliver a few weekends a year with a volunteer organization. In my professional career, I’ve received feedback of all kinds. This ranged from getting chewed out at full volume in the Marines, what we called a “conversational tone,” to thankful and not-so-thankful letters from customers, and regular written performance reviews in my civilian jobs. In many of these situations, sometimes my boss and even my employees have just wanted to tell me what they felt about me.

It’s not a bad thing to get feedback. It’s always nice to be told you’re doing a good job, of course. When accepting positive feedback, simply be gracious about it. If you’re really a go-getter, you can take those compliments and think about how to capitalize on your strengths, but let’s save that for another day.

Feedback can be tough to take sometimes when it’s not what you want to hear -- for most people, it’s not easy to be criticized. This week’s article is going to focus more on how to accept that criticism, or redirection of your efforts. Being open to feedback is one of the more critical methods by which both managers and employees become stronger.

So, let’s just dive right in. The most important thing to remember about constructive criticism from your boss: It’s not personal.

Okay, now that’s out of the way. Your boss sincerely wants your organization and your team to be a success. She isn’t talking to you about your performance or behavior because she doesn’t like you, or to pick on you. By far the most likely reason you’re having this discussion is because she sees something that is having an adverse impact on your success and wants to fix it. In fact, most managers don’t particularly like giving negative feedback; if anything, she’s probably waited to be sure it’s really necessary to address the issue at all. You may not agree with what your boss is saying, and that’s fine, but most likely she has a better overall picture than you of the impact your behavior is having on your team or customers.

Occasionally you may find that your peers or your employees want to let you know how they feel about something you’re doing. Regardless of the source, be open-minded and humble. what they have to say may be petty or even completely inaccurate, but you owe it to yourself and to them to listen attentively. What they perceive may or may not be the whole truth and you may not be able to appease them in good conscience. If they believe you’re behaving in a certain way and they don’t agree with it, however, you’re going to want to hear what they have to say. Get it out in the open before it becomes a bigger issue that damages morale or performance for them or others. Besides, who knows? They just might even be right.

What if the direction of the conversation is a complete surprise? If your boss is doing her job (and you’re not completely deluded), you should never be surprised by what your manager has to say about how you’re doing. The same goes for you and your employees, by the way, if you’re in a position that involves supervising others. Keeping your employees informed about how they’re doing is part of your job, and they should know where they stand with you at any given time.

Anyway, sometimes changes slip through the cracks or you’ll have a project, customer interaction or sales quarter that doesn’t go as well as you thought, and you’ll find yourself caught off-guard when told you’re doing something that isn’t really what your manager had in mind. In a situation like this, it’s even more important than normal to keep that open mind I mentioned earlier. It’s natural to feel defensive when criticized, but you’re not going to have much focus coming out of the meeting if you don’t listen and take that criticism seriously.

You also need to remember that this conversation is about you. Although the discussion may involve your interactions with others, or you may have some “feedback” of your own to give to the person talking to you, bite your tongue in this instance. The last thing you want to do is turn this discussion into an argument in which nobody learns anything and everybody’s feelings get hurt.

Finally, seek feedback regularly. You can’t act on feedback that you don’t have. Even if you think or know that you won’t like what you’re going to hear, be open to it. Not only does your boss want you focused on being the best performer possible, but asking for criticism - and addressing any concerns or changes that need to be made - will demonstrate a high level of engagement that she will respect. The more you know about how you’re doing, the better a job you can do at it.

Have you ever gotten constructive criticism of your behavior or performance that was tough to swallow? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." - John C. Maxwell

A reader asks for assistance

This week marks a milestone for The Boss Perspective. The article for today is going to focus on a question submitted by one of my readers, who we’ll call Linda for privacy’s sake. She found herself in a situation at work recently that’s not going to be fun for her to address. It seems that Linda, who is a junior manager, planned for some time off a while back, and had scheduled her assistant to cover the shift. The assistant, who’s demonstrated some attendance issues in the past, initially agreed to work Linda’s shift but cancelled at the last minute to catch up on schoolwork.

There are a whole mess of reasons why she may have chosen to back out and leave Linda and her customers hanging. I’m going to discuss this as if I were the one dealing with the situation, but I’m going to intentionally do so without some background context. It wouldn’t be appropriate to highlight their company’s specific policies on this website, and of course we don’t have the employee’s side of the story. My response will need to be fairly generic because of this, but the rest of my readers may one day find themselves in a similar situation. It may be worth noting, however, that Linda and her assistant are close in age, which may play into how the assistant feels about reporting to Linda.

The business model for this particular workplace required employees to stick to a fairly specific and regular schedule based on the hours of operation. Hopefully I’ve spoken to my assistant in the past, to communicate our attendance policy but also to address her prior struggles with adhering to the schedule. If she’s not already, she should probably be on a performance plan with specific goals and objectives for improvement. With attendance, this is usually straightforward. An organization can consider what accommodations need to be made, but in general if the business needs dictate a set schedule then that’s pretty much where it needs to be.

I would review the assistant’s individual calendar so I could plan for a meeting that shouldn’t be interrupted or postponed. If this is the sort of organization that does “write-ups” or other documentation of discipline, I would prepare that ahead of time and have it ready when I go to sit down and talk with the assistant just in case. I would open with discussing what was agreed to or understood versus what actually occurred with regard to her dropping the ball, and ask for her thought process or reasoning behind not covering the shift she agreed to.

In my personal experience, both as an employee and as a supervisor, homework and studying can frequently conflict with a work schedule -- especially if one wants to have any sort of personal life outside of school and work! It may well be that this particular individual doesn’t plan to make a career out of being someone’s assistant at this company, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is committing to a schedule and then not living up to that commitment. Nor is this a habit that she should develop prior to moving on to her “career” job, wherever that may be.

It may not be enough simply to tell her that she was supposed to do something or agreed to do something and then didn’t get it done, and this is disappointing or whatnot. To help her see both sides of the story, I would explain to her how this affected the personal life of whoever ended up unexpectedly working the shift, and how it impacted the customer experience. Then I would ask her what she could have done differently to avoid this situation. Although I’d want her to see a lesson to be learned, or better alternative to ditching work, I wouldn’t be incredibly surprised if she simply expressed regret at agreeing to cover the shift in the first place.

This is tricky because I don’t want to get into her personal business with questions like “when did you receive your homework assignment” or “what were you doing all week that prevented you from studying at night?” Her personal business is, well, none of my business. The steps I take to address the employee issue remain the same, however, since she may one day have other issues at work due to poor decisions made entirely within the workplace.

Then I would move on to how we could avoid situations like this one in the future. The needs of the business and the responsibilities associated with her role may preclude simple answers like avoiding covering shifts for other people. I may offer her advice on time management; I may do some homework of my own and find that my attendance policies are too lax or too strict. It may also be that given the assistant’s prior struggles with attendance, she shouldn’t be scheduled to cover anyone else.

I’d also talk about what happens next with her if she doesn’t avoid behavior like this in the future. It’s important to be clear with expectations around behavior and improvement. This is not to make threats about future disciplinary actions, but rather to prevent the need for those entirely by making clear to my employee where I want her to focus her energy. I also want to make it as easy as possible for her to see what behaviors to avoid or change. If she’s constantly stressed out over any potential disciplinary actions, her performance will begin to suffer as a result.

Finally, disciplinary action may indeed be needed. I prefer to think of performance management as a lot more than just a punitive, reactionary process, but sometimes unfortunately it ends up being just that black-and-white. Attendance can be one of those issues. Hopefully Linda’s assistant can take away a lesson from this situation and improve her behavior, but ultimately she must be responsible for her own actions. Linda and her organization should ensure they provide the necessary guidance and allow the assistant every opportunity to be successful; whether that employee steps up will be on her alone.

What would you do, if you were in Linda’s position? What do you suppose this employee is thinking? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." - Stephen Covey

Lunch break link

Today's lunch break link is from Forbes, which maintains a great collection of articles on Leadership. I've developed my own leadership style based mostly on my career experiences and training I've been through, but I feel like there's always room for improvement. I try and read a few articles a week about management and leadership; there always seem to be a few good takeaways. Although I haven't personally read anything else by Forbes contributor Glenn Lopis yet, he seems to have a great perspective:

"The most successful leaders are instinctual decision makers. Having done it so many times throughout their careers, they become immune to the pressure associated with decision making and extremely intuitive about the process of making the most strategic and best decisions. This is why most senior executives will tell you they depend strongly upon their “gut-feel” when making difficult decisions at a moment’s notice."

How does one develop the right instincts for making the decisions involved in leading a successful team? Part of it just comes down to being aware of your habits and honing them. In this article that Lopis wrote for Forbes (be sure to continue past the advertisement), he lists fifteen things that successful leaders do every day. I feel comfortable saying that I see many of these things in my own actions, but how much better could I do for my team if I truly lived each of these principles every day?

Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow on me Twitter @BossPerspective.

Back to basics

When I was in high school, I was involved in a program for all four years that appeared on my transcripts as Leadership Education. Some of my readers will recall it more or less warmly under other names; none of them will have forgotten our quirky but accomplished instructor. In between listening to his exploits as a helicopter pilot and lectures on our glorious history, my classmates and I managed to pick up a thing or two about leadership. He gave one definition as "the ability to influence others." This is a greatly simplified summary, but it's a starting point.

There aren’t literally just right and wrong ways to influence people. The carrot and the stick shouldn’t be the only tools in your toolbox; the good cop and bad cop aren’t the only hats you’ll be wearing. Leadership involves finding ways to engage your team, as you can’t just force people to buy into your plans. Don’t make your employees jump through hoops without a good reason, one where they can understand the part that they play, and they’ll trust you so much more. It may take a while, but over time as you demonstrate sound judgement with their welfare in mind, you’re more likely to earn their respect and get them all reading from the same page.

As with many major life disciplines, managing people (successfully) is a blend of art and science, and some people will go farther than others. There are techniques which can be taught and habits which can be developed. Some people seem to naturally possess the instincts, good judgement and charisma that attract followers. Although they aren't really born with it, leadership may seem to come more easily for some than others. Most people, though, become leaders (or better leaders) through hard work and lots of trial and error. Think about the people in leadership positions who have been major influences in your life - certainly in your career, but also perhaps on a sports team or in a school setting - and ask yourself if they got lucky in the talent lottery, or if they got to be that way because of their experience, background, and learning from their choices.

I don’t need to tell you that you’re going to make plenty of mistakes, and that it’s okay. You already know that. You probably also know that you need to learn from those mistakes and think about how you’ll handle it better next time. No one’s perfect, after all. Yes, try to avoid making them in the first place and don’t be negligent. But don’t be afraid to try new ideas, or ways to improve on old ideas. Don’t get complacent. Your team probably wants to be successful as much as you do, so as long as you’re transparently sharing your vision with them they’ll get behind you.

Chances are, you're reading this blog because you are a people/team manager, intend to become one, or just have to deal with one on a regular basis. Whether you're here because you want to become a better boss, or simply want to know how your boss thinks, this is probably not the starting point for understanding how to lead and manage people. There are a ton of books on the subject written by more intelligent people than me. That being said, you’re more than welcome to stay and hang out. I may even have some good stories, and you never know what you might learn.

Are you in a position where your actions are influencing the behavior of others? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people." - John D. Rockefeller

Vacation

Hi everyone,

I'm on vacation this week, so I won't be posting an article. However, I don't want to leave you all with nothing this week, so I have a bonus quote for you. This one comes from a colleague of mine and helps keep things in perspective, sort of along the lines of that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, etc. Next time you feel like the waters around are running a little fast and deep, remember this:

"The rock does not become smooth without rough waters." - Stephen Riley

If you’ve enjoyed reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work." - Agha Hasan Abedi

Managing Perception

Have you ever heard anyone say “Perception is reality?” The way you deliver a message is often as important as the actual content of the message, because the person you’re communicating with may not necessarily interpret your words in the way you intend. This holds true for your audience whether you’re speaking to a subordinate, external customer, your own boss -- anyone really. It doesn’t only apply to what you say, but also perception of you or your organization in general. The way someone feels about you is real to them, whether you’re truthfully super nice or kind of a jerk. The type of person or boss that you actually are could be totally irrelevant to their perception of you.

There are two main pieces to managing the perception others have of you. The first is awareness of how your audience may feel about you, your message or your actions, and the second is crafting or eliciting the response or reputation that you want. Knowing your audience is the greater part of this, but a little bit of common sense plays into it as well. I don’t know if I can teach you common sense (I’m always working on my own), but maybe I can help put this in perspective for you.

Your verbal and written communication doesn’t come with subtitles. Try to be aware of how your audience will receive your words - sort of a modified version of the “platinum rule” - and you’ll find it easier to anticipate reactions.

You may conduct yourself in the way you would want to be seen or articulate your thoughts in a way that makes sense to you, but that may not be what others get out of it.

Speak to an employee the way he would want to be spoken to and you’ll make a better connection. Put yourself in his shoes and think about how his personality or experiences will affect the way he sees you.

In my previous job, a somewhat formal environment, I tried to maintain a certain image among the team members reporting to me. I tried to be supportive and warm but not particularly buddy-buddy. I also wanted to come across as positive and sort of take ownership of policies and procedures communicated by our organization. So, I would choose my words very carefully when sharing these corporate visions and plans with my team. A lot of casual discussions on these topics would end up coming across as though scripted, as if they were pre-approved by our legal and HR departments. Employees would sometimes jokingly say “That was very managerial of you.” Although I didn’t want to be too stuffy about it, that was pretty much what I was going for in that environment. 

Of course, this may not be the ideal approach for each situation, but it can serve as an example of how to intentionally cultivate a certain perception among your team. One of my colleagues has built a great rapport with his staff, and combined with his confidence when discussing work matters this really reinforces the belief - well justified in his case - that he knows what he’s doing, is on top of things, and will take good care of them. He doesn’t simply go about his day treating his employees like parts in a machine, but instead tailors his style to maintain a specific image.

Managing the perceptions of others is kind of a form of reputation control, and your words and actions will color those perceptions. If you come across as lacking confidence or knowledge in your reports to clients, then that’s what they will believe about you, and they’ll begin to question your ability to deliver on their needs. The same goes for coming on too strong with new employees or in a new role. You could just be trying to get your bearings on what’s happening around you, but you may burn some bridges if the first impression your new group has is being overbearing or a micromanager. Know your audience and plan ahead for the reaction you want. You’ll find yourself connecting better with your team, and perhaps earning a little more respect too.

Have you ever found that the impression you thought you made was way off the mark? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Thursday's Thought

"...leadership without morality is simply bureaucratic technique." - Fen English

Tuesday's lunch break link

Today I want to briefly share this excellent blog post with you on applying lessons learned at work to your personal life, from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. In it he discusses realizing that he was putting the people he cared about on the back burner, in the belief that they could handle it and would cut him some slack. Jeff's a brilliant leader who's done great things at LinkedIn, but it hit him that he wasn't even giving his family the same consideration as the people he manages:

"...I was doing what so many of us have a tendency to do: Taking the people we're closest to for granted by assuming they are the ones we don't need to make an effort with. After all, they'll understand, right? However, nothing could be further from the truth."

We put so much energy into maintaining the right attitudes and relationships at work that we frequently don’t give the same effort and respect to our friends and family. Find the line and try to walk it - you probably don’t have to get it exactly right - and you’ll find yourself much more satisfied with your work-life balance.

Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow on me Twitter @BossPerspective.

How well do you play the bad guy?

Every boss has to lay down the law sooner or later. While policies and their effects are usually reviewed prior to implementation, you won’t always know whether or not employees are going to like them or even follow them. If you know your people, you might already have a pretty good idea. Either way, sometimes you’ll find yourself in a position where you have to communicate or enforce unpopular decisions. You’ve just become the bad guy. So, how can you soften the blow?

The most important part of enforcing an unpopular decision is helping your employee to understand the reasoning behind it. Unless you’re in the sort of environment where your team immediately defaults to “How high?” when you suggest they jump, you’ll probably find employees a lot more bought in when you can explain why you’re cracking down on them. Although they may not be happy about it or even agree that it’s justified, they’ll be a lot more receptive, and a lot more likely to listen, if they’re satisfied that they understand where you’re coming from.

Frequently, management reacts to staff behavior with decisions or policy changes that employees may not expect or receive well. Some examples of this can be disciplinary action, restriction of privileges and removal of job perks. Sometimes it’s sharing a disappointing performance review score. When a member of your team isn’t performing adequately and you’ve already exhausted developmental and constructive tactics, it might be time to switch the carrot out for the stick. Is it possible to do this without just being a jerk?

It sure is. First of all, don’t get personal. After all, the employee in question may be very nice, and somehow just got it wrong this time. Focus on the undesirable actions that specifically led to the need for your policing. Be clear about what was done that shouldn’t have been, or what needed to happen but didn’t. Go over the policy that was violated or the goal that was not met so your employee understands what exactly it was that they did, or failed to do, that let you down.

Discuss the impact that your subordinate’s behavior is having on your desired results or performance. Is her constant tardiness forcing the work load to shift onto her peers, causing them undue stress and maybe some decline in quality? Maybe your business requires extraordinary attention to detail, and her struggles in this area are driving your clients bonkers when they see what she’s done to their marketing brochure.

Find out how your employee thinks she’s doing and the thought process behind her behavior. Get her re-engaged by asking what she could have done differently or better now that you’ve discussed what’s going on and and the repercussions, as well as the path toward improvement. You may still have to enforce tough consequences, but you won’t come across as such a bad guy.

When was the last time you had to be “the bad guy” to someone you supervised? How did it go? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

“Change” - It doesn’t have to be a bad word

When I wrapped up my time in the Marines and transitioned into a customer service role, I learned the hard way that my communication skills were lacking. Having gotten used to thinking of my peers and subordinates as line items on a roster, I was negatively affecting my team’s ability to do our job with the way I communicated changes in process or procedure.

While I was great at building rapport with customers, I had a tendency to be a bit abrasive or insensitive toward my own co-workers. It took a serious conversation with my mentor at the time for me to tone it down some, which involved the oft-repeated cliche that our team members were our greatest resource. I’ve since learned that this statement is absolutely true, but people are more than just resources to be allocated and it's important to recognize when they’re feeling unsure or uncomfortable.

Fast forward a few years. As my career’s progressed and I’ve been further removed from the “front line” and taken more ownership over things like quotas, or a store or department profit & loss statement, I’ve had to be careful not to lump in my employees with other resources like supplies and equipment. At the end of the day, or fiscal year if you prefer, it’s true that you do need to make changes based on business needs. That doesn’t eliminate your responsibility to be cognizant of your employees’ thoughts and feelings though, and the effects these have on your organization’s performance.

Although it may not be specified in the job description, one of the most important responsibilities that the leader in any organization has must be engaging the team. It’s all well and good for a manager to simply spell out goals and priorities, but you can’t just leave it at that. There is absolutely a human element that cannot be ignored in the long term. People are not cogs in a machine to be counted and distributed without context. It may be easy for a manager to rate or disposition or performance manage employees without knowing or caring about them personally -- but eventually what you’ll end up with is robots. You can probably imagine, robots don’t care for your organization’s vision one way or the other.

Organizational changes can be hard for employees to adapt to, and it’s important for leaders to understand that change management is a legitimate skill worth developing. It takes communicating in a constructive way, explaining the change and its desired effects to your team so they understand the part they play in the bigger picture, and executing the plan as effectively as possible to retain employee trust in their leadership. You’ll find that changes are easier to swallow when rolled out in such a manner that employees can buy into them and get behind your mission rather than numbly following orders and instructions. Try trusting your team and treating them like they own a piece of the business. After all, they have a stake in it too.

Have you ever felt blindsided or challenged by a change in the way your organization does business? Ever rolled out new strategies or directives and gotten a less-than-enthusiastic response from your staff? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this link with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.

Say your piece while keeping the peace

In the normal course of managing your workplace, regardless of your industry, sooner or later you’re probably going to feel like complaining. This is perfectly normal. In fact, my Marines used to joke around that it was their moral responsibility. Even in a well-run office with happy employees, there may come a time when you just have to get something off your chest, simply must speak your mind, let people know about the latest injustice.

Here’s my advice: don’t.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t give feedback on situations where there’s room for improvement. If your process isn’t as efficient as it could be, or you feel like your manager needs to polish his communication skills, there are ways to address this and it’s important to do so, if your workplace culture welcomes constructive feedback. But there’s that one little word there, constructive, that is so often set aside.

Addressing errors, inconsistencies, or shortcomings should be done with improvement in mind. If you’re going to criticize out loud, be it a person or process or situation, then the professional thing to do is suggest an alternative. This applies almost universally, whether you don’t like the way your boss is talking to you, the way your employee interacts with a customer, or perhaps your company’s policy on certain subjects.

Let’s consider this from a selfish perspective first. Sure, it feels a little indulgent to get caught up in your frustrations and share them with others and just to vent a bit, but you risk falling into a trap that’s hard to escape. Once your colleagues, employees or manager begin to perceive you as an excessively negative person it can be very difficult to change their minds.

Like it or not, their perception will color their personal interactions with you and probably the professional as well. Complaining about your boss to your peers, or worse to your direct reports, is not going to win any of them over. It’s going to make you look like a whiner. The same goes for tearing down your employees without laying out for them a clear path toward improvement. They might learn from their mistakes, but they’ll definitely take you for a micromanaging jerk.

Now let’s look at the bigger picture. Let’s say for a moment that you have a real problem with a situation at work - maybe it personally rubs you the wrong way, maybe it’s a legitimate professional concern - and you start trashing your organization or policy in front of others. This is a deceptively easy habit to develop, and before you know it you’re the toxic influence lowering morale in general for the people around you. In addition to the damage this does to your personal reputation, you risk undermining the overall perception of your organization with both your employees and your customers. How much will associates trust your organization if its leadership doesn’t buy into the vision? Will your customers pick up on the sense of negativity hinted at in their dealings with your team?

What to do, what to do? Remember that word we used earlier, constructive. Lead by example and set the tone by focusing on solutions instead of your problems. Identify your issues without dwelling on them. Direct your energy toward figuring out what can be handled more efficiently or communicated more professionally in a positive light, and you’ll find your audience much more receptive. Problems still need to be addressed, but the manner in which you talk about them will dictate your results as much as the action plan itself.

Have you felt the influence of a perpetually negative person in your workplace? How did you deal with them? Do you wish you had done something different? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this link with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.