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Editor: Dr. Wolf J. Rinke
Publisher: Wolf Rinke Associates, Inc.
(c) 2006 Wolf J. Rinke
Vol. 9 No. 2, Apri/May 2006
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Feel free to forward this eNewsletter to others.
To get your own FREE subscription click above.
IN THIS ISSUE
1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
2. DON'T HAVE PEOPLE WORK FOR YOU--Part II
3. MONEY SAVING OFFER--FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
4. HUMOR BREAK
5. HEAR WOLF HOWL--I MEAN SPEAK
6. ABOUT THE EDITOR
7. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
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REALITY CHECK
"Treat every human being as if he or she is the most important
person in the world."
--Wolf J. Rinke
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1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
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Woman Execs: "We have met the enemy and the enemy is us"
Catalyst, a New York research firm, asked 296 CEO's of both genders,
to rate the effectiveness of men and woman leaders on 10 specific leadership
behaviors. They found that both men and woman executives "perceive
woman leaders as better at caretaker behaviors and men as better at
take-charge behaviors." That perception not withstanding, research
has repeatedly demonstrated that "there is little difference between
the leadership styles of successful male and female bosses."
ACTION STEPS
Educate men and woman on the latent influence of stereotypes so that
when they complete performance reviews they make sure that men and women
are judged on their performance not their stereotypes. (Easier said
than done.) Most importantly women have to start believing in their
own leadership effectiveness so that they stop perpetuating negative
female stereotypes and stand up to both men and woman who "build
them down."
Source: C. Hymowitz, "Too Many Women Fall for Stereotypes Of Selves,
Study Says," The Wall Street Journal, 10/24/05, p. B1.
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2. DON'T HAVE PEOPLE WORK FOR YOU--Part II
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In the last issue of the eNewsletter (Issue 9-1 www.WolfRinke.com)
you learned why it is important to treat all of your team members as
if they are volunteers. You also learned the first two strategies of
how to accomplish that: "Give people something to be passionate
about" and "Build a positive organizational culture."
Now let's take a look at eight more strategies of how to treat all of
your employees like volunteers.
Take your mission, vision and core values very seriously
Companies that attract "volunteers" stand for something that
employees can identify with and get passionate about. And only passionate
employees will deliver consistently excellent service and improve the
bottom line. This strategy is analogous to developing a "brand"
that is identified with certain attributes. That brand has to communicate
that what we do is important and we are special. This organizational
brand--I refer to as the philosophy--is critical to attracting and keeping
volunteer employees, because they are looking for meaning at work. This
is especially true since many institutions that used to provide meaning
to people, such as government, family, communities, and even religious
institutions, are crumbling. (More in Chapter 11 of "Don't Oil
the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership
Effectiveness.") www.WolfRinke.com
Make work fun
One of my favorite sayings: "If it's fun it gets done." So
ask yourself, are your team members having fun yet? Better yet ask them.
You see it's hard to get employees to behave like volunteers when work
is a big pain. Ask five of your team members to serve on a "Celebration
Team." Give them a budget. If you don't have any money, suggest
that they contact local merchants who'd love to achieve greater visibility
in your company. Ask those merchants to make donations to your Celebration
Team. Example: movie tickets, a weekend for two at a local resort, etc.
Just be sure to give those who donate lots of visibility. Now ask the
Celebration Team to get together to identify specific things they are
planning to do each month that are fun. Tell them anything goes, provided
that they stay within their allocated budget and it does not violate
any laws, rules or regulations.
Position people to build on their strengths
Statistics tell us that 25% of the US population hates what they do,
another 56% could take it or leave it, and only 19% love what they do.
Typically people who love what they do--volunteers--are in jobs that
let them build on their strengths. So find out what your team members
love to do and do everything in your power to place them in those positions.
Invest in career development
If you want your organization to get better, your employees have to
get better. That may be common sense--however my experience as a management
consultant demonstrates time and time again that common sense is not
very common. The best of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in 2001
and 2002--Stockbroker Edward Jones of St. Louis--(#70 in 2005) got this
figured out. They provided 146 hours of training, 3.8% of its payroll,
for every employee during 2002. And new brokers get--are you ready for
this--four times as much. And in today's economy where job loyalty has
all but vanished, providing valuable training to your employees is about
the only fail-safe strategy left to insure that people stay with you.
Because employees who feel that they are growing on the job are much
more likely to feel like volunteers and stick with you!
Pay well and provide generous benefits
"But we can't afford that"--is what I am told repeatedly,
especially by managers who have high turnover rates. So let's do a little
bit of quick math. Let's assume that your turnover rate is 40%, your
average salary including benefits is $25,000/year/employee, and that
you have 200 employees. Human resource professionals estimate that replacing
an experienced employee costs--depending on skill level--an average
of one to one and a half times the employees' annual salary. Some of
that cost is obvious such as recruiting, interviewing and training costs.
The greatest proportion, however are hidden costs. For example, when
you lose an experienced employee, customer satisfaction will be lowered,
which may have a significant negative impact on your bottom line. And
the new employee, even being properly trained, will not perform at the
same level of competence and productivity of an experienced employee
for at least several months. This too, costs you. Plus there are many
other hidden costs every time you lose an experienced employee. Let's
be conservative, and use the one times annual salary estimate. That
means that the turnover cost for this hypothetical case is $2,000,000
per year (80 employees x $25,000). If you are able to cut that turnover
rate in half, you would save $1,000,000 per year. I bet that even if
you paid slightly more than the competition, tied additional compensation
to performance such as customer satisfaction, and provided your employees
with highly valued fringe benefits, you would have lots of money left
over! Money that would go straight to your bottom line.
Help employees succeed
You know the old saw: nothing breeds success like success. Well guess
what, it's true. Volunteers want to feel good about themselves and one
of the best ways to do that is to help them succeed faster. So promote
from within and do whatever you can to provide team members with highly
challenging assignments. Provide tuition assistance, empower, coach
and do whatever it takes to enable team members to succeed and while
they are doing that they will just happen to make significant contributions
to the overall success of your organization. That's nice!
Build a high trust workplace
High trust starts with telling employees more than they want to know,
making sure that your word is as good as gold, and giving employees
self-confidence so that they can become the best they can be. And it's
supplemented with a strong bias against layoffs. (A great majority of
the 100 Best companies have never had a mass layoff). (More in Chapter
13 of "Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways
to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness.") www.WolfRinke.com
Be positive and energetic
Attitudes, just like colds are catching. Positive attitudes are caught
just as easy as negative attitudes. The only problem is that negative
attitudes suck the energy out of your team members like a giant sponge--something
volunteers are just not going to put up with. On the other hand positive
attitudes are like the little Energizer bunny, it'll keep your team
members going, and going, and... (Well, you get the point.) To build
a positive attitude, become aware of your conversations including the
ones that you have inside of your head. Recognize that positive language
energizes you, and negative, cynical, "stinking thinking"
conversations, de-energize you and your team members. Make it a practice
to say positive things, especially about other people, or say nothing
at all. Also recognize that your mind can hold only one thought at a
time. It can either be positive or negative, it is your choice! So when
you catch yourself thinking positive thoughts, congratulate yourself.
On the other hand when you are thinking negative thoughts, catch yourself,
change those thoughts, then give yourself credit. Remember your team
members take their cue from you! You must be the role model for the
kind of behaviors you want them to exhibit. (For in-depth strategies
of how to make this happen read my book "Make It a Winning Life:
Success Strategies for Life, Love and Business," www.WolfRinke.com)
What's all this add up to? My work with highly successful companies
has shown that treating your team members like volunteers means that
you will have lower turnover rates, will be able to pick the cream of
the crop any time you need to fill a vacancy and achieve massive improvements
in your overall profitability.
SOURCE: Based in part on Chapter 10 of my book "Don't Oil the
Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership
Effectiveness," McGraw-Hill, 2004, (See the special offer below.)
http://www.WolfRinke.com
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3. MONEY SAVING OFFER--FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
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My Latest Book Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian
Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness,
by W. J. Rinke. McGraw Hill Price: $14.95.
"Tells you what you need to know to win in the game of leadership
in these turbulent times."
--J. W. Marriott, Jr., Chairman of the Board and President, Marriott
International, Inc.
POWERFUL CD: How to Motivate Employees to Achieve Peak Performance.
Publisher Price: $19.95.
This LIVE audio by yours truly (~60 mins.) will teach you how to build
a positive organizational culture that will achieve quantum leaps in
performance, productivity and profitability.
Both book and CD--$24.90 + s/h. SAVE $10.00!
------------------------- Offer expires 6/1/2006 -------------------------------
Log onto www.wolfrinke.com/SpecialSW.html or call 800-828-9653. Mention
this ad when ordering by phone!
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4. HUMOR BREAK
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The personnel office received an email requesting a listing of the
department staff broken down by age and sex. The personnel office sent
this reply:
"Attached is a list of our staff. We currently have no one broken
down by age or sex. However, we have a few alcoholics."
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5. HEAR WOLF HOWL--I MEAN SPEAK
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These full day seminars maybe open to you, especially if your company
is a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS). Contact the
Chairperson for additional information.
Achieve Peak Performance by Increasing Your Personal Effectiveness
8/1/06 Philadelphia, Joe Paesani, Philadelphia@ims-online.com
Winning Management: Building a Peak Performance Workplace
8/22/06 Hartford, CT, Robert Kravits, Connecticut@ims-online.com
10/18/06 Atlanta, GA, Dennis Piehl, Atlanta@ims-online.com
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6. ABOUT THE EDITOR
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Dr. Wolf J. Rinke, CSP is an internationally recognized keynote speaker
and seminar leader who delivers customized presentations that combine
story telling, humor and motivation with specific "how to"
action strategies that participants can apply immediately to improve
their management and personal effectiveness. He is also a highly effective
management consultant, executive coach and author of 13 books including
Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve
Your Leadership Effectiveness and Winning Management: 6 Fail-Safe Strategies
for Building High-Performance Organizations available at www.WolfRinke.com
To take advantage of Dr. Rinke's services call 800-828-9653 or mailto:WolfRinke@aol.com
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7. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
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