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Editor: Dr. Wolf J. Rinke
Publisher: Wolf Rinke Associates, Inc.
(c) 2007 Wolf J. Rinke
Vol. 10 No. 3, June-July 2007
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IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS YOU CAN USE
MONEY SAVING OFFER--FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
TRUST ALL PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME--Part I
HEAR WOLF HOWL--I MEAN SPEAK
HUMOR BREAK
ABOUT THE EDITOR
PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
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REALITY CHECK
"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and
they will show themselves great."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
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1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
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WANT BETTER DECISIONS? SLEEP ON IT
In a study of decision making, Ap Dijksterhuis found that the longer
subjects thought about a problem the more likely they were to include
irrelevant information at the expense of more relevant data. He found
that the more information decision makers considered the less accurate
their decisions became. His conclusion: "Conscious deliberation
leads to sound decisions only when a very limited amount of information
is involved." Additional experiments demonstrated that those decision
makers who put their unconscious mind to work by "sleeping on it"
made better decisions than subjects who decided immediately or those
who relied on extensive conscious deliberation.
ACTION STEPS
Any time you are confronted with a complex problem use your conscious
mind to acquire all the data you need, but don't analyze it. Instead
sleep on it, or go on a vacation, so your unconscious mind, which has
far greater procession capacity than your conscious mind, can digest
the information and present you with a "solution." Then act
on it knowing that there is a high probability that it will be your
best decision.
Source: A. Dijksterhuis, "When to Sleep on It." Harvard Bus.
Rev., 85 (2), pp.29-31, 2007.
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2. MONEY SAVING OFFER--FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
=================================================== 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 8/1/2007 -------------------------------
Log onto www.wolfrinke.com/SpecialSW.htm
or call 800-828-9653. Mention this ad when ordering by phone!
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3. TRUST ALL PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME--Part I
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"Trust all people all of the time, until they prove you wrong"
is the advice I provide in my seminars and consulting activities. The
typical response: "You don't understand the people who work for
me" or "You sure have no clue who our customers are"
or "I wouldn't trust my manager if my life depended on it."
In one way I understand. After all, trust has become a vanishing act
in corporate America. No wonder, with all the mergers, reengineering,
layoffs and the Enron debacle employees find it increasingly difficult
to trust management. According to a study of 1,800 employees by Aon's
Loyalty Institute of Ann Arbor, MI, "13% of US workers distrust
their employers on the most basic level--they don't feel free from fear,
intimidation or harassment at work." In a similar study of more
than 7,500 employees Watson Wyatt Worldwide of Bethesda, MD found that
"only half trusted senior managers." Here is the so-what:
According to Watson Wyatt "...companies where employees trusted
top executives posted shareholder returns 42 percentage points higher
than companies where distrust was the rule."
The corporate leadership team merry-go-round
The consequences of leaders not trusting their team members is perhaps
best illustrated by the following true story. (Names have been changed
to protect the guilty.) In the late 1990th I was engaged by John, the
Senior Vice President of a high tech company. John and Chris the CEO
and owner of the company wanted me to help them with improving the effectiveness
of the senior management team.
My in-depth organizational assessment interviews with all members of
the executive team revealed that Chris had lost trust in John as well
as several members of the executive team that John had brought on board.
The trust had deteriorated to such a low level that I recommended that
John be asked to leave and that the executive team be reorganized. Which
is exactly what was done at great expense to the company.
I made this recommendation even though my organizational assessment
had revealed that much of the lack of trust resided primarily in Chris
the CEO, not John or the management team. And that lack of trust had
resulted in Chris taking a variety of steps that undermined John and
his management team's ability to get the job done. (John had been brought
on board because Chris was getting on in years and the company had grown
too large for Chris to handle. John, and his highly qualified and expensive
leadership team of five executives had been given carte blanche for
running the day-to-day affairs of the company.)
In other words Chris had set John and his team up to fail from the start.
That's why I strongly urged Chris that he have me coach him (Chris)
to insure that the next team would be more successful. I also recommended
that once the new executive team was on-board that we conduct an intensive
trust building initiative to get the new leadership team started on
the right foot. Chris, however, externalized the problem, and hence
saw no need to be coached since "John and his team just could not
be trusted, and once I get the right team on board everything will be
fine."
About three years after the new management team had been brought on
board I got another call from Chris, with a request for help that was
literally like someone had just rewound the video and let it run all
over again. The only thing that had changed was the names of the management
team members.
Once again, trust had deteriorated to such a dysfunctional level that
the executive team was asked to leave. And even though this was deja
vu all over again, Chris continued to externalize the problem, and once
again brought on yet another new executive team. It has been just about
three years and I'm expecting a call from Chris any time now.
Stop a moment and think of the incredible costs and loss in productivity
sustained by this company all because the leader--Chris--was unable
to trust people and is unwilling to take ownership of a problem that
can only be corrected by affecting changes in himself. And I predict
that unless Chris sells the company, it will ultimately fail. After
all trust is the foundation upon which all relationships and interactions
are built! And once that foundation is destroyed, relationships and
interactions can no longer function smoothly, effectively or productively.
Here is the message in a nutshell: If you consistently mistrust all
of your team members all of the time you will be correct 3 percent of
the time. Not very good odds, are they? If on the other hand you trust
all of your people all of the time, until they prove you wrong, you
will be right 97 percent of the time! So why not bet on the much better
odds? It is your choice, don't give it away!
So what can you do to build trust in your organization? You can start
by invoking the law of reciprocity, which says that "Whatever you
give is what you're going to get." So if you want more trust you
have to give it first. (And by the way all this stuff works at home
too, because we are talking about what it takes to build strong relationships--at
work or at home.)
The next thing you can do is make sure that your word is always as
good as gold, that your team members never have to second-guess anything
you tell them, and that they can count on you to do right by them, your
customers, and your organization. Once you get these basics down pat,
I'll share six additional steps you can take to build trust in your
organization, in the next issue of this eNewsletter.
SOURCE: Based in part on Chapter 13 of my book "Don't Oil the
Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership
Effectiveness," McGraw-Hill. (Get this book at a significant discount.
(See the special offer in section 2.) http://www.WolfRinke.com
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4. HEAR WOLF HOWL--I MEAN SPEAK
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These full day seminars maybe open to you if your company is a member
of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS). Contact the chairperson
for specifics.
Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel: Innovative Strategies to Improve Leadership
Effectiveness.
10/11/07, Seattle, WA, Bill Woods, Seattle@ims-online.com
12/11/07 Hartford, CT, Art Muldowney, Connecticut@ims-online.com
NOTE: I have other "in-house" presentations scheduled in
the U.S.A., Canada and Europe. Please let me know if you are interested
to preview me or bring me into your organization at reduced expenses
when I'm scheduled to be in your area. That way we can let you know
when I'm coming your way!
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5. HUMOR BREAK
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A tourist climbed out of his car in downtown Washington DC. He said
to a man who was standing near the curb, "Listen, I'm only going
to be gone a couple of minutes. Would you do me a favor and watch my
car while I go in the store?"
"What?" the man huffed. "Do you realize I am a member
of the United States Senate?"
"No, I didn't realize that," the tourist said. "But I'm
in a hurry so I guess I'll have to trust you anyway."
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6. ABOUT THE EDITOR
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Dr. Wolf J. Rinke, CSP is a highly effective management consultant and
executive coach who specializes in building peak performance organizations,
teams and individuals. He is the author of 14 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.
Wolf is also an internationally recognized management/leadership 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 leadership effectiveness. You can preview
a live demo at www.WolfRinke.com.
To take advantage of Dr. Rinke's services contact us at 800-828-9653
or WolfRinke@aol.com
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7. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
===================================================
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