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Editor: Dr. Wolf J. Rinke
Publisher: Wolf Rinke Associates, Inc.
(c) 2008 Wolf J. Rinke
Vol. 12 No. 3, June-July 2009
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Feel free to forward this eNewsletter to others.
To get your own FREE subscription click on the link above.
1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
2. HOW TO LEAD DURING TOUGH TIMES
3. HEAR WOLF HOWL--I MEAN SPEAK
4. HUMOR BREAK
5. ABOUT THE EDITOR
6. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
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REALITY CHECK
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"People who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centered
and less mindful of what others need, do and say."
-Robert I. Sutton
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1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
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TRUST IS GOING, GOING, GONE
According to a Harvard Business Review Advisory Council survey 76% of
1,024 readers trust senior management at U.S. companies less compared
to just a year ago. The results at non-U.S. companies are not much better-51%
less. Contrast that to colleagues which are trusted less by only 10%.
ACTION STEPS
Read the next article and take action.
Source: How Trust has Eroded, HBR 87 (6), 2009: 64-65.
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2. HOW TO LEAD DURING TOUGH TIMES
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If you've had layoffs recently your team members are shell shocked.
And even if you have had no layoffs, they are still troubled because
they are wondering when it will happen to them. They are suffering from
what I call the "snow storm" effect. They become fearful and
pre-occupied with what might happen next instead of being productive.
According to Robert Sutton's June 2009 HBR article How to Be a Good
Boss in a Bad Economy, it is tougher to be a good boss during a crisis
because of two toxic forces: 1. People who gain authority over others
tend to become more self-centered and less mindful of others, and 2.
Employees devote an inordinate amount of mental energy watching and
worrying about the actions of their leaders. Here is what you can do
to minimize these debilitating effects.
Tell Team Members More than they Want to Know
I introduced this concept in my book Winning Management: 6 Fail-Safe
Strategies for Building High-Performance Organizations to stress the
importance of providing team members with the big picture to empower
and motivate them. This becomes even more critical during a crisis because
according to Sutton when people feel threatened they have an increased
need for predictability, understanding, control and compassion.
Achieving all of these, with the exception of compassion, requires that
you are absolutely transparent, which James O'Toole and Warren Bennis
defined as: "The degree to which information flows freely within
an organization, among managers and employees, and outward to stakeholders."
(HBR, June 2009.) Transparency is absolutely essential if you want to
build trust, another component critical to managing and leading people
during tough times. Building trust, according to O'Toole and Bennis,
requires that leaders at times ignore the lawyers and create a default
position of "When in doubt, let it out." And during those
rare circumstances when "letting it out" would cause irreparable
harm to the organization, tell your team members why you can't tell
them, and then patiently and repetitively answer their questions. If
you are skeptical about "letting it out" let me reveal a truism
I've shared with executives I've coached since the early 1990s: "There
are no secrets in organizations, period." With the advent of the
internet that truism has become even truer today.
So quit trying to hoard and control information. Instead be absolutely
up front about your company's current circumstances and how it got there.
If there are things you and your leadership team could have done better,
fess up and say so. Perhaps even more important tell your team members
what you plan to do in the future to address the current challenges.
And, of course, ask for their input. But don't just ask for it, act
on it, and if you don't, tell them why not. Because the front line and
your customers usually have answers to many of your problems. And when
you think you're done, tell them again, and again …using a wide
variety of media-in person, internet, e-mails, blogs, etc. etc. Once
you say to yourself: "If I explain this one more time, I'm going
to puke," you are you somewhere close to having most people get
it.
Be Visible
Your team members are watching you all the time. And, according to Sutton,
they tend to interpret what you do in a negative light. So when you
have a closed door meeting with your executive team the grapevine will
crank up and assume that you are hatching the latest downsizing plan
or are getting ready to file for Chapter 11.
To overcome this, you have to make time to be more visible. You may
even want to go so far and literally knock down the walls between you
and your team members. That, according to executive coach, Maureen Moriarty,
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/400177_workcoach16.html, is what Japan
Airlines CEO Haruka Nishimatsu has done. Nishimatsu desk now sits in
the middle of the office, without even a cubicle separating him from
his people, so that his employees can walk up to his desk at any time
and talk to him.
Or do what one of my clients, CEO Jesper Moeller of the Toms Group in
Copenhagen does; make it a habit to lunch with your people in the cafeteria.
This level of visibility will get you closer to your team members and
enable you to figure out what is really going on. While at the same
time giving your employees first hand information about you so that
the negative grapevine has less of an opportunity to flourish.
Get it Over With
If you must downsize, which is questionable, (see my Winning Manager
eNewsletters 11-5 and 11-6 for other strategies to improve the bottom
line), cut deeper than you really have to so that you can potentially
avoid future layoffs. The fact is that downsizing increases employees'
level of dysfunctional stress because they feel out of control-the victim
phenomenon, which is linked to greater turnover, decreased team effectiveness,
and poorer job and company performance. According to Anthony Nyborg
and Charlie Trevor a moratorium on future layoffs diminishes these dysfunctional
outcomes because "the anticipation of downsizing can have an even
stronger effect than layoffs themselves on employees' negative perceptions
of their work environment." (HBR, June 2009.)
And remember to go through the extra effort to tell team members more
than they want to know by providing detailed explanations of the why,
what, when, where and how. And under no circumstances speak ill of the
people you've had to cut. You are managing "survivors" who
will have a heightened sensitivity to the people who are gone, and bad
mouthing them will further decrease morale and may cause your peak performers
to look for new opportunities elsewhere.
Show More Empathy than You Think is Wise
Showing empathy means that you see the world through your team members'
eyes. You've got to understand their fears, apprehensions and motivations.
This is a great time to practice your active listening skills. And keep
in mind that when you deliver bad news of any kind, that at the time
of delivery you are in different mental place than your team members.
You've already had a chance to digest the news and work through the
anxiety that all of us struggle with during any change process-even
if it's good for us. They, on the other hand, are likely hearing it
for the first time and need lots of TLC to deal with it.
Showing empathy also means that you get to know your team members-I
mean really get to know them. Don't be like some of the executives I
coach and delude yourself. Instead be tough with yourself. Grab your
calendar, and look at the last five working days. How much time did
you dedicate to nurturing the relationships with your team members?
I don't mean how much time did you spend telling them what to do. I'm
talking about how much time did you spend talking with them . . . not
at them? Talking with them about their concerns, their fears and apprehensions.
And don't forget to ask them about their spouses, their children, their
aging parents, and the many personal challenges they face? Being there
for them with compassion, assistance and time off when they have professional
or even personal challenges like a sick child, an aging parent or even
worse a death in the family. Here is an important realization for you
to take advantage of: "When the 'yogurt' hits the fan, your team
members will not do it for your company. However, they may do it for
you." So let me ask you, how much empathy have you shown them lately?
Practice "Pragmatic Optimism"
Acting giddy and telling people they have nothing to worry about is
just not going to cut it. Instead I encourage you to demonstrate "pragmatic
optimism." (Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?)
I identified three types of optimists in my book: Make it a Winning
Life: Success Strategies for Life, Love and Businesses:
Type 1-the unrealistic optimists have learned it's important
to think positive. Unfortunately they only learned half the lesson.
They talk a good game, but have no fire-in-the-belly, or a clearly defined
action plan. When things don't go the way they expect, they are stranded.
Ultimately they become discouraged, and give up. They may continue to
smile, maintain a superficial positive attitude, and pretend that everything
will turn out for the better. Often it will not, and they become disillusioned
and cynical.
Type 2-the eternal optimists are like the people I met in Jamaica.
Regardless of what happens to them, no matter how bad things get, they're
governed by the axiom: "Don't worry, be happy." In the face
of adversity, they invoke a higher order, shrug it off, and just go
on with it. They are almost on the right track. Many have dreams, but
most lack passion, fire-in-the belly, action plans, energy, and the
will to persevere when the going gets rough. In short, they talk a good
game, but they don't persist.
Type 3-the pragmatic optimists recognize we live in an imperfect
world, a world in which success is not a straight line, and where nothing
goes only one way. Instead it is fraught with obstacles, pain, hard
work, sweat, blood, and tears. (Sorry I didn't mean to get that dramatic.)
Pragmatic optimists accept setbacks, tragedies, losses, and disasters
as the normal order of things, as lessons from which to learn, and as
challenges to be mastered. Because they do not perceive obstacles and
set-backs as failures, they are able to deal with them constructively.
(President Barack Obama strikes me as a pragmatic optimist.) In short,
they have the capacity to persevere, and more importantly they have
the ability to help their team members do the same.
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3. HEAR WOLF HOWL--I MEAN SPEAK
===================================================
The following full day seminars may be open to you if your company is
a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS). Contact the chairperson
for specifics.
Increasing Your Personal Effectiveness
9/21/09 London, England, contact: Mike Matthews, london@ims-online.com
9/22/09 Edinburgh, Scotland, contact: Graeme Crawford, scotland@ims-online.com
9/24/09 Manchester, England, contact: Gareth Morris, manchester@ims-online.com
NOTE: I have other "in-house" presentations scheduled. 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!
===================================================
4. HUMOR BREAK
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Jim was tired of the corporate rat race and decided to go into business
for himself. He bought a vending cart and set it up in a prime spot
on a busy downtown corner, right near a large bank.
One day, his friend Tom asked Jim if he could lend him $1,000. Jim refused.
"But why?" asked Tom. "Everyone knows you're doing well,
and I'm not asking for much."
Jim answered: "Well, Tom, in order to get this spot I had to sign
a non-competition agreement with that bank over there. According to
the terms of the agreement, they don't sell food, and I don't lend money."
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5. 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. 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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