Name: Woody
Email:
Bio: Dr. Woody Sears has been training managers and leaders since 1967. Tested in more than 200 organizations and presented in more than 100 public seminars, his techniques for resolving organizational conflicts have helped thousands of managers just like you to solve problems, develop employees, and enhance their personal effectiveness. Early in his career, Woody was lucky to have been accepted as a resource person by Leadership Resources, Inc., one of the early behaviorally-oriented consulting firms. That provided opportunities to work with and learn from many of the scholars and consultants who were developing the framework for what subsequently became Human Resource Development. Chief among those mentors was Leonard Nadler, Woody’s major professor in the doctoral program at The George Washington University. Professor Nadler coined the term HRD and is the creator of that academic and professional discipline. Those experiences followed a Master’s program in change management at North Carolina State, and a tour as a U.S. Marine officer. Beyond consulting and presenting public seminars (mostly on project management), Woody has designed customized project management systems for a number of companies and government agencies. Throughout his career, he has worked to simplify essential management information so it’s accessible to everyone. Contact Information: Email: woodysears@gmail.com
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Laughing, Learning, Leadership & Leprechauns
February 8th, 2010
Photo courtesy of Disney Dad
If you’re reading this, you owe someone back there a debt of gratitude for the advice, counsel, and concern-for-your-future invested in you. If someone cared enough about you to celebrate your successes but to be brutally honest when you screwed up, to refocus you when you lost your bearings or to kick you in the ass when you allowed a sour impulse to override your common sense, you were lucky You are living well today because someone, maybe several, became your mentor for a moment, a month, or for years.
I am remembering my mentors with the hope that it will prompt you to remember yours — and your obligation to pass along to others those gifts that can only be repaid in kind.
Robert L. (Bob) Stockment was as close to a leprechaun as anyone I’ve ever known. It wasn’t that he was short, because he wasn’t. It was more his smile, his laughter, his ability to be kind and gentle even in the midst of the most inconvenient muddles. He was the one, more than any other person, who taught me how to be a presenter, a public speaker, a lecturer. His message was simple: “People want to laugh, to be entertained, more than they want to learn. But if you can allow them to have fun, you will be amazed at how much they will learn.”
A number of times, participants have asked if I was a boxer, and when I can be scrupulously honest, I have to confess that I never was – but my mentor was! And like a duckling imprinting on the first thing it sees, I imprinted on Bob, his easy, expressive style, and his self-deprecating humor, and his way of moving among participants rather than standing behind or hanging onto a podium. I watched him lecture, I watched him sitting in circles with groups of executives, and the way he would reach out to include them in discussions and to support them when they participated. He was the instant friend, the good listener who made everyone feel comfortable.
When I met Bob, he was working for the Agricultural Research Service, recently returned from a stint in New York as an executive with a major organization for managers. He had liked the job, most of his associates, and the majority of the executives he met. But not his boss, who assigned to Bob the disagreeable collateral duty of finding women to be escorts and sleep-over companions for some of the visiting executives. So he returned to Washington and government employment.
One of his first assignments as training director for Agricultural Research Service involved enhancing the managerial performance of the Service’s director. It was an assignment organized by someone very senior in the Department of Agriculture who saw a need, an opportunity for a solution, and made it happen.
The director, an MD/PhD scientist, came to their first meeting, wearing his white lab coat and carrying a clipboard. He was almost sarcastic when he threw down his gauntlet, the world-renowned scientist confronting a man with no academic credentials. “Okay, Bob, how are you going to make me into a better manager?”
In that beautiful way he had, of smiling and dropping one shoulder as though he was ready to fire a right hand to the body, Bob said, “Well, sir, the first thing you need to do is take off that lab coat. It identifies you as a scientist. It locks you into the safe role as a researcher, as an expert, as an authority. It causes the people who work for you to respond to you as a technical advisor. That keeps them from seeing you as an executive and it keeps you in the dance of pleasing them instead of providing direction for the growth and future of the Agricultural Research Service.”
The director looked at Bob, without moving, for nearly a minute. Then he shrugged, took off the lab coat, tossed it onto a chair. He sat down and asked, “Okay, Bob, what else do I need to know?” They did not need many such conversations, and as far as anyone could tell, the director never again wore the lab coat.
Early in his life, after an undistinguished stint in the Navy as an enlisted man, Bob worked on a lathe in South Bend, Indiana. He remembered “a nice kid” with a new degree in industrial engineering. One day, Bob saw the engineer coming through the plant with his boss. Bob pushed his stock bench several feet away so he would have to step away from the lathe to get new stock. Sure enough, the engineer spotted the extra steps. “Bob, wouldn’t it be easier if you rolled the stock bench closer to the lathe? Then you could save those extra steps.” Bob expressed his appreciation for the suggestion and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The engineer looked content as he and his smiling boss continued their tour.
Bob’s lesson in these stories was that no manager wants to fail, and no one wants to work for a manager who is failing.
Employees in even the most menial jobs will help their managers look good and succeed – if only the manager will give them the opportunity and appreciate their integrity. Adversarial relationships at work are caused by managers who cannot allow workers to express their integrity and will not recognize the dignity of those whose tasks are menial and whose prospects are limited.
Bob’s widow sent me his pocket watch, as he had directed, but he left me with so much more. With three academic degrees more than he had, I still struggle to be his peer.
How Mentoring Really Happens – In the Company of Heroes
January 25th, 2010Mentoring can happen in an instant, in a few well-chosen words, and initiate lasting and life-changing insights.
Flickr photo courtesy of H.Kopp Delaney
If you’re reading this, you owe someone back there a debt of gratitude for the advice, counsel, and concern-for-your-future invested in you. If someone cared enough about you to celebrate your successes but to be brutally honest when you screwed up, to refocus you when you lost your bearings or to kick you in the ass when you allowed a sour impulse to override your common sense, you were lucky You are living well today because someone, maybe several, became your mentor for a moment, a month, or for years. I am remembering my mentors with the hope that it will prompt you to remember yours — and your obligation to pass along to others those gifts that can only be repaid in kind.
Two people who became my heroes are celebrated here. Who knows? Maybe you will hear what I heard, and the impact of their words will continue to ripple across time and space.
Lori Eisenberg was my first marriage counselor. It was our second meeting alone. Between the first and second, she had met with my wife and then with both of us. She opened the meeting with stunning directness: “What have you got against getting a divorce?”
I was shocked into speechlessness. Finally, I stammered, lamely, “Well, it would cost a lot of money.”
And here is her world-class, life-changing response: “So, go make some more!”
Talk about cutting to the chase, knocking off the nonsense, and getting down to making decisions! That’s been more than thirty years ago, and the imperative to act, to decide, to quit equivocating, is still as powerful. I’ve remembered it at least weekly, and it has pushed me into maybe a thousand decisions. “So, go make some more!”
Her direct advice has been included in more than 200 lectures, and it’s always a surprise to people who want to wallow in the clouds of high-level abstractions instead deciding to get out OR to stay-in-and-make-it-better. With all due respect to the semanticists, sometimes either/or is the only honest, courageous decision.
What a gift! I pass it along to you.
Fr. Joe Frazier, an Episcopal (Anglican) priest, was my second short-statement mentor. He had been nearly-famous as a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio. Their anti-establishment songs delighted Libertarians and those of the political left about the same time The Beach Boys and The Kingston Trio were enchanting the politically asleep.
He was making a pastoral call to my wife, who had terminal cancer. After suffering through three abdominal surgeries and three rounds of aggressive chemotherapy with attendant hair loss, she was angry and often lashed out. She looked at me, then at Joe, and like a verbal arsonist said, “I don’t think Woody is a Christian!”
Fr. Joe put out the fire in a six-word, world-class, life-changing response: “Is he taking care of you?”
I’ve spent at least a hundred hours thinking about that situation and the lessons implicit in it. His gentle way of cutting to the bottom line while bringing the single, most important issue to the surface, was a powerful intervention, worth studying, worth thinking about.
In another instance, Fr. Joe and I were discussing capital punishment. I was rolling out the usual pro-death-penalty arguments. Again, without heat, Fr. Joe changed my attitude, my values, and maybe my life with a few well-chosen words.
“I guess the death penalty would be okay if I could imagine Jesus pulling the switch. But I can’t!”
Of course, he was employing the rhetorical strategy of identifying an acknowledged standard to neutralize an argument, and it worked! I had to confront the duplicity in my values, and my trust in the man who had asked, in my behalf, “Is he taking care of you?”
Flickr photo courtesy of the great H. Kopp Delaney
These three interventions have been transformative. Each was weeks or months of tutorials distilled into less than a minute. They were clear, concise, and authentic; pointed, straight shots to the heart of the issue and to the heart of the recipient. They were as finely crafted as any piece of art, models of efficiency and effectiveness.
Where does the ability to speak in such succinct, truth-telling terms originate? My guess it’s from integrating three separate skills: listening and attending acutely, reading the situational dynamics, and suspending judgment. Individually, these may be the most challenging of the interpersonal skills, and integrating them in a single moment is a great feat of personal discipline. But when it happens, magic moments are possible.
I’ve seen the magic, and I’ve struggled for the discipline to replicate it. When I’ve been able to make it happen for others, I feel that I’m at my best – and repaying a debt to two remarkable mentors.
Author’s note: This is the last of 13 recollections of some of the Heroes in my life. Thanks for sharing them with me, and I hope you will take a few minutes to visit with the Heroes in your life .
The Secret to Team Work or Team Building
December 6th, 2009
Photo courtesy fo Nighthawk 3
The “secret” to team work and team building lies in the possessive pronoun “our.”
WHEN WORK BECOMES “OURS”
When work becomes ours, obstacles become ours, and our successes are celebrated, people “naturally” become team members. But people — at work or in civic activities — usually need a catalyst, someone who says “our” and who involves others in making decisions and experiencing small successes until they, too, talk about “our” tasks and team.
TALKING ABOUT “WE”
The catalyst — leader or manager — begins by talking about what “we have to do,” and what “they want from us,” and is scrupulous in avoiding “I” and “my.” The catalyst asks, “What do you think? How should we approach this? How can we use ourselves best? Who has some ideas about how to solve this problem?” When people respond, the catalyst does not accept or reject, but instead asks others to build on the idea or suggestion, to embellish it out of their experiences and knowledge of the subject.
THE ROLE OF GAME-PLAYING … NONE
Such participation often is hard to get in that part of the world in which I live. Learned patterns of mistrust and caution in dealing with those in authority will not be overcome in a single Monday-morning meeting. Nor will the process be expedited much by taking people out of the office for a day or two of “team building,” playing games and being led, blindfolded, by others to “build trust and confidence.” (All this suggests that employees need to be “fixed” so that they will work harder, better, faster, and cheaper for their managers.)
Genuine participation, encouraged and rewarded, consistently and convincingly by the designated leader, is the only way to build effective work groups.
(This writer’s bias is for “work groups,” as teams always have an authoritarian component in the coach, captain, or manager. They tend to view people as expendable if they’re not productive, like athletes who get too old or lame to perform. Athletes are volunteers, employees aren’t! Most of us are economic conscripts, trading time and talent for money. Please don’t abuse us further by trying to motivate us!)
PATIENCE & PERSISTENCE
Developing effective work groups requires patience and persistence in acknowledging individual and collective contributions, recognizing and rewarding people at every opportunity, along with sincerity in expressing appreciation for anything done to support the group and its performance.
These things come from the heart, from belief in the value of co-workers. Few managers appear to have the commitment to their people and the discipline to do these things – which is why “team building exercises” become necessary. Unfortunately, there really is no substitute for a manager’s attention and appreciation.
How to Successfully Market Yourself?
November 21st, 2009
Photo courtesy of L.Can1
Once upon a time, I was a human resource manager. I interviewed a lot of professionals. I hired some of them, but most I ignored. Why? Because I didn’t like them. Why? Because they wasted my time. They submitted resumes that I reviewed and passed along to hiring managers. They came to my office by invitation because it seemed they had promise. But they came unprepared to use my time effectively, and to present themselves intelligently.
Those unprepared candidates had no specific information about my company, its position in its industry, its primary (and secondary) products and services, its major clients, the number of its offices and its reputation in the local area. Obviously then, there was no way for them to tell me how they would contribute to the success of my company; that is, how they would contribute to its profitable operations.
And as for saving their resumes for six months or so … ? Their resumes went directly into a trash can.
To push the point further, some of those candidates were professionally accomplished and physically attractive men and women. They had attended good schools, but they did a really poor job of representing their schools or themselves.
There are at least six fundamental things they did not understand about work, jobs and interviewing:
1. You are NOT your diploma. Like noses, most people have one.
2. You are NOT special unless your presentation of yourself makes you so.
3. You MUST understand some specific things about the work you want to do as it is done in my company.
4. You MUST be able to answer my questions in terms of your ability to make money for my company.
5. You MUST understand that interviews are serious assessments of your character and your probable value to my company.
6. You MUST prepare for interviews as you would for a final exam or some demanding board or licensing certification. If you fail to do so, you will fail to be hired! Count on it.
Burn these six truths into your brain. Understanding and acting on them may be the difference between getting a really good job or ending up in a job that is a professional dead-end from day one!
If you are job-hunting, you have a lot of competitors. The November report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics says unemployment is at 10.2 percent, and trending up. In real terms, that means it’s probably closer to 15 percent. That’s a lot of people in personal and professional pain, and some of them will be hoping to win every job for which you apply.
Before getting into the mechanics of preparing for an interview, there is one more thing—another “secret”—that I want to share with you. It was passed along to me by an experienced human resource manager in response to my question, how do you make good hiring choices? She said, “It’s really so simple. First you realize that all the candidates have essentially the same academic preparation, so you focus on what your gut tells you. As you look across your desk at the applicant, ask yourself, would I like to have dinner or spend an evening with that person? If your gut says NO, then don’t go forward with the application. Why impose on your co-workers and clients someone you don’t want to spend time with?” (I know this violates the EEOC spirit, but … So pay attention to your appearance, attitude and overall presentation of yourself. If you are careless with these details, you’d better be a world-class player.
Hooray for simplicity! I used her system. I never had to fire anyone I hired!
Life’s Six Ps
This rule is not an elegant statement, but it is infallible: Poor planning predicts piss-poor performance!
Planning begins long before the interview. It begins with learning what you are bringing to the party, what you have to offer an employer that will provide a prompt payoff for the investment in your salary. This is the essential point you must make with the HR or hiring manager—that you are competent, quick to learn and have proof of your past performance.
People look at me as though I’m from another planet when I tell them that writing a resume can take as much as 100 hours. Most are defeated right then. But consider this: A resume that is not based on a thorough search of one’s skills and experiences will likely reflect that shallow, thoughtless preparation. A resume does not win you a job; it is the gate pass that allows you to present yourself as an employable candidate!
Without that thorough preparation, what have you got to say for yourself? You may be well-dressed and have okay interpersonal skills, but is that all there is to you? What have you done that predicts high-levels of future performance? Can you answer any question the interviewer asks in words that predict prompt payoff for the employer? These are the questions that differentiate postal clerks and bus drivers from those who get the good jobs, the good salaries, the good life.
Why are you applying to that company?
Because they have an attractive ad is not a good reason. Neither is having a good reputation. The only reason you should apply to a specific company is because it is one you have chosen in advance, in the industry, or using the technology that fits your interests, skills, and preparation. This leads to two points:
1. You should focus your job search on those companies that do what you want to do; and
2. Do some preliminary research on those companies before you contact them, and let it be reflected in your CV and cover letter.
If you get a response and an invitation to come for an interview, do some SERIOUS research on that company. Don’t stop with what you find on the internet. Go to a library and review journals prepared by ratings agencies and other sources. Use your interpersonal skills to get the research librarian to help you.
There is a lot of gold buried in libraries that often only a skilled researcher will be able to pull up for you. Focus on current clients and contracts, major projects, products and processes. See what you can find about the role you are most likely to be hired to fill, and begin to think about how your skills and experiences will allow you to succeed.
Make notes. Study them. Prepare as though you really want to get that job.
Then, before you go for the interview, prepare yourself mentally—meditation, prayer, guided imagery, or whatever works for you. In short, do not play fast and loose with this opportunity because, for the interviewer, you are just one of several/many who will be rejected in the process of finding a keeper. Trust me, this is so!!!
Beyond doing the necessary homework suggested above, here are some more survival tips:
1. Arrive at least 15 minutes before your appointment.
2. Make yourself known to the receptionist. Present a business card or the note inviting you to the interview that includes the name of the person with whom you are to meet. (Use a highlighter to make that name easy to see. The receptionist doesn’t always know everyone.)
3. When you meet the interviewer, express appreciation for the opportunity the interview represents.
4. Once seated, you could say something like, “I know quite a lot about FlimFlam Manufacturing, and I would like very much to work here!” That sets up the interviewer to ask, “Yes? What do you know?” Now you have an opportunity to put your research to work. It also does something else important: It puts you in the position of driving the interview. You have made the first move! You can demonstrate that you have done your homework and are serious about wanting to work there. That will impress the interviewer!!! Trust me, that almost never happens, and you will have the interviewer’s rapt attention. Sometimes, the interviewer will interrupt you to call in someone else to hear your recitation. That’s a great start!
5. Be sure to mention the role for which you are applying. Use the knowledge of your skills, abilities, and experiences to explain why you know you will be the candidate who will make money for the company from the first day. Emphasize your ability to work with others and your willingness to contribute to their success as well as your own. But keep it light—don’t over-sell. The tone you want is like, “By the way, while I was at the university, I worked nights doing similar work, but for a smaller company. I really loved that job.”
6. If I were the interviewer, I would ask you to tell me about a job that you did not love. What I would be listening for is a sense of perspective, recognition that life throws you some lemons, and appreciation for what was learned in an unhappy situation. These are clues to maturity.
7. To the extent possible, answer every question with a reference to your capacity to perform. See #5 above. Be gentle. Polite. Being overly assertive can be offensive. Usually it is. If you are in charge of the interview, you really are interviewing the interviewer, so there’s no need to be heavy-handed! By the way, self-deprecating humor is always appreciated, but do NOT tell jokes or risk sounding like a smartass. Instant death!
8. At the end of the interview, be sure to thank the interviewer for courtesies extended, and be sure to ask, “When do you imagine that I might hear from you about the decision on this job?” Remember, usually it is the manager for whom you will work who makes the hiring decision, not the human resource person. When you are interviewed by the actual manager, be sure to emphasize your ability to hook up with others to create results—another way to say you are a team player. And of most importance, be courteous. Do not create the impression with the manager that you will be difficult to control!
9. Do not let the sun set that day without sending (at least by e-mail) a thank-you note to the interviewer(s)—and do make sure you get business cards so you have the address. To be sure your note is received, follow up with a handwritten note sent by post or left with the receptionist. It’s such a fundamental courtesy, but it’s usually overlooked. Bad move! It might be just the small gesture that tips the hiring decision in your direction. (Expect that others being interviewed are as sharp as you are, so your play needs to be geared to outperforming competitors as much as winning with the interviewer.)
10. Practice. Get your spouse or friend to pretend to be the interviewer. Practice responding to the predictable questions. Do this for the simple reason that if you fumble while responding to a predictable question, you really demonstrate that you are not prepared for the interview and probably aren’t worth hiring!
If you attend to the details reflected in these 10 points, you will do well. Is there more to say? Of course! There are books out there that can help you. One is “Ask the Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job,” by Nick A. Corcodilos. And always, the annual version of “What Color Is Your Parachute?,” that classic by Richard Nelson Bolles. You can find others—not the day before your interview, but in the weeks and months when you are planning your job-hunting campaign. Remember the Six Ps. Remember, this is a high-stakes game you have entered, and your competitors often have just as much to offer potential employers. You really need to pay attention to the details of packaging yourself for success, or you put yourself at serious risk of losing the opportunity!
If you want details on packaging what you have to offer a potential employer in this tough job market, see the next edition of Expert Access.
Good luck? No way! Luck favors the prepared. Get ready to win!
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission, Life-long Learning programme, administered by Education Exchanges Support Foundation in Lithuania. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
The Broken Bridge Between Think and Work
October 28th, 2009
Managers think and plan, workers work.
In between is delegation, by which authority to perform tasks and consume corporate resources is granted. That’s how managers used to be taught in America, so there are probably still some contaminating effectiveness in many work places.
That authoritarian procedure – tasking subordinates — was based on the premise that workers are dull and uninspired, need to be given specific guidance, and watched closely. Missing in that equation was workers’ competence, intelligence, and responsibility. In this still-new century, formerly dull-witted workers have been buffed-up by a couple of decades of computers, instant access to the internet, and have seen millions of once-great jobs dumbed down by technology or eliminated by the dynamics of globalization.
What persists too often is the managerial assumption that employees need to be kept on a short leash.
Once employees are oriented, shown job routines, and introduced to co-workers, they should “own” those jobs and be free to perform tasks and duties involved with only nominal oversight. Then, “order giving” is unnecessary.
What employees might be told is something like this:
“You can do all routine work (about 85%), and let me know when it is complete. Here are a few things (maybe 10%) that, if you do them, tell me immediately. And if these specific things (about 5%) come up, please get my permission first.”
That gives employees latitude to organize their work so they can respond to priorities. When you see employees waiting for orders, you know that no scheme of delegation — permission to work — is in place. Instead, they must be members of teams — it’s really hard to keep teams busy all day every day.
People resent being told what to do. In its most gentle form, it’s still order-giving.
Consider this creative solution developed by New York consultant Robert House, late in the 1950s. He was hired to resolve often dangerous conflicts in restaurants between waitresses and cooks. The cooks (mostly male), resented having orders shouted at them. House resolved the issue by installing a spindle on the counter, to which waitresses could attach orders, spinning the spindle to signal a new order. Alternatively, there was a wire with clothes pins to which orders could be attached. Cooks then could take the orders off the spindle in the order that that fit stove and counter capacity, and conflicts were reduced nearly to zero. Spindles were soon found in nearly every American restaurant – until they were replaced by computerized systems that have the same “sanitizing” effect.
When people know their roles and responsibilities, are free to use their intelligence and creativity, and can ask for help when necessary, work gets done on time and within budget. Workers and managers can collaborate to ensure smooth execution of tasks, and profitable performance results. A basis for developing increasingly effective work groups is provided when order-giving, that residue of authoritarian management, yields to individual competence and results in collaborative effort.
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Photo 1 courtesy MichyLal2
Photo 2 courtesy Barracuty00
What’s the Difference Between Leaders and Managers?
October 4th, 2009
Photo courtesy Kay Ef
What is the difference between leaders and managers?
Some say leaders point out right things to do, while managers ensure that things are done correctly.
Following that definition, anyone can be a leader when his/her experience and knowledge provide the key to overcoming an obstacle.
LEADERSHIP IS AN ACT OF CREATION
This writer’s definition is that “leadership is the creation of structures and processes through which people participate in achieving worthwhile goals.”
This could happen more often if rank, hierarchy, and old ideas about social distance between bosses and workers did not interfere.
Such constraints keep both managers and workers from reaching out to include and share, and still operate in too many work places.
In his exciting 1997 book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman pulled together a lot of research to demonstrate that “the qualities of leadership and the qualities of the heart….are largely the same.”
SIMPLE IDEAS
That means simple ideas about caring and sharing and working together toward common goals are the building blocks of leadership. Add to those the ability to project a vision with challenging roles for all and worthwhile outcomes, and the “raw material” of leadership is in view.
GUIDE SUCCESS
How do you develop leaders who can guide their organizations to succeed in a global economy being shaped by unprecedented combinations of cultures and technologies? How do you develop competent managers? One requirement is that leaders invest time in developing their successors, in challenging all the assumptions about “how it is now” to see if those conditions will continue. Probably they will not.
PECULIAR – BUT NECESSARY
It takes a peculiar kind of courage to admit that what is will not be adequate in the future.
More fundamentally, managers need a peculiar kind of courage to reach out to employees, to ask their opinions, to teach them to become fully-participating members of the organization’s problem-solving system. Leaders cannot be developed when 2 or 3 managers, talking behind closed doors, make all the decisions and give orders.
A contemporary corporate hero, Jack Welch of General Electric, is said to have participated in developing over 15,000 leaders, asking them to think about tomorrow’s customers, their needs, and how GE must reshape itself to respond.
SOME TOUGH QUESTIONS
Asking tough questions, listening actively, and participating fully in the dialog about profitable and business-building responses might be a useful way to characterize leaders and the things they do to create role models that others can replicate.
The Secret Passageway to Increased Employee Productivity
September 7th, 2009
Some see the work place as a combat zone in which managers, using the emotional technology and bribery of motivational theory, try to get more productivity out of unwilling workers. This is a win/lose game in which everyone loses, with mutual respect being one of the first casualties.
Almost 40 years ago, American motivational theorist Frederick Herzberg said two sets of factors operate in any work place — things that satisfy people and things that dissatisfy people. All the factors reduce to how people are treated. If employees feel they are treated with respect, they will work satisfactorily. If employees feel mistreated, they will withhold their productivity.
Herzberg likened his “motivation hygiene theory” to chlorinating water. People who drink contaminated water get ill, but drinking treated water does not make them well — it just keeps them from getting sick. So, he envisioned (and his research proved) that if workers are not frustrated and angry with their managers, they will do all that is required and maybe 10 or 15 percent more. Free!!!! Conversely, when employees are unhappy, they restrict their output!
What satisfies people at work?
Good working conditions, challenging work, recognition for achievements.
Surprisingly, salaries are not high on the list.
We never get enough money. However, if people feel they are underpaid relative to others doing the same type of work, they see that as management’s contempt for them, and they withhold effort, suggestions, and support.
In these “crisis” days, it’s especially important for managers to treat people with respect, to ask employees for help in solving production problems, and to treat people as co-workers, not as “subordinates.” They will respond positively.
However, if managers are getting pay-offs from vendors or ”under the table” money, two things are certain: First, employees know. Second, forget about motivation. Working men and women are not stupid or gullible, despite what many managers think.
Authority is the Tool of Neanderthal Managers
August 14th, 2009
The people-side of enterprise is where the gold is buried.
Almost everyone says that.
Then why are all the people-managing/-motivating-manipulating models so complex and so often rooted in psycho-babble?
Information about how to work with people, how to contribute to their success and how to ensure the success of the enterprise is too valuable to be complicated.
Neither should it be expensive to acquire, difficult and time-consuming to implement, and ultimately forgettable. The real fundamentals break into 12 bite-sized pieces, and here is the first of them:
On Management Theory:
About 100 years ago, Frederick W. Taylor designed a new coal scoop that enabled a “good worker” to increase the amount of coal he could move in a day by nearly 40 percent. Scientific management was born, along with time and motion studies and the pursuit of metrics to turn working people into approximations of machines. That gave managers sophisticated 20th Century tools to increase productivity, more recently referred to as the chase for better, faster, cheaper (BFC) output.
Many motivational and organizational schemes have been promoted since then. But managers continued to find that there is no BFC scheme that workers cannot defeat — if their relations with management give them reasons to do so!
And there is the stick in the spokes – relationships between workers and managers were essentially a no-go area, and where research was done, it was ignored! (See note below.) Management, that bastion of authoritarian prerogative, would not condescend to negotiate with the rabble, so unions became de facto third-party interveners, later replaced or augmented by government regulators (such as OSHA, EEOC, and the Department of Labor).
MBO NO GO
The non-relationship was best exemplified by Management by Objectives (MBO). It was a two-decade attempt to use performance objectives as a substitute for dialogue. But MBO contained an authoritarian oversight – you can’t hold people accountable for failure if they can’t control the variables on which success depends! And control was management’s prerogative. Currently, enlightened companies (the usual suspects, but maybe your company is one of them) focus on building communities of individuals and groups, held together by common vision and shared goals and given broad discretion to act for the common good.
Management defines goals and budgets, but allows teams within the organizations to figure out how to get the work done. Inter-departmental collaboration and high levels of internal “customer service” replace competition and mistrust. The more community is emphasized, the less need there is for hierarchy, social distance, and secrecy. And giving orders.
Even the most brilliant manager is handicapped if people wait to be told what to do. It takes longer to develop detailed plans than to share an idea with empowered workers and support them in turning ideas into profitable reality. Where incentive programs and manager involvement permit, there is little distance between corporate interests and worker self-interest.
Authority is the Blunt Tool of Neanderthal managers.
Collaboration among co-workers is a more civilized approach, especially with Gen X and Y workers, and now with the wired wunderkind coming to work. The next letter will be On Motivation.
Want to see a Template for Worker/Manager Relationships?
Track down Rensis Likert’s award-winning 1961 text, New Patterns of Management. Notice the date: 1961! Have you ever heard of Lickert?
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Awesome photo courtesy of Von Murr
Taking Care … In the Company of Heroes
July 19th, 2009
By Dr. Woody Sears
If you’re reading this, you owe someone back there a debt of gratitude for the advice, counsel, and concern-for-your-future invested in you. If someone cared enough about you to celebrate your successes but to be brutally honest when you screwed up, to refocus you when you lost your bearings or to kick you in the ass when you allowed a sour impulse to override your common sense, you were lucky.
You are living well today because someone, maybe several, became your mentor for a moment, a month, or for years. I am remembering my mentors with the hope that it will prompt you to remember yours — and your obligation to pass along to others those gifts that can only be repaid in kind.
It Can Happen In An Instant
Mentoring can happen in an instant, in a few well-chosen words, and initiate lasting and life-changing insights. Two people who became my heroes are celebrated here. Who knows? Maybe you will hear what I heard, and the impact of their words will continue to ripple across time and space.
Marriage, Money & Go Make Some More
Lori Eisenberg was my first marriage counselor. It was our second meeting alone. Between the first and second, she had met with my wife and then with both of us. She opened the meeting with stunning directness: “What have you got against getting a divorce?”
I was shocked into speechlessness. Finally, I stammered, lamely, “Well, it would cost a lot of money.”
And here is her world-class, life-changing response: “So, go make some more!”
Talk about cutting to the chase, knocking off the nonsense, and getting down to making decisions! That’s been more than thirty years ago, and the imperative to act, to decide, to quit equivocating, is still as powerful. I’ve remembered it at least weekly, and it has pushed me into maybe a thousand decisions. “So, go make some more!”
Her direct advice has been included in more than 200 lectures, and it’s always a surprise to people who want to wallow in the clouds of high-level abstractions instead deciding to get out OR to stay-in-and-make-it-better. With all due respect to the semanticists, sometimes either/or is the only honest, courageous decision.
What a gift! I pass it along to you.
A Nearly Famous Father
Fr. Joe Frazier, an Episcopal (Anglican) priest, was my second short-statement mentor. He had been nearly-famous as a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio. Their anti-establishment songs delighted Libertarians and those of the political left about the same time The Beach Boys and The Kingston Trio were enchanting the politically asleep.
Taking Care
He was making a pastoral call to my wife, who had terminal cancer. After suffering through three abdominal surgeries and three rounds of aggressive chemotherapy with attendant hair loss, she was angry and often lashed out. She looked at me, then at Joe, and like a verbal arsonist said, “I don’t think Woody is a Christian!”
Fr. Joe put out the fire in a six-word, world-class, life-changing response: “Is he taking care of you?”
I’ve spent at least a hundred hours thinking about that situation and the lessons implicit in it. His gentle way of cutting to the bottom line while bringing the single, most important issue to the surface, was a powerful intervention, worth studying, worth thinking about.
In another instance, Fr. Joe and I were discussing capital punishment. I was rolling out the usual pro-death-penalty arguments. Again, without heat, Fr. Joe changed my attitude, my values, and maybe my life with a few well-chosen words.
The Switch
“I guess the death penalty would be okay if I could imagine Jesus pulling the switch. But I can’t!”
Of course, he was employing the rhetorical strategy of identifying an acknowledged standard to neutralize an argument, and it worked! I had to confront the duplicity in my values, and my trust in the man who had asked, in my behalf, “Is he taking care of you?”
Arrows to the Heart
These three interventions have been transformative. Each was weeks or months of tutorials distilled into less than a minute. They were clear, concise, and authentic; pointed, straight shots to the heart of the issue and to the heart of the recipient. They were as finely crafted as any piece of art, models of efficiency and effectiveness.
Where Does This Ability Come From?
Where does the ability to speak in such succinct, truth-telling terms originate? My guess it’s from integrating three separate skills: listening and attending acutely, reading the situational dynamics, and suspending judgment. Individually, these may be the most challenging of the interpersonal skills, and integrating them in a single moment is a great feat of personal discipline.
Magic Moments
But when it happens, magic moments are possible.
I’ve seen the magic, and I’ve struggled for the discipline to replicate it. When I’ve been able to make it happen for others, I feel that I’m at my best – and repaying a debt to two remarkable mentors.
Author’s note: This is the last of 13 recollections of some of the Heroes in my life. Thanks for sharing them with me, and I hope you will take a few minutes to visit with the Heroes in your life .