I coach soccer for 7-year olds, and it’s quite a hoot.  You typically see five or six kids around the ball at all times, but let’s cut them some slack – the ball is where the fun is. 

One of the first things you discover coaching kids at this age is their attention span can seem as brief as summertime in Minnesota.  They’ll stop practicing and point out airplanes taking off from the nearby airfield, big rainclouds rolling through the sky, friends on the next field over – unfortunately, it all adds up to distraction. 

And the problem is, once you’re distracted, you’re no longer able to concentrate on building soccer skills and scoring goals.  At this age, every kid has some work to do.

One of the first things I do at the beginning of each season is set out some guidelines, or “norms.”  So, no matter what’s going on around them, we all agree to things like:  We’re here to learn soccer, not hang on the crossbar; we pass the ball to our teammate’s feet, not shoot at their head for fun; we tie our shoes before practice begins.  Most of the kids can handle these, though a few have difficulty, and they periodically need a brief chat with me as a reminder.

I work with many small businesses that could use a chat – not with me, but with their own employees about what’s acceptable and what’s not. 

Too many clients allow subtle to extreme negative behavior to run rampant in their organizations, and when you talk with their employees, most tell you it’s distracting and prevents them from being as efficient and effective as they could be.

What’s needed in these work environments are guidelines that everyone agrees to and is willing to abide by.  They’re not rules or policies, but rather ways employees treat each other.  Think of them as boundaries for team behavior.   

Norms provide the glue to hold teams together during crisis and stress.  They help the team work through conflict and make it easier for employees to approach, and communicate with, each other.  And, the norms are not negotiable unless the whole group agrees to change them.

Teams without norms typically exhibit the following characteristics:

• guarded about expressing thoughts and feelings
• avoiding conflict
• reluctance to give sincere feedback
• demonstrating low trust, superficial consensus, and low commitment

Instead, by establishing principles for how employees treat each other, teams can build a strong, behavioral foundation to get them through both the good times and the inevitable rough patches. 

Some examples of useful norms include: “We start on time and end on time”; “We challenge the idea, not attack the person;” “We resolve issues within the team, not in front of clients.”

Here’s how you can create norms with your team:

1.       Get the team to brainstorm potentials norms in small groups

2.       Share and determine best choices

3.       Gain agreement from the team and ensure everyone can live with the norms

4.       Write them down and provide a copy to each team member

5.       Make them available at every team meeting

6.       Call out situations where someone has inadvertently violated a norm (you can come up with friendly ways to do this, such as by using a kooshball to toss at the “perpetrator”.)

7.       Address chronic violators with negative consequences

8.       Modify the norms over time, as necessary

Just as kids need to know the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, adults in the workplace can also benefit from solid parameters for team behavior.  Help remove fear, confusion, and distractions with norms, and your team just might score a few more goals.

There are numerous assumptions and myths surrounding leadership, and a few are explained in my previous HRTools.com Insight. In my opinion, the above title question is best answered by a few simple words: A leader is someone who people want to follow. 

To develop effective leadership in management, so that people will want to follow your leaders, you will want to consider some important elements. Among them:    

1. Base your decisions on what people think is important. In other words, what do people value? The answers to this question determine how people decide to pursue things, and even how budgets are developed and established. People need to believe that something is worth their making an investment. For instance, in the workplace: If you’re asking people to work on something, whether it’s for a short, intermediate or long-term basis, you’re asking them to invest with their time, skills and/or knowledge. Leaders are in the promotion business, and if they are promoting what people do not value, then it will be difficult to gain their following. 
2. Know who your players are. Some people just have a knack for providing guidance to and directing others. On the other hand, some people do not have that knack. If you don’t recognize the distinction, you can end up with mismatches, which will cause problems. For example, you might have frustrated employees because they are not in leadership roles, and that’s where they want to be. Conversely, you can have an individual who is very good at what he or she does—perhaps an expert in some technical field—they’re very bright, etc., so you put them in a leadership role. In the latter case, this technical expert may not want to be leading people; and, he or she would rather be a technical expert. So ability is one thing and willingness is another. 
3. Avoid making assumptions about people. Oftentimes, leaders will assume that everyone wants to be a leader, but that is not the case. Not everyone does want to be a leader, or at least, not in the way that some leaders view it. Someone might be a leader amongst their peers in terms of technical knowledge. But these same people might be ‘behind-the-scenes’ kind of operators. So you need both the ability and the willingness in order to develop an effective leader.
4. Recognize the differences between titles and abilities. Let’s face it. Some people are only interested in the pay or the status that a title can offer. Or they want to be seen in a positive light, but their willingness to connect with people isn’t there. If these people are in it only half-heartedly, then their abilities to lead will be impacted. These people will not be effective leaders, and they usually fail. 
5. Leadership requires experience. You can read about leadership in a book. You can attend leadership classes, and you can participate in simulations and do all these sorts of things. But, ultimately, you have to put yourself in real world work situations. You have to be willing to try and to experiment with behaviors. Leadership is really behavioral, so you have to experiment with behaviors and see what outcomes you get. Then, you keep tweaking those behaviors over a period of time to learn what works and what does not work. So, experience is the most important factor when you want to develop effective leaders. 

In my work as a performance specialist, I encourage leadership trainees to practice and experiment. Sure, mistakes can be made and frustrations are felt, but it’s also very rewarding when you see potential leaders experience those ‘Aha!’ moments. Those are the times when they are thrilled, because they have accomplished something they didn’t know they could do. 

It all starts to come together for these new leaders. They learn how to effectively lead people through conflict resolution. They learn how to communicate change. And through their skills training, combined with their willingness to experiment, they are building trust and gaining an understanding about the dynamics of those important interpersonal relationships. 

And, most importantly, they are realizing that people want to follow effective leaders.

How would you answer this question: Do you think that leadership in management is crucial to both individual and organizational successes? 

An obvious or at-first-glance answer is “yes.” However, at second glance, it can be answered in another way. Unfortunately, leadership in management can also have the opposite effect, as some leadership styles can hamper successes. If leadership in management performs poorly or ineffectively, you will see that those type leaders end up performing a disservice to an organization. 

As it is, leadership in management sets the tone for the workplace. And business leadership is responsible for creating an environment that is employee-focused; one in which people can respond affirmatively to such questions as: 

1. Do the employees want to show up for work?
2. Do the employees want to work in the environment?
3. Do employees understand the workplace climate, certain norms and guidelines and how things operate? 

All in all, if leadership is working to make the work climate conducive for employee productivity and engagement, then yes, it can be said that leadership in management is crucial for individuals and organizational successes. 

Leaders are essentially responsible for modeling behaviors. If leaders fail in setting the tone, and their behaviors are dysfunctional, as you can probably imagine, their leadership is ineffective and it all backfires. So, not only does it matter what leadership says, it is also matters how leadership behaves, as those behaviors set the tone for the employees. 

Here are some common myths about leadership: 

1. Titles make the leader. This is a common misperception. I can have the title CFO, and I might be a finance expert; however, this title does not make me a good leader. I can be the CEO, which also might mean that I’m entrepreneurial; or I might know how to sell; or I might be a technical expert at some aspect of the business. However, none of these characteristics necessarily mean that I am a good leader.
2. Experience makes the leader. This tenet is not necessarily true. Someone may be very knowledgeable and have lots of experience. He or she may have been around the business for a long time, yet if no one wants to follow this individual, they are not a good leader.   
3. Intelligence makes the leader. Again, someone may have a high IQ and score well on standardized tests. High test scores do not mean that someone can be an effective leader. While high test scores tell us that this person is smart, or that he or she knows how to score well on such tests, it doesn’t mean that he or she knows how to run or help a business. Simply put, smarts do not necessarily equal leadership.
4. Personality makes the leader. You may be outgoing and have a dominant personality. You might be aggressive, assertive and decisive. You might be a strategic-type thinker, which means that you have the ability to envision things and make sensible connections. While these qualities are useful and valuable in certain situations, it doesn’t automatically follow that such work or personality styles make someone a good leader. Or just because you are a visionary and you understand what is going on in the marketplace, it doesn’t mean that people will automatically want to follow you.
5. Education makes the leader. Someone may have a great education and they may have earned their MBA. Education credentials may indicate that you are very bright and capable, but those credentials do not mean that you will be a great leader. You could have an advanced degree in finance, but you also still have to be able to connect with people. Just because you have a sophisticated degree or an accelerated education, which are all great, those achievements do not make you an effective leader. 

The bottom line is: If you, as a leader, do not know how to connect with people, then you might as well run that business by yourself. Once you involve other people in your business, however, that leadership in management becomes critically important. 

Effective leaders are the ones who make the work environment a place in which employees: (a) want to show up for work and (b) want to follow the leaders.

Employers, of course, want to see their businesses as growing and profitable. Awhile back, I helped an employer who wanted to do some troubleshooting in order to figure out what was going on in the company. So my team and I helped the company conduct an organizational diagnosis. 

This company employed about 20 people, and the employer wanted each employee to meet with my team, one-on-one. During these meetings, we interviewed each employee for the purpose of collecting data. 

An aside note: Conducting individual interviews, as described above, is one way to gather information, but you also have other choices. For instance, you can collect data from focus groups. Or you can gather comments during a large group conference setting, during which you can flush out a lot of information. 

Now, going back to our interviews, we first wanted to learn what was working and what was not working; what was going on and what wasn’t going on throughout the organization. When you set out to do an organizational diagnosis, you want to connect the dots, so to speak, because all the areas of the business are interconnected. We asked questions about the company’s operations; for instance, we asked the employees: 

1. What is the business situation?
2. What kind of results are you seeing?
3. What is your profit-loss situation? 

Then, we wanted to learn more about the direction of the organization. We asked questions such as: 

1. What is your mission?
2. What are your values?
3. What are your strategies and objectives?
4. Are these directional positions clear? Do you understand them? Are you excited about them? 

Finally, we wanted to understand work processes, and we asked these types of questions: 

1. How does the work get done?
2. Can you describe the work flow?
3. How are teams organized?
4. Can you describe the policies?
5. How are employees organized?
6. How are roles defined?
7. How are decisions made?
8. Who has responsibility and control? 

Using this one-on-one interviewing format, then, we were essentially getting various perspectives. By asking each employee his or her take on the business processes, and other matters, we were looking for patterns. In essence, we were not only looking for positives and negatives, but we also wanted to know what implications the employees’ perspectives held for other parts of the company. 

For example, when employee roles are unclear or employees do not understand the company’s direction, we need to determine how this confusion might impact business results. 

Other areas that you will want to examine in an organizational diagnosis are: 

• Staffing

1. How is hiring handled?
2. How do you approach recruitment?
3. What does your placement look like?
4. What does your turnover look like?
5. What concerns do employees have? Do they see things as broken or in good shape?

• Culture

1. What is the environment or climate like?
2. What are the implicit beliefs?
3. What rules or standards are in place that people don’t even have to discuss and that make the culture unique?
4. Are employees motivated?
5. Do employees feel supported?
6. How is conflict handled?
7. Are employees satisfied?

• Development

1. How do employees grow in knowledge, skills and abilities?
2. How do things get done?
3. How are relationships with others?
4. Are there learning opportunities?

• Rewards/Recognition

1. Does it matter if you do good work?
2. What are the consequences?
3. How are employees evaluated?
4. Are employees evaluated fairly?
5. Does the system work? Is it useful?
6. Are employees held accountable? 

This experience helps illustrate that an organizational diagnosis uses a comprehensive approach. A number of categories make up the ingredients for an organizational assessment. These categories are all interconnected and any changes you make to one category can have implications for other categories. It is also important to involve all the employees in the diagnosis—and the smart organizations do. 

As a final point, I want to emphasize that with an organizational diagnosis, you are looking for patterns. You’re not looking to make individual or isolated changes, on the contrary, you are looking at the organizational system as a whole in order to get to the root of any problems. It is a mistake to act on the symptoms or put out little crisis fires here and there. If you do, invariably those problems pop up again. Instead, when employers take the time and make that short-term investment, in turn, they can reap long-term payoffs. 

“A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner,” so says an English proverb. 

Some analysts predict that the U.S. business scene will look significantly different after this economic crisis. After navigating through some very turbulent times and great uncertainties, many might agree, we will eventually change how we do business.    

How about your business? Are rough and unpredictable times forcing you to examine your organizational processes, services and products? How about your employees? How do they coordinate their activities with one another? Most importantly, do you think your organization is doing what it should in terms of developing, maintaining and strengthening or improving customer/client relationships? 

If not, you may want to consider an organizational diagnosis as a way to closely examine what is going on in your business versus what should be going on. Now more than ever, business can little afford to have uncoordinated or redundant processes and ‘live in the moment’ attitudes. 

Above all, we know that the stronger and more competitive businesses are also those that develop strong relationships with their employees. These businesses place a high priority on involving and engaging employees in purposeful ways; they, for example, will encourage and recognize problem-solvers and innovative thinkers. 

If you want to lead your business out of the blues and doldrums to where you think it should be, during good or bad times, here are my suggestions for doing that: 

1. After you have successfully engaged and involved your employees, you will focus on collecting data. Your actions should reflect an attitude of confronting reality head on. This data will reveal what is going on today. You will use this data to determine what is working and what is not working.
2. Once you have collected your data, then you will start to assess that data. You will ask probing questions. What are the positive trends; what are the negative trends? Is it flat here? Are things working for the better, or have we always done things this way? What is the current status of ‘xyz?’
3. After assessing your data, then you can begin to develop organizational improvements and act upon them. It’s at this point that you really involve the employees by assigning them to certain teams or committees. Those are the stakeholders in creating improvements. These teams will act on some of those improvement recommendations; they will put them into play and test them out. By applying these methods, you will then be ready to take the fourth step, which is evaluation.
4. You will then evaluate what was tested and what was learned to see if you can make incremental improvements. What worked? What didn’t work?  What will we need to change? What do we want to keep? What missed the mark and why? Do we want to try that again? 

As I see it, then, America’s most success-driven business leaders are now gaining momentum, and they will be the ones who apply critical thinking techniques to break free of any unproductive habits.  

In the final HRTools.com Insight of this series, I will share a real-life organizational diagnosis success story.

Science fiction followers may remember a robot in one of the Star Trek episodes, when confronted by irrational human behavior, saying, “That does not compute.” 

If you’re a business leader or a decision-maker, do you see things as “not computing” within your organization? Are you detecting tell-tale signs of lackluster performance? Do you think that your company should be more competitive than it is right now? How about your people? Are they as flexible and as engaged as they should be in order to be innovative and solutions-oriented? Or worse, do you see a financial crisis looming on the horizon? 

The question is: Why?  No leader wants to lead a ‘dead organization walking.’ 

The overall goal of an organizational diagnosis is to find out and apply what should be happening within the organization versus what is happening. Your objective is to improve business performance overall. 

As discussed in a previous HRTools.com Insight, leaders first must recognize that internal deficiencies exist. Next, leaders must commit to finding out what problems are causing those deficiencies and how they’re interfering with achieving optimal success. 

Granted, this kind of overall scrutiny isn’t something that organizations conduct on a regular basis. So here are a couple suggestions of what to watch out for—or some common misconceptions about this process. Some business leaders may tend to sabotage the process by: 

1. Being short-sighted by an immediate crisis: They may act on symptoms and immediate or localized issues experienced by a team—such as those between a manager and an employee. In doing so, they are not getting to the root of the problem. And to get at the root of the problem, you have to ask tough questions. You have to also acknowledge reality, which means you must involve employees in the process. This point takes us to another common mistake.
2. Neglecting to recognize the value of involving all stakeholders. When organizations fail to involve the employees to some degree, they are less likely to gain their long-term commitments. Employees, after all, are the ones who can help you improve your processes and help you recognize what is going on within your company. If you don’t involve employees, you may get some short-term compliance, but that is not the same as gaining their long-term commitment. When stakeholders become involved, you will find that they, in turn, can help you recognize the issues your organization is experiencing and help you come up with the solutions to those issues. 

In short: In order to achieve success, and before implementing an organizational diagnosis effort, business leaders should prepare to go at it with more than just a ‘live in the moment’ kind of attitude. In addition to analyzing your income and balance sheets, for instance, you must address all the areas that make the funds go in and out. And you simply cannot have one leader making unilateral decisions. Instead, remember that all decisions also have decision points, which can have wide and long-reaching consequences for the entire organization. 

The idea is that you examine not just isolated issues or departments or tasks, but also how changes you make to any one of them have implications for other parts of the system. So you don’t treat one issue at a time when those issues are connected to other parts of how your business runs. Otherwise, you take the risk of unintended consequences. 

In my next Insight, I will review steps that an organization can take to effectively conduct an organizational diagnosis.

Picture this: Your top management group has gathered to observe a presentation by the leader of an organizational diagnosis effort for your business. He is standing in front of a wall-size, blank whiteboard and is preparing to illustrate a diagnosis of the organization. In other words, he will be making the case for what is going on within the organization versus what should be going on within the organization. 

Although different than a medical diagnosis—which identifies a disease by examining the symptoms—an organizational diagnosis basically examines the current performance of a business and identifies those gaps that are keeping it from its desired performance. 

An organizational diagnosis can be a valuable and revealing process, if properly approached, and if an organization is willing to take full advantage of it. 

Organizations are made up of people who coordinate activities with others to carry out business transactions. Once you involve people, of course, you have all sorts of areas that are affected, which should also be taken into account. 

Why wouldn’t an organization take on such an effort? There are a number of reasons: For one, some companies simply don’t take the time to conduct an organizational diagnosis. For another, some companies are unsure of how to account for all the interconnected parts. 

To that point, I think it’s very important for organizations to understand how to take advantage of an organizational diagnosis, because this process can: 

• reveal certain activities that you aren’t even aware of;
• help reconfirm what you are aware of and remove blind spots and
• help you laser in on other very useful information. 

Ultimately, what you’re trying to accomplish with an organizational diagnosis is a performance check on each of all the moving pieces. During this check, for instance, you will want to examine those pieces that serve to help create the culture of the business and help drive things forward. 

Individuals in a business tend to focus on their own little worlds, so they don’t always think of the organization as an organic entity. But a business has a great number of interconnected activities; they are interdependent on one another—not independent of one another. As a result, you have a ripple effect, with consequences. So when one unit acts on even one piece of the business, invariably, there are implications for other units. In other words, you can change something in one part of your business that can end up impacting the entire business. 

And this is why organizational diagnosis is so important. You end up getting a picture with data that can help you measure the entire business system, not just one piece of it. This is how you start to build the diagnosis. 

Which leads me to my next point: It’s much more important to take a holistic wide-view of the business—or on a system-wide basis—instead of simply addressing localized, individual parts of the business.  

As someone once said, “You don’t want to win the battle, but lose the war.” In other words, you can try to accomplish something in one part of the business, or with one group of people affecting one element of operations; so you focus just on that and feel like you have gained a short-term win. But, undoubtedly it's going to have an impact on other parts of the business, and you can ultimately end up losing, if you haven't accounted for the other parts. 

So the key thing with organizational diagnosis is you're looking for all of those patterns and then the goal is to not just make individual changes—isolated changes—but to look at the system as a whole and get to the root of what the issues are and not just act on symptoms. The overall goal of an organizational diagnosis is to apply ‘what should be happening within the organization,’ so that the effect is improved business performance overall.

If you have employees who ultimately want a seat at the table, and especially if they’re top performers, you will want to start setting the table. Most employers want ambitious employees who aspire to help grow the company. What today’s managers may face, as mentioned in my previous HRTools.com Insight, are some individuals who expect to be promoted to vice president after a year on the job. How can an organization manage the career development aspirations of today’s diverse workforce?  

Here’s a story of what can typically happen in this present business environment. I know of a company with about a hundred employees. This company’s middle managers realized they had a number of Millennials in the workforce (also known as Gen Y, those individuals born between 1981 and 1983). Many of these employees were very eager and aggressive about trying out new ideas and experimenting, etc. 

So I suggested that they get together with these employees to discuss their ideas and take a deliberate approach with them. If these employees wanted to pursue or experiment with some ideas, they needed to figure out why they thought those ideas would work, and also learn from those experiences, and so on. 

For those employees who wanted to be quickly promoted to vice president, for instance, I encouraged them to engage these employees in detailed conversations. They started out their conversations by saying, “It’s OK if you’re not there (at the VP level) yet.” They also needed to ask them thought-provoking questions such as: 

1. If you want to work toward the role of a vice president, why is that?
2. What is exciting about that role? Why does it appeal to you?
3. What are you hoping to accomplish?
4. Does this role represent increased status and increased pay, or is it for some other reason?
5. Are you bored with your current role, or is it just that you see your friends achieving that status at another company, so you believe you should be striving for that, too? 

Also, as another point: It’s important that employers provide a safe and secure environment for its up and coming leaders to express themselves; one in which their feedback and comments will not be held against them. You want your employees to always feel that it’s safe to say back to you, “No, thank you.” 

Or have you thought about how you would handle this scenario? You have employees who are being considered for an opportunity or a promotion; and an employee is selected and he or she accepts the promotion. You will want to do the responsible thing and let the other candidates know, as well, who received that promotion. They should be further told why they didn’t get the promotion, or what the deciding factors were, and what they may want to consider doing to get to that next career step in the future. 

Ultimately, your objective for career management is to develop and maintain an environment in which people want to stick around and keep doing their specific tasks. For one reason, employee turnover is very costly. For another: Organizations are wise to recognize that a diverse and experienced workforce often provides the best pool from which to prepare its up and coming leaders. 

Given our diverse workforce, organizations are wise to be versatile and tailor their career management development relationships by keeping an open, understanding and flexible mindset.

Would you wear your mission statement for everyone to see?

Someone once said that a mission statement should fit on a T-shirt. 

If you are developing or revising your mission statement, you might be thinking, “How can something like crafting a short business statement possibly be so challenging?” You are not alone, and I’ve seen avoidable mistakes made as a consequence of employers almost subconsciously deceiving themselves or making the process much more complicated than it needs to be. 

For example, as I referenced in a previous HRTools.com Insight that introduces the mission statement process, Google’s one-sentence mission statement reads: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The last I checked, their stock was trading at close to $400 a share. 

To give you a closer look at how this process can trip you up, I’ll first share some common mistakes employers can make when formulating their stated purpose: 

1. Not evaluating the motivation or the reason(s) for needing one: If a business owner feels compelled to come up with a mission statement just because the guy down the street has one, employers can end up fooling themselves. Or thinking that they better come up with one, because an HR 101 text book says to have one.
2. Using the process to excite the employee base: Employers who think, “Hey this sounds like fun, and if we just talk about it, it will get our employees excited, so let’s make sure we are able to at least say something” can ultimately lead to a regrettably skewed statement.  
3. Making it something only ‘for show’ or superficial purposes: If you are taking the time to put together a mission statement, and it’s only for show purposes that’s not a valid reason. Instead you will want to (a) carefully think it through; (b) inspire a general sense of collective agreement; (c) have it reflect a non-negotiable part of who you are and what you do. Then, your mission statement stands to serve a more real purpose. 

Now that you know what mistakes to avoid when developing a mission statement, here are a few practical steps that you can use as an aid: 

1. Make it a deliberate process and don’t drag it out.
2. Approach it with an intuitive type attitude; ideas should come to you fairly quickly.
3. Select company representatives, if yours is a large organization. If yours is a smaller organization, you may want to appoint a core group of employees who will gather others’ input, including senior level employees. 
4. Ask people questions such as, “What is it about our company that is meaningful to you? Why do you come in here instead of going somewhere else down the street?” In other words, you want to find out what makes your workplace unique to your employees.
5. Create a draft statement and ask for feedback.
6. Analyze the draft statement and ask yourself if this statement will be valid a year from now, two years from now, etc.
7. Make sure it reflects your values, vision, and why everyone comes to work everyday. 

Remember this statement should reflect you and your business. It stands for something that you will live by each and every day. If it’s just some slick-looking thing hanging on the wall, and you’re not operating in a way that demonstrates this statement, then it becomes more of a distraction than anything. Finally, imagine seeing your mission statement on a T-shirt. Would you want to wear it for everyone to see?

Do some of your employees think they should be promoted to vice president after working a year at your company?

In a previous HRTools.com Insight, I explained how everyone benefits—employers and employees alike—when business goals and employee career management goals are in synch.

As mentioned, everyone saves a lot of time when they are upfront about what they are looking to do. So, I encourage organizational leaders, and their employees, to be open and transparent in their relationships.

When developing career management practices for employees within an organization, employers may find the following practical steps a useful guide: 

1. Do a reality check. Be honest with employees about what is possible and what is not.  This clarity is especially important when dealing with employees who may have unrealistic expectations. Those individuals may not realize that certain criteria are required for certain positions. For instance, they may lack the necessary experience, business savvy, technical skills, etc. to fulfill the responsibilities of a higher-level position.
2. Avoid dragging out the process. In other words, when a new role, or a variation in a role, is identified, make sure your organization is prepared to talk about it. If not, the process can drag on and on. Leaders and managers want to avoid putting themselves in situations where they’re responding to inquiries by saying, “Well, we will have to see. Well, let me look into that.” These sorts of hazy responses serve no purpose and are not useful to anyone. Instead, you want to be prepared to ‘cut to the chase.’
3. Adopt a flexible attitude. Employers should be willing to allow employees to try out new roles or responsibilities whenever possible. Don’t allow a job description to restrict employee performance. Employees have all sorts of talents, skills and abilities they can bring to the table. Provide them with opportunities and allow them to experiment in a role. For example, some organizations allow an employee to “tag along” with someone else for a week. These employees can benefit from participating in new experiences, which are typically outside their normal range of activities, such as sitting in on internal or client-facing meetings.
4. Recognize the value of experimentation. By allowing opportunities for employees to experiment, they can then find out if a certain type of role appeals to them or not. A position may look good on paper until it is experienced. The last thing you want to happen is to put someone in a role and then find out later that it isn’t what they thought it would be. So give employees an opportunity to experiment and, again, do not tie them to job descriptions.
5. Influence a safe environment. Beware of putting employees into roles that you are ‘selling’ them on. In other words, if you tell them, “This is a really exciting role change,” etc., and they get the impression that it is not safe to say, “No, thank you,” this can be a mistake. Or even worse, when an employer responds by saying something such as, “Oh, never mind, you’re out of here.”
6. Remember employee expectations are different from one to the next. Again, it’s about setting expectations. You may have an employee who is assertive, aggressive and a go-getter, and this individual wants to rise to the top. These characteristics do not represent every person who shows up to work. So for others, career objectives may mean something totally different. For some individuals, roles that allow for more flexibility and more time at home may be more meaningful. Or you may have someone who is bored in their current role, but he or she does not want to manage or supervise other employees. So you will not want to make them a manager or a supervisor.
7. Think outside the traditional career ladder box. Besides assuming that everyone wants to hear, “You’re our people manager,” get to know your people. Not everyone wants to hear that, so make sure you also understand what the role entails. Be upfront and honest about the role and how you see this person fulfilling the responsibilities. Then, take notice of their reactions. Are they excited? Do they seem happy and willing to take them on?
8. Expose employees to new and various projects. Based on an employee’s interests, background, qualifications, etc., give them exposure to new projects. Find out if they are suitable for the task. An employer can have the power and authority to push people, including those who are performing well, but ultimately if the willingness isn’t there, it will fail. In other words, if the motivation is not there, you’re going to see an excellent performer move to being an OK performer. 

So success means different things to different people. Employers have a definite vision of what success and growth mean to them. Synch up your goals with those of your employees, and you will more likely find them whistling while they work.

Can career-path conscious professionals follow your yellow brick road? 

Remember the Warner Brothers film, The Wizard of Oz? This film adaptation of the L. Frank Baum stories follows Dorothy and her three friends on a memorable journey. They all have the same goal. They want to find someone who can help them make the necessary transitions so they can pursue their dreams. During their journey they encounter others whom they need to either overcome or trust, in order to reach their destination—which is arriving at the Land of Oz and meeting with the Wizard. In their minds, Oz holds the keys to their futures. 

Similarly, career management pursuits can sometimes become a journey and can often turn into political maneuvering. These twists can happen when people do not identify their true intentions, or their true needs and wants. As a result, they end up with a, “What is going on behind the curtains?” kind of scenario. 

In my mind, everyone can save a lot of time, and even enhance opportunities, if they would be a little more upfront about what they are looking to do. So, I encourage organizational leaders, and their people, to think along these more open and transparent lines. 

Don’t make assumptions. Clarify and, whenever possible, synch business goals with career management goals.

In my work, I see employers who are interested in the career management goals of their employees. Obviously, frustrations occur when the needs of the organization and those of the employee don’t always intersect. 

When employers and employees come to the career management table, it helps to share and clarify definitions. Career management can mean very different things to different people, depending on who you ask. Again, when everyone is upfront about their intentions, this clarity can often override many of those ‘behind the curtains’ kind of assumptions such as:

1. Assuming that a manager’s motivations—or that individual who is serving in a career decision-maker’s capacity—are triggered by the same career issues as those of the employee.
2. Assuming that everyone in an organization wants to move up and that everyone wants more status, higher pay, more responsibility, etc. 

In other words, what you can become faced with are clarification and synching issues. For instance, what motivates one individual to either move up or make a horizontal career move may not synch up with an organization’s actual needs, or what is motivating the organization to make certain decisions. 

Again, it can be an incorrect assumption to think that everyone wants: 

• to move up;
• to be promoted;
• more status and/or
• more responsibility. 

Healthy workplace relationships, which are also built on trust, require great communication skills. Managers should really get to know and understand their employees. Employers may learn that not everyone in their organization wants a more complex and sophisticated job. Many employees enjoy what they’re doing, and they do not want to get promoted. Some people want to try out new responsibilities, but they also want to remain at their same levels. They may just want more variety. 

Then again, other employees do want the traditional move-up opportunities. These employees may want increased responsibilities, and they may want to supervise direct reports. Some professionals may be looking for another role, a new job, faster advancement or even a career change and an improved lifestyle. When employers can better understand and meet employee expectations and needs, then obviously everyone benefits. 

In a future HRTools.com Insight, I will review steps that employers can take to develop effective career management plans for their employees.

My dad always says the dictionary is your best friend. Offering information you can use.  Available anytime. Trustworthy.  So I reached over to my bookshelf recently, grabbed the big volume and flipped pages until I arrived at the word delegation.  I read, “to commit or entrust to another.”  A few things struck me upon examining this brief definition. The first was the presence of the word trust, and the second was the definition’s implied opposite: to keep something to yourself.

Delegation is one of the best ways to help employees succeed. It builds strength and capability through expanded job responsibilities and challenges. What’s in it for you?  It buys you more time to work on the things that you value and are important to the business. And yet I see managers avoid delegation all the time. Why? Rationalization, such as the following:

• I can do it a whole lot faster.
• I can do it a whole lot better.
• I don’t have time to coach.
• I don’t have time to give feedback.

So tell me—if you can do it faster and more effectively, then why do you bother to hire and pay employees?  And if you don’t have time to coach and give feedback, why are you a manager of people? Guess what—if you’re a manager, your number one job is to develop your employees so they can succeed. You benefit, the company benefits and those employees are set up for success.  If you don’t trust your employees, then don’t delegate.  But maybe you’re not sure what you can thoughtfully pass on to others.  Here’s a partial list of what can be delegated:

• Duties for which you don’t have time to complete yourself
• Routine tasks (but not grunt work)
• Problem solving
• Skill-building opportunities
• Current duties that should no longer be emphasized in your own role

How do you do it?  A small amount of investment time up front can pay big dividends later, so it pays to plan carefully.

Step 1: Analyze your employees.  What are their strengths, development areas and opportunities to take on additional responsibilities?

Step 2: Once you have matched up the right employee with an appropriate delegation opportunity, sit down with the employee and explain the what, the why and the outcome you’re looking for.  Then provide some training or coaching, and express the boundaries of the assignment and levels of support to be expected from you and others.

Step 3: Set appropriate authority levels for the employee. Do you want the person to make recommendations and then act? Or will the employee make decisions, act and then provide you with updates?

Step 4: Follow up and provide additional coaching and feedback.

Expect a performance dip in the early stages of activity, as the employee is likely to have a learning curve and be operating in unfamiliar territory. If you’ve prepared the person well, you should see a nice payoff in confidence, knowledge and skill. Plus, you’ve provided the employee with breadth of experience.

Sometimes, the best way to get power is to give it away. That’s what delegation is about. You trust someone enough to take care of something on your behalf. By providing the necessary information, training and support—and offering help without removing responsibility—delegation provides a wonderful opportunity to develop employees. Think of delegation as your best friend, and you might find that your time gets freed up for the really important work, like running your business.

Google’s one-sentence mission statement reads: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Although a simply constructed sentence of 15 words, Google’s mission statement is succinctly powerful. No one could argue against the company’s claim, as stated on its Corporate Information—Company View Web page: "Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second."

Would you say their mission is succeeding? In February, Google reported on its Google Milestones Web page: "After adding Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese, and Galician, Google Translate is capable of automatic translation between 41 languages, covering 98% of the languages read by Internet users."

A mission statement is useful if there is a strong purpose for having it.
Some business owners are confounded by the idea of developing a mission statement. Others argue that mission statements are a senseless waste of time. Then, some business people insist that a mission statement is absolutely essential for any company to be successful. If someone says to me that all businesses should have a mission statement, I say that is partially true. I believe that a mission statement is useful if there is a strong purpose behind it.

If there is a reason to develop one, a mission statement needs to be well thought-out and purposeful. A business should not have a mission statement simply because someone says they should have one, or so it can be framed and hung on a wall or printed on a nice little trifold display card.

Remember Enron? They had a mission statement; it was concise, understandable and very powerful. Anyone walking into their corporate offices could see it hanging there on the wall and, as it turns out, it wasn’t worth two cents. If a mission statement becomes a bunch of words that people snicker at, you’ve wasted your time.

A mission statement steers you through good times and bad times. 
Basically a mission statement serves as the foundation for the ship you steer through rough and calm waters. It represents you and why you exist. A mission statement clarifies your organizational purpose—who you are and what you are about. It should speak to you and your employees by answering this question: "What is the point of showing up here every day?" 

If developed with a purpose and a reason in mind, a mission statement helps you get people aligned with what you are trying to accomplish. It serves as a valuable and powerful catalyst for energizing employees, stakeholders and customers, keeping everyone on board with you through good and bad times.

So, to be effective, a mission statement should be visible and create excitement. It should also reinforce the ideas that we are on the same team, and we are moving in the same direction. It should underscore the reasons why we are doing this together. A mission statement should connect people with their values—that is, individuals who carry out your mission should find that their personal values match those declared by the company’s.

When someone sees your mission statement, they should see an image of your vision, a "pre-painted picture" of a desired future outcome. 
This big-picture imagery, again, helps move people toward that future direction. Then when stresses, crises and distractions show up at the door, you have this foundation and direction firmly planted and it helps keep everyone steady. It keeps you in the channel and, when times are tough, prevents you from running ashore and getting grounded. If your mission statement is real and it’s strong, and if people take it seriously, it will serve as a compelling and steadying force.

If you are thinking about developing a mission statement, think about why you need one. Think about your business and what sets you apart from other businesses. You want it to represent nonnegotiable parts of why you exist and who you are. Remember, too, when you finalize your mission statement, you must be committed to living it out. You must choose to make it the focal point of your business. Otherwise, you will have a bunch of words displayed on a piece of paper or hanging on the wall that are meaningless.

In a future HRTools.com Insight, I will review steps for approaching and developing a mission statement, including some commonly made mistakes to avoid.

Employee Development Plans:  A Means or an End?

I got into a fight recently—with a dozen people.  Well, not a bare-knuckle, street brawl where you come away with a bloody nose and get hauled away to jail for the evening.  In fact, this fight didn’t take place in the street or even in the company break room.  No, this was an engaging, thoughtful debate with some small-business owners about integrating employee development plans into the performance evaluation process.

How do you evaluate employee performance?  Many small-business owners have no formal process for providing timely, relevant feedback to their employees about their strengths and areas for improvement.  But even if you do have an established process, are you measuring the right factors?  And if you are, does it make sense to also evaluate the outcomes of employee development plans?

The group and I began by discussing skill and behavioral areas to evaluate, but then moved to individual development plans and whether they would also measure their employees on the items in their plans.  Things started to get tense when I presented the group with a list of factors that one might measure:

• Potential
• Attitude
• Effort
• Job knowledge

For which of the above four factors would you evaluate and provide a score?  If you answered none, come over to my side, grab a stick and join the fray.  The participants couldn’t believe that I would not evaluate any of these variables.  Let’s look at them together, determine what we’re trying to accomplish, and understand why these items may not be useful to evaluate:

• Potential: this really isn’t measureable, as nothing has happened yet.  If the employee has performed well in the current role, then reward for that.
• Attitude:  attitude itself isn’t useful to evaluate, though it leads to behaviors and results which are measurable and could have an impact on your business results.  Connect attitude to behaviors, and behaviors to results.  Then, evaluate.
• Effort: trying to do something and actually doing it are not the same.  In fact, doing something and getting business results are not the same either.  How does your business make money? With effort, or with execution and results?
• Job knowledge: knowledge, skills and abilities are of course important in any role.  And many IT companies I work with reward their technologists for obtaining certifications.  But what makes them important is what employees are able to do with the knowledge and expertise they’ve acquired.  Whether it’s through training or other means, knowing something and doing something with that knowledge are quite different.

As you can see, I’m much less interested in what employees know than in what they can do with that knowledge.  For which do you want to reward? 

So, the next time you’re helping someone create a development plan, think twice about evaluating the person on the details of the plan.  Instead, focus on results and use the plan as the means (and not the end in and of itself) by which the person will get those results.  Your employees will win the fight for top performance with a strategic development plan that leads to growth and profitable outcomes.

In a previous Insight, employee motivation techniques were explained. As discussed, employees bring their own motivations and perceptions to the workplace. It’s a manager’s job to get to know and understand their employees in order to inspire and engage them to be top performers.

When top-performing employees get off track.

Managers can occasionally find themselves faced with an employee who has gone off track. When this happens, a manager may conclude that it is a result of a straight-forward performance or training issue. Oftentimes, managers or supervisors will jump to this conclusion and decide that some particular training class is in order.

I’ll share a real-life example to help illustrate: I worked with an employer that had a historically outstanding employee. In fact, he mentioned that this employee rated a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Then, all of a sudden, things changed. This employee was no longer operating in the same way. He was not as motivated and his work quality dropped. The employer could not understand or figure out what had changed.

In fact, as it turns out, the employee’s role had changed. To the owner, it was a subtle change; purely a matter of informing the employee what he needed to focus on and that he needed to prioritize. However, the employee found the change as an unfavorable one. He didn’t enjoy his work as much; it wasn’t "his thing." He didn’t identify with the new role, and he didn’t see it as fitting his purpose for being there.

There’s a reason why employee performance slides, and it helps to investigate.

When employers notice that an employee’s performance has changed and he is not performing like he used to, it helps to understand why. An employee may feel awkward in confronting the manager and explaining, "You know what? When you reassigned me to do something different, which affects how I spend my time, I’m just not enjoying my work as much as I used to."

So when stepping in and helping this employer, we talked it through. I asked him, "Is it possible that this employee is now doing work that they don’t enjoy as much as they used to? The energy and excitement are not there anymore, and you’re seeing a drop-off in performance."

I further explained, "This is pretty normal. It’s like anything else in life. If you enjoy a hobby and then someone asks you to work on something else and it’s not your thing, you’re not going to be into it as much as you used to be. And without the energy and interest, you can potentially lose their performance."

Once he followed up with that employee and confronted the issue, he acknowledged, "Yes, that is exactly what has happened." This awareness left the employer with an important decision: Should he continue assigning this employee to a new revised role that may not work out?

To retain top-performing employees, managers sometimes have to be flexible.

I suggested that he could consider tweaking things a bit and give the employee more of what he used to do and reallocate the new work to someone else. The employer ended up compromising because he did not want to lose this employee.

All in all, we discussed all the possible scenarios before coming to this conclusion. For instance, was there anything personal going on in his life, some sort of crisis, etc. And once the employer went and talked with the employee, one-on-one, he was able to investigate the change in behavior. That discussion led him to the real problem—the role change.

Again, it’s the manager’s job to find that healthy balance for their top-performing employees. Employees typically need enough stress and challenge in their roles to bring out their best. Too little stress or challenge can lead to boredom—too much, burn out.

Even the smartest and brightest can become bored or burned out in their roles. It’s finding that ideal environment for your "superstars" so they can maximize their performance potential. With this approach, the employee feels good about showing up to work and what they’re doing while they’re there, and the business is also getting what it needs. 

Blame your employees? Look in the mirror instead.

Remember the Hershey’s television commercials for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups?  Two people are walking toward each other, one eating peanut butter and the other eating chocolate. They collide. And then blame each other for the mess:

“You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”

“No, you got your peanut butter in my chocolate!”

While the commercial ended happily, we know that both people contributed to the initial “mess.”  Managers frequently have collisions with their employees around performance, but instead of acknowledging their role in the problem, and then adjusting their approach, they instead blame the employee, as if the entire responsibility for the issue rests with the employee. Yet, it’s more complex than that—where does the responsibility lie for broken manager-employee relationships, and what can you do to resolve them successfully?

Less effective managers typically make the mistake of thinking about poor performance this way:

• Why did they do that?
• I can’t believe them!
• Why do I have to tell them?
• Shouldn’t they just know?
• Another mistake?  Fire them!

I was recently speaking with an owner of a small manufacturing company who shared her frustration with an employee who she believed continually didn’t follow procedures.  She wanted to let him go.  She expressed her aggravation by asking me, “Why can’t he just do what he needs to do?  Why do I have to tell him that?” After many minutes of listening to her whine about this employee, I decided to confront her head on.

ME: “So I understand your concerns about this employee, and it sounds like he bears some responsibility for where you’re at today.”

OWNER:  “He sure does.  I think I’m going to fire him.”

ME:  Well, tell me - what role have you played in the problems you’re describing?  How have you contributed to this situation?  And what would the employee tell me?”

OWNER:  (silence)

It’s rare that problems between managers and employees are caused by only one party.  Think about it: What’s the likelihood that the employee was responsible for 100 percent of the performance issue?  Almost always, the manager bears some responsibility.  It may not always be 50/50, but leaders need to hold up the mirror and see how they have contributed to the situation.  Before you place all the blame on the employee, consider the following:

• Have I provided both direction and support to this employee?
• Have I provided the tools and resources to allow this employee to be successful?
• Have I provided specific outcomes and results I’m looking for?
• Have I created an environment that promotes the behaviors I’m looking for?
• Have I tried positive consequences first, before negative or punitive actions?

Sure, sometimes the employee is off the mark and has contributed to the situation.  But I bet you have, too. Instead, find ways to set your employees up for performance success and you won’t need to clean up a sticky mess you may have helped create.

In my next Insight, I will share another real life example of how managers can successfully handle the delicate balancing act of developing employee-motivation techniques.

Walt Disney said, "It is kind of fun to do the impossible."

One could say that Disney was motivated into higher performance by shooting for the impossible - or by doing what had never before been accomplished. He was probably primarily motivated by factors two and six, as listed below.

In terms of the American workplace, what motivates employees into demonstrating higher performance?

Each employee brings their own motivations to the workplace. Some show up to work because their job is their main source of income. Others really enjoy the people they work with; some enjoy their work and love their boss; then some like and align themselves with their company's values. Simply put: Employees are motivated by a variety of reasons. The factors can come from basic core values or something of an even greater calling. Otherwise, they would go somewhere else.

That said, what are some examples of employee motivation factors? Again, I see a variety of factors including the following:

1. A certain level of responsibility and power or status.
2. The challenge of the job.
3. A topic of interest.
4. A manager who is liked and respected.
5. The purpose of the company, which gives employees a sense of connection.
6. The pace of the work or the nature of the industry is exciting.
7. The benefits of rewards and recognition.
8. The association, fun and camaraderie of being with their peers.

For me, it's that kind of 'Sunday-night-feeling' where I look forward to waking up on Monday morning; at a minimum, I don't mind showing up at work on Monday!

Are There Ways to Motivate Employees?

Understandably, it is challenging for employers to discover what motivates all their workers so they can inspire greater performance. Here are just a few techniques that may help:

• Observe employees in their work and pick up on some cues. For instance, can you observe certain levels of trust demonstrated between workers and their supervisors?
• Ask the employees point-blank questions such as: "What brings you here every day or why do you come back every day? Or "Hey, we've never talked about this; but we've worked together for 'x' number of years, etc."
• Prepare for further discussions with new employees. "We've gone over the roles, the tasks and the departments and all these procedures; so what are you looking forward to? What is most appealing to you in terms of what we have discussed? What are you hoping to do here?"

These types of discussions will enable employers to tweak their employees' experiences. For instance, they can provide specific resources for further development or offer rewards that employees will respond to; they can provide them access to information or certain teams and projects, whatever may be relevant.

A manager, of course, is not always in a position to give the employees everything they want. But whenever possible or when the tweaking doesn't hurt the business, there are opportunities that can prove to be invaluable. On the other hand, a manager can miss opportunities for a variety of reasons:

• sense of awkwardness;
• no basis for a relationship;
• level of mistrust; or a
• lack of caring.

For sure, managers want to avoid missing opportunities or, worse yet, suffering the consequences of actually de-motivating employees. In future Insights, I will share real life examples of how employers and managers successfully handle the delicate balancing act of developing employee-motivation techniques.

My first two HRTools Insights cover leadership training and leadership feedback. To wrap up this series on leadership, I will reveal how classroom training and real-world experiences can further enhance leadership performance.

More than ever, American businesses need effective leaders. Leadership is more than simply holding a position; leadership is about making decisions and taking action. Classroom training serves to help potential leaders realize when they are ready to take off the training wheels.

Classroom-training programs provide tools and techniques that leaders can take away and use in the real world. Effective leadership entails nourishing and leveraging relationships for the good of the organization. Classroom settings—such as in the following examples—provide leaders with opportunities to develop and nurture relationships:

1. Interpersonal practice sessions
2. Insights into nurturing a variety of leadership scenarios (different people, different backgrounds, different organizations, etc.)
3. Demonstrations of well-executed versus poorly executed leadership examples
4. Lessons and case studies
5. Situational examples
6. Mock interviews or conversations

In settings like these, participants are encouraged to engage and focus on the human side of leadership training, which they can then transfer over to their real world experiences. For instance, leaders can practice what they learn in the classroom with team members and their peers or managers. On the business side of leadership training, participants learn how to develop a vision, set goals and keep people on track with their tasks.

Classroom Training Enhances the Ability to Develop Relationships

Granted, everyone learns differently. While some people learn by reading or studying, leaders can gain valuable hands-on experiences through classroom training. In other words, they gain confidence and a frame of reference for enhancing their real world relationship experiences. 

Performance trainers and specialists want their results to show that classroom-trained leaders can demonstrate effective leadership. Here are a few examples of what I mean.

You want leaders who can: 

1. make difficult decisions;
2. make timely judgments (with minimal hesitation or stalling);
3. take proper initiatives;
4. analyze or assess what needs to happen next; and
5. understand how to receive and act upon feedback.

Classroom training goes back to the notion of engaging participants to connect with their people. For example: How does a leader reconnect with a superstar who just lost a big sale? How do you get this individual in the mood to rally for the next sales opportunity? Here is a time when a leader needs to engage this person in a conversation, one that is motivational and morale building. This is a time when a leader needs to know what to say, and at the right time, in order to drive business forward.

Leaders See Both Today’s and Tomorrow’s Opportunities

Leaders, too, play a significant role in moving American business forward. Effective business leaders must have the ability to look at not just today but also look to tomorrow.

They must be constantly on the lookout for the competition, including what’s coming next and recognize the implications and the possibilities. Not only that, business leaders need to be able to paint a picture—for others—of what they see. 

As it is, leadership is one of those words that everyone recognizes and, for some people, it does come more naturally. There is plenty of leadership training content that can be found in books or on the Internet; however, classroom training is distinctively effective because it creates activity and brings the content to life and gives it meaning.

High-Performing Leaders Say, 'Show Me the Feedback'

If you haven’t read it yet, you may want to read my first HRTools Insight about leadership training and how it elevates ‘natural born leaders’ to higher performance levels. High-performing leaders make ‘it’ all happen: They sell visions, build team camaraderie and inspire supportive cultures of innovation and motivation—to name just a few differences that top-performing leaders make. 

Employee Feedback Tells the Story

To make ‘it’ all happen, high-performing leaders need employee feedback. Multisource feedback, also commonly known as 360-degree feedback, is a valuable tool. Multisource feedback includes comments provided by employees at various levels throughout an organization. 360-degree feedback programs can also include comments provided by external groups such as customers, vendors, etc. These comments are normally gathered and kept in confidence; the recipient only sees the final results, not the individual feedback comments.

As with any feedback, to make it worthwhile, the information has to be used in the right ways. First of all, the leaders have to be receptive to the feedback. There also must be appropriate follow-through. For instance, if a leader receives feedback about behavioral competencies that he or she is not aware of, additional learning experiences-type training may be necessary.

The following sample questions—which refer to competencies that high-performing leaders can demonstrate—help explain what we mean:

1. How do you give feedback to an employee?
2. How do you talk to employees when there is a dramatic change taking place?
3. How do you get people excited about a new project?
4. How do you rally people from a tough loss in the marketplace?

As explained above, employee feedback can also help answer these questions. Leaders can learn how effective their leadership is by reviewing employee feedback results.

Why Leadership Matters to Employees

High-performing leaders must have excellent communication and interpersonal skills. They also innately want to make decisions. Most importantly, they must have the ability to connect with people. If you look across the board, the effective leaders are the ones who engage people. People are willing to listen to them and they are open to their ideas. These are the leaders who people see as wanting to do the right thing. These traits are important to people because leaders affect them in personal ways.

Based on my experience, these abilities have nothing to do with IQ or management skills. High performing leaders want to interact with others, they want to get to know them and they want to learn from them. Obviously there have been hundreds and hundreds of books written about leadership. Many of these books tend to focus on the “superstars.”

I find that learning experiences and, again, that employee feedback, often end up serving as the best teaching moments. An unexpected or surprise event can prompt someone to step up and take decisive action, which can then turn into a leader’s greatest moment. It may be a difficult situation, and they never thought about how they would have responded, but they turned it into a positive experience for their followers. On the other hand, if employees feel misled, most of them will tell you if you just ask.

My next Insight will focus on classroom-teaching experiences for high-performing leaders.

What do you think? Do you think that leaders are born and not made? 

Some people naturally aspire to leadership positions. Attracted to roles where they get to make decisions, gain authority and exert influence or power, some people find leadership appealing. These are the people who want to be in the forefront. In my opinion, these people naturally gravitate toward these tendencies and they aren’t necessarily learned. These people just seem to be “wired” for leadership from birth. 

I also believe that most of us, to some extent, have leadership potential. We all hear about extreme situations, such as during times of crisis or disasters, that bring out previously undetected leadership potential in some people. These are the ones who step in at the right place and at the right time, making life better for everyone. 

However, I do believe that effective leadership skills are learned.  Based on my experience, leadership skills training teaches aspiring leaders how to do things such as make wise decisions and make things happen. Also, leadership skills training comes alive when leader trainees learn from other seasoned leaders. They can learn from other leaders, including from their mistakes, and they can modify their techniques and approaches to match their own personalities. 

Let’s talk about leadership skills training and its role in the workplace. Business or organizational leadership is all about inspiring people to move in a certain direction. A leader paints a picture, creates a vision, gets people excited and “walks the talk.” Basically, a leader gets people to move from one place to another and toward some goal or objective which results in everyone feeling a sense of accomplishment. 

As I indicated before, most people have leadership potential. Some are often the “unofficial” leaders seen at all levels of an organization. Since leadership is really a behavior, not a position, these people may not have “VP” as their title and they may not be into strategic planning. But if you watch for them, they are the ones who keep meetings on track and on time, garner enthusiasm for a project, etc. 

Leadership skills training is primarily about improving communication skills and becoming more self-aware. Some leaders aren’t even aware that their day-to-day behaviors, if left unchecked, can have negative effects on their employees. I know of an executive coach who explains that some leaders succeed not because of what they do, but in spite of what they do. 

Some leaders have blind spots and they don’t realize how their actions, words and behaviors impact others, sometimes in unfavorable ways. For instance, they may be too gruff in meetings. Or they may treat others in condescending or sarcastic ways which actually disconnects them from their employees. 

Again, this is why a leader’s communication skills play an important part in developing a successful business environment.  For instance, a successful leader knows how to effectively communicate when it’s time to: 

• Talk to employees about a dramatic change
• Get employees excited about a new project
• Rally people from a tough marketplace loss
• Enlist support for a new product launch

As you can see, it is critical for leaders to have excellent communication and interpersonal skills so they can connect with their employees. It’s only when people connect with their leaders that they buy into their ideas, do the right things and work toward a common goal. 

Which leads us to why feedback becomes very important in a leadership skills training program. In my next "Insights" post, I will discuss ways that leaders can benefit from employee feedback.