Earlier today I was contacted by a newspaper asking my thoughts on a report by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas stating that March Madness was going to cost companies $1.8 Billion due to time wasted at work as employees focused on the games. Here were my thoughts:
In the big picture, the estimated $1.8 billion loss from activities surrounding March Madness sounds large, but comparatively, companies lose more than 60 times that each year from mismanaging poor performers. Rather than squash people’s excitement about life events outside the workplace, why not invest in training managers how to be better managers so performance is boosted year ’round? It would be exponentially more profitable than trying to squash people’s excitement during March.
A February, 2010 poll shows that 65 percent of workplaces organize office pools for the Super Bowl, and 57 percent do the same for March Madness. Does it affect production? No doubt, but only in the short term. I would challenge Challenger, Gray, and Christmas Inc. to do further research on the higher levels of production resulting from an increased sense of teamwork among employees who rally around March Madness activities.
Companies that try to stop people from doing things that build esprit de corps are asking for trouble. They may gain short term compliance, but they lose long-term commitment. In the bigger scheme of things, I think limiting employee involvement in things like the Super Bowl and March Madness is a bad idea.
If a company wants to get creative they could find a way to capitalize on the event, such as throwing a March Madness office party as a reward for meeting production numbers.
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When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to tell a boss he’s full of it, it may be time to quit.
The other day I received a phone call from Tom (not his real name), someone who used to work for a former client. Tom had a great work ethic and did his job well, but the president of Tom’s company was a spoiled brat who just didn’t “get it” when it came to leading people. It’s what led Tom to eventually say “I’m out of here,” just like I said when dealing with the company a few years back.
It was Tom’s immediate supervisor who brought me in to work with Tom and the rest of his department. One day the company’s president (let’s call him Richard) paused to tell me how bad things were and how he needed to get thing into shape. I told him the trouble spots in question were within my realm of expertise and I could help.
Unfortunately, I found the heart of the problem was Richard’s childish, bullying attitude, and he had no desire to shake it. He just didn’t get that a leader cannot flaunt one’s position and flood the workplace with sarcasm and expect morale or production to improve. Eventually, when Richard took the employees’ input for how to improve operations and mocked it openly in a company-wide meeting, I quit. Richard thought he was being cute. I thought he was being an ass.
It’s been several years since I talked with anyone from that company, so Tom’s call was a surprise. He told me that he was now working elsewhere after tiring of Richard. He had been making great money, but there came a tipping point when the BS outweighed the gold, and Richard lost a great employee.
Some leaders just don’t get it.
I never said it to Richard’s face, but Tom’s phone call brought back a lot of memories, so I’ll say it now for all to hear: “Richard, try to get it: Your employees are not your puppets. It’s time to grow up and treat people (including yourself) with respect.”
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What follows are 10 essential understandings about relationship management that ought to be common sense. However, after 20+ years of working with managers at all levels and across a wide spectrum of industries, I’ve found too many people who are not aware of them. Therefore, if your work involves dealing with people, soak this in:
1. In the realm of personality styles, we should drop the ideas of “good” and “bad.” People are just different.
2. People often equate “different” with “difficult.” In reality, different is difficult only because people haven’t learned to work effectively with the differences.
3. In the same way that a stick has two ends, people have strengths and weaknesses. All strengths have an associated weakness, and all weaknesses have an associated strength. You choose which end of the stick will receive your attention.
4. All personality styles add to team strength; it’s just a matter of focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. By focusing on strengths you’ll get stronger. By focusing on weaknesses, you’ll get weaker.
5. Seeking the strengths in differing styles does not come naturally — it takes constant effort.
6. We cannot be effective if we expect everyone else to meet us on “our turf.”
7. We cannot assume we know another person’s definition of “win.” We may have a general idea, but to truly be effective we must ask.
8. If we place personal goals over those of others, the team, and/or the organization’s vision and mission, we create divisions. This severely weakens our ability to maximize results.
9. Effectiveness has to with doing the right thing, efficiency has to do with getting things done fast. When working with people, effectiveness is rarely efficient. The best results usually come when we take the necessary time in our relationships to do things right.
10. It’s one thing to understand these things, it’s another thing to do them. The longest road can be the 18 inches between your head and your heart. So if you want the best results, start walking the walk.
]]>Date: Thursday, Mar 4, 2010 - 11:00am - 12:00pm Mountain Time
Register here
Learn what motivates teams to top performance in the workplace. Best-selling author Dan Bobinski draws from 20+ years of consulting experience, extensive studies in best practices, and the latest in neuroscience research to show you what’s behind passion-driven teams.
Dan will discuss the principles and methods top managers use to develop passionate, engaged employees that are motivated, enthusiastic, and strive for excellence.
Why you should “attend”:
Today’s workforce requires managers to be more than just a person in charge. Creating Passion-Driven Teams shows you how to tap your team’s natural motivations and achieve consistent, sustained top-performance.
To register for this FREE webinar, visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/908502897
About the Author:
Dan Bobinski is the president and CEO of Leadership Development, Inc., and director at the Center for Workplace Excellence. For more than 20 years Dan has coached and trained managers and leaders in Fortune 500 as well as small and mid-sized businesses. His Workplace-Excellence blog has been listed among the top 100 daily must-reads for entrepreneurs, and his newspaper column on workplace issues is syndicated internationally. Dan is a passionate speaker and trainer on management topics, and he holds a master’s degree in human resource training and development as well as a BS in workforce education and development.
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When service providers fail, the cost can be a life. Such was the case in Pittsburgh, PA in early February, when Curtis Mitchell died while waiting three days for a 911 response during a winter storm.
During my recent trip overseas I realized the need for companies to get some fresh eyes and re-examine their customer service practices, so the Curtis Mitchell story caught my eye.
Amazingly, ambulances were within a short walking distance to Mitchell’s residence three times over those three days, but the paramedics would not get out of their vehicle and walk through the snow. Instead, they had to gall to tell the 911 operators that Mitchell would have to walk to them.
The article says that the drivers MAY get disciplined. I hope they do.
Thankfully, the article also states that the region’s 911 policies have been changed, and now drivers will have to go to the door of a building from which a 911 call has been made.
It’s a shame, though, that it had to go this far. People shouldn’t have to die for companies to take a look at their customer service practices.
Even if your business doesn’t deal with life or death situations, the health of your bottom line is affected by the quality of your customer service. When was the last time it had a check up?
]]>Being in fresh environs is different than being in and around your own place of business, where little things that make a difference can easily get overlooked.
For example, when you’re in your own city, you know how to get around, what to expect at regularly-visited places of business, and what constitutes acceptable service. Things that are missing can easily go unnoticed because you have other things on your mind or you mentally rationalize their absence.
But my time overseas took me out of my familiar zones. I experienced things as a totally new customer much more than usual. And, with different languages and different cultures, everything was magnified much more, as well.
Eye contact, mannerisms, and the employees’ willingness to serve the customer were all magnified. I’d forgotten how strongly these factors can impact retail customers.
Surprisingly, signage (or the lack thereof) also made a huge difference. Well-placed, instructive signs go a long way to helping new customers understand something about how your business operates. The lack of them easily leaves new customers wondering where to find things or which way to go.
I found myself quickly wanting to go back to places that had good customer service, and wanting to avoid the places where it didn’t exist — even if the company had what I wanted.
And so with these glaring experiences I exhort people to look at their customer service with “fresh eyes.” Have someone who’s not been a customer at your place of business before come in — and then find out their thoughts about the experience. What could have been better? What would help them want to do more business there?
Then — do it again … and again. Look for ways to improve, and then make the improvements. Just remember: The way to get the best insights is to keep using fresh eyes.
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In the middle of February I will be conducting a 3-day workshop in Doha, Qatar, entitled Achieving Management Excellence.
The workshop is being hosted by Campbell Knowledge Corporation, and will be held the Grand Hyatt, Doha, Feb. 9 - 11.
Specifically designed for middle managers, this 3-day workshop covers a lot of ground. Think of it as “everything you need to know to be an excellent manager.” The workshop will also elaborate on material from my latest book, Creating Passion-Driven Teams.
For more info, or to register, contact Odessa Angeles, Director of Training for Campbell Knowledge Corporation, at Odessa@CampbellKC.com.
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Take your job seriously, but take yourself lightly. This according to Jeff Justice, a motivational humorist, who says humor goes a long way in the battle against stress.
Justice also says that “humor can be used in stress reduction, problem solving, team building, and improving communications.” And he’s quick to point out that humor doesn’t mean having to tell jokes. In fact humor is often about finding a unique way to connect two separate events or ideas.
The really cool thing is that humor is a known stress reducer.
Scott Friedman, a popular speaker and author who holds degrees in marketing and psychology, says “Humor creates an instant bond.” He also says it removes negative, non-productive feelings and creates a fresh new approach to situations.
The idea is to laugh about a situation while it’s happening – it keeps oxygen going to the brain and keeps a person thinking more clearly.
Humor is good - but use caution
While all that is good, caution should be a guideline for humor in the workplace. Yes, laughter can help stress, but sometimes it should occur internally.
For example, you probably shouldn’t choose something funny to say if the boss announces that sales are down 25 percent. Making light of every little thing that happens might sound appealing, but too much of a good thing causes a bad thing.
Consider one place of employment I know about, where they have an employee who drops one-liners at everything. Yes, the man’s comments are funny, but it’s become so pervasive that he’s perceived as someone who doesn’t take anything seriously. In fact, some people don’t like working with him anymore because his comments are so distracting from the work at hand.
At another place of business, one employee’s continuous sense of humor was causing people to get offended. And, as in the above example, his relentless wisecracking also distracted other employees from being productive. It was clearly a case of too much of a good thing.
Because of this, think of humor as salt: A little can be good, but too much of it becomes unpalatable. As the English poet Samuel Butler once said, “it is tact that is golden, not silence.” And I’m told it was Shakespeare who said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Humor tips
Dr. Joni Johnston of the company Workplace Relationships offers a few tips for using humor at work:
1. Pay attention to clues about your co-worker’s mood
2. Trust your intuition
3. Take yourself lightly
4. Use humor as the icing, not the cake
5. Avoid playful insults
Johnston says that humor should be used at the right time, in appropriate amounts, and shouldn’t make fun of an individual. In other words, if you make light of something, choose to make light of the situation, not a person.
Here’s a good example of that, offered by Jeff Justice: A creative female employee got tired of her boss rejecting her budget. He kept telling her it needed to be smaller. When she finally got her budget down to bare bones, he still rejected it.
Knowing she couldn’t make it any smaller and still do the work required of her, she took her papers over to the copy machine and kept reducing the images until they were the size of a postage stamp. When she took it back to her boss, they both had a good laugh. And, her boss gave in and okayed her budget.
One of Justice’s approaches for using humor to combat stress is imagining the stressful situation at it’s absolute worse. When you take the situation on a mental journey to the point where it becomes absurd, it then can become funny—and it also makes the present situation not seem quite as bad!
Prove it for yourself
Try some of these techniques and see if they work for you. I’ve used several of these techniques with much success, including helping me get through boot camp “way back when.” In a military boot camp environment, company commanders and drill sergeants manufacture stressful situations to “make a soldier/sailor out of you”. Ask any veteran, and they’ll probably agree that learning to laugh about the events while they were happening made it easier to cope.
It’s kind of like what Bill Cosby says: “If you can laugh at it, you can survive it.”
Bottom line: If you’re stressed, don’t stress about it more, but rather look for a way to connect your current situation to something ironic and perhaps even silly. If it helps, think of yourself as starring in your own comedy movie. By looking for and finding the humor, you’ll send more oxygen to your brain so you can think clearer, and you’ll probably enjoy life a bit more along the way.
And also remember what Jeff Justice tells us: “He who laughs - lasts!”
]]>“New jobless claims rise more than expected”
“Sales for all of 2009 plunge by record amount”
“Record year for foreclosures”
It’s enough to be discouraging, but only if you’re looking solely at the news and not at the opportunities.
The truth is that each of us make choices about what we do each day, and opportunities present themselves all the time. The choice to act (or not act) is ours.
If you think the current situation is a roadblock on the path to success, consider this: Each of the following businesses was started during a recession:
Burger King
Microsoft
Hewlett Packard
CNN
IHOP
I remember people all around me mocking the CNN concept when it was announced, saying it was going to be boring and nobody would watch. Hmmm. The world is well-populated with nay-sayers.
Each of the successful companies listed above (and thousands more) was started and staffed by people who believed they could succeed, even when times were tough.
According to a 2009 survey, 55 percent of US workers are unhappy with their jobs. It’s even worse if you’re young; with 64 percent of the 25-and-under crowd saying they’re unhappy.
My question is “what are you going to do about it?” You can focus on the negative headlines, or you can focus on that cool idea you’ve been bandying about. The choice is up to you.
]]>Director, The Center for Workplace Excellence
Not much good comes from trying to look good. You must actually be good, too.
Unfortunately, someone needs to remind the Chicago Police Department of this truism. A recent article by Steve Bryant on nbcchicago.com (Police May Scrap Entrance Exam) states that the Chicago PD is thinking about doing away with their entrance exam because they don’t employ enough minorities.
If you have half a brain, you’re saying “What?”
But it’s true. Apparently the department is overly concerned about achieving racial parity. Only 25 percent of their rank-and-file officers and 8 percent of their lieutenants are African-American, but the 2000 census shows that blacks make up about 37 percent of Chicago’s population. It would seem that someone doesn’t think those numbers look fair.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather make sure the people hired to serve and protect are the best available at serving and protecting—regardless of their skin color. If the best cops are 4 feet tall with green skin from Antarctica, “hire em!”
It so happens that I grew up in a Chicago suburb near O’Hare airport and my father was a policeman in that town for 28 years. I can tell you from close observation and interacting with these men and women on a regular basis that they don’t have an easy job. The stresses on policemen and women are enormous.
Put yourself in their shoes
For a moment, put yourself in a police officer’s shoes. It would be pretty unnerving as a highly qualified officer to be surrounded by people hired because of their skin color and not because they were the best possible people to be backing you up.
Quality hiring makes a huge difference. When I was contracted to do management coaching at Qualcomm, Inc. in San Diego, California, I noticed they had an intense application process to identify the best possible applicants. As a result, the company created much of the cutting-edge technology we use today in our mobile phones, along with other nifty inventions that most of us never hear about.
But Qualcomm wouldn’t be the successful company they are if they merely hired people to balance their employees’ skin-tone palette.
If this kind of logic doesn’t sit right with you, think about your current place of employment. Regardless of your specific career choice, if the professional hurdles you had to clear were suddenly discarded and unqualified people were hired (for whatever reason), I imagine you might feel a bit ripped off and cheated.
‘Opportunity’ and ‘Outcome’ are different
I’m all about equal opportunity, but equal opportunity doesn’t mean equality of outcome. In other words, everyone who wants to apply themselves should be given the chance to do so. But true fairness says that people are to be evaluated based on their merits, not on their race, color, religion, gender, national origin, veteran’s status, political affiliation, or the existence or non-existence of any disability.
Hiring (or not hiring) people based on any aspect of the above-mentioned list is not only unethical and immoral, it’s illegal.
Sadly, the Chicago Police Department is giving us an example of how to substitute perceived fairness for true fairness.
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