Social Media = Communicating with Employees

If we accept that leadership – and by extension performance management – is about having a conversation with the people you lead, have you thought about how to use social media to connect with your employees, especially the young ones?

 

1. Twitter could be about sharing short, to the point ideas and inspirational thoughts that keep people focused on the important organizational objectives.

2. Blogs could be used to provide insight into what you are thinking, how you prioritize, or any one of a number of aspects about you, within the context of your leadership that people would find helpful as they do their work.

3. Facebook provides opportunities to promote your organization’s brand.  You can use it to educate both employees, clients and potential customers.

4. LinkedIn is about networking and that is as important inside the organization as outside.  Providing regular updates about what you are working on, where the organization is going, etc can be invaluable to people who are working to make your organization successful.

Each of these tools provides a different approach to communicating with people, but all are immediate, real-time methods of getting information out to the people that need it.  You can be selective and use one or two or combine them.  I write my blog and have notifications go out to LinkedIn and Twitter so that my entire network can access it as soon as I hit the ‘publish’ button.  You can do the same.

I know that all leaders find it difficult to connect with employees in meaningful ways: if you haven’t considered social media as a tool to help close that gap, you need to start.

Let me know how that works out for you.

 

Aligning Organizational Objectives with Organizational Talent

Ask yourself three questions:

 

1. What are your organizations most important projects?

2. Who are you most talented people?

3. How many of your most talented people are working on your most  important projects?

 

If you:

A. Can’t answer question 3

B. Get frustrated at the answer to question 3 because the number is far less than you want

… then you need to sit down and look at how you align your people and your objectives.  If you don’t have alignment, chances are that the people who report to you are aligning their resources with agendas and goals that are more personal than organizational.

 

I challenge you to do this:

• Ask your direct reports (those that have direct reports of their own) the same three questions.
• Then ask them this question, if the answer to question 3 isn’t to your liking:

“Why aren’t all our best people working on our most important projects?”

Let me know what you find out.

 

Vision is a key leadership competency, but only if you can action it

I was sitting in a client meeting yesterday, discussing the output of a recent senior leadership team meeting, and identifying how to move forward with the project, which was about how to engage the SLT in having performance management discussions.  A thought formed in my mind about the essence of leadership; it came to me as the fire chief was speaking about what he was trying to do in the organization.  He had an idea about what needed fixing in the organization and he articulated it in about 3 sentences.  He then linked those sentences to what the organization could achieve (translate: meet its objectives)  in the current constrained public spending environment.   All I could do when he finished was say, ‘Yes, absolutely, that sums it all up.’

Leaders have a vision of how the organization is and where they want to take it.  Not necessarily a grandiose, far-flung, “let’s change the world” kind of vision, but certainly a high-level view of how the organization needs to change to be successful.  The successful visions (translate: those that have a high probability of success)  have common components to them:

1. They start with an accurate view of where the organization is at the moment.  They talk realistically about the positives and the negatives, but end on an upswing, speaking clearly about the opportunities that existed and their commitment to take full advantage of them.

2. They identify the environment that the organization operates within and clearly point out the significant factors that need to be addressed for there to be success.

3. They translate action into what people in the organization need to start, stop and keep doing.  They likely won’t have all the details, but they will have sufficient force behind their words to motivate people to get up and do something different, to help move closer to the vision.

4. Finally, they have enthusiasm.  The fire chief talked about how positive he felt after the SLT meeting, how good he felt the prospects were about success and how he was looking forward to the next phase of the project.  His enthusiasm rubbed off on everyone else in the room and the meeting ended with a sense of momentum and positive energy.

What the chief was talking about was his vision for how the collective leadership of the organization needed to change to be successful.  Think about it in a slightly different conceptual manner and it becomes his Picture of what leadership would look like in the future.  In essence, he was doing 2WA’s 5P’s.

I challenge you to do this:

• Think about your organization and where it needs to go to be successful.  Paint a vision, a Picture in your mind of what it will look like, in the future.
• Identify the opportunities that exist and how – if exploited – they will be a pathway to that vision.
• Analyze your environment and understand the pluses and the minuses regarding those opportunities and see how you can be successful in achieving your vision.
• Specifically identify the big chunks of work that are required to be done properly for your vision to be achieved.
• Take all that and put it into words.  No necessarily long, not necessarily overly dense or complicated.  Bring clarity and simplicity to your words and your vision about what is possible will be enthusiastically received.

In doing these things, you first identify how great things can be and then break it down into manageable steps so that people find it easy to understand how they can reach your vision.  Once they do that, they will easily move to action.

Let me know how that works for you.

 

If you want to learn to be a great manager, manage a restaurant

I had one particularly great mentor in the area of management and leadership.  His name is Doug Fowler and we worked together at both Bemeleman’s and The Bellair Cafe in Toronto in the 80’s.  

Doug taught me a number of things that are now my touchstones when I impart advice to people I coach.  Here are a few that you should try.

1. Be visible – managers need to be seen and they need to see.  Be on the floor, let people know you are there and available to assist, give advice, hear a complaint and a compliment.  Doug didn’t micro manage, but you knew he was watching and you wanted to do a good job for him.  

2. Deal with situations as quickly as you can – if it was a problem with a customer, Doug was on it smoothly and quickly.  He would ask a few questions of the customer and of the wait staff and would make a decision quickly and act.  In Doug’s mind, the customer wasn’t always right, but they definitely got the benefit of the doubt.  Once the customer was dealt with, the waiter got feedback.  Doug made it clear what the impact of the waiter’s actions / customer’s actions were, how the situation had been resolved, what the correct thing to do in the future was and most importantly, what his expectations were, going forward.  You always knew where you were with Doug and if you did the right thing, he backed you.  Fully. 

I recall a couple of times that customers were thanked for their patronage and told to find a different place to eat next time. 

3. Be calm and collected – It was important to give off an air of being in control of both yourself and the situation: it rubbed off on everyone else and that provided us the confidence to do a great job.  He didn’t fluster, he didn’t blow up; he kept a very cool demeanour on the floor and it worked, no matter what he was feeling inside.

Bottom line – when you manage a restaurant everything is immediate.  You can’t put things off; deadlines can’t be extended; quality can’t be overlooked; problem employees can’t be ignored; obnoxious customers can’t be accommodated.  If you do any of those things, customers will not come back and you’ll be out of business.

I challenge you to translate Doug’s approach to your workplace.  

Let me know how it goes.

“But I thought you wanted input” … How to know Triangle time from Circle time

What is “Circle” and “Triangle” time?

Circle time is a very inclusive facilitative time when everyone is equal.

• All ideas are accepted and the focus is on personal relationships and process. 
• It is more important to consult and hear all ideas than to find the one right idea.   
• Circle time can be a very creative time and also very time consuming. 
• Circle time can be used to get only INPUT or used as a decision-making technique. 

 Triangle time is quite different from circle time. The hierarchy determines whose ideas will be actioned.  In a Triangle, everyone is to follow the boss, when he or she says ‘This is the one we are going to action.’

When in Triangle time:

• Everyone needs to be aware of who holds the power in the room  
• If the leader says we are going to do “x”, it is time to accept the decision and begin to implement.
• Once the decision is made, the focus shifts to who has the best job skills to get this done. 

 When you are in triangle time, there are unwritten rules that must be followed.  These include:

1. Obey the coach – don’t challenge (especially in public or alone)
2. Know your role
3. Sublimate your personal goal.
4. Deliver.

 How do you know when people are in Triangle time? When items are “for your information” or “for your action”.  If an agenda item or email says, “for you input” or “for your discussion” – you are in Circle time.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem comes when a manager, the boss comes into a meeting and pretends it is Circle time, when actually it is Triangle time.  In short, he is looking for buy-in to his idea, not your input into the best idea.  How do you know when this is happening?  People offer ideas but he doesn’t take notes and / or he keeps coming back to one idea and asks ‘what you think about this one?’

What to do?  As a direct report, know when to offer ideas openly and when to line up with the boss.  As a manager in a meeting, don’t ask for input when you don’t want it.  If you don’t want ideas just implementation, say so.  People will appreciate the transparency.

“5 P’s” – An Essential Change Concept

We are working with a local entertainment organization (facility management, conventions, booking acts) that is being privatized and as a result we are working with managers and front-line staff to help them manage the change.  We designed and rolled out a number of different change and transition workshops, tools and events to help them identify the change, their transition issues and get them to plan their reaction to it.  Their response was overwhelmingly positive and there were a couple of specific concepts and tools that they particularly loved.  I want to share one with you right now:

The 5 P’s – Anytime you are going to make a change, you must use the 5P’s to both plan and communicate the change:

Problem – What is the Problem that must be resolved by the change?  Remember, if you want people to change you have to convince them that the problem is big enough and bad enough for the change to be necessary.  Once you do that, you are gold.

Picture – What will the organization / situation look like once the Problem is resolved?  You have to literally paint a Picture of how things will be once the problem is resolved.  It could be that the organization will be larger, or smaller or have more departments.  Perhaps the picture is that communication snarls have been reduced, meaning that information flows faster and more accurately.  In any case, the picture must be so compelling that people want to follow you.

Plan – What are the steps we need to follow to deal with the Problem and get to the Picture?  If you don’t have a plan that makes sense, that is more or less complete, that has the resources behind it for success, that has a part for everyone … then people won’t believe you, the problem or the picture.  Get a plan that will deliver and people will trust that you know what you are doing.

Part – What is my Part in this change?  What is your Part?  What is our collective role?  Everyone needs to play a part in the situational change.  We all need to be acting to resolve the problem and we all NEED TO SEE THAT OTHERS ARE DOING THE SAME.  There has to be a collective sense of action and a collective sense of the pain involved in putting the change into action.

Progress – How will we measure our success?  How will we track the Progress of the change?  All organizations at one time or another have engaged in a change that seems to go on forever and that never seems to be effective.  Make sure you tell people when it starts and when it will stop.  That will create a sense of urgency for you and others, so that the plan gets implemented as quickly as possible.

Use the 5P’s when you are just contemplating a change.  If you can’t fill in significant amounts of detail about each of the 5 P’s, you are not ready to make changes.

What is managing and leading?

I am sitting in a workshop listening to people say ‘I don’t spend any time managing and leading because I don’t have direct reports.’. Over half the workshop agreed with that statement.  I was very surprised at such a narrow view of leadership.

 

Managing and leading is when you do such things as:

1. Provide feedback to peers or on something they are doing.

2. Present a different perspective in a meeting, in an attempt to broaden the group’s thinking.

3. Acting in a way that deliberately aligns with the organization’s values, in the hope others will do likewise.

4. Clearly interpret policy for people so that they know what and why they should behave in a certain way.

5. Understand your role in moving the organization forward and then doing it.

 

None of these require direct reports. I challenge you to do these five every week.

 

 

 

 

Set your expectations and your direct reports will thrive

Setting expectations is about stating what you want from your direct reports.  But why are they essential to managing people’s performance?

Role descriptions (the HR variety) are the ‘what’ of jobs.  They state what people should and shouldn’t be doing, in a given position.  Expectations tell people the ‘how’ of their job.  Properly stated expectations will point out how an employee should behave in terms of delivering service, interacting with others, balancing work and life priorities, keeping current with job skill requirements, etc.  By having the ‘what’ of a role description, in concert with the ‘how’ of an expectations document, employees will more clearly understand how they should operate.

Do this:

1. Sit down with each employee and in an informal way, probe whether or not they fully understand all that they do in their role.  Make notes – I’m sure there are some things they’ll need to work on.

2. Going further, get a sense for how they do their work.  Find out if their behaviour lines up with one or more of: the corporate mission, vision and values; the organizational customer service ethos; or any other standard or code that your organization has that prescribes how people should operate in the work place.  Make note of any gaps between what their stated behaviour and what you think they should do and create a professional development plan.

3. Create a set of expectations for your direct reports.  Come up with 10.  Ensure they line up with the mission, vision, values of the organization, but make them behavioural so that people can ‘see’ how they should behave.   Talk about them at a staff meeting and make it clear that you expect people to align with them and that you will be following up.

What you’ll find is that over time, people will align with your expectations because you have laid them out first, monitored them and given people feedback regularly.

Expectations + role descriptions = great performance.  Take the time to set expectations and you will see a significant performance improvement among your team members.

 

Thought leadership or ‘my two cents worth’?

Thought leadership is a social media-driven phrase that is getting a lot of air time over the past couple of years.  To be a thought leader is an enviable position; it suggests a great deal of expertise in concert with the ability to reach an audience that either wants to access that expertise (for those that know what they don’t know) or that needs to access the expertise (those that don’t know what they don’t know, but should).  I suppose I am trying to be a thought leader in the ares of leadership, performance and change, if you judge me by my blog and my tweets, along with the 2WA Monthly Musings.  It sounded pretentious, to my ear, at first.  Lately, I’ve reconsidered that position.

In today’s society, learning venues and vehicles are much more varied than they were 10 or 15 years ago.  Then it was classrooms; now it is still classrooms, but webinars, e-learning, lunch and learns, mentoring, job shadowing, secondments, special projects and more have been added to the mix.  Then it was learn from the expert; now it is learn from a variety of people, including the expert,  your peer, your boss and your mentor.  Oh and get a coach to help you make sense of it all.

While the phrase thought leadership may be a bit imperious sounding, it starts to make sense if we think of it as each person offering their thoughts on a given topic that – when pulled together in a person’ consciousness, a  person who wants to know more about that topic – it starts to make sense.  If we add up all of the ideas on leadership, performance or change that come from the people that we can most easily access (work with, read books written by, attend lectures by) then we have a rich vein of information to use to improve ourselves.

So think of thought leadership as everyone’s individual perspective.  Everyone has an opinion, not all of them are worth listening to, but in hearing as many as possible you become more educated, leading to better informed, resulting in better actions and decisions.

Just ‘my two cents worth’.

Leadership in the world of human resources

2WA conducted a workshop yesterday for the Ontario Municipal Human Resources Association in Toronto.  We had about 40 people from various municipalities around southern Ontario, with about 30 of them being HR people and 10 members of the management teams for their respective organizations.  The topic was how to create an HR strategic plan to mobilize municipalities to address the impending tsunami of workforce retirements that is a result of the baby boomer demographic hitting their retirement targets.

 

I won’t go into the workshop elements, but what struck me about the conversations that we had over the day was that there was a sense among the HR folk that their senior managements teams didn’t see a problem.  The truth is that in Canada there are currently 3.3 people in the workforce for every 1 person retired.  That number will fall to 2 to 1 in about 8 years.  In the US, there are about 10,000 people turning 65 years of age every day.  That started about 3 years ago and will continue to 2019.  The evidence is there, yet anecdotally I’m hearing that municipal leaders are not all seeing the need for change.

Which leads me to a couple of things that leaders must be doing to play their roles properly:

1. Spot the next wave – strategically, it is imperative that people leading organizations spend a lot of time figuring out what the next opportunity is for their organization, what the next threat is, what the next impact will be.  They need to spot it, galvanize people to plan to take advantage / mitigate it and implement those plans.

How do you do that?

Talk to people outside your organization; talk to people in your sector / industry; find 5 periodicals about your industry and read them; take people to lunch; ask questions; look for strategic oriented blogs; read economic forecasts; go to presentations and speeches that are business oriented … generally, become more informed and open your mind.  Listen to experts and let all their information permeate your brain and don’t jump to conclusions.

And when your HR person comes to you and says ‘we have a problem and we need a plan’ listen to him, tap into your new broadened consciousness and lead your organization