The Story of John and Margaret, aka How Not to Hire Someone

The following is an excerpt from our updated Hire the Best training, coming soon.

John and his wife met a nice woman at church. Let’s call her Margaret. As they got to know each other, John and his wife developed a casual friendship with Margaret. They would exchange hellos, talk about their week, and share stories about their kids. They liked Margaret. She seemed sensible, funny, and rational.

John’s company had less than 20 employees. A few months after meeting Margaret, there was an opening in his business at a time when Margaret was looking for a new job. After a couple of coffee meetings, he decided to hire her.

Fast-forward a year later, and Margaret had become the most toxic member of John’s team. Good employees had quit because of her, and team members that stayed were unhappy and less productive because of her workstyle, attitude, and inconsistent work standards.

For her part, Margaret was very unhappy. In her mind, her role was undefined, she took on too much work, and she regularly worked on the weekends to keep up. She was exhausting herself for the company and for John, whom she no longer respected.

What a nightmare.

Think about all the time and money spent onboarding Margaret and training her. Consider the negative effects on other team members, and the opportunity cost of a bad hire versus a good hire. Margaret had become toxic and caused good employees to quit. Sales were lost. Customers were upset. Opportunities were missed that could have generated revenue and profits for years.

Even in such a small company, hiring Margaret may have cost John’s company a million dollars. In a larger organization the loss might have been more.

The impact of one bad hire can hurt your company financially for years.

And what about Margaret?

She felt she was working hard to help the company. She was frustrated, unhappy, and depressed. She ultimately regretted her decision to join the company.

A bad hire cuts both ways. This is a huge expense which is often overlooked.

For everyone’s sake, we need to avoid hiring the wrong person.

A Bad Hire is a Costly Decision

A Career Builder study from 2013 says 62% of U.S. employers blame bad hires for five huge expenses:  Lower company productivity, negative worker morale, sales declines, strained client relationships, and even costly legal issues.

A report by the SHRM Foundation says direct replacement costs of departed employees can reach 50-60% of an employee’s annual salary. This includes accrued paid time off, overtime or contingent employee costs, plus staff time for exit interviews and administration. And this is one of the lower estimates!

In the story above, John definitely inflicted a few of these costs upon his company unnecessarily through a foolish hiring decision. Furthermore, these expenses are just the ones we can track. How many other “expenses” and losses are lurking in the shadows, unknown to business owners?

The Solution is to Follow a Better Hiring Process

John could have avoided these known and unknown expenses by simply following a better hiring process.

Some people can follow their gut, they have that unique intuition. They can tell a good candidate from a bad candidate in the blink of an eye. But these amazingly instinctive hiring managers and business owners are few and far between.

For most of us, meaning you and me, we need to follow a step-by-step process to attract, qualify, interview, and onboard great employees. It is simply the best and most proven method of hiring the best.

The next time you are hiring for an open position, remember the story of John and Margaret, and follow the right steps to hire the right candidate.

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We have been offering our Hire the Best system for years as a proven process you can follow with all the steps and tools you need to hire the right candidate. It has produced amazing results with our clients, and this year we are excited to debut a new, updated version in the coming months.

Need help with your hiring process? You don’t have to wait for the updated version of Hire the Best.

Contact us today to schedule a conversation.

Are You Prepared for 2020?

Here are a handful of ways to get off to a good start next month so 2020 is your best year ever!

If any of these 5 ideas remind you of someone, please forward them this email.

#1 - Bad Leadership Habits?

How much training and mentoring have you had to be a leader?  None?  Not much?  Then it’s no surprise you don’t have all the skills and processes you need to be an effective leader.

Stop making leadership mistakes that hurt your career and relationships with others.  Learn how to create more time in your week to achieve significant work.  Learn 3strands leadership.

Signup for our six-month Leadership Essentials (formerly Certified Leader) program. 

WHAT YOU GET:  One week you have a coaching call with me to develop your leadership skills and habits.  The next week you participate in a live, group, online training to interact with other leaders and learn the best practices of great leaders.

#2 - Hiring Problems?

You hired someone and they’re a disappointment!  You wasted time.  It’s stressful.  It’s no fun to fire her or him.  It’s embarrassing and frustrating to have to hire someone again for that role. 

Stop making hiring mistakes.  Find more candidates.  Hire better people more wisely.

Signup for our Hire the Best system.  Humbly, we believe this is the best hiring system in the world.  In 1Q 2020 we plan to introduce about 75 self-training videos and 250 sample documents and guides related to hiring.  Order now at a lower price.  (You’ll get these key documents, and access to the fully upgraded program with videos, when it’s available.

Today you get the self-serve version for $995, including a free M2W Talent Assessment.  Or, work with me for four hours to implement Hire the Best, and not one, but two M2W Talent Assessments.  (Pricing for self-serve version will increase 2X-3X in 2020.)

WHAT YOU GET:  Full access to our Hire the Best system, a proven way to find better candidates, qualify them correctly, and onboard them into brilliant, top performance.

#3 - Need Better Soft Skills?

Soft skills are how we behave.  Our Triple Perspective Talent Assessment tests for 25 competencies, or soft skills including leadership, decision-making, interpersonal skills…

You hired someone, expecting they know how to behave professionally.  They don’t.  They are rude, mean, do not communicate, poorly manage their time, lack character…

Stop assuming your employees and new hires know how to behave.  Teach them!  Even better, have them learn as a group so they learn your standards together.  (Leaders should take the courses too.)

Sign-up for our Charm School today and try some courses with your team.  It’s FREE for 30 days.  Use our online pre-recorded trainings, quizzes after each lesson, points for quiz completion, and an admin area to manage your employees who are participating.

WHAT YOU GET:  A low-cost way to assign 16 soft skills courses to new hires, have employees work on behaviors as part of a performance improvement plan, and enable managers to lead group trainings on soft skills with very little preparation.  Also, we’ll be adding a new course monthly in 2020.

#4 - Do You Really Know Yourself?

Why do you make mistakes?  Why do you miss deadlines, and/or make others upset? 

Stop wasting time with unnecessary drama because you don’t fully comprehend your most intense behaviors, motivators, and the maturity of your soft skills.

Try our M2W Talent Assessment service.  If you haven’t done one before, then order a free Talent Assessment here (about halfway down the page).  You get the full Triple Perspective service, one time, at no cost!  If you have tried them and want to order TA’s for your team, then use coupon assess5 for a 10% discount on any order of 5 or more.

WHAT YOU GET:  An amazingly accurate explanation of how you behave, what drives you, and your maturity in 25 different soft skills.  You receive a 50+/- report, cubicle sign to remind yourself and others how you work best, and a 2-to-3 page summary of how anyone can work effectively with you.  Apply what you learn to accelerate your career, and improve your productivity with others.

#5 - How About Free Stuff?

Subscribe to our newsletter with advice on how to be a great leader enjoying a thriving career.

Subscribe to the Manage 2 Win podcast where we interview leaders and other game-changers.  Get new ideas, insights, and real wisdom you can apply to be your best.

Don’t hesitate to email us with any questions.

Have a very blessed Christmas and holiday season!  We hope you are closing this year in great health, with joyful laughter that makes your eyes tear up and stomach hurt, and a confident belief that great opportunities are ahead!

Sincerely yours,

David

David Russell

Senior Consultant and leadership activist

How to Be Grateful and Hold on to that Positive Perspective

My experience is the biggest difference between people who are thriving in life, versus those who are unhappy, is gratitude.  Below are 25 contrasts to gratitude.  Where are your strengths?

Being thankful gives you the courage to overcome, the wisdom to discover the answers, and the persistence to be complete, not lacking anything truly important.

Ungrateful people are lost.  They can’t and/or won’t focus on the positives, so they allow real and perceived negatives to control them.  It’s complicated, and sad.  However, in most situations there are viable positive perspectives and solutions when a person is willing to pursue them.

How many grateful habits do you have?

1. Grateful people say, “Let’s find out.”  Lost people say, “Nobody knows.”

2. When grateful people make a mistake, they say, “I was wrong.”  When lost people make a mistake, they say, “It wasn’t my fault.”

3. Grateful people credit their “good luck” for winning, even though it isn’t good luck.  Lost people blame their “bad luck” for losing, even though it isn’t bad luck.

4. Grateful people know how and when to say “Yes” and “No.”  Lost people say, “Yes, but” and “Perhaps not” at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.

5. Grateful people aren’t nearly as afraid of losing, as lost people are subconsciously afraid of winning.

6. Grateful people work harder than lost people, and have more time.  Lost people are always “too busy” to do what’s necessary.

7. Grateful people go through a problem.  Lost people try to go around it, and never get past it.

8. Grateful people make commitments.  Lost people make promises.

9. Grateful people show they’re sorry by making up for it.  Lost people say, “I’m sorry,” but do the same thing the next time.

10. Grateful people know what to fight for and what to compromise on.  Lost people compromise on what they shouldn’t, and fight for what isn’t worth fighting about.

11. Grateful people say, “I’m good, however I’m working on being better.”  Lost people say, “I’m not as bad as other people.”

12. Grateful people listen.  Lost people wait until it’s their turn to talk.

13. Grateful people would rather be admired, than liked, although they’d prefer both.  Lost people would rather be liked than admired, and are willing to pay the price of mild contempt for it.

14. Grateful people are strong enough to be gentle.  Lost people are rarely gentle, but are often weak, angry, or act like a petty tyrant.

15. Grateful people respect and learn from those who are in some ways superior to them.  Lost people resent and claim there are faults in those who are in some ways superior to them.

16. Grateful people explain.  Lost people explain away.

17. Grateful people feel responsible for more than their job.  Lost people say, “I only work here.”

18. Grateful people say, “There ought to be a better way to do it.”  Lost people say, “That’s the way it’s always been done.”

19. Grateful people say, “We can do it.”  Lost people say, “I don’t know” or “I’m afraid.”

20. Grateful people pace themselves.  Lost people have three speeds:  stop, slow, and emotional.

21. Grateful people are thankful for what they have and others.  Lost people never have enough and everyone else has issues.

22. Grateful people do work that is personally fulfilling.  Lost people believe nothing matters.

23. Grateful people keep trying, in new ways, to overcome obstacles.  Lost people give up shortly after starting, or repeat one year’s experience for decades.

24. Grateful people are systematic, reliable, and trustworthy.  Lost people are inconsistent, don’t deliver top results, and can’t be trusted.

25. Grateful people think of how to serve others and work for the common good.  Lost people serve themselves and focus on what’s best for them.

You probably have some more differences you’d like to list.  Maybe you can have a contest with your team…

Here’s the value in this list

Use this list to become better.

Most of us are a mix of a grateful person and a lost person. Therefore, choose one grateful behavior that’s a strength you want to be stronger, or a bad habit of a lost person you want to overcome.  Work on it on individually, or as a team for 90 days with daily accountability.

Celebrate how you improve, and never let the old habit overpower the new more grateful one.

Never stop developing yourself to be a new level of best.

Have an awesome week!

NOTE:  Inspiration for this list is a 30+ year old document I found the other day.  I had hand-typed it.  The list brought a smile to my face as I recognized many of life’s important lessons.  I believe it’s from a publication called, The Christian Athlete. They posted it in a format of winners vs. losers.  I prefer my approach above. I kept many of their statements the same, edited others, and added some of my own.

People remember how you make them feel

Our memories are subjective. They impact our lives so much, including what food we eat, the friends we hang out with, and the businesses we work with.

There’s a short quiz that’s incorrectly attributed to Charles Schulz, the American cartoonist best known for his Peanuts cartoons with Snoopy and Charlie Brown. It looks like this:

Try naming the:

• Five wealthiest people in the world

• Last five Heisman trophy winners

• Last five winners of the Miss America pageant

• Ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize

• Last six Academy Award winners for Best Actor & Actress

• Last decade of World Series winners

How many of these can you name accurately? Now try naming the:

• Few teachers who helped you

• Three friends who stuck with you during tough times

• Five people who taught you something worthwhile

• Three people who have made you feel appreciated and special

• Five people you enjoy spending time with

It’s a lot easier to name the people in the second group than it is to name people in first group, right? This is because the people who make a lasting difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards.

It’s the people who care, the people who make you feel appreciated.

Remember this the next time you greet someone for the first time, try to help solve their problem, or have an opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life. You might end up as one of their most memorable people.

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Sometimes I have a hard time incorporating this lesson into my life, but I sure do feel it when I’m slighted by someone else.

The Surfing Accident I Felt Horrible About

A few months ago I purchased a nine-foot longboard for use at the famous Malibu surf spot right next to Malibu Pier. It was just a cheap Craigslist find specifically for Malibu.

The spot is conventionally known as just “Malibu” and it’s usually super crowded. This is a relatively light day. Crowd levels can get insane.

A week later I was struggling with work and decided to take a break and try the new board. Malibu didn’t look too crowded and the wind was reasonable.

Most of the session was perfect. A 9ft board has plenty of volume for a guy like me and I caught three awesome waves. I was super proud of myself, it was my second time out there. But you know what they say, “Pride goeth before a fall”.

On my fourth and longest wave I rode maybe 50 yards down the line until I spotted a guy sitting right in my way. He was just sitting there on his board, long hair, goatee, hipster-vibe.

Since the wave was so good I wanted to make it last as long as possible, so I held my line right up to the last second and then tried to turn and avoid Hipster Steve. Unfortunately, I tried to turn too quickly to my left (Malibu is a right-hander that breaks off the point, which means you ride the wave to your right when facing the beach) and the wave pitched a little. I fell to the left and my board shot out to the right, a fiberglass bullseye straight at Hipster Steve.

Immediately my heart sank and I panicked: “Oh crap, please don’t let him be injured too bad!” I popped my head out of the water ready to apologize profusely, which I did immediately.

But Hipster Steve didn’t care. He looked at me like I was the worst person in the world, scowled and exclaimed, “You went straight at me! What if I was an 8-year-old girl?” He wasn’t injured, not in the slightest from what I could see. He was just pissed at the moron on the Craigslist board.

I froze up, neglected to evaluate the situation objectively, apologized twice more, then paddled to the shore and went home disgusted with myself. I had never collided with anyone like that before. I seriously considered quitting surfing right then and there. It took me at least a week to wrap my head around the situation and acknowledge other perspectives of the incident.

I will never forget that encounter, I felt horrible.

Fortunately I have some surf buddies that talked some sense into me. I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say that it was just as much Hipster Steve’s fault as it was mine.

But I will never forget that feeling, and I hope I never make someone feel that way. Life is too short to make another person feel completely worthless.

People remember how you make them feel.

PS. I now refer to that board as The Maneater :)

Good Cop Update

You’re a member of a team.  You might be the leader, or someone without management responsibilities.  You have a meeting with two managers of another team, Natasha and Vito, to discuss a problem that occurred between your team and their team.

 You’re shocked by their response. Learn how to get through this, AND be a much better leader by reading our new, recently updated our Good Cop Style guide.

As always, let us know if you have any questions.

Now, go out and change the world!

David

Learn When to Apologize and Own Your Mistakes

One of your team members promised they would do something for a client.  They got distracted with other work, and it was not done on time.  The very upset client contacts you.

You meet with the employee.  You remind them of the commitment they made to do the work excellently on time.  You explain the client just called and unloaded on you because of the employee’s mistake.  You can’t help yourself.  You speak in an angry, accusative tone of voice.  Your body language says, “Don’t mess with me.”

Hey, isn’t this reasonable?  The employee messed up.

The employee responds by lying.  (You can decide specifically what they lied about.  Maybe they said they did part of the work, all of the work, communicated with the client, or something else...)

You get madder.  You’re not screaming, but it’s clear by the tone of your voice and your body language that you’re very angry.  You show them documentation that proves the employee is lying, or at least not giving you all the information because if they did, the facts would convict them of the mistake.

At this point, the employee admits the mistake.  They agree they shouldn’t have behaved that way.  They commit to jump on the situation immediately, and have it resolved by 3 PM.  You tell them to notify you after the work’s done, the client’s been notified, and any of their questions have been answered.  The employee agrees to do this.

What’s missing?

A sincere apology.

The employee made a big mistake.  Then they lied about it, or at least did not give you all the information.  To fully own the situation, they should have apologized to you.  How could they not have the decency and professionalism to apologize?

The answer is often because you don’t apologize to them consistently after your mistakes.

This issue is compounded when their life experience includes parents, peers, other bosses, coworkers, clients, vendors, and possibly others who haven’t set an example of sincerely apologizing to them, when it’s appropriate.  Here are some reasons why people may not apologize when they make a mistake.

People don’t apologize because they:

1. Think apologizing makes them appear weak.  They fear how they appear to others.  This may lead them to focus on where they were right, and downplay any mistakes they made.  This may extend into justifying or not owning the mistake, and/or not apologizing, by telling themselves the other person’s mistakes are much worse.  Therefore, they don’t take responsibility for their behavior and/or apologize.

2. May have low self-esteem.  Sincerely admitting their mistake and apologizing reinforces or deepens their shame.

3. Feel the other person never apologizes to them.

4. Can’t do it sincerely.  For them, it would be fake.

5. May not be able to separate the apology for their behavior from their character.  They believe they’re a person of good character, yet incorrectly are convinced people of good character don’t make mistakes.

6. Fear an apology opens the door to additional condemnation from the other person.  It’s not safe to apologize.

7. Are trying to manage their emotions.  It’s more comfortable for them to be in denial and to protect themselves let angry, judgmental, feelings take over.  They may isolate themselves rather than deepen the relationship with the other person by letting their guard down with an apology.

As the title of this post indicates, you can stop apologizing, or never start apologizing, depending on where you are in life.  However, this is not a healthy strategy or behavioral tactic.

Did you notice the need for not one, but two apologies in the example above?

The other apology needed is from the leader.  The leader may have used all the correct words, given all the appropriate details, and accurately confirmed what had happened, what needed to happen, and agreed when it would happen. 

However, the leader got mad.  The leader was threatening verbally and in their body language.

We like to say, “Whoever gets mad, loses.”

In the example above, the leader needs to apologize for getting angry, their tone of voice, and possibly their body language.  It didn’t help the situation.  It made it worse.  Most likely, the leader’s behavior was also contrary to your company values.

If there’s 100% of a problem and you are 4.3% wrong, then own your 4.3% mistake.  Don’t dismiss your mistake by saying the other person was 95.7% wrong.  Also, don’t go to the other extreme by taking responsibility for their mistakes.  Then, you’ve foolishly stolen this opportunity for them to learn.

Have the courage and confidence to fully take responsibility of any area where you were mistaken.  You’ll find this encourages others to more comfortably take responsibility and apologize. 

You and your people may need some guidance on how to do this.  It might be a new, healthier path to take in life. Rather than play the victim, people can take responsibility and apologize for their mistakes.  One place where we teach how to forgive and apologize is our Workplace Drama course in Dave’s Charm School.  We also work with teams to develop habits, systems, and processes that enable them to work more effectively in life and be more fulfilled in their work.

Leaders have opportunities to respectfully and empathetically teach people better habits.  However, you have to be a role model of the behaviors you’re teaching them to develop.  They learn more from your actions, than from your words.

Yes, you can stop apologizing.  It’s an option.

It’s just not the best option.

Let me put it bluntly:  Not apologizing is a foolish decision that limits your growth, hurts relationships, and negatively affects the lives of others.  It’s selfish, and hurts you the most.

Instead, develop habits to take a Goldilocks approach to apologies.  Don’t apologize too often.  Don’t apologize too little.  Simply take responsibility for your actions and apologize every time it’s appropriate.

Contact us if you’d like to develop better relational habits yourself, for your team, or both.

Indications You Could be the Problem

Instinctively, leaders can be too quick to blame employees for poor behavior, lack of skills, and not meeting their expectations.

The leader’s expectations are high, yet the employee made a mistake by not meeting them. The mistake is like an onion. It has a strong smell and you want to get away from it as quickly as possible.

Mistakes can be distracting, emotional, depressing, costly, and make leaders angry.

However, a wise leader is quick to ask questions, patiently listen, be slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Follow this ancient teaching. Ask questions and listen. Be slow to speak and slow to anger until you have peeled back the layers of the onion. The outside may look bad, but the truth inside is often much more valuable.

Another common analogy is to consider the leader as a physician. A doctor must discern between symptoms and actual diseases. Symptoms could be related to numerous diseases, not just one. If you rush to diagnosis and treat the wrong disease, then you could make the patient worse. Or dead.

If you don’t address the core disease, then the symptoms multiply into additional variances of the sickness. The catalyst of the problems continues to spread and possibly accelerates.

Click on the image to read an article on how to literally avoid the pain of cutting onions.

In contrast, peel back the onion layer-by-layer by asking questions, listening, and gathering more data. Be open to different conclusions based on the facts. Cure the disease by first comprehending what it truly is.

For instance, why is an employee late to work, a meeting, or with a deliverable?

Or, why does an employee disregard company policy, procedure, value, or a best practice?

These are symptoms, not the core disease.

Peel back the onion.

The first layer of the onion might be instinctive. The employee is wrong. It’s that simple. End of story.

The second layer of the onion might indicate there was something that distracted the person or convinced them the deadline or standard was less important.

The third layer of the onion might identify one or more bad work habits of the employee.

The fourth layer of the onion might conclude nothing is stopping the distractions or anti-company standard messaging, which reinforces their bad work habits.

The fifth layer of the onion might point out part of the problem is other employees.

The sixth layer of the onion might catch a breakdown in process, soft skills, and consistency in the way this employee was hired, managed, developed, and/or retained.

The seventh layer of the onion often is part of the core problem, if not THE core problem. You find this issue in your mirror.

You, as the leader, have total control over how you hire, manage, develop, and retain each employee. Therefore, when there are ongoing symptoms, the cause is often the person in the mirror.

Your behaviors are not matching your expectations of others, your company standards and best practices, and possibly even your ethics.

Do you want the truth?

You are the primary problem. At least part of the core problem.

The employee must own their mistakes, but they cannot do this effectively or efficiently when their leader continues to mismanage, abuse, or neglect them.

Do you have the courage to choose your relationship with the employee over rushing to judgment so you can get back to your work?

“The plans of the diligent lead to profit, as surely as haste leads to poverty,” states Psalm 21.

Many leaders refuse to own their mistakes. They’re busy. It’s easier to blame others.

However, this teaches others their bad habits and motivates less than stellar performance.

Getting to the core of a problem is similar. It takes a bit more time. It’s often uncomfortable in some ways. You are required to maintain your emotions when others may be misbehaving. There may be some discomfort as you confront the facts, and find the employee is not the primary reason for the mistake.

Why are you the main problem?

Because you hired the employee. You manage them. You develop them. You retain them even though their performance is low. Your best practices and standards may have gaps or be outdated.

Leading people is a challenging discipline. It’s not an easy process, but a necessary one.

The more you peel back the onion with courage, integrity, and a commitment to grow as a leader… the fewer onions you have to peel.

The Social Media Dilemma

Should your company use social media? Should you personally use social media? We have been wrestling with these questions for years.

As a small business, one of our biggest challenges is connecting with potential clients outside our network. We attend events, ask for referrals, and share advice through our email list. We also produce content on our podcast, our blog, and by writing books. Those efforts produce quality relationships that we greatly value. But we have difficulty scaling those efforts and grabbing the attention of people outside our network.

That’s where social media is alluring. With a good Twitter post or YouTube video we could potentially reach thousands of people who have never heard of us. The possibility of a viral Facebook update is tantalizing to say the least. A lot of people in one place, networked together. It seems like a marketer’s dream.

But the more we think about it, the more we wonder if it’s the right thing to do.

Social Media Is Not Healthy

Have you ever seen an article with this headline: "Experts Agree, Social Media is Great for You!" Of course not. Social media and online forums often bring out the worst in people, especially in relationships. A study from the University of Missouri found that "individuals who use Facebook excessively are far more likely to experience Facebook–related conflict with their romantic partners, which then may cause negative relationship outcomes including emotional and physical cheating, breakup and divorce."

Almost every study of social media has concluded it is not a healthy part of our lives. This Forbes article by Alice Walton lists 6 Ways Social Media Affects our Mental Health.

Guess what? None of them are good.

The only benefit of social media seems to be the ability to connect with people we don't usually come into contact with (including in emergencies).

The ability to find and share cool stuff is a benefit too. But how often have you drafted your goals for the year and one of them was, "Look at more cool social media posts"? Probably never.

Social Media is a Likely Accomplice to the Murder of Privacy

Unfortunately, whether on purpose or incidentally, social media has also greatly contributed to the destruction of our privacy. We are encouraged to share our lives on social media, and people often share more than they should without knowing what the social media company is going to do with that information.

On top of that, the rise of big data advertising means every user's inputs are scanned and categorized, then offered up as a means to sell them more stuff, usually without any blatant warning of what is happening. It's automatic.

“When Ashkan Soltani, an online privacy research and consultant, analyzed ‘third-party tracking beacons’ on 50 of the most-visited sites, they dumped an average 64 tracking technologies (i.e. cookies and web bugs) onto users’ computers.”

The above quote is from an article on Seeker.com titled Is the Internet Destroying Privacy.

All of the primary social media sites are in the top 50 most-visited sites, and it's not just the top 50 sites that are doing this.

Furthermore, let's play the conspiracy theorist for a minute. Are we really so naive to think that governments aren't tapping into as much of this information as they can? Just one look at the revelations revealed by Edward Snowden and we can probably do away with the word "theorist" in the first sentence of this paragraph.

Increasingly it seems like “our" data is not ours unless it is explicitly protected by a verified open-source program that encrypts all of it and shares none of it.

Current social media sites do not measure up to this standard. The logical conclusion is privacy is dead.

Social Media (and the internet overall) is Often Not a Reliable Source of Information

This one is a mixed bag, but it's important to note: You've heard of the term "fake news"? There's a reason it resonated so well with people.

The internet is amazing. But it's also chock full of an amazing amount of fake information, fake information that is often shared on social media. Wikipedia even has a page titled "Wikipedia is not a reliable source", yet people still reference its articles all the time.

That's the first rung of misinformation, simple alteration of text.

Have you seen the Deep Fake Videos? Check this out?

According to Summit News, scientists at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology “have been able to simplify ‘realistic neural talking head models’ which normally require a huge dataset of images to look genuine. The researchers created life-like talking heads with just a few images of a person and even in some cases just a single image.”

This is scary enough to be part of the social media dilemma.

On the other hand, we must admit the internet can serve as a superb vetting platform. People instinctually want the truth, and millions of self-appointed internet police love to expose fake stories and denigrate the source. But that doesn’t negate the fact that digital content can created and manipulated all too easily.

The Breakout Potential of Viral Content Does Not Usually Lead to Increased Revenue

Now let's talk about your business.

Marketing is an art form, not a science. Most companies don't know how to market themselves effectively, and probably don't know why they have social media pages. It seems normal now to have a page on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn where people can "follow" you and your activity.

The grand hope is that one of your clever posts are shared by your fans and reaches potential customers who were unaware of your superb products and services. Your clever post becomes a virus, appearing on millions of individual "walls" or "feeds", making you or your company famous for a few days. You earn credibility, get more followers, and more customers.

But that's rare, at best. As Jeremy Knauff writes on Spartan Media, "Going viral is a combination of hard work and luck".

For normal, honest content, posting on social media is like playing the lottery. If you don't already have a large following, your chances of posting something that goes viral is next to nothing. Your options for creating a piece of viral content are few:

1. Capitalize on a big news story with a passionate reaction or insight.

2. Get lucky with a post that is so insightful and new that people feel compelled to share.

3. Post real news of something remarkable or astonishing that happened to you or your company, and post it as soon as possible after the event happened.

Even if you do exploit one of these rare and highly variable options, the chances of reaching enough people to make a difference to your bottom line is next to nothing. On average, you will make a tiny splash on your side of the pond and get a few new leads.

But let's say for the sake of argument that one of your posts does hit it big. You will get a ton of new followers, new traffic to your website, new leads, and new customers.

Have you succeeded? Did you win the game of social media? Perhaps. But it's temporary. Social media is all about the fresh and new. If you don't continue to put out new, quality content, people will quickly lose interest. A lot of them will even comb through your previous posts, find things they don't like, and start arguments with complete strangers they can't hear or see.

You can capitalize on your 15 minutes of fame, but the spark will fade fast. Jeremy Knauff hit the nail on the head, "success isn’t one event, it’s a culmination of all of the small things you do over a long period of time".

To have long-term success, you'll likely have to build your social media following slowly and deliberately. You can't count on the viral lottery ticket.

Outright Censorship on Social Media is Dangerously Orwellian and Can Hurt Your Business

This is a big problem for us. Even if you do have a great, popular post, it's potential can be cut to ribbons by censorship. All of the major tech companies are now censoring content according to their own arbitrary rules.

Every page of search results, every social media feed, every article you read is processed by Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) via algorithms or manually for acceptability under their standards. Then Big Tech filters out the things they don’t like, and serves up the remains. What’s more frightening is that they are actively lying about it.

Tech companies say their platforms promote free speech. They don’t. At least, not anymore, not in the true sense of the term.

Here's a few examples:

• Crossfit Deletes Facebook and Instagram After User Group is Deplatformed

• Twitter Bans Analyst Who Revealed AntiFa Connections With Journalists

• It’s Not Your Imagination: The Journalists Writing About Antifa Are Often Their Cheerleaders

• YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

• YouTube Punishes Steven Crowder for Homophobic Speech, a Confused Approach to an Unsolvable Problem

A great episode of the Joe Rogan podcast is #1258 featuring independent journalist Tim Pool. In the episode, Tim points out a handful of instances where Twitter policies seem to be idealogically motivated and challenges Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Twtter’s global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety Vijaya Gadde, to explain the policies.

This is just a few of the many examples of users or content being censored on these global platforms.

You might say, "Well, so what, Jeff? MY company doesn't share stuff that could be censored. Why should we care? We're just a business. Besides, I'm glad they censored that stuff."

Unfortunately, you're wrong and you should care.

Here's why: You are connected to your company. Your company is composed of multiple individuals, each with their own worldview and opinions, each connected to your company. What if you and your team supports a particular ideology, completely legal, but unsavory to Big Tech? Boom. You, and by extension your company, can now be made virtually invisible on the internet. The reason? "Extreme views".

Nevermind truth. Nevermind public debate. The people who hold the power don't like your opinions. Begone.

This should scare everyone who uses these platforms. Perhaps this image of Martin Niemoller’s testimony is too harsh, but it’s relevant:

Make no mistake, it is well within the rights of Facebook or Twitter to censor any content they want. They are a corporation, a business, beholden only to their shareholders, not their users.

But they dominate the social media landscape, so much of the public conversation is transmitted through their networks, and therefore they have tremendous power.

As a business, should we support the current power structure or look elsewhere?

I told you it was a dilemma.

Social Media is Not a Level Playing Field, it is Rigged in Favor of Established Media

This is worth noting. Let's say you don't get censored, you are creating "appropriate" content, and trying to build a following. Great!

There's only one problem: You probably still have to pay to play.

Take YouTube for example. A channel called Coffee Break published a video in May 2019 called What 40,000 Videos Tell Us About the Trending Tab:

The video dived into research by a computer science student at Glasgow University by the name of Mitchell Jolly. Jolly pulled and analyzed 6 months worth of YouTube trending data for 10 countries. Are you familiar with the Trending section of YouTube? It purports to show videos that are growing in recent popularity.

But that's not the case.

Instead, as Coffee Break explains, the Trending section is dominated by establishment media videos from major networks, like “news” clips and late night shows. It takes a lot more for an independent video to make it on the trending page.

We would be foolish to assume this is only happening on YouTube.

Even if your company happens to have a break out piece of content, it looks like the chips might be stacked against you. It’s demoralizing. If small businesses have to compete with the media juggernauts in an unfair playing field, then what’s the point? Unless you pay for advertising to promote your post, it seems unlikely to reach as much of your target audience as it would in a fair playing field.

The Solution? Either Quit Altogether, or Post Everywhere and Often

With all of these negative aspects it is hard to consider a realistic, healthy solution to The Social Media Dilemma. Considering all of the negative aspects of the institution, it seems counter-intuitive to continue using social media at all.

On a personal level, I hardly use social media. I have a Facebook account just so I can manage our company page. My LinkedIn account with 165 connections is the most robust page I have, but I rarely use that too except to share our content.

As a business, especially a small business, we are really struggling with whether to use social media or not. It's hard to neglect the power of the internet to make our voice heard. But we don't know if it's worth the effort.

I can only see three options for businesses:

1. The Principled Refusal: Stop using social media completely and hope your target market will admire your ethical stance and gravitate to your values. A small example: Basecamp has gone Facebook-Free because they don’t like how cavalier Facebook has been with their data. This is honorable and I like it.

2. The Bare Minimum: Keep your social media company pages. Post to them a few times a year but otherwise do nothing with them. Focus on other things, like delivering for your customers.

3. The Social Media Strategist: Define a strategy for social media marketing and implement it religiously. Post everywhere and post often in order to get your name in front of the widest possible audience. Engage with people as much as possible, offer rewards and contests for followers, and share the best content you can come up with.

Basically you can go all in or do nothing with it, because a marginal effort just isn’t going to cut it.

What do you think? Am I over-analyzing the situation (I have a tendency to do that)? What is your company’s social media strategy?

Leave a comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How to Resolve Issues with Your Employees

You expected “X,” but the other person or team did “Y.”  This “pulls your trigger” or “pushes your button” and you emotionally flood. 

Your emotions instinctively, instantaneously initiate survival thoughts and actions, moving you into fight or flight mode.  This activity sends cortisol to your brain and temporarily eliminates any problem-solving capability.

You’re ready to “kill,” or “run.”

However, there is a third option:  Pause, control your emotions, and focus on how to relate to the person rather than attack or disengage.

To stop the drama from unfolding and the subsequent “Blame Game,” hit “PAUSE” on your emotional remote control to stop your habit sequence.

Start the resolution process by controlling your emotions.

Overpower any habit of anger and/or fear with a new, more powerful system of habits:

First, breathe deeply.  Reverse your natural reaction to tense up, have short quick breaths, accelerated heartbeat, and tensing up to look threatening.  Slowing or stopping these reactions stops the cortisol rush to your brain, which enable you to solve problems.

Second, don’t react.  Try to avoid instinctive or uncontrolled, negative words, facial expressions and body language.  Your mind may be racing, but your response can be intentional and controlled.

Third, master your emotions.  Don’t let your emotions control you.  Instead, don’t just control them.  Master your emotions to behave wisely.  This may mean you walk away if you are feeling emotional.  Politely excuse yourself from the meeting, online discussion, or phone call.  If it’s a text or email, then pause and don’t send a reply.

When it’s not an urgent matter, consider if you have enough information to make a wise decision.  Therefore, if you’re emotionally stable, then ask questions.  Listen.  Take notes.  Then you can say, “Give me 15 minutes and I’ll get back to you on that.”  (Ask for any reasonable amount of time.  It might be a day.  Or don’t specify a time.)

Some people can regain their composure, confirm they have complete information to make a wise decision, and think clearly to solve a problem in 5-15 minutes.  Other situations may delay your response by days.

Avoid venting because it’s unhealthy, a bad habit, fuels assumptions, intensifies emotions, and wastes time. 

Whatever you do, NEVER rush to write a condemnation and immediately send it.  No matter how many versions you edit, your written communication will almost always be received negatively. 

If you emotionally feel the need to write a response, then draft something and set it aside.  Keep it brief.  When you are ready, then talk with the person.  AFTER the conversation, review and edit the email to confirm the conversation you had with the person, and next steps agreed upon.

If the person who upset you reports to you, then require them to email you after your discussion with her/him.  Agree to a deadline of when they will email you.  Their email should explain:

#1 - Briefly, possibly in one statement, what went wrong. 

#2 - Confirm how they will resolve it.

#3 – Explain how the mistake or misunderstanding will not be repeated in the future.

Their email confirms you both have the same understanding… or not.

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Verbal Is the Best Approach

"There is a time to confront someone and a time to be nice.  May God grant us the wisdom to know the difference and the courage to do what is right."  (Life Application Bible footnote)

Great leaders never emotionally sacrifice a relationship to be right.  Our relationships are an irreplaceable asset.  This is one reason why the comment on an ancient teaching (above) states effective confrontation is a combination of wisdom and courage.  Not just one or the other.

If you have wisdom about a situation, but not the courage to address it, then the toxicity of the problem gets worse as the damage continues. 

If you have courage, but lack wisdom to confront effectively, then you expand the problem as your drama creates more emotion, confusion, and pain.

Find a balance rather than avoid confrontation too long, or confront someone too quickly, emotionally, and/or unprofessionally.  When a problem occurs, big or small, first calm yourself down.  Then follow these three simple relational steps to resolve the situation.

The following process can resolve any situation. 

In this example, you are on a project team of four people.  You are all peers.  You are not a team leader or manager.  The person who upset you, or is not working hard enough, is your peer and you have decided to address it.

Photo by Product School on Unsplash

#1 – Meet 1:1 Privately

The first action is to meet with the individual 1:1 privately to ask questions about the situation.  Be empathetic, sincere, and respectful.  Focus first on building the relationship stronger through the issue, and second on resolving the problem.  Being relational requires you to be intentional in your approach.

You can be nice and still resolve a situation efficiently and effectively.  

Start by understanding their perspective before offering advice or solutions.  Ask questions and listen.  See if the person understands what’s going on.  If appropriate, can she/he accept some responsibility?  Are they open to change?

The person may be the problem.  They are not working smart or hard enough.  They made a mistake.  They are doing something incorrectly.  They are not communicating… 

It may not be apparent at first, but the issue you initially think is their fault may be caused by someone else or something out of their control.  For instance, maybe they had poor training and thought they were doing it right.  Or, they missed a deadline due to a part not being available.  Possibly their primary error is not communicating the problem soon enough, or at all, rather than being late.

As much as possible, try to use the pronoun “we,” not “you” when discussing the situation.  We have certain standards.  How do we get through this?  How can we avoid this in the future?  When we do this, then our clients have that problem…

“You” points the finger at them and is judgmental.  “We” comes alongside them to resolve the issue.  A sincere “we” communicates they are safe and thus can be less defensive.

Come alongside the person to help them see the light.

If the individual is willing to admit a mistake, then build on that to discuss more details of the situation, ways to resolve it, and the process to avoid similar mistakes moving forward. 

People have limited emotional capacity due to their life experience.  It may not be important for them to own everything they did wrong at this moment.  For instance, they may only be able to handle so much information or change.  It may be irrational to expect too much of them now.  You can address some issues at another time when the person will be more receptive.

After the meeting, watch for times when the person is doing “it” right, or at least better.  Sincerely compliment them.  Not once, but often because the person’s new behaviors need reinforcement for at least 90 days to become a habit. 

Image by _Alicja_ from Pixabay

#2 – Bring Others

If your 1:1 meeting cannot resolve the situation, then bring 1-2 others on your team, or the entire team to meet with the person.

Again, be empathetic, sincere, and respectful.  However, the boundaries are firm.  There are quality standards to meet.  Deadlines to achieve.  The work of this individual impacts others, including clients and other third parties.

Ask questions.  Listen.  Ask more questions.  Have a candid discussion of the issue, possible resolutions, and ways to avoid repeating the problem.

Talk in “we” statements.  If the person is open to change, then discuss what that looks like.  Possibly train them, and then ask them to do the task to demonstrate they understand.

Follow-up with encouragement.

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

#3 – Escalate

If your 1:1 and group meeting fail to bring about improved behavior and results, then escalate the situation to management.  Don’t delay if you’ve given the person a fair chance to improve. 

It’s foolish to let one person, or a few people, behave unprofessionally or unproductively and bring down a team or a company. 

If you’re a manager, then move the person to a performance improvement plan after 1-2 verbal warnings.  You can do a single write-up without a plan after the verbal warnings if you prefer.  Most leaders do not enforce boundaries and so poor performance continues for months or years before the issue is resolved, or the person is terminated.

Jesus taught this process in Matthew 18:15-17 (NIV):

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.  But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’  If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Do you see the process?

#1 – Meet 1:1

#2 – Bring others to meet with the individual

#3 – Escalate to management

#4 – Remove them from your team/company

As leaders, part of our responsibilities is to judge situations and people.  However, we don’t make assumptions.  We do the following:

1.      Stay focused on the issue and the facts. 

2.      Treat everyone equally. 

3.      Put relationships first. 

4.      Don’t think we are better than others. 

5.      Make tough decisions in a Goldilocks timeframe.

We are nice, but our boundaries are firm.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/377950593710487127/?lp=true

One last suggestion

Problems happen.  Issue resolution is a good thing when done well.  Here are some key attributes of healthy confrontation when expectations and/or standards are not met:

#1 – Think the situation out carefully in advance so you have a solid foundation of understanding.

#2 – Your approach is respectful, and based on facts, not emotions or your personal bias.

#3 – Conclusions are measured against clear standards of performance and ideal outcomes that were communicated in-writing prior to the event(s) in question.  People can only be judged based on established, written standards and expectations.

#4 – Issues are verbally communicated calmly, without insulting language.  No flaming emails because they reflect more negatively on the author than the recipient.  (Written confrontation is necessary when the situation is or may become a legal issue.  At that point it is even more important to be careful what you say.  In most situations it’s best to talk first and then send a written communication.)

#5 – Avoid assumptions.  Ask questions.  Listen.  Ask more questions.  Research if necessary.  Discuss options to resolve the problem now, and avoid repeating it in the future.

#6 – Kindly determine the cause.  Own your mistakes, even if minor, such as your tone of voice, lack of follow-up, unclear goals or policy, …  Encourage others to take responsibility for how they may have contributed to the issue.

#7 – Focus on being encouraging through a process of acknowledging the mistake(s), learning from it, and motivating all parties to move forward with a well-thought out solution as a mutually respectful, co-dependent team.

Problems are part of life.  Successful people resolve issues so they don’t repeat mistakes.

If you have any questions, please email us.  We are available to discuss your challenges and possible solutions.  (We do not provide legal advice.)

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

What Are Soft Skills and Why Are They Important?

Soft skills. It’s a term you’ve probably heard before. From executives and consultants, to Seth Godin and Inc Magazine, people are talking about the importance of soft skills so much it feels like a new diet craze.

However, when you take some time to investigate, it becomes clear that “soft skills” just means “likeable”, “conscientious”, or “admirable”. It’s a broad term used to describe almost all non-technical skills. According to Wikipedia, the term “soft skills” encompasses a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills.

These skills have always existed. They have been utilized and perfected in many successful organizations. However, their popularity has increased as the mass majority of people have caught on to the fact that these skills are super important and they can be taught to anyone.

Where did the term “Soft Skills” come from?

Soft skills have been around forever, they are not new. Before it became an official term, Dale Carnegie described many soft skills in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

However, we started using the term “soft skills” because of the US military.

Around 1959 the US Army started investing heavily in training procedures that utilized technology to improve workflow and learning efficiency. They created a regulation (a doctrine, a set of guidelines or rules) called Systems Engineering of Training (CON Reg 350-100-1) that laid the groundwork for designing and producing courses for specific Army jobs. According to author Dr. Paul G. Whitmore, the courses created under this regulation would cover job related skills involving people and paper – inspecting things, supervising people, preparing reports, or designing structures – skills that did not involve machines.

This was the catalyst for the creation of “soft skills” as a term. While the term did not appear in CON Reg 350-100-1, the regulation spurred the analysis of skills and skill development in the modern military.

The term “soft skills” eventually and formally appeared in a report on a 1972 CONARC Soft Skills Conference, or a 1972 US Army training manual (I believe they are one in the same).

At the 1972 soft skills conference, Dr. Whitmore and John P. Fry presented three papers dealing with skills analysis and training procedures. I was able to find a reference to Dr. Whitmore’s papers at the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). After giving them a call and speaking with a representative, they directed me to the National Technical Reports Library where I was able to download the March 1974 version of the reports. The three papers are:

1. “What Are Soft Skills?” by John P. Fry and Paul G. Whitmore

2. “The Behavioral Model as a Tool for Analyzing Soft Skills” by Paul G. Whitmore

3. “Procedures for Implementing Soft-Skill Training in CONARC Schools” by John P. Fry

These papers were presented at the 1972 CONARC Soft SKills Conference. Page II-7 of the conference report reads:

text highlight added by me

So that’s it. “Soft skills” (along with many other things) originated within the US Army.

Today these skills are also referred to as “people skills” or “emotional intelligence”. Seth Godin thinks we should stop calling them soft skills because the word “soft” makes them sound like they are not important. Regardless of what you call them, they exist, and they are so important that the US Army held a multi-day conference about them.

The question is: Why are they important?

Why are soft skills important?

Everything you do involves other people, directly or indirectly. Even if you are a programmer who never talks to another human being, your code eventually makes its way to the outside world and affects people. If you want to turn your creation into a business, you will have to talk to other people, in person, on the phone, or digitally.

Furthermore, if you want to get a job, keep your job, or advance up the career ladder, you will need to be personable, conscientious, and self-aware. Your whole career centers on the importance of soft skills. If you cannot smile at appropriate times, hold a conversation, or deal with conflict, your career potential is, on average, extremely low.

Soft skills are so important, we often instinctively value them too much. Ever wonder why or how a certain person became a manager or a director, when they don’t seem to have the required technical skills? It’s probably because they have great soft skills!

Technical skills are just half of the game. If you can fix a product, you have half the equation figured out. However, you will lose business if you don’t know how to connect with your customer on an emotional level, understand their needs, and make them feel valued.

The importance of soft skills cannot be overstated: To succeed, people need to be able to connect with you, and you need to be able to connect with other people in meaningful ways. Soft skills are important because they are the difference between being an engaged member of a team versus being just another cog in the wheel.

What soft skills should you master?

There are so many different examples of soft skills. Too much duplication, too much overlap. Let’s discuss the most important ones and why these are covered in our courses at Dave’s Charm School.

At the very least, these interpersonal skills should be on your radar:

1. Communication – the ability to speak, write, present, and listen, in person or on the phone.

2. Courtesy – a habit of observable manners, etiquette, business etiquette, graciousness, including saying please and thank you, and being respectful.

3. Flexibility – adaptability and willingness to change, adopting the mindset of a lifelong learner, accepting of new things, willing to adjust, and, in a word, teachable.

4. Integrity – practicing honesty, being ethical, valuing high morals, having personal values, doing what’s right.

5. Interpersonal skills – being kind and personable, having a relaxed sense of humor or ease, being friendly, nurturing, empathetic, displaying a strong sense of self-control, being patient, social, and slow to anger, appearing “warm” and considerate.

6. Positive attitude – choosing to be optimistic, enthusiastic, encouraging, happy, and confident.

7. Professionalism – recognizing and donning the appropriate look, manner, and poise, appearing businesslike, well-dressed, and adopting the proper attitude for the situation.

8. Responsibility – showing yourself to be accountable, reliable, able to get the job done, resourceful, self-disciplined, wanting to do well, conscientious with common sense.

9. Teamwork – being cooperative, getting along with others, supporting others, trying to be helpful, willing to collaborate.

10. Work ethic – hard working, willing to work, being loyal, taking initiative, being self-motivated and on time with a good attendance record.

11. Time Management – able to schedule your time appropriately, manage project flow and deadlines according to their due date, being efficient and following through on commitments.

12. Conflict-Resolution – ready and able to engage in problem-solving, displaying sympathy and empathy for others, practicing active listening, knowing and practicing effective crisis management and negotiation.

13. Leadership – taking initiative, coordinating efforts between team members, mentoring, inspiring others, making difficult decisions, having and pursuing a vision.

14. Balance – respecting boundaries, practicing self-care, managing your own expectations as well as your workload, maintaining focus on your purpose.

This may seem like a long list, but we practice or neglect each and every one of these just about every day. These skills are the counterpart to all of the technical knowledge we have, and they are just as important. Be mindful of these as you work.

Fixing a product should be followed by a smile, and perhaps a warm handshake. Collaborating on a design should include providing your technical knowledge and then being able to gracefully accept the input of others. Leading a team requires pursuit of your mission, but it’s also about being able to inspire your team to follow you on that mission.

You are using soft skills regardless of your position, and the higher you climb the job ladder the more important those soft skills become.

How to improve your soft skills

The best thing you can do to improve your soft skills is to learn and practice. Read books like How to Win Friends and Influence People. Review and rate yourself on each of the soft skills listed above. Then schedule some time each week or month to practice areas in which you feel deficient.

It takes time to improve soft skills, but it’s worth it. Focus on strengthening your strengths, and shoring up your weaknesses.

The benefits will last the rest of your life.

How Often Should You Train Your Employees?

A consistent training regimen is important for you and your team. Effective training provides new hires and existing employees with the skills and knowledge they need to not only do their job but improve their performance. However, like many companies, you may not be sure how to train your employees, when to train them, and when to retrain them on previous skills.

If you are going to prioritize learning and skill development in your company culture, you need to do it right.

How good is your memory?

In “A Study in Scarlet”, the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes described a man’s brain as an attic. A foolish man would stuff the attic full of junk, making it difficult to retrieve useful items and information. However, a wise man (or woman, of course) would only save the most important tools and information so as to render them easily accessible in times of need. This is an extraordinarily relevant theory to our workplace habits, training tactics, and daily performance.

Your employees get bombarded every day with emails, texts, phone calls, and conversations that contain countless bits of information. You cannot expect them to retain everything. More importantly, you must be prepared for them to forget at least some of the knowledge and habits you try to instill.

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied his own ability to retain various information. Specifically, he studied the memorization of nonsense syllables like “WID” and “ZOF”, then plotted the results over a period of time. The graph of his results is now known as the forgetting curve. The forgetting curve and supporting research estimates that within 1 hour people will have forgotten up to 50 percent of the information presented in an earlier learning session. Within a day, an average of 70 percent of the new information may have been forgotten. Within a week, participants may have forgotten around 90 percent. These are averages based on one type of study, the percentages should be taken with a grain of salt.

While this is a large amount of information to forget, one thing is important to note: Forgetting is useful. It clears out old memories that are no longer needed – like where you parked your car last week during your offsite meeting, yesterday’s weather, or what you had for dinner three weeks ago – and makes room for new memories that are more pertinent. This is great for our efficiency, and it is inevitable.

However, the process of forgetting things often involves forgetting important things, information we want to retain. This is a problem.

Thankfully, Ebbinghaus and others have noted the speed of forgetting depends on a number of factors including the participant’s physical state at the time of learning, the emotional or intellectual power of the memory, the teaching methods, and the amount of repetition. For instance, Ebbinghaus hypothesized that mnemonic techniques for aiding information retention or retrieval (like the ABC’s song) may improve retention rates.

Ebbinghaus’ research also prompted his notion of “overlearning”. Overlearning means one has spent more time than necessary memorizing a certain piece of information and has therefore rendered the memorization of the information stronger and less likely to be forgotten.

3 Tips to Optimize Your Training Regimen

When we take Ebbinghaus’ hypotheses into account, we can design a training regimen that is memorable and impactful. Here are a few tips to improve the efficacy of your training sessions.

To start, make sure your training schedule is relevant to your company’s work schedule and appropriate for your employees. Too often companies schedule training far in advance of when it will actually be used. Since time is of the essence, you should schedule training as close to the time as it will be used. This allows employees to perform learned tasks in the real world closer to the moment they were first introduced to the knowledge, which should increase the likelihood they will develop the correct habits.

In addition, make sure training times coincide with the best learning environment for your team. If your employees usually begin work around 8am, don’t schedule training at 6am. Their entire physiological clock will be in an interrupted state. Instead, we recommend you schedule training for 9am (in this scenario). At 9am your team is awake, at the office, acclimated to their environment, and has had an appropriate amount of time to respond to any morning emergencies.

Second, when designing your training content, make sure it is related to the actual job. Bland bits of knowledge and a few check boxes do not constitute an engaging learning experience. A new piece of information is much more likely to be remembered if it is relevant to the task at hand, if the learner can see exactly how the new information will benefit them. Try to use stories and concrete examples.

Third and finally, allow students to practice immediately after the training, in real life, and in real-time, if possible. For instance, if an employee is given the responsibility of answering service tickets related to a specific software package, let them practice answering real service tickets from real customers. Guide them through the process, help them craft their responses, and give them the freedom to make a few mistakes.

The more time spent learning a new task will contribute to the “overlearning” phenomenon mentioned by Ebbinghaus. If you can give your team hands-on experience during or right after training you will significantly increase their retention rates. This is why we try to give examples and exercises during each lesson of Dave’s Charm School courses.

Should Training be Priority #1?

The best companies are often the ones that prioritize training over everything else.

Lately I have been reading Simply Brilliant by William C. Taylor. Quite a few of the companies mentioned in the book place a high priority on consistent, regular training.

One of the examples that stood out to me is Pal’s Sudden Service. Now, I’m not a huge fan of fast food, mostly because it’s usually unhealthy fare. But I don’t have to be a fan of fast food to appreciate Bill Taylor’s description of the company culture at Pal’s and their commitment to training.

According to the book, Pal’s is the fastest fast food restaurant in the country. On average, customers get their food at Pal’s Sudden Service in less than a quarter of the time of any other quick-serve restaurant. They place an order face-to-face with a human being (very cool) in an average of 18 seconds, then pick up the order at the handout window (another real-life human!) in an average of 12 seconds. I don’t think customers drive super fast, that’s not included in the estimates. It’s the interactions with the employees that we are talking about.

This is just one of Pal’s incredible performance statistics mentioned in the book (hint: they also rarely mess up orders).

The secret to their success? A commitment to training. One hundred and twenty hours of training for new employees, and regular, required, re-certification for existing employees. Pal’s is so committed to making sure their team is excellent that they administer pop quizzes: “Every day… a computer randomly generates the names of two to four employees to be re-certified in one of their jobs (at the restaurant). They take a quick test, see whether they pass, and if they fail, they get retrained for that job before they can do it again.”

It’s this commitment to training that has made Pal’s a success, with their customers and their employees. Think about it: If you had one hundred and twenty hours of training to make hamburgers and fries you would (1) rarely make mistakes and (2) feel incredibly competent.

I will leave you with one final quote from the book that I found the most important, and most relevant to this article. When speaking about Pal’s commitment to training, Pal’s CEO Thom Crosby said this:

We believe in certification over graduation. We train you, we graduate you – that’s when most companies stop. But people go out of calibration just like machines go out of calibration. So we are always training, always teaching, always coaching.

Think about that the next time you schedule a training session.

In closing, how often should you train (or certify) your employees? It depends on the focus of their work and your company culture.

One thing is for certain: If you want your team to be skilled and confident, regular training is a must.

Don't Drown in 2019

One of the famous sayings of American author Edwin Louis Cole is, “You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”

Where are you underwater?

Here are four common areas where leaders are “underwater:”

#1 - Can’t hire people, or make mistakes when hiring.

#2 - Your managers need better leadership skills.

#3 - Your culture is inconsistent / hurting profits.

#4 - Employees are not fully engaged.

For you, drowning is a choice not a destiny.

Don't stay there.

Do something different.  Focus on one of the pain points above and engage an expert to help you remove the flood of emotions, stress, and challenges.

An experienced consultant can lead you to where the water is only an inch deep, or to dry land!

Here are relatively low-cost, highly effective, time efficient solutions to each of these four issues:

#1 - Can’t hire people, or make mistakes when hiring

You must hire people to grow your organizations.  You can’t fulfill services and/or deliver products without hiring more people.  However, there is a pressure to fill openings quickly and the time to hire new employees takes time away from your primary responsibilities.

Therefore, too many leaders rush the process, don’t have a complete hiring system, and make emotional decisions that result in too many failed, costly hires.

There are three primary values to a great hiring system:

1.      Discovery:  It’s easier to find great people to hire, and they find you!

2.      Avoid mistakes:  Almost everyone you hire proves to be a solid team member, if not a superstar.

3.      Save Time:  It’s faster to hire great people systematically, rather than emotionally hope people might work out.

Do something!  Get out of the water…

Implement a thorough hiring system.

If you’re interested in our Hire the Best system, then click here to learn more, or email us to discuss your needs and how we can help you customize Hire the Best and help you roll it out.

#2 - Your managers need better leadership skills

Gallup says,

“Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units.”

“Though many people have some of the necessary traits, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve the kind of excellence that significantly improves a company's performance.”

Often leaders are inconsistent, fail to communicate, don’t manage time well, and lack a framework for how to be an effective leader.

Inefficiencies and workplace drama due to untrained leaders is such a waste!

Do something!  Get out of the water…

Train your leaders. There’s no other way to improve their skills.

One option is our Certified Leader program. The next 6-month session starts the week of July 1. Read testimonials here.  Learn about the program here.

#3 - Your culture is inconsistent / hurting profits

You have a company culture whether you work on it or not.  However, when it’s not intentional then you have multiple cultures being lived out simultaneously based on individual employee personalities.

That’s not efficient or effective.

Inconsistent culture disengages employees, clients, and vendors.

Do something!  Get out of the water…

Invest time to develop a strong company culture and maintain it so your organization can thrive.

If you need help, please consider our Leadership Essentials services, which are designed to supercharge your culture as a catalyst for positive transformational change.  Learn more here.  Here what others say about the program here.

# 4 - Employees are not fully engaged

Employee engagement, productivity, and commitment to excellence are primarily management’s fault, not an employee issue. 

These issues occur for three primary reasons: 

#1 - Lack of a solid leadership system, such as our 3strands Leadership discipline; 

#2 - Leaders are not trained how to fully engage their people;  and

#3 - There are assumptions about each employee’s motivations, natural behavioral strengths, and core competencies. 

Think about it… Often the disconnect is #3 - you could know your people better.

If an employee is not doing well, there is an issue with their behaviors.

When there is an issue with their behaviors, you need to know how to motivate them to develop new habits to overcome the bad habits/behaviors.

Their soft skills / core competencies are developed from work/life experience, behaviors / habits, and their motivation to achieve.

Leaders need to understand these three attributes of themselves and each of their direct reports, peers, and supervisors.  That’s why companies use our assessments with all employees, and as part of their hiring process.

Stop guessing and assuming.

Do something!  Get out of the water…

Test your people with a quality assessment and train them how to apply what they learn.

One option for you is our assessments, which have been taken by over 15 million people.

Our Triple Perspective service explains how people behave, what drives them, and which soft skills they bring to the workplace.  We give you:

#1 - Recommendation of whether to hire them or how to work with them

#2 - Full report (+/- 50 pages) accurately reporting a person’s behaviors, motivators and competencies

#3 - Summary (2-4 pages) of the report

#4 - Cubicle sign of most intense behaviors and driving forces to remind people how to engage with them

#5 - All of this in a validated, bias-free and fully integrated assessment report that meets EEOC and OFCCP requirements

#6 - Conversation to explain the results.

#7 - If you assess a group, a remote / online group training

Here’s an example of the cubicle sign we provide as part of our Talent Assessment services to remind people how to best engage someone:

We can train your entire team how to read their reports and apply what they learn to increase their love for what they do, and work more effectively with others.

Learn more about Manage 2 Win Talent Assessments here, or email us to discuss your objectives.

One of the famous sayings of American author Edwin Louis Cole is, “You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”

Where are you underwater?

It’s June.  In about 3 weeks half of 2019 is over.

The cost of inefficiencies and mistakes are HUGE.

You don’t have to drown your profits and growth capital in mistakes and inefficiencies.

Choose one of the four major drains on your profits above, and fix it.

It’s time to conquer the water!

Half the year is almost gone. Act now to address an area where your organization is “drowning.”

If you’re interested in our thoughts on your challenges, please email us to schedule time to talk.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

You’re on the Wrong Treadmill

Some of the definitions for “treadmill” on Dictionary.com is:  “an exercise machine…. (or) any monotonous, wearisome routine...”

Do you have time each day, or an entire daily routine, that feels like you’re on a treadmill?

… Click on the image below and watch the short video from The Secret Life of Pets 2.  Is this how you feel?

Too many leaders feel stuck in “reactive mode” and unable to find time to fully develop their organization.  That’s an example of what could be considered a negative treadmill.

In contrast, a positive treadmill makes you more effective, efficient, and a catalyst for growth.

For instance, I recently heard a speaker talk about going to CrossFit.  If you’re not familiar with CrossFit, their website describes it this way:

“CrossFit is a lifestyle characterized by safe, effective exercise and sound nutrition. CrossFit can be used to accomplish any goal, from improved health to weight loss to better performance. The program works for everyone—people who are just starting out and people who have trained for years.”

CrossFit is a combination of workouts, lifestyle, and community.  Although the program builds muscle and endurance, the focus is not to have bulging muscles.  CrossFit does not use treadmill machines, but the discipline of their program could be considered a routine similar to a treadmill. 

Is the CrossFit program a positive or negative type of treadmill?

Positive! 

This is because it develops a healthy lifestyle within a community of people seeking similar results. 

The speaker explained because he does CrossFit, he has the muscles and the skills to properly lift someone to safety who has become incapacitated.  That’s not the focus of why he is doing CrossFit, but it is an added benefit.

So often we want to avoid treadmills in business, however positive treadmills enable us to go beyond average to great.  Positive treadmills are challenging, yet enjoyable, build relationships, and enable us to do meaningful work.

How many of your treadmills today are positive?

Let me give you one more athletic example before we close with a next step.  This is inspired by an article on TheRinger.com titled, The Reason the Patriots Always Come Back.

To be candid, it’s been many years since I’ve spent more than one hour a year watching professional football.  However, I have tremendous respect for the New England Patriots because Tom Brady seems to have good character and the team has been able to achieve some of the greatest comebacks in football history.  This team has won an astounding six NFL Super Bowls.

One of the reasons for the Patriots’ success is the “treadmills” they use to develop each player’s capacity to have more energy than their competitors in the fourth quarter of each game.  Superior conditioning gives them a significant competitive edge and ability to rebound even against what are traditionally impossible odds against them.

Conditioning is a treadmill.

Strategically implemented, conditioning is a positive treadmill.  Tactically implemented, conditioning may help in some ways, but its overall impact is limited.

The Patriots are strategic and relentless with conditioning.  As a result, they have won an AFC championship games by erasing a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter, and have overcome a 19-point deficit at the start of the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl.  These are just two examples of the power of the Patriots’ strategic, positive treadmill.

What do I mean by “strategic treadmill?”

A strategic treadmill concentrates an individual through focused activities to achieve a specific outcome.

For the New England Patriots, it means their players do a lot of running.  The important thing to comprehend is not the amount of running they do, but how they run.  The team runs hills even during the NFL playoffs.  Most importantly, they condition their players for specific in-game scenarios.

Although every NFL team focuses on exploding from a position and being able to run short distances, no team does it with more consistency, rigor and intelligence than the Patriots.  They run hills, but the Patriots also develop the ability to run for a few seconds, and then do it again, and again, and again. 

The players learn that their superior conditioning shows up in every phase of every play throughout the game.  The conditioning is torture, but it builds the mental strength as well as physical power that enables them to outperform the competition when the going gets rough.

The Patriots take a simple thing and do it better than anyone else.

Leadership treadmills

Highly effective leaders and organizations develop a habit of taking something simple and doing it better than anyone else. 

Great leaders don’t avoid the treadmills.  Instead, they study and take control of their treadmills.  The negative aspects are stripped away, and the activities that create superior outcomes are expanded.

Steve Jobs did this with the Macintosh, iTunes, iPad, and iPhone.

Jeff Bezos led his Amazon team do this with online retailing.

Florence Nightingale did this with sanitation standards for healthcare.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did this with racism.

And the list goes on…

Taking something simple and doing it better requires vision of the weakness that is holding you back, and then discerning the best way to engineer a solution that overpowers the weakness with new habits. 

Short-term pain may still be part of your solution, but the significantly larger long-term gains make the agony worth the prize.

One last point

Treadmills serve a purpose.  They strengthen a limited part of your body or team.  However, treadmills are not a total solution.  The New England Patriots can run circles around other teams, but if they will lose every time if that’s all they do.  Professional football players also must lift weights for strength, workout as a team to bond effectively, study plays, study the competition, and mentally prepare themselves for every aspect of the game.

Consider leaving the “whiner” family, complaining about your negative treadmills but not doing anything about it.

Get away to reflect on your situation.  Remove interruptions and distractions to think clearly as an individual or a team.

Focus on how to better apply treadmill-like activities to take something simple and do it better than anyone else.

Consider having a meeting facilitator or coach join you in this work.  A different perspective can yield millions in outcomes.

Contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

P.S. If you like the treadmill wheel at the top, visit this site.

Employee Engagement Drops AGAIN

Just when you thought employee engagement could not get worse…  it has.

Previously it was believed the average number of employees who are fully engaged was 18-20%.  That left 80-82% less engaged or totally disengaged.

The Harvard Business Review reports the latest research from Marcus Buckingham concludes employee engagement has dropped further.  It’s now a bleak 15.8%. 

What’s the problem?

Weak leadership.

Weak leadership that leads to inconsistent, unengaging workplaces… that leads to unnecessary drama, stress, lost profits, and employee turnover.

Why is there weak leadership?

No training.

A friend of mine who is a senior leadership consultant is about to train 120 leaders.  Guess how many have previously had any formal leadership training?

Only 6.

114 Leaders have been untrained for their entire career as a leader, yet they are responsible for thousands of employees and millions of dollars of revenue. 

Whereas, only 6 have had some, maybe not much, training on how to apply their strengths and avoid their weaknesses to fully engage people in a thriving work culture.

So much is written about how leaders are visionary…

Maybe.

Our experience is the best leaders build teams that love working together, kick butt on the competition, and achieve what has never been done before.

Wouldn’t you LOVE to be on that team?

How can you make it YOUR team?

The alternative is lower productivity and higher employee turnover at a time when it is incredibly difficult to hire top performers. 

You cannot afford to lose a great team member, or even a good one because it’s so hard to replace them.

Why not invest 1-2 hours a week to be a better leader?

Our next Certified Leader program starts the week of July 1, 2019.  Space is limited to 10 leaders.

Our Certified Leader program starts with you and your manager defining your strengths and weaknesses.  Then I invest six months working 1:1 with you to expand your strengths and eliminate your weaknesses.

Week 1 and every other week thereafter you participate in a group training – you, me, and a maximum of 9 others.  We discuss 12 key skills of great leaders and how you can apply them to be your best as a leader.  (12 x group training sessions)

Week 2 and every other week thereafter you and me work 1:1 to build you up and remove any weaknesses, discuss the prior week’s training, and consider responses to any challenges you are having at work.  (12 x 1:1 coaching sessions)

You can visit our testimonial page on this program.  100% of our graduates encourage other leaders to get certified for leadership in our Certified Leader program.  Here are quick quotes of prior participants’ praise of the program, and encouragement that you participate:

“… I found this program to be invaluable …”

“… I definitely feel like I'm walking away a better leader than when I began!”

“… the combination of one on one time with a coach and the group sessions provided a much more powerful experience then I had anticipated.”

“… Dave, his employees, and their Certified Leader Program are the best. Period.”

“… I am a better leader because of this class.”

“… The Certified Leader Program was a great help for myself and for my team…”

“… If you are serious about being a successful leader this is the course for you.”

“… I feel more prepared for what is coming and how to handle crises with a level head and a path forward…”

“… My coach really inspired me these past 6 months.  …I ask myself ‘what would my coach do?’”

We are pleased that a growing number of organizations are making our Certified Leader program THE certification for their leaders.  Existing leaders are sent through the program.  New managers are being placed in the program at the time of their promotion so they can immediately apply what they learn with their new team.

Registration is now open.

Stop knowing you can be a better leader, but not doing anything about it.

Certified Leader is simple.  It only takes 1-2 hours a week.  You get 1:1 coaching customized to your unique needs.  It’s life changing!

Click here to sign-up.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

Pay a Bounty for Superstars When Hiring

It is simple.  The best people are not looking for work.  They are fully employed and succeeding elsewhere.

However, these passive candidates are often the best people to hire.  How do you reach them?

Let me give you an example:  Scott Young of PennComp[i] in Houston leads a very successful I.T. services consultancy.  Scott is very careful with his time.  He has family and faith priorities in addition to his company's needs.  He is particularly sensitive about wasting time when hiring.

What's Scott's trick to finding superstars more quickly?

When I talked with Scott years ago, he was paying his employees and anyone in his network a $6,000 bonus when they refer someone he hires.  As a former Arthur Anderson consultant, he has a network of over 500 peers.

However, you miss the point if you just look at the reward money.

What does it cost you to delay a hire because you are unwilling to reward your employees to find people for you?  The headhunter fee for a new hire can be at least $10-$30,000, plus the time and other costs to find someone are huge.  Add to that lost opportunity costs of not having a good person in the open role;  and the stress on other employees who try to cover the responsibilities of the open position…

WAKE-UP:  A LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trends report concludes 48% of new hires are identified through employee referrals.  This makes employee referrals the top source of great talent.  If your employee referral program is not bringing you great candidates, or you don’t have one, then now is the time to develop a killer employee referral program.

Referral programs can ask people to refer career candidates to you without any reward.  Some leaders believe their employees should refer people because “it’s the right thing to do.”  That is partially true, but then you are disregarding the other side of the equation. 

Your company saves money on recruiting and time to hire when you hire a candidate that an employee referred to pursue a career with your organization.  Do you deserve all the profit and savings of that transaction? 

Wise leaders realize their company is saving $10,000-$50,000 by hiring someone who has been referred.  So why not give a portion of that savings to the loyal employee who referred the person? 

At the very least, make a donation comparable to a referral reward to a non-political registered nonprofit that is meaningful to the employee who referred the new hire.

As a young man I worked on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange.  We had a saying:  “Bulls make money.  Bears make money.  Pigs go broke.”    The movie, Wall Street, about Gordon Gekko said it slightly differently (below), but the point is the same.

Demanding or expecting your people to refer their friends and associates without compensation is piggy behavior.

Some companies can motivate employees to make more referrals without offering cash or other types of bonuses.  The challenge is busy employees don’t take the time to think about recruiting.  Like any successful company initiative, you have to drive the behavior.

In most cases, the employee’s referral fee is only 1-10% of the savings and profits your company gains from a referral.  The most popular programs are the ones that pay a reward ranging from $500-$7,500.  I’ve seen rewards for some hard-to-find positions as high as $20,000. 

My experience is most referral programs pay people $500-$1,500, with the more generous ones landing at about $2,500 up to Scott’s $6,000.

With or without a referral bonus program you should be emphasizing how referrals make your workplace better.  Remind employees how enjoyable it is to work with other great people, and how superstars and solid performers benefit your company overall.

Lots of top companies are having success with employee referral programs.  For instance:

1.      Salesforce organizes recruitment Happy Hours.  These are get-togethers where employees can invite the people they want to refer.  Their employees have been paid more than $5.5 million worth of referral bounties.

2.      Enterprise Rent-A-Car has a culture of competition.  Their employee referral program encourages regions to compete against each other, and rewards winners with cash bonuses for the most referrals. 

3.      PURE is an American property insurance company.  Between 40% and 60% of its employees have been sourced through referrals. 

4.      GoDaddy made it a game to increase developer referrals.  They put up posters in the work areas of their developers asking for employee referrals, but they wrote it in computer code.  Decoded, it read: “If you know of a coder in your network who kicks a--, referred to GoDaddy Recruiting.” 

5.      One approach Google uses is to ask their people.  For instance, if they want a great cloud app salesperson in Manhattan, New York, then they ask employees:  “Who’s the best cloud app salesperson you know in Manhattan?” 

6.      InMobi parked a brand-new motorcycle at the entrance of their offices to inspire employees to help them hire engineering managers.  The 900-person firm shows a Royal Enfield bike for their India offices and a Vespa for their American office.  Employees could choose between a brand-new motorcycle and a trip to Bali.  The program increased their employee referral rate of people hired from 20% to 50%.

7.      Freelancing marketplace Fiverr wanted to increase employee referrals by creating a game on Zao, an employee referral app.  Zao creates a game amongst employees by offering points for sharing jobs and referring friends.  The platform also notifies employees about status changes of their referrals.  Top Fiverr employees receive gifts on a quarterly and yearly basis.

You have options. 

Consider your company culture and the preferences of your employees.  Design a program that engages people rather than something that is perceived as a burden.

Referral payments demonstrate Sincere Gratitude, the third strand of my 3strands Leadership discipline, to people who recommend career candidates to your organization that you hire.

GREAT Leaders love to reward people for extra effort.  Referring people to your firm is added work for employees and can put those relationships at risk.  They deserve a reward.  If you would pay a recruiter, why not your people?

Here are some quick tips to launch and sustain a great employee referral program:

1.      Announce the program by giving examples of how employees have referred great people.  Ideally, you can humbly include someone you referred who was hired and is a superstar.

2.      Communicate updates biweekly or monthly.  Have quarterly meal events where you walk through how to submit a candidate; celebrate rewards paid-to-date and referral candidates in your pipeline;  and have managers explain their current openings.

3.        Be a role model.  If you want your people to recruit others, then you need to do it too.  Track your referrals in the program even though you don’t get paid for them.

4.        Do not be greedy.  Let’s say you have a rapidly growing firm and an employee goes crazy on your referral program.  They end-up making $100,000 in referrals bonuses.  I doubt this would ever happen, but if it does, don’t stop them!  If this happened then they probably saved you over $1 million. 

5.        WORK THE PROGRAM.  Communicate.  Encourage.  Inspire people rather than givve them a guilt trip.  Engage with most people to talk with people who know people who know people.  Hiring people in their limited network of friends and family is limited.  Get people networking. 

The only exception are the super introverts and a limited number of others who do not network comfortably.  Don’t force people to network if it’s uncomfortable for them.

Again, BE THE ROLE MODEL.  You should be doing 2X-3X as much networking as you ask of your people.

6.      Do not pay more to non-employees for referrals than you pay your employees. 

7.      Pay the referral bonuses 90 days after the start date of the new employee.  If they fail before that then everyone gave it a try.  If the new hire fails after 90 days then it is a management issue and the person who made the referral still deserves the bonus.

As an option, you can design a program that gives some perks or maybe 10% of the bonus to the employee who referred the new hire at 30 and 60 days.  Just remember, all paid bonuses are non-refundable.  You never want to ask or require an employee to return a bonus.

Our Hire the Best program has a more complete write-up, including a sample program.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

Minion Recognition

Most organizations do not regularly recognize employees for their contributions.  Others do minimum recognition.  However, one rapidly growing IT managed services provider does minion recognition.

More on that in a moment…

Why is employee recognition important?

Because when you fail to regularly express Sincere Gratitude for employee contributions, many employees do not work as hard and even superstar team members quit.

This costs you a lot of money.

Gallup says:

“A lack of recognition remains one of the most common reasons why employees leave an organization. What’s more, some Gallup research suggests that the more talented the employee is, the faster they leave, compared with other disengaged employees.

It’s true that many organizations have recognition programs now – however, most do not take into account what’s most meaningful for each individual.”

This is the first point I want to make about employee recognition:  You must recognize an employee in ways that are meaningful to the individual.  Otherwise it has limited or no value.  Your effort to appreciate them may even offend the person.

Recognition Lesson #1

Connect your compliment to what is meaningful to the employee.

One Gallup poll concluded 65% of people received no recognition for good work in their workplaces. 

I read a similar statistic decades ago in a book titled, The Carrot Principle.  Do you believe this is true?  That two-thirds of workers never get any recognition during an entire year?

I think these survey conclusions are wrong.

My experience is that most of these workers were complimented, however along with the compliment they were corrected or reprimanded.  Something like, “Thanks for finishing that project for XYZ Corporation yesterday, Bob.  Next time, please try to finish a couple hours earlier.”

Or here’s another one:  “I didn’t think you could do it.  Nice job!”  Is that insulting?  I don’t believe in you, but wow, for once you delivered…

Or how about this one where the person puts their big butt into the statement, which obliterates the compliment:  “I love the way you designed this report.  The colors and graphics are fantastic, but next time we don’t need something this fancy.  It’s overkill.”

The second point I want to make about employee recognition is that it needs to be sincere.  When you attach a correction or reprimand, it makes the compliment seem insincere. 

Recognition Lesson #2

Be sincere.

Sincere Gratitude is the third strand of 3strands Leadership, our simple recipe for anyone to become an effective leader.  Being thankful for what you have, including your employees, is an important habit for all leaders.  Recognition is one method of expressing your appreciation.

You have two choices when giving sincere recognition: 

#1:  Separate the correction or reprimand from the compliment.  Have that discussion at a different time.  Simply give the compliment.

#2:  Respectfully and empathetically provide the advice, correction, or reprimand first.  Discuss it.  Agree on next steps.  Move on.  Then, give a specific compliment rather than a general one.  It’s much more powerful.  For instance, I say to you, “Nice job!”  It’s a compliment, and when it’s sincere, my exclamation is appreciated by the employee.

However, sometimes you want to touch the person’s heart more than their brain.  This takes some thought and total sincerity.  Let’s say instead of my simple “Nice job” compliment, I say to you:  “I know you worked through several drafts of this report to improve its clarity and catch all the possible mistakes.  Your extra effort made this report a success.  You really helped our team by making it your best.  Thank you!”

Now let’s consider one more tip before we get to the minions. 

Recognition Lesson #3

The best way to recognize an employee captures their attention. 

It’s not some plain paper certificate, boring trinket, or a casual greeting.  You don’t do this all the time, but monthly or quarterly this approach pays big dividends!

Four years ago Ben Parr wrote an article for The Harvard Business Review titled, 7 Ways to Capture Someone’s Attention.  Getting someone’s attention, curiosity, and having them immediately appreciate your recognition is important when complimenting and rewarding employee contributions.

Here is a quick overview of Mr. Parr’s suggestions.  Check out the article if you want his complete thoughts.  I am adding a lot of my own commentary to his list of 7 ways to get someone’s attention.  Our objective is to increase the impact of the compliments we give team members.

#1:  Automaticity - Sensory cues direct our attention automatically.  If a female hitchhiker wears red then she’s more likely to get a ride.  You turn your head when somebody fires a gun.  Try to identify subtle ways to trigger people’s instincts to capture their attention.

#2:  Framing - Our view of the world is biased based on our life experience.  These frames of reference cause us to respond to some ideas and ignore others entirely.  This relates back to my recommendation to connect recognition to the individual’s definition of meaningful work.  Another technique you might use is repetition.  Repeat a message when you want an individual to believe it.

#3:  Disruption – Anything outside our expectations catches our attention.  Do something positive yet unexpected to increase the impact of your compliments.  For instance, I recommended a Client buy a life-size cardboard superhero and add a message bubble to it complimenting an employee.  They placed the superhero in the employee’s cubicle after he had left for the evening.  He was surprised by the recognition when he arrived the next morning, and loved it!  That superhero stayed in his cubicle for months.

#4:  Reward – At times you want to engage the neurotransmitter dopamine because the recognition is a pending reward.  For instance, your team might be looking forward to an off-site retreat at the end of a big project.  However, rewards we can touch, experience, or even visualize have a greater impact.  Therefore, if your off-site retreat is weeks or months away then before you go send people pictures, give them a little sand from the beach, or something else to pre-experience the event.

#5:  Reputation – People respect experts more than CEOs or celebrities.  Have experts give compliments.  Connect the contribution of the employee to your expertise.  In other words, you could say something like, “The way you handled yourself in that meeting yesterday is one of the best presentations I’ve seen in my 20-year career.”

#6:  Mystery – People don’t like uncertainty and often actively try to reduce it.  Unspecified rewards can motivate people who want to solve the mystery.  These are particularly effective if they are designed to connect with the individuals definition of meaningful work.

#7:  Acknowledgment – One of the most vital human needs is validation and empathy from others.  We want to feel a sense of belonging to a community that cares about us.  This creates an atmosphere of positive reciprocity, where you do something nice for another person and they want to respond in the same way.  Sincere Gratitude expressed in employee recognition, rewards, and compliments meets this core human need.

Now, on to the Minions!

BECA is the IT Brain Power Company of Duluth, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta.  Here’s how Sherry Estep, VP of Operations, explains their infestation of minions and minions of minions...

If you get the chance to visit our office, you will notice the minions scattered around the cubicles, break room, meeting rooms, and executive offices. People always ask us - “What’s up with all the minions?”

Shortly after Mike became President of BECA in 2013, he began brainstorming ways to increase employee incentives.  He wanted a way to reward our employees when they went above and beyond expectations, but he didn’t want to do just a plain cash reward.

Enter the minions…

The previous summer, Mike had been dragged to the newest Despicable Me movie by his wife (me) and kids.  Soon after, the minions became very popular in the United States.  The figurines were easy to find in stores and minions were used to sponsor a variety of products.

Mike thought they would be a fun and creative way to boost morale throughout the office.  Now 5 years after the first minion appeared in our offices, the minions have become more popular than even Mike thought possible.

How it works…

The minions are used as an incentive for our employees to go above and beyond expectations. Minions are rewarded to BECA employees when they receive an outstanding customer evaluation or are nominated by a fellow team member for their hard work.  The minions can be kept or traded-in for a cash reward.  At the end of the year, the employee who has received the most Minion Awards is awarded Minion of the Year and $500.

The craze…

What started out as a simple idea to boost morale has become a standard, if not a competition around the BECA office.  Despite the fact the minions can be turned in for money, almost all employees choose to keep them and display their minions proudly at their desks.  We have Star Wars minions, Super Hero minions, and minions from the various movies.

We encourage our clients to help by letting us know when someone has gone the extra mile for them.  Whether one of our engineers solved a tough problem or our sales team was helpful in getting something ordered, we ask them to let us know so we can hand out those minions!

Could it be that one day BECA has to expand their office space to fit all their minions?

Maybe…

The Bottom Line

Appreciate your people in ways that are meaningful to them.  We have a Recognition Survey you can use if you’re not sure what your people like.

There is a lot more to employee recognition, but as you can see with BECA’s minions, a simple program can have a big impact. 

Thanks, Sherry and Mike!

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

Lincoln the Wise: Delegation and Character in a Time of War

Lincoln’s presidential nomination at the Republican party convention in 1860 took many by surprise, including his three primary rivals at that convention: William H. Seward, Edward Bates, and Salmon P. Chase.

The country lawyer and failed senate candidate did not have the pedigree of other candidates. However, he also didn’t have their political baggage. As a moderate he became the primary second choice of virtually all other candidates’ detractors. When one candidate faltered, their supporters coalesced around Honest Abe. So it went, in an age when candidates did not campaign for themselves but made their case through surrogates, Lincoln emerged as the first presidential candidate of the newly formed Republican Party.

There is so much I learned while reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book was as informative as it was inspiring, and it has taken me a few weeks to wrap my head around its impact on my perceptions of Lincoln, his team of rivals, and the Civil War.

A recurring theme throughout the book is many people’s love for Lincoln. He inspired admiration with comedic anecdotes and firm, logical arguments. By the end, when the inevitable occurred, I felt more anguish and sorrow than I ever have after reading a book, because I too had come to love and admire our 16th president.

I wrote to a friend:

“Lincoln is dead”

…and confessed to shedding a tear or two.

But, thankfully, Lincoln’s memory lives on, and his deeds have become legend. I would like to share two stories from the book. Well, two and a half.

Lincoln and Stanton

Edwin M. Stanton, U.S. Secretary of War, 1862-1867, 1868

Despite occasional difficulties with his health, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton worked tirelessly to run the army during the Civil War. Hardened by family tragedies, Stanton was your “no BS” type of guy, and he was greatly respected by Lincoln.

“He is the rock on the beach of our national ocean against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing.”

— Abraham Lincoln, speaking of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War

Lincoln and Stanton did not seem to have a deep personal relationship, but they did have a very good working relationship. Goodwin describes the existence of “an unwritten code between the two powerful men: ‘Each could veto the other’s acts, but Lincoln was to rule when he felt it necessary.’”

One time, two congressmen obtained Lincoln’s approval for a military appointment for one of their friends. They took it to Stanton, expecting the President’s endorsement to mean certain success, but Stanton refused! He told the congressmen that the position was important and he already had “a man of suitable experience” in mind to fill it.

When the congressmen walked back to the White House to discuss the matter with the President, they met a reticent executive:

“Mr. Stanton is right and I cannot wrongly interfere with him.”

Lincoln wisely respected the knowledge and experience of his Secretary of War, enough to allow Stanton’s decisions to overrule his own. He had the humility to rely on his team for their expertise, to delegate tasks and authority as often as he could.

This delegation of responsibility often took a toll on Lincoln’s cabinet, which I imagine, in comparison with Lincoln’s burden as President, forged a bond between them all.

Stanton felt this toll one time in particular, and I hope Mrs. Goodwin and her publishers will approve of me sharing some quotes and my favorite paragraph in the book:

A clerk recalled finding Stanton one night in his office, “the mother, wife, and children of a soldier who had been condemned to be shot as a deserter, on their knees before him pleading for the life of their loved one. He listened standing, in cold and austere silence, and at the end of the heart-breaking sobs and prayers answered briefly that the man must die. The crushed and despairing little family left and Mr. Stanton turned, apparently unmoved, and walked into his private room.” The clerk thought Stanton an unfeeling tyrant, until he discovered him moments later, “leaning over a desk, his face buried in his hands and his heavy frame shaking with sobs. ‘God help me to do my duty; God help me to do my duty!’ he was repeating in a low wail of anguish.”

Even the most hardened men feel great pain. Lincoln knew this, personally, and understood the value of his Secretary of War’s capability for empathy just as much as his work ethic and dedication.

Lincoln and Douglass

Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist, b. 1818 - d. 1895

After Lincoln was inaugurated for the second time, there was a public reception at the White House. Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, had attended the inauguration but was refused admittance at the door of the White House by two guards following previous protocol to not admit blacks. Upon recognizing a gentleman going in, Douglass “asked him to tell the president that he was unable to gain entry. Minutes later, the word came back to admit Douglass.”

Lincoln had met with Douglass previously in private. However, this was different. This was a very public setting in a time when slavery had just been abolished, and racism was a big part of American society.

“Douglass would always remember the events of that evening.”

— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals

When Lincoln, standing tall above the crowd in the East Room of the White House, spotted Frederick Douglass, he called out loudly so everyone could hear him, “Here comes my friend Douglass,” and proceeded to ask the abolitionist’s opinion of his second inaugural address. For a president to hold a public conversation with a black man, in the White House no less, was remarkable. Goodwin gives the impression that this had simply never happened before.

Lincoln’s conduct towards Frederick Douglass, in treating him as any other man, inspired Douglass to dedicate the Emancipation Memorial (also known as the Freedmen’s Monument) to the memory of Abraham Lincoln in 1876.

“Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches.”

— Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln, at the Unveiling of The Freedmen’s Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., 1876

According to Goodwin, whether Lincoln believed in the full equality of black men or not is unclear (note: Women’s equality was hardly discussed at all).

What does seem clear, however, is Lincoln’s equanimity and openness. He welcomed all opinions, enjoyed good conversation, and, regardless of a person’s race or position in society, attempted to give them his full attention and consideration.

Today, when people dismiss others based on superficial identifying factors (say, political party or line of work), it would be wise to remember we once had a President, the highest office in government, who tried to serve rather than dominate, and welcomed all into his home.

The Best Lies

Psychology Today reports that more than 80% of lies go undetected. 

Lie to Me was a TV show that ran from 2009-2011.  It was based on the work of Paul Ekman, an expert in lie detection.  According to the producers of the television show, studies and surveys show:

42% of adults think it’s okay to lie.

Only 54% of lies are accurately detected.

2/3 of adults think it is okay to lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

98% of teenagers lie to their parents.

In a conversation the average person will lie 3 times during every 10 minutes.

44% of adults will exaggerate when telling a story to sound “cooler.”

Based on these statistics, lying is prevalent in most workplaces and extremely costly.

You can watch Lie to Me episodes of all three seasons on Hulu during a 14-day free trial.  Or buy the series on Amazon.  (Season 1 is my favorite.)

The best lies are convincing because they contain a portion of truth.

Leaders should master the ability to discern when someone is lying across all four management disciplines:  How you hire, manage, develop, and retain great employees.

Everyone with whom you work may tell a lie at some point. Which person’s lies hurt you the most?

Your own.

Therefore, as you consider these thoughts, commit to develop better habits and behaviors in yourself first.  Become a role model to others of how to live truthfully in all that you do. After sincerely dedicate yourself to work in this direction, then you can request or demand that others in your workplace make a similar commitment.

Actions speak louder than words.  This is why leaders have to go first particularly when it comes to behavioral change.,

Let’s consider some ways that convincing lies have an element of truth:

1.      Lie with Grace:  The lie is pretty clear, however it is masked with insincere yet convincing behaviors that seem to be grace, loving, respectful, and/or caring.

An example of this might be when you confront a person about something they said was a lie, and their response is, “I’m sorry that upset you.” First, they did not admit that they lied. Second, if they are unwilling to admit they lied then they probably don’t care that it upset you either.

2.      Partial Truth:  Someone is telling a part of the truth to manipulate your reaction, response, or conclusion. This may be for selfish gain, or to protect oneself.

For instance, you ask someone if they contacted a client to discuss something, as you had agreed.  Their reply is they talked with the client, but they do not include the fact they did not reach the client within the schedule you agreed to, or discussed everything you wanted them to discuss. This leaves you with the impression the situation was handled properly, when it was not.

Another example is former President Bill Clinton emphatically stating, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…”  This of course depends on your definition of the words, “sexual relations.” By most people’s understanding of the word, he did have sex with Monica Lewinsky multiple times in multiple ways.

3.      Shifting Truths:  One tactic of politicians and negotiators is to respond to a question by stating a truth that does not provide the answer. They may even imply something is the truth when it is not. Again, the objective is to deceive rather than be candid and truthful.

Unfortunately, President Trump is an unconscious or conscious master of this behavior.

The Washington Post has started a section titled, Fact Checker.  The objective of the section is to compare statements of politicians and famous people to the truth.

Assuming the Washington Post is being honest in this effort, it is interesting reading. For instance they recently compared the statements by Kamala Harris on jailing parents for their kids truancy with the facts. Read the entire story here, or the summary below.

When she is asked about her anti-truancy initiative these days, Harris carefully frames her answers in terms of what happened in San Francisco when she was district attorney. No parents were jailed there, so her responses cannot be faulted for being inaccurate.

But they can be faulted for lacking context. Harris went on to become the attorney general of California. She championed a law that other district attorneys outside San Francisco used to jail at least a handful of parents. The Root asked about Harris’s anti-truancy measures in a question about her time as district attorney and attorney general, but she gave only half an answer. It’s a significant omission worth Two Pinocchios.

4.      Small Lies:  Some people referred to “small lies” or “white lies” to justify telling a partial truth. However, there are at least two major issues with this approach.  (1) Whatever you want to call it, the reality is that what is being spoken is a lie.  (2) These types of lies lead to bigger lies, and a habit of lying.

Examples of this may be calling in sick when your “sickness” really does not slow you down very much, or when questions about breaking the rules you point out that someone else did it without admitting you made the same mistake, or using the fact they did it as justification for your poor behavior.

The list above is not exhaustive. In my next post I will explain some habits you can develop to catch liars, starting with how we lie to ourselves.

Fear often motivates people to lie.

Be courageous.  Tell the truth in love, respectfully, and intentionally.

When you are uncomfortable with telling the truth, then delay your response.  Get advice from people you trust if necessary.

Truth is a choice.  For some of us, a full commitment to truth is turning in a new direction on our journey.  It’s a healthy choice.

In the meantime, be careful who and what you believe. There is truth to be found, tested, and championed.

Let part of your legacy be that people trusted you to be someone who was truthful and always sought the truth from others to make the best decisions for the common good.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

"I'm Not a Narcissist."

It struck me the other day how many toxic behaviors our Clients are experiencing in leaders and staff.  This inspired me to write again about narcissism and similar behaviors. When you catch someone behaving disrespectfully or unethically, realize it is much worse than that one instance. You have to take action…

The following is not science.  It is a series of recent thoughts about behaviors I have observed in people that are hurtful to others, and themselves.  Some are narcissistic, others might be.

Take a moment.  There is something here for you to consider. 

First, a 4-question exercise you can try on your own before doing with others.  (I word the questions for a group.)  Please proceed carefully, respectfully, and empathetically. 

The first question is, “Please stand up if you regularly demonstrate one or more narcissistic behaviors.”

Most of the time, no one will stand, or otherwise identify themselves as a narcissist.  (How about you?)

Why?

Because people perceive narcissists as “bad,” and that narcissism is a behavior of other people, not themselves.

The second question is, “What famous people do you think are full-blown narcissists?  Please do not mention anyone in room or within our organization.”

This should bring some discussion, with a combination of laughter (nervous?) and scorn.  Do not take sides.  Let people have their views.  This is not an exercise to judge others, although it may seem to be.

The third question to ask is, “How would you define narcissism?”

After people explain what they understand to be narcissism, it can help to explain a third party meaning because too often people do know how a narcissist has been defined by professionals.  Most of the time the narcissist slur is an exaggeration that is unfair and inaccurate.

Dictionary.com states narcissism is a noun, meaning:  an “inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.”

Part of how Psychology Today defines a narcissist is this way:  “…The most benign type (of narcissist) may be the charismatic leader with an excess of charm, whose only vice may be an inflated amour-propre… Bona fide narcissists may also have a tendency to disregard other people's feelings and take advantage of others to get what they want. As with many characteristics, narcissism can be viewed as a spectrum: Some people are lower on the trait and others higher, with many landing in the middle. Out-and-out narcissists exhibit the highest levels of self-flattery.”

The truth is, narcissism is not an all-or-none characteristic.  Everyone has some narcissistic behaviors.  Narcissism in small degrees can be healthy.  It can give us the strength to overcome low self-esteem, improve productivity, fuel ambition, and even drive our motivation to sincerely care for others. 

There is a bigger concern, which rarely occurs.  This is when someone has narcissistic personality disorder, or “NPD.”  This is the opposite of a touch of narcissism.

Psychology Today defines narcissistic personality disorder as:  “… People with narcissistic personality disorder believe they are superior or special, and often try to associate with other people they believe are unique or gifted in some way. This association enhances their self-esteem, which is typically quite fragile underneath the surface. Individuals with NPD seek excessive admiration and attention in order to know that others think highly of them. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder have difficulty tolerating criticism or defeat, and may be left feeling humiliated or empty when they experience an "injury" in the form of criticism or rejection.”

The fourth question to ask is, “Based on these definitions of how a narcissist differs from someone with narcissistic personality disorder, who in this room has at least some narcissistic behaviors?  Raise your hand if you do.”  (You should be the first to raise your hand.)

Hopefully, people are relaxed and there are some laughs.  Do not force anyone to agree they have narcissistic behaviors.  It may be difficult for some to admit.

One way to consider whether a behavior is slightly narcissistic, or a toxic narcissism is to evaluate the following:

How many narcissistic behaviors does the person have?

How intense is each narcissistic behavior?

What is the frequency in which they demonstrate these behaviors?

Understanding narcissism correctly is important for your company culture.  This is why I am discussing narcissism today.  Do a self-check.  Are your narcissistic behaviors reasonably healthy, or do they create regrets in your life?

Test these 14 questions alone or with a trusted friend.  Then, if you are comfortable with it, you can introduce this entire discussion as an opportunity for a group to consider how well they work together and serve your clients.

#1 - When you feel threatened, does truth become relative?  To win the situation, do you withhold information, apply partial truth, or act dishonestly?  Do you not feel safe to be candid or vulnerable with the truth?

#2 – Is there any area in your life where you have double standards, i.e. you have a higher standard for someone else than for yourself?  You may have a strong sense of right and wrong for other people, but the rules you apply to them do not always apply to yourself.

For instance, do you require your employees to enter all their billable time daily, but you do not?  Do you demand that other people arrive on time, finish on time, and deliver on time… but you are inconsistent?  Do you tell others not to gossip, but you do?  Are you quick to judge others, particularly negatively?  Do you add your own negative comments or quickly agree when others disparage someone else?

#3 - People say that you said or did something, but you deny it. Possibly, you even fully believe that you did not say or do it.  Or you just do not want to admit it.  However, this has happened multiple times.  Can they always be wrong?  Or, do you have an issue with truth, memory, and/or feeling safe admitting mistakes?

#4 - Part of the time you are a very nice, engaging, and caring person.  However, if something doesn’t go your way then you attack the other person verbally, possibly with anger, or withdraw.  This fight or flight approach is often due to an unhealed wound that might be the disease of a narcissistic symptom. (Physical abuse is horrible, however don’t discount the lasting pain verbal and emotional abuse can cause.  There are studies that conclude emotional abuse can be worse than physical abuse.) 

#5 – You do nice things for other people because it makes you feel good and/or helps you look good to others. That is the primary focus behind your motivation, not to help them.  You tell others about how you help other people.  Although helping others should feel good, you’re bragging, not serving. 

#6 –You take advantage of other people.  You may ask them for support that you do not provide in return.  You may say half-truths to get them to do something they would not if they had the full picture. 

#7 – You can get angry quickly.  Those triggers are often connected to wounds that have not healed. 

#8 – You are a survivor. There been times in your life where you had to dig out of a hole, get out of a tough situation, beat an addiction, overcome depression, or surpass another significant life challenge on your own.  Something required a major commitment from you to reverse a negative situation in your life, even if you got help.  It is healthy to feel good about it.  It is unhealthy to feel superior to others because of it.  Do you brag, or say things to impress others?  Look around you.  Is most or all the stuff decorating your office or home is focused on your accomplishments?

#9 – You push your children hard because their success or failure reflects on you.

#10 – When you are winning, you are happy. When you are losing, you are not proud of the way you behave.

#11 – You constantly compare yourself to others and perceive them to be better than you.  A voice inside you constantly accuses you of “not being good enough.”  To compensate for your low self-esteem, you instinctively focus too much energy on the faults of others rather than their positives.

#12 – Your dreams are about fame and riches, rather than your accomplishments serving others and your cash transforming the lives of those less fortunate.  You achieve the dreams of many people, maybe even your own, but there is little joy.  This is often the result of self-gratification.

In contrast, millionaires who donate funds to help others through organizations with integrity are happier than earning or inheriting the cash in the first place.  (Inc. Magazine article and other studies)  Do you feel fulfilled in life now?  If you died today, what would you have changed in your legacy?

#13 – Do you focus on your rights a lot?  Do you feel you are entitled to a raise, promotion, and other rewards of performance before or without being required to achieve?  This might be caused by a belief your parents and/or others close to you do not love you.  It is hard to love others and feel satisfied when you do not first feel loved.  Do you complain instead of having gratitude and patience? 

#14 – Do you not respect the boundaries of others?  They tell you to stop, yet you keep asking questions or doing what you think is right?  Have you noticed this behavior does not motivate them to change, but it does hurt your relationship with them?  Yet, you continue to disrespect the boundaries of others.  Why?

All these behaviors are symptoms of a greater disease.

Life is about sensing the symptoms and completing journeys to heal the diseases that afflict us.

Why did I mention narcissism?

Because too many people point the finger at others, exaggerate their flaws, and label them a narcissist or other slur.  Most of the time the label is extreme and inaccurate. 

Start by understanding yourself.  If you do not, then there are serious risks:

When a person understands him/herself better than you understand yourself, then that person will control the communication or situation.

Or…

When a person understands him/herself and understands you better than you understand yourself, they can control you.

Watch out for the 14 behaviors listed above.  If you or a member of your team struggles with any of them, then work on developing positive habits to overcome them.  It takes time, but anyone can develop better behaviors if they commit themselves to growth and work with others candidly on their development.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant

Blame Someone Else

The last time you made a mistake, did you blame someone else?

There have been a few times when one of my Clients’ employees have not liked something that their boss did, and then just did not show-up at work the next day. They called-in “sick” and blamed their boss rather than own the fact their behavior is wrong.

This is especially a concern when the employee is in a leadership role because they are setting a standard that if you are upset with something at work then you can take a paid day off by lying that you are “sick.” 

Two other versions of this type of selfish reaction is the employee gets visibly and verbally angry, or isolates themselves.  These are all examples of playing the Blame Game.  Someone feels they are right and the other person is wrong.  Something occurs that upsets them, and they react with a Fight or Flight behavior.

The Blame Game is unproductive, and demonstrates a lack of emotional intelligence.

As leaders, we hold ourselves to higher standards and expect the same from our people.  A more positive alternative to the Blame Game is to work through the situation with patience, respect, and open communication.

Part of our responsibility as leaders is to develop habits to respond positively and effectively to problems rather than let anger and emotion make things worse.

Our life experience, including our career, is a mix of positive and negatives.  The exhilaration of the good and the wounds from the bad experiences affect our reactions and responses.  Although our life experiences are different, we may subconsciously choose the Blame Game as a survival mechanism. 

Do you like to be quickly, often emotionally blamed when something goes wrong?  Especially, when you believe some, or all of the problem, is not your fault?

Here are three common approaches when mistakes are made:

1.      Blame others.  Some people have an instinctive reaction that everything is the fault of someone else or a circumstance.  Initially or long-term, their habit is to deny and defend any way they may have contributed to the issue rather than own their part of it.

People with this habit, which is the Blame Game, judge others harshly for the same negative behaviors they exhibit themselves.

2.      Blame myself.  There are people who immediately blame themselves for everything, even when their contribution to the problem was minor or they were not involved at all.  Part of this issue is low self-esteem.

We all need constant work on our habits.  These first two approaches are unhealthy habits that are often the outcome of difficult or even abusive life experiences.

3.      Own it.  Rather than jump to conclusions, these people have healthier habits.  They consider the situation and are comfortable owning their portion of a mistake.  They often verbally accept responsibility, apologize, resolve the situation, and work on their habits to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

This approach is healthy and productive for the individual and everyone involved.  However, how do we get there if this is not our habit today?

Before I outline a better habit than the Blame Game, let’s consider some interesting nuances in how people relate to each other when one or more people need to accept the responsibility (blame) for situations.  Let me walk you through a few of them:

1.      Circumstance.  Did you trip over something because you're clumsy or were not paying attention, was it someone else's fault, or fate caused by a higher power?  The truth may be clouded by the wounds of your life experience.  Being comfortable admitting a mistake, open to learning from it, and then letting it go frees you to be your best.

2.      Fight or Flight.  It's interesting to consider that blaming others can be a defense mechanism or conflict resolution method.  Either way it is destructive.  Someone who reacts to conflict by wanting to fight is more interested in being right than preserving the relationship.  Someone who reacts to conflict by withdrawing (flight) is more interested in protecting themselves than preserving the relationship.  Both approaches are unhealthy.

3.      Intent.  There are two employees who do not record details about their work as required by their company.  The work done by both employees is not successful and the error occurs again at each client.  The problem reoccurring by the client served by the first employee had to be resolved by someone else.  This person wasted a lot of time because the prior work was not properly documented.  The problem reoccurring by the client served by the second employee is resolved by that same employee.  Because that employee had done the earlier work, the new problem was resolved relatively quickly.

Which employee behaved worse when not documenting the work they did?

Too often we place greater blame on the employee whose lack of responsibility negatively affected someone else.  However, there is a strong argument that if the two people had the same intent, then they should be equally blameworthy and receive the same consequences.

4.      Liars.  One major issue with the Blame Game is people consciously or subconsciously lie to themselves, and others.  This is especially common when an individual's habit is to immediately deflect, deny, and defend.  This is true even when their defense is to withdraw rather than attack.

5.      Judgment.  If we are going to be candid, most people are not very good at figuring out why someone else behaves the way they do.  Jumping to judgment means that we are relying on assumptions, limited facts, our own bias, and/or any distorted perspective we may have due to pressure we are under at the time.

6.      Stuff.  Let's be real.  "Stuff" happens.  One healthy approach to problems is to change your approach.  Be accepting, if not even thankful.  Pause and direct your thinking to embrace the fact you "get to" experience the situation, rather than "have to" endure it.  If you believe in a higher power, rather than jumping to a conclusion or the Blame Game, you can ask something like, “Lord, what do you want me to do in this situation?”

7.      Habit.  Blaming is a habit.  It occurs as a reaction, instinctively jumping to a conclusion.  The reverse, a response, is a more powerful habit we all need to develop to sustain healthy relationships. 

The bottom line is everyone loses when they play the Blame Game.

Maybe there’s a better path to take at this stage of your journey…

Here is one approach to develop a new, more powerful habit to overcome any Blame Game-like reactions to situations in our lives:

#1 - Jump to curiosity, not judgment.    

SUGGESTIONS:  (1)  You can own your piece and move on. 

(2)  Other times you need to work with others to resolve the situation.  The process of ownership is shared and takes longer.

(3)  Own only your mistake(s).  Do not take responsibility for any part of the issue which was not due to your actions.  Maybe your mistake was a bad tone of voice, you too quickly agreed to something, or you did not follow through on time.  Although you might have made a mistake, that does not mean everything that occurred is your fault.  Others need to own their piece of the problem puzzle too!

#2 - Ask questions.  Do not let others tempt you into joining the Blame Game.  Be open receptive to receive information about the situation.

#3 - Carefully consider the answers to your questions, and the facts.  If necessary, ask more questions.

#4 - Be open to quickly owning any part of the situation that may have been your fault.  You can soft-pedal a bit by saying something like, "Well, that sounds like I could've handled that situation better.  I apologize.”  Often you may want to save a deeper apology for later after you have had time to get a complete picture of the situation. 

#5 - Apologize sincerely, specifically as needed, and relatively briefly.

#6 - Discuss possible solutions.

#7 - Give time for the individual or group to process the new information, if necessary.

#8 - Work through it together, focusing on the solution(s), and avoiding the Blame Game. 

#9 - Agree together on a resolution.  Confirm how everyone involved will communicate progress towards and completion of the resolution.

#10 - Follow-through. If necessary, follow-up with others to confirm everyone has done their part to resolve the situation. 

#11 - After the situation is resolved, take time to consider how to avoid repeating the mistake.  Successful people do not often repeat mistakes.  Maybe you need to work on some of your habits or improve some processes so this situation does not repeat itself.

#12 - Be alert the next time a similar situation occurs.  Build on the strengths of how you resolved the prior mistake to have people work respectfully together to more quickly and easily overcome the current challenge. 

Mistakes happen.  Often part of the mistake or the entire event is out of our control.

However, we do have 100 percent control and responsibility for how we respond to the situation.

Avoid the trap of the Blame Game. 

Instead, be the inspiring, trustworthy, capable leader you were designed to be.

Sincerely,

David Graham Russell

Leadership Activist, Author & Consultant