My new book is finally out…
About 10 days ago the books arrived from the publisher. They really came out nice. We have already sent out over 100 books to current clients and attendees to my recent speaking events.
I am receiving lots of kind feedback! I sent 5 to the controller at one client and she gave one to the president. He has now made it requried reading for all Managers and Supervisors. That’s AWESOME.
Because of the tough economy combined with companies forced to get leaner and meaner, today’s business environment is putting a lot more pressure on young developing leaders. This creates an internal business environment where workers are stressed more than ever – working longer hours and pressured for more results with less resources.
A recent August 8th article in USA Today [At Work, No More Mr. Nice Guy] stated that rudeness and bad manners are rising amongst the employees. They’ve got fluid job descriptions and less role clarity. Work is becoming more toxic. Younger people are seeing what work has done to their parents.
While this reality is true in lots of companies, it doesn’t have to derail groups or projects. As a leaders, we have to be more sensitive to these issues. Have periodic meetings with your people and talk openly about these realities. Then have the group members offer suggestions on how to reduce these stresses. Let it be their ideas. Keeping everyone focused on the stress reduction and the workplace civility issue, will help improve the work environment.
I was recently talking with the Vice President of a very large engineering company. He is over all HR and Training for North and South America.
He said in the 1990’s they looked for technical people who already had 70% of the technical skills and then the remaining 30% in people skills.
Now 20 years later they look for a degree but 30% in the technical skills is acceptable with the balance of 70% in people skills.
I, of course asked, “why such a shift?” He said, “Because it is much easier to teach additional techical skill than to teach people skills.”
I though this was profound and needed to be shared.
What has been your experience?
As a younger man, I frequently felt I had great ideas and that I was not fully utilizing my abilities. The trouble being, I was in a job that wanted me to work hard on a narrow focus – not some bigger picture needing great ideas.
Then through reading and research, I realized that if I was going to find better opportunities, I had to improve my abilities and let others know about it. So not satisfied with just a Mechanical Engineering Degree, I made a smart move to enter and complete the Executive MBA Program at the University of Houston. This helped me a lot. It especially helped me with the knowledge, but I still needed a good place to focus my knowledge. I wanted to make a real difference in the business world.
That’s when I read an article on the value of a mentor (a business coach). Someone who was an “older me” helping the “younger me” – someone who was wiser & who really cared. A mentor will listen to your story and listen to your dreams. He/she will then say, “Let me show you a better more efficient way.” That is the point of this video. An expert can show you a few simple techniques and get you on the right track.
As a coach and mentor, I get to witness first hand, the value I bring to individuals. It is very gratifying. Mentors can come in all types, shapes and sizes and from lots of different places. You will not see them until you begin to look for them. SEEK & YOU SHALL FIND.
When traditional classes, books and articles discuss leadership, it is normally focused at the higher levels in the organization. This is, of course, important. It is also easier to lead at the top levels because you have the authority – you can make other people do things. It comes with the territory.
However some of the most important leadership is done at the lowest levels in an organization. This is where one team member has to convince the other to step up and do the right thing or to do a job to a higher degree of quality. This is much easier said than done, because that team member with the good intentions has no authority over the fellow team member – he/she cannot make the other person do something. He/she can only convince the other person of why it is in every one’s best interest. This can be selling at its finest (like we teach in the sales session of Accelerated Professionals, everyone is in sales). One of the easiest ways to do it, is to Lead By Example.
The other extremely important place where leadership is conducted is between a supervisor and the front line worker. Because this is where the bulk of the real work is done in the organization. I just finished teaching some leadership courses to two different groups at a company. The first group was 15 supervisors and the second group 15 managers (the bosses). The supervisor class argued that it was more important that they implement the leadership methods we were covering in the class (vs. the management group) because the majority of the real work at the company was being done with the supervisors working with the front line workers. So we need leadership EVERYWHERE and we all need to LEAD BY EXAMPLE.
In some of my recent training on Teamwork, a new concept occurred to me that needed to be included. “Excellent Teams Practice” Well there is no surprise in that. Champion football and baseball teams practice. Top performing basketball teams practice. All sports teams practice. The champions do it better.
But let’s look outside of sports. All the U.S. Military branches practice: The Army; the Navy; the Marines; and the Air Force – they all practice. And then there are elite divisions within these branches such as the Navy Seals, who practice certain thing even more. They get really good at it. They get to know their team members very well too. They want to know who they are working with when it is performance time. They have to know who they can trust. It is the same with SWAT teams. When you see them in action on television, they are well organized, move with purpose and cover each other.
So I am teaching teamwork and it occurred to me, that companies are asking teams to become excellent performance teams with classroom knowledge and classroom practice alone. This is not near enough. Excellent teams practice. I was recently training a ‘team’ of department managers from each department at a chemical company. We went through all the classroom stuff and then I sold them on the idea that ‘excellent teams practice.’
They agreed with the concept but protested. When do we have time to practice? We are all very busy already – when will we have time to practice? This is crazy, are we suppose to practice Monday before we have a Monday? Practice a whole week of work before we have a week – this is impossible. Then it occurred to one manager and she said isn’t Monday practice for Tuesday? And Tuesday practice for Wednesday? etc.? Then another manager said the truth is we hit the playing field and just go live and do our best. There is no practice other than ‘yesterday was practice for today.’
After some discussions we agreed that they did need to practice some critical events such as upcoming customer visits, meetings with government agencies, meetings to discipline employees, meetings to hire a key employee candidate, etc.
They agreed that these meetings were all too important to just leave to chance and that it would pay dividends to spend a little time practicing before each of these key events.
EXCELLENT TEAMS PRACTICE !
Every company wants teamwork. But like all excellent teams – they have to practice. SWAT, Fireman, Sports teams and all the military teams practice. When do you practice? Well you obviously can’t practice each work day, but you can practice key events such as customer visits, sales calls, employee discipline, etc.
The loss of experienced employees can cost a company dearly. Many studies have been done and the news is always bad. The most important conclusion is that it can be avoided if handled properly. The investment required to keep valuable employees is a wise investment. Remember it starts with the hiring process.
Many national “Why People Quit” surveys have been conducted over the years, usually with very similar results. The top responses for ‘reasons for quitting’ routinely surveyed are:
• Lack of Appreciation
• Problems with my immediate supervisor/manager/boss
• No opportunity for advancement
• Poor work environment
Some people do quit to pursue more money, but it is not among the most popular reasons. If you step back and analyze this a little, you realize the top reasons above are all people reasons – the interaction with people. If the people interactions are not meeting your expectations, you soon begin to develop a strong desire to remove yourself from the situation.
Read more in my free eBook: The Turnover Solution
The world needs you to move to the next level in your life, because life does get better when you get better. The beauty of it is, by moving to the next level in life and improving your life, it is next to impossible not to improve the lives of other people. It is a generous gift you share with the world.
Life should be one big set of incremental improvements leading to endless discovery and opportunity.”
~John F. Graham
exerpt from the book