by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
When Amy Diederich and I started offering elearning, we had a business plan full of charts, models and projections. We’d both come out of Fortune 100 companies so we knew the drill. Former bosses would have been proud how we learned the lessons they taught us.
While we were planning rich, the elearning business didn’t unfold as we had expected.
The logic was undeniable, yet what we hadn’t counted on was serendipity.
Business planning is fairly linear. Risks and contingencies are accounted for, but their impact must be minimized. The outside chance needs to remain just that – the outside chance. (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Inspiration
Many times in life, love and leadership, the small things are really big things.
Sometimes for us, sometimes for others.
We get so busy with the busyness of life that we forget to make or take time for the small things.
Often, it’s those small things that make life more enjoyable, productive, meaningful, connected, special. (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Years ago I handled labor relations in a meat processing facility where every employee had a singular function. Someone ran the slicer, someone else the grinder, etc. Everyone knew and accepted the very narrow parameters imposed on their job duties.
An exchange with a client this morning prompted my walk down meat packing memory lane. (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Character
Abby was upset her boss put her through a 360 evaluation process.
She was even more unhappy after receiving the feedback. In fact, she was shocked, angry and disbelieving because there was absolutely no way she was unethical, thoughtless or lacking in credibility and integrity.
How could people think that of her?!
In following the trail of bread crumbs to the root cause of her issues, Abby was amazed to discover it was her propensity for changing meeting schedules that had opened the door to the lack of trust, low satisfaction and poor performance that dogged her department.
“Don’t they know I’m busy and that other things come up? What’s cancelling or moving a meeting or two got to do with integrity?” she mused.
Abby was blissfully unaware she consistently cancelled and/or rescheduled meetings, for reasons both valid and trivial. Because she was out of touch with her behaviors, she missed the impact those behaviors had on how her team viewed her and how they interpreted her behaviors. From her team’s perspective:
- Abby didn’t honor her commitments so her word meant nothing
- Because her word meant nothing, she had no integrity and couldn’t be trusted
- And, because Abby held a high level position, acting that way must be the recipe for success
This slippery slope of illogical assumptions had eroded Abby’s reputation with her employees. Abby’s prowess as a performer who always delivered the hard results had been trumped by her inability to be a leader who set an example for moral integrity by honoring her commitments. Commitments as small as setting meeting times.
“Trust is rebuilt by focusing not on what the other person did or did not do but on critiquing one’s own behavior, improving one’s trustworthiness, and focusing attention not on words and promises but on actions, attitudes, and ways of being.” ~Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith, The Art of Waking People Up
3 ways for leaders to regain lost credibility
Abby was fortunate her organization viewed her as salvageable, valued her enough to provide coaching, and supported her long climb to being a leader who could balance both task completion and building relationships. To get things back on tract with her team, Abby agreed to:
1) Get organized.
Many of those rescheduled meetings were the result of poor planning and her failure to write down meeting times.
2) Think and act like a leader of a team.
Abby’s style was “me-focused.” If the opportunity arose to meet with someone she thought could help her, she grabbed it, thinking it was no big deal for her team to meet with her on another day. Working to move beyond her own self-interest and to consider the impacts of her actions on others was a big first step. “Successful managers all excel in the making, honoring, and remaking of commitments,” according to Donald N. Sull, HBR professor and author.
3) Connect and communicate more.
Abby slowly embraced the fact that having integrity and being trusted were intangible assets crucial to her leadership success. Something as simple as showing up on-time for a meeting she had called was a building block for credibility, one of the foundations of trust. “Without integrity, nothing works,” writes Michael Jensen in The Three Foundations of a Great Personal Life, Great Leadership and a Great Company: Integrity, Authenticity, and Committed to Something Bigger than Oneself.
What other recommendations do you have for Abby?
Image credit: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Employees complain in engagement surveys that their bosses don’t treat them with respect or as unique individuals. Yet on the flip side, research shows that bosses who treat people with kindness, respect and dignity are “seen as less powerful than other managers.” This is a dreadful paradox: We want to be treated with kindness yet don’t respect those who do.
What’s up with that?
In the workplace, kindness—being friendly, generous and considerate—is often dismissed as a weakness because of the negative stereotypes that cling to it: pushover, sucker, patsy or nice guy (or gal) who finishes last.
Kindness isn’t typically rewarded at review time, given that most business performance is evaluated on what’s done rather than how it’s done.
Soft skills such as kindness lose their sizzle (if they ever had any) when compared with off-the-charts sales and other impressive bottom-line impacts delivered by the tough guys whose bad behavior often gets overlooked.
Because we see the it’s-all-about-me behaviors rewarded more generously than the we’re-all-in-this-together ones, “Managers see respect and power as two mutually exclusive avenues to influence, and many choose the latter,” says Batia Wiesenfeld, et al, in “Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind.”
Nice is about me; kind is about you: So how does a character-based leader who wants to treat employees with dignity escape the paradox of the kindness hamster wheel?
5 ways to end the paradox of kindness
1) Choose kindness over rudeness despite the personal cost.
If you want to treat people kindly, then do so, fully aware that your choice can be costly. Research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that men who are agreeable earn less money per year (upward of $10,000) than those who opt to be disagreeable.
2) Commit to the Goldilocks principle of getting kindness just right.
“Kindness, like many other traits, has an optimal level that makes it a virtue as opposed to a vice,” writes William Baker and Michael O’Malley in “Leading with Kindness.” Combining empathy with accountability is a skill set that no kind leader should be without.
3) Embrace a both/and approach to leadership.
Truly kind and effective leaders understand they can both provide candid feedback and disagree with people, and leave others’ self-respect intact. Don’t confuse kindness with being likeable. Offering an alternative point of view doesn’t make you unkind.
4) Learn what power really is.
From all the media accounts of power run amok, it’s gotten a bum rap of being all ego-centric and self-serving. Hooey. One can do well, show kindness, and be as powerful as all get-out. Dare to be kind. Buck those kindness-as-weakness stereotypes and encourage those around you to do the same.
5) Break the cycle.
Accept kindness from others without typecasting them as powerless. Flip the stereotype on its head by recognizing that those who treat you kindly are being truly powerful. They’ve courageously chosen to not follow the me-centered path.
The next time someone shows you respect, cares what you think or deals with you fairly—in short, treats you with kindness—don’t sell them or yourself short by presuming they’re without influence or smarts or power.
What are some negative ways you’ve seen kind leaders treated?
I’m delighted to be guest posting at SmartBlog on Leadership so you’ll see this post there, too!
Image credit before quote: morgueFile
