Leadership and Learning

Posts Tagged ‘engagement’

It is a generally accepted principle that an organization over time cannot be much better than its leadership. There may be temporary, heroic flashes on the front lines, but for sustainable, renewable performance, leadership is essential.

The reasoning is that effective leadership sets the stage for performance and alignment of activity. Without clear context, the narrative of what is supposed to happen, agreement on the values in use, what matters, what makes sense and all those other functions of leadership people are left to their own devices, and anything from confusion to chaos can result.

Now let’s switch gears for a moment.

When people talk about “performance management” in the federal government, what comes to mind? The press is full of stories of non-performing employees, bureaucrats who administer red tape, embrace process over results, and any other number of criticisms and dings. Everything from productivity, to work ethic to innovation all get called into question.

The idea seems to be that employees need their performance managed. That’s the assumption that I suspect many people make.

But there’s more to the picture than meets the eye.

How do we talk about performance management for leaders?

And since we now know that things like emotional intelligence, engagement, open communication, transparency, truth-telling and the ability to craft a compelling narrative around the “why” of work really, really matter in leadership, how do we regard or manage the performance of leaders who are more about high control, secrecy, command, politics, inner circles, vision of nothing except (in the private sector) making a fortune, or manipulation?

Of course, the mushrooming use of the 360-degree assessment is one foot in the door, but I suspect the whole notion that leaders are held accountable for their performance on the job – and in the process, not just in the results – is something of a surprise for many.

In this context, an article last year in Government Executive on how senior executives in the federal government evaluated political appointees was fascinating reading. The appointees earned a “C” average. More than 30% of the respondents gave the appointees a “D” or “F.”

The story reads: “Obama officials lack functional and agency-specific knowledge, according to survey respondents. Many believe appointees don’t understand human resources and procurement rules, saying they presume the ‘institution is there as an obstruction’ and attempt to ‘break organizations.’

“Appointees have ‘unbelievably poor communication with career employees,’ one respondent commented. Almost 40 percent of managers gave appointees Ds or Fs on collaboration and communication with their staffs. Some ‘have a divide-and-conquer strategy, and there are way too many industry fingers allowed in decision-making,’ a respondent noted. At another agency, a manager said the result has been ‘politicization of normal agency functions.’”

You can only wonder how the people the survey respondents were talking about feel about these results. In my experience, leaders hearing such criticisms usually go to defenses. This is all unconscious activity, but it’s quick, and often well-grooved. They will talk about how others don’t “get it,” they have complainers and whiners on their hands, the culture has too much deadwood, etc.

Which raises the question, whose accountability is that?

Moving beyond simplistic and naive power-based notions of “I set the rules” to acceptance of everyone’s performance really mattering – including at the top – is one of the dimensions of the new story of leadership emerging in our lifetimes. The disconnect between poor performance in leadership and accountability for that is just one more issue organizations are grappling with as they find their way into this new and very different story.

I often compare the emerging, new story of supervision and leadership to the loading of a huge new program on your computer. You know — the blue status bar creeps slowly across the screen, so you go get a cup of coffee rather than staring at it for a long time.

This new story loading onto the computers we call ourselves and our organizations is contrasted thus:

• Commitment versus compliance
• Initiative versus status quo
• Communication versus need-to-know
• Engagement versus apathy
• Listening versus just telling
• Connectedness versus fragmentation
• Spirit versus emotional void
• Caring versus not caring
• Excitement versus depression
• Winning versus just getting by

The blue status bar just lurched forward a bit with the news that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is going to widen the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) out to all federal employees. It currently goes to about one-third.

http://www.fedview.opm.gov/2011/Reports/

(Caution: Descending into the survey results can result in a lot of time going by. The results are endlessly fascinating, and OPM has brilliantly made the data available in a way that can be sliced and diced across multiple dimensions, such as age, gender, supervisory status, HQ versus field, etc.)

OPM Director John Berry said the survey is becoming more important in how federal agencies address their challenges.

Now, let’s just stop here for a moment and have a pulse check.

One interesting thing that we run into from time to time in our work is supervisors’ and leaders’ reactions to hearing the concept that they are going to receive feedback from employees reporting to them. This is often in the form of the 360-degree assessment, an instrument that is rapidly growing.

There is simply no way to comprehend the sanity or utility of such an idea if you believe supervision and leadership are about control, command, only telling, using power to punish dissenters, and most of all, that the “people stuff” in work is irrelevant.

Sorry to tell you ladies and gentlemen, this mental model is much more common than many people think. Old habits die hard.

And so, here we are in 2012 with the federal government tripling the size of one of the most powerful surveys by which the workplace, supervisors and leaders are evaluated. It’s only been around 10 years, and now it’s being rolled out to all employees.

There is an expression command-and-control types use whenever employee perceptions, recommendations or even actions come into the mix. “The lunatics are running the asylum.”

This is a dark, depressing expression on several levels. It name-calls – a very primitive defense against uncomfortable things — and it compares work to an asylum. Some other expressions you have probably heard include, “When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,” or “That’s not your area.”

I have often said that we are living in a fascinating time. The old story of leadership is slowly, agonizingly slowly, headed toward the door, mainly through the room called retirement. Showing up in its place, and championed by Generation Y, is an entirely new mental model around what leadership and supervision are.

The voice of employees is about to get a lot louder.

I have never recommended a book in a blog posting before, but that’s about to change, and for a very good reason.

Sometimes in a good life, you come across a theory, model, idea, course, book or conversation that fundamentally changes the way you see the world. You may have a sense that the scales have fallen from your eyes, that you understand reality in an entirely new and profoundly more accurate and powerful way, that this new way of thinking explains a whole lot more than anything else to-date. And you may feel that knowing what you now know, that there’s no turning back. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, the secret is out, and you are changed.

This is Mark Addleson’s new book, Beyond Management: Taking Charge at Work.

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Management-Taking-Charge-Work/dp/0230308163

I have read who knows how many books on organizations, management and leadership, and many more articles. This book is different, and it is different in a way that is exciting, disturbing and profound. It lays out what we need to understand about organizations if we are to move beyond a tired, exhausted, dysfunctional and counter-productive mental model of what work is.

Full disclosure: I had the privilege to sit in Mark’s class at George Mason University a few years ago when he laid out over several months, point to point, his argument on what is happening in organizations, and what needs to be done. I have to tell you that due to the design of the Master’s program I was in, these lectures were often on Friday night until 10:00 PM. If you’re like most people, there are many things you can think of that you would rather be doing on a Friday night than listening to a lecture on organizations and work. And I have to tell you I often left the lecture hall electrified by the power of Mark’s discoveries and explanation.

So, what’s the ”juice?” What is Mark saying, and why is it so important? Here we go:

• Work has shifted from factories to knowledge work. Instead of a steady, reliable production line, we have today problem-solving, change, ambiguity, conflict, alignment of interests, creativity, collaboration, confusion, clarity, evolving and most fundamentally, trying to make sense of the world and our place in it. “What should we do now? What is the best idea? How can we position ourselves to do something great?” These are the questions of knowledge work.

• Management models are still pretty much what they were for the factory. Hierarchy, a culture of “telling” rather than “asking,” defining outcomes without employee input, and high control are all hallmarks of the factory. They also demotivate virtually all employees.

• As a knowledge worker, you already understand the profound difference between work you do when you are motivated – “switched on” – and demotivated –“phoning it in,” or “going through the motions.” Because your real value is a function of what comes out of your brain, the state in which you work really, really matters. High motivation, excitement, energy and creativity creates beautiful work products. (Knowledge work is much more art than science. Even scientists doing their best work talk about being immersed in the flow of the activity, the genius of a new idea, or the elegance of a theory. It is anything but rote production work.)

• You can’t really “manage” or command creativity. You can’t schedule a meeting at which people will generate insights at 3:45 on a Thursday. You can only foster it and create conditions in which it is most likely to happen – support, encouragement, good working arrangements, and recognition, for example. Already, we see the logical limits of command and control.

• A key part of Mark’s book is to differentiate from the practice of work and “the view from the top.” Being inside the work is to be engaged in all those questions listed above. Trying to understand the client’s perspective, figuring out how to organize around a seemingly impossible request, asking a colleague for an idea on how to change something in the work, communicating, collaborating and generating ideas. Mark’s contention is that most of this is invisible to those running organizations. Instead, they look at what he calls the “D’s.” These include such things as data, dollars, deliverables, and directives. These are all abstracted, reified objects – they are not the work itself. The work itself happens on the telephone when hearing about a surprise in a project, when conflict erupts, when it becomes clear people had really different ideas, when you create information in a way that allows a client to make a good decision. The view from the top regards these often as interruptions to the real work – remember, it is steeped in a production mentality. The deep fantasy is that everything runs like a clock, with no time-outs for the real stuff of knowledge work. (I have heard it said before: “What is work besides solving problems?”) If you think about the tension between a musician and his or her record company, you start to get a glimpse into this divide. The record company would love a predictable schedule of releases that sell millions. The artist is trying to get “out there” what is “in here.” This is creativity, imagination, beauty. It’s not so schedulable. Organizations are only starting to begin to grasp what this all means. It will require a new business model.

• The smartest, most advanced companies already understand this changing paradigm, and are acting on it. Google, Pixar, Harley-Davidson, Zappos and many other much smaller companies seem to be “getting” what work today really means. Taking much more a whole systems view (including customers, communities and other stakeholders), they are rethinking what happens in work, and what it means for leadership. Most others are still fighting last year’s war with a production and factory mental model. Input, throughput, output.

At the risk of doing it injustice, I will say this is a sinfully abbreviated summary of just some of Mark’s key points. If any of the points above resonate, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book.

You have probably felt at some points in your life that you were in a pattern, with the same things happening over and over. They may have been good or bad, but you felt the recurring theme.

This has been my life over the last two months. I’d like to identify what I’ve experienced, mainly because I believe it’s a sign of the times. I’ll explain at the end what leaders can do about this phenomenon – if they have the will.

I am accustomed to hearing the following story – we hear it at many client sites – but the consistency of it this autumn really struck me. It runs something like this:

• Our leadership doesn’t communicate with us.

• Our leadership is not interested in our ideas.

• Our leadership sees our role as simply executors of their will.

• Our leadership regards different ideas as hostile and threatening.

• Our leadership knows morale and engagement are low, and either blames us or ignores the data.

• Our leadership manages by threat and fear instead of encouragement and reward.

It has truly been like being in the movie Groundhog Day. As I have listened to participants in leadership development sessions, I have felt as though I could finish their sentences. In every case, where I thought they were headed with their comments was correct.

Before addressing what to do about this, it is fair to raise the question of how in the world things got to this point.

Actually, things have been this way for a very long time, but as people hear new models of leadership – based on shared values, connection, communication, accountability (for everyone) and meaningful results (to name just a few attributes) – the contrast becomes more stark, more painful. One clear marker of this is Generation Y, which generally wants to have nothing to do with the tired, worn-out models of leadership – if you want to call it that – bulleted above.

There is a palpable yearning for a new way to work out there, and leadership in many organizations is tone-deaf to it.

So while it’s actually not that new, I believe it’s intensifying, for several reasons.

First, organizations everywhere are under attack. Government agencies, banks, the cable company, your local retailer . . . they are all operating under conditions that are very different from just 10 years ago. Competition, consumer expectations, technology, social change, and globalization are all shifting the landscape.
Most people, in most organizations, in unguarded moments will admit to feeling overwhelmed, under siege, pulled in a thousand directions, working harder and harder and harder . . . and they’re not sure why.

Certainly, the acceleration simply to increase shareholder return has left many employees feeling empty. Human beings are wired for meaning, and so just chasing more money can feel meaningless. Steve Jobs once famously said that Apple’s massive market capitalization was interesting, but it wasn’t really the point. Great products were the point – and what produced that market capitalization.

But beyond the factors in play mentioned above, here is what is really happening in organizations that is producing such a profound alienation.

In any historical movement, as a new model or theory or way of living/working/being arises, the old guard intensifies its insistence on the status quo as the only legitimate way of living/working/being. Sensing the questioning, criticism and potential for something new and untested and not well understood, the decision-makers redouble their efforts to “stay the course.” Just do more of whatever has been done.

This reaction is easy to understand. A new model of leadership that emphasizes transparency, openness, feedback that runs both ways, willingness to listen, empowerment (I apologize for using this word if you suffered through any of the TQM initiatives in the 1980’s. I know how painful it was to have hopes raised and then dashed as organizations realized the cost of what they thought they were buying), shared values and meaning are so fundamentally at odds with the mind-set of “Because I’m in charge, I set the rules.”

I am sorry to tell you that this mindset is much more common, and entrenched, and intensifying that you may want to believe. The assault is underway, and the rear-guard actions are obvious to see.

This manifested in one example of a besieged executive who had received massive negative feedback on his leadership style. His response? “I don’t care what they think, and I don’t want to hear what they have to say.” I am always in favor of this mindset in battle, or in an emergency, when there is no time to hold a focus group or ask people how they feel about how things are going.

But seriously, folks, if you are trying to run an organization where people give their best, are connected to the mission, to each other and to meaningful results that make a difference in others’ lives, I have to tell you, this refrain just doesn’t work. It gets you begrudging compliance from a demotivated and disengaged workforce that did not believe enough in its own talents to leave and find a better place to work. Talent walks.

(It is also interesting to explore the reactions of leadership to high and unwanted turnover. You can easily see how defensiveness and blind spots collude to explain away the exit interview data.)

The fact is, the values systems in place with old-style leadership and a new form of leadership are so fundamentally at odds that some people believe it will take the dying off of the current generation of leaders in order for a new mental model to take hold. This is explicitly stated as the case in Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. There may be many leaders who can’t make the shift. That doesn’t mean it’s not important to try to engage them in a new way of working, but in practical terms some will get it, and others just aren’t ready, and won’t.

So what is to be done?

This is a message for leaders. Apart from the communication role others may play in trying to help leaders see new things in new ways (I call this the Vertical Channel of communication, in which information flows up and down), this is directly targeted at those frustrated with their organizations, wondering where the accountability is (we hear this one a lot), wondering why people seem disconnected from the work, puzzled by the turnover, and so on. Here is what you can do:

• Ask the most important question of all: “What do you think?” Give people a chance to explain their reality, their perceptions, their ideas. This is tremendously motivating, and shows you actually care about what they think.

• Get out of your office. We know that in a largely unconscious process, you fill up the day with meetings and commitments so that you have no free time – a problem in itself in terms of renewal and sustainability – and you then plead that you don’t have time to communicate with employees. Dr. Phil would ask, “So how’s that working for you?”

• Define, really, the mission and values. Don’t write something on posters to go up on the walls that will invite cynicism and eye-rolling. If you can’t cogently and succinctly describe the mission, the so-what? of the organization, you’re in trouble. The mission is what people work for after they can eat, have shelter, transportation and high-definition cable TV. Ditto with values. They have to be real. Pompous, artificial, self-serving values are deal-killers. No one can get behind a value such as “Take the customer for all they’re worth,” yet that is the operating model in many private-sector organizations.

• Let go of the 50-pound weights you take home on your shoulders every night. Again, in a largely unconscious process (by this I simply mean unthinking), many leaders feel it’s all on them. Since they’re the only ones who can do it, or do it the right way, it’s a big weight. What about an organization where the best ideas come forward freely, shared meaning-making occurs – where people address, “What makes the most sense?” — and people are made accountable for execution? The operative model today was described by Jim Collins as “The genius with a thousand helpers.”

There are many more ideas, but the real point is that the will, the desire have to be there. It is a profound shift of values and the most basic, fundamental assumptions and sense-making for many. If your mental model is “I’m in charge so I don’t really care,” then good luck, because you’re going to need it.

If, however, you are open to the possibility that there may be a better way to work, you can get on the road doing the four things above. It’s a noble quest, and a modest start. See where it leads.

It was another rite of passage: Sitting in a high-school auditorium for the awards night before graduation. A parade of wonderful young people being honored for achievements and successes. It makes you optimistic for the future.

But one thing really stood out – jumped out – as a counter-cultural, I would say practically subversive theme. To understand it, and what it means for leadership, we first have to step back and look at the terrain in which many of our organizations are operating.

Increasingly, it appears to me that that ethos at work, our workplace culture, is about self-advancement and self-promotion. Jockeying for the verbal advantage in meetings, subtle or overt put-downs of those with other perspectives, the fight for the next promotion, the lack of true team consciousness as individuals come together and wind up in gridlock as they advocate for their own, individual interests.

I describe this as the crisis of the “I” story. (The “We” story is about connecting with others. The “It” story is about what needs to be done.)

Your own experience may vary. You see what you see, and if your view is more sanguine, then enjoy. You’re in a good place. What I see and hear too often in talking with people in workplaces all over is the late-stage moral decay; the logical, ultimate extension of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Capitalism and competition are great, but they are incomplete. Left unchecked, you don’t hear what I heard at the awards night. Here’s what the speakers kept saying about the recipients.

“He helped others who needed help.”

“She always had time for others.”

“He thought first about others.”

“She brought people together.”

“He helped people come to agreement.”

And on and on.

The objects in I think every case were “others.” The whole point, the focus of the excellence was toward others. Not the self, not the resume, not the accomplishments. It was about how this award-winner built something larger than him or her.

Think about your day. Your week. Your career. When you engage in action, which story are you living in? And as Dr. Phil asks: “How’s that working for you?”

Readers of this blog know I like to play the electric guitar (I turn it up to 11), and I like Arlington Fretworks. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/home

Proprietor and craftsman Daniel Carbone repairs and builds guitars there. I have written previously about his standards of excellence being off the charts. (One client wrote that he would trust him to work on his kids’ teeth.) http://blogs.managementconcepts.com/lm/leadership/2010/09/a-thousandth-of-an-inch-or-%e2%80%9cgood-enough-for-government-work%e2%80%9d/

Daniel’s website notes that an interesting question has arisen in the music and physics world of whether a wood-based instrument improves the more you play it. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/articles

Sounds pretty virtuous if it’s true. According to a New York Times story, Dr. David G. Hunt of the School of Engineering Systems and Design at South Bank University in London believes it is. He says vibrations aimed at the instrument subtly alter the physics of the wood in a way that empirically increases sustain (the Holy Grail of guitar players), and more subjectively improves the sound.

So what leadership lesson can we apply from world of musical instruments and physics?

Every time you do something positive, constructive, helpful, engaging, uplifting, inspiring, motivating or other-centered (music), I believe you change yourself (wood).

By actually doing whatever you have learned and think might work better than whatever you were doing, you behaviorally rewrite some of your operating system source code; you rearrange the molecules in the wood.

There is actually a neuroscientific explanation for this, as you change behavior, you lay down new neural pathways in your malleable brain; it is about plasticity. It is how habits – good or bad – get formed. One phrase is, “what fires, wires.” Synaptic connections become the new reality.

You can also pick up good vibes by associating with people who operate at a high level. By observing, maybe by  osmosis, you are influenced in a positive way — but you still have to act on what you are noticing.

Keep in mind that overnight, radical development usually doesn’t last. It takes time.

I once worked with a woman in Atlanta in a leadership position in a federal agency. She said in workshop that one thing she does now is really listen to employees. She also said she could not do this several years ago. (Actually, she could have at any time; she just chose to start trying it at some point.) Her comment was that it still requires some effort, but it is much easier now than it used to be.

Her molecules got rearranged. Without belaboring the point about the very significant benefits of true listening, we can say she is somehow different as a result of all the times she was ready to jump in with The Expert Opinion, but chose to hold back and listen longer. I would lay a heavy bet her employees appreciated this.

The opposite way to think about this is the old phrase, “To know and not do is to not know.”

A final point: The author of the study mentioned above said in an interview that “People don’t understand entirely the structure of wood, even after using it and studying it for centuries.”

So there’s something a mystery in this (but not enough to prevent guitar players from keeping their axes by their speakers). Think about it: We have some real gaps in our knowledge of wood.

How about our knowledge of people and relationships?

The team over here at 8230 Leesburg Pike has been through a lot lately, let me tell you.

From a variety of sources, we have been buffeted by new demands, expectations, rapidly changing circumstances and other factors that all created what can safely be described as enormous stress.

It started in the autumn, so it’s not like it’s been just a short-term thing.

What helps you get through stress?

One thing I learned, or maybe relearned, or maybe learned more experientially is that a tight team really counts.

By tight team, I mean a group of people who genuinely care about each other, who are willing to put in extra effort to help others, and who actually appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to do so. There’s a certain pleasure and satisfaction in knowing that you are directly helping someone you care about. There’s an iron commitment in knowing you will go the wall for others.

There is something magical in this. It’s beyond the pure, very limited, self-interest Adam Smith wrote about. (Free-marketers, settle down out there. Nothing wrong with self-interest. It’s just that it’s only one part of a much larger picture.) It’s transcendent. It’s not really described in any competency model, strategic plan or other official artifact, because it’s not an official, organizational process. It’s an organic, grass-roots, person-centered state of being, grounded in relationships. The most an organization can officially do is to create the space, the grounds, for it to happen. Some military environments and sports organizations seem to be the best at fostering it. (Hmmm. I wonder if that’s because their performance is measured so carefully, because it’s so important?) But the people have to be the ones to make it happen.

Mot people have been fortunate enough to be on a tight team at some point in their lives. It could have been in a sport, a committee at church, a neighborhood or anywhere else. There is no real predicting it – it certainly can’t be guaranteed. But sometimes, it just happens. If it’s happened for you, you understand its power, and the difference it makes. If you shoveled snow off an elderly neighbor’s drive-way, and your other neighbors came out to help . . that feeling that you had, together? That’s what I’m talking about.

When I think about how the team I’m on might have fared through the stress we experienced if we had not been a tight team, I just shake my head. I don’t think it could have happened.

It’s the glue that keeps people connected. It’s a beautiful thing.

If you’re a manager in the federal government, you’ve heard some big news this week: not only will your pay be frozen for the next two years, but so will the pay of those who report to you. If you’re new to supervision you may wonder whether it is best to proactively surface this issue with your team or just hope they won’t bring it up. Don’t let the water cooler conversation get ahead of your leadership. Now is a great time for government supervisors to step up, talk with their team members about what matters most in their work, and turn the issue of pay freezes into an opportunity to foster more engagement within the team.

You probably realize that annual increases are not the only reason that people stay in their jobs, but when was the last time that you talked with your team about what does keep them engaged in their jobs? How did those conversations go? Research shows that when managers take the time to talk with employees about what really gets them excited about their work, and then do all they can (beyond pay and promotions) to connect the dots between assignments and energy, engagement levels go up along with several other positive workplace indicators.

If you have a solid performer on your team that you think is at risk of leaving, here are some engagement tools that you can use to turn things around. In addition to using these tools with your employees, now is also a good time for you to ask yourself these questions. Take time to re-engage your own energy and focus too, so you can continue to be the best leader you can be for your team.

• The High Cost of Low Engagement: What Supervisors Can Do About It by Casey Wilson

This short white paper is designed to help supervisors build trust and engagement with their team members through intentional conversations about their work and what energizes them. Applying the principles in this article (as well as the book it connects to, The Cornerstones of Engaging Leadership) will help you to navigate through some of the most important conversations you will ever have as a leader. You can access the white paper and the book through the following links. (Full disclosure: My boss wrote this white paper, the book, and the course we offer on this topic. I’m recommending them because they work, not for any extra engagement “points”.)

White Paper: http://www.managementconcepts.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=372&PageID=1698&cached=true&mode=2&userID=238

Book: http://www.managementconcepts.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=325&PageID=624&cached=true&mode=2&userID=238

Course: http://www.managementconcepts.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=301&PageID=642&mcTarget=course&mcTargetID=4003&cached=true&mode=2&userID=238

•  Love ‘em Or Lose ‘em: Getting Good People to Stay by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans

This book contains multiple “stay factors” for supervisors to leverage with their staff, such as opportunities for growth, meaningful work and great co-workers. The authors include questions that supervisors can use to conduct “stay interviews,” or conversations that surface what matters most and what it will take to keep them on board. You can read about the book here: http://www.keepem.com/

• 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter

This book is full of stories, examples, and data that show the power of engaging employees in service to a common mission. The research for this book came from interviews with more than 10 million employees. You can read more about the book here: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/25402/book-center.aspx

The upcoming year is promising to be one that includes an increasing focus on budgets and performance. This is the perfect time to use employee engagement as the tool to maintain focus and achieve performance goals. What tools do you use as a leader to carry out the important work of talent management? I’d love to hear from you.

My wife was recently hospitalized (she’s fine now) and during an emotionally wrenching 6-day saga I served as air-traffic controller for a lot of communication from outside the hospital with and about her.

One problem with being the in leadership and professional development business is that you cannot avoid seeing situations through certain lenses, some of which I want to share here.

What jumped out most for me was noticing how people tended to respond to the news that things were definitely not well in one of two ways.

Some people immediately wanted to know what was happening – an analytical, fact-driven narrative of the medical situation in order to understand what was happening, and what was needed that they could provide to help.

Others, however, immediately went to the emotional realm – how Linda was feeling, how I was feeling, how our daughter was handling the news. Their emotional expressions of support stood out.

For those of you familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, you can probably recognize the preference for Thinking judgments in the former, and the preference for Feeling judgments in the latter. Thinkers generally want to know what is, while Feelers focus more on the human side of whatever it is is.

What struck me was the language. The vocabulary of Thinkers was populated with words like “cause, events, diagnosis, outlook, facts,” while the parlance of the Feelers included words and phrases such as “Tell Linda that we love her, what can I do to help? This is weighing on us all, and know you’re not alone.”

With type, there is no right or wrong, there is just different – a concept that may seem easy to cognitively “get,” but which in real life tends to produce a lot of judgments and conflict. A legitimate question is: Which preference was more useful? And the answer – and the key to understanding Type generally – is “both.”

You want people like doctors, specialists, nurses to get very fact-oriented and operate from a logical, rational, technically correct perspective. A life may be hanging in the balance.

At the same time, since we are human beings, you also want people to connect with you, feel your pain, empathize and sympathize. At one point, during the darkest hours of not knowing what had happened to my wife, a nurse simply put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I know how hard this must be.” This expression of support brought tears. I didn’t want the nurse to step away from her responsibility to administer medication properly, report vital signs or update a chart, but the Feeling element was huge.

Doctors who have a good bedside manner, and are emotionally intelligent, get sued at a fraction of the rate of those who don’t. Both Thinking and Feelings matter.

For leaders, the question is whether they can bring both to the game. The bad news is leadership is overwhelmingly populated by Thinkers, leaving a real deficit in the Feeling domain. No wonder engagement levels, a sense of meaningful connection and genuine commitment toward leaders on the part of employees are so low.

A good gut check for any leader is: Am I over-relying on my preference, or can I flex enough to incorporate behaviors, actions and communication that come from the other end of the dichotomy?

Simple examples for Thinking leaders include asking how individuals are doing – not just their work projects, but them. It could be sharing a story about something that happened to you that creates disclosure or transparency, particularly if there is a human dimension in it. (This makes it easier for others to talk about how they are doing or what they are going through.) It could be to show genuine appreciation for the person.

Simple moves. Potentially big results.

For my mid-life crisis I bought an electric guitar. (It was cheaper and more acceptable than some of the alternatives.) This weekend, I took it to a local repair shop I found on the web (http://www.arlingtonfretworks.com/) for some routine tune-ups and maintenance.

I had been struck by the site itself. It sold me on the shop. The proprietor described in extensive, rich detail what he does and how. It was clear this is a guy who is really into what he does. He loves his work.

This was confirmed when I handed over my beloved Line 6 Variax 300. He stared at it for a while, put it on the bench and began taking measurements, sighting along the neck, making “hmm” sounds, hooking it up to various test instruments and immersing himself in the project. Totally absorbed.

I had intended to just drop the guitar off and head home, since I was on the hook to pick up salad at Safeway for dinner. But I stayed more than an hour as he showed me things I would have never seen or realized. (Like many mechanics – and this seems to be obligatory in the field — he spent some time dissing other guitar techs as not really knowing what they are doing.)

The time culminated in a moment when he noticed that the nut (the part of the guitar neck the strings run through) was slightly uneven. “See?” he exclaimed as he wobbled the string and took measures. He then got out a tool – there were many, many tools – and tapped a few times ever so slightly, then moved the string again. He seemed satisfied, but got out another instrument that measures the evenness in the nut. It showed perfect.

The instrument was indicating he had adjusted the nut by 1/1000th of an inch. He was happy. He was proud. I was more than satisfied.

The state of caring about one’s work was explored in great detail in Robert Pirsig’s classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a classic in philosophy. Caring means involvement, concern, wanting, pursuing, investing and engaging. It is not really about the work, as there are many, many different kinds of work. It is about the individual, and what motivates him or her.

The opposite of this state is found in a cynical phrase I’ve heard too many times in working with groups and teams – “It’s good enough for government work.”

I’m not sure what the origin of this phrase is, but I know what it means. It means we can all settle for mediocre, minimally acceptable, pedestrian and barely passing. The more we emphasize volume production, the more likely it is we fall into a “good enough” mentality.

How immersed are you in your work? How much do you care? How do you feel when you pack up at the end of the day? Was it good enough for government work? Or was it a product of true caring?

From a leadership perspective, what are the implications for others of you showing up as “good enough” versus being truly into the work?