Are Managers Responsible for Difficult Employees?

Wow, there are a whole host of services and articles to help managers with difficult employees. When you do a Google search you can find an overabundance of articles.

An engaged employee is one who has a positive emotional connection that naturally causes him/her to exert greater discretionary effort. A difficult employee is one who is actively disengaged. They are a recruiter for inappropriate behaviors and poor performance. They are a “Pied Piper” of dysfunction. The actively disengaged avoid effort and actively enroll others to join them in their poor performance. Difficult employees create tremendous waste in all its forms including managers’ time, lost productivity for other workers, and even damaged customer relationships. I guess this is why there are so many books and articles for how to address them.

But, what is the root cause of these employees and what percentage of responsibility do managers have for the root causes? When my first wife and I were having problems we visited a marriage counselor. He asked me what percentage responsibility I thought I had for the marital dysfunction. I had never thought about that question before until that moment. It took me a while to answer and I think I told him “around 10%.” He then asked, “Don’t you think you own at least 50%?” It took me a while to realize I had contributed to the dysfunction. I believe managers with difficult employees are similarly in denial.

There are only two major sources of difficult employees. They were either hired that way or they evolved into dysfunctional by working at the company. Either way the managers have a significant responsibility for both of these sources. Think about it. Managers control the hiring process and the policies, procedures, and processes of the organization.

Is it fair to say that a manager controls the hiring process? Doesn’t a manger own at least 50% responsibility for hiring someone who is difficult? Of course managers don’t purposely hire the disengaged but that’s not the point. Even if the employee is a great actor and hides their dysfunction, isn’t the manager responsible for having a predictable hiring process that can uncover this secret?

Furthermore, who has more control of the working environment than the management? If the environment contributed to the dysfunction shouldn’t the manager take a higher percentage of the responsibility for this as well? A manager’s number one job is to create the proper context for productive and high quality work, correct?

I have a Blackberry. I sync it often with my Outlook files as many people do. It started giving me an error message during the synch process. I got very angry and called Verizon and started demanding service. “Why should it just suddenly stop working?” I asked. The customer service person was very cordial and walked me through a series of steps to back up my data and then wipe clean the devise so it could synch properly. She told me it was probably a corrupt piece of data. I was upset and impatient.

After walking through all the steps I was able to synch again without incident. That is when it dawned on me. I had accidently disconnected the devise during a synch earlier in the day. I received a call in the middle of the synch process and forgot to keep the devise connected when I answered the call. I had actually caused the corrupted files. I was a cause of the dysfunction.

I believe mangers are a significant cause of difficult employees. They either hire them that way or they create them with unknowing dysfunction of their own. If you are a manager go ahead and read all those books and articles that focus on what you can do to change the employee but I also advise you to start looking at your behaviors and decisions for the real root causes. I advise you to take at least 50% responsibility for these actively disengaged. Make sure you check your hiring processes and your working environment for dysfunction. I bet you will find a huge opportunity to change some things you are doing to cause the problems.

It Should Be Human Potential Leadership Not Human Resources Management

We have all seen Einstein’s quote about change. He said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This tells me we can’t dissolve a problem until we find a new way of thinking about it. We must change our thinking first otherwise will resurface again later.

What problem should we address that will make the most difference for American businesses today? I want to help organizations dissolve the employee engagement problem. Engaged employees have an emotional connection to work. They voluntarily exert extra effort into their work. They do this without being threatened, bribed or even asked. To make us more competitive on the global stage we must improve our employee engagement. Improvement in technology can help but it is not the full answer. We must tap into every heart and mind of every employee in order to catch up to the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans etc. Our average engagement in the USA is around 26%. That is a problem.

If we are to follow Einstein’s advice, we must begin to think differently? The fastest way to change your thinking is to change your language. I have a suggestion for my Human Resources Management friends. Change your name from Human Resource Management Department to Human Potential Leadership Department.

When we look up the word resources in the dictionary we find a source of supply or a means of spending. This definition suggests a limit or a finite amount. Human Potential Leadership suggests unlimited supply. The dictionary clarifies this with the words “possibility and development”. The greatest sin a leader can commit is not allowing people to achieve their full potential.

There can be three elements within the Human Potential Leadership paradigm:

• Leadership of the Context

• Management of Processes

• Self-management by all the people

Leadership of the context means an environment that allows everyone to reach their full potential. This environment has freedom and choice and encourages to self-management of employees’ own behavior. This type of environment naturally rewards (not with money but with learning and intrinsic rewards) self-reliance, problem solving, and learning. It demands a clear vision, aim and strategy for optimum action and faster decision making. It avoids dependence on management for everyday decisions that are required to solve everyday type problems.

Management of processes means just that. Notice I did not mention management of people. Instead everyone is already naturally involved with managing their own processes and their own interactions within those processes. This means everyone is clear about their hand offs to internal and external customers. They know how to use quality improvement tools and they apply the tools every day to improve those hand offs.

Self-management refers to the creation of trust through consistent behavior. This behavior is in alignment with natural principles and values. It refers to emotional intelligence. It means treating everyone with respect in every situation. It means social responsibility and full transparency without negative consequences. It means full integrity with everything.

This new language opens up all new possibilities. It naturally sloughs off unnecessary ineffective policies such as the current dysfunctional performance appraisal process. With self-management, leadership of the context, and management of process the current appraisal process is obsolete. This new paradigm demands more sophisticated methods of interaction.

Surely the Human Potential Leadership Department will be in a much better position than the Human Resource Department to improve employee engagement and to solve that lingering problem.

The Language of Employee Engagement: Stop Using “Drive” Start Using “Facilitate”

If you have time look up the definition of the word “drive.” You may be surprised with the results. The first definition in the Merriam-Webster online is to “frighten or prod in a desired direction.” Most of the rest of the choices in definition included the words “force” or “cause.”

Very often I see articles about improving employee performance or employee engagement with titles that include the word drive: “How to Drive Performance… or How to Drive Employee Engagement… etc.” Is “drive” the correct word to use? Is this the most useful thinking for an effective leader?

A leader’s language is a reflection of how he/she thinks. How the leader thinks will determine his/her actions. How a leader thinks about people and problems determines the decisions he/she makes and the policies he/she support.

Stop using “Drive”

Some of the language we use doesn’t fit the employee engagement model. Our language often damages engagement without our knowledge. Drive is one of those words to avoid because it suggests thoughts and encourages actions that are contrary to those required to sustain employee engagement. Engagement is a delicate condition that can easily be damaged, often unknowingly. Engagement is a subjective emotional state within the minds of employees. It can be quite fleeting if the conditions in the environment don’t consistently support it.

Recently, while delivering a training program at a client, the manager told me he needed to step out of the training to participate in a staff meeting because an employee had “acted out” the day before and the staff needed to be reminded “that type of behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” I asked him how long the meeting would take and therefore, how long he would be out of the training. He said, “15 minutes at most.” He was out over 45 minutes. His excuse for being late was his senior management needed to discuss other issues that would help drive performance.

Instead of making it easier for my participant to gain fully from my training program his managers put up a road block by forcing him to stay later than his agreement with me. They needed to "drive" his performance. This type of leadership sends mixed messages to employees. Mixed messages can damage engagement. Think about it for a moment, would you have been more engaged or less engaged by those decisions and mixed messages? Furthermore, sending mixed messages and limiting employee choices can often create “acting out” behavior the very reason for the meeting in the first place.

Start Using “Facilitate”

To facilitate means to make easier. In contrast, driving means to frighten or prod. Which do you think creates greater, more predictable, and more sustainable employee engagement “driving or facilitating” performance? Which will create greater results?

Leaders who think in terms of “driving performance” will have a tendency to take action first and insist their employees take action. In a “drive” environment often the action the employee must take is often the one his/her manager insists upon.

These “drive” leaders will look for heroes (or heroines) who fix problems so they can be rewarded. I have seen how this type of leadership encourages some high performers to actually create problems so they can step in a fix them to get credit or rewards. This is only one unintended consequence of talent management programs. These leaders will reward action over reflection. They will reward results over relationships.

Leaders who drive performance tend to have less trust and create a “management dependent” environment instead of a “self-management” environment. Management dependent means employees rely too heavily on what management wants. This slows response to change and, at worst, can lead to a bureaucracy. In contrast, a “self-management” environment allows employees freedom to act within a context (set of parameters). This accelerates decision making and problem solving.

Leaders who facilitate look for employees who can fix the root causes so problems don’t re-surface. They value reflection as much as action. They understand that learning can only occur with action combined with reflection. Facilitator leaders trust their people. They place a greater value on predictable processes than they do on identifying heroes through talent management.

Leaders who are facilitators listen more and learn more. They are able to identify new ideas that often come from their employees. They recognize and value an emotionally healthy environment. They are willing to allow people to “self-manage”. They spend more time on strategic thinking and less time on people problems.

Start using the word facilitate in place of the word drive. It will make a huge difference in how you think about your role as a leader. It will open up new ways to working with people and will create new opportunities for improvement.

Engagement and Synergy: A Marriage Made for Innovation

The driest place on earth is in South America. The Chilean dessert of Atacama is on the western cost of Chile and spans 600 miles. There are many reasons for this strange meteorological anomaly but that is not the real story. The real story is that life thrives in this dessert. Why? It’s because of the interaction and synergy between the cool water and the hot air of the dessert.

Each morning the cool water in the Pacific at the 24th parallel creates a cool breeze that drifts over the warm sun dried land of the Atacama. A thick fog is created and settles on the arid sun baked land. The cacti and other plants serve as hosts for the moisture in the fog and it condenses on the plants. The plants absorb it and the animals drink it up off the outside of these hosts just before it is either consumed or evaporates.

Rain hasn’t fallen on this dessert in any measurable amount since measurements were started yet life thrives. Without rain life still exists. Why? The interaction between the cool water, the hot air, and heated earth create moisture that is shared by all. This is a great metaphor for how an effective leader and a successful organization can operate.

Often leaders and employees have opposite personalities yet they must work together to solve problems. They can choose to be in conflict and avoid each other or they can choose to optimize their communications to create synergy. By creating quality interactions between two people of oppose styles new ideas can emerge that were never expected.

Synergy is cooperative interactions between two or more people (or objects) that result in solutions or ideas that would have been impossible if the individuals tried to create them on their own. Synergy produces innovation.

On its own, the cool water could not create fog. On its own, the hot air or earth could not sustain life. Together they can create an environment that does both.

Too often leaders use talent management alone to create innovation. Improving the quality of individuals alone will not create synergy. Improving the quality of interactions between people is more important and that should be the focus of a great leader.

Stop trying to improve your individual employees. Instead focus on improving the quality of how they interact. Miracles can happen.

Creating Dysfunction Instead of Engagement in Three Easy Steps

Samuel Johnson once said, fraud dreads examination but truth invites it. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority is dreading the next steps in the investigation on safety inspections. In a recent Wall Street Journal report the MTA admitted that their workers failed to do the required tests and maintenance on its subway signals. Furthermore, managers failed to properly manage the workers and failed to put processes in place to prevent them from filing the false reports.

This is serious. Proper functioning signals will prevent delays and PREVENT ACCIDENTS. Proper functioning signals will stop a train if an operator misses a red light. What would cause a worker to commit fraud on something so important? Workers submitting false reports put passengers, the MTA, and themselves in danger. What would cause workers to be so dysfunctional? Three simple steps can easily do it:

1. Set stretch numerical goals beyond capabilities

2. Hold people accountable to those goals

3. Rely on inspection to catch errors

Many organization set stretch numerical goals that are often beyond some capabilities. This causes employees to take short-cuts. This is exactly what the MTA workers did. Most of the problems occurred on the highest traffic areas because high traffic makes it much more difficult to do maintenance. Workers need to dodge trains more frequently to ensure their own safety during the tasks. Furthermore, the tasks of inspection and maintenance are arduous and complex.

Many organizations attempt to hold people accountable to overly challenging tasks or goals without knowing what the outcome will be. This is exactly what the MTA did. This creates dysfunction because it forces workers to either make short-cuts. They must achieve what management expects or risk being criticized for not doing their job and therefore receive a lower performance evaluation rating. This is not the only place where this dysfunction plays out. Our high school (and college) students admit succumbing pressure to perform by cheating. Depending upon the study, 80-95% of students admit to surrendering to the cheating option.

Inspection is important but not as a way to ensure compliance. Inspection should be used to uncover important knowledge about how to improve the processes. It should not be used as a club to threaten employees with punishment. According to the article, the MTA’s inspector general will now look for those individuals responsible for falsifying the reports. I wonder how much truth he/she will get with that approach.

Why not develop engagement instead? What should the MTA management do to improve safety, reduce costs and improve maintenance quality? The short answer is to engage the workers in creating the solutions and stop trying to catch them doing things wrong. Here are a few basic steps:

• Use the current inspection data to identify where and how the improvements to the maintenance process can be improved.

• Engage the workers to help improve the process while helping them to feel safe and helping improve their productivity. Make it safe for them to tell the truth without fear of reprisal.

• Take their recommendations and fix their processes.

• Stop using inspection as a club and start using it to increase the knowledge of the MTA to improve the processes again.

Are you creating dysfunction and then looking for the offenders so you can hit them with the inspection club? Stop. It is only hurting everyone. It is not leadership. It is dysfunction in three easy steps.

Leaders Can Learn Principles of Engagement from The Lord of the Rings

I was watching the Lord of the Rings the other night. It was the first of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. The fellowship is made up of 9 very different characters of various ages and races. They all agree, voluntarily, to risk life and limb to destroy the ring by returning it to Mount Doom in Mordor. How do the members become so engaged in the face of such danger? The answer to this question can help us uncover key principles that any of us can use to create voluntary engagement in our organizations.

The principle is there must be a very “big why” to create cooperation. The Council of Elrond decides that the threat of Sauron is too great. The Council describes, to the characters, the history behind the threat, the consequences of the continued threat, and the benefits that will be realized when the ring is destroyed.

In an organization, once a strategic initiative is chosen by the leaders, the Senior Leader(s) can explain why the initiative is so important. He/she can explain the history, the consequences if we fail and the benefits if we succeed. These explanations can be delivered in the different “languages” of the different people depending upon individual needs or “languages” (not necessarily English vs. Spanish for example but also different departments have different ways of interpreting concepts).

The “big why” is brought to life by providing a clear picture, or vision, to constituents. Frodo is given a clear picture of what the Shire will look like if he doesn’t take the ring to Mordor. He sees his cousins in chains and his wonderful peaceful home in flames.

Too often leaders just assume that everyone understands the strategic initiative in the same way they do. Too often the leaders are too close to the issues because they discuss them and live with them for days before an initiative is chosen. Most employees are far behind in their understanding. They need to be given time and energy to help them catch up. They each may need a different explanation of the vision that they can personally relate to. Too often leaders interpret the resistance to the change as “difficult people”. Most often it is because the explanations provided by the leaders were inadequate.

Frodo stepped forward. He volunteered to take the ring to Modor. He asked for help. “I don’t know the way” he explained. He saw his role clearly because no one else had the proper character to resist the evil of the ring. He saw the in-fighting within the Fellowship continuing if he didn’t step forward. He realized without him, the ring would live on.

Once Frodo stepped forward the others could see how they could help bring their own special tools and talents to accomplish the initiative.

Leaders who understand the strengths of their people and allow them to fulfill roles, that best serve not just their own passions and strengths but also serve the organization, will optimize employee engagement. By clearly explaining the roles and responsibilities, the risks of the specific roles, allowing people to step up and volunteer, trusting people’s judgment, avoiding authoritarian decisions as much as possible, and explaining how you will support them while minimizing criticism a leader begins to build the initial engagement needed to begin positive action on the initiative.

Maybe I was just over tired or maybe just in a weird mood but I saw key principles of truth in the movie. Perhaps you can see those too and more importantly perhaps you can implement them in your organization. Maybe it’s just me but I believe running a business today is very much like a trip through Middle-earth where Orcs and Ringwraiths can attack at any time. We need a fellowship of engagement to help us.

Be More Competitive with Self-Management: How Talent management Can Create Dependency and Poor Performance Long-term

There is an important distinction between self- management and manger-dependent management. Most organizations have a manager-dependent environment. This is when the manager must provide feedback to employees in order to create improved performance.

A manager-dependent environment encourages employees wait to receive ideas for improvement from their managers before making any significant changes in performance. This type of environment creates more fear and less innovation. Self-Management increases employee engagement. Employees create their own feedback mechanisms and can act autonomously. This accelerates the decisions and therefore accelerates the ability to adapt to changes.

When my daughter Emily was 12, one morning she missed her school bus. She was very upset and came downstairs to my office crying, “Dad, I missed the bus. Can you take me to school?” Of course I agreed but then asked her a question, “what do you need to do to catch the bus on your own from now on?’ She looked at me in a thoroughly confused manner. At that moment I was not sure she could think of an idea.

When she arrived home that afternoon she said, “Dad, I thought about what you asked. If you buy me a timer I will set it 5 minutes before the bus arrives and if it goes off I will know I only have 5 minutes left. I can then easily catch the bus.”

I told her that sounded great. I also asked her what else she could do to be prepared in the morning. She said she would set her books out by the front door right before bed time. For the next 2-1/2 years she used this method and always caught the bus on time. She self-managed her ability to catch the bus by creating and following her own process.

To become more highly competitive organizations must ask employees to make more decisions on their own. A new book about the virtues of talent management has just been published. It reinforces the Jack Welch management methods. Welch insisted on providing frequent honest feedback with complete candor. In my experience managers don't have that kind of time to provide frequent feedback. They don’t have time to constantly be observing the employees. My point is managers should instead rely more on employee, trust them more, and facilitate them creating their own answers to their own problems just as my daughter was able to identify a way to catch her bus.

In order for employees to figure out ways to manage and measure their own performance, a leader needs to recognize that the existence of an authoritative structure, an authoritative policy like performance evaluations, and a management orthodoxy like talent management all work together to sustain a dysfunctional environment that prevents self-management from flourishing.

Effective managers should stop employees when they ask questions that perpetuate manager-dependency. Instead managers need to be courageous and trust that employees can create their own solutions. This requires courage because performance may suffer in the short run but the payoff in the long-term is worth it.

A leader’s first responsibility is to create an environment of autonomy. Talent management means a ranking of employees, rewarding the top performers and “yanking out” the poorer performers. This policy and practice creates unnecessary competition minimizing the opportunity for innovation.

Courageous leaders allow people to make decisions within the proper context. A leader can clarify the vision and the purpose of the organization. Then by clarifying the strategic initiatives a leader can allow employees to create their own goals and objective. These goals can be aligned with the strategic initiatives to move the organization closer to that mission and vision. The autonomy is created and with autonomy comes choice. With choice comes engagement. With engagement comes performance. Self-management must replace manager-dependent management.

Effective Leaders Use Respect and Choice to Deal with Unacceptable Behavior

Did you notice I didn’t entitle this blog, dealing with difficult people? That’s because the phrase “difficult people” is not a useful thought. If the person is a problem then why did you (or the organization) hire them? If you really have a problem person please go fix your hiring process and then come back to this article for help with unacceptable behaviors because the problem is not with the people. It is with you!

Gandhi said we “must become the change we seek.” I want to add to that, we must change first before we can expect a change in someone else. This is about what you can do as a leader first.

The techniques I am about to share are not about threats or bribes. They are about choice and respect. There are three major steps.

First, agree that the unacceptable behavior is a problem at your workplace. Christine Pearson, a management professor at the University of North Carolina business school conducted a survey about incivility:

“Christine…surveyed 775 people regarding "rude, insensitive, discourteous behavior" at the office. Survey results indicated that twelve percent of the people that experience rude behavior quit their jobs, while 52 percent reported losing work time, and 22 percent of those surveyed deliberately decreased their work effort. The most troubling statistic is that over 78 percent of those surveyed said that incivility has worsened in the past 10 years (Pearson, Andersson, Porath, 1999).” (http://www.publicvirtues.com/Incivility_Study.html)

Clearly unacceptable behaviors increase costs and reduce productivity in organizations. Make sure everyone (or most everyone) can agree. Give them time to process this truth. Share specific instances so they can relate to the problem.

Second, agree on a list of acceptable behaviors and share them. Clearly describe the following values behaviors in specific observable terms:

• Integrity

• Respect

• Customer Focus

Answer the question, “When someone has integrity, what do you see? When someone has respect for others, what do you see?” Do the same for “Customer Focus”. You must be clear and specific about what you want. Eliminate all opportunity for interpretation if you can. For example, “Listen with the intent to understand: e.g. stop, look, acknowledge what is said, and ask questions when you don’t understand or disagree (avoid criticism or judgment).”

You can then share this list with your team. Ask them to adopt this list and to follow them at work regardless of any situation. Explain that there is never a good reason to break integrity, respect, or customer focus. There are only excuses. Excuses are not acceptable. Tell them that you have committed to the list yourself and that you want them to be free to give you feedback when and if you don't follow the behaviors.

Third, ask the team members to think about committing to the list also and ask them to think about which of the following two options they would prefer.

Option 1: Everyone agree to the behaviors on an informal basis. This means you will not record (or document) any behavior inconsistent with the list. The purpose of option 1 is to learn only and not to punish or threaten. If this option doesn’t work you can always go to option #2.

Option 2: Agree to formally receive feedback about the behaviors. Ask the entire team to agree to the behaviors and ask them to agree give verbal feedback and to document everyone (in writing) when the behaviors don't match the document.

It is probably useful to let Human Resources know that you are doing so they can give complete support. You will be treating everyone the same and everyone fairly and so HR should be able to support you.

You may need training on how to deliver the feedback respectfully. Some people can be disrespectful when they just intend to be helpful.



You can ask the team, "Which option is best for you?" Let them decide. Please remember, this is about respect and choice.



Either option must be presented as being acceptable. However, the purpose is to eliminate the unacceptable behavior as a team and to help each other receive feedback and to learn new approaches to conflict and communication. Research shows that people are almost always unaware when they exhibit unacceptable behavior. The feedback will be the way they become aware. The feedback is a way to learn.



This is about a higher purpose for the organization. It is about creating an environment of trust through respect and choice. It is also about living the higher purpose of being respectful with all human beings (or all beings on the planet) at all times. This is a basic principle for success and can become a reason everyone must make an effort.

Talent Management Alone Leads to Failure

Talent management is the American management theory that concludes that the very best performing organizations are the one who have leaders obsessed with hiring, developing, ranking, and ruthlessly evaluating with candor their talent. Enron was the ultimate “talent management” organization. The demise of Enron cost shareholders more than $11 billion. The stock went from a high of $90/share to a $1/share in just one year.

You might think we could learn from this epic business debacle of Enron but some of us didn’t. I am referring to the authors of a new book confirming the value of talent management. I won’t give the title because I don’t want to promote something I believe is so clearly incomplete and nearly criminally wrong. Smart people can be VERY wrong and I believe this book confirms it.

McKinsey & Company promoted talent management in the late 1990’s and Enron became the poster child for its practices. GE was also a big proponent. Of course Enron and GE were both very successful for a while. We know the story of Enron. GE was also very successful and propelled Jack Welch to celebrity status for management gurus. However, GE has lost its luster too going from a high of around $50/share in 2001 when Jack Welch retired to around $15/share today.

OK, I know there are a million factors for these failures and one could argue that the McKinsey theory of talent management is not the major factor. However, managing talent is not the most effective management theory for today’s complex global economy and any book that tries to persuade me is a wasted read for two reasons:

• This thinking is inconsistent with systems thinking and systems thinking must be at the heart of any management orthodoxy.

• Managing talent creates a dependency on managers by employees and that damages the organizations ability to adapt to change and prevents long-term optimization and predictability.

Talent management demands the manager rank the talent and disproportionately reward the “top” performers while “yanking” the poor performers out. They often call it “rank and yank.” This policy and practice creates a high degree of competition, back-biting, cheating, hiding negative information, and all around dysfunctional behaviors. In systems thinking everyone must cooperate to optimize the system over the long-term. System thinking requires total transparency, complete integrity, and optimum cooperation. “Ranking and yanking” is consistent with short-term thinking and that often destroys the cooperation.

In a system the quality of the interactions between the parts is more important than the quality of the parts. For example, try building the very best car by taking the best parts from numerous different auto manufacturers and building a hybrid car from those best parts. It won’t work. Why, the parts don’t interact optimally.

When managers need to provide constant evaluations with candor, they have little time for anything else. There is never enough time to observe the talented employees to provide an accurate picture. Secondly, if the employees rely on the manager for their feedback then they can become dependent upon the manager for an important part of what gets them engaged. The evaluation process becomes manager-dependent.

Our schools are “manager” dependent and few of them are working well. Instead of allowing students more opportunity to self-manage (track and evaluate their own progress) teachers and administrators use standardized tests, standardized curriculums, and teacher dependent systems that take away autonomy. Schools are failing to deliver results. This is one reason why.

Talent management broke down at Enron and it broke down at GE. When Jack Welch left the GE stock started a continual slide. If talent management was the right American Management theory wouldn’t have enabled GE to continue it success? When Welch left the results left with him.

A better way is to create system-dependent processes instead of manager-dependent processes. We can do better by helping all managers and employees self-manage. We can do better by helping all students to self-manage. Self-management allows an organization to better respond to the accelerated pace of change. We need a different model. We need a self-managing model.

We see self-management in nature. Instead continuous evaluation by a higher power animals and plants operate and thrive in self-organizing systems. Birds flock by self-management to hard wired principles. Fish swim in schools following key principles of survival. Each fish or bird manages itself according to those principles. We can learn much from nature. Talent management is not one of those things.

Doing the Wrong Things faster Still Makes Them Wrong

I don’t believe in the value of the typical performance appraisals. They often damage trust and they ignore real root causes of problems by looking to the individual to fix problems that are actually in the system. People often ask me if I subscribe to performance appraisal software that enables managers to more quickly process performance appraisals and track individual performance. The purpose of this software is to accelerate the tracking of individual performance to make higher quality promotional and compensation decisions. Unfortunately accelerating decisions using the wrong tool is still wrong.

I help organize and coordinate a fund raising program for local Rotary Club called the Program Book. I t is for the largest annual fund raising event. Members place ads in the ad book and it is distributed to all members for the purpose of raising money and promoting businesses who support Rotary.

A Doctor provided me a hand written ad for the book. The participants in the ad book are supposed to give original artwork in order to insure quality and accuracy. Instead the Dr. gave me a hand written note! Have you ever seen a Dr.’s handwriting? I couldn’t read it. Furthermore, I did not have the ability to request a correction because I had to go out of town. I ran out of time to contact her. The ad was, unfortunately, printed incorrectly.

When the Doctor saw the ad she complained to her Rotary friends. She and others in Rotary blamed me for the quality of the ad. Her hand-off to me was very poor yet I was reprimanded. Perhaps I should have taken extra steps to avoid the mistake yet the suggested process for providing the original artwork was not followed.

The real root cause of the problem was the inability or unwillingness of the Doctor to follow instructions. Yet, I was the one reprimanded for the error. Is the typical performance appraisal any different? More often than not, employees do their best to avoid errors. The errors are almost never intentional and almost always involve factors outside the control of the employee. Is evaluating the individual really the best way to optimize learning or improvement? Let’s look at my situation.

Was I supposed to do something special for the Doctor? Why does the Doctor require special attention when others are able to follow instructions? Should I have instead stood firm and insisted the Doctor provide original artwork or should I have refused the ad?

A more useful approach would be to agree on a process for accepting or rejecting the artwork submissions. Continuously improving that process is more important than attempting to evaluate individual behavior in the face of a dysfunctional system.

Performance appraisals don’t effectively address system issues that directly impact individual performance. Why not focus on the improvement of the process instead of focusing on improving the individual? Evaluating the individual faster using software is still the wrong thing to do.

Things Are Not As Simple As You Think– Do Leaders Know How to Solve Problems?

The other day I went to the refrigerator in our garage to get a beer. I opened the door and noticed the light was out. I thought, “It must be the bulb.” Wrong!

I called to my wife that the bulb was out in the outside refrigerator and not to be alarmed. I would pick up a new bulb at the store later that day.

I bought a new bulb and went straight to the refrigerator when I got home. After screwing in the blub it didn’t work. “Now what?”, I asked. I noticed the air from the inside of the refrigerator was not as cold as usual. “Oh my gosh” I thought. “I bet the plug was accidently pulled.” I checked it. Wrong! The plug was in. “What is going on?”, I asked.

Later than day I was vacuuming the house and when I plugged the vacuum into an upstairs bathroom it didn’t work. The refrigerator light bulb still didn’t work but the one in my head went on. The circuit breaker must have tripped! I went to the basement and flipped the circuit breaker. Sure enough, the vacuum worked and so did the refrigerator (and the bulb). It was the circuit breaker all along. Or so I thought. But, what was the root cause of the circuit breaker tripping?

As leaders we can learn from this story about how to solve problems. Very often Leaders are approached by employees because a problem has surfaced. A leader will jump to a conclusion and an immediate action to solve the problem. It is so easy to just jump in with a solution and not think about “How can we optimize learning.” However, if the leader jumps in too often with an immediate solution he/she is encouraging employees to be dependent and not independent.

Isn’t it better to provide employees with a predictable problem solving model that employees can use themselves? Isn’t it better to “teach people to fish than to provide fish for them when they are hungry?”

A question I always ask managers at a new client is, “Are you proactive or reactive when solving problems?” They always rate themselves poorly admitting they a more reactive and not proactive. This creates tremendous waste and that waste is very often immeasurable. It doesn’t show up as a line item on the Profit and Loss statements.

I had just used the leaf blower in an outside outlet. I thought, “That must be the problem! It was the leaf blower!” I tested my theory by running the leaf blower again from that outlet. I checked the refrigerator and the circuit breaker. Both were working fine. I was confused. I still didn’t know the root cause.

The predictable problem solving model (learning model) is the Shewhart Model (or also known as the Deming Model) i.e. “Plan - Do - Study – Act”. The Plan step includes these questions:
• Is it important that we fix this problem? Is it a priority?
• What do we want? What is the ideal? What is the vision?
• What problem do we specifically want to solve?
• What is the root causes of the failure?
• How will we solve it?
• How will we know it is solved?

Let’s apply this to my refrigerator/circuit breaker problem. It is very important I fix this because if the refrigerator stops working long enough, the food will spoil. I have a good deal of food there that I depend upon.

My vision is, I want to be sure the refrigerator works regardless of what happens and I want to be sure I check the circuit breaker to be sure it has not tripped. Ideally I want to correct the problem so the breaker doesn’t ever trip.

I will solve it with small experiments using the P-D-S-A Learning model.
I will know it works when I occasionally inspect the circuit breaker and it is still on.

Now let’s move to the Do step. This step means you implement your plan. In my example I would test different appliances in each circuit in the house and on the outside of the house. I would check the refrigerator after each test. I would record the data afterwards.

The Study step is the analysis of the data. Here are some questions we can ask:
• What does the data tell us?
• Are we achieving the results we expected?
• What did we learn?
• Can we change the system to achieve the results we want every time?

For the refrigerator I would review which outlets might have tripped the circuit breaker, if any, and then formulate a repair process for those outlets.

The final step is the Act section. This is where we implement our conclusions from the analysis step. In my case, I would repair any of the outlets that showed up needing repair when the data was collected.

As a leader how are you solving problems? Are you jumping in with your ideas first for the sake of expediency (go buy a bulb)? Are you training your employees to depend upon you for the solutions for their problems instead of depending upon themselves? Are you missing an opportunity to train your people to be more autonomous? Are you creating more of a bureaucratic than an entrepreneurial organization?

Take time to learn the problem solving model. Use it. As you can see, even a simple problem like a refrigerator can baffle you or waste your time. If you don’t use a predictable process you will definitely waste your time and money.

Managerial Practices Can Appear to be a Bit “Crazy”

Managerial practices can appear to be a bit “crazy” if they are based on beliefs very different than our own. Please keep an open mind as we explore the answers to these three questions. You may think I am a bit crazy because of the possible significant gap in beliefs we may have.

Question #1: “Will an improvement in individual performance by each employee lead to an improvement in overall organization improvement?” A “yes” answer suggests the belief that a “whole” can be improved by improving the individual parts. A “no” answer acknowledges that the improvement of the parts is not enough to create improvement of the whole. In other words, something else is an influence on improvement.

The 1980 Olympics was forever marked in my memory when the USA Hockey Team won the Gold Medal in the final game against the Russians. The team was made up of a group of very talented individuals but those chosen were not necessarily the very best individual performers. The coach, Herb Brooks, was looking for a dynamic interaction between the players. He wanted them to care more about the success of the team than they did about their personal success. Brooks "You're looking for players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back," Brooks once said. "I look for these players to play hard, to play smart and to represent their country."

The dynamic interaction between the parts was more important than the quality of the parts on the USA Hokey Team. This is the fundamental belief that will cause someone to choose my answer, “no”. A significant improvement in the parts can actually cause harm to the entire team. I would use the baseball scandal as the example. Those individual players who used steroids to improve their individual performance eventually hurt the entire team and the image of the entire national pastime.

Question #2: “Will evaluating individual employee performance during a performance evaluation improve the relationship with the employee?” A “yes” answer suggests that someone who is judged will feel trusted and appreciated. A “yes” answer also suggests a belief that a performance evaluation can improve relationships. Research shows that performance evaluations do little or nothing to improve relationships and in fact can often damage trust between an employee and supervisor. Adecco Staffing of North America conducted a research study in March 2006. The results showed of 2,000 people surveyed just 49% of the workers said they find managers take performance appraisals seriously and only 44% said they receive constructive feedback. How can this type of result improve working relationships? A “no” answer acknowledges that criticism can damage a relationship.

Research shows the higher the level of trust in an organization the higher the performance. If trust is a critical element to high performing organizations then developing strong trusting relationships must be a key factor.

Question #3: “Will holding individual employees accountable for reaching their goals improve organizational performance?” A “yes” answer here suggests a belief that achieving individual goals is a key factor in organizational performance. Holding people accountable means what? Does that mean one will get blamed when things don’t go the way they should? What does “accountable” mean anyway. Is it accepting responsibility? Can you accept responsibility for results when you don’t have all factors consistently under your control?

Hero or Bum?

As a young salesman I was assigned one of the largest accounts in our company, namely Gillette. This was a Fortune 500 company with high visibility and great influence in our company. I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. They had been working on a new product for two years and one month after my assignment to the account I was awarded a very large contract for packaging.

Not being trained properly I was asked to handle the large order and after two months I came to find out that we were going to miss three important ship dates. There was nothing we could do but agree to make the packaging on the dates they were suggesting.

I remember the meeting being so stressful. My boss was giving me glaring looks like I was some kind of evil idiot because I had let this get to a point where the company would have to incur a great deal of overtime to accommodate the orders.

I was a hero one week and then two months later I was a bum. Why? It was because there were factors outside of my control. I had made an important sales goal but I had failed to schedule the order properly because of a lack of training. I was naive and inexperienced.

The fact that I could go from a hero to a bum all in three months tells me that the answer needs to be “no”. How can I be held accountable for something I didn’t understand? How can I receive accolades for an order that fell into my lap?

How can I receive blame for a mistake (poor planning) when I was completely unaware of what I should do? Sure I could have asked the right questions. Perhaps I should have thought about it harder. But what is the lesson here and how can an organization avoid this type of situation in the future? Will holding me accountable for my mistake help the organization in the future? Will the fear of punishment help future young sales people or will a improvements in the training process help more?

The typical managerial practice in the typical organization includes:

• Spending significant energy and resources to evaluate individuals instead of evaluating the quality of the interactions between the employees.

• Working toward results while often damaging or failing to improve working relationships.

• Holding individuals accountable for goals when they have little control over the key factors that generate the results. This approach causes damaged relationships and a climate of blame.

Once one understands different beliefs, these practices, although quite popular, begin to seem a bit crazy.

3 Reasons to NOT Treat Star Performers Differently

We love our heroes and star performers. I love them too. There is very often a mystique about a hero or star. I watched an interview with Medal of Honor recipient Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Guinta. Guinta stepped into the line of fire to help two comrades on the battlefield in Afghanistan. He acted seemingly without fear in the face of incredible danger. He succeeded. He is clearly a hero in every sense of the word. However, predictably, he didn’t see himself in that way. He claimed to behave the way he was trained and that every other soldier is expected to behave that same way. He followed principles.

In January of 2009 “Sully” Sullenberger landed a USAIR flight in the Hudson after both engines shut down from a bird strike. He was honored by everyone including the President of the United States, his hometown, and 60 Minutes. He was called a true America hero by many in the press. His actions were called a miracle. He claimed that he and his crew were only doing their jobs. He said, "But I know I can speak for the entire crew when I tell you we were simply doing the job we were trained to do." Sullenberger followed processes based upon solid and proven principles.

Why is it so often that our heroes are so modest and downplay their star qualities and give away their accolades? They know something that we often forget. They have a system supporting them.

In the case of Sullenberger the flight crew was thoroughly trained to react quickly and decisively in an emergency situation. Sullenberger took control of the plane and instructed his co-pilot to read through the appropriate check lists. The check lists and the cooperation of the co-pilot did as much to save all 155 people as did Sullenberger. They all played a significant role in the coordination of a successful heroic event. Sullenberger did NOT act alone. He could not have possibly done it alone yet we still want to hold him up as some super natural champion. Heroes understand systems. The general public doesn’t yet appreciate the influence a system has on performance. We don’t yet think in terms of systems.

There are three reasons why we should not treat star performers differently whether it is in the military, the airlines or in our organizations. First, doing so ignores the overall system interactions that helped contribute to the successes. We can forget the catcher who snags a wild pitch to save a perfect game for the star pitcher. We ignore the co-pilot’s role of reading and fulfilling the emergency engine startup check list or the flight attendant who keeps the passengers form panicking even though they need to stand on the wing of a jet in the middle of the Hudson River. System interactions contribute greatly to a hero’s success. Acknowledging this helps us engage others and understand a bigger picture.

Second, treating “stars” differently prevents us from duplicating successes in the future. By giving all the credit to one person that event becomes a “person dependent event” not a system dependent event. If the success is great don’t we want to duplicate it as much as possible? Sullenberger is now retired. Does that mean we cannot teach others to duplicate his actions? Why can’t we have 100 heroes in USAIR and not just one?

Finally, treating heroes and stars differently prevents us from learning. It creates a barrier to learning. Aren’t we are saying, “We just couldn’t have done it without them?” Instead, isn’t it more important to acknowledge their accomplishments and the system interactions and ask, “What can we learn from this?” Isn’t it just as important to learn from our successes as it is to learn from our mistakes?

So much time and effort is spent now on looking for ways to keep our star performers in our organizations. We court them, provide opportunities for them, we lavish them with praise and bonuses just to be sure we them happy. The next time you see a star being honored think about what we might be missing. What other system interactions need to be honored and who else needs to be engaged? How can we duplicate that same set of circumstances and interactions such that we duplicate the success? Finally, ask, what can we learn? If we want continued success and continued engagement in our organizations we need to stop treating our heroes so differently.

Addicted to Performance Appraisals - Trust and Appraisals Don't Mix

The dictionary defines addiction as the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice that is psychologically or physically habit-forming (as narcotics) to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. I am convinced business people are addicted to performance appraisals. Up to 90 percent or more of all organizations conduct performance appraisals in some form or another. It is therefore unnerving to realize that appraisal, more often than not, damage trust and performance, the exact opposite of their intended purposes. If one takes few moments to research how employees and/managers feel about conducting performance appraisals, one will find a paradox. The very same sentence will describe how the practice is universally hated and at the same time claim how it is one of the most important tasks for an organization. Surely this is a sign of addiction.

Performance appraisals come in different forms. They may range from the simple written appraisal of an employee’s performance by his manager, to a more intensive method called the 360 degree feedback instrument in which all those who “surround” the employee - customers, boss, colleagues and direct reports – give a rating (a grade). Typically, employees are rated (or graded) on a scale of 1 to 5.

Companies that rely on performance appraisals to evaluate employees have the best of intentions. Unfortunately, however, those good intentions frequently backfire into damaged trust and worse performance. Employees don’t see the value of performance appraisals in their current form. The Watson & Wyatt WorkUSA® 2004 study revealed that only three out of ten U.S. workers say their company’s performance management program actually does what it intends to do - improve performance . And only two out of ten workers say their company helps poorly performing workers improve.

Why are we addicted, why are they not working, and what can we do to break the addiction and replace them with a more effective and universally accepted practice? I hope to provide some answers to these questions here.

Why are we addicted?

We are addicted to performance reviews because we grew up with that same model in school. We have been taught to focus on the importance of improving the individual. The school system insists we all work on our own and it continually grades our individual efforts. The teacher attempts to “download” facts into our “empty skulls” while standing in front of the room, deciding the subject matter (curriculum) for us and pushing through the material to keep with a specified schedule. We are asked questions and are expected to raise our hands individually, competing for her/his time and attention, and give the “right” answer to her/his questions. After the dump of facts then we are tested to see if we remembered. We are graded as individuals. We rarely (at least not as a rule) are asked to work together in teams to share knowledge and learn from each other. We are rarely asked to learn in a group and synergize . We are held responsible for our own grades. We are treated as independent parts in the school. We regurgitate “facts” and rarely are asked to develop our problem solving skills (especially as a team).

As managers and leaders we have applied this same way of thinking about people to our organizations. We treat them as independent parts in the organization with little or no consideration regarding the context (environment) of the behavior. We grade them with little knowledge about how their behavior is influenced by the environment within which they work. There are benefits and drawbacks to this way of thinking. The main benefit is the ease of decision making. Grading an individual is simple and easy to do. The person responsible for the context (environment) has little or no responsibility and therefore has little work to do except assign a grade. They may also have to explain the grade if the individual complains but that rarely happens.

The drawback is, there is little or no evaluation of the context and so any search for flaws in the context rarely happens. If there is a problem in the context it usually will go undetected in this way of thinking. If the grade for the individual is poor, it is assumed the “problem is in the individual, not the context. Problems that reside in the context will continue.

Without trust we can't have predictable employee engagement. Without predictable engagement we can't have predictable performance.

2 Reasons Why Your Performance Appraisal is NOT Really About You

My sister worked for a company that was about to be sold to an investor. She called me in a panic. Her performance appraisal was scheduled and she was nervous they were about to fire her right before the sale. I assured her the request to schedule a performance appraisal was to provide the new buyer with evidence about the performance of the current employees. I was sure the buyer merely wanted to have some evidence about how effective they were and if they could support the change in ownership.

The next day she called to tell me I was right. Her original fears were unfounded. Her performance review was excellent and met all her expectations. Clearly the seller (my sister’s current employer) wanted to convince the buyer the people were excellent.

Was that performance appraisal really about her or about the sale? Most performance appraisals are not really about the people but instead about some other motivation or intended outcome. This can include things such as a bias, a manipulation, poor leadership, justification for a raise or bonus, justification for a firing, and justification for a promotion or a demotion. Aren’t performance appraisals supposed to be about improving the performance of the individual? If so, why would leaders misuse the policy for their own selfish motivations?

The current performance appraisal process really doesn’t work well and there are two basic reasons why:

1. The basic assumptions behind the current appraisal are flawed

2. The appraisal process is most often manipulated to justify some motivation other than its original purpose e.g. justifying a raise (or bonus) to keep a high performer happy or justifying the firing of a poor performer.

The main assumption of the current appraisal process is that improving the quality of the people will improve the organizational performance. This describes our desire to analyze the parts of a whole in order to understand the whole. This is inconsistent consistent with systems thinking and leaders must embrace systems thinking in order to achieve predictable organization improvement.

Most leaders now assume that poor organizational performance is rooted in poor employee performance. Nearly ninety percent of organizations conduct performance appraisals and that is its main purpose. This is merely a dysfunctional yet sophisticated form of blame. Additional assumptions that follow from this are:

• Individuals have control over the results of their work and the factors that allow them to achieve their goals. This is false. There are always many factors that contribute to the success of a goal.

•  Managers can evaluate individual performance separate from the contributions of others and the influence of the work tools, environment etc. This is false. Managers cannot separate their bias (either positive or negative) from their evaluation.

None of these are true because they are inconsistent with systems thinking. Instead, the correct assumption is: “the quality of the interactions between employees (and departments) is more important for improvement of the organization than improving the quality of the people.” In other words, you can’t separate the evaluation of the person from the quality of the interactions that person has with their co-workers and the working environment. If this is true one must conclude that the typical appraisal doesn’t evaluate the individual. It evaluates their interactions. It is not about the person it’s about the interactions of that person in that particular environment.

Leaders often manipulate the appraisal process to serve their own purposes. Just as with my sister, the owner manipulated the process to make all employees “look good” so the new buyer would be impressed. This compromised the opportunity to receive real feedback for improvement. It compromised the truth.



Leaders very often will compromise the process to achieve some short term goal. The appraisal then becomes more about achieving the goal and less about the person receiving the appraisal.

That performance appraisal with your name on it is really NOT about you. It is really about how you are able to interact with others and environmental factors outside of your control.

Attempting Fairness with Policy Alone Damages Engagement

Treating all employees fairly with correct policy sounds important, reasonable, and necessary. All managers should do it. Correct? Unfortunately the concept of fairness is vague at best and misleading at worst because it depends on the interpretation of each individual and that creates too much variation in interpretation. An attempt to manage fairness with policy alone creates a lack of employee engagement especially when the process is ineffective or non-existent.

My daughter Emily is a junior in college and works part time for a catering company. She drives to one of the catering company clients to serve dinner to elderly customers at a Senior Living facility. Her boss rarely sees her. He does little more than schedule the workers. He is rarely at the location because the students work well as a team and need little or no supervision. The process for serving dinner is very predictable and relatively easy to learn and implement.

After working a year for this company Emily was scheduled for a raise. The company policy required she receive a performance review before she could be approved for her raise. This policy was an attempt to treat all employees fairly by insuring all employees who receive a raise in fact deserve one. It sounds reasonable and necessary however, there is a problem. The boss is rarely, if ever, available to observe her performance. He therefore must guess. There is no predictable process in place to access Emily’s performance. The policy exists but there is no way to carry it out because the process can’t deliver it.

The boss and Emily met. He explained his rating of “3.2” on a scale of 1 to 4. In this company’s performance management policy the “1” rating is unsatisfactory and requires immediate dismissal; the “2” required immediate improvement with a performance plan; the “3” means “meets expectations”; and the “4” means “exceptional”. The boss explained that “no one ever” receives a “4” rating because he doesn’t believe in it. Everyone can improve and therefore the rating of “exceptional” is unreachable and unattainable. The boss had his own way of interpreting the policy.

My daughter was disappointed in her rating because she had never missed a day of work scheduled, had filled in for other employees when they called in sick or needed an evening off multiple times, and the clients loved her. She continually received unsolicited accolades and even gifts from the seniors. She was not only disappointed but also appalled by his explanation. She felt de-motivated and discouraged.

She decided to speak up asking, “How can you rate my performance, you are never here?” “That’s not true” he replied. “Occasionally I arrive at the end of the shift in time for me to see you mopping the floor.” Policy alone cannot deliver fairness nor can it deliver engagement. An event that was intended to increase engagement actually damaged it. Policies don’t deliver fairness, processes do. Without predictable processes, based on sound theory, fairness will be non-existent and engagement will be damaged.

While all employees need to understand policy it is not the policy alone that delivers the outcomes. It is the process. Employees also need to be treated as individuals. Their individual needs, characteristics, skills all need to be addressed to honor their unique make-up. The current performance appraisal process doesn’t deliver this (nor will it ever be able to do so in its current form). Although my daughter’s story is a bit unusual in its detail, the outcome is very common, i.e. a disengaged employee after a “good” performance review.

Policy alone cannot deliver fairness and engagement. A process that is both flexible and clear is needed to manage the variation in desired outcomes. Too often a leader “sends down” edicts to the masses and expects compliance. It just doesn’t work that way. That is an unsophisticated way of achieving engagement and the results show it.

Are You Stealing Accountability?

I love my 10 year old Acura. Although it has 250,000 it runs beautifully. Of course, with a 10 year old car one must expect to replace parts occasionally. One morning the front left ball joint failed and I was stranded at a park with my dogs.

Luckily I have AAA membership. I called and requested a tow. The nature of the breakdown caused the front end to be nearly touching the pavement. I cautioned the AAA agent to send the right kind of tow truck to handle such a situation. She assured me “all our service stations are knowledgeable professional shops”. Of course, you guessed it, when the truck arrived the driver proclaimed, “I brought the wrong kind of truck. I will need to get a different one.” He suggested I call AAA and report the error and gain approval for him to implement the new action.

I took his advice and called AAA. When a woman answered, a different person from the original customer service representative, I realized the explanation was going to be challenging and the accountability for the error was non-existent.

It took a while but the driver returned with the correct truck and I was off to have my car repaired. On the way to the shop I was wondering how, and if, AAA could learn from this situation. I tried to warn the first customer service person to avoid a mistake. The mistake still happened and it caused wasted time for AAA, the tow truck driver, the towing company and the customer (me). What was the root cause(s) of the error and how could AAA learn to avoid it in the future? Unless accountability is set up into the system the answers to these questions will be elusive and the mistakes will likely reoccur.

Accountability means to be responsible and it requires four elements. First people need to be aware of the situation or problem. Second, they must understand a specific process to follow. Third, they must agree to follow the process. Finally, there must be feedback (data or consequences) if the process fails. It is a leader’s responsibility to set up the system so that all four elements are present. Without these elements a leader just ends up blaming people for mistakes and learning is compromised.

In my story all four elements were missing. The initial customer service person was clearly un-aware of the need or the meaning of the information I provided her regarding the condition of the car and the type of truck needed. In addition, she had no clear process (I am guessing because of my impression) to handle this information or request. Third, she obviously made no agreement to follow such a process. Finally, it seems there was no feedback to either her or any other customer service person regarding the mistake (again I am guessing).

Are you setting up accountability or just blaming people for mistakes when they occur? If you don’t set up accountability then you are stealing the opportunity from people to optimize their learning. Perhaps if there was a process to escalate the call to a supervisory level when a puzzling or challenging question was asked that might have begun to set up the accountability system in AAA. Perhaps if the telephone system was set up to quickly escalate the call, as needed, to a knowledgeable technician. Perhaps if the customer service person was trained to recognize the opportunity and to transfer the call, the second element of accountability would be met. Perhaps if there was a feedback loop to report wasted time for tow truck drivers it would create the forth element of accountability. Perhaps if there was a team of knowledgeable process experts who could study the root causes and therefore modify the process or change the training processes (consequences and feedback) the mistake would not be repeated.

It is a leader’s job to set up the accountability system. In the 15 years of consulting rarely have I seen an organization with a robust accountability system. Instead, leaders tend to look for mistakes, guess at root causes on their own, and use a performance appraisal process to punish the employee who unfortunately found him or herself in the middle of a dysfunctional system.

Are you stealing accountability from your organization and from your people? Stop now and set up the four key elements. Stealing accountability is wasteful and it creates victims not leaders.

Don't Get Caught In the Middle: How to Avoid Becoming a Mediator with Employees

When I was a young boy my friends and I would often play “monkey in the Middle”. It was a rather cruel but fun game. The “monkey” was the person in between two others who would throw a ball back and forth. The “monkey” would run back and forth jumping to catch, or at least touch, the ball. Once touched the person who threw it would then take the “monkey’s” place in the middle. We counted the number of throws and kept score. The one who had thrown the ball the most times was the winner. In other words, the one who was able to stay out of the middle the longest won.


As a leader have you ever found yourself in the middle of a conflict between two employees? Have you ever been able to mediate a solution for them? How much time did it take? How much energy did you expend? Furthermore, were you able to resolve the issue between them and feel confident it would not return? I doubt it. Intermediaries usually end up running back and forth trying to understand each side of the argument, reaching for the “ball”, rarely touching it, and often ending up an “exhausted loser”.


How can we avoid this unfortunate, ineffective, and wasteful situation as leaders? We must create an environment of engagement and autonomy. We must avoid creating an environment of dependency, victimhood, and bureaucracy. When employees are autonomous, and therefore responsible for resolving their own conflicts, they first do whatever they can to avoid the negative conflicts. Yet once a conflict emerges, they quickly take action and/or they dismiss it as unimportant. In either case the conflict does not become a “time waster” as it does when a leader attempts to mediate.


There are three basic steps to create an environment of engagement and autonomy allowing, and encouraging employees to resolve their own conflicts. First, clear operational behaviors must be created that clearly spell out how conflict will be seen and interpreted. Here is a good question: As a leader, do you want to eliminate all conflict? NO! Conflict means learning. Conflict is a symptom of two differing points of view or two differing methods of solving a problem. So the first message about conflict is in this list of behaviors is: “we embrace conflict as a learning experience.”


Second, there needs to be a tool employees can use to calm nerves and to get to the real issues during a conflict. This tool can help influence productive discussion and diffuse emotional distress which often accompanies negative conflict. A leader must provide a tool for employees to talk to each other during these stressful and emotional times.


Third, there must be a tool to smooth over hurt feelings if one of the employees is accidently wronged during the conflict. Often times differing communication styles (personalities) can cause offense. A disrespectful offence that goes unacknowledged creates a barrier to resolving the conflict. It damages the relationship and the trust. Providing a tool that helps employees to approach each other when they are wronged (disrespected) creates the autonomy they need to remove this relationship barrier. Every employee must be given permission to use such a tool and every employee must be asked to accept this feedback when offered.


I challenge you to think of a time when you were the mediator of a conflict and you were able to solve the issue between the two people without their help and cooperation. Cooperation is an outcome of having all three of these elements in place and trusting the employees to use the tools to solve their own problems. Any problem they don’t resolve themselves will resurface anyway. When employees get the message that they can “go to the boss” and he/she will solve it” they become victims of their circumstances. Victims cost organizations money and time.


So what should a leader do when an employee complains about another employee and asks the “boss” to intervene? Gently say no. If you have created the environment of autonomy and engagement with these three tools you can turn that employee back to use the tools. Turn the employee back and gently remind them they have two choices, either forget the conflict because it is trivial or use the tools to solve it themselves. It is their choice. This keeps the leader out of the middle and prevents the “monkey in the middle game from exhausting the leader and wasting everyone’s time.

Trust Leads to Autonomy Which Leads to Engagement

Trust Leads to Autonomy Which Leads to Engagement

Trust is a vital ingredient in high performance organizations. High levels of trust enable improved communication flow and productive problem solving. Research shows that improved flow of information improves performance, reduces unproductive conflict, increases adaptability, and innovation. Having trust in someone (or in a team) allows us to give autonomy to that person. Autonomy leads to engagement. The more autonomous one is in their work the more creative they are and the more engagement they feel.

Right now engagement is a critical factor for an organization’s success. The higher the engagement the higher will be the productivity and profitability. Yet the latest engagement research shows only about 29% of employees are fully engaged in their work. This tells me leaders are not trusting employees. Trust must come before engagement.

Successful leaders recognize they must trust employees first. They purposely put people in situations where they will be challenged and allow the employees to demonstrate their skills. A leader will make themselves available but they don’t look over the employee’s shoulder and they don’t micro-manage. They trust first in order to be trusted. Ernest Hemingway once said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to manage the variation in trust in their organization or within their team. This requires a keen understanding of the right definition of trust. The definition I appreciate the most is from the International Association of Business Communicators. Their definition is: a willingness to be vulnerable because of the presence of integrity, concern, competence and shared objectives. By managing each of these four elements a leader can then make a decision to be vulnerable. By making themselves vulnerable they bring out the best in the employee. They allow that employee autonomy and with autonomy come growth and engagement.

In the movie The Horse Whisperer Robert Redford plays a middle aged expert horse trainer/cowboy in Montana. He is met by a young girl and her mom who ask him to help rehabilitate their horse. The horse suffered a nearly fatal injury in an accident with an 18 wheeler. The girl and mom wanted to avoid putting the horse down even though the injury was so severe. The horse was not the only casualty. The girl lost her leg. She was only 14.

Redford realized he needed to help the girl before he could help the horse. In one scene he and the girl find themselves out on the range alone with an old pickup truck. Redford asks the girl to drive him back to the ranch while feigning fatigue. He challenges her to use her skills. He trusted she would be able to drive him even though she had never driven a truck let alone a standard shift. He trusted her first, provided support, and allowed her autonomy to give it a try.

It worked. She did it. She became engaged in the process of helping to rehabilitate the horse. By trusting her, giving her training and allowing her to use her skills (providing autonomy) she became engaged. This works for employees. It also can work for students.

Our schools are in trouble. The new documentary Waiting for Superman demonstrates the challenge well. Some say the film blames unions and teachers for the problem. Certainly they play a role. But those who say that are missing a huge piece. The problem starts with how we think about students and how we have set up the system. We have a system set up to send the message, WE DON’T TRUST YOU. We have very strict curriculums. We use standardized testing to drive improvement and reward or punish students and schools. We use grades to attempt to motivate students to do better. What are we left with? Is it engagement? Is it results?

I would recommend we send a message of WE TRUST YOU. Students naturally want to learn and teachers naturally want to do a good job. Don’t they? We can then provide an environment of autonomy. We can then expect them to be engaged.

Successful leaders trust people will do the right things. If they don’t do what they are supposed to do then there needs to be consequences. But why create a system that sends a message of distrust for everyone just because you have a few bad apples? Trust people, give them the tools so they can be autonomous and then watch the engagement happen.

As a Leader What Message Do You Send?

I was walking our two dogs, as I do almost every morning. We go to the nearby park and walk the 2 miles rather quickly so we all get good exercise. Of course I had my Blackberry so when I think of a quick call I can make it during the walk. While striding up a gradual hill I started breathing a little heavy when I suddenly remembered a call I needed to make to one of my strategic partners. I needed to confirm a seminar date that was scheduled for the end of the following week.



I called my client and one of the owners, Diane, answered the call. I asked to speak to the scheduler Evelyn. As I was asking I was breathing even heavier. Apparently talking and walking up hill creates even heavier breathing. I am sure I sounded like a nasty pervert as I asked Diane to pass on a message to Evelyn to return my call. After I hung up I realized I should have explained my context. What impression did I make? If she didn't know me she may have thought I was an excited pervert while I requested, “Please tell Evelyn to call me. I have a few questions for her.” Thank goodness we have a good trusting relationship so I doubt Diane will think poorly of me. But, can I be sure?



Very often leaders exhibit negative behaviors that unintentionally and unknowingly create the wrong impression. These behaviors can damage the motivation and productivity of employees in ways that are immeasurable. Most organizations have the following dysfunctional cultural characteristics:

• The leader misbehaves

• The poor behavior of the leader negatively impacts the employee’s motivation and attitude toward the leader and the organization

• Most of the employees are too afraid to give feedback to the leader and so the poor behavior continues

• The employees begin to exhibit poor behaviors

• The leader conducts a performance appraisal to correct the employee behaviors



This typical series of interactions does little to address the real root cause of the dysfunction, i.e. the leader’s behaviors. Instead, these cultural procedures serve to sustain the dysfunction.



Leaders are not, nor will they ever be, omnipotent. When they misbehave they need to know it and they need help to change their behaviors to prevent the unintended negative consequences.

When I first begin my work with clients I always explain to the Senior Leaders that one of my roles is to give feedback to them about poor behaviors. I ask their permission to provide that feedback and I insist they agree. I always get that agreement because the leaders (and all people) already think they are behaving correctly. Leaders who misbehave rarely do so purposefully. Almost always they are unaware of the impact on others. They need to be respectfully told.

Ask yourself, how many companies proactively welcome respectful feedback to leaders by employees? I often see leaders who insist on strict discipline yet consistently show up late to meetings. I also have seen leaders deliver criticism to one direct report for a particular issue and then fail to deliver the same level of outrage to a different employee for a similar issue.

To optimize trust and create a high performance culture, leaders must be willing to accept the responsibility for the impressions they create. Because they cannot be omnipotent, they must accept frequent respectful feedback about poor behaviors. They also need to send a grateful message to the messenger. Any defensive reaction will inhibit the feedback in the future and help continue the dysfunction.

Therefore, leaders need to either be very insightful and emotionally intelligent in order to observe their own dysfunctional and misunderstood behaviors. In other words, they need to be aware of their “heavy breathing”. In addition, the leader must be truly courageous and purposely set up a small team of trusted advisors who will provide respectful feedback when he/she unconsciously creates the wrong impression. Without these two approaches surely the negative impact on productivity will continue unchecked.

2 Lessons Leaders Can Learn From Nature

This summer was especially dry. My front lawn looks like a flash fire went through. My ability to keep up with the watering fell way short.

I waited until September to take action because I know from experience that is the best month to re-grow grass. I asked my lawn guy to prepare the soil with an aeration treatment, growth fertilizer, and power seeding. I carefully watered his good works and the grass is coming back nicely.

All I did was create the proper conditions and allowed nature to take over. This is an important lesson for leaders. Don’t focus on improving individuals. Use your energy resources to create the right conditions for performance.

I didn’t attempt to accelerate my lawn repair by conducting motivational speeches or placing posters of motivation on the surrounding trees and bushes. Nor did I offer additional “rewards” in the form of additional fertilizer or water to encourage faster growth from those high performing seeds. I also didn’t threaten to withdraw those goodies form those seeds that were slower to grow.

That approach would have been ridiculous. Just as ridiculous is leaders who use performance appraisals and pay for performance and expect long term sustainable improvement without creating the proper performance context. Performance, like grass will naturally grow when “good seeds” are planted in the proper conditions. Nature takes over.

A leader’s first job is to create that context. The proper context in an organization includes the following five key items:

1. Values

2. Vision

3. Mission

4. Management Theory

5. Strategy

This is lesson number one for leaders. What have you done lately to reinforce the clarity of the Values: How we want to behave regardless of the situation; Vision: how w want to look as an organization in the future; Mission: Why the organization exists; The Management Theory: Do you believe people want to do a good job or do you believe people need to be pushed to work?; Strategy: What differentiates you from other organizations in your industry?

The second lesson from nature is autonomy. Nature allows choices to be made. Make the right choices and you succeed. Make the wrong choice and you lose (or you experience pain). Nature does not control. Nature encourages autonomy.

When organizational leaders rely on methods of control to manage, they impair the organization’s ability to respond or adapt to change. To be successful in this fast-paced business climate, leaders must learn to cultivate a context that empowers and encourages informed and rapid decision-making.

A good metaphor for this type of responsive decision-making is a flock of birds in flight. It is a most mystifying phenomenon. As a group, they have no leader to tell them when to turn left or right, or when to slow down or to speed up; yet as a group, they change direction as effortlessly as a single organism. How is this possible? It is possible because, flocking birds naturally follow three basic principles: first, they fly in the same general direction as their closest neighbors; second, they fly at the same average speed as their closest neighbors; third, they fly at the same average distance from their closest neighbor and avoid colliding with them at all costs. Following these three basic principles, they are able, as a group, to respond to their fast-changing environment with rapid, precise adjustments.

Flocking birds are what’s called a “self-organizing system”. Organizations can achieve the same agile capabilities if the leader clarifies the vision and the organizational objectives, and teaches clear effective principles. In doing so, the leader establishes trust and increases his/her influence, while empowering each individual to make the right decisions at the right time. In the presence of a clear vision, clear objectives and sound principles, individuals participating in a self-organizing system learn how to adjust to a fast-paced environment. Like the birds, people will respond quickly, appropriately and in the best interests of the “flock”, without needing a controlling authority to tell them what to do.

The creation of this performance context allows autonomy. The birds are free to make choices within the context of the principles. A leader can create the conditions and then trust employees to operate autonomously within that context. So doing will create the best response to change and the greatest possibility of high performance.

Stop trying to control the seeds or the birds. Create the proper conditions instead and let them perform. It is the natural thing to do.

Are you a Leader of Leaders or Victims? - 5 Strategies to Enhance Accountability and Responsibility

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. After a few hours a small opening appeared. The butterfly wanted to emerge and the man watched for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop. It appeared as if its task had become daunting. To the man it looked as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no further.
The man decided he must help the butterfly. With a pair of scissors he snipped off the remaining bit of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. But, it had a swollen body and small shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.
What the man, with good intentions, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Are you, with the best of intentions, creating dependent victims in your organization or are you creating and encouraging independent thinkers who solve their own problems?
Our culture tends to reward those who provide instant answers to difficult problems. We tend to be impatient with those who take time to think through solutions. We often promote fast paced and narcissistic behaviors because it creates instant results. Instant results can often carry with them delayed unintended consequences.
A leader has willing followers and works with them to solve problems. A victim is most often stuck and often attempts to enroll others to join in the mutual misery. A leader has a positive influence on others and uses it often in place of authority and/or power to create action. Victims more often rely only on authority and power to cause others to act. Leaders are able to persuade. Victims rely on demands.
Victims feel tricked or duped by others and frequently blame others for their troubles. Leaders spend time fixing problems and working to prevent them. Victims feel powerless and spend time complaining about problems instead of fixing them.
What can leaders do to encourage leaders to follow and what can they do (and stop doing) to discourage victims from sabotaging productivity and engagement? Here are 5 strategies you can use now to create leaders (butterflies that can easily fly) and avoid inadvertently creating victims (with swollen bodies and shriveled wings):
Believe in people and trust them in order to create trust in you. Give people a chance to make mistakes and, when and if they do, avoid punishment. Instead, use the event as a learning experience for both you and the person who made the mistake. That doesn’t mean you allow them to avoid the consequences of their error. Ask them to make amends. Don’t hide the mistake and don’t take away the consequences.
My daughter wanted to buy a motorcycle. She had taken her motorcycle skills class and achieved her license. As her dad, instead of saying no, I encouraged her to drive a few cycles before buying one so she could assess which one might be best. In the mean time, her brother purchased a rather large bike and she asked if she could try it.
After receiving his permission, she took it for a ride and found it to be a bit more than she could handle. She had to lay it down at a stop sign when she lost her balance. The bike was a bit too large. We had a discussion about the size she needed.
We used the mistake as a learning experience to decide the bike size she needed and the need for safety above all else. In addition, she had to pay her brother money to repair the small amount of scratches she caused when she put down the bike on the street.
Proactively empower others. Look for opportunities for others to be independent and give them the option to act on their own.
Be respectful always in words and tone even in the face of emotional upsets caused by mistakes. Unless people purposely make mistakes, the discovery of the mistake itself is enough motivation for the person to feel remorse. Adding to it by being disrespectful with criticism is unnecessary and damaging to the relationship while stunting the learning opportunity. This doesn’t mean you avoid giving feedback when needed. It means delivering feedback not criticism. Feedback is specific data about behaviors. Criticism is opinions.
Unless asked for your opinion, avoid giving it because you will create dependency. You will be preventing optimum learning if you give your opinion before being asked. You create dependency if you try to solve the problem before they have had a chance to exercise their own problem solving skills. An effective leader offers suggestions and other options to change the observed results but usually only when asked. Even then tend to delay their response to give permission for the person to process their own solution. Wait for the learning to start. Their learning pace may be different than yours. If you jump in with an answer you create dependency. If you jump in it may cause fear to offer solutions in the future.
Truly listen to concerns, use empathy, provide forgiveness, and emphasize continuous learning. Leaders who look for scapegoats for mistakes create victims. Those who focus on learning will make more money. Our knowledge economy requires that we manage the engagement of all employees. Engaging their hearts and minds will be the only way to compete in the global marketplace. W e need every brain focused on improving performance, process, and serving customers. The higher the percentage of engaged brains the more money everyone makes.
Hold people accountable to their word not numerical goals. Ask people to make agreements and then let them know if they break them. Acknowledge and thank them when they keep agreements. Avoid the accountability trap by attempting to hold people accountable to numerical goals where they don’t have full control over all the factors.
The butterfly needed to work hard to emerge from the cocoon. It didn’t have a goal to fill its wings with fluid and reduce its swollen body. It had the task to emerge through the hole. The normal body and functional wings were the outcomes of the task of emerging through the hole. Identify the challenging tasks people need to perform to accomplish their goals and ask them to make agreements to perform those tasks. Then, hold them accountable for completing those tasks. Don’t help them unless they ask for help and even then, question them about what they need to do to accomplish it themselves. Don’t enable poor behaviors for the purpose of achieving the goal. It damages the learning experience and usually creates dependency.
Facilitate problem solving. Don’t tell them what they did wrong (unless asked) instead explore with them (with effective questioning) what they learned and how to resolve the issues. Instead of criticizing for missing numerical goals, explore the root causes of problems and provide tools to solve their own problems.
An effective leader knows how to teach and coach. He/she knows the problem solving method and the tools needed for problems solving. They teach and coach people to solve their own problems. They teach people to fish and they stop feeding them the fish. A leader will encourage the butterfly to emerge on its own.
Ask questions to uncover what YOU could have done differently to help them. There is an interdependent relationship between leader and employee. Employees cannot operate completely independently in a system. Ask questions to uncover what you could learn form the situation and what you can do differently.
Give away credit when things go well and, when things don’t go well, look for the part you played in the dysfunction and take full responsibility. Look for opportunities to express appreciation and gratitude for their hard work.
One of my clients exemplifies humility and yet is extremely ambitious. His leadership has propelled his organization forward to be one of the most admired in its industry. He has expanded the business and continues to praise and give credit to his board of directors and his employees. I reminded him one day that his leadership played a significant role in the success he was enjoying. I told him he didn’t give himself enough credit for the success. He said, “I know, others remind me of that often.” His humility and willingness to acknowledge others is a characteristic of Level 5 Leadership a phase coined by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. A combination of humility and will creates a Level 5 Leader.
Be a facilitator of performance not a controller. Resist the urge to achieve instant results and be patient by asking questions. Don’t be so quick to take out the scissors. Allow the butterfly to emerge. The beauty of high performance will be the result of your patient leadership.