"Etiquette" versus "Getting the Job Done"

There’s an interesting new book out on workplace etiquette, which I read about in Forbes. It shed some light on new discourse between managers and employees… though I’m not sure I completely agree.

The author, Vicky Oliver, advises that when it comes to communication, be it by phone, text or e-mail, many of us managers need to be more mindful of business etiquette. Apparently, leaving a voicemail message when you know the recipient isn't there to pick up the phone is bad form. Seriously? Well, then why do we have voice mail at all?

Oliver also advises managers to never send communications late at night. She says: “If you get a brainstorm at midnight, go ahead and write that note, but put it in your draft folder and then hit send at 9 a.m. It's bad boss etiquette to harass your employees with notes after hours or on the weekend."

So here’s my issue: I have no problem with employees setting boundaries and not feeling obligated to work 24/7. But in my role as a leader, responsible for innovation, my creativity does not always come during “formal” work hours, which are mostly booked solid with client and staff meetings. So when I have some time to think, reflect and ponder, it often spurs creativity and it’s more efficient for me to share these ideas with my team when they come to mind. And my team is globally dispersed. So when it’s 9:00 a.m. in Philadelphia, it’s midnight in Sydney. How does Oliver’s etiquette fit into this scenario?

I don’t advocate using technology as a collar to keep employees “on call” 24 hours a day. But I do expect to use technology as a way to enable my team to accomplish more, getting it done better and faster. My perspective is that if you want to be highly valued as a member of the team, you need to be available, flexible and responsive. These are some of the values that separate average employees from the star performers. Not everything fits neatly into a 9 to 5 box. Sometimes it just comes down to getting the job done.

I believe that my employees will perform better if they have a clear understanding of where we are heading, what is expected of them, if they are empowered to do what they do best and if they trust me to lead them.

Which side of the fence do you sit: being up on the latest etiquette or getting the job done?

Pushing Philanthropy Beyond Writing Checks

Many companies these days are using their commitment or investment in corporate social responsibility (CSR) to elevate their brand in the minds of their stakeholders and prospects. Any effort in this direction is positive. But sometimes it’s a bit ambiguous how a company’s culture and brand are aligned with their CSR efforts.

It was refreshing to learn how one of our clients, Panera Bread – the bakery-café franchise – is doing what they do best in a way that truly demonstrates their brand value, culture and commitment to CSR. They are leveraging their expertise and products to serve the community. In this innovative experiment, they have opened a nonprofit restaurant, which is essentially an eatery where people pay what they can afford.

According to the article which ran in USA Today, Panera’s cashiers tell customers their orders' "suggested" price based on the menu. About 60% to 70% pay in full. About 15% leave a little more and another 15% pay less, or nothing at all. A handful of customers have even left big donations, such as $20 for a cup of coffee.

At Right Management, we partner with Chicago’s Cara Program, a non-profit dedicated to helping poor and homeless individuals prepare for the job market and find permanent employment. We commit our own professional staff, company resources and job hunting expertise to help people get back to work. We do mock job interviews, give individual coaching, help with job hunting on the Internet, and do whatever else may be necessary to help Cara’s students achieve their career goals.

With so many companies jumping on the CSR-bandwagon, it begs the question: how can you really use this commitment and investment by truly adding value? How can you leverage what you do best and align your company’s CRS activities with your brand, culture and expertise?

As some might say: it’s about “eating your own cooking” or “walking the talk". I say it’s about pushing philanthropic efforts to be more than just lip service. Take it to the next level and ensure employees and clients are aware of your efforts and confident that the organization is committed and acting responsibly in the best interests of the community.

Engagement: "It's Not My Job!"

As many as one-in-three organizations don’t hold their managers accountable for employee engagement levels. Forty-six percent try to do so, but they don’t have any formal systems in place to monitor. Meanwhile, our research and many other knowledgeable sources reinforce that a strong correlation exists between engagement levels and leader behaviors and actions.

Not everyone believes that managers impact engagement, as noted in recent article in Employee Benefits News. Some managers believe that keeping employees engaged is not part of their job description.

Employee engagement is a complex issue. It is true that engagement is driven by many factors which both include and exclude a managers’ influence. And it’s a natural reaction to feel frustrated about being held accountable for things that are often ill-defined. However, some of the top drivers identified in our global research are actually directly aligned with those behaviors cited in the Employee Benefit News article as those for which a manager should be held accountable, such as providing employees with guidance, necessary tools, empowerment and respect. These behaviors have been shown to directly influence engagement levels. The issue isn't just accountability, but understanding how strategy, leadership, processes, culture and customer service factors correlate with engagement.

Employee engagement can’t be dismissed by managers with a “not my problem” attitude. It has to be addressed through management where challenges to engagement levels can be reliably linked to actions or inactions. However, the other factors outside the manager’s influence that drive engagement levels need to be understood and contextualized for each organization so that accurate and effective action plans can be developed and implemented. If you don’t know what drives engagement in your organization, it’s impossible to create an employee engagement strategy. It’s different for every organization, country and industry.

One of the common challenges many organizations face is that managers are often not provided with the coaching or support to develop the behaviors that are important for driving engagement. Many managers are focused on “managing” and getting things done, with little effort on leading and empowering others.

Do you know the engagement drivers for your organization and are you providing the leader development needed to foster engagement-related management behaviors?

The benefits of being insubordinate

As marketing guru Seth Godin writes: “What’s the opposite of insubordinate? I guess it’s subordinate. Which is better, I wonder. Is it preferred to do exactly what you’re told, to be clearly subordinate to the system, to the boss, to the short term demands of the organization - or are we better off doing the right thing instead?”

In my opinion, there is tremendous value as a leader to having at least a few insubordinates on your team. As senior leaders, many of us have witnessed CMOs who are surrounded by “yes” people where he/she gets too much agreement and too little candor. Often even the CMO recognizes it and doesn’t know what to do about it.

The challenge is to encourage every team member to speak up, to facilitate more back-and-forth, even if it means dissent from the CMO’s point of view. This also means enabling them to take action without “checking all the boxes,” letting them do what they think is right and allowing them to stake their reputation on it. Insubordinates are often the ones most responsible for moving the company forward – sometimes taking back doors to get stuff done – with the best interest of the company in mind. Insubordinates are the ones who tell it like it is and aren’t satisfied maintaining the status quo. I appreciate it is hard to do this if your organization has a culture that punishes people for pushing back or for taking calculated risks. But there is great value and a need for people who are prepared to challenge and push at times without dancing around the issue or flowering the delivery.

Senior leaders today are inundated with information and competing demands on their time. They are flooded with data, torrents of email and unplanned requests. So team members sometimes find they’re not actually accomplishing anything, but merely passing messages back and forth, waiting for decisions to be made. Make sure the vision is clear and keep the culture productive and high-performing by embracing a little “insubordination”.

What’s the ratio of subordinates to insubordinates that surround you?

Do you ask or tell?

We know that leaders can inspire or undermine employees in their everyday activities. So it was refreshing to read Dan Rosenweig’s comments (CEO of Chegg) in the New York Times recently, commenting on his own leadership style: “I try very hard to be descriptive about how we want to define success and not necessarily prescriptive on telling them exactly how we want to do it — because, frankly, many of them are a lot smarter than me at what they do.”

Many of us struggle to build high-performing organizational cultures as we battle the challenges associated with allowing employees to take risks and potentially fail, or giving employees too little latitude to find their own way to the solution, leaving them ill prepared to be effective decision makers or make significant contributions to the success of the organization. Competitive pressures and cost containment leave us with little room for mistakes. What’s the best approach?

If you’re being prescriptive, then you may as well be doing the job. As a leader, I subscribe to the Just Ask leadership approach of asking before telling. Great leaders know just the right questions that direct employees in a way that helps them to find their own way to the solution. Descriptive leaders provide overarching direction and guidance, yet empower people to achieve the vision laid out for them with their own skills and ideas.

Both leadership approaches have some merit depending on what is warranted for the specific situation. But descriptive leadership styles are likely to produce a talent base that is resourceful, can solve problems, is results-focused, empowered and independent.

Have you considered how often you prescribe rather than describe a project brief or desired solution?

Looking through the window

Managing one’s brand these days can have the fragility and transparency of glass. The combination of technological revolutions, the growth in individual employees having greater power to exercise personal choice, and rising customer sophistication have resulted in such innovations as Glassdoor and Vault. Employees can comment on company and leadership performance and put it out there for the world to see. CEOs can view their own approval ratings based on employee comments and votes.

Such websites are putting pressure on leaders to be more active in managing their own brand – both their personal brand and also their organization’s brand. Individual communication that may have once been regarded as private one-to-one conversations can now be regarded as essentially public if you factor in the transparency of communications on such social media sites as LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook.

Entrepreneur magazine forecast that the number one marketing trend for 2010 would be transparency and trust. Well, the same applies for leaders.

The ubiquitous nature of technology means that it is always on and inviting participation. It is changing how, where, when and by whom work gets done. It’s about coordination, collaboration and transparency. Leaders need be in tune with the feedback available on these new channels and be proactive with personal and professional brand management. It’s not just about listening to what's being said, but also about actively participating in the discussions.

Use the transparency tools available today to track the sentiment of employees and match these against your own company engagement scores. Assess the feedback on your culture, identify challenges and opportunities and invest in your own leadership development.

With brand transparency what it is today, you never know who may be looking through your window.

Integrating contingent workers into company culture

Temporary staffing is on the rise, thanks to the ability it gives companies to adjust their workforce based on business needs. In fact, it’s likely that the regular use of contingent workers, instead of full-time employees, will become a permanent practice in many organizations.

But, as more businesses start to rely increasingly on temporary workers, they also face new, complex challenges: integrating these employees into their culture and ensuring they’re as engaged as full-time staffers. It’s a tall order since it's much more difficult to create a strong bond with contingent workers.

To that end, companies need to decide just how tightly they should integrate contingent workers into the organizational culture. While one business might feel these employees should be considered to be a true extension of the organization, another might look on them, in effect, as appendages. But each approach requires a different approach. The former company, for example, might include temporary workers in all organization-wide events – company picnics, holiday parties and the like – while the latter would probably refrain from doing so.

Organizations that make the use of contingent workers an important part of their workforce strategy and take appropriate steps to integrate them into the culture will find a significant payoff: a reliable talent pool to draw from – with demonstrated skills and fit – when hiring opportunities arise; as well as an engaged, loyal temporary workforce and, ultimately, stepped up levels of organizational performance.

Trust Erosion

Trust in managers is in short supply these days. As reported in TechRepublic, our research found that 19% of employees “rarely” trust their manager. Further, new research has revealed that nearly one-in-three employees perceive their immediate manager to be incompetent. The result: a workforce ready for greener pastures or one filled with silent saboteurs.

Lack of trust and faith in ability perpetuates a negative spiral inside organizations. Leadership is usurped. Employees quit and stay. Productivity suffers. And ultimately, performance dwindles.

As Robert Sutton cites in his blog on “I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me,” dysfunctional leaders often lack self-awareness. We’re talking more than just the run of the mill emotional intelligence. We’re talking about being insulated from reality, disconnected from subordinates.

Trust is a two-way street. Managers must show they have a plan, can articulate the plan to employees, and demonstrate that the plan is being implemented effectively. Employees need to trust that their managers have the capability to make the organization a success. And in turn, leaders must also show that they trust employees to drive the organization forward and make them valued partners of a common purpose. Employees want to know what the bigger picture is, and importantly, how they can contribute to that vision.

One of the most critical aspects in building trust is sincerity and candidness between an employee and his/her manager. This is the belief that each individual can be trusted to speak his or her mind openly, knowing that the other will listen with a helpful ear. With the degree of change taking place in many companies today, this growing erosion of trust is an indication that communication needs to be improved.

Have your created an environment to foster trust in your organization?

Scare tactics: keeping the adrenaline going

No one would dispute an undercurrent of fear continues to run through our current economic climate. Yet fear, as it relates to creative tension, can be a valuable tool for motivating high performers.

Nothing innovative or truly cutting-edge is born of complacency. Leaders need to motivate employees by inspiring them to achieve their maximum potential. To be sure, the balance between fear and creative tension is a fragile one. But when this balance is achieved, its payoff will be a high performance culture.

In a sense, high performers thrive on fear. They are inherent risk-takers who have little interest in playing it safe. As such, they operate best in a culture where creative tension is the norm. They bristle at the idea of being micromanaged. Yet, born decision-makers, they also have no qualms about being held accountable. Rather than shy away from responsibility, they embrace it. Rather than walk away from a challenge, they meet it head-on. Leaders need to find a way to effectively stimulate these high performers while simultaneously affording them the freedom they need to succeed.

Of course, creating a culture of fear benefits no one. Creativity cannot thrive in an environment where fear — a fear of failure, primarily, and its dreaded consequences — is prevalent. Leaders need to be sensitive to creating a culture in which the creative process, often in the form of risk-taking, is not simply tolerated but actively supported and sustained as a means to achieving success.

And to that end, a little fear can go a long, long way.

Off with his head!

According to Herodotus – the first great historian of western culture – when Artabanus, uncle to the Persian emperor Xerxes, poked holes in Xerxes’s plan to invade Greece, an angry Xerxes refrained from putting Artabanus to death only because he was family. After Artabanus, who would have dared raised an issue with Xerxes?

In business, as in history, some leaders aren’t always open to disagreement and many people seek to avoid conflict. Staying off the radar, not ruffling any feathers, nodding “yes” is always the safer and more comfortable alternative. But it isn’t necessarily the most successful. Xerxes’s invasion, of course, proved a complete disaster.

Expressing and accepting a challenging point of view isn’t always easy. As Herodotus shows, leaders who react badly to challenges have a long history. But when a new idea creates a firestorm, maybe it needs to be looked at a little more deeply to better understand why it feels threatening.

Are you – as a leader – open to disagreement? Or are you surrounded by people who don’t challenge anything you say?