Being Good – Fundamental to Better Leadership?

Author: Dave Crisp

1 Jan

Holidays provide change and time to reflect whether one intends to or not. This season various reports seemed to reinforce just how complicated human differences are. No two of us are alike, so the task of coming up with strategies that work reliably in varied situations with any consistency could be difficult. The chief leadership puzzle also popped up again in conversation – not ‘what is leadership’ or ‘does effective leadership make a difference?’ We know the answers to those. What we don’t know is why so many leaders don’t adopt the proven keys that make one leader so much more effective than others.

One answer seems to be that we find ‘nice guys’ not very leader-like, so we hesitate to emulate them. Instances to explore this question come to light constantly. A high profile example arrived in a newsletter pointing to an interview in Forbes of ING Direct CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann who has just written his second book of leadership wisdom called Rock, Then Roll: The Secrets of Culture-Driven Leadership, which Forbes says “gathers nuggets of information distributed to ING Direct’s employees over Kuhlmann’s ten years with ING Direct,” the second of his books to do so.

Mr. Kuhlman is a fabulous Canadian success story not many know much about. An RBC VP at age 33 he took on the challenge of developing online banking for Dutch-owned bank and financial company ING and made the new venture amazingly successful, both in the Canada and the US and several other countries internationally. I happen to know what an uphill battle he must have had within ING from recent coaching with another Canadian sub of theirs which found them almost impossible to deal with – never allowing the sub to make decisions and delaying giving permission needed to operate, exactly opposite to Mr. Kuhlman’s style.

As a result of these different approaches to leadership ING overall needed a $13 billion bail-out from the Dutch government, while one way to pay it back has been to sell Mr. Kuhlman and his super-successful ING Direct to Capital One for $9 billion. Those numbers make the value of effective leadership pretty clear. If you’re wondering whether ING head office will be reading Mr. Kuhlman’s books, I can guess almost certainly they will pay no attention to them despite his success versus their failure.

Mr. Kuhlman, before anything else, promotes an empowerment culture and what he calls ‘culture-driven leadership.’ That means creating a culture in which everyone potentially leads and no one waits on the CEO or anyone else to lay out orders. It is also a great affirmation of the principle that an excellent leader can carve out a highly effective culture in his or her segment of a company that otherwise is downright hostile to it. But will an old-line bank move from command and control culture to this? Not likely in our lifetimes.

The only hesitation I have recommending Kuhlman’s books is he hands out 302 leadership messages in them and another 46 since that latest one. From his interview I think the themes are likely pretty clear, but none of us is capable of digesting, let alone putting into practice, 348 bits of advice, especially when you recognize they fit a particular set of circumstances that you may never encounter again. Inspirational undoubtedly, but workable?

Oddly, a more usable description of similar, but literally on-the-ground ‘nice guy’ leadership is an analysis of Denver Bronco’s quarterback Tim Tebow’s style (also in Forbes). The highly religious Mr. Tebow has become quite controversial as a result of his very public devotional behavior on the field, but he’s simply one more unique individual with unique style. It’s hard to argue with his practical success as a leader, which Kevin Kruse (author of the recent book, We: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement helps us get a handle on.

Without much of a stretch it seems clear these are examples of similar approaches especially in intent, albeit in very different situations where specific details inevitably have to vary. I tend to like Kruse’s descriptions better because they get at more directly what I believe are the five key core concepts without confusing them with too many specific examples – being positive with everyone, but dealing honestly with challenges, bringing the unique pieces together in balance (together meaning ‘we’ over ‘me’ just as Kuhlman insists in his culture-driven model), keeping focused on delivering results. Both promote starting small and persisting to build momentum. and both provide excellent, but very different examples of all this working effectively. Surface differences, similar principles.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, How Simplicity Works, Leaders of the Future

Can HR Own the World?

Author: Dave Crisp

6 Nov

In previous posts I’ve argued for HR jumping in to take the lead in newer, somewhat undefined areas that we know companies need to evolve into – for instance, measurement of many HR programs and policies is an obvious one, but social media is more of a current hot topic. On both HR has solid reasons for jumping in first and driving the agenda.

In fact, there are many parts of any organization that don’t function as well as they could and those are all areas where HR could take a lead role in improving things. That might even reach up to the C-suite where the Board might be wise to look at the CEO and other C-level incumbents with a view to improving performance.

Of course, you can’t do everything, so you have to pick your areas – ones where you think you will get results and where you think you will survive. I won’t say ‘where you are safe to tread’ since a key part of leadership is taking risks and pushing limits. For instance, you may well be able to coach C-suite members, but hesitate because they won’t accept it willingly and may retaliate. Survival is a serious issue to consider. If a particular project you really believe in is clearly not survivable, you have to make decisions. Is it worth pursuing even if it results in you being pushed out or can you contribute satisfactorily (in your view) by staying away from that project and tackling lesser ones that nonetheless make a difference? Every leader at least sometimes has to come to terms with such questions. It’s not optional, but a clear aspect of leading. If the stuff isn’t tough, others would be doing it.

It’s pretty scary and awfully presumptuous perhaps for HR to think it can wield authority in areas that haven’t been previously defined for it, but that’s what being a valued contributor to a senior team is all about. Every member of the team ought to have opinions and ideas for improving every other area. Silos often prevent team members from even raising these thoughts, but that in itself is something that falls into a key role HR is intended to consider. Organizations function better without silos, but someone has to tackle the questions of how to get rid of them.

So, no, HR can’t own the entire world, but does have an opportunity to choose to take on significant pieces of it, areas that other functions in the organization probably wouldn’t dream of touching or areas that others, who could take them on, aren’t. HR is the only function that shares with the CEO the responsibility for what’s going on in every area of the organization. In sales you worry about sales and maybe about ‘adjacent’ areas – engineering of the products you are being asked to sell and the marketing and social media issues, but you rarely find sales worrying about what’s happening day-to-day in IT or finance or how to fix them. Yes, they may have opinions at a distance, but hardly the access directly into the heart of what makes those organizations function the way HR potentially does.

So deciding where and how to attempt to lead is a challenging set of choices for HR, knowing that you can’t own the entire world. It gives one freedom to focus where it will make the biggest difference, but how many HR functions sit down and actually attempt to decide that?

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 3 Strategic - Thinking, Building A Career, Coaching Yourself, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

What HR Information is Strategic?

Author: Dave Crisp

9 Oct

My move toward more writing has been noticed! I know because suddenly emails are flooding in for all sorts of new publications. I enjoy reading and news releases are mostly short and pithy, so for now I’m not overwhelmed or annoyed, just somewhat puzzled.

For every useful item that lands in the inbox, there are about five that make me wonder who thinks this will be of interest to someone they often address as “Dear HR Strategist.” (Thanks to Canadian HR Reporter, that’s my label at the moment and one I’m honored to aspire to.) About half of these make me wonder why they think anyone at all would be interested.

Cases in point – one entitled “Employees’ Poor Emotional Wellbeing Is Obstacle to Wellness Efforts.” No, really? There are stats to prove it, sort of: “40% of employees say an emotional or physical problem has interfered with normal activities..” Yup, when I get a cold or flu, it sometimes interferes with stuff. If I had an emotional problem that might well too, though I might not know what was happening or be willing or able to report it. Wonder what they were hoping for with this factoid. The same survey shows unhealthy habits among sizable segments: “34% of employees consume one or less fruits and vegetables a day.” Maybe of more direct concern at work: “Only 16% get enough sleep.”

What HR strategies should I promote for these? I can report my intentions to be a good leader caused me more than once to ask a team member if they were sleeping OK, but I have to admit it never occurred to me to ask about their fruit and vegetable consumption. Lest I be unfair just quoting teasers, let me add the objective is to point out emotional problems may lead to poor wellness habits, so wellness programs without a component to help with mental/emotional issues may be less successful – a laudable aim.

Another opens with the dangerous headline: “Canadian Employers Not Doing Enough to Keep Employees Happy.” Bosses are justly suspicious of trying “make employees happy.” It goes on to say about a third of both Boomers and Gen Y feel employers should do more to address their concerns. Not a surprise. and clearly related to the endless surveys showing 65% to 80% or more of employees are varying degrees of disengaged. Surprisingly their attached press release expands on this to say 75% of Gen Y and 82% of Boomers are satisfied with their jobs. and yet 40% of the young group couldn’t get jobs in their preferred fields and 33% are planning a job change soon and 60% are working for money not enjoyment. So. they’re not as happy as they’d like, but they’re highly satisfied, but not in their preferred fields and thinking of moving. What’s the right strategy for this?

I’m a huge believer in two key observations. First, human beings are constantly subject to contradictory feelings, wants and needs. making it difficult to articulate a consistent direction. We want autonomy at work, but lots of feedback on how we’re doing, clear direction and support, but not micromanaging. These are contradictions we can understand and work with. Need I go on. We are contradictory beings and that makes life and HR interesting and challenging, but we can shape strategies on these.

Second, we develop innovations, both strategic and tactical by facing such contradictions squarely, so calling them out clearly can be helpful. My puzzling is about how to sort out useful contradictions from such ‘teaser’ factoids and headlines that may not reflect anything like the actual meaning of the reports they purport to summarize. Often it seems more likely the confusion such reports create, but don’t specifically try to resolve just makes strategic innovation more difficult. If a dozen readers can develop even more than a dozen interpretations of the study by picking and choosing from the supposed highlights, what use can we really make of it?

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Business/Strategy, Happiness, How Simplicity Works, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Respect, Good Leadership, (Ethics) and Quality People

Author: Dave Crisp

25 Sep

What issues rank among the top four or five that create high engagement?

Guess what Mercers and SMITH magazine just found from a survey of readers as reported in Canadian HR Reporter? 7000 people entered their Six Words About Work contest and these emerged. As they point out these four have remained constant despite the recession and continuing turbulence.

As far back as the dark ages (just before the dot.com bubble burst and was accused of busting the War For Talent) around y2k, I started using the top five that AON found in one of their massive surveys – and guess what? They found the same items in the same order, with just a little more definition of what those ideas mean.

We could enter this in the “how many times do we have to prove the same thing” contest, but why carp at reinforcing what we all need to keep in mind about the modern workforce? Good times or bad, employees want respect, which incidentally reflects instantly in leaders’ stance on work-life balance, which is why that issue ranks so high on employees’ want lists. If you respect people, you support them taking the time they need, when they need it, to get life in order.

Good leadership is about challenging people to be the best they can be and supporting them in their striving to succeed (and gain promotions, which is where the bigger salary increases come from).

Ethics, which the new survey can’t seem to find a word for, includes everyone being honest, but especially the pride employees want to feel that a company is delivering a decent product or service for the money, something that came out loud and clear in this survey. It slides into AON’s finding that employees want “fairness” which included fair rewards (the good do better than the poor performers) and fair in relation to what other companies pay, but also fair to other stakeholders and customers.

Quality people is about training and supporting staff who can thus deliver those good products and services as part of a team. as virtually all surveys find. All four or five, depending on how you count them, wrap into each other.

You can’t leave one or more out and expect the whole to hold together. Engagement comes when all these are ticking along smoothly most of the time and leaders are walking the talk as well as routinely talking about it in lofty vision and values statements.

And then along comes Yahoo, a modern, up-to-date company enlightened enough to hire a solid woman as CEO. and then. oops, as of early September, fire her. over the phone. Ever want to know a highly visible way to show your employees how much you do or don’t respect people or treat them fairly? This will generally go down as one way to make the point unmistakably.

Does one blunder invalidate everything you’ve put in place before that? Generally not, but if you can treat your CEO this way, I’d be looking over my shoulder as an employee for sure. and maybe tidying up my resume ‘just in case.’ If you want your employees thinking that way, just violate those four or five seemingly basic, but apparently challenging principles that we all know, that operate in good times and bad. Do we need to hear them proven again? Apparently some major operators do.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Coaching Others, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

When Do You Lose Your Cool?

Author: Dave Crisp

7 Aug

Lately I’ve been in the process of ‘retiring’ from coaching and consulting to ‘just do writing and speaking.’ That hasn’t reduced the workload, rather increased it if anything. Why? Because information overload exists in every area of life today thanks to the Internet especially, so emails and chat groups I would have scanned and filed or trashed have expanded into a main diet so I can develop more focused articles on HR and leadership strategy.

Meanwhile things I’ve taken on ‘because I’ll have more time’ like my condo board result in similar information overload, so the total not only hasn’t gone down, but for some adjustment period has gone up. Maybe that’s fraying my patience a bit.

Suffice it to say I lost it today (albeit mildly) with a chat comment back to me that probably wasn’t intended to be snarky, but felt that way. What triggered this was question on a chat board about why, with everyone talking engagement, the writer isn’t hearing a lot about diversity.

I commented positively that I think diversity is essential for engagement, but would be interested to see if he got examples as he was requesting. He did subsequently get a couple, but what I got was a reiteration that sounded like – if you agree it’s so important why don’t you answer my question why people don’t include it more often? So much for my thinking I’d been supportive, now I’m being challenged. Both chat and email have that tendency to sound snarky when the writer may simply be trying to be brief.

Well I more or less dumped my frustration with these sorts of questions. Each proponent of a particular view (me included I suppose) wonders why their viewpoint isn’t #1 on every list. I happen to think the key is effective leaders, who will promote diversity, for instance, because that makes them more effective. I pointed out I just got an advance copy of a report done in conjunction with HCI that points out that effective career planning is essential for engagement. They argue that with jobs opening and people finding it easier to move, companies would do well to institute better career planning in order to keep them engaged. Actually I think the primary goal of this is ‘to retain them,’ but I agree that one key to retention is engagement. Is it chicken or egg?

The challenge we face is there are dozens of possible “programs” which now propose engagement as the overall objective. because the real overall objective is performance and research shows engagement drives performance. We desperately need to get our strategic priorities in the right order. Engagement is the overall goal because it drives results, which has to be the core goal of any group that wants to remain in business.

To get engagement takes treating employees individually as valuable contributors. If we ignore suggestions and make them feel they can’t make a difference we won’t get engagement. When I say we, though, I mean each and every manager since that’s the individual each employee expects to turn to for support, encouragement, understanding, respect, etc. Getting those right leaders in place requires effective Talent Management which combines a good tracking system with good leadership development, succession and career planning (two different aspects) and solid HR environments that don’t discourage people. So, yes, diversity is definitely in there – individual respect and recognition – but it’s not a stand alone item. Neither is career planning or any of the others on the list. If it doesn’t all hang together logically employees will immediately find the discordant element and tend to turn off. Strategy is more than a single program.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Business/Strategy, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Christmas Destroying Corporate America?

Author: Dave Crisp

12 Dec

Here’s a topical title, I thought, when Harvard’s BNET newsletter arrived with it in my Inbox. Sure enough, it makes you scratch your head about how extreme people can be, but at the same time makes one think all over again.

Blogger Penelope Trunk has some good credentials – some big corporate jobs, entrepreneuring successfully, a popular blog, career advice columns and a book, Brazen Careerist. Perhaps not surprising, I’d never heard of her, since she seems to target Gen Y. The article was frustrating and the blog, if anything, seemed the same, but the book is great. Go figure. In this age of uncertainty and upheaval I think we’re going to see more and more of this difficulty in deciding if someone is right or wrong, but this single article is not so hard to pigeon-hole – a clear slam at anything religious showing up at work, even Christmas decorations that aren’t directly religious at all, as other ranters point out. This fits with the general theme of such posts – do it my way or else your nuts. Instead let’s do it cooperatively.

The book is great career advice, not only to Gen Y, but any age – be your own person, don’t simply buy into myths or standard advice, but pay attention to what you need to manage your own career path. It’s a good standard career/job search book plus solid insights about modern corporate approaches to getting on people’s good sides including your boss, since you need them as team members and supporters.

Like any advice you have to take it with grains of salt and adapt the principles to your own situation using your own common sense, but overall helpful. Not so much the BNET blog item. I tend to stay out of the ‘do we call it Christmas party or holiday party’ debate. Personally I’m fine with either, but every December, right on schedule, I (as we all are no doubt) am subjected to rants of ‘this is a Christian country,’ etc. Trunk takes us through most of the usual rants in reverse – arguing that society is shoving one religion down everyone’s throats, as she sees it, and destroying the team work corporations desperately need among diverse minority and majority members of our teams.

Not so, I argue. First, working with diverse people requires considerable on-going discussion of differences, good and bad. You don’t get diverse team members working well together without them feeling fine about discussing and holding to differences openly, whether its differences of opinion about work strategies or differences on personal issues. If anyone doesn’t want to participate in discussion, I’m fine with that, but I strenuously object to trying to push differences into the background, keeping them out of the workplace artificially by legislating a sort of division of church and state.

What works at the political level fits organizations. No one should be able to force their rules on others, force others to convert or belong to their ‘club,’ whatever it is and I see that sometimes it helps to say ‘keep it out of the workplace’ because it is starting to force others to participate. But to say that Christians can’t whoop it up over Christmas or Jews, Muslims or others who want to celebrate can’t do so in ways that don’t interfere with others who can simply ignore them or not participate is not only silly, but counter-productive.

The fact that a Christian holiday has historically created some particular days off doesn’t trouble me as much as Trunk, who claims she’d like to work (if she still worked in an organization) on Christmas because it might be a good time to meet people of her own group, among other reasons. Any day off was fine for me, within limits. Maybe we should keep everything open 365 days a year and let people have ‘flex time’ for their particular holy days as long as everyone gets an equal number, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of most of the rants I hear.

Is this strategic HR? You bet. Getting diverse team members hired and working well together is a challenge organizations have to master to be more effective as all relevant research repeatedly demonstrates. Rants may help individuals stick out for their wild opinions, but they don’t help teams come to grips with how individuals are different and how they are the same. Whatever your spirituality (and even atheists have plenty), understanding it and recognizing your right to honor it in various ways that don’t interfere with working approximately 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year, is part of understanding how different people contribute in different ways.

I’m intrigued by everyone’s beliefs. It helps me understand where their thinking is coming from. For some that means being part of the majority and for others part of a minority. Nothing in those words makes one right or the other wrong – in either direction. Minority/majority should be just a fact about numbers, customs and historical arrangements, not about anyone forcing anyone else to do anything. Ranting doesn’t result in logical change, which may or may not be needed. But perhaps it helps us think through key issues in this very important and powerful area that deeply affects how people work together.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 3 Strategic - Thinking, Business/Strategy, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR)

Implementing Lean – Is HR The Problem?

Author: Dave Crisp

5 Dec

Some days I wonder if I read things correctly. Presenting leadership skills recently to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) reminded me their focus these days is on Lean – a particular culture and system of management developed from the Toyota Production System and its surrounding style of leadership. I think highly of Toyota as a model (one that needs to be adapted to other environments – nothing can ever simply be transplanted as is). I felt right at home.

I was puzzled a few days later to see an ad come in for a Lean Summit in Orlando headlining a couple of webinars under the heading “HR Professionals Take Notice..” It goes on to say if your company is implementing Lean, you should support it and ‘not to be a liability to senior management.’

Given that effective HR and effective Lean have lots in common it is rare, in my experience, for HR to be a roadblock. My on-going discussions with SME confirm that. Both tend to be frustrated that more companies should be moving to these cultures and aren’t, or at least aren’t as quickly as we’d all like. In fact, implementing a new Lean program is a huge opportunity to establish a better HR climate.

Both HR and Lean place a huge emphasis on up and down and horizontal, across silo, 2-way communication and respect for employees, their opinions, suggestions and their need to continually learn. These are so well aligned with the aims of HR in modern operations that you’d have to be a Neanderthal HR manager to block a Lean implementation – or at least, so it would seem.

True, implementing Lean usually means major work for HR if it’s done intelligently. Probably reassessment, rewriting and revisions to most job descriptions and therefore to pay scales and categories, work rules, cross-training, etc. Clearly those exercises aren’t the easiest to undertake if you have unions involved or you’re worried about turnover caused by poor communication. But I’m not sure you can lay the blame for these challenges or their lack of being handled well mainly on HR.

At SME we spent considerable time sharing concerns we’ve encountered in all sorts of culture change efforts that senior management theoretically wants. Often they’re keen as long as it doesn’t mean THEY have to do anything differently. It’s the infamous not walking the talk problem and it appears in lean implementations very clearly because they require everyone, at every level, to approach things differently.

The webinars in question, themselves, point out that things have to begin being done by teamwork, not executive fiat. I’m not sure how they can claim “HR practices often derail lean efforts.” but let’s hope we can find ways of partnering to make sure everyone works together and encourage our top teams to see the futility of saying one thing and not following through. HR certainly isn’t the first place I’d look for lack of teamwork, but we all contribute to the problem at times.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization, Science

What Level Was Einstein Imagining?

Author: Dave Crisp

8 Aug

Here’s another Proust-like ‘seeing the world with new eyes’ example that fits leadership and HR. This came to mind when a speaker at SCNetwork’s recent Diversity forum, Brenda Nadjiwan of Indian Affairs, opened her presentation with a quote from Einstein. It’s one I’ve often treated with impatience, partly because it seems almost obvious (have to say, though, we miss lots of obvious things) and partly because it suggests a new struggle and gobs of time may be needed to find a brand new solution. But wait, here’s what came to mind..

The Einstein quote is well known enough: Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. But perhaps Einstein had something different in mind than the obvious meaning that you have to rise up to a higher level of thinking to solve a problem created at a lower level. What if it’s the reverse?

In management strategy we frequently encounter the problem that the solutions we propose are “too simple.” For instance, we point to the tremendous power of simple recognition by senior managers as a powerful force for engagement and performance of staff. Just acknowledge good work we say. It isn’t rocket science. All it takes is literally saying something as simple as, “wow, thanks, that was great” or “I really appreciate your taking the time to think that through, I’m not sure I could have found such a great answer.”

What stops managers from saying stuff like this and reaping the benefits of improved performance from people who will strive like mad to do even better the next time just for a few more words of praise? Can we ever get enough praise? Do we ever get enough so we don’t need more for weeks and weeks and weeks? No. Most of us can absorb that kind of comment almost daily and still crave more. We know what this feels like personally, but we somehow don’t ‘get it’ that others who report to us respond the same way.

Managers argue that employees will tire of this, take it for granted, be even more upset when they don’t get praised next time because we established a baseline (and, oh, it’s work, it takes time, it’s hard to remember to do it – true until it becomes habit!). Many worry that most of the praise would be false, provided for work that’s just a basic expectation of the employee to do a job. Well, I’ve seen tons of employees not do the basics, so it never bothered me to thank people for doing their job and doing it quite well. I never seemed to have too much trouble distinguishing something I could thank someone for and make an even bigger fuss over something truly unique. Psychology tells us repeatedly that positive reinforcement works. So why not?

Isn’t this exactly a case of a problem being solved at a different, but ‘lower level’ of thinking – basic human needs – than the level that created it – expecting all employees to be so ‘grown up’ they just do their jobs because, after all, isn’t that what they’re paid for? Maybe managers are hung up looking for ‘higher level’ solutions when ‘lower level’ would actually work better. Maybe I’ll be accused of ‘lowering the level’ in organizations or in HR, but if it works, if everyone is happy and productivity increases, why not? What do you think?

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching Issues, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks

Why Isolation from People Matters

Author: Dave Crisp

3 Nov

Auto Industry task force leader Steven Rattner’s comments about why Obama had to remove Rick Wagoner as head of GM have been widely reported. While it might seem more important that $100 million deals were approved based on PowerPoint slides instead of solid research, it’s interesting that another key example was how badly they were isolated from people, including their own employees.

Senior GM execs had a private elevator key that allowed them to get from their guarded top floor suite to their private garage without stopping at any other floors to let anyone on, Rattner notes as a typical example. Perhaps not quite as obviously dreadful as flying in private corporate jets to ask the President for bailout money, but maybe more significant. At least one can argue the economic value of a corporate plane – sort of.

Cutting oneself off from team members and from their casual input on a day-to-day basis, even as much as one might pick up in an elevator ride, is deadly to leadership. Worse, it reinforces your status as untouchable by rank and file. The message is clear – don’t tell us anything, we’re not interested. If relationships never develop on any sort of casual basis, people will hesitate and decide not to approach you about things they worry might be important, but not important enough to risk embarrassment if you turn away or get annoyed.

Not everyone fears speaking to a senior executive just because of their title, but many do. Seeing others engage in casual conversation helps everyone feel OK about it, too. Every leader has to constantly work toward encouraging all sorts of comments. It doesn’t just happen by accident that people keep their leaders up to date. So the private key isn’t just a symbol, but one more actual roadblock that only the worst sort of leaders set up.

Hannibal drank from puddles alongside his troops; Genghis Khan rode with them. No one doubted who was in charge, and you can bet they talked. If you’re afraid to talk to your boss about every day work stuff, you can bet most others including his or her highest lieutenants are, too – so nothing is getting through. Time to be dusting off the resume.

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Happiness is Multi-faceted

Author: Dave Crisp

11 Aug

This may be more than one post’s worth of ideas, but researching following the World Congress of Positive Psychology (mentioned in an earlier post) led to some great resources.

Perhaps the most important concept is that happiness isn’t a single thing. When thought of as if it were you tend to think of leisure and joyful moments, but it really runs much deeper. Todd Kashdan makes the point in his excellent brand new book Curious? that we might not even want to set happiness as the most important goal in life. That’s carried through in the very interesting Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) web site authored by graduates of the first MA programs in the field.

In fact, the PPND site impressed me with several graphics or “image maps” that allow you to click on elements that make up, for instance, ‘a life well lived image map‘ and find the components to a ‘positive emotions image map‘ and other facets of living well. The concepts they capture reinforce Kashdan’s point that maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree trying to focus on happiness alone.

A similar point emerges from another new book, The Happiness Equation, by others of the Positive Psych movement. It gives brief information about 100 items that add to or subtract from happiness and well-being – quite a list, from which you can generate a score to assess how happy you are relative to others, but even more importantly you can see from that which factors are contributing or are missing that create a sense of a good life.

Once again one of the most impressive things about this is the vast amount of research and publication that’s been done in the few short years since this field of study emerged. It really puts in perspective the sort of counseling that goes with mild mood prescriptions to form what Jonathon Haidt and others have shown to be the best antidotes to depression and how closely some of these relate to the elements needed for people to be happy and engaged at work.

While it might seem that these are intensely personal concerns, the fact is that happy employees have consistently been shown to produce better results. It isn’t either/or, but both/and. We can do the right thing by helping people identify what would make them happier and simultaneously improve profits and market share. What a concept! Great to see it born out again and again in modern research.

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