Do managers need to *make* their employees happy?

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I used to tell management students that they don't need happy employees. I was wrong. Read here for why: http://j.mp/VRbuC0.

However, I stand by my underlying assumption that managers cannot make their employees happy and that should not be their first goal with employees. Managers create the conditions for happiness; employees choose to be happy.

Happiness at work, while unique to each individual, is often the product of:

• Challenging, engaging work. Bored people are not happy.
• Seeing the work as valuable and important.
• Being immersed in a psychologically safe environment, where each person is free to, and expected to, speak his mind even when disagreeing, and where each person's speech and behavior are respectful of others.
• perceiving pay, hiring, and promotion systems as fair

Managers are responsible for creating and maintaining these -- they delegate tasks, they demonstrate appreciation and link their employees' work with the organization's goals, and they set the tone of respect and candor. Beyond that, employees must take responsibility for their own happiness.

For some people, working with people with whom they have an affinity is also a necessary ingredient for happiness. If you are one of these folks, I recommend choosing your job carefully: be sure to meet as many coworkers as possible before taking a job and if possible, attend a meeting and/or a lunch with them.

Why listen

Here is Kevin Sharer, CEO of biotech giant Amgen, recounting the events that spurred him to become a better listener:

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Governance/Leadership/Why_Im_a_listener_Amgen_CEO_Kevin_Sharer_2956
(00:02:46)
The best advice he ever got to listen better is to have only one objective when listening: understand what the other person is trying to convey to me.  His "bandwidth" for listening increased when he realized there will be time later to persuade or critique.

What about you? Can you let go of your own plans to argue convince, or object and use your listening time to focus on comprehension?

Do we have to "normalize discomfort" to create a feedback culture?

In her interview with the Washington Post, University of Houston Professor and author of Daring Greatly Dr. Brené Brown states, "the most common criticism (HR People) hear [from people leaving their jobs] is, 'I never got any feedback.'"

Most managers and leaders with whom I meet and who I coach or train have no idea how to give feedback, or they assume that feedback is only something one does when one must take corrective action.  As Dr. Brown says, when most managers gave feedback it "was corrective. It was fast and not meaningful, and it was blaming."

We must give feedback frequently -- and look for opportunities to appreciate what people do -- to be heard when we have to correct a performance shortfall. Dr. Brown describes a "feedback culture where discomfort is normalized." But most of us don't want to normalize discomfort; we want to avoid discomfort at all costs! What we fail to realize is that avoidance leads to future much more uncomfortable conversations when things are so bad we have to say something -- and we're emotional about it and therefore less likely to speak calmly (which leads the other person to respond with their own negative emotions, which block them from fully hearing us).

So how can we "normalize discomfort"? First, give feedback when things are going well -- let people know what's working and why you appreciate them.

Second, when giving corrective feedback test yourself with two questions:

1. am I just venting, or, if I truly want to see a change, am I feeling strong emotions when I think about it?
2. can I define the changed behavior I seek clearly and concretely?

If you're venting, feeling emotional, or unable to define the future state you seek, now is not the time to give feedback.

Third, ensure your corrective feedback is given "respectfully and wholeheartedly" and tied into the organization's mission and goals. Feedback is critical for your best employees, your good employees, and your adequate employees (those not adequate should be moved out) because it keeps everyone focused on the purpose of their work, provides inspiration, and facilitates self-motivation.

Help your manager handle conflict well

Today's Human Resource Executive Online presents a survey that shows that 41% of "employees think the person to whom they report does not deal well with workplace conflicts. In fact, of 20 managerial behaviors that the survey asked respondents to rate how much they trusted their immediate supervisor to master, handling workplace conflicts ranked last in the survey."

While managers should learn to both resolve conflicts and to coach their teams to resolve internal conflicts, employees can go a long way toward helping their managers do so by following these steps: 

1. Before bringing a conflict to your manager, work to resolve it on your own. Have you looked at the issue from the side of the other party?  Have you fully listened to and understood his/her concerns?  Have you found ways to help the other party hear yours?
2. When bringing a conflict to your manager, remember to bring the fullest story you can -- not just your own perspective but also what you understand the other party's perspective to be. There's no point in sending your manager off in a huff to confront the other party, then having him or her return to you with the other party's story. This would lead your manager to see you as manipulative. Your manager needs to see you as a partner, not a whiner.
3. Approach your manager from the perspective of a collaborator, not a needy conflict-avoider: you want to resolve the conflict productively and you would like to ask for his help.  You respect your manager's time and have tried all you can think of to resolve the conflict on your own.
4. Don't just drop the problem in your manager's lap but instead come prepared to suggest two or three solutions.

As much as possible, leave personal issues out of the message -- it doesn't matter if you think the other party is a jerk. What you need from your boss is help managing the problem, not the person.

Absence makes the team grow stronger, part 3

This screencast was created for a course titled, Leading Virtual and Global Teams and may refer to an assignment. Please be sure to view parts 1 and 2 of this series for full information. Source: Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger? By Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, Jeffrey Stamps, and Jessica Lipnak © 2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Running time: 00:04:45

Absence makes the team grow stronger, part 2

Part 2 of 3 This screencast was created for students in a course titled, Leading Virtual and Global Teams. Running time: 00:04:28 Please be sure to view parts 1 and 3 (soon to be released) of this series for full information. Source: Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger? By Ann Majchrzak, Arvind Malhotra, Jeffrey Stamps, and Jessica Lipnak © 2004 Harvard Business School Publishing

Absence makes the team grow stronger

(00:04:45) To be continued . . .

We are teachers all the time . . .

How powerful are models? Very powerful. The folks at Crucial Skills provide a great example: They sent a researcher to cut in a long line at the movie theater in front of another research associate who was pretending to wait in line. The research associate politely said, "I'm sorry, perhaps you're unaware. We've been standing in line for half an hour." The line cutter apologized and moved to the end of the line.

How did this modeling change others' behavior?

"We then waited a few minutes and cut in front of the person who was standing just behind our research associate who spoke up. Would the subjects take their cue from the person who said something? . . . 85 percent of the observers said the exact same thing when one of our colleagues cut in front of them.

Demonstrating a simple, polite, and apparently effective script provided observers with the motive to step up to a problem they normally would have avoided. Individuals who would normally have said nothing, once exposed to a positive example now spoke their minds."

When someone speaks over others in a meeting at work (the equivalent of cutting the line), speak up! Respectfully and calmly say, "I'd like to hear the rest of So 'n So's comments and then hear yours. Would you please let her finish?" You will find that most everyone in the room not only appreciates it, but are willing to step in the next time.

How about you? Have you ever seen people take important actions to help a group overcome an individual's misbehavior? Has that action led to others' actions that support the group's working together?

"Formal hierarchy is a declining construct"

-- Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The new college graduates in managerial positions with whom I've met recently are interested in shared leadership, concensus-building, and cultures that support employee development. They use terms such as "human potential", "shared meaning", and "social good." And they're not smirking when they use them.

In my earliest experiences in management, I worked for companies that would have thought these terms laughable. We expected managers to stay overnight Saturday so that we could save money on their airfare -- even though these managers would have to fly out later Sunday to get to their destination in time for a Monday morning meeting -- leaving them only a few hours on Sunday with their families. We expected everyone to work a minimum of 10 hours each day; anything less would have been seen as weak and uncommitted. Anyone gutsy enough to make a decision that unfortunately went wrong would be roundly criticized in front of his peers.

These new graduates are creating a whole new world. I can't wait to work for them.

the environment you create can influence your employees' IQ

I keep hearing people say that IQ is static and that EQ can change. I disagree: there is plenty of evidence that both can change. And, organizational leaders may influence their employees' IQs by the way they evaluate them:

"A group of participants suffered an average IQ drop of 17.4 points during an experiment in which they were ranked by their intelligence scores, suggesting that simply being ranked can profoundly diminish some people's ability to express their cognitive ability, says a team led by Read Montague of Virginia Tech." -- The Daily Stat, Harvard Business Review February 1, 2012

Do you rank your employees against each other? You might find being ranked motivating, but many people become stressed by these rankings -- and while some stress is good, this kind of stress limits the mind's ability to access information held in memory (psych.nyu.edu/phelpslab/papers/04_CON_V14.pdf ) and make good decisions (http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n6/box/nrn2648_BX1.html).

I know you didn't devise a ranking system so that you could lessen your employees' ability to do well; you did it thinking a little healthy competition will generate the good stress -- the kind that gets everyone hussling a bit more. Can you share some other tools you can use to facilitate/develop your employees' innate motivation without preventing them from utilizing their greatest potential?

Coach whenever you can; Direct when your employee needs direction

Last year I wrote two posts on "Tiger Management", a play on the book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". I've been reminded how important it is for some managers and leaders to give themselves permission to be Tigers when necessary by several leaders with whom I've met recently.

Each relayed a story of how they had tried to coach an employee toward learning a new skill. Yet, in each scenario, they were working with employees who were simply too green to figure anything out on their own. Coaching works when the coach has some basic skills upon which to build! Without those, the coach has to first direct the coachee, perhaps step by step, toward acquiring the skills.

Know where your employees are and meet them there. Be the manager they need rather than the manager you want to be.

Cynical employees don't share quality ideas because they don't expect anyone to hear them

At the end of the first class of all the courses I teach, I ask students to write any questions they have regarding the course topic (management, leadership, business, etc.). Usually, students will write things like, "how do I motivate others?" or "how do I get senior leadership to buy into my ideas?"

Their questions help me remember students as individuals, understand what is important to them, and respond to their specific needs. I email an answer to all questions within 24 hours.

Yesterday I received 3 questions that were so broad and/or vague as to be unanswerable. I emailed the 3 students stating this, and discovered that while one person wasn't paying attention when he wrote his question, the other 2 never expected me to read their questions. In fact, one person wrote, "Im surprised that you actually took the time to read our questions. I was going to put gibberish on the sheet at first, since these things are usually left unanswered thus figuring it would never be read."

Gibberish! My first thought is, why would an instructor bothering asking students to write something down that he never intended to read? What would be the purpose of the use of class time and paper? My second thought was, this student assumes his instructors are not reading his work (whether they are or not, we'll never know) based on their inaction.

What's even more interesting is that I'd spent some of our class time discussing the criticality of management follow-up: when managers ask for employees' input on decisions, they must share the decision taken with the employees. They should thank them for their original input and, if it wasn't taken, explain why. Otherwise, the employees will assume the manager is giving lip-service to participative management.

Don't ask a question if you don't intend to listen to the answer.

For these two students, my words about follow-up could not be heard over their (louder) experience of not being listened to.

Do you take the time to listen to your employees? How do you find the time to respond to all their questions, and provide feedback on their ideas? How often do you communicate your organization's and/or work group's purpose and how does this communication influence how your employees commit to that purpose?

While it feels like a poor use of time, we must take into account employees'/students' cynicism and take the time to overcome it with each new person with whom we work. For, why would this manager, when at work or in class, bother to provide well thought-through, clearly articulated ideas to or ask specific questions of a manager who isn't going to listen anyway?

How should we use power to effect change (if at all)?

Yesterday I worked with an intact workgroup on understanding and using conflict styles and strategies. One strategy, power-dominance, was at first confusing and later the subject of concern.

The group responsible for reporting when to use and when not to use power in a conflict stated that a leader should use his power when he wants to get a team to change; then they stated that a leader should not use power if he wants to effect change. Hmmm. These ideas were far enough apart in their discussion that they didn't notice the contradiction. When they reported back to the full group, the inconsistency was obvious.

After much discussion, the group realized that many of us tend toward using our power (when we can get it!) when we feel we must push a team toward some change because that team is dragging its feet. "If they'll just make the change," we figure, "they'll see it was worth it."

Intellectually, the group knows that when we use our power to make a team effect a change, we'll get short term compliance but long term resentment. Even if the team later agrees the change was worth it, they may feel a lingering lack of trust in us for pushing them to that change.

Rick Brenner writes in his Chaco Canyon blog, "Using fear as a tool of debate begets compliance, not heartfelt support." So what do we do when we know the change is the right thing to do but our team is dragging its feet?

This group agreed the optimum choice is to pull out all the influence strategies the leader can get his hands on: demonstrate (rather than tell) how the change will benefit the team; get outside voices whom the team trusts to talk up the change; put the change in visual form and get it in front of the team at every chance; ask team members one on one to help you understand their resistance -- find those whose resistance is lowest and once they're persuaded ask them to persuade others; garner incentives that have meaning to team members that will accrue to those who implement the change; find out if there's anything painful about the change and do everything in your power to eliminate or at least reduce the pain; search for the pain in the current way of doing things and bring it up frequently; ensure the team has the ability to make the desired change and train them or otherwise enable them; etc.

These ideas take more time -- and are a use of power, albeit a less resentment-causing use -- but I'm betting less than you'd guess -- particularly if we use all of them rather than one or two. What do you think? When was the last time you had to persuade your team (or teen) to make a change? What was your response when they dragged their feet?

risk of asking for a behavior change

I was talking with a group of engineers this week about letting another person know when his behavior is making it difficult for them to do their work. Many of us complain and gossip: "can you believe he's late to every meeting!" "Once again she goes on travel without letting anyone know where she is!" "He's so creepy -- he comes up behind me when I'm working on the computer and rubs my shoulders!"

The outcome of this complaining is that we get solace and comaraderie -- the person or people to whom we complain agree the complained-about person is a creep or an idiot or selfish or whatever characterizing term seems to fit. There is no actual change as a result and our improved emotional state lasts only until the offending person behaves in his "usual" way again.

We have a chance of changing behavior when we let the other person know how his behavior is negatively affecting us and our work. We can say, "we can't make rigorously-analyzed decisions when you arrive late to meetings -- we're missing too much of your input." Or, "when we don't know you're going on travel, we assume we'll be able to work directly with you. It would help our work planning if you'd give us advance notice of travel plans." Or, "I'm uncomfortable when you come up behind me and rub my shoulders. I'd prefer you simply come around my desk and say hello"

Speaking up has the advantages of enabling us to experience ourselves as people with the potential influence to make changes rather than as whiners, providing the other person with the opportunity to change behavior he may not realize is detrimental to others, and limiting gossip, and therefore outgrouping, at work.

One person in the program said, but what if I speak up and the person doesn't change his behavior? Yes, this is a risk. Perhaps the other person's habits are so deeply ingrained that he can't change them, he lacks the emotional intelligence to make changes, or our requested behavior was unreasonable.

I have a student with whom I've talked in person and to whom I've sent several heart-felt emails about arriving late to class. I've talked about what he's losing, what his learning group is losing, and what our class is losing by his missing so much of the class period. He continues to arrive about 30 minutes late. He will not change. That's his choice; a choice that will be reflected in his grade. And if you're thinking, well that gives you positional power, not so fast. This student is the first to complain about course process (often about things he insists I don't do for students that I do at the start of classes which he misses) and I have no doubt he will complain to the department and in his evaluations. These complaints can influence the department about hiring me for future classes and can influence future students' thinking about taking the class. His coming in late will cost me.

I can't change his behavior but if I had not tried I would not have changed his behavior nor would I ask other students to make this change. Yet every other student who habitually arrived late changed behavior after a few words from me. We must see each person and situation as unique. If I stopped speaking up, I'd see myself as powerless and I would become powerless.

When we say nothing, we get nothing.

Can you teach "heart"?

I noticed this sticker on a student's computer: "you can't teach heart".

I asked him about it -- what does it mean by "heart" in this context? Kindness? Generosity? Empathy? (all of which I believe can be taught)

He said the saying is "absolutely true" and in his context it meant commitment to the sport (jui jit su). So, what do you think? Can you teach someone to be committed to a sport -- to give his heart to it?

I disagree with this quote. While I believe we cannot motivate another person -- that the other person has to be self-motivated -- I do believe we can do things to teach commitment:

1. model commitment ourselves. We can demonstrate to our employees, teammates, peers, and children our own commitment to our group, company, team or family. We are teaching all the time. Do we give our heart to our organizations or work teams? Do we give our heart to our families? How often do we just go through the motions, get through the day, finish the task? We cannot expect heart when we don't give heart.
2. actively demonstrate the outcomes of commitment. Oftentimes people don't go the extra mile because they don't see the value in doing so. We think those folks are lazy and lose interest in them. They get less attention and see even less value in giving their hearts, and we've facilitated a negative spiral. We may know why we're committed, but if we haven't shared the overarching goal -- our organization's reason for being beyond making a profit, our team's goal beyond winning the next game, and our family's role in our lives beyond someone to add to the laundry basket -- then we cannot expect anyone else to have that goal at the front of their minds.

I'm sure there are more ways to teach "heart". What ideas do you have?

Do you create practice space for your team?

Sports teams practice and perform: 5 or so days a week they get together and experiment with new plays, try out different tactics, push limits, and test theories. They expect some of these won't pan out -- they'll fail -- and they'll learn from what didn't work to determine what will.

Players increase competency by seeing what works and learning from what doesn't, by reaching for more speed or endurance or skill, and by learning how to respond to setbacks. And competency creates confidence, which inspires players to try to reach higher goals.

When game day comes along, they use what they've learned combined with their confidence to succeed.

In some work environments, employees perform all the time. There's no room for trying something new, testing unique ideas, or failing. As a result, confidence wanes, leading employees to be less willing to stretch themselves, less likely to take risks, less comfortable offering suggestions. New competencies aren't developed and existing competencies aren't strengthened.

What can you do to create room for practice at work?

Early wins central to employee engagement

I've talked before about the importance of early wins to building momentum toward a major change.

Today's HBS Working Knowledge demonstrates that early wins create the sense of progress, and that sense of progress is critical to employee engagement. More than cash, awards, and recognition, most of us feel a strong desire to achieve. We want to see progress. Early wins provide tangible evidence of progress. And this leads us to feel more engaged, more committed and therefore more likely to succeed further.

So what to do about early losses? If my team fails to achieve a planned goal, is all momentum lost? Not necessarily. Turn that loss into a sense of progress by taking the time to discuss what was learned. Planning what to do differently next time is progress. Ensure your team recognizes this as progress.

If we never fail, we'd never learn. Something else I've talked about in this blog ;-)

Efficacious email #2 of 2

Emailing effectively & efficiently

So much time is wasted with inefficient emailing. How can you improve the efficacy of your emails?

(first of two podcasts)

Who defines project goals: top management or implementers?

It matters. When top management defines a project they usually do so because they have information front-line employees don't have: a competitor's new market strategy will affect sales; a new technology will soon be available that may reduce costs; the cost of capital is going up/down which influences the ability to expand.

All good reasons. The risks of a top-defined project: top level managers often don't know enough about implementer constraints and resources: current employee skills do not match the project requirements; current technology can't support project needs; other projects and daily tasks are more critical or salient to the employees' success. Sometimes current employee evaluation, compensation and promotion systems lead employees to focus on goals that are at cross-purposes to the project goals. While this is something within top management control, they rarely acknowledge or even notice it, and therefore it goes unchanged.

When front line employees define project goals, they may do so because they see the need first hand: customer behavior changes, calling for a new service method; access to a supply changes, requiring substitutions; or there's a shift in the labor pool, requiring new training systems.

Again, good reasons. The risks of bottom-up defined project scope are that folks at the front don't have access to or understanding of corporate resources, and may ask for unreasonable funding or management attention. They don't see where the overall organization is headed, and may not realize that their project goals run counter to the strategic direction. And they don't have access to competitive analysis that might require them to speed up or slow down or drop their project.

Ultimately, when project requirements come from the top, the implementers complain that management is being unreasonable: "we can't possibly get this done in that amount of time!" When project requirements come from the bottom, senior managers don't value the outcome and therefore don't reward success and may not supply needed resources or champion-support.

Solution? Communication!

While ideas for projects should come from everywhere, project scope and resource allocation must be defined by a cross-level group. Senior people in the group must recognize that by their very title they may inhibit surfacing of critical information and must therefore make extra effort to create psychological safety within the group. Everyone should recognize what each member brings to the table.

With open communication and clear understanding of each person's limited vision, project goals will be defined more precisely, leading to greater success.