Author: TimSchneider

Communication Style

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Adapt Your Styles

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

People communicate in dramatically different methods and styles. Almost as if there are sub-languages within each major language.

 

Image for a moment that, as the leader, someone in Berlin must perform a series of tasks to complete an objective. You speak in your native tongue of English. The Berliner smiles and nods their head approvingly. Communication complete and successful, right?

 

Just as different languages will lead to communication disconnects, different communication styles will often cause a lack of information flow and impede any real communication. Five or more years ago, the leader would often proclaim that “I am who I am” and it is your job to adapt. Sometimes it was followed by the gentle reminder “or leave.” More recently, successful leadership communication has become a more chameleon-like and adaptive approach.

 

The most commonly identified communication styles include direct, relational, low-key and detailed. The direct style often communicates in a very blunt, matter-of-fact or bullet point method. There is not a lot of language wasted on pleasantries and not a lot of background or supporting data is provided. Many times an assertive tone, implied urgency and rapid pacing comes along with the direct style.

 

By contrast, the relational communicator is often more wordy and those words are designed to build rapport. Usually, an upbeat demeanor and an eagerness to contact people are included in this style, as is an animation in non-verbal messages. These people are often labeled as chatty and optimistic.

 

The two additional styles of communication are a little harder to peg and pigeon hole. The low-key style is seen as reserved and speaks with a flat demeanor. They prefer a very soft, methodically paced and predictable approach to interpersonal communication. The detailed communicator is one that is data driven and often prefers a low-key tone. One unique trait of the detailed communicator is they will tend to answer the why question first and provide multiple sides of a point prior to communicating the resolution.

 

Now imagine for a moment all of these style thrown into a working environment and told to perform. Just as foreign languages cause disconnects, non-modified communication styles will do the same. A relational style leader attempts to communicate with a key team member who prefers a direct style. A low-key team member tries to interact with a direct style boss and soon loses her in minutiae.

 

The effective leader will bridge this disconnect with adaptive communication styles. He or she will read the style of the receiver very quickly and adapt appropriately. Quite simply, that means to know your communication style and learn how to read the style of others and adapt your style to that of the communication receiver. When that is done, messages will be transmitted with greater clarity and less misunderstanding. Subconsciously, team members recognize and appreciate the leader’s attempt at adaptation and better connection.

 

With people that you know, assessing their communication style is relatively easy. You have observed them. You have communicated with them previously. You have seen what style of communication works and does not work with them. What about new contacts and those people who are not as well known?

 

One technique that works with a high degree of accuracy is to assess the response to the “how are you?” question. Direct style communicators will respond quickly with one word and one word only. Relational communicators will provide between three and five words and many times, inquire about you. Low-key and high detail communicators will often express a brief pause while they assess the reason for your inquiry and the need to respond in an accurate manner.

 

The final word on communication style is back to the reason why adaptation is important. If, as a leader, your communication style disconnects with some people and the messages that you send are not followed, you lose. If you adapt your style and more people engage to the messages you send, you win.
Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Self Management, Owning Your Behaviors, Blindspots and Obstacles to Personal Change

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Fully Understanding Yourself

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

The most difficult person that you will manage in your leadership career is you.

That is a very hard statement to get your hands around and grasp but managing yourself is a very challenging task. Without good self-management, the delicate balance between leader and follower is jeopardized. You can loose credibility. You can damage relationships. You can completely become irrelevant.

Background on Self Management
First, a little background on self management. Self management is half of the science of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence tells us that eighty percent of our reactions, responses and projections are driven by emotion and not by logic or processed thought.
Many leaders struggle with this concept because they fancy themselves as creatures of pure, unemotional logic. This is nothing but a fallacy designed as a cover for the true nature of decisions and responses.

Emotional intelligence is split in two distinct and different pieces. The second piece is external and relational management and the first piece is self management. Working with the skills associated with both of these pieces, a complete emotionally intelligent leader is produced.
Another point of emotional intelligence and self management relate to age and experience. There is absolutely no correlation between calendar age and emotional intelligence. Some twelve year olds can have outstanding self management and emotional intelligence while some fifty year olds can have very poor emotional intelligence.

A final bit of background information about emotional intelligence is that organizations of all types and sizes have found that good self management is a great predictor of workplace success. Much more so that experience, formal education or technical skills, team members and leaders with good emotional intelligence and self management are much more likely to be successful than those with poor or lacking skills in this area.

What this has caused is that more and more companies are testing, screening and interviewing for emotional intelligence and self management. Your next career move may become dependent on how well you can manage yourself.

Complete Understanding is the First Step
The first, and perhaps hardest part of self management begins with full understanding of the subject matter. That would be you.

You will never completely understand yourself and about the time you think you have a handle on all of your behaviors and personality traits, new iterations of you and your style will emerge. Understanding yourself is not a singular event but a necessary leadership process that needs to be frequently addressed and consistently administered.

There are three sources of information for self understanding. The first is the most overused and most unreliable source related to effective leadership. Far too many leaders rely solely on their own discovery and feelings to try to understand themselves. Unfortunately, this source is full of pitfalls and lies. Often, self talk and intuitive feedback is more about who we would like to be rather than who we really are. Internally produced feedback is a part of understanding yourself but it is a highly unreliable source.

Another reason that self feedback is not a good sole source of understanding is that many leaders have a tendency to be either very hypercritical of themselves or self aggrandizing. The hypercritical feedbacks leads to many negative thoughts that are very counterproductive in self management. The puffing that comes from believing you are more and better than you really are can lead to alienation and loss of followers. Self feedback needs to be balanced with information from other and more objective sources.

Assessments and Profile Tools
One of the best sources of leadership self-understanding comes from psychometric personality tests. Great examples include the DiSC profile and the Myers-Briggs assessments. A psychometric instrument or test is a fully validated and predictive tool that can be used in a variety of settings including coaching, counseling, team building and leadership development. Test like color coding, what Star Wars Character I Am and handwriting analysis might be fun but they are not valid or predictive of your behavior and attitude traits.

One of the great dynamics witnessed in the past twenty years of coaching leaders relates to the use of personality tests. Almost without exception, people will find a piece of language in one of the DiSC profiles and just fall in love with it. Things like “works well under pressure”, “considers the feelings of others”, “builds relationships and teams effectively” or “takes charge and accepts challenges.” They will just ooze with pride when reading and reviewing results like those.
Without missing as much as a breath, the same people will read language such as “can become manipulative and quarrelsome”, “easily distracted by interruptions”, “overly concerned with details” or “appears artificial or disingenuous” and react with contempt for the validity of the survey, assessment or test.

The difficult bottom line about psychometric instruments for feedback is that you cannot embrace the good comments and trends without owning and being accountable for the other behaviors and traits in which you don’t like or don’t agree. We always encourage leaders to note all the statements in these instruments in which they disagree and then ask someone else to review the statements and provide honest feedback. The results: almost unanimously, other people reviewing the results fully validate the accuracy of what is said. Like it or not, it is you and your behavior.

Many times, the information from psychometric assessments and tests in which the leader does not agree represent behavioral blind spots. Blind spots are those pieces of behavior, or in the case of leadership, stylistic elements that the person does not recognize but all other people see with perfect clarity.

If unmanaged, blind spots can be very damaging to a leader. The blind spots can alienate followers, harm and strain relationships and create poor image elements that can damage a career. Blind spots can also be a very limiting factor in the growth and ongoing development of leaders.

If Three People Call You an Ass, You Should Buy a Bridle
The third and final source of information related to understanding yourself comes from the feedback of others. This can be in two subsets, formal and informal. Formal feedback from other people includes performance reviews and 360 degree evaluations. Performance reviews are usually not a very good source of self understanding and awareness because they are done infrequently and they are generally not done well.

The formal process of gathering leadership, performance and behavioral information from others is commonly referred to as a 360 degree assessment. It obtains feedback from those you lead, your boss and others, including vendors and customers, in which you exercise influence. The best versions of these instruments contain both quantified and numeric ratings about key leadership indicators but also include a section for anonymous comments. The most helpful information is often found in the comment section under headings that include behaviors to stop, behaviors to begin, things the person does well and things the person could do better.

The one intellectual honesty risk with 360 degree feedback comes from selecting the audience to comment and evaluate. Two errors occur frequently in choosing either people that you know will be very supportive and positive or choosing people that will be very critical. Both populations do not provide an accurate picture of you or your style. Evaluators and comment providers must be a cross section of those who love you and those who do not.

Informal methods of gaining feedback include the highly complex transaction of (gasp) asking people how you are doing. One of the best leadership sources of this information come from those being led. Simply asking how you are doing as a leader, what you could do better and what is working well is a great source of feedback to understand yourself and uncover some important blind spots.

Another great source of the same type of information comes from peers or near peers. Since they have no real vested interest in how you lead, their degree of honesty would be pretty high. This works especially well if you can create a peer mentoring type of relationship where the feedback is shared between both of you.

As with all types of self understanding feedback, this also contains a warning tale or two. The first time out of the gate, many people will not provide you with direct and fully honest information. In fact, your subordinates and peers may sugar coat things or deny that there is anything in you that needs to be changed. They may even openly think you are up to no good in this questioning. It is only through a consistent approach in which you have demonstrated no repercussions that team members will provide you with complete honesty and feedback that you need. You must ask several times across multiple months and show that no one is going to get hurt to get the self management information you want.

The final cautionary tale about direct feedback is the desire that many people have to dismiss the source. In informal feedback, if you hear something you don’t like from someone you don’t like, it is easy to discredit the information. You might say things like “you know Bob, nothing ever pleases him” or “Mary has not had a good thing to say about a boss in ten years.” Unfortunately, even when the source is not valued, some of the feedback is important. Even when wrapped in exaggeration or dislike, important information about you might lay below the surface and underneath some emotion. Focus on the message and not the messenger.

The three ingredients of understanding yourself are what you already know and believe, feedback from personality assessments and profiles and the feedback from others. Armed with this information you are now ready to begin the final step of self awareness and understanding.

Owning Your Behaviors
Like it. Love it. Hate it.
It is you.
The final piece of self understanding and awareness is to begin to reconcile all of the feedback you receive and owning who you are. The good and the not so good. The parts you like and the parts you don’t like. The effective leader owns all of those pieces of who they are.
From this point, most effective leaders will construct a plan to deal with the areas in which need improvement or need to be corrected. This is a longer term approach in which your behaviors and style are modified through consistent application of better skills and competencies that take the place of the old behaviors. This type of change and progression takes time, persistence and dedication.

Difficult? Absolutely. An absolutely necessary to your success as a leader.

A Little Note About Personal Change and Growth
The biggest obstacle that most leaders face in their own growth and development is success.

That is a tough concept.

When things are going well. You get good raises. Your performance reviews are solid. Results are good. Everything is peachy. What is your motivation to change, improve and grow?

Success often creates an artificial sense and aura of need to continue to grow, develop and change. Success can be a fog that blurs reality. Success can blind leaders into believing they are doing everything well and nothing needs to be tuned.

The most changeable and development desiring leaders are those who are coming off of a failure event and not a success event. Those feeling and experience failure embrace growth while those experiencing success often rebuff it.

Let the impetus for your leadership growth and development be success and not failure.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

The Basics of Positive Feedback

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Powerful Tools

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

The correct and frequent delivery of positive feedback is one of the most powerful tools available to any leader. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most widely misunderstood, misused and underused tools as well.

Positive feedback is providing appreciation and acknowledgement when a team member performs at their role expectation or higher. It is simply designed to replicate the positive behavior or performance from the team member and create a culture where others strive for the positive feedback and acknowledgement.

For those of us who are dog owners and those of us that have previously enjoyed the company of man’s best friend, we can compare positive feedback in work team members to the process of conditioning dog responses. When you throw the tennis ball to the dog and he brings it back, you say “good dog.” When you throw the ball again and he brings it back, you again say “good dog.”

In the event that you cease saying “good dog” the dog will stop bringing the ball back. You say “good dog” to praise a positive event and encourage the replication of an appreciated behavior.

For those of us who have raised children, we can also compare our interactions with them to the correct use of positive feedback at work. When a child brings home a good report card, we say “good job, nicely done.” The intent is to reward the good grades and encourage more good grades. Every time the grades come back well, we repeat the praise.

Please don’t get this comparison wrong. Adult working humans are very much different from dogs and children. Or are they?

Adults react to reinforcement conditioning in the same way as children and dogs. When positive feedback exists, they will replicate the behavior. When no positive feedback exists, there is little motivation to replicate the performance.

Why Bother
In about twenty years of consulting and training work, we have documented an incredible phenomenon related to the lack of positive feedback in working environments. It is the “Why Bother” phenomenon.

Basically, what happens is that a team member does something well and the leader does not acknowledge or appreciate the activity. The first time around, there is not much harm because intrinsic motivation and pride will drive the team member to do well again. Unfortunately by the second or third time with not acknowledgement, thanks or reasonable belief that any appreciation is coming, the team member will develop a “why bother” approach and begin performing at minimum or worse levels.

This phenomenon also occurs when a leader is seen only in the role of critic in chief. The only time we hear from the boss is when something is wrong or she always tells people how to do it better so, “why bother.”

“Why bother” can become pervasive in workplaces and organizational culture when there is no expectation for positive feedback. It is very common when a leader ascribes to the “I pay them to do a good job” or “I expect them to do a good job” or the “when they don’t see me they know they are doing well” philosophies. Arcane and fatally flawed, you can’t produce replicated good performance through ignoring people.

Another contributor to “why bother” are the systems used in place of human interaction positive feedback. Annual performance reviews, employee of the month plaques and bonus checks have value but do not come close to the immediate reinforcement needed reproduce good performance.

As a leader, if you want to jump start the performance of team members or recharge an entire work group that you think is under-achieving, positive feedback can cure the “why bother” phenomenon quickly and re-motivate team members.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Courage to Confront

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Compromising Actions

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Courage is not Rude or Rash

Some people confuse being courageous and speaking up with being rude. Real courage, like real confidence, is not a spoken or boisterous competency. It is quiet, thoughtful and polite. Real courage is not about interrupting others, talking over someone, using emotional fits to win a point or even using bullying tactics. It is certainly not about blind copying an email to embarrass someone.

Conversely, people who come across as polite and deliberate should not be misjudged as lacking courage. The loudest person in the room is not the one with the real courage. In fact, the cool leader will use courage more effectively and with better judgment.
Being rash is covered in detail in an upcoming commandment but suffice to say that risk must always be mitigated and analyzed. Jumping blindly off a cliff is not risk taking. It is just dumb.

Courage to Confront

The first and most used competency for leaders is the courage to confront. This becomes almost a daily function for many supervisors, managers and executives and it is a fundamental part of the coaching function. The courage to confront is simply the desire to discuss poor performance and behavior in a direct and immediate manner.

Not being rash, this is an unemotional approach to coaching team members who do not meet expectations. Most commonly, this is a leader directed coaching dialog in which an expectations for performance or behavior has not been met. Many leaders fear and avoid these interactions for a variety of reasons but the most common avoidance excuse is the loss of popularity or the risk of a full blown and ugly confrontation. Both of those lines of reasoning create a grossly ineffective leader. As a supervisor, manager or executive, you are not there to be loved. Your responsibility and accountability is to the organization and not the feelings of your team members. You are not running for homecoming queen.

The desire for popularity is an interesting dynamic. Everyone wants to be liked and loved. We humans are wired for it. Unfortunately, this becomes counter-effective and counter-productive in a leadership role. Leaders must shift their need to be liked to a need to be effective and a need to be respected. Many times a leader that makes decisions to remain popular will greatly compromise their respect quotient. More simply, the leader that fails to confront failed performance in one team member because of a desire to remain liked by that team member will loose respect and credibility with other team members.

Effective leaders make one more shift related to popularity. They move the desire to be liked out of the workplace and move it home or in other settings. This shift provides for the need to be popular and liked but keeps it from compromising important actions in the working environment.

Another obstacle to the courage to confront is performance comparatives. In it’s most simple terms, a performance comparative is looking at total team member value compared to a failure or error event. It is the failure to address today’s dress code violation because the team member usually looks good or because they are a star performer in other areas. It is not talking to a team member about their surly approach with the receptionist because they produce more than any of the other team members. It is the fearing the loss of good characteristics, behaviors and performance when addressing a deficiency.

This paradigm is most easily challenged by asking a real star performer wants to be a star performer in all areas. Also challenging this belief is the fact that team members want to know where they stand and how they are doing. Real star performers want an opportunity to be a star in all areas and fix anything that does not rise to star level. Remember, when providing this type of coaching to only focus on the single behavior that needs improvement and not the total value of the team member.

The final obstacle related to the courage to confront is the fear that a coaching session about poor performance or behavior will result in an explosion from the team member. Ugly, yelling explosion. Maybe even a complaint to human resources about you. Crying, denying and accusing. Unattractive stuff.

First, go back and read the skills and techniques to be used in these types of coaching sessions in the immediate preceding chapter and commandment. Coaching team members is not easy but it is a core skill needed in effective leadership.

Challenge yourself to understand why some team members explode during a coaching dialog about poor performance and behavior. They explode. You respond in kind. You may even say something you regret. You may say something that causes liability to you and your company. They win. Without exception, explosive behavior from team members are designed to derail your mission as an effective and coaching leader. We have taught these team members that if they explode, the supervisor backs off. And better still, the leader becomes leery of future conversations about performance.

Another example is when a team member breaks down and even cries. They cry. Your empathy turns to sympathy. You back away from the performance or behavior dialog. They win. Lesson learned and it will be used again and again.

More common is the false belief that these types of dialogs always result in ugliness. In fact arguing, crying and fussing are relatively rare. Much more common is the desire for the team member to know where they have erred and how they can remedy it.

The “No Surprise Principle” tells us that team members would much rather have a conversation about their performance that read it as a surprise on their annual performance review. That is almost guaranteed to get a nasty response. Team members need to know how they are doing and effective leaders tell them.

As a final note in this section, also consider how this skills translates into other areas of your life. If you had a dog that was digging up your backyard and did nothing to confront the behavior, would the dog continue to dig? Would your other dog be encouraged to also dig? Your child has a tantrum and you back off from your dialog, what has she learned? Will your other kids mimic that behavior?

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Courage to Confront

  By ,

Courage is Quiet

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Courage is not Rude or Rash

Some people confuse being courageous and speaking up with being rude. Real courage, like real confidence, is not a spoken or boisterous competency. It is quiet, thoughtful and polite. Real courage is not about interrupting others, talking over someone, using emotional fits to win a point or even using bullying tactics. It is certainly not about blind copying an email to embarrass someone.

Conversely, people who come across as polite and deliberate should not be misjudged as lacking courage. The loudest person in the room is not the one with the real courage. In fact, the cool leader will use courage more effectively and with better judgment.
Being rash is covered in detail in an upcoming commandment but suffice to say that risk must always be mitigated and analyzed. Jumping blindly off a cliff is not risk taking. It is just dumb.

Courage to Confront

The first and most used competency for leaders is the courage to confront. This becomes almost a daily function for many supervisors, managers and executives and it is a fundamental part of the coaching function. The courage to confront is simply the desire to discuss poor performance and behavior in a direct and immediate manner.

Not being rash, this is an unemotional approach to coaching team members who do not meet expectations. Most commonly, this is a leader directed coaching dialog in which an expectations for performance or behavior has not been met. Many leaders fear and avoid these interactions for a variety of reasons but the most common avoidance excuse is the loss of popularity or the risk of a full blown and ugly confrontation. Both of those lines of reasoning create a grossly ineffective leader. As a supervisor, manager or executive, you are not there to be loved. Your responsibility and accountability is to the organization and not the feelings of your team members. You are not running for homecoming queen.

The desire for popularity is an interesting dynamic. Everyone wants to be liked and loved. We humans are wired for it. Unfortunately, this becomes counter-effective and counter-productive in a leadership role. Leaders must shift their need to be liked to a need to be effective and a need to be respected. Many times a leader that makes decisions to remain popular will greatly compromise their respect quotient. More simply, the leader that fails to confront failed performance in one team member because of a desire to remain liked by that team member will loose respect and credibility with other team members.

Effective leaders make one more shift related to popularity. They move the desire to be liked out of the workplace and move it home or in other settings. This shift provides for the need to be popular and liked but keeps it from compromising important actions in the working environment.

Another obstacle to the courage to confront is performance comparatives. In it’s most simple terms, a performance comparative is looking at total team member value compared to a failure or error event. It is the failure to address today’s dress code violation because the team member usually looks good or because they are a star performer in other areas. It is not talking to a team member about their surly approach with the receptionist because they produce more than any of the other team members. It is the fearing the loss of good characteristics, behaviors and performance when addressing a deficiency.

This paradigm is most easily challenged by asking a real star performer wants to be a star performer in all areas. Also challenging this belief is the fact that team members want to know where they stand and how they are doing. Real star performers want an opportunity to be a star in all areas and fix anything that does not rise to star level. Remember, when providing this type of coaching to only focus on the single behavior that needs improvement and not the total value of the team member.

The final obstacle related to the courage to confront is the fear that a coaching session about poor performance or behavior will result in an explosion from the team member. Ugly, yelling explosion. Maybe even a complaint to human resources about you. Crying, denying and accusing. Unattractive stuff.

First, go back and read the skills and techniques to be used in these types of coaching sessions in the immediate preceding chapter and commandment. Coaching team members is not easy but it is a core skill needed in effective leadership.

Challenge yourself to understand why some team members explode during a coaching dialog about poor performance and behavior. They explode. You respond in kind. You may even say something you regret. You may say something that causes liability to you and your company. They win. Without exception, explosive behavior from team members are designed to derail your mission as an effective and coaching leader. We have taught these team members that if they explode, the supervisor backs off. And better still, the leader becomes leery of future conversations about performance.

Another example is when a team member breaks down and even cries. They cry. Your empathy turns to sympathy. You back away from the performance or behavior dialog. They win. Lesson learned and it will be used again and again.

More common is the false belief that these types of dialogs always result in ugliness. In fact arguing, crying and fussing are relatively rare. Much more common is the desire for the team member to know where they have erred and how they can remedy it.

The “No Surprise Principle” tells us that team members would much rather have a conversation about their performance that read it as a surprise on their annual performance review. That is almost guaranteed to get a nasty response. Team members need to know how they are doing and effective leaders tell them.

As a final note in this section, also consider how this skills translates into other areas of your life. If you had a dog that was digging up your backyard and did nothing to confront the behavior, would the dog continue to dig? Would your other dog be encouraged to also dig? Your child has a tantrum and you back off from your dialog, what has she learned? Will your other kids mimic that behavior?

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Leadership Influence in Turnover and Morale

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The Right Questions to Ask

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

Turnover and the Role of the Leader

Many organizations have an exit interview process that is usually administered by the human resources function. Almost without fail, the exit interviewer asks why the person is leaving. Almost equally without fail, the exiting team member says something about compensation. Box checked. Exit interview complete. Statistics now tell this organization that turnover is due to compensation issues.

Unfortunately, most organizations are asking the wrong questions in exit interviews. Rather than ask about why someone is leaving, ask why someone started looking for a new job. Why did they put themselves through resume’ updates, interviews and background checks for just a few more disposable dollars per year? It is with this line of questioning that you receive significantly different responses and ones that are more connected to the leadership within an organization.

With the “why were you looking” question, you will tend to hear more about how they were unappreciated by their boss, not connected to the group or never built a relationship with the leader. All of those point directly back to the personal connection of leadership and the impact it has on turnover.

The finance department does not have a turnover problem, it has a leadership problem. There is not a turnover issue in the Pawtucket branch, there is a leadership problem in that location.
Reasonable stability in employment will be a good measure of leadership quality within a working unit. There are some economic factors in play, especially with entry level team members, but this is largely about the leader.

There is an additional extrapolation in this topic. Good people want to work for good leadership. Conversely, poor team members will often tolerate poor leadership. Poor and difficult team members will struggle with good leadership because it challenges them and undermines their power over the working environment.

Morale and the Role of the Leader

Just as with turnover, the personal connection of leadership plays and important part of team morale. The marketing unit does not have a morale problem, there is a leadership failure in the marketing unit.

Just as children will follow the tone lead of their parents, team members will derive their queues for attitude and morale from the work leader. If the work leader is consistently upbeat and in good morale, the team will demonstrate the same. By contrast, if the leader is sullen, unresponsive, abrasive or hidden, that will suck the life out of the team.

The second leading question that we often ask in leadership training programs is if you can motivate someone else. About half to two-thirds of a typical group will respond in the affirmative while the remainder believes that motivation is an individual and personal function. The second group is correct but the example of how to be motivated is provided by the group’s leader. Motivation is personal but the role model is the leader. Motivation is personal but the spark to ignite motivation is often provided by the leader.

In the absence of a high quality, tone setting leader, other voices become stronger. The complainers set the tone. The whiners are the tone makers. The pot-stirrers become powerful. Team morale is not slightly dependent upon the leader, it is wholly dependent upon the leader.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Breeding Sheep in the Workplace

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Nothing More, Nothing Less

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

.Sheep.

Need constant attention. Need to be told and shown every step along the way. Not thinking. Not deciding. Not innovating. Just following and doing what they are told. Nothing more and nothing less.

Bah.

Sheep in the Workplace

Even if you have never left the comfortable confines of the big city, you have been exposed to sheep at work.

They are the people that require constant direction, sometimes the same direction, over and over again. They cannot solve problems, cannot think creatively, cannot deal with change and cannot make decisions. There will never be independent risk taking. They develop a co-dependence on leaders to guide them on a constant and continuous basis. They require a great deal of time to get even simple things accomplished.

There is no correlation between the amount of money paid to, the education level of or the type of job in which sheep congregate. Sheep come in all sizes, salary levels and ages.

Why Sheep are Bad?

When sheep become pervasive in a working environment, they will suck all of the valuable time and energy from a leader. They are very needy and require tons of time to manage.

Sheep also place a grossly unfair burden on leaders to have all of the answers and all of the ideas. Effective leadership must be able to capitalize on the ideas of his or her team and not just rely on their own creativity or innovation skills.

The presence of sheep in the workplace also create a paradigm shift in many leaders. When forced to deal with sheep, many leaders will micro-manage everyone using the assumption that all team members need that level of instruction and daily direction. Nothing will alienate a leader and render them ineffective faster than consistent micromanagement.

Sheep also have a significant impact on overall performance of an organization and the quality of service provided to your customers. Because decisions are bottlenecked back to the leader, effectiveness in reduced. When customer issues require leadership intervention, the service experience suffers.

Who is Responsible for Sheep?

Now for the hard part. You may struggle swallowing this for a minute but if you are truly self-honest, it should resonate.

To truly understand the origin of workplace sheep, we must examine recruiting, hiring and interviewing processes. Do you look for smart, experienced and thinking job candidates? In the interview process, do the job candidates indicate that they will need instruction on every step of the way and will need you to answer the same question multiple times? Do you pride yourself on being an employer of choice?

Well, if indeed you hire bright candidates that claim to have some levels of decision making and independence, where, when and how do they become sheep-like?

This is where the answer becomes a little painful. We breed them.

Through our management and supervision skills we breed sheep. Through our organization’s policies and procedures we breed sheep. Through our lack of providing feedback we breed sheep and through our taking a quick approach rather than a long term approach, we breed sheep.

Like it or not, we play the most significant role in turning a team member from a bright and ambitious rising star into a sheep. When we provide all the answers, avoid positive feedback and stifle innovation, we are building our flock.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Communication Richness and Frequency

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Tricky Combination

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

The needs for effective communication in a leadership role are indisputable. The role of poor communication patterns and skills is equally known and understood. In fact, most issues surrounding team morale, lack of involvement, poor accountability and bad performance can be traced back to the communication of a group’s leader.

Communication is a tricky combination of art and science. In it’s basic form, communication is the flow of information between humans. The last part about being a human phenomenon is important to remember. Communication is a human connectivity that is critical to the leadership role because it enjoins people in a unique and personal way to the tasks and mission of an organization. It also relates directly to the personal nature of leadership and the connection point of why people will follow a leader. To have people to want to follow, the leader must communicate with them.

If you look at leadership as the consistent and constant application of skill sets, communication is the foundation upon all others will be built. Failed communication is the cardinal sin of leadership. Effective communication will be the rock on which the other skill sets rest.

Richness

The first concept of communication effectiveness in leadership is to understand message richness. Richness describes the total content within any communication and the connect points that a communication receiver is able connect. Richness is also highly related to the emotional nature of humans. Our team members are creatures of emotion and not creatures of logic. The greater the degree of richness, the greater the emotional connection to the message.

In-person interaction has the highest degree of richness because all parts of the message sender and receiver can be evaluated and processed. Body language can be read. Tone can be interpreted with accuracy. Clarification can be requested. Understanding can be evaluated. Rapport can be built. By far and away, one-on-one personal dialog has the highest richness.

When using the telephone, richness begins to diminish. Although tone can still be evaluated and clarification can be achieved, there are no non-verbal messages to evaluate. Similarly, in public communications, meetings and presentations, richness also fades because of the lack of interactive elements related to clarification and understanding.

Richness takes a final hit when we convert communication to the written word. With the exception of Nobel Laureate winners, most people cannot achieve any type of meaningful connectivity in writing. Even with emoticons, colored backgrounds and dancing symbols, emails have a coldness and lack any ability for clarification. Written communication also has a high probability for misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Humor and personality can rarely be translated in the written word.

One challenge to consider is compare the amount of time spent recovering from a misunderstood email to the amount of time spent to walk down the hall and talk to the recipient. Consider how much time you might spend repairing a relationship from a terse one line email. When possible, engage in interpersonal, one-on-one communication.

Frequency and Not Volume

As far as leadership job go, the strong, silent type need not apply. Leadership requires a consistent stream of quality communication to team members. Communication frequency is at the core of group performance issues like trust, understanding direction, achieving objectives and even integrity.

One common mistake made by leaders is that volume makes up for frequency. So instead of talking frequently with team members, the leader simply conducts a marathon staff meeting once a month. During that meeting, the leader pines endlessly about all the issues past and current and indulges in a pontification designed to prove their commitment to quality communication. A three hour state of the organization address does not make up for a lack of consistent and frequent communication on a more personal and individual level.

In comparing volume and frequency, consider the human disconnect point in communication. In any dialog, humans report that somewhere between ninety seconds and three minutes, when the object of the dialog is not forthcoming and the content has suspect value, people disengage and cease listening. So, as a leader drones on endlessly, the target audience is left day dreaming. Visualize a Far Side cartoon when the dogs hear “blah, blah, blah, spot.” More frequent and shorter interactions will cure this phenomenon.

The other big issue surrounding communication frequency is trust. Without frequent communication, team members will often mistrust the motive of the leader and lack the personal connection and loyalty needed to be as effective as possible. Equate this to personal relationships. When communication is infrequent, trust will often sag dramatically. When communication occurs, even in troubled relationships, trust can be established as a baseline for moving forward. Relationship therapists will always work to establish frequent communication prior resolving other issues in the relationship.

Team members also report that one of their largest frustration is not knowing where they stand with the boss. They are unsure of their future and don’t know where they fit in the organization. All of these issues are curable by increasing the frequency of leadership frequency.

The easy way to improve frequency is to remember that the leadership legacy is about other people’s achievement and not your own work flow. With increased communication, your team will gain trust and work harder for you.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Your Role in Organizational Culture

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No Easy Task

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

There are four primary functions that you, the leader, must play in reference to organizational culture. Your first role is to determine organizational culture and the impact of that culture on your sphere of influence within the organization. This is no easy task and you will occasionally receive mixed messages on culture. Some people around you and above you will walk the talk while others balk at it. You will have to gauge key objectives, vision, mission, core values and the tone of leaders to determine the culture.

When the culture is built on solid ground and clearly defined, your second role related to culture is relatively easy. Simply support it and build upon the strengths found in the organization’s culture. The one challenge point in this area will be your ability to subordinate some of the strong feelings that you have related to how things “should be” with how thing actually “are.” Your support of the organizational culture is critical to how your team will respond within the culture and your overall leadership message of support and oneness.

When an organization’s culture is a little fuzzy or you are unable to reconcile what the culture really is all about, you will need to provide some fine tuning for your team. This requires you to find the strongest and most positive messages within the culture and constantly reinforce those messages. It will also require you to quash the messages that are counterproductive or not helpful to the organization and redirect team members to the strong and positive points of the organization’s culture.

The final role that you may have to play related to organizational culture is that of definer. You may be the one that establishes values, connects to the vision and provides clear messages related to the organization. Many new, emerging and growing organizations lack an organizational culture and leaders, at all levels, must work to define that culture and produce the environment that cultural drivers have the correct balance. This is also seen when there is a change in senior leadership and the previous keepers of organizational culture are replaced. When in the role of definer it is important to see the needs of team members, customers and all stakeholders and to determine what cultural elements will produce the highest degrees of success for all.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.  

Communication Clarity

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Less is More

Tim Schneider, Coach, Speaker, Author and Trainer from Aegis Learning

By Tim Schneider

One of the most common challenges associated with leadership communication is message clarity. Fortunately, this is also the easiest issue to fix.

Quite simply, to improve clarity, use less words.

Visualize this setting for a moment. The leader requests to have a corrective coaching session with a team member. Starting with “you know that you have been a very effective employee here and we appreciate your hard work, attention to detail and reliability.” Continuing without a breath to “In fact, the time back in 05 when you came in early during the computer transition was especially valuable and recently when you helped with the holiday party was very valuable.” Droning on with “The bottom line is that we need more people like you but unfortunately, we cannot tolerate you not getting along well with your fellow, and equally valuable, team members.”

Clarity was impacted early and often in the above interaction. The point of the dialog was to discuss the team member’s relationship with peers. Did the team member understand that or was he completely disengaged by the time that point was made? It is extremely likely in the above model that the team member did not get the point and was entirely uninterested by the time the point was communicated.

Think about another example related to a changed procedure for a minute. The leader begins by saying “when we began processing orders in the late nineties, there were only a few of us working on about thirty orders every day.” “From there, we installed the first automated processing system, that a few of you long-timers can remember; and I am sure you remember the problems we had with that conversion.” “We are now at a great crossroads in our department where I had to hire a consulting team to work with our order processes and hope to devise a method to handle the new increased volume, mostly from the internet, without hiring an army of new people.” “With that said, we will need to, effective immediately, begin coding our orders with a separate source identifier when it is an internet or email order.” Even the most eager and high energy team members will be long gone by the time the punch line rolls around on this one.

In both examples, the leader needed to engage in object oriented communication which is the articulation of the objective first and then holding all other detail for counter-punching opportunities or to respond to questions. This means to express the important part first to make sure communication receiver is engaged and to not jumble the message with unimportant fluff or unneeded explanations.

Some people are a little too anxious to add explanations and history when none is necessary. Still others will try a little too hard to provide mounds of information in support of their position. When this is done, in an unsolicited or in an environment that is not needed, the speaker loses credibility. Many subordinates will see through the overly pontificating boss rather quickly and this loss of respect will be hard to recover.

Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder, CEO and lead facilitator for Aegis Learning.