Tag: leadership

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

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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.  

Work Ethic and Results Orientation

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Existing Challenges in Leadership Work

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

By Tim Schneider

The final personal leadership self management competency set relates to work ethic and a little reminder about breeding sheep. Effective leadership requires a work ethic that is strong and committed. Committed to the betterment of the organization and the results required to be successful. Not committed to personal comfort and self-gain.

Work ethic is sometimes described as an intangible that is learned early in life or somehow genetically encoded in people. Work ethic is also derided by prior generations as being non-existent or diminishing in subsequent generations of team members. As a matter of historical record, this comparing work ethic unfavorably from generation to generation has been occurring for ages. The fact is that work ethic and commitment are learned skills and competencies like all others. When reward and feedback is provided for work ethic behaviors, work ethic improves. When no feedback or reward is provided for work ethic, it will be non-existent.

The effective leader must demonstrate a balanced approach to work ethic. You must not become a workaholic or work more hours just to work more hours. Your role is to work the amount needed to get the job done and be effective. You must also me a model of efficient behavior to get the most done with the most effective use of time.

Two very different challenges exist in leadership work ethic. The first is the challenge to personal comfort and self-interest. An effective leader must subordinate their own interests and comfort for the greater good of organizational successes. This will mean sometimes skipping a lunch, not leaving right at five or even cancelling a vacation. The effective leader is prepared to do this, not because of what it shows and demonstrates but because it is occasionally necessary. The effective leader also demonstrates this commitment silently and without grandstanding about it.

With companies and organizations going through difficult times, many leaders have learned negative lessons about commitment and work ethic. Some people translate layoffs, downsizings and reductions in compensation as the signal to disregard work ethic and commitment. This could not be further from the truth. Even if your company does not recognize or reward work ethic, you must set aside your self-interest and selfish motivations for greater organizational objectives.

The second challenge to work ethic is an over exaggeration of needed time on the job and becoming a workaholic. No one likes to work for a workaholic because they will never demonstrate the hours or commitment that he or she does. Followers will come to resent it and far too often workaholic leaders compare the time they put in to those of their team members.

Leaders must work and work hard but not fall victim to the mandatory seventy hour rule. Work when you have to. Be efficient in your use of time. Go home and have some balance in your life.

Results orientation is a simple competency for effective leaders. It is the drive and focus towards meaningful results for the organization. From a self-management perspective, it requires the discipline to recognize the behaviors and activities that are not productive and the resolve to redirect team members towards the achievement of results.

The orientation to results also require effective leaders to not overly rely on procedures, processes and policies but focus rather on the bottom line achievement. Within the boundaries of legal, ethical and safe, it is not the “how” that matters, it is the “what.” Result orientation also allows greater levels of participation and innovation from team members and avoids the dreaded “micro manager” label often assigned to leaders who are overly concerned with the discipline of process and not results.

Result orientation and sheep breeding are very closely related. In order to have a nimble, thinking, responsive team, you cannot breed sheep. Similarly, to achieve results and have effective result orientation, you cannot breed sheep. Effective leaders will challenge themselves to not manage the process but lead their team to the desired results.

Tim Schneider

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

The Mechanics of Tone Setting

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Initial Greeting

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

By Tim Schneider

Good tone setting requires a couple of basic behaviors and skills that are applied on a consistent basis. Some leaders utilize these skills on almost a naturalized level, while others must embrace the skills on a more mechanical level.

The first step of good tone setting is the initial greeting of team members. For most environments that is the “good morning” at the start of the work day. To pull this off correctly, the greeting must sound sincere, upbeat and not, on any level, forced. The great tone setters will also include some relational dialog about family, interests or just the drive to work.

One epiphany moment exists in the initial greeting of team members. Leaders have a significant choice at the start of each day. On one side they have their office or cubicle where all of their work lives. New email, yellow sticky notes, files and stuff. On the other side is the team. You know, the people who do the work so you can be the leader.

When a leader chooses to take a few minutes and go to the office prior to greeting team members, they are telling the team that, at best, they are secondary in importance. Don’t be naïve. Your team notices that choice.

Another great tone setting skill is to demonstrate interest in team members. One of the many tests that we often administer in leadership training is to quiz the depth of knowledge about team members. Most leaders can recite the family composition of team members. Some leaders can talk about the interests, passion points and motivations of team members and a few can provide insight into location of origin, pets or other details.

A leader’s ability to show interest is a powerful tool. When you are able to follow-up on a sick spouse, inquire about the results of a soccer tournament or check on vacation plans, team members feel connected, respected and valued. Those are the team members that will work harder, faster and stay with you longer.

Another weapon in successful tone setting is the ability to laugh and lighten the mood. We always do serious work but often take ourselves too seriously. When the leader laughs, especially when times are challenging and tough, the team will respond in a very positive manner. Tense people do not work well and are not very productive and that message of tense is set by the leader.

Tim Schneider

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