For a business owner or manager to expect workers to leave the world beyond work out of their work-day world is not only unreasonable but it is also impossible. Things happen. Our energy is sapped by an illness of a loved one, a quarrel with a significant other, a needed home repair – you get the picture. Workers cannot turn off their life outside of work. Life happens and it can steal the energy we need to be our best at work.

What a business owner or manager can do is to utilize every resource they have to maximize the flow of energy to their workers. It is the one huge lever we all have but a lever so few actually use. Too many owners and managers behave in ways that further deplete workers energy and then wonder why on earth these lazy louts just don’t measure up. So what’s a manager to do? How do we infuse energy into our business systems and stop the energy loss? The answer is quite simple but not always easy to do.

The first step in the energization process is to become aware of what energizes your workers and what depletes their energy. It would be much easier if our work force was monolithic in nature but it is not. People have different expectations and desires. It falls on the manager to figure out what makes different people want to get up and come to work on their good days or want to stay home on their bad days.

Fortunately, most people will be energized by just a few categories of factors. For some it will be the opportunity for financial gain. For others it will be the opportunity to help others and build strong relationships. Some will enjoy the challenges of learning new things, while others will work best when everything is highly organized and orderly. There are those that are seeking a leadership role; either formal or informal. And then there are people that need to see the beauty in what they are doing. Finally, a few will just want to know what is expected of them and then be given the freedom to go out and meet those expectations.

As a manager, if you play the wrong hand with the wrong worker you create friction between that worker and yourself. Too many managers make the mistake of assuming what energizes them is what must energize others, and this leads to a great deal of friction between many managers and most of their workers.

The second part of the energization process involves learning new behaviors as a manager. If everyone was exactly like me, I could treat every worker the way I’d like to be treated. But, reality tells me that only a small percentage of my workers will be energized by the same factors that energize me. If I am to maximize the performance of my workers, I must learn how to maximize the energy flow from me to each of my workers.

To do this I must learn to behave, as best as I can, in a way that minimizes the friction between me and each of my workers. This means I must learn at least six new energy languages. If my most proponent source of energy is financial reward, I will need to learn to speak the languages of altruism, aesthetics, politics, regulation, theoretics, and self-determination as well. This is not easy because I am most comfortable speaking in terms of economics and these other languages are foreign to me. But just as practicing speaking French, Spanish, and German can help me become fluent in those languages, practicing these other motivational languages will help me become fluent in these other motivational languages. Additional, it is not just a verbal language. These are both verbal and behavioral languages. You can’t just talk the language; you must to behave the languages as well.

How do you learn these other motivational languages?

Step 1. The quickest way to do this is to spend time with people who actually speak that language. Find workers that speak from an aesthetic, altruistic, theoretical, political, regulatory, and/or self-determination point-of-view.
Step 2. Have these workers tell you how they would like to be communicated to and how they would like to be treated.
Step 3. Start doing what works best for each of them.

As time goes on, if you are diligent in your studies, you will become fluent. You will always speak economics best (if that’s your language) but you can become very adept at any of the other languages if you try.

Our experience is that workers really want to know how they fit into the larger scheme of things.  Lacking the connections, workers will do exactly what most managers do – make assumptions.  Those assumptions will most likely be off the mark, and can color their perceptions of the company and management.  In the long run this will affect productivity and profitability.

If you want to give yourself the biggest advantage possible you will need to know where your people are coming from.  That can only be ascertained through careful observation of what they do and why they do it; not just at work but outside of work as well.  In a comprehensive study we conducted of route drivers for the vending industry we discovered that unlike their managers, route drivers were not strongly motivated by money.  Money was important as it allowed them to pay their bills and engage in the outside activities they valued most, but they we far more driven by a desire for consistency, predictability, and knowledge of what was and what was not expected of them in the workplace.  Their interest was in putting a clearly defined amount of work for a clearly defined and fair amount of pay so that they could spend their off-work hours with their families and friends engaged in other activities that they valued just as much as work.

In that same study we could see how managers were misreading these drivers.  They often looked for a route driver that would behave in an entrepreneurial way.  That is, they would look at their route as if it was their own company and take on all of the “responsibility thinking” that a business owner would take on.  This is not consistent with how the route drivers thought or believed.  The route driver did not want that burden.  In those companies that took that approach there was constant turnover in route drivers. The business owner and manager took on those responsibilities because that was part of what motivated them to get up and go to work each day.  They loved that challenge. That was their world, not the world of the route driver.

Careful observation will provide the insight you are looking for.

If you want to give yourself the biggest advantage possible you will need to know where your people are coming from.  That can only be ascertained through careful observation of what they do and why they do it; not just at work but outside of work as well.

Step One:  Identify the direct reports that you find the most challenging to motivate.

Step Two:  Begin to observe what they do, and why they do it.  What do they talk about at work?  What do they do when they are not at work?

Step Three:  Is your observation consistent with what your assumptions?

For many years leaders thought that all they needed to do was create awareness. If people were aware of what the leader wanted, they would somehow figure out that something really needed to be done and how they should do it. In line with that thought was the associated thought of; if my people know who they are, they will be able to become who I need them to be. Both assumptions are erroneous assumptions. Awareness does not naturally lead to an understanding of what needs to be done or how to do it nor does awareness lead to comprehending how to make oneself more effective at doing what needs to be done.

The act of leadership requires the leader to do all three. Effective leaders create opportunities for followers to become more aware of: 1) themselves, 2) the world around them, 3) the tasks they must engage in, 4) the expected outcomes of those tasks, and 5) the processes they should use to get those tasks accomplished. Once that awareness is evident, effective leaders consider the orientation of followers; that is what will be each follower’s natural reaction to what has been laid in front of them?

There are many possibilities. One might want to carefully plan the steps to be taken. Another might want to get right at it without any planning. A third might want to get the input of others. And yet another might want to do it completely alone. In fact, each person will have an action orientation based on numerous factors. A few of these orientation factors might be directness and decisiveness, relationship building, aesthetics, altruism, process and rule following, thinking, independence, or economic gain. There are others, but these are some we often see when people make decisions about how they might engage in any activity.

But awareness and understanding orientation, in themselves, do not lead to success. Most followers need their leaders to guide them through the actions needed to achieve success. Successful performance is about behaving our way to success. We cannot think our way to success, we must act. Actions result in our behavior and it is behaviors that get things done. If someone has a heart attack, we don’t want doctors to take an excessive amount of time to develop a course of action and treatment implementation. We want them to act now to save a life. But if someone has cancer, we don’t want doctors to act before they have studied the situation carefully and then developed the best possible treatment plan.

In all circumstances the best course of action will be a product of the situation we are faced with. It will consider each person’s awareness level, their preferred action orientation, and the unique qualities of the situation. Success will hinge upon the effectiveness of the plans made and the skills of those who implement those plans, as well as a leader’s ability to either coach or find a coach for followers in areas they lack the knowledge or skills needed to achieve success.

Awareness, Orientation, Action – practice:

Step One:  Review the five areas leaders can create opportunities for awareness in their followers.  Are you utilizing each of these opportunities as a leader?

Step Two:  Determine the orientation of your followers.  What might their natural reaction/orientation be when given instructions?

An immature leader is often like a carpenter who only learns how to use one tool! It’s hard to cut a board in half using a hammer. If you want to cut a board in half, you would be much better served by learning how to use a saw. In fact, there are even different types of saws that can be used for cutting different types of boards and based on what the final product of process is to be. Leaders who say “this is who I am, and this is how I lead” are sticking to stories they have told themselves and others and they are not considering what tools are really needed in any given situation.

Mature leaders understand that great leaders have a “leadership toolbox.” They size up the situation and then go to their toolbox and take out the tools that they believe will work best for the situation. They make these decisions based on past experiences and acquired knowledge and understanding. Once they have begun to use their tools they also seek feedback on how things are going because they know that they may need to engage in some course correcting if the selected tools are not doing the job. Sometimes they realize that they don’t have the right tools for the job and they seek out others that might have a better set of tools.

We have seen too many leaders and managers that fail to take advantage of the skills and tools others bring to the table. These leaders are afraid that they will look weak if they ask for help from someone else. These leaders don’t realize that the story they are telling themselves and sticking to is a massive blocker to their own success. By thinking that they must be the ultimate source of knowledge and skills for the team and by ignoring the other valuable options that are available, these leaders hamstring their teams and limit their chances for success.

What’s the story you are telling yourself about you as a leader? Is that story one of adaptability, agility, and openness? Can you adopt a new story when your current story is no longer useful? Can you be the leader your team needs when they need it? The answer to these questions are critical to becoming a mature leader; one that can lead in the most difficult of times. Know your story but don’t get stuck with it. Be an agile leader. Rewrite your story as often as you need to.

Stretching is also important for our personal growth and development which, in turn, is critical for our performance and the success of our organizations. In this case, we are not stretching our muscles, but we are stretching our “Self-Concept!” We all think we know who we are, and we often believe we need to be true to ourselves. But, if being true to ourselves means we fail to master the skills needed to perform with excellence, then we are hindering our own and subsequently our organizations capacity for success.

If I am the CEO of a company, I must realize that the first person who must learn to stretch my self-concept is me, but this doesn’t let everyone else off the hook. Every single person in the company must also learn to stretch.

How do we stretch our self-concept? First, we must understand that if we perceive the process as being hard work, we will be less likely to do the work. So, our suggestion is that we play at stretching our self-concept. Play is different from work.  According to Herminia Ibarra (Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, 2015) the difference between play and work is all about the mind-set with which you approach the task. When you are working you are serious. You set goals, have time lines, and follow protocols and processes. When you play, none of that matters. You lose yourself in the fun. If you are curious about something you investigate it. You are not afraid to try new things. Failure creates some of our most laughable moments! That is so much different than work. Failure at work is painful and often detrimental to our careers.

Our suggestion is that you start playing with who you are and what you need to be. Don’t make your self-improvement work; make it fun. Play with it. If you need to become more outcomes focused because you are far more concerned with perfecting processes, then perhaps you play with ideas that start to ignore some of the possible details and begin to take action. To do this you will need to use a task that is more playful than “workful”, such as creating a new game or writing a silly story. You may find it hard to stretch yourself beyond what you normally do. You may find that you want to use the same process for doing these “fun, playful things” that you would use while doing “structured, ‘workful’ things.” Fight the urge. Let loose. Let it go.

Practice Stretching:

Step One:  Start by recognizing how you usually do things and recognizing how others may perceive your preferred methods as being blockers to success.

Step Two:  Think of what change others would like to see in you. Now create a playful process for helping you stretch yourself in that direction.

1. Received by my audience
2. Understood by my audience
3. Resonates with the audience and they know what to do with my message
4. Leads to the expected actions and produces the desired outcomes (because they have the tools, skills, and knowledge to implement the behaviors that result in those desired outcomes)

The team we worked with shared the same belief as we so often see with others. That belief is that I am only responsible to simply send the message and make sure I was clear in my mind as to what that message was.  They had never thought in terms of having the responsibilities as outlined above. Our point with this team was simple. We communicate with others for a reason. If that reason is to cause a series of actions that lead to important outcomes, then our responsibility extends way beyond just sending the message.

How do you make sure these four things happen when you communicate? You must ask questions! You cannot assume they heard you and that they understood what you said. You must ask every person to respond and tell you, in their own words, what you said and what actions they must take. This will help you know if they understood and know what to do. Finally, you can ask them if they know how to do what you want them to do.  Are they capable of what you are asking them to do and do they have the tools, materials, time, and resources that are necessary to accomplish that?

Once you confirm you are on the same page, then the chances of success are dramatically increased.  If the outcomes do not meet your expectations, then conduct further evaluation based on the effectiveness of the process, abilities of people, and/or key behavioral implementation factors, such as; persistence, prioritization, drive, integrity, professionalism, etc.  Still not getting the outcomes you want?  Then it might be time to find someone else to do what you are asking for.

Check to see if your messages are being received:

Step One:  If you are not getting the outcomes you expect, review your communication through the four areas identified above.

Step Two:  Conduct further evaluation if necessary

Step Three:  Be proactive on the front end of communication to avoid assumptions, miscommunication, and delays.

The first factor is seated in how the employee feels about the job. The second factor is how the employee feels about him or herself doing that job.

A leader not only has the ability, but also the responsibility to help employees feel good about their job and feel good about themselves while doing the job. One of the biggest challenges a leaders faces is the simple fact that they are responsible for the level of performance of each of their direct reports. With the pressure on the leader to improve performance, it becomes too easy to ignore the fact that disengaged employees are poor performers. If you improve engagement, better performance will follow.

The subject this week is empathetic listening skills.

We use a simplified empathetic listening process that consists of only two steps.

Step One:  Initially, pause – for at least 5 seconds.  Listen for understanding.  Do not respond immediately to what you hear but take the time to make sure that you fully understand what your employee is communicating.  Listen to what they are saying and then repeat back to the employee what it is that you think you have heard. Ask them, “Is this what you’re trying to tell me”? It may take two or three, maybe even four exchanges of information before the employee says, “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you”.

Step Two:  This step can sometimes be a little more difficult. This step is about asking the employee what it is they would like you to do regarding what they have told you. What often happens is the employee will begin to suggest what they see as a possible solution to the problem they’ve posed, but not given the opportunity to share their thoughts.  If you encourage them to share how they would solve the problem, they end up owning and becoming more engaged in the solution. This simple process works extremely well. As a result, leaders intervene only when employees really need them and employees take ownership of their own work.

Every organization requires some materials for operation.  Whether it is just a few pens, pencils, and paper or million dollar machines, there is stuff to every business. That is true whether you are in business by yourself, a teacher, a preacher, a small business owner, a not-for-profit, a service club, or a manufacturer employing thousands of people. Stuff is needed to make your operation work.

A common mistake that many leaders make is not fully understanding what all that stuff might be.  We get the big things but sometimes we overlook the little things that can trip us up. This is especially true for big picture people; the people who tend to be more visionary in their leadership style.  We quite often find that some pieces of the puzzle are put into the category of “assumed presence.”  What that means is that it just always seems to be there so we ignore its importance to the operation. 

Not paying attention to these details can result in a failure at some point.  If you are one of those more “heads in the clouds” type of leaders, you will probably want to make certain you have the person you can rely on that will take note of every detail regarding what is needed for the business to succeed. Unfortunately, too many leaders fail the delegation test, which is something we’ve already reviewed.

As we have seen throughout this book and throughout our life experiences, we each tend to have a primary focus.  That focus is usually either people, things, or ideas.  If you are a people or idea type of person, there is a strong chance that there are things that are part of your business that you may not be fully aware of.  If you are a small business, one where you are the primary manager, there is a chance that you will miss something.  If you are a people oriented or idea oriented individual it will become very important that you have someone that can maintain the material assets focus for your business.  We at Culture by Choice understand this very well.  None of us is particularly enamored with the asset end of our business.  It’s not that we dislike that end of the business, it’s just that we are much more focused on the people and ideas.  For that reason, it was important for us to have someone watch after the more material side of our business.

This lack of material asset focus is not unusual for many entrepreneurs.  Many entrepreneurs have wonderful ideas that they are very excited about.  These idea people can talk a mile a minute when you get them going about the core of their business.  But shift the focus form the idea to the material aspects of making this business a successful reality and many will falter a bit.  We’ve seen this many times in the new start-up clients we have worked with through the Central Michigan University Research Corporation (CMURC), an organization that helps launch new business ventures in the Central Michigan region. In many of these businesses they have wonderful ideas about a much needed new business but when it comes to the details regarding how to make the business succeed many lack the detail orientation needed to make it a reality.  CMURC, through their classes and seminars helps these fledgling businesses put the entire package together before they venture off into uncharted waters. 

We have helped those entrepreneurs acquire a better understanding of who they are and very critically, who they are not.  The blind spots they have, and believe me we all have them, are the parts of their intellectual, psychological, and emotional makeup that can trip them up because we each have biases about what we prefer to do and pay attention to and if we  let these remain a mystery to ourselves, they can come back to haunt us.  If the blind spot is that we really don’t like the material details of the business that can be our undoing.  Knowing that we rarely become proficient at something we really don’t like that much, our advice is usually to find someone to partner with or to contract with that can take care of these details.

THE ARTICLE: Identifying Assets: Material Based Assets

During the economic down-turn, there have been thousands of businesses that went belly-up because their customers lost their customers.  Consider the Big Three Automakers in the US.  Their inability to sell cars resulted in the cancelling of orders from parts suppliers all over the country. Many of these teetered on bankruptcy and numerous businesses were plunged into the abyss.  And it’s not just the suppliers; What about the companies that make the equipment that are used in the manufacturing processes?  This is a real domino effect!

The “stuff” that makes business possible, the material assets, has a major impact on the success of any business.  Taking full stock of even the smallest items and understanding how those items influence success is a critical exercise for several reasons.  Among those are:

1. Making sure all that “stuff” is really necessary. Do you have bells and whistles because someone thought it was a good idea or do those things really contribute to productivity and profitability
2. Are all these things in good running order? How much time is wasted because a machine continues to go down or because a computer is running way too slow?  We recall the company that had several clerical staff members that had to wait on average 30 seconds for a process to complete before they could move on to the next task on their computers.  They were doing between 20 and 30 tasks a day.  That meant that they were losing between 10 and 15 minutes a day waiting for the computer to process data.  With ten people doing similar data entry, that means a loss of 100 to 150 minutes of work a day.  For a work year that is 430 to 650 hours.  At a cost of $20 per hour that equals $8,600 to $13,000 plus benefits.  Simply upgrading a server to increase response time can save money in the long run.
3. One of the critical things in all businesses is money. Leaders need to know whether or not their business is adequately capitalized.  Do you even know what adequate capitalization is?  What would it take to keep your business alive for 6 months during a serious financial crisis?  How about 12 months?  Our experience is that many small businesses (and quite honestly more than a handful of big businesses) have not fully thought through the capitalization puzzle.  With small businesses there is often an inability to get the type of financial guidance that comes from a good CFO.  To be able to take advantage of the power of such a person, there are options.  One of these is an organization like The Profit Experts.  Fred Parish and his group of CFO’s for hire can provide an affordable view into quality financial management for small businesses and help a business gain control over their “Capitalization” issues.

There are many more reasons to be aware of your material based assets but I believe these three give you a good start for looking at your own.

SUMMATION:

Helping any organization succeed is a 3 pronged process.  Leaders must pay attention to all of the assets of the organization which includes the people, material, and intellectual assets.  Most of us have a stronger affinity to one of these three than we do the other two.  But organizations do not function solely on any one of these three.  It requires attention in all three areas.  W\Leaders often have a bias towards one of these and as the word suggests, those who are biased towards one over the others will have a tendency to focus more on the area of their bias.  Leaders that are more materially focused run the risk of downplaying people and ideas.  Leaders that have a strong ideas bias will put the concepts of the organization above the people and the materials.  And those more biased towards people may ignore the ideas and materials.

Let’s take a quick look at what it might look like if one of these three is allowed to overshadow the other two by an excessive amount.  Let’s assume that a leader is very materially focused or in other words has a strong bias towards things.  If this goes unchecked that leader will pay very close attention to the material assets of the organization and will tend to think of the people assets in the organization more as things than as people. On the idea side of things this leader may discount ideas that can have a positive impact on the organization.  In fact, there are instances where highly materialistic people will begin to look at ideas as tools and will change philosophical or moral stances as they perceive that a new “philosophy” can help them achieve material gain.  These are the “The End Justifies the Means” people.

There are also problems if the leader possesses a strong ideological bias.  These leaders will adhere to ideas even when those ideas may cause the eventual demise of the organization.  Being principle centered is a great asset but if the principles you adhere to runs in contradiction to the needs of people and if those “ideals” discount the importance of the material needs of the organization, the organization is in trouble. When ideologues demand strict adherence to “the idea” and ignore the impact of those ideas on the rest of the world around them, a day of reckoning will be at hand.

Finally, leaders that are so focused on people that they play it too loose with principles and denigrate the need for materials end up being unable to meet the needs of the very people they wish to serve. We have seen these “bleeding hearts” run their organization into bankruptcy because they failed to take care of the day-to-day business that allows the organization to be sustainable.  It is in balance that organizations succeed. You can have a people-focused organization but it had better not be so biased in that direction that you lose sight of your principles or so much so that you spend your way into oblivion.  

As is the case with so many leadership qualities, when we consider the three legged stool of people, things, and ideas, balance is essential. Too much emphasis on any one of the three legs creates an organizational bias that can be detrimental to the organization as a whole.  Each of us will have our own personal biases in these three areas and if we allow our own bias to color the organizational focus we run the risk of alienating some of our team members.  By letting everyone know that the intention is to maintain a balance between these three aspects of the organization, a clear message is sent that leadership intends to remain unbiased in their approach to operations. Now it is incumbent upon the entire team to stay open minded and to hold one another accountable for remaining unbiased.

© 2013-2015 Culture by Choice-WTBG, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: All rights reserved distribution of this information outside of an academic setting no permitted without express written permission from Culture by Choice-WTBG.

One of the most difficult tasks for many leaders is clearly identifying the people assets of an organization.  Too many leaders pay too little attention to this requirement for leadership.  Jim Collins admonished us to make sure we have the right people on the bus but the only way we can do that is to know three critical things about your organization.  First you must know the real reason the organization exists.  This is not about mission and vision statements. This is about getting to the underlying reasons for the organization’s existence.  It’s not about platitudes; it’s about attitudes.  Without crystal clarity of purpose, there will be no foundation upon which to build your team.

The second thing you must know is what specific behaviors and actions will best lead to the fulfillment of the purpose.  By knowing everything that must be done and how those actions should be taken, you can become a leader that is focused, disciplined, and strategic.  Without this knowledge you are shooting in the dark.

The third thing you must know is what types of people will be needed to complete each and every aspect of the activities that lead to success. If you are building a financial portfolio you will pay careful attention to your asset allocation.  Leaders must be just as cognizant of their human asset allocation.  Just as with our finances, imbalance can put our entire investment in jeopardy.  Too many people, who have the same skills, think the same way, or draw from the same experiences puts your team at risk.  We have had clients that hired people that mirrored management styles of upper level management.  In times when alternative views would have been quite helpful, everyone was thinking the same way.  Even though they thought they were doing all the right things, success was elusive.  To generate the types of alternative approaches to getting desired results requires that there be a healthy dose of diversity in the thinking perspectives of people on the team.

Some leaders have excellent intuitive senses about people.  They can speak with a person for a few minutes and have a fairly good assessment of a person’s strengths and blockers.  They can also ascertain what motivates people.  But, most of us need some help in making these determinations. There are a variety of assessments that can be done to help leaders better understand the talent that exists on their teams. We use a suite of assessments that tell us about an individual’s strengths, blockers, values, beliefs, predominant behavioral tendencies, leadership preferences, and key motivators.  When we have this information about the people on our team we can make informed decisions about how we deploy people.

In a recent conversation with one of our clients we were able to help the CEO understand that a key individual would be better deployed in a much different position.  This individual was in a direct customer contact position and had very low scores for influence and people skills.  Where this individual had strengths was in the area of compliance and consistency.  In a position with direct contact with customers it was necessary to be able to react to situations and come up with new approaches to getting the sale completed. This individual was much happier with routine and standardization.  There was another position within the organization that needed a person that could take a set of standards, apply them to a designated process, and complete a series of formulaic processes so as to keep the business in compliance with required guidelines.  Upon moving the employee from direct customer contact to this more compliance oriented position, the business improved customer relations and increased their ability to stay within required boundaries for operation.  This was a win for the employee, a win for the customers (as a new customer service rep was brought on to handle that role) and a win for the business because it has happier customers, happier employees, tighter compliance, and a healthier financial bottom line.

In the article that follows this introduction, we describe a story that has been told to us by Vaughn Grisham, the Director of the McLean Institute at the University of Mississippi. We are indebted to Vaughn Grisham for the numerous conversations we have had over the years.  His insight into how human assets trump physical assets has helped us understand that this is not simply a community building/community development concept.  We understand that it is good business to care about people; your employees, your customers, and the surrounding community members all have relevance to your profitability.

Some leaders look at these human capital pieces of an organization as being soft and fuzzy.  But we have shown our clients that human capital is fundamental to profitability.  Our largest client, a very large food service industry company in the Southeast, was spending more than $4 million per year as a result of employee turnover.  By convincing the company that they could reduce turnover by becoming more intentional in the way they recruited, hired, on-boarded, trained, deployed, and developed employees, we helped them discover an instant way to impact their financial bottom line.  Since adopting this more intentional and scientific approach to personnel management, they have all but eliminated their turnover problem.  This is saving the company over $4 million per year which is reflected in a much healthier profit-loss analysis for the business and has made the share-holders very happy.  By the way, the employees are ecstatic with the new processes.

Any business can do this.  You don’t have to be huge to make a big difference.  We’ve seen these procedures work for businesses with 10 employees or 1,000 employees.  The only prerequisite is that leaders must take the time to find out who their people really are and then deploy them based on what they learn.

THE ARTICLE: Identifying Assets: People Based Assets

Every situation and circumstance exists in a context.  Nothing is isolated and independent.  Within the context of every situation there are assets that can be used to help us get a job done.  And do not be fooled, there is always work to be done, even when we are relaxing and taking it easy.  Life is work!  Don’t think this is the case?  What do you do to relax?  Play golf, fish, take a walk in the woods?  Are these activities free from work?  Maybe it’s not work like “WORK,” but it is still work.

What possible assets might exist in a given leadership scenario.  One of my favorite stories is the Tupelo Mississippi story as told by Vaughn Grisham, Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi and Director of The McLean Institute for Economic Development in Oxford, Mississippi.

At the end of the 1930’s Tupelo, Mississippi was a dying cotton town in one of the poorest counties in Mississippi. The Tupelo Story is about how a local progressive thinker and newspaper owner named George McLean started a development program that turned his town into a thriving and prosperous community that was the top dairy county in the United States.

McLean’s first step was to find out what they could grow on the depleted soils of Lee County, Mississippi.  He was told you can grow trees or you can grow alfalfa hay.  Trees would take years to return an economic benefit while the hay could be put to use right away.  But they were going to need something to do with that hay.  All the farmers in the region had a few cows that they kept for family milking purposes.  What if they changed that into a commercial dairy farming focus?

McLean convinced Tupelo businessmen to help invest in the purchase of a high-quality stud bull. McLean told the hardware store owner, you may not like me, but you need me. You took in $6,000 last year. You’ll never make more than that until you help increase the amount of money your customers make. The local businessmen bought the stud bull and the cows were fed the alfalfa hay and new baby calves were born and the dairy industry began.  Within a few years, the investors had been repaid and Lee County became one of the biggest dairy producers in the country.  All of those farmers had more money in their pockets and they spent their money in the stores in Tupelo.  Needless to say, those business owners were now believers in what George McLean was telling them and became the first in line when it was time to create a Community Development Board, that Board still exists today and drives the continuous improvement of Lee County Mississippi.

In a poverty stricken town in a poverty stricken county in a poverty stricken state they still found the assets they needed to change their fortunes.  They didn’t wait for someone else to rescue them; they pulled themselves up by their own boot straps.  Let’s take a moment and really think about all of the people based assets we have right here in St. Joe County!

SUMMATION:

In many business, organizations, and communities it is common to decry the poor state of affairs that prevent us from achieving greater things.  The example of Lee County Mississippi teaches us a valuable lesson.  It’s not about the conditions we find ourselves in; it’s the conditions of our resolve that will make the difference.  We may not have abundant material assets at our disposal but we have the most critical asset of all, people.  How we engage people and allow them to do what they are best suited to do will have huge impacts on the success of our organization.

All too often we hear about a leader that believes he or she has to tighten the reins on their people.  There’s this belief that you have to keep the people under control or they’ll run amuck. But people are better than that.  People want to contribute and be part of something meaningful. When liberated from the bondage of small thinking “leaders” we have seen organization members do things that are absolutely amazing.  Consider these examples:

1. A business owner thought he had to oversee every contract his sales manager was negotiating with clients. Clients who thought they had a deal saw that the sales manager couldn’t finalize these contracts and got suspicious.  Many of them wouldn’t sign on for services and the company wallowed, unable to increase its client base.  We helped the owner let go and allow his sales manager to fully negotiate and sign the contracts.  The owner’s fear was that the sales manager would sell services at a price that would not cover costs and produce adequate profit.  What the owner saw over the next 12 months was a four-fold increase in revenues and an amazing increase in profitability.
2. A school district had a superintendent that kept information away from subordinates and made all the decisions from his office. As a result, principals and supervisors felt as though they had no control over what they had to deal with on a daily basis and became somewhat paralyzed regarding decisions they had to make. Minor situations tended to fester into major problems that required significant efforts from the superintendent which could not always be handled in a timely fashion and parents became frustrated and started taking their children out of the school system and enrolling them in alternative institutions. The superintendent left the district and a new superintendent came on board and we helped the school district adopt a new approach to a more empowered decision-making model. Given the freedom to act, principals and supervisors started to take personal responsibility for the quality of performance.  The environment improved.  Parents started to feel like the school cared about them and their children.  They stopped pulling their children out of the school and some of those who left in the previous years started coming back.
3. A fast growing business had a CEO who kept an iron-tight grip on everything that was going on with the business. When it was a small business with just a few employees, it wasn’t a big deal.  But as the business grew from a local, to regional, and then national organization, it became harder and harder for the CEO to stay on top of every little thing that was going on.  His first step at turning the reins over to someone else happened with the hiring of a Chief Operating Officer.  The COO was given the responsibility of making sure that processes were followed the way the CEO wanted them to be followed.  The COO thought he knew exactly what the CEO wanted and began operating from that belief.  Within a few days the CEO was standing in the COO’s office asking what the heck was going on.  Who told the COO it was okay to change a procedure.  The COO responded with, I thought you wanted me to make sure the service processes were followed by all the employees all over the country and this new procedure made it easier for them to follow the process.  The CEO fired the COO and went back to handling everything himself.  The business stagnated, people started quitting at the remote sites due to lack of support from “Corporate” and customers cancelled contracts due to a lack of service as promised. 

   This CEO came to us for help in finding the right people to fill all these positions.  We started with a discussion about what he really wanted.  Why does his business exist?  When you go back to when you started the business, why did anyone want to buy the service? Now that we know why, let’s take a look at who is needed to deliver that why to your growing customer base.  What will they need to know to be able to this?  What will they need to be like to be able to do this?  If they are people like you, how will they respond to a boss who watches every little thing they do? How would you respond to that type of boss?  Now let’s build an organization that can do what you want it to do.  This company is growing again.  The CEO recognizes that his approach to the world can inhibit growth and development of those who work for him.  He found a new COO and set very specific expectations for behaviors and performance before the person started and he gave this new COO the latitude to create procedures that would improve efficiency and effectiveness without needing prior approval of every little thing.  But the COO knew that major changes needed to be discussed with the CEO before they are discussed with anyone else and before they are implemented.  The business is moving in the right direction and before any new key sales or service person is hired, the company makes sure they all know exactly who nit is they are hiring.

We cannot overemphasize how important it is to be fully aware of and to properly deploy the talent on your team.  Your human assets will determine whether or not you have material assets in your business.  The success of any organization is directly related to the quality of relationships that exist between the people who must participate and conduct the business of the organization.  Ignoring or marginalizing your human assets is one of the biggest mistakes any leader can make.

© 2013-2015 Culture by Choice-WTBG, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: All rights reserved distribution of this information outside of an academic setting no permitted without express written permission from Culture by Choice-WTBG.

One reality every leader must come to grips with is the fact that you cannot be everywhere and you cannot do everything.  There is just too much to be done.  The art of delegating is often a difficult one to master for many leaders because at the core of effective delegation lies the need to trust.  If you delegate authority to get certain things done you must relinquish the reins in that matter.  If you assign someone the task of completing a function and you never fully give them the authority to become an agile leader in that arena, you haven’t delegated at all.  You’ve simply told somebody to do something and you are still taking on that responsibility and leadership role.  And, as is the case with most leaders, you can’t be everywhere at the same time.

Trusting others is harder for some people than it is for others.  If you are a naturally skeptical person, it will be harder to trust others.  It is understandable because trusting others means putting your success into their hands but you really are doing this anyway.  How well people on your team work towards the achievement of team objectives will depend on how strongly they want to do this for you or for themselves.  If they perceive that they are doing tasks for you, the quality of the work they do will directly relate to how much they trust and value you as a leader.

The trust and value piece will stem from how followers perceive your relationship to them. If they see you as basically unfair and uninterested in their well-being, you will, most likely, not get a very strong effort from them. But if your team members believe that you are rewarding them proportionately with respect to the amount of time, energy, effort, knowledge, skill, ability, and resources they are putting into the task you will be more apt to get better than average efforts and outcomes.  Furthermore, if you have been crystal clear in your expectations, progress reporting timelines, and the processes and procedures you expect to be followed, they will reward you with focused attention to the tasks at hand.  And finally, if they believe you have taken a personal interest in them and have placed your trust in their intentions and abilities, you will see them achieve excellence in outcomes.  At this point you won’t have to monitor the team, they will monitor themselves.  When these three steps are taken in combination with shared accountability, each team member knows what to do, how to do it, and how to accurately measure the outcomes of the process.

If you do the ground work beforehand you need to let go and let the team do its work. By stepping back and allowing the team to work as a team what you really do is emancipate them.  You give them the total freedom to make things happen.  If they have a context in which to do their work and if they are fully aware of what is needed, they will find a way to get it done.  For at this point, they are no longer doing it for you; they are doing it for the team and for the client or customer for which the project is intended anyway.

THE ARTICLE:

DELEGATING: Good leaders realize that they have limitations.  There are limitations to their time, their skills, their knowledge, their energy, and in many other areas.  For that reason alone, the art of delegation is critical for the great leader.  Beyond the mere capacity of an individual there is the fact that followers need to feel that they are truly needed.  This can only happen when they have the sense that their skills, knowledge, and abilities are appreciated and used by the leader.  So in combination, the needs of the leader and the needs of the followers are met.  To effectively delegate the leader must know his or her people.  It is not OK to guess and it is often not OK to simply go by what people say they can do.  There are people who are not very good judges of their own abilities. If you want confirmation of this, simply watch the first few episodes of American Idol.

To delegate with effectiveness a leader must ascertain the abilities of the people.  Past performance can be helpful but paying careful attention to what is going on around you is just as important.  In the early minutes, hours, and days of a project, what are people doing and how well are they doing it? 

At the beginning of this book, we stated that leaders need to learn how to lead based on who they are not what a book tells them they should do.  Let’s take a moment to examine some differing approaches to leading.  There may be as many as nine different approaches that leaders may use to move a group of people towards a desired outcome. 

Some leaders may rely on establishing a common vision, mission and purpose while others may prefer to focus on preparation and tactics.  Some leaders might work at building trust and common bond between team members while others might foster innovations and change.  There are leaders that will zero in on responsibility and integrity while others will develop strategies and discipline.  And then there are leaders that will build team synergy or focus on results or maintain consistency and conformity.  And there will combinations of these but no one way is better than any other way.  If what works for you is not what works for another person, so be it.

© 2013-2015 Culture by Choice-WTBG, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: All rights reserved distribution of this information outside of an academic setting no permitted without express written permission from Culture by Choice-WTBG.