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What’s Your Favorite ‘Golden Rule’?

What’s Your Favorite ‘Golden Rule’?

​Many company leaders say they instill their own “golden rules” at work and strive to make those rules stick. They’re gratified when they see their employees follow those rules in the workplace—often when wise guidance is most needed.Here are some of their stories.”Who’s got the monkey?” Rick Eberly, CEO of Chembio Diagnostics Inc., headquartered in Hauppauge, N.Y., says his favorite golden rule is about accountability.”My favorite golden rule for … management comes from the best-read Harvard Business Review article, first printed in 1974, called ‘Who’s Got the Monkey?’ ” Eberly said. “In fact, it is one of two of HBR’s top reprints ever.”Eberly worked for the CEO of a public company in the health care market for over 20 years, and the CEO drilled the “monkey” concept into his managers. “The bottom line is, don’t bring your problems to your boss with no proposed solutions or, in essence, [don’t put] the monkey on your boss’s back,” he explained. “This leads to successful delegation, transparency and accountability throughout an organization.”Once leaders understand that they are accountable for solving problems and improving the operation, it cascades throughout the organization. “That leads to quicker solutions being executed across areas in the business,” Eberly said.There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile. The best golden rules are applied consistently, said Charles J. Read, president and CEO at Custom Payroll Associates Inc. in Lewisville, Texas. “The rule should be followed almost every time,” he said. “There can be rare exceptions.”That goes for Read’s favorite golden rule: There is no traffic jam on the extra mile.”Many companies and company [managers] won’t go further than the required minimum,” he said. “In business, always go further in taking care of people, clients or employees. [That] means bending over backward to help make our clients’ lives as easy as possible. We’re always trying to find better and simpler ways to prevent and solve problems and to make the routine even simpler.” All tasks are our tasks. To Phillip Lew, CEO of C9 Staff, a remote staffing solutions company based in Seattle, a golden rule is any belief or practice that gets the job done according to standards and as quickly as possible. Additionally, it must bolster a positive working atmosphere.Lew’s favorite rule: “All tasks are our tasks.” “It’s a golden rule I want company managers to prioritize,” Lew said. “Instead of saying, ‘Here’s a task. You have until the end of the week to complete it,’ a good manager should say, ‘Here’s a task. Study it. Before the day ends, I want you to get back to me and tell me how I can help you complete this task by the end of the week.'”This way, the chance of getting the task done to standards is greater [and you avoid the risk of] having to redo the entire thing if it’s done incorrectly,” he said.Act on suggestions from your team. Stephen Roe, founder and head of digital strategy at Mexico-based Grow Atom, an SEO agency that counts Salesforce and AT&T …

12/10/2021

In Times of Upheaval, Leaders Must Model Empathy, Transparency, Agility

11/10/2021 Comments Off on In Times of Upheaval, Leaders Must Model Empathy, Transparency, Agility
In Times of Upheaval, Leaders Must Model Empathy, Transparency, Agility

​The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of building open and sincere relationships between managers and their reports.”How do you know how your company is doing right now?” asks Dennis Baltzley, global head of leadership solutions at Korn Ferry in Washington, D.C. “You know from your employees.”It’s well worth the effort to cultivate genuine relationships with your workers because candid conversations with employees may be the best tool leaders have right now for assessing the health of a company. Even employee engagement surveys can be deceiving if workers have reasons to hide how they really feel. Workers may feel pressured to say “the right things” if there’s not a deep manager-employee relationship. But keep in mind that employees often have a good sense of whether their managers are honestly interested in them. Leaders who check in with their reports on a regular basis may be doing so as a way to stay connected, but these efforts can backfire if check-ins seem more like “check-offs” on a to-do list. Workers can tell the difference. Empathy Is KeyResearch shows that leaders who develop sincere relationships with workers take the time to learn about the employees as people. They ask questions about their employees’ lives and approach each conversation with empathy.Showing empathy means listening and trying to understand not only how a person feels but also why the person feels that way. This can be harder than it seems because “that person’s culture and beliefs may be very different from yours,” said Jyoti Jani Patel, a Seattle-based leadership consultant and co-creator of the website The Empathy Tour, which features an online collection of stories celebrating organizations that are practicing empathy in creative ways. “Empathy says, ‘I get it, from your perspective,’ ” Patel said.Leaders should always be engaging in “communication with employees about what we hear their needs to be and explaining what the needs of the company are,” said Michael Brisciana, SHRM-SCP, vice president of human resources at Janel Group, an import/export company based in New York City with 15 offices nationwide. “It’s about trying to balance the two sides.”Empathy Starts with the SelfBack in the spring of 2020, many leaders expected the COVID-19 pandemic would be a short-term problem, lasting perhaps a few weeks. But as the public health crisis has dragged on, “what we’re seeing playing out on a global scale is organizations that are stressed,” Patel said. “And there’s a lot of really stressed-out leaders out there who are struggling to have empathy.”Research from the Society for Human Resource Management found that almost all of the CEOs surveyed (97 percent) agreed that their actions have a direct impact on workplace culture. Yet in the Workplace Empathy Study, conducted in February 2021 by HR software company Businessolver, 7 in 10 CEOs reported that it’s difficult for them to consistently show empathy in the workplace (a 29-point increase from the previous year’s survey). In addition, 68 percent of CEOs said they fear they will lose respect if they show empathy in the …

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Take the Fear out of Feedback

22/09/2021 Comments Off on Take the Fear out of Feedback
Take the Fear out of Feedback

​The ability to give feedback is a superpower. Little nuggets of feedback can change lives. But the word “feedback” has a negative connotation, perhaps because not many people are comfortable giving it.One mistake many managers make when giving feedback is to focus only on poor performance instead of also speaking to successful performance.That’s according to Tamra Chandler, partner at EY, and Laura Grealish, senior manager at EY, both in Washington state, who co-authored the book Feedback and Other Dirty Words: Why We Fear It, How to Fix It (Berrett-Koehler, 2019). They provided a new outlook on one of the more dreaded duties of HR and managers during their session “Redeeming Feedback for Good” during the SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2021.”We need to redeem feedback and start over, because feedback is good for your company,” the presenters shared. “You have to lean in and listen in your feedback. If you do, you will outperform those companies who don’t.”Chandler and Grealish said teams should allow frank and positive thoughts in their feedback because teams that encourage this will stay together longer. Employees who receive specific praise in the form of feedback performed better at future tasks than their counterparts, they said.For example, two-thirds of employees whose managers focus on their strengths are “fully engaged.” When managers focus on their weaknesses, employee engagement drops to 31 percent.”Research shows that focusing people on their shortcomings doesn’t enable learning. It impairs it,” Chandler said. “Our words have the power to inspire, to unlock potential, to lift us up instead of knocking us down. If that doesn’t get you on board with fixing feedback … nothing will.”Most importantly, when supervisors focus on fixing a performance problem through negative feedback, “It’s a huge turnoff in the employees’ minds,” they said. “When we exert control over someone, their performance will actually go down, outcomes suffer, and learning is limited. As a supervisor, remember it’s about their future and not your agenda.”Trust and Positivity Are KeyWhen giving feedback, managers shouldn’t be judgmental. Feedback should be intended to help individuals or teams thrive and grow. “If not, then don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s feedback,” they said.Once a manager and employee develop trust, more valuable and more effective discussions over feedback can be had, they said.”When there’s a trusting relationship, so many good things happen. There’s 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy, 50 percent more productivity, 60 percent more joy, 70 percent more purpose and 50 percent more retention,” Chandler said.Chandler and Grealish said negativity will kill the process. They recommended that supervisors tie necessary negative feedback to the future: They recommended conveying the message “It’s not that you did it wrong. It’s that you can do it even better.”Don’t Make Feedback ScarySupervisors should aim to lower employees’ fear of receiving feedback. “The last thing an employee wants to hear is, ‘Let’s set up some time tomorrow for you to visit with me in my office,’ ” Grealish said. “That is something that will surely lead to …

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