Month: December 2019

Think Someone on Your Staff is Lying? Think Again!

The Unfortunate Truth:  If you are a leader, you have experienced trying to sort out your people’s stories as you try to resolve a conflict, calm an angry customer or conduct an investigation. You may wonder how two – or three, or four – people could have sat in the same meeting and yet arrived in your office with such different versions of who said what when. Frustrated, you may conclude that someone must be lying. Not so fast!

The Science of Memory:   To understand how everyone may be telling the truth as they understand it, listen to the latest science on NPR’s Hidden Brain, “Did That Really Happen? How Our Memories Betray Us”

Most of us like to believe that we remember events as if we had an instant video replay, yet modern science disputes our beliefs: “Memory is not like a video camera; a better way to think of it is as an act of reconstruction, or what you might call “mental paleontology.” This is the analogy that psychologist Ayanna Thomas likes to use.”

In other words, we may think the bone we find in a dig is that of a brontosaurus, if that’s the only dinosaur we know, yet someone else may assert that we’ve uncovered a new type we’ve never even named.

Why Our View of Memory Matters:  If we think that our own – or our pet employee’s – version of events must be the truth, we can make decisions based on the wrong information. For example, as the nation watched Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, most of us picked a side. We assumed that either he, or Christine Blasey Ford, must be lying since their version of events differed so shockingly. We failed to consider the possibility that they were both telling the truth as best as they remembered the events in question.

We’ve all had this experience in our personal lives. If we’re rushing out of the house, for example, and we ask our spouse or partner to pick up the kids after soccer before they’ve mainlined their essential caffeine, we may return home to an empty house. Are they lying when they swear that we didn’t ask them to take on this task? Are we lying when we assert that we did? Probably not. We just have different perspectives of the same event.

What Should You Do?

Assume Positive Intent. If you have two staff people who have consistently performed in a useful and honest way, do not automatically assume that one of them must be shading the truth if they provide different reports. We all hear what we want to hear, or what our history or culture tells us must be reality.

Dig Deep to Find Out What Happened. If the two versions of an event cannot be reconciled, take the time to seek other input. Realize that you won’t be able to instantly find the “truth.” In fact, you may never know what “really” happened, only the different perspectives of your people. You will have to decide based on the versions of the facts at hand and your own independent judgment.

Seek Reconciliation. The Quakers opine that we “all have a piece of the truth.” Frequently, that’s the best you can do. Try not to settle for a binary solution, but for a consensus that meets everyone’s needs and interests.

For more information on investigations and consensus, read these Monday Memos:

Want to Bullet Proof Decision Making? Here’s How
Why is Building Consensus So Hard? What You Need to Know
Decisions! Decisions! How Objective Are You Really?

What Do You Think?

Have you observed behavior in yourself and others that seems completely out of character? Call or write us at:303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Can’t Promote Your Best People? Here’s What to do Instead

The Promotion Squeeze: A common complaint I hear from leaders is that they can’t reward their best people with promotions, impacting their ability to retain the staff they most want to keep. Perhaps the organization is too small or too hierarchical, baby boomer workers are retiring later, or the budget doesn’t stretch that far. What I recommend is that they consider other rewards.

What Do People Value About Promotions? Promotions may be viewed as the only way to increase someone’s compensation, prestige, challenge or skills. One thing that’s important to learn is WHY your staff wants that next step up the ladder. Their reasons may not be what you think.

What Do They Really Want? Leaders assume that their people want promotions, yet there are many other factors that impact retention. Training and development opportunities, for example, count as one of the most significant perks in many surveys, especially for millennials. Read about these and other findings in the 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey.

What Should You Do?

Ask, Ask, Ask: You may assume that you know someone wants a promotion or that you know why they want one, but your suppositions may be way off base. When you have development conversations with your people, ask general questions about their goals and objectives and the reasons behind their desires.

For example:

“Is there anything that I’m doing or not doing — or that anyone else is doing or not doing — that could help make you more successful?”

  “Where do you see yourself in a year, five years, and/or ten years in terms of your career?”

 “What kinds of benefits are most important to you?”

When you first start asking these questions, you may not receive much information, but if you keep asking every time you meet with them, you’ll eventually find out what they would like to do.

Frequently, leaders tell me that they don’t want to ask because the answers might raise someone’s expectations. Even if they request a perk that you know you have no power to grant, it’s important for you to understand what they want so that you can manage their expectations.

If they say that they want a promotion, find out why? Is it the money, perceived power, or experience? Perhaps you can match what you are able to offer to their real needs and interests.

Offer Training, Development and Lateral Moves:   Once you know what people want and why, you can match what you can offer to what they truly need and want. Offer training and development so they can work in another group, suggest they switch jobs so they can learn new skills, send them to conferences, classes or introduce them to a potential mentor for their long-term goals.

Teach New Skills and Mentor Them Yourself:  Study after study has found that employees value one-on- one time with their leaders. Even if what they want doesn’t correspond with your current department’s needs, offer to coach them in developing the skills for their future job. Explain what they’ll need to do to learn in grow in that area, offer books, degree suggestions or videos. Follow-up with potential ideas for how they can eventually move into the career they want. Your time and attention is a valuable commodity and reward.

Let Them Go:  At some point, you may find yourself mentoring someone into a new job with a different organization. This can be perceived as a loss but frequently is not. A former employee can be a valuable part of your network. They may go to work for a customer, return to your group when you have more positions to offer, or refer a great new hire. In my experience, investing in someone over the long term always pays off.

Want more ideas about how to retain your best people:

How to Keep the Ones You Love: The Number One Retention Strategy Attracting and Keeping the Best Employees: What Really Works

What Do You Think?

Have you observed behavior in yourself and others that seems completely out of character? Call or write us at:303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

The #1 Reason Your People Erupt and What to do About It

The Eruption Problem: If you have been a leader for any length of time, you know the issue. You have a long-time staff person who has never caused you problems and all of a sudden they scream at a colleague. Or, perhaps you have a brilliant sales manager who can be charismatic and charming one minute and yelling at his team the next. What propels your people to behave in ways that disrupt and disturb your environment when you least expect it?

The Hot/Cold Response: What neuro-psychologists tell us is that almost all of us respond differently when we are in a “hot” state; when we have been triggered by an event, person or discussion. If we are in this mode, we react in ways we would never have imagined possible when we are in a “cold” state: when we are rational and calm. We become strangers to ourselves and others.

Of course, we all have different emotional set points, the level at which we may erupt or clam up varies from individual to individual, but almost all of us have our limits. At some point, we will freeze, lash out, or behave in some other way that feels bizarre to us and to those who know us well. For a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, go to NPR’s Hidden Brain, In The Heat Of The Moment: How Intense Emotions Transform Us.

Even if we are on a diet, for example, we may eat two pieces of cake when we are ravenous, despite our New Year’s resolution. When we are satisfied, we can’t imagine such behavior.

What Should You Do?

Don’t Dismiss The Power of Emotions to Transform Us: Understand the reality that – with a powerful enough stimulus – all of us can transform into beings we don’t recognize. We will yell, freeze or have unprotected sex, no matter how much we believe that such behaviors are inappropriate. Victims may not report sexual harassment, for example, if their fear of retaliation is strong enough, even if they are assertive in most situations. Leaders may snap at a direct report, even if they believe that managers should maintain a calm presence. Mothers may go on to have another child, once the pain of childbirth and sleep deprivation subsides, even if they swore that they never would.

Value Emotional Intelligence: With hiring, promotions, and other decisions about staff, value people who understand that emotions matter, their own and their employees. Encourage learning about the impact of emotions as much as you do technical skills. Don’t promote someone into managing people who has brilliant proficiencies, but no people skills and no interest in learning such competencies.

Provide Training: Help is out there. All the research shows that we can learn to master emotions, even powerful ones, through training, coaching, books and other learning methods. For more information on this topic, go to:

How Emotional Intelligence Assessments Can Help Leaders Change Do You Know the Most Important Quality for a Leader?

What Do You Think?

Have you observed behavior in yourself and others that seems completely out of character? Call or write us at:303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

What’s the Best Way to Encourage Challenging Conversations? Look for Models

CHALLENGING CONVERSATIONS ABOUND: You may need to terminate an employee, give a workplace friend painful feedback, settle a dispute with an aggressive colleague or any number of additional tough conversations. Regardless, you need to constantly seek ways to improve your skills.

KEEPING THE FAITH: Whether you’ve had dozens or maybe it’s your first, one way to ensure these talks happen is to look for models of what others have managed to do.

MY FAVORITES: I talk often about famous models I’ve used to keep me inspired to resolve conflict: leaders like Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa and the like; people who had to forge a path where challenges abounded and they constantly needed to upend convention through tough dialogue. Yet my personal model for courage is my grandmother. Raised in the Basque provinces of Spain in a family of nine, she set sail on a steerage ship in the early part of the 1900’s, speaking neither Spanish nor English, but only Basque. She had grown up on a subsistence farm with little education and certainly no worldly experience. Her two sisters in Salt Lake City, who worked as maids in Basque boarding houses, summoned Isadora Ansotegui. Unfortunately, I don’t know how she found her way through Ellis Island, New York City and the trains across the country, but I’m sure she arrived exhausted and terrified. I can only imagine what courage the journey required.

What Should You Do?

TAKE HEART: Whether it’s your first challenging conversation or your hundredth, you will need a dose of courage before you begin. While I’ve written about other preparation tips, remembering your own models and heroines can help.

How to Tackle a Tough Conversation by Breaking it Down
A Systematic Approach to Creative Conflict
Have I Told You Lately That You Bug Me?

Even though I’ve frequently placed myself in risky or new situations, I can’t imagine anything I’ve done that has rivaled my grandmother’s leap of faith in setting out across oceans and continents with so little in the way of preparation, training or support. Yet sail and arrive and thrive she did. Remembering her, who am I to complain that I can’t rise to a challenging occasion?

MODEL FAMOUS PEOPLE AND MORE HUMBLE: Courage is everywhere if you look for it. Don’t just check the news or best-selling biographies but think of your own friends and relatives. Who do you admire for stepping up in challenging circumstances? Who can you remember as an image of grace under pressure? Who inspires you?

SHARE YOUR STORIES: A large key to leadership is the ability to inspire those who follow. While we may try to encourage those we lead with our vision or other abstractions, the ability to tell a relevant story works much more effectively.

What Do You Think?

Have you had experience with these kinds of situations? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Want to Be a More Effective Leader? Learn How to Listen

The Power of Attention:  Everyone I know who has met former President Bill Clinton (including me), describes his power to make you feel as if you were the only person in the room. Regardless of our politics, most admire his ability to come from a humble background and rise to (and survive) in the highest office in the land. Pundits often point to his power to empathize and listen as one of his greatest strengths.

Who Paid Attention to You?  If you think back to mentors, leaders or teachers who changed your life, undoubtedly, they had the ability to listen to your hopes and fears. Have you been able to pass along this gift to those you lead or coach?

How Successful Leaders Lead:  Research suggests that when we are in conflict with someone we start feeling as if the other person is either uncaring or not very bright. With smart leaders, they assume that everyone else involved, regardless of background or title, is smart, caring and fully invested. When we come from that place, we fuel a better outcome. This mindset encourages parties in conflict to understand why others have differing views, which allows them to have constructive conversations.

What Should You Do?

Ask How or What:  Often described as asking open-ended questions or active listening, this technique is easy to describe but hard to implement consistently. Resist the urge to ask questions that can be answered with a “yes” or “no” and ask questions that require more information and opinions.

Listen to What’s Not Said:  Become aware of tone, body language and intensity. If someone’s voice drops at a certain point in the conversation, for example, you might let them know that you noticed that difference and ask them if they were feeling uncertain about their idea at that point. Ask “what are some of the strengths and weaknesses you see in that proposal?”

Become Comfortable with Silence:  Silence makes most people uncomfortable but if you are willing to wait for someone to answer a question or present an opinion, even the shyest person may eventually talk. Ask something open ended and then sit still and listen.

Resist Offering Unsolicited Advice:  We may love telling other people what to do but, in most situations, allowing them to come to their own conclusions is far more effective. Continue active listening until they do, unless they clearly ask for your opinion.

For more tips on listening, read these Monday Memos:
A Surefire Way to Get People to Get People to Listen
Leadership Communication: How Do You Rate?

What Do You Think?

Have you had experience with these kinds of situations? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com