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Want to Stop Racism? Start With Yourself

What Should You Do?

If you are a leader, you have an obligation to intervene in the moment. If it is a large group, simply say that the comment or behavior is inappropriate and then speak to the individuals privately later on. Be clear about whether it is a violation of law, policy or values and document the discussion. Severe behavior should, of course, be reported to HR.

If you are simply a bystander with no management authority, you still have a moral – if not a legal – responsibility to intervene. Here are some suggested responses:

• Clarify what you heard:  “I think I heard you say ___, is that true?” “Did you mean ____?”
• Ask for more information:  “I’m puzzled about what you’re saying, can you explain?”  “Did you think that was funny?”
• Remind them of your values:  “At this organization, we don’t say things like that. Could we change the subject?”
• Admit your own experience or lack of education: “I used to feel that way too, then I realized ____.”
• Affirm your own opinion about the behavior: “I think it’s wrong to stereotype or generalize about a group of people.”
• Appeal to the speaker’s reputation: “I always thought of you as a person of integrity and fairness. It surprises me to hear you say that.”
• Explain the impact: “Your comment is hurtful.”
• If you can’t think of anything in the moment: “Ouch!”

How to Keep the Ones You Love: The Number One Retention Strategy

What Should You Do?

While feedback and performance reviews will probably not go away, consider reframing your talk by focusing on the future. Take these steps:

• Focus on future projects. Instead of a critique of a project, focus onimproving performance for future projects.
• Offer options. Don’t give directives if you can avoid it. Consider yourself a coach with numerous tools you can offer and let them choose what will get them to their goals.
• Treat people as adults. Most people know when they’ve made a mistake or need to improve performance. Ask them what their goals are and guide them toward solutions and problem solving, not just critiques.

How to Keep the Ones You Love: The Number One Retention Strategy

What Should You Do?

• From the first day on, let people know that you are in it for the long haul with them. You want to help develop their career. You hope they will have a long relationship with their organization, but even if they leave, you would hope that the relationship endures. You never know when someone is going to leave to work for a customer or potentially boomerang back to your team – even if they leave.

• Follow through on the above. Schedule regular one-on-ones where you focus specifically on their goals and objectives and how you can help. You should do these more often than an annual review – ideally once a month. Give them useful feedback – both what is working and what is not working.

• As the following questions: If there is anyone here who is interfering with your success, please let me know. If there is anything I can do, or that anyone else can do, to make you more successful, please let me know. The first time you ask these questions you may not receive an answer but if you keep asking, eventually you will receive useful information.
• Even if you can’t offer raises or promotions, look for other benefits:  can you offer cross training opportunities, educational courses, more flexible schedules and the like? These perks can mean a lot.
• Don’t forget the small things. I once worked with a new leader whose team was in mutiny because he never said hello in the mornings, spent time with them in the break room, or planned small celebrations. He was a task-oriented engineer and had no interest in wasting time on these niceties but his team felt otherwise, as do most employs.
• When you are with people, be present. Turn off your devices, practice active listening and ask open-ended (who, what, where, when) questions.
• Have someone else do effective exit interviews if people do leave so you have relevant data. Don’t just ask why they are leaving, but what was happening when they first started thinking about leaving. You will collect surprising information.

New Year’s Resolution? Take the Hassle Out of Performance Reviews!

What Should You Do?

• Understand the purpose of reviews. They are to help your staff develop and grow. Even if you think they are just paperwork, your people take them seriously and so should you. 
• Realize that employees are not the only ones who take reviews seriously, so do judges and juries. Reviews will be the first thing that any attorney – your own or the opposition’s – will want to see to justify what you did.
• Make documentation easier by doing a mini “brain dump” at the end of every day. Just spend five minutes writing down in your manager’s file anything that occurred with regard to an employee matter.
• Learn how to know what to document. We had a manager in one of our classes who had been sued three times by employees. Of course it’s always good to learn from our mistakes so we asked him what he had learned. He said that he learned that it is not useful to ask “should I document this?” — because then the answer will frequently be no. Instead, he said that he had learned he needed to ask: “if this happens again, will I wish I had documented this? — because then the answer will usually be yes.”
• Make employees do the work for you.  After every “one-on-one” that you have with employees, ask them to email back to you what you said. Since most of us don’t listen well, you will be depressed and amazed at what comes back, but it gives you an opportunity to straighten out any misunderstandings. At the end of the year, you will have a beautiful documentation trail and your employees will have done all the work.

What Does #MeToo Mean For You as a Leader

With the plethora of complaints piling up against public men, what does the #MeToo movement mean for you as a leader? If you’ve somehow missed the national eruption over sexual harassment complaints, many of them stem from the hash tag #MeToo, that has encouraged women all over the country to step up and publicly acknowledge sexual harassment or assault that they received in the workplace – sometimes many years ago.

Generally, this hurricane requires you to understand two things:  1)  You will receive more complaints; and 2) some people may become paranoid about complaints.

While it may take some time to understand just how significant the rise in complaints may be, based on an informal survey of my clients, there’s no doubt that the tide is rising. With that increase, however, you need to understand that some people will become paranoid about false or inappropriate complaints. I’ve heard people express concern about flirting, for example, even though neither the law nor most organization’s policies get involved in such time-honored workplace frivolity, unless it rises to the level of severe or pervasive behavior.

“You will receive more complaints and some people 

may become paranoid about complaints.”

One time I was giving a workshop on sexual harassment for a group of cops and I asked the group how we could make sure that we don’t inadvertently offend someone. A captain in the back – who had spent the entire session with a scowl on his face and his arms crossed- responded that he knew how to avoid such problems, he just “didn’t talk to women.”

“You can’t do that”, I advised, “that’s discrimination.” “No it’s not”, he asserted, “I don’t talk to men either.”

What Should You Do?

• Step up your training for managers to make sure that they know how to receive complaints, without panicking or becoming defensive or angry – even if the complaint is about their behavior.
• Assure people that – according to the EEOC and my own practice – false claims are rare, less than 5%.  What’s common, of course, is misperceptions. People frequently view the same event through different lenses.
• Address paranoia and backlash upfront. Make sure that your staff understands that failing to hire, mentor, meet with one-on-one or travel with women is discrimination. Make sure that training covers both harassment and discrimination.

Can You Take a Joke? Rules for Humor in the Workplace

Especially in the current climate where new harassment claims erupt on a daily basis against titans of media, industry, and politics, people seem to be moving toward paranoia about what they can and cannot do at work.

Leaders are frequently frustrated by conflicts that keep erupting, even when they are sure they have been resolved. You spend hours working with groups who are negotiating some thorny issue and give a sigh of relief when they finally all declare that they “agree” to a solution.

What Should You Do?

What Do People Mean When They Say “I Agree”?

Leaders are frequently frustrated by conflicts that keep erupting, even when they are sure they have been resolved. You spend hours working with groups who are negotiating some thorny issue and give a sigh of relief when they finally all declare that they “agree” to a solution.

But what if their interpretation of what they mean by asserting “I agree” is different from what you think they mean? They may, for example, simply be agreeing to anything in order to just get out of the room or off a long phone call. Their statement of “I agree” could simply mean that they are sick of the discussion and will say anything to escape.

“…enthusiastic endorsement of the project may be essential, and you may have no idea whether you have that support or not.“

Likewise, saying “I agree” could mean that they enthusiastically endorse the proposal and will do anything to advance the cause, or it could mean that they don’t really like the proposal but won’t veto the result.

I once coached an executive, for example, who responded “okay” to most of my feedback. I danced along assuming that he admired my wisdom and suggestions, happy that my coaching was being appreciated. It took me some time to realize that to him, saying “okay” simply meant that he heard me, not that he was necessarily going to heed my advice.

Depending upon the issue, enthusiastic endorsement of the project may be essential, and you may have no idea whether you have that support or not.

What Should You Do?

I like to use a large version of this tool that we hang on the wall. The group then uses individual sticky notes to show where they fall in the discussion. Options range from enthusiastic endorsement to expressing a personal – rather than an organizational – objection to some plan, to outright veto. With this graphic representation, you can assess whether you have the support you need to proceed.

Some projects require a total buy-in of the group, for example, while with others, a simple majority vote is enough. Allowing participants to mark where they fall along that continuum allows more people to express what might be an unpopular opinion, even though they wouldn’t want to state their concerns out loud in front of the entire group.

Leaders and Reality Testing: Do Your Leaders See Themselves as They Really Are?

When we are coaching or conducting leadership development sessions, we use a variety of self-assessment tools, including EQ-i 2.0, conflict styles testing, and values clarification. What we notice, however, is that some leaders consistently see themselves as high performing in all areas and not as they really are. When this happens, we are frequently called upon to deliver the bad news:  their reality testing is off the mark.

“…a leader without true self-awareness is virtually uncoachable and unlikely to develop.”

In https://hbr.org/2017/03/how-to-tell-leaders-theyre-not-as-great-as-they-think-they-are, Professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, PhD, suggests a variety of tools to deliver the bad news. In our experience, unless someone is willing to do this, a leader without true self-awareness is virtually uncoachable and unlikely to develop.

What Should You Do?

Curing Condescension: Why Leaders Should Never Ask Why!

For some reason, I seem to receive a lot of requests to coach leaders when their staff charges that they have poor people skills, low emotional intelligence, and are “condescending”. I’ve found it difficult to explain to these leaders what condescending actually means. For some reason, they just don’t see it.

“Appropriate levels of empathy and assertiveness drive successful and productive conflict resolution.”

What Should You Do?

• Believe them.  Employees are very sensitive to tone and will pick up condescension every time. Don’t argue, debate, or get defensive.
• Ask for examples. They may have a hard time coming up with these in the moment but ask them to keep track and let you know.
• Stop using WHY.  Why frequently comes across as accusatory and has a way of making people think that you believe they were stupid to take certain actions. Instead, ask, in an open-ended way, for clarification. Use words like who, where, what. Being puzzled and confused always helps lower the emotional intensity of conversations, so use those explanations for your questions.
• Sit down if you’re standing, breathe, lean back, don’t point at people, and use a normal tone of voice.
• Save email for facts.  If you want to know why someone did something or are in the midst of a conflict, you have to sort it out face-to-face, or at least over the phone.