Blacksmiths and Wordsmiths

Have you been down to your local blacksmith’s lately?  Unless you’re reading this post through a hole in the space-time continuum, you probably haven’t.  Actually, blacksmiths still exist, but they are now a rare, highly-specialized group of skilled workers.

Compare this to the 15th through 19th centuries, when a blacksmith was one of the focal points of every community.  As our societies and technologies evolved, the skills of the blacksmith became less and less pervasive.

Now compare this to the wordsmith.  I couldn’t find any significant history on the wordsmith, so I’ll make something up, and then go post it on Wikipedia.  The wordsmith was also around in the 15th through 19th centuries, although they kept a low profile.  This is because as children, future wordsmiths were routinely beat up by future blacksmiths

This may explain why so many wordsmiths are able to rear their ugly heads (and ply their treacherous trade) today.  With the diminishing number of future blacksmiths, future wordsmiths don’t receive near as many beatings as they should to discourage them.

You probably know a wordsmith – although they set-up shoppe in the most unlikely places.  The wordsmith is the one who ensures that any meeting that could have been done in 30 minutes, goes for at least two-hours.  These are the people who will argue incessantly about subject-verb inversion, and how it may affect the organization’s vision statement.

If you find yourself organizing or facilitating the articulation of organizational goals, strategies, mission or vision statements, you need to root out the wordsmiths early.  Send them on a business trip, or tell them there’s a newspaper somewhere that needs to have a letter written to the editor because the sentence structure of a headline was inappropriate.

The bottom line is that missions, visions, goals and strategies are all useless documents, unless they move people to action of some sort.  If the wordsmith gets her way, these documents will all be grammatically and politically correct, but so general and generic to the point of being useless.

So… if you have any of these documents, that sit high on a shelf for 11 months of the year, until the dust is blown off them for the next planning cycle, you can blame the wordsmith.  To address this problem, you have two options:

  1. Distract the wordsmith long enough to rewrite the documents in a concise and meaningful way.
  2. Hire a blacksmith to take out the wordsmith.

 

Aligning Mission, Vision & Goals

Learn how to align your Mission Statement, Vision Statement, and Goals and Objectives – and how to make sure these are acted on.

Watch the ‘Aligning Mission, Vision & Goals’ video (12 mins 34 sec):

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Mission, Vision, and Goals

Many organizations spend an inordinate amount of time crafting mission statements, vision statements, as well as goals and objectives.  They then put these up on a shelf and forget all about them.  This week we talk about how individual managers can make these important documents useful by pulling them back down off that shelf, and ensuring they are aligned.

Monday’s Tip: Review your mission, vision, strategies and goals for your department. These documents should be aligned with those of the larger organization, but don’t wait for anyone else – tackle them in your department now.

Tuesday’s Tip: Do not belabor these documents. The biggest mistake people and organizations make is to make mission, vision, goals, and strategies longer, and more difficult than they need to be.  Be concise and action oriented.

Wednesday’s Tip: Communicate these documents. It is useless to create these documents and then keep them a secret.  Ensure that employees and other key stakeholders are very familiar with the mission, vision, goals and strategies.

Thursday’s Tip: Have a sustainment plan. You need to ensure that any work done articulating mission, vision, goals and strategies is not wasted by moving to action on the contents of these documents.

Friday’s Tip: Visit your vision, strategies and goals weekly. Your mission should not change much over time, but you need to act on your vision, strategies and goals on a weekly basis.  If you are doing things that are not related to these documents, you should questions why.

I’m Not a Manager. I’m a Babysitter

Well, that’s kind of harsh – even if it is true for many leaders.  How did it come to this?  How did you manage your career so you could end up mediating between two employees who are applying death-threats to each other because one used the other’s Arthur Fonzarelli commemorative coffee mug, and never washed it?

None of us stood up in the first grade and announced to the world that we wanted to be a middle manager.  Yet, there are far more middle managers than there are police officers, fire-fighters and ballerinas combined.  And here you are a generation later with the title, “Manager” which entitles you to:

  • 10% more pay than the two idiots arguing over the coffee mug
  • longer working hours
  • hypertension.

I remember being the manager of a supermarket, where I’d have to mediate such disputes as who had to check through the groceries.  Yep, that’s right – we had hired over 100 people into the job description, “cashier”, and I was constantly involved in battles over who had to check.  Weren’t we paying all of you to perform that function?

Or another employee who made a career out of torturing other people with comments such as:

  • “I think you’ve put on weight”
  • “You’ll probably be bald in another couple of years”
  • “Why do you think it is that people don’t like you”

Of course, he always phrased these in such a way that he couldn’t be taken to task for harassment, but that didn’t stop the line-up of complaints about his behaviour.

I finally developed a coping strategy for these petty complaints that made me tremendously unpopular with everyone, but I enjoyed my job much more, and had way more time on my hands.  Unless I deemed the complaint to be something that would effect the viability of the business, or lead to an unacceptable amount of risk, I would tell people, “You need to sort this out on your own, because if you try to involve me, I guarantee no one is going to like the result”.

A threat?  Probably.

A survival strategy?  Definitely.

I’ve spoken in this space before about “the burden of leadership” that some managers have thought is a bit harsh.  I won’t back away from those comments, but I will say that petty complaints and conflicts are not part of any manager’s job – it’s a baby-sitter’s job.

The Manager’s job is often a thankless one, but it doesn’t have to be trivial, unless you allow it to be so.  This aspect of the manager’s job is timeless.

 

 

How to Manage Conflict

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How to manage conflict is a core management skill that is seldom developed for many leaders.  Below we discuss some easy steps for managers to be able to effectively manage conflict.

A survey conducted by Accountemps in 2011 concluded that leaders on average spend 16% of their time trying to manage conflict.  Given this amount of effort, organizations already spend a great deal of time and money to manage conflict.  Presumably those organizations and the leaders there would want to ensure that they manage conflict well.

The Avoidance Myth

Many leaders erroneously believe that avoidance is the best way to manage conflict.  This is not true.  In fact, avoiding and yielding responses to manage conflict can be extraordinarily harmful.  Conflict is inevitable in any workplace, and is neither good nor bad, but rather how people manage conflict can make the situation better or worse.

4 Keys to Properly Manage Conflict

Below are four key elements to effectively manage conflict.

  1. Know when to act.
  2. Focus on specific behaviours, not individual person(s)
  3. Be self-aware
  4. Move forward

Know When to Act to Properly Manage Conflict

Sometimes leaders need to take decisive action when attempting to manage conflict.  Other times they should ignore a situation:

  • Respond to serious conflict, and avoid petty grievances.  People should be told to sort out their own problems when they are of a minor nature.
  • If there will be a significant affect on morale or productivity – deal with it.
  • Certainly act if there is any potential for harassment or violence.

Focus on Specific Behaviours, not Individual Person(s) to Properly Manage Conflict

As a leader, you must rise above personality clashes when attempting to manage conflict:

  • You need to deal with problem people, but in the context of their behaviour or the situation.
  • Take note of observable or measurable behaviours.
  • Be aware of both active and passive responses to conflict.  In other words, in some cases, you may be better off to take note of a situation, and deal with the conflict when you have more and better information.

Be Self-aware

You are a leader who has a responsibility to manage conflict, but you are also a person who is subject to thoughts and emotion.  Make sure you are self-aware:

  • What is the impact of this conflict on you?
  • What people or situations are likely to “push your buttons”? (The Conflict Dynamics Profile will help you figure this out)
  • Attempt to understand how and why the conflict is occurring.
  • Know there is a “moment of choice” that will either resolve or escalate the conflict

Move Forward

In order properly manage conflict, there must be some resolution.  In other words, something must occur differently going forward than has happened in the past:

  • Ensure everyone understands what will be different going forward.
  • Who will do what by when to achieve resolution?

3 Things to Remember to Properly Manage Conflict

  1. Deal with conflict – do not avoid it.  It won’t resolve itself, and the longer you leave things, the worse it will get.
  2. Don’t minimize the impact on you.  Be aware of what emotions are at play when dealing with conflict, and how they may impact your judgment and action.
  3. Don’t make it personal.  Always deal with the situation, rather than attacking the person, and conversely remember that someone who is attacking you, is likely not attacking the person.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about How to Manage Conflict (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

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How to Manage Conflict: Help! I’m a Referee!

Conflict Management: Learn more about being self-aware; when a leader should act; not getting personal; and how to move forward.

Watch the ‘How to Manage Conflict: Help! I’m a Referee!’ video (12 mins 36 sec):

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How to Manage Conflict

It’s not very often you see a fist-fight in the hallway at your office, but there are lots of other examples of conflict in the workplace.  This week we talk about how leaders should manage conflict, including what happens when they avoid conflict.

Monday’s Tip: Don’t let it fester. Avoidance makes conflict worse.  There is never a perfect time to deal with this, so do it now.

Tuesday’s Tip: Anticipate potential conflict. If you think you will be put in a situation that will potentially lead to conflict, anticipate constructive responses in advance.

Wednesday’s Tip: Do not react when you are emotionally volatile.  If you feel yourself becoming angry or otherwise emotionally compromised, resist the urge to act on those feelings as it may create an outcome you don’t need or want.

Thursday’s Tip: Don’t deal with petty grievances. Tell people to sort out their own problems, when they are silly or trivial.  Do not become a babysitter.

Friday’s Tip: Focus on observable behaviours, not the person. Do not go after a person, but rather their poor behaviour.  Likewise, do not take it personally when someone attacks you.

Dispelling Guru Myths

Part of my job is to read the latest management books, and scan the media for important literature that could be of some use to managers.  Some stuff is certainly better written than others, but lately I’m getting downright cranky with some of the “wisdom” the alleged management gurus and pumping out to maintain their publishing revenue.  As a result, this week we’ll address some of these guru-myths.

Myth #1:  You need to treat everybody the same.

Treating everybody the same is a management slogan that gets trotted out as good leadership behaviour when exactly the opposite is true.  People are individuals and need to be treated as such.  Here’s something else the management gurus won’t tell you – sometimes, some of your people will desperately need a kick in the ass.

The reason management gurus won’t tell you this, is because they don’t know.  They don’t know, because they’ve never actually been a manager.  Yes, they may have sold enough books to own their very own Caribbean island, but many of them have never actually had direct reports.

I won’t disagree that people should be always treated with equal amounts of respect.  But respect necessarily means that a good leader will deal with a poor performing team member (sometimes via that kick in the ass, mentioned above) out of respect for the higher performing team members.

Myth #2:  Managers need to delegate everything

Another guru-myth is that every manager needs to, “delegate, delegate, delegate!” There is no doubt that effective delegation can help a leader push some teams to outstanding performance.  But there are other teams, where relentless delegation can be a catastrophic mistake.

In teams with members that are lower skilled for the tasks they are performing, the last thing you want to do is delegate.  These people need to be carefully directed and managed – some people might even call it micro-managing.  Delegating too much, too soon is probably a larger management issue than failing to delegate.

Myth #3:  Training solves all performance problems

More than once we’ve gotten a call from someone who asks us to come in and do some change management training with his people.  Our very first question is, “why do you think they need training?”

Sometimes, they do.  In other cases, people are fully capable of making the change being asked of them, they just don’t want to do so.  (See:  ass-kicking, above)

Myth #4:  People don’t resist change.  You just need to give them all the information

This myth is particularly offensive.  People DO resist change even when they know the benefits, and have all the information required.  Case in point:  the metric system.  It’s vastly superior, and far easier to understand.  Nearly 7 billion people use it every day, yet the few who still choose not to use it hang on to the old imperial system like Linus protects his blanket.

 

I could go on and on, but I’m working on a change-management training course for managers who want to better delegate to the people they want to treat all the same.

 

The Situational Leadership Model

Learn to identify your default management style and select the best management style to match the situation.

Watch ‘The Situational Leadership Model’ video (13 mins 32 sec):

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'Situational Leadership Model' Podcast Slides

 

Situational Leadership

This week we talk about Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model.  This simple tool helps managers decide when they should be more directive, and when they should coach, support, or delegate more.  It also helps you diagnose performance problems as problems of competence or commitment, and how to remedy both.

Monday’s Tip: Identify performance issues as “Competence” or “Commitment”. If you put a gun to someone’s head, and they still can’t do a task, you have a compentence issue, otherwise, it’s a commitment issue.

Tuesday’s Tip: Remember that the same person may require a different management style in different situations. A person may require very directive behaviour on one task, while you can easily delegate to them on another.  You need to adjust your style accordingly.

Wednesday’s Tip: Match the style (Directing, Coaching, Supporting, or Delegating) based on the situation. One style doesn’t fit all, and once you’ve determined someone’s developmental level, it’s easy to determine the most effective management style.

Thursday’s Tip: Figure out what style you default to. We all have preferred management styles, so be aware of what your preferred style is, and work to improve the others.

Friday’s Tip: Check your diagnosis often. People learn and improve, which will require you to adjust you management style accordingly.

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