Working Your Organization System

In October’s blog, I wrote about having a way to capture all of the to-do items swirling around in your head, creating a projects list, and from that, determining what your next actions are.  Here’s how to work through your entire organization system to keep it up-to-date. 

1.       Each day, take time to prioritize what you need to do that day.  Spend some time at the beginning of the day (or at the end of the day for tomorrow), looking at what has come up on your calendar or Next Actions list to determine what absolutely needs to be done.  Schedule time on your calendar to do things that will take you 30 minutes or more.  This will help you plan what you can get done and when.

In general, your calendar and your Next Actions list will drive what needs to be done on any given day.  Your priorities will most likely change during the day, but if you plan it out you know what to shoot for, and you’ll have a better chance of getting the main things done.

Don’t forget to check your tickler file if you’re keeping that separate from your calendar.

2.       As items enter your system through your email, your physical inbox, Next Actions list or another capture device, determine what the item is and whether something must be done with it.

a.      If nothing needs to be done with the item, then:

                                                              i.      Trash it.  Junk mail comes to mind for this category along with notices of events you don’t have an interest in attending, or email that you were only CC’d on and don’t have an interest in;

                                                            ii.      File it away for reference in your topical file in case you ever need it.  Maybe someone sent you an article on “employee performance”.  You don’t need it for anything now, but maybe you will in the future; or

                                                          iii.      Let it simmer.  You’re at dinner with friends who describe their latest trip to Antarctica.  Now you think you might want to go someday.  Put it on a Someday/Maybe list where it will stay until you decide to go or until you decide you’re no longer interested.

b.      If something does need to be done with the item, then:

                                                              i.      Do it.  If you’re the person who needs to do it, and it will take you 2 minutes or less to do it, do it as soon as it comes up in your email or physical inbox;

                                                            ii.      Delegate it.  If the item is better handled by someone else, delegate it to him/her.  For example, if you have an administrative assistant, s/he can make those mailing labels for the alumni gathering.  You don’t have to.  When you delegate something, make sure you’re clear with who will do it and when it needs to be done.  Make note on a Waiting On list, so you can follow up if needed when you review that list; or

                                                          iii.      Defer it.  If you’re the person who must take action with the item, and it will take longer than 2 minutes to do it, then defer it by putting it on your calendar for the date and/or time that you need to do it.  Maybe it goes on your Agenda for a particular person or meeting, or maybe it should go in your tickler file for a later date.

3.      Review your lists at least once a week.  Check on your . . .

a.      Waiting On list for things you’ve delegated to someone else.  Do you need to follow up to find out how things are going?

b.      Next Actions list for the next steps to take on various projects.  Is there something you can do in the coming week(s) to move a project forward?

c.       Someday/Maybe list to see if you’re ready to do an item from this list . . . or maybe you’ve decided to cross things off this list because you’re no longer interested.

d.      Agendas to make sure you are keeping track of items for meeting agendas or to bring up the next time you see a particular person.

Ultimately, you should have the least number of lists to keep you organized.  The goal is not to have a complex system but to have the simplest system that works for you.  If you find yourself not working your organization system from time to time, don’t worry.  It’s easy to get back into it.  And you know that you feel better and more in control of your work when you keep your system updated.  For more tips on self-organization, I recommend the book, Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Self-Organization: Capturing Items and Managing Projects

In my September blog entry, I talked about the beginnings of getting organized, including organizing your files, creating a tickler file, and processing through everything in your inboxes every day.  Now, let’s look at capturing and managing all projects you have on your plate.  Remember:  the idea is to get things out of your head, through your inboxes (physical and/or email) and into your organization system, so they can be handled timely and by the right people.

1.      Have a capture tool with you always for work and personal items.  A capture tool?  That’s just a fancy way of saying that you need to be able to record every thought about something that needs to be done when it occurs to you.  You probably already have a grocery list on your refrigerator – that’s a capture tool.  As soon as you notice you’re out of milk, you put it on the grocery list, so the next time you’re at the grocery story, you don’t forget to pick up milk.  Have you ever gone to the store thinking you’ll just remember all 6 items you need, but once you get to the store, you can only remember 5?  Yep.  Should have used a list (a capture tool).

Your capture tool can be a small note pad and pen, the electronic memo or task function on your PDA or cell phone, or a voice recorder.  Whatever works for you and is portable.  So, when you get home from work and remember that you need to call Joe Schmoe tomorrow about the Smith account, you can write it down on your note pad, type it into your PDA or cell phone task list, or record the reminder on a voice recorder.  (Only one method required – not all three.)  The idea is that if you “capture” the thought, you won’t fret all evening or lose sleep trying not to forget to make the important phone call the next day.  Capture it and forget it until you’re where you can deal with the item.  And don’t worry about keeping personal and business items separate.  Capture everything together.  You might need to pick up a birthday card for Aunt Martha during your lunch hour, so get it down somewhere.  The timing of when you can complete personal projects and business projects overlap much of the time because business hours needed for information or service for your personal projects are the same business hours you’re at work.

2.      Create a Projects List that includes both personal and work items.  A project is anything that takes more than 1 step to do.  For example, “Clean the house on Saturday” could involve these steps: (1) check for needed cleaning supplies, (2) vacuum the carpet, (3) dust the furniture, (4) clean the bathtubs, (5) clean the sinks, etc.  Now even if you write down, “Clean the house on Saturday”, chances are you will become overwhelmed thinking of the project as a whole.  Ugh!  But if you break it down step by step, you need only muster up the energy to do the next piece, which usually isn’t so bad.

So, your project list might include both personal and work items:

o   Clean the house on Saturday

§  Get cleaning supplies

§  Vacuum carpet

§  Dust furniture

§  Clean bathtubs           

§  Clean sinks

o   Create new employee appreciation program

§  Call to George at XYZ Company to find out what they do for employee appreciation

§  Talk to HR about doing an employee survey

§  Invite Bob, Mary, Jim, and Sue to be on an employee appreciation committee

§  Etc.

Don’t be surprised if your project list has 50+ projects on it.  Take the time to capture it all, so you’ve identified all the balls you have in the air.  It will feel good to get everything down where you can see it.  And again, your Project List can be on paper or electronic.  Don’t worry if you can’t think of EVERY step required for each project.  As you work through the steps of the project, you’ll see what you need to add.  That leads to the Next Actions list.

3.      A Next Actions list contains those things that are ready to be done.  This list contains those things that must happen as soon as you can do them – personal and professional.  From your Inbox, Tickler file, and Projects list, you can determine what your Next Actions are for the next week or so.  Next Actions that must happen on a particular day and/or time can go on your calendar.  Other Next Actions may not be time sensitive, in which case, you’ll keep them on your Next Actions list until you do them.  Again, the Next Actions list can be on paper or kept electronically.

If you have more than, say, 25 items on your Next Actions list, you might want to categorize them to make it easier to manage.  Categories might include:

·         Phone Calls

·         Errands

·         Computer Work

·         At Home

·         Agenda Items (for people and meetings)

·         Read/Review

·         Waiting For (anything you’re waiting for someone else to do)

Use categories that make sense for you.  You’ll need to review your Projects and Next Actions lists at least once per week to make sure you’re on track.  Next time:  Working Your Organization System to Stay Organized.

Get Organized - Getting Started

Confused with the flurry of paperwork and email that flows through your office daily?  Tired of living among piles of paperwork on your desk or on the floor?  Are your file drawers chock full of documents that you haven't looked at in ages?  Where did you file that electronic file from 2 years ago that you need in 5 minutes?

You might need to get organized by managing the influx of physical and electronic documents.

It's estimated that corporate executives waste 6 weeks per year searching for lost documents. (Fast Company Magazine, August 2004).  How can you make sure your are set up to increase your productivity simply by organizing your workspace?

1.  Tidy up the clutter. Your best weapon?  A file cabinet that meets your needs, doesn't fight you, and is within arm's reach of your desk.  File drawers should be no more than 75% full to make accessing files easily.  Use typed labels in a simple A-Z system.  Put 1 manila file folder per hanging file, too, so overstuffed files don't obscure the labels on the files behind them.  Remember to clean out and/or archive old files once per year.  Label things clearly and logically enough so you can find a file within 1 minute.

Your computer files should be just as organized and de-cluttered.  At least once per year, archive or delete files from your desktop.  Re-arrange your file structure periodically as your focus changes and as you archive older files.  You should be able to find any computer file within 1 minute as well.

2.  Create a "tickler" file to remind you of tasks you need to do in the future.  This can be a physical tickler file, or you can create "tasks" and/or "recurrences" of appointments on your electronic calendar.  If creating a physical tickler file, create a file folder for each of the twelve months of the year (Jan through Dec.) and create 31 separate file folders (numbered 1-31) to account for up to 31 days/month.  If it's September, put the September file in front, followed by the 31 daily folders.  (The rest of the monthly folders are now behind the 31 daily folders in order beginning with October.)

Place notes, invitations, fliers, etc. in the monthly folder during which you need to attend to them.  For the current month (in this case, September), put the items requiring attention in the particular daily folder that you'll take care of them.  Each day, check the daily folder for the current month and take care of the items inside.  When you start a new month, move that month to the front, followed by folders 1-31, and sort the tickler items from the monthly folder and disperse them throughout the daily folders.

3.  Clear out your physical and email inboxes everyday by addressing everything in them.  For your email inbox, create storage folders for items that you want to save, that you will address later, or for messages you will forward to someone else to take care of.  Move your incoming mail to a folder if you're not going to take care of it right away.  Set up email rules for certain incoming email, so it will automatically file itself.  For example, if you are CC'd on email frequently, set up a rule that sends anything you're CC'd on directly to an email folder for these items.  Check email only twice per day -- once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

Your physical inbox should be managed the same way.  With both your email and physical inboxes, trash it, delegate, put it on hold, or get it done.  Remember to:

• Process the top item first
• Process one item at a time
Never put anything back

With these basics in place, you'll be well on your way to staying in control of the steady flow of work that comes through your office.  Next time: managing larger projects with a Project List.

Do You Have What It Takes to Manage People?

It happens everyday:  someone is put in the position of managing people for the first time and finds it is daunting and very different from what they expected.  New managers often find they are completely unprepared for what it takes to be the supervisor because they were counting on the fact that just being the one in charge coupled with their own sparkling personality was going to make them a hit with employees.

Au contraire, mon frere.

What does it take to supervise employees in the workplace successfully?  In addition to things you can learn (how to interview, how to address behavior and performance issues, how to communicate better, etc.), it takes a couple of other attributes that are sometimes not as easily acquired:

1.       Self-Awareness.  To maintain your composure under stressful situations at work (and at home), you must be aware of your underlying assumptions about people and work, your motivations, your own hot buttons, your talents, and your limitations.  A tall order, I know, but without this basic awareness, you are prone to react (and over-react) to situation after situation in the workplace without producing the results you desire.  In fact, without self-awareness, you’ll probably make the same mistakes over and over, produing exactly the opposite of what you desire.  Becoming a manager is a great experience for learning these things about yourself.  Managing others will help you increase your self-awareness, but you have to be willing to recognize and own your “stuff”.

You also must be self-aware enough to realize that even though you would like to believe you “deserved” the promotion to manager, the workplace is not always about merit.  Maybe there are others who would be as good or an even better manager, but you were in the right place at the right time to be selected.  Realize this, have some humility about it, and keep focusing on your own growth as a person to enhance your growth as a supervisor of people.

2.       Flexible Personal and Professional Boundaries.  Having flexible boundaries means you decide what to let into “your space” and what to keep out.  Good but flexible boundaries make you resistant to influences that will get in the way of your ability to function as a healthy manager.  As you understand your role as manager, you should come to understand that your role is to get maximum production out of those who work with you while enforcing all the rules of the organization.  (Sometimes that means you will not be the most popular person around.  You have to be OK with that.) As you create professional boundaries with your employees, you are establishing the ground rules for how you will behave and others are to behave around you.  Having flexible boundaries means . . .

·         You build trust with your employees as you maintain confidences, are firm, fair, and consistent in your dealings with others, and admit when you make a mistake.

·         You understand that you have a role to play, and your employees have roles to play and that the decisions made and the actions taken at work are not designed to personally favor you or another individual.

·         You do not make decisions out of pity for others or just so your employees will like you.

·         You hold yourself and your employees accountable for expected performance and behavior in the workplace based on the business objectives for your work group.

3.       Realize Forms and Structures Don’t Manage For You.  I work with managers who frequently ask for a form to use to address an issue with an employee – whether it’s for evaluation, discipline, etc.  I often balk at this request because for some managers, I sense they want the form, so they can say every critical thing they want to say to the employee on paper, then slide it across the desk to them and feel like the problem is solved without a conversation.  This is not management.  This desire to let the forms do the talking can indicate conflict avoidance that protects the manager from dealing with messy and often ambiguous people issues.

Yes, issues should be documented in writing.  But while the structured information on forms can help managers make sure they are addressing the right things when working with employees, the form itself is not the magic – the manager’s interaction with the employee is.  Instead of managing by remote control through a form, you must look someone in the eye (or hear their voice on the phone if you’re in different cities) and talk about what’s going right and what’s not working then continually follow up to make sure the employee stays on track.  And yes, you have to be self-aware enough to recognize the baggage you might bring to the conversation.  Yes, you must keep within your flexible boundaries.

4.       Remember You’re Working with Other Adults.   Due to the hierarchy of most organizations, we often fall into the trap of believing that those at the top know more than those toward the bottom.  Not so.  There is plenty of knowledge and experience that must be tapped to make any organization successful.  So, remember you are working with adults who know a thing or two about work and life. Some of your employees are more knowledgeable and more experienced that you are, too.  You don’t have to be the one with all the answers – you’re there to help others discover the answers (whether you already know them or not).

Taking on the role of manager will be challenging and rewarding.  Instead of validating your talent and wonderfulness, it is for most a wake-up call and growth opportunity.  Enjoy!

Copyright - Beth Strathman 2011

All rights reserved

Don't Believe Everything You Think

EMPLOYEE:  “My boss doesn’t like me.  He’s out to get me.”

HR:  “What makes you think he doesn’t like you?

EMPLOYEE: “He called me names and is always mad when he’s around me.  He just doesn’t like me.  I’m afraid that he’s going to try to fire me.”

As an HR Director, I hear too many employees describe the relationship with their supervisors this way, even when the employee is considered by all accounts a good employee with no reason to worry.  Why? 

What I have learned is that much of what we all think, is only in our own head and is not necessarily true.  Yep.   We make up a lot of stuff about what’s going on in our workplace and the world in general.

The brain has been described as a pattern-making machine.  It looks for patterns everywhere (even where there aren’t any).  We have many THOUGHTS that come together in patterns, which eventually form BELIEFS about everything.  And although we like to think of ourselves as rational, logical beings, we typically don’t investigate the object TRUTH of our THOUGHTS and BELIEFS by finding ways to prove or disprove what’s going on in our heads.  (Look at your beliefs about Barack O'Bama or Sarah Palin as people;  do you know either one of them?  Where did you beliefs come from?) 

Based on the way the brain is designed, the more we believe something, the more we see it in the world around us.  And if we don’t examine what we have going on in our heads, we can end up making decisions about or reacting to situations and people in ways that can look wacky to others and that don’t serve us in the long run.

So, let’s go back to the employee who believes his boss doesn’t like him.  As he keeps the “boss doesn’t like me” filter in place, the employee will see, hear, and experience events at work to align with that belief.  When the boss doesn’t smile around him, the employee interprets that in relation to his belief, “the boss doesn’t like me”.  He has now formed stronger brain connections around that thought, and uses the lack of smile to forge an even stronger connection to the belief that the boss doesn’t like him even though the employee has no idea whether the boss even saw him or whether the boss had other things on his mind.

Because we all do this, become aware of a few of the thoughts or beliefs you hold about a situation or another individual at work.  Where did these thoughts come from?  Were you a part of the situation – were you actually there?  Do you interact regularly with the individual?  Or did you form your thoughts and beliefs about them based on what others say or believe?  What are you getting out of holding on to those thoughts and beliefs?  Is it possible that the one experience you had of another individual was not the norm for him?

The Work by Byron Katie provides a simple yet powerful structure for investigating thoughts you can use on yourself.  The basic process includes 4 questions and turnarounds regarding a thought you have:

1.       Is it true?

2.       Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

3.       How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

4.       Who would you be without the thought?

And

Turn it around, and find three genuine examples of how the turnaround is true in your life.

So, what’s the boss in our example to do, especially if the boss isn’t against the employee?  It’s an uphill battle for the boss.  Assuming the boss isn’t mistreating the employee, he must continue to act professionally and respectfully in the workplace, and he must overlook the pettiness of the situation and try not to take it personally.  Yes, it's a tall order.  Others are in a better position to help, especially HR or other trusted supervisors and colleagues.  They can assist the employee with looking at his beliefs and thoughts and to help him question them.

As a manager or business owner, question a belief you have about someone at work.  Is it true?

Self-Awareness Leads to Accountability

Watching the government almost shut down recently and listening to congressmen from both parties blame the other side while the country goes deeper into debt and nothing gets done, I’m really wondering where the accountability has gone.  Neither side is holding itself accountable to produce results that matter to the American citizen.

As leaders of organizations, we should be the role models of accountability for ourselves and to our employees.  So what would does it take for company leaders to hold themselves accountable? I suggest you start with some serious self-reflection.  To check how accountable you are as a leader, consider reflecting on the following questions:

(In a particular situation) what did I do that worked?  Why? What did I do that didn’t work?  Why not?  Taking stock of the facts helps you to hold yourself accountable based on the actions you took – both good and not so good.  Be honest with yourself.  If there was conflict or disappointment within the situation, resist the temptation to vindicate yourself.  Even if you think you were justified in whatever you did or didn’t do, what could you have done differently to decrease the conflict or increase the satisfaction with the situation for  yourself and others involved?

(In the particular situation) what can I learn about myself based on how I acted or reacted?  Reflecting on how you respond and react helps you to spot patterns that can lead to personal insights about what’s driving your reactions (motivation, fears, and desires).  Becoming aware of these deeper aspects of yourself and the behavioral patterns they lead to allows you to catch yourself in the act or even before you act/react and interject conscious thought to interrupt what might be a behavioral pattern that isn’t working for you.  The split second it takes to think about what we are getting ready to do or say, allows us to exercise choice – the choice to stay stuck in our unconscious patterns or to consciously create new solutions without reacting unconsciously.

(In the particular situation) what excuses did I make (in my head or out loud) for my own or my department’s bad results or failures?  As you identify the story you tell yourself, ask whether or not it’s really true.  What beliefs about yourself or others shore up your story.  Are those beliefs necessarily true?  When you examine the stories you tell yourself, you might just find that your reactions are based on unfounded beliefs about the situation. When you unpack those unfounded beliefs, it’s surprising how much more present you can remain in situations that previously caused you anger and stress.  Once you realize the Accounting department is not just a bunch of nimrods trying to jerk you around, you’ll work with them much more cooperatively and proactively.  In other words, don’t believe everything you think!

(In the particular situation) what did I do that might be part of my typical behavioral patterns?  Do you tune out when stressed and retreat?  Do you come across as overly-critical of others?  Do you consciously or unconsciously intimidate others?  No matter your behavioral patterns, you’re probably doing unto others what you don’t want done to you.  Be aware of these patterns and how they shape your interactions with others.

(In the particular situation) what could I have done instead of my typical pattern? If I change my typical reaction pattern, what do I think might happen? Once you’ve identified behavioral patterns that may not be serving you, try an alternative way of responding.  Instead of frequently pushing yourself beyond your limits, what would happen if you take a breather once in a while or take a day off for fun?  Instead of fearing you’ll disappoint others, what if you said “no” more often or try making your doubts known at the outset?  Instead of appearing intimidating, what would happen if you conceded a point to someone else without trying to justify yourself and let them “win”? Letting go of our usual ways of being and doing what feels like the opposite of what we are programmed to do is a practice that help us realize that our typical maladaptive behaviors may have served us when we were younger, but they just might be getting in the way of holding ourselves truly accountable as adults.

The self-aware leader is an accountable leader.  The more you model what real accountability is, the more likely your employees are to own their results without excuse, too.

Enabling Versus Empowering in the Workplace

Do you have employees who are poor performers or who don’t get along with others who have been in your organization for too long?  Why?

There is no reason why an employer should continue to tolerate employees who continually produce substandard work, exhibit unsatisfactory attendance, or who behave badly as a general rule.  Yet, most employers have at least a few of these employees.  The sad fact is that employers have no one to blame but themselves.  Even in the public sector, where employees are entitled to “due process” before they are fired or demoted, it is very do-able to address the performance and behavior issues and terminate an unproductive or badly behaved employee.

The issue for most organizations is co-dependent managers, who would rather be liked than to hold employees accountable.  Another word for it is “enabling”.  Enabling is behavior that insidiously encourages the “bad” employee to continue being bad.  It’s the same dynamic between loved ones and an addict, which prevents the addict from addressing her addiction --like allowing drug use in your home or giving the alcoholic money for rent because she used the rent money to buy booze.  If you are “walking on eggshells” around an employee in your organization and avoiding a necessary conversation about unmet expectations, chances are, you are part of an enabling dynamic.

Enabling is behavior that prevents or interferes with holding the employee accountable to acquire new competencies.  It keeps her stuck in her unproductive performance and poor behavior.  Enabling keeps the employee believing she has no power or control over her life events, her work, and her self-efficacy.  The result is that the manager becomes complicit in reinforcing old or maladaptive behavior such as procrastination or passivity by not expecting more.  In short, a co-dependent manager is silently communicating that the “bad” employee is not capable of changing and is not capable of taking responsibility for her performance or her actions.

What does this look like?  Looking the other way when the employee mistreats a customer or co-worker.  Talking yourself out of addressing an issue as you pretend “it isn’t that bad”.  Giving the employee adequate performance reviews, so you don’t have to justify your observations of inadequate performance.

By avoiding any negative impact to herself, the manager who enables a “bad” employee is forgetting her duty to the organization that relies on productivity to succeed and to the rest of the employees who are meeting company expectations.

Why would a manager allow an employee to continually fail?  Simple. The reaction the manager will get from an underperformer when addressing work issues is not going to be pleasant.  Like the addict or alcoholic, the enabled employee will most likely have an emotional outburst that deflects the attention away from herself as she points the finger at others, including at the manager.  Not a comfortable place to be.  In short, it’s just easier to tolerate the substandard employee and hope it doesn’t get any worse than it already is.

The healthier way of dealing with the substandard employee is to expect more of her by empowering her.  But this takes guts, an acknowledgment that it’s your job as a manager to do this, and a belief that it is better to respected than to be liked.

Empowering is behavior that expects the employee to acquire new competencies for better performance.  It increases the employee’s sense of control or power over a situation, and encourages the learning of new coping abilities to replace maladaptive behavior.

What does empowering look like?  Good old-fashioned management:  1)Talk to the employee about what you are experiencing, giving her a chance to explain; 2) Restate your expectation for what acceptable work product or behavior looks like; 3) Offer or require training if appropriate for the issue at hand; 4)  If applicable to the situation, ask the employee for options for how she can do things differently to achieve the results you expect; 4) Follow up and follow through with the employee to make sure the necessary changes are taking place; 5) If the necessary changes do not occur, start summarizing your conversations about performance or behavior with the employee in writing, and escalate the formality of the written summaries from a warning to reprimands to a letter of suspension or termination as warranted and according to your company policy.

My best advice:  If you think you might have enabling tendencies, don’t seek a promotion to a management position.

Leadership: Celebrity Versus Character

With the Hollywood awards season upon us, the idea of “celebrity” gives me pause regarding my work with organizational leaders.   "You get fame. You create celebrity. There's a difference,” notes Dr. Chris Bell author of American Idolatry: Celebrity, Commodity and Reality Television.  What is celebrity?  Celebrity is the conscious promotion of oneself.  And in American society we increasingly reward those who strive to be noticed and on display with media coverage and multi-million dollar deals.   It’s enough to make me stop watching “Entertainment Tonight” – well, almost.  But I have to admit that we consumers of celebrity gossip are creating this appetite for all things superficially juicy.

You most likely have met the “celebrity” leader in an organization at some point in your work career.  Well-liked . . . friendly . . . attractive . . . can make you believe that she agrees with everything you say . . .  that she is on your side on every issue.  Until you learn she makes everyone else feel that way, too.  How can she be all things to all people and agree with everyone on everything?  Easy.  She doesn’t have a sense of the value of her true self and seeks to feel worthwhile and accepted by creating an attractive image and/or convincing the world that she is something other than what she truly is.  A true chameleon, she is a master at adaptation . . . a true embodiment of Darwin’s notion of survival of the fittest.  There is definitely talent here, and we call it politics.  But those who survive in politics typically are those who have a talent for promoting and preserving only themselves.

Think of Jefferson and Adams.  To me Thomas Jefferson, while a brilliant man, tended towards the “celebrity” side of the leadership spectrum.  Quite charming and affable, Jefferson pretended that he had nothing to do with scurrilous rumors about Adams, a man he counted as a friend, which he paid to have printed during the election of 1800.  But Jefferson’s quest for the Presidency was more important to him than his friendship with Adams, and they went for 10 years without speaking to one another due to Jefferson’s self-interest in defeating his friend.

In contrast, John Adams existed more toward the “character” side of the continuum (perhaps to an extreme).  When the British soldiers, accused of killing Bostonians in what became known as the Boston Massacre, needed a lawyer, John Adams took the case.  Not because he was a Loyalist and certainly not because he stood to personally profit (he lost business because of it), but because he believed that everyone was entitled to legal defense.  He put his own interests aside to stand for a deeply held principle, defended the soldiers, and won the case.  Perhaps to a fault, Adams routinely put principle before his own self-interest and even lost the election of 1800 in part because he truly believed the unpopular Alien and Sedition Acts were in the best interest of the American people even if they were not in his personal interest of getting re-elected.

While politics is a part of every group, how prevalent should it be in an organization?  Not that prevalent, I say, because most organizations purport to have a mission about something other than individual self-promotion and self-preservation.  Self-preservation and self-promotion become distracters and, ultimately, attributes of individuals you can’t trust.  To me, trustworthiness is the very foundation of leadership.

So, those with what Iacocca describes as “character” are the leaders I admire and are those I try to emulate.  To me “character” is having an alignment of values and purpose that is apparent to others on a consistent basis.  You can predict what an individual with character will do next because their actions are in tune with what they claim to stand for.   An individual with “character” is focused on the greater good, and not simply on what is in it for herself.

Delivering Performance Feedback without Performance Evaluation Forms

In my November blog entry, I railed against the typical, formulaic performance evaluation.  So, if typical performance evaluation forms aren’t effective for communicating a manager’s desired performance from employees, then what is?

Simple . . . a little something I like to call, “communication”.  (Assuming you did a decent job of hiring a qualified, sane person for the job.)

I’m a big proponent of the adage a la Oprah that when “people know better, they do better”.  And for employees to know what “better” looks like, managers have to talk to them.  In turn, for managers to talk to employees, managers can’t be conflict avoidant (see December 2010 blog entry on conflict avoidance).  So here are some tips for giving performance feedback to your employees:

1.       Focus on an employee’s strengths.  If possible, assign employees to work on tasks and projects that will utilize their strengths.  For example, if an employee in your sales department isn’t that good at making conversation with people he doesn’t know, but has an eye for detail, send others out to interface with customers and use the detail-oriented employee to make sure the sales documents are in order after the sale has been made.  (I know . . . This suggestion is highly idealistic, but if you can, do it.)

2.       Make sure your expectations for the employee’s work are clear and actually told to the employee.  One of the biggest misconceptions managers have is that the employee SHOULD know what to do and how to do it.  Or that the employee interpreted the boss’s directions exactly how the boss intended them.  Wrong.  That’s why we have managers to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

3.       Talk to employees about their work daily, weekly, and monthly.  It’s a manager’s job to talk to employees about their work, whether things are going well or whether there are problems.   To do this, meet with employees at the outset of a new phase or project to clarify your expectations and to get their input; check in with the employee regularly on an on-going basis to see if changes are required; and after the work has been done debrief with the employee to help her reflect on what went right, what didn’t turn out so well, and what might be done in the future to achieve the best possible outcome.

4.       Put your observations about an employee’s work in writing.  Whether an employee excels at her work or whether the employee has shown a pattern of shoddy work, putting what occurred in writing and giving that letter or memo to the employee is the best way to document how well or how poorly the employee is doing.  Letters of commendation, letters of warning, and letters of reprimand should also be placed in the employee’s personnel file.

By following these actions, managers are able to create performance feedback that is more effective and timely than using the typical performance evaluation pre-fab form.