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The Stronger the Personal Feelings, the Less Likely Any Agreement Will Occur

The primary barrier to mutual communication is a person’s natural tendency to judge and approve or disapprove of what is being said by another person. Judging takes place because people tend to evaluate what they hear from their own personal point of view and reference. These evaluations short-circuit their ability to objectively think through, reframe and analyze responses.

Leaders not only have to communicate their own thoughts, ideas, and messages clearly, but are often responsible for facilitating better communication between groups and individuals with divergent points of view. Leaders must understand that communication is heightened when personal feelings and emotions are deeply involved. One rule of thumb always applies: the stronger the personal feelings of the involved parties, the less likely any mutual agreement between the two.

This is because two ideas, two sets of personal feelings and two sets of judgments exist completely disconnected from each other. When these are not laid aside, nothing remotely resembling communication occurs.

This is a serious consideration for leaders, as they are often placed in situations where a complete lack of communication exists. They can find themselves in an environment where communication has completely broken down due to the highly-charged emotional content of both parties’ arguments. Without an understanding of the factors directly affecting communications, leaders will find themselves unable to facilitate useful exchanges and discussions; the communication that does take place will produce aggravation, conflict and frustration for all parties.

Healthy communication occurs, and personal evaluations are avoided, when leaders are able to listen with a genuine sense of interest and understanding. This is a direct result of seeing an expressed idea or attitude from the other party’s point of view and developing a sense of how the other person feels. This allows leaders to achieve a personal frame of reference linked directly to an individual’s thoughts, perceptions and interpretations. When a leader is able to develop this understanding, he or she is able to facilitate better communication, assuage the other person’s fears, and establish more realistic and harmonious relationships.

Leaders can effectively apply this technique in a difficult environment by requiring each party to clearly restate the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately to the speaker’s satisfaction. Only after this is accomplished does the second party state his or her viewpoint in response.

This should be done before anyone states their viewpoint or makes a response in a heated discussion, because it forces each party to pause and consider the other’s point of reference, helping the individual to identify what lies beneath the communicator’s thought process. This technique works because it immediately gives each party time to pause, think, analyze, evaluate, and remove the emotion from their statements.

This method requires an individual to achieve the other party’s frame of reference, so he or she can understand their thoughts and feelings well enough to summarize them accurately. This establishes real communication guaranteeing amicable solutions can be reached for two reasons. First, when understanding is achieved, it forces the other party to revise his or her own statements and thinking, to filter out emotions and subjectivity. Second, it reduces the differences between conflicting parties to reasonable disagreements that are both rational and understandable.

Leaders should know that complete understanding is often difficult to achieve because of the risks associated with challenging and altering one’s own thinking and views. Most are averse to this perceived threat.

Additionally, when emotions are at their peak, it is extremely difficult to achieve another’s frame of reference at the exact point when it is needed most to accurately interpret what is being said.

Leaders can easily overcome these barriers by assuming the role of neutral third party. In this capacity, they restate both individuals’ positions and points of reference to build clarity, introspection and understanding. This is an effective method for neutralizing potential miscommunication problems through active personal interaction. When individuals realize they are being understood clearly and accurately, and feel comfortable because their views are being mirrored, their statements grow less exaggerated and defensive.

Taking the position of a neutral third party allows leaders to handle any insincerities, exaggerations, lies and “false-fronts” that typically characterize communication breakdowns. This method leads to discovery of the truth and a realistic, objective appraisal of the barriers inhibiting two-way, interactive communication. The aim is to achieve “mutual” communication, focused on solving problems rather than attacking individual or group ideas, reasoning or appraisals.

Excerpt: Improving Communication in the Workplace: Pinpoint Leadership Skill Development Training Series (Majorium Business Press, Stevens Point, WI 2011) $ 16.95 USD

Eight Ways to Improve Communication

Correctly Framing Problems Pinpoints the Right Solution

The Challenge of Handling Conflict

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

April 9, 2014 at 2:49 pm

Do Institutionalized Management Practices Create Formidable Obstacles to Change?

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Every organization must adapt to change whether they like it or not. Customers, competition and technology compel organizations to adjust. The success and speed of change is dependent upon several key factors that are closely associated with leadership.

However, institutionalized management practices and structures can create formidable obstacles to internal change and can prevent organizations from taking advantage of short windows of opportunity. These obstacles present a challenge to all managers.

In most organizations individuals are taught to manage not by leading but by controlling and directing. Within these organizational cultures, this style of management is often equated with leadership. This key fallacy often prevents organizations from effecting change and taking advantage of afforded opportunities.

Management is a precise set of processes that keeps a complicated system of people, resources and technology running smoothly and, hopefully, without problems. These processes include functions such as planning, budgeting, organizing and controlling. Yet management as leadership goes well beyond these activities to include the set of processes that initially creates an organization and allows it to adapt to a variety of changing circumstances.

It is important for managers to understand the difference between the two processes. Leadership is what defines the future for the organization, aligns people with a vision and motivates them to carry on despite the obstacles. Transforming an organization in the face of change requires a majority of leadership skills and a minority of controlling and directing skills. While management in the traditional sense was required to build and staff the large corporate organizations of the past, leadership is what is required to transform them in the face of change for the future.

The key factors of change within any organization are all leadership-based. In the past, management was essential to internally build and maintain large organizations and bureaucracies. While such management is still important, organizations faced with rapidly changing technologies, markets and competition must focus their efforts externally to effectively handle change and take advantage of the subsequent opportunities. This external focus is part of leadership.

The reasons behind this strategy are self-evident. Internally-focused managers and employees tend to be myopic in their thinking, which makes it difficult for them to identify the external forces presenting both threats and opportunities to the organization. Insular thinking is designed to protect internal bureaucracies and political power bases; thus, it denies the existence of the forces of change that are buffeting the organization.

Since they disregard the forces of change, these managers are highly resistant to alterations and build walls within the organization. These barriers are difficult for managers as leaders to overcome. Before they can emerge to challenge these internal barriers, they must understand how the key factors of leadership compare with the traditional management structure, and how the two vary in style and approach to change. While controlling and directing management can support leadership in the accomplishment of goals and objectives, most organizational cultures have traditional managers dictating what managers as leaders should and can do; this is the opposite of what should be happening. The following comparisons are where many of the directing/leading conflicts occur with traditional management imposing its principles and constraints upon leadership.

Planning and Budgeting vs. Establishing Direction

The role of management in the traditional sense is to establish detailed steps and schedules that direct the organization toward the accomplishment of its goals and objectives. Individuals and organizational resources are allotted according to need and assigned to specific tasks.

The role of management as leadership is to develop and define an organizational vision for the future. Managers initiate strategies to produce the necessary changes required to achieve their vision.

The conflict in traditional manager-run organizations is that they wish to have managers who lead work within the constraints of the established plans and budgets, which limits their ability to act and effect overall change. Rather, planning and budgeting should be used to support the manager’s goals and vision to implement necessary organizational change. This presents a challenge for managers as leaders: they must effect internal change before they can achieve external change.

Organizing and Staffing vs. Aligning People

The conflict between organizing and staffing on the one hand, and aligning people on the other, is an argument of form over function. Many entrenched managers have institutionalized a number of management functions, which creates highly structured programs that help the organization to achieve its institutionalized goals and objectives. Employees and resources of the organization are controlled and directed through these goals related to policies, procedures, methods and systems.

While managers as leaders understand the validity of a management structure and a need for it to support a leader’s vision, goals and objectives, they are primarily guided by the principles of aligning people to their vision. Managers who lead accomplish their goals by communicating direction, via words and deeds, to everyone whose cooperation is needed for the creation of teams and coalitions that understand the vision and accept its validity.

Once teams and coalitions are internally established, managers understand the need for the functions of organizing and staffing that support these efforts, but are not constrained by them.

Controlling and Problem Solving vs. Motivating and Inspiring

The use of control methods and techniques is management’s way to monitor results and identify deviations from the plan. Problem solving techniques are instituted to use the organizational resources that resolve the problem.

The manager who leads will use these methods and techniques only after motivating and inspiring people to overcome the major internal and external barriers to change. A key difference is that controllers and directors use methods to implement solutions while leaders motivate people to change.

Predictability and Order vs. Change and Opportunity

The fundamental difference between controlling and leading management is in the final results.

Controlling management focuses on the short-term results that are expected by various stakeholders in the organization, such as meeting budgets and quotas and producing an adequate return on investment. Their focus is on predictability and order, which inhibits organizational adaptation and transformation to meet the forces of change.

Management as leadership aims to drive the organization through change vis-à-vis their vision. While this focus may alter the organization’s short-term goals, it has the potential to produce extremely useful change by taking advantage of emerging opportunities and transforming the organization in a positive manner. The results of this endeavor can produce new products, services, approaches and methods that positively impact the organization in the long-term.

Excerpt: Facilitating Change: Pinpoint Leadership Skill Development Training Series (Majorium Business Press, Stevens Point, WI 2011) $ 17.95 USD

Related:

How Well Do You Set the Tone?

What Does Luck Have to Do With It?

Anticipating and Handling Employee Fears of Change

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

March 24, 2014 at 10:00 am

Conflict is Inevitable With Persistent Resistance to Change

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Resistance is experienced in most teams as they struggle with the concept of change. The purpose of creating teams is to tackle difficult issues and tough organizational problems. Invariably, the resulting solutions teams develop result in active transformations that disrupt the status quo and personal agendas, which also tends to remove personal positions of power. Consequently, there is a natural tendency for individual team members to resist pending changes.

The main challenge in leading teams is to allow the full complexity of individual personalities, talents, qualities and insights to emerge. These must be actively harnessed in order to achieve major team objectives.

While it is easy to set limits on verbal expressions and behaviors, doing so severely diminishes overall team potential and performance. Since various personality traits of individual members actively shape their general and immediate focus and perspectives, leaders who understand them are able to estimate their direct responses to change. Ultimately, with this related knowledge and understanding, they should be able to anticipate and minimize overall team member resistance. And they should be able to demonstrate that resistance results from differing perspectives that can be reconciled with the objectives of the entire team.

Resistance is an instinctive and energetic opposition to new ideas or someone’s expressed wishes to do something differently. If individual team members persist in their resistance, conflict becomes inevitable. Often resistance is framed as a struggle for control or as a problem that has been eliminated. The lines of conflict are often quickly drawn. Therefore, it is important for leaders to understand the concepts of resistance and conflict within their team environments and to learn how to harness and control them.

Avoidance of Conflict

Conflict should not be seen as something to be resolved, but as an experience to be explored. Opposing views in regard to team direction and change are never totally unrelated and can have great value when considered “different parts of the same story.” Leaders will often find that resistance and conflict are consistently initiated by many of the same individuals on their teams as a result of their inherent personality traits.

Avoidance of conflict either drains interest, enthusiasm and trust or results in concealed tension, internal fighting and impaired team performance. While some leaders meet resistance head on, others often do everything possible to avoid the attached conflicts. Rather than keep conflicts from erupting, avoidance causes increasing internal team resistance. It is extremely important to keep in mind that appeasement in order to diminish conflict is not effective, and instead creates a host of additional challenges to overcome.

Denial of Conflict

When leaders propose change and team members feign agreement, the actual degree of resistance can be immense. This often occurs when teams have strong norms, where dissention and negative views are rarely tolerated and expressed. The core of resistance lies with a particular side of the team or with individual leaders that no one is fully prepared to address or discuss.

While the denial of conflict might be considered a normal process within many team environments, it more often than not builds to the point of erupting into a far more serious problem. Therefore, when active resistance is initially encountered, leaders must ensure that conflicts within their team environments are not denied, but adequately addressed and worked through.

Anxiety

Avoidance and denial of conflict are rooted in personal anxiety. Oftentimes, members can be intimidated by their team environments, their lack of seniority and/or experience, or their own inherent personalities. The concept of change also frightens many people due to associated fears of the unknown and feelings about how change will personally and directly affect them.

It is important for leaders to recognize these factors and the subsequent anxieties that may be created within their team environments. These factors need to be identified and openly and fully discussed. Leaders must address the consequences of allowing anxieties to take root in order to diminish individual fear factors that tend to create undue apprehension, nervousness or panic. Once these issues are addressed and individuals fully understand the root causes and the impact these factors have on their team, personal anxieties will dissolve. When this is accomplished, individual stress levels are reduced.

Addressing the Concept of Change

In team environments there will always be members who desire change and members who wish to keep the status quo. Both of these positions give insight into what members perceive to be the true needs of their team. To ensure that insights are not lost, leaders need to ask themselves the following questions:

What is currently happening to and within the team?
What force for change is directly impacting the team?
Within the team, what counterbalancing forces seek to minimize change?

When leaders are able to identify these factors, both positions are respected, and those who resist change can be viewed as the guardians of the team’s traditional norms and beliefs.

Viewing Resistance as a Strength

Rather than something that must be actively overcome, leaders should be aware that resistance deserves respect for its ability to help teams discover how to change. Since resistance is characterized as a mobilization of energy, leaders must learn how to channel it in positive ways. Resistance should be viewed as a healthy and creative force that can be applied to effectively meet individual challenges. It can be used to frame problems and issues in new ways that all individual team members can appreciate and respect. The team process can be used to work through complex issues, tackle difficult problems and their attached implications and ramifications, and arrive at a consensus in regard to the most workable, practical and effective solutions.

The Challenge of Handling Conflict

When the Process of Change Spins Out of Control

Conflict Turns Decision Making Upside Down

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

March 14, 2014 at 10:00 am

When Building Trust, By All Means Avoid These Six Behaviors

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One of the pillars of leadership is developing and fostering a deep sense of mutual workplace trust. One of the most vexing problems faced in organizations is a simple lack of trust between employees and their managers. For managers to experience successful growth and positive results in their respective department or unit, trust must be established on all levels. Without a deep sense of trust, their vision, goals and plans—as well as unified workplace cohesion—will be unobtainable.

Establishing trust is difficult, time-intensive work. It is earned when synergistic working relationships are established with individual employees. These relationships are characterized by active communication and listening, open and candid interactions, and a total acceptance of all persons as unique individuals. Trust also includes the manager’s personal involvement in ensuring employee as well as departmental success.

The fact that managers are granted authority over employees does not guarantee trust between both parties. Trust is based upon truth, which implies open, honest and direct communication free of personal or hidden agendas. For managers to become totally effective leaders trust must be earned and established. In the absence of trust, leadership principles will be of little consequence in the workplace.

Managers have a unique role within organizational workplaces. While they are responsible for individual employees and are required to guide and direct their activities, many are working on different assignments, projects and tasks in varying phases of completion. Many times it becomes impossible for managers to oversee everyone’s ongoing daily activities. This type of environment demands that high levels of trust are established and sustained.

Lack of trust in the workplace stems from areas managers can fall short in, including:

Establishing a Work Environment Free of Fear

Most managers are generally under extreme pressure to produce ongoing results. Many are focused on agendas that are able to secure or enhance their chances of organizational advancement. In the process, they often create zero-tolerance policies for mistakes and failures. This produces work atmospheres where employees become afraid to discuss problems or results in honest and open dialogue. Rather than trust their managers to support them, they hide pieces of information or mistakes that can hurt or jeopardize them in any way.

Communicating with Employees

Many managers have direct contact with their employees, but often fail to actively listen and engage in conversations that encourage interaction, feedback or input. Some are only interested in picking out certain information that they want to hear without thoroughly listening to anything else being said. Even though they fully believe they are communicating effectively, selective listening and targeted talk work to demoralize their employees and reduce their levels of trust and loyalty.

Interacting in Person

Many managers choose to communicate with their employees via email, written memos or posted messages. Very few efforts are made to interact directly with them on a regular and active basis. This becomes a major pitfall, as only when they make it a point to seek out employees to have open and free discussions and conversations can they become attuned to workplace problems, concerns, and attitudes and know which motivational methods need to be applied to whom.

All employees must be treated fairly, compassionately and honestly and be appreciated for their own particular characteristics and personalities. All have unique needs that must be addressed and met if they are to feel an important part of the organizational team. Since many tend to function with daily frustrations and pressures associated with their assignments and responsibilities, managers as leaders must become actively involved with them daily in order to encourage and sustain the motivation needed to assure they do not succumb to burnout and other psychological problems.

Specific Steps to Building Trust

If leaders wish to establish and build workplace trust, there are specific behaviors that must be avoided.

Criticism

Discussions concerning documented performance results and how to improve them are always necessary and appropriate as one of the manager’s primary responsibilities and functions. However, they must make it a point to avoid making unwarranted negative comments regarding an employee’s performance, attitudes and decisions, as they are directly perceived as personal criticisms, not constructive performance or work-related input.

Psychological Analysis

Managers as leaders must avoid assuming the role of amateur psychiatrist and analyzing employees’ motivations and behaviors. This includes resisting the urge to prejudge their circumstances, situations and actions.

Advice

Managers can easily provide solutions or advice without making the effort to seek employee input. As problems are often more complex than they appear, managers can short-circuit the learning process and alienate employees by not allowing them to identify why things happened, how ineffective solutions were reached, or the particular factors that contributed to inferior results. It is important that managers seek employee input in regard to specific problems in order to understand, analyze and learn from the facts and pertinent information they possess. Only then do they provide their advice, suggestions or solutions.

Command

Some managers tend to coerce, manipulate and force employees into completing assignments on time or accepting increased responsibility. As leaders, they need to avoid these types of actions, and instead motivate and encourage their employees to achieve desired results and/or increase their personal effectiveness and efficiency. They must know their employees well enough to be able to match the appropriate motivational strategy with each individual.

Control

Managers as leaders must avoid controlling actions and behavior through intimidation techniques and practices. Threatening employees with negative consequences does not motivate them. Employees need to be consistently and positively encouraged to produce results. Intimidation only serves to demoralize them.

Intense Questioning

Managers as leaders must avoid second-guessing and questioning employees on every decision, idea, recommendation or suggestion they make. Employees must be trusted to make decisions on their own without intense scrutiny and oversight. A barrage of suggestions or intense questioning as to their employees’ rationale or methods on every assignment only creates more obstacles to them doing their jobs properly, and sends a clear message that their manager thinks them untrustworthy and even incompetent.

Excerpt: Building & Nurturing Trust in the Workplace: Pinpoint Leadership Skill Development Training Series (Majorium Business Press, Stevens Point, WI, 2011) $ 16.95 USD

Five Strategies to Build Trust

Six Ways to Destroy Trust and Credibility

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

February 28, 2014 at 11:00 am

Should Accountability Be a Primary Priority?

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Today it seems that much of what we hear focuses on a lack of accountability. It resonates inside business practices as well as being far reaching in the character of influential people within our political environment, cultural role models and those responsible for influencing and teaching our children. Accountability is an important topic to consider, especially in business today. After all, a lack of accountability in the workplace does produce both intended and unintended consequences that can affect so many people in a brief amount time.

The choices we make and the paths we choose to take all come with associated levels of accountability and accompanied consequences. Many in the business setting tend to have extremely higher stakes and risks. The question is; “Should accountability be a number one priority in today’s business climate?”

Basic Definition of Accountability

The basic definition of accountability can be simply defined. It is being answerable to others. In the work environment as managers and leaders, it is important for several reasons. Accountability is the means for applying checks and balances. These protect companies from internal and external vulnerabilities and competitive disadvantages. It enhances fairness for employees and limits disruptions and frustrations that slow their efforts and personal growth. Through accountability, everyone can be given the opportunity to share their ideas, motivate and encourage those around them. Perhaps it is time to look at accountability as a “positive business relationship factor” rather than a “judgment that defines individual progress and potential”.

Personal Accountability

Accountability inside the workplace needs to be considered as a positive principle to embrace. It motivates each of us to do our best. It presses us to be better managers of the time, talents, responsibilities and resources that have been awarded us to oversee. If it were not for being answerable to someone else, it would likely become a much more difficult task to foster personal growth and to become better at what we do along the way. Nothing hampers individual promotions and work relationships more than a lack of personal accountability, or the desire for it. If you look around and give it careful consideration, you will probably notice that most divisions and derisions within departments or work units can be directly traced back to issues of little to no accountability in regard to one or more people.

Why Many Will Openly or Silently Resist Accountability?

Being in a leadership position requires the knowledge of understanding why many employees and even peers will openly or silently resist accountability. It may be wise to formally address them as part of your company expectations or workplace standards reinforcement activities.

Some Employees Have an Aversion to Accountability

They are inwardly or even at times outwardly rebellious to authority. They sometimes feel they know better than someone else, and will refuse to adhere to any rules or suggestions that they have had no input or say into their development or implementation.

Some Employees May Be Simply Lazy and Non-Performance Driven

Accountability interferes with the ability to continue in their comfort zones fordoing what they feel they want to do, when they desire to do it.

Some Employees May Fear the Loss of Their Jobs or Positions

Accountability implies a disclosure of their negative performance in areas where they may be compared to others, where positive outcomes will become undermined or overlooked.

Some Employees May Not Trust Their Mangers or Supervisors

They refuse to believe the accountability criteria they set will be fair, or feel it will be used appropriately.

Pride or Ego Highly Contributes to the Erosion and Resistance to Accountability

Some individuals believe that the means of their own personal feelings and belief system will forever tend to justify the ends and outcomes they wish to produce. Actions of accountability and support of everyone’s interests are not a necessary part of the process for getting something accomplished. These individuals usually feel they are above the need to display qualities of corporate responsibility, while being held to the same standards as everyone else.

Accountability Stimulates Individuals Do Their Very Best

These are sobering days for any business and especially those that function within them. Character, high standards for staying on course, upholding personal convictions, promoting truthful words and unwavering actions while displaying high levels of responsibility, are all an integral part of accountability.

While it is true that everyone is probably forced to do more with less, accountability needs to become a two way street. A buy-in to accountability can make a huge difference. Work relationships generally become stronger. Responsibility becomes part of the company culture. Paths to individual success, progress and promotion are opened up. Corporate stability is sustained, which in turn allows for greater future growth and individual prosperity. Trust within the workplace is greatly enhanced. Loyalty increases.

For multiple reasons, accountability stimulates individuals do their best, versus doing only what is needed to get by. In the end accountability will ensure that all workers will begin to hold each other to set standards, and because of it, increase pride and more positive workplace attitudes. Individuals taking advantage of circumstances and situations tend to become far fewer. Challenges can be addressed and solved without the accompaniment of intimidation and fear. By placing accountability as a number one priority, there will be far fewer challenges to overcome but more privileges, promotions and positive rewards to offer.

Assessing Employee Growth and Development

Nine Rules for Coaching Your Employees

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

February 21, 2014 at 11:00 am

Ten Steps You Need to Take to Effectively Sell Your Ideas

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Louis Gerstner – IBM

Leaders have ideas and a personal vision of what they feel their organization is capable of accomplishing. Ideas and vision are meaningless unless a leader can effectively communicate them to others and win their approval.

When leaders introduce a new idea to an organization, they are not only selling that new idea, they are selling the concept of change.

In many organizations, the concept of change is not readily accepted and often takes time and patience to implement. This is where many leaders find their values and principles tested. Their ideas are often not accepted at first and they must present them over and over again until they are. However, during this period, each rejection causes the leader to reevaluate their position and refine their ideas until they find acceptance.

As facilitators of change, leaders will encounter many barriers and obstacles within their organization. It requires time, persistence and the ability to organize and effectively communicate new ideas and concepts. A true leader will not give up on their vision and the ideas and concepts that define it. They are convinced of the merit of their ideas and remain focused until they are able to see them implemented.

Leaders must use effective communication methods to implement their ideas including the following steps:

Evaluate

Before a leader can present and sell their idea to others, he or she must take the time to make sure it is carefully conceived and thought through. It is not sufficient to simply state an idea and then hope the organization implements it. Rather, before presenting a new idea or concept, the leader must examine it from all aspects, perspectives and viewpoints. He or she must determine if the idea is feasible in terms of time, money, personnel and other available resources.

A poorly conceived idea or proposal has little hope of a fair hearing, much less being approved.

Substantiate

A leader can best move an idea or concept forward by taking the time to research whether or not the idea has worked elsewhere. If it was tried at another company location or within the industry, there may be results and statistics that can be used for validation.

Leaders can substantiate their conclusions with impartial documentation cited in trade journals, magazines, newspapers, books and industry research papers. Naysayers will find it difficult to dispute a well-documented and conceived idea.

Develop Scenarios

Before formally presenting a new idea or concept, leaders should take the time to develop a best- and worst-case scenario. Typically, neither the best- nor worst-case scenario will occur. Actual results will normally fall somewhere between the two extremes, but before a final decision is made it is important to identify the exposure to the organization.

It should be noted that when leaders develop scenarios, the assumptions on which they are based are critical. The more realistic and substantiated the assumptions, the more reliable the scenario. Faulty assumptions can produce a skewed, unrealistic and therefore unreliable scenario.

Solicit Feedback and Support

Before making a formal presentation, astute leaders will solicit feedback from allies and associates. This provides an initial forum to test their ideas and concepts while gathering additional feedback in order to make modifications and improvements before a formal presentation is made. It also allows leaders to build the internal support they need to move their ideas and concepts forward.

Link Benefits to Idea

Individuals will support a new concept or idea when they grasp the benefits to be derived from it. Everyone wants to know, “What’s in it for me?” Leaders can use this reality to their advantage by clearly outlining and communicating the benefits of their idea to the organization, employees and customers. This allows leaders to build internal support as individuals realize the personal benefits they will experience from the idea once it is implemented.

Review Timing

New ideas and concepts can be welcomed at certain times and ignored at others. If the organization is dealing with many other issues or it is the end of the budget, new ideas and concepts may not be received or tabled until circumstances change. These circumstances can affect whether a new proposal is even reviewed.

Leaders must be aware of the timing of their presentation so that it is well received. They understand the priorities of their organization and wait until they know their ideas will be received and allocated the time and resources to fully evaluate them.

Communicate with Passion

The creation of new ideas and concepts are part of a leader’s vision for the organization. They must communicate their ideas with passion and paint a vivid picture of their vision in order for the audience to appreciate the positive changes that will come with it. A lackluster presentation makes for lackluster results.

Anticipate Objections

An effective communicator will anticipate objections to their idea(s). Rather than passively wait for these negative comments to occur, he or she will immediately address them at the beginning of the presentation with documented facts and figures. By anticipating and addressing objections up front, fewer objections will occur later. Problems arise when leaders attempt to hide and mask negative information, problems and implications. This renders their presentation suspect and subject to more intense scrutiny.

Identify Best Communications Method

Depending upon the scope and complexity of a new idea or concept, there may be multiple ways to present an idea to superiors, associates and employees. Leaders must determine what will be the most effective manner of communicating their ideas, whether it be a memo, report or a physical presentation to a group or committee. The optimal mode of communication will vary, but leaders should consider that which will best convey their new idea or concept to the decision making individual or body.

Request an Evaluation

When leaders encounter resistance to the implementation of an idea or concept, they request a controlled evaluation to be conducted on a limited basis. This provides the decision maker(s) with concrete facts on which to base their final decision.

Excerpt: Improving Communications in the Workplace: Pinpoint Leadership Skill Development Training Series. (Majorium Business Press, Stevens Point, WI, 2011)$ 16.95 USD

Execution: Six Action Steps

Performance Plans Create Results and Maximizes Performance

Objectives Allow Managers to Focus on Obtaining Results

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

February 19, 2014 at 11:00 am

Linking Structure to Action

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Jim Casey (l) and Claude Ryan (r) – UPS

Well-executed plans require organizational structure before they can be successfully implemented, and the great leaders understood this. A properly structured organization builds and drives lines of accountability throughout itself. As the former Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army, General Robert Wood [Sears] “ran the company along military lines: directors of hardware and research, for example, corresponded to army chiefs of ordnance or artillery. Channels of authority fell sheer from top to bottom, but autonomy rode down with them.” (1)

James Casey (United Parcel Service) started UPS as an adolescent, so he didn’t possess the military background that Wood had, but he “was an early and thoroughgoing advocate of what was called, in the 1920s, ‘scientific management.’ He believed efficiency produced profit. And he believed that efficiency was achieved by measuring everything – by keeping track of the cost (in time and money) of every step in the process of achieving a result – in this case, the result of successfully delivered packages that met customer expectations. Further, Jim Casey believed that whenever you found a process that improved efficiency, you made it standard practice and you supervised employees to achieve fidelity to that practice.” (2)

Wood and Casey were only a few of the great leaders who linked structure to action. Ray Kroc (McDonald’s), Sam Walton (Wal-Mart), Kemmons Wilson (Holiday Inn) and Thomas Watson Sr. (IBM) all built organizations where structure was also solidly linked to action. So did Admiral Hyman Rickover (U.S. Navy). “Rickover believed in courageous impatience. The power of unshakeable determination was critical for him, as good ideas do not get executed very often. Deciding what to do is the easy part … getting it done is more difficult. Being involved in details shows subordinates that if it’s not important to you … why should it be to them? When details are ignored, projects fail. This is not about doing things yourself; it’s about frequent reports (both oral & written) and from numerous sources (remember, he had 40 direct reports!!)” (3)

Peter Drucker observed, “Managers do not make decisions by opinions nor according to their preferences. They manage through the force of facts and not through the force of personality. ‘Bedside manners,’ I once heard Sloan say in a speech to GM managers, ‘are no substitute for the right diagnosis.’ ” (4)

Doenecke Justus D., General Robert E. Wood: The Evolution of a Conservative (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society)
Nelson Douglas W. – President of The Annie E. Casey Foundation at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy – speech to the Foundation Impact Research Group Seminar, March 9, 2005
Wacker Watts, Courageous Impatience (www.firstmatter.com)
Drucker Peter, The Best Book on Management Ever (Fortune Magazine, April 23, 1990)

Excerpt: Great! What Makes Leaders Great: What They Did, How They Did It and What You Can Learn From It. (Majorium Business Press, Stevens Point, WI 2011)

Read a free Chapter

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

February 7, 2014 at 11:00 am

“Leaders Should Set a Clear and Decisive Tone at the Top”

When the Process of Change Spins Out of Control

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The process of organizational change is complex. A number of associated factors have the ability to impact the organization’s overall ability to successfully evolve. Improper development, management and monitoring can result in the change process spinning out of control and creating chaos. In the center of this storm, it is the leader who must then wrestle control of events and restore order.

As individuals are making the shift from a management to leadership style, the entire workplace is being buffeted by change. The leader is no longer controlling the employee’s actions, but guiding and directing them through involvement and empowerment. Properly executed, this should be a smooth transition. However, ill-conceived plans implemented by poorly prepared leaders and employees can turn the entire process into chaos.

Most organizational changes do not transpire quickly. Typically, organizations and leaders both evolve together as they transition from one style of management to the other. Leaders grow through the persistent application of leadership ideas and concepts and development of their skills. The process is without an ending point, and continually moves forward over time.

Leaders who find themselves in the midst of a process that has swirled out of control must not be swept away by the tide of events and circumstances. If they are, they will give up the ability to remain detached and view what is happening objectively. This can be challenging because they must regain control while dealing with the daily demands and pressures of the job. Because of this they must understand that they are staring down a complex and often daunting task. For the leader in these circumstances, the first step is to retain or regain emotional control and then proceed dispassionately.

Identify Causes

It is simplistic to think a single cause of a complex problem can be identified. Most problems are caused by ever-widening and overlapping circles of circumstances and events. What appears to be an obvious and clear-cut cause is often only symptomatic of a much deeper problem. When events appear chaotic, the problem can lie in more than one area and each has to be addressed in turn.

Leader’s Role

While real introspection is often painful, a leader has to identify any possible personal contributions to the problem. Chaotic events often occur for reasons directly stemming from the leader. In certain instances the leadership role was thrust upon an individual lacking the aptitude and confidence to fulfill it. Once in the position, they fail to lead and are unable to manage due to the organizational change, and consequently leave a vacuum that is filled by disorder.

In other instances, the leader may be new and inexperienced and is attempting to accomplish overly ambitious goals and objectives. Rather than evolve, they are pushing change too fast or expecting too much of their employees.

Employee’s Role

When the process seems to be collapsing, the employee’s role must also be examined. In certain instances employees did not receive adequate training to fulfill the roles expected of them. In other cases too much is expected of employees too quickly. They are immediately overwhelmed and unable to deal with the circumstances.

A lack of employee involvement and empowerment in the process can cause major setbacks. Their lack of input and feedback did not foster the ownership of ideas and participation. Consequently, they perceived too high a personal risk, which created resistance. Since their involvement is essential, this created a void that was quickly filled with chaos.

The Plan’s Role

Consideration must be given to whether the plan underlying the process itself may be flawed. This can happen for a variety of reasons brought about by both the leader and employee’s participation (or lack thereof) in its development. Motivation, beliefs, resistance and lack of skills and/or experience can give rise to a poorly conceived plan. Typically, such problems associated with either leadership’s or employees’ role in the process will impact the overall plan.

Timing and Timetable

Ill-conceived timing and timetables can wreak havoc. Inexperienced leaders might not be aware of the impact of certain change implementation dates on the organization. Additionally, attempts to accomplish too much too fast can overwhelm the entire organization.

The Organization’s Role

In certain instances, management can undermine their own efforts by micromanaging the process and issuing counterproductive dictates and mandates. In other circumstances, employees might not trust the motives of the company due to past experiences and existing policies.

Lack of management and financial support of the process undermines employees’ ability to accomplish their goals and objectives. Without proper support, leaders’ efforts will be severely hampered.

Question the Premises

Leaders must question the rationale and premise for the process of change. Based on their current experience, they must revisit the assumptions, facts, data and other key factors identified at the beginning of the process. They must determine if the logic and thinking behind the process is still valid in light of their experiences.

Determine Solution

Once the causes have been isolated, leaders are often forced to begin the entire change process again. However, now they have identified the sources of the problem and have learned from the experiences of past failures. With this base of knowledge and expertise, they should be able to streamline the process and eliminate many of the bottlenecks. However, if they have not addressed the causes honestly and objectively, many of the same problems will recur.

Implement Plan

Once control has been regained, implementation of the process should proceed more cautiously, assuring that a solid foundation for change is established and that each step is successfully and competently achieved before moving ahead with the next.

Astute leaders should enlist the assistance of key influencers within their employee pool. These are the natural leaders who have the ability to persuade others and enlist their support. If these individuals are sold on the idea of change and understand that the benefits more than offset the risks associated with change, they will be able to convince others within their ranks of the same—and make the leader’s job much easier.

The leader should also ensure his or her employees have been properly trained in the necessary skills to do the job. Once they have achieved this level, they should be involved and empowered to participate and control the process from within their organizational unit.

Excerpt: Dealing with the Challenges of Leadership: The Pinpoint Leadership Skill Development Training Series (Majorium Business Press, 2011) $ 16.95 USD

Barriers to Integrating Change

Anticipating and Handling Employee Fears of Change

Managers as Facilitators of Change

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

October 28, 2013 at 4:23 pm

Ethics: Actions Do Have Consequences

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Although ethics and personal integrity appear to have a diminishing role in our culture, when a massive failure of ethics and moral standards results in corporate implosions such as the Enron bankruptcy, as well as the collapse of the financial markets people notice. There is no question that in business, the highest moral and ethical standards are expected and demanded.

Actions do have consequences. Despite the thinking in popular culture that has helped enable a number of political leaders’ “ethical lapses,” in business ethics and integrity are closely paid attention to by superiors, associates, subordinates—and most importantly, customers.

All of these people judge managers and employees by their actions, not their words. Even a minor lapse in ethical judgment is not easily forgiven or forgotten.

This is important for managers to consider because their behavior impacts people on multiple levels. The consequences and implications of any ethical decision are far-reaching and must be carefully thought through before the action is taken.

The moral and ethical behavior of a manager has many consequences and implications beyond an immediate judgment or choice. Ethical behavior and integrity play an essential role in any manager’s position, for the following reasons:

Trust

The basis of all relationships is trust. Managers are primarily responsible for the directing of human resources. While they may also be responsible for the tools and equipment associated with business, their primary charge is the management of their individual employees. In this capacity, they are dealing with superiors and subordinates in financial terms.

Superiors are relying on the manager to provide accurate reports and records of their unit’s activities. The employee relies on the manager to assure that his or her efforts are supported and performance accurately reported.

The foundation of and glue that holds these relationships together is trust. Any ethical lapse is considered a breach of trust and will result in the pillars of management collapsing. Once this occurs, the manager has lost their effectiveness.

Rapport

Rapport is the building and nurturing of quality relationships. This is a term normally used to describe relationships among employees, but it goes beyond this. Managers require good rapport at all levels with their superiors, subordinates and associates.

The manager’s role is to act as a liaison between the various levels they are in communication with. The employee has access to his or her manager. The manager has full access from senior management to support staff.

Exceptional management, support and communication means the manager must actively maintain good rapport at every level. However, building relationships and establishing rapport is a people skill that further demands trust and ethical behavior. These are the cornerstones of building rapport on all levels. Any degree of moral and ethical failure at any level will undermine the manager’s efforts and effectiveness.

Credibility

There are managers who have undoubtedly displayed lapses in moral and ethical judgment, yet still maintained their job and position. They may have shielded their actions from their superiors, but not from their subordinates. In some instances they may have made statements or promises and failed to follow up on them.

In any ethical failure, they have betrayed the trust of their subordinates. When this occurs, these managers have lost credibility in the eyes of their people, which more often than not results in sapping their motivation.

Employees will either leave or let their performance drop knowing their manager has little integrity. While these managers might think they have won in the short-term, in the long run there are profound consequences to be paid.

Reliability

Managers who have betrayed trust cannot be relied upon. If this occurs between the manager and his or her superiors, it is dealt with on the senior level, normally resulting in termination.

A loss of credibility with individual employees will result in them being unable to trust the manager. Rapport with these individuals will be eroded to the point that all work-related effectiveness is lost.

The consequences will be a revolving door of people under the manager’s responsibility, as any respectable person will not continue under these circumstances.

Reputation

A person’s reputation is the most valued possession that they have. Once destroyed, a personal reputation is difficult, if not impossible, to restore. The same is true for a company’s reputation.

A manager holds the responsibility for both his or her reputation as well as the company’s. His or her personal actions have a double, if not triple, impact since senior managers, his or her subordinates, and the company’s customers are continually examining his or her actions. This is an awesome responsibility unparalleled in magnitude in any organizational environment.

Related:

You Are Judged by the Actions You Take

Emotional Bonds are a Reflection of a Leader’s Effectiveness

Six Ways to Enhance Your Personal Credibility

Emotional Bonds are a Reflection of a Leader’s Effectiveness

Can You Be Trusted? The Answer May Surprise You

Excerpt: Ethics & Integrity: Pinpoint Management Skill Development Training Series by Timothy Bednarz (Majorium Business Press, Stevens Point, WI 2011)

Written by Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.

September 27, 2013 at 10:18 am

Posted in Character, Credibility, Ethical Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Challenges

Tagged with business ethics, credibility, ethical behavior, ethical decision, ethics, Leadership, loss of credibility, personal integrity, personal reputation, rapport, reliability, Reputation, trust

Archive for the ‘Leadership Challenges’ Category

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Planning and Budgeting vs. Establishing Direction

Organizing and Staffing vs. Aligning People

Controlling and Problem Solving vs. Motivating and Inspiring

Predictability and Order vs. Change and Opportunity

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Avoidance of Conflict

Denial of Conflict

Anxiety

Addressing the Concept of Change

Viewing Resistance as a Strength

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Establishing a Work Environment Free of Fear

Communicating with Employees

Interacting in Person

Specific Steps to Building Trust

Criticism

Psychological Analysis

Advice

Command

Control

Intense Questioning

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Basic Definition of Accountability

Personal Accountability

Why Many Will Openly or Silently Resist Accountability?

Some Employees Have an Aversion to Accountability

Some Employees May Be Simply Lazy and Non-Performance Driven

Some Employees May Fear the Loss of Their Jobs or Positions

Some Employees May Not Trust Their Mangers or Supervisors

Pride or Ego Highly Contributes to the Erosion and Resistance to Accountability

Accountability Stimulates Individuals Do Their Very Best

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Evaluate

Substantiate

Develop Scenarios

Solicit Feedback and Support

Link Benefits to Idea

Review Timing

Communicate with Passion

Anticipate Objections

Identify Best Communications Method

Request an Evaluation

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Identify Causes

Leader’s Role

Employee’s Role

The Plan’s Role

Timing and Timetable

The Organization’s Role

Question the Premises

Determine Solution

Implement Plan

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Trust

Rapport

Credibility

Reliability

Reputation

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Timothy Bednarz, Ph.D Majorium Business Press

Timothy Bednarz@Examiner.com

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