How to make values meaningful in your company

Do the leaders, managers and employees of your company really embrace and live its values?  Or do they treat your company’s values as nothing more than words on paper?  If you answered “words on paper,” you’re not alone. To read the rest of this article from the Business First of Columbus, see: How to make values meaningful in your company http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2005/10/31/smallb5.html

Why?  Because all too often, the words merely represent what leaders want values to be.  Executives often don’t follow their own stated values, and/or create those phrases with little or no involvement from managers and employees, and no one requires compliance with values.

Typical management styles that create meaningless value statements include these examples: See complete article.

Some truths about effective values: See complete article.

Some effective guidelines:

• Leaders can begin the process of values clarification and specification, and then get staff at all levels involved in discussing and modifying them.
• At each level, managers should lead discussions and reinforce organizational values with their actions.
• Feedback must go in all directions, not only downward.
• Create written statements through an iterative process that never ends, so people have an opportunity to buy-in or leave on their own.
• Values become powerful through examples that demonstrate, “When that happens, we do this”
• Stories are the best way of spreading values in action.
• Effective implementation occurs when leaders work in concert with other leaders, and when managers work with their teams and interface with other managers to give immediate feedback – private and public.
• Poor technical performance and out-of-control behaviors, such as physical violence and embezzlement are usually easy to measure compared with behavior that reinforces or opposes attitudes and relational-communication processes.
• Values begin to affect behavior when they are evaluated, praised, rewarded and punished, using as rigorous and non-bureaucratic a process as possible.
• Internalization of values takes time and actually never ends, because people often hesitate and fear reprisals, and there are always new situations and new staff.

There are no formulas, but there are guidelines. If you consistently live your values, no extra effort is required.  It’s second nature for you.

Often, individuals need coaching and organizations need consulting to help them design and implement a plan that fits the situation.  Especially if that means changing a culture of entitlement.  To get the help you need, call Ben at 1-877-828-5543.

What to do when a good worker fails as supervisor

It can be tough to look one of your employees in the eye and tell them, “This isn’t working.  You don’t have the ability to do this job.”  It can be especially painful when the employee thinks they can. A particularly difficult situation can come when you’ve promoted a good worker to a supervisory role, but they haven’t been able to learn and demonstrate the necessary skills.

To read the rest of this article from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, see: What to do when a good worker fails as supervisor http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2006/11/06/smallb5.html

It’s tempting to promote very competent workers.  After all, they have good skills, work ethic and know the job.  But the skills necessary to be a productive worker and to be an effective supervisor are different.

Take the case of Jane, a strong, task-oriented, problem solver – especially when she worked alone.

But as a supervisor, she’s a bust.  She doesn’t tell her staff what she needs and seems to delight in harassing them when they do things wrong.  She publicly criticizes anything she doesn’t agree with, loudly and relentlessly.  She blames and attacks others when she’s not successful, and casts suspicion and doubt on people who aren’t her favorites.  She ignores obvious legalities about confidentiality.  She’s negative, bullying and abusive.

Go back to the initial decision to promote her. What considerations went into it and how was the opportunity presented?  The overall perspective on a promotion should be that it’s a trial period.  Anyone moving from worker to supervisor has a lot to learn.  So be specific about your expectations of the employee in their new role and offer to help them make the transition.

Now comes your moment of truth. You have to face the music. Part of being a successful leader is making decisions for the betterment of the whole organization, even when you know your decisions are only best guesses and someone might disagree and have hurt feelings.

Jane needs to be demoted to become a worker again in her previous group or, more likely, demoted sideways so she doesn’t have to face her former co-workers after having been demoted.

The more you promote good workers without carefully examining the capabilities necessary to be a good supervisor, the more you’ll continue having heartache.  The more you avoid evaluation conversations, the poorer will be your results as a people manager.  The longer you allow Jane to victimize her staff; the longer you put off the conversation with Jane, the bigger the problem will grow.

And don’t chicken out by using email to avoid the conversation.