Category: People

“Shooting the messenger” is a metaphoric phrase used to describe the act of lashing out at the (blameless) bearer of bad news.  To blame or punish the person who tells you about something bad that has happened instead of the person who is responsible for it.

No news travels through an organization more quickly than the boss’ negative and emotional reaction to a development that results in unpleasant consequences for those who are not responsible for it.  A single episode of “shooting the messenger” absolutely guarantees that meaningful discussions, critical self-analysis, and informed debate within the organization will cease. A leader’s inability to receive factual feedback, truthful analysis, frank discussion, and meaningful conversation will produce an almost paranoid reaction among employees, most of whom have no direct knowledge of the actual circumstances, but all of whom will internalize the personal lesson as “don’t deliver any bad (or even slightly negative) news. Tell the boss what he/she wants to hear; happy news, don’t raise issues or identify problems, don’t make waves.”

These behaviors in turn hide from the leadership the very things that are most important for them to know; the organizations’ challenges, threats, future developments, frictions, rough spots, and things that need the attention of those who can prevent them from accelerating into major organizational troubles.  The very essence of a leader’s responsibility is to solve and prevent problems for the organization.  The organizational effect of a leader’s ill-considered outburst on any “messenger” is obvious, especially over time and particularly if the behavior becomes a pattern in the work place.

I once replaced a senior leader in a large organization who was well regarded by those external to the command.  He was well spoken, politically astute, and highly intelligent. But he had great difficulty conveying what he wanted his staff to do and was given to frustration when the staff tried to understand the guidance or provide normal organizational information.  The staff quickly learned not to engage him any more than necessary.  But inevitably the staff had to interact with him and it became evident that they weren’t sure what he wanted and couldn’t deliver routine information.  This further frustrated him and he was not shy in expressing it.  The staff withdrew even further and his frustrations deepened.  It became a tightening cycle that crippled the organization’s ability to perform its mission.

“Shooting the messenger” is one of the most destructive things a leader can do to her/his organization, their own reputation, and worst of all to the employees.

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #21

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

“Of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable—and one of the least understood. Most captains of industry listen only sometimes, and they remain ordinary leaders. But a few, the great ones, never stop listening. That’s how they get word before anyone else of unseen problems and opportunities.” — Peter Nulty

There is a common trap for leaders, especially very experienced ones, and that is the notion that talking with employees is the key to communications.  The real key is listening and paying attention to them, sincerely and in a way that develops a true understanding of their views, concerns, and emotions.

Of course it’s important to impart the leader’s view point, information, and thoughts, but the real prize is in listening and asking questions to develop a rapport and a professional connection that binds the leader and employee to the common issues of the organization.  Employee opinions matter and tell discerning leaders volumes about the organization, its problems, innovations, solutions, health, and future.  But leaders have to genuinely listen, pay attention, care enough to understand, to tweeze out the underlying meaning, subtle nuances, and unstated implications of the voices of employees.

There is a tendency by some leaders to approach communications as a sterile exchange of views, a sharing of facts, issues, and the exercise of a routine process.  It is much, much more than that.  It should be an intimate engagement, an opportunity for leaders to see into the heart of the organization and understand the layers of meaning, things left unsaid, and to empathize with those closest to solving organizational problems and performing its missions.  Even when leaders have heard it all before, they need to listen and pay attention again and again to hear the voices that need to be heard to help the organization succeed.  It is a sign of respect, even flattery.  Unlike leaders’ mouths, their ears will never get them into trouble.

 “Effective listeners remember that “words have no meaning – people have meaning.” The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process; meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved.” — Larry Barker

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #20

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

“One learns people through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.” — Mark Twain For effective leaders, personal communications is the window to their hearts, minds, and souls.  Discerning employees, and they are all discerning, will see their leaders for the true selves, which is offered through personal leader communications.  It is much more than the details of the business and organization that are transmitted by the words of leaders. It is the essence of their personalities and characters, their hearts, hopes, fears, cares, convictions, principles, and desires.  Employees see all of this, and more.

Leaders’ words must be accurate and precise, measured and heartfelt, not given to hyperbole but clear in the conviction and purpose of the moment.  Leaders’ words must come from empathy for the employees, deeply rooted in an appreciation for the audience, their circumstances, the last things they heard and how it was understood and internalized.

Repetition and consistency are the life blood of leaders’ words; familiar themes and oft discussed points and views are comfortable, comforting, and reassuring to audiences of all types in everyone organization.  Simple and clear explanations speak volumes to unspoken fears and rumors, pre-empting the inevitable rumor mills and idle gossip that does so much to erode morale and confidence in the organization and its leaders.

Explaining organizational decisions in terms of the “greater good” and the need to ensure the overall health of the many and the long term success of the organization are powerful messages that will resonate well in every company.  Almost everyone understands that mission and team are higher order organizational objectives that ultimately help everyone to succeed and prosper.

Explain the trade offs involved in tough calls, people understand hard choices if they know what they are; tell them.  Inform employees directly. Understand that your vision and message is lost or diluted as it passes through the layers of an organization.  Ask employees two or three levels below what they are being told about your messaging.

Hear employee views, encourage respectful debate and skepticism.  Be transparent, don’t sugar coat the bad news or minimize misdeeds or lapses, especially your own.  If you blow it, say so, and do it clearly; “I blew it, totally my fault, I should have done much better and will in the future.”

And most of all, leaders’ words must match leaders’ deeds in concept and detail to have credibility and to have meaning in the future.  Employees will remember everything you say, and I mean everything.  You need to remember too, and do what you said you would.  No kidding.

Just as a vacuum of effective leadership will eventually be filled by poor leadership, the absence of superior communications from leaders will likewise be replaced by lousy communications.

“The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.” — C. Northcote Parkinson

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #19

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” – John Le Caré One of the things subordinates need most is leadership presence. Us–just ourselves–giving them the physical and face-to-face character and personality we owe them. Nothing can replace that presence. Employees need to hear from their leaders mouths, with their own expression, the words that define the organization and its employees’ purpose, methods, intent, passions, desires, concerns, promises, and desires (to mention only a few).

And more importantly, leaders need to hear, in unvarnished terms the hopes, fears, insights, ideas, suggestions, and desires for the organization that subordinates share.  It tells subordinates, like nothing else can, that they are important, that their efforts and thoughts matter to leaders and ultimately the organization.  It also tells them, that leaders care about them, what they do, how they do it, what they need, how it can be done better, and how leaders can help them.

Isolation is deadly for leaders. It will eventually be fatal if allowed to endure long enough.  A string of recent organizational failures are vivid evidence of leaders who were isolated from their organizations and the realities of their employees.  Disasters like the wait time scandal at Veterans Affairs, the recent Secret Service debacles, General Motor’s systematic failures in dealing with defective ignition switches, Target’s and Home Depot’s inability to secure the personal data of millions of customers, and the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe are all examples of organizations where leaders lost touch with their people and by doing so lost their way.

By working to stay connected to subordinates, who are the engine of organizations, leaders can avoid tragedies like these.  By talking and listening to people leaders begin to understand the needs and expectations of customers, the current operational environment of employees, and are able to act on feedback from the employees in the trenches. Leaders can understand how the organization is “wired”, who works for whom, decision making, resource allocation, internal processes, problems and how to help their organizations.  It simply takes the time and focus of leadership on a daily basis.

Leaders have to be involved to truly lead. When leaders fail to spend time with their people, they lose touch with the issues of the day; they lose touch with reality and are unable to understand what’s on the hearts and minds of their employees.

Worst of all, subordinates will know that the leaders don’t really care about them.

Go see for yourself and ask how you can help.

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” — Henry David Thoreau

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #18

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

“Much of leadership is about finding balance between two often-conflicting activities: asserting authority and responding to others’ needs” — Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, Leadership Presence

It took me many years of practice as a leader to fully realize that leadership relationships with employees are very much like a marriage relationship.  In marriage, it is often not enough to meet your spouse half way. There are some days when you have to meet her/him much more than half way. In fact, it may be all the way if your spouse is not able or willing to do all that their part demands for some reason, at that particular time.

There are other days when the tables are turned and we find ourselves unable to do all we should or must for the relationship and our spouse makes the majority or all of the effort.  In the end, the right things happen and we are both the better for the complimentary arrangement that always (or usually) turns out right. It is a constantly adjusting and adapting process that ensures the best outcomes for both sides of the relationship and the greater good of the family.

This exact same dynamic occurs in organizations and it is a defining behavior of successful organizations, both large and small. Leaders and employees do it mostly without thinking about it, but we should think about it, and remind ourselves to practice it.

Also like a marriage, leadership interactions with employees must have a consistently high ratio of positive to not so positive encounters, if the relationship is to be healthy and enduring.  A respected marriage counselor told me that a healthy marriage needed to have at least ten positive experiences for each negative or slightly negative encounter.  It was not lost on me that she qualified the statement by saying “at least” and strongly implied that the ratio was actually higher than ten to one.  It was an epiphany moment for me as a leader when I realized that the same is true for interactions between leaders and employees.

I learned as well that, like a marriage, if the accumulation of negative encounters grows and the ratio of positive to negative drops too low, one of the partners will quit trying to make the partnership better.  They will simply go along at the minimum level of effort in the relationship, believing they can do no good, unable to meet the expectations of their partner and unwilling to go on trying.  It is a doomed relationship until the proper balance and ratio of positives is restored.

As leaders, we need to keep track of our contributions and the simple math of relationships.

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”— Mother Teresa

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #17

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

With apologies to Charles Dickens and his Victorian novel in selecting the title of this blog, I’ll share with you the things that employees expect of their leaders. Expectations for leaders begin in infancy and childhood and never seem to diminish in spite of disappointments that we encounter and setbacks we endure as employees.  If anything, these seem to amplify our beliefs that leaders can or should achieve something greater.

So what exactly is expected of leaders? The list is long and is by no means comprehensive:

We expect leaders to:

• Genuinely care about us, not just as employees, but as people.
• Possess the highest character, placing the needs of the organization and its people above themselves; the quality of selflessness is greatly prized.
• Find the right way for the organization, no matter the difficulty or challenges.
• Listen to us earnestly and understand our thoughts and opinions; to use our knowledge to help the organization, to harness our creativity and passion.
• Enable us to successfully contribute in the context of an organization, to facilitate our successes in giving a purpose higher than ourselves.
• Have a vision, purpose, and end state firmly in mind for the organization, a vision that will ensure success for all of the employees.
• Be fair and impartial in their judgments, and inclusive and ecumenical in all matters; without bias, preconceptions, and agendas.
• Be open and sharing, communicating all matters, large and small, to us
• Inspire us, to lift our emotions and spirits in ways that enable us to perform beyond our own abilities and experiences.
• Collaborate; consulting and asking as they plan and mange the affairs of the organization.
• Exercise judgment that is worthy of the organization and its people.  Decisions are well founded and correct in the context of the environment.
• Appreciate, at the deepest level, what we do for them and the organization.  And express it constantly.
• Understand what we are doing, how we are doing it, and help us accomplish the things we cannot do for ourselves.
• Tolerate mistakes as the price of doing better, but impose real consequences for the things that matter.  Once dealt with, our mistakes are forgiven and forgotten.  The focus is relentlessly positive.
• Never waste our time.
• Build teams that work.  We are part of the team; the team needs to succeed so we can succeed.  So the organization can succeed.
• Share the leadership role, to let us participate, to challenge us and help us learn and develop.
• Challenge the organization on our behalf and behalf of the mission and greater good, to protect us from bureaucracy and unfair treatment.
• Set high, but attainable standards.
• Be consistent, predictable, and steady.
• Care more about us than themselves or their boss. The focus is on the mission, the employees, and the organization, in that order.
• Follow the Golden Rule.
• Always do their best.
• Never give up, especially on us.
• Do the right things, for the right reasons, in the right ways.
• Match their actions and their words.
• Be honest in all things.

As leaders, if we do these things, or even try our best, we will be rewarded beyond our wildest dreams.

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #14

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

I am going to shift gears from my blog theme a bit for this post to offer some thoughts on organizational performance issues highlighted in the news recently. Namely, disasters such as the wait time scandal at the Veterans Affairs, GM’s systematic failures in dealing with defective ignition switches, and Target’s inability to secure the personal data of millions of customers. I suggest that what has spilled into the news are the tips of icebergs that signal deeper and broader dysfunctions, as well. From the deaths of veterans and motorists, to tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue, the effects are clearly catastrophic to the customers and patients of these large organizations. Even the kindest observer would categorize these incidents as monumental organizational failures. And, yet they were totally avoidable.

These catastrophes are the direct result of organizational cultures that, over time, have failed to do the:

• Right things
• For the right reasons
• In the right ways

Each of these organizational cultures failed to instill the proper attitudes, habits, and practices to serve their customers, employees and stockholders. As a result, they were unable to maintain and sustain the institutional health of their respective organizations. The results are being played out at the White House, on the nightly news, and in Board rooms where CEOs are being replaced after millions of dollars in losses are being paid.

The debate over the causes and solutions are wide-ranging, but mostly superficial. These failures are attributed to: poor, uninformed leadership; entrenched bureaucracy; corporate dishonesty; and the lack of dedicated institutional resources for the mission.  The suggested solutions are equally superficial with calls to fire the leaders; reform the bureaucracy (without saying how); provide additional resources to the VA; and prosecute the alleged perpetrators. These superficial causes and their proposed remedies have some merit, but lack context and ultimately obscure the deeper root causes of the problems.

The truth is that all of the factors mentioned play a role in some part of the problem. However, true root causes and their interconnections must be identified and understood. This is the only way that action can be taken to resolve the institutional dynamics that drove these fine organizations to produce such devastating results.  Identifying root causes and interconnections is not as simple as pointing a finger at overly complicated bureaucracies or inadequate resources. It requires the following:

• Understanding the needs and expectations of customers,
• Knowing the current operational environment of your employees, strategy, planning, capabilities and capacities of your organization,
• Getting, listening and acting on feedback from the employees in the trenches, acceptability, work force morale and cohesion,
• Understanding how the organization is “wired”, who works for whom, decision making, resource allocation, internal processes

None of it is terribly complex for those who understand organizations and how they work.  It simply takes the time and focus of the leadership on a daily basis.  Mr. Mueller did this at the FBI.  He spent 40% of his time after 9/11 on these real issues and the FBI is still working on it.  But it REALLY matters and it keeps organizations for doing things like the VA, GM, and Target.

I hope that in the aftermath of events like we have seen that someone really takes the time to understand what happened, how to fix it, and what to do.  Everyone involved deserves better and it is not complex, but it takes REAL work, REAL leadership, and REAL focus. 

Many thanks, Keith Stalder, #13

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.

“Nobody rises to low expectations.”

~ Calvin Lloyd

Parents are our first leaders. They are the people who brought us into the world, who feed, cloth, care for, and love us from the day we are born until the day they die. These experiences teach us about leadership from the moment of our first consciousness as toddlers. Their love, concern, compassion, devotion, and sacrifices on our behalf are virtually unconditional and unlimited. It is the perfect picture of perfect leadership.

We develop indelible and lofty expectations of our leaders from these early experiences. These expectations of leadership virtues are what we measure every leader against thereafter.  In this way, leaders must aspire to meet the same parental expectations within their organizations. It is the price that leaders pay for followership, support, production, loyalty, cooperation; all the outputs of organizations large and small.

Leaders who don’t understand employee expectations or can’t live up to them will be deeply disappointed. Just like parents, leaders who understand and can live up to those expectations will see employees rise to them and beyond.  The possibilities are almost without limit and although it seems like a tall order for leaders, the good news is that it’s not complex.

In my next post I’ll talk about some of the most important expectations.

Keith Stalder, #12

Copyright © 2014 Keith Stalder & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.