Working With Others

Last night I listened to a re-broadcast of NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  One of her guests was the author of How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman MD.  Dr. Groopman’s main point was that doctors tend to latch on to the first thing that a patient says with the idea of making a diagnosis within the short period of time in which health plans now expect physicians to see a patient in an office visit , approximately 12 minutes.  He cites the significant number of incorrect diagnoses that occur because most physicians fail to ask the simple question , “what else could be going on?

While listening to Terry Gross’ interview with Dr. Groopman was sobering, it made me wonder about the listening skills of most decision-makers in the business world.  In a world that seems to insist on a fast pace and short-term expectations of success, how often do they latch on to the first piece of data that gets presented and make a quick decision only to find that they’ve missed a key piece of information that would suggest a completely different course of action.  When I work with managers at all levels on the topic of decision-making, I share a line from a poem by the 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi:  “Stipulate with every transaction that you need three days to make sure! Sniff with your wisdom nose. Get clear. Then decide.  I think we could all learn from this advice.

I’m co-facilitating a management development program this week.  When I do this work, I often think about the managers I have had earlier in my career.  Given that the research suggests that 80% of the people who leave an organization leave because of a bad manager, the probability of a person encountering at least one is pretty high.

One of the characteristics of at least one bad manager that I had was to consistently cancel our weekly update meetings because of other “more pressing issues.  Not only did I go for weeks without meeting with this person, this manager had the audacity to ask me to complete my own performance review because the manager “did not have time.  At the time, I thought that I was the only one who had experienced such behavior.  Unfortunately, this kind of managerial negligence occurs more frequently than one would expect.

Most employees want to know what is expected, how they are doing (i.e., feedback), and the chance to develop.  Meeting with a direct report on a regular basis is a critical management responsibility that offers an opportunity to provide these basic wants for employees.  Failure to do so is likely to result in a de-motivated employee who is likely to look elsewhere for employment.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am an unabashed Tony Dungy fan.  I’ve been that way since I watched his first game as a University of Minnesota quarterback in the early ˜70’s. Nevertheless, I think managers and leaders (in fact, everyone) can learn a lot from Tony Dungy, the head coach of the current Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts: that nice guys can finish first; that perseverance counts for a lot; and that how you say things is just as important as what you say.  I’d like to focus on this last point for a minute.

As the sports pundits give Tony the credit he richly deserves, they continue to refer to one particular scene when he first took over as the Colts head coach.  In the first team meeting , and professional football teams have more meetings than the average business , Tony told his team in a very calm voice, “You guys will need to listen carefully, because this is as loud as I get.  I’m sure that each of us at one time or another has had a boss or has known someone who has had a boss that was known as a screamer.  There are managers and leaders that truly believe that the only way to really mean something is to say it in a loud voice.  Tony showed us all that you do not need to be a screamer to get results.  Moreover, I contend that successful leaders have a way of being calm under pressure and that I have never known a screamer who can convey a sense of “everything is going to be all right by yelling orders at the top of his/her lungs at their direct reports or peers to get a point across.  So what ways do you convey that sense of calmness that Tony Dungy does so well?

When I was teaching students in both regular and executive MBA programs, I was fartootst by the chutzpa of students who would demand an “A just for handing in a paper that was in reality not very well done.  One thing that I always did was hand out at the time of the assignment criteria for what successful performance on the paper would look like.  You know, it would include things like a clear statement of the problem, a well-thought out argument with appropriate justification and references, and no typos, misspellings, or grammatical errors.  When these elements were missing , including some students leaving out entire answers to a question on the assignment , students would lose points on the assignment.  Nevertheless, in the face of these missing requirements, some students would argue, “I’ve never gotten anything less than an ˜A’ in my life and so you HAVE to give me an ˜A’.  You can imagine that complaints like these get tedious after awhile.  Some professors however, would get worn down, give in, and leave the rest of us with something called “grade inflation.

Unfortunately, a similar phenomenon is happening in the workplace. Some employees in some organizations are demanding with increasing frequency ratings of “greatly exceeds standards when they only deserve a rating of “meets standards.  And so we have “performance rating inflation.

I think this phenomenon occurs for at least three reasons.  First, employees are not necessarily clear on what is expected of them.  To make sure that performance expectations ARE clear is a primary management role.  Second, when those expectations are clear, a manager needs to hold the employee accountable to those performance standards.  And third, managers who are unable or unwilling to set clear expectations and hold their direct reports accountable make it more difficult for those managers who are willing to do it.

From time to time I overhear twenty- and thirty-somethings casting aspersions on their boss by referring to that person as “old school.  I think this is code for “my boss is a hard-nosed ogre who is intolerant, inflexible, and resistant to change.

I have coached a number of these old school managers and while I agree that what’s missing from the managerial skillfulness of this group is more tolerance, flexibility, and openness to change, I do see a number of strengths that add value to the workplace.

First, they tend to be results driven.  If there are results to be achieved then they will deliver on what is expected.

Second, these old school ogres learned that credibility and trust are hard to earn so they make a habit of doing what they said they would do.  As one member of this group once said to me, “a deal’s a deal. They show up, they hang in there, they return phone calls, and they are reliable and dependable

Third, they have clear standards of performance for themselves and for those who work for them.  Some may object that these standards are too tough; however, they tend to enforce them fairly, and most times you will know where you stand.  And when they say “well done there may not be a lot of fanfare in how they say it, but they mean it.

Finally, most of this group typically have a short fuse with those who offer lame excuses, or worse yet, out and out lie when an assignment due date comes and goes.

So there are some desirable aspects of being old school.

Once again allegations of mismanagement hit the papers , this time it’s the Small Business Administration in Washington, DC. As the article states, “Longtime critics of the agency said the current problem [a budget shortfall] highlighted a continuing pattern of mismanagement and poor planning at the S.B.A.

I think the gist of the article really highlights the critical leadership competency of scenario planning , the act of being able to anticipate possible futures and have in place a specific plan to handle situations that could actually occur.

I am reminded of Thanksgiving Night in 1981 when the old Northwestern National Bank Building in Minneapolis burned. What was remarkable was that the Bank was able to be open for most banking business in another location , that means having computer systems up and running and the space needed to do business, the very next morning , the Friday after Thanksgiving. This achievement did not happen by accident.

One of my neighbors at the time was the Secretary to the Board of Directors of Banco, the parent company of the bank. We usually sat together on our bus ride into downtown Minneapolis. He told me that the bank had just completed its disaster plan about a month before. The senior leadership of the bank went through the discipline of trying to anticipate what natural and man-made disasters could shut down the bank and what could the various departments do to plan for those scenarios. One of the key events that they anticipated was a catastrophic fire.

The moral of the story is that all leaders need to pay attention to learn from the past, pay attention to the present, and plan for the future.

One of the alumni affiliations I claim is The University of Minnesota. And after living in the Twin Cities for 32 years and now traveling back frequently to Minneapolis on business, I still keep up with the local news. Today the University of Minnesota hired a new football coach , a guy named Tim Brewster.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was sports editor for my high school newspaper and I covered high school sports for the local media in southern New Jersey before I moved to Minnesota to attend graduate school. Today, I fancy myself as somewhat of a sports historian even though I have become disenchanted with men’s major college athletics (do we really need 30 plus football bowl games?) as well as professional sports (I’ve grown weary of overpaid men behaving badly). So I now tend to view sports teams and coaches through a management and leadership lens rather than that of a fan.

What is curious to me about the appointment of Tim Brewster as the Gophers’ head coach is that he is the first University of Minnesota head coach that I can remember , and my memory goes back to the Murray Warmath era at Minnesota in the ˜60’s , who shows up with apparently ZERO head coaching experience. His most recent post was tight ends’ coach for the Denver Broncos , a position coach. News reports tout his major asset as being a good recruiter because he recruited quarterback Vince Young to the University of Texas when he was an assistant to head coach Mack Brown.

From a task relevant competency standpoint, there is a big difference between the competencies needed to be a position coach and those required of a head coach. The analogy would be the difference between the requirements of a first line manager of a Fortune 500 company and those of a CEO! I’m not kidding. In most cases, organizations fill the chief leadership position by hiring someone who (a) has performed the role successfully before at a similar organization , in this case, was previously a Division IA head coach; (b) held the chief leadership position in a smaller organization , that is, was a head coach at a Division IAA school; or (c) held a “second-in-command position at a similar organization and is ready for a promotion , in other words was the offensive or defensive coordinator at another Division I school. This appointment deviates from customary hiring practices and there could be a variety of reasons.

Perhaps Joel Maturi, Athletic Director at the University Minnesota, sees this guy as a diamond in the rough whom he believes deserves a chance at this level; or worse case scenario, Brewster was not the first choice , other more qualified candidates might have turned down the opportunity. And the list , based solely on conjecture at this point , could go on.

One observation that I’m certain others will make is that Brewster was hired by the same athletic director that decided to sign previous head coach Glen Mason to a four year contract just one year ago only to fire him after Minnesota’s bowl loss to Texas Tech a couple of weeks ago costing the university $2.2 million in a buyout of the contract as well as $1.3 million in deferred compensation.

So Tim Brewster is the new guy and here is what he will face from a management/leadership perspective:

• He will need to hire an entirely new coaching staff. The key in filling these vacancies is to surround yourself with the best possible people. The question is will talented people come to Minnesota to be on this guy’s staff when he has never been a head coach before?
• He will need to establish a vision or identity to aid recruiting. Others recognize his recruiting ability, but if does what he knows , namely recruiting , it takes time away from other big picture activities.
• He will have to deal with the media.
• He will need to get results quickly , in the Big Ten, that means win.
• He needs to establish credibility with returning players based not just on his position power of “I’m the head coach.

Tim Brewster seems like a nice guy. However, he will need to demonstrate critical task relevant competencies that he has never had to demonstrate before. I wish him success, but he has a steep learning curve ahead.

As part of the coaching process that I follow, I try to assemble as much data as I can about my coaching client. That information includes 360 degree feedback data, style information such as the MBTI, as well as insights from interviews with bosses, board members, direct reports, and peers. Often I will also “shadow the person I am coaching to observe them in action. In the process of preparing for a new client, I had a conversation with one of the board members for the organization who shared with me his perspective on the difference between a manager and leader. According to this CEO, “the role of a manager is to get the most effective use out of the organization’s resources, and the role of a leader is to create a shared vision to help people do their best.

Now, the debate about the differences between what is a manager and what is a leader has been going on a long time and there are far too many references in this discussion to cite here. However, one of the things I have noticed is that there is an organizational belief that as one progresses up the corporate ladder through the ranks of manager, senior manager, director, and so on, there is an expectation , sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes not , that at some point a person will shift from being a manager to being a leader and do “the vision thing. Certainly, senior leaders , or more specifically, THE senior leader of an organization , need to be less involved in the minutia of running the organization and more concerned with it’s strategic direction. However, I offer several observations.

First, we mix up the terms “management and “leadership regularly in the way we talk about the people who run organizations. We typically refer to the people at the top of an organization as senior management , not senior leadership , although I am hearing the term “senior leadership team more often. Yet, when we reference them individually we often say they are the leaders of the organization , not the managers.

Second, we promote someone into management because he or she got great results as an individual contributor and we HOPE that they will be successful getting work done through others. We promote someone into a senior management position based on his/her ability to get work done through others by delivering results in a number of different assignments and then we HOPE they can think strategically and do the “vision thing.

Finally, regardless of the level of management one is in there are elements of management in that position as well as elements of leadership. Skillful and self-aware managers know the difference.

And so the litany continues. In an Associated Press article by Brent Kallestad, the headline reads, “2 in 5 bosses don’t keep their word, Florida State University survey shows. This article goes on to summarize the results of study led by associate professor Wayne Hochwarter of the College of Business at Florida State University. The “bad boss behaviors it reports include failing to keep promises, failing to give credit to direct reports when it is due, giving employees the silent treatment, and making negative comments about other employees and managers. Finally, the article reports Professor Hochwarter’s observation that all of these bad behaviors lead to poor morale, less productivity, and increased turnover.

While the researchers at Florida State do make some helpful suggestions for what employees can do when faced with a bad boss, what’s missing in the article is any guidance on how to prevent or correct the presence of bad bosses in the first place. Certainly, this is a problem that has been going on for a long time , someday, I’ll write about my first boss , and it does not lend itself to a simple solution. However, there is one basic question that someone hiring a first time manager or promoting an existing manager to a level of greater responsibility can ask: “Could I work for this person? If the answer is “no, how can you ask someone else to work for this potentially bad manager when you yourself could not?

A record breaking snow fall in NM finds me hunkered down in my adobe casita in the North Valley of Albuquerque with some time to catch up on some reading and other tasks that accumulate as a result of a busy schedule. In perusing the December 8-14 issue of New Mexico Business Weekly (yes, I am that far behind), I came across an article by Jason Trenkle about Larry Waldman, the Senior Economist at The University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. While the article talked about Larry’s facility with numbers, it focused primarily on “what keeps him up at night , pondering why it is he thinks and acts the way he does. In other words Larry Waldman spends time on better understanding himself.

In my management workshops and in one-on-one sessions with managers and executives, I stress self-awareness , building a better understanding of our individual style and how it lands on others. We all have different preferences regarding what energizes us (e.g., people or ideas), as well as differences in how we perceive the world, how we make decisions, and how much structure or flexibility we need. Understanding our own preferences and how they impact others as well as appreciating and valuing the different preferences our colleagues may have is a major key to effective and satisfying workplace relationships. If only all of us would invest in Larry Waldman’s practice of self-understanding I think we would have a start at better relating to others.