The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook of Vitalwork Inc. / The AMJ Group : Management Education, Retreat Facilitation

Do you ever wish you were the one who said that, I mean something that is frequently referenced, like the saying above,"It is a poor craftsman..."  Well, this is a case where whoever said it doesn't seem to be getting any credit. After a semi-exhaustive, OK not really that much, search I have come to the conclusion that no one is getting credit for this beauty and it is used all the time. I have decided to assign it to Poor Richard, he of almanac fame. Did he play basketball?

This is a great time of year if you are a basketball fan. It is a great time of year to pretend you are a basketball fan! March Madness has come to be the most participatory event in all of college athletics, maybe all of sports, from a fan standpoint. With men's and women's tournaments being played right along side each other there seems to be something for everyone and the outcomes are almost always unpredictable. Even the most casual of fan might win the office pool this year what with all the upsets.

In this year’s tournaments it seems like the eventual outcome, except maybe everyone being dumbstruck if the U Conn women don’t win, is up for grabs. What is not in doubt is that the players involved will give everything they have physically and emotionally. Some will play through pain and injury, many will suffer disappointment over what could have been and the vast majority will go home empty handed save for the experience, which is of course priceless.

What is not so much in doubt is the way the coaches will handle the outcomes. One thing you will be able to count on and one reason these players are willing to give so much and do whatever they are asked is that if they win the coaches will give them all the credit and if they don’t they will share the responsibility for the loss.

Is this so very different from where you work, from where any of us work? I am guessing that the responses are mixed. But why should it be any different at all?

I have noticed, and maybe so have you that in business there is this assumption in the background that everything is supposed to work out, all the time! We hire people and they don’t work out, we promote people and they don’t work out. We are poorly prepared for these all too frequent occurrences yet we know they are coming. It seems that maybe after four gazillion years of running companies maybe we would see this coming and yet when the truth of the failure is finally recognized (often getting there is like pulling teeth) we seem either incredulous or betrayed.

Deirdre Honner recently posted a wonderful piece on her site that I think sheds a powerful light on all this ugly history. In her HR Maven posting of March 19th titled simply, Training and Development, she unlocks the mystery of dealing powerfully with performance failures for all managers, if you are brave enough to face it. Using the current experience of her dog in “good dog school” she offers that the difference between a previous failure and this time around is marked by recognizing that she needs to play the game not just watch it, she has a responsible role.

“This time is different.  Cameras stay home.  I am fully committed and invested to do my part, pay attention and work with Samson.  We work together on our taskings.  When he misses, it's MY fault.   He can only deliver when he understands exactly what I want him to do.  When he misses, I must examine where I am failing - by sending wrong or conflicting messages, not clear in my instructions, where I am confusing him.  That's humbling.  Really. Because Samson is a very, very smart dog.  His mistake is my fault. This time, I own it.”

Deirdre is the Associate Director of HR at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. As a former HR manager myself I take great comfort in knowing that there are professionals like Deirdre out there counseling managers, young and old, to realize their responsibility when it comes to the people reporting to them. Deidre clearly recognizes that her pal Samson is an asset to be treasured and developed, so are your reports. It is humbling I know, to see yourself as responsible when they fail. If you can’t do this you should step down from the post to make room for someone who can.

As the coaches in March Madness will repeat time and again during the tournament, yes it is about winning, and it’s also about how the game is played. There is tomorrow to get ready for, set it up to win.

• Where are you spectating your people's performance?
• What's the roll you could be playing?
• Are you willing to step up and engage with the game today?

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This week it is time to get “touchy/feely!” Well…at least feely, specifically those feelings we call fear and its close friend anger.

Fear…most managers I have worked with do not know how to proceed effectively in the presence of this strong emotion. What they see or sense they

• Often misidentify as disagreement or failure to buy in, or
• Think that something must be wrong and they have to fix it

Some time back I was working with a group of engineers who had committed to producing a breakthrough in the production in their plant. As the project unfolded I met regularly with the Program Manager (PM). A very short time after the project was initiated the PM began complaining about one of his key reports on the team, a guy who was in charge of a critical piece of innovation that held the key to the breakthrough the team was seeking. If this guy and his sub-team did not come through the project had no chance of succeeding.

After hearing the PM's complaints about this key player once I was quick to respond when I heard similar comments in a subsequent meeting. I asked the PM to describe exactly what his problem was with this player’s behavior. He responded by letting me know that this key player had made several promises which he had already failed to meet and he, the PM, was rapidly losing confidence that this guy was going to get the job done. I could see that the PM was angry and yet I knew these two men had worked together for years and had a positive history together. So I asked the PM what he thought was going on, suspecting that the he had already formed a pretty strong opinion that was shaping his interactions with this team member. “I don’t think he is committed to this project being successful, I think he is just going through the motions”, was the response I received and by his tone I assumed that he was pretty angry about this as well.

Passion, initiative, creativity…aren’t these traits what we all want from our team members? When that is not what we experience or observe, especially when the stakes are high and we are counting on each other there is a tendency to conclude something like what this PM had done. "The guy is just not committed, if he was we’d see flames shooting out of his pants and sparks flying off his head, not his door closed and our phone calls and emails not returned."

This was not the first such project I had worked on so I asked the PM if he would be willing to consider another possible explanation for the behaviors he was seeing. “Would you be willing to consider that what you are seeing are symptoms of fear?” is exactly what I asked. The PM seemed stunned at this prospect but then I went on to suggest that he himself was afraid and masking his fear with anger at his colleague. That comment brought on a prolonged silence. After a couple of moments of looking out the window the PM turned to me and said that yes, he had not recognized it but he was afraid, afraid that his goals would not be met and the anger was his way of expressing that he did not like being afraid. So I asked him further whether he was willing to just be fearful that the objective was not going to be met and take actions as if it were (This was a little trick I had learned when making my first parachute jump! If I had waited until I was not afraid that jump would never have happened.)

From this point on the PM and I were able to talk openly about both his fear and the anger that was covering it up. I pointed out that as long as he did not choose being afraid his fear was choosing him. Yes, there was all the baggage that is associated with our culture, men, fear etc. but the bottom line was that if he was fearful that is what he was, and no point pretending otherwise and no need to apologize. This was a big project with high stakes and as I told him, if he wasn’t afraid I’d be concerned.

Once we got through with our conversation he was able to approach his delinquent teammate and ask him about being fearful using the failed commitments as an entry point to the conversation rather than a club.

You can imagine how the rest of the story goes because otherwise why would I share it with you! That conversation opened the gates for all members of the team to talk openly about both their fears and their commitment to making the objective. No more excuses, the team moved ahead, the objective was met.

 As managers we’d do well to recognize that

• Fear in the face of uncertainty is normal and it can be seen as information and not a problem
• Fear is often disguised as pushback or inaction due to cultural taboos
• Anger is often another cover up for fear. When we are afraid we are not going to get what we want, we frequently get angry
• Until people are free to choose their fear as OK they are held hostage by this strong emotion

Where are you fearful at work and either pretending not to be or masking it with anger? 

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 When a wife yells at her husband, who has his eyes glued to his desktop screen, "You are not listening to me!" she is dead on, he's not. But does that mean he's not engaged?

Actually, he is very engaged, with what is in front of him on the screen. People are always engaged, it just may not be with what we consider to be important and that is a critical element that managers may be missing.

As managers, what we often don't seem to get is that our role is not so much to create engagement, as it is to direct it. If this sounds counter to what you have been reading, told or imagined yourself I offer no apologies but I do ask that you seriously consider what I am proposing.

Recently, a manager in a class I was delivering asked what she could do about the attitude of one of the younger workers reporting to her, he just didn’t seem as committed to his work as she would have liked. I asked about the quality of his work, she indicated that it was OK but just OK.

'OK but just OK' is an indication that the young employee is sufficiently engaged to comply with what is expected of him. I asked the manager if just OK was a problem, her response was telling. “Yes, I’d like to see more enthusiasm from him.” All right, now we were getting somewhere, the manager was confused. I mentioned to her that what she wanted was a personal preference not a legitimate requirement of the job. She didn’t seem to like this very much so we continued. I asked her if there was anything he did seem committed to and she responded sharply, “Well, fantasy football!” So I proceeded to ask whether she had ever looked into what he found so engaging about fantasy football? I could tell by the look on her face that she was shocked and maybe even offended by my question and her response matched her facial expression, “Why should I have to do that?”

I am a very pragmatic guy, you tell me you have a problem I begin looking for a solution, I don’t worry about who is right or wrong or what should be happening. Actually, I think this may be most manager’s problem with engagement, they approach it like a problem to be solved rather than an asset and a resource to be leveraged and understood.

My response to the manager rocked her back even further. “Look” I said, “You brought up the issue, you are apparently the one with the problem. I am looking at the situation and seeing whether we can uncover a way to get in communication with this young guy and leverage what he is fully engaged with since telling him he needs to be more committed does not seem to be getting the job done. Would you agree with that?” She then nodded her head yes. “So now”, I said, “You have an option available that wasn’t there before, you can give up your agenda and explore his interests or you can continue being right about his attitude. Which approach looks like it might have more promise?”

Honestly I don’t know how this turned out since that was the last time I saw that particular manager. Based on the conversation I’d say she stuck with her agenda, at least a little while longer.

This engagement stuff is nasty business; if you are serious you need to face the reality of getting up close and personal with the people who report to you. Are you up to the challenge? Are you ready for the level of vulnerability required?

• When faced with the need/desire to redirect an employee's focus of engagement ask yourself if you are willing to discover what's in it for them? If nothing comes immediately to mind you may want to hold off until you can get interested in them

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"Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won."

                                        Dr. Suess

Turn back the clock to an April afternoon in Michigan in the spring of 1965. A young man leaves the back door of the high school gymnasium headed for baseball practice. Cleats slung over his shoulder, mitt under his arm, he is hailed by members of the track team and challenged to a footrace in the school parking lot. The young man has developed something of a reputation for being fleet of foot, at least on the baseball field, regularly stealing two and three bases a game. His colleagues on the track team want to see if he can translate his speed on the bases to speed on the track.

The runners gather at a line on the asphalt lot measured 100 yards from a finish near the baseball diamond. The young man was not prepared for this race; he wears low cut canvas sneakers and long pants. His challengers from the track team are dressed for their practice in shorts and running shoes. At the sound of the starter they are off and 10.2 seconds later the young baseball player crosses the finish line several yards ahead of the members of the track team.

The track coach who has been watching the proceedings approaches the baseballer and asks him about joining the track squad. Flattered, the young man expresses interest provided that he can also remain on the baseball team, his first love. In response the coach says that the young man will have to choose between the two sports and points out that he could likely be very successful as a sprinter for the track squad. The young man thanks the coach for the offer but chooses to remain with the baseball team. Later that spring at the all-city track meet the 100-yard dash is won with a time of 10.0, two tenths of a second faster than the young baseball player had run in sneakers and long pants with no warm up that April afternoon.

Fast forward to early 2009, the former young baseball player, now an experienced OD consultant leads a cross-functional, multi-disciplinary initiative on behalf of a client interested in generating innovative thinking and solutions in some critical customer facing areas. Players in this initiative are offered the opportunity to work on one of five suggested projects where major improvements are necessary and desired within a twelve- month period. Each employee involved, chosen because they were identified as “high potential”, is allowed to self-select to work on a project where they feel their talents will be put to good use. These are real projects with real needs and real dollars (in the multi-millions) and real customer relationships at stake.

When the initiative nears completion, four of the five projects have shown solid progress. The fifth project team, working on the most entrenched and critical customer servicing processes, presents a set of ideas for segmenting and servicing customers that stands to revolutionize not only the client’s business model but the industry model as well. Key contributions to this revolutionary set of ideas have come from diverse and unanticipated sources. The project team leader is a woman with less than five years experience in this 40-year-old company. Her most valuable collaborators have been a senior Human Resource analyst who was virtually unknown outside of HR when this initiative began and a finance director who had no experience in the customer facing areas of the business in his fifteen-year career with the client company. Prior to this initiative the only one of these three people who would have been invited to participate on this project was the woman team leader and she would have been given a secondary role because of her limited experience.

The connection between these two stories is of course the baseball player turned OD consultant (me) who never forgot what could have been that spring of 1965 if a different model had been in place. What if the track coach had focused attention on making use of the best available talent, regardless of the source?

Today’s organizations might not be as strapped for talent as they might imagine. Quite possibly their mental models for what it takes to contribute are the true limit to what they are experiencing when it comes to innovative thinking.

• Where is your organization trapped by its adherence to a tradition of finding solutions to current problems from among the available functional knowledge and experience that created them?
• What would it take to allow people with talent, passion, initiative and creativity to become involved regardless of current assignments or functional history?   

ps  If you are one of those employees looking to get your “light out from under the bushel” like to ones described at my client above, take a look at what Paul Herbert has to say over at Fistful of Talent. Check out Paul’s March 2, 2010 post about your responsibility in the matter.

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Probably the most common mistake I watch managers make daily in the workplace is addressing their reports as if they are in the same frame of mind. When people are nodding their heads, it means they are nodding their heads; that's it!

(* This post applies anytime you are counting on the collaboration of others., manager or not.)

Take a look at this group in the picture above. (Never mind the boats and water in the background, get back to business here!) Are they ready to contribute or have they assumed some pretense? Look, they have their paperwork out and turned to the first page and they seem attentive! (So do you when you assume this posture so now you know how much stock to put in their appearances.)

 You may have never thought about it but as a manager you need to be aware that engagement has at least three voices, Contribution,Compliance and Resistance, which are frames of mind your reports can be in at any time...

·         depending on the day

·         the conversation topic

·         what happened to them last night at home or this morning

·         what they were doing or

·         who they were talking to just before they came to your meeting

·         and, and, and …or, or, or…life will not leave us alone.

So now, what do I mean when I reference “frames of mind?”  Frame, like window frame, the place we are looking at the world from at any moment is more kaleidoscopic than fixed. (What you said to me yesterday was fine and welcome, say the same thing today after I have just had a tough conversation with a peer in another department and I may ‘jump down your throat, much to your surprise and dismay.) We are always giving voice to our frame of mind if others would just listen and watch

Engaged, associated by choice, is a condition of being, and there are both ultimate and interim conditions of being to consider. Ultimate engagement arises from commitments to choices made. Interim engagement is subject to the slings and arrows of everyday/every moment life and constantly in flux. Ultimately, I am completely committed to the success of my marriage; in the interim, my wife has asked me to check under the house for a water leak! Given my aversion to both maintenance and the underside of the house about the best I can muster up for this one is an “Okey Doke honey!” and grudgingly crawl under after just about anything else I can think of that just “has to be done” before checking for the leak. As it turns out my wife knows that my ultimate commitment to the marriage always wins out over my weasel mind and she will get her report on the alleged leak sooner rather than later, so she doesn’t try to handle my dawdling.

 What is this interim Voice of engagement  thing, the one we usually hear from in the moment?

 Voice of Contribution- “I am on it honey thanks for letting me know there may be a problem”, followed by action.

 Voice of Compliance- As above, “Okey Doke honey”, followed by going to the refrigerator ,making a sandwich, watching some of the ballgame and then crawling under the house.

 Voice of Resistance- “It rained last week and I don’t want to get muddy so I’ll get to it next week, its probably nothing.”, followed by no action until asked again.

 I hope that you can translate these personal examples into your own when addressing your team or another co-worker while engaged in getting something done.

Message for today: If you don’t check in with people (ask) you run the risk of talking to yourself and assuming that head nods, Okey Dokes and even “You got it boss” means that something is going to happen and you can count on it.

So, do you know your reports as well as my wife knows me; I didn’t think so.

• How many times have you been burned by talking with your folks as though they are right there with you?
• How many times have you known they were not right there with you and you went right on talking as though you could talk them into it?
• How many times have you taken their silence to mean assent and walked away hoping you were going to get what you asked for. 

Is this too basic? I wish it were and I don’t by any means want to insult anyone, unless it will help get this clear, when you are not winning as a manager start with where people are at. Address them where they are, not where you wish they were. Be curious, find out why they may not be engaged, ask what you can offer to address misunderstandings or fears directly. In the interim getting in communication is the result to be produced, ultimately it will get you where you want to go.

Where are you assuming engagement and getting egg on your face?

For an alternative to the manager's perspective, to see how "life at work" can impact the individual, take a look at All Things Workplace by Steve Roesler especially the post of February 25th, What Happened to the Talent? 

I recommend a regular visit to Steve's site, you'll get hooked.

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