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

                         “The sins of the father shall be visited on the sons”

                                                                               (Exodus 20:5)

This year, the year before this, next year and the year following next year there will be innumerable gatherings of professionals in conference after conference addressing practices to elevate employee engagement. HR pro’s will talk to each other. Engagement pro’s will talk to each other. Labor and OD the same…and while they are all away they’ll get a report that some manager back home pulled off a spectacular demonstration of “Dumb @ss”¹behavior that will set back everything they have been working hard to achieve.

I can hear us all now as we gather…

“Can you believe it?”

“What was she thinking?”

“And he was supposed to be one of our best!”

“Wait til you hear this; you are not going to believe it!”

“Well, at least we’ve got job security, cleaning up these messes!”

When I first joined “corporate America” in early 1973 I was a pretty naïve guy with a Master’s in Labor Relations fresh from Michigan State. Arriving in New Jersey, employed as an HR Generalist in a mid-sized refinery where our plant employees were represented by the Teamsters, I was finally ready to join that big “team” I knew was waiting for me out there. Let’s just say that the awakening I experienced was RUDE!

Turns out it wasn’t one big team and we didn’t play together all that well. If that wasn’t a sufficient disappointment, I was regularly treated to displays of “Dumb @ss” behavior on the part of managers and unfortunately some of the worst offenders were the very senior people.

Thirty seven years later I continue to hear reports of the same behaviors I encountered “back in the day.” The examples I refer to are not exotic, they are ones we all know: rating all employees in a merit pool as Above Average so everyone is eligible for an increase, changing a performance review written by a subordinate manager because you don’t agree with their appraisal, producing ‘Satisfactory’ or better performance reviews for employees who everyone knows are sub-par, transferring sub-par employees without dealing with performance issues, etc..

The truth is, when it comes to managing people there really isn’t that much new under the sun. There are just repeat offenses and often by repeat offenders. It is this habitual pattern of our tolerance for repeat offenses and the offenders which I want us to consider.

Allow me to re-introduce you to a couple of colleagues I hold in high regard, Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden. These two author/speaker/consultants wrote what I believe is a seminal work on employee engagement ‘Contented Cows Give Better Milk’ in 2000. They are engagement pioneers.

Bill Catlette regularly publishes a very down-to-earth monthly newsletter titled ‘Fresh Milk.’ This past week he included a piece on managers being mindful of the difference between authority they have and the wisdom of using it just because they have it. In the midst of his counsel he offered this bit of wisdom, “…we have yet to see, for example, a bullying or self-absorbed boss get more Discretionary Effort from a worker than a caring, authentic leader.” Later in the piece Bill reminds us, “With things like institutional loyalty and job security off the table, today’s workers make frequent, rapid fire "worth-its" decisions in which they decide whether or not to give their manager or the organization the benefit of the doubt, and a morsel of their Discretionary Effort.” The full post itself is concerned with responding to a question from a reader on whether it is legal for a manager to arbitrarily change a work schedule. Bill responds in his usual thoughtful manner, not just to the reader’s question but to the larger issue and lesson available in the background.

The ground Bill did not cover but might have if the question were asked differently was this; where were this manager’s peers and superior in the midst of this situation? Without regard to either the “rightness” or righteousness of this manager’s actions, were they called into question by anyone at the same level? All too often as managers ourselves we witness behavior that at first glance smacks of the “Dumb @ss” and we allow it to pass unchallenged for whatever “Dumb @ss” reason we have. We even aid and abet the “Dumb @ss” behavior before it happens by allowing people we know to be mighty capable of @asshole² behavior to be selected as managers in the first place.   

[ ^1&2  The term “Dumb @ss”  used when referring to behavior is a derived from the terrific work Dr. Bob Sutton has done in alerting us to beware of @ssholes in our midst. His blog, Work Matters is among my favorites. ]

There is no technique or practice in any book or at any conference that will rid us of the damages done by behavior that is thoughtless on a manager’s part. And such behavior will continue as long as we tolerate 1) the elevation of inappropriate people to positions of authority 2) failure to properly orient and support new managers and 3) standing by and watching as our peers or even superiors “act out” patterns of personal behavior that are obviously misaligned with best interests of either company or employees simply to serve personal gratification.

• Where do you currently see an opportunity to intervene with another manager and you’ve been putting it off for some “Dumb @ss” reason?

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For most of his 50+ year film making career, Sean Connery has entertained audiences by repeatedly playing one type of character. Dashing, unpredictable, unmanageable to be sure, we are not quite sure he is a hero, but we are glad he works for our side. Great stuff for the silver screen but not much of a leadership model. Ironically, his greatest professional honor, an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, came while playing the consummate team player, Officer Jimmy Malone in the 1987 movie version of “The Untouchables.”

In this film Connery’s character assumed the role of “leadership coach” for the young, passionate but naïve Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner. In what may be Malone’s most memorable scene, he delivers a brief soliloquy on how Ness can best deal with his arch enemy, Al Capone…

“You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital; you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?”

                             Officer Jimmy Malone, The Untouchables, 1987

Throughout the film, Officer Malone offers the younger Ness an ongoing stream of this plain speak on how to deal effectively with his foes. In one instances he delivers his message with the aid of a classic rhetorical question when a gangster draws a knife and attempts to stab Ness and winds up shot dead in the process. “Isn’t that just like a #@&**#?,” he asks, “Brings a knife to a gun fight!”

Could any message be clearer? If indeed we do need a translation, the Urban Dictionary offers this… ‘Bringing a knife to a gun fight- The act of taking an amount of any substance to a gathering which is obviously insufficient.’ (This site also offers to sell you T-Shirts, coffee cups and fridge magnets emblazoned with this saying. I’ll leave decisions on such offers to your judgment!)

Last week I was reminded of this later bit of leadership counsel from Officer Malone in an exchange I was having with officials at my son’s college. It seems that a piece of equipment my son borrowed from the school last spring was noted as damaged upon its return. I was made aware of this situation when I went to pay his fall tuition and was barred from doing so by a flag in his record indicating that the damage needed to be paid for before he would be allowed to register.

I contacted my son who said he was aware of the damage and noticed it when he originally picked up the piece of equipment. Since it did not affect the functionality of the equipment, he didn’t pay any further attention. Unfortunately he should have brought the damage to the attention of the department personnel when he borrowed the equipment. They didn’t see the issue until the equipment was returned and the cost of repair was $120.

Based on my son’s explanation, I did not see that we should bear the full cost but also recognized that the department had nothing to go on either except the testimony of one of their employee’s. I proposed to the supervisor that we split the difference equally since we had on our hands what amounted to a “he said, he said” situation. The supervisor replied by saying he was not authorized to make such an arrangement. This is where Officer Jimmy Malone’s words came back to me in a flash of recognition, “Isn’t that just like a #@&**#? He brings a knife to a gun fight!”

At that moment the supervisor probably felt as though he was standing there naked as I blurted out, “You are kidding right, you cannot make a decision on what amounts to a $60 transaction?” Two levels of management later I was able to conclude the conversation with the department director agreeing to my proposal!

It really doesn’t matter the name of my son’s school and it doesn’t even matter that it was a school, it could just as easily have been a manufacturing company’s service department, and the lesson would have been the same.

We ask our managers to lead, to inspire, to direct others in producing results of all kinds and yet we limit their authority in ways that leave them humiliated in front of their charges or the customer. These very same people, who, in their private lives, can purchase automobiles worth thousands of dollars, enter into mortgage arrangements for hundreds of thousands of dollars; bring children into the world without asking our permission…need our approval for trivial transactions. Why?

Before you get all “Sarbanes Oxley” with me or “but, but, but you don’t understand,” just stop! Whatever you are going to say next…that…that right there that you were going to say…is craaaaaap!

Engagement and power are inseparable. If our managers are dis-empowered how can we expect their engagement at anything other than a compliance level? Why would we ever expect them to inspire or be inspired themselves?

• Where have we 'hog-tied' our managers and are wondering why they under perform?
• If you are a manager; where are you constrained by practices that do not seem to respect your abilities to make sound choices, and you are putting up with it?

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“Can it possibly get any worse?
If you thought Tiger Woods' career was at low ebb, then you were wrong. Last week, the tide not only receded, he got stuck in the primordial muck and produced the most head-turning display on the golf course in his career, finishing 30 strokes behind Hunter Mahan at a course where he had never before finished worse than fourth and had won a tour-record seven titles. Woods is lost.”

 Steve Elling, CBS Sports Senior Writer 8-09-10

“Tiger Woods currently has no coach."

                                  Mike Cook

                                  The Heart of Engagement August 10, 2010

With apologies to William Shakespeare and Richard III…. Is it just me or has it been raining coaches in the business world for about the past fifteen years…and they come with certifications in case you need one, from all sorts of sources:

• Coach U
• Coach Inc.
• Center for Executive Coaching
• International Coach Academy
• Etc.

Some of these programs are several months in duration, some offer ongoing support, some are available on-line and some even offer certification in as little as 16 hours! I guess the familiar saying, “Let the Buyer Beware” pertains no matter what the offering.

Coaches are now available on nearly every street corner and make up a large portion of the attendees at any local ASTD meeting or networking group. The ‘rise of the coaches’ seems to be coincident with the proliferation of large scale downsizings that swept through the country in the mid-1990’s following the first wave of reengineering initiatives, also known as “right sizing” our organizations. It does provide individuals a low cost avenue to get into their own business, provides a valuable service, can be tailored to support just about any lifestyle and it is a rewarding profession.

However, I am less concerned for the proliferation of coaches, though dubious of quality in many cases, than I am in the absence of demand for coaching in general, most dramatically absent among many who profess to be involved in employee development, namely mid-level managers.

I am guessing that when you read the opening scenario reporting on Tiger Woods performance over the weekend at the Firestone Classic (assuming you know who he is) your thoughts immediately jumped to his recently confessed marital transgressions and you may have said to yourself, “I am not surprised with all that going on in his personal life that he cannot concentrate on golf!” I’d agree with that assessment. However, I am more mystified that someone whose career was built in close association with well known coaches, his father Earl Woods, Butch Harman, and Hank Haney among others would now find himself in the midst of the greatest crisis of his life operating without a coach!

There are limits to everything in this world, why lessen the chances for accomplishment by trying to approach tough challenges without support? In America I am afraid it is an affliction of our heritage. We have actually bought hook-line-and-sinker into the mythology of the self-made person or the ‘rugged individual.’ Asking for help, especially in the highly competitive environments of many of our commercial organizations has been/is seen as a sign of weakness or insufficiency. These American myths persist despite the fact that any close examination of what might be interpreted as “individual success” can readily be understood as the talents or vision of any famous business figure being heavily complimented and supplemented by others around them far less visible but nonetheless critical to the success realized. As the English poet John Donne so rightly said several centuries ago “…no man is an island, entire of itself…”

So what does determine the upper limits of accomplishment? There are undoubtedly numerous factors but I’ll venture that among them the foremost is the willingness to be coached, an openness to outside perspective and a recognition that anything truly remarkable or worth attaining will likely result from embracing the principle of interdependency.

For those among you that are up to something and might be ready to take the plunge into a coaching relationship I recommend a baby step to get started. There are today many fine coaches writing and making their insights, experience and wisdom available free of charge in the form of their regular blogs.

Some I like are:

Dan McCarthy- expert on management and leadership development

Steve Roesler – covers a vast array of management concerns

Mary Jo Asmus- a true executive coach

Bret Simmons - research based practical management advice

Jon Ingham – Human Capital Management, it is about the people after all

Sharlyn Lauby – calls herself an HR Bartender, she is a lot more than that!

If you think you can handle more coaching or if you like variety in your messaging try the “buffet” that goes by the name Human Capital League. If you can’t find something worth taking in at this site you are probably beyond help.

• Can you identify your reluctance to asking for help or seeking a personal advocate to keep you at the top of your game? It will be something simple, look for it first as an emotion, then as a statement of fact, a rule you have adopted without reflection.

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When I look around my natural surroundings in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, or do organizational research as I frequently do by watching Animal Planet or Discovery Channel (more the older programming about bugs,snakes and Wildebeest, not the new stuff like ‘MythBusters’ or ‘Dirty Jobs’), I am constantly reminded of the principals of diversity, interdependency and inclusiveness that underlie the workings of the natural world.

On the other hand, when I consider many of the models employed when evaluating, developing and rewarding employees in our commercial enterprises I am confronted by the focus on internal competition as well as the heavy emphasis on rewarding individual performance, despite exhortations to pull together, be a team, think big picture etc. Does it ever occur to us that these practices may serve more to confuse than to encourage employees and thereby produce a negative impact on engagement?

I am referring here to regular practices of putting individual employees or groups of employees in artificially competitive situations or force ranking employees for compensation purposes, like that ever made any sense! How about the discussions that many of us have participated in where we cull out our “A” players or make lists of High Potential Employees, (Hipos? Hypos? more non-words from the HR/OD vocabulary)  all without much recognition for or questioning of the models that give rise both to the vocabulary we use and the practices we engage in.

To what degree might your own organization routinely and thoughtlessly engage in these and similar practices without questioning whether, 

• the fundamental assumptions on which they were originally based are or ever were valid, 
• the degree to which (validity aside) the practices we employ when evaluating or rewarding employees contribute to or impede the basic level of engagement of the major contingent of our employee base 
• key measurements used to establish the basis for rewards or developmental opportunities are true measures of performance or really “roll-ups”, reports of aggregate outcomes of other measures which if considered separately might be much more meaningful, if not for purposes of reward most certainly for developmental planning,
• there is the slightest recognition of the nature or fundamental motivations of the factions within organizations that insist on the preservation of traditional models , especially compensation models that favor the few over the many?

And all this is to say that possibly the compensation systems we so doggedly cling to are only satisfactory for a minority of employees but that minority is responsible for designing the systems.

In my real life corporate working career as an HR professional I was once “forced ranked” among a group of 97 other professionals, most of whom had highly technical backgrounds. According to my manager I was ranked #15 among the group. Not too bad you say! How about the fact that I could not have performed the work of any of the people ranked above or immediately below me on the list?

When they wrote ‘First Break All the Rules’ back in 1999 Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman gave managers everywhere a collective “big shove” between the shoulder blades and suggested it was time for us to wake up. They offered anecdotal references and data that suggested that there was significant evidence that many of who they considered to be the world’s best managers did not play by the traditional rules. They actually, of their own volition, did what they considered to be in the best interest of each employee, without regard to past practices of existing policies. How far have we come since then? Eleven years after its first publication, Amazon reports ‘First Break…’ among its top ten best selling titles in both Management and Leadership Categories. For me that is pretty compelling information.We're still a'studyin, maybe soon we'll get to more doin!

How do you feel about normal distribution curves, I mean as they relate to human characteristics like IQ, talent etc.? Personally, I am a big believer in the laws of natural distribution. That is one reason why I have never understood the arrogance of highly intelligent people. How do you become arrogant about an accident of nature? Given my beliefs in this regard 

• I do admit to a natural bias on my part towards models that support and reward collaborative performance. 
• I also admit to a bias towards systems of reward that honor individual accomplishment, especially performance that benefits the larger collective of employees and the organization as a whole.
• Finally, I admit to a bias towards developmental practices that originate with both a deep understanding of organizational needs and a deep and comprehensive understanding of individual talents and strengths. I favor having these practices grounded in a commitment to optimize the interests of all parties involved.

Do these biases and beliefs of mine sound contradictory or paradoxical?  They should if they are meant in any way to reflect the true complexity of dealing with human beings in increasingly complex commercial settings.

• Where do you shy away from the complexities of employees?
• Do you embrace simplistic thinking when it comes to employees because it saves time or is just so much easier to understand?
• Do you shoot for practices and policies that encourage collaboration and inclusiveness and build on the strength of diverse perspectives and talents?

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Working with a group of managers this week we opened what has now become to me a familiar and productive organizational conversation. “How can we learn to need, not just use each other?” The group I was working with was by any standards “high functioning” yet it was obvious upon introduction that they didn’t quite grasp the question they were being asked. So, I tried asking the question in a slightly different way, “OK, what’s the real reason everyone complains about IT?” This proved to be a bit more penetrating as the people in the group began to grasp that what I was pushing them on and what was making them uncomfortable was having to acknowledge something that we have all become familiar with in our organizational lives, avoiding vulnerability. We all do it and we don’t talk about it. But what if we did?

Back in 1959 Peter Drucker coined the term ‘knowledge worker’, he then spent a good portion of the next 45 years studying and revamping his theories about knowledge worker productivity and how best to adapt and adjust management practice to account for this new reality. He went so far as to say, “…better knowledge work productivity is our most important economic need.” He further warned that our long term prosperity and even our economic survival depend upon it.

Today more than ever our habitual treatments of Drucker’s ideas as quaint or optional are like “chickens coming home to roost.”

Through observation of this new reality of economic life, the worker as asset not merely resource, Drucker developed some perspectives that the majority of managers are, 5 years after his death, just beginning to grasp. What Drucker saw was the need for managers to simultaneously make their present Enterprise more effective, identify and realize its potential, and create a different Enterprise for a different future. In so doing he suggested that business leaders needed to continually shift resources from less productive to more productive areas through better knowledge work productivity and innovation.

“ …business leaders need to continually shift resources from less productive to more productive areas ...”

The implication of this statement is profound and redefines what it means to manage. It is no longer sufficient to think of the role of management in terms of knowing what needs to be done and seeing to it that it gets done. While this definition  remains a portion of what it means to be a manager we must expand the demand on the role to include “knowing” what talent is available at all times and seeing to it that it is put to use for the best advantage of the enterprise. It also means, and this is where the “why we are all afraid of IT” thing keeps coming up; as managers we must be able to recognize what knowledge and skill we need… that we do not have and cannot provide for ourselves… that we will be reliant on others to provide. This last requirement makes us veeerrry uncomfortable. Embracing the interdependency....eeeeeuuuuwwww!

In order to succeed in the manner Drucker is describing we are going to learn to consciously, strategically need the talents, knowledge and skills of not only those people working for us but also of those we will collaborate with. And look at us; we are still struggling with getting our performance reviews done on time, again, this year, for the umpteenth consecutive year. It is time to step up our game or step away from the role!

Tomorrow I’ll go back into my workshop and we will continue to explore this newly introduced distinction between needing people and using them. As the conversations unfolds predictably the managers in the group will begin to see that they

• Need to know a great deal more about themselves in terms of strengths and limitations.
• Need to know much more about the capabilities and interests of people reporting to them, continue to know what needs to be done and now who is best to do it and, what is going to need to get done that we must be preparing for now or we’ll never be ready and who should be doing that and
• Know where they currently have collaborators who are not being related to as assets, what do those assets need from them in order to be able to provide them service and what are they going to need from these collaborators in the future that they need to let them know about now so their expectations stand a chance of being met.

And at some point in the process of becoming fully aware of what is called for now they are going to become overwhelmed with the limitations they have placed on themselves and recognize that they will need to shed some of the protective behavior patterns they have used to avoid vulnerability until now. And they will get a bit panicky, and then they will be fine.

Puff, puff, puff! Whew! The level of complexity is daunting and yet if we (managers) continue as we have with our historical ways of working like we don’t really need as much as we do we are going to get run over by the sheer volume of what we are faced with. Like the man in the commercial said many years ago, “you can pay me now or pay me later.”

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Pretty basic stuff this week but it never hurts to go back to basics.

Assuming that we are all in agreement that engaged employees are preferable to ones who are not, let’s take a brief look at actions we take as managers that actually dis-incent the engagement we say we want.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

                                                                      Upton Sinclair

If I have heard it once I have heard it a hundred times from a potential client in an initial meeting, “Mike, what I am looking for is more leadership from my people!” Notwithstanding that this statement is often made thoughtlessly the first time around, my standard response when I hear it is “Then what we need to do is determine what you and your managers are doing to discourage leadership!” Silence follows.

Once everyone starts breathing again we can begin a fruitful dialogue.

The truth of my experience is that when senior managers strongly suggest they are interested in more leadership, they are muddling leadership with engagement and their real interest is more engaged employees. If it is really more leadership they want, we’ll have a further conversation about how much control they are willing to give up. That is always interesting!

In either case the task becomes one of working with both senior and mid-level managers to distinguish how they may be unwittingly discouraging the very engagement they profess to be seeking.

Much of what managers do to discourage or dis-incent engagement will have a reasonable explanation in the minds of the managers and will look like blatant chicanery in the eyes of employees. Some cases in point:

• “Our manager says she wants us to speak our minds and offer ideas and suggestions. When she holds a meeting she tells us to hold our questions and comments to the end of her presentation. Then as she gathers her things to leave she asks if we have any questions!”
• “Senior managers tell us we can contact them directly; when we do they ask our managers why we are bringing this matter to senior management attention rather than handling it more locally.”
• “The only way for me to make more money in my current position is to create opportunities for overtime. The easiest way to do that is to slow down so my work takes extra time and then I get labeled as a mediocre to poor performer.”
• “I can easily complete my assignments most weeks in 30-35 hours; I am good at what I do. There’s no real incentive to perform at a higher rate cuz every time I finish early my manager adds work from some of the poorer performers.”
• “I’ve offered five suggestions for improvement in the past year and not received a positive response on any of them. Managers promised they would get back in writing on all suggestions within 72 hours of receipt. I’d just be happy with that”

When confronted on this behavior, managers will often respond that it was a one time occurrence, they were pushed for time, it made sense when they took the action, etc. etc.

NOW HEAR THIS…all ye who would manage. The basic employment relationship is predicated on a mutually understood imbalance of power. You have more than the people reporting to you, at least in theory!.

Without question, at this point in time the majority of employees, no matter what the organization, are keenly attuned to this imbalance and on constant alert for any sign that their status in the “royal household” may be in jeopardy. This is to say that if you make a sudden move to scratch your head don’t be surprised when they duck. This underlying and unspoken unholy understanding is only made worse by our failure as managers to acknowledge the truth of it.

In my experience as a manager I have directly said to employees, “I seek your partnership. You are not worth much to me if our relationship is based in fear. Unless I can trust you to speak up when there is something to be said I will be essentially working alone. Whatever we need to do to work through whatever fear you have of me or managers in general, I am prepared to work through with you. I am not prepared to hear after the fact that you knew something and didn’t express it.” Not everyone who received this offer accepted but everyone who accepted has not been disappointed, nor have I.

• Take a look at the bulleted items above and examine yourself not just by reading the examples but by checking yourself against the spirit of the message.
• Can you come up with your own list of unconscious behaviors on your part that may be a dis-incentive to engagement?

In case you are wondering, I am not a "management hater." I do hold managers to a certain standard because of the power balance I speak to here. My highest loyalty is always to what at any point in time I see as the "best interest of the organization."

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As a manager, especially a manager of younger employees one thing I encourage you to be on the lookout for are occasions that attack the confidence of the your less experienced reports. No doubt you can remember your own baptism by fire when in your earlier years you innocently asked a question of a superior in an open meeting, with the best of intentions, and got handed your head on a platter following a public flaying that left you questioning yourself, your values, the direction of the poles etc. If you were fortunate you had a manager who took you aside and assured you that you were fine and that what you had done hadn’t warranted the treatment you received and maybe there were better ways or times to make your thoughts or questions known in the future. If you were not so fortunate you were met in the hall after the meeting by a co-worker who cauterized your wound with a glib “Glad that wasn’t me” comment, forever cementing in your mind that you were never going to let anything close to that happen again, and were never heard from there or anyplace else that had a similar look and feel. Or maybe you were passed over for a promotion or “thrown under the bus” by a colleague in a public setting, etc. etc.

If you’ve been around for a while you now know the drill, you know you will survive, as Kenny Rogers says, “You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em!” And you know there will always be another day and the point is not so much to avoid the impact of life in the workplace as it is to develop the ability to choose your points of high impact and recover quickly. Nothing will make you more ineffective than

·         the inability to confront events when necessary to get things done,

·         the inability to sustain an injustice and return to the field of play quickly or

·          the inability to leave the past in the past

As object lesson let me present a situation very fresh in the minds of many fans of professional sports. In baseball there are two types of actors on the field at all times, those who play the game and those who officiate the games. Theirs is an uneasy interdependency made necessary by the subjective nature of many of the transactions. Kind of like performance reviews! J Anyway, last Wednesday, June 2^nd, the fans in Detroit’s Comerica Park were on the verge of being treated to one of the rarest events in all of sports, the pitching of a perfect game*. Unfortunately the gods of baseball have a weird sense of fate. On a play that would have been the last of the game a veteran umpire made an erroneous call on a fairly routine play, costing the pitcher, the players and the fans the experience of a lifetime.

*The “perfect game” has occurred only 18 times since 1900 out of something like half a million games played in that period.

I am pretty sure you as well as almost everyone at Comerica that evening can readily see the error of the call made by umpire Jim Joyce.

The fans were stunned, the Detroit players were furious, the manager, Jim Leyland, offered strenuous protest, to no avail. Amazingly, the pitcher, Armando Galarraga, calmly returned to the mound, faced the next batter, got him out and completed a one-hit game for the win.

Following the game a chagrinned Jim Joyce faced the press and admitted his mistake to the press and apologized in person to Galarraga. The next day to no one’s surprise there was an appeal to the Baseball Commissioner, Bud Selig, to reverse the call and award the perfect game. (C’mon Bud you know that wasn’t fair, give the kid a break!) To his credit Bud Selig was true to the game and declined to reverse the call.

Just like in any workplace the two protagonists in this drama returned to work the following day. In a gesture most rare and inspirational Armando Galarraga met Jim Joyce at Home Plate with the daily lineup card, (a task normally completed by the team’s manager), gave him a pat on the back and a hug and assured him that he forgave the mistake and affirmed his confidence in Joyce’s ability to proceed to effectively call the balls and strikes that day. Remarkable and rare, a story worth repeating and one I encourage you to share with your younger employees.

In any interdependency, marriage, co-worker or business partner there is room for disappointment. At times we will let each other down. These are the moments that define relationships; these are the moments that define careers. When they occur will we withdraw from the field never to risk again or will we return to play knowing that somewhere in the future we will experience disappointment again? Can we learn to apologize, can we learn to forgive, even when we know the game will never be fair. For those who cannot…there will always be tickets for the game, that’s why they call them spectators.

·         Are you noticing any of your reports becoming spectators?

·         Are there apologies for you to make or forgiveness to grant?

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For the past fifteen years I have greeted business leaders clamoring for more leadership and accountability in their organizations with this challenge, “What are you willing to give up? The question is almost always met first with silence followed by a familiar response, “What exactly do you mean by give up? Then the fun begins.

I have been adamant for some time that employees want to give their employers the best they have to offer and employers behaviors and practices often serve to constrain this from happening. Many employees are not going to give their best for conventional rewards and they certainly are not going to give it for nothing, but they will give it for free. I know this without data to back it up, I just get it in my bones and I bet you do too.

“Thankfully, there are those writers who do like data and they often do the research to make the connection between “hunch” and reality. Every so often a new voice bursts on the management/leadership development scene with an unconventional take on familiar themes and they can back it up with facts and then many of us shout “I knew it!” No author may be as "right now" in this regard as Daniel Pink, author of 'Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

This is not going to be my review of Drive, there are already plenty in circulation, in fact if you are interested I’ll send you right to one written by Andrew O’Connell that appeared in Harvard Business Review earlier this year. Better yet, if you’d like a pretty compelling synopsis of the book by the author himself I recommend setting aside ten minutes or so to watch the video animate created by RSA.org. I am betting that after you watch this piece you’ll buy the book if you haven’t already.

Without the benefit of the research presented in ‘Drive’ my company stumbled on some of Daniel Pink’s fundamental new truth through direct experience back in the mid-1990s while working with our local independent telephone company. (You may recall the 1990s as a time when telephone companies were still relevant!) During that period we were working with this company to bring about a shift in thinking, a transition from seeing the world though the eyes of a regulated utility to seeing the world through the eyes of a player in a competitive marketplace for telephonic services; a tall order at the very least.

Among the many changes that the telephone company was working to bring about at that time was to turn Customer Service from a pure expense center into another of the company’s revenue generating locations. The idea; pretty simple really, since the company could count on a regular inflow of contacts from customers with issues or questions why not address each of these contacts as also a sales opportunity. Calling features were in vogue then, Call Waiting, Three Way Calling etc. and each was available, for a price.

To motivate the customer service representatives who would be involved in making this change the company put in place a financial incentive program knowing full well that the employees would jump at the chance for additional income…they didn’t, and management was confused and perhaps not surprisingly they were angered as well. “Everyone” knew this was a great idea, why couldn’t these employees just buy in and get with the program and "hey, don’t forget the money", the money was a good thing.

We came on the scene about three months after this program had been put in place and the situation was getting very tense. The managers who had first proposed this program had gone on record promising their seniors a big payback and it was not showing up. Knowing that their idea was sound the managers determined that if they could not entice desired behavior with incentive they might as well initiate some negative consequences for not “playing ball.” And so they did and suddenly the union representing the service reps got very involved and then no one was having any fun.

When asked if we had any possible remedy to offer the first of our questions set the stage for a dramatic shift in perspective. We asked, “What made you think that people who had been basically performing the same or similar functions for on average twenty years were suddenly going to care about making more money?” The answer was pretty simple and understandable. The managers assumed that the customer service reps were motivated by the same things that motivated them. Within a short period of time we were able to determine that time off, an afternoon to spend on family issues, a simple recognition luncheon, a book of car wash coupons, or just the time to spend with a customer without worrying about who was next in the queue, all these were more meaningful to the service reps than a chance to make more money. All of these motivators were virtually free but they did mean management would have to change their behaviors, and they did.

It is now fifteen years later. Daniel Pink tells us that autonomy, mastery and purpose are the motivators that matter to much of the current workforce in the conceptual age. You might think this would be good news for many employers. Not necessarily so. Providing these incentives means management will need to give up control of employees’ time and direction to some degree. For many employers, they would still rather let go of money than they would control.

• Where are you struggling to gain employees' 'buy in' but you have failed to offer them any freedom? What are you prepared to give up?
• Can you envision your role without any supervisory or directive aspect? What could you do with the time freed up?

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There is much merit in the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Take this picture for instance.In case you don't know this is Mt. Ranier in Washington. This particular shot was taken with my Palm Treo from the window seat during a flight I was taking from Seattle to Fort Worth two summers ago. I think it is pretty great given no time for set up and it sure does a much better job of showing the magnificence of this peak than if I was to tell you how "really big" it is.

 Sometimes though you really do have to hear the story to get the picture.

We go to the gym to stay in shape, we hire a management coach to stay in shape, we go to church on Sunday to stay in shape. Repetition seems to be a fundamental practice for those who would stay sharp, whether it be in body, mind or spirit. And so it goes with those of us who create these periodic blog posts.So again it is time to repeat something we have heard countless times before.

In his March 25th post in All Things Workplace this year Steve Roesler does a great job of outlining the lesson I have mind for us to review today. In his words,

"I've coached executives and conducted workshops on all aspects of presentations for many years. One of the liveliest parts of the discussion emerges when I introduce the fact that influential presentations require at least as much time listening to the audience as speaking to them. For many, that's counter-intuitive to the common notion of influence."

Listening...there it is again...whether we are in the midst of a presentation or a one-on-one conversation, how many times have you heard said that listening is more important than speaking, especially when it comes to gaining respect or establishing influence? If you've heard it once I bet you've heard it a thousand times...and still it bears repeating.

So now that story I promised...

Some thirty years back I held a real job in a real company, actually a Fortune 50 company in the petroleum industry to be as exact as I need for my purposes here. One of my favorite assignments during this period of my career involved a two year stay on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in a large refinery.

On one particular morning my manager showed up at my office early asking of I had time for a special assignment. He had in mind for me to do a comparative analysis of the healthcare plan we offered our employees and one offered by a local chemical company. The assignment seemed pretty straight forward so I took it on and within a short time was waist deep in charts and tables.

What I noticed fairly quickly was that on virtually every feature the plan offered by my employer was equal to or superior to the plan I had been asked to analyze comparatively. After about an hour I sat back and pondered the assignment for a few moments and just as I concluded it was a waste of time I headed upstairs to see my manager. He was someone I respected a great deal and if he had asked me to do this he had a good reason; I needed to know what that was before proceeding.

When I asked my manager how it was that he came to make the request of me to do the analysis the picture began to take shape. Late in the afternoon the day before one of the more vocal plant workers, a man who seemed to have a certain following, had stopped in to see my manager. He spent about half an hour complaining to my manager about how much better the medical plan offered by “so and so company” was and wondering aloud why we couldn’t get a better plan, to the point where my manager finally said he would arrange for an analysis and see what might be done.

I told my manager of my preliminary findings and he said maybe I should continue my analysis because the company was committed to doing whatever could be done within reason to keep the plant employees from thinking they needed union representation. Now I grew suspicious.

An interesting feature of this particular refinery was the fact that it was not unionized, like virtually all other refineries in the United States and the company management took great pains to make sure that was the way things remained.

I asked my manager if he minded whether I arranged a visit with the employee who had stopped by to see him and he said that if I thought it would help I could go ahead. Later that day I had the employee stop by and we began talking about his issues, and of course all the other employees who agreed with him. Within a short period of time listening to him I could not get a clear understanding of the problem, just the vague sense that something more was going on than the simple complaint. Finally I just said to him point blank that if he could not be more specific it would not be possible for me to determine whether we should or shouldn’t consider a different medical plan and I made it clear that I wanted to help if at all possible. The employee was silent for a few moments and then said that the employees at the other plant had this plastic membership card they could show at the doctor’s office or drug store and that was all they had to do to make a claim for coverage. Our plan required the employees to complete a form, attach a receipt, mail it in and wait for reimbursement. So that was it; that was what all the fuss was about, the claims process? Well, that was almost all of it!

We talked for a while longer and it became apparent that there was a cultural factor involved. This was some years back and this was a culture where the moms in a family stayed home to raise the children and take care of the family business. Virtually all the refinery employees then were male and most worked rotating shifts so they were only on a 9-5 schedule once out of every three weeks and their wives handled the household affairs. Many of women at home didn’t understand the claims forms and since the men were used to them handling everything they were embarrassed by giving them something that was hard to understand. So this was the real problem, we had placed our male employees in a position where they were letting their spouses down and those very same spouses talked with other women who’s husbands worked at the chemical plant with the plastic card and…you get the picture. This was an emotional issue not rational but if you were not listening you would never have heard it.

We got it all worked out. I offered to set up classes for or take phone calls from the wives to help them understand the claims process. I also promised to work with our health plan administrator to simplify the claims process. The issue of considering another plan never came up again while I was there and not since as far as I know. My manager was stunned,; he realized that he was so tuned to listening for anything that might lead to unionization that he could not have heard the employee’s real request no matter how many times they talked. I was new so my biases had yet to be established.

So there’s your 1000+ words, did you get the picture?

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My Mom turned 86 last month so you know I am no kid, even though the image here might make it seem so. (This is actually an old photo! It's not my mom by the way, oh, and that's not me. Actually I have no idea who this is but I like the ocean and I like my mom, we did live in California for a while close to the Pacific so I decided to use this shot. I wish we had a photo of the two of us like this.Maybe we do and I have just never seen it!)

Does your Mom read your blog? Mine does and not only that she almost always sends me comments or questions based on the theme I have chosen for the week. She doesn't always get exactly what I am working on, she never worked in a very large organization like many of those I have consulted to over the past twenty years, but she does a pretty good job and mainly I appreciate the encouragement.

Having my Mom read my blog got me to thinking about engagement from another perspective than I had recognized in the past. Is there a connection, reflection or correlation between love, which I know is the motive behind my mother reading my blog, and a manager's engagement with the people reporting to them?

I recall that my very first "grown up" manager after graduate school really spoiled me by caring as much as he did. From the very beginning he took a personal interest, not only in me but in each person who reported to him. One of the events that truly impressed me back then was an occasion when I was really pressed for time on an assignment. Shortly after I turned in the work my manager appeared in the doorway of my office and asked if we could talk, of course I accepted his request. He had the assignment I had left with him in hand but began our conversation by asking me how I was doing personally as he seemed to know that I had been jammed up by the pressure of multiple deadlines. We talked for a while and then just as he rose to leave he handed me the assignment in his hand and suggested that I take another day before turning it in. He said that when he looked over the what I had presented he was concerned that I was stressing because what I had turned in was not my best work. Eventually this manager was one of two people I mention in the dedication of my 2006 book THRIVE: Standing on Your Own Two Feet in a Borderless World.

Did I experience being "loved" by this manager? No, at least not in the same sense that I feel with my mother. I did feel cared about as a person and honestly, in a work environment that was much more than I had anticipated would be available. It made a huge difference to me then and it made a huge difference to me later as an employer myself. I have always made it a point to let the people working in our organization know in obvious ways that they were cared about. We have never paid the most, in fact virtually everyone who has ever worked for my company has taken a reduction in salary to join us. It seems that over time we have developed a reputation for being something more than the ordinary workplace, some place offering a special experience, like the special experience of having your Mom read your blog.

With my Mom I know it's love, with the people that work for me, they can call it whatever they like, it is free and it is authentic.

• If you are a manager, do the people reporting to you have a sense that they are cared about as people?
• If you are not a manager, do you have the experience of being cared about as a person by the person you report to, by your colleagues? Do you care about them?

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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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