We all know that every boss
is responsible for providing support to the workforce. Support generally includes such elements as
training, discipline, rewards, tools, parts and materials, technical advice,
guidance and direction, planning, information, documentation, procedures, rules
and, last but not least, peace of mind.
Each element of support
projects certain value standards. Think
of values as having a range from –10 to +10, such as from total dishonesty to
total honesty, from indolence to industriousness, unfair to fair, ignorance to
knowledge, not caring to completely caring, dirty to clean, obsolete to
up-to-date, no quality to the highest quality, and the same for every other
value.
For example, tools can be of
high, medium or low quality or somewhere in between. They can be clean or dirty, easily available or hard to get, of
the latest technology or the oldest, always or rarely there when needed, easy
or too difficult to replace, complete with or lacking in adequate
documentation, always or rarely operable, or somewhere in between these
extremes. The same is true for every
other element of support. Taken
collectively, these elements of support constitute the boss’ leadership,
actually the leadership of all bosses in the chain above the worker. This leadership stares in the face of every
worker every day.
So now that it’s out there
for all to see, what does a worker (95% of whom are followers more or less) do
with all this leadership, these hundreds if not thousands of leadership
messages? The vast majority of workers
use these messages to determine how to do their work, that is how
industriously or lazily, safely or unsafely, courteously or discourteously,
knowledgeably or ignorantly, expertly or sloppily, cleanly or uncleanly, openly
or close to the vest (admitting of errors), caringly or uncaringly,
respectfully or disrespectfully, honestly or dishonestly and so forth.
Did I say caringly? Yes, the worker figures out from the quality
of all this support whether or not the boss cares about the worker. In
addition, whatever that standard for caring is, the worker turns around and
uses it to treat the company’s customers and other people in the
workplace.
Did I say honestly? Yes, if the boss states that a particular
tool or piece of equipment is adequate while the worker knows this is not true,
the worker assumes that the boss knows better and thus concludes that the boss
is being dishonest. The message is that
a low standard for honesty is OK.
"If you can do it so can I" takes over from there.
From the above, you may now
realize that your leadership is sending some messages that need fixing. So, how can you improve your
leadership? The solution is simply to
go out and LISTEN, listen to employee complaints and suggestions about your
support, your leadership messages reflecting low standards. Then correct or change that condition and do
it to the reporter’s satisfaction. This
corrects the problem thereby making the worker’s job easier, corrects your poor
leadership from leading others toward other than very high standards and
provides living proof that you really care about your people. In addition, this process of detection and
correction teaches workers how to solve problems, how to treat customers and
how to use value standards in the workplace.
One stone kills a lot of birds.
Luckily for you, these
workers don’t use the value standards they got from you to judge what goes on
around them. What they use are their
own value standards and all of their values are good. For instance everyone believes in honesty. Since each worker has different standards
for each value as compared to the next worker, each will be bothered more by
one thing, less by another. Taken
collectively, they will disclose most if not all problems. And by the way, if most of them line up
against one particular thing, rest assured that thing requires major fixing.
So get out with your people,
listen to their complaints and suggestions, and take corrective action. Corrective action may be just an explanation
of certain details unknown by the worker. Whatever it is, corrective action
must be timely, of unquestionably high quality and must include getting back to
the originator to find out if your intended fix is acceptable (doing so is
superior leadership so don’t ever put the fix into action before getting
feedback). As I explained in leadership
through support, this is your leadership and you want it to reflect only the
highest standards for every value. The values of
significance are: honesty, industriousness, confidence,
positive attitude, compassion, humility, admission of error, perseverance,
fairness, forgiveness, forthrightness, trust, respect, courtesy, grit, heroism,
knowledge, integrity, quality, loyalty and selflessness.
Listening itself must be
conducted in such a way as to reflect high standards of the above values. Your tone of voice and attitude are crucial
so use lots of confidence building smiles and lots of expressions of thanks for
their complaint and their work. You
must make clear that you know you are making the worker’s job more difficult
than it should be, albeit without intending to do so, but that you are more
than willing to make needed corrections.
Apologize for your support deficiencies and let them know you are the
supplier of support while they are your customers. Act like it, body language, facial expressions, smiles, etc! The customer is always right so act that way
and say it several times. In addition,
you may have to ask questions to flesh out the problem or to get the worker to
talk. Suffice it to say that bosses are
scary people in general and you need to gain the worker’s trust before they can
really open up. Making clear that you
are their servant as concerns support issues is a big step in the right
direction.
After you start hacking away
at the forest of your bad or low quality leadership, workforce performance will
improve almost in lockstep. Don’t be
surprised, just keep at it. It makes no
difference if you are a lower or higher level boss, the effect on the people
for whom you are responsible is the same.
This kind of listening
coupled with respectful and timely responses “leads” your people to treat their
work, their customers each other and their bosses with a similar level of
respect and caring. How better to teach
employees how to do this? There is no
better way based on my own 30+ years of managing people and four different
successful turnarounds of severe mismanagement situations including a 1300
person unionized group in New York City.
Listening has a large number of associated positive effects as well as
opportunities for superior leadership not mentioned herein.
Bennet Simonton, author of "Leading People to be
Highly Motivated and Committed", managed people for over 30 years and
effected four successful turnarounds including a nuclear-powered cruiser and a
1300 person unionized group.
Ben now helps executives and managers to improve
their skills of managing people.
His website is http://www.bensimonton.com