The coronavirus has really wreaked havoc in the workplace and the labor market, hasn’t it?
No wonder almost all of the respondents to this year’s Triangle Performance Survey of Senior Leadership ranked leading in VUCA as the top leadership challenge in 2022. Today’s job market is about the best example of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity I’ve seen off the battlefield.
That makes it easy to blame COVID-19 for our talent management challenges. (By the way, your talent doesn’t want to be managed.) We can just write our attrition problems off to the Great Resignation, right?
Not so fast, leaders! Most attrition is our own fault.
There’s plenty of research that shows most people say they leave their job because of the pay, limited opportunities for advancement, and their boss. We may have limited influence on the first, but the last two are absolutely leadership issues… and fixing those two is free.
Interviewing external job candidates last week, I wasn’t surprised to hear all of them say the reason they’re looking for another job is directly related to the environment in their current company.
And guess whose fault that is.
Now guess how many of them admitted to their companies that they’re quitting because their boss is a jerk. In round numbers, zero.
James Rickwood, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I would suggest that it’s not all that important why someone quits, because short of an opportunity dropping into their lap or winning a BIG lottery, they decided to quit long before giving notice. Like in a relationship that’s gone sour, once our partner decides it’s time to break up, it’s only a matter of time. They might be lured into staying a little longer, but if we don’t fix what they’re unhappy about, they’re headed to greener pasture.
No, what’s important is why they started looking elsewhere in the first place. That’s where we find a common thread: the boss. The leader who’s supposed to helping them feel valued doing worthy work. Sometimes, that’s actually us.
I asked all the candidates I interviewed what makes them feel valued – apart from the financial compensation, of course. (I also asked them what criteria they used to decide if a job was a good fit, but that’s a topic for a future newsletter.) Their answers weren’t particularly complex, and it made me wonder if their current boss ever took the time to find out. If they had, they might not be looking to fill an unexpected vacancy.
And it’s not the Quiet Quitters that are looking for better leadership. We wish! They seem pretty content to put up with shoddy leadership and give the minimum effort required to keep their jobs as long as we’ll keep paying them.
Unfortunately, it’s the good employees that tire of being treated badly at work and start looking elsewhere. Again, if we don’t URGENTLY fix what they’re unhappy about, they’re leaving us as soon as their criteria for a good fit is met.
Case in point: my daughter left a healthcare position she had been very happy in for a couple of years after a significant leadership change… not a change for the better, I might add. It didn’t take very long for her to realize the relationship was going to end, so she started looking around for an organization and position she believed would allow her to again feel valued doing worthy work.
When she eventually let the company know she’d be leaving and they asked why, she gave them all of stock answers: limited opportunities in her current role, wanting to explore other areas of healthcare, flexibility, benefits, PTO, etc. What she didn’t tell them was that she was unhappy with the leadership and didn’t believe they particularly cared whether she felt valued or not.
I’m not suggesting we hit the PANIC button every time someone leaves the organization, but I do believe that if we don’t make an honest effort to learn why they started looking for a new job in the first place, we’re not doing our jobs as engaged leaders.
Leaders need to engage periodically in some serious introspection and decide whether or not their decision-making style or the culture they’ve created is mortally wounding organizational performance.
I learned that lesson as a by-product of a traumatic experience over three decades ago. Early in my flying career, in close proximity to another airplane also traveling at 400+ mph, I heard a magical phrase from my instructor that’s stuck with me ever since: indecision kills.
First, though, he said, “I have the stick.”
That meant he was going be in control of the airplane for a few minutes while giving me instruction and advice, and in this case, saving my life. It was clear to him (but not to me) that if I didn’t hurry and decide which course correction to make, my indecision would result in a catastrophic mid-air collision.
While not normally fatal in the corporate world, leadership and management indecision still kills. Among other things, it kills employee morale and motivation, productivity and project momentum, and causes our customers to lose confidence that we can be responsive to their needs.
Indecisiveness is caused by a number of factors, primarily fear of failure. Much has been written about decision-making processes and steps that those who have trouble being decisive can take. But I’ve yet to find a magic pill that managers can take that makes them less hesitant to make a “good enough” decision in an environment where imperfect decisions are frowned upon.
I have the stick for a minute.
Several years ago, our director called his senior managers together and boldly announced, “We take too long to make decisions. We’re going to start making decisions faster so we can make more decisions, and if we make a bad decision, at least we’ll have time to make a better one.” Heresy in a bureaucratic institution with an entrenched, hierarchical decision making process. But he was a leader, and we did start making better decisions without getting bogged down in staff morass.
I’m not suggesting all decisions need to be made quickly and neither was he. What I am suggesting is that leaders need to continually evaluate the effect their decision-making style is having on the organization, and the decision-making culture they’ve created for their managers. When leaders create an environment where employees feel empowered and decision-making has been appropriately delegated, managers are more willing to make timely, good decisions without waiting for perfect information.
And that reduces the mortality rate for employee morale, keeps promising projects from getting bogged down, and increases customer responsiveness.
Leadership is an activity, not a position. That activity includes making sure you foster an environment where the decision-making process doesn’t paralyze the organization and mistakes aren’t always professionally fatal.
Focused businessman is reading through magnifying glass document
Several years ago, my sister gave me a book about how to deal with the controlling perfectionists in our lives. She said I might benefit from an impartial description of — get this — me.
Ouch.
Okay, so I only had two standards: perfect and unacceptable. That didn’t make me a bad person did it?
It’s not like I imposed my unreasonably high standards on my family or people at work. After all, I’ve always said, “Don’t let perfection get in the way of good enough.” And I talked plenty about building a culture where failures are learning experiences and not short-cuts to the unemployment line, of embracing our own failures as stepping stones on the road to self-improvement, yadda yadda yadda.
Other people’s failures, of course.
So what’s the problem with having unreasonably high standards?
The problem is that it makes us damned hard to work for. And guess what, as leaders it’s not about us; it’s about them. We don’t get the best from people when we bully them — yes, perfectionists bully, even if that’s not our intent.
Perfectionists notice only what’s wrong and not what’s right. But if our feedback style doesn’t include some encouragement about the good while we’re delivering the bad and the ugly, we’re liable to stop seeing the good at all.
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
It used to be a gold-star day when someone got a report past me without needing some re-work. Did that motivate them to try their best? Only initially, but when they learned their best would never been good enough, they started sending me crap knowing I’d put the effort into polishing the turd. Hardly the practice of a high-performing team.
Perfectionists are inflexible, resistant to change, and stubborn about having it done our way. Nothing wrong with that, since our way is the best, right? I can assure you that when we aren’t willing to let others do a task less well than we would do it ourselves, we end up pretty much doing everything ourselves anyway. Then we complain about being overworked, underappreciated, and short on the time and energy we need to be spending as leaders.
My mother would say, “You kind of brought that on yourself, didn’t you?”
With a tip of the hat to Maya Angelou, “…people will never forget how you made them feel.” Perfectionist bosses make others feel like they can’t do anything right. Not the legacy I wanted to leave as a leader, but what was I to do? ‘Good enough’ is the last thing I wanted to be remembered as.
Oh, that’s right… it’s not about me; it’s about them.
The good news: it’s simple to change. The bad news: it’s not that easy.
First, admit it — like any good twelve step program. Admit that you’re holding others to a standard that you, yourself can’t meet, and in the process holding the organization hostage.
The second step simply requires you to reframe success. Is perfection success? Probably. What about excellent? How about fully compliant and on time? What if your email gets the message delivered effectively but is missing a comma? Can you see where I’m going with that?
That’s it. That’s all it took for me. (Okay, like anyone in recovery, I’m a work in progress.)
Make sure your people know what success looks like, and when they get there, let them know it. Set clear and reasonable (achievable) expectations for them — and yourself — and celebrate when they’re met. That doesn’t mean settle for good enough; by all means, shoot for the stars, make continuous improvements, set audacious goals. Just make sure you’ve effectively communicated what success looks like and be happy when you get there.
Is your performance management system identifying your organization’s best leaders or its best doers? Are they being rewarded for their individual performance, or are they being recognized for how successful they’re making their team?
Do they get ahead by being competitive and striving to be the best, or do you value and promote those who collaborate and strive to make the company its best?
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
Late in my military career, I was blessed to command a fantastic group of diverse, talented and motivated Airmen. The only part that wasn’t awesome was that we lacked sufficient personnel and resources to be fully capable of executing our assigned missions. Often, we found ourselves in a situation which pitted me against my peers in a competition for more – more people, more money, more equipment, and more priority.
I initially thought it was the perfect job for me, because I’d spent most of my career competing for more.
Unfortunately (for me), my boss cared more about getting along and expected me to play well with others. After a little attitude adjustment, I found that collaborating with the other leaders – cross-training and developing people, and sharing the recognition accolades when their folks were involved – made us all more effective and successful.
Collectively, our teams’ successes made the entire organization more mission capable and successful.
Why did I feel it necessary to be so competitive? Because I was developed under a performance management system that encouraged individuals to be the best of the best, not collaborative and supportive. After all, we only want the best to be the leaders of our military forces, right?
And you probably want the best in your company to lead your employees. Who doesn’t?
But, when a rewards system keeps people focused on what they do and not why they do it, they become more competitive than collaborative. They put a priority on individual accomplishments and technical competence and miss out on the people skills development that comes from succeeding – or failing – as part of a team. Ultimately, the business suffers when decisions are made without considering what’s best for the organization as a whole.
It gets worse when you promote the best doer to be an unprepared manager, but that’s a subject for a different day.
I’ve read a lot of management job descriptions with sentences that start “Leads this…” and “Leads that…” However, I have yet to see a single performance review process that actually grades people on their leadership. Not that those systems don’t exist; I just haven’t seen one in practice.
Instead, we give managers credit for what their teams accomplish without helping them understand how their accomplishments contribute to the success of their department, the company, and the clients. In my example above, I was focused on how successful we could be instead of how successful WE (get it, the royal WE?) could be.
When you unwittingly pit employees against each other – especially at executive levels – you end up with people who spend their time jockeying for position, competing for resources, and vying for attention and recognition.
They end up focused on themselves, not the organization and certainly not the people they’re charged to lead. Too many senior leadership “teams” pretend to get along, while everyone below them on the food chain knows it’s just contrived collegiality. They talk a good game, but what they’re really playing is “what’s in it for me,” and their people and the company are suffering for it.
What does your performance review process encourage? Is it about their contribution to the larger effort?
Can they tell that their performance is judged by how successful they’ve made others, or are they too concerned about how they’re doing compared to others?
Don’t wait for HR to change the system. Have the conversations now that set different expectations for 2018! Make it the Year of Collaboration and Success.
I was the King of Malicious Compliance, and I wore the crown proudly.
Not familiar with the term malicious compliance? It’s a kind of organizational sabotage where the goal is often to get the boss fired.
Thankfully, I’ve been deposed from my throne, but here are some examples:
I’ve been known to rigidly comply with an order from my boss in a way I knew would cause him embarrassment. (Ask me about my M&M watch sometime.)
Knowing I had the correct answer, I might deliberately withhold my contribution in a discussion unless asked a direct question.
I could strictly adhere to mandatory office hours – just the arrival and departure times, of course – while spending the intervening hours in decidedly unproductive ways.
I might even do something I knew was counterproductive, just so I could say, “But you told me to do it.”
And I was pretty effective, because malicious compliance is contagious.
At the time, I freely admitted I wasn’t the best follower, and I blamed it on poor leadership. After all, I deluded myself, if I had a decent leader instead of a marginal manager, I’d have been a better follower. Even so, I never understood why my bosses put up with my crap.
So, what do you do with a guy like me?
I know what you’re thinking: I’d have fired your ass in a heartbeat. And sometimes they tried.
Now, I won’t say all organizations have someone like that, but many do. We justify tolerating them for bizarre reasons like “he’s better than a vacancy,” or “she’s really good at what she does” (when she does it), or maybe “HR makes it so hard to get rid of people.” And we put up with their crap without noticing the negative effect they’re having on the organization.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Do not tolerate those kinds of behavior. Malicious compliance will spread through the organization like sick building syndrome!
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
Take it from me, there’s a much better way, and I’m grateful someone made the effort with me (thanks, Mike): be a leader.
Leaders learn what motivates people – and what demotivates them. Get to know your folks. Find out what they like and don’t like about their jobs and what their aspirations are. When I felt like I was being treated like a person instead of a part in a machine, I responded.
Leaders don’t tolerate harmful behaviors. What you tolerate, you endorse. Address the behavior every time it occurs. Force the miscreant to acknowledge the behavior and its harmful effects. It was a hard conversation, but when I had to confront my own bad behavior, I stopped it.
Leaders seek inputs. Whether implementing a change to a process or a procedure, or developing a solution to a problem, listen to the people who will be affected – especially those who push back. If possible, let the hard heads play a significant role in the implementation; you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it goes. When others saw me get behind something I was originally against, it made a huge difference.
Leaders encourage intelligent disobedience. Your employees should feel empowered to speak up when they see something wrong instead of dogmatically adhering to the exact instruction. If they’re afraid to say something (or keep quiet out of spite), that’s on you, and you’re liable to be embarrassed by the result. Empowerment takes trust. I never set up someone who trusted me.
Leaders develop leaders. It’s one of your primary roles – and possibly your most important. Work to identify referent leadership on your staff, and put the effort into helping that person grow and improve, channeling their efforts to the benefit of the organization. I’m forever grateful to the mentors who saw something salvageable in me and made me a leader with a passion to pass the lessons along.
Look around for the royalty in your organization. Be intentional about your leadership, and give them a chance to respond. I never knew how heavy the crown was until I laid it down.
Not long ago, I received a request for comment about employee engagement being at a record high. That seemed like an odd request, since almost everything I’ve read in recent memory was lamenting dismal engagement survey results.
Poking around some, I found that employee engagement soared to its highest level in five years – a whopping 37% last October – rebounding again in February 2017 to 36.7%, only to fall back to 33% at the end of August. In other words, it sucks. If there are any managers or leaders out there that think having two-thirds of your workforce disengaged, I’d love to get paid for what you’re not doing.
Thanks, Gallup, for keeping it real.
I’ve got the sitck for a minute.
I’d been the boss for about six months and decided that we needed a climate survey to get to what was below the surface. It hadn’t been too long since the folks had endured that kind of survey, but it was under the last commander who had been gone a couple of months before I arrived. I’d just spent six months balancing listening to people and trying to address their concerns with getting the mission done. The biggest issue from the new survey was – wait for it – I was the only one who could use my reserved parking space. Yep, that was it. Who knows who was used to using the space when the commander was gone, but I sure as hell wasn’t giving up the one perk a commander gets on an Air Force base.
But I was listening. It’s possible there were some additional non-base commander approved parking spaces painted around the building just for the fun of it… obviously without my approval.
Anyway, we spend way too much time and effort trying to measure engagement, not to mention the money we throw at employee engagement programs. Based on the almost flatline chart above, we’re spending a lot of money without much results. I’m convinced it’s because we’re letting the wrong people lead – and take the blame for – our unsuccessful engagement efforts.
News flash: Low employee engagement is NOT an HR problem. It’s a leadership problem.
I’m not knocking HR–far from it. But much like with leadership development efforts, HR takes its cue from senior leadership. If there’s just lip service and no involvement at the top, employee engagement efforts are doomed.
If your company is hiring consultants to find out why your employees aren’t engaged, you’re wasting your money. I’ll give it to you for free: your employees aren’t engaged because they don’t feel valued doing worthy work, and that’s a leadership issue. If your latest employee engagement program is aimed at the employees, you’re missing the whole point. Your employees aren’t engaged because their bosses aren’t engaging them. Focus your efforts on providing your managers and leaders with the skills and tools to better engage their people every day.
But, you say, what about that annual engagement survey we take and the mandatory engagement reporting we have to do? Doesn’t that count for something?
No. Most employees would love to tell you exactly how they feel about the workplace but aren’t going to if they don’t believe you a) are listening to them, and b) will do anything about it. That’s a leadership issue, too.
How do you know what makes them feel valued? Ask them. And don’t do it with surveys and suggestion boxes. Actually talk to them. Effective leaders know how to have meaningful, face-to-face conversations with their employees and are okay with getting feedback from the people who work for them. Ask them what makes them feel valued, and listen to what they say.
What about the worthy work part? How do you know what would make them feel like they’re engaged in worthy work… like their efforts are part of something bigger than their paycheck?
Right… ask them. And not just once a year at performance evaluation time. They’ll say anything they think you want to hear to get their evaluation over as quickly as possible, and chances are it won’t change what you’re doing anyway.
When we develop leaders, we help them improve communication and feedback effectiveness, empowerment and delegation, conflict management and trust building… all skills that involve engaging the people who work for and with them. In other words, if you’re employees aren’t engaged, they’re not being led.
So when it’s time for your company’s next annual employee engagement survey, how about suggesting spending less time measuring employee engagement and more time engaging employees?
