Respect is a gift we give ourselves by the way we treat others. Remarkable leaders never demand that others respect them and their position. Instead, remarkable leaders focus on their responsibility to behave in respectful ways towards others, especially those with less power and position.

Remarkable leaders owe it to themselves to engage with others respectfully, and the credit returns to them abundantly in the form of organizational effectiveness and individual growth and well-being.

In her wonderful book “Energize Your Workplace,” Jane Dutton says the following about respectful engagement:

When others engage us respectfully, they reflect an image that is positive and valued. They create a sense of social dignity that confirms our worth and even our sense of competence. In so doing, they help us create a secure basis for seeking out connection to others. Respectful engagement thus empowers and energizes us, creating a heightened sense of our capacity to act both in relation to other people and with respect to ourselves. By the same token, acts of disrespectful engagement reflect an image of a person who is of limited value and worth. Not only do they sap our self-confidence, they encourage us to withdraw and withhold, moving away from rather than connecting with other people. Respectful engagement creates high quality connection and high quality connection creates respectful engagement. It is a powerful virtuous cycle. (pp. 25-26).

How we treat others matters to them. Because it matters to them, it affects us and everything we hope to accomplish with our leadership.

Show me a leader that behaves as if how she/he treats others does not matter and I will show you a fool.

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Real Leaders Love Their Enemies

I am drinking a cup of latte from Peet’s coffee on campus as I write this follow-up.  Recall that I lamented about the vanishing cup of $.99 coffee at Peet’s before switching over to Starbucks, then I talked about how someone in management here on campus read my blog post and provided some impressive service recovery.

Today I went back to Peet’s for the first time to give them another chance. Much to my great surprise, the manager, Michelle, recognized me and introduced herself. We had a nice conversation about some of my assumptions about the $.99 cup of Joe.

Turns out I was probably wrong.

I assumed that Joe was Joe, since the customer sees no differential pricing on coffee based on the bean. My assumption was that Peet’s charged their stores the same price for a case of coffee regardless of the bean. Michelle told me that the case of coffee they sell for $.99 costs much less than other beans they carry. So it makes sense that when they run out of that bean they would discontinue the more affordable Joe.

I still don’t completely get it, but Michelle’s personal touch and the good coffee has me in a state of mind where for the time being, I really don’t care. I’m back as customer of Peet’s Coffee.

Give your customers a reason to find fault and they will. Impress them with great product and service and they won’t be as quick to notice your imperfections in their peripheral field of view.

In case you are wondering, the .$99 cup of coffee was on the menu today.

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My new article entitled “Learning to Brand” is now live on The Student Branding Blog. Borrowing a concept from Peter Senge, I suggest that the most successful personal branders will be those that can learn faster than their competitors.

BTW, in the video I am sitting on a tree stump that had some geothermal activity under it, which is why you see steam seem to rise out of nowhere.

Check it out!

It can be hell to be behind a paradigm shift instead of creating one.  Most people become paralyzed by the fear and uncertainty of seismic change. Others focus on predicting as much as possible before it happens in an attempt to react optimally. Very few learn to continually create the future they desire.

The parable of the boiled frog is a lesson of maladaptation to gradually building threats to survival. As Peter Senge describes in his classic book “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization“:

If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to scramble out. But if you place the frog in room temperature water, and don’t scare him, he’ll stay put. Now, if the pot sits on a heat source, and if you gradually turn up the temperature, something very interesting happens. As the temperature rises from 70 to 80 degrees F., the frog will do nothing. In fact, he will show every sign of enjoying himself. As the temperature gradually increases, the frog will become groggier and groggier, until he is unable to climb out of the pot. Though there is nothing restraining him, the frog will sit there and boil. Why? Because the frog’s internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival is geared to sudden changes in his environment, not to slow, gradual changes.” (p. 22).

Paradigms are shifting in almost every industry sector. In my industry, higher education, we are seeing change we never thought we would see. Last week, my university announced that because of massive state budge cuts, it would close it’s College of Agriculture and shut down several other degree programs. In the College of Business, we are being asked to eliminate a degree in Supply Chain Management and let go of three tenured professors.

In education, I think we face a simple choice. We can take the initiative and re-create the paradigm ourselves, or we can let others create the paradigm for us.

If we dig in our heals and resist, we will squander the greatest opportunity for generative change that most of us have ever seen. I’d rather lose a battle over the budget than the war for the next paradigm.

When the temperature of change rises in your industry – JUMP! Don’t sit there and boil with the rest of the stupid frogs. The only real restraints are between your ears.

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Leadership And Real Changes

There is a lot of buzz about Web 3.0, a term used to describe how the Web is predicted to evolve in the very near future.

Web 1.0 is informational. Businesses created websites to provide customers with information about products and services. These Web 1.0 websites are essentially electronic billboards; digital megaphones to blast to anyone landing on the site the superiority of the products and services for sale.

Web 2.0 is relational. Websites continue to provide information, but they include mechanisms that facilitate listening to and conversing with customers. These sites allow businesses to build trusting, respectful, and responsive relationships with customers. Instead of interrupting and spamming customers, Web 2.0 technology and process provides customers the ability to authorize businesses the permission to build relationships with them.

Web 3.0 is anticipatory. Ubiquitous, interconnected technologies learn the individual patterns and preferences of customers.  Because mobile technologies will allow businesses to know where we are, they can use their increasing knowledge of individual preferences to anticipate what we might need at any given moment and offer real-time suggestions on options to help us meet our needs.

For your business to survive and thrive, you will need to develop the competencies to serve your customers with a Web 3.0 mindset.

If you want your employees to be able to excel at learning and anticipating the needs of your customers, you are going to have learn and anticipate the needs of your employees. Leadership 1.0 is unable and unwilling to facilitate employee 3.0.

Your customers are changing. Your employees are changing. If YOU don’t learn to change your leadership style, you and your business are in trouble.

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La La Land

Enablement

The fist of bad management beats the satisfaction, commitment, and trust out of even the most resilient employees. Each of the five fingers of the fist symbolizes a different way that bad management does it’s dirty work.

1. Thumb: Discouragement. Employees are to be seen doing work, not heard challenging or suggesting improvements. Bureaucracy stifles creativity and punishment for failure ensures silence and homogeneity.

2. Index: Damnation. All organizational ills are blamed on those damn crappy employees. It’s much easier to blame and flame than it is to partner with employees to fix crappy systems.

3. Middle: Disregard. Employees need to know their place. Management runs the show, not employees, and there is nothing they can do about it. Employees should just be glad they even have a job.

4. Ring: Doubt. Employees are not to be trusted. Without a way to keep a close eye on them, they will take every opportunity you give them to lie, cheat, and steal.

5. Pinkie: Dependence. Management does all the thinking and makes all the important decisions. Fear is the best motivator and helps control employees who for whatever reason think they can make decisions and take action without management approval.

Do you work for a manager like this, that shakes her/his fists at employees? If so, why?

What’s your experience with the fist of bad management? Please comment and share your thoughts!

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The Stepford Organization

I got my annual performance evaluation today. Let me first say that I have a very high regard for both my supervisor and my Dean. The problem I am going to describe is with the evaluation system, not with my supervisor. The verbal feedback my supervisor gave me was all very fair, but the system used to produce the ratings is flawed. It is a system they did not design and have little control over.

I am rated in three categories: teaching, research, and service. In each category, I can receive a rating of outstanding, excellent, commendable, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory. There are no published benchmarks to describe in absolute terms what outstanding behavior looks like, and how that differs from excellent and commendable. The standards are subjective, relative, and there is variance both within and between rating periods.

In the service category, faculty are expected to perform the assignments given to them at the first of the year. I performed all my assigned committee duties in the college, then did extra service work in the community.

I was rated commendable.

Junior faculty (that’s me) are not expected to perform as much service as more senior faculty. We are simply given fewer service assignments until we make tenure. I agree with this philosophy, but it produces a negative effect on the performance evaluation that cannot be overcome. If you are dealt a commendable hand, how can you ever be expected to perform outstanding in this category? Exactly.

I give this example to highlight my point that the performance system, more than the individual’s behavior in the system, drives the distribution of evaluated outcomes. It’s even worse when the system is highly subjective and there is a forced distribution.

Performance evaluation is a charade.

A few weeks ago, Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com released the Best Companies for Leadership Study and Top 20 list.  I got a chance to ask John B. Larrere of Hay Group some questions about the study.  John is National Practice Leader for the Leadership and Talent practice of Hay Group. He works primarily with Executives and Executive Teams. He has a particular interest in international executive leadership.

1. Can you tell us a little about the design of your study? What kind of people responded to the survey, how were they contacted, and how did you use their responses to determine your results?

This year Hay Group opened the survey to all employees of an organization, to get a real sense of leadership across all levels of the organization. We looked not only at what organizations are doing to develop their leaders, but also the types of cultures they create to grow and sustain leadership over the long term. The study is truly global with a total of 1869 individuals from 1109 organizations and 98 countries completing a survey. As you can see from the below demographics, the study results apply to all organizations with response from all regions and sizes of organizations.

Regional distribution

Revenue distribution

Source: Hay Group/Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com, 2009 Best Companies for Leadership Study

2.     How should we expect that being picked as a top company for leadership translates into sustainable financial performance or superior customer experiences?

When we looked at how the Top 20 organizations compared to the S&P 500 in terms of shareholder returns, we see that the Top 20 outperform in both the short term and long term. Part of this performance is tied to leadership. The Best Companies for Leadership have a consistent focus on leadership development in both good and bad times. Prior to and in the past downturn, the Best Companies for Leadership continued to develop and train leaders, which allowed them to be much more resilient going into the downturn and provided them with a stronger cadre of leaders to help lead their organization out of the economic challenges. We also found that leaders who develop an environment that is not only engaging but also enabling not only inspire people to do their best but also provide what people need to enable them to attain the success that they have been very excited to deliver. For example, giving people “battlefield promotions” but the past hard times when accompanied by leadership development opportunities both inspired and enabled people to succeed. Our best companies continued to help their leaders develop in hard times and this helped the newest leaders more than ever.

3.     I notice that Wal-mart is on your list. Have you ever shopped at Wal-Mart? Based on your experience as a customer, would you have predicted this company would be an example of great leadership?

See my video Vodcast at http://www.haygroup.com/ww/Media/Details.aspx?ID=24306. Wal-Mart prospered because their strategic story, their brand story and their behaviors, in good times and bad, have been consistent. Their strategy has been one step ahead of their competitors in their sector and also made them a good alternative to consumers who would have been more likely to shop in a higher end store. Strategy is important but unless it is encapsulated in a memorable story it remains an untried solution. Wal-Mart has its own effective leadership culture that guides leadership behavior consistently but also turns strategy into action. Their leaders have made key marketing decisions because their key strategy is to provide “the good life” to all their customers regardless of income. So they have made forays into electronics, in light of the demise of big box electronics stores that have provided lower cost access to these products. It flows from the consistent story they tell one another and the marketplace.

4.   All of the companies on your list are large companies. What if anything can the small to medium sized business owner learn from your study?

While the companies on the top 20 list are large, organizations of any size can learn from this study. As you can see from the demographics of the study, input came from companies of all sizes. Small and medium sized businesses can focus on the following:

• Bottom up and top down, get your leadership involved in addressing strategic, company-wide issues. Simplify it all into a short number of Must Win Battles that tell the “story” of how your organization will win, how it will turn opportunity into reality and how it can parry-off threats and challenges.  Cf. Thomas Malnight, “Must Win Battles” (2006 Wharton School Publishing) that chronicles how Tom and I approached simplifying strategy into core factors around which leadership teams coalesce and bond.
• You may have had to put Talent Management on a back burner during the recession in a way some of the larger companies were able to avoid. Put it back in its rightful place ahead of the recovery, so you can position yourself for the opportunities that will come in the turn-around.  If you don’t have resources now for training, make use of strategic movement of people into roles that will develop them. Make sure you tell them what this opportunity can teach them, what they will learn, and what you expect them to be able to demonstrate as a result of this movement. The top leadership can spend more time in mentoring people whose jobs have changed markedly whether they have moved to a new position or stayed in their old position with much wider responsibilities.
• Use your culture as an asset. Your culture has the power to clarify the behavior necessary to successfully apply your strategy. Your story can show how the strategic behaviors you require flow from a set of common values. Wal-Mart did it; you can also, if your story is consistent, engaging and inclusive.
• Strategy, the study reveals, is more important than ever as we enter the recovery period. Top leadership needs to take time, individually, to reflect on opportunities and challenges, so that they each can enter into more productive discussions and agreements on strategy. Schedule your strategic time as if it were a recurring client meeting. Prework and pre-thought are necessary to make good contributions to this process. Do you have a process? Determine how you want the strategy process to work.  Who has primary responsibility for developing it? Who should contribute to it, even if they are not primary?  How? Where do you get strategic data, intelligence, market insights?  Do you have complementary skills involved developing strategy?   Strategy requires good conceptual thinking and good analytical thinking. These two skills rarely get exhibited by the same person. Make sure your team has these complementary assets.
• Create a culture of leadership that rivals a marketing culture, a sales culture, a manufacturing culture. Leaders who “do” too much rarely lead effectively. “Getting your hands dirty” is only effective on the margins.  If leaders are doing their associate’s jobs for them or are over-hyped sales people, R&D people, marketing people, your organization is running rudderless without leadership. A culture of leadership creates an environment which engages and excites AND also enables and empowers associates to succeed.

Thanks, John!