Thoughts, feelings, and motivations comprise an individual’s inner work life. Inner work life manifests in behaviors that matter at work – performance, citizenship, and withdrawal. Inner work life is driven by events at work – events that signify progress, events that support the work itself, and events that support the person doing the work.

Events that support the work itself are second only to the progress principle in their ability to affect the inner work life of folks in your organization. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer use the term catalyst to describe things that facilitate the completion of work and the term inhibitor to describe the absence or negative form of a catalyst.  It’s very important to keep in mind that “catalysts and inhibitors can have an immediate impact on inner work life, even before they could possibly affect the work itself.” (p. 102).

Catalysts and inhibitors are a direct product of an organization’s culture, which “is created largely by the words and actions of leaders, beginning with the organization’s founders.” (p. 108). The three main aspects of culture that shape specific catalyst and inhibitor events at work are (p. 109):

• Consideration for people and their ideas. Do managers at all levels honor the dignity of employees, value their ideas, and serve as examples of civil discourse?
• Coordination. Are systems and procedures (e.g. performance evaluation) designed to facilitate coordination or competition between individuals and groups?
• Communication. Open, honest, and respectful communication is perhaps the most powerful force for sustaining progress, coordinating work, establishing trust, and helping people understand that what they think and do matters.

One of my favorite sayings from Bob Sutton is “the law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people.” The most effective way to change the culture of any organization is to change its systems, the way it works. The first and most important change must occur between your ears – a discontinuous change in thinking about your role as a leader and your relationships with your constituents.

Change the way you think, and you will change the way you behave. Change the way you behave, and you will change the way others think and feel about you and ultimately how they behave toward you. Change the way you and your people relate with each other, and you can partner with each other to fix the crappy systems. Continually fix the crappy systems, and you can begin to affect positive change in the culture of your organization.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I’m off to day two of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit that I am attending via satellite broadcast at Grace Church in Reno. Day one set a high bar, with speakers like Seth Godin, Len Schlesinger, Brenda Salter McNeil, Steven Furtick, Bill Hybels and the amazing Cory Booker. I can honestly say its one of the best events I’ve ever attended and has far exceeded my expectations.

On my way in, I’m going to stop and buy a cup of Starbuck’s coffee because Bill Hybels asked everyone attending the conference to do so.  Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, was scheduled to speak at the conference today, but he canceled because of a petition signed by about 700 people protesting his decision to speak at this Christian church.  In his extremely gracious response, Bill Hybels said he was going to try to meet with the group protesting Schultz’s appearance so he could better understand their grievance, and he asked us all to buy a cup of Starbuck’s coffee and send Howard Schultz a note of encouragement.

Folks, that’s gracious leadership.

No one could ever accuse Howard Schultz of being a coward. His record speaks for itself; however, I do think he made the wrong decision in this case, one that reflects a lack of integrity, courage and foresight. But you know what, we all make decisions that others disagree with. When you are the CEO of a global company, it just comes with the turf. Good people sometimes make bad decisions.

I will keep drinking Starbuck’s coffee because I like it, I think they treat their people well, and their people usually treat me well when I visit. But I will think of both Bill Hybels and Howard Schultz differently from now on.

I’m also going to go buy one of Patrick Lencioni’s books this weekend, because he is stepping in at the last minute to replace Howard Schultz on the schedule today.

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There is a difference between employees not speaking up at work because they don’t have anything to say about a specific issue and not speaking up because they fear the consequences of expressing their ideas. Managerial behavior can signal employees that it is unwise to speak up. But even when managers hold positive beliefs about the value of employee voice that manifest in encouraging behavior towards employees, some employees will still be reticent to share information they believe is risky.

The Academy of Management Journal recently published an extremely well done study by James Detert and Amy Edmondson (full citation below) that examined employee taken-for-granted beliefs about when and why speaking up at work is risky or inappropriate.  The authors found that “sometimes unwillingness to speak up is not experienced as intense, discrete fear but rather as a sense of inappropriateness; voice seems risky because it seems wrong or out of place.” (p. 481).

Through a series of four separate studies, they identified the following five beliefs employees can hold about authority figures that can cause them to exhibit self-protective silence:

1.     Negative career consequences of voice: e.g. if you want advancement opportunities in today’s world, you have to be careful about pointing out needs for improvement to those in charge

2.     Don’t embarrass the boss in public: e.g. you should always pass your ideas for improvement by the boss in private first, before you speak up publicly at work.

3.     Don’t bypass the boss upward: e.g. loyalty to your boss means you don’t speak up about problems in front of his or her boss.

4.     Need solid data or solutions (to speak up): e.g. unless you have clear solutions, you shouldn’t speak up about problems.

5.     Presumed target identification: e.g. it is not good to question the way things are done because those who have developed the routines are likely to take it personally.

This research is important because it shows that the boss is not always to blame for organizational silence. Individuals arrive at work with a set of implicit theories about work and authority figures that they learned via past direct and vicarious experiences. The authors conclude “managers appear saddled not only by their own actual behaviors inhibiting voice but also by subordinate beliefs about managers.” (p. 484).

If you want employee voice to become an operational priority, you are going to have to make changes to your selection, training, evaluation, reward, and promotion systems. My advice is to make employee voice an expected, measured, and rewarded behavior. Hire employees that can demonstrate a proven record of coming forward with specific suggestions and solutions at their previous jobs. Never promote to a position of management an employee that in addition to mastering the performance expectations of their assigned job did not also attempt to partner with managers to improve that job.

If you discover you have a manager that stifles employee voice, help them with training but don’t promote them again until they demonstrate that they understand how to encourage employee voice. If you discover you’ve hired an employee with strong self-protective beliefs about the safety of silence, help them engage in behavior at work that directly and specifically challenges those beliefs; otherwise, “it is unlikely that they will revise, set aside, or develop new implicit theories related to speaking up.” (p. 465).

Do you have any suggestions? Please share them in the comment section below!

Full citation: Detert, J.R. & Edmondson, A.C. (2011). Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-For-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work. Academy of Management Journal, 54 (3): 461-488.

Photo credit

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Organizational silence is a shared belief among employees that speaking up is unwise. Employees have learned that when they share information about issues or problems, the organization reaps all the benefits while they bear the costs.

One of the causes of silence at work is the behavior of managers. Through the things they say and do, managers send signals that employees interpret as reasons to avoid or even fear speaking up. The silencing behavior of managers is rooted in beliefs they hold about employees and the nature of management. Elizabeth Morrison and Frances Milliken identify three of these unstated beliefs managers hold that can lead to silence:

1.     Employees are self-interested and untrustworthy

2.     Top management, not employees, always knows best about issues of organizational importance.

3.     Unity, agreement, and consensus are signs of organizational health, while disagreement and dissent should be avoided

These beliefs manifest in behaviors and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If managers believe that employees are self-interested and untrustworthy, managers will either intentionally or unintentionally act in ways that discourage employees from coming to them with sensitive information. Employees who feel shut out of the decision making process and unable to express their views may respond by becoming less trusting of their managers and less committed to the organization. Managers then say to themselves and each other “see, we were right about those folks.”

If you are self-interested and untrustworthy, it’s likely you hold these beliefs about others. It’s also highly unlikely that you can admit to yourself and others that you are a jerk.

If you never approach your boss with bad news, I’d bet your employees rarely approach you with bad news. It’s impossible to encourage in others behaviors you don’t practice. You might have good open door rhetoric, but your employees know the truth about your intentions toward them and have unfortunately adjusted their behavior to conform to your real expectations.

The behavior you observe in your employees is often as much a statement about you as it is about them. If you don’t like what you see your employees doing, first look in the mirror. It’s not easy to identify and confront your unstated beliefs, but learning to continually improve yourself is the best thing you can do to improve the performance of your people and your business.

photo credit

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Social objects are most trusted when they are shared by friends. If you write a blog post with relevant content, I can pick up that blog post and share it in my social networks. When my friends see that I have put my brand on your brand, they are much more likely to trust your content than if they had found it via one of your outbound marketing techniques.

Conversation around your social object can occur either on your site where the object was created, or on my site where the social object was shared. My friends and I can talk with you and with each other about it’s content. When you and your employees listen and respond to the conversation, your engagement influences the way we think about and are motivated to behave toward you, your employees, and your business.

You can’t recommend yourself to my friends, only I can do that. Unless you create the social object, you don’t create the opportunity for me to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. You are not entitled to my recommendation, you have to earn it with remarkable content that consistently demonstrates that you understand issues that matter to us and you care more about helping and engaging than selling.

When a friend shares your social object with me, it’s a signal; when you blast out a sales message, it’s often just noise. My purchasing decisions are increasingly based on signals that I’ve sourced from friends in my online networks, and I’m getting better at filtering out your outbound marketing noise.

Please take the time to watch this very brief clip from my recent presentation on social business to the Reno-Tahoe American Marketing Association. After you’ve viewed it, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I rarely make a major purchasing decision anymore without first sourcing it in my social networks. Even minor decisions like where to eat sushi for lunch are made better when I first check with friends on Facebook. Social business sourcing helps me make better decisions, which saves me time and money.

What role did traditional marketing play in my decision to follow my friends’ advice and eat lunch at Hiroba Sushi last week? I think very little. The only reason people in my network recommended this place in response to my direct inquiry was they had eaten there themselves and knew the business was a winner. It was operational excellence, not saavy marketing, which led me to spend $48 for lunch that day.

When asked, my friends volunteered to publically put their brand on Hiroba’s brand and trusted that Hiroba would not disappoint. My social network connections did not put their faith in Hiroba, because faith is a belief in something you have not seen. Trust, on the other hand, is a prediction based on experience, and they all knew from personal experience that I too would probably enjoy Hiroba as much as they did.

They were right, and I was glad I asked.

People talk about your business, which is nothing new. What is new is the way they talk about you and your business, and the speed with which what they say about you can reach many more people than ever before and impact your revenue stream. For years I taught the marketing principle that a dissatisfied customer would likely tell around 20 people about the bad experience. Now, a pissed off customer can quickly and easily share their bad experience with thousands via their connected web of social networks.

The new realities of social business make the basics of business excellence more important than ever before. If you have not designed a system to consistently impress your employees and enable them to in turn consistently impress your customers, you are making a serious strategic mistake.

The most important social business metrics are not things like fans, followers, reach, likes or leads. The most important metrics for businesses that want to fully leverage the strategic potential of social business are employee and customer satisfaction. What they say about you in their increasingly connected social networks is shareable and trusted, and that makes it more important than anything you will ever say about yourself. If you’ve made their satisfaction merely an act of faith, you better be prepared for social business hell.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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In contractual relationships, our primary concern is holding others accountable for high standards of performance. Effective contractual relationships require what we deal with others in good faith and that we assume full responsibility for performing our part of the arrangement. That is absolutely essential, but the normative trust and commitment of contractual relationships will never be enough to establish a high performance work environment.

Research has shown that only affective trust and commitment between leaders and followers produces the psychological safety requisite for people to apply the full potential of their heads, hands, and hearts to work. Building on a solid foundation of fair contractual relationships for everyone, high performance leadership moves to establish covenantal relationships with as many employees as possible.

Covenant promises require a different kind of trust, commitment, and leadership intimacy than do contracts.  Contracts are the currency of bosses and subordinates; covenants the currency of partners. Interdependent partners in covenant relationship commit to enabling each other to keep promises established to achieve the vision, values, goals, and daily behaviors consonant with their shared purpose.

Unless and until you are willing to hold yourself accountable for performing your own job with distinction, walking the talk your employees value, and genuinely caring for those you’ve been given the privilege to lead, you will never master covenant leadership. You are not entitled to partnership; you earn partnership by first providing it to others.

“How can I help?” may be the single most important question you can learn to ask as a leader.

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I received my copy of Jeremie Kubicek’s book “Leadership is dead: How influence is reviving it,” free from his publicist. Let me first say that the book never fully delivers on its catchy title. While I believe that leadership might be unwell, it is certainly not dead. And while I love how Jeremie describes influence, it’s impossible to show that influence is reviving leadership because influence has been and will always be the heart of leadership.

I’m going to recommend this book because I love the message, but I have to tell you honestly that I did not enjoy reading it. I’ve heard this message before, so I found it distracting that the author never credited sources that have previously written similar things. For example, his first two of seven actions to make leadership come alive are 1) give trust to become trustworthy, and 2) be credible. James Kouzes and Barry Posner emphasized the importance of trust and credibility a long time ago.

The core of Jeremie’s message can be summed up in his list of attributes that define a true influence leader (p. 77):

• leads with vision
• leads from the head and the heart
• practices humility and service to others (let’s go of status and self-preservation)
• influences rather than pushes or demands
• invests in the success of others first
• rises above unethical practices, pressure, and petty politics
• attracts a diverse and dedicated team of future leaders
• delivers more than expected
• wields the tools of forgiveness, gratitude, and laughter
• reaches out to make the last first

Jeremie goes on to say:

Leadership is influence. Influence is power. How that power is used comes from the intent of the leader, from the motives of the heart (p.78).

I love that message, even though it’s very familiar to me and many others. If this message is either new to you or you’re not entirely sold on it, then you will be very well served to get your hands on this book and consider it very carefully.  If you’ve seen it before and are already sold, then you should probably save your money.

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Leadership in its fullest expression is relational. Strong relationships are characterized by shared purpose, affective commitment, trust, and interdependence.

Out of necessity, most of our relationships at work are overwhelmingly contractual. Strong systemic drivers of behavior – e.g. selection, training, goal-setting, performance appraisal, and rewards – are both enabled and constrained by their agency. Contractual relationships assume things will go as planned, pressure others to action, and encourage recourse when things go wrong. Contractual relationships foster dependency and constrain intimacy.

Covenant relationships are forged with purposeful promises. All parties in the covenant are motivated to keep their promises not only because they share passion for a cause, but also because they deeply value and appreciate the interdependent posture of the covenant. When promises are strained, covenant encourages restoration instead of recourse. According to Max Depree:

Covenant relationships are open to influence. They fill deep needs and they enable work to have meaning and to be fulfilling. Covenantal relationships reflect unity and grace and poise. They are an expression of the sacred nature of relationships. Covenantal relationships enable corporations to be hospitable to the unusual person and unusual ideas. Covenantal relationships tolerate risk and forgive errors. (p.60).

Interdependent partners each assume full responsibility first for their own performance, then for challenging assumptions and continually improving the systems that define the performance culture of the organization. Covenantal relationships inspire intimacy at work.

What’s keeping you from leading others with relationships characterized more by interdependent covenants and less by contracts? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Last night the #leadfromwithin community impressed the heck out of Lolly Daskal and I as we presented them with 10 questions on trust. Lolly produced a transcript of the chat that was 144 pages long! There is no way I can cover all 144 pages, or give credit to every incredible person that participated, but I want to share with you some of the highlights to the first two questions.

Question 1: What does it mean to trust others?

@heart_path to trust others means to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to believe they are sharing their authentic selves with you

@sweetieberry to trust others means to believe their discipline and belief in honesty are shared

@lollydaskal trust is the fundamental building block for any relationship; it is the glue that holds any relationship together

@stanbridge1 trust is the opposite of certainty; trusting another is all the things you can’t be certain of but have faith in anyway

@mariepayton I trust in those that are looking out for my interests as well as theirs

@stevelaswell trust means you allow others to be responsible

@katenasser trust delivers you from a solo life of security to an enriched life of risk

@edwardcolozzi trust is the greatest gift, along with love, one shares with another person

@worksmarta trust must be earned

@leadershipfreak trust is confidence in others based on past performance and present character

@toloveitall trust others? Means being able to show vulnerability

@ebonitruss trusting others means you put yourself out there even when you are unsure of the consequences

@versalytics trust is believing that someone will act with your best intentions

Question 2: What does it mean to trust yourself?

@laurindab trusting self means I will find a way to succeed even if I initially fail

@burgessct it means you must be consistent in word and deed

@juanortiztweets trusting yourself is to put all your fears in a box, go out, and do what needs to be done

@jkwleadership trusting yourself is to allow yourself to fail because you know you can get up again

@earthliz trusting yourself allows you to be in the moment without having to second guess your priorities

@womanonajourney knowing that you will do the right things at the right time

@taramarkus trusting yourself is to understand your weaknesses and use your strengths to overcome so that all of you works in harmony

@katenasser trusting yourself means stepping out even when others say stay in line

@simon_gb to have faith in your abilities to succeed

@lollydaskal it means walking in obedience to my inner voice even when others think otherwise. Owning my choices!

@strategicmonk trusting myself means knowing myself better than I know my expectations and criticisms of myself

@jimweible trusting yourself is knowing that your inner voice is in tune with your outer self

@careerspan it is the core belief that your “gut” instinct is not extinct

@growinggold to trust myself means that I know that I know

@jpgtx trusting myself means that I show others the same person I see in the mirror each morning

@lizsvos I trust myself when I listen to my heart

@eldiddulph trusting myself means courage to risk ideas, beliefs, love, not being accepted but plowing forward anyway

@john_paul trusting myself means knowing that I am not totally in control

@mjasmus you must be able to forgive yourself in order to trust yourself

@lollydaskal trusting yourself is being honest with yourself about your feelings and conflicts and obstacles

And that’s just the first two questions! I think you can see the richness of the conversation that takes place in the #leadfromwithin community. These conversations take place every Tuesday night at 8 pm Eastern time – you should join us sometime!