Performance Previews: Linking Each Other to Our Success

March 3, 2011

The current turmoil over union rights in Wisconsin as well as the overall economic challenges facing both public and private organizations should provide a springboard for altering the way we do business.

While I am not suggesting abolishing unions, I believe there is an opportunity for significant change in employee relations at this pivotal time. This change could have wide spread implications leading to increased fiscal accountability, higher productivity and greater employee engagement.

In a recent New York Times editorial titled, “Why Your Boss is Wrong About You,” Samuel Culbert argues that one way to do this is by doing away with performance reviews because they are entirely unfair. Performance reviews are too focused on pleasing the boss rather than achieving results, he says.

“They are an intimidating tool that makes employees too scared to speak their minds, lest their criticism come back to haunt them in their annual evaluations,” writes Culbert. “They almost guarantee that the owners — whether they be taxpayers or shareholders — will get less bang for their buck.”

Culbert is a professor in the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of “Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on What Really Matters.”

As I wrote in a previous post, performance reviews are all too often an HR necessity rather than an opportunity to improve performance and strengthen relationships between managers and employees. New methods such as Results Only Work Environment or ROWE can be helpful in holding the employee more responsible for achieving results.

Culbert suggests taking this ROWE methodology a bit further in what he sites as performance previews, which are a way to hold both boss and his subordinate accountable for setting goals and achieving results. A true partnership can then exist between supervisor and employee to reach goals that are based on shared interests and responsibility.

Once goals are established, the decision regarding how the work gets done can be made between the two people most responsible for it and independent from the organization. This relationship is based on mutual respect and can capitalize on the unique strengths and knowledge available rather than from some objective standard found in boilerplate review paperwork.

I once held a position where, despite my success in achieving the financial-based, project targets in the management by objectives (MBOs) agreed to in my employment agreement, I was not given my annual bonus because my supervisor decided I had achieved these only through his intervention. Though I disagreed with his assessment, I had little recourse.

What if instead we had worked as a team and his success was also determined by the achievement of these goals? Rather than he as my supervisor determining my compensation based on his own subjective interpretation of who did what and how the work got done, he judged this purely on results?

All too often in competitive workplace environments, there is too much office politics, jockeying for position, and silo mentality that is in the way of getting the work done. Performance previews may provide a viable alternative to performance reviews, especially if they lead to increased communication, teamwork and achieving the organization’s goals.

The current economic crisis provides us with a great opportunity to revamp the way we do business and implement a win-win solution such as performance previews.

I welcome comments on how your organization would benefit or suffer from such a change in the way to evaluate employees.

A Culture of Collaboration

December 18, 2010

In my last post I wrote about collaboration as one of the essential elements in order to thrive in the knowledge economy. Though most companies boast of their own collaborative workplace environment, all too often this is more of a public relations talking point rather than an internal employee reality.

Changing the corporate culture from one that is competitive to collaborative is a huge challenge. To be meaningful, it needs to be fully embraced and articulated by the entire management team, and implemented throughout all departments.

Back in the twentieth century, employees made themselves valuable based on what they knew. Today people make themselves valuable by seeking opportunities to work with others and tapping into their expertise. Content is jointly developed through participation. The content is fluid and leveraged to create opportunities with ongoing collaboration.

Knowledge-hoarding and the accompanying silo mentality that takes place in many large organizations blocks this collaboration. The end result is power struggles, a lack of cooperation, and lower productivity.

Lack of true collaboration can also diminish innovation as competition for resources can cripple efforts for new products.

In a New York Times editorial earlier this year, former Microsoft executive Dick Brass wrote that Microsoft has a “dysfunctional corporate culture where big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence.”

“Unlike other companies,” wrote Brass, “Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.”

Time will tell whether this year’s release of Windows Phone 7, Windows Azure and Kinect will nullify any of this.

John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, in a recent Newsweek interview explains how abandoning command-and-control leadership has enabled Cisco to innovate more quickly, using collaboration and teamwork.

“At Cisco we are moving to collaboration teams, groups coming together that represent sales, engineering, finance, legal, etc. And we’re training leaders to think across silos. We now do that with 70 different teams in the company.”

Chambers continues, “So we’ll have a sales leader go run engineering. A lawyer go run business development. A business development leader go run our consumer operations. We’re going to train a generalist group of leaders who know how to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that’s the future of leadership.”

In author Evan Rosen’s book, “The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy,” he explains how and why collaborative tools can motivate employees and drive business. What follows are what he considers the ten cultural elements present when collaboration is working.

  • Trust – To exchange ideas and create something with others, we must develop trust. This is a challenge, especially in competitive organizational cultures. Nevertheless, we must get over our fears and develop trust if we are to collaborate freely.
  • Sharing – Hoarding information prevents the free flow of ideas and therefore sabotages collaboration. Sharing what we know improves collective creation by an order of magnitude and therefore makes everybody more valuable.
  • Goals – Taking the time to agree on goals at the beginning of a collaborative project pays off exponentially by providing the impetus for shared creation.
  • Innovation – The desire to innovate fuels collaboration. In turn, collaboration enhances innovation. After all, why collaborate just to maintain the status quo?
  • Environment – The design of both physical space and virtual environments impacts innovation and collaboration.
  • Collaborative Chaos – While all people and organizations require some order, effective collaboration requires some degree of chaos. Collaborative chaos allows the unexpected to happen and generates rich returns.
  • Constructive Confrontation – Great collaboration requires exchanging viewpoints, and sometimes that means construction confrontation—expressing candor about ideas. Collaborators must confront each other so that they can hash out their differences and make their shared creation better.
  • Communication – Collaboration is inextricably linked with communication, both interpersonal and organizational.
  • Community – Without a sense of community, we often lack comfort and trust. Therefore, community must be present for effective collaboration to occur.
  • Value – The primary reason we collaborate is to create value—reducing cycle or product development time, creating a new market, solving problems faster, designing a more marketable product or service, or increasing sales.

For organizations to meet the competitive challenges in the external marketplace, they must change the internal corporate culture from competitive to collaborative. This is a radical change and it is one that is vital for sustained innovation and increased productivity.

5 Things Managers Should Say to Employees

November 17, 2010

With nearly ten percent unemployment, it may seem ludicrous that a manager needs to say anything nice to employees these days. But you might consider the upside of treating your people well in hard times as well as good times.

In an earlier post, I wrote about things an employee should say to his or her boss. This provoked some harsh feedback because many readers may have thought I was referring to an employer as opposed to an immediate supervisor or manager. The immediate supervisor is someone who very likely also has a boss and therefore knows what it’s like to be in your shoes.

Unfortunately, there is a great divide between what employees want versus what their bosses think they want. And this has been consistent for a long time.

A survey on the discrepancy between what employees want versus what managers think employees want was conducted in 1946 by Foreman Facts, from the Labor Relations Institute of NY. This study was replicated with similar results by Ken Kovach (1980); Valerie Wilson, Achievers International (1988); Bob Nelson, Blanchard Training & Development (1991); and Sheryl & Don Grimme, GHR Training Solutions (1997-2001).

What Employees Say They Want (in order)
1. Full appreciation for work done
2. Feeling ‘part’ of things
3. Sympathetic help on personal issues
4. Job security
5. Good wages
6. Interesting work
7. Promotion/growth opportunities
8. Personal loyalty to workers
9. Good working conditions
10. Tactful discipline

What Managers Think Employees Want (in order)
1. Good wages
2. Job security
3. Promotion/growth opportunities
4. Good working conditions
5. Interesting work
6. Personal loyalty to workers
7. Tactful discipline
8. Full appreciation for work done
9. Sympathetic help on personal issues
10. Feeling ‘part’ of things.

If you just look at the top three things that employees say they want from their managers, you can see that these are at the bottom of what managers think employees want.

As someone who has worked in both for-profit and non-profit organizations, it always amazed me how little businesses use praise in the way it is often used in non-profits. A genuine “thank you” or “nice job on that project” can truly make someone’s day and often make an employee feel more satisfied and productive in his or her job.

Managers often forget that what motivates them are the same things that motivate their people. Employees want to be recognized and appreciated. They want to be treated humanely. And they want to be integral to the organization. Bottom line: it’s not always about the money.

Here are five things a manager should say to employees:

  1. “How can I help?” Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard developed the Situational Leadership Model on the importance of providing a combination of direction and support depending on where the employee is at a given time and position. Ask your employees what they need from you to perform their best.
  2. “Great job on . . .” Use specificity to make your praise authentic and meaningful. Everyone craves appreciation and receiving it can be more powerful in motivating an employee than just about anything else.
  3. “You seem particularly happy/sad/irritated . . .” Insert something genuine here to show you are paying attention to feelings. Say it in a way that communicates you are concerned and then really listen for understanding.
  4. “I want your input on . . .” This can make an employee feel engaged and appreciated in the organization like nothing else. But don’t say it unless you mean it and will consider what they say.
  5. “Thank you.” These two words are never used enough in the workplace. Using them more often is not simply for common courtesy, but as a way of connecting and showing appreciation for a job well done.

Employees and managers are more stressed than ever, working faster and with fewer resources. And lots of managers mistakenly think they are too busy to give praise, show appreciation, or truly connect with their employees.

But the best managers—ones who are able to effectively direct and support employees, recognize and appreciate them when appropriate, and remain sensitive to their emotional needs—are likely to get the most out of their people and thereby increase their own value to the organization.

What about you? Does this ring true for you who manage other people? As an employee, would you be more satisfied, motivated, and productive if you heard these things from your boss?

Should Fun be Mandated at Work?

September 29, 2010

Fun activities in the workplace can often improve employee engagement. When these are mandated or poorly concocted, however, the fun can actually be counterproductive and reduce overall morale.

Some companies have used fun activities as a way to recruit new employees. It is used to increase customer engagement and even to help leverage social media opportunities. But is this fun really effective if it is mandated rather than grown more spontaneously?

Some examples of the fun activities I’m speaking of include:

  • TD Bank, the American arm of Canada’s Toronto Dominion, has a “Wow!” department that sends out teams in costumes to “surprise and delight” successful workers.
  • Google offers employees volleyball courts, roller hockey and bicycle paths to encourage hanging out longer in the workplace.
  • The London branch of Red Bull recently installed a slide in its office.
  • Acclaris, an IT company, has a “chief fun officer.”
  • Twitter claims one of its core values as creating “fun and a little weirdness.”
  • Zappos encourages workers to form noisy conga lines and then single out an individual colleague for praise, whereupon the person must wear a silly hat for a week.

What is it about fun that makes it necessary for employers to create it for us? Is this due to much of the younger workforce having had so many structured fun activities as children: heavily scheduled playdates by helicopter mothers, overly supervised slumber parties, too little downtime between extracurricular activities?

Encouraging employees to have fun while at work is all well and good, but this shouldn’t be a requirement. And what that fun looks like should not be decided by public relations or human resources departments in isolation of rank and file employees.

There are many ways employees can find more joy in their work. The most basic are not so much fun and games, as they are simply more supportive of the workers.

Fostering an environment where people feel empowered to do their best work should be executed long before efforts on creating fun. These can include such sensible things as:

Safe Environment – Ensure that every employee feels physically and emotionally safe to execute his or her job function. If employees are more concerned about their personal safety, they are not going to be able to enjoy any fun activities.

Open Communication – Provide the opportunity for every employee to feel free to speak with others throughout the organization. Keep an open door policy so that all ideas and concerns—both positive and not so positive can be heard.

Meaningful Values – Netflix includes nine behaviors and skills that they value in all employees: judgment, communication, impact, curiosity, innovation, courage, passion, honesty, selflessness. Working around people that embody these nine values would trump all fun activities for me.

Team Building – Provide opportunities where people can bond on topics outside the work they do. This can often be loads of fun with extremely powerful benefit of building trust and teamwork.

Advancement Opportunities – Ensure there is a career path for every employee so that expectations can be met and incentives exist to encourage moving up in the organization.

Flex Time – Perhaps the most fun employees can have is in first ensuring that their personal lives and families are taken into consideration. This could ultimately mean that an employee does not want to have fun at work if it means additional time away from his or her family.

These things will certainly help employees feel more joy in the workplace, which can result in higher employee engagement. They are also likely to improve productivity and that’s the kind of fun we could all use in this economy.

The Value of 360-Degree Feedback

August 4, 2010

Like most employee evaluation programs, the 360-degree feedback process can be effective or ineffective depending on the guidelines, training and implementation accompanying it.

Feedback in this process is typically provided by subordinates, peers and supervisors. It also includes a self-assessment and may include feedback from customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Results can be effectively used by the person receiving the feedback to seek training and development for improvement if necessary.

However, there is some controversy regarding whether 360-degree feedback improves employee performance, and it has even been suggested that it may actually decrease shareholder value.

A 2001 Watson Wyatt study found that 360-degree feedback was one of the factors associated with a 10.6 percent decrease in market value of an organization. The study notes that while nothing is inherently wrong with these practices, many organizations implement them in misguided ways.

And a study on the patterns of 360-degree feedback rater accuracy shows that the length of time the rater has known the person being rated has the most significant effect on the accuracy of a 360-degree review. According to the study, the most accurate ratings come from knowing the person long enough to get past first impressions (one to three years), but not so long as to begin to generalize favorably (more than five years).

Organizations having success with 360-degree feedback processes report:

  • Organizational climate fosters individual growth
  • Criticisms are seen as opportunities for improvement
  • Assurance that feedback will be kept confidential
  • Development of feedback tool based on organizational goals and values
  • Feedback tool includes area for comments
  • Brief workers, evaluators and supervisors about purpose, uses of data and methods of survey prior to distribution of tool
  • Train workers in appropriate methods to give and receive feedback
  • Support feedback with back-up services or customized coaching

Organizations using 360-degree feedback without first providing the foundation for success can have negative consequences such as:

  • Feedback too often tied to merit pay or promotions
  • Comments are traced to individuals causing resentment between workers
  • Feedback not linked to organizational goals or values
  • Use of the feedback tool as a stand alone without follow-up
  • Poor implementation of tool negatively affects motivation
  • Excessive number of surveys mean raters provide few tangible results

When a 360-degree feedback process is not properly implemented it can seriously derail its effectiveness. Like any training or development program, this process requires guidelines and oversight to ensure it is implemented properly and fairly throughout the organization.

Since 360-degree feedback processes are typically anonymous, people receiving feedback have no recourse if they want to further understand the feedback. They have no one to ask for clarification of unclear comments or more information about particular ratings and their basis.

Too often the 360-degree feedback process is problem-focused rather than solution-focused. By focusing on the employee’s weaknesses there is less of an opportunity to build on the employee’s strengths. And great leaders are those who build upon employee strengths rather than on their weaknesses.

The best 360-degree feedback provides insight about the skills and behaviors desired to meet the mission, vision and goals of the organization. It enables each individual to understand how his or her effectiveness as an employee is viewed by others. The feedback is based on behaviors that other employees can see. And the process includes a follow-up plan or coaching in order to improve.

As with any performance feedback process, it can be a profoundly supportive, organization-affirming method for promoting employee growth and development. Or the process can reduce morale and motivation, and make things much worse for the individual and the entire organization.

Six Tips for Better Listening

July 28, 2010

Most of us take for granted or don’t really think about our ability to listen well, and few of us are very good at it. Ironically, I suspect many of us believe we are actually pretty good listeners while other people we know are not.

All of us could improve our ability to listen better and this could make a huge difference in improving both our personal lives as well as our work lives.

As I’ve written about in previous posts, Turn Signals and Talk Signals and 5 Tips for Workplace Communication, effective workplace communication is extremely important for a healthy organization.

There are basically four communication skills: (1) reading, (2) writing, (3) speaking, and (4) listening. The concentration of most communication training throughout our lives is, for the most part, in this particular order. In the workplace, however, one could argue that the order should be reversed based on the amount of time used in each of these areas.

Listening and speaking are much more widely used and valuable capabilities in the workplace than reading and writing. Sadly, listening skills get more lip service than actual attention by both the employee and employer.

It’s not very often where we see a job posting that requires “great listening skills.” Nevertheless, this should be a requirement and one that should be given a lot more attention and respect.

Research in 1971 by Albert Mehrabian determined that there are three elements of face-to-face communication: words (verbal), tone of voice (vocal) and body language (visual).

According to Mehradbian, these verbal, vocal and visual elements account differently for our liking of the speaker of the message. Words account for a mere 7%, tone of voice 38%, and body language a full 55% of this liking. And our liking of the speaker can greatly affect our ability to trust and continue following the message being conveyed.

Furthermore, nonverbal elements (including feelings and attitudes) are particularly important, especially if they are incongruent with the words. If words and body language disagree, we tend to believe the body language.

Understanding how these nonverbal elements can affect our ability to understand and trust a message is vital to effective communication.

Being on the receiving end of a conversation means more than simply preparing for when it is your turn to speak. In order to really understand a message being presented, you need to actively listen with all your senses. You need to stay present and fully tune in to understand.

Here are Six Tips for Better Listening:

  1. Don’t interrupt the speaker until he or she has finished. This sounds so obvious, yet it is amazing how often we talk over others. It’s not only rude, it can also cripple true communication. There is perhaps no greater gift you can give to another person than by paying attention and let them know they are being heard.
  2. Focus on what the speaker is saying both verbally and nonverbally. Listen to each and every word the speaker is saying instead of preparing for your response. Watch for body language that is congruent or in contrast to what is being said. Concentrate on the speaker’s tone of voice, eye contact, facial expressions and feelings to aid your understanding of the message.
  3. Use active listening skills to demonstrate your attentiveness. Nonverbal cues such as maintaining eye contact, nodding and leaning forward all indicate you are paying attention. In addition, you can say things such as “I see” and “uh-huh” if the information you are hearing is clear.
  4. Be curious and not defensive. Sometimes we are hearing things we don’t agree with or are offended by and this is when it is hard to avoid becoming defensive and stop listening. Recognize when you are triggered by this and then try to stay calm and present so that you can continue to hear the entire message before responding. Keep an open mind and seek to fully understand the speaker’s perspective.
  5. Put aside your judgment in order to fully understand. Fact is, we can all absorb and process words spoken by other people much faster than they can verbalize the information. This leaves lots of time for us to analyze, evaluate and anticipate the speaker’s thoughts. This should be avoided as the ability to truly listen and reserve judgment is crucial for all ideas to be given full consideration.
  6. Use paraphrase to aid understanding and show you care. You can use a variation on “What I hear you saying is . . .” in order to reflect on what the speaker has said. The goal of paraphrasing is to 1) ensure you are clear about what has been said, and 2) let the speaker know that you care about what he or she is communicating. Both are equally important in communication.

When you are truly listening to someone, you not only hear the words but are fully paying attention. When you pay attention, you do more than simply take in facts and information; you also convey how seriously you consider the thoughts and feelings of the speaker and this helps build rapport and trust like nothing else.

These six tips will help you to become a better listener and this will pay dividends in both your personal and work life.

5 Tips for Workplace Communication

June 9, 2010

When listing one’s strengths during an interview or on a resume, most of us include “excellent communication skills” because we know this is valuable to employers. But how many of us are really capable of communicating effectively? For that matter, how many employers are excellent communicators?

I studied journalism in college, worked as a freelance writer for a while, and published some short fiction. Nevertheless, I still find writing to be one of the most challenging things I do.

At times I also find it difficult to speak effectively with clients, friends and my own family members. So much can be misinterpreted or misunderstood due to a lack of clarity when I am talking or not being careful enough when I am listening.

Ineffective communication skills in an organization can dramatically impact the bottom line. In fact, according to research by Watson Wyatt, Gallup Consulting and Towers Perrin, these costs can include:

  • increased employee turnover
  • increased absenteeism
  • dissatisfied customers from poor customer service
  • higher product defect rates
  • lack of focus on business objectives
  • stifled innovation

No wonder communication skills are so valued in the workplace. Whether it is the need to carefully compose an email, raise a sensitive issue in a staff meeting, or discuss poor performance with an employee, making our messages succinct and clear can dramatically help an organization run more effectively.

So much can be lost in translation—the coding and encoding that is done between sender and receiver. Jargon exists in every industry and this can often impede clear understanding. Acronyms enable quicker delivery, yet they also make deciphering a challenge for those who are unfamiliar with them. And do emoticons really aid our written information?

The ability to clearly convey our intention and message is extremely important at work. Just as important, yet rarely emphasized, is our ability to carefully listen to what is spoken and what is unsaid yet conveyed through body language. It is this combination of both clearly conveying and accurately receiving that makes up effective communication.

Here are five tips to improve communication in your workplace:

Be specific and clear. Get to the point regardless of whether you are speaking or writing. Don’t ramble or include needless details. If you’re giving instructions or issuing a directive, take special care to be accurate and precise.

Establish true dialogue. Encourage your listener to ask clarifying questions or to follow up to aid their understanding. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know an answer, and be sure to get back to them with the correct answer when you do know.

Carefully read and listen. So much can be read between the lines of what is spoken or written based on the tone or body language associated with a message. Therefore, when on the receiving end, it is important to take into account the overall context of the message and be on the lookout for a disconnect between words and subject matter.

Stay positive. Petty or passive-aggressive sniping should not be tolerated. Even the harshest feedback can and should be delivered in a positive, supportive, team-centric manner. Focus on behavior or performance and not character. When on the receiving end, it is equally important to avoid getting triggered by difficult messages.

Make a habit of on-the-spot communication. Nothing can be more destructive than waiting to deliver significant feedback, praise, criticism or complaints. If you’ve got something important to convey, don’t put it off until the next meeting or the next annual review. Make on-the-spot communication a priority.

Following these five tips in your workplace can take time and self-discipline to master, but they can help dramatically improve overall communication. And improving this so-called soft skill can deliver hard bottom line results.

Mark Craemer      www.craemerconsulting.com

6 Tips for Employee Motivation

May 20, 2010

Despite the preponderance of best-selling books on dieting, smoking cessation and breaking other addictions, the truth about all motivation is that it is not about techniques, but about personal will. True motivation comes from deciding you are ready to take responsibility for managing yourself and doing something about it.

Similarly, in the work environment, motivating employees cannot come from management techniques, but from the employees themselves.

So the question should not be how can you motivate your employees, but how can you create the conditions where employees will motivate themselves? The answer is to foster an environment that enables them to assume responsibility and provide them with choice.

But let’s back up a bit. The age-old rewards or ultimatums for obtaining desired behavior has limitations. No matter whether it is in trying to get your six-year-old to practice the piano or seeking to make an employee more productive, carrot and stick approaches have proven not to be effective over the long run.

Psychologist Harry Harlow, in his pioneering work with rhesus monkeys, used the term “intrinsic motivation” to explain why monkeys solved problems without a tangible reward at stake. In the same way, he theorized that all children are intrinsically motivated to learn. As human beings, we are curious creatures and pursue knowledge and problem-solving out of our own pleasure in doing so.

Somehow many of us lose our intrinsic motivation by choosing career paths that are not aligned with who we are. Following a line of work based on others’ expectations or based on high financial rewards can backfire in providing us with a satisfying life. Money has, in fact, been demonstrated to actually undermine intrinsic motivation.

All of us need to take responsibility for our intrinsic motivation—both in our personal lives as well as our work lives. The motivation we have for doing anything is ultimately linked to this personal responsibility.

Author Ken Blanchard, in the “The One Minute Manager” series of books, talks about the need for every employee to determine whether direction and/or support is necessary and then make this clearly known to his or her boss. Only in this way, can a boss fully understand what is required to help the employee succeed. This is the employee’s responsibility and a key component to motivation in the workplace.

Self-motivation is at the heart of all responsibility, creativity, healthy behavior, and lasting change, according to psychologist Edward L. Deci.

In his book, “Why We Do What We Do: The Dynamics of Personal Autonomy,” Deci suggests that for intrinsic motivation to succeed in the workplace, it comes down to providing autonomy in place of control. A controlling atmosphere means employees will feel stifled and lack motivation to produce optimally. On the other hand, by giving an employee the choice on how to do his or her job, intrinsic motivation is more likely to occur.

As a manager, this requires taking an autonomy supportive position, which is a personal orientation you can choose to take toward other people, especially those in a one-down position. An example of a one-down position could be between a manager and employee or between a parent and child.

An autonomy supportive position requires being able to take another person’s perspective. You need to be able to grasp what it is like to be your employee, in your company, this particular community and this industry. This is a skill to be learned and it can require not only time, but also self-discipline to master.

Here are six tips to keep in mind to foster a favorable environment for employee motivation:

  1. Demand personal responsibility. Make each employee accountable in their respective roles and expect them to communicate what is necessary to succeed.
  2. Provide choice. Set objectives and let the employee decide how and what to do in order to reach these objectives.
  3. Set autonomy-supportive limits. Ensure each employee understands why something is important and the parameters around it.
  4. Set goals and evaluate performance. This helps maintain motivation because people behave when they expect they can attain goals.
  5. Recognize and award everyone. Rather than pit individuals and workgroups against each other in a competition, recognize each group or individual for their most important accomplishment or improvement.
  6. Overcome obstacles. Controlling personalities and lack of skills can be obstacles to autonomy-supportive behavior. Managers may require skills training and need to also see autonomy-supportive behavior coming from above.

Research by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci found that autonomy supportive managers have workers who were more trusting of the corporation, less concerned about pay and benefits, and displayed higher level of satisfaction and morale.

Further research found that people who are autonomy-oriented have higher self-esteem and are more self-actualized. People high on the autonomy orientation have more positive mental health and report more satisfied with their interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, through their behavior and expectations, people can influence their environments to provide them with more of what they need.

Employees need to feel competent and autonomous for intrinsic motivation to be maintained. And it is important to remember that it is only their perception of competence and autonomy that matters for intrinsic motivation.

This combination of employee responsibility and employer choice enables a healthy environment where intrinsic motivation can foster. And intrinsic motivation is the key to employee motivation.

Mark Craemer            www.craemerconsulting.com

Motivating Employees in the 21st Century

April 5, 2010

Forget all the things you may currently believe about motivating employees. Cash incentives to stimulate productivity may work in the short term, but are ultimately not sustainable. Threats are also short lived because employee resentment brings about ill will and this is counterproductive in the long run.

Such carrot and stick approaches for improving performance simply are no longer effective and it’s time organizations move to a more radical approach.

In Daniel Pink’s insightful book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” he explores the question of what motivates people to do innovative work. Based on more than thirty years of research in behavioral science, he provides compelling evidence showing that monetary rewards can actually hinder creativity.

And as Pink relates in his speech at the TED Conference, when it comes to motivation, there is a huge gap between what science knows and what companies do.

Today, many companies more closely track knowledge workers hours at their desks rather than results produced. And, as I wrote about in a previous post, Results Only Work Environment or ROWE is one way to change this mentality.

Author Pink convincingly argues that once our basic need for financial stability is taken care of, the desire for intrinsic motivation kicks in. Intrinsic motivation is founded upon personal rewards (individual interest or love) rather than extrinsic motivation (money). In fact, many scientific studies have demonstrated that people actually become less motivated when money is tied to doing something we are already drawn to doing. It actually devalues it for us!

Further, Pink suggests it is necessary for both employees and employers to break free of this old “if-then” paradigm and replace it with “now-that” instead. Rather than hold out some reward or punishment in order to accomplish a goal, there should be an opportunity to tap into an employee’s own individual interest in meeting the goal.

“If tangible rewards are given unexpectedly to people after they have finished a task, the rewards are less likely to be detrimental to intrinsic motivation,” said Edward L. Deci, the University of Rochester psychology professor and author of “Intrinsic Motivation.”

The key to tapping into these intrinsic interests, according to Pink, is via autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy is about the urge to direct our lives. It means enabling employees to determine specifically what is entailed (task), when the work is done (time), how it gets done (technique), and with whom it is done (team). Autonomy requires management to step aside and give employees the opportunity to fully apply their creative selves.

Mastery is about the desire to get better at something that matters. It enables each of us to fully engage who we are in what we do. Only in this way are we likely to embrace the work we do as it transcends merely making a living and extends into making a life.

Purpose has to do with the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves. It is the desire to leave the planet better than we found it. Purpose has to do with contributing to the greater good.

Writer and management consulant Peter Drucker stated “. . . once each knowledge worker has defined his or her own task and once the work has been appropriately restructured, each worker should be expected to work out his or her own course and to take responsibility for it.”

Enabling employees to tap into autonomy, mastery and purpose requires management giving up some control over how, when and where people work. It means the boss needs to incentivise people in ways that stimulate their desire to do good work. It means trusting that employees will choose to do the right thing for them as well as the organization.

These motivation techniques may not make sense for every workplace, but at a time of economic recession, global competitive pressures, corporate distrust, and low employee engagement, it makes sense to at least consider them wherever possible.

Mark Craemer  www.craemerconsulting.com

Is ROWE the Best Form of Employee Engagement?

March 27, 2010

Employee engagement initiatives should not be considered fuzzy, feel good opportunities merely to improve job satisfaction and employee retention. Instead, they should be seen as a business strategy for achieving increased productivity.

Fully engaged employees can indeed deliver higher productivity, but what engages one employee does not necessarily do much for another. That’s why things like flextime, telecommuting, concierge services and other benefits help, but don’t necessarily contribute directly to the bottom line.

Unlike other work/life balance programs, ROWE is a business strategy that can positively impact the bottom line while at the same time stimulate employee engagement.

ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) is a human resource management strategy created by Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler and first implemented at Best Buy in 2003. Using ROWE, 80% of Best Buy’s corporate staff now come and go as they please as long as the work gets done on time.

The premise of ROWE is that employees are paid for results rather than hours worked. This provides both freedom for employees and results for employers. ROWE is based on the assumption that employees will do more and better work when given the latitude to decide how and when it is done.

Unlike flextime, ROWE is employee controled not management controled. ROWE requires accountability and clear goals, while flextime requires policies and guidelines. ROWE has unlimited options and is fluid, while flextime has limited options and ultimately is inflexible. Most importantly, ROWE is based on the work and not the hours.

The concept of ROWE is a bit like college where you decide when and where to study and write papers. In most workplaces today, employees are treated more like grade schoolers with strict policies on when to show up, where to sit, how to do the work and when to leave. No wonder recent graduates become disillusioned when entering the “real world.”

Now that aging Baby Boomers are mixing with Generations X and Y, it seems a perfect time to initiate a different approach to how work is performed. We certainly have the technology (teleconferencing, emailing, text messaging, and cell phone calling) to extend the workplace location and flexibility on when to do the tasks. Now it’s just a matter of will.

ROWE is not an entirely new concept. Piece work, where workers are paid a fixed rate for each unit produced or action performed, has been around for more than a century. And then there is performance-rated pay, where money is paid directly on how well a worker performs in the workplace. Commission-based sales is a form of this type of compensation.

High technology companies have been tinkering with alternative concepts for some time. At IBM, 40% of employees have no official office. Sun Microsystems allow nearly half of their employees to work anywhere they want. Google offers their engineers the ability to spend a full day each week working on side projects to pursue their own interests. In a typical year, more than half of Google’s offerings, including Gmail and Google News have come during this 20 percent time opportunity.

ROWE builds upon these and other models to provide employees with more opportunities to do the job their own way and this can lead to greater employee engagement and higher productivity.

But ROWE is not without it’s challenges. Measuring output for some jobs (overhead, administration) can be very difficult. Some people have a hard time working with others if they are not face-to-face. And overall management can be challenging.

Nevertheless, ROWE is proving to be effective returning an average of 35% increase in productivity while reducing voluntary turnover by as much as 90%. In addition, research by the Flexible-Work and Well Being Center at the University of Minnesota found that more ROWE employees than comparable employees:

  • Have greater organizational commitment
  • Report higher job satisfaction
  • View the culture as family friendly
  • Report increased job security

And fewer ROWE employees than comparable employees:

  • Do low-value work
  • Experience interruptions at work
  • Feel pressure to work overtime

Some successful examples of ROWE implementations can be found in retail corporate offices (Gap Outlet, Best Buy), financial services (JA Counter & Associates), and non-profit (Girl Scouts of America in San Gorgonio County of California).

Implementing ROWE as a sound business strategy can provide many benefits. Employees gain the freedom to do the job their own way, which leads to greater job satisfaction, better work/life balance, and higher productivity. Employers are better able to separate performers from non-performers, attract more talented people, and increase their bottom line.

What is your opinion of ROWE? Is this something you and your organization could benefit from?

Mark Craemer        www.craemerconsulting.com

Do you know Your Employees’ Strengths?

March 6, 2010

The great business writer and management consultant, Peter Drucker, once said “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make the system’s weakness irrelevant.”

Great leaders often emphasize their individual strengths and surround themselves with executives whose strengths in other areas minimize weakness in overall leadership. Similarly, managers and supervisors should better leverage the individual strengths of all rank and file employees and align them so organizational weaknesses are minimized.

David Cooperrider, who developed the methodology for organizational renewal known as Appreciative Inquiry, once remarked that when organizations were surveyed with the question “To what extent does your company know your strengths and put your strengths into play everyday?” The answer was that only 20 percent of people agree that their organizations do this to a great extent. This suggests that 80 percent of employees feel that supervisors and teams don’t know or utilize their strengths very well.

Focusing on the strengths of our employees and co-workers is essential for achieving optimal performance. Then why do so many employees feel this is not the case?

Knowing and capitalizing on individual strengths must be a shared responsibility between supervisors and their workers. Employees need to clearly communicate these strengths so they are more obvious to their boss. At the same time, supervisors and managers must actively seek to understand and capitalize on these strengths.

“We’ve reached the end of problem-solving as a method of management capable of inspiring the growth and development of people, and creating the cultures of real innovation that are demanded by today’s complex and competitive business environments,” said Cooperrider. He goes on to say that all deficit-based forms of management analysis only lock organizations into where they are today and not where they could be.

In the same way that we often see other people in terms of snapshots, locked into boxes where we prevent them from changing and growing. We also tend to limit what we see as other’s strengths and aptitudes.

The prevailing problem-solving perspective focuses on a glass that is half empty. What the appreciative inquiry method does is take a more positive approach, seeking to find what is best in itself, discover more of what is good, and spread this around. Appreciative inquiry utlimately helps organizations with a strengths-based approach to incorporate multi-stakeholder innovation and sutainable design.

Using an appreciative approach can help us to see beyond the education, the resume and the job description to uncover the true gifts and strengths each employee has to offer. Then it is just a matter of aligning these with others inside the organization so that you can minimize weaknesses and improve productivity.

I contend that if you raise any glass high enough, it will appear fuller. Perspective is therefore essential to seeing what is possible. If you can take a point of view of abundance rather than scarcity, you may be surprised by the gifts and strengths you find in your employees.

Mark Craemer                        www.craemerconsulting.com

Engaged Employees Produce Shareholder Value

February 25, 2010

Organizations that put the effort into fully engaging employees are more likely to reach peak performance and that is a mandatory step in achieving increased shareholder value. This may sound like common sense, yet it is all too rarely implemented.

In my experience, the best companies are those who focus on customers and employees in that particular order. Providing customers with the respect and value they deserve can help maintain a company’s position through fierce competition and often lean economic times. The same could be said for employees. To get the best out of your workers, treat them with respect and provide them with the value they deserve.

Too often when a company decides to go public, shareholders replace employees in spot number two and sometimes customers in the top spot. When this happens, share price may increase in the short term, but is not sustained in the long term. Customers who are no longer the focus will find another company that honors them above stock price. The same could be said for employees who are no longer treated respectfully.

When employees are treated as liabilities instead of assets, they often lose interest in doing what’s best for the organization. And this eventually contributes to a drop in shareholder value. On the other hand, effectively engaging employees to achieve their best performance can directly lead to an increase in shareholder value.

To get the best performance out of employees requires motivating them and capitalizing on their abilities. Motivation means clearly understanding what rewards are of particular interest to each of them. These rewards could be monetary and take the form of a bonus or raise, or more ego-related and mean recognition or a promotion. Regardless, motivation is key in engaging employees to deliver their best performance.

Capitalizing on individual employee’s abilities is equally necessary. This means not only getting the most out of his or her knowledge and skills, but gaining a better understanding of their individual talents and putting these to work. Talents may not pop out on resumes, but they are ultimately the true gifts and strengths employees bring to the workplace.

As I discussed in an earlier post, knowledge and skills are competencies that can be taught. Attitudes and beliefs are what constitute talents and these are very difficult to teach.

Talents are recurring patterns of behavior that can be productively applied, according to Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their book “First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently.” The key to excellent performance then is finding a match between an employee’s talents and his or her role.

These talents may include:

Striving Talents (why of a person) What motivates her to get out of bed in the morning? Are these talents based on achievement, stamina, competition, service, ethics, beliefs, etc? Drive, for example, is a striving talent and very important for someone who needs to initiate rather than respond in the workplace.

Thinking Talents (how of a person) How does he think, how does he weigh alternatives, how does he come to decisions? These talents may be based on focus, discipline, responsibility, performance, and many others. Analytical is a thinking talent and very important for someone who must effectively weigh alternatives.

Relating Talents (who of a person) Who does she trust, who does she build relationships with, who does she confront, and who does she ignore? These talents could be based on empathy, relationship, stimulation, persuasion, etc. Communication is a relating talent and essential for someone who regularly works with other people.

Matching employees’ talents along with their knowledge and skills in the right roles is the best way to capitalize on their abilities. And getting a clear understanding and offering what motivates each of them individually is equally important. These employee engagement activities can then result in them reaching optimal performance.

But engagement needs be more than a human resources initiative—it should embraced as a strategic foundation for the way of doing business. And that is a powerful step towards increasing shareholder value.

Mark Craemer               www.craemerconsulting.com

Presidents’ Day and Great Leadership

February 15, 2010

Here at a time when we celebrate our nation’s presidents and the leadership they provide our country, it’s good to reflect on leadership itself. Is it possible we expect too much of individual leaders and too little of followers? Do we over value our leaders and under value everyone else?

In the same way the leader of our country has only so much power and influence over getting things accomplished, the same could be said of CEOs, executive directors and other leaders of organizations. Is it really possible for President Obama alone to create new jobs, reform health care and stimulate the economy? He obviously must rely on Congress to accomplish (or keep from accomplishing) these and many other things. Nevertheless, we are likely to credit or blame Obama depending on what gets done.

Unlike big government, leaders of organizations do not depend on politicians with their own constituents as well as special interests and lobbyists. Business leaders instead rely on employees with a different kind of constituent (a.k.a. families) and these employees should be delegated to and depended upon in a leadership partnership.

Recent research by Nitin Nohria and colleagues at the Harvard Business School found that, on average, only 14% of a company’s performance is dependent on its leader. Many factors ultimately determine how well an organization performs, and along with leadership, they include overall strategy, employee talent, market focus, and corporate culture.

Leadership, ideally, should be shared and organizations that recognize this are more likely to excel. Top leaders obviously must take charge and convey to employees how important their individual behaviors are to the success of the organization. A great leader must lay out a clear and consistent strategy, and then empower his or her people to effectively execute that strategy. If a leader has surrounded him or her self with the best talent in the right roles, then fully delegating to these people should be a natural progression for getting things done.

Mainstream media gives far too much attention and makes superstars out of a small subset of executives and leaders in many high-profile companies. Most-admired or highest-paid CEOs do not always make the best leaders nor do they necessarily deliver the best in shareholder value or make for a desirable place to work. The best leaders are often lesser known, share the limelight with others, and put the organization’s interests above their own.

A recent report by the Harvard Business Review on the 50 best-performing CEOs in the world ranked the performance of leaders of large public companies over their entire time in office. This long-term view is unique in these kinds of lists and of particular interest.

What their research found was that many of the most celebrated leaders regularly written about in the business press were not included and many lesser known names were. Though Apple’s Steve Jobs topped the list, other well known CEOs such as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Satoru Iwata of Nintendo, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric, Sam Palmisano of IBM, and Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil did not even crack the top 200 of those in the study.

The study also found there was no corner on the market in terms of an industry or country dominating the list. And, interestingly, only 15 of the top 50 CEOs had an MBA.

Like the greatest U.S. Presidents, the best business leaders are those who map out an effective strategy, then inspire and enable their people to carry it out. Empowering employees with their own leadership responsibilities allows them to fully participate in leading the organization. This shared leadership approach actively engages employees to be part of the solution rather than simply staying on the sidelines.

In the same way President Obama needs to get the best out of Congress to accomplish his goals, other leaders need to find a way to inspire and fully delegate to those employees who can help get things done. Effective change does not come from passive hope with followers standing on the sidelines. Great organizations, like great countries, succeed when leadership is shared and responsibility for getting things done is embraced by everyone.

Mark Craemer       www.craemerconsulting.com

Genuine Praise Makes Good Business Sense

February 9, 2010

Having worked in for-profit and non-profit organizations provided me with an appreciation for both environments. In the for-profit sector, the pay was typically better and I generally found a greater sense of urgency for getting things done. In the non-profit sector, I felt a sense of altruism for what I was contributing to society and I received a great deal more praise. This last item always made me curious as to why giving praise to employees was not more widespread in the for-profit sector.

It turns out that giving an employee genuine praise often goes a lot further than even monetary rewards, and that makes good business sense.

According to a 2003 Gallup survey outlined in the book, “How Full is Your Bucket?” by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, 61% of American workers received no praise at work. And the biggest reason people leave their jobs is because they feel unappreciated.

Through their research of some four million employees in 10,000 business units and 30 industries worldwide, they found that workers who do receive regular recognition and praise: 1) increase their engagement among colleagues, 2) increase their individual productivity, 3) receive higher loyalty and satisfaction scores from customers, 4) have better safety records and fewer job-related accidents, and 5) are more likely to stay with their organization.

All of us need recognition and reassurance in our work lives just as we do in our personal lives. Praise increases the pride we take in our work and that improves job satisfaction as well as the quality of our products and services. Praise reinforces our relationships with co-workers and supervisors. Praise also keeps us from feeling that we are taken for granted and it builds company loyalty, which is all too rare these days.

So if praise is so vital to productivity, customer satisfaction, workplace safety, employee engagement, and employee retention why aren’t more organizations dishing it out more liberally? There could be many reasons. For instance, some managers, directors and executives simply are not comfortable with giving praise. This could be due to their family or educational backgrounds, or because the corporate culture doesn’t encourage it. Some may believe that a paycheck and standard benefits package is sufficient and if you want a pat on the back, you should get it in your personal life.

Whatever the reason for-profit organizations skimp on this simple strategy, it is time to reverse the impulse to hold back praise and instead let it flow.

Here are some suggestions for delivering praise in your organization:

Praise with purpose. Your purpose in praising someone at work is not to get him or her to like you. The purpose is to increase employee productivity, engagement and retention. Praise should not be confused with a compliment. You compliment someone on their sweater, but you praise them on their skill at finding a solution to a business problem.

Praise with honesty. Employees can easily see through an empty statement that lacks genuine appreciation. This can damage your credibility and possibly make things worse. Instead, genuinely deliver praise on something you see them do that is beneficial to the organization.

Praise with specificity. Target the praise you offer someone and don’t just say “great job.” Instead, say something specific such as, “That presentation you gave this morning was informative and has generated a lot of buzz around here.” Or ask an employee for his or her input on a specific project or problem. Soliciting someone’s advice or opinion is praising their intelligence and it makes them feel valued.

Praise in public and reprimand in private. This can be tricky if the employee is easily embarrassed, but publicly praising an individual employee can often improve morale of all employees. Simple kudos during a meeting or in a company newsletter can be good forms of public recognition. Just as important, leave all reprimands or critical feedback for private meetings.

Praise also does not have to come only from those on the top as praise should emanate in all directions throughout the organization. And it is likely to be contagious. Give it a try in your organization. Catch someone doing something especially well and tell them why you personally think that is so great. You may find in this little act that you end up appreciating your own job a little more.

Mark Craemer                      www.craemerconsulting.com

Great Managers: Key to Employee Retention

December 18, 2009

During this time of economic recession and double-digit unemployment, it may seem odd to focus on employee retention. But I contend this is exactly the right time to identify and strengthen relationships with great managers because they determine whether your best employees stay or leave the company.

Recent research on employee retention found that people leave managers, not companies. If there is a turnover problem in your company, first look at your managers because managers trump companies. Employees may join a company because of its overall prestige and reputation, but the employee’s relationship with his immediate supervisor determines how long he will stay and how productive he is while there.

Great managers, like great coaches, focus on people first and then on the actual plays. Similarly, a great novelist often begins with characters rather than a plot. And the skill set of managers is not necessarily the same as that of leaders. It is important to look at your managers not simply as leaders in waiting, but recognize the unique managerial gifts and strengths they contribute to the organization as managers.

Organizational consultant and author Warren Bennis said that managers do things right and leaders do the right things. Leaders should be concerned with looking outward and focusing on the future for the organization, while managers should be looking inward and on the immediate details of the daily operations.

In their book “First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently,” Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman argue that great managers do the following:

1. Select an employee not only for her unique experience, intelligence and determination, but for her talents. Knowledge and skills are competencies that can be taught, while attitudes and beliefs are talents that are difficult to teach. Talents are recurring patterns of behavior productively applied. And they can have great value to any organization.

2. Set expectations by defining the right outcomes, rather than the right steps. Great managers communicate clearly what is expected of each person in order to accomplish the organization’s goals. Rather than direct each employee on the specific way to do their job, great managers provide freedom and support to the individual to get the job done well and on time.

3. Motivate the employee by focusing on his strengths rather than weaknesses. Great managers often act as coaches by providing clear feedback on what the employee is doing well as well as not so well. The best managers help build confidence by recognizing and utilizing each employee’s unique talents. Simply stated, stress what works and minimize what does not.

4. Develop the person to determine the right job fit and not necessarily the next rung on the corporate ladder. This often runs counter to what most of us think is necessary in many organizations. The fact is many people are not suited for nor do they want to be executives in a company. Great managers determine how to recognize and fully utilize an individual’s unique talents and enable them to be successful wherever they are in the organizational chart.

According to the Gallup Path to Business Performance, sustained increase in shareholder value must begin first by identifying employees’ strengths and second by determining the right fit for them. These steps are then directly followed by hiring great managers and creating engaged employees. Without these first four, there can be no loyal customers, sustained growth, real profit increase and, finally, stock increase.

The key to excellent performance then is to first find the best match between an employee’s talents and role. Identify and cultivate those talents so that they may be best put to use in the proper role to meet the organization’s goals and objectives. Finally, make it clear in no uncertain terms what outcomes are expected and let the individual employee determine the specific steps to reach them. In this way, great managers can keep employees fully engaged and help retain the best employees in the organization.

Mark Craemer                                    www.craemerconsulting.com

Trust, Direction and Support in Group Development

December 10, 2009

Bruce Tuckman’s model for group development goes a long way in helping to define the evolutionary process of effective workgroups. According to Tuckman, successful workgroups go through the following phases in this order: forming, storming, norming and performing. These four steps are necessary and inevitable for groups to grow, face challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, and deliver results. Group members who understand this model can face the storming phase with a little less stress. Group leaders should also understand how trust, direction and support shift throughout this group development process.

As you might expect, trust is absolutely essential for any group to be effective. In fact, some might argue that trust can often mean the difference between success and failure. Group leaders should be aware that the forming phase of group development is when group members are assessing leadership. This assessment includes whether or not they can trust the leader of their group. Establishing trust is especially important at this time because the next phase is when the leader may very well be the only one who is trusted. Storming is when people are least likely to get along and are looking for someone to hold the group together. A leader who inspires trust can help weather the storm. Once the group successfully passes through this storming phase, they can transition to the norming phase. The norming phase is when group members learn to trust the process and this can happen only if they pass through the storming phase effectively. Finally, the performing phase is when group members learn to trust each other. This shared trust, gained through group experiences in the previous phases, significantly enable optimal group performance.

It can also be especially helpful to look at how a leader’s direction and support are applied during each stage of group development. The direction and support I am speaking of here are based on those of the Situational Leadership Model developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey. In this model the direction and support an employee requires from his manager shifts as the employee learns his or her job. In a similar manner, the collective group’s need for this direction and support also changes depending on what stage of development the group is in.

The forming phase of a group is when direction is especially important in order to establish the necessary groundwork so the group can be productive. This is when a leader must lay out clear goals and objectives for the group as well as establish specific roles and responsibilities for each member. As I mentioned earlier, this is an especially important time for the leader to inspire trust. Support is not so important at this time. On the other hand, the storming phase is when a leader is looked to for both direction and support. Storming is when the group is most volatile and vulnerable. This combination of clear direction as well as unwavering support for each member helps the group to continue in the face of such a challenging time. Leaders who are able to balance this dual need for both high levels of direction and support enable the group to move forward to the norming phase. Norming is when the need for direction is low and support is high. This is a time when the group is finding its way and each member needs a high level of support to inspire confidence so he or she can carry out the group’s objectives effectively. It is a time when good leaders are able to inspire group members and help them become solid performers. The final stage of performing is when an effective leader’s need for both direction and support are low because of the work done previously. In the performing phase, theoretically all members of the group are now competent and confident in their ability to carry out the group’s goals and objectives.

Group leaders who understand the importance of trust throughout the four phases of group development can improve overall group performance. Gaining trust must be earned, of course, but the sooner this can be accomplished within a group setting, the smoother the transition through these phases. In the same way, a better understanding of when to apply higher levels of direction and support to group members can also improve the passage through the phases of group development. Trust, direction and support all play a role in engaging employees and the wise leader knows how to apply them in a workgroup setting.

Mark Craemer                               www.craemerconsulting.com

Dipping Below the Waterline

November 29, 2009

My wife and I recently got married and we merged her 9-year-old with my twin 5-year-olds to form one larger family. The roles for all five of us needed to be redefined because of this big and wonderful change in the way we live. The old way of doing things needed to be updated. And despite the fact that this family merger was extremely good for each of us individually and collectively, adjusting to the changes required paying close attention to both the mechanics as well as the emotions involved. The changes required ongoing discussion and clarification of our new roles and responsibilities within this family group.

Regular clarification and discussion around changing roles and responsibilities should also take place in workgroups where new members join and others leave or when there is a change in focus or direction. When a workgroup reaches a level of productivity that is no longer satisfactory is also an excellent time for this.

The Waterline Model (developed by Roger Harrison, Ron Short and John Scherer) is a useful diagnostic tool for helping such groups who seem to be working harder than ever yet not operating as effectively as possible. It is also useful when there is dissonance within the group that reduces overall efficiency. This is because groups often get stuck not because of technical issues, but because of structural problems with regard to goals and objectives or roles and responsibilities.

The Waterline Model’s notion of task versus maintenance is useful to keep in mind whenever you are working with a group of people. For instance, when your group is working to accomplish something but gets stuck, it is helpful to stop talking about the task at hand and drop under the waterline to talk about maintenance of the group. Maintenance, in this sense, means delving into the relational aspects within the group. It means talking about the feelings, attitudes or perceptions that are inhibiting you from doing your part to fully participate in accomplishing the group’s goals.

When a workgroup’s progress gets stymied, it is more often than not the roles and responsibilities of each member that needs to be examined. In fact, more than 80% of workgroup dysfunction can be associated to this lack of clarity. This is because members may not be clear at a given time on what they are each supposed to be doing to help meet the group’s objectives. Job titles and job descriptions only go so far in addressing this. Without greater clarification around the specific role each member plays and the associated responsibilities within that role, the group can continually spin its wheels or go entirely off track. And these roles and responsibilities will likely change over time.

Shifting the focus from task to maintenance means taking the necessary time to clarify the roles and responsibilities of each member of a group. Talk about what may be keeping individuals from doing their part to contribute to the group goals and objectives. Give every member of the group an opportunity to speak up and communicate what may be preventing him or her from doing their best. Though it may seem like you don’t have time for this, the task at hand will always take longer and the problems will go deeper below the waterline if not addressed. These problems deeper below the waterline include such things as group dynamics as well as interpersonal and intrapersonal problems. And these can take a lot longer to rectify.

So whenever your workgroup gets stuck, take the time to stop doing and start talking. Check in with individual members of the group to figure out what needs to be said to get things unstuck. Making time for this regular maintenance will make your tasks go that much smoother and more efficiently.

Mark Craemer                                                                      www.craemerconsulting.com

Effective Workgroups & Jazz

November 6, 2009

The other night a friend and I attended a concert featuring a jazz quartet. I was a bit disappointed with the overall performance, but couldn’t quite put into words why. My friend suggested there was a lack of “dialogue between the musicians.” All of them were technically proficient, he said, but it was as if they were each playing in a separate space with no notion of what the others were doing. The bass player kept an up tempo, but when the tenor saxophonist blew unexpected low notes, the drummer failed to echo back with a similar retort. The interplay lacked any depth because of missed opportunity for a dramatic call and response between the musicians. My friend’s explanation helped me appreciate the difference between a band simply playing a jazz composition and one creating a stirring and memorable performance.

It also made me think about how work groups can function well, but not necessarily thrive. For a workgroup to be especially effective there is also a requirement for dialogue among the individuals. Dialogue in this sense, however, is more than simply talking together. The kind of dialogue I’m suggesting for an effective workgroup requires: 1) the opportunity for a personal check in with each other, 2) open ended questions that expand the conversation, 3) active listening that demonstrates true understanding, 4) brainstorming free from real-time editing, 5) embracing diversity to ensure all voices are heard, 6) resolving conflicts as they arise, and 7) resisting group think even when it is easiest to so.

Think about a time when you were part of a work group that was especially satisfying. I suspect there was something dynamic about the group. I further suspect it was satisfying because you accomplished your goals, overcame challenges, and everyone contributed to the success. More than likely, you were challenged and under stress, but were also stimulated because of the energy from the group.

Like the best jazz ensembles, effective workgroups are dynamic, diverse, and challenging. A leader needs to provide the group with just enough structure to maintain focus without blocking creative thinking. Providing a safe and trusting environment can encourage individuals to play off each other’s ideas and build something greater than solo thinking alone. A certain synergy becomes present when everyone is actively involved and engaged in the work at hand. And this is worth striving for.

All workgroups can be more effective. And it takes a concentrated effort by every member to actively participate in the dialogue to make it satisfying for everyone.

Mark Craemer                                           www.craemerconsulting.com

7 Keys to Highly Effective Virtual Teams

September 2, 2009

Virtual teams are on the rise in every industry and with good reason. The ability to accomplish goals as a team without being located in the same physical location can accelerate processes, reduce costs and enable true global collaboration. However, the challenges of virtual teams are also greater than those in co-located teams.

A virtual team can be defined here as a group of people who work interdependently with a shared purpose across space, time and organization boundaries using technology. However, all the existing technology that connects people on virtual teams has limitations. Without the benefit of sitting next to or across a conference room table from others, much is lost in terms of clear communication, mutual trust, and overall group dynamics. Communication is especially difficult without nonverbal clues such as body language and facial expressions. And anything that can go wrong face-to-face can also go wrong with virtual teams—only faster and less gracefully.

The key requirements for highly effective teams (co-located or virtual) include:

Trust – People work together effectively because they trust one another. With trust, groups converse easily, organize tasks more quickly, and manage themselves better. Without face-to-face clues, trust is harder to attain and easier to lose.

Respect – Everyone on the team has something to contribute and everyone’s opinion needs to be welcome. Only through this mutual respect can teams expect to function well.

Cooperation – In order to function effectively as a team, it is vital to fully cooperate with one another. This means allowing for disagreements and welcoming challenges with regard to one another’s view.

Commitment – Perhaps the most important requirement for a highly effective team is the commitment we each make to the team. Only through our commitment will we persevere through difficult periods when we otherwise might lose hope.

To be highly effective, virtual teams need all of the above as well as the following key requirements:

1. Appropriate Technology – Using the right technology to enable effective collaboration and communication is vital. This technology may include email, conference calls, video-conferencing, remote presentations, text messaging, chat-rooms, bulletin boards, web-conferencing, and other tools. Encourage the use of a variety of them to deepen collaboration and broaden perspectives.

2. Outstanding Communication – Choosing the appropriate medium (video conferencing, email, telephone, etc.), depending on the message, can be as important as the content itself. You should also carefully consider your audience and the context for your message. Then ensure that the words you use will not be confused or misinterpreted.

3. Shared Vision & Goals – Establishing a clear and inspiring vision as well as team goals shared among all members is vital to optimal performance. In addition, clarity among individual roles as well as group and individual expectations are necessary for all members to be on the same page.

4. Sense of Community – Every community requires mutual trust, respect, fairness, and affiliation. These are essential on virtual teams because individuals can often feel isolated across time and space, and requires creative ways to build a sense of community among all members. This can often be accomplished through team building and team bonding exercises, but requires continual attention.

5. Strong (and Shared) Leadership – With the absence of an opportunity to “manage by walking around,” leaders should check-in with individuals spontaneously to discuss issues or opportunities that arise. Leadership on virtual teams is often shared and this should be encouraged whenever possible so bottlenecks don’t slow progress.

6. Coordination and Collaboration – Because we don’t physically see each other working on a specific task, it is essential for a greater level of tracking and coordinating on projects in virtual teams. This coordination often transcends organizational boundaries and requires the collaboration of every team member.

7. Appropriate Electronic Body Language – Our tone of voice in conference calls, word choice and sentence structure in emails, and the speed of our response can all impact how our messages are received and interpreted. Virtual teams require that we are mindful and more deliberate in how we convey our messages.

All teams require trust, respect, cooperation and commitment to be highly effective, and virtual teams require this and more. By paying particular attention to the seven key requirements, your virtual team can be highly effective as well.

Mark Craemer                                                                               www.craemerconsulting.com

Working Smarter to Increase Productivity

May 26, 2009

Is there a connection between working smarter and greater productivity? How do we actually work smarter anyway, and why don’t we do it all the time instead of when we’re forced to do it?

In spite of the current economy with rampant corporate downsizing, there are signs that most companies will actually improve their productivity in the near term. According to a recent survey, a clear majority say their firms will work smarter and that this will come about through improvements in work processes. These were the conclusions of a study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) and HR.com who surveyed top executives as well as lower-level managers and supervisors in January 2009.

According to the survey, 86% of respondents said “there will be an increased emphasis on productivity” over the next six months. This greater focus on productivity has already panned out according to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor, which stated that in the fourth quarter of 2008, productivity in the nonfarm business sector rose 3.2%. It also rose 2.8% for the entire year, which was the highest growth rate since 2004.

So just how do we work smarter? Should all workflow processes and procedures be subject to a rigorous test to find and fix inefficiencies? Are these inefficiencies all that universal and easy to detect? I suspect not and therefore external efficiency experts and consultants should be in high demand. After all, if inefficiencies were easy to detect and correct, these would be taken care of by the people inside the companies.

Half of those surveyed also cited that there will be greater effort and engagement by employees as well as more effective workforce management. Organizations are trying to further engage employees at the same time as they make these work processes more efficient. And one could argue that you can’t have one without the other. If employees feel they are working as efficiently as possible, they very likely will feel more highly engaged in their work. On the other hand, if employees are highly engaged in their work, they may very well find ways to improve—given the opportunity—work process efficiency. It is this symbiotic relationship between engaged employees and the efficient work process that all companies should be seeking.

Working smarter should be more than just choosing to correct an existing inefficient process, but as a new philosophy for approaching each and every workday. For example, working smarter could mean choosing to look at your email inbox only two or three times a day instead of constantly reacting to whatever message zaps your attention from completing the task at hand. You may be in a position to do this with your phone as well. One could also choose to hold or attend meetings only when they are conducted in a manner that is highly productive. For those who bring their laptops to meeting to get other things done at the same time, they might question the widely held belief that multi-tasking really is more efficient than fully focusing your attention on one thing at a time.

For a sustained rise in productivity, working smarter must become more than just a convenient phrase for leaders to tell shareholders. Working smarter means organizations must embrace the notion of helping to fully engage their employees and provide them with the opportunity to influence their work processes. The resistance to change is very powerful, however, so it will take strong leadership and commitment to see that these improvements are driven throughout the organization and remain in place.

Mark Craemer                               www.craemerconsulting.com

Five Major Pitfalls for Leading Effective Work Groups

May 18, 2009

Building high performing work groups is important for all organizations, but achieving them is easier said than done. For the sake of this discussion, an effective work group depends upon whether the output meets the quantity, quality and timeliness established, how well the process of the work can be carried out by the individuals interdependently in the future, and whether the group experience contributes to the growth and well-being of the individual members.

To be an effective work group leader involves creating favorable performance conditions for the group (either on one’s own authority or by exercising influence upward or laterally with colleagues), building and maintaining the work group as a performing unit, and coaching the group as it evolves.

Work groups can be ineffective for many reasons, and it’s important for a leader to first recognize the nature of the problem. For instance, is the difficulty due to a lack of effort, inappropriate talent or a flawed strategy? Each of these areas would require a different intervention in order to make the team more effective.

The best way to keep a group from becoming ineffective in the first place is to avoid these five major pitfalls:

1. Work group in name only. When people are told they are a team but treated as individual performers, this sends a mixed message. This is also untenable as individual goals are likely to trump group goals. The team’s very existence is to achieve group goals, and it is therefore vital to emphasize that there is no “I” in the word team. Make it clear that all individuals will prosper only when the team prospers. Encourage team building activities that build trust and open communication between every member. Acknowledge and reward team achievements as well as encourage collaboration among individuals.

2. Lack of authority, responsibility and accountability. Managers should insist on exercising their authority with regard to the direction and constraints on group behavior. With clear direction, the team can align their efforts with the objectives of the larger organization. Ideally, group leaders should define the outcomes they are looking for and then give the team the flexibility to accomplish them on their own. By providing clear direction, the team can then choose the appropriate performance strategies. This can often generate and sustain energy within the team.

3. Inappropriate structure. Groups that have appropriate structures tend to develop healthy internal processes, whereas groups with inappropriate structures tend to have process problems. It is crucial to have the right people in the right roles, but without the right structure around these roles, the process breaks down. A leader should assemble a group of people in the correct roles and provide a structure that is suitable to contributing to them accomplishing the work at hand.

4. Inadequate support. If you specify challenging team objectives but skimp on organizational support, the team is bound to fail. The full potential of work teams can be realized only when organizational structures and systems actively support competent teamwork. And this must be done in deeds as well as words. The potential of a well-directed, well-structured, well-supported team is tremendous.

5. Limited training and coaching. It is helpful for leaders and managers to provide some hands-on training and coaching as group members develop the skills they need to work well on a team. Favorable times for this intervention include when a group is first launched, when it reaches a natural break in its work, and when it has completed its product or reached the end of a performance period. Providing adequate training and development ensures the continuation of the team’s performance.

Being an effective group leader involves (1) creating favorable performance conditions for the group with appropriate structure, accountability, and support, (2) building and maintaining the team as a performing unit by encouraging collaboration, open communication, and trust, and (3) coaching and helping the team in real time with appropriate training and development.

When all three areas are focused on, a group leader can help avoid the five major pitfalls and help their work group prosper.

Mark Craemer       www.craemerconsulting.com

Employee Engagement in a Down Economy

May 4, 2009

When companies face challenging economic times, layoffs are often chosen as a viable way to reduce costs. In the short term, this makes the company’s balance sheet more appealing to shareholders and the company is more financially stable until the economy picks up again. In the long term, this workforce reduction can sometimes realign resources to increase productivity on the most important projects and jettison those projects that are unprofitable. Layoffs may therefore help a company become more efficient regardless of the economic climate.

However, layoffs can also create a great deal of stress among employees who remain on the job as they feel the loss of their coworkers and may be concerned that they are next. This sense of loss should not be minimized and should be acknowledged by upper management to demonstrate their own compassion for those who have lost their jobs. And a little bit of stress by those left behind is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but if the stress keeps employees from doing their best work, it can be detrimental to the organization. In addition, those employees still on the job may have had their workload realigned and/or increased due to the reduced workforce, which further increases this stress.

In a typical workplace environment during the best of times, only 29 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, while 71 percent are disengaged—either not engaged at all (54 percent) or actively disengaged (17 percent)—according to the most recent Gallup Management Journal’s Employee Engagement Index. In tough economic times when layoffs are present, this employee engagement is likely to be even lower.

Employee engagement activities can help reduce stress by demonstrating the organization’s commitment to the employees who remain on the job. It can also help employees feel more committed to the organization. A leader’s ability to articulate a shared purpose that complements the overall mission is critical for success going forward. And the most effective of these employee engagement activities result in management demonstrating clarity, connection, and collaboration.

When leaders clearly communicate a compelling vision for employees to embrace, people feel engaged in their work because they know where they are going. Employees are ready to follow a leader who knows where he or she stands and clearly communicates this. When employees know what the organization stands for, where it is going, what it wants to achieve and how they can directly contribute, employees are motivated to do their best work. This clarity among leaders is not always apparent and, during times of layoffs, needs to be especially so in order to reduce employee stress.

Leaders also need to connect with employees to show that they truly value them. This can be demonstrated in many formal ways, including profit-sharing, flex-time, and clear advancement opportunities with follow-through. But this connection should also include actions that are not directly related to the job and as simple as engaging employees in a conversation unrelated to their work. Simply getting to know and appreciating your employees as fellow human beings working to pay the bills, raise a family, and pursue a happy and productive life goes a long way in building trust. Also, what leads to true satisfaction for most employees is the credit they receive for the job they perform. When a leader credibly states that his or her employees are the organization’s greatest asset, this helps him or her connect. Exceptional leaders extend a great deal of recognition to others and they do this a lot. Ultimately, being cared about by colleagues is a strong indicator of employee engagement within an organization.

All good working relationships include trust and cooperation, which is a requirement for strong collaboration. Leaders can inadvertently discourage this collaboration with an overly competitive workplace where no one wants to share information for fear they will lose power or resources as a result. However, when leaders freely share information and encourage others to do the same, they can foster a collaborative environment that enhances employee engagement.

Most of these employee engagement activities do not require additional spending, however, some leadership coaching may be necessary to help further develop the ability to cultivate clarity, connection, and collaboration. Those leaders who use employee engagement activities such as these will go along way in reducing stress caused by layoffs and bring about lasting commitment among the employees who remain.