Education

“I think the problem is that these millennials just don’t care,” Sara shared with us candidly in a moment of total frustration. We both looked at each other and then at her, “Uh…you do realize YOU are a millennial, right?” “Yeah, yeah,” she acknowledged, “but I’m a DIFFERENT kind of millennial.” Of course she is, and so were the people who were frustrating her. No matter what generation you’re in, we’d bet money you don’t feel like you fit the stereotype.

During a session with a culture change client, the organization’s president had an epiphany: “For 30 years I thought my job was to manage processes and results. This culture change journey has helped me redefine my job - to manage people’s energy.”

Imagine giving such a response to your boss when they offer you a promotion or to take the lead on a strategically significant project for your Government agency. Imagine saying “sure, I’ll get onto that as soon as I’ve had a vacation with my family!” Too often we fear that such a statement will lead to such a career changing offer going towards someone else. We fear that it sends the wrong message! Does it though? The simple answer is that it does not necessarily have to be sending a negative message and creative leaders most likely know this!

Cornell University professor Dr. Tony Simons’ powerful article, “The High Cost of Lost Trust,” appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 2002. In that piece, he described his team’s efforts to examine a specific hypothesis (“Employee commitment drives customer service”) in the US operations of a major hotel chain. They interviewed over 7,000 employees at nearly 80 properties and found that employee commitment drives customer service, but, most critically, a leader’s behavioral integrity drives that and more.

Over 30 years ago I had a conversation with a teenager that caught me completely off guard - and reminds me of a valuable principle to this day. While I have a very well-honed skill for catching people doing things wrong - if I want to be an effective leader, I need to catch people doing things right. I work on this every day, with clients, peers, and bosses - greatly because of the jumpstart this conversation gave me.

Choose to make the decisions that will take you to the end that you have in mind. That means being proactive, not reactive about life and what it might present to you. The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh in the 2018 movie Christopher Robin is useful on this point. Winnie The Pooh: I always get to where I'm going by walking away from where I've been.

The position of the kicker on a football team has always intrigued me. Here is a player that for most of the time is practically anonymous. Many of the rival fans and neutrals watching won’t even know his name. He runs on, unannounced and unnoticed, a few times in the game just to kick the ball between the posts, and then disappears again, whilst everybody is generally consumed with the much higher profile players and the more dramatic plays.

As the New Year begins and our work life starts to move into first gear, we can be tempted to think back to yesteryear and ponder the ‘if only...?’ question. Not that reflection is a bad thing mind you, indeed, done purposefully it can be positive. That said, there is a lot of wisdom in what Walt Disney had to say. Curiosity is what impels us to move forward.

As a leader, your credibility is maintained, day by day, when you do what you say you will do. For example, if you announce that, from this point forward, every team member will be expected to demonstrate our team’s valued behaviors, you have set a standard. Educating team members about desired valued behaviors is important, but, without accountability, those valued behaviors are just one more set of expectations that your employees can ignore.

If you’re like most managers we work with you just don’t have enough time. Your open door has become a revolving door of employees bringing you problems that need solving. So how do you turn these problem-bringers into problem solvers?