As I’ve listened to the “talking heads”, I’ve thought about the “politicking” that went on through this debate and how Democrats and Republicans train newcomers to Congress. They make sure new representatives and new senators know they are to support their party.

Imagine this business situation:
Will, a new employee, joins the team. First he goes through new employee orientation where he takes care of all the legal and benefit stuff and learns a bit about the organization.

Next Will goes to his workplace. He might get introduced to everyone; he might get someone assigned to help him the first few days; he might be told when the group takes breaks and where the restrooms are. But then again, none of that may happen. Instead, he might be put to work immediately with little information about or exchange with co-workers. He comes to work, does his work, and goes home. At the end of the week or middle or end of the month, he gets paid.

Also at the end of the month, Will is told he won’t be getting a small bonus because his work wasn’t accurate enough often enough. At a team meeting, he learns that since his numbers weren’t high enough, everyone on the team misses out on a bonus. He wonders, How was I supposed to know how I was doing? Where do I find these numbers? Why didn’t one of my team members clue me in? Will and his team need some training in how to work as a team!

This is a problem for many work groups today. Groups of people are called teams but:

• given individual responsibility
• held accountable as individuals, and
• rewarded as individuals.

Many come from areas where each individual had to sink or swim alone. They don’t really know how to work as a team. This sets a team up for failure because there is:

• no trust
• unhealthy conflict
• no commitment to the team
• no accountability to each other
• no collective results

Consider what is necessary for successful teams. To start with organizations must align their reward systems with teams, define teams, and set expectations. Then team members need to learn these things are the team’s foundation.
Good team training follows that includes interactive ways of exploring these topics:

• understanding individual strengths,
• developing trust,
• making commitments to each other,
• learning how to share and listen to conflicting ideas and points of view, and
• agreeing to be accountable.

The results of such training would be:

• Team contracts that spell out ground rules for behavior,
• Scheduling and meeting planning that supports the team, and
• Solution-finding processes that get at the cause of problems and result in viable solutions.

If Will and his team get this kind of training, the next team member will succeed faster than Will did and the whole team with thrive.

Now if I could just get the ear of congress and the president . . .

What do these work situations say about America’s workplaces? I think it says individual managers, supervisors, CEOs, and whole companies are functioning under the impression that fear is a great, long-lasting motivator.

Does fear work to increase productivity in the workplace? Yes, absolutely . . . at least for the short term. It increases negative stress. Fear ultimately paralyzes.

I can think of several organizations that have used fear to:

• Get buy-in for change,
• Drive higher productivity sort of, and
• Reinforce the power of authority.

But is that what they get long-term?

What if you were in a company-wide meeting with a new CEO and management team and the CEO tells the group, “I’m tired of you acting like seventh-graders. Get on the bus with us or leave!” Then you’re required to go to either a focus group where you’re expected to say how you felt about the meeting or to a meeting of your workgroup where you’re expected to say how you felt about the meeting and the future of the organization. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d have much to say in either meeting. And immediately after the meeting, I’d be more focused on brushing up my résumé than being productive.

What if you were a sales person who’s required to meet goals but can only make a limited amount of money? Only if you bring in a new major client (read as multimillion dollar client) will you be “allowed” to make more in commission. In this case, the fear is that the management team doesn’t know what it wants and doesn’t appreciate good-to-great sales people. If I were a sales person in this organization, I’d be looking elsewhere for the freedom to be my best and make the highest amount of money my skills allowed.

What if you were an office worker who had been given an assignment with an ever-changing goal and ever-changing measurements? “I’ll know you’ve done a good job when you do a good job,” is the manager’s only direction. Every time you present what you think is exactly what the manager wants, you’re told, “No, that’s not what I said. This is your last chance to do this right!” If I were that person, I’d go to bed and wake up every day dreading work. I’d be so fearful there would be no way I could function at my best.

What is the winning formula that these managers don’t know? I’ll tell you:

10% fear + 90% hope = 100% good place to work

Hope in the workplace liberates creativity, vision, high esprit de corps, and high morale. It encourages risk taking, an important factor in the innovation process. All of those things result in:

• Better business relationship,
• More creative and innovative ideas, products, and services, and
• A strong, sustainable bottom line.

The colonies were free! Well, not quite. There was still the pesky problem that England didn’t want the colonies to be free. “Words are cheap.” The Declaration of Independence is a magnificent document. However, announcing independence didn’t gain it. Winning the Revolutionary War did. Words can support and inspire action, but action must be taken!

Change the scene to the contemporary American workplace. Imagine a manager who needs to lead a group to change their behavior from inconsistent and untrustworthy to consistent and trustworthy. How would that manager go about doing that? A speech? Demand the necessary changes and reprimand when they don’t happen? When we want to change behavior, managers must model by exaggeration and consistency. Exaggeration brings the action to the attention of others. Consistency says this action is important and it will be used every time.

So, if we managers want employees to be trustworthy, we have to be trustworthy. If we want employees to be consistently on time with quality service or products, we have to be consistently on time with quality service or products. What are managers’ quality service or products? Managing employees and the work of the group. Specifically, that means being trustworthy and consistent in every interaction with every employee.

If we haven’t been consistent and trustworthy in the past, it may take employees a while to trust us. A recent Dilbert cartoon illustrated this fact when the pointy-haired boss gave positive feedback to an employee. The employee was surprised and skeptical about what the boss was trying to do. That kind of skepticism can be overcome by consistency. We have to keep doing the right thing so employees believe we will consistently act that way. At that point of belief, we become role models for that behavior.

We will still make mistakes, be inconsistent and untrustworthy, because we’re human. How such mistakes are handled are also modeling opportunities. Admitting a mistake and getting back on track models at least two other important behaviors: humility and perseverance.

Accept the challenge: Take action immediately!

One contribution by Edwards Deming is still a strong component of how successful businesses work: continuous process improvement. All you have to do is look at commercials for new cars, cell phones, and computers.All tout improved or recreated products or new creations. They are sleeker, have more features, work faster, and (may) cost less! All of those improvements are a result of continuous process improvement.

Deming was a strategist who believed, as I do, that everything we do is a process and every process can be improved. Companies that succeed regularly evaluate processes. It’s not a fad: It’s a way of thinking and doing. It’s asking, What can we do . . .
. . . quicker?
. . . smarter?
. . . with more people?
. . . with fewer people?
. . . with less cost?
. . . with increased satisfaction?
. . . to increase productivity?

We’ve done a better job improving the technical side of processes, such as mechanized steps and a variety of measurements, than we have with the people side of processes, such as team building, conflict resolution, and customer satisfaction.

That’s not to say improving the technical side or different steps in a processes isn’t important. It is! Imagine how productive you’d be today if you were doing your work exactly the same way you did it 5 years ago.
–You wouldn’t be able to communicate electronically as easily.
–Sharing documents and sending invoices would be awkward at best.

We seem to come easily to the decision that we must continuously improve the technical and equipment side of processes. We can measure the amount of time and, therefore, the costs.

With business relationships it’s harder to be objective. We may not realize that the amount of time allocated for specific steps in a processes is because one department “pads” time when working with us because individuals don’t trust each other. We may miss the fact that we have multiple meetings because decision makers aren’t all in the room or on the same page.

Since we know improved work relationships result in improved productivity, each person can make a difference. Simply ask yourself: What can I do to improve my work relationships and my work processes? What actions do I need to take to build trust with my colleagues, managers, and customers?

Asking, answering, and acting on such questions lead to professional accountability that can positively affect corporate accountability from the bottom up.

Praise is needed as much for those whose work is improving as it is for those who always perform at a level of excellence. Recognition positively reinforces those working to improve their work and performance and it stabilizes those who normally turn in high-quality work. If one is making consistent improvements but no praise follows, the worker will assume that their work is not important and they will diminish their efforts.

The manager’s mindset must not become: I’m not going to praise this worker because it’s the first time they’ve ever done anything right. For one thing, the likelihood of this statement being true is slim. Everyone does something right sometime. And for another thing, it is even more important to praise this unusual happening in order to create a pattern of good behavior.

Recently, I attended a high school football awards banquet at the end of the school year. It was the coach’s responsibility, of course, to introduce each award recipient. This would have been the perfect time for the coach to praise each winner (obviously, they had some desirable strength or they wouldn’t have been chosen to receive an award). He could have easily praised the skill, leadership qualities, and resiliency of these fine young men. Instead, he foolishly chose to make them the butt of quips by commenting on their athletic and academic shortcomings. While his comments drew laughter from the audience (undeservedly so), the players were obviously uncomfortable and embarrassed. Had that coach offered his critique during the season when performance could have been improved, he might have had a winning season. As it was, he saved his criticism until the end of the year when nothing could be done. Timing is everything.

Positive behavior changes will start to occur when you move from general feedback to specific feedback.

For example, compare these comments made by a manager:
“Good job, Mike.” (Good job on what? This comment is vague and flimsy.)
“I certainly appreciate the way you chaired the meeting today, Mike. You were enthusiastic and prepared.” (This is actual matter from which Mike can spring forward, and you can bet that from now on he will always be “enthusiastic and prepared.”)

If one hears enough times a definitive statement of high regard for their performance in a precise way, the behavior is guaranteed to be repeated.

No two people learn the same way or with the same results. That’s why it is much more time and cost effective to utilize assessments, questionnaires, tests, and other forms of participant feedback before training events occur. Then, objectives can be set for the training session that will meet individuals’ needs.

When workers seek to improve their performance, it’s critical that they get feedback from authentic sources such as leaders, employees, customers, and colleagues, in order to know how they are coming across. Then, an individual is in a good position to search for a solution for their individual problems.

Team-building is enriched by placing members in an environment other than the work setting to develop the emotional, social, physical, and intellectual parts of the team.

The work environment is usually very sterile. We only experience each other in a one-dimensional way; so many aspects of our personality are never displayed in the office. Take your team members off on retreat to climb a mountain, row a boat, play a game of ball, or camp out, or lead them to take on a benevolence project or other extra-office activity. In doing so, you will give them a chance to see other sides of who they are and to use that information constructively in the workplace. The history and experiences we build in a relationship help us to work through problem solving, communication, and conflict resolution in a time of crisis.

People resist being changed, but most do not resist change itself. Success lies in the way change is presented. As a leader, you have the opportunity to make change an exciting adventure simply by giving your team members, when at all possible, a voice and a choice. “Choice” is a powerful word indicating ownership and freedom, two elements that boost any team’s morale. Certainly, no organization can give carte blanche to employees, but many are working to find a happy medium offering such options as flex time, office arrangement, casual dress, and the freedom to set their own schedules while still meeting goals.