Blanchard LeaderChat

There’s an old saying that, “People don’t really care what you know, until they know you care.”  This is good advice for leaders who often get caught up and lose focus while dealing with all of the performance pressures at work.  Sometimes it feels like you have to choose between focusing on people or focusing on performance.  This is a false dilemma.  As Ken Blanchard has advised over the years, the best leaders focus on both people and results at the same time. 

In case you’ve gotten off- track with this, here’s a short acronym to help you remember to stop and take the time to show that you CARE about the people you work with, and who report to you.

Connect. Take the time to lift your nose from the grindstone today and check in with your people.  How’s it going?  What’s happening in their life?  What are they excited about?  You might be surprised at how long it’s been since you checked in, or how much has changed in their lives.  Take a minute to reconnect.

Acknowledge. Listen to what people are telling you.  Truly hear what they are saying.  As a leader, it’s easy to get caught up in telling instead of listening.  How are your people doing on their tasks and key responsibility areas?  Chances are that they are just as busy as you are.  Take a minute to acknowledge the work they are doing and the effort they are putting into it.

Respect—the skills, effort, challenges, and needs that your people have.  What are their strengths?  What challenges are they facing? Where do they need help?  What can you do to help them succeed?  Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your primary job is to evaluate performance.  As a leader, your primary job is to help your people succeed.

Encourage.  Everyone can use a kind word, a pat on the back, and a word of encouragement.  Who in your group has been up against it, fighting fires, chasing deadlines, and making sure that things get done?  Who seems burnt, or worn out, from all the work they’ve had to accomplish? Take a minute to show your appreciation, offer some encouragement, and let them know that you appreciate what they’ve been doing.

In today’s hectic work environment, it’s easy to neglect the people side of work.  Don’t let that happen to you.  Relationships are an important ingredient to an engaging work environment.  If you’ve been out of touch lately, use these four practices to reconnect and show people you care.

In a recent post for Fast Company entitled Managers: Set People Free To Promote Growth And Get Results, Blanchard Executive VP Scott Blanchard makes the observation that knowing when to give people greater autonomy in their jobs is often hard for managers to figure out.

As a leader, it’s important to make sure you’ve set your people up for success before you transfer responsibility and accountability. Here are some of Blanchard’s key points to make sure you’ve done your part.

Share what to do, with clear guidelines

A big part of being a manager is saying, “I’ve done what I can do, and now I need to turn it over to people so they can be accountable and responsible for their own performance.” The reality is that managers can’t watch their people all the time, so at some point their people are going to have to act on their manager’s behalf, consistent with the way that their manager wants them to act. This requires the manager to provide a clear picture of the desired outcome.

Make it a gradual process

Autonomy, when correctly implemented, is a gradual and appropriate empowering and loosening of the reins on people to enable them to take responsibility for what they are doing. For example, if you are a parent, you know that sooner or later your children are going to be out in the world, living and making decisions outside of your expressed views.

If parents don’t let their kids do anything independently and develop their own skills before they turn 18 and leave for college, then they’re asking for trouble. Parents, as well as managers, need to slowly loosen the leash and give more autonomy over time. Otherwise they’re going to see some real disasters because they haven’t built up a person’s capacity to be autonomous.

Employees aren’t children, of course, but this example provides some context that all of us can relate to.

There is a big difference between providing autonomy and abdicating management responsibility. If managers just let people loose without skills, abilities, and boundaries, then they are abdicating responsibility and setting people up to fail. Autonomy needs to be a slow and steady process. Your goal as a manager is to help people learn their job inside and out through thorough training, and then, as they demonstrate competency, give them the autonomy to be flexible. Autonomy without competence is really risky and dangerous, and lack of autonomy when someone is competent can be insulting and demotivating.

Look for the right time

The challenge for a manager, then, is to identify the point at which to turn the job over to the employee. This is the leap of faith when supervisors move from a coaching role to a more consultative role with their people. Parents, again, are familiar with this when they watch their kids drive away to college–they take a big gulp and hope that they’ve prepared their kids to take care of themselves when they get to the campus.

In my own case, I have been known to give people responsibility too soon–sending them out before they really have all the competence and skills necessary. Other people I know have a tendency to hang on too long–then they miss the opportunity to give people a chance to really spread their wings and succeed or fail on their own merit. When managers hang on too long, they can create either dependence, or a sense of frustration, anger, and resentment in employees because the employees feel they are being micromanaged. As a manager, you want to get it right as often as you can, but be aware of the possibility that you may be either too slow or too fast in turning people loose.

In matters that aren’t life and death I would recommend a bias toward turning people loose early. In more critical circumstances you may have to hang on for a more extended period of time, but eventually you still need to let them go off on their own.

To read more of Blanchard’s thoughts on empowering your employees, check out his complete post here at the Fast Company Leadership Experts blog.

A few weeks ago I took my mother-in-law to a doctor appointment and the nurse who helped us had this Chinese symbol tattooed on the back of her neck. When I asked her what it meant, she said that it represented “honesty.” As the Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies, I was immediately intrigued since honesty is a core component of trust. As I did some research on this symbol, I learned that it could represent several concepts including “trust” itself. Yet the formation of this character is a compound word that has the meaning of “a person’s word is to be believed.” I was struck by the clear implication for leaders – are you a person whose word is to be believed?

In order to be a leader whose word is believed, it’s necessary to be honest in your dealings with people. Some would say that it’s unrealistic to be honest in all situations. In fact, just this week I read an article on a well-known management website that advocated the top ten reasons to be dishonest in the workplace, most of which were rationalizations for self-centric, me-first egoism. Being honest and ethical is actually a self-esteem boost for a leader. John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, said “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.”

If asked if they were honest, most leaders would say “Yes, of course. I don’t tell lies.” Telling the truth is at the core of being honest, but it’s not the only behavior that people interpret as honesty. Sharing information openly, not coloring or hiding parts of the truth to fit an agenda, and delivering tough news with tact and diplomacy all go into someone forming a perception of you as an honest leader. In a recent survey conducted of over 800 people who attended our webinar, Four Leadership Behaviors That Build or Destroy Trust, 57% of respondents said that the most important behavior of a leader to build trust is acting with integrity; being honest in word and deed.

You can’t establish a relationship of trust without being honest. When you behave honestly, others are able to rely upon your consistency of character. Being reliable, consistent, and predictable in your behavior, decisions, and reactions to critical situations allows your followers to have a sense of security and confidence in your leadership. Being honest also helps the bottom line. Kenneth T. Derr, retired chairman of Chevron Corporation said “There’s no doubt in my mind that being ethical pays, because I know that, in our company, people who sleep well at night work better during the day.”

Honesty is like a behavioral tattoo, the indelible mark of a trusted leader. Do you have it?

This is one in a series of LeaderChat articles on the topic of trust by Randy Conley, the Trust Practice Leader at the Ken Blanchard Companies. For more insights on trust, follow Randy on Twitter @TrustWrks, Facebook, and the TrustWorks! blog.

As leaders, sometimes we blow it.  Sometimes we break trust by exhibiting poor judgment or poor behavior. Randy Conley, Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies calls those occurrences “trustbusters.”

Minding your A,B,C, and D’s—Ability, Believability, Connectedness, and Dependability

Trustbusters are behaviors that erode trust among direct reports and colleagues.  Some common examples are when we don’t demonstrate expertise in our jobs, and don’t achieve results which causes people to lose faith in our Ability. 

We also “bust trust” when we break confidences, tell lies of convenience, or gossip about others.  This impacts our Believability. 

Another trustbuster is when we don’t listen. It’s hard sometimes to pay attention when we’re in conversation with people. Your mind starts to wander, or you find yourself thinking about the next meeting.  When we don’t listen, or show interest in others, or recognize others, that erodes trust by eroding our Connection with people.

Finally, as leaders we sometimes bust trust when we don’t follow through on commitments by being disorganized or unreliable which undermines people’s perception of our Dependability.

 How can you go about rebuilding broken trust?

There are five key things that we can do to rebuild trust, says Conley. Conley calls them the 5 “A’s.”

1. “The first thing is that we need to Acknowledge that there’s been a breach of trust,” says Conley.  “It’s like they say in a twelve-step program, the first thing you have to do is acknowledge that you have a problem. You’ve got to acknowledge the situation exists.
2. “Second you have to Admit your part in the breach of trust. You have to own up to whatever you did that caused that loss of trust with that individual.”
3. “Third you have to Apologize for it—and if I were to add another key, I would say that you also have to make amends, so apologize and make amends for whatever you did to break the trust.”
4. “Fourth you have to Assess. And that means using the ABCD model to assess what you did and what were the core elements of trust that you broke and what can you do centered around those behaviors to help rebuild trust?”
5. “And then finally, you have to Agree on an action plan with the person that you broke trust with. You have to agree on what you’re going to do differently moving forward to help rebuild trust.”

Trust is a very delicate thing that takes a significant amount of time to build and can be broken in just an instant. But it is possible to repair and rebuild trust. But you have to address it immediately.  Don’t let a mistake in judgment turn into an indictment of character. 

Conley likes to quote a Chinese proverb to help leaders understand trust and timing.  The proverb says that, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”  Don’t let trust issues fester in your organization or in your relationships.  Address them today.

To learn more about Conley’s thoughts on improving trust—including the one behavior that all leaders can address immediately—read The Leader’s Role in Building Trust. 

Or listen to a recording of a free webinar that Conley conducted on June 15, Four Leadership Behaviors that Build or Destroy Trust.  (Over 800 people attended this free webinar courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies and Cisco WebEx.)

Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).  Trust Practice Leader Randy Conley will be discussing strategies for leaders in a special presentation on Four Leadership Behaviors that Build or Destroy Trust.

The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 600 people expected to participate.

Immediately after the webinar, Randy will be answering follow-up questions here at LeaderChat for about 30 minutes.  To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.

Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat

• Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
• Type in your question
• Push SUBMIT COMMENT

It’s as easy as that!  Randy will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received.  Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.

We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.  Four Leadership Behaviors that Build or Destroy Trust recording.

As you look back over your work career, who is the supervisor, manager, or leader that you would identify as your best boss?  And more importantly, what was it about them that made them great in your eyes?  Take a minute now to identify that person.  We’ll use your experience to identify something that will help you in your own personal leadership journey.

Once you’ve got your best boss in mind, take another minute to identify what it was about him or her that made them special and memorable for you.  Chances are that you will identify a couple of traits similar to these that other people have identified when we’ve asked this question.

“_____________________ was/is my best boss because he/she …

• Believed in me
• Trusted me
• Gave me an opportunity to grow
• Took me under their wing
• Made work fun
• Treated me fairly
• Went to bat for me
• Stuck their neck out for me

Was your boss’s trait one of these—or something different?  While each of us will identify different specific traits that our best boss has, there is probably a word that includes any that you might have come up with.  All of us, no matter what our experience, could probably say that our best boss was so special in our eyes because they truly CARED about us.

I know that this is true in my own case. My best boss was Margie Blanchard, the cofounder of our company who I reported to from 2000 to 2003.  The traits that made Margie so special in my eyes included that she

• Connected with me
• Acknowledged me
• Respected me
• Expected more from me

Now I know that acronyms can be overdone at times—especially in the consulting business, but I couldn’t help but notice that the first letter of those traits spells CARE. 

Magic? I don’t think so, just a great reminder of a key ingredient to being a great boss.  Though it will be displayed in many forms, at its core, one of the key traits of our best bosses is that they cared about us.

A Fun Exercise and Way to Celebrate

So let’s have some fun with this and tap into our collective brilliance.  I’m a big believer in “catching people doing things right” and that “none of us is as smart as all of us.” Let’s put both of those ideas to work today with a little exercise.

Help me expand on this CARE acronym by adding your boss’s trait into the mix.  As the cheerleaders say, “Give me a C, Give me an A, Give me an R, Give me an E!”  Just use the COMMENTS button above to type in a trait of your best boss that goes with one of these letters.  (For extra credit, take a minute to identify and say thanks to that best boss while you’re here.) I promise you’ll feel good and get off to a good start this week if you do.

Who knows, together we might create one of the truly great leadership acronyms (rivaling SMART goals even!)

And even if we don’t, we will still have a great reminder of this one important trait that we can carry with us today as we work with our colleagues and direct reports.

The difficult economic situation of the last couple of years has negatively impacted levels of trust. A recent study by Maritz research found that just 11% of employees surveyed had a strong degree of trust in their organization’s leaders. Even more alarming is that only 7% of the respondents said they had a strong degree of trust in their coworkers. It paints a picture of a “dog-eat-dog” world with everyone out to protect their own interests.

This presents a huge challenge for businesses today according to Randy Conley, Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies. In the latest issue of Blanchard Ignite!, Conley explains, “Trust is at the foundation of all relationships—whether it is interpersonal or organizationally… leaders face the fallout from low trust through decreased performance and increased disciplinary issues, low morale, and increased turnover and absenteeism, just to name a few.”Conley reminds leaders that trust isn’t something that happens by itself. It is developed through the use of very specific behaviors. Read more…

Boss watching is a fact of life in many organizations. Frontline employees are more concerned with keeping the boss happy than they are with keeping the customer happy. Leaders can help employees focus in the right direction by taking the mystery out of what people can expect from them as a leader.

Employees are always concerned about how their boss will react when he or she finds out about a situation. This uncertainty keeps people unwilling to step out of tightly defined roles for fear that they will do something wrong. People shouldn’t have to guess how their leader would respond. Leaders can improve the situation—and open up a little playing room for employees—by clearly sharing their expectations.

Read more…

Think back to your best job—a time when you felt totally engaged in the work you were doing. What was it about that job that made it so special? What was happening in the work environment that caused you to feel that this was a place where you could grow and succeed?

Those are the questions that researchers at The Ken Blanchard Companies have been exploring in ongoing research into the factors that create Employee Work Passion. Their findings show that an engaging work environment is comprised of many different factors. And while the rankings and impact of each factor varies from individual to individual, all must be present to some degree for an employee to feel the sense of well-being that leads to higher levels of performance and satisfaction.

Read more…