Blanchard LeaderChat

We all know the saying “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” It’s sound advice—but it’s also a dangerous habit unless you step back occasionally to see what impact it might be having on the busy person’s experience at work. For most managers, having a “go to” person is a great asset. Just make sure you don’t overdo it by going to the same person again and again.

This is a dilemma for most managers according to Scott Blanchard in a recent blog post for Fast Company magazine.  Blanchard explains that it is only natural to assign tasks to the most accomplished people on your team. The challenge is to balance a short-term need for immediate results with a long-term view for the growth and development of your people.

Finding the perfect balance

Drawing on some of the core concepts from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Blanchard explains that managers need to balance routine work that is easily accomplished with challenging new tasks that provide variety.

How can managers find the right balance?  Here are three strategies that Blanchard recommends:

• Become more aware of your goal-setting habits.  Have you optimized the challenge inherent in each person’s goals or tasks, or have you fallen into the habit of overusing and under-challenging your best people? Have you focused more on your own needs instead of theirs by giving them routine work you know they can accomplish successfully with little intervention on your part?
• Focus on both the long and short term.  Manage the urge to assign a task to a proven winner to ensure quick completion versus assigning the same task to someone who is brand new and may require some direction and support. But don’t go overboard. You don’t want to focus solely on employee development and compromise organizational effectiveness. Balance is the key.
• Create variety for yourself and others. According to Warren Bennis, the most effective managers are the ones who actively engage in clear periods of reflection as well as action. Balancing task variety is one of those projects that requires some discipline and awareness to think through.

Blanchard also reminds readers that most people become bored because they’re doing boring tasks—not because of a character flaw. Instead of moving away from a person you might see as a complainer, see that person instead as someone who is not really “in flow” and work with him or her to find out what the right mix could be. It’s a management basic that creates the long and short term impact that works best.

PS: To read more of Blanchard’s thinking on creating the right mix in your work environment, check out, Helping Your Employees Find Their “Flow” at Fast Company.

Everyone goes through emotional ups and downs during the course of a normal work week.  What’s your personal policy as a manager when it comes to addressing the feelings of your people at work?

• Are you an Avoider, unsure about how to deal with feelings so you retreat from the situation? 
• Are you an Ice Man, and believe that feelings don’t really have a place in the work environment?
• Are you an Over Indulger and tend to get a little too wrapped up in emotional situations?

Going too far in any of these three directions can lead to problems at work.  The best approach is to find a balance.  Make sure that people are clear on performance expectations, but at the same time let them know that you are there to help and support them when necessary.

Looking for a way to do this regardless of your personality type?  Here’s some good advice from Ken Blanchard, best-selling author of more than 50 books on management and leadership.  When asked what he hopes people remember most from his body of work, Blanchard identifies one concept that goes back to his best-selling book, The One Minute Manager, written together with Spencer Johnson. 

“Catch people doing things right.”

Take the time to notice when someone who reports to you is doing something right.  This one simple gesture says volumes.  Imagine it for yourself.  How would your day be impacted if your boss stopped by and shared a kind word about something you’re working on? How would that make you feel, impact your morale, and subsequent performance? 

Now, imagine what a kind word from you would do for your direct reports.  No matter what your personality type is, a kind word is always appropriate and appreciated.  Try it today.  You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.

Wondering where to find the best “how-to” consultants on employee engagement? Look no further than your own company. Today, right now, inside your own organization are managers who consistently provide the right organizational environment that promotes well-being and generates high levels of engagement.  And they do it all while operating under the existing umbrella of your current organizational culture.

In a new article for the November issue of Blanchard’s Ignite newsletter, best-selling business author and consultant Scott Blanchard identifies five ways that organizations can find and learn from these best practice managers. 

Step 1: Survey your organization. Use a reputable employee engagement assessment to survey your organization. Make sure that the instrument is valid and reliable and that it will provide you with actionable data. Also, be sure to set the demographics up carefully. You need to protect anonymity to ensure candid responses while still obtaining the smaller unit data that you are looking for. In Blanchard’s experience, a review at the department or function level will usually get the job done.

Step 2: Identify your personal pockets of excellence. Once you get your survey results back, study your organization at the department or functional level. Identify your own personal pockets of excellence. Find out which teams and departments are scoring significantly above the organizational average. Contact leaders in these departments to set up interviews to learn more about what is happening in their specific unit.

Step 3: Focus your conversation where it counts the most. Blanchard research has identified 12 factors that create a passionate work environment and account for most of the variance in employee perceptions. (See Blanchard’s white paper, Employee Work Passion: Connecting the Dots, for more information on this.) These factors are broken down into five organizational factors, five job factors, and two moderating factors.

• Organizational Factors—Growth, Procedural Justice, Distributive Justice, Collaboration, and Performance Expectations
• Job Factors—Meaningful Work, Task Variety, Workload Balance, Autonomy, and Feedback
• Moderating Factors—Connectedness to Colleagues and Connectedness to Leader

Use these factors as a structure for your conversations with unit leaders. Find out how they approach meeting each of these components of a passionate work environment. Discover what they are doing differently from leaders in other departments.

Step 4: Don’t go overboard with prescriptions—Understand the process instead. As you listen and learn about how individual managers and teams address each of the 12 Employee Work Passion factors, listen for the underlying reasons why they engage in those behaviors. Don’t fall into the trap of just mimicking the behavior. The relationship between managers and direct reports is complex. What works for one manager in creating positive feelings of Connectedness and Collaboration may not work for another. Each manager needs to find his or her own individual approach.

Step 5: Share best practices with others and ask your leaders to do the same. Once you’ve identified all of the different ways that people in your organization are approaching employee work passion in the company, start to share some of those practices. Conduct forums, post tips on internal Web sites, and share success stories.

Get started today!

In any organization, at least 20%, and often as much as 30% of the people coming to work each day report high engagement levels.  Do you know who they are in your organization?  If not, you’re missing a very practical way to identify, celebrate, and learn from people who intimately understand how to create an engaging environment within your unique culture.

To read more of Blanchard’s thoughts on bringing out the best from your own organization check out Employee Work Passion: Seek out your pockets of excellence.  Also be sure to see the information about a free November 16 webinar that Blanchard will be conducting on Cultivating Employee Work Passion: The New Rules of Engagement

Only 20% of people say that they are truly passionate about their work according to a recent survey from Deloitte.  The vast majority of workers are disengaged, with an estimated 23 million “actively disengaged” in the U.S. alone according to Gallup. 

The lingering economic slowdown has created a real motivational problem for today’s leaders.  A shortage of resources has limited the ability of organizations to provide raises, promotions, and other perks. It’s been just as bad for employees as the widespread scope of the problem has left them with few alternatives beyond their present organization.

The result has been a perfect storm where millions of workers have resigned themselves to their jobs and effectively “quit and stayed.”  These workers show up and do their job at a basic level, but they are sullen and unmotivated in a quiet way that is hard to get at. 

It’s not so much what these workers do, as much as it is what they don’t do.

Here are the five intentions that passionate employees embrace.  Wondering if your people have “quit and stayed?”  Ask yourself to what degree your people:

1. Actively endorse the organization as a good place to work?
2. Go above and beyond the basic requirements of the job in terms of performance?
3. Think beyond themselves and strive for win/win solutions?
4. Go the extra mile when it is necessary to get the job done?
5. Intend to stay with the organization long term?

If you can’t answer YES confidently to these five questions, here are a couple of additional questions to ask yourself to get at the cause of the problem. A lack of passion is usually caused by negative perceptions at a job, organizational, or relationship level.  Probe a little bit in each of these areas and you will likely find the problem area. 

• Job Factors: Do your employees see the importance of their work?  Are people empowered to make decisions about their work and tasks? Are workloads reasonably proportioned for the time people have to accomplish them?
• Organizational Factors: Does the organization still seem committed to growth? Have clear goals been set? Are decisions about resources being made fairly?
• Relationship Factors: Do people feel connected? Do employees have a supportive professional relationship with their leader? Are leaders checking in and providing feedback regarding employee performance?

No one wants to be the type of person who quits and stays, but sometimes people fall into that trap.  Help people up.  Open up a dialogue around these issues.  Just taking the time and asking how things are going in each of these areas will show people that you’re noticing, that you’re willing to help, and that you care.

PS: Do you have a “quit and stay” solution to share?

On January 25, The Ken Blanchard Companies will be hosting a Leadership Livecast on the problem of Quitting and Staying.  Have you successfully addressed quitting and staying in your organization? Can you share it in five minutes or less?  Videotape yourself and send it to us.  You could be a featured speaker!  Click here for details.

Gallup’s latest report on The State of the Global Workplace 2011 identifies the levels of engagement and subsequent wellbeing of workers from over 120 countries.  It’s another great report from a pioneer in the field of employee engagement.  Overall the report shows that only 11% of workers are engaged, with 62% identified as disengaged, and 27% identified as actively disengaged. 

One item buried deep in the report was something that I hadn’t seen Gallup talk much about in the past.  In a section looking at implications for leaders, the report identified the two factors among the twelve that Gallup measures that are consistently among the lowest rated worldwide. Can you guess what they are?

I’ll give you a hint.  It’s something you can do personally and it won’t cost you a thing.

The two lowest rated items are, “In the past seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work” and “In the past six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.”

In looking at why this might be occurring, Gallup researchers identified three possible causes

• Larger spans of control might be making it more difficult to give the kind of individualized attention required to ensure these needs are met.
• When it comes to jobs with a high degree of routine, feedback and recognition may be overlooked because managers do not differentiate individual contributions.
• It might just be that we are “…better wired to receive praise than to give it. We feel our own hunger more than we empathize with others around us.”

How are you doing with the praise and recognition of your people?  If you are a little rusty, here are three tips for getting started.

1. Make it timely.  Praisings are most effective when they are delivered as close to real time as powerful.  Don’t “save up” your praisings for a specified time.  Praise in the moment!
2. Give specific examples.  A general comment like, “You’re really doing good work,” is nice, but a praising that identifies a specific action is better.
3. Repeat often.  You really can’t overdo it—as long as you are specific and sincere in your praising.

For over 30 years, Ken Blanchard has asked audiences worldwide, “How many of you get too much praise at work?”  No one ever raises their hand.  We all have a deep-seated need to be recognized and appreciated.  Everyone enjoys a pat on the back.  Don’t be stingy with your praise.  Catch someone doing things right this week.  Guess what?  You’ll feel better too!

That’s the message Scott Blanchard shares with readers in his latest column for Fast Company magazine.  Drawing on exclusive, primary research that shows Growth as one of the lowest-rated employee work passion factors in today’s organizations, Blanchard shares what individuals, managers, and senior leaders can do to improve growth perceptions inside their organizations.

Individual Employees

For individual employees, Blanchard recommends first and foremost, to focus on doing a good job in your current role while you look for new opportunities inside the company.  As he explains, “Growth beyond your current job is a privilege usually reserved for people who perform in an exemplary fashion. When managers get requests for growth from people who are not performing at their best, it may feel to them like they are stepping on a treadmill with an employee who may never be satisfied in his or her current role.  Most managers will avoid this, because they suspect it will become a never-ending process.”

Managers

For managers, Blanchard advises facing growth conversations head-on—even when you don’t have traditional next steps up the corporate ladder to offer. As a manager, keep your eye out for new opportunities and new projects that may come up. Know which people on your team would consider it rewarding to get involved in a project that is different than their normal job.

This could potentially be a lateral move, or even a move to completely different part of the organization. Some of the greatest opportunities for growth are found in areas that integrate what’s happening between two departments. For example, a project following up on leads could bring the sales and marketing departments together, while refining and solving a business problem could integrate the engineering and sales departments.

Good managers look out for their people and think beyond the day-to-day. When they have someone who is really working hard for them, they go out of their way to help that person grow.

Senior Leaders

For senior leaders, Blanchard reminds executives that good people always have opportunities.  His recommendation?  Conduct an assessment to find out how employees view current growth opportunities in the organization. Make growth a priority. Your best people are not going to wait patiently for opportunities for advancement—even in a slow economy.  If you are not providing them with growth opportunities, they will go elsewhere and they will take what they learn from you and use that to build their career at another company.

You don’t want to be the person at a top employee’s exit interview who hears, “The headhunters seemed to care more about my career development and growth opportunities than this organization did.”

Learn More

Growth is just one of 12  important factors employees evaluate in their work environment. To see Blanchard’s latest research on the topic read Employee Work Passion Volume 3: Connecting the Dots.  To read more on Scott Blanchard’s specific strategies for creating an engaging work environment check out his other Fast Company articles.

Do Your People Really Know What You Expect From Them?

Feedback Usually Says More About the Giver than the Receiver

Managers: Set People Free to Promote Growth and Get Results

The Role Money Plays in Engaging Employees

The Just-Right Approach To Social Media And Transparency, And What It Says About Your Company

Maintain A Startup Attitude for a Passionate Office

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Wouldn’t it be great if management was as simple as assigning tasks and checking on progress?  The reality is that many times managers are faced with employees who seem able to take on a new project, but never quite get started.  Follow-up conversations identify a lot of reasons why action hasn’t occurred , but you still have a sense that you haven’t really surfaced the real issues.

If you find yourself with an employee who doesn’t seem enthused to take on a new project and you can’t quite figure out why, here are three areas to explore. First identified by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan in the 1970’s, these factors are being rediscovered as management theorists and practitioners look at the factors that create an engaging work environment. 

1. Autonomy.  Everyone has a need to exercise some level of control over their environment.  Is the new role or project that you are assigning promoting autonomy in your employee, or will working on it make them more dependent on you and your organization?  Employees will move toward projects and roles that increase their sense of autonomy and will retreat from environments that they feel decrease it.  What is your new role or project offering?
2. Relatedness.  People are social animals.  It’s important to create opportunities for people to work in a way that allows them to feel cared for by others, and to be able to give back to others.  Even for people who seemingly want to work in an isolated manner with little interaction, there is still a need to be seen, accepted, and validated by others.  Will the new project you are proposing lead to an increased sense of connectedness, or promote isolation?
3. Competence.  Everyone needs to feel that they are growing.  People will move toward assignments which provide growth opportunities, and they will avoid assignments which seem to be dead ends.  While routine work is a part of most jobs, keep in mind that a properly constructed role or task will include opportunities to learn new skills and increased competencies. How does this new task rate on that scale?

People have good reasons why they act on certain tasks and why they delay taking action on others.

Even when managers set clear goals, provide day-to-day coaching, and follow-up with proper amounts of direction and support, employees can still be slow to take action if these sometimes hidden drivers of behavior are not taken into account.

Is someone you know dragging their feet on an assignment?  Keep in mind their perceptions of Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence.  Though often unspoken, they are always a part of an employee’s decision process.

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 PS: Would you like to learn more about creating an engaging environment for employees? 

Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for an Executive Briefing near you.  Upcoming cities include San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and St. Louis. 

Learn more here.

Everyone loves a bump in pay, extra time off, or other form of reward or recognition.  The problem is when managers start to rely on these types of extrinsic motivators too much and stop looking for the deeper intrinsic motivators that lead to long-term satisfaction and well-being at work.

Alfie Kohn first wrote about this in his book, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes.  Daniel Pink picked up the banner most recently in his 2009 book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. 

In both cases, the author’s point to social science research conducted over the past 50 years which shows that money and other extrinsic rewards can actually reduce motivation and ultimately performance if not used properly. 

(For a great introduction into some of this social science research, check out Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation which summarizes the work of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, two long-time researchers in this field.)

Three warning signs

Are you falling into the “if-then” trap as a manager?  Here are three warning signs:

1. Instead of trying to understand what really motivates your direct reports, you increasingly rely on a carrot approach where you dangle incentives in front of employees to get them to engage in desired behaviors.

2. Instead of taking the time to fine tune job roles and responsibilities, you take an approach of, “We pay you a fair day’s wage and we expect a fair day’s work in return.”

3. Instead of helping people connect their work to a higher purpose, you instead insist that they stay focused on their own task and leave the big picture thinking to senior management.

With this type of thinking, it’s easy to fall into a transactional mindset as a manager.  Now work becomes mostly about getting the next raise, bonus, or other prize.  Don’t let incentives and compensation become the de facto manager in your organization.  Go beyond “if-then” thinking to discover what truly motivates your people. It’s time well-spent that will pay long-term benefits!

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PS: Interested in learning more about creating a motivating work environment?  Check out these upcoming executive briefing presentations!

Creating an Engaging Work Environment: The Leader’s Role

The New Paradigm of Motivation: How to Make It Work

In a recent blog post, Gen Y: The Doom of Middle Managers? Entry-Level Rebel Jessica Stillman points to data that suggests Gen Y workers might not need traditional middle managers. 

Why? 

Changes in technology, attitudes, and the nature of work eliminate the need for supervisors who only see their job as telling people what to do and then evaluating performance at an annual review.

If that is what’s happening in your organization, consider asking senior leadership to create a higher standard for managers.  Setting goals and conducting performance reviews are just the beginning of a middle manager’s job.  Their real value is in their ability to access resources, remove obstacles, and provide day-to-day coaching for the people who report to them. 

If your manager is not providing you with the support that you need to succeed, here are three things to ask for (and a proven way on how to ask for it.)

What to ask for

1. A clear sense of how your job impacts key departmental goals. Everyone needs to know that their work is meaningful and to have some clear alignment between what they do and what the organization is trying to accomplish.  If you can’t point to a key departmental objective and how your work is impacting it, you do not have the alignment that should be in place.
2. A well defined job that includes some routine and some challenging tasks. In a healthy work environment, you will typically have 3-5 goals that you need to accomplish.  If your job is structured properly, some of those tasks will be very achievable with your present skills while others are more of a stretch that you cannot accomplish with your current skill set and resources. This mix is an essential component of a satisfying job that also encourages career growth.
3. A clear agreement with your boss about where you are at and what you need to succeed.  For tasks where you are self sufficient you need an agreement with your boss to give you the autonomy you deserve to accomplish the task as you see fit.  No one likes being micromanaged on tasks they are capable of achieving on their own.  For tasks that are beyond your current skill level and immediate resources, you need an agreement for the direction and support that will help you access the budget, training, and expertise you need to get the job done.

How to ask for it

• Use “I need” statements.  One of the most powerful ways you can get the help you need to accomplish your work goals is to use “I need” statements.  For example, “In order to process customer orders more efficiently, I need a higher level of access into our customer database,” or “In order to create the type of social media campaign and metrics that we are talking about, I need some additional training.”  For best results, pair any “I need” statement with three possible solutions.  Very few bosses will turn down this type of request—especially when it is in pursuit of legitimate departmental goals.

A good middle manager or front line supervisor takes strategic directives and turns them into results.  Is that the role your immediate manager is playing?  If not, expect more.  Use “I need” statements to make sure that your job is aligned,  that you have a mix of routine and stretch goals, and that you have an immediate supervisor committed to helping you access the resources you need to succeed.

Good middle managers will never be obsolete.  That distinction is only reserved for managers who see their role as assigning tasks and evaluating others.  That truly is obsolete, not just for the next generation of employees, but for all employees.

A recent survey conducted by Training magazine and The Ken Blanchard Companies asked more than 800 Training magazine readers to share their thoughts on the factors that create an engaging work environment.  Readers were asked to rank order 12 factors first identified by The Ken Blanchard Companies as a part of their ongoing research into what creates a motivating work environment.

The top three job factors that the respondents identified as most important were

• Meaningful Work
• Autonomy
• Task Variety

The top three organizational factors that respondents identified as most important were

• Procedural Justice (Fairness)
• Collaboration
• Performance Expectations

In a follow-up question, the respondents were asked who they felt had the primary responsibility for influencing and improving each of the factors. Surprisingly, respondents identified themselves as having the primary responsibility for several of the factors. The one exception was on the factor of Feedback, where 82 percent of the respondents saw the responsibility as primarily being in the hands of the supervisor.

To see the complete survey results, download Employee Work Passion: What’s important in creating a motivating work environment and whose job is it?