:
rule three:

If you’re a busy manager who doesn’t give a damn what your staff has to say, then this is a good thing.

On the other hand, if you’ve figured out that:

1) A manager is only as good as his or her staff,

2) The people in the company closest to the production and closest to the customer are in a position to have valuable insights, and

3)To keep ahead of the crowd you need to tap into the creative powers of every member of your team,

Then you’ll want to make that sharing threshold as low as you can make it.

Make it a habit to hang around your staff in their work areas. Wander around. Say hello. Ask those friendly open-ended questions like, "How’s it going?" You know, the kind of question that could be answered by, "Okay," or "Not bad," or "Fine." Or the answer might be, "Not bad, but all this overtime is killing me." Or, "Okay, but we sure seem to be getting a lot more complaint calls lately."

Close Encounter

A woman named Betty had her apartment broken into while she was at work. Well, it wasn’t really ‘broken’ into; the window latch was already broken. The burglar just opened the window.

The only thing taken was her TV. And they caught the guy who did it.

But ever since then, she’s been frightened of people of that minority group. She’ll cross the street just to avoid possible contact.

I keep telling her that she’s behaving in a very prejudiced manner. I keep saying, "most hearing-impaired people are not burglars."

[I have a habit of telling stories. Some are obviously made-up. Some are very bad old jokes. Some are from real life. Some are a combination of those three things. What they have in common is that they’re used to encourage people to look at their current workplace issues from a different angle.]

It’s important that you communicate through your actions that you’re going to be in the middle of the work areas frequently and that your appearance on the floor doesn’t mean there is a problem. The next level, even harder to pull off, is to convince your staff that one of their co-workers sitting in your office chatting is not a bad sign.

Of course, being open and accessible requires a lot more than just being physically available. The open communication needed for productive team performance requires a high level of trust.

The most obvious component of a trusting relationship is honesty. Your staff must be able to believe everything you say. There is no middle ground on this one. Even if you are dishonest or misleading only one half of one percent of the time, then every single statement out of your mouth is suspect. Is this the time he’s lying?

And it gets worse. You need to be honest with everyone. Your boss, customers, vendors, other departments, everyone. Once an employee who knows the real story overhears you lying to your boss or a customer about how a missed deadline was due to some mechanical failure outside your control, it’s all over.

Not only have you made it impossible for your staff to ever accept anything you say at face value, you’ve also communicated that honesty is optional.

In an Inc. magazine essay called, "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire," Harvard psychologist Steven Berglas explains how dishonesty at the top sets the tone for the whole organization. He says that managers who lie and cheat need to realize that "The liar’s punishment is not that he is not believed, but that he can believe no one else. That’s the true consequence of amoral leadership."

Time out for a story. A group of department managers is being harangued by the plant manager about the increase in credits being issued for faulty products. "Four years ago we issued only $14,000 in credits for the whole year," he ranted. "Now here it is only July and we’re already at $12,000. These mistakes are going to ruin the company. You need to tell your employees how much money their mistakes are costing the company. You’ve got to crack the whip on these people."

The plant manager wasn’t lying about the $14,000 or $12,000. But he did leave out the fact that sales had increased 100% during those four years. So although the value of the credits issued had increased about seventy percent over those four years, the rate of faulty products shipped actually dropped from seven per thousand to six per thousand.

Sharing numbers with your staff can be a great tool for making them feel that they have a stake in the big picture. (They do.) But the numbers have to be honest and they have to be presented honestly. Otherwise, you are like the boss who uses poor sales to explain the small pay raises but doesn’t mention sales numbers when times are good.

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As somebody who feels comfortable using numbers as an analytical tool, I get really annoyed by the sloppy use of numbers. It drives me crazy when a newscaster, in a voice tinged with concern and braced for imminent disaster, tells us that the Dow Jones Industrial average plummeted over one hundred points. (Or about one percent.)

A news story from Detroit says that Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords are the cars most frequently stolen. Of course, there are more Accords and Camrys on the streets than any other car. The article made no attempt to give the numbers any perspective. For Chrysler LeBarons to be the most frequently stolen car, every LeBaron on the road would have to be stolen two or three times.

One of my favorite Dilbert comic strips shows the pointy-haired boss denouncing the use of sick days to extend the weekend. He cites irrefutable reports that show forty percent of sick days are used on Mondays and Fridays.

Paul, a manager of office cleaning crews, complained to his boss about an inadequate allocation of cleaning supplies. He had his crew count the number of sinks and toilets they cleaned every week and used that number to show his boss that three cases of cleanser wasn’t enough. His boss asked him how many shakes were in a can. Paul didn’t know. After he emptied a couple of cans and reported the results back to his boss, the cleanser allocation was reduced.

Part of any healthy, open relationship in the workplace should be give and take between managers and those who report to them. But it’s the manager’s ongoing responsibility to keep the employee informed on his level of performance. And if you think once a year is the correct number of times to provide feedback, you’re wrong, by at least twenty-three.

Roger that, Houston

I’m not saying that you have time to write an evaluation and sit down with each member of your staff twice a month. I’m saying you need to provide constant, prolific feedback in every way you can think of. The more often, the better.

And guess what. Most of what each employee does is done right. So, the overwhelming majority of the feedback should be praise.

Think about the last time you got some sincere positive strokes from your boss. Remember what it did for your day? Remember what it did for your self-confidence? Your attitude about your job? Your feelings toward your employer?

While we’re at it, think about the last time you got a hefty pay hike. Aside from some fleeting thoughts about whether this money will allow me to pay off some of my credit cards, my thoughts would be mostly in the direction of, "I guess the boss really does appreciate my contributions."

As a manager or supervisor, you may have to work within very narrow parameters when setting or increasing pay rates for your staff. And since pay raises aren’t likely to happen more than once or twice a year, that indirect method of praise needs be considered secondary. Direct praise is primary.

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While it’s always a plus if your praise can be specific, it certainly doesn’t have to be. "John, I’d just like you to know that I really appreciate how hard you work. Your commitment to satisfying customer needs makes the whole company look good." You can stop John in the hallway to tell him. You can call him in to your office for a minute. You can write him a letter or a post-it note. Just do it and keep doing it over and over.

There are some tricks to keep the compliments rolling. We are not in the habit of praising. These techniques will probably seem stilted and phony, but we are trying to break some pretty old habits.

I tell a story about a kid named Fred. At age three, Fred had still not started talking. His mother was a little concerned, but was going to wait a little longer before she panicked. Then one morning at breakfast, clear as day, Fred said, "Mother, the toast is burnt." Fred’s mother got really excited "Fred, you can talk. I’m so happy." With tears of joy running down her face, she asked him why he hadn’t spoken before this. Fred’s answer, of course: "Up until now everything has been okay."

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One plan is to simply schedule a certain amount of spontaneous, informal praise for each week. (Really, I know what it sounds like, but we’re breaking new ground here.) Make a list of your staff and do some math. Decide how often you want to cover everybody on the list and figure out how many compliments you need to make in a week. Then start praising. Don’t go in a particular order. Just cross them off when you do them. You might do the easiest ones first just to get your momentum going.

The phrase "Catch somebody doing something right" really annoys me. Yeah, it’s encouraging positive feedback, but it’s insinuating that it’s difficult to find someone doing something right. Most people I know spend ninety-nine percent of their day doing their job right. If you’ve got employees that you can’t say two positive things about each month, you’ve got bigger problems. Pay especially close attention to Rule Five.

And don’t forget to spread the work around. This is an area where you can involve others. At one point, I had each team leader name a "Star of the Week." Be sure to let key people in other departments know that you want to hear about how your staff is doing. Does your company use customer satisfaction surveys or questionnaires? Make sure you have access to responses that reflect on your staff.

Putting praise in writing is a useful tool. It sets a different kind of tone if it’s typed on letterhead and stuck in an envelope. It says this wasn’t just a passing thought. It says the quality of your performance is important to me and to the company.

Want to take it up a notch? Mail the letter to the employee at home. It’s a way to make it more likely that the good vibes generated by the praise get shared with the family. Building good will towards the company is like money in the bank.

On some occasions, you might want to get some top manager to co-sign a letter from you. The employee will probably guess that the company president didn’t write the letter and may not have even read it. But she does know that you must be really serious about what you said about her in the letter. And maybe now the president will know what an outstanding job she’s been doing.

Go to Rule 4:
Hitting a moving target is tough;
hitting an invisible target is even tougher.

© Copyright 1999, 2000 by Wayne Bonekemper

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