Within a two-day period, two separate clients called to schedule training sessions on Diversity, also called Incivility in the Workplace. Both reported they had recently experienced a nasty incident among co-workers at their respective offices, and they felt they needed to formally remind staff of basic civil, non-discriminatory conduct.

In the media, there have been a growing number of reports on incivility, rudeness, harassment, and ultimate violence in the workplace between and against co-workers and management. Some think the more casual office atmosphere in many organizations causes the increase in incivility.  ‘Casual Fridays’ and other less professional interactions such as excessive sarcastic humor and intra-office emails, instead of face-to-face conversations, create venues for employees to behave less than professionally. Quite often, the sarcasm is taken too far and verges on blatant harassment.

When I go to client sites, I see signs posted in the kitchens, hallways, and restrooms, which are nothing more than reminders of basic skills my mother taught me as a child.  There are signs asking employees:

»   Not to leave dirty dishes in the sink

»   Not to take the last cup of coffee without refilling the pot afterwards

»   Not to walk away from jammed equipment & expect someone else to fix it

»   Not to spit, brush your teeth, or dump coffee grounds in the water fountain

»   Not to walk away from an overflowing or jammed toilet.

All of the poor behaviors listed above gradually build frustrations in co-workers. This creates hostility among them, and negatively impacts morale and production. This then leads to negative and sarcastic comments. If the abusive and sarcastic joking isn’t controlled immediately, there is potential for the organization to be slapped with a harassment or discrimination lawsuit.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1. Become aware of incivility in your workplace
2. Become aware of possible discriminatory or harassing behaviors in your workplace
3. Immediately talk to the offenders and remind them that when they are in the workplace their offensive behaviors are not acceptable
4. Take action against blatant offenders
5. Immediately inform all staff of the standards of conduct expected of them
6. And always remember: As the leader, You set the example!

Leaders, there’s no excuse for incivility in the workplace. Period.

We have a special guest on the blog today. Jesse Lyn Stoner, Seapoint Center, has written a terrific article that we’d like to share with you.

Be the Boss You’d Like to Have

By Jesse Lyn Stoner

The friendly gentleman sitting next to me on the airplane said:

“I like my boss because he is genuinely interested in me and what I’m doing. He doesn’t just ask generally how things are going, he says, ‘how’s the [specific] project going?’ I know he’s paying attention and cares. When I first started working for him, he told me ‘you are going to make mistakes. It’s not avoidable. The only thing I ask is when you make a big mistake, let me know early on so I can run interference and so we can learn from it.’ I have a lot of latitude to do my job the way I see fit.”

Lucky for him, I thought. That’s a great boss.

In my travels I have the good fortune to talk with people from around the world. When they hear I work in leadership development, it’s not unusual for them to tell me about their own boss.

The friendly gentleman continued, “My last boss was not so great. He was as unpredictable as the weather in New England. That was really hard.”

I had to laugh. What a great term to describe the fatal flaw that kept this boss from being effective: a New England Weather manager. (In New England we say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”)

Over the years I’ve heard people use a lot of funny terms to describe their boss’s fatal flaw. Here are some actual things I’ve heard people say:

Microwave Manager: “You have to be careful around Bob. He’s a microwave manager.” (When I asked what they meant, they explained that if you put the wrong thing in a microwave, it blows up.)

White Rabbit: “Everything with Gayle is a rush. We call her ‘The White Rabbit.’ And because we get our assignments at the last minute, we’re late before we’ve begun.”

Tight Underwear Manager: “Peter is so uptight. It sucks the fun out of every project. I think his underwear is too tight.”

Climbing the Ladder Manager: “He was more concerned about how he looked than about what we were doing. All he really cared about was climbing the corporate ladder.”

My Way or the Highway Manager: “Susan won’t let go of control. We don’t bother making suggestions. It’s ‘my way or the highway.’”

Alta Cocker: “Marvin’s an alta cocker. He tells us he’s too old to change and we’ve got to figure out how to adapt to him.” (If you don’t know what that term means, it’s Yiddish. Check it out.)

Seagull Manager: “He’s usually off flying around somewhere, but every once in a while, he swoops in unexpectedly, makes a lot of noise, dumps a load, and then flies off again.”

After I finished laughing at the gentleman’s description of his last boss, I asked him, “What about you? What kind of leader are you?”

He paused a moment and said, “I hope I am the same kind of boss that I want to have as my own boss.”

Do you know how your people describe you?

Are you the kind of boss you’d like to have as your own boss? … or do your people have a special term to describe you?

How are you going to find out?

This article was reposted with permission: ©2011 Jesse Lyn Stoner All Rights Reserved If you want to re-post or republish, please contact Jesse Lyn Stoner.

Jesse Lyn Stoner, a partner at Seapoint Center www.seapointcenter.com, is a business consultant, coach and former executive. An expert in collaborative organization change, she has authored several books including Leading at a Higher Level and the international bestseller Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision, which has been translated into 21 languages. She can be found on Twitter @JesseLynStoner and she blogs regularly at www.jessestoner.com

The shareholders or members typically elect the people who will serve on the board of directors. In a small firm, the board of directors is usually comprised of the business’ owners and family members. In larger organizations, the boards are comprised of interested individuals from disparate backgrounds and industries that, theoretically, represent the organization’s customer or membership base. The board’s responsibility is to guide the overall direction of the organization and to be the ultimate decision-making authority on strategic matters facing the organization. The company president or CEO reports to the board. The board of directors has voting power and full authority to override the decisions of the President/CEO. The board can hire and fire key staff—including the President/CEO. A board of directors directs the actions of the staff and of the organization.

Unlike the more commonly known board of directors, advisory boards are typically comprised of persons who—individually—are providing counsel to the business owner. These individuals may be attorneys, accountants, business consultants, human resources specialists, marketing professionals, etc. Each provides expertise and guidance to the business owner separately. An advisory board simply provides a way to pull these various advisors together on a monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual basis. Then, as a group, they can discuss the issues facing the company and can oft times determine quick solutions to strategic company issues. These advisors are not elected and they have no voting power. They are asked by the business owner to serve as a member of the advisory team and are paid for their advisory board services (as the board is usually a continuation of their current services). Their job is simply to advise.

I often suggest to my smaller clients that they start an advisory board when they are not yet comfortable with the idea of expanding or creating a board of directors for their company. Determine what is right for your organization and then invite them, advisors or directors, help you lead your organization to success.

Remember: Advisors advise—Directors direct.

The leaders aren’t listening to the team member’s current message. Instead, the leaders’ minds have jumped ahead and are anticipating the direction the team members’ similar messages have taken in the past – and they’ve not been ones liked by the leaders. Therefore, anticipating more of the same, I’m seeing leaders interrupting their team members, stepping on the members’ comments, and negating the members’ ideas almost before the team members have finished speaking.

Needless to say, unchecked, the leaders’ behavior can change the tone of the brainstorming or planning sessions and quickly transform them from open, energetic, idea-generating sessions, to subdued conversations with limited input and over-whelming tension.  So yes I do my job of  “checking” the behavior of the leaders and all team members to maintain an interactive environment.

However, most team meetings don’t have an outside facilitator serving as referee and discussion leader. Therefore, leaders, it’s up to you to gauge how your biases may be enhancing or hindering your team’s planning sessions. Are your biases overshadowing ideas that could propel your organization forward? Are your biases towards individual team members causing you to not listen to their concerns or ideas? Are your biases causing you to block messages that could transform the way you, your team and your entire organization operate?

Are your biases blocking your leadership duties? Besides, if you have a team member or members who have historically had so many bad ideas or are so disruptive that you immediately tune them out, why are they still working for you?

Copyright 2012 – Liz Weber, CMC – Weber Business Services, LLC – www.WBSLLC.com

Yep, I heard it again. A new client, a CEO, told my team prior to our first work session, “I want my life back. I love working, but I’ve got to stop working 90-hour weeks. Something needs to change around here.”

Sounds logical and completely reasonable to me, but how do you get your life back if you are the only person who knows your job? Worse yet—how do you do that if you are the owner, CEO, or a senior manager? Who can do your job?

As I have observed over the years, being a CEO is hard. Being the top dog is tough and it’s lonely. For publicly held companies it’s even worse since Sarbanes-Oxley Act went into effect in 2002. There are more reporting requirements, more involved board members, and more people watching to confirm personal and professional integrity and ethics are in play.

How do you find someone to takeover some if not all of your job responsibilities in the near or long-term? How do you do this when more executives and prospects don’t want the job?

• Develop more leaders throughout your organization and not just at the top
• Create more “depth” and not just single-position strength
• For more information/solutions, read my book: Something Needs to Change Around Here: The Five Stages of Leveraging Your Leadership

Now, let this Dragon Lady of Accountability™ ask you: If you’ve been working 90-hour workweeks, how much of that time are you spending developing others? Let me guess. None. Hardly any. If, on the other hand, you had been spending dedicated time to developing skills in your other managers, supervisors, and front-line staff, you would not feel (or be) so out of control. You would feel more in control because you would be leading a team who knew what was expected of them, individually and as a whole.

Get your life back by developing skills in others and by developing leaders throughout your organization. Get your life back by working with your team to develop systems, processes, and procedures that help all of you gain greater control now and in the future. When you create an organization others want to become a part of and where your team members are happy, that’s when you will get back to a life you can enjoy.

Copyright 2004 & 2011 – Liz Weber, CMC – Weber Business Services, LLC – www.WBSLLC.com

We have a special guest on the blog today. Shep Hyken, Shepard Presentations, LLC, has written a terrific article that we’d like to share with you.

Are You the Owner?

By Shep Hyken

At many of my presentations, I’ll leave time at the end for the audience to brainstorm the ideas and take-aways they plan to implement as a result of what they heard in the speech. At a recent presentation for the Vail Valley Partnership in Vail, CO, Clark Walsh an employee at Old Forge Pizza made a great comment:

“I want to be so good that my customers ask me if I am the owner.”

Why would a customer ask that? Because of Clark’s positive attitude, the excellent service he delivers, the way he treats fellow employees, and more.

At least several things are happening here:

One, Clark respects and admires the owner.

Two, Clark finds the customer’s comment to be a compliment.

And three, the owner of the restaurant has obviously set a good example, one that Clark wants to emulate. By the way, this one is important. An owner must be a good role model, a mentor and leader. I’ve seen plenty of owners/leaders who don’t set good examples with a “do as I say, not as I do” management style.
 
Regardless of the size of your company, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, act like an owner.

Reposted with permission: ©2011 Shep Hyken All Rights Reserved If you want to re-post or republish, please Shep Hyken directly.

Shep Hyken is a professional speaker and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling business author who works with companies who want to develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For information on Shep’s speaking programs, books, and learning programs please contact (314) 692-2200. Email: shep@hyken.com – Web: www.hyken.com – Click here for information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs (www.TheCustomerFocus.com).

Why do so many of us fear having difficult conversations with our managers and other members of our staffs? Why do we choose to not address poor or inappropriate performance? Are we afraid of the potential conflict? Are we afraid we might hurt someone’s feelings? Are we afraid someone might cry?

Whatever your reasoning for not addressing poor performance, let me remind you that as the leader you are accountable to know what your manager’s job is (a manager’s responsibility is to ensure the work gets done) and that it’s done correctly. I hate to sound cold now, but if a certain piece of equipment started to malfunction and churn out parts that were not up to standard, would you simply stand by and let it continue to spew defective parts? No. You would shut down the unit, determine the cause of the malfunction, and then fix it. It is conceivable that you would stand by the machine to monitor it as it restarts production to ensure the parts are being produced correctly again. You may even continue to interact with and tweak the machine until it operates the way you know it can and should. So why don’t you do the same thing with your people?

Fear of potential conflict, hurt feelings, tears, or some other possible reaction holds you back. By not having those difficult conversations you are allowing poor performance to continue, less-than-acceptable products or services to be produced, as well as almost certainly decreasing the opportunity for overall morale to exist and grow. And that’s simply not right.

HOW TO HAVE DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS:

1. Be crystal clear about the subject of your conversation with your employees. You will be addressing a fact: poor performance.
2. Don’t let yourself become consumed with the potential reactions you may or may not be confronted with. Your employees may appreciate that you are now asking them to work with you in developing a mutually agreeable plan of action to correct the issue.
3. To deal with anger, hurt feelings, or tears, remember your intent in having this conversation (to address performance) and remind your employees. “I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I meant to have a conversation on performance.”

That simple clarification, shared with an upset employee, is often enough to help refocus the conversation back to the true topic. Try it. You have nothing to fear…and it may just work. It has potential.

If your organization is like most, the added pressures of employee vacation schedules can compound stretched-to-the-limit holiday work requirements. With some employees out of the office on vacation, some trying to cover the work of those who are on leave, and others trying to get caught up when they return, there’s a direct impact on the focus and efficiency of your organization. Because of this natural cycle that hits many companies every year, it’s critical that you regroup now with your team to re-focus everyone’s attention on where you’re at and what you’re working towards—the Vision.

Want to promptly reshape your employees into a “team” focus with a unified, strategic goal? Follow these five steps:

1. Reiterate clearly what the organization’s vision of success is and what the organization’s current position is in attaining that vision
2. Review with each department how critical their success in meeting their production and service goals is to the entire organization
3. Review with each employee what each individual’s goals are and how they directly impact each team’s and the organization’s success
4. Remind everyone in the organization, that the key to success is consistency in their focus on the organization’s vision of success
5. Develop specific strategies (with due dates) for regaining the focus with everyone.

If people know specifically what they’re working towards and the specific strategy to achieve it, success is in sight. Now’s the time for success.

Be smart. Be strategic. Be realistic. Identify just one thing at a time to enhance. Just as Curly, in the movie City Slickers indicated, the secret to life is THE one thing each of us believes is essential. So pick just one leadership “thing” at a time to enhance. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t buy into the theory that it’s wise to throw as much onto your team as they can tolerate to test their mettle. That’s just asking for chaos and for your team to burn out. Be smart. Be strategic. Be realistic.

So pick just one thing. Identify one leadership skill that, if understood and implemented regularly by all of your managers, would generate real benefit. What basic skill would help them and their team members? The skills you identify don’t need to be sexy; they need to be key skills needed by your managers to help their team members. Basic skills such as the following are great ways to enhance leadership skills – one step at a time:

1. Say “Thank You.” Encourage your managers to acknowledge the contributions and positive behaviors of their team members regularly. Often team members only hear from their managers when they do something wrong. Why not communicate regularly to enhance those relationships?

2. Communicate status. Coach your managers in how to share information on a regular basis to help team members understand things such as: How is the company doing? Is the company meeting its targeted goals and objectives? What challenges are anticipated? Share with your team members information that allows them to better understand why the ebbs and flows of pressure and workflow occur. Share information with them so they can be part of the conversation — and part of the solution.

3. Ask for input. Teach your managers how to comfortably and regularly ask their team members for their input, ideas, and solutions to problems. Though this sounds basic, if team members haven’t been asked before, they’re hesitant to speak up and won’t trust their managers’ sudden interest in their ideas – so they won’t offer any. It takes time. It requires building trust. It requires solid leadership. But it produces incredibly strong, collaborative teams who solve problems and produce more.

Identify just one thing. Identify just one leadership skill that would help your managers and help your team members. Identify just one leadership skill that will help you help them. Be smart. Be strategic. Be realistic. It  will take time and it will be met with resistance – by managers and team members alike. However, that’s part of leadership and it all starts with just one idea at a time.

Copyright 2011 – Liz Weber, CMC – Weber Business Services, LLC – www.WBSLLC.com

If your answer to that question was “What’s a balance sheet, and those other things you mentioned?” you are in danger of losing control of your organization. (If you answered, “Yes. Totally.” You are driving your business like a pro—read another article.)

Running your business without understanding the numbers is like driving your car blindfolded. By not understanding what the numbers are telling you, you are leaving yourself open to unnecessary cost overruns, and most often, insufficient cash to pay bills.

Believe it or not, all it really takes for you to understand what the financial statements can tell you is a bit of time and the understanding that you do not have to be a financial wizard to understand the reports. You just need a genuine desire to learn what the numbers are telling you about your business.

Spend some time with your accountant or a qualified business advisor. This professional should be able to help you understand the fundamental importance of each of the financial statements, and how each impacts your business.

• BALANCE SHEET tells you at any given point in time what you own and what you owe
• PROFIT & LOSS STATEMENT indicates where your money came from and where it went over a period of time
• CASH FLOW REPORT tells when you will have cash coming in the door and when your cash will be going out to pay bills.

Ask yourself :

1. Do I know what my financial statements are telling me?
2. If so, what are they telling me about my profit margin, debt load and liquidity?
3. Are my financial statements current?
4. Am I confident that they are accurate?
5. If I am uncomfortable with my understanding of the financials, who can I turn to better understand them?

Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t understand financial statements, many people don’t. Most people will not take the time to learn about them; but if you do, you will have gained better control of your organization. You will be in the drivers seat again.