Boss Tip #2 - Be The Dumbest Guy In The Room

Have you ever had to work for a boss who had no need for encyclopedias because he already knew everything? I did, and for quite a few years too.

Day after day, he would sit in his corner office overlooking the sales pool. He would rarely fraternize with the troops because; well because that's not what managers do. Managers have much more important work than do the minions below them.

Think of how great it would be not ever having to read the stuff that would improve you in sales, customer service, finances, economics, management, teambuilding and morale. How great would it be to not have to ever open a book when all you really had to do was ask your boss?

Have you got a boss like that? Then send your boss this article and maybe he/she will get the wake-up. And, if you are that boss, then STOP IT!

People don't get better at their jobs because you tell them to. People get better at their jobs because they want to. And that want comes from taking ownership of their work. Ownership comes from not blindly following your directives, but to actually discovering something for themselves.

People have ideas, thoughts, inspirations that should never be quashed. They should be encouraged to explore, to think abstractly and to brainstorm with others. Your people must be encouraged to explore new ways of getting things done. They must be rewarded for their results and not for doing the work the way you say it must be done. (But if you're a "manager" and not a "leader" then you really haven't got the foggiest clue as to what I am speaking of anyway.)

Managers (this is ultimately what separates them from being leaders) are insecure. Any employee who demonstrates an ability to think and/or know more than the manager is a threat to the manager. Therefore, to keep the rebels from rising, the manager will defend himself with, "I already knew that."

A leader, however, is full of self-confidence. A leader understands that in order to lead the very best team, that team has got to be at their very best. A team is at their very best happens when each member of the team takes ownership of their respective duties within the team. The leader, therefore, to help bring out the very best in his/her team, must become the dumbest person in the room.

Let me explain my "Dumbest Person" philosophy.

The dumbest person is the one who demonstrates the least amount of knowledge on any particular subject. Only by asking questions will that person ever become more knowledgeable. By asking questions and challenging a team's thinking, will a leader be able to draw out the best ideas from his/her team.

The leader cannot profess to know anything if he/she wants to encourage a team's freethinking. Once a team hears, "I already know that," they will immediately stop following that particular line of thinking and move onto something else because the members of the team don't want to spend any amount of time telling a boss that what he/she knows is wrong.

So dummy-up bosses. Play the devil's advocate. Be the dumbest guy in the room. Ask a lot of questions. Challenge your team's creative thinking. Don't ever say you already know the answer if you want your team to think for themselves and take ownership of every thought, every deed and every action.

If, as the leader, you won't play the part of the dumbest guy in the room, then you really are the dumbest guy in the room. But then you already knew that didn't you?

Boss Tip #1 -Get Out From Behind Your Desk

I spent eighteen years of my life as a radio broadcaster. In those eighteen years, I saw some of the worst and some of the best examples of management style. It’s where I learned the difference between being a leader and being a manager.

Here’s the difference: A manager will “send” and a leader will “bring.”

Let me explain. I had one manager who, it seemed, was forever chained behind his desk. He never came out from behind that desk and we, as staff, were reminded in every discussion in his office who the boss was.

Yet, I had another manager several years later that would always come out from behind his desk and sit beside me whenever we met. He made me feel, at that moment, like the most important person in the world.

Now which of these two managers do you think I gave a better effort for?

Over those years of working under different management styles, here’s what I learned:

• A manager will send a memo, will send a directive to work harder, will send an order, will send his/her idea to a meeting or will even sometimes send his/her replacement when he/she thinks it’s not important enough to attend him/herself.
• A leader will bring him/herself to the meeting, will bring a willingness to show that he/she is prepared to work alongside his/her people, will bring his/her own ideas and encourage everyone else to poke holes in them, will bring out the ideas from his/her people and will bring other staff with him/her to a meeting in order to allow his/her people to bring their best to the meeting as well.
• A manager will sit behind a desk and have a psychological barrier between him/her and a staff member. Usually the manager’s chair will sit several inches higher than the chair on the other side of the desk making the other person feels smaller and less important than him/herself. Usually a manager does not want to have their authority questioned and therefore will ensure that the employee never forgets who’s in charge.
• A leader, however, will come out from behind the desk and sit beside the person he/she is talking to. A leader will raise the prominence of the employee to almost that of an equal and certainly to a valued member of the team, thereby creating a better “team” environment. A leader will choose to be vulnerable because he/she has inner confidence. Real confidence requires no proof (think about that one for a moment). A leader realizes that if nobody is following them, then I guess they’re really not the leader are they?

So, if you’re going to be a better boss, you’d better get used to the fact that there are a whole lot of people on your team who are, perhaps, just as smart as you and have a few ideas you haven’t even thought of yet. Trust in them enough to show them they are valued. Don’t make them feel small in your presence, as it will only encourage dissention in the ranks.

Be a leader instead of a manager. Understand the whole leadership concept this way: The purpose of a fruit tree is not necessarily to grow fruit, but to grow another tree. Now go grow some trees.

Instigationally,

Kevin

13 New "Not-So-Best" Practices

Instructions before reading: please firm up tongue, make space between upper and lower teeth, now place tongue firmly in cheek.

LAUGH-long learning – finding the humour in messing up and being confident enough to admit you made a mistake.

LACK-countability – a trait found in whiners, moaners and complainers who take no responsibility for sub-standard results. They insist, instead, on blaming the job, the boss, the customer or the economy for doing poorly.

FUNomenal employee – those with a positive attitude who make the job a better place to work.

LEERdership – a trait found employees who sit at their desk staring at the clock waiting for the whole terrible ordeal (workday) to be over.

Customer DIService – believing that it’s the customer’s privilege to be served by you. Here’s the Balance-Sheet philosophy: The customer is “Revenue.” You are “Expense.” It’s your privilege to have a customer. Get it straight.

Earning Disorder – the result of not understanding that the more you learn, the more valuable you become. Look at your paycheck: The amount is not what the company pays – it’s what the company pays you. Other people, more valuable people, are earning a lot more. Your paycheck is directly proportional to your perceived value.

NOtivation – the result of too many times saying, “That’s not my responsibility.”

GINspired – those returning from a two-martini lunch. (Can also be found at conferences and conventions showing up first thing in the morning at the commencement of a full day of intense learning, still half-drunk as a result of abusing the Hospitality Suite’s open bar the night before).

Lunch Rumour (a.k.a. BUZZness meeting) – water-cooler gossip between two or more individuals targeting other employees behind their backs.

Employee DEtention – how staff feel about managers who still believe that they can get more productivity from employees by ruling by fear.

ResponsiBULL Management – managers who preach about taking responsibility and then look for a scapegoat when one of their own decisions goes wrong.

POLLitically Correct – managing by poll – elevating their own “need-to-be-liked” as the most important component of decision-making.

GRatittude Adjustment – That “a-ha” moment when you realize that every bad job, every lousy boss and every meager paycheck has a blessing attached: you could be unemployed. You ARE in charge of your own life y’know.

Feel free to pass these around. And if you have a Not-So-Best Practices phrase you’d like to share, click on the “comments” button below and add yours.

Corporate Social Responsibility? What?

It's one of the latest buzzwords in business today: Corporate Social Responsibility. But what exactly is it and why is it growing in the business world?

Wikipedia defines it as follows:
Corporate social responsibility (CSR)is a concept that suggests that commercial corporations have a duty of care to all of their stakeholders in all aspects of their business operations. A company’s stakeholders are all those who are influenced by, or can influence, a business’s decisions and actions. These can include (but are not limited to): employees, customers, suppliers, community organizations, subsidiaries and affiliates, joint venture partners, local neighborhoods, investors, and shareholders.

CSR requires that businesses account for and measure the actual or potential economic, social and environmental impacts of their decisions. In some cases the application of a strong CSR policy by a business can involve actions being taken which exceed the mere compliance with minimum legal requirements. This can sometimes give a company a competitive/reputational advantage by demonstrating that they have the interests of society at large as an integral part of their policy making. CSR goes beyond simple philanthropy and is more about corporate behaviour than it is about a company's charitable donation budget.

In other words, CSR is supposed to mean that companies should do the right thing when it comes to their business practices. In other words, the CSR is the conscience of the company.

So, it was with great interest that I have been watching TV and reading the newspapers these past few weeks looking for companies who wanted to complain that the Government of Canada reversed their policy on allowing companies to operate as Income Trusts (paying almost all profits of the company directly to shareholders and thus paying virtually no corporate taxes to the government). The only real complaining I heard was from the companies who were in the process of moving toward Income Trust corporations and not so much from the companies who had been operating as IT's.

The shareholders though, oh they complained. They complained that their regular source of income, the payment of company profits, was going to be washed up when Income Trusts came to an end. They complained that they were mostly seniors who had invested large portions of money into those same companies and were being paid in their retirement. Mostly, they complained that things change.

This got me to thinking.

It's pretty hard to convince the general public that a company is doing the right thing by avoiding paying corporate tax, even though those same taxes, if they paid them, would be used to build the roads that their goods travel on.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. As more and more companies moved toward Income Trusts there would be less and less tax revenue generated to government. That means that the onus, my friends, would be on you and I to provide the infrastructure through our taxes, that would allow the companies to ship their goods on the roads they didn't pay for but we did, so that they could make a profit and then pass it on to those who invested in their companies, not necessarily you and I.

Corporate Social Responsibility means doing the right thing, and still making a profit. But do the right thing nonetheless.

Hey I totally understand why companies would operate as Income Trusts: the government said it was OK. I may be simple but I'm not an idiot. Why wouldn't a company not pay taxes if they weren't legally obligated to pay them?

It's the same principle that you and I employ every year in April when we try to squeeze out as much as we can on our tax returns. The difference is, that we're obliged to pay something. And that's why government stepped in and leveled the playing field.

At the end of the day though, the Corporate Social Responsibility statement of a company doesn't mean a thing, if the people who developed it are choosing to not do the right thing.

You will get what you give. That's a law that has been around for thousands of years and still applies today. Do the right thing, and it will come back to you. Yes it will. Sometimes though, we have to be nudged toward doing the right thing. I think that's what happened here.

I'll Be Nicer If You'll Be Smarter ...

Unless you've been living under a rock, the economy is on fire in Alberta, Canada. As a matter of fact, guesstimates are that between 20,000 and 100,000 jobs will go unfilled in Alberta this year due to a shortage of labour.

Companies are competing with each other to attract anyone and everyone who wants to work. Although the minimum wage in Alberta is around $7 an hour, no employer in their right mind is offering that kind of money and expecting anyone to apply for the job. Fast food workers are getting between $10 and $14 an hour for dishing out burgers through a little window. There's a ton of money floating in the air in Alberta, and not enough people to grab all that cash.

Now before you pick up the family and move here, know this: there's virtually no place to live. Real estate and rents are at a premium and unless you already have a home here, you'll end up staying in shelters which are already overcrowded.

But that's not the point of my ramblings. So let's get to that point, shall we?

With so many jobs and so few people to fill the jobs, a couple of things are happening right now.

1. We're dipping way down into the labour pool to depths never before dipped and pulling just about any warm body we can to fill a position that needs not much more than a warm body. Let me tell you, that makes it difficult these days to find exceptional customer service. Companies are spending less time on the finer points of customer service and instead concentrating more on getting their new hires up to speed on the goods and services the company offers. Their new hires know much about their companies but not much about how to deliver exceptional service.
2. Because their is stiff competition in the marketplace, managers are having to change their ways of how they deal with employees, especially in sub-par performance situations. The slightest little feeling of not being valued (interchangeable with "having their butt kissed"), any new hire can quit in the morning and can be working somewhere else in the afternoon. One wrong word from a manager, and the company is looking for another new employee and going through the whole training issue all over again.

This got me to thinking.

Whatever you've learned as a manager in past is "out the window" today. You can no longer be demanding, you can't insult your people in reviewing job performance and you sure can't threaten them with a firing. They'll just flip you off walk out on you right then and there.

The new manager in a hot economy has to have people skills. Without people skills and especially soft-skills training, your manager is going to see net revenues decline within their companies as they drive up training expenses by not being smart enough to realize that you can no longer manage by fear.

The new manager has to be diplomatic, encouraging and above all, patient. If that's not you, then be prepared to be spending every waking moment of your day putting out fires of new hires.

Now is the best time to bring managers into the classrooms and teach them how to be people first, managers second. Personal development training is crucial right now for both managers and new hires.

The problems is not with job-skills in a hot economy. The problem is with people skills. You'll never succeed at Time-Management training to a new hire if they didn't have enough self-discipline to go out and look for a job before. Sales training is a waste of time if your people lack self-confidence. Team-building is pointless if your people are only here because of the money they can make.

What the market needs right now is personal development, personal leadership and personal accountability training. Until you convince your people that every little thing they do or say has a consequence, they'll jump from job to job to job looking for someone to coddle them like mom did.

People, managers and workers, need a hard cold dose of reality that every single one of us is exactly where we planned to be or we'd be somewhere else. What we have in our lives is our doing. No one else is to blame. It's time for people to take ownership of their lives. Now if you tried to say that to your people you would likely have a mass-exodus. But guys like me can say it, in a way you can't say it and probably way better than you could ever think of saying it, and your people, including your managers, will get it. And you'll have a better bottom-line because of it.

Think about that today. How much more of both money and people would you like to keep right now?

I Hate Motivational Speakers...

Believe it or not, I actually only came to this conclusion this past weekend. It dawned on me as I was taking a review of my business to ensure that I was in line with what the market is looking for, that I am changing with the wants and needs of the marketplace and keeping my material fresh.

That's when it hit me - in order to explain to someone what it is I do (y'see I'm not that famous yet), I would have to explain that I am like a motivational speaker. But really, that's not true. I hate motivational speakers. I think I'm more of an UNmotivational speaker.

I don't think it's my job to motivate anyone to do anything. Because if I did, and it didn't work out for them, they would blame me. And where's the accountability in blaming someone else?

I want people to get the concept of accountability - that we create the lousy little lives we have. We did it. It's all our fault. Stop blaming everyone and everything else.

Greatest quote I ever heard about motivational speakers is this: If this industry, the people who are speaking to business, were to actually run the businesses they were speaking to, there would be no businesses left to speak to. Because as an industry, we preach success and practice failure more often than any other industry! - (Larry Winget)

I have seen more speakers take the stage and preach stuff that hasn't worked in ten years. They haven't read a new book in that time. Some take the stage for the applause or simply the money. Others use the stage as a catharsis to work out their problems - hoping magically that if they say their stuff enough times they'll actually start to believe it.

There are, however, some really good people in the speaking industry too - people who believe and practice what they say, don't deceive the client, don't do things just for the money and don't need professional psychiatric help. But the ones in it for the wrong reasons outnumber those who simply want to do good in the world. That's a shame but I suppose it's the same thing in every industry.

And if you're lying to yourself and your audience, then I guess you just don't get "accountability."

Think about this fact: if the whole world understood the concept of accountability, Jerry Springer would be off the air ... and there would be no more Injury Lawyers. (Hmm, maybe that's a secondary mission for me, get Springer off the air and do away with all of the injury lawyers. Hmm, I'll work on that.)

That's when it hit me that I am not motivational - I am instigational. I don't want you to make just a few minor changes for a few days and then go back to the way it was, I want you to make profound changes that will stick with you for life. I will instigate you to make those changes especially if you don't like where you are in your life.

I will instigate you to stop whining and moaning and bitching and complaining about your life being someone else's fault. Suck it up princess. The world owes you nothing - it was here first.

So, don't ever call me a "motivational speaker" - 'cause if you do, you'll probably be looking for an injury lawyer soon after. I'll instigate the fight.

If It's Not In You, Don't Do It...

I was asked today, why I don't offer workshops, seminars, full-day or half-day sessions in addition to my 75 minute keynote presentation. Actually, come to think of it, I have been asked that question a lot recently. Trust the process. There's a reason I was asked again.

Let me back up a bit on the story. Before I was asked why I don't offer anything except a keynote, I was asked if I was aware how much money I am leaving on the table with my clients. You see, if I offered seminars, workshops, break-out sessions and the like as well as my keynote, I could be paid for each additional item I convinced my clients to buy.

But my thinking is this: if I have a really good presentation, and everything I have to say, every funny story, every touching moment, every point I want to make, can be made in 75 minutes, why would I not do it in 75 minutes?

I think that there a lot of speakers in the marketplace who are doing a huge disservice to their clients by offering a keynote, a break-out and a seminar over a couple of days, but actually have to spread out their points over three events, then the client isn't getting the very best of each of the three. That's dishonest on behalf of the speaker and totally and utterly unacceptable as a business practice.

There are too many speakers who have a half-dozen titles for their presentation and each one, remarkably, is just like the next: same ideas, same concepts, same presentation with a different title. That's just bad business. Not much wonder people make fun of motivational speakers.

I only have one presentation, it has one title, it has amazing results. It's not in me to deceive the client. It's not in me to do a seminar (Lord knows I hate being a seminar participant sitting in a room with complete strangers doing dumb little exercises just to eat up time because the seminar leader used up all his ideas in the keynote we just heard). That's not honest. That lacks integrity. I will not be a part of that.

If you're a meeting planner, do not hire the same speaker to do a bunch of things for you, unless you've seen every single presentation of his and know for a fact that each presentation is fresh, does not repeat itself and ideas won't be stolen from one to make the other go.

I don't care how much money I leave on the table. I just will not deceive my customers to get it. I will earn what I earn, and so long as the family is fed and there's a little left over, that's a good day.

Repackaging the same old stuff as new is not in me and I won't do it.

Can you ask yourself the same question when it comes to your business practices? Step up now and be accountable. Tell the truth. Do the right thing.

If you do the right thing, you'll be surprised at how much more rewarding your job becomes.