Boss Tip #5 - Lunch Menu Leadership Test

There have been a lot of questions this past week on what the Lunch Menu Leadership Test is all about. No one, it seems, is able to find any reference to it on-line anywhere. That’s because it’s MY test. So stop looking. This is the only place you will find that information.

So whom is the test meant for? The test is applicable if ever you are in the position, or even on a selection committee, to hire for any of the following positions: CEO, CO, Mr. Big, VIP, administration, administrator, baron, big brother, big cheese, big man, big wheel, boss, brass, businessman, chief, commander, director, directorate, don, entrepreneur, exec, godfather, government, governor, head, head honcho, head man, heavyweight, hierarchy, high priest, higher-up, industrialist, key player, kingfish, kingpin, leader, leadership dude, management, manager, meal ticket, number one, officer, official, point man, skipper, supervisor, top, top brass, tycoon or any other position in the upstairs upper echelon.

The test is relatively simple. Hey, it would have to be. I thought of it.

Take your management/leadership candidate for lunch, nothing really fancy just a place where the menu wouldn’t be too foreign to an average Joe. Once seated, either your host/hostess or a server will swing by with menus and say something like this: “Good afternoon and welcome to the Monkey Bar & Grill. My name is Peter and I will be your server today. Can I start you folks with a couple of beverages before I tell you about our fantastic luncheon specials today?”

(Jeez, did you order a story? I don’t remember ordering a story.)

Anyway, back to the test. Once Peter drops the menus on the table and rattles off the luncheon specials for the day, once he turns his back and runs to fetch your beverages, start the clock and say nothing more. Simply open your menu, pretend you’re looking at it and observe what transpires next. This IS the test.

If the candidate closes his/her menu in under sixty seconds with a decision made for lunch, you have a winner. Here’s my thinking, if someone about to be moved into a leadership position can not make a decision for themselves in under sixty seconds, a simple decision about what to eat, then how in the world would they be able to make far more important decisions affecting the entire organization?

The key to the Lunch Menu Leadership Test is the following philosophy: How we do one thing is how we do everything.

If the candidate can make quick decisions on unimportant stuff, then he/she can likely make quick decisions on important stuff.

If the candidate takes more than sixty seconds with a simple luncheon menu, you’re going to have problems with him/her.

If the candidate says, “I’ve never eaten here before, what’s good?” I hear, “I’m not comfortable with new surroundings. I might be able to become comfortable with a little help from someone who’s experienced this before, but right now, I don’t know what to do (have).”

“Hmm, I’m not sure what to have. What are you having?” means I will be making the vast majority of my decisions based on consensus. That means I will be polling people so I can decide what I should do next.

Studying the menu and flipping pages back and forth several times means they can’t decide. They are indecisive.

During the meal if I hear “Maybe I should have ordered what you did,” he/she spends too much time on second guessing their decisions. Likely, direction will change like the wind.

There are many more things that can be translated from the test but the key here is if you are going to place someone in a position of leadership, they had better be able to stand on their own two feet, accepting the results of their decisions and not afraid to make them.

This test never fails, unless the candidate knows about the test in advance and knew where they were going to be eating.

Want to find out what your boss is really like? Take them for lunch. You’ll see what I mean.

A Motivational Speakers Convention?

Did you know that there is an association of motivational speakers? Can you imagine what it would be like to attend the annual convention of motivational speakers? Well, sorry but you missed it. It was last weekend.

OK, to be fair, it not actually called the motivational speakers association. It is an association of professional speakers. They met in Vancouver this past weekend. I didn’t attend for two reasons: 1) I actually had an audience to speak to while everyone else was at the conference, and 2) well, I’m not actually a member of the association.

I used to be a member. Over the time that I was an active member of the association, I learned that there are some practices of the association that I am in opposition with at a values and principles level. I had a difference of opinion, so I left.

In the association, every member is welcome to work toward his or her CSP - Certified Speaking Professional designation. (It really carries no weight when you’re being considered for a job – trust me.) It is possible to become a Certified Speaking Professional within the first six years of ever being a speaker. All you have to do is make enough money over five years ($250,000-$675,000) doing enough presentations over five years (100-250) and have had enough clients over five years (25-100). Then you do the normal stuff: attend the convention every year (32 Continuing Education Credits), pay your membership dues every year for six consecutive years ($400/yr), get 20 clients to write you nice letters about how good you were (over 5 years) and pay a $375.00 US application fee. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Pass that criteria and you can be a CSP. (Honestly, for the speaker who is doing this full-time, the criteria is pretty simple).

Even though there is a committee who supposedly watches the speakers in action, and even though there is a questionnaire that is sent to clients hiring the speaker asking them to rate the speaker on preparation, delivery, thoroughness and professionalism, nowhere will the speaker ever be asked for what kind of results the client received. And that is where I take issue with a certification of any kind: where the certification is based on everything except the results the attendees experienced.

When I say results, here’s what I mean: if you’re a sales trainer, after you finished your seminar, how much did sales increase? If you’re a productivity trainer, how did productivity increase as a result of your session? If you’re a motivational speaker, how well did your session inspire the attendees to reduce the number of sick days over the next year?

Those are results. Results are what tell the story of whether or not a speaker should be certified as a professional – not how much money they make. Money is a lousy way to keep score.

And it shouldn’t be other speakers who sit on the selection committee for certification standards, it should be the meeting planners who hire speakers who should determine who is certified professional and who is not. (There is an organization called MPI – Meeting Planners International. These are the folks who should be handing out the hardware.)

If you’re half ways decent in marketing, can live with $1000 per speaking presentation (unbelievably low price for a professional speaker – more like a starting speaker), you could find yourself doing 50 presentations per year to charitable organizations and community groups. Do it for five years and you’ve made $250,000 speaking to 250 separate clients and organizations. You ought to be able to get at least 4 nice letters per year from clients and several who say that you were professional. You could do this part-time and still become a Certified Professional. You don’t even have to be very good. And that’s my issue.

Don’t even get me started on becoming a member of the speaking Hall of Fame. That’s an award given by your peers when they think you’re at the peak of your game, even if you’re not. After you get the Hall of Fame, there’s nothing left to earn.

Personally, I think the speaking industry is in too big a hurry to congratulate themselves on a job well done – even if it isn’t well done. Oh, and that thing about getting results for the attendees? Don’t mention that. They’re a little touchy on that one.

Boss Tip #4 - Monkey See, Monkey Do

Over the last couple of weeks I have received a few emails that have been fodder for future Tips for Bosses. Today’s tip encompasses several of those emails. Remember, if you're not a boss, then send this to your boss. If you are a boss - listen up.

Look at the title again – Monkey See Monkey Do! What more do you need to know? Your people learn from your example. Get it? That’s it. That’s all that needs saying.

However, there are too many bosses out there who are apparently too thick to get this one in a sentence or two, so here comes the rest of the explanation.

Are you in some sort of advisory situation, like a manager, supervisor, Vice President, you know, some kind of power position? If so, name a book on leadership you read in the last ninety days? And that, in one simple question, will illustrate the difference between managers and leaders.

Leaders lead by example. Leaders know that if they want their people to improve, they themselves have to set the bar by leading by example. Leaders will make time to read and improve themselves and show their people that although they too have busy days, there is always enough time for self-improvement.

Managers, however, are so busy making sure that they are needed in their position, that they will spend the better part of their days justifying their position. In other words, they will look like they’re busy, make decisions (when someone else could have made them just as easily) and keep the paperwork flying across their desks (after all, a cluttered desk looks so much busier than an empty desk don’t you think?). Because managers are doing all of these things, there is no time to read – besides, reading at a desk would make a manager look like he or she has nothing to do – their bosses might think so too and replace them with someone who “looks” busier.

So the message that managers send to their people is “look” busy and your job is safe. Not much wonder managers have a hard time inspiring their people to do better.

The message that leaders send to their people is that everyone could stand to improve him or herself - and that includes leaders too.

Now here’s a problem that managers have when they spend so much time trying to justify their position by “looking” busy: they get so caught up in their own heavy workload that they have no time to inspect what’s happening outside their office door (and yes I know managers never come out of their office, they expect people to bring stuff to them). If there’s no time to inspect what happening in the office, then they become less informed of what needs doing and completely ignorant of who’s doing what. At that point, they are no longer leading the team. They are simply a figurehead in-charge.

If this is your office, fire your manager immediately and replace him or her with a leader. Do not subject your entire team to this kind of irresponsible lack of direction and expect your people to perform. Monkey see, monkey do.

There are people on your team who care very deeply for the place they work. A “manager” is only going to mess things up. A manager who is only interested in making sure he or she looks busy is going to sabotage your organization.

When you want to replace your manager, ask this of those in line to replace him or her – “List the books you’ve read on leadership in the last ninety days and give me your brief summarization on each.” You’ll find a suitable and very capable leader within your own organization in short order.

Instigationally,

Kevin

Next Tip For Bosses - The Lunch-Menu Leadership Test

Boss Tip #3 - Never Be Missed

(Here's another one to pass on to your boss. If you are the boss, I hope you get the big picture of this one. If you're not the boss, take these tips to heart and you will be one day.)

What would happen if today, you, as the boss, went out for lunch and made a decision to not return to the office for the rest of today and several days as well and didn’t bother to phoning in to tell people you were taking time off? Think about that question for a moment.

What would happen if you just stopped showing up for a few days and didn’t tell anyone where you were? Would your people mildly begin to panic about who would make decisions in your absence? Would the foundation of the office start to fall apart because no one was there to take charge? Would there be a great deal of unease around the office wondering where you were and when you would be returning?

Do you even know the answer to that question? In your mind, would the place fall apart? In the minds of your staff, would they welcome your departure?

The difference between a manager and a leader is that a manager will tend to need to have his or her fingers in everything that is going on in the office. That need to have some form of control is usually the result of a deep-rooted and well-hidden insecurity. A manager who feels the need to control every decision and/or needs to have his/her input made prior to a decision being made, well that person has a control problem. Control issues stem from insecurities.

If you’re worried about one day being replaced as the person in charge, then you don’t get the whole concept of leadership – you are, in fact, a manager.

You will never be a leader so long as you are worried about someone else doing a better job of running the place than you do. You will never be a leader if you let your fear of being shown up stand in the way of bringing out the best in the people who work for you. You will never be a leader if you need to be in the spotlight and need to make sure that everyone knows you are the leader. If you need any of these, you may be the person in charge but you are no leader.

A leader will ensure that he/she has surrounded himself with competent people: perhaps even people who are smarter and better at managing. That same leader will ask his/her people to stretch themselves and make decisions – decisions that affect the company. That same leader will also understand that so long as people feel that they are valued for their contributions, that they get the opportunity to make valuable contributions and that they also take responsibility for their actions, they will not be trying to knock off the guy at the top. The leader’s job is safe because everyone is in charge – in charge of his or her own areas of responsibility.

Think you’d be missed as a leader if this were you? Not a chance. Enjoy your vacation.