Boss Tip #8 - The Credit Score

Is this column about financial background checks and credit scores? Well, not in the way you might think. This column is about credit scores but not about qualifying for credit as a consumer. It’s about how much credit you give as a boss.

Take a survey of your people and ask them what they want from their work and their boss and you will find this answer in the Top 5 every single time: recognition. People want to be acknowledged for the work they do – not just when they need to be raked over the coals for a screw-up.

People want to be recognized for their contribution, their diligence and the quality of their work. If the only time you talk to your people about the quality of their work is when you dump on them, well then you’re the village idiot aren’t you? Don’t believe me? Just ask your people. No better yet, secretly listen to what they’re saying about you in the coffee room.

Just because you’re the boss, don’t believe for one second that your people are doing everything in their power to make you look good. That’s just not true. People are doing a great job likely because of the personal satisfaction they get from doing a great job. If you overlook this fact, and regularly steal the credit for a job well done, you will be spending more of your time training new people to replace the people who left than you will on having the spotlight shone on you.

If you want the spotlight and the credit, then take the credit for attrition numbers being on the rise, training budgets being escalated because you have to train more new people and also poor morale.

Nothing knocks the morale out of people faster than stealing the credit from them after they poured their heart out on a project. People want a reason to take personal pride in their work and if you’re going to steal it when they do go above and beyond for you, or at the very least not acknowledge their effort, you are going to be a very lonely boss working by yourself.

If you work by yourself, well then you’re really not the boss are you? You’re just an employee who no one wants to work with. And that would be no surprise either. You brought it on yourself.

Are you giving someone credit for their work daily? I’m not referring to just a “Good job” in the hallway, but something public and heartfelt. The more you let your people know they will get the credit for a job well done, the more you will have a job well done from your people. What goes around comes around.

Publicly acknowledge and privately criticize. Make sure the rest of the staff know when someone has done a good job. Don’t play favorites and don’t blame someone else for a shortcoming in your department. More on that next time.

Pursuit Of Excellence

About eleven years ago, at a time when I had lost my Dad and my marriage, I was searching for something. I'm not sure what it was I was searching for but I was damn sure I didn't have it.

At the time I was selling photocopiers and fax machines (because faxes were the "in" thing at the time). It was an honorable profession and one that I learned how to hone my sales skills in very quickly. Honorable profession but tough.

I had been invited to attend an introductory session of a personal development course in January that year and after the one-hour introduction, I spent eight months resisting what it might do for me. Why? Honestly, I gave a lot of reasons but the truth was I didn't have the money and was afraid to admit it. Then someone invited me barbecue. About 40 people attended and I knew probably half of them. These forty or so people were all graduates of the same course I was resisting. They seemed to have what I wanted - some kind of sense of purpose and a joy of life. Within thirty days I was in the course.

Over the next few years I took other courses in the series and even chose to be a team assistant at many of these same courses. I lost touch for a few years but never lost the tools I developed.

Last weekend, I went back to sharpen the tools I had gotten those years earlier. It's true what they say about this course - "You will learn something new every time you go back." And I did this past weekend.

I'm feeling a little more peaceful and a little less stressed today. I recognize the things that have made me successful and the little areas I need to improve on. I know I am on track with my life today and know where I am going. A lot of questions got answered in a long-weekend.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the name of the course. It's called The Pursuit of Excellence. Curious? Click here.

Boss Tip #7 - Uncross Your Fingers

Dr. Phil said it best: “Don’t let your mouth write checks that your ass can’t cash.”

That’s a more straightforward way of saying if you’re going to make a promise you’d better be prepared to keep it. But the problem here is that although we all know that in a supervisory position, your word must be golden, still one in four bosses today don’t keep the promises they make.

I know you’re thinking, that isn’t possible that a quarter of all bosses openly lie to their people, but a survey from the University of Florida Business School says it’s true. One in four bosses on the job today don’t keep their promises. Jeez, there are politicians with better records than that.

“Relationships based on lies never last.” That’s my quote and it’s absolutely accurate 100% of the time. If you start a relationship based on a lie, then you have to tell more lies to keep the first lie going. Pretty soon you’re into your own lies so deep you can’t remember where you left off. That’s when the lie comes back and bites you on the butt. Everybody eventually gets caught in a lie. And it’s always ugly when the lie is discovered.

Bosses, you can’t afford to tell lies, even little white lies (I’m not sure what constitutes a white lie and what constitutes a big whopper of a black lie. A lie is a lie right?) If you tell that new hire today that in three months they’ll have an increase in salary, then in three months it better be an increase and not just a review to increase. There’s a huge difference between the two. Keeping your word brings trust from the employee. Bending the truth creates mistrust and you know how volatile people can be when there’s mistrust from management on down.

Also, you get what you give. If you’ve attended any of my instigational keynote sessions, you know I present that notion. If you’re surrounded by employees who don’t keep their word, then it’s likely you don’t keep your word. You get what you give.

If your people openly lie to you, likely you openly lie to your people. You get what you give.

If your people don’t tell you the full truth, likely you don’t tell them the full truth. You get what you give.

If you ever want your people to openly accept you as their leader, then you have got to lead by example. Keep your word and they’ll keep theirs. You get what you give.

Stop standing in front of them and promising while secretly holding a hand behind your back with your fingers crossed. We’re not in Grade School anymore. We’re in the real world where bosses need to keep their promises if they ever have any chance of keeping the trust of their employees.

C’mon. Really. It’s not that hard. Stop trying so hard to be liked by your staff and instead start trying to be respected.

Automobiles, Shuttles, Planes, Buses and Ferries

The airline ticket showed me arriving in Prince Rupert, British Columbia at 7:20 pm. According to my watch and the words from the Captain of the little "Buddy Holly" aircraft we were flying, we were going to be on-time. It had already been a long travel day to get to Prince Rupert, which is only 45 kilometers away from Ketchikan, Alaska. Don't believe me? Check a map.

I was seated next to a lawyer for the two-hour flight north. Chris was not just any lawyer, but a Crown Prosecutor based out of Prince Rupert. He, if you can believe this, has the good fortune of visiting the Queen Charlotte Islands (some 120 km offshore in the Pacific Ocean) every month for a week at a time. He gets there by single-engine float plane. Life changes when you live in remote communities.

Anyway, back to my story.

Chris told me we would be landing on an island. In my mind, I pictured a cute little island and a cute little bridge that would carry us to the mainland in a few short minutes once we landed at Prince Rupert. I didn't ask anymore questions. I should have.

At 7:20 pm we landed and everyone got off the plane. Last flight of the day coming into Prince Rupert and last flight leaving. The airline has a schedule to keep so once our bags were offloaded onto baggage carts, the outbound bags were loaded onto the plane before we got ours. Not much you can do with only ONE baggage handler.

After the plane was loaded up with the outbound bags and passengers, a large steel door opened and we watched our bags come down the "baggage carousel." It wasn't a carousel. It was really a very wide stainless steel slide that looked more like a deli counter than a baggage centre.

Once I got my bag, I walked with it for about twenty feet when I handed the bag to a bus driver who loaded it on the bus (the only way in or out of the airport). We each took our seats on the bus, including airport staff (last flight of the day and everyone goes home).

We drove for about 5 minutes until we came to the ocean and a ferry awaiting our arrival. We could feel the gale-force winds coming off the ocean. Two large motor coaches were loaded on the ferry as well as a one-ton cube van. Then we settled in for the twenty-minute ferry ride to the mainland and the town of Prince Rupert. That ferry ride was a little more fun with waves smacking the sides of the ferry and splashing over top like a Hollywood movie. Once to the other side, the bus drove up the ramp and a few more miles to the center of town where we offloaded the bus. A short shuttle drive to my hotel and I looked at my watch: 9:15 pm. It took almost two hours between landing and arriving at the hotel. The distance? No more than 5 or 6 miles. Was I in Toronto?

Once the sun came up the next morning, I saw the reason for the airport on Digby Island: it's the only flat piece of land as far as the eye can see. The Prince Rupert airport was an adventure for sure. But once in Prince Rupert, I found that this is one of those places that everyone must see at least once.

When you do visit Prince Rupert, do yourself a favour and stay at the Crest Hotel - a four-star hotel overlooking the ocean from almost every room. Fabulous facility, incredible food and breathtaking views. Hotel Manager Scott Farwell and owners Steve and Tina Smith have assembled an incredible staff of people who get the big picture - it's all about the guests. (That’s why they hire speakers to come and speak to their staff and improve their guest-service experience).

You will not be disappointed. And you'll get to tell your own story about getting to and from the Prince Rupert airport. Trust me, people won't believe you.

Boss Tip #6 - Keep Your Mouth Shut

Over the Christmas holidays, I ran across an article in the Winnipeg Free Press that claimed that 27% of employees said that their bosses made negative comments about them to other employees and other managers.

Now just picture this: lining up 100 bosses in a row, having 27 of them step forward and accusing them of talking about their employees to other employees behind their backs. How incredibly juvenile and malicious is this, really?

I couldn’t believe what I read. It was sourced from the College of Business at Florida Sate University who surveyed some 700 people in a variety of jobs. This was only one of their findings. But this is the one that surprised me the most. Bosses? Talking badly about employees to other employees? Jeez are we still in high school?

It’s time for these bosses to start growing up. What possible good can come from talking to employees about the performance of other employees? You can only hope, as a boss, that the person you’re telling doesn’t clue in that in five minutes you may be talking to someone else about him or her. Gossip is one of the most demoralizing factors in any office. And when that gossiper is in a supervisory position, the company is in big trouble.

Employee morale drops. Performance numbers fall. Attrition rises dramatically. Training budgets become stretched to the max from having to hire so many new people. The company will have a bad reputation with its employees. And once it becomes part of the corporate culture, good luck finding qualified people willing to work there.

If this gossiper sounds like your boss, risk the loss of your job by going over their heads and demanding a change. The boss that talks about their people to other employees needs to be fired today. If their immediate supervisors are reluctant to do something about it, they should be fired too.

And if you can’t find a way to make senior management do something about the problem, then plan your exit strategy and perhaps consider doing what they do: talk to others behind their backs – others like the media.

Nothing solves a problem quicker than the watchful eye of the general public and a subsequent drop in business. No business can afford to keep loose-lipped bosses in their ranks. Business, be prepared to take your lumps if you choose to keep these poor excuses for mentors on-board. There is no excuse for this kind of behavior from anyone in a supervisory capacity. Doing nothing condones the behavior and actually fosters more.

Make sure your supervisors are skilled in the art of tact, confidentiality and diplomacy. If you don’t, you’ll pay – one way or another.