Giving and Reciprocity

There are just a few more days left until Christmas. Those people with kids especially know the joys of Christmas morning under the tree. Watching those little faces light up like the Christmas tree over their heads, they are excited, happy and thankful.

Getting gifts is great. Kids love it. But parents don't give their kids gifts with an expectation of getting something in return. Kids have no money and rarely have the presence of mind to think beyond what "Santa" is going to bring them. A parent who would give a child a gift only under the condition that the child reciprocate in return would be considered an a**hole by most people. But sadly, that is the same expectation people place on other people when they give. If you are willing to give to your children freely without expectation of return, what's with the expectation placed upon people other than your own kids?

Simply giving a gift without any expectation of return feels good. I mean, if there were an expectation of return every time you gave a gift, after you dropped a couple of dollars in the Salvation Army kettle would you expect to have it returned to you by a homeless person outside the mall doors? Let's be realistic. So why do you place expectations on other people outside of the gift-giving season?

If you serve your customers and clients, do you "expect" them to serve you back? When you go over and above what is expected for your co-workers, do you "expect" them to drop everything they are doing just to do something nice for you? Just because your customers may not fully comprehend how much you go out of your way for them, should you hold back your best effort until you get a little reciprocation coming back your way?

Giving is giving. It's why they call it "giving." There's is no taking when you're giving. There is no expectation when you are giving. If the only reason you give is so that someone else is going to owe you for it later, then you are a sad example of giving without expectation of reciprocity. Giving is supposed to be unconditional.

Sure, some people could offer more of a heartfelt "thanks" when they receive one of your gifts. Sure a client could pass on a referral about you and your service. Sure, you could be considered for that service award if someone would just recognize your hard work and nominate you. But they don't. And they don't because with every little extra effort you might think you're giving, you are also exuding some sort of "expectation" energy around you. People think there must be a catch when you do something nice - because deep down, you need to be reciprocated.

People may want to do nice things for you but not out of obligation. So, if the only reason you're doing something nice is to get something back, then you're not doing something nice - you're doing something selfish. The point of giving is to make it about other people, not yourself. Remember that fact this Christmas - and beyond.

Make a New Year's resolution to do one nice thing everyday - for your spouse, your kids, a co-worker, a customer or a stranger. Change your Attitude of Service to include "giving" as a strategy. You will find that your results in life will tend to change for the better the faster you let go of making people feel like they owe you something.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Managers Responsible For Poor Employee Engagement

Have you made a decision to improve your corporate culture in 2010? Look, you can't keep putting it off. 2010 is going to be the year of mass exodus of employees to new jobs. You are going to lose some good people unless you stop digging in your heels and get with the program.

Right Management's survey results last month says it all: 60% of employees say they will move to a new job in 2010 and another 21% are actively networking right now to see what's out there. That's 81% of the workforce on the hunt for new work because during this recession, you let your people develop fears and feelings of uncertainty. You abandoned them when they needed you most. You took away their training, their perks and the things they looked forward to just to hang on to a few lousy dollars. They feel abandoned now and they have as much loyalty for you as they felt you had for them.

Employees don't leave an employer - they leave their managers and their culture - specifically managers who make your corporate culture hard to swallow.

Now before you hire the Employee Engagement consultants as a knee-jerk attempt to fix the problem, let me clue you in on what the real problem is and why employees don't engage. It's not because there aren't enough perks. It's not because the work isn't rewarding. It's not because the cubicle is too small. It's, most times, because the supervisor is a jerk who under-appreciates them, who treats them like a number, who plays favorites and who has little or no compassion or soft-skills as a decent human being.

Can you honestly say that each and every manager in your group could muster up the courage to have a heart-to-heart with an employee about a sick child at home or to be truly thankful and grateful for the work of their employees? Do your managers, in addition to being taught how to manage, have the ability to communicate feelings or just to bark orders?

You may have been able to get away with that when you had a full complement of Baby Boomers working for you but the numbers are turning and by late next year, Gen Y's will outnumber Boomers in the workplace. Your workers want only a few things and they will actively engage themselves:

• a decent work environment - not a funky new office but a place where they feel like they matter, are told so and are asked their opinions and ideas on company initiatives.
• a rewarding career - not just a job but something that they can become more than just proficient in and be encouraged to become considered one of the best in their field.
• a manager who is as much a coach and mentor as they are a boss - someone who can find the drive, the spark and the magic in every single employee and find ways to inspire those employees to reach for the next level daily.
• a senior management that doesn't just pay lip-service to the softer side of doing business - but a senior management team that actually encourages it and if a manager is incapable of coaching and inspiring, they fire his ass to save their good people.

If you've got a manager or two who refuse to accept that business is run by people, for people and to serve people then I encourage you to pay the legal bills to remove that manager instead of having to pay the recruiting, re-training and recurring bills of getting a constant parade of new employees up to speed.

If you want your employees to engage, you had better engage your managers. If you've got high attrition numbers in one or two departments, it's because of your managers. Stop buying the department manager's excuses and remove them. Your managers are costing your company good people and a lot of money.
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Leadership Fad Has Created A Culture Crisis

Too many people want to be perceived as being at the forefront of their niche so they will use the word leadership to describe just about anything that will help them make a few bucks. It's sad really, that the word leadership has been sold out. Authentic leadership, servant leadership, reflective leadership, thought leadership, absolute leadership and transitional leadership are nothing more than vacuous terminologies of self-importance in a desperate attempt to carve out a money-making identity that no one else has yet exploited.

Truthfully, this preoccupation with the leadership fad is so last year. It is time to get your head out of the clouds because it's about to rain - hard. Corporate North America is headed toward a corporate culture crisis in 2010 because, in spite of all of the leadership books and all of the courses available, no one has actually been leading.

The truth is, you don't become a leader in a few days or weeks in exchange for money. (If you need proof, go find out which leadership course Winston Churchill, JFK, The Dalai Llama and Ghandi enrolled in and also find out their passing grades.) So while marginal managers have been off trying to re-shape their personal brands from dolt-manager to leader-of-minions, they have been forgetting (or ignoring) their work: managing. And now because of it, workplace culture is crumbling.

Right Management's recent survey results show that 60% of North American workers will be actively seeking new jobs in 2010. Another 21% are actively networking to see what's out there before they decide to update the resume. That's a total of 81% of North American workers who are not happy with their workplaces. Why aren't they? Because while the economy was crumbling, managers weren't managing and weren't responding to the very real concerns of their people. They were too busy pretending to be visionaries who were above that icky business of managing.

That's what happens when no one pays attention to the very people who make the whole business of business work. When people feel let down, culture follows. And people will quickly exit a crumbling culture. And who was supposed to be looking after the culture? The same people who were trying to getting a passing grade in leadership courses.

North American organizations are about to suffer the largest workplace exodus in decades due largely to, you guessed it, a lack of real leadership.

Your need to be seen as a "leader" has been overshadowed by your inability to lead during tough times. You may have passed the course but you have failed the test. 
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Financial Worries Create A Hazardous Workplace

Did you realize that the average North American worker spends about twenty hours per month worrying about finances? This statistic is concerning. That's, on average, an hour a day.

What happens when you're worrying about money? You are focused on your worries and not the task at hand. That means you are not fully present in the performance of your job; whether it be office work, driving, construction, serving your customers or attending a learning session. If you are preoccupied with your worries you are not fully aware of your surroundings. And when you're preoccupied, accidents happen.

In this still uncertain time in our economy, people are worried about finances. So much so, that they may be making decisions that could adversely affect their personal safety and security.

Here's a simple example of what happens when people start making their decisions based on a perceived lack of funds. Because money might be tight, an employee working in wintry conditions might choose to forgo purchasing winter tires this year and take a chance on the all-season radials despite the facts that all-seasons have no grip, no traction and no stopping power in temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. Add a young child in the back seat and, well, you get the picture.

There are some employees who actually have "win the lottery" as a financial strategy. I am dead serious. They believe that a windfall of money will solve all of their problems. Not true. If an employee has difficulty with the small amounts of money, they will never handle the big amounts of money. It's the reason why there are so many broke lottery winners just a year after their windfall. I will bet most of your employees are just not good with money.

So, here are five ideas to help employers get their employee's financial worries in check and get them focused back on the job:

1. Offer them the use of a financial planner. In fact, go ahead and work with a financial planning company to prepare a one-two hour session for the general staff. Then give them each an hour of work time over the next few days to meet privately with the financial planner to get started on a financial plan that will help remove some of the worry over the long-term.
2. Contract with a tire shop to provide your employees with a volume discount and offer your employees an hour or so off of work to go and get winter tires installed on their vehicles. People who feel secure driving to and from work will take that feeling of safety into the workplace.
3. Create a staff emergency fund with a maximum of whatever you feel comfortable with to help your staff with unforseen emergency funding. The emergency fund is a repayable loan over a short term. Most employees would never use it but to know that there is a safety net would reduce worry.
4. Offer to subsidize monthly passes to use public transit. Even $10 per employee helps a little but means a lot coming from their employer.
5. Create an inviting common area and encourage your people to bring their brown-bag lunches. Offer some lunchtime learning seminars around finances and budgeting and help your people acquire the skills to take control of their finances.

The Attitude of Money, Security and Safety is a necessary attitude in the workplace. Think beyond just safety. Help your people with their finances which helps the employee with developing a sense of security. Once a worker feels secure, he or she is less likely to take chances that would affect their personal safety.

The more you help your people get better with money, the less they will worry about it. What that means is that you could likely get another twenty hours per month productivity from your people by helping them with problems they don't like to talk about. Trust me on this: they will repay you with their loyalty.
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Fire The CEO To Shift Culture

Fritz Henderson is gone as CEO of the "New And Improved" General Motors. He was on the job only nine months. Had he done anything wrong? Not really. His removal was due to one simple reason that far too many companies succumb to: complacent culture.

It's hard not to feel sorry for Mr. Henderson, who had little time to prove himself. But his removal was the right move. He is a GM lifer, and job one at the company is to change a management culture.

Once asked about the culture at GM, Henderson said, "It's fine. In reality, it's the only culture I know." Which was precisely the problem. If you're going to try to be different or going to try to shake things up, then you need someone at the helm who isn't a product of the culture that you're trying to change.

I believe it was Einstein who said that you'll never solve a problem with the same thinking that created the problem.

If you're going to to attempt to shift a culture dramatically, it will rarely happen with the same faces running the place. You can make culture shifts gently keeping the same senior management but to do so effectively requires a shift in the senior management's communication, involvement of lower levels of management and inclusion of front-line workers.

Sorry, but you can't sit in the ivory tower and hope things on the ground are going to shift by decree. If you want to institute a culture shift, you have to first shift the attitudes of the employee. Once you can get a buy-in from the employee, only then will you get lasting changes in your culture.

GM wasn't getting that so Fritz is gone. What about you? Are you near the top thinking everyone else's attitude needs to change except yours? The answer to that question might explain your culture.
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