How Managers Get Labeled Racist and Bigot

It would so easy to blame your life circumstances on your mediocre teachers of your childhood. Hey, if they had no real understanding of success and how to achieve it, how could they possibly prepare you to be successful right?

So why is it that people are so quick to blame their bosses for not getting ahead at work? Nothing irks me more than hearing that incessant whining of "not being recognized" or "my boss plays favorites and I'm not it" or "it's because I'm (gender, sexual orientation, race, age, weight, etc.)."

Those comments are the result of owning an "entitlement" mentality: you think you are entitled to be further than you are and now you are blaming others for not just giving it to you. Truth is, you are also entitled to be unemployed.

Managers who give credence to the people playing this game for fear of being labeled as a bigot, racist, etc., are just as guilty of keeping this entitlement mentality going.

Look, people who say this stuff do so because no one has told them any different. If they are not being promoted because they aren't competent, then they deserve to be told they are not competent. Saying nothing for fear of offending allows employees to pull stuff out of the air, to make stuff up in the absence of information - and then you have twice the work to do in straightening it out.

If you speak with your people every single day (and that really IS your job - not paperwork and management meetings, contrary to what you might think) and let them know how they are doing in simple ten-second conversations, you end up eliminating a lot of the backlash that could come later. People want to know how they are doing and in the absence of information, they will make stuff up based on what they THINK is the truth. My Tweak™ - The Future of Management program addresses exactly this.

If this is happening to you as a manager then you're not managing, you're defending. And you can't help your people get any better if you're constantly defending yourself. When this happens, you are in the way of your people getting any better. Now you need a new manager to start over. Maybe you should have just told them the truth: that their work is mediocre and not worthy of promotion.

Who Gets Your Ear?

You've heard the term "getting one's ear" haven't you? It's a term to describe how one person may get the attention of someone else and be able to influence that person. Presidents and other high-powered officials must choose wisely their counsel and be very selective about who gets their ear.

Wrong decisions can be made by listening to the wrong people. In fact, I recall a friend of mine who asked me to join into an investment group a few years ago. I researched the person in charge and found that he had a criminal record was banned him from securities investing. Just a few months ago, he was arrested for heading up a ponzi scheme. I hope my friend made out OK and got out after I sent an email with a link to the criminal's past.

Not just anyone should be able to get to you. You must be selective of the voices you allow to speak to you. And as a manager, you had better be listening to the voices who have something to teach you - no matter what it costs. You, the manager, will be responsible to influencing the ears of others. I hope you've got your facts straight and only people in the know get your ear.

A Filter-Free Fairy Tale

Part of the reason behind Filter-Free Fridays™ is to give you a chance to tell your team members, fellow employees and the really important people in your life how you really feel about them - especially if they impact your life in a positive way.

Everyone should have at least one person who impacts their life in a positive way. If you don't have one, you're hanging out with the wrong crowd. I have one in my life that, over these past two years, has made a tremendous contribution to my life in helping me be better - every day.

Her name is Trish and we have known each other since Grade 4. She got pushed ahead the year after we met allowing her to skip Grade 5 so, come high school, we never took any of the same classes. But I saw her everyday. Once, I asked her on a date when I was 15 - she said yes. I took her to a school dance but never asked for a second date only because I thought she was just being nice by agreeing to go out with me - she wasn't. My self-image as a teenage boy needed some work. So I had to live with my crush on her and never acted on it for fear that she might say no.

Going to a small high-school of 200 students in a small town, everyone knew everyone else. We had the same teachers, went to the same church, had the same friends, knew each others' parents and came from the same economic background. We had history and a keen understanding of each other's values. We came from the same place physically and philosophically.

After high-school graduation we went our separate ways: her off to university and me off to Kapuskasing, Ontario to take a radio job. We never spoke again for 30 years - until a high-school reunion. We developed a great friendship over the following six months seeing each other only once in that time due to living 2000 miles apart.

Over these past two years, Trish has become my mentor, my confidante and my best friend. There isn't a day where we don't laugh to the point of tears or just relax and feel safe to just be who we really are. There isn't a day where something ever goes unsaid or that a dream goes unspoken. There isn't a place we don't visit together or support each other to be healthy and happy. And if she leaves to do a little shopping, a little part of me goes missing for that few hours while she is away.

Tomorrow, in Gatineau, Quebec, I am going to marry the girl I asked on a date some 35 years ago - and she is going to marry me. She said yes. We will be surrounded by our families and close friends - many from high-school. Trish's 20 year-old daughter will be Maid of Honor and my 25 year-old daughter will be Best Man.

But the lesson we offer to our children is to set a standard and never settle. Keep your standards high and always believe that if your relationship seems like a struggle, it may not be the right one. The right one makes loving easy.

So pardon how long my gushing might seem, but once in a lifetime, someone comes along who just rocks your world and, in the words of Jack Nicholson, makes you want to be a better man.

Tomorrow, I will prove it when I simply say, "I do."

And that, my friends, is a glimpse into my personal life - Filter-Free. Do the same for yourself.

When Managers Interview Over Their Heads

It really isn't a tough concept to wrap your head around - the chance that a manager is at some point going to interview a job candidate who is clearly superior to the manager in every way: charisma, performance, communication skills, relationship-building skills, leadership qualities, knowledge, experience, etc. So what does a manager do when interviewing someone like this?

The truth is, most managers would be afraid that hiring someone who clearly outperforms them would be simply hiring their own replacement. And so, sadly, many really great people get passed over as "overqualified" because of a manager's own insecurities.

The truth is, a high-achiever might be just exactly what your organization needs - but here is the caveat - only if the Culture fit is right.

Hiring shouldn't always be the best person - but should be the best person for the company Culture. Having a highly-focused, customer-focused, high-achiever on staff might be just the ticket to get the rest of your people to build a new customer-focused Culture of high-performance.

But most times this doesn't happen because if a manager hasn't been able to build that Culture already, then he or she obviously doesn't know how to do it. That makes it unlikely that they could recognize good talent and Culture potential if it came along.

But nowhere is it written in the management handbook that a manager can not learn from an employee. Real good managers, employee-focused managers will do what is best for their employees and won't act out of fear of looking poorly or inept. But the moment you pass over a great potential employee because of insecurity is the moment you look incredibly inept.

How Managers Poison New Hires

The truth is, new hires will get sucked into the Culture of the workplace faster than formal training will stick.

Managers who welcome new employees on their first day then promptly hand them off to any employee because they have a meeting to run to, run the risk of doing two things:

1. giving a very poor first impression that staff and their contributions don't matter - meetings do, and
2. potentially poisoning your new hire by foolishly choosing some random employee and having them learn the real "attitude" of the place from someone disgruntled or actively disengaged.

You say you want to increase employee engagement and reduce employee turnover, yet you hand off a newbie to other staffers without a plan. What are you thinking?

Who is the employee with the best attitude, the best performance, the best engagement and the best intentions? That person is your new on-boarding mentor. Have a conversation with the potential mentor and tell them that because of their performance, you are placing new hires in their care to learn the correct way of doing things around here. Give your people positive responsibility and you will find that they rise to the occasion.

The first relationship that a new employee strikes up is usually the longest lasting relationship. Make sure your new hire gets mentored by the right attitude, the right work ethic, the right performance and the right engagement levels.

If you want to ensure the future Culture of your workplace is headed in the right direction, don't just willy-nilly leave new hires with your staffers. The first few days are important learning times for new employees - especially for improving Culture. Make this a strategic move. You will have made your own job much easier down the road.

3 Ways To Manage Procrastination

Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, and Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada have identified traits of procrastinators:

• Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators: they don't pay bills on time, they don't cash gift certificates or checks, they leave their Christmas shopping until Christmas eve.
• As a culture we don't take procrastination seriously as a problem. Because we are so nice; we don't call people on their excuses ("my grandmother died last week") even when we don't believe them.
• Procrastination is not a problem of time management or of planning. "Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner (time management) is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up," insists Dr. Ferrari.
• Procrastinators are made not born. Procrastination is learned. Managers may reinforce (and sometimes even create) procrastination because they tend to be tolerant of excuses.
• Procrastination predicts higher levels of consumption of alcohol among those people who drink - the effect of avoidant coping styles.
• Procrastinators lie to themselves such as, "I work best under pressure" or that time pressure makes them more creative. But in fact they do not work best under pressure nor do they turn out to be more creative; they only feel that way. They squander their resources.
• Some are thrill-seekers, who wait to the last minute for the euphoric rush. There are the avoiders, who may be avoiding fear of failure or even fear of success, but in either case are very concerned with what others think of them. They would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.

Here are 3 ways to manage procrastination (taken from my new program, Tweak™ - the Future of Management):

1. Eliminate long deadlines for project completion - in the same way that manufacturing ramps up daily production over a longer term (5000 more widgets over 25 days = 200 more widgets per day) you must break down projects into daily steps. This forces the procrastinator to engage NOW! Tomorrow is always the deadline. This way you don't get blindsided by being too far behind. You can correct immediately.
2. "Show me what you have so far" pop quiz in public - risks embarrassing the procrastinator. Knowing that you might ask at any time for status reports forces the procrastinator to have something prepared. Always ask for status. Inspect, don't expect. Procrastinators fear embarrassment. Use this to your advantage.
3. Deliver consequences and don't buy excuses - last-minute efforts produce mediocre results at best. If a procrastinator is not pulling his/her weight, take project responsibilities away from them and swap project responsibilities with a good worker. Give the procrastinator's project responsibilities to the good worker and give good worker's mundane tasks to procrastinators so that the good worker is not punished by having to pick up the slack.

What are your thoughts on procrastination? What has worked well for you? Leave me your comment below.

What Service Is Supposed To Look Like

I inadvertently broke the LCD touch-screen of my new camcorder this week. In a panic, I emailed Panasonic to find an Authorized Repair Depot. They emailed back next day suggesting that I contact Southland Crossing TV here in Calgary. I called Southland immediately. But because I would be traveling within a week and needed to take the camera, they asked to see it and diagnose it right away. They confirmed the LCD screen needed to be replaced - but because it is a professional camera and a new model, they couldn't access the parts catalog online.

Melanie at Southland promised to call Panasonic directly - and she did - three times with no reply. Then she sent three separate emails begging for Panasonic to return a call which she finally received with an acknowledgment that the part would be sent by air overnight - no extra charges for overnight shipping.

Melanie then sent me this by email: "Hi Kevin, I heard back from Panasonic. The part is in stock with them, cost of the part is $161.40 + GST. If this is OK, please give me a call so I can create a work order."

I called immediately and Melanie promised to alert me when the part arrived so they could get the camera in right away. The challenge was going to be scheduling because of Remembrance Day. They would be open Thursday but closed Friday and Saturday. She told me the part was being shipped by overnight courier and scheduled to arrive by 9 am next day.

Melanie called at 9:30 saying don't leave the house because the part isn't here yet - but I was already on my way. I left the camera anyway with the intention of picking it up by end of business regardless of whether it had been repaired.

Then, at 11 am, this email arrived: "Hi Kevin, the part arrived & it has been given to Rommel to work on. I will advise once it is completed."

An hour and a half later: "Hi Kevin, your camcorder is done. We will be here till 5:30 today."

Calgary is a city of 1.1 million people. Southland Crossing TV does business like they're in a small town. I gushed to Melanie directly that the service experience was incredible and that given the opportunity, I would return to them in the blink of an eye.

On Filter-Free Fridays™ you speak your truth in a non-hurtful way. Well here's the truth, if you're in the electronics repair business, Southland Crossing TV is the service model you have to compete with. Yeah, good luck to you. It's going to be pretty hard to top that. And given the choice between you and someone like Southland, why would anyone choose you?

Will You Acknowledge Their Service?

November 11 is Remembrance Day in Canada and Australia. It is Veterans Day in the United States. And although November 11 is the day marked to honor military veterans in the United Kingdom, the ceremonies won't take place until Sunday.

On this November 11, how about we take a moment out of our own busy lives to, just for a moment, think about someone else for a change.

Perhaps you work with someone who has done military service or work with the spouse of someone who has done military service. Perhaps one of your own relatives may be former military. Why not think about them for a moment on November 11.

Look around. Look at all of this stuff you have been able to amass. Think of all the things you are able to do and all of the freedoms that you have. We live in some of the best countries in the world. Oh sure, we have our moments and we have our difficulties from time to time. And we don't always get it right. But, we pretty much have it all.

There is a process in place that is as simple as a young man or woman who makes a decision to sign up for active military service. That one person along with thousands of others get trained, focused and deployed to protect the very freedoms and luxuries of life that we have. How hard would it be to say "thank you" on November 11?

Here's how easy it is: on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month take a moment to just be thankful that you have what you have. Someone, maybe someone you don't know, made a decision to stand up for you. Some lost their lives standing up for you and some returned home. Remember, it's not the price they paid that is important, it's the fact that they chose to do something important at all.

Will you acknowledge their service?

What Good Managers Know

Your own kid has probably played some sort of organized sport. You've probably already figured out that there are some very good coaches and some that are just awful. The problem with bad coaches is that they can instill some bad habits and behaviours early on which can make breaking them more difficult later on. A good coach will have to first undo what the bad coach has done.

Playing for a bad coach can hurt motivation and the Culture of the team to the point that the players simply don't want to perform anymore. Hey, you've seen it in pro sports too.

Some coaches play to win - others play not to lose. Two very different philosophies that become readily evident in the performance of the team: one team offensively makes things happen regardless of what their opponent may be doing and the other team plays completely in defensive mode, their play dictated by what the other guys do.

Just like sports, the poor performance of an employee is a perfect reflection of the manager's ability to coach that employee to a better performance. Every employee can be coached but not every manager can (or will) coach. If you can't (or won't) coach, you, the manager, are in the way and are solely responsible for hurting the performance of your department. Don't blame your staff - they are working with no direction.

Oh, and trying to look superior isn't coaching. Come to think of it, it has absolutely nothing to do with management either.

Good managers know that the manager of the future (the future starts now) is a coach first, manager second. If you don't know much about coaching then you know little about managing. If you won't improve your game, why should your employees improve theirs? Lead by example.

A Missed Filter-Free Fridays™ Opportunity

Driving through Calgary recently, I spotted a sign. Well, if the truth be told, it was my wife who saw the sign first and she yelled out, “You’ve got to take a picture of it.” She really gets the concept of Filter-Free Fridays™.

So we turned around the car and rolled into the parking lot to see the sign that I thought was a completely missed opportunity by the sign company sales representative to offer a Filter-Free Fridays™ piece of honesty to a small business owner attempting to gain a share of the “dollar store” market.

Now, first of all, the dollar store market is competitive because … well … because everything costs a dollar. Price isn’t the competition point. In fact, you expect the price to be the same. So what separates one dollar store from another. That’s where someone tried to get a little creative … when, in fact, the sign looks like it was produced by the Department of Redundancy Department. Here’s the sign.

Seriously, do you really need to tell people that you have super deals at low prices? It’s a dollar store. That’s sort of the expectation. The low price ($1) is supposed to be the super deal.

And honestly, would you be encouraging friends and family to buy your birthday gift from the dollar store? “Gifts and much more?”

Every dollar store has low prices. Every dollar store has super deals. I suppose if you wanted to cheap out, you could buy a “friend” (I use that word loosely) a crappy gift from the dollar store.

What separates one dollar store from another? Service, how you treat people and the quality of the product. Maybe that could have been on the sign instead of redundancy. It was certainly a missed opportunity for the sign company sales rep to help the customer differentiate in a crowded market. Instead, they filled the sign full of redundancies, really saying nothing of value and made it into a bit of a joke. Maybe the sales rep should have spoken up.

On Filter-Free Fridays™, will you remove the filters that prevent you from being honest and finally speak the truth to your customers or will you just take the order and only think about yourself? You have a choice.

Bad Managers Are About To Be Found Out

This is the end of the road for autocratic managers who hide in their offices and avoid their own people and decisions. This is the end of the road for managers are quick to blame, who offer poor communication direction and instruction. Because you can't build a solid corporate culture by busying yourself with meetings or pretending to be swamped by stacking papers on your desk, filling out time sheets, pushing paper and constantly holding a phone to your ear. You're not fooling anyone by starting your own fires just so you'll have something that makes you look busy and important.

No, the job of a manager is to coach, to inspire, to motivate them to spend a little time each day improving the little things that add up to big performance. A manager's job is to tweak performance.

Employees dislike being told constantly what they're doing wrong. Managers should already know that. So by knowing that, why is it that so many managers still spend so much time harping on employees about what they're doing wrong? Because there are a lot of managers out there that have no idea what they're doing. And up to now they have been able to hide it. But, they are about to be found out. And that single fact alone should scare most managers and organizations as a whole.

The truth is, employees want to be coached in the same way athletes are coached. Sports coaches spend time each day with their athletes fine tuning and adjusting their performance. Think for a second about how well a professional athlete would do on the sports field if all the coach ever did was harp on them for what they were doing wrong.

Get with the program managers: there's a new generation of worker that is expecting to be coached not crapped on. Your people don't want you to do the work for them, they want to offer suggestions as to how they can do the work for themselves. Your job as a coach is to find a way to uncover the little a-ha moments of your people that makes them want to be better, to get focused and to engage themselves in their work.

And if you as a manager don't think that you are able to act as a coach to your people because you're too busy, then you're in the way. Step aside and allow someone who can do the job to coach your people to the next level. Your people deserve better.

It's Not The Work That Engages

Gen Y does not have a poor work ethic. In fact, it could be argued that their work ethic is better than that of Baby Boomers - just different. The truth is, Gen Y doesn't engage in the same things as Boomers do especially when it comes to meaningless work, lack of direction from an immediate manager and poor corporate culture.

To engage the new generation of worker, you have to understand how they think. Every thing they have ever done in their whole lives has involved a menu: cell phone menu, computer menu, web site menu. Even choices that they have could be considered menus: what they would like for lunch, what career path they want to take, courses in school, etc.

Never bark out, "Get that done and then come back for your next task." That's not a menu. A menu is a list of tasks that they can accomplish in no particular order. Give them the choice and they will engage - even the mundane.

The new workers of today may end up with 14 different jobs over a 3-year span but that doesn't mean they are not motivated. It means they haven't found their "fit" yet. This is the first generation to put Culture Fit ahead of pay, benefits, perks and prestige. If it doesn't fit, they won't engage. So understand, it is NOT the work they are not engaging in, it is the workplace they are not engaging in.

This is important. It's not the work that needs to be engaging - it's the workplace.

Leave me a comment. I want to hear your opinion.