Put The Money Back

When the recession hit, you asked your employees to sacrifice with you while you adjusted to a market downturn. You asked them to give up their expected raises, to find ways of cutting costs, to cut back learning and to do it for their own job security and the good of the company. And now that the company is back on the mend, how quickly are you reinstating pay raises, learning opportunities and meetings and giving back the budgets they helped slash?

Or are today's better margins going directly to the company bank account?

My, my, how quickly we forget who helped you make it through the tough times. It's no wonder that over 60% of the job market is looking for another job. It's an insult to be asked to cut back for the good of the company and then not pour that money right back to the people who sacrificed "for the good of the company." You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.

If, as a middle-manager, you're not actively pitching senior management to open the financial floodgates again, your people are going to lump you in the same bucket. If that's the case, they won't engage for you, they won't produce for you and they won't really care much what you have to say. It's because you did what senior management asked you to do and made them find ways to cut back. But now, you're seemingly not championing for them once that money is flowing again.

This is exactly how cultures of trust and mutual respect get destroyed: by how you emerge from the downturn. If you asked your people to cut back then you MUST give them back what they sacrificed to get you through - or at the very least (if you've become lean over this past two years) ask their opinion on what should be reinstated and what is better left as is. Get their input and make them feel a part of the process right now. If you don't, expect a lot of new faces in your workplace shortly.

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Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
Web Site http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

$240B Lost Productivity by Waiting

If you arrived for your noon meeting on time and the sales rep you were supposed to meet didn't show until 1:45 pm with no apology, no reason, no information and seemingly no remorse, would you still buy? Would you respect them ever again?

So how come this has become an acceptable practice at a doctor's office? Why do you lay down and take it and not say anything? Your time is just as valuable as the doctor's time. The doctor runs a practice which is a business. If enough people complain about unacceptable wait times, the doctor, in good conscience, will stop triple-booking appointments and start informing you when they're running two hours behind so you don't have to sit there un-respected for two hours.

Waiting in doctor's offices accounts for $240 billion a year in lost productivity (Source: Alan B. Krueger, Economics Professor, Princeton University) from waiting 847 million hours in waiting rooms unnecessarily.

Airlines have found a way to inform you when your flight is going to be late (phone calls, email and text updates) and delayed flights impact hundreds of passengers at a time. I got a call yesterday that the Simon and Garfunkel show I have tickets for Sunday has been rescheduled. There were 20,000 tickets sold and 20,000 people were notified by phone. So how come doctor's offices can't tell 6 people the doctor is running an hour late? It wouldn't take 5 minutes to inform an hours worth of patients by text message, phone call or email that the doctor is running an hour late. All it would take is a small dose of respect for the patient.

If you are scheduled to visit a doctor today, make him or her accountable to your scheduled time (15-20 minutes late is acceptable). Say something. Complain. You have a right. It may be that the doctor is not even aware of how the office staff is scheduling and stacking patients. Make the doctor aware. Tell the doctor that you don't feel respected. And if you've been hit financially because of the wait, send the doctor an invoice for your lost time.

Filter-Free Friday™ is the day you speak up, get the respect you deserve and help others become better at what they do. Sitting in a waiting room for hours needlessly is not acceptable so don't pretend that it is. Speak up and say something.
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Kevin Burns - Excellence Attitude/Culture Strategist
Speaking Web Site http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Attitude with ATTITUDE Blog by Email
Follow Kevin on Twitter @attitudeburns
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Being Liked And Being Respected

How come you don't say what's on your mind? How come you hold it in? You want people to like you don't you? And you're afraid that if you deal with the stuff that's been bothering you, then you may not be liked anymore. Well get over it. You don't need to be liked anyway. Being liked is the chicken's way out. Given the choice, you should prefer to be respected far more than wanting to be liked. Being liked is the short-term approach whereas being respected is what everyone should be aiming for.

There has been much talk about how one generation seems to perhaps not hold the same amount of respect for others as another generation. It may be true but maybe not. What seems to be true is that everyone wants to be respected regardless of generational differences.

Respecting others means respecting yourself as well. Just rolling over, laying down and taking the beating it is not respectful at all. It is disrespectful to both you as well as to the other person because you are no longer offering them your very best. When you lay down and allow others to run over you, or at the very least, take advantage of you, you are not offering your best. In fact, you are offering your worst and that is terribly disrespectful.

When you hold your frustrations and irritations in, you try to convince yourself that it's not that bad. But you still end up holding a resentment towards the other person. There is no way for you to be respectful of someone else or work in a positive way with someone with whom you hold any trace of resentment.

So if the office dork (because that's what you call him - maybe worse) who leaves an empty coffee pot on a burner ticks you off because he doesn't start a new pot, then don't hold it in anymore. Take it to him and respectfully (not timidly) tell him that you expect him to offer more respect to the rest of the staff by replenishing the coffee. Maybe he just doesn't get it because he has a subservient spouse who looks after little things like this. Maybe he's forty-five years old and still lives with his mom. Either way, you need to teach him a lesson from the adult world - you know, the real adult world where you have your own place to live and you don't have someone cleaning up your mess for you.

Other employees talk about this guy don't they? How respectful is it letting other people grumble and whine about this guy behind his back? You're letting him hang himself out to dry. That's not respectful at all. Show a little class by telling him what you are all thinking. And if he doesn't like you anymore because you told him the truth, well that's OK. You didn't like him either and you harbored resentment. You are no further behind.

Deal with your squabbles and irritants before they fester into great big issues that can't be resolved. Respect yourself and others will respect you too. After all, you can't give respect if you don't have any for yourself. You can not give away that which you do not possess.
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An Attitude Of Trust

Trust is NOT something you earn. In fact, if you are ever put in a place where you feel you have to earn trust, it means you were mistrusted prior. That's a horrible place to start in business, in friendships and in relationships. If you mistrust out of the gate, you've got some serious "baggage" you need to sort out.

You either trust someone or you don't. Black and white. There's no middle ground. You can't sort of trust someone. If you think there's a middle ground, you need an Attitude Adjustment.

We trust people until they give us a reason to not trust them.

Starting out with a feeling of mistrust for every single person, every single organization, every single new idea is not how you do business. If the whole world thought that way, new companies would never get off the ground, new employees would never be hired, new salespeople would have EVERY door slammed in their faces, every new innovation or idea would be summarily dismissed if we didn't trust people to be basically honest, good people.

Trust is given until proven otherwise.

However, earning respect? That's a whole different discussion. And don't argue semantics here - trust and respect are very different traits. Be very clear on the distinction. People trust you when you first meet them. Now, what you say and do will earn their respect.

You Don’t Have To Go To Meetings

Recently, I was chosen to address the full staff of a small municipality – everything from Administration and Social Services personnel to Fire, Police, Library, Recreation and Public Works staff. This was their annual Staff Day, a half-day session to inform all of the members of the municipal government staff of what was happening with new projects, new staff additions and new directions for the coming year. I was brought in to wrap up the morning offering a new perspective and a new attitude towards work, safety and developing a personal leadership role within the job environment.

During the early part of the meeting, while representatives from each department were addressing their updates to inform the rest of the staff of the goings-on, a few employees sitting in the back row decided that it was more important to chatter amongst themselves instead of keeping up to speed on what their own employer and organization was doing and how it may affect them, their work and the community in which they live and work. There was little respect or courtesy being demonstrated by these few workers especially during the part of the program in which the CAO was addressing the topics of Respect, Trust and Integrity.

Just prior to my session commencing, there was an open forum to ask questions. One back-of-the-room disruptor muttered under their breath loud enough for others around them to hear, “Do we have to be here?”

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: No you don’t have to be here. You don’t have to attend any staff meetings. You don’t have to show up at work on time. You don’t have to endure three hours of coffee, donuts and free pizza for lunch. You don’t have to give your attention on the job. You don’t have to be considerate to your fellow workers. And no, you don’t have to sit through a boring meeting. Simply hand in your resignation and you’re free to do whatever you want.

However, if you take the job, you need to suck it up. You take all of the meetings, the procedures, the bosses, the whining of your co-workers, the hours, the holidays, the paycheck and the benefits you’re entitled to. You don’t have to do any of the jobs you don’t like – but you will have to give up everything you do like in order to stop doing what bores you. Some parts of the job are not as much fun as other parts of the job, granted. But they are all necessary.

My guess is that the Staff day was developed in response to, “How come no one ever tells us what’s going on?” I’m willing to bet those comments came from the people in the back row who chose not to pay attention anyway. And in a few weeks they’ll ask, “How come no one told us this was going on?”

Full kudos to the Administration for bringing the staff together to communicate what is happening with the municipality. They demonstrated respect, trust and integrity with their employees. Too bad not everyone reciprocated.

People who show no respect for their fellow workers will likely show little respect to their work, their equipment, their responsibilities, their co-workers, their bosses and their customers. Would it be a loss if these people left the job? Really?