Laura Wolfe Coaching LLC

Supporting the Evolution of Careers, Leaders,

& Climate Consciousness

Loose Lips

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adhesive bandage emoticonRecently met with Allison, a quite accomplished woman. Since graduating college twenty years ago, she has had a phenomenal career working for a series of very successful organizations before taking her current position as the Executive Vice-President/Chief Operations Officer for a privately held company. Over lunch she shared with me some of her challenges.

A topic in particular struck a nerve and I believe it is worthy of a blog post. Allison told me that her office is within earshot of her CEO’s office and he regularly talks about employees when they aren’t around. And not just a little bit and not quietly. He does it all the time and says some pretty rotten stuff about people in the company who aren’t there to defend themselves. It’s so bad that Allison often works with earbuds in, listening to music or with her door closed.

Years ago, I worked for a guy named Mike who taught me a lot about being a good manager. One thing he absolutely, positively would not allow was for someone on our team to talk about a team member when they were not present. He was totally hardcore about this and would shut you down if you attempted to do so. So nobody did it. And, we all knew this unwritten team rule.

Consider another example: A friend had a coworker who regularly talked about people in their workgroup. She knew this because she often interacted with this guy. My friend’s position changed so she had much less contact with the coworker and before long she began to suspect he probably now spent a lot of time talking about her!

If you are a supervisor or a manager who talks about your employees, people notice and it often makes them uncomfortable. They may wonder what you say about them when they aren’t around.  But, because you are in a position of authority, it is unlikely anyone will call you on it.

During World War II, the phrase “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships” was coined by the US Office of War Information as part of their effort to limit the possibility of people accidentally giving useful information to enemy spies. How about an update to this slogan for 21st century managers and supervisors – “Loose Lips Damage Relationships”? For a manager or supervisor hoping to get the most out of employees, a relationship built on a foundation of integrity and trust is key. If your employees suspect you’re talking about them when they aren’t present, integrity and trust can be compromised.

The basic ideas here – don’t talk about others and don’t gossip – are lessons we all learned as kids.  Let’s just put them into practice as managers and adults.

Psychedelic Engagement

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My husband and I caught the Psychedelic Furs at the House of Blues in New Orleans this past June and the show rocked!  It was exceptional for many reasons:

  • The night brought out friends I’d hung with during the 80s, a really fun time, and it was great to hang with them again.
  • The Furs did two sets – the first was their album Talk, Talk, Talk (which includes Pretty in Pink) in its entirety and the second set was greatest hits.
  • Saxophonist Mars Williams totally poured his heart out for two hours. I LOVE the sound of a saxophone but who doesn’t?

Are you wondering how this relates to management, the purpose of my blog?  Well, in addition to the above, the show was fantastic because lead singer Richard Butler (photo on the left) and his brother Tim (bass guitarist in photo on the right) were totally into it, really connecting with the audience and clearly having a blast.  You could see it and you could feel it.

Musicians are artists, yes, but that night they were also service providers.  What we paid for was to be entertained and we were not disappointed.  If only all service providers could be so into what they were doing and connected with their customers.

Academic researchers refer to this as employee engagement, a term for which many definitions exist. Mathis and Jackson define it as ‘the extent to which an employee feels linked to organizational success’.  In a recent Journal of Business and Psychology article, engaged employees were defined as those who feel committed, involved, passionate, empowered, and who demonstrate those feelings in their behavior.  The Psychedelic Furs were and did all of those things that night.

The article goes on to describe aspects of performance management that can lead to increased engagement:

  • setting performance and development goals
  • providing ongoing feedback and recognition
  • managing employee development
  • conducting mid-year and end-year appraisals
  • building a climate of trust and empowerment

I certainly can’t explain how the Furs manage their performance to be so engaged but future posts in this blog will elaborate on the above and other performance management practices.  A lesson here is that employee engagement can be cultivated.

Finally, some Psychedelic Furs trivia to close:  According to Wikepedia, Pretty in Pink is a metaphor for “naked” and Richard Butler believes the movie totally misrepresented this original meaning.  I never knew that until now.  Did you?

References:

Mone, E., Eisinger, C., Guggenheim, K., Price, B., & Stine, C. (2011). Performance management at the wheel: Driving employee engagement in organizations. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26, 205-212. doi: 10.1007/s10869-011-9222-9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychedelic_Furs

Mathis, R. and Jackson, J. (2011). Human Resource Management. 13th edition. South-Western, Cengage Learning.

 

You Haven’t Done Nothin’

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My coaching and consulting practice is all about helping people navigate the world of work and helping managers become better at what they do. The following story holds a good lesson for managers and supervisors.

A friend got a new manager who decided right away to address a department issue so immediately formed a committee.  At the first meeting of the committee, the manager presented some relevant data in an unusual way. No one thought too much about it, until a month later there was a big data dump in the organization that was totally out of the control of the manager and committee. A lot of information was now readily available and it became clear, based on this, that the manager had presented the earlier data in the weird way to conceal some significant inequities in the department.

Once my friend realized what was going on, she could NEVER trust what the manager said or did again; a shadow of doubt was always there.  And this happened in the guy’s 3rd month as a manager!  He destroyed trust and had done it practically right out of the gate. Not good. My friend continued reporting to him for several years but lost all motivation to go above and beyond as a contributor in the work group. In the words of the academic research, she stopped engaging in organizational citizenship behaviors.

Deception in the workplace is very often found out and usually results in undesirable consequences.  If you find yourself in a situation that compels you to deceive co-workers, either just don’t go there or just spill the beans. An ideal solution to this typically does not exist.  But I believe it’s true – when you deceive, trouble you weave.  And, once you are busted, the negative perceptions of others are hard to overcome and trust is tough to regain.

The words of Stevie Wonder sum it up: “But when misled who knows a person’s mind Can turn as cold as ice un hum”! Can’t think of a better way to say it; such great language – a mind as cold as ice. Definitely something a manager doesn’t want in an employee.

For complete lyrics, click  here: http://www.lyricstime.com/stevie-wonder-you-haven-t-done-nothin-lyrics.html

Crank It Up!!!

This particular Stevie song (You Haven’t Done Nothin’) is one of my favorites. And I must digress, hearing it always reminds me of the world of post-Katrina New Orleans. But that’s another post…

Speaking of Stevie Wonder and New Orleans, we ALWAYS listen to a Stevie Wonder greatest hits collection on the way to the Fest (i.e., the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival), the BEST music festival of all time IMHO.  If you’ve ever seen Irma Thomas (the soul queen of New Orleans) there on the first Saturday, you’ve probably seen her show open with a cover of Stevie Wonder’s Superstition.  Those amazing rhythms are a great warm up for her show.

This year (2011) on the first Sunday of the fest, after watching Dr. John for awhile, I made a loop around the grounds and saw (in this order) Pete Fountain, The Decemberists, Tom Jones, John Legend & The Roots, and finally, John Mellencamp.  If I hadn’t been so worn out at the end, I would have gone by the Blues Tent to catch Arlo Guthrie.   What a great afternoon it was!!

This One’s for You, NASA

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Did not catch today’s shuttle lift off live but have watched the video several times and it gives me chills and I feel awe, greatness, and such a thrill. I am a big fan of the space program – maybe because I was born in 1962 and clearly remember how someone’s dad would haul a big, heavy tv into our first and second grade classrooms so we could watch Apollo missions. And, of course the memory from July 1969 of family gathered in our den watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon is pretty cool. I know youth is coveted in the world today, but I kind of feel sorry for those so young they were not alive during the amazing and exciting early years of space travel. I daily use (and love) my microwave oven, memory foam mattress, scratch resistant eyeglass lenses and regularly use dozens of other consumer products made possible by space program research.

But, because I am an organizational psychologist, I am also tuned into some other things we’ve gotten from NASA – a lot of great knowledge about organization behavior including awesome examples of leadership, teamwork, problem solving, creativity, and expertise as well as some very tough lessons on decision making and group think. I taught a college-level course in Organization Behavior for many years and often pulled from NASA examples to explain sometimes difficult concepts.

My husband and I recently had brunch with friends at Luke (our current favorite John Besh restaurant in New Orleans) and movies came up. We all agreed that Apollo 13 is worth watching yearly. I know it’s a movie about what happened on that mission but regardless, some of the scenes stay with me. In one of those, a box of seemingly random parts is dumped on a table in a conference room full of engineers. They are told that in a limited amount of time, using only those parts, to figure out a way to connect a square piece to circular one and that “failure is not an option”. And they do. Another scene near the end, when someone says to Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, “This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever faced” and he replies, “With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour” really chokes me up. Finally, at the end of the movie, when the Odyssey splashes down in the Pacific and the astronauts fall out into the rescue raft, surrounded by the greatness of the US military, I ALWAYS feel overwhelmed with pride that I am an American. It’s not terribly different from what I felt today when I watched the video of the final shuttle launch.

So, to all NASA employees, past and present, and to those in the US military that have supported NASA efforts and to the NASA contractors out there including neighbors in New Orleans who worked at the Michoud facility all those years:  Thanks for a lifetime of great lessons and memories.