“A high percentage of organizations develop a military rationale, whereby only a very small number of people make all of the decisions. There is little wonder, then, that people aren’t keen to get out of bed and come to work on a Monday morning.”
— Ricardo Semler
(Brazilian entrepreneur best known for his radical reform of the workplace)
To Grow Your Company, You Must Be Willing to Grow as a Leader
I meet many business leaders who want me to help them grow their companies but who have very little authentic commitment behind their façade of hope for making that happen. What they really want from me is to “change” their employees’ behavior so that they, the business owners, won’t have to do what they know deep down they must do: grow as leaders. A commitment to changing others, rather than to changing one’s own way of being in business and one’s own way of relating to employees is not leadership but merely the pretense of it.
Frankly, spending money to fix employee behaviors in hopes of getting workers to produce better results is a waste of cash. Retraining employees is worthless if the person at the top refuses to alter the way he or she thinks. That’s why you find business owners who complain that the last consultant wasn’t effective and that the company couldn’t sustain the results of the training. The changes that the consultant proposed never made it off the ground because there was no connection to a vision, no commitment to change leadership behavior. How do I know this? At one time, I was one of those leaders who fell for change tactics. I’m eager to save you some time and money by sharing what I learned.
Any transformative initiative in a company demands that the key leaders of the company be willing to examine their own behavior first. Only then can they start helping those who work for them formulate a better approach to executing company strategy.
A True Example of a Disconnected Company
I’ll give you a great example of how poor leadership behavior creates a disconnected company. This is a true story. A close friend who wasn’t sure what she wanted to do next in her career agreed to take a “temp to perm” assignment with a well-established and respected investment banking firm. You know how it works: The company and the employee try each other out to see whether the connection will work. Two senior investment bankers from an international mega-trading firm had started this particular firm in the early 1990s. The two founding partners had recognized an opportunity to capitalize on the market as it was at the time, and so they left the big firm and formed their own company. Presumably, these two highly successful gentlemen saw the opportunity to have their own firm and reap the profits of their own hard work rather than make a larger firm wealthy at their expense. However, twenty years later, although the firm had grown and was successful, it appeared rudderless and without a defining purpose.
On the first day of work at the firm, my friend learned that she was just the latest in a long succession of new employees who had joined the company and promptly left during the past five months. The job that had drawn these short-term employees was an entry-level receptionist position, and that’s the position my friend had decided to take.
On her first day my friend was trained to answer the phones and make coffee for the partners. She was told not to worry about learning the conference call system, since the only conference call that day would be for the partner who set up and handled conference calls on his own. However, two hours into the morning, the switchboard lit up with four calls and then more calls. Conference callers were dialing the main number because the partner had sent the wrong code to the conferees, and no one was able to access the scheduled conference. Three other women in the company jumped in and scrambled to figure out what had gone wrong. But all hell broke loose, as the phone system was overloaded. Suddenly, the responsible partner came storming out of his office and screamed at the new employee, “What the f--- do you think you’re doing? You’re giving out the wrong f---ing code to people.” The four women stood there dazed.
What happened to my friend that day happens far too often. The negative behavior of just one leader set a negative tone for the culture of the entire company, and as a result, no new employee wanted to continue as a full-time employee.
But it didn’t end there. My friend had been instructed that a certain partner wanted a fresh pot of coffee placed on his desk at exactly 2 p.m. each day. She noticed on the company calendar that this partner was scheduled to be in a meeting in the conference room at 2, so she made a fresh pot of coffee at 1:55 and set the new pot in the conference room as a convenience for the partner and his meeting attendees. That was all to the good; she was savvy enough to anticipate the moves of the partner she was trying to support.
Promptly at 2 p.m., the partner emerged from his office and, without looking or asking if his coffee was ready, said to her in a demeaning tone of voice, “I sure hope you are going to be brewing me a pot of coffee at 2 p.m.” She looked back at him and told him that the fresh pot of coffee was in the conference room waiting for him, because she knew that’s where he’d be. The only response from the partner to this initiative on the new employee’s part was, “Oh.” No apology, no explanation, no responsibility for his behavior or the deprecating tone that he had just subjected the brand-new employee to—and no “Thank you” either.
As you’ve probably guessed, my friend didn’t stay in that job.
Why Do Leaders Behave This Way?
The leadership behavior described in the previous example happens every day in thousands upon thousands of companies. The boss considers him- or herself to be above the employees and therefore entitled to behave in any way he or she sees fit, regardless of the impact. That attitude of “you are here to serve me” reduces the employees to doing only one thing well: working hard to avoid upsetting the boss. It also causes them to resent the boss every minute they’re working. Far too many companies tolerate this kind of behavior, despite the fact that when employees are working to avoid unacceptable antagonism, they’re definitely not working on finding ways to improve the company’s value to clients or increase its revenue.
I think this is unconsciously learned behavior. Maybe the current leaders of the company were once treated that way by others, and so they think that is how all leaders behave. However, such behavior creates a major disconnect between the employees who have to endure it and the strategy that the employers want to execute. No employee thinks about how best to support the company’s strategy when the focus is on surviving in a toxic workplace.
The fact that these leaders exhibited unacceptable and even abusive behavior—and that the other leaders in the company tolerated it—says a lot about the people running the company. Accountability for such behavior was nonexistent, and while the leaders’ goal was to make money, they had no respect for what others in the firm were doing to help them accomplish it. The employees were focused only on making sure they didn’t end up in the crosshairs of any of the spoiled-brat leaders who habitually threw little-boy temper tantrums and degraded people if everything wasn’t exactly the way they wanted it.
Looking-Glass Companies
I call this kind of disconnected company a “looking-glass company” for two reasons:
If the leaders of the company would look in the mirror, they would see the source of the majority of their company’s problems.
Employees reflect the thinking and behavior of their leaders.
Looking-glass companies are a common type of disconnected company, and the leaders in these businesses refuse to examine themselves and their own behavior as the source of their organization’s poor performance. As a result, they will likely never achieve their full potential. A looking-glass company is essentially drifting. It goes wherever a blowhard leader decides to push it that day. If the leader is in a good mood, the employees breathe a sigh of relief that they’ve made it through another day. If not, there’s no telling what the employees will have to endure. Far too many business owners focus on creating a company that is designed t
o make money, but just for them. Everyone else is chattel. This isn’t a problem of excessive greed or avarice. It’s bigger than any Wall Street issue; it’s a Main Street problem.
I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to earn their fortune by creating and building a business. That’s been my life for more than forty years. The problem is that when the leaders of a business don’t state a purpose or take a stand for something bigger than themselves, the company devolves into a workplace where employees are miserable. When workers resent the way they are being treated or how they are expected to work, when they get little direction and are then ridiculed when they get it wrong, they produce about 33 percent of the possible results. That’s because they’re not focused on producing results—they’re focused on covering their asses.
To Start Fixing the Disconnect, Make Your Company FOR Something—Not Just ABOUT You
A rudderless and drifting organization like a looking-glass company isn’t for anything. It’s about the owner. It rarely takes into consideration anyone but the founder, or anything other than the founder’s ego and financial needs.
Most entrepreneurs and CEOs I talk to say they want their company to experience double-digit growth or become a Best Place to Work company, or both, but few of them have the integrity to look at the source of the problems that cause them to fail at executing that strategy. Becoming a Best Place company takes a leader with a high level of desire and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to produce breakthrough results. That includes changing one’s perspective and modifying one’s own thinking and behavior. Too frequently, leaders believe that all the work they need to do on themselves has either already been done or would be a waste of time.
“When there’s ever a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back and find a time period when the consensus was ‘well, that’s nonsense!’ so what that means is that a true creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense.”
— Burt Rutan
(American Aerospace Engineer)
When I interviewed leaders from Best Place to Work companies, I discovered that while they concurred with my understanding of their organizational culture, they didn’t have the language to describe it. As a result, they weren’t aware of the distinction between their own Best Place to Work culture and others. This is important, because if you want to produce a breakthrough in your company, you need the language to describe the source of your results—good or bad. You also need an awareness of the hidden conversations your employees are having, because, as I’ve already said, the greatest challenges in business today are the unseen obstacles—those limiting and negative viral conversations that undermine and sabotage individual and team performance.
The Ten Conversations That Undermine Your Strategy
I’ve compiled a list of ten conversations that always obstruct performance. These conversations might well be in your organization, and you will recognize them if they are.
These conversations aren’t complicated. They don’t require you to have training in organizational development to recognize them. However, they are the reason your employees are disconnected from you, from your vision, from your mission, from the strategy for your company, and from the needs of your customers. They add up to your Execution Virus.
“It’s not our strategy.”There’s no buy-in for your strategy because your employees have nothing invested in it—nothing contributed, nothing at stake. Your employees invest in their work, but that’s it. They have no say in the direction of your company, and therefore, they disconnect and passively withhold themselves.
Employees who are not invited to the table to contribute don’t see your company as their company, because they don’t see your strategy as their strategy. You do all the planning, you demand a certain result; they do all the work, and you get all the reward. They are expected to invest themselves in their work and produce results, but they didn’t agree to this path and they question some aspects of it. That’s because you didn’t ask them what they thought or how they saw themselves fulfilling their roles.
Don’t talk about “engagement” and “empowerment.” Do allow people to contribute to the direction of your company. This gives them a way to make an investment in what they are working on and gives real meaning to that work.
“They don’t appreciate us.”Employees are resentful of management for not recognizing their contribution to the success of the organization. This is an easy conversation to overlook, and I’ve found it’s one of the more awkward conversations most leaders struggle to address. It was for me for many years.
No matter what level of skills a leader has achieved, I’ve rarely found an executive who is comfortable authentically (meaning from the heart) acknowledging or expressing appreciation for an employee in front of others. It’s rarely done in business. So many leaders believe that if they acknowledge someone, it will come back to haunt them; perhaps the employee will take advantage of the comment when the time comes to review his or her performance and salary. So leaders think, They get a paycheck, and that ought to be enough acknowledgment and appreciation. Nevertheless, employees may still feel exploited. It can cost you big-time not to have that conversation. It costs you nothing to appreciate and acknowledge the contribution of others.
“They’re always making excuses.”Employees learn from their leaders. When leaders use ready-made excuses, point the finger of blame at peers or other team members, or point to circumstances beyond their control as reasons for failing to deliver, employees will find their own excuses for not doing what they said they would do. This produces a business culture in which strategies, plans, and intentions disappear soon after they are agreed to, and teams quickly fall back into business-as-usual behavior. No one holds management accountable, because that just isn’t done. The underlying message from management is, “You’re in no position to question me as to why I didn’t do what I said.”
“Did you hear what (Team Member A) said about (Team Member B)?”Gossip and stories that degrade others in the organization create a bullying and toxic workplace environment. If your employees are experiencing the scorn of another employee, or if management knowingly tolerates gossip about others, then you have employees who will give just enough to get by.
How do you know a conversation is gossip? If what is being said about another person can’t be said to someone’s face, it’s absolutely gossip. Wherever there are secrets or anything that cannot be discussed at any level of an organization, you will find a dysfunctional organization that’s unable to focus on what matters. There is no alignment with what is important, because people feel bullied.
“What mission statement … and why should I care?”Sit everyone down unannounced and go around the room. Ask them to tell you the mission or vision statement of your company. If you’re lucky, maybe 5 percent of them will be able to give you an answer. As for the rest, you’ll have difficulty getting them to understand the relevance of the company’s mission and getting them to implement it with any sense of urgency. How can people implement actions or execute a strategy when they can’t understand the relevance of your vision and mission and connect it to their job?
“They treat us like shit.”If there’s mistreatment, rudeness, and nastiness toward employees, leaders will surely take action to stop it, because they know that no company can execute its strategy with that going on, right? Apparently not. In a study that spanned fourteen years, Christine Porath and Christine Pearson found that 98 percent of employees they surveyed reported experiencing rude or uncivil behavior either toward them or toward another.8 In 2011 alone, half of employees surveyed said they were treated rudely at least once per week. That’s a 100 percent increase since 1998, when only a quarter of employees reported rudeness at work. What gives? Evidently quite a bit. Uncivil behavior hits squarely at the bottom line, because those who are on the receiving end nearly always report responding in a negative way. The article pointed out that employees do their worst work under the duress of being disrespected, an
d that feeds the turnover problem in many companies. It doesn’t just impact the workplace, either. It spills over to negatively impact customer relationships as well.
Here are the full effects that rudeness at work has on employees:
48 percent of employees intentionally decreased their work effort.
47 percent intentionally decreased their time spent at work.
38 percent intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
80 percent lost work time worrying about an incident.
63 percent lost work time avoiding the offender.
66 percent said that their performance declined.
78 percent said that their commitment to the organization declined.
12 percent said that they left their job because of uncivil treatment.
25 percent admitted to taking their frustrations out on customers.
And worst of all, 25 percent of offending managers said they didn’t recognize their own behavior as uncivil.
The researchers drew the following conclusion:
“The costs chip away at the bottom line. Nearly everybody who experiences workplace incivility responds in a negative way, in some cases overtly retaliating. Employees are less creative when they feel disrespected, and many get fed up and leave. About half deliberately decrease their effort or lower the quality of their work. And incivility damages customer relationships. Our research shows that people are less likely to buy from a company with an employee they perceive as rude, whether the rudeness is directed at them or at other employees. Witnessing just a single unpleasant interaction leads customers to generalize about other employees, the organization, and even the brand …
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