Help them see how they fit into the overall team—They were hired for a reason, most likely their skill sets. Brainstorm together the ways they add value to the group. They have probably been so focused on the exasperation of trying to perform under frustrating circumstances that they have lost sight of what's good about the team. They have almost certainly lost sight of how they fit in this team. And the team may have lost sight about what's good about them.
Collaborate with them on envisioning successful performance—Come up with measurable performance goals you can agree on. Make sure they're compelling enough to truly engage your employees' commitment. Ideally, these goals should speak to their own values and definitions of excellence. Agree on what the penalty should be if they fall short of their commitment.
Ask whether they need anything special from you to stay on track—If they have been laboring under the heavy pressure of contempt from your predecessor, they will probably be mainly relieved to know that this particular load has lightened up, thanks to your open mind. So maybe they need a weekly or monthly check-in meeting with you to make sure you both feel that things are going well.
Mark small successes subtly—Most "most improved" awards are backhanded compliments. Most people want to be recognized for consistent excellence, not for the journey they've been on. Your earliest meetings with your problem employees were private. So celebrate the subsequent small successes equally privately.
Brainstorm together the ways they add value to the group.
Don't worry; your team is noticing. With the employees formerly known as "Problem" back on the team, everyone is getting a fresh start.
Truth 29
Performance appraisals are really about you
The irony is exquisite: The one time of year when you're most likely to feel at most risk of conflict and confrontation with your employees is also the one time of year when you're most likely to see eye-to-eye with them. This is performance appraisal season. And this is what you have in common with your people: You all dread it.
There's no wonder. Performance appraisals have never been an especially happy time. This is when managers and employees put (or bang) their heads together to review what went wrong last year and figure out how to make the upcoming year better. This kind of conversation comes with the potential of criticisms, accusations, denials, warnings, threats, ultimatums, even terminations. If you're as uncomfortable with the review process as your direct reports are, you can very easily lose control over the conversation, and then it becomes even more emotionally charged.
This is an opportunity to reconnect with your employees in a positive way. To engagement-committed managers, annual performance reviews offer teachable moments meant to inspire and align their employees with next year's mission, deepening a relationship of trust and mutual respect in the process. Whether your people emerge from their meeting with you either shaking or smiling says more about your philosophy of performance management as an engagement tool than it does about what kind of employees they are—or will likely be over the next 12 months (if they stick around that long).
The review meeting should hold no surprises—especially unpleasant ones—This is not an annual performance ambush. If your people need to improve or adjust their performance to meet your standards and expectations, tell them early and often (as promptly as you can without humiliating them in front of others; as often as you can tolerate before deciding to terminate them). Your job as their manager is to help them be successful in their jobs all year long. So the more you dread the annual event, the more you should look closely at whether you're doing your job the other 364 days of the year.
This is an opportunity to reconnect with your employees in a positive way.
Use the meeting as a way to model excellent customer service—In the context of your management obligations, your employees are your customers because, as we've already established, your obligation is to give them what they need to do their jobs well. One of those necessities is pitch-perfect behavior modeling. So treat them with the utmost courtesy and consideration all the time, but especially during the review process. Why? This meeting is their point-of-purchase with you. Whether it's explicit or not, one of the outcomes of the meeting will be their determination as to whether they want to continue doing business with you for another 12 months.
This is not an annual performance ambush.
Remember that this is a review, not a disciplinary action—You can make the most progress by focusing on what the employees are doing right and well. This isn't to say you must sugarcoat the entire conversation, but focusing only on what needs to be corrected or improved will only provoke them into thinking they might be better appreciated elsewhere. Talk about the wins of the past year and explore together what made those events especially successful. Then brainstorm ways the employees can repeat those successes—maybe even "best" them next time.
If you must request improvements in the employees' behavior or productivity, make your comments as concrete as possible. Abstract advice (such as, "You must be more flexible," or "you need to show more respect") are too vague to be instructive, and they're confusing enough to damage the trust between you.
Set your expectations high, positive, and inspiring—And then you'll have some terrific developments to celebrate together next year! Those are results that you can bring to your manager when the time comes for your performance appraisal. Everyone will see eye-to-eye on what excellence looks like in your department. That will say a lot about you and what kind of job you've done as a people leader.
This meeting is their point-of-purchase with you.
Truth 30
New hires can inspire current employees
Everyone gets a little nervous when a new hire must be found to fill a new position, recruited, and then brought on board. Naturally, as the person's boss, you want someone with the skills to do the job and the temperament to do it well—and preferably pleasantly. A personality fit with the rest of the team would be great. You're lucky if you're able to conduct team interviews, with everyone agreeing on who the first-choice candidates might be.
It doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you just need to get someone on board to meet critical needs and get essential work done. Hopefully, your current employees will go the extra mile to fold the newcomer into the group and make the first few days, weeks, and months as easy as possible.
New hires come with their own baggage, though, good and bad. Who you hire and the way you go about selecting that person can make a huge difference in helping your incumbent employees decide whether the golden age of your team is over and it's time to look for a new job themselves. Or perhaps the new hire is actually an exhilarating breeze about to blow through your workplace. Maybe your current employees are freshly energized by the prospect of this person's influence and passion.
Who you hire can inspire the people you already have. In addition to considering your candidates' skill sets, ask yourself these questions:
Does this candidate speak passionately about the industry or profession?
Can he bring fresh knowledge and perspectives about new markets and new ways of applying new methods and techniques to old problems?
Perhaps the new hire is actually an exhilarating breeze about to blow through your workplace.
Does this person seem to like people?
How does this candidate embody your own vision for your department's future?
Does this candidate demonstrate to your people your own personal commitment to bring them only the very best of colleagues to work with?
Employees who work in a highly engaged team setting will welcome new colleagues as a chance for a fresh start with new opportunities for unexpected insights and learning new ways of doing things. Assuming your current team members are already passionate about what they do, they're going to look for that same quality in their new teammate. And the care and time you take in selecting that new employee (even if it's done unilaterally rather than via a team select
ion process) demonstrate that you're committed to giving them what they need to be successful on the job—and that includes quality coworkers.
However, you might be tempted to hire in a panic, especially in a labor shortage situation. Where your team may be made up of people you once hired for attitude and trained for skill later, it's possible that in your urgency, you'll now hire for skill and hope that your team eventually helps the new hire correct the attitude problem. That's a false economy, and you're doing your entire team a disservice—including your new hire, who will know as well as anyone (and probably sooner than most) that it's a poor fit.
When you started your journey to creating a high-engagement culture of strong, impassioned coworkers, you set the bar very high for everyone—for your current employees, for yourself, and for everyone you bring on board in the future. Keep your standards high, even if it means that you must run understaffed for a little while longer.
Keep your standards high, even if it means that you must run understaffed for a little while longer.
Your people will willingly take up the added burden of the vacant position's responsibility—especially if the delay demonstrates that you care enough to hire only the very best.
Part VI: The Truth About Creativity
Truth 31
Innovation begins with y-e-s
Leaders have long been in the habit of assigning the responsibility for being creative to the people whose job it is to deliver something new. So it's natural to assume that the most important whizbang, breakthrough ideas come from research and development departments, business development, or even customer service. However, as management experts are becoming increasingly fluent in all the benefits of engaged employees, they're discovering that breakthrough creativity comes not so much from people who own the job of delivering new ideas as it does from people who feel great about the job they own—regardless of its core function.
Breakthrough creativity comes from people who feel great about the job they own—regardless of its core function.
According to a survey conducted by the Gallup Management Journal, 59 percent of engaged employees strongly agreed with the statement that their current job "brings out [their] most creative ideas." The more engaged the employee, the more likely she will offer new ideas.
But wait! There's more! The Gallup survey also showed that engaged employees are more likely to be positively receptive to ideas offered by their teammates. Then, as if that weren't enough, they also report that they "feed off the creativity" of their colleagues. So, the result is an upwardly spiraling dynamic of free-flowing creativity and positive reinforcement, which then generates even more free-flowing creativity. That culture of mutually supportive breakthrough thinking can appear anywhere in the company, ultimately benefiting the entire organization's bottom line, regardless of whether the idea is a new product eureka or a simple solution for reducing waste in the recycling area.
But this spiral has to begin someplace. In your department, that "someplace" had better be your office. To take advantage of this upward-spiraling dynamic of energized and original thinking, you want to create a culture of idea generosity. If you establish a culture where employees trust that their ideas will be respectfully heard, they will be more likely to approach your office with breakthrough notions and inspirations. Therefore, your office must be Destination Yes.
Create a culture of idea generosity.
This is not "yes" as in "Your wish is my command." You're not a genie. This is "yes" to your employees' most pressing request: to be given fair, respectful, and open-minded treatment. When your employees can assume that they'll be heard, they'll assume it's worth their energy to speak up.
Assumptions are contagious, and your employees will catch their clue from you. Consider your own automatic assumptions about the quality of ideas that your employees are most likely to bring forward. If scarcity thinking, mistrust, impatience, elitism, and hide-bound allegiance to rules cause you to assume that your employees' ideas are a waste of time, your employees will assume the same. And your office will become Destination What's the Point of Even Trying?
But the culture of idea generosity thrives within an office that has the reputation for being Destination Yes. Good ideas become great ones when they're safely bounced around a team of well-willed colleagues who thrive on each other's inspirations.
Good ideas become great ones when they're safely bounced around a team of well-willed colleagues who thrive on each other's inspirations.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, "And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?"
Only one answer comes to mind: possibility shared in the safe and trusted circle of colleagues who gather within a culture called "yes."
When that happens, the possibilities are endless.
Truth 32
Everyone can be creative
Creativity is an essential component to any department today. It's the key to differentiation that will make you stand out among all your competitors, no matter what service or product you're providing your customers. This might actually come as bad news to you if you're not accustomed to thinking of yourself (or your department) as the creative type.
Creativity may be a discipline, but it's not a teachable skill. It's more of a frame of mind.
Or it might come as even worse news if you've been wishing all along that you were creative and having been watching your competitors eat your lunch. If you've tried to train your employees to be more creative, you probably know this already: Creativity may be a discipline, but it's not a teachable skill. It's more of a frame of mind that allows people to be more receptive to making fresh connections of notions that result in breakthrough ideas. So you can't teach creativity, but you can nurture it by providing an environment that inspires and invigorates your employees.
Take your employees on "artist dates"—In her book, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron recommends that her readers (primarily writers and visual artists) leave their desks and easels and go out into the world a couple of times a week to expose their souls to fresh colors, textures, and experiences that will eventually find their way into their work. Similarly at Ferrari, Director of HR and Organization Mario Almondo brings the artist dates to his employees via The Creativity Club. During this special event, Ferrari brings in jazz musicians, painters, writers, orchestra conductors, and actors to show its employees how artists come up with new ideas and solve creative problems.
Dissolve your silos—Cross-pollinate your potential for ideas by bringing in employees from different departments to work on problems and their solutions. The fresh perspectives that outsiders will lend your group won't be censored with the prejudice of "we've already tried that" or "that can't be done." Likewise, lend your people to other departments so that they can experience the creative satisfaction of offering their ideas to other people's problems.
Breakthrough ideas typically happen most the day after the subjects reported feeling especially happy.
Give your people what they need—The notion of starving artist is charming only in Puccini operas. Your employees need money, time, rest, play, positive reinforcement, encouragement, and guidance to stay energized, hopeful, and courageous enough to keep coming up with new ideas and approaches to old problems.
Make your people happy—yesterday—Researchers have discovered that breakthrough ideas typically don't happen at the peak moment of happiness. They tend to happen most the day after the subjects reported feeling especially happy.
Find ways to help your employees remember the meaning of their work—Harvard Business School Professor Theresa Amabile says, "People are most creative when they care about their work and they're stretching their skills." Never let your employees lose sight of the meaning behind the work they do. No matter what your employees do, if they do it successfully, they're making life better or easier for someone. So bring some of your employees' customers into your organization, so they can tell the st
ory of how your product or service made a difference to them. When you make sure they don't lose sight of that fact, you nurture their potential for creativity.
People are most creative when they care about their work.
Open your department to volunteers—Mark Twain once wrote that the definition of work is something you used to do for love but now you do for money. From the phenomena of YouTube and Wikipedia, we have learned that the public's passion extends into even the geekiest of pursuits, such as building an encyclopedia. If an encyclopedia project can attract volunteers, surely there's something about your organization that can appeal to discretionary passion. If there is, open your doors to this group and let their energies infect your employees.
As the engaging manager, you're in a bind. You're responsible for generating great performance and products that result from creativity. But you can't force creativity. All you can do is provide an environment where it can thrive. How you go about that is a creative challenge with your name on it.
Truth 33
You stand between inspiration and implementation
It's one thing to have a department that generates ideas—especially great ideas—like a machine. It's quite another thing to know how to take care of all those ideas—even the bad ones. Nobody can reasonably expect all his ideas to be successfully implemented, of course. But your people deserve to trust that you will take give their ideas respectful consideration, no matter how good or bad they are.
The Truth About Getting the Best From People Page 8