Leadership Caffeine: Do You See Beauty or Blemishes?
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth
If you’ve ever worked for or around someone who is an expert critic…one of those individuals who can look at a masterpiece and spot a flaw, you know how demoralizing the experience can be. They look at beautiful pictures or great outcomes and focus on describing the flaws.
If you are one of these “Negative Motivators,” this one’s for you!
No Gold Stars Here:
A client struggled with a boss who believed that motivation and inspiration were outcomes of criticism. He wasted no time at every opportunity identifying what he perceived as flaws in the projects, programs, and presentations of his co-workers. When a frustrated and bold employee finally screwed up the courage to ask why he never offered positive support, his answer was immediate; “That’s not my job. I’m supposed to make you perform better, not cheerlead. You want a gold star, go back to kindergarten.”
Uh…OK. Thanks for the inspiration, I guess.
Look, I’m all for constructive criticism supported by coaching. That’s what we’re supposed to do. However, motivating by providing a never-ending string of criticisms is only going to demoralize people and teams and suck the life and creativity out of your organization.
Beware When You Start Believing Your Own Attempts at Rationalizing Your Behavior:
Every once in awhile, I run into a “Negative Motivator ” who has a well-developed and almost believable rationale for their approach. A few of the comments I’ve heard over time:
We’re all adults, and we don’t need daily pats on the back.
No one achieves greatness because someone was there telling them how great they were every step of the way.
How do people know how to improve if I don’t tell them?
It’s my job to ensure that people meet my high standards.
People want to please the boss. I use it as a carrot that’s out there in front of everyone. So far, no one has caught up to it.
In isolation, there’s just a bit of truth in every statement (OK, the bit might be really small in a few of those!), but what’s missing is an understanding of the human cost (energy, inspiration, environment) from a never ending slow-drip of negativity. A more balanced approach that acknowledges beauty where appropriate and offers encouragement and criticism will in my experience, produce far greater results.
5 Ideas for Achieving Better Balance in Your Feedback:
1. Know thyself. Many of the Nattering Nabobs of Negativity (thanks, Spiro Agnew) aren’t as semi self-aware as those who commented above. In case you dont’ know which side of the ledger you come down on…positive or negative, run a little experiment for a few days and keep a tally of how many criticisms you offer versus how many times you offer praise during a day. If the balance is consistently skewed towards the negative, you have work to do.
2. Know thyself, part 2. Give your employees a chance to share their thoughts on your feedback skills and habits. While the results of an anonymous survey can be skewed when groups fear the boss, if you are genuine in your pursuit of feedback on your own performance, you will likely gain some frank and useful input.
3. Advance your philosophy in pursuit of better performance (yours and theirs). You’re not completely wrong in your thoughts on constructive criticism. However, great coaches and great managers encourage the development of strengths and carefully help people navigate the weaknesses. They don’t bludgeon them into high performance with all that’s wrong with their work. There’s a needed balance of positive support and constructive criticism.
4. Don’t change your style suddenly and starting handing out gratuitous praise…support it with clear examples. You know when people are doing good work. Find time on occasion to acknowledge the work and share very clear and specific reasons about what’s good with the work. Your clearly defined positive feedback reinforces what people did right. Your goal is to get them to do that consistently.
5. Beware feedback sandwiches of all types. Sandwiching your feedback is a bad habit where managers who are uncomfortable offering constructive input surround the negative issue with big pieces of positive praise. (For more on this odious technique, see my post: Why I Hate the Sandwich Technique for Delivering Feedback.) In the case of our Negative Motivator here, beware Reverse Sandwiching…hiding the praise between two big pieces of your moldy negative comments. The praise will be overwhelmed by the negatives surrounding it.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
You can offer positive praise without being perceived as weak. Some “Negative Motivators” are concerned about losing their “tough” image, and they wrongly associate praise with weakness. I’ve worked for and around tough managers…those with high expectations and standards, who understood that positive praise was an important part of the success formula. While their minds might be drawn to the problems and the negatives they see in every image, they are emotionally intelligent enough to recognize that others both need and deserve positive support for their good work as well.
You don’t need to stock up on gold stars, but for top performance, you do need to learn to talk about and reward the positives on occasion. Just for today, start looking at the beauty in work and try and not preoccupy on the blemishes. You might be surprised how people respond.
Leadership Caffeine: Dealing with Cracks in the Leader’s Smile
Filed under: "To Do" List, Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine
Notes from Art:
My week has already started with a double jolt of leadership caffeine. I speak Monday afternoon on one of my favorite topics: “High Performance Trade Show Marketing Practices” at TS2 in Chicago at McCormick Place, based on the content in the e-guide here on this site.
Also, I am thrilled to be featured this week as the guest interview on the popular Project Shrink videocast. The video interview is entitled “Leadership and the Project Manager,” and came about via my free e-book of the same name. The proprietor of the Project Shrink blog and videocast, Bas De Baar is one of the leading voices on the human side of project management success, and an all around great professional and gentleman to deal with.
Ok enough about me and on to the real point behind these posts…sharing insights and ideas to drive your leadership performance.
Dealing with Cracks in the Leader’s Smile:
I chatted with a valued colleague the other day that indicated that she is finding it increasingly difficult and even awkward in the face of financial pressures and employee strain to keep a cheerleader’s positive demeanor in the workplace.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard from a leader struggling either to smile or simply maintain a positive outlook in the face of occasionally overwhelming obstacles. One manager indicated to me, “I know that my team reads my mood, but sometimes I feel like I’m out of place smiling and acting upbeat. It’s like trying to sound positive at a funeral, where the best thing anyone can come up with to say pales in comparison to the reality of the situation.”
While I hope that you don’t feel like your workplace is a funeral in motion, I will offer a few suggestions that should allow you to give the smile muscles a break and keep the team focused on the mission.
- You can relax the smile, but you need to double the can-do spirit. If you’ve given up on chances of survival and success, it’s time to check out of your job. If you’ve still got some gas in the tank, steel yourself and your remaining team members for the task at hand.
- Focus on the basics. My manager colleague above is watching as membership slips weekly. Some of it is inevitable as the members deal with their own financial struggles. Some of it may be controllable. Involving the entire team in identifying opportunities to strengthen member relations and improve customer experience may help. Better yet, get some customers involved in the process as well.
- Now is a great time to tackle the “Elephant in the Room” issues that we often ignore during better times. A Trade Show Manager indicated to me that given the state of her firm’s situation, she found it easy to walk into her manager’s office and suggest that now was a great time to rethink the firm’s approach to selecting and executing these expensive events. She has since been able to cut costs, improve program planning and execution and actually improve results on a smaller budget. Instead of lamenting her situation, she seized the opportunity and got others involved in making needed improvements.
- If you’re smiling less, make sure that you do a better job of delivering positive feedback. I spend most of my time teaching people how to deal with the other kind (constructive), but the fact is that well constructed positive feedback will reinforce the positive behaviors you are observing and this type of input is much appreciated. Keep it genuine and of course, don’t ignore the chances for constructive feedback either.
- Keep the team up to the minute informed on good and not so good news. Even if it’s bad, they will appreciate your transparency and your respect for their concerns. To most, the fear of the unknown is worse than the reality.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
It’s impossible for you to be upbeat all of the time. In fact, no one expects it. However, it is possible and necessary for you to be confident in the face of adversity and to avoid jumping on to the same emotional roller coaster that many of our colleagues ride. Stay focused on what matters and help your team keep focused on the same. The smallest of victories breed more and soon your team will forget about worrying and focus on doing. And then you can smile…just a little bit.
What to Do With a Lousy Boss
More often than not during a workshop, someone will raise their hand and ask, “All of this stuff about being a good leader is nice, but what do I do about my lousy boss?” Being fairly fast on my feet, I resort to the facilitator’s fail-safe of “asking the audience” before offering my own suggestions on this dicey issue. Not surprisingly, there are few satisfying answers (that don’t include jail-time for you as a possible outcome) to this dilemma shared by so many.
Generally, the complaints fall into one of the following categories:
Doesn’t support me
Offers plenty of criticism
Criticizes/berates in public
Contradicts himself/herself
Micromanages and then criticizes me for not making decisions
Takes credit and dispenses blame
Loves his ideas…won’t listen to our suggestions
And so on…
The fact is that as the subordinate you don’t have many good options unless you have grounds for complaint based on harassment, discrimination or other legal concerns. For sake of discussion, let’s limit the complaint list to the interactions and issues highlighted above.
What’s An Emotionally Abused Employee to Do?
The responses back from other workshop participants fall into similar categories and reflect the limited number of options that the victimized employee truly has in this situation. (My value-add in italics.)
Approach the manager and provide feedback on the disturbing behaviors.
I like this one, because it reflects that someone is thinking about applying the workshop content to a real situation. Some well-intentioned managers are not aware of all of their bad habits, and the properly constructed feedback conversation can be a valuable coaching tip for the manager. Less enlightened managers will respond with anger and/or retribution. My advice…read the situation, read the manager and it might be worth a carefully constructed conversation to raise the topic. If the manager views you as wanting to help him/her improve results/performance, you may pull this off. If you start softly and the conversation quickly deteriorates, bail out.
Take your complaint(s) to HR
HR professionals everywhere may rankle, but I hate this suggestion. Setting up HR to be the father and mother confessor and creating the expectation that HR can fix all of these issues is poor practice in my opinion. I’ve worked with a few deft HR professionals that can help individuals and teams navigate this type of a situation, but they are in the minority.
Leapfrog your boss
This is another risky proposition, and people employing it need to keep in mind that in a “he said/she said” debate between you and your boss, you lose.
Approach the boss en masse
This, “safety in numbers” strategy has a high failure rate, because when push comes to shove everyone is more concerned about their job than trying to get the boss to change. If you are leading this charge, be prepared to go it alone.
Transfer within the company
If you like and are committed to the organization, a transfer can be one way to potentially escape a lousy boss. Follow your firm’s posting rules, don’t do anything behind your manager’s back and hope that he/she doesn’t make the process more difficult for you. Also, if you apply for and don’t get a job in another department, remember that you still have to work for the lousy boss.
Leave the organization
This is often the path that good people take, and it certainly solves the immediate problem. If you do not believe that you can escape the clutches of this lousy manager and if you are not committed to your organization for your near-future growth, exiting stage right is great. However, look before you leap. Choosing a job just to escape a boss is an emotionally charged situation that can have you making a bad and potentially career damaging choice.
The Bottom-line for Now:
I suspect like most of the workshop participants seeking wisdom from their peers, that you might leave this post feeling like you didn’t find the answer you were looking for. My polite rebuttal is that the easy answer you are seeking doesn’t exist. Most of us have worked for leaders that we’ve not respected and have probably tried some or all of the above approaches along with a “Wait and See” tactic. Choosing your approach depends a lot upon your situation. How badly do you need the job? How comfortable are you in dealing with potential repercussions? Is your organization’s culture tolerant of aberrant leader behavior or are those types eventually flushed out and eliminated?
My guidance is to take personal stock of your situation, recognize the risks that you are taking in pursuing any line of action (or the psychic damage in doing nothing), prepare and act. I offer polite, constructive feedback (I coach upwards) and if that doesn’t work, transfer or leave. Life is short and you should not let your career or your self-esteem be held hostage by some chuckle head of a leader.
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