Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Managing People

Treat Employees Like Volunteers

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Treat your employees as volunteers—as if they’re free to leave at any time. Volunteers want to connect to a mission. They want to make an impact by investing their time and energy because they want to, not because they need to. Moreover, unlike employees, volunteers aren’t constrained by the command-and-control structure.

You’ll pay greater attention to the non-monetary needs of your employees, and you’ll better align your goals and their goals. You’ll be more intentional, preferring transformational motivation, not transactional motivation.

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What to Do When Your Boss Steals Your Best Ideas

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Be thankful that your boss is stealing your ideas or getting credit for your work because the best way to make your boss love you is to make her look good.

It’s surprising how well this ensures a steady and trusting working relationship. So suck it up, buttercup!

Your boss’s opinion counts more than anyone else’s in your career trajectory. So the last thing you want is to put yourself in an adverse situation with your boss.

Credit for ideas is way overrated, anyway. The core of your job isn’t to sit in a cubicle and think up ideas. It’s carrying out those ideas—that’s what you’ll list on your resume—projects done, money saved, marketing campaigns led–not your bright ideas.

Don’t go over your boss’s head and protest. Your boss’s boss doesn’t pay attention to who stole whose ideas. If your boss is mean and nasty, your boss’s boss will eventually figure it out without your help.

Idea for Impact: Is it that awful that your boss takes credit for your ideas? Think of it as unselfishly donating some ideas in exchange for a good relationship with your boss.

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When Implementing Change, You’ll Encounter These Three Types Of People

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'Change is like a Slinky' by Hans Finzel (ISBN 1881273687) To successfully make changes in your workplace, you’ll need to have everyone on board. But don’t try to get them all to accept change at once. Not everyone responds to change similarly; some employees will not react well to it initially.

According to Hans Finzel’s Change is Like a Slinky Paperback (2004,) you must anticipate your allies and adversaries. Determine which of these three groups each of your employees belongs to and adapt.

  1. The Innovators and Early Adopters. Some people love the challenge of change for its excitement and the opportunity to spearhead change. These employees can research the topic, develop prototypes, and act as “change ambassadors” to motivate people further down the hierarchy.
  2. The Careful Majority. Most employees will support change once they’re reasonably confident it’ll succeed. Demonstrate to skeptics what the change will represent and how it will benefit them and the company. Acknowledge concerns—both the spoken and unspoken—and the discomfort of being in unfamiliar territory while focusing on what’s within their control. Eventually, the majority will follow the early adopters’ lead.
  3. The Holdouts. A few employees may resist—and even sabotage—change because they feel uncomfortable about it, don’t believe in it, or can’t see any benefits in it for themselves. If their contentions are worth the time and energy to debate and discuss, make a fair effort to gain alignment on perspective and resolution on position, but be firm with your strategic direction. Get key organizational leaders to give these dissenters reasons and opportunities to get on board, but let them know the price if they don’t accept change.

Idea for Impact: The best managers understand that each employee has different skills, sentiments, wants and needs—and work to put each employee in a position to feel valued and contribute.

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These are the Two Best Employee Engagement Questions

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Engaged employees are more likely to be effective, stay with your company, and nurture a favorable corporate culture. To gauge employee engagement levels regularly, run a pulse survey and ask these two questions:

  1. To what degree are you proactively engaged in improving the tasks you’re responsible for? Does your workplace actively seek your ideas to make those improvements?
  2. To what degree do the processes that you are working with enable you to be highly successful in your job?

Seek ideas meaningful for improvements from people on the job. Demonstrate commitment to taking significant action and follow through.

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  5. From the Inside Out: How Empowering Your Employees Builds Customer Loyalty

Can You Be Terminated for Out-of-Work Conduct?

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An employee’s off-duty conduct is generally off-limits as far as employers are concerned, and an employer can’t terminate an employee for conduct outside work if that termination would amount to unlawful discrimination.

However, exceptions exist if the misconduct outside the workplace poses a serious risk to the employer’s business.

  • In employment-at-will states, employers can terminate an employee for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all.
  • If an employment contract is in place, it likely outlines the specific types of conduct for which an employee can be terminated. So the rights and obligations of the employer and the employee are set contractually.

In many cases, though, no clear-cut guidelines can help determine the course of the action, especially for off-duty, private deeds with moral or political overtones that aren’t rightfully the company’s concern. However, the employer can terminate if the employer can establish a logical, if not obvious, connection between an egregious off-duty behavior having some bearing on their job (e.g., substance abuse that impairs the ability to perform work,) posing a reputational risk, damaging the employer’s interests, portrays the employer in a poor light (e.g., the employee was wearing a uniform or sporting the employer’s logo ) or is incompatible with the employee’s duty (e.g., a poorly worded social media post painting the employer or the industry in a poor light, or inciting hatred and hostility.) The devil is always in the detail.

Idea for Impact: Any out-of-hours misconduct with some sufficient or necessary association with the employment is grounds for termination. Best to know the employer’s policy on what makes up a breach of the company’s values, public position, and policies.

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The Hidden Influence of Association

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The “Law” of Association, a maxim popularized by motivational gurus Jack Canfield and Jim Rohn, implies that you’ll become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

This is to say, empirically, everything about you is the average of the five people you hang around most. For instance, your happiness level will be the average of the five of your best mates.

If you want to raise the quality of your life, rub shoulders with people already living the quality of life you aspire to. To become a better communicator, hobnob with great communicators. If you want to be more positive, mix with more optimistic individuals. If you want to be a fabulous parent, spend time with parents who’ve mastered the art.

Birds of a feather flock together … because they share a common vision, and they’re all going in the same direction. So if you’re pursuing a goal, find the people who’ve already attained that goal or are well along the path to achieving that goal. Then be with them, hoping some of their principles rub off on you.

Idea for Impact: In regards to relationships, we’re greatly influenced—whether we like it or not—by those closest to us. Get out there and connect with those whose lives you want to live. Those connections can pay off careerwise and personally.

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Managerial Lessons from the Show Business: Summary of Leadership from the Director’s Chair

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'Notes on Directing' by Frank Hauser (ISBN 0972425500) Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director’s Chair (2008) explores the parallels between directing the stage and managing projects. The shared themes include ad hoc teams, one-off goals, tight time frames, limited budgets, nebulous chains of command, shared objectives, etc.

Compiled by writer Russell Reich from the notes of British stage director Frank Hauser, this tome contains 130 meditations on casting actors, rehearsing, stage-setting, supervising the production units, and handling critics.

Organized temporally from a director’s initial encounter with the play’s script to its final production, this slim volume is so much more—it’s not just for stage directors.

  • #7: “Learn to love a play you don’t particularly like. You may be asked—or may choose—to direct a play that, for any number of reasons, you don’t think is very good. In such cases it is better to focus and build on the play’s virtues than attempt to repair its inherent problems.” Idea for Impact: Focus on virtues and strengths, not weaknesses. Spend more of their time reinforcing the good performers than dealing with untrainable performers—i.e., you can never remediate grievous weaknesses. Position the person somewhere else where her talents are a better match.
  • #33: “Every scene is a chase scene. Character A wants something from Character B who doesn’t want to give it.” Idea for Impact: Productive relationships with balance and joy call for continuous concession and managing one another’s expectations. Work hard to ensure that all sides feel contented with a negotiated compromise.
  • #73: “Know your actors. Some like a lot of attention; others want to be left alone. Some like written notes; some spoken. Get to know them. It doesn’t have to take long. It’s a good investment that will pay enormous benefits later.” Idea for Impact: Embrace individualized management. No two employees are alike—their temperaments, qualifications, experiences, and backgrounds shape them into thoroughly unique people who’re persuaded, challenged, and inspired in different ways. So why treat them all the same way?

Recommendation: Read Notes on Directing. It’s a worthwhile meditation in managing people, projects, and yourself. Anyone who must get things done through people will find insightful meditations on getting to the core of the narrative, handling people with diplomacy and nuance, and navigating conflict.

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Confirm Key Decisions in Writing

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All human dealings are subject to intended and (largely) unintended misunderstandings and misinterpretations. In fact, when an agreement is distasteful, it’s easy to misunderstand.

Confirm oral agreements, instructions, and understandings in writing at the first chance you get. Don’t rely on just memory.

After meetings, email all the participants recording what was discussed. That way, if there’s ever a debate about what was discussed in the meeting, there is a written record to review. Do this even for phone calls if what was discussed is important. A helpful template:

I am confirming the agreement we reached at our meeting this afternoon. We decided on the following provisions: A, B, and C. Let me know as soon as possible if this information is not accurate so we can finalize this part of our negotiations. Call me to discuss any necessary changes if this doesn’t reflect your understanding.

Idea for Impact: “If it wasn’t written down, it wasn’t said.” Documenting critical decisions—your interpretation of it at least—helps avoid future fracas. If you don’t receive a written protest or correction, your account of the meeting stands accepted.

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Trust is Misunderstood

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Trust isn’t just about “them” out there; it’s also about you. Trust is different things for different people.

Trust is a skill and way of operating that concerns choices and judgments, and opportunities and risks. Trust doesn’t transpire like an on-off switch. It’s something you create and nurture. The less trust between the two sides, the more challenging it is to get anything done.

And the hard part isn’t creating trust; it’s sustaining it. Trust isn’t won once but must be re-won constantly—often by affirming the positive and not allowing the win to become more important than how it’s achieved.

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The More Facebook Friends You Have, The More Stressed You’ll Be

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Seems to me that everyone’s getting sick of having to think twice about how anything—everything—they say can upset their followers on social media. We live in an oversensitive and censorious culture. The more friends you have on Facebook, the more likely something you say or do on the site will offend one of your “friends.”

The displeased’s hostility, the outflow of anger, and their petty drama won’t stop until they’ve forced their narrow-minded ideologies upon you. Even unintended slip-ups—even those from years ago—abruptly become grave and irreparable. One episode could affect your whole life. You’ll be called out; you’ll be canceled. Your employer may find that the simplest way to steer clear of the controversy is to fire you and destroy your career.

Idea for Impact: Don’t be oblivious about current events, but be aware of what and how you weigh in on cultural, social, or political issues on social media or in other unsuitable fora.

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