Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Managing People

Why Groups Cheat: Complicity and Collusion

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News broke out that Ernst & Young revealed this week that its employees cheated on ethics exams. The accounting behemoth is being fined $100 million. That’s one of the biggest fines ever levied against an audit firm.

It’s absurd that specialists responsible for keeping things straight and steering moral enterprise cheated on ethics exams! Ernst & Young’s leadership evidently disregarded the internal reports about the cheating. Perhaps because when people identify so strongly with a group, they’re much more swayed to view the group’s actions positively and accept that group’s norms.

Research by Vanderbilt University’s Jessica Kennedy and colleagues suggests that high-flying people are sometimes more inclined than low-ranking people to adopt what their group recommends, even when it represents an ethics breach. Power sometimes provokes people to so strongly want to identify with their group that they’re willing to overlook when the group’s collective actions cross an ethical line. This affinity is, therefore, urged to sustain transgression instead of stopping its spread, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.

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  2. The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!
  3. Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals
  4. The Enron Scandal: A Lesson on Motivated Blindness
  5. Power Inspires Hypocrisy

Stop Trying to Fix Things, Just Listen!

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In these distraction-packed times, it’s harder than ever to create the mental and physical space necessary to really listen—actively listen—to another person.

A common listening pitfall is trying to have all the answers. Instead of fully hearing out a friend, you’re scrolling through your brain, being all frustrated that this problem has an obvious solution and concocting a hasty fix.

As a listener, your most important job is to listen with curiosity and immerse yourself in the person’s message. Just try to understand the person and listen to their feelings. Validate their suffering, take their perspective, and let them know you understand. That’s often what people want most.

Idea for Impact: To be a better listener, talk with each other about the ways they’d like you to give support. People have different ways in which they prefer to seek and provide support.

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  2. How to … Address Over-Apologizing
  3. Avoid Trigger Words: Own Your Words with Grace and Care
  4. “Are We Fixing, Whinging, or Distracting?”
  5. Silence Speaks Louder in Conversations

When Your Team is Shorthanded

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When your team is understaffed and/or overwhelmed, remind your supervisors about the pressures you’re dealing with. Ask for more resources without being perceived as a whiny opportunist.

  • Prioritize and focus. Decide what goals are truly significant—to you, your team, your company, and your customers. Comb out anything that doesn’t have a justifiable economic impact or isn’t aligned with the company strategy. Meet with your boss and team to ensure everyone’s aligned with your tailored priorities.
  • Align expectations and manage up. Engage your team on what you could collectively do differently to provide better results with greater efficiency. Have daily and weekly priorities. Use short, frequent meetings to increase your team’s work momentum. Let small successes be a motivational tool.
  • Get credit for your good work. Make the most of the understaffing by recasting yourself as an asset to your company amidst this apparent upheaval. With the buoyant jobs market and a heavier workload for those left behind, you may never be in a better-negotiating position.

Idea for Impact: If your team is understaffed and overworked, you don’t need to suck it up and try to do it all. Don’t keep your head down, and don’t let the burden of responsibilities stymie your personal and team goals.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Treat Employees Like Volunteers
  3. The Speed Trap: How Extreme Pressure Stifles Creativity
  4. Teams That Thrive make it Safe to Speak & Safe to Fail
  5. No One Likes a Meddling Boss

You Need a Personal Cheerleader

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Many people credit some of their success to others who believed in them and urged them on when their confidence waned.

A personal cheerleader could be a companion, friend, or family member who believes in you, takes an eager interest and encourages you, and helps lift your self-confidence, even if they raise some practical questions.

This cheerleader could indeed be a mirror through which you can see yourself. Somebody who encourages you to process and think through your experiences and reframe mistakes as opportunities to learn. Somebody who can help you notice things you do well, however small.

Idea for Impact: A personal cheerleader is pivotal to a meaningful, resilient life. Curtailing negative self-talk is difficult when you’re trying to build your self-confidence.

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  3. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster
  4. Witty Comebacks and Smart Responses for Nosy People
  5. Five Signs of Excessive Confidence

Don’t Manage with Fear

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The ability to rouse fear has forever been an essential tool of management. Fear can be an effective mobilization tool in the short term. But fear breeds complicity, not commitment.

Instead of fear-based tactics, try soft power. Build trust and gain influence using these methods.

  1. Develop an inspiring vision. Work hard to follow through on implementing that vision and celebrate even little accomplishments along the way.
  2. Communicate expectations. Ask, “How can I help you do your job better?” Follow up. No need to keep everything too close to the vest. You needn’t tell everything you know, but what you say and do has to be true.
  3. Solve problems quickly. Push for results. Set aside some time for review and create options or actions that are apt for your team’s situation. Be tough where you must be, kind where you can be.

Idea for Impact: Don’t take the fear approach with employees. With motivation, fear works—up to a point. Understand how your people view your leadership style and ensure your behavior doesn’t cross the line between pushing them hard and pushing them away.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Teams That Thrive make it Safe to Speak & Safe to Fail
  2. The Difference between Directive and Non-Directive Coaching
  3. Why Your Employees Don’t Trust You—and What to Do About it
  4. Listen and Involve
  5. To Micromanage or Not?

You Always Have to Say ‘Good’

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“How are you?” is usually meant less as an actual question and more a greeting-on-autopilot—a casual call-and-response.

The unwritten rule of conversation is that you’re expected to reply with nothing more than a declaration of utter satisfaction with life.

People aren’t usually interested in hearing the real answer. Responding with a “Well, to be honest, I’ve been kind of down today. Had a bad day at work” could be a faux pas. You aren’t supposed to burden every interlocutor with your situation, particularly with people who aren’t close.

So “how are you?” isn’t a bad thing to say at all—most of the time. But, there’re occasions, readable with empathic awareness, when you shouldn’t ask someone how their day is going unless you’re going to listen to their response with genuine respect and interest.

Idea for Impact: Showing that you care about people can do wonders, but if you don’t care, don’t feign that you do—people can see through it.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Witty Comebacks and Smart Responses for Nosy People
  2. Here’s How to Improve Your Conversational Skills
  3. Signs Your Helpful Hand Might Stray to Sass
  4. Avoid Trigger Words: Own Your Words with Grace and Care
  5. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster

How to Lead Sustainable Change: Vision v Results

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In the Drucker Foundation’s Leader to Leader (1999,) Harvard Business School professor John Kotter proposes one of my favorite visuals on the essence of noticeable results that bear witness to a leader’s vision of change:

This illustration encapsulates why some organizational change initiatives succeed while others never get off the ground or break down after a while. Kotter observes,

Results and vision can be plotted on a matrix that has four dimensions. Poor results and weak vision spell sure trouble for any organization. Good short-term results with a weak vision satisfy many organizations—for a while. A compelling vision that produces few results usually is abandoned. Only good short-term results with an effective, aligned vision offer a high probability of sustained success.

Idea for Impact: The only way a leader can produce a well-paced, sustainable, and transformational change is by mobilizing the people around her to appreciate the benefits for them in her vision of the desired future. Ongoing results oblige visibility into progress and will catalyze the organization’s commitments.

Read Kotter’s Leading Change (1996,) an influential missive on change management.

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  2. A Guide to Your First Management Role // Book Summary of Julie Zhuo’s ‘The Making of a Manager’
  3. How to … Lead Without Driving Everyone Mad
  4. Direction + Autonomy = Engagement
  5. To Inspire, Pay Attention to People: The Hawthorne Effect

Direction + Autonomy = Engagement

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The best way to achieve results as a manager is to give your team clear objectives and then allow them to approach the tasks in whatever manner that makes sense. You can suggest deadlines, schedule check-in appointments, and make yourself available for questions. People tend to take more pride in their work when they aren’t micro-managed. Delegate results when you can and interfere only when you must.

Observe the strengths and weaknesses of each employee and assign tasks based on what will allow each individual to thrive. When employees feel invested in a task, whether because they volunteered for it or because it employs their strengths, they are more likely to take ownership of their work and excel on the project. Have faith in your employees’ ingenuity and give them much latitude in how they do things.

Idea for Impact: Often, the most potent motivator for employees isn’t money—it’s the opportunity to learn, expand responsibilities, contribute and gain appreciation, and be recognized for achievements.

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  1. Don’t Push Employees to Change
  2. A Guide to Your First Management Role // Book Summary of Julie Zhuo’s ‘The Making of a Manager’
  3. How to … Lead Without Driving Everyone Mad
  4. How to Manage Overqualified Employees
  5. Leaders Need to Be Strong and Avoid Instilling Fear

What to Do When Your Friend Becomes Your Boss

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Sure, there’re many examples of the double-dynamic working sufficiently well. But the friend-and-boss/employee relationship implies a power structure that complicates every aspect of your friend’s jurisdiction over you—answerability, promotions, raises and bonuses, vacations, desirable assignments and implied favors, and managerial feedback.

The boss-employee relationship comes with complications and tensions that hitherto didn’t exist. The perimeters of professional associations are more pronounced than between friends. When things don’t go how you expect, you’ll sense the subordination and betrayal.

When a close friend becomes your boss, avoid the complications, awkwardness, and potential for the relationship to sour. Choose which mutually exclusive relationship element is more significant to you—friendship or your job. Have a candid conversation with your boss and clear the air regarding your choice. Delineation will beget immense relief.

Idea for Impact: Friendship and managerial relationships simply don’t mix.

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  4. Friendships Aren’t Always Built to Last Forever
  5. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster

Learning from Bad Managers

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It’s always nice to have great bosses who’ll teach you many things the easy way. However, you’ll have a boss who’s bad for you at some stage in your career. Bad bosses come in all forms: tyrants, abrasive, unprincipled, insensitive, indecisive, inconsistent, unfair, uncaring, arrogant, insensitive, quick-tempered, manipulative, apathetic, and so on.

If you’re perceptive, you can learn more from these bad examples than you’ll from the great bosses you’ll work for. Remember the axiom: “No one is totally worthless; you can always serve as a bad example.”

When you have a bad boss, ask yourself, what things about this boss will you commit to never doing? Make a list and refer to it occasionally. Avoiding doing these things will help you be a better boss—and be a positive role model for others.

Idea for Impact: Bad bosses can become useful teachers precisely because they provide some of the best lessons in what not to do that you’ll ever be offered. Take it upon yourself to never be like your bad boss.

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  3. The Hidden Influence of Association
  4. Lilies and Leeches
  5. What to Do When Your Boss Steals Your Best Ideas