Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Managing People

How to Prepare for Meetings

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Preparing to Attend MeetingsMeetings are important organizational tools. Whether as one-on-one conversations or as larger all-employee information sharing sessions, meetings are integral components of getting work done. Despite some obvious benefits, most meetings are not very productive and are longer than necessary. One of the primary reasons for the lower productivity of meetings is that attendees come unprepared.

Assume you have consented to attend a meeting because your participation is critical to the objective of the meeting. What questions will you ask to prepare for the meeting?

  • Have I read the meeting agenda? What is the objective of the meeting? What is my role? How will I contribute to the meeting?
  • What segment of the meeting is relevant to me? Can I join late or leave early if I am not required throughout the length of the meeting?
  • Is this a follow-up to a previous meeting? What action items had I agreed on then? What results will I present? What questions will arise?
  • What relevant pre-reading material should I seek?
  • What research do I need to do? Whom on my team should I talk to regarding items on the agenda?
  • What is the desirable outcome? What is the undesirable outcome? Is there a compromise?
  • What positions am I prepared to take on key issues being discussed in this meeting? What facts and charts will I present to support my position?
  • Who are the other attendees? What positions are they likely to take on key issues? Why? What are the likely group dynamics: who will support me, who will oppose my positions? What counter arguments will I present?
  • What other attendees should I talk to prior to the meeting to garner support to my position? Can I invite additional attendees to the meeting to help support my position? How will I persuade other people to see my point of view?
  • What action items am I willing to take? Do I have the necessary resources? Will I participate in follow-up meetings, if scheduled?

Meetings are all about sharing thoughts in a collective setting. They are only as good as the ideas that attendees bring to the discussions. By asking the above questions, you will contribute to focused, productive meetings. You owe it to yourself, the meeting leaders and to your fellow-attendees.

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Overcoming the Temptation to Please

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You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.
– Dale Carnegie

We desire that people around us like us; we yearn for their respect and affection. We depend on the choices these people make: be it in a job interview with a corporate recruiter, a performance review with a boss or a project delegation meeting with a team member. Clearly, the more likeable we are, the more people are ‘on our side,’ and therefore, the more likely they will make decisions in our favor.

Doing what others want to gain their approval regardless of the merit of their wants is, therefore, a temptation. Companies are tempted to pursue short-term profit-enhancing strategies to satisfy stock market expectations. Politicians are tempted to devise welfare schemes to help garner votes in an upcoming election. A professional is tempted to please the boss by agreeing to everything the boss asks.

We need to be tough-minded—we need to base our decisions and actions on facts, not personal inclinations. It takes courage and discipline to resist the lure of pleasing others. Making an objective decision that is unfavorable for a requester may disappoint him/her; however, a candid explanation of the rationale behind the choice often appeases the requestor. Being tough-minded does not mean being inflexible or insensitive. Being tough-minded involves doing what is just and right after careful consideration of procedures and people.

I encourage you to reflect on your actions and decisions by asking yourselves if you make these choices to please other people or if you make these choices based on the virtue of facts. Improving your likability should be a wish and not a goal.

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Respect for Employees: Cases from RadioShack and Northwest Airlines

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Lisa Haneberg wrote about RadioShack [RSE] laying off 400 workers and informing them of the decision via email. Lisa’s Management Craft blog article records her thoughts on this choice.

Human resources… People are not just resources like computer systems and Post It notes. Our employees, all of them, even the underperforming ones who ought to be let go, are our partners. They are our business family. Even when it is the right thing to do to let someone go, we need to remember that they are important partners. How we leave a relationship is just as important as how we enter into it.

‘101 Ways to Save Money’

Northwest Airlines terminal at Detroit Metropolitan AirportThis reminds me of another instance of careless mistakes at Northwest Airlines. The company, currently operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, is considering additional layoffs and pay cuts for employees.

A few weeks ago, a booklet distributed to likely-to-be-laid-off ground workers is reported to have advised them on saving money: “don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash” and “take a date for a walk along the beach or in the woods” along with more sensible tips like “brown bag your lunch” and “refinance your mortgage.” See the full list of ‘101 Ways to Save Money’ here.

Irrespective of the organizational and financial state of the company, including tips such as the above in employee communication is careless, insensitive and insulting to the dignity of the workers, especially when they are candidates for potential layoffs. An appropriate supervisory review of this publication prior to release could have easily avoided the bad publicity and ill will that this incident generated.

As alluded to every year in Fortune magazine’s ranking of the ‘best companies to work for’ in America, employees’ attitudes towards their organizations have a profound effect on the performance of companies. Further, better performance leads to higher morale among the employees; this results in a virtuous cycle of company performance and employee morale. The primary means of achieving high employee morale is by co-creating a corporate culture that instills a sense of ownership through empowerment, trust and fair treatment, by instilling pride for personal and organizational achievements and by providing adequate opportunities for personal and career growth.

Interviewing Candidates: Stale Questions Get Stale Answers

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One of my former lab mates, who has been interviewing for a job, recently remarked that her interviews are typically boring because interviewers tend to ask identical questions.

The main objective of an interview is to discover more about a candidate’s credentials and objectives to see whether the candidate is a good fit for an available position. An interviewer who asks cliché questions or uses tired language typically leads a dull question-and-answer session. He/she loses the attention of the candidate and fails to acquire comprehensive information about the candidate.

Avoid cliché questions

Job seekers have access to a number of books and websites that describe canned ‘best’ responses to the most popular interview questions. One response to the oft-asked “What are your weaknesses?” question is the predictable “I work too hard and ignore my social life.” Avoid old standby questions and ask incisive questions that make the candidate think.

  • Instead of “Do you like your boss?”, ask “What do you think your boss’s weaknesses are? How do you complement her weaknesses and support her responsibilities?”
  • Instead of “Tell me about yourself?”, ask “What aspects of your upbringing have contributed to your success at your current position as the leader of the risk management group?”
  • Instead of “Why does a career in sales interest you?”, ask “Can you name a few salesmen you admire? Over the years, what aspects of their talents have you incorporated in your sales approach?”

Personalize the questions

To whatever extent possible, review a candidate’s résumé ahead of the interview and customize the discussion. Frame your questions to relate to the candidate’s experiences: “In you résumé, you mention that you led a team of technicians that worked during the weekends to meet an important deadline. Why do you think they cooperated with you and agreed to work during the weekends?”

Relate to the responses

Relate to one or two of the candidate’s responses by mentioning your own experiences: “I once had a customer who …”. Resist the temptation to start a conversation, empathize or add value to the candidate’s response. Be brief. Avoid talking too much about yourself.

Use a fresh tone of voice

On occasion, you may be required to interview several candidates in succession, e.g. while filling multiple positions or in a college recruiting session. After talking to a few candidates, your chosen set of questions may start to sound jaded due to repetition. Watch your tone of voice when asking questions; convey enthusiasm for the candidate’s details and engage in a lively conversation.

Maintain good rapport

Interviewers often over-indulge in note-taking by recording minor details of a candidate’s responses and interpretation of these responses. Although the candidate welcomes the occasional respite from visual attention, too much note-taking can have a distancing effect. Record just an outline or use a graphical note-taking technique, e.g. mind mapping. Review this outline immediately after the interview and add details you want to capture for later review or a consensus meeting.

Pair up with a colleague

Conduct a tandem interview if possible; alternate asking questions and taking notes with the colleague. While one person takes notes, the other person can ask follow-up questions and maintain a rapport with the candidate.

Conclusion

The primary challenge for an interviewer is to see beyond the veneer of the candidate’s carefully-crafted résumé, on-the-surface details of past responsibilities and often well-rehearsed responses to interview questions. A lively conversation is essential to elicit thoughtful, candid responses and enable the interviewer to make an educated decision on the candidate.

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Performance Management: What is Forced Ranking?

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Reader Sriram from Chennai (India) asks,

A multinational recently acquired our 35-employee software testing company. Our personnel department sent an email on how this purchase affects us. The email mentioned a new forced ranking system for performance evaluation. Can you describe this system?

Every organization needs a formal approach to track individual contributions and performance against organizational goals and to identify individual strengths and opportunities for improvement. Typically, this system involves placing employees along a performance curve or classifying employees into categories of percentiles for performance.

Bell curve for forced ranking / performance management

Jack Welch, General Electric’s former CEO, is often associated with a 20-70-10 distribution: the top 20 percent is rewarded for best performance, the middle 70 percent is rated ‘average’ and the bottom 10 percent is coached for improvement. The ‘rank-and-yank’ system, also associated with Jack Welch, automatically terminates employees in the bottom category, allowing organizations to purge the worst performers.

Although an individual’s supervisor conducts the formal performance review discussion, management higher-ups assign the individual’s ranking following debates on performances of comparable individuals from across the organization. Often, these higher-ups are not knowledgeable enough of an individual’s performance. An individual’s ranking then depends on the supervisor’s willingness to fight on behalf of the individual. The ranking is ‘forced’ because an individual may be ranked in a lower category regardless of whether the direct supervisor (and hence the most knowledgeable reviewer) would have rated the individual that way on his/her own.

In intent, the forced ranking system is an excellent method for rewarding top performers and setting specific deadlines for improvement for poor performers. Despite its appeal, the system has several drawbacks. For instance, the system promotes individual performance over teamwork and often leads to dissatisfaction among ‘average’ and poor performers. In my opinion, most of this dissatisfaction stems from poor administration of the system at the ground level. I will cover this in another blog article.

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Dissatisfied at Work? Are You Really a Square Peg in a Round Hole?

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If you are not happy at work, you may believe that your dissatisfaction is rooted in your position—in the relationships, the workflows and the demands of the role. You may feel that if you were in a different position or were associated with another organization, you would be more content.

However, there is a good chance that the problem is not with your position per se, but with your attitudes toward various elements of work-life: people you interact with, responsibilities, bureaucracy, office politics, etc. You may not have realized and/or capitalized on the various opportunities that the current position presents.

  • If you feel your work is not challenging enough or if you do not sense career progression, you can request additional responsibilities at work. You can analyze colleagues who have succeeded in similar positions and learn from them. If you want to be promoted, you could assume some of the responsibilities of the position you desire.
  • Even if you do not like your boss, colleagues, subordinates or customers, you still need to get along with them by being open-minded or by discovering common ground. In extreme cases, you need to accept that people will not change and just suck up, no matter how frustrating their actions are.
  • If you want to change to another line of work, you need to realize that the grass on the other side of the fence always looks greener until you jump over. There is no guarantee that the new position or the new organization will be any better. There will be a considerable lead-time to reestablish yourself in the new workplace before you can be eligible to move up. Organizations realize that there is a significant penalty to losing an experienced person and are likely to accommodate your needs and aspirations.

Professional success is often not simply a matter of choosing the right career path or the right company, although these are important factors. The attitudes you bring to your work-life define your career development and contentment. Change your attitudes, adjust, discover opportunities available and thrive in the given circumstances.

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Four Keys to an Excellent Relationship with Your Boss

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The relationship with your boss is a critical aspect of a favorable work atmosphere and your job satisfaction. The boss forms a vital link between you and the upper management and thus represents the entire organization to you. Below are four key principles to build and sustain an excellent relationship with your boss.

  1. The relationship between you and your boss is likely a circular relationship: if you like your boss, your boss likes you; if your boss likes you, you like your boss. Overlook actions of your boss that may disappoint you and be conscious of how you react to conflicts.
  2. Suit his/her work style. Understand your boss’s thought processes, preferences and pet-peeves. If your boss is hands-on, favors raw data for making decisions, resists confrontations or avoids risk, you must be sensitive and suit his/her style. You may be able to sell your boss on the merits of changes to his/her style; however, realize that change takes time and is not guaranteed.
  3. When your boss succeeds, you succeed. Understand your boss’s role, his/her strengths, weaknesses and goals. Ask how you can support his/her objectives and the organization’s goals. Do not assume his/her expectations of you. Communicate continually by detailing progress on your assignments and by giving prompt feedback on challenges you face and asking for support.
  4. Realize that one hand cannot clap. Fundamentally, people are different; their perspectives and work-styles are different. You are very lucky if you have a boss who is competent and supportive—somebody who is genuinely interested in your assignments and career advancement. Recognize early if things are not going well; be open and straight-forward in communicating your thoughts and if changes you made have not improved the situation appreciably, be prepared to leave.

Success in building relationships does not come easily. Co-operating with your boss involves being proactive and tolerant, making mistakes and learning from them. The onus is on you to effectively manage this key relationship and achieve the best results for yourself, your boss and the organization.

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The Skills-Attitudes Competence Model

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While poking around the internet, I recently bumped into a few articles that refer to a study by either Harvard or Stanford or both that concluded that 85% of one’s success at work is due to his/her attitudes and just 15% is due to technical skills [1, 2]. While most of us agree with this statement in principle, we could question how a survey could quantify attitudes and technical skills and the contributions of these traits to professional success.

The simple skills-attitudes competence model shown below will help quantify one’s talents and understand the relative contributions of skills and attitudes to professional success. This model is a graphical indication of one’s positioning with respect to technical skills (x-axis) and attitudes and behaviors (y-axis). Every job carries a certain level of expectation for both of these disciplines. A threshold line divides this landscape into the proficient and vulnerable zones. The position of the threshold line vis-à-vis the lines of expectation signifies a lower tolerance for poor attitudes in comparison to insufficient technical skills.

Consider six people, A to F, in the landscape. ‘A’ possesses lower than expected skills, but possesses the right attitudes to learn, grow and get things done. ‘B’ and ‘C’ possess the same level of skills as ‘A’, but possess worse attitudes and risk being labeled incompetent. ‘B’ could move into the secure zone by developing skills (transitioning along the x-axis) or by developing positive attitudes (transitioning along the y-axis) or by developing on both (transitioning along an inclined line). ‘D’ and ‘E’ may be extremely skilled; their skills may be critical to the success of the organization. However, if ‘D’ fails to fails to conform to the core values of the company or exhibits behavior that is difficult to tolerate, the organization may eliminate him from his position. ‘F’ possesses the best attitudes and skills and thrives in the organization. The farther away ‘F’ is from the threshold line, the more secure he or she is.

Use this skills-attitudes competence model to define tangible attributes of skills and attitudes expected of you in the context of your current position or your desired future position. Identify your position on this chart. Under the guidance of your supervisor and mentors, identify what skills and/or attitudes you can develop towards a successful and satisfying career.

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