Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Great Manager

Why Hiring Self-Leaders is the Best Strategy

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The best leaders understand the power of self-leadership. When you have a team of self-leaders, you can step back and let them do what they do best—lead themselves.

To build a team of self-leaders, look for naturally curious, driven, and goal-oriented individuals. Seek out people who can work independently and collaborate with others when needed. These folks only need a little hand-holding, are self-motivated, and take the initiative without being told what to do.

Idea for Impact: With a team of self-leaders, you can focus on the bigger picture and trust that the day-to-day tasks are handled with care. So, consider hiring a team of self-leaders to take your organization to new heights. They’ll get things done efficiently and effectively while freeing you up to focus on what matters most.

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

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At a time when apathy and distrust are so endemic in many organizations, some companies have nurtured employee loyalty to create customer loyalty flourish. The following case studies will substantiate the cultivation of a positive work environment that prioritizes employee recognition and support invariably results in exceptional customer service.

The Nordstrom Way: Enabling Employees to Have the Freedom and Vision to Become Self-Directing

Nordstrom’s founders created a culture that prioritized a “worshipful relationship” with its luxury department store customers and empowered employees to do everything they could to please them. The Nordstrom Handbook emphasizes outstanding customer service and encourages employees to set high personal and professional goals, expressing confidence in their abilities. The company’s Rule 1 reads: “Use good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division manager any question at any time.” Nordstrom’s success is a testament to empowering employees and supporting policies prioritizing exceptional customer service.

Flying the Fun Skies at Southwest Airlines: Giving Employees the Freedom to Deliver a Great Brand Experience

Southwest Airlines achieved great success early on due to its committed and motivated workforce. Founder Herb Kelleher recognized the importance of prioritizing employee satisfaction to create a culture of caring for one another and providing excellent customer service. Kelleher famously said, “The business of business is people—yesterday, today, and forever. If the employees aren’t satisfied, they won’t provide the product we need.”

To create a positive work environment, Southwest Airlines encouraged fun among its employees, setting it apart from other airlines that were considered dull and unappealing. Celebrating employees and their families is deeply ingrained in Southwest Airlines’ culture, and it is evident in the prominent display of pictures capturing these special moments throughout their office spaces. This people-centric culture helped the company attract and retain talented workers passionate about their jobs and provide top-notch customer service, which made flying with the airline a fun experience. Despite the potential cost savings, Kelleher remained committed to celebrating employees with parties, banquets, gifts, birthday cards, and outings, citing the value of having the fewest customer complaints in the industry.

Beyond the Call of Duty: Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen at Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz Carlton is renowned for its exceptional customer service, with the empowerment of employees being a critical factor in their approach. The company’s philosophy of “Ladies and Gentlemen Taking Care of Ladies and Gentlemen” highlights the importance of treating customers and employees with respect and dignity. Regardless of their rank and title, employees can spend up to $2,000 per day per guest without seeking supervisor approval to solve problems and deliver personalized and unforgettable guest experiences. This approach may seem costly, but it empowers employees to use their judgment to create memorable and personal experiences for guests. One of my friends enjoyed staying at a Ritz-Carlton hotel a few months ago, where he ordered a burger and a milkshake. Unfortunately, the hotel did not offer milkshakes, so he settled for a glass of water. However, to his amazement, the waitress surprised him with a milkshake to accompany his burger. She went the extra mile without being prompted by scouring the kitchen for milk, ice cream, and cold milk to create the shake.

Idea for Impact: Empowering Employees is a Strategic Approach That Yields Significant Benefits

Empowering employees goes beyond providing the necessary tools and training; it fosters a culture of trust, autonomy, and ownership.

How you treat your employees directly impacts how they treat your customers. When you prioritize making your staff feel appreciated and supported, they are more likely to provide exceptional customer service. A positive work environment can foster innovation and creativity within your organization while attracting and retaining top talent.

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The #1 Tip for New Managers to Succeed

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New managers are under pressure. Most managers are underprepared for the transition into new roles—and undersupported during them. In fact, the revolving door is turning more swiftly as companies are seeking quick results. New managers must immediately tackle challenges and demonstrate their competencies instead of having a grace period to find their footing and mull changes.

When taking on a new management position, adaptability to the unique culture and ways of doing things is the key to success. You must quickly throw yourself into the work and learn who’s who, who does what, and how your company operates.

Idea for Impact: Balance the pressure to show results quickly, understanding what significant changes are needed. First, talk to your constituencies (internal and external customers, competitors, leaders, employees) and lay out a road plan for the next three months, one year, and three years. Manage expectations and don’t overcommit.

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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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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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You Can’t Serve Two Masters

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Learning to “serve two masters” and managing multiple supervisors is a vital skill in today’s work world. Organizations have increasingly embraced matrix structures, with “dashed line” reporting (you work under a supervisor who doesn’t do your performance reviews) and “solid line” reporting (the true boss who evaluates your performance.) Do your best to accommodate the latter, but don’t overlook the other(s.)

Further, with cross-functional teams, it’s common these days to have multiple team-based supervisors, each overseeing your work on different projects. If you’re not cautious, it’ll become all too easy for each supervisor to regard you as if you have no other commitments, and you can end up letting them both down.

The key to managing expectations at odds is insisting on boundaries. If you aren’t too careful, you could become totally overwhelmed—each boss isn’t mindful of what the other’s sending you. Each ends up pushing their own agendas regardless of what you already bear on your plate.

To resolve the two-boss dilemma and try to please everybody, take the initiative and get your bosses to cooperate and liaise regularly:

  • Create and maintain one master priority list of everything on your plate. Update it at the beginning of every week, and make sure both bosses have a copy. This should help each understand how any emergent task would jibe with the other items on your list.
  • When one boss drops an urgent task on your lap, refer to the master priority list and ask, “If you want me to do this, what is it you want me to take off the list because I also have three other deliverables due in the next few days.”
  • Establish a daily 5- or 10-minute standing coordination meeting (“scrum”) with all the bosses. In the meeting, point out your current and impending priorities. They can adjust their relative preferences for you.
  • Don’t be the “go-between” and agree to speak on behalf of one boss to the other—especially if they aren’t speaking to each other. There’s much ambiguity, and managing conflict can become a significant challenge for you.

Even if you have multiple supervisors whom you take direction from, you’re likely to have one boss who’s ultimately responsible for their career. This boss will judge your performance and decide about your compensation and promotions. Tell her about your double bind and see if she can work out an acceptable arrangement with her colleague.

Idea for Impact: Remember to maintain good relations with everybody you work with. Personnel changes are widespread and frequent in most companies, and you never know who’ll be your next boss. Don’t strain your relationships with the other.

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Never Skip Those 1-1 Meetings

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The weekly 1-1 meeting with direct reports is usually the first casualty of managerial overload. A few email exchanges or ad hoc encounters aren’t a reliable alternative for the open line of communication set forth by a regular 1-1 meeting, especially if an employee needs a problem addressed or priorities adjusted in changing situations.

Idea for Impact: Keep your commitment to do whatever is feasible to preserve your 1-1s with direct reports—in both schedule and content—even if it means having an abbreviated meeting or adjourning to later in the week.

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Do Your Employees Feel Safe Enough to Tell You the Truth?

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Take any corporate scandal or the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and you’ll find lower-ranking voices that tried to be heard within these organizations to prevent or minimize the consequences of the excesses or the accidents.

Some leaders are too isolated from reality and establish an “all’s-good” guise whereby anything other than affirmative becomes an undesirable—unwelcome even—answer to a performance-related question. Such leaders foster a “good-news culture,” where any truth-teller or devil’s advocate is quickly dismissed. Queries such as the cursory “Is everything okay?” elicit information-free, non-answers like “yes” and “great!”

When leaders are disconnected from reality, they become incontestably right. Employees know the rule of the game is to say what’s safe to say. To not tell the truth. To tell the leader just what she wants to hear. Employees would instead go with the flow rather than speak truth to power.

Consequently, business pressures often lead to shortcuts that go overlooked. Risk is normalized. Leaders who cannot tap into the truth get blindsided when the problems blow up because they didn’t nip the problems in the bud. Leaders have only themselves to blame when things go wrong.

Idea for Impact: Insightful leadership isn’t about the privilege of position but the privilege of information flowing upwards. Wise leaders dare to seek information they don’t want to hear. They know how to ask the right questions, look for revealing details, and set up a culture of openness that makes it easy for employees to tell the truth.

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Giving Feedback and Depersonalizing It: Summary of Kim Scott’s ‘Radical Candor’

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It takes finesse to tell your boss and colleagues what you really think and address conflicts with urgency. When individuals are hesitant to talk frankly to each other, unresolved conflict can wreak havoc on productivity and culture.

'Radical Candor' by Kim Scott (ISBN 1529038340) Former Google and Apple executive Kim Scott’s bestselling Radical Candor (2017) can help if you struggle with delivering honest feedback with the subtlety that suits the relationship. To avoid turning criticism into a personal attack, Scott suggests phrasing feedback using a “situation-behavior-impact” recipe (identical to the Manager Tools’ Feedback Model I’ve recommended for years): describe the situation where the problem behavior appeared, the other’s specific actions, and their impact. Instead of “You’re sloppy,” tell, “You’ve been working nights and weekends, and it’s taken a toll on your accuracy.” Scott also extends directions on how to educate to deal with conflict, strike positive solutions, and foster a fertile conflict mindset that everybody embraces.

Recommendation: Speedread Radical Candor. If you condone the narrative inconsistencies, excessive name-dropping, and banal Silicon Valley tenor, this text will teach you how tactful conflict and giving honest feedback can be an impetus for positive change. Bruised egos and problems nipped in the bud are better than the alternative—stalled projects, mediocre work, and resentment that festers on.

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