Change we can believe in

I thought I’d get your attention by using President Obama’s famous campaign slogan that indeed helped him get elected. My blog is not about him though, but about change and beliefs. When leaders want to drive change, they need to mobilize people. If people don’t get excited about the change vision, it will be an uphill battle. In fact, 70% of organizational change initiatives fail because people didn’t get convinced.

There are two kinds of organizational changes: 1) Those where change happens no matter what, and all there is to do is to manage the reaction of the employees. 2) Those where change depends on employees changing their behaviors. Without the employees’ cooperation, there will be no change. In the second kind of change, something fundamental is needed; the employees must truly believe in the change vision. And even though this sounds too basic to even say, to achieve this, the leaders must first believe in the change vision. I have seen important initiatives where the top leaders were ‘supporting’ the change, or thought ‘it was a good idea’. Not good enough.

Usually beliefs are formed by our experiences and observations. For example, the company has a suggestion box for employees to submit ideas. If the company acts on some of the ideas, the employees soon form a belief that their ideas are valued, so they continue submitting more ideas. On the other hand, if the company doesn’t do anything with the employee suggestions, a different belief is formed: employee ideas are not valued. The company should not be surprised when the box soon stands empty. Beliefs guide actions and non-actions.

Visionary leaders can form a belief without a former experience. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King is a good example. His vision mobilized a whole nation to change its fundamental values. His “I have a dream” speech articulated how a future could look like. He didn’t doubt. All his actions were driven towards his vision.

When a leader wants the change, there has to be belief. Whether it is a revolutionary change in the business model, or a new computer system, there is no space for doubt. The leadership team must feel and taste how success will be. Hope is not enough. Hope translates into “Let’s try this and maybe it will work”. Belief means “We will do whatever it takes to get to our vision.” Then, one by one, turn your employees from doubt to hope to believers.

Have you ever been part of a change that was absolutely awesome?

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How to heal a toxic culture?

We hear stories of workplaces with backstabbing, blame games, taking the credit from others, kiss up -kick down antics and worse. Unfortunately, some of you spend your work days in this kind of environment. In some cases, there are pockets of suffering teams caused by individual bad managers that are allowed to continue their pillaging. In other cases, the poison has permeated the whole company culture. Is there anything to be done when the problem has reached this level of severity? A culture can be healed; it takes time and intentional steps.

Start from the top

One could argue that the most important task of the leadership team is to manage the company culture. Everything else follows. As the top team has such an influence on the culture, you are often part of the problem as well. Do you have the guts and self awareness to put the stake in the ground and turn the company around, even if it requires some significant soul searching and behavior change on your own part? If you can’t resolve your simmering conflicts and passive aggressive positioning, there is not much hope for the rest of the organization.

Trash to treasure

Assess your existing culture. There is no culture that is totally rotten. Identify the legacy you can build on and be proud of. Perhaps among all the stings and arrows flying everyone ended up being very punctual and concise in communications. Or, even though it is totally overboard, everyone says what they mean. Once you are able to articulate what you are dealing with, define what you aspire for. Create a vision for your new culture and share with your employees.

Open feedback

Although easier said than done, the only way to build a new culture is through open feedback. Leaders, managers and employees must learn to express to each other how they perceive each others’ behaviors and how they would like to shape them towards the new culture. The goal is to make it a safe experience, thus it is a delicate, arduous and exciting journey. As many mistakes will be made, the company must also develop a learning focus where learning from mistakes will be celebrated. This concept itself will be hard to grasp for employees who have lived in a company where coworkers were looking for opportunities to pull the rug from beneath their feet at the first opportunity.

Manage out the toxic behaviors

Managers’ role will be to slowly guide the teams to the new behaviors using informal feedback and coaching. Those who are too entrenched in their old toxic behaviors need to be managed out to show to the workforce that the new culture is for real.

Long term maintenance

As the culture gets traction, it is important that the new blood in the company reinforces the new culture. The selection process must be aligned with the new cultural values. The stricter the selection, promotion and reward decisions are made based on the cultural values, the stronger they are adopted by the rest of the population. Track the progress by using cultural surveys and focus groups. The metrics and stories will both tell you when the toxin levels will start decreasing. The business results will show it too.

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Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Taken: 5 steps to begin the journey of authentic leadership

This week I have a guest blogger: Michelle Braden is the founder of MSBCoach in Virginia and is a remarkable leader and an inspiring business coach.

Written by Michelle Braden:

Something that I have often found amusing regarding human behavior is our tendency to find something we like and then overuse it.   A good example of how this happens is with music.  There is a great song, the radio station picks it up and proceeds to play it about a million times a day. Before you know it, you do not like the song anymore or it loses its appeal.  Unfortunately, we see this happen in business trends as well.  A word that has become very popular and almost overused in the business and leadership realm is “authentic”.

In the last year authentic has become a “posh” word used in connection with leadership.  I must admit, I use it a lot.  I love the word “authentic”.   It is all over our website, in fact, our annual conference is the “Authentic Leadership Summit“.

When you look up the word authentic, you see words like:

• bona fide
• reliable
• unquestionable
• worthy of belief
• genuine
• and the list goes on…

These are traits that I want to emulate as a leader.  My guess is you do too; otherwise, I doubt you would be reading this blog.  I am convicted every time I use the word “authentic”.  I want to ensure it carries the “sacred” meaning that should be attributed to it. I do not want to throw it around as a careless, popular adjective next to the word leader.

The challenge is not whether or not we want to be “authentic”.  I believe the challenge is in how we apply being authentic and living it every day in all aspects of our lives.  If you are asking, “what do you mean” then I suspect you do not have children.  I am kidding of course; however, going through challenging situations, such as raising children or leading an organization through a merger will squeeze you to discover what you are really made of.

There is so much good Information out on authentic leadership that I will not dare to compete with it; however, I have found a few things that have helped me and maybe they will help you as well – I feel confident #1 will:

1.       Read, ask and learn all you can from books, coaches, mentors and friends and then sift through all the information to figure out what works for you.  It is important that you learn from others, but in the end, you figure out if it applies to you or not.

2.       Identify your personal five values.  You can do this by:

• reflecting on what is important to you
• asking how you want to be remembered as a leader
• asking what would you like for your children or significant other to say about you when talking to their friends
• knowing and understanding  your hot buttons
• When you identify these areas, you will begin to unfold your own values.

3.       Keep it real – what I mean by this is, work on yourself as a person and a leader but do not try to make yourself someone else.  There have been many great leaders in the world that you can learn from, but you will never be them.  I read a book titled, “The Enemy Called Average” several years ago.  The author made a statement I will never forget, “We are all born originals, but most of us die carbon copies”.  Be the best original you were created to be.

4.       To improve your authenticity in leadership, pick one thing to develop at a time.  Often leaders are over-achievers, I know, I am one myself.  As an over-achiever, you will probably want to pick several things to work on; however, I encourage you to pick only one.  Choosing one thing will help you have focus.  A Hebrew proverb says, “finishing is better than starting”.

5.       Practice self-observation activities.  Once you pick the one item you are going to work on you can begin to observe yourself.  For example, let’s say you chose to develop better listening skills.  You begin observing yourself, watching for situations where you are not practicing good listening.  Do not do anything just begin to take notes.  After a few weeks, review your notes.  You will see patterns emerge.  Your goal is to become self-aware.  When your “normal” pattern of poor listening arises, your self-awareness will kick in and you will practice to create a “new normal”.  In this case, it is full, undivided listening.  As with anything new, it will take practice.  Nevertheless, if you continue to practice it will become a part of who you are.
There are other things I could add to this list; however, I would like to hear from you.  What have you done or what are you doing to develop yourself as an authentic leader?  I look forward to learning from all of you.

As the founder and CEO of MSBCoach and the Emerging Executive Leader’s Program, Michelle has coached and trained business owners, executives, non-profit leaders, teams, managers and individuals in transition for over 17 years. She is an advanced certified human behavior consultant, certified business coach and facilitator of GET CLIENTS NOW!  As adjunct faculty at Piedmont Community College, she teaches leadership development and high performance team building.  She is a freelance writer for The Business Networker and has a column in Forward VA Magazine titled “Ask Coach Michelle”.

Have you captured the hearts and minds of your new employees?

According to an Aberdeen report, the best-in-class companies that have a formal onboarding process improve their new employee engagement by an average of 31% and reduce their time-to-productivity by 24%. Engaged employees in turn are more likely to be top performers, and companies with an engaged workforce have higher profits. Onboarding is much more than a 2-hour session where the new hires fill out the mandatory HR forms.

With new technology, the best companies allow access to a new employee portal and important company and career information even before the start day.  If your company has not caught the tech wave yet, you can still think of ways to share information to affirm their decision to join your company. What can you tell about your culture, your history and your business that can get them excited about being part of your organization? Give details about your benefits upfront, so they can discuss them with their family before they make their final decisions.

Orientation should be a reflection of your company culture. Find a way to reflect your core values through stories, discussion and activities. Orientation doesn’t have to take place in one session either. Bazaarvoice, on the list of Austin’s Best Places to Work For, gives out a list of 55 items to explore during the first week of employment. The new hires are asked to find out from Finance how much cash Bazaarvoice has in the bank. They get to sit in meetings with Sales or executives. They may get to expense a tray of cookies to share with coworkers, or a dinner at a restaurant where Bazaarvoice has celebrated its history. As Bazaarvoice is obsessed with the culture fit, they offer $2000 for any new hire who realizes that they don’t belong and want to leave.

How many new employees have started their first week excited and found themselves rolling their thumbs because the computer hadn’t arrived, the password is not working, or the manager was traveling. This is the first impression you are creating. The logistics process must be rehearsed, until it is flawless. There must be a work plan for the new hire to get started, otherwise, delay the start date.

Engagement is formed in hearts and minds. You capture hearts when your employees feel pride in being part of your organization and create meaningful connections with their coworkers. You capture their minds when they understand the vision and purpose of your organization and how it ties to their role. Onboarding is a great place to start making headway into the hearts and minds of your new champions.

Share your experiences in onboarding: the good, the bad and the ugly!

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