Vicki Anderson

“One thing about trains—it doesn’t matter where you are going. What matters is deciding to get on.” From The Polar Express

When I heard this quote recently while watching the movie, The Polar Express, it hit me how often we fail to get on board in life, in leadership, in commitment to being the best we can be. We often run alongside the train or watch from a far hill, but don’t step up to get on.

What’s keeping you from being the best leader you can be? Is it time? Is it knowledge? Or, is it just old habits that are hard to change?

Frankly, I have found as a manager that it takes less time to lead people to do the right things than to have to correct and push them constantly to do it. Once my staff knew the standards I expected them to achieve, they went after them because they knew I would be watching for them and reward them when they did. People are constantly looking for that ray of sunshine from their bosses but they rarely get it. They usually only get the pushing and shoving when they do something wrong. And, you know, it’s a lot more fun to work in a positive atmosphere than one where the only communication is punishment.

If you don’t think you have the knowledge to be the best leader you can be, that’s easy to fix. There are tons of books on leadership or seminars to attend. And if you don’t have time for that, get books on audiotape or CD. Listen to them on your way to work in your car. It is amazing how much you can absorb just while driving around town. I have had subscriptions to book summaries on tape, which are a pretty good idea to get the basic ideas from the latest books. Then if you want the whole book, you can go buy it or get it from the library.

If you are finding it hard to change old habits, you are in good company. I have found that this is the biggest stumbling block for most people. You manage in ways that you have learned from watching others and what you think works in your workplace. You do it automatically without thinking. To do something different would require you to stop and analyze the situation and then decide how to approach it in the most effective way. You might say things differently or react differently. Often these behaviors seem strange when you first do them and you are afraid that you might look silly or less than competent. Since as leaders we want to look competent, we avoid doing things that make us look incompetent. So, even when you learn a new technique, if it doesn’t work right the first time, you go back to the old way—even though that doesn’t work either. It’s just more comfortable.

However, if you will make the commitment to take the time to learn some new techniques and practice them daily, you will soon discover the real payoff to leadership vs. management. You will build a greater rapport and trust with your employees and more job satisfaction. The measure of your employees’ work is in the results they achieve. The measure of your work as a leader is in helping them achieve it consistently and flawlessly.

“Sometimes the things in this world that are the most real are the things you can’t see.” This quote from The Polar Express summarizes the effort it takes to make the commitment to leadership. You may not notice the subtle changes in your leadership effectiveness from your commitment, but they become more real the longer you do them. And one day, you will look back and say you are thankful you decided to get onboard.

The holidays are a great time to role model what you say you believe. If your organization says it is about serving others or valuing people, take a look at what you are doing to actually live those principles. What are you doing to serve your employees, your customers, and your community? If you say you value people, how are you treating them this holiday? Are you being Mr. Scrooge or Bob Cratchett?

Being a leader who believes in the power and value of people doesn’t get measured in the size of the bonus you give at Christmas. It is measured in the way people are treated every day, but at this time of year people tend to take stock in how you behave. Hopefully you have been living most every day of this year in a way that it is unnecessary for the three ghosts to visit you on Christmas Eve. Here are a few tips for being a generous leader:

1. Share power where it is needed. If you give someone a task to do, make sure they have the authority to get it done.
2. Give credit where credit is due. Encourage people to contribrute ideas by giving them credit when they do. You will ultimately look good for having such bright employees.
3. Empower people to put ideas to work. When people see what needs to be done and you give them permission to do it, they tend to look for more.
4. Build self-esteem of others by identifying what they do right so they can do more of it. Put them in positions where they can succeed. You will be rewarded many times over with employees who are motivated to do more.

Be generous with praise and a miser with criticism, but make sure both are specific and timely about what the person is doing right or wrong. Be generous in management by walking around. Your biggest job is helping people be successful. If they are successful, you will be successful. Here’s hoping your new year will bring you success as a leader.

How do I get people to do what I want? This is a universal question from supervisors. My answer is simple:

1) Ask for the outcomes you want.
2) Define clearly what the outcome looks like and why it is important
3) When you see people doing what you want, reinforce it. If they are not doing what you want, correct it immediately.

While this sounds so common sense, it is amazing how many people work with very general instructions from their supervisors. Most people know how to do a job if they have been trained properly, but they rarely know why they do it or what the expected outcome is. Alternatively, many people are told the outcome, but not the process of how to get there.

Being a supervisor today means responsibility for more people than you can truly take care of. I find it typical for people to supervise 30+ people. Under these circumstances, it is even more important that each communication be useful to both parties. That means knowing which information the person needs—process or outcome, or both.

Communicating your expectations clearly takes more time at the beginning, but it saves more time along the way and achieves more positive results. When assigning a job to an employee, use your time efficiently by clearly stating the outcome you desire. The more complex the task, the more important this becomes. However, even simple tasks are often assigned with vague instructions such as, “Get me a copy of the XYZ report when you have time.” The employee doesn’t know whether that means drop everything and do it now, do it by the end of the day, or do it in the next couple days. People generally want to please their supervisors. Give them information to do that.

If you want to achieve consistent results from employees, you must be consistent in your reinforcement. This is the element that takes more time, but has such a big payoff.

When you see people taking actions you want, tell them so. This doesn’t have to be a flowery speech. It can be a simple, “You’re on the right track,” or “Thanks for getting on that project so quickly,” or “Looks like you’ve made that correction we talked about yesterday.” You can also leave a post-it note or send an email.

When people go off-track, get them back on the right path quickly by clarifying your instructions and the outcomes you stated earlier. Make sure they have the resources to get the job done—that means people, knowledge, and tools. Let them know the impact their error has on the product or process so they know why you are correcting them. Give them useful information that will help them succeed, such as “When you don’t get that part sanded smooth enough the first time, it means the next person has to stop and fix it before they can do their part of the process. This causes delays and extra work for others. Please make sure you sand the parts smoothly enough that the next person can fit their part on easily.”

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz who had the power all along to go home if she chose, supervisors do not realize the power they hold in achieving the results they want. The majority of employees want to succeed, but they don’t know what the supervisor is looking for, so they try different things to get attention—sometimes the wrong things. You get consistently right behavior when you ask for what you want, define the details as necessary, and reinforce it when you see it.

During my working years I have had the good fortune (or misfortune) to work for some very demanding and difficult bosses. I have had people ask me how I could stand to work for them. However, I had a pretty good relationship with all of them.  As I consult with leaders and their staffs, I have often heard people frustrated with their bosses but they don’t think they can do anything about it.

I think a key ingredient in your career success is managing the boss’s expectations of you. If you think you are working hard, but are not doing what the boss thinks is important, you are wasting your time. Your boss may be wrong but she/he is the boss. It is very important that you are clear about what your boss wants from you and when. Make sure you know outcomes desired and their priorities. Also, make sure you know what types of things they need to know and what types of things they want to approve.

As a leader, it would be good for us to give these things to our staffs automatically, but the truth is that in the fast pace of every business today, we don’t always take time to give as much direction as we should. Therefore, it becomes incumbent upon the employee to ask questions for clarification and communicate status on projects before the boss has to ask.

I think the reason I got along well with my difficult and demanding bosses was because I figured out what was important to them and made sure they got it when they wanted it. If I disagreed, I had an alternative solution. If I made a decision without them that might have been controversial, I alerted them as soon as possible so they didn’t hear it from someone else, and I owned up to my mistakes and their remedy quickly. I think it is not only possible to manage the boss, but imperative if you want to move ahead in your career.

I had a conversation with a colleague today about the future impact of the rising cost of gas on employment. We wondered whether there might be some shifts in employment as people are not able to afford the price of gas to get to work. The long commute may become a thing of the past as people seek work closer to home or move closer to their work. There may be turnover that will in essence be a shuffling of employees from one location to another. It is a given that there will probably be more telecommuting, as that is already happening. However, we wondered how long it will take for workers on the lower end of pay scales whose work is physically at the workplace to decide to look for work closer to home or not work at all. This may be a big struggle for employers who could lose valuable knowledge and skills from these employees. What accommodations might employers need to do to keep these valuable assets?