In my latest Talent Management Blog, I define employee engagement as doing that which needs to be done above and beyond that which is required in the job. Do you know where your employees stand on engagement? Click over to learn how you can determine which of your employees are stepping up to the plate.
Engagement Made Simple: 5 Ways to Test Your Employees’ Level of Engagement
“Listening is teaching and talking is learning.” Think about it. When we actively listen, we are really shaping behavior; in how we respond and react to what is being said and who is saying it. But for those who are talking, all they are doing is behaving.
A new study has been conducted and research findings suggest that bosses are not listening to what their employees are telling them. The study cites perceived power and control as the reasons that they are not heeding advice from those below them. It makes the claim that the more power an individual has; the less likely he or she will be to take advice from others, most notably their employees. The thing that caught my attention though, was a comment stating that employees who worked under decision-makers who did take advice from them, perceived their bosses to be better. Employees need to know that there are ways to turn this around.
Some may find it hard to believe but a lot can be explained by the amount or lack thereof of reinforcement in the workplace. I am convinced that if a boss is reinforced by his or her employees, he or she will be more adept at listening to and acting on advice. I’ve covered this topic before. Praising your boss can work in your favor if done correctly. Now, I don’t mean manipulation. I mean finding ways to let the boss know that his/her decisions, support or other actions have made your job easier or better and made the work environment a better place in which to work.
For tips and ideas of how to effectively reinforce your boss, read Other People’s Habits and check out these two articles:
Well, not exactly but I did have the privilege of writing about the new movie release Moneyball, as a guest blogger for Talent Management Online. Click over to read about what lessons can and should be taken from Moneyball and applied to the workplace.
School bells may be ringing across the country but I am convinced now more than ever that we are not prepared to provide the best education possible for our kids.
I was disheartened to learn of the cheating scandal that is rocking the Atlanta Public Schools. And to further hear of the reoccurring issues with the government’s No Child Left Behind program. More than half the nation’s schools are in jeopardy of failing to meet reading and math adequacy standards. More than half! Monetary implications aside, what are we doing to today’s youth? And to our nation’s future?
It is clear, as was evident in the Atlanta Public Schools fiasco, that what was well-intended when the No Child Left Behind program was initiated has set up a culture of penalty and punishment if targets are not achieved. It can be said based on past history that the federal government spends little time when it designs regulations to consider how to create student success through policy. Little thought of how such a policy, if designed thoughtfully, can shape educational cultures of delight where students learn at high and steady rates. What we see instead are policies that often set a goal—and attach a penalty if the school does not do it.
What No Child has done is create threat and fear, in the administration, with the teachers, and even down to the students themselves. Teachers and administrators who participated in the Atlanta scandal, it’s fair to surmise, were doing what they thought ‘best’ in the name of avoiding the loss of funding they would be awarded by meeting government-set standards.
A major overhaul needs to be undertaken in Atlanta and across the country; and we must look to the context—the requirements that are naïve at best!
Much of what is wrong with these programs can be fixed and the yield will be outstanding and effective teachers and students that reach higher levels of learning. The solution is an understanding of behavior, not from a common sense perspective but a scientific one.
I believe the Atlanta Public School has done the right thing in firing school personnel who have been caught changing test scores. Not that cheaters cannot be changed but in my experience, lying, cheating and stealing have always been firing offenses. The problem in changing such behavior is that it is very difficult to put immediate consequences on the negative behavior (i.e. changing test scores) and therefore it makes the delivery of effective consequences necessary to change the bad habits difficult to manage.
Although I am sure that the problem was produced by ineffective leadership at the highest level that deliberately or accidentally created a system that tempted wrongdoing, it is better to eliminate those who folded under the pressure to produce false results.
The incident reminds me of when I was a lieutenant in the Army. If I heard it one time, I must have heard it one hundred, “I don’t care how you get it, just get it. And by the way I don’t want to know how you get it…” Although I am sure this was never said by school administration, the pervasiveness of the behavior indicates that the pressure was there.
Until there is an administration where leaders understand the direct and indirect impact of their policies, procedures and management and supervisory behaviors on the behavior of teachers, the problem will not go away. When you award a bonus for increasing test scores, you can hardly claim lack of culpability in the scandal as there are people who will lie, cheat and steal to get it. They may think they are working for the greater good—the survival of the school system, the obtaining of needed resources for the children, and of course, their own self-interest—continued employment.
When you only look at results and not behaviors, people often find “more than one way to skin a cat.” Taking the test for the student is one. That slippery slope of how we reach incredibly wrong decisions often starts with subtle or visible threat and fear, not from the ‘bad character’ of a few. In spite of the bonus, I am confident that most people who were caught did not do it for the bonus but because of the negative consequences around failing to produce the required progress.
I submit that all staff in the system is there for one reason – to help children learn. By doing some reverse behavioral engineering (RBE), the criticality of those jobs can be determined fairly quickly. By RBE, I mean start with the student and ask how a job helps the student learn. Of course the main responsibility falls on the teacher. Therefore most staff positions should exist to support the teacher in being effective in the class room. In my experience, most staff positions make it more difficult rather than easier to do the job.
As far as testing goes, the teacher should be evaluated on the number of children who perform to some standard or show significant improvement – not an average for the class but the number who are successful. The teacher’s success metric is ‘number of individual students making progress above their baseline’. Dr. Fred Keller, a pioneer researcher and teacher said, “If the student doesn’t learn, he wasn’t taught.” Local administrators should be measured on the number of successful teachers, and so on up the line. Rewards and punishment should not be delivered on results without factoring in how the results were obtained. This means that teachers should be observed so that inefficient and ineffective practices can be determined and corrected when they happen. The measure of observer (coach) effectiveness is whether teachers ask for the help. Artists want people to see their work; athletes want people watch them play; musicians want people to listen to them play. Why would teachers who are good at what they do not want people to see how they do what they do. They will when they are successful. If coaches (i.e. administration) help teachers teach more effectively, they want people to know and will welcome observers in their classrooms. What this means is that results will never be a surprise as problems will be identified and corrected in real time. Over time most of the observations will be positive as the students will be achieving at high rates.
In 1983, Dr. B.F.Skinner wrote in “The Shame of American Education” that the data showed that the technology of teaching existed to teach twice as much in half the time. That was almost 30 years ago. It has been done in only a very few places. It has been verified and documented in the toughest of schools and with a wide variety of students, some who are labeled as hyperactive, from poor homes, without qualities of persistence, without learning being a value in their home environments, all the things that have been said about why teaching is so hard. These processes have created eager learners, wanting to go to school, teachers who find joy in their impact, parents who are amazed and delighted with new found love of learning in their children and our society that benefits as these students go on to make a difference in our world. What better time than now to do it in the Atlanta City Schools and throughout the country.
While it may seem logical to think that frontline employees are responsible for creating a safe working environment, they are not the ones who have control over budgets or resources. In this latest vblog, Dr. Judy Agnew, co-author of Safe By Accident?, discusses who is in charge of ensuring a safe physical environment and why organizations typically fall short in doing so.
For more on the topic of workplace safety, visit our many safety related articles on www.pmezine.com.
With all of the hype surrounding the new movie release “Horrible Bosses,” it forces those of us that have had a horrible boss in the past to relive our own experiences.
In an article I read this week on the topic, How to handle a bad boss (without killing them), a few anonymous people spoke up about their own dreadful experiences. I was surprised, although knowing what I know about positive reinforcement I’m not sure why, that in each example, they put up with the bad boss behavior rather than do something to combat it. I realize it’s normal to have ‘fantasies’ of bad bosses getting their just desserts but why not do what you can to redirect bad boss behavior?
Unfortunately most executives, looking only at results, don’t see the organizational costs of bad boss behavior. You certainly don’t get discretionary behavior but you almost always get reduced personal output that spreads to other employees not directly affected by the “bad boss”. It is not infrequent that employees resort to some form of sabotage.
Just as your boss changes your behavior (attitude, motivation, etc.) you also change hers. Although most people don’t realize the impact their behavior has on the boss, it can be significant and can turn a bad boss into a good one. The problem is that most employees do not see it as their responsibility to train the boss. However, if your life is made miserable by living with a boss 40 hours a week, it will benefit you to take on the task.
It bears repeating, as I say this quite often, that if you think that you get too little recognition or positive reinforcement for what you do at work; think of your boss because he/she gets less. Before you act (if even just in fantasy) on ousting your boss, try any or all of the following. Knowing what I know about the science of behavior and positive reinforcement, your work environment, and your relationship with your boss, is bound to improve.
A little positive reinforcement goes a long way to improving bad boss behavior. All people need positive reinforcement to do their best – bosses included. You have the ability to strengthen your boss’s good habits and improve other behaviors by how you respond to the boss’s behavior. Positive reinforcement will do the trick. Learn as much about it as you can. Doing it at the wrong time, in the wrong way or the wrong place will make things worse, but if you do it right and do it often, you and your boss will be the better for it.
Guest post by Darnell Lattal, Ph.D.
I came across an article from NPR (Of War and Kisses: How Adversity Shapes Culture) that provides great context for how cultures are shaped and nurtured. Before I go further, I think it’s important to add ADI’s definition of culture as a back drop for what defines a culture: Patterns of behavior (what we say and do), encouraged or discouraged (purposefully or inadvertently) by people or systems over time.
The article suggests that a culture can be shaped by its experience with major events and how the people of that culture come together collectively to address challenges. There is no better example of this than Japan.
Through the years, we have had the good fortune to develop a strong relationship with our Japanese friends and alliance partners at WILL-PM. I co-authored a book (written in Japanese) with Jun Ishida-san, CEO of WILL-PM, on workplace stress in Japan. Through this experience, I know that the cultural implications for behavior in Japan may not always be ideal and many cultural mandates or ‘rules of conduct’ can impede a feeling of wellbeing. But, what we have seen, post-tsunami, from the people of Japan paints a picture of a broad set of rules of culture unlike most.
The 10 items listed below came to me from a friend in Singapore who said she got it from someone in Malaysia, but beyond that, the original author is not known. This list states the value and, importantly, provides behaviorally anchored examples.
HATS OFF TO BRAND JAPAN: 10 things to learn about the Japanese culture.
There is much to admire about Brand Japan, and right now we, in America, are talking about lessons we might take as to how to embed certain culturally predictable values in how our people respond to crisis. It is quite likely you would have seen many of these traits during our own various disasters, but you would also have seen looting and stealing for example and we often highlighted the exceptions. The Japanese stood out because of the consistent response across a great many, with no fanfare or discussion of how noble people were. The newspapers were not seeking out the rare individual who demonstrated amazing grace. That grace was everywhere. Lessons can and should also be taken here about how we are designing our workplaces as cultural incubation centers in America. Actionable Values—mission driven and anchored—to what we say and do is essential to creating that amazing brand we all want in our work life and in our culture.
While reading an article from the Huffington Post by Marcia Reynolds titled, When Women Talk about Themselves, They Earn More, it reminded me of something my actress daughter said jokingly that characterized many people she met in the acting business in Hollywood, “I’ve talked so much about me, why don’t we talk about me?”
I have two reactions to the Reynolds article. First, I don’t believe that women who talk about themselves earn more than those who don’t. She presents no data, only her impressions from interviews. Second, I think it is bad advice for a man or woman.
Although she says that most women don’t like to self-promote and she states flatly that self-promotion is not bragging, I would suggest that there is a very fine line between self-promotion and bragging and that it is difficult for most people to differentiate between the two. I don’t like people who brag and don’t think others do either.
To make my point the author says, “In my own career, I survived many layoffs and zigzagged up the corporate ladder through a number of high-tech companies, taking on greater and more interesting challenges each time I moved. I learned early on that self-promotion is not bragging (the author’s opinion). Flaunting (emphasis is mine) my unique core talents helped management determine how best to use me.” I don’t like her already! Do you?
Wouldn’t you hate to be stuck talking to this woman at a cocktail party or even during a break at a management meeting? Listening to fingernails scrape a blackboard would be more tolerable.
Reynolds states that, “They (female executives) possess special and critical traits that qualified them for their roles. Yet they become totally helpless when I ask them to tell me what makes them special.” I would not know what to say if someone asked me what made me special because I don’t think of myself that way. I don’t think many others do either. I would think that anyone who would have a ready answer to the “special question” would not be as special as she thought she was.
The best advice I can give to women, or men, who want to advance and enjoy doing it is to focus on making other employees successful. As Lao-tse wisely said many years ago, “When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’” By focusing on contributing to the success of others, you will gain their trust, respect and support all the way to the top.
Save talking about yourself to someone who cares. Maybe the person staring back at you in the mirror?
This is not the first blog I have written about mistakes I think Google is making in how they are managing the company. It will probably not be the last. This blog was prompted by an article a friend sent me from the New York Times by Adam Bryant, Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss.
It appears that Google has invested quite a sum to determine what kind of boss they need to manage their company in the future. As Bryant says, “So as only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards, they correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.” He also reported, “Once they had some working theories, they figured out a system for interviewing managers to gather more data, and to look for evidence that supported their notions (bold italics are mine). This activity involved more than 10,000 interviews and over 100 variables.
With this kind of “research” it is no wonder that the results were “so forehead-slappingly obvious.” They found—get this—that managers had a greater impact on employees’ performance and how they felt about their job than any other factor. How many thousands of employee hours and company resources did it consume to come to this conclusion?
Google now trains managers based on the results of this study. Quotes from a couple of managers who had been through the training speak to what they learned. One said, “…two of the most important things I can do is just make sure I have some time for them and to be consistent. And that’s more important than doing the rest of the stuff.” Another said the training helped him understand the importance of giving clear and direct feedback.
While I understand that someone who is inconsistent and does not give clear and direct feedback will be less effective than those who do, those things will not create a company that brings out the best in its employees. Even spending time with employees does not guarantee an improvement in morale or performance. It is possible that spending time with the boss can be a punishing experience. Many managers who give clear and consistent feedback are also very punishing, and can therefore create employees who are only willing to give just enough do get by.
The most important thing Google can teach its managers is how to deliver contingent positive reinforcement. They are not likely to do that since their culture is built on non-contingent reinforcement. Indeed one of their 10 Golden Rules for managing knowledge workers is to cater to their every need. I think they have misinterpreted Peter Drucker who said to strip away everything that gets in their way. I think Drucker meant that a company should eliminate all the unnecessary administrative goobledegoop. What Google has interpreted it to mean is to provide things like first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses—just about anything a hardworking engineer might want. The problem is that they are also all the things a non-hardworking engineer might want. The assumption is that having these things available for employees will cause them to spend more time in productive work. I know of no research to support this notion.
It seems to me that Google has spent a lot of time and money to learn that employees at Google are just like employees everywhere else. They all respond to the laws of human behavior. Googlers are not so special that they follow their own set of behavioral laws. By learning those laws, executives and other managers at Google can save a lot of time and money and develop truly effective managers who bring out the best in all employees.
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Sure the Apple community was thrilled yesterday when the man who runs what is arguably the most highly valued tech company in the world, took to the stage to launch its latest product amidst stepping down just a little over a month ago due to health problems.
Was Steve Jobs presence out of pure passion for what he started or to alleviate investor concerns that Apple can survive and thrive in his absence? How does a company stay on course when such iconic leaders step down?
Legacy planning has become a timely topic. With high-profile CEOs, we often think of them as icons and lose sight of them as human beings with identifiable qualities and a tangible vision that can be nurtured and sustained throughout the rest of the company. The best legacy plan is one that understands a leader’s greatness in terms of very specific attributes and behaviors and can promote them in others.
Consider this as you look at whether or not your organization has a legacy plan in place:
Legacy planning can be one of the most important plans an organization has in place. Whether you are at the top of the organization or not, there are ways to contribute to building your company’s legacy. It starts and ends with how we manage behavior.
