Boxing champion Daniel Mendoza could really throw a punch. Despite his relatively small size for a heavyweight -- barely five feet seven and 160 pounds -- he dominated the British prize-fighting scene in the late 1700s. But it wasn't simply the power behind Mendoza's slugging that allowed him to dispatch his larger opponents. In fact, the timing of his punches gave him a unique advantage.

As a pioneer of the scientific approach to boxing, Mendoza figured out a seemingly obvious way to defeat his challengers: throwing the first punch. While his bigger and stronger competitors expected the diminutive fighter to play defense, Mendoza caught them off guard with his audacity to land the first blow. Mendoza's hit-first technique is credited as the inspiration for the idiom, beating them to the punch.

As it turns out, Mendoza's boxing strategy can help you win the verbal skirmishes waged against your creativity on a daily basis.

Perhaps you've noticed when offering a suggestion that someone is always eager to shoot down your idea. A well-meaning boss, for example, might dismiss your recommendation with the helpful recollection, "We tried that once, and it didn't work." Or a coworker might admonish, "Management will never go along with that idea." If you're like most people, you get weary of the constant jabs at your innovation and stop making suggestions.

Why not employ Mendoza"s fighting style when selling your ideas? The champ knew his opponents were going to punch him, so he punched them first. No, I'm not saying you should physically hit people who assail your ideas. But if you expect their arguments, you can beat them to the persuasive punch.

Here's an example: In his speech to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Hubert Humphrey called for civil rights reform. The way it would normally work is that Humphrey would make his remarks and, the following day, the opposing opinions of his political rivals would appear in the media. Humphrey would have to answer his opponents the next day, but by then his argument would have lost steam.

But rather than waiting for the other side to voice its contrary view, Humphrey stated it for them, and in the same sentence he provided his follow-up response. "To those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late." In other words, Humphrey anticipated his opponents' attack, and he beat them to the punch.

Know that there will always be people with good reasons why your ideas are bad ones. When preparing your case, stop and consider their most likely arguments. Then, like Humphrey, build your counterattack into your sales pitch. "To those who say we've tried this before without success, I say our previous experience has shown us the obstacles we can overcome."

When demonstrating your creativity, never go down without a fight.

Labels: communication, leadership, management, vision

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For many leaders, empowering employees can be a personal challenge. For one thing, the thought of sharing our power might mean confronting some of our personal insecurities. What's more, empowerment requires that we trust workers to fulfill their commitments -- and that can seem risky. We must work hard at being empowering, lest we become micromanagers.

Not surprisingly, our bosses face this same challenge. And that increases the odds that you work for a micromanager.

If you work for a micromanager, you know the drawbacks. Micromanagers continually interrupt you, rearrange your priorities and deadlines, hand off their crises to you, and take credit for your good ideas? If that's not enough, they consume your time with countless, endless meetings and overburden you by commissioning a stream of pointless reports.

Some leaders micromanage because they can -- their positions give them the authority to boss people around and they intend to use it. Other micromanagers fear falling short in terms of their own performances. She won’t get this done, we’ll miss the deadline, and that will make me look bad. That fear prevents micromanagers from trusting their employees; consequently, they attempt to establish complete control.

As long as you work for a micromanaging boss, you will struggle in your leadership role. Through their actions, micromanagers broadcast their lack of trust. Your employees will sense your micromanaging boss's doubts and wonder whether you are worthy of their trust. Therefore, if you work for a micromanager, you need to confront the problem directly.

I suggest that you start by asking your boss the following:

"Am I fulfilling your expectations as a leader? If not, please tell me how to improve. Otherwise, when you meddle in my actions, countermand my decisions, or outright do my job for me, I have to conclude that you distrust my judgment."

If your performance does need improving, this kind of candid conversation with your supervisor can help you grow as a leader. On the other hand, drawing attention to micromanagement behavior could actually help your boss recognize a personal leadership weakness. You might point out the obvious:

"You're probably unaware of how your behavior causes my employees to wonder if I have any real authority. That's why they often go around me to you."

But some people micromanage consciously and deliberately; many micromanagers try hard to intimidate. To them, you need to be blunt:

"You hold me accountable for getting things done. But by constantly overriding my authority, you’re making it impossible for me to succeed."

By challenging micromanagement behavior you're telling your boss that you welcome constructive feedback and are eager to work hard toward improving, but that you are unwilling to endure unwarranted bullying and second-guessing.

Enough is Enough

If your micromanaging boss is unreceptive, or proves unable or unwilling to change, you should consider changing bosses. Unchecked, micromanagement limits your opportunities to grow. Your micromanager will continue to ignore you, abstain from teaching you new skills, withhold company news from you, exclude you from decision making, and selfishly hold back the most demanding assignments. Your employees might see you as weak or untrustworthy. You will expect less from yourself. Your performance will reflect your boss’s low expectations. And, lo and behold, another self-fulfilling prophecy will come true.

If your core personal values include principles like trust, respect, and helping individuals grow then living by the values you profess requires standing up to micromanagement.

Labels: employees, leadership, management, trust, values

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Is this the worst economy ever? Hardly. Remember the Carter Administration? In any event, this recession is not a time to reflect on our own hardships; it's an opportunity to help others handle theirs. That was my message today to the employees of Lourdes College. You can view the slides for that talk at slideshare. Bookmark this post on del.icio.us

Are leaders born or made? It's an age-old question that suggests that leadership might be reserved for a fortunate few. The truth is that the ability to lead, just like the knowledge needed to perform math and science, is something that individuals can learn. So where are tomorrow's leaders going to acquire the qualities that they'll need? From teachers, no doubt. That is my message this weekend to a group of educators at the 2009 Annual Concept Schools Conference. You can view the slides for that talk at slideshare.

At the conference, I'll also introduce school administrators to the concept of values-based leadership -- that is, how to inspire high performance as a result of promoting and living by the values and mission of your organization. Those slides are available here. Bookmark this post on del.icio.us

Health officials are busy warning anxious citizens about the spread of the H1N1 virus, better known as the swine flu. For their part, organizations are advising their employees on how to keep their illnesses to themselves. Internal emails describe everything from how to properly cough in public (seems it's better to cough into the crook of your arm than into your hand) to how soon to return to work after experiencing the flu (wait at least until the fever subsides).

If only companies were as concerned about the contagiousness of their leaders' emotions.

Even without speaking, leaders can communicate their moods to everyone around them. And, as researchers Howard Friedman and Ronald Riggio established, emotionally expressive people can nonverbally transmit their moods onto others almost immediately.

Friedman and Riggio studied three-person groups comprised of one highly expressive subject and two unexpressive participants. Subjects in each group sat facing away from each other while completing a mood questionnaire. Participants then turned and faced their fellow group members for two minutes, during which time they could look at each other but not speak. Finally, participants filled out another mood survey.

As the researchers had expected, the moods of the unexpressive subjects tended to change to match the mood of the highly expressive participants. For example, an angry, highly expressive subject could make two happy, unexpressive people irate. In two minutes or less! All without saying a word.

As Friedman and Riggio point out, nonverbally expressive individuals broadcast their feelings through their body language, and those around them cannot help but notice the signals. Negative emotions are especially easy to transmit nonverbally, because people are naturally receptive to warnings about anxiety, fear, and anger.

Emotions, like a flu virus, are contagious. If you're a leader, be aware that you might be silently infecting your employees with your nonverbal messages. Try spreading some positive messages instead.

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According to research by Gallup, employees tend to receive very little praise from their supervisors. In fact, less than a third of U.S. workers would strongly agree that a boss has praised their work in the past week. Why are leaders so stingy with the compliments? One excuse I frequently hear from managers is that recognizing employees for doing a good job is an ongoing burden.

In other words, once you start praising people, they expect you to praise them again and again.

Labels: employees, leadership, management, praise, recognition

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"Our system was failing to meet its most basic responsibility: the development of productive and well-disciplined individuals." Dick Grote, Discipline Without Punishment

In the early 1970s, a troublesome mystery befuddled the executives of Frito-Lay. Abruptly one day, complaint letters from outraged customers began arriving at the company's headquarters. Angry writers reported the same upsetting experience: each had been shocked to discover, on a Frito-Lay potato chip, an obscene message written in felt-tip pen.

Having traced the source of the offensive chips to a particular plant, management dispatched training and development manager Dick Grote to the facility with instructions to track down the culprit responsible for the vulgar messages. What Grote found instead was a workplace culture that bred disobedience.

Grote learned that plant managers had fired fifty-eight of the factory's 210 employees for disciplinary reasons in the prior nine months. Supervisors were misusing progressive discipline -- verbal and written warnings, unpaid suspensions, and terminations -- as a way to rid the plant of unwanted workers. The excessive firings resulted in dismal morale and led disgruntled employees to sabotage the company's products.

The sheer volume of disciplinary actions at the plant allowed Grote to spot what is less obvious in most organizations; that is, that traditional progressive-discipline methods are highly ineffective.

In his book, Discipline Without Punishment, Grote writes, "The problem wasn't the way we were administering the system. The problem was the system itself." Like discipline systems at most companies, Frito-Lay's offered employees no way to redeem themselves. Says Grote, "Virtually every employee who received a verbal warning received a written warning; almost everyone who reached the point of a disciplinary suspension was fired not long after." So he decided to change the system.

While keeping the progressive characteristic of the system, Grote eliminated punishment and replaced it with personal responsibility and decision-making. Warnings and reprimands became reminders -- coaching sessions in which employees are asked to take responsibility for their actions and commit to changing their undesirable behaviors. Unpaid suspensions became paid leaves during which employees can reflect on the seriousness of the problem -- without the resentment and financial hardships caused by withholding pay.

Over the next two years, the number of terminations resulting from disciplinary actions at the plant fell from 58 to two. Thousands of organizations have since followed Frito-Lay's approach with staggering results. In addition to firing fewer employees, these companies are also experiencing lower voluntary turnover, reductions in sick-leave usage, and drops in worker grievances.

"The basic premise of the traditional discipline system is that crime must be followed by punishment," writes Grote. With that in mind, too many organizations treat all of their employees like criminals.

So, is it time to overhaul your disciplinary system?

Labels: discipline, employees, leadership, management

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"Perhaps one of the most prevalent errors is based on the idea that discipline is punishment." Robert Bacal, "Five Sins of Discipline"

Many years ago, I had to confront an employee about her recurring tardiness problem. It wasn't my first disciplinary conversation; over time, I'd dealt with everything from below-standard work performance to blatant theft, and I had developed a thick skin for the task. Nevertheless, in this case I was reluctant to have the necessary conversation.

Labels: discipline, employees, leadership, management

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In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins stresses that an important means for companies to become extraordinary is to choose the right people. But as Collins points out, too many organizations allow incompetent or disobedient employees -- workers he calls the wrong people on the bus -- to obstruct their company's road to greatness. These troublesome employees cause leaders to impose highly stringent rules. In turn, the added restrictions frustrate many good employees and prompt them to leave. As a result, problem workers make up a larger percentage of the organization's workforce, leading management to enact even more rules.

Not surprisingly, Collins found that companies willing to deal with their poor performers are able to avoid this deadly spiral.

Perhaps you've been avoiding the unpleasant task of tossing some "wrong people" off your organization's bus. If so, you're not alone. Firing workers is gut-wrenching work. Besides, you want to give people every opportunity to succeed. But as the following story illustrates, delaying the inevitable might be as detrimental to your problem employees as it is to your organization.

Many years ago, on the morning of my first day at a new job, I boarded a city bus for the twenty-minute commute downtown. There was a bus stop right outside our apartment building and another one just across from my new office. So, I decided to forgo the downtown parking hassles and take the No. 5 bus to and from work. My morning ride went off without a hitch.

After work, I once again hopped aboard the No. 5 for what I expected would be a quick trip home. To my surprise, about three blocks from our apartment, the bus driver turned off our street and headed in a new direction. Because the bus had made some short loops around several neighborhoods along the way, I wasn't overly concerned at first. It was just a matter of time before we returned to my street and reached my stop. Or so I thought.

One by one, my fellow passengers all disembarked while the bus traveled further and further from my home. Finally, the bus driver pulled over to the curb. "This is the end of the line, pal," the driver said to me. "My next stop is the garage. You have to get off."

I explained to the driver how I thought he would be passing my apartment. After all, I had boarded the No. 5 in front of my place just this morning. "That's my morning route. In the afternoon, you need to take the 5A." And with that, he left me on the sidewalk, five miles from home.

As I searched for a payphone to call my wife and ask her to come and retrieve her off-course husband, I remember wishing someone had told me that I was on the wrong bus.

Like your wayward workers, I thought I understood where my bus was headed. And even when it became increasingly clear that the No. 5 was going another direction, I tried to convince myself that everything would work out eventually. Had I known sooner that I was on the wrong route, I could have saved myself some frustration and embarrassment.

The moral of the story is simple: If you have some wrong people on your bus, do them -- and yourself -- a favor by making it clear that they'll never reach their hoped-for destination in your organization. Bookmark this post on del.icio.us

"Many of those who remain after downsizing are stricken with survivor's guilt. Others are filled with an enormous amount of anxiety, assuming that it is only a matter of time before the other shoe drops." John Challenger

There are few leadership tasks more gut wrenching than laying workers off during business downturns. What could be harder than putting people on the street when jobs are in short supply? If you have any kindness in you, you'll feel badly for those you've had to displace. As it turns out, those employees who are spared from layoffs need your compassion, too.

"Companies use the word affected with people who lose their jobs -- the implication being that the people who remain aren't," says Joel Brockner, a professor of management at Columbia Business School. "They're very much affected."

And when workers are affected, their employers are, too. According to a survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, companies undergoing downsizing efforts face tough challenges in keeping surviving employees engaged and focused. Fifty-four percent of HR executives cited maintaining employee engagement as their biggest challenge after conducting layoffs. Another large concern, according to 23 percent of respondents, is easing anxiety among surviving workers that additional layoffs might be imminent.

And then there’s the guilt.

Psychologists note that workers who avoid the downsizing ax experience mixed emotions, ranging from the initial relief of keeping their jobs to the feeling of guilt over their good fortune. What's more, anxiety that more job cuts are coming and the burden of taking on additional workloads can lead some workers to actually envy their former coworkers.

As a leader, be aware that your role in layoffs doesn't end once you've pass out the pink slips. Columbia's Brockner recalls a conversation with a bank executive who boasted about the company's generous severance package. "I said, 'That's great. What have you done for the people who have remained?'"

"It is an unfortunate situation to be in, but the way companies handle it -- particularly the way they deal with surviving employees -- can make it significantly better or worse," says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "You cannot simply tell employees to 'do more with less.' There must be a back-and-forth dialogue to address employees' concerns and fears."

According to Challenger, surviving employees want leaders to be straight with them. "Honesty is the best policy; employees deserve up-front communication when it comes to the state of the company and their jobs," he says.

When economics dictate that you let people go, do it as compassionately as possible. And don't forget to take care of your survivors.

Labels: business, employees, leadership, management

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