When the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts meet in the Super Bowl this weekend, it will mark the first time in history that the big game includes a team with an African American head coach. What makes this breakthrough even more significant is the fact that both head coaches, the Bears' Lovie Smith and the Colts' Tony Dungy, are African Americans. In an editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, author Joseph Epstein argued that we're minimizing each man's personal achievements when we focus on his race:

"Doesn't doing so suggest a patronizing sense of amazement -- as if to say, who'd have thunk not one but two black men could be at the top of their line of work? Doesn't doing so also suggest a note of self-congratulations for Americans -- as if to say, look how far we've come in giving these men a chance?"

Epstein contends that great accomplishments should stand alone, apart from the achiever's race, religion, or ethnicity. Only when that happens, he maintains, will we truly be a tolerant society.

I think Epstein makes a good argument, but I believe he's overlooking a significant benefit to acknowledging these kinds of milestones. We need constant reminders that we are not yet the tolerant society Epstein describes. Pointing out that it took forty-one years for an African American coach to reach the Super Bowl is a striking reminder. What's more, it honors Smith and Dungy for pushing through the obstacles and moving us closer to the day when we won't notice the skin color of a football coach.

So when we celebrate the first African American Super Bowl coach, or the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House, or the first Swedish astronaut in space, we're not demeaning the pioneers. We're recognizing the passing landmarks along our long journey to tolerance. Bookmark this post on del.icio.us

SSOE is an international architectural and engineering firm with a clear vision of its future. That vision includes being an organization large enough to meet the expanding needs of its clients while maintaining its commitment to quality. Toward that end, senior management has identified a group of talented leaders and begun preparing them to help guide the company's growth. This week, I had the privilege of conducting a workshop for these exceptional people. You can download the first day's slides here and the second day's slides here. You will need PowerPoint to view these slides.

Labels: Slides

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Mark Fields has a tough job. As president of Ford Motor Company's North American operations, he is spearheading a restructuring effort that includes closing sixteen factories and eliminating almost 45,000 jobs. It's a necessary process because Ford continues to lose money; the company lost $7 billion in the first nine months of 2006.

But while Ford asks workers to tighten their belts or make the ultimate job sacrifice for their company, Fields continued to enjoy a special perk. As part of his employment contract, he had use of a company jet for commuting to his primary residence in Florida. The cost to Ford: over $200,000 for the fourth quarter of 2005 alone.

Now when a local television station featured Fields in a story about the compensation packages of some of Detroit's automotive executives, current and former Ford employees found Fields' flying privileges disgusting. So, in a webcast to employees yesterday, Fields promised to stop using the corporate plane for his personal trips. Instead, Ford will pay for his airfare on commercial flights.

"He did not want that issue or any other issue to distract the North American team," said Tom Hoyt, a spokesperson for Ford. Sorry, Mr. Fields, you're too late for that. You see, when a leader in your position professes a value, like cost cutting for the good of the company, and then he flaunts a personal disregard for that value in the face of his employees, then that leader loses credibility.

To be sure, the piggish behavior of many top executives is robbing once-great companies like Ford of their reputations and, more importantly, of their employees' trust and respect.

Related Post: FORD: Fix or Repair Daily?

Labels: leadership, trust, values

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Charged with organizing a dinner party where members of her university's psychology department could meet a candidate for an open faculty position, a psychologist e-mailed invitations to her colleagues on the hiring committee. After listing the details of the event, she jokingly admonished that "talking to the candidate is not required; just don't embarrass us." Her attempt to be funny failed when some recipients thought she was being serious.

"She meant it as a joke, but much to her surprise some people were really upset," says Justin Kruger, PhD, who was one of the e-mail recipients. Kruger and his colleague Nicholas Epley, PhD, of the University of Chicago, studied why we misinterpret e-mail messages. They found that we overestimate our own ability to communicate the nature of our messages via e-mail. We think we are so good at conveying sarcasm or humor in our written messages that readers can't help but understand that we're only kidding.

The problem, say the researchers, is egocentrism -- a technical name for our inability to separate ourselves from our own perspectives. We tend to believe that everyone sees what we see, or thinks what we think. Therefore, what the writer considers humorous is not necessarily funny to the reader.

But e-mail senders are not always to blame. Turns out, we have the same high opinion of ourselves as recipients; that is, we overrate our ability to construe the tone of the e-mail messages we receive from others. And that often leads to conclusion-jumping interpretations.

"There's nothing new about text-based communication," says Epley. "People have been writing letters for centuries. But what's different in [e-mail] is...the ease with which we can fire things back and forth. It makes text-based communication seem more informal and more like face-to-face communication than it really is."

What's the answer? Epley suggests picking up the phone. "E-mail is fine if you just want to communicate content, but not any emotional material."

The senior leadership team at a very progressive organization I know recognizes how disruptive misunderstood e-mail messages can be. That's why each team member strives to limit their number of outgoing e-mails to ten a day. When the leaders reach their limit for a day, they reach for the phone. The result: fewer e-mails and better communication.

Related Post: Name That Tune

Labels: communication, leadership

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Only 49 percent of U.S. workers have trust and confidence in the senior managers of their organizations. So indicates a survey conducted recently by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. The global consulting firm assessed the attitudes of more than 12,000 employees, working at various job levels and in all major industries, as part of its WorkUSA 2006/2007 survey. If learning that less than half of all employees trust their leaders does not alarm you, consider this: the trust level is down from 51 percent in 2004, the last time Watson Wyatt took its poll.

"This dip in ratings is concerning because employees' attitudes about their senior leaders are a key factor in building engagement," according to Watson Wyatt's Ilene Gochman. "People want to work for companies where they have confidence in the organization and trust what senior management is doing."

Diminishing trust levels should come as no surprise to business leaders, considering the many highly publicized corporate scandals of recent years. But many leaders are shocked to learn that trust and employee loyalty are interdependent, and that when employees mistrust their leaders, they are more likely to leave.

More than ever, employees are searching for leaders with integrity who prove their credibility continuously. Recognizing that is the key to increasing the level of trust your employees will have in you.

Labels: credibility, leadership, trust

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In his 1963 book, Strength to Love, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote the following:

"The means by which we live has outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

Many of today's business leaders would benefit by reflecting on Dr. King's observation.

Labels: leadership, values

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In a post today, Seth Godin reminds us that "the art of management is in understanding that all problems are different, and that your intuition and insight are the key." Failure to understand that simple concept is why most management books and workshops fall short of making people better leaders. They try to teach a systemic approach to leadership: if an employee does that, then you do this. But the methods don't succeed because, as Seth points out, no single method can cover every situation that might arise.

Knowing how to handle undesirable employee behavior is not what's most frustrating to the leaders that I train; in fact, most usually know what they need to do. What does frustrate them is trying to understand why employees behave certain ways in the first place. So, in my experience, leaders learn faster, and retain the information longer, when they learn why and how at the same time.

Seth refers to leading with "intuition and insight." I call it Leading from the Heart. Pick your own term. But if you want to be a better leader, focus more on awareness than on techniques.

Labels: leadership

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Forty-four days before the Battle of Gettysburg, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain took command of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Along with 1,000 other men, Chamberlain had joined 20th Maine at its inception one year earlier. He had no skill or training as a soldier, much less as a leader; in fact, he had spent three years at the Bangor Theological Seminary. He took leave from his teaching position at Bowdoin College when patriotic fervor called him to duty. So unfit for war was he that college officials sent a message to the Governor of Maine warning that Chamberlain was "no fighter, but only a mild-mannered common student." Despite that glowing recommendation, the Union army commissioned Chamberlain as a lieutenant colonel.

Entering the third summer of the Civil War, 20th Maine was down to 358 men. The rest had been killed or wounded, or had simply deserted. Four days into his command, Chamberlain received notice that 120 badly needed troops would be joining his unit. While this should have been welcome news, the transfer order described the men as mutineers from the recently decommissioned 2nd Regiment of Maine. In fact, the men, transported to 20th Maine by armed guards, faced certain court martial after the war. The general signing the order instructed Chamberlain to "make them do duty or shoot them down the moment they refuse."

Shortly after arriving, the mutineers elected a spokesperson to justify their insubordination to Chamberlain. Having enlisted for three-year terms of duty, the 120 men were surprised to learn that their fellow 2nd Maine soldiers had received two-year stints and were already going home. With victory seemingly out of reach, and their faith in the Union leadership diminished, they wanted to go home, too.

Chamberlain faced his first serious leadership dilemma. He could shoot the derelicts if they refused duty; however, he would be shooting his fellow Mainers. He could continue to hold them prisoners, which would further tax his troops. Or, he could re-recruit them. He chose to re-recruit them.

Chamberlain called the malcontents together to address them. He showed them his official roster on which he had added their names, not as prisoners, but as soldiers in his unit. He voiced appreciation for their grievance, promised to see what he could do for their cause, and hinted that taking up arms might help them avert court martial. Finally, he explained the serious challenges the unit faced in the coming weeks and told them he needed their help. Afterward, all but six of the mutineers bought in and went on to fight with him at Gettysburg where the regiment successfully defended Little Round Top and captured almost 400 Confederate prisoners.

Although Chamberlain's exact words to the mutineers are lost to history, accounts from those who heard them indicate that he focused on what today we call the "big picture." He stressed the purpose for which they originally agreed to fight: "to set men free." Without their help, he assured them, the war would be lost and so too their cause.

When your own workplace mutineers create a leadership dilemma for you, rather than shooting them down with common punishments, choose to re-recruit them. Remind them why they joined your organization in the first place, and show them those values still exist. When you do, you'll inspire them to help you fight your battles.

Labels: leadership

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Apple Computer says its internal investigation exonerated the computer maker's co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs of willfully backdating stock options. While analysts continue to speculate on whether Jobs is completely out of the woods -- there's still the possibility of an SEC probe into Apple's option practices -- I suspect there's many people, like me, who are pulling for Jobs to survive the scandal. It's not that we're hoping he gets away with any wrongdoing; it's that we want him to be not guilty.

Here's why: Daily media accounts report on some CEO we've never heard of, at a company we've never heard of, involved in the latest corruption investigation. Leaders with names like Bernie, Kobi, and Hank, brought shame on companies called WorldCom, Comverse, and AIG, by overstating earnings, using questionable accounting practices, and manipulating stock options. The constant onslaught of scandals causes employees everywhere to develop stereotypes associating business leaders with dishonesty and deceit. And those biases force even the most scrupulous leaders to work harder at developing employee trust.

Many leaders are downright exhausted from proving themselves more trustworthy than those obscure scoundrels in the daily news are. To make matters worse, when a well-known and widely admired leader like Steve Jobs stands accused of unsavory business acts, people feel personally let down. As a result, the stereotypes swell and employees start viewing their own leaders with suspicion.

So we don't want Steve Jobs pardoned; we want him acquitted. His innocence will make our jobs as leaders a little easier. Bookmark this post on del.icio.us

Matt Langdon points us to a new Florida State University study that confirms that when people leave their organizations, they're usually leaving their bosses. FSU researchers surveyed over 700 workers about how their bosses treat them, and the results are discouraging. For instance, nearly one in four managers blame someone else for their own mistakes, either to cover up their blunders or to avoid embarrassment. What's more, 39 percent of bosses fail to keep the promises they make.

Other abusive behaviors highlighted by the survey include: failing to give credit when it's due (37 percent), giving employees the "silent treatment" (31 percent), making negative comments about workers to other employees (27 percent), and invading employee privacy (24 percent).

The research substantiates a link between poor leadership and low productivity. Employees with bad bosses experienced greater exhaustion, workplace tension, nervousness, and depression. Employees "were less likely to take on additional tasks, such as working longer or on weekends, and were generally less satisfied with their job," said Wayne Hochwarter, associate professor of management in the College of Business at FSU, who worked on the study with doctoral students Paul Harvey and Jason Stoner.

Those leaders who think workers are only in it for the money should think again. "Employees were more likely to leave if involved in an abusive relationship than if dissatisfied with pay," said Hochwarter.

As the FSU study indicates, bad bosses are everywhere and affect everyone. Survey participants included men and women of all ages and races, workers in service industries as well as manufacturing, and employees from large and small companies. Hochwarter has advice for people with lousy bosses. First, he tells abused workers to remain optimistic, "because few subordinate-supervisor relationships last forever." He also encourages employees to report a supervisor's threatening, harassing, or discriminating behavior. "Others know who the bullies are at work. They likely have a history of mistreating others." And finally, he tells employees to "stay visible at work. Hiding can be detrimental to your career, especially when it keeps others in the company from noticing your talent and contributions." Bookmark this post on del.icio.us