This week’s article is…align employee strengths with organization goals to accelerate results!

Vital leaders practice 6 crucial skills required to unleash the full creative powers of every employee in accomplishment of your most important goals.

1. Listening is the doorway to understanding and the bridge to trust.
2. Expectations of employees when understood drives great performance.
3. Align employee strengths with organizational goals to accelerate results.
4. Develop employees through coaching and delegation.
5. Encourage employees with positive and corrective feedback.
6. Resilience the base for leadership excellence.

Trivial leaders are focused on the achieving business results but never consider employee work preferences when assigning jobs. This lack of awareness and caring by the leader is a major reason employees become frustrated, stressed and unmotivated. The impact on business results is seen in high employee turnover, increased sick leave use and lower quality in products and services.

 From a leader’s perspective, the most serious betrayal has to do with thwarting human potential, with quenching the spirit, with failing to deal equitably with each other as human beings. ~Max DePree

The vital leader aligns employee strengths to business and organizational goals. No matter what job a person is assigned, every role in that job will not be a good fit for the employee’s preference for accomplishing work. Vital leaders understand every job is comprised of both task and relationship roles. They also know whether employees are more task or relationship oriented by understanding their strengths:

Task Oriented Strengths	Relationship Oriented Strengths
Questioning Logic focused Objective Skeptical Challenging	Accepting People focused Empathizing Receptive Agreeable

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Furthermore, vital leaders understand task and relationship oriented behaviors may be presented in a direct or indirect manner. Keeping this in mind, we can now describe four employee work styles and their preferences for accomplishing work.

What Employees are Direct and Task Oriented

You rely on what employees when the job must be done now! They are hard charging with a never fail attitude. You’ll recognize them right away. They are straightforward and ask “What do you want?” and “What’s the bottom line?” Give what employees work that is challenging, stay out of their way and watch them thrive!

Who Employees are Direct and Relationship Oriented

You rely on who employees to persuade and energize others to achieve group goals. Who employees have a gift for connecting people with resources to achieve business goals. You will recognize them when they ask such questions as “Who’s involved?” and “Who can provide recognition and resources?” Provide who employees with opportunities for group activities and you will not be disappointed with the outcome.

How Employees are Indirect and Relationship Oriented

When you need support for team goals give the job to a how employee. How employees are patient and use a calm approach to support others in accomplishment of goals. You recognize them because they ask, ”How can I best support the team?” and “How do we develop a plan for us to follow?” Allow how employees to help others in a stable environment, and they will stay on task until the job is satisfactorily completed.

Why Employees are Indirect and Task Oriented

If work must be done right the first time give the job to a why employee. They are very deliberate in their approach to work and use precision along with analysis to achieve the highest quality outcomes. Why employees give themselves away when you hear them ask “Why must it be done this way?” and “Why did you change the rules?” Give why employees the opportunity to use their expertise for ensuring quality and they will deliver error free products and services.

 Leaders must know the strengths of each employee, then create opportunities for employees to use them. ~Gallup Organization

Armed with knowing the job requirements and the employees natural strengths will allow you to assign employees work that is a natural fit and require less energy for them to perform. Of course this is not always possible. When it isn’t possible, you can inform the employee of the work, which fits their orientation and let them know what about the job may be frustrating. This approach sets the employee up for success while improving employee engagement, and organizational success.

Vital Leader Thoughts on Employee Strengths

1. Identify whether your employees are more task or relationship oriented. Also consider if they are more direct or indirect when communicating with others.

2. Now align their strengths with the jobs required of the organization.

3. Finally, set the employees up for success by sharing how the job aligns with their strengths and is a good fit for how they prefer to work. Also describe which parts of the job are not a good fit and may cause some frustration or stress for the employee. Knowing you care will allow employees to give their best in achieving business goals while feeling appreciated for what they do.

In the next article, I will share my thoughts and experience for developing employees through coaching and delegation.

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Unless you are one of the very few people who have been fortuitous enough to be self employed throughout the duration of your career, chances are you’ve had a boss; or several.  Even highly successful CEOs had to work their way up the ladder through the experiences they learned within a corporate atmosphere.  The leader of an organization ideally is one who shapes the individuals of their team in a nurturing climate that helps them to grow, excel and strive for excellence.  There are many different styles that a leader can adopt to ensure the success of their subordinates.

            Yet, there is also one leadership style that does just the opposite. A toxic leader, toxic boss or a toxic manager is a term used to describe the leader of an organization who does more harm than good to the wellbeing of a company.  Instead of using positive reinforcement, employee engagement and encouragement, the toxic leader will be more apt to use bullying, yelling, threatening, punishments, belittling or condescending behaviors to try to achieve results from the staff.  Maybe a simple and easy way to describe this type of leader is the “Boss from Hell”.

            The unfortunate aspect of a toxic leader is that very often the person is completely oblivious of the harm done, or that there is even a problem with this type of leadership style.  They think that in order to get people to do things they want, they must monitor and control the employees by using negative strategies.  Instead of listening to new ideas, they shut people down.  When an employee does something wrong – either because they were not trained properly or just accidently – the toxic leader screams and yells or writes up the employee instead of showing the person how it can be done differently, or better.  They may even carry on these antics in front of other staff to set an example, making the employee feel like crawling under a table with embarrassment and humiliation. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s article is…expectations of employees when understood drives great performance!

Vital leaders practice 6 crucial skills required to unleash the full creative powers of every employee in accomplishment of your most important goals.

1. Listening is the doorway to understanding and the bridge to trust.
2. Expectations of employees when understood drives great performance.
3. Align employee strengths with organization goals to accelerate results.
4. Develop employees through coaching and delegation.
5. Encourage employees with positive and corrective feedback.
6. Resilience the base for leadership excellence.

Trivial leaders see people as a thing and use the carrot and stick style of motivation. When you do well, you get the carrot. When you don’t do well, you get the stick. Also known as the “Jackass Theory” of motivation. Since trivial leaders treat people as things they can only control, manage, direct and watch the employees every move.

When people are treated as things, they lose trust and withhold their full commitment. ~Stephen Covey

When commitment is withheld employees only do what they are told because you are paying them.  As trust continues to erode employee commitment continues to decline further to malicious obedience. Some people even rebel or quit even though they stay on your payroll. Furthermore, unless commitments are made, there are only promises and hopes… but no results.  

Vital leaders see people as an asset and treat them as a whole person turning their potential into performance and performance into profits. They understand there is a direct relationship between the extent which employee expectations (psychological contract) has been discussed and how much the employee volunteers their highest efforts and energies. Moreover, the employees fully engage themselves in your most important priorities. You can’t buy this level of engagement…you have to earn it.

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks. ~Johann Gottfried Von Herder

Vital Leader Thoughts on Employee Expectations 

1. Help people develop a language through which they can efficiently and accurately communicate concerns about their work preferences, attitudes, and satisfaction.
2. Help employees gain a deeper understanding of what brings them satisfaction and frustration on their job.
3. Learn hot to better read the pulse of your departments or organizations to discover potential areas of group dissatisfaction.

Next week I will share my thoughts and experience with aligning employee strengths with organization goals to accelerate results.

This is the first article in a series of 6 helping you answer the question…Are You a Trivial Leader or a Vital Leader…a catalyst for employee greatness! 

Vital leaders master 6 crucial skills required to unleash the full creative powers of every employee in accomplishment of your most important goals. 

1. Listening is the doorway to understanding and the bridge to trust.
2. Expectations of employees when understood drive great performance.
3. Align employee strengths with organization goals to accelerate results.
4. Develop employees through coaching and delegation.
5. Encourage employees with positive and corrective feedback.
6. Resilience the base for leadership excellence.

 

Big egos have little ears. ~Robert Schuller

Trivial leaders are intoxicated by their own voice. They don’t hear the ideas and concerns of others. Trivial leaders do not value the viewpoints of others or understand the importance of listening. Therefore, the only perspective they have is their own and when things go right they take all the credit and when mistakes are made they blame others.

Trivial leaders who refuse to listen costs their organizations in several ways. Communication breaks down and must be re-accomplished and projects come in over budget and not completed on time. The result organizations lose money each and every month due to mistakes and waste enormous amounts of time. Besides losing money employees face emotional wear and tear causing relationships to become strained which impact performance and productivity.

 

Listening is the doorway to understanding and the bridge to trust. ~John Bentley

Vital leaders begin with the attitude that all people have good intentions and sound reasons for why they are communicating what they are saying.They put people at ease, while letting them know they care and will take appropriate action on employee ideas and concerns.   When people are understood and trusted they will give their best effort and fully invest themselves in their work. 

A vital leader truly listens and pauses after the person finishes speaking to process what was said. The pause allows you to reflect on what was heard or ask a clarifying question letting the person know you were listening. Lastly when people are heard they feel valued and provide creative ways to improve business results and customer WOW!

 

Of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable—and one of the least understood. Most captains of industry listen only sometimes, and they remain ordinary leaders. But a few, the great ones, never stop listening. That’s how they get word before anyone else of unseen problems and opportunities. ~Peter Nulty

Vital Leader Thoughts on Listening

1. Are you hosting listening session with your employees? If not, the employees may not understand what the organization is doing and the challenges you are facing. Listening sessions allow you to share this information so employees can ask questions and provide ideas and feedback to improve the situation.
2. When listening, takes notes and show a genuine interest in others and what they think. If you are busy and cannot be interrupted let the individual know you cannot give your undivided attention and energy right now. Next establish a time for the person to come back so you can listen fully and truly value your time together.  
3. When meeting in your office take the time to unplug the phone and turn off your computer monitor to prevent distractions. This sends a message to the employee that you are important to me!

Please share with us your listen tips to help us become a Vital Leader. Next week I will share my thoughts and experience with understanding employee expectations (the psychological contract) to drive great performance.

By John Bentley and Lucille Force, RN MSN, MSA

Some might think the term “succession planning” wouldn’t be so difficult to incorporate in the corporate sector. After all, the word ‘success’ is front and center, but in reality the term is much more easily said than done.

Succession planning ensures the continued effective performance of an organization by establishing a process to develop and replace key staff members, over time. It should involve businesses investing time, ideas, and planning in order to entrust continuity of their leadership talents.

Great succession plans are linked to the organizations’ vision, mission, and goals; and those plans then identify the required leadership behaviors to achieve those goals. Effective and successful organizations do not passively wait for their future. They create it; by investing their time, planning and creative thoughts into assurance in the stability of their leadership talent.

Quint Studer, founder and CEO of Studer Group, and named by Modern Healthcare as one of the “Top 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare, published this in 2007:

Yet in a 2004 study, the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) reported that only 21% of 722 hospitals engaged in routine succession planning. Chances are high that the best candidate for a director level position is a current manager and that the best candidate for your next vice president is a director. Unfortunately, many organizations are focused on senior leaders, never considering the talent hiding even deeper in the organization.

 As rooted in common sense as succession planning may be, getting it from theoretical status to practical application can be a challenge. Why? There are many reasons – from simple self-preservation – to awkward or inappropriate execution of a succession program.

Three Degrees of Succession

 There are three types of succession planning: Simple replacement planning, developmental succession planning, and talent pool planning:

1)     Simple replacement planning is a process that indicates possible internal replacements for critical positions.

2)     Developmental succession planning is a process that identifies possible internal candidates to fill critical positions AND that provides for developing individuals to meet the challenge of future organizational change.  Through encouragement, these leaders in the making are developed through continued technical proficiency and by grooming for possible advancement.

3)     Talent pool planning involves identifying a group of possible internal replacements for key positions and then cultivating the development of groups of people to meet future organizational change challenges.

No matter the type of succession plans that are used, the ultimate goal is to plan a sequence of personnel moves and training to groom and prep candidates.  Arming them with proper training for key positions is preemptive to prepare for a time they are called upon to meet the challenge of future organizational change. 

Why plan for succession?

Many businesses and organizations already are (or soon will be) experiencing a leadership crises in the form of voids at or near the top.  As large numbers of upper and middle management position employees – most of whom are baby boomers – retire, there will be a need to fill their shoes.

Approximately 80 % of middle and upper managers in the federal government are already eligible for retirement, and although the percentages for similar management position employees in state and local governments are unknown, they are assumed to be alarmingly high. On top of that, the United States will have 10 million more jobs than skilled workers to fill them by the end of this year. (It’s true!)  Those numbers alone should adequately convey an urgent need for businesses to pursue succession planning.

 Another reason for succession planning is the traditional approach many organizations employ regarding short and long-term capital improvements and operational programs planning. They do so without fully integrating the accompanying impacts on developmental needs of employees that are responsible for delivering services or goods. The result is those employees’ capabilities are not developed accordingly to match the skills needed do deliver those services and a gap occurs between what the organization requires and the employees’ ability to respond to those requirements.

According to William Rothwell, author of “Effective Succession Planning”, research suggests that 70 % of all U.S. companies do not have a working succession program of any kind.

Failure to anticipate and plan for veteran talent and leadership drain — or succession plan — is one of the best ways to prevent either gradual or sudden erosion of leadership and experience at key positions.

Lucille Force (RN, MSN, MHA) says; “If organizations don’t get on board with succession planning, many may implode.”

When succession planning fails

There are a surprisingly abundant number of reasons why succession planning either fails to get off the ground, fails in general, or makes things worse.  Many organizations fail to plan because they are always in “crisis mode” and succession planning is barely an afterthought.  Certain companies (many of them) simply overlook potential leadership drain and don’t react until it’s too late.

One significant barrier is a general lack of experience in succession planning at many companies.  Most current leadership positions in organizations and businesses are held by baby boomers, which may look at succession planning as unwelcome competition for their jobs.

“I have personally witnessed this,” said Force.

Sometimes, it can be as simple as a failure to identify the best potential leadership candidates.  Many organizations place too much emphasis on new blood as the answer for leadership losses. While new employees and fresh faces may indeed bring in new and different ideas, there are potential drawbacks. Among them, failure of the new faces to know and understand the rich history of their organization, a lack of awareness of the unique nature or composition of their clientele or customer base, and/or a naiveté when it comes to the current climate or internal political situation at their organization. These things take a long time to learn and understand, as well as either overcome or utilize.

Many times, businesses correctly select people to put in leadership positions who are technically sound, but never provide adequate training, coaching, or mentoring. Conversely, they have the training in place, but fail to select the best candidates.

 A little-known problematic approach to succession planning involves implementation of a program promoting or focusing only on upward and not lateral movement.  Another pitfall involves promoting people with certain personalities or behavioral styles, instead of looking for leaders who understand behavioral adaptability or how to connect with everyone.  Do they make employees feel valued and inspire employees to give their best efforts?

Many don’t.  So, what are the two biggest mistakes made involving succession planning? Not holding managers and leadership accountable for succession planning and not sharing data with employees.

How to succeed in succession planning

A great succession plan is linked to an organization’s vision, mission, and goals. It requires leadership behaviors to achieve those goals and realize those visions and missions. These behavioral styles and traits become part of a leadership development program and may be learned through various methods.  Those include classroom, online, developmental, on-the-job-training, and coaching/mentoring. All of these things combined ensure that an organization has leaders who create a healthy overall organization in which employees can unleash their full creative power to achieve the overall mission.

Succession planning is not a new idea. In fact, it has had its success demonstrated more than once.

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch was quoted as saying; “From now on, choosing my successor is the most important decision I’ll make. It occupies a considerable amount of thought almost every day.”

That’s no small statement coming from a man who increased GE’s value from $13 billion to $410 billion in his 19-year tenure as the company’s CEO.

It’s the role of every manager to help their promising subordinates develop their fullest potential by continually challenging them and increasing their leadership competencies.

Successful execution must include succession planning.  You could say that the development of future leaders must reflect an organization’s objectives and goals. To that end, succession planning should involve:

• The support and backing of a company’s senior management.
• Identification of the skills needed by an organization over the next five to 15 years.
• An integrated human resources process involving development, training and performance review.
• Identification of key positions and their inclusion in the succession program.
• Analysis of the existing workforce and identification of which employees are eligible to retire within five years.
• Identification of qualified high end employees ready or almost ready to step into key positions.
• Select the specific competencies and skills needed for viable replacements.
•  The existence of a solid communication system with managers.
• Establishment of a system for locking in on the best potential replacements for outgoing leaders, and evaluating those candidates’ backgrounds.
• Development of candidates’ skills through work experiences, job rotations, projects and special assignments.
• A system of monitoring candidates’ progress in addition to one that offers encouragement, feedback and rewards.
• Ownership of the succession program by the entire organization, not just its HR department.

Primary and peripheral benefits

Besides the obvious reward of preventing the erosion and loss of leadership, experience and talent; succession planning also fosters other benefits.

A potentially underrated dual benefit to successful succession planning is the establishment of a wider and better field of talent that will one day become the next generation of leaders of the company.

Employee turnover can be lowered due to having more satisfied and happy employees who want to work, and want to work longer at a certain organization.

Less time, effort, and resources are wasted in replacing retired or outgoing leadership talent, thereby saving money and improving the bottom line.  This is also beneficial to healthcare, due to lower reimbursement costs and higher levels of quality and improved patient satisfaction.

Another plus not to be overlooked is the boost it levies above competitors who are failing to utilize succession planning.  Much of success — as in business or other arenas — comes from staying ahead of your competition or peers.

Putting the ‘SUCCESS’ in succession planning is not something you should put off, as a senior leader at any company.  Instead of being afraid of relinquishing control or telling too much, it should be seen as a way to grow and become even more powerful at the company. You are the leader and the one that subordinates turn to.  Share the knowledge and see what a boost having succession planning can offer to your organization.  

John Bentley, president and founder of Power 2 Transform has earned a reputation for getting to the heart of the matter by helping healthcare organizations develop a culture where employees operate at their full creative powers ensuring the highest levels of patient safety and satisfaction. You can contact John at www.power2transform.com or john@power2transform.com 

Lucille Force, RN, MSN, MSA is an Associate Chief Nursing Officer in Massachusetts.  She has over thirty years of nursing experience and is certified in Nursing Administration by the American Association of Nurse’s Credential Center.