Communication Archives :: Strategic SenseStrategic Sense

Archive for Communication

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (0)

29 Apr

Question Are You Asking the Right Questions? “We find … it’s much more important and difficult to ask the right question. Once you do that, the right answer becomes obvious.”
~Amory Lovins

If you want to know more about why people do or don’t change, then ask more questions.

When working with organizations and teams, it is important to first listen and understand before building plans and developing programs for them. For organizations that do not have coaching as a mainstay offering for their leaders, they may be surprised to hear it is those coaching methodologies that open the door to understanding. For a large company, it is definitely worthwhile for key individuals and leaders within the organization to be coached, and for those in charge of organizational development (OD) to have some coaching training behind them.

There is a generalized stigma around coaching that can be hard to shake and it’s often referred to as that ‘airy-fairy’ soft-skills stuff. There is nothing soft about coaching!

If you remember being figuratively pinned to the wall as a teen in high school as some wise adult helped you learn to stand up and take responsibility for your own actions, you can easily recognize the value for coaching in any environment. Through great questions, a coach can dig deep enough to get to the root of why you choose your current thought patterns and reactions, helping you better understand where you fit among the dynamics of a multifaceted team of individuals. There is nothing soft about it. The secret to a coach’s success is the training they receive within two areas:

learning how to ask questions and

the right questions to ask.

This is why people in Change Management (CM) are also effective coaches. One who seeks to understand the stakeholders and the stakes involved in any change initiative is best served by first knowing the right questions to ask. Great questions return great results, further creating introspective reasoning for the individual who is providing the answers. The people being asked begin to think a little more about what they do and why they do it, eventually getting to the heart of why, within a change initiative, the stakes are so high for them.

This doesn’t mean the stakeholders are all in an ‘organized coaching program’, but rather, through a varied series of meetings, one-on-one discussions, facilitated group sessions and other forms of analysis and risk analysis, the CM professional is able to dig deep to the heart of any challenges that may inhibit change.

Change is inevitable, but change as a push mechanism is rarely successful. Change initiatives that take into consideration all stakeholders and build a plan for change that motivates and inspires people to move forward from resistance to desire find greater success. It is my experience that there is usually a lot more to resistance than what is initially shared, and a little coaching methodology can certainly loan itself to finding the greatest resistance and helping the people within an organization work through it.

___________________________________________

Patti Blackstaffe works with people and organizations to develop
Happy Workplaces world-wide guiding them toward mastery and leadership
through consulting, advising, coaching, speaking, and delivering training.

You can reach Patti at 1-855-968-5323

Idea Sessions | Change Management | Executive Coaching | Team Building

share this Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Comments (0)

Categories : Communication, Conflict, Culture, Human Resources, Leadership, Management

Tags : Asking the right Questions, Change Management, Leadership, Organizational Development

Policies, Procedures and the Leadership Team

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (2)

12 Feb

Whether you have 10 people walking in the door for work or 1000, they all bring with them their dreams, hopes, values, frustrations, problems and their desire to make their career the best it can be. People bring with them every experience they have ever had, and their perception of what that experience has meant to them, good or bad. Most of them will react to everyday situations based on those experiences, putting a wrapper around the situation based on what they believe it means to them.

Witnessing the human dynamic can be both awe inspiring and difficult, depending on what is playing out at any given time within the organization. You will have motivated and non-motivated employees, you will have great leaders and managers who are biding their time. There will be people with good intentions and the odd one with not-so-good intentions.

And this is why every company needs to have policies and procedures in place with strict adherence to them.

For the routine actions and for the unusual actions that will occur in any company, a set of guidelines for both employee and employer provide clarity and help avoid miscommunication.

First, the best place to start is to look at your Provincial or State labour standards or code. These are the guidelines you as an employer must uphold, it is the law in the place where you live. It is also the job of every manager in your company to know what these are; are you helping them? Small companies without a solid HR presence will especially need to know what the rules are.

Second, you need to protect the company and your employees from harm. Harm includes law suits, security issues, labour problems and safety. There are clear guidelines in all of these areas as well. Do your homework, make sure you know what your rights are and make sure you know the rights of your employees. A company handbook can include some of these items.

Third, you need to understand what processes you as a company wish to work within, basically; “What are my manager’s supposed to do and what are they allowed to do within these walls and how do I want them to accomplish it?” AND “What are my employees supposed to do and how do I want them to accomplish that?”

Many companies are unaware of how important their own policies and procedures are.

Executive team, not everyone ‘works like you and thinks like you.’

I know a lot of companies are weary trying to keep up with the legislated pieces and want to apply more of the budget to operations rather than HR. However, HR, when given the right direction and authority, have the ability to save the company many dollars in the long run.

From vacations to stress leave, from benefits to complaints, without a solid set of procedures to access and the guidelines of what to do, your employees will be scrambling for answers and wanting support. In most companies employees want their immediate manager to have both the answers and the authority to make a difference for them. Have you prepared your management team to handle all they will need to handle when they encounter a difficult situation or event, a budgetary shift, a grievance? Have you prepared your HR team to take on what the manager cannot? Have you outlined the differences in their roles? Are you tracking attrition, complaints, costs of transition, and more? Have you outlined the overall ‘behavioural intolerance level’ your company will not accept and what happens when they arise? If not, you have some work to do.

It is easy to make the assumption your staff understands how you want the company to run, after all, you are there every day and you are showing them how to do it. Be cautious, leader, these people need things clearly laid out, eliminate as much opportunity for misinterpretation of your desires as possible. Empower your staff to make decisions without you because the policy or procedure is spelled out in a way that supports your teams and protects your organization. But be aware, this is not a quick task or a two month answer, you will need facilitation and direction through about 18 months to two years of development if this is the first time you have embarked on such a task and you have more than 20 employees.

Give your Managers and HR department the tools and the power to make a difference for you and for your staff. Develop a company where everyone knows what support looks like and your teams are empowered to shine.

___________________________________________

Patti Blackstaffe works with people and organizations to develop
Happy Workplaces world-wide guiding them toward mastery and leadership
through consulting, advising, coaching, speaking, and delivering training.

You can reach Patti at 1-855-968-5323

Contact us here to book for Idea Sessions, Change Management, Executive Coaching or Team Development.

Idea Sessions | Change Management | Executive Coaching | Team Building

share this Policies, Procedures and the Leadership Team

Comments (2)

Categories : Communication, Culture, Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Training

Tags : Employees, employment standards, labour laws, Leadership Guidance, Policies, Procedures, Training

Why I Can’t Be Hired

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (0)

05 Feb

Be willing to do the work, not play the victim of circumstance

Working in Organizational Development (executive coaching and change management) is my passion. I love situational, character and behavioural development within an organizational environment. I personally study hard to build my programs and I take neuroscience, anthropology and psychology research into account for all jobs involving people. I have done this self-study for almost 20 years regardless of where I have worked – I am fascinated by people. What really charges me is when I am asked to come in and work with teams for greater collaboration and communication.

To determine if I am a good fit for the consulting contract, I ask the following two questions:

How much action and change is the executive leadership willing to take on in order to make my efforts worthwhile for the company?
What kind of support will be available from the top in order to make positive change happen?

The one statement that leads me to decline a consulting role with a company is this:

“I just want you to come in and fix ______________.” (This statement is rarely associated with actions of the executive leadership.)

First, your people don’t need fixing. Second, I am powerless to ‘fix this’ because as the consultant that is not my job, as the leader it is YOUR job. Third, I am hired to guide you and lead the way, the work involved belongs to each and every individual within the company STARTING with the top level leadership and supported through to the front lines.

When a problem exists, the first step is for the leadership to be able to admit there is a problem, but they cannot stop there. They must be willing to admit the actions they have been taking thus far are not working and something needs to change. It needs to change first at their level.

I have been known to decline any job whereby the hiring individual is unwilling to do what it takes to turn around the morale or working relationships within the company. I will also turn down coaching jobs with any manager who is not willing to take the action necessary to make change at their (leadership) level.

Coaching and consulting are about providing the assist, but we don’t come in and score the goals for our client, that is their job. They must be willing to do the work – not play the victim of circumstance.

___________________________________________

Patti Blackstaffe works with people and organizations to develop
Happy Workplaces world-wide guiding them toward mastery and leadership
through consulting, advising, coaching, speaking, and delivering training.

You can reach Patti at 1-855-968-5323

Contact us here to book for Idea Sessions, Change Management, Executive Coaching or Team Development.

Idea Sessions | Change Management | Executive Coaching | Team Building

Comments (0)

Categories : Communication, Culture, Leadership, Management

Tags : Getting hired, hiring fit, who doesn't hire me, why people hire me

The High Cost of Complaining and How to Stop It

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (3)

23 Feb

Strategic Sense made a commitment this year to highlight some of the remarkable authors, leadership professionals and business people we have had the great fortune of meeting and working with over the last 3 years. Starting on Wednesdays, you will see guest-posts from some of these folks. All are leaders in their field and will have solutions to some of our biggest workplace issues. As with Mike Figliuolo‘s post last week that encouraged us to be Middle Leaders today’s post helps us to stop complaining…

Today’s Guest Post is by Marlene Chism, a speaker, author and founder of The Stop Your Drama Methodology to increase clarity and improve productivity and personal effectiveness. Her Motto is ‘No Complaints, No Excuses and No Regrets”. You can visit her websites at www.stopyourdrama.com or www.attitudebuilders.com or get a copy of her book Stop Workplace Drama (Wiley 2011).

Here’s Marlene…

Riddle: What addictive habit is bad for your health, wastes your time, and is costly to your business?

Answer: Negativity.

Here is some interesting research.

Habit
Negativity is a habit. We think over 60,000 thoughts per day and 85 percent of those thoughts are either negative or repetitive.

Health
According to The Journal for the Advancement of Medicine, even a five minute episode of recalling an angry experience suppresses the immune system for up to six hours.
Time Waster
If two employees who make $20 an hour complain for one hour per week, an average of 12 minutes per day per person, that averages out to $2000 per year due to complaining. Think about what happens with five or six others join in on the complaining.

Costly
Studies show absenteeism is related to workplace negativity. Gallup reports that negativity cost US economy 3 billion in lost productivity last year.

Negativity shows up in various forms: gossip, finger pointing and bickering just to name a few manifestations, not to mention the habit most of us have without realizing it: Complaining.

Complaining is a difficult habit to break, after all venting feels good. The bad news, and part of what makes complaining a addiction is this: Every time you vent, you grow a new brain cell for the purpose of venting. The brain changes as a function of where you put your attention.
I want to give you the answer to break the complaining addiction: Learn how to ask for what you want. That’s right…no complaints, no excuses, and no regrets; just ask.

The method I teach is called “Turning negative into positive.”

It’s easy.

Catch yourself the moment you say, “I don’t want…” Stop yourself right there. This is step one. Now that you know what you don’t want, you don’t need to waste any more time talking about what you don’t want. Turn that statement into a positive request. In other words, what is the opposite of what you don’t want? Then all you have to do is reframe your statement. You have just saved thirty minutes of story-telling, and now you aren’t boring everyone around you as you rant and rave about what isn’t working. In fact, there’s a good chance you will get what you want if you can name what it is that you want instead of going off on a tangent.

Here’s the formula in a 1-2-3 format.

1. Know what you don’t want.

2. Reframe what you don’t want into what you do want.

3. Ask for what you want.

Example: You are getting ready to have a discussion with a co-worker and you have a feeling it might turn into an argument. It is tempting to say, “I don’t want to argue.”

1. Know what you don’t want: (I don’t want to argue.)

2. Reframe what you do want. (I want us to come to an agreement.)

3. Now, ask for what you want, “I have something a bit sensitive to talk to you about and what I really want is for us to come to an agreement.”

Besides setting the stage for problem solving, you have started to break a habit that is bad for your health, wastes your time, bores others and costs your company lots of money.

Marlene Chism is a professional speaker and the author of Stop Workplace Drama (Wiley 2011) Marlene has a master’s degree in HR Development from Webster University. To get a copy of Stop Workplace Drama, go to www.stopworkplacedrama.com

- Patti Blackstaffe at Strategic Sense Inc. is a Speaker, Executive Advisor, Trainer and Leadership Professional. She has worked in international business, non-profit and education; with a focus on workplace behaviour she has a mission to teach companies how to become Happy Workplaces.

share this The High Cost of Complaining and How to Stop It

Comments (3)

Categories : Communication, Leadership

Tags : complaining, Drama, High Cost of Drama, Stop Your Drama, Workplace Drama

Human Capital and Culture

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (1)

14 Sep

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are an enormous effort for the companies involved. Not only are you busy putting process and financials together between two companies, every single level of the organization must take on a ‘change role’ as they begin to integrate.

There are several ways we see this managed by the companies involved:

Push: The larger acquiring company pushes it’s systems down to the acquired company and defines a “This is how we do things here” stance.
Handshake: The two companies take the time to evaluate the systems and processes in order to determine which ones will work best for the newly forming organization.
Separation: The companies are tied at the highest level, but the two companies work and function with autonomy from each other with exception to the reporting levels.
Pull: This happens when a very small company is purchased by a larger organization, often you will see the small company become a department or branch of its own, taken under the wing of the parent company.

Many of us have been through one or many M&As in our working lifetimes and we all have an opinion as to how it was handled, how smooth the integration and how effective the changes were. In many cases the changes are seen as negative experiences and there is a reason for that.

M&As occur for a variety of rationale, a company wishes to partner with another company who has a compatible product – a marriage of sorts. A company will need to improve their portfolio based on a particular direction they wish to head or a company may wish to corner a market and cannot do it alone, but needs the product or strength of another company to accomplish that task.

One of the actions that can be abandoned in this process is the due diligence of evaluating a mix of varied cultures and the effect bringing those cultures together may have on the organization. Cultural compatibility is necessary for ensuring that the very expensive investment made in the new company will be realized with an appropriate ROI (return on investment) for the product being purchased.

If any of you have older teens who have dated someone with a completely different family background than yours, you know what I am talking about when I say marrying cultures. You can see the differences pretty clearly, but those teens are rather blind to what the issues may be. If they carry forward into marriage, there will always be some serious road-blocks as they work their way through those differences.

In the beginning, the excitement of what “could be” doesn’t take very long to turn into “uh oh” as the two organizations begin to define their “show stoppers” and “must haves”. Understanding the risk you take in cultural incompatibility is vital in managing that integration.

Change is always hard, it is our human nature to avoid it at all costs and instead rest in our comfortable way of doing things. The last thing any company wants is to pay 8-50 million dollars only to see the product knowledge walk out the door and risk the product and the investment all together. Your ROI includes the people involved, M&As are best accomplished with a people approach.

Patti is a strategic advisor in Leadership Development, Customer Service and Culture through Mergers and Acquisition. You can book her to speak at her Speakers Page.

Need Strategic Sense for your business? – hire us for Leadership Development of individuals & teams, group training and company strategy. Happy Workplaces Succeed, take the path to get there. 403-201-8512

Comments (1)

Categories : Business, Communication, Leadership, M&A, Management

Tags : business investment, Human Capital, Mergers and Acquisitions, People, ROI

Staples Inc. Shows It Can Be Done

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (1)

10 Aug

There are some terrific examples of Customer Service out there, some we have come to expect, Zappos for one – a large organization built on providing WOW for their customer. When I am listing examples for my clients, one company would never spring to mind and that is Staples. They are the largest supplier of office products nation-wide and a business I have tried to avoid using, until now.

Previous experiences were…

Lack of care or concern for my copy center needs, several times miscounting or getting it wrong then refusing to correct it.
Waiting for up to 20 minutes for someone to help or assist me, if they noticed at all.
Allowing me to leave the store either disappointed or angry at their lack of concern for my solution.

In fact, last summer I had decided to obtain most of my office products from elsewhere. As a result, I thought I’d try one of the other Staples locations and came to the conclusion this problem was much larger than a local manager who didn’t ‘get it’ because I received the same experience at other locations.

**All that has changed! Staples is a key supplier for several things I need for my business, and in the last month felt forced to shop there – was I ever pleasantly surprised.**

Yesterday I tracked down a manager/supervisor and asked if the management had changed since last summer. He indicated it had not, and wanted to know why I asked. I mentioned my work in the areas of Leadership and Customer Service and told him I was seeing a marked improvement in their store, he was happy to hear it.

Apparently Staples rolled out a nation-wide customer engagement plan to all their stores. I now intend on being a more frequent customer to observe its sustainability and its reach. From what I witnessed in my last two visits, they do appear to understand that customers are the reason for their job, rather than an interruption.

I had at least 3 employees in different departments ask if there was anything I needed help finding or if I had any questions. Score tally 1
Managers and supervisors were watching closely to see if anyone looked stranded or lost and directing employees accordingly. Score tally 2

I do hope their customer engagement rollout includes building on that engagement, extending that new customer service goal to include customer experiences as they increase their customer base; they have an incredible opportunity to do so.
Kudos to Staples!

Patti is a strategic advisor in Leadership, Customer Service and Small business. You can book her to speak at her Speakers Page.

Need Strategic Sense for your business? – hire us if you prefer to rise above the status-quo, care deeply about employee and customer experiences and truly believe in living and performing with excellence.

share this Staples Inc. Shows It Can Be Done

Comments (1)

Categories : Business, Communication, Customer Service, Leadership, Management

Tags : Business, Customer Service, engagement, Leadership, Management, service, Staples Company

Just Get Out Of The Way!

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (3)

30 Jun

There are a lot of different descriptions of what a tool-kit really is, and it’s different for everyone.

Plumbers have a varied tool-kit to Electricians. Teens will need a different tool-kit than toddlers for getting through the learning curve that is teen life. Equally, leaders will benefit by understanding the tool-kits needed by their team members so they can do their jobs!

So what exactly makes up a tool-kit? It’s anything utilized by an employee to enable and enhance their ability to perform and exceed their expected role as an employee. You wouldn’t ask a software developer to write code on paper – you’d provide him with a computer, the right software, the ability to properly test it and (very important tools) the support to take as many roadblocks out of their way in order for them to do the job. That could include providing them with space to focus, limiting meetings and interruptions, fighting for the budgetary means to allow them to continue. It also means getting out of their way!

Leaders forget sometimes they are no longer the hands-on specialist. Often, they find themselves wanting to dig in and work with, rather than guide, employees. We’ve been hearing from a number of our clients that sometimes all they want is time to get the job done. Frustration over a manager who is keen to take part can provide the following impressions:

The Leader is micromanaging
The Leader is not confident in their employee’s abilities
The Leader doesn’t trust the employee to do the job ‘right’.

Often the case is simply an enthusiasm and keen desire to be part of something they have left behind.

So what is today’s message? Provide employees with what they need and then please get out of their way! Offer them the chance to shine, to improve and to make a difference on the team. We don’t suggest you abandon them, by any means; you are there to support and provide a tool-kit for them in order to enable them to shine. Avoid hindering them!

Patti is a strategic advisor in Leadership, Customer Service and Small business. You can book her to speak at her Speakers Page.

Need Strategic Sense for your business? – hire us if you prefer to rise above the status-quo, care deeply about employee and customer experiences and truly believe in living and performing with excellence.

Comments (3)

Categories : Communication, Conflict, Leadership, Management

Tags : Business, employee, enable, encourage, Manager, micromanaging, trust, Worker Tool Kit

Sweating the Small Stuff

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (0)

10 Jun

In customer service as in any other area of the business, it is in the details where we strike the defining difference between meeting our competitors on the same plane or rising above them to a level that leaves them wondering what on earth happened.

I found this TED talk by Rory Sutherland packed with great insight as to why those details matter.

Watch the TED video and feel your creative energy begin to form….(under 13 minutes)

I have often felt we’re missing some key positions within companies; roles that could launch an organization passed the competitor but also offer the kind of innovative and creative culture Generation Y is seeking.

Idea Generation Specialist

This person would meet with all levels of the organization listening to thoughts and solutions raised by both employees and senior executive and have a clear understanding of both the challenges and the things which work well. As a bridge between management and front-line, they would have an overall picture many organizations might miss.

Creative Use Product Designer

This person would be tapped into the customer, would know exactly how the product is being used and know what ways the customer would WANT the product to be used. Caution here, we are not saying add any feature requested, but demand and need would drive innovation from the user’s perspective.

Customer Experience Analyst

When building a company customer service department, many organizations work hard to develop a streamlined, efficient manner of approach to customer service. They see this part of the organization as a reactive force to customer complaints and frustrations rather than a pro-active department who’s purpose is to respond with already defined pro-active ways of making the customer feel not only ‘served’ but leaving with the experience of a lifetime that makes them feel like they are royalty. This person would know what the customer is EXPERIENCING. There is a difference between experience and response.
Front-line Knowledge Collector

This is the most fun for me – an individual who knows exactly what is happening at the front-line. A person who’s job it is to share company-wide the great ideas generated by the front-line staff. As Rory Sutherland says, the best ideas that cost the least money are generated by those without authority or budget. How interesting to implement cost-saving, creative and thought-provoking ways to get messages to the customer, all generated at the front-line. Company awards for most creative / least expensive ideas may be worth striving for. (Trust your front-line, they do know your business and your customer.)

Employee Satisfaction Analyst

When was the last time someone came to your office and asked you what it would take for you to feel valued in your organization? How about someone who spent their day helping to create the kind of culture an employee would love to work within. Evaluating organizations to strive for making a difference for the customer base, the world and rallied the employees to strive for satisfying not only themselves, but the organization as a whole through collaboration and team work? You have the people – Generation Y are experts at these things, we have a lot to learn from them.

Comments (0)

Categories : Business, Communication, Customer Service, Gratitude, Leadership, Management

Tags : building customer experiences, companies who care, creating a power workplace, Creativity, future roles in work, Innovation, it's the little details, small stuff matters

When Streamlining Drives Business Away

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (2)

26 Apr

I’ve been focused on some good-sized client projects of late neglecting blog readers – but because I prefer content to be personally from me, client projects became the priority – glad to be back..

Today offered such a great example of how you can drive business away with apparent “streamlining” I just had to share.

CitiFinancial has been leaving automated calls at our home and does not ask for anyone but twice a day the automated voice tells us to call them at this number: 1-877-667-6152. Given there are 5 people in our household, all adults, it makes it hard to know who should call back, my spouse, me or one of our adult kids. Every person has been asked if they are CitiFinancial customers, everyone says no – so here is the scenario.

Phone call 1 – automated message

Phone call 2 – automated message

Phone call 3 – us phoning the number to see who they are calling – only to be told they cannot give us that information as it is private.

Phone call 4 – automated message

Phone call 5 – automated message

Repeat 4 and 5 daily for two weeks.

We call them – this time the person asks my first and last name – I am told that it does not match with that number in their records and there is nothing they can do.

Two more weeks of automated phone calls – twice daily.

Email to their online contact page stating that I either wish to know why they are hounding and suggest they stop. If the calls do not stop I will be calling my phone company to have the number blocked – I receive no response.

Today I received two more calls from CitiFinancial – both automated with the same message.

Today I called the number again and this time the person took the other last name that is used in this house and said it does not match with that number either. I asked if they could possibly tell me WHO on earth does match with that number and was told it was not possible to provide that information to me as it is confidential, but that they will look into it.

Steam begins to come out of my ears.

Here is how I responded – I swore at them – not a great leadership response, but definitely I had reached my limit. I told them I have done what they have asked of me, I have called them. I have done everything a good person is supposed to do to try to get down to the bottom of why my personal phone number is being hounded. I also wanted to know why the number they give me does not provide me with any information as to why I am being hounded by these ridiculous automated calls.

I will admit, I lost my temper… I said that I know this person is not personally responsible for the ridiculousness of the system under which they are working, but that I am not a CitiFinancial customer and they have ensured I never ever will be. The representative says they have no answer for me, could offer no reason for why I needed to call, and that they are not associated with the department that sends the automated calls.

She took a rotten bunch of my attitude today and remained professional. Kudos to whoever hired her, she has a terrible job of sitting blindly without information at a number to which automated calls are directing people highly annoyed with CitiFinancial. I sure don’t envy her that job, and if I knew how to reach her again would offer her an apology.

CitiFinancial, your streamlining does not work… you should be ashamed of your selves.

How do you think an organization would respond if all of us called that number leaving an automated message saying “Call us at this number” not directed TO anyone, and then telling them we knew nothing about why they are calling us back… a little something to ponder…..

share this When Streamlining Drives Business Away

Comments (2)

Categories : Business, Communication, Conflict, Customer Service, Management

Tags : angry customer, bad business, broken efficiency, CitiFinancial, poor communication, poor service

5 Ways Managers Add Sugar on Sugar at Company’s Expense

by Patti Blackstaffe · Comments (0)

02 Feb

I love candied ginger; it’s spicy and sweet at the same time. I like to add it to salads and recipes. What makes it different is it doesn’t have the “jelly feel” like other sugared candies.

I was thinking about that and how we tend to add sugar to more sugar all the time. Managers and Leaders do that in business so often it tends to come back and bite them.

Performance Reviews: managers are so scared to tell an employee the truth that they dance around it. They’ll say some sugary thing hoping the meaning is understood, and then follow it up with the employee’s good stuff – sugar on sugar.
Employee Surveys: managers worry ‘somehow’ the survey is not anonymous and make carefully worded statements and then add a positive one to buffer it rather than tell an employer or company what’s really going on – sugar on sugar.
Peer to Peer Conversations: when another employee complains, managers smile and nod while listening then offer them good luck as they leave the office without giving feedback or perspective on the employee’s role in it – sugar on sugar.
Angry Customers: managers deal with customers by saying pretty things and offering a gift in exchange for poor service rather than following up by learning how to keep customers from getting angry in the first place – sugar on sugar.
Bully Managers: when allowed to continue beating people down and burning people out, most employees resort to saying nothing or denying it, this is the worst. Tainted sugar on sugar.

I like ginger; it offers a spicy flavour that tastes great. I like sugar (who doesn’t) but when they are together they are a fantastic eating experience. Those jelly candies with sugar on top – they’re average. It’s sweet, but nothing to write home about and easily forgotten.

It seems to me there needs to be a good balance between politeness and honesty; support and development; diplomacy and authenticity in leadership. I am pretty sure most companies when asked would choose fantastic over average, so why on earth build a culture that breeds average?