Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Management Turnover

Management turnover is inevitable.  Employees come and go.  Baby Boomers retire.

Turnover can be a positive process when managed to bring new and better people into your organization.  Yet, unmanaged employee turnover can easily weaken your company's leadership brand, knowledge base, profits and competitive edge in the marketplace.

Excessive turnover is often a symptom of fundamental problems in the business.  From my experience, the major reasons for high employee turnover are:

Improper recruitment

The nature of the job and culture of the company

The characteristics of the individual employee

By focusing on improving incoming employee quality (from sharpening recruitment methods to better matching of candidates with the job and company culture) and reducing the length of time that a position is vacant, an organization can substantially reduce turnover costs.

In a report in The McKinsey Quarterly, the consultants, Matthew Guthridge, Asmus B. Komm and Emily Lawson, point out that companies face a “demographic landscape dominated by the looming retirement of Baby Boomers in the developed world and by a dearth of young people entering the work force.” At the same time, they say, “question marks remain over the appropriateness of the talent in many emerging markets.”

Good Times Don't Last Forever

'Good times' don't last forever....yet, people want to believe they do.

Like the turkey who believes good times are common place until the third week of November, most people expect the good times to roll on. And so, they only see what they are looking for. Even their stockbroker won't tell them that "when in doubt, get out."

Yet, if you understand that there are business cycles, you look for the unexpected and thus see the unexpected when it surfaces....long before others do.

Mike Jay is a futurist and makes his living by helping others see what they are blind to. In his new book, Jay answers the question:

In tough times, what risks should we avoid and which should we snap up?

Our ability to recognize and react to today's unexpected events is key to both our growth and survival.  As business entrepreneurs, we must have enough knowledge to plan and anticipate, yet enough street savvy to know when things are going unusually right or unusually wrong.

Questionable Comments at Work

More women say they're hearing "sexually inappropriate" comments at work, according to a 2007 phone survey released by Novations Group, a Boston consultant.

Some 38% of women said they heard sexual innuendo, wisecracks or taunts at the office last year, up from 22% in 2006.  The percentage of men hearing such comments stayed steady at 45%.  Indeed, men were more likely than women to hear all types of tasteless or questionable comments, with 44% saying they heard racial slurs, for instance, compared with 24% of women.

Novations CEO Michael Hyter says one theory is that women's impatience with such comments' frequency is rising.  But Paul Secunda, professor of law at the University of Mississippi, says the responses could partly reflect a lowering of barriers between the sexes, with male employees making remarks more openly as a way of treating women like peers.  The problem, he says, is that "what might be reasonable to a man may not be reasonable to a woman."  That difference, he adds, "shows up in sexual-harassment case law."

A vice president in a New York real estate firm says, "As a woman in a male-dominated industry, I feel the men I work with often tone down their remarks in my presence.  This puts me at a disadvantage, since it means they're sanitizing and often not fully representing their feelings/intentions/opinions.  There are boundaries, however, even for guys speaking with guys.  If they're using 'damn,' ignore it.  If they are using the n-word or c-word, that's out of bounds, even for most men."

Regarding swearing in the workplace, David Friedman of New York says, "Someone just starting in the workplace should grin and bear it.  Anyone who's so offended by a colleague's swearing won't last long in the corporate environment.  It's better to focus on what you can control, such as your performance and behavior, than on what you can't, such as your boss's swearing."

Sources: BusinessWeek, March 17, 2008, and The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2008

HR Departments to focus on developing leaders

Now that detail-driven tasks are being handled by Human Resources (HR) outsourcing services or through Web-based applications (that allow for employee self-service), HR department management has the time and energy to become strategic. 

Advising corporate leadership on how to best develop and leverage its human capital can be important in getting the most out of an organization's talent.  Dr. Edward E. Lawler III, professor of business and director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, says that HR professionals could play a key role in three functional roles:

Improving Leadership:  The HR department can help managers at all levels become better leaders by teaching them how to improve their communication skills, set expectations for their staffs and motivate people.

Informing the Board:  A second important role for HR management is to become the corporate board's expert resource on the condition and utilization of the workforce.  Directors can use this type of knowledge to evaluate senior management and do succession planning, assess organizational design and effectiveness, and make strategy decisions such as whether the organization has the people with the right skills to start a new line of business.

Assessing the Workforce:  A third potential role for human resources is to spearhead efforts to develop a human capital information system to measure things like the skills and competencies of the workforce, its performance in critical areas and its cost to the organization. 

In an organization that wants talent to be its source of competitive advantage, the HR department simply can't be the stepchild it usually is today.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2008

Passion, Guts and Glory

What do authentic leaders have in common?

They care, teach, affirm, champion, refine, stretch, lead, and love through personal example. They understand that leadership is a matter of influence, not position — influence that results from being both respected and liked!  People follow because they want to, not because they have to.  Gutsy leaders are excited, engaged, and intensely focused — they are passionate, and their passion is contagious!

Winston Churchill said it well: "The key to your impact as a leader is your own sincerity. Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself.  Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe."

What will you do to ensure your leadership is characterized by passion, guts, and glory? 

 Dying professor, Dr. Randy Pausch knows he is dying. This video will leave you thinking when it's over. Take 10 minutes of your time to watch: Dr. Randy Pausch - from Oprah