Unlocking the economic value of your employees.

This is not about how many units of production, or how many service calls or how many times the employee did wha i pay him/her to do. This is about unlocking of the knowledge and abilities of the people who come to work every day, do their job and then go home with all the unused capacity. This under utilized capacity is there for the asking, but requires you to do something first.

When you have done things to show that you value the person, the most outrageous employee is often the most valuable in terms of business improvement. The employee who challenges the leadership in public is most likely to be the one who understands our business and knows in his mind that we can be better.

His mantra is “in spite of this we make money”. Almost any change in the way we do business helps to make his day to day job easier.

Who is the only expert on any job? Most likely it is not the college educated person we pay the big bucks to. It is the person who does that job every day. Unleashing this gold mine is simple but difficult.

The secret- ASK!

“But I have asked many times.” How many times did you do anything with the information? This past week saw a very outspoken employee come up with an idea that will generate cost savings 10X his annual salary. We valued him. He told us his idea, we acted, fought the Engineer for him and he proudly told the division President about his idea and how much money it would mean.

ASK ME! I would love to tell you how to protect my job by being more efficient.

The ‘rules of engagement’ or ‘the code’ or ‘the unwritten rules’ or how about just common courtesy…

When you run a meeting do you have a set of ground rules that everyone must abide?

For example…

Only one person talks at a time.   Or, no one can talk more than 1 minute and then some one else has to speak.

Setting up the ground rules lets everyone communicate.  What happens if you have a slow talker or someone does not like to talk?  What do you do about these folks?

As an informed leader, you need to understand the make up of your team so that you can make sure that everyone’s opinion is represented during the team discussion.

The next time you sit in a meeting take a look around and watch the dynamics in the room.  Is everyone participating and actively engaged?  If not, try to figure out why.

Then develop a code of conduct that will make sure that everyone is engaged and participating.

Recently I was challenged by Don to simply say ‘Thank You’ when someone gives me a compliment.

He told me that he has heard me on numerous occasions that I always try to defer the compliment by giving a bunch of reasons why I was NOT the reason nor deserving of the compliment.

For example, I was helping a team improve the overall yield (how much material was made correctly from the raw materials).  I provided consulting to the team and even some engineering at times.  I acted as the leader when needed but I really tried to make sure that each member of the team had a chance to flex their leadership muscle so that they could develop into great leaders.

The compliment I received was ‘We could not have made that improvement without your services.”

My original response was “Thank you but… it really was the team that made it happen.  They worked long hours and attacked the goal head-on…”, etc.

I really believe that the team was the reason.  Yes, I did help but no more than anyone else on the team.

Don’s coaching comments were “You don’t let people give you compliments and feel good about giving you a compliment.  You always have a reason on why it is not you.  Break this habit.”

So for the last couple weeks, I have been taking compliments and only saying “Thank you’ with no caveats or if’s and but’s.  It has been hard.

Thanks Don for helping me develop into a leader.

How will you Coach your new employee? What will you ask of him/her? Are they capable of doing it? Do they fit the job they have been hired to do?

DISC reports are very thorough, but for them to be useful to the hiring company, you must know what the job entails. If the job could speak what would it say? Remember that DISC only tells HOW the employee will respond to the task. The closer the person and the job match, the more successful they will be. High D’s like to make decisions and be in a highly visible leadership role. Put them in a room by themselves and they will retire in place- if you can even keep them in the room!

As you Coach the high C, put them in the room. They are thrilled to work on projects alone, in a private area with no interruptions and very explicit rules to follow.

Placing these people in the wrong roles leads to absenteeism, possible drug use and eventually they will leave or you will fire them. In spite of all the costs you have incurred, you have lost of some of your self esteem as a leader by making poor hiring decisions. Use the DISC and PIAV as a hiring tool. You will make yourself successful and contribute to the success of others. Hiring the right people makes you a great leader.

An informed leader knows how to hire the right people using DISC and PIAV. Take 20 minutes and complete one on line.

Coaching impact on the family is sometime not recognized. Was called to help a manager who was not accomplishing things that their boss the President of the company needed done. I spent several hours and several sessions both face to face and on the phone with the individual.

I did not establish the first rule of coaching-do you want to change? Essentially the manager even at times almost in tears, felt that he didn’t want to change, liked the way he was and let things fall where they may.

Always a part of coaching is creating life balance. He did not help his wife with the two small twin boys. She also worked full time outside the home, but he saw no reason to help her out. After several discussions about this, he agreed to try to improve in the home life area by sharing household chores and being home more often. He reported back to me that his marriage was much improved even as he joked “we haven’t made much progress at work have we?”

Long story short, I could not help the manager in his professional life and he began seeking other employment. He left the company but we were still friends and he stayed in contact. The president of the company and I both felt we had failed him. End of story- we thought. Ran into his wife a few months later. With trepidation, I approached her and we began talking about him and what had happened. Suddenly, out of the blue she said “I know that your coaching did not save my husband’s job, but you saved our marriage. Thank you for that.”

I called the president of the company the next day and told her the story. She almost cried. That was the best money I ever spent then, she said.