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.

Recently I held an interview with a prospective client who is the Senior VP of Operations for an $8B corporation.

An associate and I were trying to convince him that even though we were small, we could give them the service to help them meet their goals quicker than doing it with their current tools. After sharing our success with him, he very adamantly stated that the results were in manufacturing and what did that have to do with their business?

He was quick to tell us how busy he was that they were engaged in the annual capital plan meeting and was not in a very good mood. Since Cost of Poor quality was only good for manufacturing, how could that metric be useful to them?

What are your goals for next year? To double the stock price, he answered.

How do the employees impact the stock price?

How does this capital plan meeting impact the stock price?

How do you measure the success of the meeting?

How do you accomplish the goals of the meeting without rework, waste and downtime?

What are the critical four to six measures that all capital spending should be measured against? Were you using a Priortization matrix (also known as a Cause and Effect Matrix or Decision Matrix) to decide which projects to fund?

Did everyone in the meeting understand what these critical few were?

After we had prioritized the list of capital appropriations, did we know how to use a FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) to see how likely we were to accomplish the goals of the appropriations?

No, the goal is not to spend all the money on time and account for all of it!

If we were not going to meet the financials promised by the job, did we have an alternate plan to make the numbers with other capital opportunities? Was someone accountable for the results? Was it baked into the operations plan?

After hearing the questions, the VP could only respond. The Prioritization matrix and FMEA do not apply to a non manufactureing environment.

This is not about how many units of production, or how many service calls or how many times the employee did what I pay him/her to do. This is about the 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 that 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 something 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 (let’s try anyway) and he proudly told the President of our division 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.

I was invited to participate in another great day of presentations from the hourly workforce to upper management.

This time though there were some ‘outsiders’ from the plant. Actually these hourly visitors were from a sister plant. They were unable to attend the seminar at their ‘home’ plant.

I thought it was a very interesting dynamic to watch. Would they be accepted? Would they be considered outsiders? Would they participate?

It was amazing to watch.

The outsiders were embraced by the team!

They made them feel fully welcomed and actually tried to help these individuals solve their problems to. Not in a demeaning way but in a truly helpful way.

Why can hourly people see past all of the politics and get right to solving the problem at hand? Whereas management has to posture themselves as the know - it - alls for everything?

This is a lesson for everyone… rank does not matter when improvements are being discussed.

What a wonderful lesson I learned today.

Had a conversation with a Facility Manager the other day.

He told me he was in a hurry to get the areas cleaned up because the president of the company was coming to visit next week. I asked what was involved with this clean up method.

His reply was to paint a couple areas, remove some trash, etc. Nothing that cost too much.

He sort of explained like this…
You typically keep your house in order. But when you have the family over for the holiday dinner, you take it up a notch. That is what what we are doing here.

I next asked who would be meeting with the president. His comments were well the Staff of course.

Now here is where my challenge question…

How about letting one of your hourly workforce give the tour.

And now even the bigger item…
Don’t go on the tour.

If I was standing next to the Manager… I am sure that could have pushed him over with a feather.

Why as Managers are we so insecure with what our people are going to say?

Get over it. You may be able to fool the president the first time… but you are not going to fool him every time he comes. He is going to figure it out. So if you are trying to hide something… the only person that you are hiding anything from is yourself.

Share the glory with the hourly person. Let him boast about the great things happening in the facility.

He just may surprise you.

In addition, if you always kept this approach in the back of your mind, your approach, communication style, and direction may take a different (and better) approach.

I was working with a couple plant production managers today talking through a project. Sure we talked about all of the financial and business strategy stuff on this project.

We talked about how to sell it to upper management so that they could get funding for the project. They knew it was right thing to do…

Then I asked… so did you ask the persons actually impacted by the project?

The operator and mechanic who are hourly personnel were the folks that I was talking about. If the President of the company came to the site today, would that hourly person be able to communicate why the project was important?

You may wonder why I think this is important… the President is never going to show up, right?

There are a couple reasons. First… respect.

Think outside of work for a minute. Think about sitting in church or sitting at wedding reception. Now here is the question… as you are chit chatting about various things, asking for opinions, etc. Do you ever consider that the person you may be talking to is a CEO or maybe an hourly person at a plant.

I bet you can recall a time when you had some open and honest communication with someone outside of work and you felt great after the conversation. You felt that you learned something and maybe you even shared something with that person.

So why does it have to be any different at work?

Second point… it is actually about learning something.
My late Uncle told me the day that I graduated from college thinking about my first job as an engineer… his wise words…
You don’t know crap.
You won’t know crap for ten years.
And you better find a good plant maintenance person so you can actually learn something.

My Uncle was a long time Plant Manager of an Aluminum Plant… and yes it had a union.

Go figure…

Communicate with people to get different points of view, so that you really can make the best decision… and get the real support to make the project ultimately work. Knowing who to ask and being able to process the data is part of becoming a leader.

Try this test…

Instead of replying to the e-mail that you just got and responding with 25 paragraphs of text and extending the email trail…

Pick up the phone and call the sender back.

It would take two minutes… plus the sender will actually get more from the message because he will understand the tone of your message versus having to guess from the email.