It's time to rethink, reimagine leadership for a new generation. As an executive advisor, I help leaders improve their effectiveness by helping them understand how human behavior - the human experience - affects their leadership impact and the results they want to achieve. | Learn more www.joanncorley.com
If you are an HR professional or key decision-maker, please note, "a simple training day" is not going to fix this. Yet many times, that's the choice that's made.
In my experience there are 2 main reasons why:
1. Key leaders, decision-makers do not understand or appreciate the "human experience" in the work environment.
2. There is a disconnect between how behavior (the human experience) impacts revenue. Therefore the "cheapest" prescription is chosen without being clear on the need and the best remedy to meet it. I call that the spray and pray decision. Let's spray out a bunch of information in a "training seminar" and pray it sticks and fixes things.
I've said in previous posts, when dealing with employee performance problems, many decision-makers want a bandaid, when surgery is what is really needed. A bandaid seems to be much cheaper... really? And by the way, this is beyond an HR problem as some like to direct it...it is overall a leadership and management problem.
Read full text here: https://www.joanncorleyspeaks.com/2016/02/the-one-thing-employee-training-cant-fix.html
I'm gonna cut to the chase. I've observed for many years a cyclical epidemic. Managers who don't know how and are not managing ...and are not helped in any useful, sustainable way.
And so...it continues.
As a business owner, senior leader or HR professional, if you've experienced this on any level I want to help you diagnose why.
Now, I don't want to insult your intelligence. Perhaps to you the 6 items below are obvious and you've sought help and just haven't found the right resources to fully fulfill your needs. I'll address that in a minute.
You can read the full text here: https://www.joanncorleyspeaks.com/2019/10/6-reasons-why-your-managers-are-failing.html
Tip: Business management is developing managers. You've got to grow them...so you can grow!
Duration: 6 mins. 25 secs.
I had a great family get together in Indiana this weekend after speaking at the Energetic Women's Leadership Conference in Indianapolis. (The conference was a gathering of women from all over the US who are in the Energy industry - primarily gas & electric).
One of the many highlights was getting the latest updates from my stepson Chris regarding the state of their business in 2019 (we have 4 business owners in our immediate family!). They are exceeding goals! I was so happy to hear!
"So, what are your current challenges, what do you want to be different?", I asked. His answer, "Building middle management." Their business is family owned and operated with very aggressive growth goals. They need an effective, competent second tier leadership/management team if they want that to happen.
So we talked through some of his efforts and in several aspects he has some great things in place. For example, they have scorecards to keep everyone focused on the metrics that matter. They are very sensitive about company culture. They certainly do a lot of fun things together.
The one thing he really was stalled on was building a management team that could replace him so he could be free to develop the best, most market responsive strategies to grow the business overall.
So I shared with him my newly formed Executive Advantage Blueprint for Smart Management. I walked through each "smart management" building block - some of which, to varying degrees, he had in place.
What was missing is what most leaders miss...see if any of this applies to you: View full text here: http://www.joanncorleyspeaks.com/2019/06/is-this-your-1-business-challenge-too.html
Notes: // JCS Business Advisors is a strategic business management consultancy. Through our expertise in human behavior, we develop high-performance leadership teams and organizations as we partner with forward-thinking senior leaders, entrepreneurs and their HR counterparts, bridging the knowledge & execution gap of connecting people, performance, and profits.
// Email: joann@jcsbusinessadvisors.com // Ph: 888.388.0565 // Schedule a complimentary advisory call and receive a copy of our latest executive briefing.
//Learn more about our "all-in-one" blueprint that develops competent leaders and managers, effectively manages operations, people, talent and time. Special Note: I want to make a bold statement. Every business owner and/or senior leadership team needs an advisor who has expertise in human behavior. It is the #1 driving element of their business they do not recognize (as well as many business coaches), yet directly impacts every area. Take advantage of our complimentary 30 min. Q&A (ask us anything) and see how that translates to your business. Contact
Take a 10-minute breather today and learn how to determine when it's time to fire someone. Want to be clear & confident? Firing an employee is one of the most significant challenges and the toughest things to do in leading and managing. Yet, sometimes, it's absolutely necessary...and not doing so can severely hurt your business. Do you have a firing philosophy? Do you experience "fog" when you're trying to determine whether to do so or not?
Update: It's 2018. Suzi and I are now part of a strategic partnership that works with business owners, leaders and HR professionals addressing issues surrounding harassment, sexual and otherwise. Our mission is to help companies create positive, healthy cultures that can consistently thrive. We recently did a webcast on sexual harassment that you may want to check out as well. Click here In the meantime - this an interesting and revealing podcast. Below you'll find her site link. She has some good very helpful information on her blog! The podchat is an expanded discussion of this post. Please pass on -- a must listen for all HR professionals, managers and employees in this precarious situation!
I recently saw an article called7 Reasons Children Don’t Disclose Abuse” by Ginger Kadlec (you can follow her @gingerkadlec). In the world of mental health and child protection, this article provides an easy-to-understand summary – a neat list of the forces of silence. Those of us who have worked with abused children know these things instinctually. We know why kidnapped children don’t run away. Perhaps this is how I understand the dynamic of workplace abuse so well.
I’m not saying that workplace abuse is as bad as child abuse. Children are much more vulnerable and in need of our protection. Adults are in a better position to know when something just isn’t right. However, the power dynamics are similar and when the bully is successful, it is because he or she has used these familiar tactics. The same issues are at play and at the center is fear. This fear doesn’t have to have a rational basis for us observers but it has great power over the employee victim. It is the reason employees endure workplace abuse and intimidation for years without approach management with a complaint. Instead of worry about their family’s safety as child victims do, it’s the desperate need for employment and the thought of job loss that keeps many abused employees at work. Here are my counterpart reasons, paralleling the original article noted above.
1. “Keep this a secret.”
There are workplaces where truly evil things go on and about which leadership has no idea. Sure there are clues like turnover, employee absenteeism, etc. But workplace bullies are often skilled at making employees feel as though management agrees with them and sanctions their tactics. Fear of straight-forward confrontation with this manipulative individual keeps employees silent. In addition, sometimes bullies draw coworkers into their confidence and offer full membership into the “power group” cultivating the idea that the bully is right and representing a safe haven from isolation. There have been times when I describe what has gone on in a workplace and senior leadership stares back at me, mouths open, incredulous.
2. Threats and fear
Employees learn very quickly who’s in charge, who calls the shots. An example is when an employee questions the bully and gets punished with rumors, defamation and marginalization. Everyone sees what happens, how the victim of retaliation suffers. No one wants that to happen to them. Most people want to be liked at work. We want to be a part of the group not sit alone at the lunch table. When you add the need for employment and fear of losing one’s livelihood it creates the perfect opportunity for emotional blackmail.
3. Love
Ms. Kadlec notes that children are often abused by persons they love on another level. Perhaps it’s someone they look up to. In a work situation I see employees who love the company and basically love the content of their jobs. They don’t want anything really bad to happen to the company. With this mindset, they have difficulty take a posture they see as “against” the company. Employees wrestle with the question: “Doesn’t management understand we’re suffering? on the one hand and: “This bully must be doing something right for management to keep them on.”
4. “No one will believe you”
This one is easy. Employees know that this bully has been behaving this way for many years. They know that no one has been able to get them fired. In the worse case, they have seen the bully dispatch complainers swiftly and with little strain. The dynamic of emotional manipulation sets up punishment of coworkers that the bully sees as unfriendly to their view. Employees wonder, “If all those people weren’t successful in stopping the abuse and intimidation, why would anyone believe me?”
5. “It’s all YOUR fault”
You would be surprised at how long employees sit with feelings that it’s them, that if they could only say the right thing in the right way, the bully would see the light. When companies bring me in to help with long-standing workplace bullying, I speak with employees who have endured terrible treatment. Even after the bully is gone, they still have residual feelings that there was something they could have done. Bullies are so good at manipulating others to feel responsible for keeping them happy and comfortable. This codependent relationship is well understood in clinical and substance abuse counseling practice and it surely applies here.
6. Grooming
Finally, bullies select their victims carefully. They cultivate power-over relationships with those whom they can successfully manipulate. These might be new staff or employees who are fundamentally shy or insecure. These folks are more likely to bend to ideas that the bully is well-connected in the office and much more powerful. Bullies, like abusers, have two ways to deal with coworkers perceived to be more powerful. They can cultivate positive relationships with senior management or they can undercut powerful coworkers with rumors and promoting them as bad or mean. Peremptory strikes are an extremely successful technique for getting rid of those who might otherwise have the power to hold the bully accountable. The same way that domestic abusers don’t hit their boss, the workplace bully reserves their really abusive treatment for coworkers they perceive as no particular threat to them.
I would love to hear from you about your workplace experience with these dynamics.
Welcome to the inaugural launch of Podchats - a fun, casual, yet informative conversation with thought leaders in the arena of Human Resources, management, and leadership that are 30 minutes or less.
This site was formerly known as Management-in-Minutes and several of those mini-audio lessons are still included in the subscription stream. However, going forward the stream will be devoted to Podchats.
This podchat was prompted by Mike's post provided below. It caught my attention because in my workshops I talk a lot about learning to read people and how that needs to be a professional competency. Mike has a unique view on reading people and so I invite you to view his website.
That's how we started our discussion and then took an interesting segway into intuition. The link to his site is listed below. It's jam packed with lots of in-depth content. For now - enjoy the Podchat.
-JoAnn
The Podchat: You can listen here or subscribe via email or iTunes - see information to the right.
Listen here: Duration-30mins.
“Which Box Do You Want to be In?”
Word choice is a function of personality. Yes, circumstances like jobs might require specific words but much room remains to choose other words. Sometimes, a single expression can give us all the insight we need.
For example, while with a previous employer, I helped a call center with customer service strategies and techniques over the phone. The center was transitioning between managing executives. When the new executive arrived, she heard about my help’s success. She wanted to meet and discuss me joining her team. After laying out her vision, she showed me a chart expressing the new functional detail for each job. Each job was shown as a box.
At the end of her review, she closed by pointing to the chart and asking, “So Mike, what I really want to know is which box do you want to be in?” To see the significance of this insight into her personality, it would help to contrast it with other possibilities:
“. . . which box do you want to be in?”
“. . . what kind of contribution would you like to make?”
“. . . how would you like to help me?”
“. . . where do you think your talents might work best?”
