leadership Archives - Page 7 of 22

03
May 19
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Are You a Trusted Resource?

Tags : expectations leadership resource trust

Trust is critical everywhere. Workplace trust affects everything that will happen next. It is true with customers, vendors, and employees. Are you a trusted resource?

Have you wondered why…

employees don’t seem to care;

micromanagement is rampant;

managers are unavailable;

electronic communication is preferred;

turnover ratios are high;

customers nibble on marketing but seldom bite;

vendors won’t negotiate on terms?

All of this may have something to do with trust and reputation.

Trust Expectations

Being a trusted resource is critical for efficiency, process improvement, and customer confidence.

Have you considered your customer, marketing, or brand promise? Are you living up to that or would the other side suggest that is a lie?

Are you consistent with employees and decisions? Do people know what to expect and when?

Being a trusted resource comes with an obligation. The obligation to live up to promises and expectations.

Successful organizations seem to get more of this right instead of wrong. They work on trust, realize the sensitivity and costs of a breakdown, and insist on the actions and behaviors necessary to promote it.

Trusted Resource

Consider this, has your project been on track and within budget? Is there gossip, drama, absenteeism, turnover, and a relentless focus on pay?

Are sales where they should be? Do you know your best customers and treat them with respect instead of rules? Do you have great terms and support with vendors?

What is all this costing you?

What is holding you or your organization back?

Perhaps you are not a trusted resource.

-DEG

Do you need some help with trust? Call me.

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

29
Apr 19
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Cultural Acceptance Is Just The Beginning

Tags : acceptance behavior culture guidelines leadership

Organizations are built through culture. What is being accepted in your culture? Does cultural acceptance guide what happens next?

Whether it is ethics, dress code, or diversity and inclusion, your culture plays a role in what happens next. Your culture creates the allowance or defiance that shapes its future.

Observed Guidelines

Most modern social guidelines suggest more freedom, more openness, more be who you are and do what you want. Are there limits? What defines those limits?

Of course, there are limits. What does the group allow?

That customer just bought the fifteen-year-old hunk of junk car we had out back and never asked about the transmission.

We sold them a hundred units at ten percent over our list price. They never said a word.

I closed the deal and hung up before she could ask any more questions. (Fist bump!)

Our workplace is our community. What is the culture of your community and what do you allow, congratulate, or celebrate? What are the performance guidelines? How are customers treated?

Cultural Acceptance

You have a choice in your community. You can be part of the future or part of the problem. Often the problem is our quest for the short-term win. Grab the easy money or deliver with the sleight of hand to the unknowing.

What your organizational culture tolerates is what your workplace becomes.

The challenge is often connected to cultural acceptance. In matters of ethics, integrity, and moral values, nearly everyone knows better, yet fitting in is often why they were hired.

When employees weigh the risk of not fitting in with the perceived value of staying; they often choose to stay, regardless of the cost or potential value of the return on risk.

This is where things start but often not where they end.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

25
Apr 19
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Will Compelling Ideas Cause a Shift?

Tags : bad compelling good ideas leadership

There are lots of ideas floating around. Easily, more ideas than there is action. The hesitation, fear, and lack of action doesn’t help new ideas grow. Are you delivering compelling ideas? Ideas that are sticky and gain momentum?

Jump on The Box

For some people it is easy to get on the soap box. Hold up a cue card (metaphorically) and someone will jump on their box.

Once on the box, listeners sense the urgency, passion, and may be compelled to jump on board with the idea. They may also find disagreement and want to argue.

The challenge then for the soap box stander is to not only be compelling but also to be charismatic. It is similar to an election. Candidates get on the box. It is the stump speech.

How does this apply in the workplace?

It happens every day. Someone has a chance or the opportunity to get on the box. The messages that we exchange and engage with in the workplace are often followed by action and belief, or not.

Recently, at a speaking engagement someone asked me, “How do you teach up the ladder, get executives involved, and gain buy-in?” I thought the answer was easy, I responded with, “You have to be compelling.”

Compelling Ideas

I love the opportunity to get on the box. Sometimes I have to reel myself back in before I take things too far. Change is often about small doses of a good idea, spread across time. The big picture is just too much, too soon.

Like the closet that needs cleaning, it is easier to do in pieces. When we open the door and see so much clutter, we just don’t know where to start. So, we do nothing except close the door again.

The shift that you want to make may be a good idea. You’ll have to be compelling and maybe a little charismatic. Use the right speed and quantity.

Too much, too soon, and you may end up with the perception that it is a bad idea. Door closed.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

24
Apr 19
-

Can You Force Respect or Only Earn It?

Tags : earned forced leadership respect

Respect is a commonality. Respect is something that nearly everyone wants yet often there is struggle to attain. Can you force respect?

People will do things for many different reasons. Fear is a big driver for action. We may fear future embarrassment if we don’t act, we may fear being removed from the team, or we may fear that we will be fired.

Short Game, Long Game

Motivation through fear is probably not a good idea for the long game. It works in the short game, but typically fails in effectively building relationships.

When the boss says, “We need to ship all of these orders today or corporate is going to close our facility.” that is a statement of fear. Certainly, it may spring people into action, but in the long game, it breaks down loyalty and commitment.

The feeling often becomes, “The Company doesn’t care about me, so I don’t care about the Company.”

Motivation and respect are often closely connected. You can insist someone must do something, and perhaps they will. What about respect, can you force respect?

Force Respect

I may not respect a hot stove, until I touch it. Telling me to respect it is valuable, but until I live it there may be some doubt.

Some people will give respect freely. Their values and beliefs direct them to respect first and obtain the supporting evidence later. In other cases, people may expect you to earn it, it is never just given.

How should you navigate this in the workplace?

You can try to force respect. However, it is likely an illusion. Respect works best when it is earned. It is part of the long game. It is a relationship built across time.

Forcing anything is a short run game.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

19
Apr 19
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Training Cost And Other Expenses

Tags : cost culture leadership training turnover

Have you evaluated the training cost? Have you evaluated the cost of not training? What about the time commitment, is that stopping you?

There are plenty of excuses why organizations shy away from training. Some popular excuses relate to budget, time commitments, and occasionally someone will mention a lack of need.

Measure Costs

What are the true costs associated with a lost customer? What are the costs of poor decisions made by supervisors, managers, and other workplace leaders? Employee turnover, what does that cost?

I’ve been told, “When we have a choice to ship the product or sit in training. We’re always going to ship the product.”

It is a statement that is hard to work with, yet it is a mindset that is associated with higher costs of doing business.

Shipping the product today matters. Conceptually it matters more than training. I should say, “More than training today.” Shipping the product without training is a short run game. It works while it works, until it doesn’t.

Training Cost

Most organizations deepest interest is to grow. Increase revenue, share the mission objective, touch more people, change lives, impress investors, and build, grow, build, grow.

In most businesses or even the non-profit, the long game matters more. A three-person company can ship the product efficiently, a three-hundred-person company may be different.

The infrastructure costs could be a few million, or rent or lease, is multiple tens of thousands per month. Salary and benefits, they are likely the largest item on the income statement.

Marketing and advertising, they are often paid months in advance of the collection of the accounts receivable from a possible sale.

Will you do all of that without training? That is just on the surface, dig deeper and you’ll discover more. What will shape your culture?

Every dollar invested in training accounts for many more dollars you’ll save somewhere else.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

16
Apr 19
-

Language Matters Because It Builds Culture

Tags : belief communication culture language leadership

What is the language of your workplace? Is there optimism, excitement, and energy? Language matters because it sets the tone and shapes the environment for everything that happens next.

“Good Morning,” is different from, “Ugh, here we go again.”

“I’m ready, let’s go,” is different from, “I’m not awake yet.”

We never know exactly what each day will bring. Yet we have a choice to decide what we will bring to each day.

What are your contributions to culture?

Building Culture

Every workplace has a culture. Every organization, business, and group effort have language behind their energy.

What is the language of your workplace? It is energizing or creating fear? Does it inspire confidence or get hung up on doom and gloom?

We are people, people with personalities, emotions, and feelings. We leap forward with inspiration or make a choice about fighting or retreating during fear.

Today you will make a choice about what you see. You’ll look for the opportunity, or describe a problem that cannot be solved.

You will believe that what is unfolding is happening for you, or to you.

Most of that belief will develop from your language. Tell yourself either you can, or you can’t. You will be correct.

Language Matters

Belief is powerful. Our belief systems are often created from the language that surrounds us.

Your team and your organizational culture are built by this belief.

Suggest that there is nothing good about this day. Chances are you’ll have a hard time finding something. It is a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Think carefully about what you’ll say today. It will guide what happens next.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

15
Apr 19
-

Hiring Practice Is Shaped By Culture

Tags : authoritarian culture hiring practice leadership

“We can’t find people.” It is a statement I often hear. Closely followed by, “Nobody wants to work today.” Is this about your hiring practice, culture, or the workforce generations?

Likely the truth is, it is pieces of all three. Working on one of these, will make a difference for the other two. Culture.

By now you’ve probably thought about pay. Not so fast, we’ll get there.

Uplifted Veil

Culture is about mindset. A corporate set of values and beliefs that resonates throughout the organization.

Culture isn’t entirely about what is published. It isn’t entirely about the values statements, the mission statement, or the slogan that appears on a plastic disposable pen at the job fair.

Certainly, all those things have relevance and in-part create the experience for onlookers, but you won’t hide the truth for long.

The winner of the Boston Marathon didn’t just lose thirteen pounds on the latest diet shake or meal plan. They haven’t made statements that they are training yet meanwhile they are secretively are doing something different.

The organization may have the best branding video on the planet. When you lift the veil, what do you see?

Clever marketing creates attraction. As some would suggest, it works. Yet what is inside the box or under the cover will ultimately make the difference.

Hiring Practice

It is one of the hardest things to learn about organizational culture. Culture is not just about what you say or the powerful showcase. It is also about what you do and the associated outputs and results.

Human resources and talent management professionals can help a lot, and they often do. However, if the departmental supervisor believes that leading is about how you demonstrate authority, the uplifted veil is something different.

Yes, there are dirty jobs, mindless jobs, and jobs that are dead ends. Yes, there are perfect fits, and mismatches.

Everyone wants to know what is really under the veil.

When what is underneath is unattractive, only pay will make a difference.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

10
Apr 19
-

Organizational Success, Roof Repair, and the Mechanic

Tags : expert expertise leadership success

What is the connection to creating organizational success, making a roof repair, and a fixing a car? Likely not much, and there probably shouldn’t be since each require different types of expertise.

One of the biggest mistakes I often observe with small businesses (less than $35.5 million in annual revenue and 1,500 employees) is that they can’t get out of their own way.

Field of Experts

Theoretically, small businesses are led by experts in their field. Engineers lead engineering firms, attorneys lead law firms, and the landscaping business is owned and operated by those who are experts in landscaping.

This seems to make sense, it is practical, and likely an appropriate pathway for success.

What happens when the landscaper needs legal representation, or the widget manufacturer needs an advertising campaign? What if the convenience store needs a new roof or the local insurance agency needs car repair?

If you are the executive leader of an advertising agency, city mayor, or the director of a thriving non-profit humanitarian organization you are likely not also a computer engineer, tree trimmer, or carpenter.

Are you going to fix the bug in the software? Cut down the 85-year-old maple tree that is threatening the office, or build an additional room for your expansion?

Organizational Success

Creating organizational success comes from your expertise.

Just because you had a college class in psychology or business law, does not make you an expert.

Because you once participated in a strategic planning session you are not an expert at facilitating strategy.

Reading a book, watching a video, or attending a seminar to expand your knowledge on any topic is valuable. Becoming an expert requires hours and hours of pounding on your craft.

Organizational success develops from focus. Know your lane, leverage and outsource everything else.

As an organizational leader your job is not to do everything. It is to create the best of everything.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

08
Apr 19
0

Developing Middle Managers – PSU

Tags : certificate leadership management supervisor training

Developing Middle Managers

Learn key managerial competencies in planning, communication, decision making, and more in five full days of this highly interactive classroom experience complemented with online resources. Completion awards a Professional Certificate in Functional Management, 3.6 CEUs, and 35 SHRM PDCs.

Dennis Gilbert and Mary Kay Williams will be serving as faculty for the Penn State Smeal College of Business, Executive Programs.

This is a 5-day program starting on April 8, and concluding on April 12, 2019.

For additional information please contact Sue Greene:

Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
484 Business Building

University Park, PA 16801

Telephone: 814-865-6341

01
Apr 19
-

2 Paths for Getting Things Done

Tags : accountability choices culture leadership responsibility

How do we get things done in the workplace? Should we push people, push systems, and use authority? Are you getting things done?

Organizational culture is driving what happens in your workplace. Is the culture supportive, or is it us against them?

Which Path?

One thought is that the authoritarian approach guides what happens next, or else, nothing happens. Without authority, without pushing, without using people as a tool, nothing happens. People will do little or nothing, they’ll wait.

This is the concept of, “because I said so.” This should beg a question though. The question becomes, “Is that the culture of leadership?” Unlikely.

Another pathway suggests that potential exists in everyone. Everyone can and should contribute. Instead of thinking about tackling work or challenges with an iron fist, we instead consider that properly empowered people will figure it out together.

This path believes that everyone has talent. This is how skills are developed, talent is grown, and leaders are made.

How will leadership utilize this resource?

Getting Things Done

One path ignites ownership, creates buy-in, and establishes responsibility. It is a natural system for accountability. It is an opportunity to recognize the potential that is in everyone and it highlights the potential of the team.

This culture pulls employee teams into action. There really isn’t a reason for push. Compelled by determination and responsibility teams will achieve.

In this system empowerment is the driver. It is a good way to get things done.

The other path suggests you wait to get picked. Dominance is about authority. Judgment of people happens based on their history, not the possibility for the future. Do as I say, not as I do. You’re never paid to think.

Every culture has a choice. Every choice metaphorically mortars another brick in the culture.

Make good choices because it is not only how things will get done, it is also how things will get built.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Tag Archives: leadership

May 19

-

Trust Expectations

Trusted Resource

Apr 19

-

Observed Guidelines

Cultural Acceptance

Apr 19

-

Jump on The Box

Compelling Ideas

Apr 19

-

Short Game, Long Game

Force Respect

Apr 19

-

Measure Costs

Training Cost

Apr 19

-

Building Culture

Language Matters

Apr 19

-

Uplifted Veil

Hiring Practice

Apr 19

-

Field of Experts

Organizational Success

Apr 19

Apr 19

-

Which Path?

Getting Things Done

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