CHAPTER NINE
THE DISCIPLINE OF CARING ABOUT PEOPLE

“It doesn’t matter how much you know; all that really matters is how much you care.

—Anonymous

How much do you really care about the people who work for you? This question is central to determining your success as a leader and the success of your organization.

Here is a question for you: How much of people’s thinking and decision making is emotional, and how much is logical? The answer is that people are 100 percent emotional. They decide emotionally and then justify logically. To put it another way, the way your people feel about you, the company, your products and services, and themselves when they are at work, is the critical element in their performance, productivity, and output. The way they feel determines their levels of engagement and how involved, dedicated, committed, and creative they are. And this emotional factor is largely influenced by the manager and the way he or she treats people on a daily basis.

Your Greatest Resource

The greatest untapped resource in any organization, and the most expensive, is its people. It is within the skills and abilities of the average person where the greatest potential for growth, productivity, performance, achievement, and profitability lies.

In this chapter, you will learn one of the most important disciplines of management—to focus on the emotional component of your work and how to motivate others to peak performance. You will learn how to use some of the best ideas developed in the past 50 years to enable your people to feel terrific about themselves and to contribute their maximum to the organization.

All motivation is self-motivation. You cannot motivate people from the outside, but you can remove the obstacles that stop them from motivating themselves. As a manager, you can create an environment where this potential and motivation is released naturally and spontaneously.

Tap Into Your Human Resources

According to Robert Half and Associates, the average person works at about 50 percent of capability. The other 50 percent is largely wasted throughout the working day in idle conversation with coworkers, playing on the Internet, coming in late, leaving early, extended coffee breaks and lunches, and personal business.

One of the reasons for this time wastage, one of the greatest financial drains on any organization, is that people are not motivated and focused enough on their work and lack the urgency and direction to get their work done before they do anything else. They often do not feel that their boss or the company really cares about them as individuals. It is, however, a challenge that a good manager can resolve. Your job then is to tap into the unused 50 percent that the company is paying for and to channel that time and energy into producing more and better work.

The purpose of a business is to get the highest ROE (return on equity) from the amount of capital invested in the company. The goal of management is to get the highest ROE (return on energy) from the people who work there. Financial capital is calculated in dollars. Human capital consists of the mental, emotional, and physical energies of the individual. Your job as a manager is to maximize this human capital and focus it on achieving the most valuable and important results possible for the organization.

Remove the De-Motivators

The two major de-motivators in life and work are both factors that begin in early childhood and carry forward into adult life. They are often referred to as negative habit patterns or conditioned responses to stimuli.

Removing Fear of Failure

The first of these de-motivators is the fear of failure. It is the greatest single obstacle to success and achievement in adult life. Because of destructive criticism in childhood, the adult grows up afraid of making a mistake or failing at his or her work. This fear serves as a form of paralysis and holds people back from taking risks, volunteering for new responsibilities, or extending themselves in any way. Fear of failure holds people back from taking on new assignments and continually create reasons or excuses for nonperformance.

In the research on A Great Place to Work, which is updated each year, one of the key factors identified in high-performance organizations is simply called “trust.” They define trust as “the ability to make a mistake at work without being criticized or punished.”

Making People Feel Safe

A quality of high-performance organizations is that the people in them are willing to take risks and chances in order to move ahead and to move the company ahead. They are concerned about failing, but not afraid. They know that they can make mistakes and learn from them without the fear of losing their jobs.

W. Edwards Deming, the father of Total Quality Management, said that one of the 14 keys to building a high-performance organization was to “drive out fear.” In the absence of fear, people tend to perform and produce at a higher level than ever before.

Removing Fear of Rejection

The second major de-motivator is the fear of rejection. This fear arises in early childhood when parents practice “conditional love” on their children. They make their love and support conditional upon the child performing to some undetermined high standard. The child then grows up hypersensitive to the opinions, comments, and feedback of others, especially his or her boss in the workplace.

This fear of rejection is also a fear of criticism, condemnation, or censure; the fear of making a mistake and being dumped on for it. Excellent managers are those who practice “unconditional acceptance” with each person, causing them to feel safe and secure with their boss and in their work.

Many other reasons may lead to de-motivation and poor performance, but fears of failure and rejection are the two main fears that prevent individuals from extending themselves to do their best. Successful organizations and managers consciously and deliberately remove these barriers. They encourage creative effort even at the risk of failure or making mistakes. They make it clear that nobody gets rejected, dumped on, criticized, or threatened with retaliation if they make a mistake. The best managers create an environment where people feel free to be the best they can be.

Making People Feel Important

The first part of the word triumph is “try.” The great discovery is that the more people like themselves, value themselves, and consider themselves to be worthwhile human beings, the less they fear failure, the less they fear rejection, and the more willing they are to try new things. They are willing to move out of their “comfort zones” into their “discomfort zones.”

Management’s job is to encourage “try” in the form of experimentation, greater efforts, and occasional failure in the attempt to find ways to do the work faster, better, and cheaper.

Successful companies create an environment where people feel terrific about themselves. Understanding the role of the self-concept in behavior is the starting point of effectiveness in management and motivation.

The self-concept is the belief structure or value system of the individual. It is a composite of all of the beliefs, values, attitudes, and opinions of the individual, starting in early childhood and continuing to the present day. The self-concept is like the command center that sits at the core of personality and productivity. It is what governs individual performance, behavior, and output.

All changes or improvements in external performance and behavior begin with improvements in the self-concept; the way individuals see and feel about themselves and what they believe about themselves. To put it another way, all changes in the outer world of an individual begin with changes in the inner world.

The Three Parts of Personality

The self-concept is made up of three components: the self-ideal, the self-image, and the self-esteem. Let’s take each of these in order.

Support Positive Self-Ideals

The individual’s self-ideal is a summary picture of what the person aspires to be in life. It is made up of the goals, dreams, hopes, and ideals the person has and what is possible for him or her to become at some time in the future. Each person is consciously or unconsciously guided and motivated by an inner desire to be more and better at some time in the future.

In the world of work, the individual’s self-ideal is influenced by the corporate values, the role models represented by the senior people in the organization, and the corporate culture surrounding employees. When this environment is changed in a positive way, individual employees begin to perform at higher levels.

Build Positive Self-Images

The second part of the self-concept is the self-image. It is the way a person thinks he or she is viewed by others. Your self-image is greatly influenced by the way people treat you on a day-to-day basis. When people are treated as though they are valuable, important, and respected, they see themselves and think about themselves in a more positive way. As a result, they perform at higher levels and do better work.

The self-image is also affected by the way the individual sees him-or herself and thinks about him- or herself relative to what he or she is doing. Positive feedback on performance from the boss improves the individual’s self-image, and increases his or her ability and desire to perform at a higher level.

Build Self-Esteem in Your People

The third part, and the core of the self-concept, is the individual’s level of self-esteem. Self-esteem can be defined as “how much you like yourself.” The more people like and respect themselves on the inside, the better they perform on the outside. The more people like themselves, the bigger will be the goals that they set for themselves. The more they like themselves, the higher standards they will set for the quality of their work. The more they like themselves, the more they like other people, and the more they become excellent team players. The more they like themselves, the more they perform at higher levels in every area of life.

The key to creating a peak-performing organization is to create a high-self-esteem environment by removing the fears of failure and rejection that inhibit personal performance. The manager who creates a positive, high-self-esteem workplace will have higher performance, lower absenteeism, lower employee turnover, higher productivity, and fewer mistakes.

Focus on the Key Factor

The key factor in motivation and in peak performance is just one thing—the nexus or point of contact between the manager and the managed. It is the key determinant of the performance, productivity, output, and profitability of an organization. The point at which the manager and the managed connect, whether positive or negative, is where the performance of the individual and the organization is determined.

When this contact between the boss and the subordinate is positive, supportive, and encouraging of self-esteem and a positive self-image, then performance, productivity, and output of the individual will be the highest possible. If this point of contact between the manager and the managed is negative for any reason at all, performance and output will decline. A negative relationship with the boss will trigger fears of failure, rejection, and disapproval. If the boss is negative for any reason, people will play it safe and only do exactly what they need to do to avoid being fired.

The more effective you can become in eliciting peak performance from each of your staff members, the more and better people you will be given to manage for peak performance. The top managers and leaders of today are those who are capable of eliciting extraordinary performance from ordinary people.

Effective managers are intensely action-oriented. When they hear a good idea, they move quickly to implement the idea and put it into action. Therefore, if you read about anything you think can help you to motivate your staff to a higher level in this chapter, don’t delay. Practice it immediately, that very day. You will be amazed at the results.

Communicate Clear Expectations

Whenever you communicate clear expectations, you make it possible for people to win. Whenever you communicate vague or fuzzy expectations, you risk causing them to fail in doing the right job, or doing it well, and having them end up feeling like losers. The most common complaint in the world of work today is “not knowing what’s expected.” People need to know exactly what they are expected to do, and when, and to what level of quality.

“You cannot hit a target that you cannot see.” In order for your people to feel like winners they need clear goals. The clearer the goals are, the easier it is for people to achieve them. The more goals they achieve, the more they feel like winners. And the more they feel like winners, the more their self-esteem goes up.

Inspect what you expect. Monitor, check, and control. Once you’ve given a person a job, and you have been clear and specific, set performance standards and a deadline, and then, stay on top of the job.

Practice Participative Management

Participative management is a powerful tool to build involvement, commitment, loyalty, and ownership of the task. You have to believe that people need to be involved and are entitled to participate in determining the work they do, the standards that are set, and how they accomplish things. We have found over and over that the most effective work teams, especially with generations X and Y, are democratic, where the boss and the employees work together to in participate and discuss what needs to be done. They discuss and divide up the tasks and assign them, and then monitor and set timelines for review.

The manager should act as a coach or partner in the work. At your participative management meetings you hand out assignments, discuss work in progress, and each person hears what the others are doing. The employee’s commitment to quality work is in direct proportion to their involvement in setting goals and standards. The quality of their work is going to determine your success as a manager. Quality work can never be produced without some kind of emotional commitment. Emotion and quality work are only achieved through involvement.

The Four Factors of Motivation

Motivation can be discussed in terms of four factors and three Rs. In the way you manage these factors, you show your people that you care about them. A change in any area can lead to major improvements in how people feel, and in how they perform in their jobs.

• Motivational Factor #1: Leadership style. This factor determines how motivated people are to perform as parts of the team. Sometimes just changing the leader changes the whole performance of the organization.

• Motivational Factor #2: Reward structure of the organization. In other words, what are the incentives for excellent performance? How are people paid, and what are they paid for?

• Motivational Factor #3: Organizational climate. Is it a happy place to work or is it a negative place to work? Is it performance-oriented place or a politically oriented place?

• Motivational Factor #4: Structure of the work. Some work is inherently motivational. Other work is boring or not motivating at all. This factor has a major influence on how people feel about their jobs. Good organizations are always trying to structure the work so as to match the nature of the work with the nature of the employee, to make it challenging, interesting, and personally rewarding.

Change the Leadership Style

The reward structure, the organizational climate, and the nature of the work can be changed slowly over time, but leadership style is the thing that can be changed the fastest. If you change your leadership style from negative to positive, you suddenly become a multiplying factor at work. That’s why so many organizations in trouble bring in a Lee Iacocca or a Michael Eisner or another highly motivational leader. This person becomes a motivational force, affecting performance, even leaving the other three factors unchanged.

The Three Rs of Motivation

The three Rs of motivation are rewards, recognition, and reinforcement. Rewards can be both tangible and intangible. But they must be based solely on performance. The only way for a reward structure to work in motivating people to help the company to be more successful is when it is directly tied to the goals of the business. Doing a good job and making a valuable contribution is the only thing that should be rewarded. The fact is that what gets rewarded gets done. If you want to see what is getting done in an organization, just look at what’s getting rewarded. When you change the structure of rewards, you immediately change behavior.

Recognition for a job well done is something that managers owe to their people. Whenever a person does something that is exceptional or even makes a good try, give them both private and public recognition. Celebrate achievement; large and small successes.

The third R in motivation is reinforcement. It takes place when you continually comment on, praise, and encourage good work and good behavior. What we know from behavioral psychology is that what gets reinforced gets repeated. Every time you give praise, privately and publicly, for any behavior, you are probably going to get more of it.

Successful organizations create environments where the only way you can get ahead is by contributing in specific ways to the success of the business.

Management by Values

The deepest of all human needs, right at the core of the self-concept, is the need for meaning and purpose. Explain how the work benefits others, especially customers, and how it contributes to their lives and work. Purpose serves as a powerful motivator. Values elicit emotional responses and deeper commitments from people.

Values such as quality, friendliness, service, respect for the individual, building self-esteem, and training and growing people are what trigger, motivate, and inspire people. But don’t assume that people know what your values are. It is important that you as the manager continually reinforce your values in action. When someone is having a problem, the way you work with that person demonstrates your values. When you deal with a difficult customer, you demonstrate your true beliefs regarding customer service. When you deal with someone who is unfair or demanding, you demonstrate the values of the organization.

The Fortunate 500

Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book together called The Fortunate 500. They looked at the top 20 percent of companies in each industry, those companies that had consistently achieved higher levels of profitability over multiyear periods than those in the bottom 80 percent in the same industry.

One of the distinctions they found among these companies was that all the companies had values of some kind. The difference was that the top 20 percent of the companies had written values that were clearly formulated and which everyone in the company knew and lived by consistently. The companies in the bottom 80 percent might have had values, but few employees knew what they were, and few were able to articulate how to live or work by those values in the daily activities of the business.

When someone joins a high-quality organization, one that is known for its values and its commitment to quality, the new person often begins to take on the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the new organization and to become a better and higher-performing person as a result. When a person is surrounded by winners in a corporate climate that encourages and rewards winning, he or she tends to become a high performer as well.

The Manager as Teacher

One of the most important roles that a manager has is to teach and train the people under him or her in ways to do the job better. Never make the mistake of thinking that people already know how to do their job well. If they did, they would probably not be working under you.

Taking time to teach causes people to feel valuable, and their self-esteem to go up. It makes them feel valuable and important. Take time to instruct, answer questions, and to give feedback. One of your most important responsibilities is to teach and “grow” the next generation of managers. You multiply yourself by teaching others how to do the tasks that you have already mastered.

Create a Positive Work Environment

Thousands of employees have been polled over the years to determine what they find most important and enjoyable about their work. Over and over, the same six ingredients are mentioned.

1. Challenge. The more challenges people experience, the more engaged they will be and the more positive they will feel about themselves. When the job is challenging, people are busy and active all day, working harder and enjoying it more.

2. Freedom. The more freedom people feel they have to get the job done on their own schedule and in their own way, the better they feel about themselves and their work.

3. Control. This factor is characterized by remaining interested and involved in the job of the subordinate. You consistently check to see how everything is going. You set regular times for review and feedback. The more sincere feedback people get on their work, the more they feel that you care about them and what they are doing.

4. Respect. The more you respect the employee, by asking questions, listening, and taking action on his or her ideas, the more valued and important the employee feels.

5. Success experiences. Give people jobs that they can perform successfully at their levels of experience and skill. The more opportunities they have to actually succeed by being given jobs that are within their capabilities, the more they feel like winners and the higher will be their self-esteem and self-confidence.

6. Positive expectations. Nothing boosts self-esteem and improves performance more than when individuals feel that a boss believes they have the capacity to do the job well.

Continuous Training and Education

An essential key to motivating your staff and showing them that you care about them and their future is to train them to become more valuable and important to both the company and to themselves. The more you invest in them, the happier they will be, the better work they will do, the more they will cooperate with each other, the more creative they will become, and the more positive a work environment you will have surrounding you.

Earl Nightingale once wrote that, “Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy goal, or ideal.” Whenever people feel that they are growing personally, becoming better and better, moving toward becoming the best person they could possibly be, they experience a continuous feeling of happiness and motivation. Nothing generates this feeling on a more consistent basis than your dedication to the continuous training, education, and development of your people. Continuous learning is the key to high performance, motivation, enthusiasm, and commitment.

The Right Question

Some managers question the idea of training their staff by asking, “What if we train them, and they leave?” But this question is not the right question. The right question is, “What if you don’t train them, and they stay?”

Companies like IBM, Xerox in its heyday, and AT&T, are passionate about training their people on a regular basis. An employee at IBM, after several months of training prior to beginning work, was required to take 40 to 80 additional hours of training each year. It was a minimum requirement for continued employment. Such companies take training very seriously.

The best companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year training their people because they know that proper training has an incredibly high payoff. According to Human Resources Executive magazine, properly training people in the key skills of their jobs can yield 10, 20, and even 30 times the cost of the training to the bottom line in subsequent years. For every dollar that a company spends in training, they get back incredible returns on that investment.

People as the Greatest Cost

Aside from cost of goods sold, the average company’s operating expenses are between 65 percent and 85 percent payroll and benefits, and only 15 percent everything else, including rent and utilities. Even including manufacturing costs, the average company spends 65 percent of its gross revenues on salaries, wages, and associated costs.

According to a study conducted by the American Society for Training and Development, average companies spend about 1 percent or less of their gross revenues on training the people who are expected to generate those revenues. According to that same study, the top 20 percent of companies in profitability in every industry spend 3 percent or more of their gross sales revenue on training their people. Some companies, those that spend as much as 5 and 10 percent of their gross sales revenues on training, consistently achieve the highest growth rates and the highest levels of profitability in their industries.

Dana Corporation, in a highly competitive market, was famous for devoting one day per week to training its people in the essential skills they needed to perform their work in an excellent fashion. As a result, they consistently outperformed and outsold their competition who worked their people five days a week and had little or no time for training.

Training and Motivation

Numerous studies have shown evidence of a direct relationship between continuous training and development, and the feeling of personal growth and increased self-esteem that people experience. Whenever an individual takes in new information and feels that more of his or her potential is being released, that individual’s self-esteem goes up, and self-image improves. These individuals feel happier and more positive about themselves.

One of the jobs of management should be to develop a training plan for each staff member. Sit with the individuals and determine the skills that they will need, in addition to their existing skills, to make an increasingly more valuable contribution to the business. In a large company, you can arrange for training internally. For smaller companies, thousands of excellent training organizations are available to come in and conduct specialized training customized for your people and your business. Sometimes, one training program can completely transform the performance of an entire department or even an entire organization.

Continuous personal and professional growth is the most dependable motivator of people toward greater levels of competence and higher levels of performance. Training your people is absolutely essential to creating a winning corporate climate.

Training and Competitive Advantage

A senior executive said recently, “The only competitive advantage we have is the ability to learn and apply new ideas faster than our competitors.” Just as a top sports team has a rigorous and continuous training program in place, a top company must do the same. The rule is that “your life only gets better when you get better.”

By the same token, people only get better when the manager gets better. The company only gets better when staff get better. And as Pat Reilly, the basketball coach wrote, “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.” Because of the incredible speed of change and competition in every industry today, if your people and your company are not constantly improving, getting better and better, they are actually falling further and further behind those companies who are training their people to ever higher levels.

W. Edwards Deming, the quality guru said, “Training is not mandatory; neither is survival.” Continuous training and development is not a choice. It is not really optional. It is a mandatory behavior for survival in the markets of today and tomorrow.

Mentoring and Motivation

Nobody does it alone. Each person who is successful today is successful as a result of the ideas, input, wisdom, and guidance of people they have met throughout their careers. Sometimes this mentoring is direct, one-on-one, in private sessions aimed at helping the individual to identify areas for improvement and to implement new ideas and skills in that area.

Sometimes mentoring is indirect. It comes from working with a senior person possessed of greater wisdom and experience and learning from that person by observing how he or she does a job and handles responsibilities. The best mentor I ever had personally was a senior executive who never mentored me directly at all. Instead, he let me sit in on meetings where important issues were discussed and important decisions were made. The things I learned from watching him in action still affect me today.

Take an Active Interest

One of the most powerful motivational factors in the world of work is for you to take an active interest in the careers of the people who report to you. Because you are busy, you probably do not have enough time to sit and chat with junior employees for long periods. Instead, you can be a mentor in short bursts of a few minutes or so by taking the time to give a little guidance and point them in the right direction. Individual attention from a senior person is a major motivator of personal growth and performance.

If you are serious about becoming a mentor, take the time to pick one or two people in your company and then offer to become a guide, friend, coach, and counselor to them. These individuals might be people under you or near you, or even in other departments. One of your key functions as a senior manager is to bring along young, talented, and ambitious people and to help them and guide their careers.

The wonderful thing about mentoring is that attention from a senior person whom the individual respects builds their self-esteem and self-confidence. These mentored individuals feel more important and valuable. They grow more dedicated and committed to the work and to the company.

Paying Attention Is Paying Value

According to a basic rule, whenever we pay attention to someone, we are also paying value to that person. When we pay attention, it raises another’s self-esteem and it makes that person feel more important. When you pay this kind of value to junior members of your staff by taking an active interest in their lives and futures, they become more loyal and committed to you, and do a better job. Many successful executives today report that it was the effect or impact of another executive who took an interest in their progress that made all the difference in their lives and careers. It can be the same for you.

One of the greatest tributes to your success as a manager will be the number of people who say that you are the person who made them what they are today. Many senior managers find that they get their greatest satisfaction in life from following the progress of the people they have mentored over the years.

Key Considerations in Mentoring

Mentoring, however, is not as simple as selecting junior people and giving them regular advice to help them in their careers. The first consideration is always that of compatibility or chemistry. For a mentor-mentee relationship to work, the two must be relaxed and comfortable with each other.

I have sought out mentors in the past, and at the first meeting, realized it was not a good fit. The other person and I did not get along in a comfortable, relaxed fashion. It was soon clear to both of us that we were not headed toward a good mentor-mentee relationship.

People have approached me to be their mentor in the past as well. In some cases, I have been a mentor to those people for months and even years. In other cases, after the first meeting, the lack of rapport between us was clear, and the mentor relationship never got off the ground.

Take Your Time

If you are seeking a mentor-mentee relationship with a person above you, start with a cup of coffee and explain to the person that you would much appreciate their occasional input and guidance in your career. If they are open to this relationship and the two of you are compatible, be sure that you do not overwhelm the other person with time demands. Keep your mentoring sessions to approximately 10 minutes.

When you meet with your mentor, have a list of questions, concerns, or observations that you would like to discuss. Be sure that you have a copy for your mentor. When your mentor gives you recommendations of books to read or courses to take, be sure to take action on those recommendations immediately. Report back to your mentor what you did and what you learned. This behavior will reinforce to your mentor that spending time with you is a good investment in the future.

Instruct Your Mentee

When you become a mentor, explain these general rules and guidelines for effective mentoring to the other person. Have them come to you with a written list of questions or concerns. Schedule your meetings in 10-minute blocks, or longer if you have the time. Have a specific starting and stopping time. Be punctual for the meeting, and end the meeting at the time agreed.

Parkinson’s Law says that “Work expands to fill the time allotted for it.” If you allocate 10 or 15 minutes to a mentoring session, and the mentee is aware of that, you will be happily surprised at how quickly you get through all the items on the list in that short period of time.

Both being a mentor and being a mentee can be greatly enriching experiences in your life. As you mentor junior staff, you can often have an influence on them that will last for many years, if not their entire lifetimes.

Leading by Example

One of the most important responsibilities of management is to lead by example and to be a role model for your staff. In this way, you help them shape their personal self-ideals by being the kind of person that they admire and respect. Leading by example is an absolute requirement in management and a prerequisite for leadership. The level of character and performance among people in the workplace can never be higher or better than the behaviors, standards, and integrity of the management, including yourself.

You do not raise moral levels in an organization. Morals filter down from the top. They are based on the character and personality of the leader or manager. The words and actions of the manager set the tone of the entire department whether positive or negative, productive or unproductive.

The Great Question

One of the great questions for you to ask is: “What kind of company would my company be if everyone in it was just like me?” In business, staff generally treat customers the way they are treated by their managers. Whenever you experience excellent customer service, you know that the manager behind the scenes takes good care of his or her people. Whenever you experience poor customer service, you know these people report to a poor or negative manager. Because they cannot pay their manager back for the negative way they are being treated, they simply take it out on the customers. You see this behavior often.

The key is for you to adopt a warm, friendly, and supportive personality with your people. You create a positive corporate climate by being a positive, cheerful, and confident person yourself. Emotions are contagious. At work, the boss and everything he or she does have an inordinate influence on the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors of the staff. A positive or encouraging word from the boss can make a person feel happy and more productive all day long. On the other hand, a negative comment or a frown from the boss can cause a person to feel anxious, insecure, and generally less productive for the rest of the day. The things that you do and say as a manager have an inordinate impact on other people.

Everyone Is Watching

Everybody watches the boss, all the time. They watch you out of the corners of their eye. Whatever you say to anyone is quickly relayed to everyone else. And everyone knows everything. There are no secrets in a business or an organization. If you make a positive or negative comment about someone, even casually, it will speed back to that person faster than you can imagine, and usually distorted from what you actually said.

One of the best ways to lead by example is to always be positive. Always speak in a positive and uplifting way about each staff member when you are talking to other staff members. Whenever you compliment workers outside of their earshot, that comment will get back to them quite quickly and have the desired effect of raising their self-esteem and improving their self-image.

In meetings, you are on display. Everyone is watching you. They are watching and aware of everything you do or say, and even the things that you neglect to do or say.

The Testing Time

The most important time for you to set an example is when things go wrong, when you are under pressure, when a major problem, reversal, or setback occurs in the organization. This “testing time” is when and where you need to demonstrate the real quality of your character. These moments are when you show everyone who you really are inside.

In 2010, I was diagnosed with throat cancer. For someone who has built a 20-person business around professional speaking, seminars, and audio/video recordings, the discovery that I had throat cancer was a real shock. At the same time, I realized all of my staff would be affected by my diagnosis. Because people think about their incomes continually, they would especially wonder whether their jobs were safe and secure. Fortunately, I had excellent doctors, and the cancer was one that was eminently treatable. My doctors had caught it at stage 1, and although it required chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation to deal with it, I was not in any danger of losing my life.

As soon as I understood the gravity, or lack of gravity of my situation, I made it a regular habit to go into my office and talk to each person on a weekly basis. I remained continually positive, upbeat, and cheerful. I told them what was going on, my course of treatment, what was likely to happen, when I would lose my voice and for how long, and every other detail. As a result, although staff members were worried, they continued to be positive and to carry on the business of the company as though everything was quite normal.

An Opportunity to Demonstrate Character

Whenever you have a problem or a crisis in your business, remember that everyone is watching you. In such a situation, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your qualities and character as a leader. Your job is not to react to negative situations, but to respond calmly and effectively, and to keep everybody focused on solutions and on doing a good job.

As the leader, if you want other people to be effective, efficient, and punctual, you must also be effective, efficient, and punctual. Manage your time well. Set clear priorities, work on your most important tasks, and demonstrate diligence and industriousness at your work for all to see. You cannot expect other people to perform at any higher level than you perform on a day-to-day basis.

As the manager, be courageous and decisive. Be willing to take principled positions, stand up for your staff, make firm decisions, and be able to explain the reasons for the things you do. Just imagine that every day and in every way your staff are watching you and forming their own behaviors by observing the way you act. Set a good example for them so that if they all behave the way you do, your company would be a terrific place to work.

Listen to Your Staff

Leaders are listeners. Leaders listen twice as much as they talk. The best leaders have a high question-to-talk ratio. They ask a lot of questions of their staff and give them an opportunity to express themselves openly and honestly on a regular basis.

You can tell the quality of the relationship between the manager and the employee by how freely the employee feels in expressing his or her ideas and opinions to the manager without fear of being criticized or ignored. The employee trusts that his or her comments will be heard.

In the annual studies of www.agreatplacetowork.com, one of the most important characteristics of the best companies is that they have high levels of trust. Trust is defined as “I can speak my opinions freely to my manager without fear of being criticized or losing my job.”

Listening Is Powerful

Listening has been called “white magic” because of its almost magical effect on building up people and making them feel terrific about themselves. When you listen to another person, you “pay value” to that other person and make them feel more important and worthwhile.

The average manager spends 60 percent or more of his or her time in meetings and conversation with staff members and superiors. The more and the better you listen, the more aware you will be of what is going on. The faster you will sense problems or difficulties that you can help to resolve. The more you listen, the more relaxed and confident will be your people in your presence.

Four Keys to Effective Listening

First: Listen Attentively

Lean forward and listen closely to what the other person is saying. Put aside all distractions. Turn off your computer and mute your telephone. When you sit and talk with a staff member, treat that person as if they are the most important person in the world.

Dale Carnegie once said, “Rapt attention is the highest form of flattery.” When you listen intently to another person, it affects them physically. Their heart rate increases. Their galvanic skin response goes up. Their blood pressure increases. When you listen intently to another person, making them feel more valuable and important, their self-esteem and self-confidence go up as well.

Rapt attention means leaning forward, looking at the person’s face intently, and flicking your eyes occasionally to their eyes. Nodding and smiling are also parts of being an active listener. Let others know that what they are saying is important to you and that you are paying close attention to it.

Most of all, do not interrupt or even attempt to interrupt. Most people are so concerned with their next comment that they barely listen to the other. They merely wait for an opportunity to jump in when the other person takes a breath.

Second: Pause Before Replying

When the other person stops talking, instead of immediately commenting, allow a silence to develop in the conversation. It need not be more than three to five seconds, but a brief silence gives you three advantages:

1. When you pause, you tell the other person that you are carefully considering what they’ve said, which makes them feel more valuable and respected.

2. When you pause, you avoid the risk of interrupting the other person if they are just reorganizing their thoughts before continuing.

3. When you pause, you actually hear the other person’s meaning at a deeper level of mind. Remember, it is not only what the person says, but what they don’t say that is essential to the message they are conveying.

The best listeners practice the “art of the pause” in every conversation. It gives them a tremendous advantage in both understanding and in being understood.

Third: Question for Clarification

Never assume what the person really means by what they are saying. Instead, if you sense any ambiguity, simply ask, “How do you mean?” This question is the most powerful of all questions for guiding and directing a conversation.

People are conditioned from early childhood to respond whenever they are asked a question. When you ask the question “How do you mean?” the individual will almost invariably answer by expanding on his or her previous comments, giving you more material to enable you to understand clearly what he or she really means.

Remember, the person who asks questions has control. The person answering the questions is controlled by the person who is asking the questions. The more questions you ask, the more control you have over the conversation in a positive way. The more you ask questions, the more you learn and understand. Having more information enables you to make better decisions and to be a better manager.

Fourth: Paraphrase the Speaker’s Words

Feed back what the person has just said, and paraphrase it in your own words. This “acid test” of listening is where you demonstrate that you really were listening closely to what the other person was saying, rather than smiling politely while being preoccupied with your own thoughts.

You can say something such as, “Let me make sure I understand exactly where you’re coming from …” and then go on to rephrase what the other person has just said. When the other person agrees that, yes, you really understand what he or she trying to say, you can then reply with your own comments or observations.

Ask Questions

Asking questions is the key to leadership and to good communications. When you ask questions, you get a chance to listen to the answers. And listening builds trust.

Trust between two people is the foundation of peak performance. Even more important, listening builds character. The more you listen to other people and genuinely try to understand and empathize with them, the more you develop yourself. This development comes out of the tremendous discipline that is required to listen attentively without interrupting. Practice listening patiently in an unhurried and relaxed way. Listen as if you have all the time in the world. Remember that some people need more time to get to the point than others.

Listening also enables you to get a real understanding of what your people are thinking and feeling. When people feel that they can speak openly and honestly to their boss, and their boss focuses his or her entire attention on attempting to understand what they are saying, the boss is conveying value to those employees, expressing care about them, and saying he or she considers them to be important. Listening to other people is a powerful motivational tool that not only builds them up, but it also builds you up, and makes you a better and better-informed manager.

Practice the Friendship Factor

When employees were asked in a recent survey the characteristics of the best bosses they had ever had, they almost universally replied by saying, “I always felt as though the boss cared about me as a person, rather than just as a member of the staff.”

The friendship factor is the most important relationship quality that leads to and enables people to perform at their very best. Establishing high levels of friendship among the staff and between the staff and the manager is the key to success in business today. The quality of the interaction between the employer and employees is the vital determinant of motivation and performance in any organization.

The existence or nonexistence of the friendship factor is what will determine how helpful your staff will be, and how cooperative they are when it comes to working together with you and the other team members to get the job done. In a larger sense, it is safe to say that your success in business is going to be proportional to the number and quality of business friendships that you develop throughout your career. It is not just the number of people you know, but the number of people who know you in a positive way. The more that people know you and like you, the more open they will be to voluntarily helping you in your life and work.

The existence of the friendship factor has a huge impact on whether your employees will perform at a higher level or quality, achieve excellence, and feel terrific about themselves when working with you.

Practice Clarity and Consideration

Excellent managers seem to have a balance of two important qualities—clarity and consideration. They express caring, concern, and compassion with their employees, treating them like members of their corporate family, and making them feel happy and secure in their work. At the same time, they are absolutely crystal clear with regard to tasks, outputs, and the responsibilities of each person. Each person knows exactly what is expected of him or her to do their job well.

The friendship factor is developed with the three Cs: consideration, caring, and courtesy. These behaviors toward the people who report to them are the norm for excellent managers. You practice consideration with your staff when you ask them about themselves, and especially about their families and their personal lives. When you show an interest in what they are doing outside of work, you tell them better than any other way that you value them as individuals who have lives that are separate and apart from the work place. When you ask people about their personal lives, and listen attentively to the answers, they feel more valuable and important, and as a result they like and respect you even more.

Care About Your Staff

You express caring about your staff members when they tell you of a problem and you immediately stop and make an effort to help them to solve the problem in some way. For example, with my staff, I always tell them that, “Children come first.” By this comment, I mean that if ever their child has a need or problem of any kind while they are at work, they can leave immediately to take care of their child without any deduction of pay or requirement to make up the time. For young mothers, it is one of the very best ways to show that you really care for them and the most important parts of their lives.

When you ask them questions about their family and their personal life, listen attentively, and express sympathy for the challenges they face, you demonstrate that you genuinely care. You also show caring and consideration by being appreciative and complimenting them on their possessions, clothes, and their personal achievements.

Practice Golden Rule Management

You express courtesy toward your staff when you show personal regard and respect for each person. When you maintain a courteous demeanor, especially under stress when a situation goes wrong or when an employee has a problem, you increase your people’s feelings of security and comfort in the workplace. When you are courteous to people, it leads to improved morale and higher motivation.

The key to the friendship factor is for you to practice what is called “Golden Rule Management.” Treat other people the way you would like to be treated by your superiors. Treat your staff like partners and clients and as essential, valued parts of the enterprise.

When Jack Welch was president of General Electric, he encouraged all managers to treat their staff as though their staff members would be managers over them the following year. Because of the dynamic structure of General Electric and the rapid promotion of highly competent people, it was not uncommon for a person to find themselves working under a person who had been under them not long ago. This potential change of positions caused everyone in General Electric to treat each other exactly as they would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.

The Best Time of Your Work Life

The best time of your work life is when are getting along the best with your boss. The worst time in your work life is when you are having difficulties or problems with your boss. Your job as a manager is to make sure that you are getting along well with everyone and that they are all getting along well with you.

It is quite easy for you to practice the Golden Rule in your behavior toward your staff. You can simply ask yourself, “What causes me to feel the best about myself when I am at work? Who are the best bosses I have ever had, and what did they do or say to me that made me feel happy about my work?” Whatever your answers to these questions, use them as guides to the way you treat your own staff.

What makes you happy, excited, enthusiastic, and fulfilled at work? How can you create this same positive feeling among the people who report to you? What is the ideal relationship that you would like to have with your co-workers? Do and say the same things to other people that you would want them to do and say to you, if the positions were reversed.

The more time you take to tell and show your people that they are valuable and important, and that you care about them, the better manager you will be and the better results you will get.

Action Exercises

1. Identify your most valuable people, the ones on whom you depend the most. What could you do right now to show them that your care about them?

2. Treat your staff each day as if you would be working under them one year from today. What would you do differently?

3. Practice the three Rs of motivation each day—rewards, recognition, and reinforcement. Tell people on a regular basis how good they are.

4. Show your staff that you care about them by asking them questions about their personal and family lives, and by taking a genuine interest in them.

5. Practice active listening with your staff when they want to talk. Pay attention, don’t interrupt, and ask questions for clarification.

6. Select one or two of your high-potential staff members and look for ways to mentor and guide them to be more successful.

7. Identify key skills that your staff members could learn that would make them more valuable to the company and to themselves. Help and encourage them to acquire these skills.