Last night a bunch of us attended the touring version of the Broadway musical “Les Miserables” at the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts here in Jacksonville. We planned an early dinner before the show at an Irish pub near the theater. Nothing like a plateful of Irish fish and chips before watching a French story of love and revolution, produced by a British billionaire.

Because I chose to stay in the office a little longer than I should have, and also because I made a few wrong turns in downtown Jacksonville amid lots of road construction detours, we ended up at the pub a good bit later than my original plan had envisioned. It was pretty clear that, in order to eat, AND make it to the show before curtain time, we were going to have to, at the very least, violate a number of those rules about chewing slowly and savoring every bite.

Because it enjoys a good reputation, the joint was jumping. So I was particularly relieved that they were able to seat us as soon as we arrived. A moment after we’d all sat down, someone in our party said “We need to tell this waitress we’re in a hurry so she’ll get a move on. Otherwise we’ll be here all night.”

Someone else at the table piped up and said, “If it’s all right, why don’t you let me tell her that? I think I’ll be able to get her to move pretty quickly.”

A few minutes later, the waitress arrived, greeted us exuberantly, and then asked the usual, “Can I get everyone started with something to drink?”

My friend said to the server, in a kind and friendly manner, “We would like to have a long, slow, relaxed dinner tonight,” to which the waitress replied, “Okay…”

And then he continued, “However, we haven’t left enough time for that tonight; we’ll come back another night for a more relaxed dinner. But tonight, if you could help us out by getting rid of us by 7:15, we’d be very appreciative.”

“Gotcha,” she said, with a wink. “Let me go ahead and take your order for everything right now, and then I’ll bring the check as soon as you’ve got your food.” She then kicked it into high gear. We got good service, fast. More efficient than gracious, which is exactly what we needed. We were comfortably seated in the theater a good ten minutes before the orchestra conductor’s first downbeat.

By claiming responsibility for our tardiness, and its consequences, my friend had taken every hint of blame off the very person in whose hands rested the power to get us fed and on our way in time. The waitress was engaged in a challenge to “help us out”, not challenged to “get a move on”, as if she’d been shuffling along before that. As a result, she went above and beyond – out of her way – the extra mile – to give us what we needed. Or, consistent with the theme of Contented Cows MOOVE Faster, she gave us the benefit of her Discretionary Effort.

Most of our employees know we’re not perfect. We demonstrate that to them on a regular basis. And most are happy to help us out. What they’re not willing to do is to be held responsible when we’ve screwed up.

So, if that should happen, and it will:

• Apologize, quickly, and without excuses and weasel words.
• Clean up your own mess
• If need be, ask for their help. Then recognize it as help. Not an obligation.
• Thank them when they come through for you. In our case, last night, we enjoyed our fish and chips, and left a whopper of a tip.

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by virtue of a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. He and Bill Catlette are the authors of the popular “Contented Cows” leadership book series, and Rebooting Leadership. Their newest book, Contented Cows STILL Give Better Milk, is due to be released by John Wiley & Sons on July 3, but is available for pre-sale now. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

School shootings have, tragically, become an all-too-common part of the world in which we now find ourselves, for reasons that are too complex to speculate on here. Yesterday’s killing of Dale Regan, the Headmistress of the Episcopal School of Jacksonville, from which both of my children graduated in recent years, is only the latest to hit the news. I wish I could be confident that it would be the last.

Dale was a precious woman whose influence on my kids, and thousands of others, can never be taken away. Nevertheless, the loss to her family and friends, the school, and our community is immeasurable, and impossible to understand.

In reality, this was not so much a school shooting as it was a workplace shooting. Shane Schumerth, a teacher whose employment had been terminated on Monday, March 5, returned to the campus the following day, with an AK47 assault rifle concealed in a guitar case, entered Ms. Regan’s office, shot her to death, and then killed himself. That’s about all I know. Anything more would be speculation.

My purpose is not to point the finger of blame at anyone. My considerable experience as a parent at this school for more than ten years told me that the school’s leadership handled everything with an abundance of caution, with wisdom, and with the utmost care for its students, faculty, and staff. I don’t know the circumstances around Schumerth’s hiring, or what led to his firing.

Seeking to salvage something useful from the tragedy and loss here, it occurs to me that it would be a good idea for employers everywhere to take time, now, to review how they hire people, and how they fire them, should the need arise. Some thoughts:

• Unfortunately, our overly litigious society has made it more difficult to learn salient issues regarding a job candidate’s previous employment. But it’s not impossible. Do what you can, within the law, to find out what you need to know about those you plan to hire. Especially if their employment puts them in contact with children. I don’t know, in this case, that more information about the killer’s background could have prevented his being hired. It certainly would in some cases.
• We should respond, but not overreact to tragic events like this, with respect to security. I suspect that the Episcopal School of Jacksonville will become a less accessible place than it has been. That’s a necessary casualty of what happened. I hope the school will exercise wisdom, judgment, reason, and balance with this, and I expect that they will.
• If you’re a manager with a good reason to end someone’s employment, do NOT let the fear of reprisal deter you from doing what needs to be done. However…
• Review your existing procedure for terminating people’s employment. Do you even have one? Getting fired is one of the top 2 or 3 most traumatic events many people will ever experience. Most will respond like healthy minded adults. But not everyone. Schumerth did not.
• Be thoughtful about how, when, and where you deliver the news. Ensure that you have effective security measures in place. Think through the possibilities, even the unthinkable ones. Especially the unthinkable ones.  Maintain a heightened sense of awareness for a reasonable period after the event.
• The Society for Human Resource Management has an excellent, instructive article on the subject, that is, unfortunately available only to SHRM members, at http://bit.ly/Abg6hM. If you’re a member, click and read it. If not, search your available resources for information and guidance on how to prepare against violence at the workplace, especially in termination situations.

And finally, don’t let the day end without hugging someone you’re on hugging terms with. It is no revelation when I state that none of us has a guarantee on even the next minute. Although I wasn’t thinking about this at the time, I’m awfully glad that the last time I saw Dale Regan, we hugged.

Dale Regan

Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette are the authors of several books on leadership and the workplace. Their newest book, Contented Cows STILL Give Better Milk, will be published by John Wiley & Sons in June of 2012.  Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

This weekend I was honored to have sung at the funeral of a man in our church. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him, and what I always saw was an upbeat, friendly, kind, and warm guy, whose interest always seemed projected outward – toward others – not inward. I was surprised to learn he was in his 80′s. I would have thought much younger.

What was not a surprise was a story the minister told about Lloyd, to the large congregation assembled to celebrate and honor his long life. During Lloyd’s last hospital stay, the minister was visiting him one morning when a middle-aged male nurse popped his head into the room and asked, almost without waiting to hear a reply, if Lloyd needed anything.

“Yes,” said Lloyd, “I do. I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?” Not really, but he’d make time. Lloyd, whose cancer was draining the life from him, told the nurse, through a genuine smile, that he had chosen to return to this particular hospital for his continued treatments primarily because of the outstanding nursing care he had received on earlier visits. This nurse, however, Lloyd was sorry to say, had not lived up to his high expectations. “You’re inattentive and brusque, and too rough. I’m an old man, in lots of pain, and you sometimes handle me like I’m a football player in here for knee surgery.

“Often, you’ve forgotten to do things you said you’d do. And I have to tell you that last night, you were talking loudly, all night, at your station right outside my room, and it kept me awake.”

Lloyd, an electrical engineer with an MBA, had served in senior leadership roles in the Bell System. He told the nurse that he stood out from his co-workers, and not in a good way, and not because he was one of the few male nurses there. But because he simply didn’t do his job as well as the others did theirs.

“I’ll be going into hospice care in a few days, and the way you do your job won’t really make much more difference to me. But it will to all the others who come in here after me. And it’ll make a difference to the people you work with.

“You don’t need to change a lot,” Lloyd told the guy, “but I think if you’d slow down a little, listen a little better, be a little gentler in your approach, and follow through better on your commitments to your patients, you’d go from being a good nurse, to a great one. Will you try to do that? Not just for me, but for you?”

The minister made the point that although Lloyd had been clear in giving the nurse some unsolicited performance feedback, he had done it in such a kind and caring way, that at least the nurse had stopped, and listened.

The leadership consultant in me observed from the story that Lloyd had followed, to the letter, the fundamentals of effective feedback. He’d been clear. He didn’t muddle the message with weasel words. He didn’t dance around the issue. Nor did he bash the guy over the head with it. Perhaps he was bringing his engineering education to bear on the conversation. He knew that too much pressure would cause the system to break, but that too little would be fruitless.

Lloyd provided clear and reasonable expectations, specific performance observations, and definable suggestions for specific behavior change. And he wrapped it all in a genuine sense of caring for the object of his feedback. That is the definition of a good performance coach.

After the service, the minister and I were talking. I told him I enjoyed hearing the story of the nurse. A sheepish look came over his face as he said, “Thanks. But I would never have told that story if I’d known the nurse was going to be in the congregation. I didn’t see him until later in the eulogy, and besides, he looks different in a suit and tie.”

And sometimes we, as leaders, fail to give needed feedback because we’re afraid they won’t like us anymore.

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by virtue of a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and Contented Cows MOOve Faster, and the brand new book Rebooting Leadership. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

It was the best of service, it was the worst of service. Well, not really the worst, but with the title of this post, I couldn’t resist.

I love my Amazon Kindle. And not just because Rebooting Leadership is available in that format. So I was positively disconsolate when it stopped working on the first day of a 3-week trip.

From the Delta Sky Club at JFK, I logged into my Amazon account, clicked support, typed in my mobile number, and immediately my phone rang. They called me! I didn’t have to look up a number, dial it, navigate through an infernal scheme of menus, listen to hold music, and plead for a real human. One called me!

By virtue of my having logged into my account before I requested the call, the Amazon rep knew everything I wanted her to know. She didn’t ask me for my account number once, let alone twice. She grieved in sympathy with me, for a moment, over the demise of the e-reader, and without further inquisition, said she’d overnight me a replacement! Can you believe this? Did you know they did this? I didn’t.

Luckily for me, my wife was joining me on the trip 2 days later, and brought the new Kindle, completely loaded with all my stuff, to me.

Bravo, Amazon, all around!

Not so Panasonic. Our new Lumix digital camera (great camera – takes terrific pictures) arrived without the software, described in the manual, that lets the camera commune with the computer. Sending CD’s, I thought, is so first decade, surely it’s a download these days, and they just haven’t updated the manual.

Wrong. Went to Panasonic’s site (such as it is). Got no help there. Got on the phone. Customer service sent me to tech support, which sent me back to customer service, where a snippy woman who didn’t believe my story gave me the number for the “parts department”. I’m not making this up.

Twenty minutes later, Parts answered. They wanted my name, phone number, email address, account number, and – get this – the serial number of the item I was calling about – before they’d entertain any questions.

I asked how I could download the software. You can’t. We have to send you a CD. Please do. It’ll cost you $15. An argument ensued, and to cut my time losses, I surrendered the credit card number.

Ten days later, I got a paper receipt in the mail from Panasonic. Someone actually cut down a tree, refined its pulp into paper, printed a receipt, stuck it in an envelope, put it in a truck, took it to the post office, transferred it to a jet, put it on yet another truck, then a van, and then a nice man walked it to my house.

Five days after that, the CD turned up on my front doorstep.

Point: Both Amazon and Panasonic have now burned into my psyche their respective “brands”. I associate Amazon with terms like “pathfinder, state-of-the-service-art, newfangled, impressive, and going above and beyond to help the customer.” Panasonic, to me, now means “obsolete, outdated, obstructionist, old-world, traditional, clueless”, and a host of other things, none of them impressive.

Product brand, and service brand, extend to workplace brand. If someone were to ask me where they should explore selling their talent, Amazon would be one of the first names off my lips. Panasonic wouldn’t even occur to me.

I wonder – no I don’t – which company’s getting the best candidates turning up on its front doorstep.

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and Contented Cows MOOve Faster, and the brand new book Rebooting Leadership. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

This past March marked the 100th anniversary of New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, one of the deadliest workplace disasters in U.S. history. 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, died in the fire. As with too many things, it took a tragedy to bring about long overdue changes both in the garment industry, and in workplace safety in general.

While in some ways, we’ve come a long way with workplace safety, the anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on the topic, and especially the role of leaders in keeping people safe at work.

Let’s be clear: Safety is everyone’s job. Repeat. Safety is everyone’s job. It’s the leader’s job to be sure that everyone knows that. Quality, productivity, organizational direction – you name it. The leader’s job is to set the vision, communicate it, model it, and help keep followers on track. The same goes for safety.

No sensible person would argue the merits of a safe workplace. Most of its benefits are self-evident. But there are others – significant, but less obvious.  Of course, people can’t work as well (or at all) if they’re hurt (or worse). But let’s not overlook the fact that if people are worried about their own safety, or if they have to make cumbersome adjustments to their work in order to stay out of harm’s way, they can’t possibly give their full measure of effort. They’ve got to slow down – beyond the reasonable “slow down” that comes with giving due care to the job.

When a leader shows (not just says) that safety is a big deal, that leader demonstrates, in a clear and compelling way, that he or she CARES about his or her followers. And take this to the bank: we know that people simply reserve their best effort for leaders who care about them as humans.

In April, we administered an employee survey and conducted training for Alaska Clean Seas, an Oil Spill Response Organization (OSRO) operating on Alaska’s North Slope. Talk about dangerous work. In January, I visited their Prudhoe Bay operation, in preparation for the project. (That’s what we do. And we’ll do the same for you, if you ask us to work with you.)

From the moment I arrived in the aptly-named Deadhorse, Alaska, I was fed constant reminders of safety. Holding handrails (both inside and outside), eye protection, wearing seatbelts, appropriate clothing for Arctic weather, safe footwear, the list goes on. While every ACS worker I encountered made me safety-conscious, the issue of safety has no greater champion at ACS than President and General Manager Ron Morris.

What’s been the effect of an unrelenting focus on safety at ACS? The event for which they brought us to Anchorage in April was, among other things, a celebration of a remarkable milestone: Ten years without a lost-time accident at Alaska Clean Seas. You read that right. Ten years. No lost-time accidents. That doesn’t happen by…well…by accident. It happens only through leadership, and a commitment by everyone in the company.

So, Bill and I weren’t surprised when Ron Morris opened the Anchorage meeting, held on the 10th floor of the Captain Cook Hotel, with a safety briefing. Here’s how to escape in the event of fire, earthquake, or anything else that makes outside look better than inside.

So leaders – a few to-do’s to make sure you’re executing your leadership responsibilities with respect to safety:

• Mind yourself first. Model safety in all you do. At work, and away. Seatbelts, helmets, handrails, smart moves. Whatever means safety in your world.
• Keep your eyes and ears open for hazards, especially of the not-so-obvious variety.
• Keep your mind open to suggestions from others about potential hazards, and ways to make your place safer.
• Develop systems and processes that encourage safety awareness, and make it easier to comply. Be sure people fully understand the consequences of carelessness.
• Emulating our friends at Alaska Clean Seas, celebrate your success with safety, but never grow complacent.

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Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and Contented Cows MOOve Faster, and the brand new book Rebooting Leadership. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.