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.

Steve Jobs’s resignation as CEO of Apple is a good reminder for leaders everywhere, and at every level, to ponder the question, “What will happen when I leave?”, whether “leaving” means quitting, retiring, getting promoted, being fired or laid off, or dying. And it’s not a question reserved only for legendary founding CEO’s of mammoth multinational corporations. It’s a question for every manager, leaders of teams large and small.

“What could happen when, for whatever reason, you leave?”

Three distinct possibilities exist:

1. Things will fall apart (a lot, or maybe just a little). In its August 26, 2011 issue, USA Today reported University of Illinois Professor Heitor Almeida’s claim that “companies with founding CEO’s tend to outperform and have 10% to 20% higher valuations than firms without”, and that “firms that lose their founder CEO often struggle, as was the case at Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Charles Schwab and Apple itself after Jobs left the first time in 1985.”

I’d be willing to bet that being a “founding” leader has less to do with this phenomenon than being a strong or iconic one. GE’s Jack Welch comes to mind.

The organization (team, branch, department, division, corporation – whatever) whose success is so closely tied to the personage of its leader at any given moment that it can’t survive that leader’s departure isn’t really all that great an organization, is it?

2. The business or team will survive, and even thrive. Leaders who build an organization around more durable principles than themselves often have the pleasure of looking back and seeing the success that came from the foundation they laid, and the work they did.

Southwest Airlines has done just fine since the retirement of co-founder Herb Kelleher as CEO. No one could be happier about that than Herb.

I could give a million other examples. I’ll give one. A manufacturer client of mine had a plant in the midwest that had endured a long history of labor problems, undoubtedly owing to a succession of plant managers who thought they were there to manage machines and production, not to lead people. The union was pretty much in charge of this particular facility, the only one of the company’s plants that was losing money. A new sheriff came to town, in the person of a new plant manager, and within 3 years, the labor troubles had subsided, the union had been deemed by the workers to no longer provide added value, and the plant was making money.

The new plant manager had fundamentally changed the leadership style in the whole factory, and his style had legs. Sadly, in his fifth year at the plant, he died unexpectedly. That was 2004. I still keep up with the HR manager at the plant, who tells me that the place is humming along nicely, and performing profitably on the foundation built by the late, greatly admired plant manager.

3. They’ll follow you where you go. This one may be the most personally rewarding, and is becoming more commonplace. We find ourselves in an age in which people are less and less tied to their organization – their employer – and perhaps more connected to individuals leaders – those who are seen as conduits to individual development and the chance to do meaningful work. For skilled leaders on the move, this may be the way to not so much leave a legacy, as to take one with you.

Many organizations espouse a desire to be an employer of choice. Our research has shown that to be a profitable course. But how realistic is it today, in a world where institutional trust is at a low point, and the “deal” in the workplace has been turned on its head?

Perhaps a greater aspiration is, on an individual level, to become a “leader of choice”. That might help answer the question, “What will happen when YOU leave?”

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.

First, this post is not about my vacation. How boring would that be? It’s about a fundamental change in the way people stay connected, or not. But the issue came to light on my vacation, so please indulge me a sentence or two.

Last month, my wife and I took what was, for us, the trip of a lifetime, in celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary. A Mediterranean cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas. In short, the cruise was wonderful. We relaxed, unplugged, saw places I’d only heard of before. The food was good and plentiful. The service – no complaints. And our accommodations were very comfortable. May I never forget how blessed and privileged we were to be able to take such a trip.

If you think these sincere words (and they are sincere) are the wind-up for a complaint, you’re right. Well, not so much a complaint as an observation.

The problem: The Internet service on board the ship was wholly abominable. Indescribably inadequate. And shockingly expensive. It took about ten minutes (and 3 dollars!) to sign in to gmail. Any site that required any bandwidth at all was blocked. And Skype? Are you kidding? One day, I spent five hours of my vacation, and $90, to do about 10 minutes’ work, to send a promised proposal to a client.

Reminder – I’m not whining. I realize how fortunate I am to have taken the trip at all. Now, I’ll continue.

And don’t, as did the “guest services agent” on the ship, give me this lame line: “But you’re on vacation. You shouldn’t be working!”

Earth to Royal Caribbean. As we point out in Rebooting Leadership, the lines between work and play, work and home, home and play, are forever blurred. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion. The fact that it is as it is – is not.

We work in our “off-hours” (whatever those are), and, likewise, play at work. Don’t try to tell me you don’t.

Today’s work, indeed much of today’s life, is facilitated online. If you doubt that, try unplugging your home Internet (or if yours is like mine, wait until it goes down naturally; it won’t be a long wait), and turn off your smartphone. Count the number of things you start to do, before remembering that you can’t.

On the cruise, we were traveling in a group of 19 friends. Many are small business owners, like myself. Others have responsible jobs working for someone else. All of us are used to traveling, at home and abroad, and, have gotten used to being able to connect from pretty much anywhere – hotel rooms, airports, coffee shops, you name it. Call us spoiled, if you like. Overindulged perhaps. But you may definitely call us frustrated with the ship’s inability to provide a usable Internet connection. And to charge us stupid money for the frustration.

Royal Caribbean’s excuses (offered as if highly practiced) involved pointing out that we were at sea, that satellite communications are iffy at best, and that there were more than 3,000 people on the ship, many of whom were competing for limited bandwidth. All invalid. The technology exists to let passengers connect as easily as if they were in the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

I’m pretty sure the problem persists for two reasons:

1) Royal Caribbean (and, to be fair, their competitors) don’t want to invest in making the technology work. They don’t believe Internet access on a cruise vacation is important enough to enough people to make the investment commercially advantageous. That’s shortsighted.

2) An old mindset curiously survives, and yet without nourishment from reality. A pipe, slippers, and brandy anachronism in which we commute into the office at the start of our “workday”, chain ourselves to a desk for a period of time, and then commute home. We’re generations past that. Many in the hospitality field are falling all over themselves to realize that, in order to compete. Not the cruise biz. Certainly not Royal Caribbean.

I relish my downtime. Had the Mariner of the Seas had Internet access that could be taken seriously, I would have had more of it on my vacation. For those 12 days, I could have connected, done my work, kept in touch, and taken care of business, in less than an hour a day. That would have been a small price to pay for 23 hours a day of vacation.

Here’s hoping that this summer, you have the chance to take a week or two, get away, and recharge. But I sure hope you’ve got better Internet access than I did!

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.

Visiting a new country reminds me a lot of being in a new job. There are so many rules to learn. The written, well-documented ones are hard enough to keep up with. But watch out for the pages and pages of “unwritten rules” – things you need to know, but may never be told. Until it’s too late.

Last month, I had the privilege of visiting six foreign countries – seven if you include the Vatican – on a trip that was part vacation, part speaking engagement. No, the speaking engagement was not in the Vatican. They have that covered. I spoke at two conferences in Singapore.

While my passport is pretty well worn, most of the places I visited on this trip, specifically Greece, Turkey, Dubai, and Singapore, were new to me.

And in each case, I couldn’t help feeling, “Hmmm. How does this work here? How do you do this here?”, “this” being regular everyday things like ordering coffee from a walkup counter, being seated at a restaurant, hailing a taxi, paying the restaurant bill, crossing the street, keeping the lights on in the hotel room (store your keycard in the mystery slot near the door) what to wear, how to greet people, how to use public toilets and public transportation (which in a couple of these places seemed to be indistinguishable from each other), and tipping – tipping the taxi driver, the bellman, the waiter, and even the toilet attendant. The list goes on. There’s nothing right nor wrong with these customs, nothing better nor worse. It’s just the way it’s done wherever you happen to be.

And then there’s airport security! Which countries do and do not have hangups about shoes, liquids, and laptops? TSA – take a trip. Pay attention!

How do we learn these unwritten rules in organizations? Pretty much the same way we learn them when visiting far-off lands. If we’re lucky, there will be someone who cares enough to tell us. We supplement that with observation, research, and simply asking.

I noticed in Brussels, that without exception, in the absence of cross-walk signals, drivers yield, unanimously, to pedestrians crossing an intersection. Expecting the same behavior in Istanbul will result in blood and broken bones.

I ordered Pad Thai from a stand in a food court in Singapore, and, when I asked what they had to drink, the guy looked at me like I was American, and politely directed me to a separate vendor who carried beverages. This was a food stand. No beverages on the menu. What are you thinking? When I gave a Singaporean cabbie a couple extra dollars over the metered fare, he looked at me like I didn’t know my numbers.

At work, not knowing the unwritten rules can have embarrassing, to career limiting consequences. Good leaders help new people navigate these treacherous waters. Aside from the written dress code, how do we really dress for success around here? How do we address those who live north of us on the org chart? In meetings, do we speak out, or wait to be recognized? Does the organization place a premium on doing the right things, or doing things right? Which works better here – challenging things outright, or taking a more considered approach?

Here are some thoughts (I won’t call them rules) on, well, rules:

• When it comes to rules, fewer is generally better. I didn’t say “none is better”. Fewer is better.
• As we wrote in Chapter 21 of Contented Cows Moove Faster, you should have 2 types of rules. Type 1 – a very few inviolable cardinal rules. Failure to comply renders one ineligible for membership in the organization.

Good leaders are crystal clear about these, and consistent in their enforcement. No one should even step foot on the premises on day one without having received clear, written documentation about Type 1 rules.

The immigration landing card you receive when you arrive in Singapore has, in bright red, all capital letters, in an area all its own, “DEATH FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW“. Any questions? If you have more than a few of these Type 1 rules, you’re either in a really weird business, you’re hiring the wrong people, or you’re a bureaucracy run amok.

• Type 2, covering just about everything else, is more what this article is about. Sometimes, they’re de facto policies. More often, they’re culture elements that have evolved, for better or worse, as the organization has learned what seems to work best. They’re often the little things that can trip us up, unnecessarily. Good leaders are unfailingly skilled both at recognizing that these rules exist, and in schooling their followers as to how to abide by them, and when, and how, to challenge them.

• Although not the case with Type 1 rules, discretion is a must for Type 2. If you’re a leader interested in having the best performing team you can, you’ll mold, groom, and develop your followers with respect to these “unwritten” rules, rather than punishing them if they don’t always get them right.

• Finally, leaders in healthy organizations regularly examine, and question, the usefulness of their rules, especially those not written down anywhere. Is the “rule” helping our people do their best work? Does it build value for our customers? If you’re not sure, listen to both of these constituencies. They’ll tell you.

Get a chance for a free book. Got “unwritten rules”? Comment on this post and tell us about an unwritten rule you’ve seen, in your current or a former job. If you’d rather comment privately, send an email to Richard@ContentedCows.com. We’ll take all the entries, and on June 30, we’ll have a drawing for a complimentary copy of Rebooting Leadership. We’ll publish a list of the best answers in next month’s Fresh Milk newsletter, but we WON’T identify any names or organizations.

================================

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.

As an American with a British wife, I’m sometimes asked (and no more often than in the last few weeks) what I think of the British royal family. The question is usually accompanied by the implication that the American asking it doesn’t quite understand the value of the monarchy, and thinks the royal family is a waste of time and money.

While I don’t share that view, I do understand why some feel that way.

And while this blog post is about organizational culture, and not about about the Windsors and Waleses, there are some pertinent points. To wit, the Queen’s approval rating among the British is about 80%. Hard to argue (or compete) with that. And, although it’s impossible to know, I suspect that the value of the monarchy to the tourist trade exceeds its cost.

But the real value of the British monarchy, and its associated family is in how it helps to define the culture of the British society. For better or worse, the monarchy is part of – I said part of – the essence of what it means to be British. These historic assumptions and practices have given structure, and some stability, to British society, kind of like protein molecules give structure and stability to a great loaf of crusty bread.

The organization where you work has a culture. And that culture goes a long way toward defining what – or who – that organization is.

Two eminent scholars, John Kotter, and Edgar Schein, have studied and written much about organizational culture in the last 30-40 years.

Harvard’s Kotter asserts that culture is part of why some organizations succeed and some fail.

MIT’s Schein defines culture as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems…, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”. He points to what he calls “artifacts”, as the outward manifestations of that culture. The architecture of the corporate headquarters, dress code, our hiring practices, and how we treat employees are all examples of these artifacts.

At the heart of Schein’s thesis is that assumptions drive practices. Think about your assumptions with respect to people in the workplace. Whatever those assumptions are, they give structure to your organization, and allow it to function, with some consistency, over time. Do you assume that people are on the asset side of the balance sheet? Or the liability side? Do you assume that they’re trying to cheat the company, or make a valuable contribution? That they want to learn, grow, and develop? Or stagnate, collect, and retire on the job? These assumptions are critical to how you respond to, treat, and therefore lead people.

Here at Contented Cow Partners, we tend to agree with Dr. Schein. Assumptions drive practices. And carrying it further, practices drive results.

As you sit and watch the endless loop of today’s Royal Wedding coverage on TV, wherever you are in the world, ponder anew what your assumptions are about the people you work with. And how those assumptions make it to the bottom line.

Cheers!

================================

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.