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.

This past weekend, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, Michael Vick was knocked on his keister by an onrushing New York Giants lineman, injuring his right (non-throwing) hand as he hit the ground.  After the game, Vick excoriated game officials for not flagging the lineman for a late hit. “Late hits” or, more appropriately, unnecessary roughness penalties come down to a matter of split-second judgment by the involved official(s). In this case, rightly or wrongly, they deemed the hit within bounds. Football is, after all, a violent sport.

Vick’s complaint stems from the belief that, within the league’s caste system, other, higher profile (make that champion) quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, or Drew Brees would have gotten a different call. He may well be right. Yet, whining is neither becoming, nor the stuff champions are made of.

I’ve met a lot of people who, by virtue of various twists of fate, have been given plenty of reason to complain, if they wanted to. The Walter Reed Army Hospital is full of them. But they seldom do. Instead, they leave the whining to others. Indeed, I’ve never met a champion (at anything) who was a whiner. There is a lesson here for young Mr. Vick, and a reminder for the rest of us.

Whether our “game” is played at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, a factory floor, or an office building, it behooves those of us who are leaders to set an example whereby gloating doesn’t accompany a win, and losing, or failing to get our way doesn’t prompt a woe is me display. Play on.

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A pathfinder in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. He is co-author of the newly released book,Rebooting Leadership. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit theirwebsite, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

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.

Quick… What is the mission of space shuttle Atlantis that launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center yesterday? What has been the program goal of the prior 134 space shuttle missions (launched at about $1.5 billion/copy) over the last 30 years? What has been the goal of America’s space program since 1969, when, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, the Apollo 11 crew fulfilled President Kennedy’s 1961 promise that we would put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade?

If the answers aren’t coming to you quickly or clearly, don’t feel bad. I suspect you’re like most people, including many in Congress who vote to fund NASA, and even some at the agency itself. To wit, is it really any wonder that America’s space program as we have known it seems to be riding off into the sunset?

On our way to Titusville, Florida to view the Atlantis launch yesterday, friend and business partner, Richard Hadden asked for my thoughts, as something of an aerospace junkie, on the eminent conclusion of NASA’s shuttle program.  In the pre-dawn darkness some eight hours prior to the launch of STS 135, I hadn’t yet sorted out my emotional reaction to the program’s ending. What we talked about instead is just how similar NASA’s current situation is to other entities (e.g., governments, companies, et. al.) that lose their way, their funding, and their mojo.

The Bible’s book of Proverbs 29:18 suggests that, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” In this case, an agency that has long operated with a very cloudy, or at best misunderstood sense of purpose, direction, and priority is in real danger of going away, not because a nation has grown tired of space venture, but because of the persistent failure to clearly articulate a credible and compelling vision for the future.

Operating on a raison d’être tantamount to, “we do space”, or with a charge like that established by former President George W. Bush to revisit the Moon, something we accomplished nearly a half-century ago, isn’t going to get the job done. It’s almost as if we’ve fumbled the ball and are waiting for private ventures like SpaceX or Virgin Galactic to pick it up and see what they can do with it.

More germane to this post and our readership, the very same thing happens to companies, business units, departments, and teams that fail to credibly articulate and maintain a compelling sense of purpose and direction. As leaders, it is incumbent on each of us to determine, articulate, and then permanently illuminate, with one of those big 5-cell flashlights, the path ahead. What are we about? Why does this organization exist? As the French put it, what is our raison d’être? Where are we going? Why does it matter?

Fail to connect the dots on any one of these items and slowly (at first), but inexorably, the lights go out, and the party is over. President Obama desperately needs to do this for our nation at this time, and you and I need to do it with our own teams. A few suggestions:

1. Having decided upon the “vision/mission thing”, it is not enough to announce it once or twice and then hang some relevant testimonial junk on the wall. Rather, to overcome the understandable cynicism that exists inside organizations, we need to practically “carpet-bomb’ the place with repeated signs that this is more, much more than some new program. Rather, it is to be our way of life. Words are important, but actions trump syllables.
2. To operationalize and breathe life into those words, we should make it clear to the folks on our team that good faith efforts on their part to enact the vision will never get them in trouble. Similarly, if they are doing things that do not line up with that purpose, they should stop doing them as soon as practical. On an institutional level, we must take pains to be sure that budgets and reward mechanisms support our declared purpose and direction.
3. To be sure, Level 1 and 2 managers (the folks closest to the front line, and the ones with the toughest jobs in any organization) should be charged with ensuring that their teammates get the big picture. But, because people don’t operate day to day in the big picture, they must see to it that those around them clearly grasp the top two or three priorities. You and I can spot-check this by periodically asking a few people to articulate the top three priorities for the organization. If they can do it, celebrate it, right then and there. If they can’t (more likely), we’ve got more work to do.

In the meantime, Godspeed to the crew of Atlantis sts 135, and the men and women here on the ground who have worked tirelessly in support of them and our nation’s space program.

*****

A pathfinder in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. He is co-author of the newly released book,Rebooting Leadership. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

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.

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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.