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.

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.

My father and grandfather were both fond of using the expression, “House guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” They didn’t just mouth the words, though. Each paced his visits to make sure that he didn’t darken anyone’s doorstep longer than three days. Similarly, invitations to visit were issued with the three-day rule in mind. It’s one thing, though to time a visit with friends or family, but quite another to figure out when to make a career move, or to end your working career entirely.

I thought about that a good bit last week as legendary basketball coach, Phil Jackson all but confirmed what he had suggested at the beginning of the season, that this year would be his last on the Lakers’ bench. Having advanced to the 2^nd round of the NBA playoffs, Jackson’s team played nowhere near its capability, and was crushed 4-0 in the best of 7 series by the Dallas Mavericks.

Worse, some of the Lakers players embarrassed themselves and disrespected their teammates, fans, opponents, and most certainly Coach Jackson by their behavior. I cannot imagine any of Jackson’s previous teams or players producing or behaving as the 2011 version did. I feel certain that when Coach Jackson faced the post-game cameras for what may have been the last time, what he had just witnessed on the court confirmed in his mind that the time had indeed come for him to move on. I applaud his having the courage to do it.

In recent years, we have seen more than a few people who have been less adroit in exiting stage left. The names Brett Favre and U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd come to mind. What about you? How do you know when it’s time to take your act elsewhere?

One thing that can make a tremendous difference in weighing significant career decisions is having a good friend (as opposed to a Facebook or LinkedIn friend) or coach who cares enough about you to tell you the unvarnished truth. Their only agenda is your best interest, period. If you have such a friend, cherish them, and do all you can to nourish and be worthy of the relationship. If you don’t, seek to develop such a relationship. Either way, make it a point to be a friend.

You might also consider using the following questions as a part of your decision template:

1. Would you put this job on your bucket list today? If the answer is no, is this job an indispensable step to achieving something that is on your bucket list?
2. If your job were open today, would you hire you to do it?
3. Are you happy, really happy in your job? How do you know? How many days per month do you arrive at work with a real spring in your step? How many days are you trudging in? How many days per week do you breathe a sigh of relief when quitting time comes?
4. Are you/your team consistently performing at or near peak? Be honest.
5. Have you taken a job interview in the last three years? If not, why not? What are you afraid of?

This post is intended as nothing more than a thought starter for an important glance in the mirror. Yet, as the economy and job market continue to improve, we think it timely and appropriate that each of us re-evaluate our present situation vis-à-vis our life goals and preferences, and make course corrections as necessary. Good luck.

*****

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