One of those vital personal characteristics, whether I’m helping choose the next president or a mid-level manager in the corporate world, is the person’s level of consideration and affinity for those who are south of them in the socio-economic order or org chart. I want some insight into how much or how little they care, really care about those whose interests they will be representing, or who they will be providing leadership and direction to.

Observing their interaction with a food server, retail clerk, or flight attendant provides a window into their world, but it’s just a start. I want to know, is the person naturally at ease with subordinates, and vice versa? At one company I worked for, a finance SVP had a habit of parking at the rear of his office building every morning and sneaking through a back door that no one else used, simply so he wouldn’t have to interact with the people who worked for him. The sad thing is he actually thought that no one noticed or cared.

Are they at ease interacting with those who may not dress as well as they do, or whose speech is not as polished? How quick are they to smile (really smile, not that plastic version) and greet a subordinate or service worker? Do they mumble “how are ya?” and keep right on moving, or do they stop and actually wait for an answer?

Some might argue that this is nothing but a touchy-feely academic exercise since once you are declared the leader, at any level, and have position power, people pretty well have to do your bidding and learn to live with it. Au contraire! As pointed out in our first book, upon entering a leadership role, you are immediately faced with a simple, ongoing high school physics problem – There are more of  “them” than there are of you. Failure to respect this iron law can have a drastic affect on one’s career. Remember that finance SVP who parked around back? It turned out that his people didn’t work very hard for him, because they had long since figured out that he really didn’t like them very much, or care about them. Ultimately, it cost him his job.

Conversely, we’ve seen any number of leaders with modest intelligence and skills race up the career ladder, propelled by the “little people” who were putting it all on the line for them every day.

*****

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 Contented Cows leadership book series, the next edition of which will be released in June 2012 by John Wiley & Sons. 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

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.

Earlier this week, a political shock jock who is as loved by some as he is loathed by others made completely uncalled for and by most measures, out of bounds comments about the morality of a young female college student. Days later, at the point of spears held by his show’s advertisers, he issued something of an apology.

Though it is entirely appropriate to personally and genuinely apologize when you’ve stepped in it, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that an apology doesn’t undo the wrong. Acts of contrition may serve as salve for a wound we’ve created, but make no mistake – there is still a wound there. Only in Hollywood does the wound get undone and those who created it or got themselves voted off the island get to come back at season’s end.

The lesson here for leaders is that we must be very mindful of the fact that once we open a can of worms, it’s open. We can no more put worms back in the can than we can put uttered words back in our mouth. There a number of faux pas that our teammates in the workplace simply aren’t going to forgive, let alone forget, apology or not. Chief among them are the following:

1. Lying – as in knowingly and deliberately misleading people
2. Taking credit for the accomplishments of others
3. Publicly reprimanding or embarrassing someone

In each case, we lose the benefit of the doubt both with the individual(s) involved and bystanders, and a good bit of their discretionary effort as well. Quite often, those losses are permanent. Don’t go there, please.

*****

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

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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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.

When it comes to security measures, the flying public ‘gets it.’ We really do. What agency management fails to grasp is that we’re not stupid, and we still retain quite a bit of choice as to how cooperative we’ll be when “security measures” are visited upon us. Ironically, it’s not appreciably different from the way our employees react when new procedures are implemented in the workspace.

Rather than beating the TSA like a rented mule, let’s revisit a few practices that lend themselves to more successful outcomes, be it in the airport or our more pedestrian businesses:

1. Selling trumps telling.  Rather than announcing new procedures at the “tip of the spear” e.g., when passengers are nearing a new screening device for the very first time, find ways to communicate ahead of time, what changes are being made, and why they are beneficial to the traveler, ‘er employee, ‘er customer. If you want me to buy into the change, tell me reliably and convincingly how the change is going to make my life better. Better yet, show me.  Telling someone to “Do it because I say so, or because I have the badge and you don’t” didn’t work a hundred years ago, and it sure doesn’t work today.
2. Be authentic. Stop the canned responses and lame rationale for asking people to do obviously stupid things. Be quick to admit and remedy your mistakes. People really don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to be honest.
3. Lighten up a little. In case you haven’t noticed, most of us are self-absorbed, nervous, and wrapped a bit too tightly these days. We don’t respond very well to having overly officious security officers, supervisors, senior vp’s  or spouses barking orders. Smiles help. So does “please and thank you.”

If you think about it, what’s going on in airports today is akin to behavior that I’m told exists in strip clubs, but for the fact that no one is making money or having any fun at it. Perhaps DHS Secretary, Janet Napolitano should consider hiring some younger, better looking screeners and giving them a daily stack of $1 bills to tip passengers for putting some skin in the game… or dancing while we’re in the AIT machine:-)

Your views as always are welcome.

*****
A thought leader 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. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Anyhow, upon arriving CRW airport (another hint) in the state’s capitol city around 9:30PM Saturday, I was a little surprised, and less than amused to find that I wouldn’t be leaving the airport via my reserved rental car, because Hertz (and all of their competitors) had closed up shop at 6PM. Cabs weren’t going to work either, because there were none of them around. Were it not for the Town Center Marriott (last hint) and its airport shuttle, I guess I would have been sleeping in the airport. Thanks for the lift, Mr. Marriott, and for a pleasant stay.

As an entrepreneur, I’m as capitalistic as anyone, and realize that the supply of services needs to be peaked and troughed to match demand, but dangit, you’ve got to be open and ready for at least some business to get any business. Besides, this is a state capitol, ostensibly the most important city in the state. It was 9:30 in the evening for Pete’s sake, not 3AM!

On a larger scale, my concern is that too many of us, in the face of a still crummy economy, have consolidated, economized, and hunkered down to the point that we’re barely exchanging gases with the atmosphere. We may not be dead, but we’re giving every appearance of being so. That is no way to work your way out of an economic ditch. Somehow, we need to reach deep inside ourselves for that extra ounce of confidence and oomph, strap on a smile, and be truly open and ready for business.

I’ve resolved that on my way home, I’m going to do an honest assessment of the public face of my own business to ensure that we are as open and ready for business as we ought to be. You may want to consider doing the same.

*****
A thought leader 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. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

My first thought was, what on earth was this guy thinking when, rather than quietly reimburse the City for the personal messages, he opted to file suit on grounds of unlawful search?

My second thought was, and is, that, though the Court restricted its ruling to government employees using government-owned devices, the ruling will undoubtedly spill over and have a chilling affect on private enterprise as well, and not necessarily in the expected manner.

Employees have been extensively using employer-owned wireless devices and communications networks for better than a decade. During that time there has been something of an uneasy truce as we have each allowed the line between business and personal time/pursuits to blur. To an ever greater extent, workers (at all levels) have permitted more frequent invasion of what has traditionally been their private, off-duty, personal space. It is no longer unusual at all to have one’s off-duty time peppered with business related messages, queries, and conference calls. Once the sole realm of managers who ostensibly were being paid for such interruptions, today, workers at all levels and pay grades are involved. In turn, employers have seen, and largely acquiesced to a greater co-mingling of personal with professional activities in the workspace.

Though there has been (and always will be) some tension in this arrangement, if we (manager types) are not careful, the Court’s ruling could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and disrupts what is otherwise a pretty good thing.

Some managers and organizations will use the Court’s ruling as an excuse to more aggressively police and restrict non-sanctioned use of company devices and networks. Doing so would be a mistake. How?

By and large, we have been the beneficiaries of this arrangement, where, within reason, we get free (yes) access to team members, regardless of whether they are technically on or off duty. In a world where speed of thought, response, and execution reigns supreme, this advantage is worth a lot to us. The very second that our workers decide to either turn the device off, or demand compensation for the time when it is turned on, thus making them accessible, we have lost a lot of ground. This is a decision that each of them can make at any time, quietly, and without notice. When you get down to it, we face a simple high school physics problem… There are more of them than us. This is no time to get stupid.

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A thought leader 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. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

For anyone not tuned in, MLB umpire, Jim Joyce mistakenly called a 1^st base runner safe in the 9^th inning of the game, costing Detroit pitcher, Galarraga a perfect game. For the benefit of non-fans of the game, a perfect game is a really big deal. There have been only twenty such games recorded in the entire history of major league baseball, and by all rights, Mr. Galarraga earned, but didn’t get credit for the 21^st.

Granted, Galarraga’s coach and several teammates expressed their displeasure in no uncertain terms, but from all appearances, Galarraga remained calm and professional. Apart from the error, Joyce demonstrated why he has long been considered one of baseball’s finest umpires. Immediately after the game he reviewed the video, publicly admitted his error, and sought out Galarraga to apologize.  My guess is that he didn’t wait to consult his lawyer, league officials, announcers, or game sponsors. Nor did he wait to be prodded. He didn’t have to be waterboarded to cough up the truth.

My hope is that this can serve as a lesson for the rest of us. We live and work in a world where everything and everyone is moving at a high rate of speed. Occasionally we drop balls that should have been caught, or like Joyce, make a bad call. One thing (no, the only thing) that will keep people from slowing down is the belief that, when an error is made, rather than immediately bayonetting the wounded, cooler heads will prevail, and some adult behavior will emerge.

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A thought leader 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. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

I wish that people would:

• forever ban the use of the following phrases from their language:

1. the fact of the matter is
2. to a person
3. I’m reaching out to you
4. “I was like,” when they mean “I said”
5. “No problem,” when they mean “You’re welcome.”
6. At the end of the day
7. Does that make sense?

• stop referring to the “Queen of England”. She’s the “Queen of the United Kingdom”, or the “Queen of Britain”, which probably sounds better and is easier to comply with. What about Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland? We don’t say Barack Obama is the president of Hawaii, do we? I told you this was trivial.
• use their turn signals.
• speak more quietly on their mobile phones in public.
• learn when to use “Reply All” on emails, which is almost never.
• know what they want when they’re in front of me at Starbucks.

I wish the graphics operators at my local TV station would learn to spell, and to proofread what they put on the screen.

…that the socks I put into the laundry in pairs would come out as such.

…that my stapler had a gauge on it so that my first indication of its being empty would be something other than clamping down with a staple-less stapler.

…that Microsoft Windows was better than it is. Please don’t tell me to switch to a Mac to solve the problem. I know, I know…

…that I could figure out how using Twitter would help my business.

…that I could make better naan bread.

…that fast food restaurants were.

…that people were less uptight about the phrase “Merry Christmas”.

…that I could consistently remember where I put my sunglasses.

…that there weren’t so many things in my life that rely on batteries.

And I wish that our elected representatives would do a better job of representing us, and would behave with greater civility toward each other and people who disagree with them. I told you some of these were probably unattainable.

That’s really about it. Like I said, I’m lucky…very lucky. But as long as we’re wishing, those are my wishes.

And finally, I wish that everyone reading this has a Merry Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas, and that everyone has a blessed and prosperous 2010. That’s something we can all celebrate.

Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) 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 new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

In 800 words or less:

1. What is your 1st move?
2. How do you restore  the involved unit to peak operating condition? Do you continue with their planned deployment to a war zone?
3. What systemic (service-wide) moves do you make, if any?
4. How do you deter this from happening again?

Difficult, isn’t it? Send your answers to Bill@ContentedCows.com. The author of the most thoughtful answer will win a copy of our next book, Rebooting Leadership (due out, Spring ’10).

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A thought leader 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. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

As relates to yesterday’s post, One Button, Under Scrutiny at Home Depot, Bill, whose pedigree in HR goes back 35 years, pointed out, constructively, that in this case, HD really had no choice but to tell Trevor he couldn’t wear his button (although there’s still the problem with the tacit approval of it for more than a year before that, but that only support’s Bill’s point.)

Quoting Bill, “HD’s position is likely based on a ‘no solicitation policy’ that was enacted specifically to keep employees from wearing pro-union buttons/pins during a representation election campaign. The sad reality from a legal perspective is that, if you let people wear a ’1 Nation Under God’ button, you lose the ability to prevent them from wearing a ‘Vote Teamsters’ button.”

Bill’s right, especially the “sad reality” part. It’s kind of like the story of Zachary Christie, the 6-year-old Newark, Delaware student who was nearly suspended for 45 days for innocently bringing a Boy Scout camping implement to school. Only after a public hue and cry about the absurdity of the district’s zero-tolerance policy did administrators decide that a more reasoned approach was probably more helpful.

You and I can’t do much to change big corporate or government policies, and in some cases, these policies are the unfortunately necessary by-product of the times we’re living in. But – we can sure do something about our own policies, rules, judgments, and decisions. My November resolution is to put a little more thought into the application of some of my own rules – at home and at work – in other words, to do a better job of exercising judgment and discretion, rather than just blindly applying the rules. Want to join me?

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Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) 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 new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

There is a veritable minefield of issues here. Everyone from HR types to the ACLU to advocates of religious freedom have weighed in on it. HR points out that Trevor’s button is a clear violation of a clearly documented and reasonable policy; the ACLU says Home Depot’s right to specify employee attire standards have been trampled on (isn’t it refreshing to hear the ACLU stand up for the big guy?); and religious advocates claim religious discrimination.

Home Depot (along with every other employer) certainly has the right to ban non-company-issue buttons from employee clothing. Perfectly reasonable. Apparently his managers gave him a couple of options, including that of wearing another patriotic, but non-religious button blessed by the big orange HQ in Atlanta. They gave him ample opportunity to keep his job. Trevor was warned. He chose not to comply. Sounds like insubordination to me.

So, this HR author and speaker says Home Depot was completely within its rights to terminate Trevor.

And utterly, totally stupid.

Just like the company Bill wrote about in this blog last week, Home Depot has a LOT bigger fish to fry than what its few remaining customer service employees are wearing on their ragged orange aprons. Like making their few remaining customers feel valued, like they did once upon a time, along with a host of other issues more strategic in nature than employees’ uniform accessories.

Nevermind the questionable HR practices – supposedly Trevor had worn the button for more than a year before management raised an objection – and that’ll make the company’s position harder to defend – let’s look at the impact of this decision on HD’s business:

What if nobody had said anything and Trevor went on wearing his button and working at Home Depot?  Some customers would have been warmed by the button’s message; some would have been offended; many wouldn’t have noticed, or had any reaction if they had.  It almost certainly had more of a positive effect than a negative one. Does anyone really think that even one person would have stopped shopping at Home Depot because they saw Trevor wearing his button? Had management exercised a little wisdom, a little leadership, and kept “the main thing the main thing”, no one outside the store would have known about it, I wouldn’t be blogging about it, and it wouldn’t have been all over the news.

But in fact, they did ban the button. Trevor hired a lawyer, who alerted the press, and Trevor got on local and national TV. Lots (certainly thousands, maybe more than that) of people will feel that Home Depot is anti-God (it probably isn’t), and many will stop shopping there, some until they get over it, and others indefinitely. Meanwhile, no one’s going to start shopping at Home Depot, or buy more stuff there just because of the ban.

And as Jay Leno pointed out, the name of God is invoked all the time in Home Depot. “For God’s sake, isn’t there anybody working here who can help me find something?!?!”

There’s no evidence that anyone was complaining about Trevor’s button. It’s not likely the company would have had to spend a lot of money in legal fees had Trevor carried on wearing the button and working at Home Depot. But it will now.

So, the net effect on Home Depot’s business (such as it is) is negative. Trevor got his 15 minutes of fame, and will probably get more job offers than he can shake a broomstick at.

Way to go, Home Depot. I’m glad I sold my stock when I did.

I wonder if perhaps we should adopt a color-coded “national civility index” to match the TSA’s threat meter. Think of the fun we could have with that. It would give tennis players and politicians alike something to shoot for. In the meantime, something more important is at stake, the afterwords from these outbursts – the eh hmm ‘apologies’.

Sadly, the ‘apologies’ that accompany these episodes seldom pass the smell test for authenticity. “Party leaders told me to call and say I was sorry” said one apologist. “I apologize to anyone who may have been offended” said another, whose offense involved getting off two f-bombs while describing what she would like to do with a tennis ball. Another issued an apology only after having twice denied the misbehavior. One had his agent issue an apology to his offended peeps. If anything is more offensive than the bad behavior, it just might be the apologies themselves.

This trend is bothersome not just because of its unpleasantness, but because in a lot of cases, impressionable children and young adults are viewing this as a template for acceptable behavior. The payoff isn’t pretty. In a recent survey of teens by the Josephson Institute, 64% admitted cheating on tests, 30% admitted stealing something from a store, 83% copped to lying about something significant to their parents, and, drumroll please… 93% said that they were okay with their own values. The notion that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you mumble something loosely construed to be an apology puts us way down a slippery slope.

I have gained some experience at making apologies. It’s nothing to brag about, just a by-product of screwing up on a pretty regular basis, and getting more practice. And more importantly, because I had parents who took the hard road and made certain that I got this lesson right. One summer when I was a kid, I subbed for a friend on his paper route. Everything was fine until early one Sunday morning when I launched a tightly rolled Charleston Daily Mail through two layers of glass in a customer’s front door. I quickly learned from my parents that “service recovery” consisted of more than a simple apology. At a reasonable hour when the homeowner was likely to be up and wanting his newspaper, my dad made sure that I returned to the scene to sweep up the broken glass, replace the original paper, and make a sincere apology. Then, I got the chance to “make it right” by paying for the installation of replacement glass in the storm door. As I recall, that wiped out my profits for the month, but left me with a valuable life lesson. Thanks, Dad.

Recovering from one’s mistakes isn’t just the right thing to do. On both a personal and institutional level, it’s also good for business. I was reminded of this recently by a client whose company had shipped some off-spec product to their customers. He remarked that several customers had actually called to commend them for their prompt and thorough handling of the matter. In each case, the customers expressed appreciation that his team had reacted quickly, apologized in person, and then taken action guided not by what was legally required, but what was right. Hmm.

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A thought leader 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. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

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Recognize that people matter.

We can often trace our greatest achievements and disappointments back to an individual who influenced our lives in some way.  Our parents, spouses, partners, friends, colleagues, business associates, co-workers and neighbors all impact our lives.

The skills we develop and the people we choose to be part of our lives will have a profound significance. Choosing the right relationships and partnerships is a pivotal part of you being successful.

It would be very difficult to find anyone you would consider “successful” who didn’t benefit considerably from the relationships he or she formed. Your life isn’t a solo act. It is a series of collaborations and partnerships.

Thinking and interacting with others can provide you with new and powerful ideas. We need to be grateful to those who help us. If you want to reach your potential, you must choose the right people to bring into your life. Take time to reward the people around you who believe in you.

Who are the people in your life?  What roles do they play?  Are they empowering or dis-empowering you?

People matter, they are the destined part of every success story.

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