Take A Summer Vacation This Year

by Jeff Wolf

How many times have you heard your boss tell you that? In fact, how many times have you told your employees that?

Come on, fess up. Either case is as rare as a drenching rain in the Sahara. Let’s face it. Too many bosses discourage employees from taking more than a day off or a weekend here and there. And even then they don’t discourage a barrage of phone calls from work and many will expect employees to check their email several times a day. A two-week getaway to the Far East? Not a chance.

Every year, the media reports on surveys showing that large chunks of U.S. workers don’t plan on taking all their vacation time. Why does this happen, when it’s part of a worker’s compensation package? Large percentages of workers wouldn’t pass on a company-sponsored life insurance plan, or forgo a paycheck for all of December, so why are so many people willingly (or perhaps not so willingly) giving their paid time off back to their employers?

Forbes Magazine contributor Kristi Hedges nails the explanation: “The idea of a skimpy vacation as a worthy sacrifice or badge of honor is culturally embedded. The U.S. is the only rich country to not have legally mandated paid vacation and holidays.” She goes on, “science tells us that this is a very bad idea. Increasingly, studies are showing that breaks of any kind are not only good for you; they can actually increase productivity and well-being.”

Long Vacations Benefit Both Company and Employee

To create a lasting change in their organization, and maybe even greater society at large, leaders must fully embrace the practical benefits of vacations. Good leaders will be more inclined to not only grant, but also encourage employees to take not just a couple of long weekends here and there-and maybe a week off in the summer-but longer vacation time. Employees come back from a full week (or two or three) of time off when they were able to truly disconnect from work energized and recharged, with better ideas, a fresh perspective, lower stress-levels, and genuine excitement to tackle work challenges that can become overwhelming without time to recharge. Truly effective leaders recognize the value of paid time off, and understand it’s key to a productive and engaged workforce.

Here are specific steps leaders can take to make sure this happens:

• Issue specific company policies that encourage all employees of the organization to take all vacation days due them, and in any increments they prefer.
• Be clear the time off must not interfere with mission critical work, but also be clear that one person’s week off shouldn’t incapacitate a well-run department, and that while every department has busier times on the calendar, it is normal and expected that departments will experience slower times periodically throughout the year.
• Require that all managers and supervisors conduct short meetings with their employees explaining the vacation policy.
• Ask employees for feedback regarding perceived problems with the vacation policy. Since many employees may feel constrained to speak up, use a suggestion box where they can offer suggestions or voice complaints.
• Assure that all complaints and suggestions are answered by a third-party, such as Human Resources.
• Follow-up yearly to make sure the new vacation policy is working.

As we head in to the height of the summer, when friends and family frequently plan reunions, couples get married, families with children have the freedom to travel, as leaders it’s our job to help facilitate these getaways. Your employees will thank you for it, and ultimately, your bottom line will thank you for it too.

Jeff Wolf is the author of Seven Disciplines of a Leader and founder and president of Wolf Management Consultants, LLC, a premier global consulting firm that specializes in helping people, teams and organizations achieve maximum effectiveness.

Contact us today to discuss how we may partner with you to develop your current and future leaders or to have Jeff Wolf speak at your next meeting, conference or convention: Michael Adams madams@wolfmotivation.com 858-638-8260 or www.wolfmotivation.com

 

Building an Optimal Team – Team Health

By Jeff Wolf –  Seven Disciplines of a Leader

All the competitive advantages – strategy, technology, finance, marketing – that we’ve pursued in the past are gone. The disciplines haven’t disappeared, but they have lost their power as meaningful competitive advantages, as real differentiators that can set your company apart. Why? Virtually every organization has access to the best thinking and practices on those topics. As information has become ubiquitous, it’s almost impossible to sustain an advantage based on intellectual ideas.

However, one simple, reliable, and virtually free competitive advantage remains – team health. Healthy teams all but eliminate politics and confusion from their cultures. As a result, productivity and morale soar, and good people almost never leave. For those leaders who are a bit skeptical, rest assured that none of this is touchy-feely or soft. It is as tangible and practical as anything else…and even more important.

Even the smartest team will eventually fail if it is unhealthy. But a healthy team will find a way to succeed. Without politics and confusion, it will become smarter and tap into all of the intelligence and talent it has.

Team health requires real work and discipline, maintained over time, and the courage to objectively confront problems hindering true team achievement. Leaders must confront themselves, their peers, and the dysfunction within their teams with honesty and persistence. Persistent leaders walk into uncomfortable situations and address issues that prevent them from realizing the potential that eludes them.

Four Disciplines

To get healthy, leaders need to take four simple, but difficult, steps:

1. Build a cohesive leadership team. Get the leaders of the organization to behave in a functional, cohesive way. If the people responsible for running a team, department, or organization are behaving in dysfunctional ways, then that dysfunction will cascade down and prevent organizational health. And yes, there are concrete steps a leadership team can take to prevent this.

2. Create clarity. Ensure that the members of that leadership team are intellectually aligned around simple but critical questions. Leaders need to be clear on topics such as why the organization exists and what the most important priority is for the next few months, and eliminate any gaps between them   Then people who work one, two, or three levels below have clarity about what they should do to make the organization successful.

3. Overcommunicate clarity. After the first two steps (behavioral and intellectual alignment), leaders can take the third step: over-communicating. Leaders of healthy organizations constantly repeat themselves and reinforce what is true and important. They err on the side of saying too much, rather than too little.

4. Reinforce clarity. Leaders use simple human systems to reinforce clarity in answering critical questions. They custom design any process that involves people from hiring and firing to performance management and decision-making to support and emphasize the uniqueness of the organization.

Healthy teams get better at meetings. Without making a few simple changes to the way meetings happen, a team will struggle to maintain its health. Healthy teams rarely fail. When politics, ambiguity, dysfunction, and confusion are reduced to a minimum, people are empowered to design products, serve customers, solve problems, and help one another. Healthy teams recover from setbacks, attract the best people, and create exciting opportunities. People are happier, the bottom line is stronger, and executives are at peace when they know they’ve fulfilled their most important responsibility: creating a culture of success.

Applying the principles of great performance is hard, but the effects of deliberate practice are cumulative. The more of a head start you get in developing people, the more difficult it will be for competitors to catch you.

–Jeff Wolf

Contact us today to discuss how we can partner together to help develop and grow your leaders and teams: jeff@wolfmotivation.com, 858-638-8260 or www.wolfmotivation.com

Follow Jeff on Twitter: @JeffWolfUSA

Articles in the Media

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Seven Disciplines of a Leader

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6 Essential Leadership Responsibilities That Build Effective Teams

To create a fully functional team, the leader needs to exhibit six leadership traits.

1. Build trust. Trust is a three-way street: A. You must be able to trust each member of your team. B. They, in turn, must be able to trust you. C. Team members need to trust one another.  Trust is earned, so set the stage for success by creating regular and ongoing teambuilding opportunities. You can start with small projects involving two-and-three person teams.  In due course, you’ll want to expand team size and the scope of assigned projects.  Never compromise your team’s trust in you by assigning a task that is well beyond their skills level.  This managerial mistake sets them up for failure, and it can irreparably damage your relationship.

2. Communicate. Watch any police drama on television and you will notice how law enforcement officers remain in constant communication during tactical operations. Their lives depend on it. You can’t expect your team to understand and execute a task without clearly communicating your goals and objectives.  In some cases, you will be a hands-on leader, participating in the task and offering close supervision.  In other instances, you may assign a team leader, who will be charged with keeping you up-to-date on the task’s progress.

Communication must flow in several directions: How you articulate your message.  How others hear your words (the takeaway message). How well you listen to-and hear-what team members say.

Any glitch in these communication channels can lead to a major disconnect, even project failure.  And if you rush through communication efforts, rattling off details without ensuring clear messaging or ending a meeting with “Got it?  Okay, let’s do it,” you discourage team members from asking crucial questions that may make or break their endeavor.

3. Offer sufficient resources and autonomy. Teams fail when members lack the time and resources required to complete their assignment.  Perform a reality check.  Ask yourself how much time and how many tangible resources you would need to fulfill the project’s demands.  Next, determine whether your team, based on members’ experience levels, requires more, less, or the same amount of time.  Seek input from team members, asking them to honestly assess how long specific components of the task will take.  Your goal is to develop an accurate, realistic timeline.

If you have chosen a team leader to lead a task, allow this person to delegate responsibilities as she sees fit.  Make sure the leader knows the difference between delegation and abdication.  The team leader’s job is to set the vision, delineate strategies (often with the help of other team members), and provide the conditions and support needed for success.

As for autonomy, don’t micromanage your team (or team leader).  Give members an attainable goal and enough autonomy to complete it.  Monitor progress, but avoid being overly intrusive.  You’re the leader – not a babysitter.  Let team members feel empowered enough to embrace responsibilities and enjoy a sense of ownership.  Remind the team that you are available if anyone needs consultation.

4. Build self-efficacy. Team members must know that you have confidence in their abilities to complete a task.  They, in turn, must feel secure in meeting your goal.

If an employee feels uneasy about his role on the team, consider pairing him with a high-performing peer.  This strategy can help boost the self-assurance of an employee who has not yet achieved self-efficacy – an individual’s judgment of his ability to successfully complete a chosen task.  Team members’ self-efficacy will affect the choices they make when working on a task, as well as their doggedness when setbacks occur.  It’s your job as the leader to uncover the employees’ fears and barriers to success and alleviate their concerns, including shyness; self-consciousness; poor communication skills; fear of conflict; impatience with, or dislike of, other members of the team; and bias.

5. Hold team member accountable. Every team member should be held to the same standard of excellence, regardless of training or years of experience on the job.  While each person’s precise task will vary, all team members’ commitment to completing the job should be unwavering.

6. Conduct routine debriefings. Debriefings should focus on high and low points during the project’s run.  When you review your team’s completed work, note individual performance and provide meaningful praise.  Team members should be rewarded when they cooperate, coordinate, and share knowledge with coworkers.  And when a team member fails to cooperate or complete her task, speak with her in your office. The meeting should be private, but team members should know that it is taking place – and that there are consequences for failing to pull one’s weight or working well with others.

Before ending a debriefing, ask each team member to share thoughts on improving performance in the future: What would they change? Which steps could have been streamlined? Were any of the steps unnecessary? Were any steps overlooked? Are any procedures archaic…performed simply because they’ve always done it that way? Is a technology update in order? Was there any overlap or redundancy among team members’ jobs?

You may be surprised at the constructive feedback you receive.  Employees also appreciate that you value their opinions and suggestions, and that you’re willing to make changes that solidify future team efforts.

Contact me today to discuss how we can partner together to help develop your leaders and teams: email or call me at 858-638-8260.

  On Sale Now

Seven Disciplines of a Leader

• Named One of the 11 Most Thought- Provoking Leadership Books of the Year 
  
• Named One of 3 Books Small Business Owners & Leaders Should Read
  
• Named one of 3 books to read by KYW-AM Philadelphia
  
• “…like hiring a business coach; it will help you build leadership skills, improve your decision-making and become a more effective leader.” –Small Business Forum
  
• “The great value of this book is found in his explanation of the “how” and “why.” In my opinion, the information, insights, and counsel he provides can be of incalculable value to middle managers who aspire to become leaders. Also, to those now preparing for a career in business or who have only recently embarked on one. There is another constituency to which I also highly recommend this book: Owner/CEOs of small to midsize, privately-owned companies who are eager to strengthen their skills in one or more of the areas that Wolf explores.” –Blogging on Business
  
• “……is going to become a leadership classic. You’ll mark up every page you read as you spot valuable principles.” – Pat Williams, Co-founder and Senior Vice President of the NBA’s Orlando Magic
  
• “…..describes state-of-the-art techniques that leaders at any level of the organization can use to improve their performance. His remarkable advice is sensible, easy to understand, and noteworthy.” -Marshall Goldsmith, author of the NY Times and global bestsellers: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, MOJO and Triggers.
  
• “….delivers major benefits for its readers. It very effectively demonstrates how to build core leadership skills, improve decision making, interpersonal relations, and teamwork skills and reveals techniques of highly effective and dynamic leaders.” -Edgar Tu, former President, Home Entertainment of America, Sony Electronics
  
• “….has given us a comprehensive list of the many ways that the aspiring or current manager can sharpen his leadership skills in order to be able to compete effectively in today’s challenging business environment.” – John A. Warden III, Colonel, USAF (retired) and author of Winning in Fast Time
  
• “….he has laid out a flight plan to guide you through both blue skies and turbulence to achieve your leadership goals. He shows how successful leaders continue to learn and grow….reading it and absorbing its lessons will imbue you with the courage and confidence it takes to become a great leader. Consider it a flight plan to support you team and you en route to your destinations” – Howard Putnam, Former CEO Southwest Airlines and Braniff International
  
• “…insightful and straightforward, a book you can put to use immediately. This book is not theory, it’s action.  Real case studies lead to real takeaways you can practice now.  Whether you are a new or experience leader, this book will make you better!” – Andrew Field, CEO, Printing for Less.com
  
• “…is a seminal book on leadership in business, a groundbreaking study that leaders in any line of work can use to increase their effectiveness on the job. Its penetrating insights will be helpful for frontline supervisors, managers, and chief executive officers alike.” – Dale Sohn, former President and CEO, Samsung Telecommunications America
  

 All proceeds go to our wounded service men and women.

How Visions Become Shared

How do individual visions become shared visions?  A useful metaphor is the hologram, the three-dimensional image created by interacting light sources.  If you cut a photograph in half, each half shows only part of the whole image.  But if you divide a hologram, each part, no matter how small, shows the whole image intact.

Likewise, when a group of people comes together to share a vision, each person sees an individual picture of the organization at its best.  Each shares responsibility for the whole, not just for one piece.  But the component pieces of the holograms are not identical.  Each represents the whole image from a different point of view.  It’s something like poking holes in a window shade; each hole offers a unique angle for viewing the whole image.  So, too, is each individual’s vision unique.

When you add up the pieces of a hologram, the image become more intense, more lifelike.  When more people share a vision, the vision becomes a mental reality that people can truly imagine achieving.  They now have partners, cocreators; the vision no longer rests on their shoulders alone.  Early on, people may claim it as their vision.  But, as the shared vision develops, it becomes everybody’s vision.

Building a shared vision involves these five useful skills:

1. Encouraging personal vision. Shared visions emerge from  personal visions.  It is not that people only care about their own self-interest; in fact, people’s values usually include dimensions that concern family, organizations, community, and even the world.  Rather, it is that people’s capacity for caring is personal.

 

2. Communicating and asking for support. Leaders must share their own vision continually, rather than being the official representative of the corporate vision. They also must ask: Is this vision worthy of your commitment? This is hard for people used to setting goals and presuming compliance.

 

3. Visioning as an ongoing process. Many managers want to dispense with the vision business by writing the official vision statement.  Such statements often lack the vitality, freshness, and excitement of a genuine vision that come from people asking: What do we really want to achieve?

 

4. Blending extrinsic and intrinsic visions. Many energizing visions are extrinsic, focusing on achieving something relative to a competitor. But a goal that is limited to defeating an opponent can, once the vision is achieved, easily become a defensive posture.  In contrast, intrinsic goals, such as creating a new product, taking an old product to a new level, or setting a new standard for customer satisfaction, elicit more creativity and innovation.  Intrinsic and extrinsic visions need to coexist; a vision solely predicated on defeating an adversary will weaken an organization.

 

5. Distinguishing positive from negative visions. Many organizations only pull together when their survival is threatened. Similarly, most social movements aim to eliminate what people don’t want; thus, we see antidrugs, antismoking, or antinuclear arms movement. Negative visions tend to be short-term and carry a message of powerlessness.

Building Better Management Teams

The following is a guest post by John Cotter. Building Better Management Teams first appeared in Wolf in the Workplace, the newsletter of Wolf Management Consultants, LLC.

Designing work for senior management teams starts by identifying the tasks that are unique to the top level of the organization. People accustomed to managing a particular function often think that the outputs of the group that they manage are the same as their own outputs. The challenge is to help them discover what the senior management team as a whole produces. This voyage of discovery starts by developing a shared understanding of how their business fits in the ever-evolving environment. By understanding the business context and the contributions of the management team to the success of the business, expectations evolve about what work is needed and who is best suited to accomplish it. Individual roles are then developed by negotiating these expectations.

Experience suggests the steps to use in developing senior management teams are as follows:

• Share individual understandings of the current business context and agree about important trends, potential problems and emerging opportunities.
• Review what the senior managing team currently produces and evaluate its relevance in relation to emerging business developments.
• Identify any new outputs required from the senior management team to assure that the company will be successful in the future.
• Examine the processes required to create these outputs and agree about how the management team should work together to support these processes.
• Redesign and reassign the current roles and responsibilities of senior managers as needed.
• Define new accountabilities and negotiate new performance and recognition agreements.
• Provide the management team with the skills, information and guidelines they need to operate successfully.

Senior managers sometimes feel a little foolish creating operating guidelines about how they should work together as a team. Surely, they think, we’re all adults and have years of experience working in groups. That, of course, is the problem. Everyone has practiced dysfunctional behavior for years. Operating guidelines should be explicit, simple, clear and concise. Here are some typical examples:

• Speak honestly. Make clear and direct requests. Be willing to surface issues or take positions that may result in conflict.
• Anyone can disagree about anything with anyone, but no one can disagree without stating the reasons why.
• Listen for peoples’ contributions, rather than editing with assessments, opinions or judgments.
• Support each other. Operate from the point of view that, “we’re all in this together.”
  It’s not OK to win at someone else’s expense or at the expense of the company.
• Support people in fulfilling their commitments and hold them accountable for results.
• Show appreciation by giving, receiving and requesting acknowledgment from others.

Managing at senior levels today involves four fundamental tasks: first, monitoring and influencing the environment to develop new business opportunities: second, articulating, modeling and creating ownership for a vision of what the organization aims to accomplish in the future: third, attracting business leaders, matching them with the right assignments and holding them accountable for results: and fourth, investing, distributing and balancing resources across the organization’s portfolio of businesses.

These are all collective rather than individual tasks. If they’re to be managed effectively, learning acquired from enterprise-level teams needs to be transferred into the executive suite. As AT&T board member Charlie Brown said, “You can’t run the business from memory any more.”