How to Manage a Toxic Employee

There’s that one person on your team — the bad apple who has nothing positive to say, riles up other team members, and makes work life miserable. If you can’t fire him, how do you respond to his behavior? What feedback do you give? How do you mitigate the damage he inflicts? 

What the Experts Say
There’s a difference between a difficult employee and a toxic one, says Dylan Minor, an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management who studies this topic. “I call them toxic because not only do they cause harm but they also spread their behavior to others,” she explains. “There’s a pattern of de-energizing, frustrating or putting down teammates,” adds Christine Porath, an associate professor at Georgetown and the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace.  “It’s not just that Joe is rude. The whole team suffers because of it.” Of course,  your first step as a manager should be to avoid hiring toxic people in the first place, but once they’re on your team, it can be hard to get rid of them. “Oftentimes the behavior doesn’t run against anything legal so you can’t fire them if others in the organization don’t agree that a line has been crossed,” Porath explains. Here’s what to do instead.

Dig deeper
The first step is to take a closer look at the behavior and what’s causing it. Is the person unhappy in the job? Struggling in their personal life? Frustrated with coworkers? “You might meet with them and ask how they’re doing — at work, at home, and with their career development,” suggests Porath. If you find there’s a reason for why they’re acting the way they are, offer to help. “A manager can use this information to coach the person, or suggest resources to help address the root of the problem.” For example, adds Minor, if the person is going through a divorce or struggling with a mental health issue, you could offer “counseling resources or time off that could potentially alleviate” the underlying issue.

Give them direct feedback
In many cases, toxic people are oblivious to the effect they have on others. “Most of the time people don’t realize that they’re as destructive as they are,” Porath says. “They’re too focused on their own behaviors and needs to be aware of the broader impact.”  That’s why it’s crucial to give direct and honest feedback — so they understand the problem and have an opportunity to change. The standard feedback rules apply:  Objectively explain the behavior and its effects, using specific, concrete examples.  “It’s not helpful to say, ‘You’re annoying us all,’” Porath explains. “You have to ground it in the work.”  Also discuss what kind of behavior you’d like to see instead and develop an improvement plan with the employee. “What do you expect them to change? Strive for clearly defined, measurable goals,” Porath says.  “You’re giving them the chance to have a more positive impact on people.”

Explain the consequences
If the carrot doesn’t work, you can also try the stick. “We all tend to respond more strongly to potential losses than we do to potential gains, so it’s important to show offenders what they stand to lose if they don’t improve,” says Porath. If the person is hesitant to reform, figure out what they care most about — the privilege of working from home, their bonus—and put that at stake. For most people, the possibility of missing out on a promised promotion or suffering other consequences “tied to the pocketbook” will be a strong motivation to behave in a more civil way.

Accept that some people won’t change
Of course, you should always hope that the person can change but not everyone will respond to the tactics listed above. Minor is currently researching toxic doctors and says that early results indicate that some are either unable or unwilling to change. Porath’s research on incivility has meanwhile found that “4% of people engage in this kind of behavior just because it’s fun and they believe they can get away with it.” In those extreme cases, you should recognize that you won’t be able to fix the problem and begin to explore more serious responses.

Document everything
If you conclude that you really need to fire the person, you must first document their offenses and any response you’ve offered so far. “You want to establish a pattern of behavior, the steps you took to address it, the information, warnings or resources provided to the employee, and the failure of the employee to change,” Porath says.  Include “supporting material” too: formal complaints, relevant information from performance evaluations, such as 360-degree or peer reviews. The idea, says Minor, is to protect yourself and the company and to show your employee exactly why they are being let go.

Separate the toxic person from other team members
Even if you can’t get rid of a bad apple, you can isolate it from the rest of the bushel so the rot doesn’t spread. Minor’s research shows that people close to a toxic employee are more likely to become toxic themselves, but the good news is that the risk also subsides quickly,” he says. As soon as you put some physical distance between the offender and the rest of the team – for example, by rearranging desks, reassigning projects, scheduling fewer all-hands meetings, or encouraging more work-from-home days — you’ll see the situation start to improve. Porath calls this “immunizing” the others. “You’re trying to protect people like you would with a disease,” she says. “You will hopefully decrease the number of run-ins and the cognitive loss.” But make sure to do this with discretion. Let employees come to you with their complaints about the toxic colleague and use “one-on-one conversations” to coach them on how they might minimize their interactions.”

Don’t get distracted
Managing a toxic person can eat up your time, energy, and productivity. But “don’t spend so much on one individual that your other priorities fall by the wayside,” says Porath. To counteract the negativity and make sure you’re still thriving, “surround yourself with supportive, positive people” and “look for meaning and purpose in your work,” she says.  Also focus on basic self-care. “If someone is draining you, build yourself up by exercising, eating right, sleeping, and taking breaks, both short-term ones and vacations,” she says. “Being healthy and proactive is the one thing we know that buffers people from the effects of toxic behavior.”

Principles to Remember
Do:

• Talk to the person to try to understand what’s causing the behavior.
• Give concrete, specific feedback and offer the opportunity to change.
• Look for ways to minimize interactions between the toxic employee and the rest of your team.

Don’t:

• Bring the situation up with your other team members. Allow them to mention it first and then provide suggestions.
• Try to fire the person unless you’ve documented the behavior, its impact, and your response.
• Get so wrapped up in handling the issue that you ignore more important work and responsibilities.

Case Study #1: Give direct feedback and support the rest of the team
Christina Del Villar, the director of marketing at the e-commerce operations software firm Webgility, managed a small team at a start-up earlier in her career. One employee, Sharon (not her real name), a senior marketing manager, was making the rest of the group miserable.

“She was an alcoholic, abused drugs, and had a medical condition,” Christina recalls, Her work was “full of mistakes,” her work ethic was poor — ”she was often out of the office, at least one day a week, if not more” — and she frequently took credit for others’ efforts.

Christina made sure to document the behavior but says she couldn’t fire Sharon because the woman “had threatened to sue for a variety of reasons, including her medical condition” should she be let go. Instead, she worked to prevent “the negativity from seeping into everything” by routinely giving Sharon feedback and direction. “Sometimes people don’t realize the impact they’re having so I like to have a blunt conversation with them about their behavior, what they can do to change it, and how they can work better with the team.”  Her approach was “delicate” because, with Sharon “you never really knew who you were going to get on any given day.” But she learned to read her employee’s “state of mind” and “pick days where she would be more accepting of this kind of conversation.”

Christina also supported the rest of the team. “Sometimes it was as easy as saying they were doing a great job or thanking them for stepping up to “fill the void” left by Sharon, she explains. She also encouraged them to focus on themselves and their work, “not on what someone else was or was not be doing.” When they complained about Sharon, she offered advice “while still respecting everyone’s privacy and staying within the law.”

While Christina’s efforts reduced the negative impact Sharon was having, the problem was ultimately solved by circumstance. When their business was acquired by a larger company,  Sharon moved to a different department.

Case Study #2: Help him rebuild his reputation
Daniel Hanson (not his real name) once managed an IT team at a large multinational that suffered every time it had to interact with Bob (also not his real name), a senior internal consultant. “He had a habit of talking down to people and being dismissive and was blissfully unaware that his behaviors  irritated people,” Daniel recalls.

With a little probing, Daniel discovered some of the reasons for Bob’s negativity. “His personal life was a mess between bad relationships and estranged children. Plus he’d realized that he had reached a certain age and hadn’t achieved the professional satisfaction that he wanted and he thought he deserved.”

Still, Daniel made clear to Bob that his behavior needed to change. He recommended a counselor provided by the company and offered up his own time and advice in weekly meetings. “I told him this was his last chance and that the next step was a formal performance management plan and almost inevitably exit from the business,” he says.
Although many managers “hated Bob with a passion,” Daniel encouraged them to stop talking about him behind his back, “to see that he was trying to change and to include him in more senior projects under close observation.” He spoke to people individually and “pointed out that his contribution on numerous projects had been immense.”

“Gradually, as Bob’s behavior changed, their attitudes toward him changed as well,” Daniel says. He’s proud that, when Bob did eventually transfer to another team, it was because he’d wanted to go, not because he’d been forced out.

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Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Managing Conflict at Work. She writes and speaks about workplace dynamics. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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What is a team?

A Team Is A Group Who Work Together

6 Secrets of Business Leaders Who Built Hugely Successful Companies

 

 

1. Communicate from the inside out.

Simon Sinek, author and CEO of the Sinek Group, believes the most awe-inspiring companies begin with a great leader who regularly asks herself “Why?”

Why are you in business? Why should customers care? Popular brands emanate a strong, purposeful mission statement to their customers. Often, people can live without your product or service, but they consistently do business with you because they support what you stand for, including your vision.

Apple’s latest launch of products illustrates this. Visit Apple.com to learn more about the new MacBook and get caught up in how the company describes its latest offering. “With the new MacBook, we set out to do the impossible: engineer a full-size experience into the lightest and most compact Mac notebook ever.”

Apple engages you with a feeling they are conquering the impossible for the user’s ultimate benefit. The brand prioritizes users’ needs to create beautiful, easy-to-use products. To build a successful business, leaders need to fully understand why they are doing what they do and communicate that to their employees and customers. No gimmicks. No fluff. 

2. Shoot the dogs early.
In 1973, Barbara Corcoran started The Corcoran Group with a $1,000 loan from her boyfriend. By 2001, she successfully scaled and sold the company she founded for $66 million. As a leader, she knew her success depended on the overall happiness and productivity of her team members. To ensure her employees had the best working environment, Corcoran routinely weeded out  the complainers and the laggards who negatively impacted everyone else’s performance.

Each year Corcoran cleaned house and let the bottom 25 percent of her sales staff go. She calls this “shooting the dogs early.” By releasing the poorest performers and those who groan and grumble, she maintained high company morale and ensured she retained the best staff possible. 

3. Walk it out.
When building a business, entrepreneurs often get stuck. Completing a simple task, conceiving new ideas or resolving a small problem can feel tantamount to climbing Mount Everest. To overcome an obstacle, you might just want to take a walk.

According to the New York Times, studies have shown that exercise helps you perform better in areas like decision making, organizing your thoughts and thinking creatively. In the workplace, this can translate in a few ways, the simplest of which is taking a quick walk around the office. Encourage your employees to get up and stretch their legs if they find themselves helplessly stuck on a problem.

You can also encourage walking meetings in your office. The Guardian suggests taking four to six people on a walking meeting to get ideas flowing. Set a time limit of 30 minutes to keep from over-exerting everyone, and offer to buy coffee the first few times you go out. Keep track of all the ideas you come up with on your smartphones. 

4. Be transparent.
As more companies open up about their processes and methods, customers are becoming savvier and hungrier for transparency. Fortunately, transparency does not require you to fork over trade secrets but it does mean being honest about how you conduct business. Your customers want to feel they can trust you. Openness and information sharing helps to build that trust.

Clothing company Everlane takes transparency to the next level. While many retailers disclose where their materials are sourced and what kind of factories they use to make their products, Everlane goes a step further and tells shoppers what the company paid for their materials. Every item has a “Transparent Pricing” section that explains how much the materials, labor, duties, transportation, real cost, and markup is for that particular item, comparing it also against how it would be priced at a traditional retailer. By sharing the economics of each garment, Everlane fosters client loyalty, brand trust and the intimacy companies need with customers to prosper. 

5. Encourage your employees to express their creativity.
Profitable and sustainable enterprises thrive on original thinking while copycat businesses shutter their doors as soon as the idea they have stolen loses its relevance. Since the successful conception and development of viable business ideas takes time and requires a flexible corporate structure, try setting aside a dedicated amount of resources to allow your employees to be creative on their own terms.

Google does this by giving its engineers 20 percent of their time to work on any project they want. This allows team members to develop products they are passionate about. Many times, that means more care and attention goes into each effort. Gmail is the most famous consequence of Google’s generous 20 percent time policy. 

6. Work in small groups.
According to the Small Business Chronicle, small groups allow employees to bring their individual skill sets to the table, which can complement and augment others’ talents. Having multiple perspectives can help the group approach a project or issue from different angles. This enables fresh ideas to emerge and mature.

Whenever possible, encourage your coworkers to collaborate in small groups. Businesses flourish when colleagues partner to conceive, develop and implement new concepts that help the company grow. Often, team members would not be able to produce the same sort of ideas alone. The best products and services are seldom built in a vacuum.

What is the Secret of Super-Successful Leaders?

What transforms an executive, an entrepreneur or an advocate into an extraordinary leader who achieves outstanding results? Some say it is their vision. Others say that they are great speakers and communicators. And many insiders say they are delegators. All of the above are attributes of great leaders, but what ability truly differentiates the good leaders from the great ones?

The great leaders are consistent QUESTIONERS. Surprisingly, it is not one’s ability to have all the ANSWERS that determines a leader’s success. In fact, it is their ability to ASK QUESTIONS – both questioning themselves and those around them. It was Albert Einstein who said it best when he said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

Why are answers valued more than questions? Once children learn to talk, they start asking questions constantly. Beginning at the age of two children’s curiosity has them asking as many as 100 questions/day. Parents often show annoyance and tell their children to stop asking questions. This negative feedback continues when they attend school where the education system rewards children for getting the right answers and rarely reinforces the inquiry process. By the time we are adults, we believe we need to have all the ‘correct’ answers to be successful. Creativity and innovation experts tell us that it is the questions not the answers that produce the most profound and innovative products and solutions.

Most of us need to reprogram our conversations, as well as our leadership and management styles to make questioning an important tool for the success of companies, institutions and individuals. This is validated in many books by experts such as Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, Susan Scott inFierce Conversations, and Power Questions by Andrew Sobel. Stephen Covey tells us in his best selling book, that Habit #5 is ‘Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood, ’ perhaps one of the greatest management tools. In Vistage CEO peer advisory groups, for which I chair a group in New York City, the primary focus of solving business challenges is based on asking questions in order to reach solutions. In my own book, Link Out, I explain that focusing on asking others questions, rather than talking about ourselves is the key to building strong trusted relationships.

So where do you start? Fire up your innate curiosity about your team, your friends, your clients, your potential customers. Think of yourself as a “learner” instead of a “judger” as Marilee Adams says in her enlightening book, Change Your Questions Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work. Adams’ book is my current favorite reading and I highly recommend it. When we make non-judgmental, open-ended questions from a curiosity point-of-view, we can lead like the greatest leaders, manage the most successful teams and thrive in our personal and business relationships. It’s amazing the answers we get, when we ask the ‘right’ questions. 

—Leslie Grossman, Vistage Chair, author,Link Out: How to Turn Your Network into a Chain of Lasting Connections, www.lesliegrossmanleadership.com

Eight steps to achieve sticky change in your organization

Originally published on January 16, 2015 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail:  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-digital/innovation/change-is-the-new-status-quo-embrace-it/article22447422/

Change sucks, let’s be honest (even for a guy like me who gets bored in his sleep). Doing things differently is difficult. Re-learning, re-thinking and, most importantly, getting people to go along with your new regime is a task fraught with peril and potentially dogged resistance.

But there’s no denying that change is a constant in life and often inevitable. We live in an era of social change, market change and technological change that add up to 24-7 turmoil. This means change is no longer a specific event that we can anticipate or plan for. It’s a continuing process that we must live out daily.

With the New Year upon us, I want to focus on how to embrace change and make constant evolution a more achievable resolution for us all.

Having read through a series of articles on change published over the last 20 years, I’ve been struck by one thing that hasn’t altered much at all: the success rate of change initiatives. It appears that historically only 30 per cent of corporate change initiatives succeed. A .300 batting average might get you into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it’s not an acceptable success rate to any owner, manager or CEO trying to keep their business ahead of the curve.

In my opinion, change initiatives are almost always defeated by a problem of definition. By “definition,” I refer to the act of determining what success looks like at the end of the process. Case in point: not long ago I sat in a client’s brainstorming meeting and the exercise started with a broad, sweeping proclamation: “Something has to change here.

Sales are not where we want them to be. We need ideas.”

Sadly, objectives like these are too broad and ambiguous, to succeed.

Through a series of simple questions, I helped the group drill down to focus on a more tangible definition of success. First, how far off-target are dollar sales? Second, based on the amount of dollar sales required, how many new accounts are really needed to close the gap? Third, how many people should be tasked with acquiring the new sales? And, finally, what geographic area should these sales be drawn from?

Within 15 minutes we had moved from a broad-based need – sales – to a specific definition of success: “We need six people to bring in a total of 12 new accounts from a 10-kilometre radius of their office within one year.” This is a well defined and achievable goal.

Most importantly, this focus identified that the real problem wasn’t sales. Lagging revenue was just a symptom of the real problem: inappropriate marketing. Given its model of big-ticket sales, the business’ focus needed to change from costly, ineffective awareness marketing to targeted, one-to-one initiatives supported by sales training.

Definition and focus are the all-important, overarching fundamentals of every change process. Once success is clearly defined, I have developed these eight steps to achieve sticky change:

1. Define stakeholder and organizational needs. Identify, support and engage the people on your team who are going to be affected by change. Address their motivation, their practical and emotional needs, and their readiness for change. This information will help you craft a compelling vision for the project outcomes, secure senior-level support, and map out a thorough project plan.

2. Identify measures of program success and appropriate rewards. Major milestones and specific metrics need to be established, with goals being used to bring focus and clarity to the outcomes you wish to accomplish. This creates alignment across the organization, provides for greater levels of accountability, and establishes a framework for celebrating success or making course corrections.

3. Design the change program. Successful change programs align with and can be integrated into the company’s culture. Building a link between a change initiative and the organization’s current values, vision, mission and processes will leverage existing attitudes and strategies. This will substantially increase the impact and longevity of any change.

4. Reduce obstacles and barriers up-front. Identify all potential obstacles and address them early on. Map out the stages of the journey your organization and team members will experience, and develop a plan for managing and navigating through each stage. In this way, clarity will replace ambiguity, and acceptance will overcome apprehension.

5. Deliver the program elements. Support change with robust project and communications plans. Change, by definition, is about doing things differently, so it requires more planning, not less. Checklists and techniques for ensuring successful program delivery should be developed and reviewed with regularity, allowing for fine-tuning on the fly.

6. Coach your change champions, early adopters and managers. Identify the champions who will lead your change project. Change champions make initiatives more credible and more scalable. They will help you build momentum faster. Support them with one-to-one coaching so that they’ll feel more empowered and better equipped to direct their teams through the hurdles of implementation.

7. Communicate goals and results to the entire organization. Support change initiatives with strong, frequent communications that share short-term gains as well as long-term success. Ongoing communication builds momentum by letting team members know that their efforts, ideas and participation are not taken for granted.

8. Review progress at pre-scheduled team meetings. Measure performance and share results. Regular feedback is a necessary accountability tool. Formal checkpoints should be determined at the start of the project and scheduled in advance, with Change Champions tasked to lead scheduled review meetings with their teams, and report back to senior management.

Technology is changing our world every day, and it’s not going to slow down to let any of us off the ride. To equip your business for the New Year, adopt one more resolution:

understand that change is the new status quo. Embrace it as a fundamental driver of your success.

Written by

Ken Tencer

If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far build a team.

The Strategic advantage of coalition leadership.

As a leader and change agent, your ability to identify needs, innovate processes, pioneer new markets is not a task easily achieved on your own regardless of what your ego or pride may think. Leadership within an organization is not only reliant on your ability to align innovation, change and progress within the corporate goals but to work within the infrastructure of internal and external stakeholders, skillfully maneuvering through political landscapes and personal agendas.

Coalition leadership is the ability to motivate and organize stakeholders to join you in the pursuit of your goals. When introducing change, evaluating the political terrain is key. Who are likely to be your allies and who are likely to be your resistors? What role do they play in the organization? What kind of influence do they exert? Even after finding stakeholders with common goals who would likely support your initiative? Will they be full supporters?

Marginal supporters? Private or public supporters? The more controversial or unique your initiative the more important your taking the time to evaluate and map the process is.

Ultimately your success as a coalition leader will come down to your being able to clearly communicate your strategic and tactical plans for the success of your initiative to the members of your coalition. Understanding their personal goals will ensure their support is solid and most importantly public. Public support gives your initiative legitimacy; it clearly establishes to the rest of the organization that this initiative will not only benefit many but there is a greater sense of purpose and likelihood of success.

Long term coalitions that share broad goals and common resources over time are key to the success of your agenda. If you do not establish the long-term viability of your coalition, the success of your organizational initiative can be jeopardized by counter coalitions, infighting and splintering of your coalition into interest groups. It is important to solidify your coalition right from the beginning by creating a shared sense of purpose. A shared purpose will enable your coalition to move congruently in pursuit of a common goal. Without shared purpose your coalition will likely easily fragment and may not develop the necessary momentum to overcome resistance to your efforts.

Getting your coalition into action at the early stages will also help you weed out marginal supporters. You may find that early supporters were really only supporters in casual conversation, or they were supporters up until you went public and scrutiny and criticism of your initiative began as it always does. Marginal supporters can quickly become resistors without the proper and timely nurturing. Even with public support, people will maintain their public hidden agendas and assumptions even after they’ve bought in to your agenda. If you allow those personal motivations to go unchecked or clearly understood by you, you run the risk of you having a message that becomes diffused by a collision of personal interests that never achieves the focus required to see your change agenda through. Spend the time to clearly understand the member’s motivations. Why are they supporting your agenda? What is in it for them? What do they expect to gain from being part of your effort? Under what conditions would they no longer find it useful to support your change agenda?

Ultimately your success in leading a coalition comes down to your ability to translate your agenda into action, being true to your mandate yet remaining flexible enough to make adjustments to plans as required. Setting up a time table with achievable milestones that will lead to small success early on will be a great foundation to establish momentum. The wonderful thing about leading by coalition is the ability to work effectively as a team counting on each other’s support, celebrating accomplishments and creating an environment of inclusion and mutual opportunity for future collaborations.

Written by

Carolina Billings

The Problem With Managing Millennials...(Is Not What You Think)

If I sit around and look through my LinkedIn feed or Facebook, Twitter, Zite...whatever, I am bound to see something about the millennials and their "narcissism" or their "poor work ethic" or what have you. And, the point of this post isn't to say if these things are true or they are not. 

The point is that the problem with managing millennials isn't them...its you. (I'll pause while you fire off a hateful email to me...)

But here is the thing, no matter what person you are dealing with, no matter the generation, no matter the position...you, as the manager, are ultimately responsible for the performance of your team. 

So I have found in working with my clients that a lot of the challenge of dealing with millennials stems from a poor grasp of setting clear goals and expectations for your teams. Which means that even if millennials have short attention spans, need praise, or anything else that is being said, as the manager, you need to set your expectations and goals in a clear and understandable way. 

Here are a few tips to help:

1. Focus Your Goals On The Output: Too much of our time is spent on just doing tasks that don't move us towards our goals. Millennials are sometimes called lazy because they talk about "balance" between work and life. I think by focusing your goals on the outputs you are trying to achieve you accomplish a few key things...you give your team the flexibility to attempt to solve problems with creativity; you don't get bogged down on assigning tasks; and, if you are lucky, your team works hard to solve the challenge in an effective and efficient manner which will lead to more "balance" by allowing them to complete mission critical tasks and knowing what they need to accomplish to get out of the office. 

2. Open Clear Lines Of Communication: No matter what you do, where you are in your career, people love to have information. The void of communication will always be filled and if you aren't careful it will be filled by bad or false information. So as a manager, help everyone by setting clear expectations for your communications with staff...including updates, status reports, and feedback. Its going to help tremendously.

3. Listen: Another big one I hear about millennials is that they want to be heard. And, somewhere along the line we seem to have forgotten the fact that as managers and leaders, we are only as good as the information we have at hand. So it only makes sense that you take a little time to talk with your team and listen. Sure listening takes time and building relationships with your staff is tough, but the first time you save a huge hunk of time and money by paying attention to something your team tells you, the investment will have paid off...and the added benefit is that you might not really be so willing to lump a whole group of people in generational stereotypes. And, that's something I guarantee will make you a better leader. 

Posted by:Dave Wakeman

Four Muscles Leaders Can Strengthen Everyday

Leadership often seems like a natural ablity that some individuals are gifted with at birth. In reality, leadership is more often a group of muscles that are highly trained in the ability to influence others to take action. Leadership is a journey that never ends and one that you can continue to develop and strengthen like you would a muscle in the gym. Below are four traits of great leaders that if you develop into your daily routine, will help you carry the influence on your team to achieve greatness.


Be Genuine- Strong leaders genuinely care about the success of the people around them. They genuinely want to help others and share wisdom that will lead people to take actions that will reward them. If you only care about your team taking actions to make yourself successful, your team will sense that, and they will resent you. Of course, ultimately, their success will be your success, but focus first on how you will make them successful. Really listen when your team members are asking for help. Don’t let email or other projects distract you while they are speaking. Give your team member your full attention to fully understand how you can be of service.


Build Relationships- John C Maxwell said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Build relationships that are so strong with your team members that they are excited to come to work each day because they get to come to work with you. Plan a team outing and learn about whom your people really are when they are not in the office. Be a mentor to at least two or three members that you believe could be future leaders in your organization. Take them to lunch and talk about leadership opportunities with them. Let them know you want to see them in a leadership position and you plan to help them achieve that role.


Be the Pulse of the Team- If you show up late and cranky, your team members will be affected. Put your game face on each day. It’s your job to provide the energy, momentum and excitement around production each day. Put on some music, clap your hands or create a contest if you are having a rough day. All three are guaranteed to make your team members smile, which in turn should make you smile.


Deliver Feedback- I have a rule. If I’ll say it about you, I’ve already told you. Make sure that your team members know where they stand both on the good and the bad. Make a point to deliver both praise and discipline right away. When you see your team members taking the right actions, love them. When you see them pointed in the wrong direction, pick them up and put them back on the road of success.


Remember, great leadership cannot be truly developed if you only workout these traits once in a great while. Strong leadership is about consistently using your leadership muscles everyday. 

Posted by:Kelly McDonald

Making the Leap From Star Teammate to Great Leader

What do you do if you’re suddenly put in charge of a team, a project, a division – or even a company?

Having been an exceptional team member in the past doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be a great captain – in fact, what made you a star performer could actually get in your way. If your individual success hinged on doing superior work, for instance, you may need to overcome a pitfall familiar to straight-A students who end up doing all the work themselves when participating in group projects.

Suddenly accountable for people you can’t control, for work you can’t do on your own and maybe even for the output of people you’ve never met, you might panic. Many new leaders do. But realizing that not even the world’s most spectacular track star can beat the time of a just-average relay team may help you realize that the power of a team can outstrip your own performance, even if it’s world class. That’s a good starting point for getting out of your own way. Consider some of the following advice, as well.

1. Visualize “winning.” To do this, you’ll need to project all the way to the finish line. Create powerful images in your mind, and then express these objectives in ways everyone will remember – from the boardroom to the shop. It’s important to turn rudimentary wishes into specific goals; to go from earning a profit to earning $1 per share, to go from having happy customers to having a net promoter score of over 75, to go from being socially responsible to setting up 20 scholarships for employees’ kids.

Establishing quantifiable measures and time-frames turns wishes into goals. Goals then transform capable individuals into powerful teams. Unified teams lead to world-class performance. And articulating, measuring and celebrating meaningful goals means attracting highly qualified employees. 

2. Build a great team. If you hire talented people and put their interests ahead of your own, good things will happen. Your own commitment to serving your team will spur them to become stewards for clients, vendors, shareholders, other employees – and anyone else who has a stake in achieving shared goals. Once the right team is on the field, your own tasks are simply to make sure they have the resources they need and to clear any obstacles out of their way.

3. Don’t play the popularity game. You may be tempted to be popular, and to that end, you might use the proverbial carrot or another type of enticement to garner support. But don’t give outsized bonuses or spackle over real issues with any sort of “free lunch.” If you build fake esprit de corps by giving stuff away, it means you’re failing as a leader, because in actuality, there are no free lunches. Everything comes at a cost. And as leader, you’re accountable for the yet-to-be-reckoned expense of keeping people in line with bribes. You’ll find that not only do their appetites return, but you’ll eventually need to pay for the “food.”

4. Do play the long game. On a related note, only yield to pressures to fix things in the short run if you’re sure your solutions won’t have negative ramifications in the long run. If you keep an eye on the full array of short-, medium- and long-term consequences, not only will your team come to trust you – even though they won’t always agree with you – but so will the market.

5. Be ready to pivot. New problems will flow from every decision you make, so pick solutions that generate a next set of problems suited to your management abilities. You’re not solving a puzzle where finding the perfect piece will complete the picture; you’re dealing in ever-changing probabilities. So adapt, adjust, iterate until you find a good-enough course of action. Then, carry out your plan as if your life depended on it – it’s more reasonable to strive for perfection in execution than in decision-making.

6. Don’t pass the buck. In private enterprise, power can shift from manufacturer to distributor to retailer to customer, and back again. It all depends on an ever-changing balance between supply and demand. In government, politicians calculate how taking from one generation to give to another may keep them in office – until the wheels of society fall off. As a business leader, you’re a steward, not a politician, so resist the temptation to simply shift burdens. Success rooted in inequity spawns instability and strife, whereas applying fairness, durability and equity will pay dividends over time.

7. Listen to your team. Listening is an important part of your job, so be sure to ask for input. But also remember that the most popular ideas are often the least feasible, so don’t base your decisions on popular opinion or politics alone. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” Build the personal capital that allows you to make tough, unpopular calls – then make them. Explain your reasoning to your team, and if you’ve listened well to them, they’ll listen to you when you make the tough calls.

8. Pass the baton. If you insist on making every single decision, you’ll have a less-innovative, less-energized and less-committed team. So decentralize decision-making where possible; empower those closest to the facts and then make them accountable.

9. Know that sometimes, there actually is an “I” in team. People are naturally self-interested. Don’t be surprised by this, and don’t punish them for it. Instead, reward those who have enlightened self-interest – who take into account the long view, who consider the concerns of the community in which they’ve chosen to live and who work for the many non-financial interests other people have. Expecting others simply to deny self-interest altogether for an objective you’ve set will merely unleash instability – and can even destroy your organization.

10.Acknowledge your bloopers. Embracing feedback, particularly the negative kind, is one key to recognizing mistakes. Be humble, vulnerable and willing to learn. If you are, your whole team will learn from its mistakes, too.

Leadership is not about being the best producer, or about being liked, or about making speeches – it is, at its very core, about getting the best all-things-considered results. Incorporating the above tweaks into your already well-established pattern of great individual performance will put you on your way to transforming yourself from manager to leader.

As management-consulting pioneer Peter Drucker noted, “Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.” In my experience, doing the right things the right way is the mark of a great leader. 

Posted by:Joel Peterson

Employee Engagement: "It's Not in My Job Description"

For me, the sentence, "It's not in my job description", is a huge red flag.

It's a sure sign someone is not a team player.  It's a sign someone is a taker, not a giver. It's a sign someone is self-centered, putting their importance ahead of others.

I think I've said before how influential summer jobs can be, and today I'd like to share with you why I feel so strongly about the phrase in the title of this post.

Between my second and third years in university, I worked in the drill squad of the world famous Fort Henry Guard, based in Kingston, Ontario.

One of the unofficial mottoes of the Guard was "Remain Flexible".  The meaning of this was that, at any time, you could be asked to be a sentry, on gun drill, tour guide or cleaning up. Duties for sentry duty or gun drills were assigned each day, but sometimes we had more visitors than expected, which meant you had to be prepared to take on some new assignments.

While this may have been just a summer job, I think these principles hold true in any well-run organization.

In larger organizations, we tend to be slotted into narrowly defined roles and responsibilities that make it hard to be as flexible as we were at Old Fort Henry.  In smaller organizations, the ability to be functional in job roles outside your core responsibilities is vital.

At one company, our purchasing manager lost both parents within weeks of each other.  She was overwhelmed not only with the loss, but also the responsibilities of attending to both their estates.  As a result, she found it difficult to keep up with her job responsibilities, and purchasing was an area in which we were extremely thin on manpower.

While this was happening, we were also having quality issues with a company that supplied a critical laminated material for one of our products.  They were unable to identify for us whether the issues was the result of a fault in the lamination process or a defective batch of material. We knew we needed to find an alternate supplier for this lamination, and the process for finding one was normally managed by purchasing.

Because of the quality issue, we were prevented from manufacturing a product for one of our key customers, who were anxious to know when we would be able to re-commence supply.  They needed answers, not excuses.

I offered to take the lead on finding alternative suppliers because, in the end, it was a customer-driven issue: we had a customer who could not market their product because we were unable to supply a critical component.  So, while my job role was sales, handling a purchasing issue was also a way of solving a supply chain issue for a customer.

The more I researched companies who made one of the materials in the lamination we purchased, the more I came to realize there were literally only a handful of companies in the world who had the capabilities of making the material used, let alone being able to meet our specifications.  (Our customer thought there would be hundreds of companies who made this material and changing suppliers could be done in a couple of weeks). We were fortunate that two of those suppliers were located within a half-day's drive of our plant, so I visited them both to get a better understanding of the challenges in making the material we needed.

One of these suppliers analyzed samples of the lamination we used - both past and current - and determined that the incumbent had, despite protests otherwise, switched recipes and companies they purchased their materials from.  We now had scientific evidence to support our allegations there had been material substitutions.

A few weeks later, when our purchasing manager returned from bereavement leave, I took her to meet the company we felt represented the best opportunity to supply the lamination we needed.  This gave her a chance to see the plant as well as meet the executive team and allowed me an opportunity to transition the supplier search back to her so she could begin qualification trials.

Taking on a task normally done by purchasing gave me some insights into the challenge purchasing people face in searching for and selecting suppliers.  Given the circumstances, it helped forge a stronger relationship between sales and purchasing While helping the company respond to a customer in need.

When I left this company, the purchasing manager was the first person to come into my office and give me a hug and tell me how much they'd miss me.  I was really touched by this and it is a moment I will never forget.

I hope you can see that, in this situation, the roles of sales and purchasing were very strongly interdependent. Had we stuck to our job roles, we might still have solved the supply chain issue for our customer, but at the cost of several weeks being unable to supply them. Blurring the lines between sales and purchasing in this case demonstrated that our company really required a team effort to survive - and thrive.

Posted by Ronald Jamieson

Big Hairy Audacious Goals Drive Innovation: How Modern Engineering Is Reshaping Manufacturing

By TEC Canada, February 18, 2014

TEC Canada is comprised of the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs from high-performing organizations across the country. These Members have compelling stories to tell about building brands that stick and creating messages that resonate. TEC has partnered with Sticky Branding to bring you these stories about the successful brands of our Members, like TEC Member and General Manager of Modern Engineering, Udo Jahn. The article first appeared on Sticky Branding. 

“The BHAGs looked more audacious to outsiders than to insiders. The visionary companies didn’t see their audacity as taunting the gods. It simply never occurred to them that they couldn’t do what they set out to do.” -Jim Collins & Jerry Porras, Built To Last.

Goals drive performance, especially BHAGs — big hairy audacious goals. They stretch you to try things beyond your reach, but they also focus your team on what’s important.

Modern Engineering is one of the oldest machine shops in British Columbia. It’s a second generation family business founded in 1939, and they have a BHAG. Udo Jahn, General Manager of Modern says, “Our primary goal is to render conditions favorable to manufacture in North America.”

It’s no small goal. They’re not simply interested in competing on a global stage. They’re trying to rejuvenate the value proposition of manufacturing industrial equipment in North America. 

BHAGs drive behaviors
BHAGs have two roles. First, they stimulate and motivate your team to change. And second, they shape the ideology of your brand.

Modern Engineer’s BHAG fulfills both roles. The goal gives the team latitude to innovate and try new ideas. They can look beyond their client projects, and consider how they can make incremental improvements in the business and their approach to manufacturing. It’s liberating to innovate when you have a clear purpose.

The goal also shapes Modern’s brand. They can approach their clients, and challenge them to improve their manufacturing processes too. The ideal becomes infectious, and allows engineers to come together, try new ideas and work to improve processes and techniques.

The BHAG elevates the brand from just another supplier to a company deeply committed to innovation and pushing the status quo. 

There’s no such thing as perfection
Perfectionism is a deterrent to a BHAG. Your team needs latitude to take risks, make mistakes, learn and get better.

Udo explains, “There’s no such thing as perfection. It’s the 80/20 Rule. If you can solve 80% of the problem you’re laughing.” But very few people or companies share this point of view. Udo continues, “Everyone wants to be number one, but they forget they have to get past 50% first. We’re conditioned to strive for perfection. People measure themselves from 100% down versus 50% up.”

It’s an interesting insight, and it makes Modern’s pursuit of a BHAG more achievable. Their goal is massive. It has a lot of moving parts, and many are outside of Modern Engineering’s control. But by focusing on incremental improvements they can work on what’s in their control, and they can make tangible improvements month-over-month and year-over-year.

Udo continues, “We’re heavily invested in becoming better every day. We don’t try to compare ourselves to the competition. We try to compare ourselves to where we’ve come from, and ask are we better today?” 

Make purposeful investments

A BHAG demands action.

You can’t make manufacturing in North America productive and competitive without very purposeful investments. Udo says, “We put our money where our mouth is.”

Modern Engineering makes major investments in capital equipment, processes and talent to achieve their BHAG. For example, they’re about to become the only machine shop in Western Canada with five 5-Axis CNC machines. And they invest in the tools and automation to operate at peak performance.

Modern also invests heavily in talent. Udo explains, “Our apprenticeship program is a clear differentiator for the company. We have more apprentices than all of our direct competitors combined.”

The apprenticeship program allows Modern to find talent early, teach them how to be tradespeople versus technicians, and give them the tools to succeed. Out of Modern’s entire workforce only two of their employees were not apprentices. 

Go big or go home
Does a BHAG make a brand? No. Collins and Porras write, “BHAGs alone do not make a visionary company. Indeed, progress alone — no matter what the mechanism used to stimulate progress — does not make a visionary company.” But when used effectively, a BHAG does shape a brand.

Udo Jahn’s vision for North American manufacturing is infectious. It gets people to say, “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”

And that interest comes out in many ways. It attracts talent that want to make a dent in the manufacturing sector, and want to work towards the vision. It attracts customers that share the same belief, and want to work with suppliers that get it.

The BHAG is a lightening rod. It takes the brand from just another machine shop to one challenging the status quo and working to achieve something greater than the collective sum of its parts. 

Author bio
Jeremy Miller is the President of Sticky Branding — a strategic brand consultancy that helps companies stand out, attract customers and grow sticky brands. Jeremy publishes a weekly column called Sticky Branding Stories that shares examples of how mid-market companies are growing sticky brands. You can reach Jeremy at 416.479.4403, and for more information visit http://www.StickyBranding.com.

TEC Member Profile

Modern Engineering is a CNC machine shop dedicated to serving their customers with integrity. They provide the latest in machining and measuring technologies in order to provide high quality, cost effective solutions. Modern is one of the oldest machine shops in British Columbia, founded in 1939. They stand out as an innovator in their sector.

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