Category Leadership Styles

The High Cost of Poor Leadership


I often use the phrase “poor leadership costs a lot of money and is a terrible waste of human potential.”

I was recently asked by one of my clients to prove it.

So, I put together some statistics on the cost of bad leadership and the upside of excellent leadership.

My Client needed this information so that he could help support making the investment in hiring me to do a leadership training workshop for his organization.

Most people understand that subpar leaders/managers have a negative impact on the organization. However, when you look at how big the cost of poor leadership really is, then you begin to re-examine the importance of leadership development within the company.

In order to review the high cost of poor leadership, I am sharing the information I sent to my client:

Poor leadership practices cost companies millions of dollars each year by negatively impacting employee retention, customer satisfaction, and overall employee productivity.

 Evidence of the High Cost of Poor Leadership

 According to research from the Blanchard Company:

  • Less-than-optimal leadership practices cost the typical organization an amount equal to as much as 7% of their total annual sales.
  • At least 9% and possibly as much as 32% of an organization’s staff turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills.
  • Better leadership can generate a 3-4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and a corresponding 1.5% increase in revenue growth.
  • Most organizations are operating with a 5-10% productivity drag that better leadership practices could eliminate.

According to Gallup:

  • It’s a sad truth about the workplace: just 30% of employees are actively committed to doing a good job.
  • Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report indicates that 50% of employees merely put their time in, while the remaining 20% act out their discontent in counterproductive ways, negatively influencing their coworkers, missing days on the job, and driving customers away through poor service.
  • Gallup estimates that the 20% group alone costs the U.S. economy around half a trillion dollars each year.
  • The single greatest cause for employee disengagement? Poor leadership.

According to Harvard:

  • Quite simply, the better the leader, the more engaged the staff. Take the results from a recent study on the effectiveness of 2,865 leaders in a large financial services company.

There was a straight-line correlation here between levels of employee engagement and our measure of the overall effectiveness of their supervisors.

The best leaders (those in the 90th percentile) were supervising the happiest, most engaged, and most committed employees — those happier than more than 92% of their colleagues.

Get your free E-Book to learn more and get tips on fixing this drag on your bottom line.  

Want to fight back against the culture of contempt? Here are 3 actions to get you started:

Arthur Brooks is one of my favourite thinkers and writers.

Though we have never met, I would love the opportunity to sit, enjoy a meal and a fine scotch with him, just for the sheer joy of the conversation. 

Brooks believes that America is being torn apart, but the problem isn’t one of incivility, intolerance, or even anger.

He says the problem is contempt.

Defines as the conviction that those who disagree with us are not just wrong, but worthless.

Arthur Brooks explains why contempt is so destructive and offers three rules to follow to overcome contempt with warm-heartedness in our own lives.

Read about being kind as a boss

He offers practical suggestions for how to fight back against the culture of contempt.

Here are three to get you started:

1. Practice the 5 to 1 rule. Offer five positive and encouraging comments for every one criticism, especially on social media. You’ll be amazed at how changing this one aspect of your interactions with others improves public discourse.

2. Stand up for people who aren’t in the room. It’s easier than ever to bash the people who disagree with us, but it only foments contempt. If your friends who agree with you start mocking people who disagree with you, don’t be a jerk, but stand up for those not represented.

3. Ask yourself who in your life you’ve treated with contempt, and make amends. Contempt creates a vicious cycle, but by acknowledging how you have hurt others with mockery or dismissiveness, you’ll be able to repair relationships.

Brook’s details all of this and more in a short, animated video about why contempt is so destructive and what we can do to fight back against it today. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/8dv1ORTvm8w

What about you?

Where can you demonstrate warm-heartedness in our own life?

Should A Servant Leader Ever Fire Someone? Yes! – And Here’s How & Why

While teaching leadership at Mount Royal University, my class had a great discussion about Servant Leadership and discipline.

Read about the myths of servant leadership

We explored one student’s situation: She has an employee who was good at her job but had a toxic and nasty attitude towards her employer, her co-workers and her work.

Sometimes, angry and negative people appear to do a good job, always at work, always on time. They are careful not to be too critical when supervisors or managers are around but are quick to spread rumours and try to supersede management at their discretion.

As we talked, I suggested that the employee was good at her tasks; but terrible at her job.

Leaders who struggle with effectiveness misconstrue servant leadership as never having to enforce a standard or discipline an employee. 

Servant Leaders maintain standards and team norms to maintain high employee engagement and, in turn, does not allow mediocrity. 

By allowing this miserable person to carry on without consequences creates mediocracy throughout your team.

 

Can You Fire a Poisonous Employee? 

The short answer is yes.

But this is a time to get help.

You needed to get your boss and HR team involved. There are legal, labour-relations and possible human rights risks to the whole organization by mishandling firing someone. So be careful.

More importantly, the ‘problem’ employee needs to be treated fairly and with respect.

There is a possibility they have never been called out on their behaviour. Maybe, just maybe, with the right coaching, mentoring and good performance management you can help turn this person around.

To be honest, the odds of rescuing the employee are poor, but they may deserve the opportunity to improve their performance.

 

Step One: What to Say When Sitting Down for a First Meeting

While you may have counselled the employee in passing (“Hey, I noticed you were very negative at that meeting”), this is the time for pointed and directed information.

It is possible that they don’t realize just how negatively they are coming across to co-workers, so ask questions and find out what they are thinking.

Some approaches work better than others, but using the model of Facts, Feelings and Future is useful when having awkward conversations.

Read about the 4 F’s

Try this script:

“I’ve noticed you are unhappy and speak quite negatively about your job and the other people who work here. For instance, I’ve noticed that while you’re always polite face to face, you’ll say negative things behind people’s backs.”

 “Part of your job is building good relationships with co-workers, and your behaviour undermines this. What can I do to help you in this area?

The question at the end will allow your employee to speak up and share their grievances, which, most likely they will have. Here’s the thing: Be compassionate.

 But at the end of all the sympathy and compassionate communication, you need to come to this: “Regardless, the behaviour is inappropriate in this office. We value your work, and we don’t want to lose you, but if you cannot pull this together, we will terminate your employment.”

Document the time, date, and content of the discussion. At this stage, you can present them with an official performance improvement plan document that details what is expected.

 

Step Two: Implement a Performance Management Plan with the Employee

You want to implement a Performance Management Plan that stresses progressive discipline.

Read about performance agreements and charters

This is where you follow a series of steps, with the idea that if the employee either improves or is terminated.

 

Step Three: Follow up

You should never expect instant perfection from an employee in the performance improvement process. After all, it takes an effort to change, and it took a long time to get here.

This is precisely the time when you must become a micro-manager. If you notice poor behaviour, correct it at the moment.

Read why micromanagement is a good thing

Regardless schedule a formal meeting every two-weeks during the performance management plan, if they are making significant progress, congratulate them. If they are not making progress, this is where the “progressive” part of progressive discipline kicks in.

Present them with a written warning. This should include details of the problems they need to resolve as well as the information that if their behaviour does not improve, your organization will suspend them and then terminate their employment.

Explain that this warning is being placed in their employee file. Ask them to sign to indicate that they have received this warning. They may object, saying that they disagree with what is written. You can explain that their signature doesn’t mean agreement, but rather that they received it.

 

Step Three: Termination

If the behaviour does not improve, it’s time to let your negative employee go.

You might be tempted to keep them on, understand that if you do not act, you will have no power over this employee ever again. They will know that they can do whatever they want to, and you won’t do much.

You may also have to provide some amount of severance – Get legal or HR advice. It is galling to pay a  problem employee on their way out the door. But remember the organization failed the person by misfiring or not managing them properly, and a small severance may show good-faith if the employee decides to take legal action.

 

Final Thoughts

If you say, “But I can’t afford to lose them,” think again.

Negative employees who gossip are damaging to your whole department. Your other employees are more likely to quit and are not as engaged as they would be if they were in a functional department.

The Servant Leader owes it to all employees to take care of this poisonous employee, which means firing them if they either refuse to or are unable or unwiling to change.

The 4 F’s (And @#$% isn’t one) of dealing with a boss with low EI

How to Deal with A Boss with Zero Emotional Intelligence

For most of my career emotions were something to be avoided like the plague.

Emotions were acceptable only when a bone was sticking out of you.

The only undeniable truth in life is that we are human and by definition we are emotional.

Our partners, children and even our pets sense our emotion and learn how to respond when we are sick, happy, sad or distracted.

read about sharing information

But what about work?

To work with people with low Emotional Intelligence, you need to learn how to communicate differently.

You might already know that emotional intelligence can influence your job success, but what can you do if your boss comes off as an emotional void?

Don’t panic, the situations more hopeful than you think.

But brace yourself have to have an awkward conversation.

What is EI?

When you say that your boss has low EI, it could mean:

  • that she’s unconsciously cruel – think The Devil Wears Prada; or,
  • he doesn’t know what their team needs to do their best work – think ‘The only time no is an OK answer is when you if asked if you have had enough.’

If your boss has low EI, they struggle to read your emotions.

They miss the non-verbal communications you are naturally sending them.

Alternatively, someone with high EI will have four skills. They:

  • Accurately read their own emotions: they can perceive the emotions with their and the experiences of others.
  • Use passion to facilitate thinking: if they need quiet to focus, they put themselves in a calm place
  • Understand how emotions progress: they know irritation leads to frustration, which inevitably leads to rage
  • Regulate their feelings: they don’t become overwhelmed by their feelings

EI doesn’t equal being good!

EI is not about virtuousness: it’s more about being able to understand your and others’ interior lives and how your actions and environments affect them. To work well with people with low EI, then, you need to accommodate that misapprehension.

 “Emotions are information, people who are low in EI are lacking the ability to take in, understand, or process a critical part of the way that we communicate in the world.

 If they can’t read your emotions, they won’t be getting all the info you’re naturally sending them.

 They’re missing this information, so you have to clarify.”

 –    Professor Sigal Barsade: University of Pennsylvania

So, what do you do?

 Book an appointment with your boss. Then you can follow this framework for sensitive conversations using the 4 F’s:

  1. First: When you make the appointment, say that you want to have a conversation that will be valuable to your working relationship
  2. Facts: Begin the meeting by retelling what happened for each of you
  3. Feelings: Tell the impact that the meeting had on you
  4. Future: Help each other figure out what you could do differently and what can be done by everybody to address the situation

Don’t forget to end on a high note: share why it’s such a good thing you two had the conversation.

By facing your bosses low IE with a conversation like this, you can help people to see that information that’s before them.

Read about partnering with your boss

The 6 Essential Questions You Can Ask Children & Employees

One of the great pleasures of my life is having thoughtful conversations with children.

Being an Uncle and a friend of children relieves me of the parental relationship and creates openness and free-space to engage at a different level.

I love opening those conversations with gentle questions like: What did you learn at school today? Or, what surprised you today? Or, what happened when ‘X or Y’ happened?

I am not sure which came first, but I often used similar open-ended questions with members of my team. I learned more about what was going on at work by framing questions to find out if people understood why they were doing something over what they are doing.

Read more about asking why

I recently read a great post by Ozan Varol, where he related a story about a question from a parent asking how he could cultivate curiosity and critical thinking in his children. He responded with questions parents should ask instead to inspire a richer conversation, discovery information and inspire creative & critical thinking.

They reframed my opening questions, my challenge to you is: How can you use them in your workplace?

1. Instead of “What did you learn today?” Try “What did you disagree with today?”

“What did you learn in today?” reinforces the regurgitation of knowledge on demand.

By reframing the question, you can develop the ability to challenge the status quo and to question alternative facts and convenient lies.

2. Instead of “What did you accomplish this week?” Try “What did you fail at this week?”

We live in a society that stigmatizes failure. As children we don’t fail, we receive participation awards. Now as entrepreneurs – and quite weirdly – terms like ‘fail fast’ have become participation medals for adults.

Read more about the fallacy of successful failure

In asking What have you failed at this week gives people the breathing room to tackle problems and it creates space to reflect, learn, and improve on your next attempt.

3. Instead of “Here’s how you do that.” Try “How would you solve this problem?”

When an employee comes to us with a problem, resist the initial instinct to deliver a quick and efficient fix.

Let them find a solution on their own. The process involved in finding the answer is far more important than the answer itself.

4. Instead of “That’s just the way it is.” Try “Great question. Why don’t you figure out the answer?”

As children, we were masters at asking questions and were moved by genuine curiosity. The education system and workplace have beaten curiosity down because most questions have been settled because That’s just the way it is.

Instead of stifling your employee’s curiosity, encourage them to ask questions and remain curious through open-minded inquiry.

5. Instead of “You can’t do that.” Try “What would it take to do that?”

Don’t off-handedly dismiss ideas as crazy or infeasible. Imagine if a young Einstein had been silenced by a busy or annoyed boss.

Open possibilities instead of closing them off, encourage seemingly crazy ideas by engaging with your people in conversation.

6. Instead of “Did you make a sale today?” Try “How did you help someone today?”

The first question is superficial.

The second encourages forming meaningful connections and developing a spirit of generosity. It is a far better message to be on the lookout for opportunities to help others.

4 Tactics You Can Use To Lead People Who Know More than You Do

As a manager, the chances are that at one time you were an expert.

But as your career advanced, you were promoted to a job outside of your specialty. Your subordinates started asking questions that you couldn’t answer or even understood. How can you lead them when they know a lot more about their work than you do?

Welcome to reality.

Read about surviving as a leader

You are now the leader without expertise—and this is where you, possibly for the first time in your career, find yourself failing. You feel frustrated, tired and disoriented, even angry. What can you do?

First, resist your natural inclination to dive into the details so they can be an expert again.

What should you do instead? To succeed in this situation, you must learn and practice a generalist leadership style. Based on my work with leaders who have successfully made the transition, here are the four key skills to develop and practice:

1) Focus on relationships, not facts – The specialist focuses on facts and the generalist leader focuses on relationships. The specialist tells their staff the answer; the generalist brings them together find the answer.

How? The best tip for building relationships is to spend a lot of time, face to face, getting to know people as individuals. Constantly adapt your approach to the individual and the situation, and that means knowing people very, very well.

Read about how to listen to your people

2) Enabling things to happen, don’t do the work – As the expert, you make decisions based on your unique knowledge. As a generalist leader, you do not do the work directly, but you enable things to happen by knowing when to leave things alone and when to intervene. This isn’t easy because you have a broad array of responsibilities and you need to be able to tell where trouble lurks:

How?

  • Sit in on meetings between a direct report and his subordinates. If the conversation is two-way, that’s a good sign. If the manager does all the talking and the subordinates are passive, it may be a sign you need to decide if the conversation is healthy.
  • Get feedback from your network to see if your teams are delivering. If the feedback is negative, but the team leader insists everything is on track, there is a problem.

3) Practice seeing the bigger picture, not mastering the details – As a generalist, your value comes from being able to see the big picture better than others. The specialist lives heads-down, plotting a detailed course on a map, while the generalist leader is heads-up, looking around and noticing the reefs, icebergs and hazards on the horizon.

How? Start by focusing how a problem is affecting the people two levels below you and two levels above you. This tactic challenges you to think deeply, and develop a perspective that will make a real difference to the organization.

Surviving your first 90 days as a new boss

4) Rely on “executive presence” to project confidence, not on having all the answers –  It may be easier for the expert to project confidence as the facts and the facts speak for themselves. Where does the confidence come from as a generalist – you must draw on “executive presence” to inspire confidence in others.

How? Pay attention to how other leaders walk into a meeting, notice how they dress, how they speak, how they stand—these are not personality traits, they are skills. Watch some videos of world leaders and notice the relaxed body stance, the calmness in their voice, how their sentences are crisp and to the point — that’s the path to executive presence.

Finally

Ease the transition to generalist leadership by realizing that you no longer can, or should, be the expert.

Your role as a leader is to bring out the best in others, even when they know more than you.

The tactics described above have helped me make the transition, and they can work for you too.

Download your guide to the 7 Simple Shifts to Being A Better Boss

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