What flavor is your leadership style?

I am not a regular coffee drinker, so I contacted my local coffee shop to do additional research on drink variations before completing my article titled Leadership Style in a Coffee Cup. The article is a reflection on gourmet coffee differences as compared to various leadership styles. 

Below is a summary of what I learned in the research process thanks to recommendations from others and the help of a knowledgeable barista named Debi. After my experience are questions you may want to ask yourself as a leader in today’s rushed business world. 

I had a shot of a highly recommended local version of Cuban Espresso (giant leap for me) once while in Florida. Since it was very strong and made my head feel like it would explode shortly after I finished it, I remember it well. The color was very dark and the flavor somewhat bitter. No amount of sugar could make this sweeter. Believe me I tried! For you coffee fans, please understand I’m not putting down Espresso as a drink - for a tiny shot-size cup it packed quite a buzz! I’m merely saying it is an acquired taste that I do not have the proper palate for. After drinking it, I understood why it was given in small shots as most people probably should only take a little of it at a time. Of course, there were those with either a caffeine addiction that seemed to go to the coffee stand every hour for another. I found out that this drink contains almost three times the caffeine content of regular brewed coffee, which explains my exploding head. Debi told me that Espresso can be brewed and blended with water or milk to make a regular coffee drink – wish I had known this was ok. Debi also let me know that Espresso becomes bitter after 10 seconds of sitting so it should be drank quickly, which may explain my experience. 

So these little tidbits made me wonder - as an Espresso leader, how much time does it take for one to become bitter or angry towards employees if their response is not what was desired? What does it take to regulate an Espresso leader’s attitude or actions? 

About Cappuccino, Debi told me it is lighter in color than Espresso due to the addition of steamed milk and it is served in a larger size too. It is always served hot and the foam on top acts to help retain the heat so that it stays hotter longer. She also said getting the foam right was what made this coffee drink one of most difficult coffee beverages to make. 

In my article, I said this style was between Latte and Espresso, which it is but it is not exactly a 50/50 split. This difficulty level in creation is one reason I related Cappuccino as the leadership style used often in the beginning stages of team-development. Team-building is a hard and long process. It requires much study and patience to get it right. So what does it take to be a Cappuccino leader in today’s work environment? How much empowerment and training are right for each of their work teams? How can this leader get it right and what support structures are necessary for both theirs and the team’s success? 

When the conversation between me and Debi turned to Latte, she informed me that it has at least twice the amount of milk of a Cappuccino, the same amount of power-packed caffeine, and will typically have a far lower amount of foam. The drink is very light with a milky coloring and typically is 90% milk with 0-10% foam. It is served warm or cold. Latte comes in a multitude of flavors with iced vanilla the most popular at Debi’s coffee shop. So I tried a vanilla one with ½ shot (baby steps) and it was good enough to make we want to try something with caramel the next time I’m in a coffee shop. 

So how does my taste test relate to leadership? Under a Latte leader, can employees handle more power without too much loss of management control? Do the employees under this leadership feel like they have lots of leeway in their work, but not enough leadership at the top? 

If you are a leader today, after reading the linked article and this post, please think about the following five questions. 

1. What leadership style do you display most often? (Evaluate yourself) 

2. Why is that a good or bad style for your business environment? (List Pros/Cons) 

3. What leadership style do you want to become more like? (Evaluate styles) 

4. Why do you think you need to make this style adaptation? (List Pros/Cons) 

5. How and when are you going to start working on revising your style? (Develop action plan) 

Please feel free to share comments on the article or this post on this blog. If you have any suggestions to help others move from one style to another or when to choose a particular style, please share that as well. 

For common management theories on leadership, search for information on: - Burn’s Transactional and Transformational Leadership - Lewin’s Leadership Styles and Research - House-Podsakoff’s Leadership Styles Model - Likert’s Management Systems and Styles

Procrastination and Motivation

You know you need to complete that big project. You know you need at least two weeks to get it done but you haven’t started yet and now you don’t have two weeks. Instead you’re searching the internet, or talking to a friend, or shopping, or watching TV and so on. The American Heritage dictionary defines procrastination as, “to postpone or delay needlessly.” So why do we sometimes delay doing the things we need to do? Is it because we don’t feel motivated?

When procrastination grabs us it uses its power to prevent us from achieving our goals or getting what we want out of life. It has the power to prevent timely decision making, starting or completing an important project, or making us feel less successful.

Planning ahead helps combat procrastination but you might have to take a minute to ask yourself why and when you procrastinate. Do you crave the excitement of the last-minute rush? Do you procrastinate on things that seem routine or unpleasant? Do you avoid starting something that seems overwhelming? Understanding when and why you procrastinate will help you overcome it.

I think it helps to think about the consequences of procrastinating. The consequences, of course, may be that you miss a deadline or drive yourself and everyone around you crazy trying to complete it at the last minute.

The consequences of missing a deadline could be that your credibility is impacted. People may lose trust in you if they think you are not a person they can count on. As far as driving yourself crazy, you may like the last-minute rush and it may increase your motivation because you have created a whirlwind of activity as you drive to the finish line. What is it doing to your stress level though? Think about the impact of stress over a period of time if you regularly procrastinate. Also, think about the people around you that now have to also adjust their plans to either assist you at the last minute or put their plans on hold while they wait for you. Doesn’t do too much for your relationships, does it?

So, when and why do you procrastinate? How does it impact your motivation? Alan Lakein, author of How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life has a favorite saying when you feel like procrastinating, “do it now!” Walt Dinsey says something similar “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” What saying works for you?

Coaching Your People!

The key to leveraging talent and retaining your best employees

It’s a Gift
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams, (Gratton, Erickson), one best practice stood out in a study of 100 of the most collaborative companies in the world – leaders coaching employees. A company where leaders took the time to coach and mentor their employees was identified as a “Gift” culture. The study found that this went far in building employee loyalty and motivation – which in turn led to more collaborative behaviors. The country western song is true after all, “Love is spelled T-I-M-E”.

But I Don’t Have Time
Leaders have known, for many years that they must invest in their people by personally spending time training, coaching and mentoring. Yet research shows that few leaders do it. The big reason given: “no time.” The truth is the pace of work is steadily increasing each year and leaders today are under enormous pressures. Yet, when you look at the cost of not spending the time, you risk:

• Losing your best employees to your competitors (FACT: 85% of people who leave their jobs leave because of perceived “unkindness” in the workplace.)
• Not having the benefit of the full talents of your people
• Low engagement and morale levels
• Mediocre performance
• Poor business results

The Business Case for Coaching/Mentoring
Let’s look at the upside – you will notice that these benefits will give you back the time you initially lost. And the return on investment grows.

• Ability to delegate more (more competent employees)
• High retention rates of your best employees
• Healthy morale and engagement levels (FACT: HR studies indicate that 65% of an employee’s motivation and morale level comes directly from the leadership style of their direct boss.)
• Increase in bottom line performance

Plus…YOU look good when your people are happy and productive!

Three Steps for Coaching Employees

1. Do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis with each direct report. Together, decide what area of growth is most important over the next six months.
2. Create a “Development Plan” – What books, classes, mentors, practices, new behaviors will support the targeted growth? (Have your employee draft it first.)
3. Have monthly “one to one” coaching sessions – one hour sessions can be done over lunch in an informal environment. Ask your employee to come to each session prepared to share how their growth plan is going, and where they need support. Take advantage of that teachable moment.
   

Success Law 6: The Law of Correspondence

Seven Laws that Guarantee Your Career and Business Success

The Law of Time says that if you’re having fun, time goes by very fast. If you’re not having fun, time drags like a three year old pulling her dolly behind her on the way upstairs to bed when everyone else gets to stay up. It just isn’t fair. We must be having fun because since my last post, the days have flown by like the blink of an eye and here we are nearing our last part in this series. Amazing! (Now, don’t get mad, but I was just pulling your leg about the Law of Time. It sounded good, but there isn’t one that I’m aware of. But maybe I could invent that one. Are you still with me?)

We have covered some fabulous material on our way to the finale, haven’t we? These seven laws, five of which we’ve covered thus far, are like good friends or amigos. They are speaking to us in familiar, direct ways to catch our attention and joust our minds towards the recognition that we will benefit from each and all of them. And they want to be part of our everyday success in our career and business if we’ll invite them to join us.

Just as a quick review we’ve looked at the law of Control, the law of Cause and Effect, the law of Belief, the law of Expectation and of course the law of Attraction. That’s the one that inspired the name for this series and still continues to work even though the hullabaloo about the book has passed. If you’ve missed any of the earlier posts, you can access them in the archives using the type of the law. They aren’t really dusty yet and they will give you a better coherence of thought from start to finish.

The sixth universal law in this series is the law of Correspondence. Briefly stated it says that what you are on the inside will be reflected by what you show on the outside. Your outer world, how you dress, groom yourself, the way you keep your home, car and other physical things will be a direct reflection of how you keep you mental world, your thoughts. Everything in your life moves from the inner to the outer. If you are calm, peaceful and self assured on the inside you will reflect that in how you handle everyday situations no matter how rushed, frantic or scattered they may become.

Your outer world of health, financial achievements, relationships and goal accomplishments will correspond to what is being focused on and related to in your mental or inner world. As you are within, so you are without in every way, all the time. When your inner world is balanced, focused, unstressed and happy your whole outer world will tend to reflect these anchors down to the smallest detail. But the opposite also holds true. Here’s an example.

As I look at my desk and my office I realize that the physical move I made almost months ago has put much of my life in disarray and it is disconcerting to me. But I also know that if I persevere and continue in a disciplined lifestyle my life will continue to improve for the better. Consistently practicing those five mental laws we’ve reviewed earlier I will return my desk, my office and every part of my life back to a harmonious and fruitful place again. It is happening if I can get that law of time to cooperate with me and stop moving so fast.

As time flies by, join me next time for the seventh and final law that guarantees your career and business success.

Killing Productivity -- Good Work vs. Good Worker

There are many enemies of productivity in the workplace. Email has become one of the biggest and certainly most talked about distractions from the work we have to do. Other natural enemies include office gossip, unclear direction on tasks, poor management and bad fit for the job.

However, one enemy that strikes me as the biggest waste of time and energy is poor quality of work. Being involved in some action, production or work that is not up to the standard necessary has a cost. This usually means that the original work must then be redone. As Vice-President of the American Society of Training and Development, we found one of the biggest causes of poor work is limited or non-existent task training in the first place.

There you have the central issue of the death of productivity. Because when the product is crap, everyone knows it and eventually, it must be done over correctly or suffer the judgment of your customer. And what a cost that is.

As we say, you never get a chance to correct a first impression and here is one that proved that saying as correct. In fact, their mistake inspired this blog.

I had just received an elaborate mailing on the value of direct mail from the United States Postal Service. It was quite an investment on their part. A big cardboard mailer was overflowing with an oversized fancy brochure, a neat T-shirt and an enthusiastic letter from the Post Office manager of Creative Marketing. After all this investment, the letter began with my name misspelled and ended with the “free” T-shirt two sizes too small.

Over the years, I have concluded that not doing something is better than sending out something poorly executed. If I was making a decision about using direct mail, how persuasive would that Post Office appeal be to me? Why would I believe that my promotion would be any better?

Our current love of outsourcing has some unforeseen costs as well. As companies rush abroad to cut back-office document processing costs, one fact often gets forgotten in the fray. Costs of small increases in error rates are enormous and can easily wipe out cost reductions from cheaper labor.

A data-entry error in a document such as a loan application may make it impossible to process the document automatically, incorrect loan documents may be created, the end customer may call with complaints, and there might be soft costs as well. BeyondCore’s interviews with more than 50 financial services firms showed that if the data-entry associated with one document costs $1, the downstream costs incurred for one document with a data-entry error can easily add up to $300. This means that if outsourcing increases the error rate by just one-tenth of a percentage point, the resultant costs wipe out the benefits of a 30 percentage point reduction in labor costs. Thus, in back-office outsourcing, quality is 300 times more important than labor costs. (http://www.totalcostoferrors.com/)

Take a closer look at the quality of the work in your organization. Set up a program on QC on the materials or work you produce. See the relationship between productivity and profit.

When quality is in place, I find that good quality produces good sleep.

Moving stress and frustrations into a positive attitude

Does one of these situations apply to you right now?

• Is there a major change going on at work? Does this change cause you some amount of stress? If so, what is the stressor and why is it stressing you out?
• Is your life or career in transition? Does this bring about stress or frustration related to any setbacks you encounter? If you are feeling something negative, how can you turn it around to help you grow?
• Do people at your job cause stress because they are not doing what you expect of them? Does this often frustrate you? If so, why does it affect you and what can you do about it?

If you are experiencing stress or frustration related to any of these situations, then consider an exercise you might use to turn the negative feelings into a more positive attitude. To do this, try the following steps:

1. Write down the negative situation that is stressing or frustrating you.
2. Write down why the situation affects you in that way.
3. Using step 2 as a resource, rewrite step one in a way that could be a positive experience.
4. When you begin to feel like step 1 is irritating you again, read the results of step 3 to yourself. Repeat this step each time until your attitude or the situation has changed.

If you have tried a stress reduction exercise similar to the above or found another alternative that works, please let us know about your experience. Sharing with yourself on paper will help your personal growth. Sharing with others on this blog will contribute to the growth of others.