Tag Archive for relationship

| May 1, 2013
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Building Your Team

How do you go about putting the best team together? You know the one that is excited to work together and produces amazing results while having fun doing it! As a manager, doesn’t that sound great? When I am thinking about my teams, that is the end goal of all of my work as their team leader.

Here are the steps I like to take:

  • Set expectations that set the tone. When I first come into a team, I always put forth my simple guidelines of what I want us to do. There are 3 key points. First, we will be trained and cross trained to issue that we can complete our assignments. Second, we will make and keep commitments. Lastly, we will have fun. Not hard to remember. Usually no one has problems with those, but if they do, it is time to start looking elsewhere.
  • I ask my current team to think about which co-worker that they have worked with that they would really like to work with again. We all have those folks in our past, that we would love to work with again. Building a strong team from the teams perspective is very key to getting their team development quickly. When we have an opening, it is a quick reference (and my current team helps recruit strong candidates).
  • I use the team to help describe, “what characteristics are for the ideal teammate.” It gets them to think about what is truly important to the team. It helps set the stage for what we are looking for. The added bonus is that each member of the team has a better understanding of what is important as well. I have seen team members change their behavior based on just that activity.
  • All potential candidates are interviewed by an interview subset of the work team. That subset are usually 3 folks that have additional interview training. We set up what each person wants to interview on and how we will grade the responses. When completed, we do a face to face debrief on the overall interview and fill in our grading. The interview team pretty much has decided which candidate is their best choice, but they understand that the final decision is usually mine to make.
  • We always have a “buddy” or mentor for every new team member. It is to help with assimilation into the team. It is an important role, that every team member will play at one time or another. Everyone wins. The buddy keeps focus on the important things. The new person comes up to speed quicker. Lastly, I get to see each person in action around some of the basic team skills (like communication, relationship building and problem solving).

Those are mine, what are yours?

The only important piece of all of this is, make sure that you are including your team in helping build your team! We all like to think we can do everything, but we just can’t.

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Category: Leadership, New To Management | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| April 30, 2013
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Toughest Leadership Situation For Me Was…

I was with some friends the other day and one of them asked, “what was the toughest situation you faced as a manager in your 20+ years of leading your work teams?”  Talk about putting you on the spot, without any notice to prepare for answering that question. After taking a few moments to think back, the toughest moment came to me quickly and really clear. There are situations that you remember both quickly and clearly because they left an impression, either good or bad.

I need to set the stage a bit. In any work environment, you have cycles of good, great and bad times. This particular situation happened during the companies down cycles. Basically, the company was redeploying employees. Redeployment means that one group is having to downsize the total number of employees and hopefully another group can use that skill set and employee for their needs. In theory, it sounds like a good idea. There have been some employees that have done well in redeployment. Most of the time, the employees just don’t find another group that can use their skill set. Having to leave the company! With the statistics the way they are most employees would rather chose to separate from the company, rather than try their luck at redeployment. In my career, as a manager, I have administered (and have happened to me) three cycles of identification of employees for redeployment. Three times having to downsize (or eliminate) my team.

I will be honest with you, every one of these situations had tough moments in them. You are dealing with people! I have always tried my best to be an outstanding manager and leader for my teams. Relationships were built with each employee. I felt that my teams have always performed well in their given area. Those teams have stepped up and delivered some amazing results. Getting back to the question… The toughest situation was the second time that I went through the redeployment process.

Why the second time was tougher than the first (or third)?

  • In most organizations, there is always a level of “fat” built-in after the company has been in a growth (and great financial results). Downsizing was required and we all knew that it was best for the organization. Standing up and presenting to the team, was tough because we were going to lose some team member(s). The who was the white elephant in the room. Processes were followed to identify those that did not have the skill sets that were necessary to move forward. When the redeployment hit the second time, well, now we knew we were going to have to make big changes, both in workload and what we had to do to accomplish our work.
  • The first time, was all new to everyone. When I presented out the process of redeployment, many folks thought this was a good thing, as it would give potential opportunity to folks that wanted to do something different. In theory, the process look and sounded good. When the second time (one year later) hit, we all witnessed the actually reality of the redeployment process. Less than 50% of the folks that attempted to find work in a different group were successful. The theory was replaced with real data…
  • The third time through the process and I hate to even say it, I had become numb to the complete process. Numb! While I was going through the process with my teams, I was having it happen to me as well. I got to “feel” and experience it 2x.
  • The second time was the toughest!
    • I was actually having to tell some pretty awesome employees that they were being selected for redeployment. I lost sleep the nights before each discussion. I was being asked to make a radical change to the team and how we were going to accomplish our work moving forward. I had to put on a positive exterior when inside I was hurting.
    • I had built a very strong team. They all stepped up after the first redeployment and made the team even better. We were actually doing more with less. We were an example to all of the teams. We were going to stop doing some work, shift our focus and basically going to tell our internal customers that we will not be doing much of what they needed. Customer service was not a focus. It was all about cost and nothing else. If the company wanted to downsize, then everyone needed to feel the pain. You can not expect customer service focused individuals to not care about customer service. My job was going to get really tough. I was going to be put in the middle and the challenges were going to be huge.

What do you do? As their leader, you have to make sure that you are being providing your team with the right level of balance. Make sure to communicate everything. Make sure that when you are speaking you are being yourself. Tell them everything! For me, I was always upfront with what is happening. I made sure to tell them that  the only thing they can control now, is the work on their desk. I know times are scary, but we still have our jobs to do. I put on the company hat as needed. We all will take time to react to what is being communicated to us, just make that time moments and keep the focus on what we control. It was the toughest situation I faced in all of my 20+ years. As a leader, it is about your people and having them do some amazing results… We all knew that people and the work at this particular point in time, was not the focus. So, I tried to make sure that my focus was with the people and their amazing results. It was the only thing, that we could feel good about!

Category: Leadership, New To Management | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
| April 1, 2013
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Volunteering 101

When was the last time your volunteered? Volunteering is nothing new. I bet we all have done it from time to time. How did your volunteer experience go? I have had a mixed bag of experiences over the past couple of years. As many of you know, I retired from corporate America and now am working on my own and volunteering my time at many organizations.  I want to share my experiences with how to insure that when you do volunteer that you are getting the most out of your experience.

Why do you volunteer? Let’s face it, no one is volunteering for the money, there is none. We basically do it because we like how it makes us (the volunteer) feel. Giving back to makes us feel good! I also volunteer to help me to continue to learn new things. When I feel good and learn something – I am in the best place possible. Think about why you want to help and match your wants to the organizations needs.

Have you ever had a volunteer experience go totally wrong? Or was not what you expected? Some of the best laid plans go totally south from time to time. I usually like to look over the organizations website to fully understand the organizations volunteer opportunity. Most larger organizations have a volunteer coordinator that can be an excellent resource to fully understanding what the opportunity is and what you will be doing. Make sure that you have your basic questions and concerns covered before you sign up! For me, I have done some volunteer work with expectations that were communicated and followed up on. When I got there, everything was different. Put that experience on high alert. I spent the next four hours stuffing envelopes. I did it, but definitely was not overly happy with my experience.

Do you go back to past organizations? This is the true test to how well that past experience went – you come back from more.

What is it that made you come back? I come back when I feel that the time that I spent volunteering was worthwhile. Worthwhile for both the organization and myself. Some people love to stuff envelopes – me not so much. I also like to come back, when everything is planned out fairly well. That means that the communication channels are open and being used. It means that expectations of the volunteer opportunity are pretty clear. Nothing is perfect and flexibility is needed, but when you go into the opportunity thinking one thing and it is a complete 180 degrees from that thinking – it is tough.

The only problem with what I have written here, is that the small volunteer opportunities usually are not well communicated and expectations clearly set. You could miss out on a pretty awesome opportunity. So, I like to take a little time to call or email the folks to discuss further the volunteer opportunity. Hearing their passion for the opportunity and how they answer my questions, usually sell me.

Best advice – Do some research on the organization and volunteer opportunity.  Discuss it with someone within the organization. Decide on if this is right for you. Get behind and give 110%. This should give you everything that you wanted in that volunteer opportunity.

Anything you do differently?

Category: Volunteering | Tags: , , , , , ,
| November 7, 2012
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Leadership Lessons Coaching 3/4 yr old Soccer

I know what people are probably thinking. How can you get leadership lessons from coaching 3/4 year olds? I believe you can learn from every situation that you are in. You just have to be willing to look at the complete experience. Or maybe you are thinking, are you going to compare adults to 3/4 years olds? Not really. There are some basics that do apply in every situation. First let me set the stage… I have been coaching youth sports most of my adult life. I love coaching! I have not done any coaching for a few years (hip replacement surgeries). Most of my coaching career has followed the ages of my children. Those children are now adults over 25. Most of the coaching that I had done for the past 10 years has been with high school age hockey players. My daughter sends me a text that she has signed up my grand daughter for soccer and the league is short coaches (she volunteered me if they don’t get another parent volunteer). I was excited to coach my grand daughter’s team. Six full of energy three and four year olds that have never played soccer before. Of course, if you have seen 3/4 year old soccer – you would call it bee hive soccer (everyone going after the ball (honey) together). With mixed emotions, our season is coming to a close. We have two games left…

What are the leadership lessons?

  • Plan with flexibility: Since I had not coached that age group in a very long time, I had to spend sometime learning what I should do. With all of my other coaching gigs, I had practice plans that were designed to help teach players how to become better at their craft. Since the players were older, some of the basics were already there. With this age group, you have to definitely have patience and keep a positive outlook when things don’t go well. Planning with flexibility means keep some extra stuff in your pocket for when the item you wanted to work on, is not working. You have to react quickly and in a positive manner.
  • Teach, demonstrate, watch and follow-up: When coaching a drill, you have to not only descript what you want them to do, you show them as well. Let them try it… Make the slight modifications to get them close to what you wanted. Praise them! I know that maybe you don’t have to spend much time in the teach and demonstrate side when you are dealing with adults. You do have to monitor and follow-up!
  • Patience: Remember why you are there. You are there to have fun and teach them some of the skills to help them with soccer in the future. Mistakes are going to happen, probably more than you think. You just have to be patient and keep encouraging them to success. With my team’s players – they want to please me and their parents. They look for the smiles, thumbs up and high fives – to them that is great stuff. I had to learn that the first practice. Soccer is a game of not using your hands. We talked about it! We corrected the situation when it happened. After the 20th time, I was losing my patience. Next practice, we put something in their hands to keep away from using their hands with the soccer ball.
  • Have fun: For me, having fun is in everything that I do. With the 3/4 year olds – they only know to have fun. Being competitive is just starting to happen with some of them. So, you have to watch out for how they react to success and disappointment. Keeping them focused on the fun aspect! The one thing I can count on, is after the game – they move onto the next part – getting their snacks and coming home. No one player is sad. They are all happy! To me, that is some good stuff.

As you can see many of the lessons learned can be applied to every coaching/leadership situation. I have to say it was fun coaching those kids. They are a handful, but it is a fun handful.

Category: Leadership | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| September 25, 2012
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Overzealousness

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Are we becoming a society of overzealous people? Do you take your sports teams a bit too serious? Do you argue with your friends, family or strangers over “your” point of view vs. theirs? We are in the middle of an election campaign and listening to the arguments between the political parties (and their supporters) definitely demonstrate arguing points of view. Have you seen the fans in the stands are games get into fights? Hey, we all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves. Where do you draw the line?

I like studying people and how they interact. Going to sporting events can be an interesting observation vantage point. Being in Arizona, brings out many of the visitor teams fans. When you get the mix of homers and visitors – the fun begins. Have you ever just listened to them go back and forth? The arguments for who is better, why this team will win and the other will lose is pretty interesting. Rarely are the arguments rooted in facts, just feelings! If you hurt those feelings, the words can and have led to violence. Unnecessary violence!

I love the diversity of my network! We are quite a different bunch of nuts. The political parties, sports teams and activities that we follow are all over the map. It is great for me. I get to get many different perspectives. It helps me learn.. What I am finding over the past 5 years is that many more folks are getting into the overzealous support. Taking it way too far. I like a good debate or discussion. When that discussion becomes something that is more than just a discussion of facts and gets too much into the feelings. Some folks would say that their feelings are part of their passions for the subject or team. Maybe so, if you stick to facts rather than just feelings. How many times have you heard, “that is just plain stupid” after someone says something. No facts, just their opinion or feeling! People are feeling individuals, attack their feelings and watch out.

It is time for us to really look at what, who and how much we put our membership into that we support. Time for us to make sure that we are armed with facts and important statistics in order to have a meaningful discussion. We also need to make sure that we are listening to those “other” folks. You just never know when you will learn something. I don’t want like minded folks only in my network. It does me no good. We just need to be armed with information and apply the “right” level of feelings to our discussion.

Category: Observations | Tags: , , , , , , ,
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