Michael Lee Stallard

Previously I wrote a post about the rock band U2 and how the band members’ value one another as human beings rather than treating each another as human doings.  I explained how this value contributes to the band’s extraordinary success.

Another factor that contributes to the band’s success is its participative, consensus-oriented decision-making approach.  The members of U2 argue relentlessly over their music, which reflects their passion for excellence. Bono has stated that this approach is frustrating at times but that U2 feels it is necessary to achieve excellence. The key here is that the band’s members appreciate each other’s strengths. Bono has said that although he hears melodies in his head, he is unable to transfer them into written music. Because he considers himself a “lousy guitar player and an even lousier piano player,” he relies on his fellow band members and recognizes that they are integral to his success.  To Bono, U2 is “the best example of how to rely on others.”

As human beings, we tend to overvalue our strengths and contributions and undervalue the strengths and contributions of others.  Don’t make that mistake. For each individual you regularly work with, take the time to learn how he or she thinks, his or her temperament and character values.  I recommend applying the thinking styles identified by Robert Stenberg at Yale University, the Kiersey Temperament Sorter to test and understand temperaments, and the character value strengths identified by Martin Seligman. If you (1) invest the time to understand thinking styles, temperaments and character values, (2) assemble teams with diverse strengths required in light of tasks the team mush accomplish and (3) apply a participative, consensus-oriented approach to making decisions, your teams will consistently outperform the teams of leaders who do less.

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Michael Lee Stallard coaches and teaches leaders to increase strategic alignment, employee engagement, productivity and innovation. He is president of E Pluribus Partners, a leadership training and consulting firm, and the primary author of the bestselling book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity. For more: www.MichaelLeeStallard.com

On March 24, I’ll be moderating a panel at the Conference Board’s annual Customer Experience Management Conference in New York City. I was delighted to hear that Robert Reiss, conference chairman, host of The CEO Show and a Forbes.com columnist, subtitled the conference  “building customer connections.”

The panel will address several case studies about building the exceptional customer experience. The companies represented on the panel all have reputations for outstanding customer experience and yet they are very different organizations.

FedEx is known for its reliability.  Who can forget Tom Hanks playing Chuck Noland, the FedEx efficiency expert in the movie Cast Away.   Read more »

Jason Pankau and I will be presenting in the Wisdom Webinar series organized by the South Bay Organizational Development Network.  The webinar will occur from 9:00 AM until 10:00 AM PST on April 13.  You can register to participate at this link.

A few hours ago, Goldman Sachs acknowledged in an SEC filing that mounting criticism in the press is a risk to the firm.  Goldman should be concerned.  A firm’s reputation affects employer brand, employee engagement and employee retention.  In the past Goldman employees were proud to say they worked for the firm.  Not so today following a long string of articles where Goldman has been referred to as a blood-sucking leech in the economy that cares only about its bottom line.  I cringe when I read such reports because I have several good friends who work or have worked at Goldman and without exception I trust and respect each one.  That said, having worked on Wall Street for most of my career, I know that people get caught up in thinking what they do is a game the score of which is determined by  how much money they make relative to others.  This mindset encourages imprudent risk-taking and behavior that may meet the letter of the law, but not the spirit. (Note: the gamesman profile was first described by Michael Maccoby in his book The Gamesman.)

I advise leaders that they must clearly communicate a set of virtuous values and keep them in front of employees.  The most effective leaders do this by celebrating the stories of individuals who exhibit the right values and getting rid of employees who don’t.  Absent a clear focus on virtuous values, an organization’s members will eventually stray into ethically questionable behavior that can destroy the firm.  And with organizations such as Goldman that are interconnected to many companies and countries via derivative contracts,  they can take the economy down with them.  That’s one reason I agree with Paul Volker and others who support effective regulation of financial services organizations.

Take a look at this article about Ursula Burns, the new CEO of Xerox, and her efforts to alter Xerox’s culture.  Anne Mulachy, the former CEO did a remarkable job pulling the Xerox family together to save the company when it was on the verge of bankruptcy.  Mulcahy is a tough act to follow but I’m pulling for Ms. Burns to take Xerox to the next level.  One way to look at  Ms. Burns challenge is that she needs to frame Xerox’s success as being rooted in achieving both task excellence and relationship excellence.  When a culture sacrifices truth to being nice (or more accurately to avoiding conflict) a company’s performance eventually suffer.  Ms. Burns is performing a delicate dance.  If she comes off too strong, people wil ear to spaek he truth.  If she does nothing, it seems that the desire to avoid constructive conflict may eventually sabotage the companies performance.

If I were advising Ms. Burns, I would say “make it clear to your Xerox colleagues that we must be intentional about achieving BOTH task excellence AND relationship excellence in order to thrive.  Sacrifice either and we will risk managerial failure for reasons I’ve written about in Fired Up or Burned Out.

Jason Pankau and I recently spoke at Vistakon, Johnson & Johnson’s Vision Care group. J&J has an inspiring identity that is expressed in its Credo. Our definition of an inspiring identity is that it exists when everyone in the organization is motivated by the mission, united by the values and proud of the reputation.

Take a look at the J&J Credo by clicking here. As you study the J&J Credo ask yourself if its mission and values are inspiring. After you study the J&J Credo, turn your attention to your organization’s mission and values and ask the following questions:

• Are your mission and values clearly expressed and widely communicated?
• Do you have a portfolio of stories that help people understand your organization’s mission and values?
• Do people in your organization periodically take time to consider their decisions and practices in light of consistency with your organization’s values?
• Does your organization’s reputation reflect it’s values?
• Does your organization’s employer brand benefit from its inspiring identity?

J&J does a marvelous job on the Credo section of its website.  Take a look at it by clicking here.  In preparation for a book I’m writing, I’ll be interviewing Kathleen Fitzpatrick, J&J’s Director of Credo and Workplace Engagement, and posting portions of the interview on this blog.

Have you seen expressions of corporate identities (mission, values, supporting stories or practices) that have inspired you?   If so, please post them here or email me at mstallard [at] epluribuspartners [dot] com.

Who could be more rational than a neuroscientist with a doctorate from Harvard? Dr. Amy Bishop, who has the aforementioned credentials, is accused of shooting and killing three of her faculty colleagues at the University of Alabama because she felt slighted. You can read about the case in this article entitled “For professor, Fury Just Beneath the Surface.” It is alleged that Dr. Bishop’s actions were set off when she discovered that her colleagues had decided not to award her tenure.

This is yet another example that shows how emotions affect behavior, even the behavior of individuals who have learned to appear rational at times on the surface. In our work, we implore leaders to be intentional about developing both task excellence and relationship excellence. Measurement, accountability and intervention are necessary elements of a process, a system, that brings intentionality to developing relationship excellence. No organization drifts toward relationship excellence so intentionality is essential. Systems that help develop relationship excellence make it less likely that individuals with mental health problems — e.g. narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathology — go unnoticed and unaddressed.

Yesterday I wrote about the incivility and indifference low status workers experience and how it contributes to today’s widespread employee disengagement. Mawi Asgedom is a friend who I admire in part for his passion to connect with people regardless of their status. Mawi graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1999 and was voted by his fellow students to be one of the Harvard’s four commencement speakers.

Standing before an audience of 30,000 Mawi gave a remarkable speech entitled “Of Snakes, Butterfies and Small Acts of Kindness.” Read more »

Amy Wrzesniewski, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior Yale School of Management, recently sent me a paper she co-authored with Jane Dutton (University of Michigan) and Gelaye Debebe (George Washington University) entitled “Caring in Constrained Contexts.”  Reading it made me realize that for workers in low status positions the indifference and incivility they experience is in part why 90 percent of employees today are either disengaged or not aligning with organizational goals.  Reading the comments of workers provides a technicolor view of their day-today experiences. Here are a few excerpts:

• “The doctors have a tendency to look at us like we’re not even there, like, you know, we’ll be working in the hallways, and you know, no recognition of what you are doing whatsoever.”

• “A typical day with the nurses down here would be I come in at about 4:30. I set my cart up in my area. … they do a lot of staring and gawking. I don’t know the purpose of this. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling for me.”

• “I was called as a favor to my supervisor to come up …and clean a room because the patient’s family was complaining that the room was filthy. It was supposed to be cleaned by the day shift and evidently the day shift has skipped over that particular room…And you have these people shouting, ‘This room is filthy,’ and this, that, and the other, and ‘I want this room cleaned now.’”

• “Doctors will do things like, you know, they’ll do an exam, take off their gloves and drop them on the floor. You know, just things like that…they don’t even think, you know, they expect housekeeping to do everything…I think there’s a difference between housekeeping and maid service and they get confused”

• “Some of them [the doctors] feel like they’re next to God. There’s a lot of doctors who feel that way too…Just in their tone and their body language. Every now and then some might, they don’t want to say it, but you know they just feel it. Say, like this. For instance I am cleaning their room or waxing. A doctor will walk right through it. Even if it is not an emergency. You can tell them. Everyone else will go around. You know, I’m saying, he will walk right through here. Now, do you think that’s kind of a sense? Just because he’s a doctor. Nurses will go around housekeepers. So that’s why you get this feeling. Who he just thinks he is….” Read more »

Yesterday was President’s Day in the U.S., a day in which we primarily celebrate our first president, George Washington.  Reading the article “George Washington’s Tear Jerker” in yesterday’s The New York Times, one might ask, was Washington really the great leader he has been made out to be?  I asked myself that question during the summer of 2002 and began a journey to unpack truth from myth.  My journey went as far as contacting and interacting with Edward Lengel, the foremost historian on Washington’s generalship.  After doing my own research I wrote the following which became one of the chapters on 20 leaders in a book I wrote entitled Fired Up or Burned Out.

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First in Their Hearts

Richard Neustadt, Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, observed the following about George Washington: “It wasn’t his generalship that made him stand out . . . It was the way he attended to and stuck by his men. His soldiers knew that he respected and cared for them, and that he would share their severe hardships.” Read more »