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Dear Performance Doctor
Do you have a question you need answered about your workforce challenges?
Do you have goals for 2011 but don't know how to bring your boss to agree to their wisdom?
Are you developing a wellness program but worried about how to get participation?
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Where is Bev Rosen?
Recent workshops and seminars Bev has conducted.
2 seminars at the University of Maryland Dental School. Their theme was "Wellness at the Workplace" and the titles were "How to Stay Healthy at a Desk Job" and "How Stress can Affect our Nutritional Choices"
Workshop on "Stress Management" at the Veterans Administration in Baltimore under the sponsorship of Anne Arundel Community College
Workshop on " Diversity: Food for Thought" at the Veterans Administration, under the sponsorship of Cecil College.
Please call Bev at 410-583-1847 to discuss your workplace challenges and how we can assist through professional development training, performance coaching or employee relations services. |
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Greetings!
Have you made some New Year's resolutions? The most popular resolution is to get healthy. In fact, many organizations have made the same resolution - bringing wellness into the workplace. As leaders, however, this extends to looking at the triggers that engage your worst behaviors and learning how to prevent this from happening. It means reviewing the fatal errors that you have made in 2010 and learning how you can avoid them. Finally, it means looking at the kinds of skills that have successfully caused people to follow your leadership and deciding how to continually increase your effectiveness.
Just as there are some environmental or genetic influences, which might prevent individuals from achieving their weight goals, there are organizational, economic, or cultural obstacles which might preclude your success. Hopefully, as you review where you have made mistakes or failed in this last year, your goals for 2011 will be SMART goals - specific and sustainable, measurable, achievable, reasonable and timely.
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Why New Leaders Fail
 Right Management Consultants asked human resource managers at 100 midsize and large U.S. organizations to name their top three reasons why managers were failing.
Here are the reasons given why managers and executives have either performed below expectations, or have voluntarily resigned during their first 18 months.
Do your own "scan" and see if any of these pop up on your screen.
- Failure to build strong relationships and teamwork with subordinates and peers
- Unable to achieve the most important objectives expected of them
- Lacked the required internal political savvy
- Unable to form a solid partnership with their bosses
- Have difficulty managing their own behaviors
- Take too long to learn their jobs.
- Refuse to Accept Personal Accountability
- Try to Control Results Instead of Influencing Thinking
- Join the Wrong Crowd - the We/They Syndrome
- Manage Everyone in the Same Way
- Forget the Importance of Profit
- Concentrate on Problems Rather than Objectives
- Fail to Train Your People
- Recognize only Top Performers
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Three Most Frequent Flaws
 Ken Blanchard, guru of The One Minute Manager found there were three most frequent flaws
1. Need to be the best
2. Willful disregard of reality
3. Lack of self-awareness
Need to be the Best: So how does this triggers get us in trouble? If we feel that we need to be the best, then it means we have become infected with the black and white syndrome and the perfectionist virus. We believe that the view from our glasses is the only view that anyone else should have and when we are don't see this happening, we use manipulative, abusive and controlling behaviors to become comfortable. To our team, they see a selfish, short tempered, needy and mean leader.
Solution: As with any trigger, we need to look at the precipitating situation in which you behaved ineffectively and ask yourself "What need was not getting met i.e. "The Need to Be Right". Then look at the behaviors and what need was getting met i.e. Feeling back in control when my Tank bulldozes everyone else's ideas that get in my way. How does your staff feel about you as their leader when you do this?
Willful Disregard for Reality: This fatal flaw is the dark side of optimism, vision, creativity, stubbornness and risk taking. You may think that you are fooling your team, but their glasses are not clouded by denial.
Solution: As Ken Blanchard again suggests, you need to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Make sure you have colleagues and direct reports who think differently from you. Make sure you have at least one person who almost always disagrees with you - encourage debate.
Lack of Self Awareness: This is the first skill set of Emotional Intelligence, which we talked about in recent newsletters. Disputing that high IQ is the path for leader success, Daniel Goleman 's research indicates that factors such as self-awareness, self-discipline and empathy add up to a different way of being leader smart - emotional intelligence. Without awareness, leaders can have no restraint or modulation of their negative behaviors. When you become a leader, you forfeit the right to remain ignorant of your impact on people.
Solution: Get feed-back from each member of your team. Make sure that you explain why you need their help and do everything possible to ensure trust and safety so they can be honest. Sit down and ask each employee what you could do to be a more effective boss: What should I do more of or start doing? What should I do less of or stop doing?What do you think I should know?
Listen carefully and say "Thank you."
Name it and Claim it! Know your least desirable traits and own up to them.
Learn what triggers you and leads you to engage in your worst behaviors.
Set up systems to avoid triggers: get help.
The Ken Blanchard Company |
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Motivating Wellness at Work has many workshops, presentations and seminars on leadership development and emotional intelligence. For a free consultation on your leadership challenge, please contact Bev Rosen, 410-583-1847.
If you would like to learn more about these and other wellness topics, please click here to be directed to our website.
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Sincerely, 
Bev Rosen, MSW, MBA
Motivating Wellness at Work |
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