Learning To Lead

Just a quick reference today. InBubbleGuy has a good book offer if you stop by the InBubbleWrap website. He is giving away what appears to be a good book, 'Moral Leadership', so I thought I'd send a friendly redirect to all of you who crave to become the best leader you can be. In all fairness, I haven't read the book, but I have applied for the contest.

Hint: read the blog post before applying for the free book.

FYI: The picture was taken several months ago when I visited a famous Chinese city called Chengdu, in SiChuan province. The scene behind me is the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, a 2000 year-old miracle of civil engineering that still serves its purpose today. The guy who threw this together was indeed a great leader. You can read more about him here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bing).

It's true. I'm on-time for almost everything. In fact, I'm early 99% of the time. But that 1% when I arrive late for something, I almost always choose to be late.

So do you.

So do your employees.

I've heard a lot of fantastic excuses in my life (the bus driver was hung-over again, the elevator stopped on EVERY floor on the way up, I was run over by a hung-over bus driver) but nearly all of them missed the real reason for being late.

If the bus is sometimes late, take an earlier one to be safe. If you are really in danger of being late due to frequent elevator stops, get up earlier. If you were hit by a hung-over bus driver...well, that's a pretty good one and I'll let it slide. Maybe try taking a different route to work.

What burns my bacon (I think that's the cut of meat on my hips) are people who arrive late for meetings and say, "I was busy...sorry for being late."

Hey...we're ALL busy, buddy. The rest of us made it.

We choose to be late. Period. We choose to ignore that Outlook reminder and click 'snooze' until it's literally the last minute. We choose not to take an earlier bus. We choose not to excuse ourselves from the meeting that's running over so we can make the other one we committed to attend. We choose to continue talking to the person in our office rather than let them know we can continue the conversation later as we have a commitment right now.

When we habitually arrive late to appointments, we do three things:

1. We waste a LOT of company time. If there are five people (besides yourself) in a meeting and you are five minutes late, you just wasted 30 minutes of combined work-time, my friend. Now HOW is that being effective?

2. We tell everyone in the room, "You and your time are not important to me." Good luck getting cooperation from those people you continue to insult with your behavior.

3. We expose the fact that we are incompetent leaders. If you can't manage your time, you should become a free-lance writer or a hobo. (Don't get confused, there...I'm not comparing free-lance writers to bums. I highly respect the former, and sometimes envy the carefree life-style of the latter)

If you're always late, then fix it. If your employees are chronically late, then fix it. If you don't know how, leave a comment and we'll all work it out together. That's what leaders do.

MJH

If you're anything like the majority of managers out there, the answer is, "Not as well as I should."

Most managers (both good and bad) like to think that they are in-touch with their people. "I've got my finger on the employee pulse" they tell themselves. Yes, we're connecting with our people alright!

Well, that's probably not true. Many employees tell managers what they think the manager wants to hear. When is the last time an employee told you that the program you just put in place is a bad idea? If you've ever made a change in your department (and if you are a leader you better darned well have made LOTS of changes) and you've never heard an employee complain about it, you've just been lied to by omission. SOMEBODY doesn't like the new policy, and I guarantee they've complained to their peers about it. The scary thing is that they may have a good point, and you'll never hear about it.

'But we have the employee suggestion box!' Please...most employees regard the suggestion box as a trash can with a fancy name on it. Besides, a suggestion box should be the last resort for an employee to make suggestions.

So how can you know what they are thinking? Well, first and foremost...ask them. I like to grab them while they're in the elevator or walking to the cafeteria. Heya, Nancy...what do you think about that new attendance policy? Ok, now what do you REALLY think about it? Great. Now seriously...you can't hurt my feelings...what do you think about it?

But another great resource is your HR Manager (Warning: I'm not sexist, but I'm going to use the word 'she' when I talk about HR Managers because mine happens to be a woman, and that's how it is. The PC-Police can go harass someone else who cares about such silly things). She talks to these people every day, and if she's doing her job well then she's got their confidence and trust. They'll tell her just about anything. What's more, it's her job to tell you what they're saying, sans the names of the talker in most cases.

I spend a LOT of time talking to my HRM. In fact, I often call her in my office to run an idea concerning personnel or policy through her brain to see what makes it through. Because she knows the people so well she can often predict what will happen not only on a company level, but on an individual level; who will suffer, who will benefit, who will complain and who will fight. She can give me a heads up and then provide me with some good advice on how to best approach the policy and how it is applied so that it is more effective and implemented correctly.

We discuss individual employee's and share our thoughts concerning their performance, what motivates them, personal issues they may be having that affect performance, and other things that help me improve their efficiency. In short, my HRM helps make me more effective, and that is my core responsibility: to be effective.

If you're not making use of this powerful resource (she IS a Human Resource Manager) then you are not nearly as in-touch with your employees as you may think. Do yourself a favor; get to know your HRM, and you'll get to know your employees much better and you WILL be a more effective leader.

MJH

I've been leading teams and people for over a decade. I'm not an expert, by any means, but that's the point of this blog: learning to lead. I'll post what I know, you tell me what you know, and together we'll get better at what we do.

I'm nobody spectacular, relatively speaking. I am responsible for several departments within the Xiamen China branch of a US-owned trading/manufacturing company. The company's headquarters are in Louisville Kentucky. 

I moved to Xiamen about 3 years ago. I had been traveling to China about five times per year while working out of our Louisville office, until one day I took the initiative and wrote a report about the problems I saw at our China office. The report also provided some details concerning solutions that might be implemented. Within five months I found myself living in Xiamen China while managing the Product Group (department) of our company, a group of about 22 people at that time.