Lack of Management Communication is the #1 Reason For Quitting

In a recently published study from Regus, over 15,000 business managers were interviewed to find out which issues would drive them to quit their job. Interestingly, 40% of them admitted that they were considering quitting their jobs after the summer vacation. Although ‘considering' is different than actually taking the courageous step to do so, it is revealing that nearly half the respondents would like to find a new position.

Less surprising are the top five reasons they state would drive them to quit their jobs:

1. Lack of communication and involvement by top management 40%
2. Lack of promotion despite good work results 37%
3. Overwork 34%
4. Lack of company vision 31%
5. Lack of belief in colleagues’ competence 28%

Although the respondents of this survey were primarily senior managers, study after study reveals that the top reason anyone leaves their job is their relationship with their manager.

Reiterating your vision, communicating your appreciation, sharing plans, and involving your employees are key to keeping good people. Here are a few tips on what works when communicating:

• Keep communication simple and heartfelt, not complex and bureaucratic.
• Repeat important messages such as vision, goals and valued behavior often.
• Do your homework before communicating in order to understand what people are feeling, to get the whole picture, and to be able to answer questions well.
• Begin your communication by speaking to where people are: usually they are thinking of themselves and how things impact them. Then bring them with you to think of the team, the company, the vision.
• Acknowledge feelings. This will allow people to feel understood. Once they feel you understand them, they will listen to you.
• Ask questions and listen.

Particularly when changes are going on – and when aren’t they? – frequent communication is essential to gain employee engagement. An “open door” policy is great, as long as you walk the talk and leave your office to communicate often with your employees.

5 Marketing Rules For Long-Distance Influencing

I was listening to a leadership CD in my car and the speaker said the sole difference in whether one is a leader or not is whether one can influence others. It makes sense to me. As we know, leaders are found at all levels, at all ages, in all places. There are leaders of gangs, of friends, of families, of organizations, of all sorts of groups and teams. What makes someone a leader is whether others allow them to influence them.

Granted, other factors are considered before one decides (consciously or not) whether to allow someone to influence them. Do they know what they are talking about? Can I trust them? Do they have a decent track record? Do they impress me enough – in whatever ways I deem important –so that I will accept their influence?

Today with more and more people working remotely and in virtual teams, learning how to positively influence others that one has never met face-to-face is even more challenging. Yet every day we receive direct mail, email, and other advertisements that attempt – often successfully - to influence us to take advantage of whatever offers they are hawking.

We can learn some lessons from the advertising world when attempting to influence long distance:

1. Repetition. Every marketer knows that repetition is necessary in order to make a sale. In 1885, a London marketer named Thomas Smith wrote some advice that started out “1. The first time a man looks at an advertisement he does not see it.” It goes all the way to “20. The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.” Frequent communication of the same message is essential. For example, say you need help from another department in another city in order to get information for a client. Let them know something like “excellent customer service means on-time delivery of vital statistics” every time you speak or email with them. Even add it to your email signature. And to take this a step further, frequent communication in general is essential, in order to build a relationship. Which leads us to:

2. Build a relationship. The best marketers build a relationship with their customers. They find something in common – their love of their product ideally, but sometimes it’s a concern for a philanthropic cause, or the community they are in, or an event. We build a relationship with someone the same way – by finding something we have in common, by truly being interested in the other person, and by getting to know them beyond our surface transactions. Take the time to get to know someone over the phone, Skype, and through email. Do you both have teenagers? Both love football? Build on commonalities by sharing stories, tips, and resources. This helps with the next lesson:

3. Understand your customer. Understand what they want and need, and speak to that. Marketers know that fear and wanting to be part of a desired group are both big sellers. With fear, you are selling the idea that “you don’t want to have bad breath/excess weight/(insert undesirable quality here)”. With selling the desire to be a part of a certain group you sell the idea that “if you buy this you will be beautiful/part of the in crowd/smart/sexy/(insert desired state here)”. Know what is important to your ‘customer.’ Do they want to be part of a winning and successful team? Do they want to be promoted, recognized? Do they want to avoid looking dumb/failing? How can you present your idea to appeal to what they want, or as an antidote to what they want to avoid? “Getting me those statistics on the 5th of each month will be so impressive to my customer – I’m going to let your boss know you do that and how helpful it is.”

4. Make what you're selling accessible. It can't be too hard to do or get. It’s not too expensive. It’s not too complicated or too boring. It’s even fun to use or do. It’s easy to ‘buy’ and easy to use. “Here’s a template that you could use if it makes your work easier.”

5. Finally, engage them. Use the Law of Reciprocity to encourage them to buy into your idea by giving them something first. (E.g., the template, the compliment to their boss.) Intrigue them with your ideas by involving them in fine-tuning them. (“What other information could we give this client to really ‘wow’ them?”) Involve them in a group event where everyone is experiencing the idea. (“I’m inviting you to meet the customer at the Client User Forum next month.”) Tell them stories to help them visualize and emotionalize your idea. Get them excited and enthusiastic about your idea and watch it take off. Studies have shown that all decisions are emotional decisions, yet are justified with logic. Give your ‘customer’ both – positive emotions tied to your idea, and logic to back it up.

Influence is at the core of leading. And you don’t need a title to lead, or to influence successfully. You don’t even need to be in the same room to influence. But the best leaders wield their influence with integrity.

Be a human being.

Know When to Delegate

The managers I talk to are slammed with work and time is a precious commodity that always seems to be in short supply. Yet when I ask them about sharing the workload with their direct reports – an excellent way to develop employees and groom successors – they often have legitimate excuses as to why they don’t do it as much as they could or should. And the biggest reason revolves around time. It does take a bit of time to delegate effectively.

Expectations need to be clearly defined. This is the most difficult part, and the most crucial. In the future, I am going to dedicate a blog posting solely to communicating expectations, but that’s not the topic today.

Besides setting clear expectations, managers need to ensure their delegatee has all the tools, resources, knowledge and skills to do the task. Sometimes check-ins during the task or project delegated are necessary. When the task is completed, the manager needs to follow up with their direct report to debrief and express appreciation. Or alternatively, to back up and make some changes if things didn’t work out as expected the first time.

When I recently spoke to one of my clients who is always overwhelmed, I was surprised to find that he was less stressed and seemed happier with how things were going. When I probed, I found out he had finally taken the plunge to delegate some responsibilities off his plate and onto his employees, who were happy to be trusted with meetings, customers, and tasks that the boss had previously kept to himself. It really didn’t take as much time as he thought it would to delegate effectively. It was a leadership step that freed him up to be a better leader.

Delegating builds relationships, and your employees will feel like they’ve gained (more of) your trust and respect. In return, you’ll get more loyalty from them. If you are afraid that you would be overloading them, just be sure to let them know if they feel they can’t handle the extra work, to let you know. You can then help them with prioritization and perhaps redistribution of their workload.

Delegation is an underused development tool. Survey your current responsibilities. What could you pass on that would expose your direct reports to new people, new situations, new knowledge and new tasks? And would lighten your load in the process? You could use that extra time to concentrate on planning and yes, leading.

There are some instances when you do not want to delegate. As you survey your responsibilities, determine which are:
• Extremely time-sensitive. It may be necessary for you to keep the task if explaining it and a ramp-up training time is too long.
• Too political or protocol-oriented. Some tasks just need your personal attention.
• High risk. If it is a task that cannot handle a less than stellar performance as your delegatee gets up to speed on it, then keep it in your own hands until that person can do it up to standard every time.

If any one of the above points are true, it’s better not to delegate that task. In addition, sometimes you just don’t have the candidate with the right stuff to do the job. Make sure you know your direct reports well, and understand their current skills, their working habits, their interests, their potential, and their knowledge. You want to be able to delegate the task or project to just the right individual – one you can trust and who sees the extra responsibility as an opportunity to develop their skills and stature in the organization.

Delegating is a leadership skill that benefits everyone. Take the time to delegate effectively and watch as not only your open time grows, but your employees do too.

How Important Is Corporate Culture?

How important is company culture? Does it really matter to the bottom line?

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, thinks so. Tony is all over the business news these days, as his new book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose was recently published. His nation-wide book tour launches on August 14th.

Says Tony: "Our number one priority is company culture. The whole belief is that if we get the culture right, the rest of the stuff like building a brand and great customer service just happens on it's own."

Tony acknowledges that he looks long-term - 5 to 7 years out - and with that strategic outlook his ideas make sense. But they may not work well for those leaders who need to focus on immediate gains and so rely on more traditional practices such as hiring primarily for skills, or following call center scripts.

What stands out for me in reading his book - which I recommend, by the way - is that Tony insists his company really walk the talk. The company culture is based on ten core values that guide the employees like the Ten Commandments guide Christians. After the employees created their core values, they were incorporated into the hiring process by using interview questions that support each of the ten values. If a candidate doesn't pass the culture fit interview, they are not hired, even if their skills and knowledge are exemplary. Once hired, a candidate goes through training and a couple weeks on the job, after which they are offered $2,000 if they wish to quit the company.

The core values are not forgotten after the interview process. Fifty percent of an employee's performance review is based on how well they have upheld the core values. Every year, a new culture book is created by the employees themselves, where they write about their experiences of the core values.

Although Zappos.com was merged with Amazon.com last year, part of the agreement was that Zappos would operate independently and be able to keep it's culture.

It's wonderful to have employees that are all aligned with the purpose and culture of the company. With everyone so engaged, progress toward mutual goals is no doubt swift. However, I have to wonder whether so much emphasis on culture might result in a bias toward hiring similar behavior styles. And when everyone in the company is predominantly one or two behavior styles, blindspots are overlooked or are overruled by the dominant behavior styles. For example, if a company's employees and culture are primarily Persuader-Controller, then possible blindspots would be thorough analysis of options, cutting corners, following processes, and follow-up. I don't know that this occurs at Zappos, but I have seen similar trends in other companies.

Zappos.com is currently number 15 in Fortune's Best Companies to Work For. That's pretty darn good. But their employee turnover is 15% and REI, which is number 14 and in a similar industry, (and one of my former employers) has a turnover of 8%. If there is such an emphasis on hiring for the right fit, why is turnover 15%?

These are just a couple of the questions that came to mind as I read Delivering Happiness. My overall impression after reading the book is that Tony is a groundbreaker and a revolutionary manager. Tony’s standout traits as a leader are intelligence, creativity, integrity, and caring about the people in his company, and I don’t mean just employees. He talks about his customers and his vendors as much as about the Zappos staff. He applied learnings from the positive psychology movement to his business, which resulted in employees having more control over their promotions and pay, among other things. With a leader like Tony Hsieh in the business world, evolutionary management is alive and doing well.

And to answer the question about whether company culture affects the bottom line, well, take a look here at the most profitable companies in the world.
With the notable exception of Google (#4 on Best Companies to Work For and #47 on Most Profitable), none of them are known for emphasizing their positive corporate culture.

Leading => Self-Confidence is Key

A month ago I participated in a teleseminar with Marshall Goldsmith, a leading executive coach and author of numerous books, including Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Marshall shared a lot of sage advice about coaching executives, but one piece about women leaders struck me. “The average woman is a better leader than the average man,” he said. What held a lot of women back, according to him, was that women are in general “more perfectionistic”, “too hard on themselves”, and “carry around a lot of guilt.” The result is they can come across as a little less confident than men.

Recently, a colleague’s feedback for a female client included the advice: “Trust yourself.” Another female client stated she wanted to work on her confidence at work.

Women at work often exhibit less confidence than men, but men can struggle with this issue too. Even when we think we do trust and believe in ourselves, we can sometimes give off the impression that we don’t by our choice of words and demeanor. Competence, knowledge, interpersonal skills and education may be higher or equal to colleagues, but that apparent lack of self-confidence results in fewer promotions, less influence and stifled success.

In an article in this week's Newsweek entitled "The Beauty Advantage" about how looks influences one’s career, a statement buried in the piece caught my attention: “Asked to rank employee attributes in order of importance, … (hiring) managers placed looks above education: of nine character traits, it came in third, below experience (No. 1) and confidence (No. 2) but above “where a candidate went to school” (No. 4).”

Confidence is the second most important attribute that managers look for in a potential employee.

One of the characteristics of a good leader is having a presence that conveys authority and a comfort in your own skin. Don’t second-guess yourself. Don’t apologize for your ideas. Don’t waver in your convictions. Get rid of the guilt! Self-confidence is not the same thing as arrogance, cockiness, or being ego-driven. Self-confidence is about owning your talents and accomplishments and developing your own potential.

It begins with knowing yourself well. And that is the foundation of an excellent leader.


PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi talks about her "extraordinary" guilt which she consciously confronted and diminished a year before she became CEO.