Finding Answers » thinking like a leader

9 Leadership Podcasts You Must Listen To

Erroin A. Martin — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:38:28 +0000

I have mentioned before that leadership is highly sought after by organizations of many different stripes. As a species we are drawn to organize ourselves in groups with named and un-named leaders. No matter how much we cry for individualism, we look for strong leaders for guidance, inspiration, and to challenge us.

Where Does Your Compass Point?

Since there is so much data out there on leadership, I thought I would do the helpful thing and give you a round up of different leadership podcasts.

The Leadership Podcasts

Project Leadership Podcasts – A podcast for project managers, R. Camper Bull interviews thought leaders on the latest tools and skills a certified project manager (PMP) must possess.

EMS Leadership – Part of the EMS Radio, these podcasts address the various trends and issues for leaders in the EMS field. Items discussed are Six Sigma in the management of EMS teams and who are the customers for an EMS team.

UC Berkley Organizational Leadership – Can’t get to a business class on leadership? Why not drop in at UC Berkley and skip the quizzes through this podcast!

CEO Exchange – PBS sponsored podcast of interviews with leading CEOs. Learn from the successful captains of industry!

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast – A weekly podcast that discusses the latest business trends. This podcast discusses lessons learned for leadership successes and failures. It does not focus only on leadership, but on business as a whole.

21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John Maxwell’s podcast on the different laws from his best selling books.

World Business News – By the BBC these podcasts deal with current events.

London Business School – A podcast that discusses leadership and current business trends that can impact a leader’s decisions.

What Great Bosses Know – This podcasts interviews managers and business leaders on practical skills they learned to become great bosses.

There are many more podcasts out there. Just like there are probably so many books on leadership that they could build a ladder from the Earth to the Moon.

What leadership podcasts do you listen to?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed, like social media, to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

15 Rules To Be A Successful Leader

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:09:44 +0000

Leadership. It means different things to different people. It is the most sought after trait that employers look for. It is a topic that has countless tomes written about it. Yet in the end there are fifteen simple rules a leader should abide by to be successful.

Here are the rules:

I lead by the rules.

Leaders only hire top talent.

Leaders put the right people in the right positions.

Leaders tell people what needs to get done and why.

Leaders delegate and then let their people get the job done.

Leaders train their people.

Leaders listen – to their people, their customers, and everyone that impacts their decisions.

Leaders remove barriers, frustrations, and obstacles to allow their people to succeed.

Leaders inspect what they expect.

Leaders promote their people publicly and privately.

Leaders lead by example.

Leaders hire slow and fire fast.

Leaders inspire a vision for success.

Leaders make decisions – especially the tough ones. That is why they get paid the big bucks.

Leaders hold the highest standards of excellence for themselves and their team.

Leaders coach.

Like many things in life, the process, the steps, the skills, and the rules all seem so simple to follow. If it were easy then there would not be so many books, classes, seminars, and leadership experts. Why people fail at the above is that they forget to be successful you have to practice the fundamentals everyday.

What rules would you add?

About the author:

What Is Leadership In Social Media?

Erroin A. Martin — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:28:21 +0000

Author’s note: What originally sparked this article were two posts. One was on the nature of intent by Amber Naslund, and the other on measuring social media. This month has been a focus on leadership on the Finding Answers Blog. In business, as in every other factor of life, leadership is sought after. It is almost like a quest for a holy grail to understand it, replicate it, and define it. I initially thought about how one may measure it in social media. That spawned this blog post. As you will read, the leadership grail defies being found even in social media. I look forward to your comments!

A Twitter Toast

How do you define leadership in social media?

How do you measure leadership in social media?

Why would you want to?

I ask these questions because in the rush to embrace social media leadership has not been adequately discussed. Instead there is talk about personalities, brand awareness, followers, and impact. Granted those are components of leadership but in the end they are measurements used by businesses to track conversions and the overall important purchase. So, what is leadership in the social media realm?

Personality

An argument can be made that leadership in social media is akin to a cult of personality. The true measurement of worth and power is in the numbers behind one’s network. People choose to follow this person because they seem to have a power over them, an attraction per se, that says, “Follow me.” They tend to have a personality that screams popularity.

I have a ton of followers and I am dog! Follow me @KooikerExpress

I follow some people on Twitter and have a few Facebook friends that have a tremendous amount of connections. A lot. They are so popular that they complain about the chore it is to “shed” or “thin the heard” monthly. (Oh! the humanity of it all!) Yet, they do not lead all of those that follow/friend them. They tend to struggle to get their pet causes of the ground, increase fan page membership, or even get online petitions signed.

In all those numbers that are associated with their networks, these people do not seem to have the power to leverage it. Instead they are great at connecting others and ideas through them.

What is lacking is their ability to project an authenticity behind their personality that makes you feel truly connected to them. If you are intellectually honest with yourself is it really possible for a person to have a deep connection with 35,000+ followers/friends?

Influence

I have heard of leadership described as getting others to do what they normally would not do on their own. In other words: influencing others. It seems that personality alone cannot define leadership in social media. Influence then must come into play.

Savvy businesspeople look for those individuals, causes, and beliefs that have a powerful influence on their customers. These forces can be the tipping point that will help a customer purchase or not. Businesses that engage in social media search far and wide for people that have influence. They woo them, engage them, and do everything they can to have this person comment, write, or apostatize about their products/services. These businesspeople understand the power of influence and how it can affect their bottom line.

Who has influence on this equation?

Yet… influence only goes so far. For example, certain individuals who are heavy users of social media influence me1. Their power of influence is limited to very specific subjects and only because I have found their information to be consistently valuable. They do not, on the other hand, influence what I purchase when it comes to electronics or other areas of my life. These individuals have an influence on a specific niche or subject matter that they have made themselves experts of.

When you look at influencers in the real world, they too tend to have an impact on specific areas that they have honed their knowledge base in. These individuals tend to be in roles that allow them to maximize their effectiveness with leaders, followers, and all the in betweens. Sometimes they are personalities and leaders themselves. Most of the time these influencers are behind the scenes making the day-to-day world work.

Impact

If a leader is not just a personality or a person of influence then they must be people who leave their marks. In social media a leader must be someone of impact. That makes sense because leaders tend to impact the lives of those they lead, whether intentionally or not.

There are plenty of examples of people making an impact in social media. Think of when Bill Gates joined Twitter, when Kevin Smith complained about Southwest Airlines booting him off the plane, when the Iranian Reform movement posted the violence by the regime on YouTube, or when your co-worker revealed too much online. All of those items had impact. They made you stand up and notice or judge positively/negatively.

Upon deeper reflection most items that have impact do not lead. Alone they are moments in time that can create an echo across social networks. “Hey look at this!” “Did you see what she did?” While a leader must have an impact, as a stand-alone concept it is not enough to lead others in real life or in social media.

Measuring Leadership In Social Media

Go ahead and measure my leadership!

I recently read an interesting post about measuring on a longitude scale social media. The basic concept is: measuring sentiment, trends, tastes, and attitudes compared to your efforts to respond, change, or influence them over time. In essence measuring the impact/ROI of a PR/media campaign.

Take that approach and apply it to leadership. Look at individuals and groups that get ahead of an issue or subject and how they shape the debate or perceptions over time. I am talking about measuring their personality, influence, and impact in the social media realm; measuring their leadership.

Currently we have farms upon farms of servers capturing and holding all this information we are posting, liking, sharing, and tweeting. If we can identify intent and the unintended consequences of specific actions taken in social media, there is much we can learn about the nature of leadership in that realm. Questions like:

Who moved you to join the protest?
When you asked your friends to support cause x,y,z what did you expect?
How were you able to get everyone to storm the coliseum?

A business would want to measure the impact of leadership in social media to determine if it is getting a return on its investment in messaging. Governments and non-profits would want to measure leadership to know if they are shaping opinion or completely going against the majority. Individuals would want to know if they are leaders, could be leaders, or are merely followers. There are plenty of reasons to measure leadership in social media.

The most important is to learn about the nature of leadership itself.

Definition of Social Media Leadership

Since I have yet to find a definition, I am going to take a stab it myself.

Does social media defy leadership?

To be a leader in social media one must also have all the traits of a leader in real life. You must have an authentic personality that attracts others to you. Even tyrants are well liked. You have to be able to influence others. People feel best following when they choose to; as opposed to being told to. You have to make an impact. People do not follow wallflowers, no matter how talented they may be.

These traits are just the beginning. Bad leadership is easily defined. You and I both know it when we see it. Good and/or great leadership… well… that is where passionate debate comes into play. Currently as it stands leadership in social media is evolving.

Lingering Questions

There is so much talk about how new social media is as a medium. It is not anything really new. People have been networking, joining societies/groups, and finding ways to communicate about their ideas (sometimes over sharing) since the beginning of the species.

Leadership itself is not new either. What is new is the combination of the new technological communication platforms and the users’ interactions with them. Both are rapidly evolving. They keep changing faster than previously known mediums. That means that the concept of leadership will change as well.

So my questions to you from above still remain. I have given my humble attempt to define leadership in social media.

What is your definition?
Who do you identify as leaders in social media and why?
How do you measure the impact of leadership in social media?
What would you do with the information if you could measure leadership?

About the author:

1 Users of social media that influence me are: Shelly Kramer @ShellyKramer and V3 Integrated Marketing; Erika Napoletano @RedHeadWriting; Amber Naslund @ambercadabra; Molly Cantrell-Kraig @mckra1g; Writing staff at the Social Media Examiner

Your Team Stinks! Can You Turn It Around?

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:58:57 +0000

You have been promoted. On your way towards your new team your boss has given you a review of their capabilities. They are bad. Not just bad… really horrible. Dead last in all measures and getting worse. You could describe them as the Detroit Lions of your company: perennial underachievers. Now it is your turn to turn them around and prove that you are worthy of the job.

You have options that sit on a spectrum. On one side of the spectrum is fire everyone and start over. On the other side is to keep everyone and try to coach/lead them to success. You will most likely fall somewhere in between. Any actions you take when a team is that bad must be seen as drastic and swift.

Do not make it a habit.

A losing team is like a habit that is easy to slide into. They always have a rational explanation as to why they lost. First there was the quota, the company was unfair and set it too high. Second, the marketing materials just could not adequately answer every question our customers’ had. Third, the leadership kept changing and we could not get into a groove. Fourth, there was a natural unexpected catastrophe. Fifth… well, you get the picture. It becomes easy to come up with the many reasons as to why “we as a team stink”: it is never our fault.

Punishment is not for the benefit of the sinner but for the salvation of his comrades. — George Patton

You, as the new leader, need to break that mentality quickly and with shock. Deciding to fire or reassign someone from the team can do this. Now, no one who has a conscience likes to fire anyone. You are going to disrupt someone’s life drastically and their loved ones. This should be a decision that should be thought through thoroughly. Conversely, reassigning someone who is a poor performer or negative spirit to another team can be considered “sweeping the problem under the rug.” You could be just delaying the inevitable of this person getting fired anyway.

This decision is going to be a difficult one for you. It should be. You need to measure your decision against the following criteria:

What is my intent and what can be the unintended consequences?
How will the organization benefit from my actions?
How will the team benefit from the changes I will make?
When is the best time to release this shock?

Keep in my mind that while you are answering the criteria above the clock is running and all eyes are on you. Your boss, peers, and company are looking for you to make a change. Your team is anxious and also looking for the next excuse to hang their losing ways on. Once you have your answers be decisive and act.

I’m intense, competitive, focused, blunt, and tough, yes. That’s fair. I’m guilty. — Lou Gerstner

How would these leaders turn failure around?

A great movie that demonstrates a leader quickly coming in and establishing a new tone to a losing team is called, Twelve O’clock High. The leader, played by Gregory Peck, takes over a bombing squadron during WW II that has the highest casualty rate and cannot follow through on their missions. He starts with shock to break the losing mentality the squadron was having by getting rid off and holding accountable individuals who perpetuated it. He kicks one bad apple out of the unit and demotes another. The rest of the unit sees both actions as swift accountable actions. Excuses were quickly quelled. Of course he goes on to make other changes and turns the team around.

You wanted to be a leader. This is what leaders do: make difficult decisions. Firing or reassigning people are difficult decisions but they need to be done. Along with inspiring, holding high standards that make your team reach, coaching for excellence, and providing a vision for success also comes discipline. Are you sure you still want the job?

What other turn around films would you recommend? What other criteria do you use?

About the author:

3 Teams New Leaders Can Inherit – How You Can Succeed

Erroin A. Martin — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:15:17 +0000

You have just been touched. Your boss has come down, placing their hand on your shoulder, and anointed you the next leader within the organization. You are to be given a team to inspire, manage, and lead into the growing future of your company. Congratulations! Do you know what team you are getting?

It is an important question that you need to answer before you take the promotion. The type of team you get will determine the type of leadership you need to provide. Each one has pluses and minuses that you need to be aware of.

The Team In Crisis

You have been chosen to take over a team that is falling apart. The last leader either quit or was fired. Dysfunction reigns supreme!

You Are To Blame! No! You Are!

The great thing about stepping into this position is that any change you bring will most likely be good. It will seem to be too easy to turn things around building upon easy results. Yes, while no one really wants to jump feet first into confrontation, taking over a dysfunctional team can build a strong reputation for a new leader.

Conversely a dysfunctional team can destroy you. Victories will come easy at first because this team needs them and desires them. Yet, without a clear-cut plan to turn the team around, those victories will only serve to shore-up the already entrenched habits that are making the team fail. A leader who does not possess the will to be decisive and believe in a vision for success will be eaten alive by the dysfunctional team.

The Successful Team

The previous leader has moved onto bigger and better things. You have been brought in to lead a high functioning smooth operating dynamic team of successful people. Unlike the dysfunctional team, this is a group that does it right all the time and has luck on their side.

We Are That Good!

The beauty of leading a team like this is that everyone is proactive and working together for results. As a new leader, you cannot ask for an easier assignment. You simply have to build upon the team’s strengths and tweak their weaknesses. You are like the pilot of a ship charted on the right course: you just have to keep the bearing.

Or, if you are not careful, you fall into a caretaker mentality and not offer any real leadership at all. The glue that held the successful team together dissipates allowing for individual goals, egos, and unproductive desires to tear the team apart. This happens because you – the new leader – do not provide leadership. The best example is seen in sports teams time and again. A successful coach of a championship team moves on and their successor runs the team into the ground in a few seasons. Why? The new coach does not provide leadership to keep the team focused on a common vision. Do not be that guy!

The Expansion Team

Your company is growing by leaps and bounds! They need you to form a new team for the IDon’tKnowWhere District. You get to pick your team as opposed to having one handed to you. This is a rare opportunity that you can use to truly set your leadership apart!

We Are Heading Into Uncharted Territory

You do not have to inherit a history; you get to create a legacy in building your team. Each member you choose is picked by you and immediately loyal to your vision since there is none other to follow. You get to make your mark on the foundation of success.

The bad news is that there is no history to build upon. You are charting a new path and each failure is yours to own outright. While each successful team member you choose is a testament to your leadership, so is each dysfunctional member you hire. The heat is really on here. Your company created this expansion and wants results. The pressure to get it right is worse than inheriting a team because each decision you make is magnified.

Successful Leadership No Matter What Team You Get

Any of the three types of teams you step into are stones for success or pitfalls for failure. The key to making them stones of success is to have a plan, a vision, a method, and be decisive.

Having A Plan. Whether you operate in 30-60-90 day intervals when it comes to planning, or longer, you have to know where you want your team to be at the end of a specific time period. With the expansion team, you might want to be fully staffed in ninety days. With your successful team, you might want to have conducted a capabilities review within sixty days. Lastly. with your dysfunctional team you may want to have reassigned a few bad apples within fifteen days. These are all examples of plans that can be executed to make any team you take over a success.
Having A Vision. People, no matter what their backgrounds are, rally around visions. Your job as a leader is to get your team to rally around one that inspires them to improve each day. Regardless of the type of team you take over, it must have a vision or it will have no reason to follow your plan or follow you. Get your team to invest in a vision of success and you more than 50% of the way to being a great leader.
Have A Method. In a previous posting, I talked about having a method to making decisions. The same applies with the three teams you can inherit with the addition to
I am in charge. Follow me!

having a method that describes your leadership. I worked for a leader whom I admire to this day. His method was to hire, train, motivate, and promote (either up or out of the organization.) His teams are always successful and never the same. He hires talent that he knows will work hard and that he can train. He trains his team to execute the fundamentals every day and strive for improvement. He motivates his team to exceed the standards he has laid down. He promotes the members of his team to everyone around him, always placing them as the centerpiece of his team’s success. If there is a bad apple… he gets them quickly out of the organization. This leader has taken over bad teams, successful teams, and launched expansion teams. He has never failed to achieve success.
Be Decisive. You are the leader. Time to step up and make decisions. Teams that are failing look for leaders that can make decisions to turn them around. This can mean letting people go or changing direction completely. Either way it has to be decisive. Teams that are successful got that way by following the decisions of their leaders. Those leaders were decisive. You have to be too or you will inject doubt into the team. Expansion teams have no history to build upon. They are looking for you to guide them and chart the new territory you’ve entered into. This is not a time to second-guess or it could lead to confusion. Evaluate the information that you have and make a decision.

Congratulations on your promotion to being a leader. Whether you posted for the position or you were chosen, you better know what type of team you are getting into before you take charge. A failure to know what you are getting into can lead you to failure. When you fail as a leader it has an effect that reaches across multiple lives. Are you sure you still want that promotion?

What other teams do new leaders get promoted into that I might have missed?

About the author:

Peer Leadership: How To Get It Right In 3 Steps

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 10 May 2010 19:11:01 +0000

Promotion. We all fight for it when we work for a company or someone else. We want a new title, a raise, more responsibility, and more influence a promotion can give us. One of the most difficult promotions is where it occurs amongst your peers. Yes, I am talking about becoming a manager/leader amongst what was once your peer group. Woe to the new leader that is not careful in understanding how difficult their position is.

Follow me gents!

Peer leadership is a wonderful thing. It means that your management team has recognized your leadership potential and wants to elevate you. It means that your peer group, who has followed your non-titled leadership when you were among them, will now follow you as their new manager. They know you and what you can do! You do not have to invest the time necessary to “get to know your team”, you already do. Peer leadership is easier then stepping into the unknown. That is why, if you do not prepare yourself, you will run the risk of being a poor leader.

Peer leadership is fraught with pitfalls and land mines.

Why? Well, because everyone already knows you… as their peer, not their leader. They know your work habits, your performance, and your personality. Most of the members of your team that you are leading look at you as that peer. They have a formed opinion of who you are as a person.

Sure, you have the title that was given to you and the higher paycheck to boot. What you do not have is their perception of you being their leader.

Three Common Mistakes

When individuals, like yourself, get promoted to lead your peers, you want to make a quick impression that things are different: you are in charge now. You are no longer a peer, but different. You start acting differently. Oops! First major mistake!

In this case the newly minted leader comes across as authoritarian and heavy handed. They use their new position to set themselves apart quickly from their peers in what seems like that they have forgotten their humble origins. This leader also strictly enforces new standards that they did not follow as a peer. This typically causes pushback from the team as they remember them as they were as a peer. This results in a loss of respect for the new leader.

Conversely the new leader lacks a spine with their peers. This leader is not going to be mean like the last boss, no! This leader is going to be a “friend.” This is just as bad as the authoritarian approach to being different. It is almost as if they are ashamed of being promoted. Respect again is lost because teams need guidance, coaching, and a leader who justly enforces standards. That is something a buddy cannot do.

The second mistake for the newly promoted leader is not being prepared to see more of the complexities behind the team. As a peer amongst your teammates you get to see the interaction from a specific level. In most instances your teammates are trying to put their best foot forward with you. This means that you do not know all their faults and all the other extraneous reasons as to why they are not up to snuff when compared to you. When you get promoted the curtain is lifted and you get to see more.

Leaders who are not prepared for this new revelation tend not to be as understanding as their predecessors. They see these faults and weakness through the lenses of a peer and not a leader. The result is that the leader pushes their new direct reports as if it is some sort of payback. This breeds the feeling amongst the team that the new leader is singling people out.

Lastly, the newly promoted leader is not ready to take charge. This means that they do not have a plan in place for specific steps to set their best foot forward. In the book The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins, talks about how important it is to have a plan for the new leader. Essentially a plan helps a leader keep focus, establish trust with their team, and build a vision for the future. All leaders have ninety days to get it right, or their teams and their “leadership” is doomed to fail at worst or be mediocre at best.

Typically leaders who are promoted amongst their peers do not have a plan in place. This makes them unorganized and ill prepared for the challenges of leadership amongst their peers.

How To Get It Right

Have A Plan For Your Leadership

Have a plan for how you will transition from peer to leader. If being a leader is something that you desire, then you should be working on this transition plan constantly. If being promoted is out of the blue; immediately start planning. A plan is important to solidifying your leadership and building a strong foundation of trust and respect amongst your team.

Approach your team as if it were new and not a team of your peers. Work to learn how each member operates as member of that team. Embrace the strengths that you are already aware of and everything else you will learn about your team. Build upon their strengths and promote their success. Work on improving their weaknesses to make a stronger team and promotable members.

Set a tone that recognizes your previous status as a peer and your new status as their leader. Convene an expectations meeting at the start of your new position. This meeting allows your team to set their own standards and expectations they have on themselves and you. It will also allow you, their leader, to place your standards and expectations as well. This helps you be just when you have to bring your team back in line. It also reduces the perception of you dictating or being authoritarian since everyone on the team agreed to the new standards.

Being a leader is difficult enough. Being promoted amongst your peers can be the hardest position to be in. (That is one reason why the Army moves battlefield commissioned officers into different units than have them lead their peers.) If you plan, listen, and recognize that leadership is about promoting the successes of your team you will beat the 90% that fail at leading their peers.

Have you been promoted amongst your peers? What were your challenges and how did you overcome them?

About the author:

Listen To The Desires Of Your Business Kingdom

Erroin A. Martin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:39:16 +0000

The kingdom of your business is made up of two entities: the employees and the vendors. Each has desires that can compliment and compete against each other. Each provides your business with information that is tainted with bias and self-interests, yet valuable none the less.

The Vendors’ Desires

The desires of the vendor is to have a client use, promote, and re-purchase the products/services that the vendor provides. Each visit to a client is designed to move a decision further towards a purchase. The vendor rewards, showers with praises, and offers incentives to the client for each purchase that is made. When times are good the vendor is the client’s best friend.

This Vendor Wants You To Write More Rx's

Mere managers and executives mistake these overtures as testaments to their authority or their power. They become enthralled with the ability to get the vendor on a moments notice to fulfill any desire. These managers forget that it is the power of the purse and their capability to purchase that brings them such power.

These managers begin to believe that the desires of the vendor is akin to friendship. They forget that the information the vendor provides is biased with the vendor’s desire for more business and more sales. Unlike a business owner, these managers will allow declines in service and response times to slide because they “know” the vendor. They are willing to put up with poor quality because searching for a new vendor is difficult and time consuming. They are blind to the subtle and incremental price increases the vendor adds over time. These managers and executives are always surprised when the vendor folds.

The successful business owner knows the relationship to the vendor is about one thing only: business. A successful business owner uses this fundamental understanding in every dealing they have with a vendor. It does not mean that they will disrespect the vendor or maltreat them, instead the business owner will never forget that through all the pleasantries business is the underlying purpose for every visit.

This keeps the owner vigilant about quality, delivery, and experience it’s business has with the vendor. The owner does not tolerate anything that would fall below its own standards for products and services. The business owner challenges each price increase and requests by the vendor that its business “upgrade”. The business owner is always willing to find another vendor that will meet its needs and standards for service.

The successful business owner knows that it is in the customer where all the power lies.

Unlike the manager that is blinded by the “friendship” with the vendor, the owner recognizes that price increases, frequent request for new purchases, and declines in service are all signals from the vendor. Information that when placed next to the signals from the marketplace can be warnings of threats and opportunities to the owner’s business.

Unlike the executive that enjoys the power of the purse and the accolades it brings from the vendor, the business owner seeks a vendor that will compliment the productivity of their employees. The business owner will award a vendor with a contract or purchase only when the vendor helps the owner’s business increase its value to its customers. The successful business owner knows that it is in the customer where all the power lies.

The Employees’ Desires

A decent wage, promotion, titles, benefits, bonuses, and job security are but some of the desires of employees in any given business. When an employee feels that these desires are met and at times exceeded by a given employer than productivity increases. When these desires are not met and are sub-standard then productivity

Without Customers There Is No Need For Staff

decreases with quality and the business is in dire straights. Or is it?

The manager who treats their employees like servants should never be surprised that their work is substandard, quality is shoddy, and productivity poor. That part of the equation is a truth. Yet, the manager that compensates employees without discernment or overly provides too much, is placing their business at risk when conditions change. Those managers are blind by their wanting to be loved and liked. They do not see that by giving into the desires of employees can create discontent when salaries, benefits, awards, and jobs have to be taken away. These managers are blind to fact that by overly spoiling their employees can erase the desire to stretch for the finish line or push for the extra mile.

The successful business owner understands that the employer/employee relationship is about one thing: business.

The owner believes that employees should be rewarded for hard work, yet it recognizes that not all employees are the same. The business owner knows that employees will always desire greater wages, greater benefits, and job security. They also know that these desires are measured on a scale with the realities of the marketplace as a counter weight. The business owner seeks to obtain a close equilibrium as possible, never allowing the desires of the employees outweigh the realities of the marketplace. The successful business owner understands by doing this he/she keeps people employed, rewards success, keeps merit the focal point of promotions, keeps benefits funded, and keeps employees motivated to service the customers of the business.

The successful business owner hires the best, compensates above the competition, motivates the workforce, and moves employees up or out.

The successful business must forever be vigilant in listening to the members of their business kingdom. Not doing so puts them and their business in grave peril. So like with the marketplace, the successful business owner must train their ears to determine what desires are to be fulfilled and which are not.

Treat Your Teams Consistently As Individuals

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:26:31 +0000

In a previous post I wrote about how an inconsistent manager can create discontent amongst their team. Later, during a discussion about this in my business planning class, I was reminded about an old manager I had. He used to say that he would be consistent in treating us all as individuals. At first blush this sounds like a complete rebuke of what I had written earlier. Yet, it is not.

Teams Are United Through Consistent Standards

My old manager knew that each of us would respond to different forms of praise, coaching, and motivation. He took his time to get to know us as individuals. He invested himself in getting a better understanding about his team. With this knowledge he was able to reward us with praise that was unique to each of us.

Now this might sound simplistic to do, but many managers fail to connect with their teams. They give praise the way they (the manager) would like to receive it. In the case of my friend in the earlier article, the manager did not even take the time to get to know the rest of their team. They were not aware of what their actions were saying.

He took his time to get to know us as individuals. He invested himself in getting a better understanding about his team.

My old manager would have done this completely differently. He would have known that my friend wants the spotlight. Whereas if it was I, well I could care less about the spotlight, just a head nod would do. My manager would have still acknowledged success in front of the group that was consistent.

So as a manager, what can you do to treat your team consistently like individuals:

Take the time to get to know your team. This is not a one-time question and answer session. This is something that is an investment by you the manager. You need to listen them and learn what they desire, wish for, and how the like receive treatment.

Be willing to get impressions about your direct reports from their peers and customers. Believe it or not, people act differently in other environments. Take the time to learn how others perceive your team.

Be up front about who you are with your team. Let them know what you wish for and how you receive praise. This will let your team understand you actions when you reward members.

Hold a high standard. Never negotiate what your standards are in public or private. Some call this integrity of the individual. This is really the spine of the espirit de corps of the team. Team members can understand varying differences in praise – once they know that you are going to deliver it in a meaningful way – what they cannot understand is inconsistent punishment for standards. What I mean is if you hold a standard that everyone will be 15 minutes early for a meeting and you always allow one person to slide… you have just negotiated your authority away. You have cracked the spine of the team.

My old manager did the above. He is successful and is leading strong teams no matter what the storms are in the marketplace. You can be the same way if you are willing to treat your team consistently as individuals.

How have your managers led?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

How Not To Be An Inconsistent Manager

Erroin A. Martin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:13:08 +0000

I had a recent conversation today with an old work colleague. We were discussing her recent adjustments to her new position at her new company. She has been very excited about the opportunities presented to her. Recently her company had launched a new product. While the first two quarters were good for her she was not in the top. Instead another person on her team was doing very well. So well that the manager of the team was delivering unusual amounts of praise on this particular individual. All of this changed when my colleague took the lead.

For manager, a failure to be evenhanded (read being inconsistent) can have profound impact on their authority and ability to rally their teams in times of trouble.

Celebrating Sales

Taking into account that every member of the team is human there are going to be some failures. For a manager, a failure to be evenhanded (read being inconsistent) can have profound impact on their authority and ability to rally their teams in times of trouble. Let us take a look at my friend. She was performing very well on this product launch, but the first two quarters she was not leading in sales, someone else was. The manager of this team was giving this other individual large amounts of praise in the form of e-mail communications, voicemails, and public displays at meetings. In the third quarter when conditions changed, and my friend took the lead, those types of praises were no longer given out at all.

Could it be that the manager does not like my friend? Could it be that someone else the team complained about how this manager praised her employees and therefore the manage changed their methods? Or could it be that this manager is not aware of how their actions are creating different perceptions amongst their team?

Of course the answer could be all three or one of the three. The point that any manager should take home is that their actions are being misinterpreted by their team. For instance, my friend is perceiving that her manager does not like her because her manager is not showing the same level of praise that she gave the other individual on the team. This could be this could be a misinterpretation by my friend or the real intent of the manager.

…a number of other actions that can be misinterpreted causing confusion and possible dissension amongst the team.

The manager could have been taken aside over her praise of the other individual. The regional manager could’ve noticed that it was too over the top. To

Time To Find Direction

change course he coached the manager to scale back her level of praise. My friend could’ve just gotten caught up in this change. Without the manager explaining this change you can see how it could be misinterpreted by my friend that she is not liked.

Lastly, and this would be very unfortunate, the manager may not have enough social awareness to know how their actions are being interpreted by the members of her team. If this is the case, then this is the beginning of a number of other actions that can be misinterpreted causing confusion and possible dissension amongst the team. If not recognize by the manager herself, or upper management, everything will come to a boil at an inopportune time. (As always seems to be the case.)

How can you as a manager guard yourself against this?

First, be fully aware that your actions and your words can always be misinterpreted. The best case to remember is e-mail. How many times have you heard of an e-mail that was supposed to be “innocent” having been taken completely out of context? The answer is a lot. So if you’re aware of this fact and you should be aware that your body language, your actions, and how you interact with other members of the team will be interpreted all the time. Does this mean that you cannot be yourself? No, you should always be yourself and be genuine for any lack of honesty is worse than any slip up you make publicly.

Second, why you should always treat your customers as differently and as individuals they are, when it comes to praise and awards you should treat every member of your team the same. If an award trip is given for being number one, that whoever’s number one gets the trip. Changing award statuses after people change positions on the rankings table is unfair. You would not want that done to you why would you do that to any member of your team? If you really have to think hard about that question you probably should not be a manager.

Third, if you’re forced to make a change in how you praise members of your team, then you should let every member of the team know that you have to make a change and why. Without doing so you leave it up to the interpretation and more importantly the misinterpretation of your actions to the members of the team. Once that happens you have no control.

Fourth, if you’ve had this problem in the past then you should nominate someone on your team or outside your team to be an objective pair of eyes. This individual will let you know when your actions are inconsistent, being misinterpreted, or have the potential to be misunderstood. We all have our blind spots. Be aware of them and having a process to cover them is a hallmark of a great leader.

It is hard for managers to be aware of the 360° that surrounds them every single minute of every single day. Yet, they have to know that this exists and they have to safeguard their blind spots and manage expectations. It is the tough part of the job.

Without knowing in full detail what this manager is thinking we cannot really fully understand why she chose her actions. The seed of doubt is already germinating.

I’m curious, if you are a manager what would you do?

If you are member of a team and you witness your manager act like this to you or another teammate how would you interpret it?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

30 60 90 Days To Execute

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:59:11 +0000

In my previous blog about business planning, I discussed the method of backwards planning. Whether you are planning a marketing campaign, a social media initiative, a sales plan, or even something unheard of yet… it is best to execute those items in manageable pieces.

…break up the tasks into those easily executable, manageable chunks.

It is best first to understand that backwards planning sets your milestones. It helps your lay down the timeframe expectations for the various pieces of your plan. Now you have to execute it. This is where the principle of the 30 60 90 day execution comes in.

Strategy & Planning

There is no secret sauce to this. No eleven herbs and spices. No special cola formula to using a 30 60 90 execution plan. You look at your backwards plan and you break up the tasks into those easily executable, manageable chunks.

Where people go wrong in using a 30 60 90 day execution plan is when they overload the first thirty days with too many tasks to complete. What was once a manageable tool is now filled with traps of failure of “too much.”

…you need to cross off what is completed and update it at a regular interval.

The next area where business executives tend to fail using this execution plan is that they forget it is a rolling plan. Once you make it the clock starts. The thirty days starts now and when they pass, what was on the 60-day portion becomes the 30-day portion and the 90 the 60.

To ensure that you do not stack too much in the first thirty days break it into three buckets of what needs to get done. So think of the 30 as what needs to get done now. Think of 60 as what can get done later. Think of 90 as what can only be accomplished after 30 and 60 get accomplished. This helps you make sure that you do not stack too much in the first thirty days.

Remember backwards planning is assigning a date and time of when you want to accomplish a particular goal, finish a project, or meet a deadline.

To avoid the second pitfall, forgetting that this plan is rolling, you need to cross off what is completed and update it at a regular interval. Every month is definitely not a proper interval. If you do that you are not really looking at or utilizing your plan. Every day is obviously overkill. It is best to pick a day in the week. I am keen to Sundays as this is when I begin looking at what needs to be accomplished for the upcoming workweek. Sunday I review what I completed (or not, I am human) and update my execution plan for the next 30 60 90 days.

Steps To Success

One of the keys to making this work is that you need to cross off items as you complete them. It keeps you looking at your plan and not letting things pile up on you.

Remember backwards planning is assigning a date and time of when you want to accomplish a particular goal, finish a project, or meet a deadline. You are working from that point in time backwards to where you are now so that you can align your resources, assign teams, and avoid unnecessary tasks. Think of this as a walking the field before the big game or match. You are getting a lay of the land before you actually play. The 30 60 90 day execution plan is a forward looking business planning tool that works within the frame work of the backwards plan to meet your major milestones. Think of this as the actual plays you are executing during the game.

I am always interested in know how other people plan and execute their work, how do you plan?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a coaching and consultancy provider for businesses and medical practices. He has over eleven years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin