The Day Job, Redefined

Good Thursday morning!

I LOVE the commercial when the parrot is mimicking his owner because he can't take another day at the job. Think of how many individuals we supervise and how easy it can be to fall into the rut of routine. Those are the days that seem to drag for me, when I know what to expect all the time, when the work is not challenging or stimulating, when I watch the clock for the quickest escape into the real world. I am lucky enough to not have had one of those days in quite some time. As a Team Leader, the work is always challenging and each day is full of brand new promise.

The individuals that I supervise, however, can easily fall into that rut if I am not paying attention and engaging them on a regular basis. Keeping them in mind, and understanding their work day is essential for me to inject a tad bit of freshness into a potentially mundane professional experience. In part, I think it contributes to the distinction between having a job and a career. If you come to work to punch a few buttons and go home, you have a job. If you come into the office with a focus on future development and how what you do today can translate into bigger things tomorrow, you may be enjoying a career. Let's try to keep our staff career-minded!

Enjoy this article, The Day Job, Redefined, and have a great day!

Zooming: How Effective Leaders Adjust Their Focus

We have made it to Wednesday!

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor, explains why executives must constantly consider both the big picture and the details. She is the author of the HBR article Zoom In, Zoom Out.  This quick podcast provides great strategy for learning to switch from zeroing in on details, and moving back to see how they fit into the big picture.

Zooming: How Effective Leaders Adjust Their Focus

Have a great day!

Cisco and a Cautionary Tale about Teams

Happy Tuesday,

When I first read this article,Cisco and a Cautionary Tale about Teams, it resonated with me. Particularly because I have divided the Production Department into several mini-teams. As I have stated in previous posts, this was in response to the JPS system. It is exciting for me to see the enthusiasm that they have when they are working in their teams. Under my supervision, they have established their workflows and clearly-defined division of duties. My concern comes in when I hear them say that they want each member to be able to perform all of the functions. In theory, that sounds a little overambitious. Although I'm a football guy, when I think of teams, my mind thinks of baseball. Not everybody can play shortstop. Somebody has to be a third baseman and there needs to be outfielders. In an emergency situation, each member should be able to slide into a clearly-defined role and work symbiotically and systematically with each other in response. Like the article states, if everybody is responsible, no one is responsible.

Enjoy the article and the rest of your day!

Leadership Lessons from the Saddle

Good afternoon,

This article provides a great analogy for leadership. Enjoy!

Leadership Lessons from the Saddle

(Sorry this post is so short. Blogger has been having technical issues all day!)
-Randy

The Right to Management Competence

Happy Friday!

Am I living up to my responsibilities as a supervisor?

Each morning, I think about this question as I ride the Metro into DuPont Circle. In a slow-paced department with few staff, it may be an easy question to respond to.  Pubs is not really structured as a slow-paced environment.We get the ball of clay in and churn out a published manuscript, all under deadline, with numerous hand-offs between departments and personalities. Lucky for me, my commute takes about 45 minutes (if everything runs smoothly), which allows for my mind to jump from one direct report to the next, thinking about latest developments and conversations. It's like clicking the remote control in my head, staying on some channels longer than others because those stars may require a little extra attention.

I also think about ongoing projects and things that I have failed to complete. I set my daily priorities and think about how best to serve my team for the day. Unfortunately, none of my preparation answers the question posed in the first line of this post. Am I living up to my responsibilities as a supervisor? Just as I expect certain things from my team, including professionalism, teamwork and commitment, I am sure that they expect certain things for me.

To a degree, being a supervisor can isolate us from the true reality experienced by our team members. In our last seminar with Natalie Loeb, Alex Uribe brought up an excellent point.

One day, he was hanging out with other members of his coworkers, having beers and enjoying life. After he was given a leadership role, his interactions had to adjust because he now had a different set of responsibilities and priorities. "He Changed."

Technically, we have all changed to some degree. Our interactions with our staff is different, as is their perceptions of us. We can no longer rely on honest feedback from our team members as a means of security that we are doing a good job. The possibility that what they say can have a negative affect on their workday may be too risky to tell Randy how awful he handled a situation. Therefore, we are met with smiles. We need to find other guidelines within ourselves in order to stay on track. This article, The Right to Management Competence, provides some jewels that can be a starting point for us to establish our own, individual frameworks.

Have a great weekend. To all of the mothers, Happy Mother's Day!

Three Leadership Steps to Defuse Tense Situations

Good morning,

I find myself writing more and more about change and ways to manage our colleagues through these changes. I apologize if it seems redundant, but there are always so many things to consider when an organization goes through changes as tremendous as ours. My eyes tend to scan articles that I can incorporate into my daily habits right away. Perhaps when we sit on the other side of JPS and AMS, other topics will seem more relevant to me. If you feel overloaded, please lead the discussion into new directions. For now, please enjoy this article, Three Leadership Steps to Defuse Tense Situations. It is a quick read, but loaded with useful tips.

Have a great Thursday!

Understanding People

When I read this today, I thought about how often we get frustrated when someone won't or can't just do what we asked them. How much wasted time and energy has been spent when simply taking a moment to understand the other person would save time, energy and get results that go beyond our expectations. This short article will help you see the power of understanding.

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The ability to understand people is one of the greatest assets anyone can ever have. It has the potential to positively impact every area of your life, not just the business arena. For example, look at how understanding people helped this mother of a preschooler.

Leaving my four-year-old son in the house, I ran out to throw something in the trash. When I tried to open the door to get back inside, it was locked. I knew that insisting my son open the door would have resulted in an hour-long battle of the wills. So in a sad voice, I said, “Oh, too bad. You just locked yourself in the house.” The door opened at once.

Understanding people certainly impacts your ability to communicate with others. David Burns, a medical doctor and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, observed, “The biggest mistake you can make in trying to talk convincingly is to put your highest priority on expressing your ideas and feelings. What most people really want is to be listened to, respected, and understood. The moment people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.” If you can learn to understand people – how they think, what they feel, what inspires them, how they’re likely to act and react in a given situation – then you can motivate and influence them in a positive way.

- By John C Maxwell
from The Maxwell Daily Reader

How to Build Confidence

Good morning and Happy Wednesday!

As my department continues to migrate from RPTS to JPS, there are some people that continue to reserve a degree of apprehension. In order to adjust, they have been asked to cast away their AGU traditions, the habits that they have developed and the things that they have been doing consistently for years. In exchange for everything that they have known, I offer them the unknown. How uncomfortable they must be!

In my role as their Team Leader, I have been trying to over-educate and over-train my staff. I believe that education and development is an ongoing process and I understand just how intimidating new things can be. Therefore, I want them to experience these changes first hand, repeatedly. The idea of a new process may seem bigger than the activity of the process. My goal is to reduce the psychological mass that is buried in the word "change" until each member of my team reaches their "Aha-moment" and understands the reality of what it means to them. I suspect that tensions will dissipate, the clouds will clear and we will be brand new (at least until the next change)!

If anybody else has been having challenges with preparing their team members for changes, here is a great article on How to Build Confidence. Have a great day!

One of my favorite Leadership Quotes

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

Henry Kissinger

As we embark on the many new initiatives at AGU, I think this describes our task as leaders charged with creating AGU's future.

Failing By Design

Happy Tuesday to everybody,

I had several topics to post today, but I read this article, Failing By Design, this morning and it trumped everything. Many times, we look at ourselves as the high performers and overachievers. We're the ones with all of the answers, right? Well, what happens when our answers are wrong? What do we say when somebody proves that we are not so smart after all? Sometimes, in order to learn, we have to allow ourselves to learn things the hard way. That means that not every initiative will be a success and not every idea is a good one. Some days will start off promising and end up disastrous. The key is analyze what happened and turn it around to your benefit. I don't always know what is right, but I do try to find what is wrong as quickly as possible so that I do not lose too much time investing my energies in distractions and deviations.

Enjoy the article and enjoy your day!

Managing Change: It's Part of Life

Does anybody remember watching the video, "Who Moved My Cheese?" That video was meant to mentally prepare us for some of the transitions that AGU was about to embark upon. I don't think that the change at AGU was like moving from Point A to Point B, but rather the evolving development of an organic life. It may be marked in milestones, but we, as supervisors, are playing a major role in this development. This article, Managing Change, provides a quick refresher with additional tips that you may want to add to your toolkit.

Enjoy!

How Good Designers Think

Happy Friday!

With all of the newness in our New AGU, I find myself having to approach many things differently, including schedules, work and staff. With that approach comes new perspectives that often conflict with my experiences in the not-so-distant past. This time last year, I was just beginning to pay attention to RPTS reports (now my AGU bible!), there was no standard telework policy, and I think we had just moved from Thunderbird to Outlook as our email system. I have constantly reinvented myself to adapt to the changes, and I challenge myself to remain flexible for future changes. With my new roles and responsibilities, I now have to manage the involvement of my direct reports, and be a constructive voice for indirect reports, all of whom may be feeling varying levels of apprehension with so many changes to our professional landscape. The way that I present changes may differ from the way that change is perceived. This article, How Good Designers Think, is an excellent read for anybody that may need to unlock learned behaviors and think outside of the box.

Have a great weekend!

Helpful Tips to Manage Change

For anybody working in a dynamic environment undergoing exciting, new changes (is there any exemptions to this description at AGU?), here is a brief article that offers helpful tips to manage your team through it:

10 Things I Know About... Managing Change | Worcester Business Journal

Have a great Thursday!

The Power of Deceptive Simplicity

Happy Wednesday!

As new supervisors, many things vie for our attention. Often, we are pulled in many directions and begin living our workdays through bullet points, rather than immersion into well-thought out strategies or establishing and cultivating professional relationships. Those elements that are meant to be tools for development seem more and more like additional distractions. Our direct reports take their cues from our leadership. We need to find ways and make time to strengthen our skills. If we make that a priority, we are making our team our priority. With so much going on around us, how are you finding ways to manage your storms? Here is a brief article with some helpful tips. Enjoy!

The Power of Deceptive Simplicity

From ME to WE Culture

Here is the text of an e-mail newsletter I receive that primarily deals with changing organizational culture. There is also a link to a great article towards the end. In HR, we've been talking about using video in our recruiting process to show what staff does at AGU and why they love to work here. We are well on our way to becoming the Best Place on Earth to Work! Let me know if you or anyone on your team is interested. This would be a late summer/early fall project and would not consume huge amounts of time and we will have FUN doing it!

From David Lee of Human Nature at Work:

Leveraging Employee Pride: As part of a "From ME to WE Culture" project, I recently met with a number of employees from a company to get more a sense of their daily worklife. I was really touched by one particular employee's level of passion for the excellent product they create (it is top tier) and his commitment to making it so. It reminded me of a couple of practices that can make a huge difference in the engagement level of both new employees and long-standing employees.

1) If you want to inspire and engage your new employees, get videos of your inspired, committed current employees talking about why they love your company and are proud of what you do. Include these in your orientation program and put them on your recruiting website. Just use a digital camera or smart phone. we're not talking James Cameron here.

2) If you want your employees to feel more connected to your mission and goals and your customers--and let them know they matter--create a video of these passionate employees talking about why they believe in what you do, and share those with your customers. Not only does it set your company apart and make it more "bondable" to customers, it makes your employees feel more valuable and like "players" rather than just "hired hands"--an important component of creating a "WE Culture."

3) One of most important questions to ask employees is - "What can we do to help you experience the Thrill of Victory and not the Agony of Defeat at work?" (or some variation of that question). Employee pride in what you do is one of the most powerful motivators and sources of sustenance during tough times.

If employees' quest for excellence is thwarted on a regular basis because of inadequate training or resources, or bogus processes, it will eventually beat them down. Conversely, if they get to experience excellence and the thrill of mastery, not only will it keep them engaged, it will also help them respond with determination and a "Can Do" spirit to difficulties.


Don't Be a Buzz Kill: I did a program with another group last week on resilience and building a high performance team culture. One of the practices we talked about was Spreading Goodwill. It's one of the simplest and nicest ways of creating a more positive culture and being a "force for good in the world".

Just an FYI, if you want more of your employees to be an Upper, you can share

Are You an Upper or a Downer?


with them. In this short article, it invites people to recognize they have a huge impact on others, regardless of their position, and a huge opportunity to help create a positive emotional climate.

Alright, back from my digression...

In one of the breaks, a gentleman in the group mentioned how he had volunteered for years at a non-profit, taking care of their IT needs at night. After several years, something big happened and he spent most of the night working on it. While there, he got a call from the Chairman of the Board saying he just found out about this and how deeply he appreciated the work this man was doing for them.

Always interested in the effect of how people are treated, I asked him how this affected him.

He not surprisingly said how touched he was and how it made him more committed to helping them.

He also noted, sadly, that it was the first time anyone had ever contacted him from the non-profit to thank him for all his hard work.

Can you believe that? Here he is coming in after work, helping them out, and narry a word?

So, please please please. Be on the lookout for opportunities to express gratitude to those who help you and those who go the extra mile...including your boss.

Let them know you notice and appreciate them.

Remember how good it feels when someone appreciates YOU?

Spread that good feeling.


Best regards and become the change you wish to see,

David Lee

The Multitasking Debate

Who here has not found themselves trying to juggle too many things simultaneously, only to have more, equally important tasks introduced into the performance? Cue the circus music! The stress of having a lot of to-dos pile up can make progress ambiguous. New distractions can often result in a loss of focus. This article, How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking, discusses the pros and cons of multitasking weighed against being more organized.

Enjoy!

Leading by Example

Happy Monday!

In high school, I used to actively participate in hallway group discussions in between classes. I was involved in many different extra-curricular activities, making me a member of several tribes. The most rewarding part of those group discussions came many years after I had graduated.

Several years ago, I was visiting my hometown for a weekend and stopped by the neighborhood barbershop, The Cutting Edge. Chris, the younger brother of one of my high school buddies, was a barber there. In high school, I remember how he had constantly been in and out of trouble. Throughout the years, he had established a well-deserved reputation filled with violence and menace.  It  did my heart well to see him working a solid job.  Although the barber shop was full of people, it appeared that his reputation prevented the ease-of-mind that the one would need in trusting this man with a blade. His chair was empty and he seemed somewhat embarrassed for me to see it so.

I walked right over to him, shook his hand, and sat down in his chair. I could feel the tension in the air as everybody watched, perhaps surprised or shocked. I could tell that even HE was a little taken aback by my directness. Right before he began cutting my hair, he said, "I always used to watch you back in high school. You would always be surrounded by the older kids. Tony (his brother) used to always say that if I ever wanted to learn anything, I should try to get as close to those conversations as possible and just listen. I don't know if you ever noticed, but there would always be a group of my friends standing behind you."

I never noticed. I learned that day, in his chair, that even if I am not aware, somebody may be watching what I am doing or saying. My actions have the potential to shape their world, or at least affect their views. Now, when I stop by the barber shop, his chair is the busiest. I cannot take credit for his skills or his success, but he often tells me that I contributed to his self-confidence.

Now, enough about me. Here is a great article that I came across discussing the concept of "leading by example."

Leading by Example - Leadership Training from MindTools.com

Enjoy!

The Words Many Managers Are Afraid To Say

The power of word choice has the potential to affect those you are communicating with, whether for the better or for the worse. Many times, I can tell that I have phrased something incorrectly by the facial expressions or body language that I receive. Even more often are my points reiterated to me after being churned through a completely different, unintentional context. In those frustrating moments, I do my best to hit the "Reset" button and begin again. As a relatively new supervisor, I recognize that the weight of my language-usage is much heavier than before, resulting in more acute interactions with staff. In attempting to create constructive experiences, I start with some of the suggestions found in this brief article, The Words Many Managers Are Afraid To Say, by Linda Hill and Kent Lineback.

Enjoy!

Your Communications May Not Be Communicating

Good morning,

I read this article a few days ago and have been digesting some of the points. I have sat in many department meetings when nobody has any questions about pending changes to the department or clarification of procedures. Only when the meeting is over and everybody returns to their cubicles is where the REAL public discussion begins. I suppose that staff have their reason, and it seems to be a shared behavior. Therefore, I sit at my desk after the department meetings in order to hear the real concerns and points.

Anyway, please enjoy this article.

Your Communications May Not Be Communicating

-Randy

Interesting - Not directly related to management

This is a great article on WSJ.com: How to Get a Real Education. What are your thoughts on how to apply this to work?

The Most Important Question a Manager Can Ask

I came across this article in the Harvard Business Review last night. I ask this question in all of my one-on-ones, so it really caught my attention. Sometimes, it's like opening a can of worms and you end up with a 2-hour long one-on-one, but I love the reaction from my staff. Some don't know how to respond. Others are "very glad I asked that question!" If you choose to incorporate it into your management style, use it wisely. Enjoy the article!

The Most Important Question a Manager Can Ask

-R

Management Reading List

I thought I'd share my reading list on management topics: Drive, Daniel Pink; Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath; Blink, Malcolm Gladwell Delivering Happiness; Tony Hsieh; Article: How Aha! Really Happens ( you need to register to view but registration is free). I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas! Rebecca

Welcome

Welcome to the AGU Team Leaders Blog. I figured that, since we spend a lot of time attending meeting after meeting, that we can open up the lines of communication and maintain dialogue through a blog. That way, we can participate at our leisure, post comments, questions, suggestions, offer ideas and support, and share success stories, or maybe things that didn't quite work out so well.  Because I set it up, I thought that I would share an interesting article that I came across recently. I think that it is great food for thought!

If you have any suggestions as to how we can make this blog better, feel free to speak your mind!

Enjoy!