Category Archives: The HR Rules

The Future of Executive Performance Reviews are Here! Are you ready?

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A small news story hit this past week and you might have missed it. It was about Facebook hiring a pollster to follow Mark Zuckerburg around to measure what people (all people) thought of him, not Facebook. Here’s a bit from The Verge:

“It was a very unusual role,” McGinn says. “It was my job to do surveys and focus groups globally to understand why people like Mark Zuckerberg, whether they think they can trust him, and whether they’ve even heard of him. That’s especially important outside of the United States.”

McGinn tracked a wide range of questions related to Zuckerberg’s public perception. “Not just him in the abstract, but do people like Mark’s speeches? Do they like his interviews with the press? Do people like his posts on Facebook? It’s a bit like a political campaign, in the sense that you’re constantly measuring how every piece of communication lands. If Mark’s doing a barbecue in his backyard and he hops on Facebook Live, how do people respond to that?”

Facebook worked to develop an understanding of Zuckerberg’s perception that went beyond simple “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” metrics, McGinn says. “If Mark gives a speech and he’s talking about immigration and universal health care and access to equal education, it’s looking at all the different topics that Mark mentions and seeing what resonates with different audiences in the United States,” he says. “It’s very advanced research.”

Facebook also conducted similar research on behalf of the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. Surveys measured awareness about Sandberg, whether people liked and trusted her, and how they felt about her speeches, interviews, and Facebook posts…The company further measured how Sandberg’s public image compared with Zuckerberg’s. The results were shared directly with Zuckerberg and Sandberg” 

Most Executives of very large companies don’t really get performance reviews. The board of directors will do something formally, but it’s all wink, wink, fairly surface level stuff, we’re all in this together, how much of a raise should we give ourselves this year kind of thing.

Can you imagine how your C-suite would respond to having themselves polled at every turn on an ongoing basis kind of performance feedback! I’ll tell you, most would lose their minds!

When I first read this, I thought, oh, this is just Mark looking into Presidency options, but when Sheryl was also put into the mix, and they were compared, that changes the dynamic. If you think about the impact of the C-suite in the largest companies in the world in terms of performance of stock price, earnings, revenue, etc., you’re talking billions of dollars to the positive or negative.

Look at what Uber’s CEO did to their brand! Can you imagine how that might have played out differently from the start if he was constantly being polled on his behaviors? Can you imagine how most executives would be if they knew they were constantly being polled on their behaviors!?

I’m not sure we need or want constant polling of executives. Bad things can happen with that as well. They become politicians bowing to the whims of the masses, and that might not be what’s right for the organization. But I do believe this Facebook experiment gives us some foreshadowing of how we might start tracking and measuring the performance of our most senior executives in the future.

Internal 360 feedback has always been a great tool to use to get feedback on our senior leaders. This kind of surveying takes it one step further in taking it outside of the organization as well.

If you want to see how this kind of constant feedback loop could go really wrong, check out Netflix’s Black Mirror Season 3, Episode 1 – Nosedive, that looks at our constant need for social reinforcement with “likes”! (Reader alert – Black Mirror as a series is super Alfred Hitchcock meets 2050 weird – don’t judge me for watching!).

What ‘Aging’ Millennials Really Care About When it Comes to Their Benefits!

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In a world where 15 minutes of fame has become 15 seconds, our greatest generation, the Millennials, are now preparing for retirement! Yep, that’s right kids, the Millennials are aging!

Pentegra recently released there 2018 Millennial Benefit Report (because isn’t that what every Benefit Analyst/Mgr needs in their HR shop a report that only focuses on one part of your workforce!) and they found the Millennials are concerned with some things I don’t think most of us would expect:

– 401K and retirement savings were the #1 benefit concern amongst Millennials! (Did you expect that?)

– #2 concern? Health Insurance (expected) tied with Pensions (Um, what!? What Millennial is expecting a pension?)

– HR Pros ranked Telecommuting and Flex-time as important benefits for Millennials, even though, those didn’t make the top 5 for what Millennials actually ranked as important benefits. (Disconnect alert!)

HR pros also believe Millennials are basically idiots when it comes to understanding their health insurance benefits. News alert! We are all idiots when it comes to understanding our health insurance benefits because insurance companies make it extremely complex in hopes we won’t actually pay attention when they bill us for stuff they shouldn’t.

So, I’m on a rampage to get executives to stop calling young people “Millennials”. Millennials are old people now! They only care about their 401K, a pension plan, and if their health insurance will cover their hip replacements!

By the way, how can “Pension” be the #2 concern of Millennials? Of really anyone under the age of 70 at this point in our society!? Almost no organizations are giving out pensions anymore. In fact, I would bet that if you asked 100 Millennials to define “Pension” less than 10% could do it. I bet 100% of GenZ couldn’t do it!

I question any study that says it’s about Millenials and Benefits and lists pensions as a concern!

This brings up a really good point about the studies we keep wanting to show to our executive teams as valid data to make decisions. Most ‘studies’ you are getting from a vendor, aren’t really validated studies, but simple marketing materials designed to get you interested in the products and services they are pimping.

I don’t even know what Pentegra sells, but if I had to bet one of my kids on it, I’m guessing they’re selling retirement products to organizations. Without even knowing anything about them! Was I right?! Of course, I was!

So, what do you think? Are Millennials really concerned with 401Ks and Pensions? My guess is they’re probably more concerned with buying a house and raising their kids. That will lead to concerns about based pay, health insurance, and college savings. Does retirement come up, eventually? Sure it does. But, for most, it’s not #1.

 

Will Amazon’s New Salary Policy Actually Hurt Women?

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So, a ton of our HR peers around the country in states like California, Massachusetts, New York City, etc. are trying to figure out new laws that ban hiring managers from asking candidates about their salary history. Forever, this has been commonplace.

It might still be in your workplace, as this isn’t federal law, yet, most managers use the salary history question as a screener to understand if they can ‘afford’ a person, or if they can negotiate and get the company a better deal. There are major problems with this practice, and it’s why many states have put in place laws to remove the practice.

Amazon is one of a growing list of companies that voluntarily decided to stop asking candidates about salary history.

From Quartz:

Amazon has promised to hire at least 100,000 new employees in the US this year. And it won’t ask any of them about their prior job history.

According to a report in Buzzfeed yesterday (Jan. 17), Amazon is pledging to do voluntarily what many companies are now being forced to do by law: bar its US hiring managers from asking job candidates their prior salary.

The policy is an attempt to help correct a gender pay gap that’s perpetuated when starting salaries are based on previously low salaries. On Jan. 1, California became the largest state in the US to institute a law barring the practice, joining Massachusetts, New York City, and other states and cities with similar laws.

While these types of laws are designed to help people who have previously been hurt by these practices (females, individuals with prison records, basically anyone who took a lower than market pay wage for some reason or another), we need to understand for every action we take, Newton’s Third Law comes into play.
This law is no different and leading economists are trying to get us to understand some of these realities that will now be the norm:

But there’s reason to believe the law could backfire, and end up punishing women. That’s because taking information away from employers doesn’t make them stop caring about the information, said Jennifer Doleac, an economist at the University of Virginia.

When employers can’t ask about salary history, they’ll make assumptions based on what they think they know, Doleac said. “When we make them guess, it hurts the best applicants in the groups we’re caring about, because we have no way to distinguish them, and they get grouped together with the rest…

…If women were well paid in their previous jobs, and are offered a lower salary at their new place of work, they’ll be forced to negotiate for the wage they already had, Doleac said. For women who can’t prove they earned more, or are unwilling to haggle, they’ll get less, she said. And low-paid women will be in the same position as they were before the laws were passed.

“We know women don’t negotiate, even when it would be really easy for them to push back,” she said, referring to prior research.  “Putting that extra hoop there for them to jump through is going to hurt.”

Fix one problem, create another that might actually have a negative impact on the ones the law was created to help.

What we should be doing as HR leaders are ensuring when offers are made that they are equitable across the board in our organizations based on objective data. We own that. Managers will make dumb decisions, we know this.
This is why we have jobs in HR. It’s our job to ensure we support those managers with information to make good decisions. Then when they ignore our information to make good decisions, we smack them over the head!
I believe Amazon is doing the right thing. I think what we’ll see long term are these laws will end up benefiting more than they’ll hurt. What do you think?

What Happens When ‘Dad’ Doesn’t Like How His Daughter’s Boss is Managing Her?

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If you follow sports recently you can’t get away from Lavar Ball, the overbearing Dad of three really talented basketball-playing sons. His oldest, Lonzo, is a really talented rookie in the NBA with the Lakers, his middle son was at UCLA as a freshman, got suspended from the team for shoplifting, and his youngest was a top recruit in high school.

Lavar took the two youngest kids out of school and took them to Lithuania to play professional basketball.

Lavar was back in the news this week when he told ESPN that Luke Walton, the Lakers Head Coach, wasn’t doing his job and should be fired.  Luke Walton is considered by many to be one of the top young coaches in the NBA and is highly regarded by both players and other NBA coaches. The NBA coaches came to his defense in a big way.

One, in particular, was Steve Kerr, considered the top coach in the NBA, and Luke Walton’s mentor. Here’s what Kerr had to say:

“This is the world we live in now. I was thinking about ESPN and they laid off, I don’t know 100 people…many of whom were really talented journalists covering the NBA. So this is not an ESPN judgment, it’s a societal thing more than anything…I’ve talked to people in the media and said ‘Why do you guys have to cover that guy.’ They say ‘We don’t want to. Nobody wants to. But our bosses tell us we have to because of the ratings and the readership.’

So somewhere, I guess in Lithuania, LaVar Ball is laughing. People are eating out his hands for no apparent reason. Other than he’s become like the Kardashian of the NBA or something and that sells. That’s true in politics and entertainment and now sports. It doesn’t matter if there’s any substance involved with an issue. It’s just ‘Can we make it really interesting.’ For no apparent reason. There’s nothing interesting about that story. You know how many parents of my players have probably been at home thinking ‘Why isn’t he playing my kid.’ Yet we’re sticking a microphone in front of his face because apparently, it gets ratings. I don’t know who cares, but people must care or ESPN wouldn’t be spending whatever they’re spending to send reporters to Lithuania when they laid off people who were writing really substantial pieces…”

Don’t think this ends here.

We can already find examples and stories from corporate America of parents getting involved in their kids work-life. In the past, a couple of decades ago, you would have never heard of a parent saying anything about how their kids were getting managed.

Now we live in a world where everyone has a platform and the ‘threat’ of this happening to you, your organization, to one of your managers, is very real.

It’s easy to say that you wouldn’t engage. That you would only work through the ’employee’ in this manner. That’s what the majority will say. But, what do you do when that parent has a larger platform than your brand? When ‘that’ parent finds others willing to listen. How are you prepared to react?

I can foresee a time in the near future where HR leaders will be meeting with parents to discuss issues. It happens in what part of society, politics, entertainment, sports, etc. before it filters into other parts of normal, everyday society. You can ignore it, but those who do will probably be the least prepared to handle this when it hits them over the head.

I’m ready. Bring Big Momma into the office, let’s talk this out!

The fact of the matter is if I’m transparent about performance there will be nothing I haven’t said to your child that I won’t be willing to say to you. I’ll first ask the kid if they want Big Momma to come in, which I’m guessing they’ll say “no”, but if they do, let’s do this!

There’s one part of our society that is ready for this and it’s teachers!

Teachers have been dealing with overbearing parents who think little Jimmy walks on water for years. You know what teachers do? They do the exact same thing you and your managers do. You sit them down, all together, you give very specific examples of behavior and performance, and you shut up and wait for a reaction.

When I taught, I found most overbearing parents, when presented with facts, would actually support me and help me get better performance. In teaching, and in the real work world, I’ll take any help I can get to get better performance!

In Lavar Ball’s case, he’s just an idiot with a stage.

GenZ Doesn’t Want Your Stupid Millennial Office Happy Hour!

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Guess what 2018 will be the year GenZ’s get us to stop talking about Millennials and this just in, all those ‘after hour’ work happy hours you think your employees love so much, well, GenZ hates them and they’ll hate you for expecting them to go to them!

Hello, Employee Experience! Turns out all of us don’t like the same things, and GenZ is much more cautious and career-focused than their much older Millennial peers. A recent article in Wired had this to say:

The college student survey allows a more precise look at in-person social interaction, as it asks students how many hours a week they spend on those activities. College students in 2016 (These are GenZ, not Millennials)  (vs. the late 1980s) spent four fewer hours a week socializing with their friends and three fewer hours a week partying—so seven hours a week less on in-person social interaction. That means iGen’ers (or GenZ) were seeing their friends in person an hour less a day than GenX’ers and early Millennials did. An hour a day less spent with friends is an hour a day less spent building social skills, negotiating relationships, and navigating emotions. Some parents might see it as an hour a day saved for more productive activities, but the time has not been replaced with homework; it’s been replaced with screen time.

Basically, GenZs don’t want your forced socialization. They would rather be at home gaming, watching Netflix or hanging out in much smaller more intimate settings. So, your weekly office happy hour is like torture to GenZers.

Another factor playing into this is alcohol is more unpopular with GenZ than any generation before them. So, if you are having a group office interaction, your youngest employees would more likely prefer it be a non-alcohol affair, especially if it’s a work event.

GenZ has grown up with Snap and IG and they know better than anyone what happens when you get in drunk in front of people – it lives on forever and is embarrassing!  Combine this with being more career-focused as a generation and GenZers would just prefer to have other types of fun than drinking.

It’s not that they’re completely different than their older peers, but from a career standpoint, they’re probably more like they’re GenX parents in terms of thinking work is about work and not a party. They go to work to focus on their career, not socialize.

So, what should you do for GenZ when replacing the office happy hour? Here are few ideas:

– Weekly Netflix Series “Meet”-Up – Everyone in their own comfortable place all watching the same show at the same time and interacting on Twitter or Snap or IG or whatever messaging app fits your culture. But without actually physically meeting up!

– Encourage smaller one-on-one employee interactions – It doesn’t mean these younger employees won’t create many relationships across your company. They would just prefer one or two people at a time versus larger social interactions.

– Plan fun events that are dry, or that aren’t centered around alcohol. GenZers are not prude, and they are fine with people making the decision to drink, but they won’t want to choose to hang out at a work event where the sole purpose is getting drunk.

Ahh! Something and someone new to talk about! Isn’t this refreshing!?

Reference Checking for Employment is Dead!

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I remember when I started my first job in Talent Acquisition and HR, I totally believed checking references was going to lead me to better, higher quality hires. My HR university program practically drilled into me the belief that “past performance predicts future performance.”

For all, I knew those words were delivered on tablets from Moses himself!

After all, what better way is there to predict a candidate’s future success than to speak with individuals who knew this person the best?

And it’s not just anybody: It’s former managers or colleagues who have previously worked with this person – directly or indirectly – and have a deep understanding of how they have performed, and now telling me how they will perform in the future.

Grand design at its finest.

About 13 seconds into my HR career I started questioning this wisdom. Call me an HR atheist if you must, but something wasn’t adding up to me.

It was probably around the hundredth reference check when I started wondering either I was the best recruiter of all time and only find rock stars (which was mostly true) or this reference check thing is one giant scam!

Everyone knows the set up: The candidate wants the job, so they want to make sure they provide good references. The candidate provides three references that will tell HR the candidate walks on water. HR accepts them and actually goes through the process of calling these three perfect references.

When I find out that an organization still does reference checks, I love to ask this one question: When was the last time you didn’t hire someone based on their reference check?

Most organizations can’t come up with one example of this happening. We hire based on references 100% of the time.

Does that sound like a good system? Now, I’m asking you, when was the last time your organization didn’t hire a candidate based on their references?

If you can’t find an answer, or the answer is ‘never’, you need to stop checking references because it’s a big fat waste of time and resources! There’s no “HR law” that says you have to check references. Just stop it. It won’t change any of your hiring decisions.

NEW WAYS OF CHECKING REFERENCES THAT CHECKOUT

So, how should you do reference checks? Here are three ideas:

1. SOURCE YOUR OWN REFERENCES

Stop accepting references candidates give you. Instead, during the interview ask for names of their direct supervisors at every position they’ve had. Then call those companies and talk to those people. Even with HR telling everyone “we don’t give out references,” I’ve found you can engage in some meaningful conversations off the record.

2. AUTOMATE THE PROCESS

New reference checking technology asks questions in a way that doesn’t lead the reference to believe they are giving the person a ‘bad’ reference but just honestly telling what the person’s work preferences are. The information gathered will then tell you if the candidate is a good fit for your organization or a bad fit — but the reference has no idea.

3. USE FACT CHECKING SOFTWARE

Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. have made it so candidates who lie can get caught. There is technology being developed that allows organizations to fact-check a person’s background and verify if they are actually who they tell you they are. Estimates show that 53% of people lie on their resume. Technology makes it easy to find out who is.

Great Talent Acquisition and HR pros need to start questioning a process that is designed to push through 99.9% of hires. Catching less than .1% of hires isn’t better quality. It’s just flat out lazy.

Start thinking about what you can do to source better quality hires and your organization might just think you can walk on water.

Your turn: What are your tips for checking references?

7 Sure Ways to Fail as a HR Leader

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It’s tough being a Leader these days!  You have all these boomers retiring and taking their typewriters and knowledge with them, you have all theses X’ers who think they are now the second coming, the GenY’s and the Millennial’s who have been told they are the second coming, and now we have these Generation Zs who think they can work from where ever since they grew up with a smartphone and an iPad in their crib.

On top of all this, somehow in the last 10 years executives decided HR is no longer HR, but now we are these business partners, so on top of having to take care of all these people issues, we now have to be concerned with business issues, teach our leaders how to be leaders, continue to train our workforce to stay current, fight off talent sharks from our competition, make sure the corporate picnic still runs smoothly and oh by the way can you put a nice internal blog post together for the CEO and make it real “peopleish”.

I get it, it’s hard being a leader in HR, that’s why I’m going to help you out and give you some tips on things to stay away from:

1. Think of yourself or your company as “the” industry leader. As soon as you do, someone will knock you off.

2. Identify so strongly with the company that you no longer have a clear boundary between your personal interests and the corporation’s interests. Yes, you should be committed, but don’t be “committed” Too often leaders doing this fail to differentiate their personal agenda and the corporate agenda and start empire building.

3. Have all the answers.  This is tough because it’s common leadership training that we all know: use your people, surround yourself with people better than you, make group decisions, etc.  But until you put your butt in that seat you never realize how many things will come your way, where people want a decision and they are unwilling to make it. So they look to you for the answer. Don’t get sucked into this trap. Pushback and make them bring you solutions.

4. Hunt down and Kill those who don’t support you. Don’t think this happens?! Look at turnover numbers of departments when a new leader takes over. They are almost always higher than those of the organization as a whole.

5. Become obsessed with the company image.  Your company image is hugely important, but it is not the most important thing you have going on. Make sure your operations match the image you want to create, not the other way around.

6. Underestimate or take obstacles for granted.  As a leader you want to be confident during hard and challenging times, but don’t let yourself get fooled into believing your own confidence will get you through.  Having a clear understanding of the reality you are facing, and being able to communicate that without fear to your team, with a plan of action, is key.

7. Stubbornly rely on what you’ve always done.  “Well, when I was the leader at GE we did it this way…” Look, this isn’t the 80’s and this isn’t GE. Might it work? Sure. But be open to new ways of doing things, while being confident of what you know will work. Don’t put yourself or your organization in jeopardy, but be willing to try new things when time and circumstance allow.

Adapted from The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives in Forbes by Mike Myatt

Burning Down Your HR or TA Department

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A few years ago my parent’s house burned down.  They were away on vacation and lightning struck the roof. Before the fire department could get there and put it out, most of the house was destroyed.  60+ years of memories and possessions, gone. In hindsight, it was a bit of a blessing; their house was at the age where everything was starting to need replacing, and my father was at the age, where he wanted to retire.

Those two things don’t go well together!  Major home improvements equals major expense, and a fixed income.  So, long-story-short, mother nature, and the insurance company, gave my folks a new house for a retirement gift!  All is well that ends well, I guess.

This situation, though, led to some deep emotional conversations about what the wish they could have pulled out, if they knew this was going to happen.  As you can imagine it was all the stuff you and I would want: our photos, our mementos, some favorite things that remind us of loved ones, or things that we were proud of.

I thought about this recently when having a conversation with a friend who just started a new position as the head of a large HR shop.  His comment to me was:

“What I really need to do is burn this place down and start over!”

To which I replied, “well, isn’t there anything you would keep?”  Bam!  That is what he needed. He did need to burn it down, but there were definitely some things he needed to take out before lighting the match.

It’s a common practice that Leaders tend to do when taking on a new position. We tend to burn down our departments.  Oh, we say we won’t, as we go around throwing gasoline on everything, and we say we aren’t rebuilding as we strap our tool belt on and start hammering away, but the truth is, most leaders want to remake their new departments into what they want, not what it was.

So, I’ll ask you to take a few moments today and think about the concept of burning down your HR or TA department.  What would you pull out and save?  What would you happily allow to burn up?  What would you miss?

Every day we owe it to our organizations to get better.  You don’t have to burn down the department to get better, but you do need to get rid of those things you know you would easily allow to burn up!

The Sackett Office Holiday Party Rules!

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Today is my annual office holiday party. The HRU Holiday Parties are pretty freaking fun! Probably like most recruiting shops and groups of elementary school teachers, we know how to let our hair down when the time is right!

You will see about 500 articles and blog posts how this season on Office Holiday Party Etiquette. Especially, with all the craziness going on with the very public sexual harassment allegations! The one thing we know about office parties is once you add alcohol stupid stuff happens.

To help everyone out, in my own Sackett kind of way, I decided we probably needed a few ‘rules’ around this year’s holiday office parties.

The Sackett 2017 Office Holiday Party Rules! 

#1 – Have a designated driver or offer up the paid Uber/Lift option right up front. It sucks trying to talk a drunk employee out of driving, they’re drunk and usually don’t want to listen. So, just make it easy and tell your employee if you’ll be drinking, just take an Uber to the party and back home, and the company will pay.

#2 – No one wants to see your junk. Okay, maybe someone wants to see your junk, but you better make sure they ask to see your junk before you start showing your junk. In fact, if I’m you, I might actually get that on video! “Hey, before I show you my junk, do you mind just looking into the camera and just saying, ‘Hi, this is ‘state your name’, I want to see your junk!”

#3 – Don’t complain about the party, the food, the drinks. You look like a douchebag when you do this. Look, someone, or some people, put this together trying their best to make everyone happy, knowing you can’t make everyone happy. If you hate the food, don’t eat and then get something you like afterward. Smile. Be thankful. Stay as long as you need to, to make your showing, then go on with your life not being an idiot. “Yeah, but there wasn’t enough chicken tenders!” Yeah, we get it Brad, here’s twenty dollars go someplace else and find some tenders.

#4 – Talk to executives before you get to your third drink. This is important because drunk talking to executives only plays well if they’re drunk too, and that probably won’t be the case. Also, don’t use the holiday party to launch your ‘big’ news about a project you want to start that is going to change the face of the company. No one wants that crap at a holiday party.

#5 – Don’t bring creepy or weird dates. This usually comes in a couple of flavors. Office dude brings a super slutty date. Great for the office dude for later, but you are the immediate joke of the party. Or super sweet office lady brings Dungeon and Dragons dude to the party who is trying to talk to everyone about the 5th dragon in world 9 that is impossible to kill without a Merlin magic mushroom, and well, yeah, that’s creepy.

#6 – Don’t say you’re coming then not come. If you don’t want to come, make that known up front. When you don’t come, after you said you were coming, and then come up with a lame excuse, it shows that you’re not fully engaged with the organization and it gets noticed. Find that excuse up front and make it known you won’t be coming, but you wish you could.

#7 – Talk to spouses! Spouses of co-workers hate coming to office holiday parties, mainly because they’re bored. Make an effort to engage them and get them joined into the conversation. One cool thing I love to do is talk to spouses and tell them really good things about their partner. Nothing feels better to your partner than to hear other people talk about how great you are!

#8 – If you start to feel tipsy, that is not a sign to start doing shots. I know this can be really confusing, right!? When you start to feel tipsy, this is your body trying to tell you that you’re about to make an ass of yourself in front of people who will share the story long after you have left this job.

#9 – No really, no one wants to see your junk! 

5 Things Leaders Need to Know About Developing Employees

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I think we try and deliver a message to organizations that all employees need and want to be developed.  This is a lie.  Many of our employees do want and need development. Some don’t need it, they’re better than you.  Some don’t want it, just give me my check.  Too many of our leaders truly believe they can develop and make their employees better than they already are.  This is a lot tougher than it sounds, and something most leaders actually fail at moving the needle on.

Here are some things I like to share with my leaders in developing their employees:

1. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” -Maya Angelou.  I see too many leaders trying to change adult employees.  Adult behaviors are basically locked. If they show you they don’t want to work.  They don’t want to work.  Part of developing a strong relationship is spending time with people who are not a waste of time.

2. People only change behavior they want to change, and even then, sometimes they’re not capable of it.  See above.  When I was young in my career, I was very ‘passionate’. That’s what I liked calling it – passionate.  I think the leaders I worked with called it, “career derailer”.  It took a lot for me to understand what I thought was a strength, was really a major weakness.  Some people never will gain this insight.  They’ll continue to believe they’re just passionate when in reality they’re just really an asshole.

3. Don’t invest more in a person than they are willing to invest in themselves.  I want you to be great. I want you to be the best employee we have ever had work here.  You need to be a part of that.  I’m willing to invest an immense amount of time and resources to help you reach your goals, but you have to meet me halfway, at least. Don’t think this means a class costs $2,000, so you should be willing to pay half. It doesn’t. Financial investment is easier for organizations to put in than for employees, but if you pay for the class and it’s on a Saturday and the employee turns their nose up to it, they’re not willing to ‘invest’ their share.

4. It’s usually never the situation that’s pissing you off, it’s the mindset behind the situation that’s pissing you off.  Rarely do I get upset over a certain situation. Frequently, I get upset over how someone has decided to handle that situation.  Getting your employees to understand your level of importance in a situation is key to getting you both on the same page towards a solution. Failure to do this goes down a really disastrous path.

5, Endeavor to look at disappointment with broader strokes. It’s all going to work out in the end.  It’s hard for leaders to act disappointed.  We are supposed to be strong and not show our disappointment.  This often makes our employees feel like we aren’t human.  The best leaders I’ve ever had showed disappoint, but with this great level of resolve that I admired. This sucks. We are all going to make it through this and be better. Disappointment might be the strongest developmental opportunity you’ll ever get as a leader, with your people.