February 2017

Here’s a newsflash: Management is responsible to employees, but not for employees. The whole notion that we’re somehow responsible for employees came out of the control and domination era of the manufacturing age. ” Just do what we tell you to do, don’t think yourself, follow our agenda until you’re 65, and we’ll take care of your health and finances until you pass away actually at 67.”. Here are some examples of when you know you’ve been stuck in the position of being responsible for employees rather than responsible to them:

1. You find yourself doing too much for them. When people can’t get their jobs done, do you step in and save them? Or do you let go of control and allow them to take responsibility for their results?
2. You think that you have to bribe them to perform well. Frustrated parents will try to buy their children’s behavior. It’s a mistake when managers try to do the same thing.
3. You’re overprotective. You won’t share an employee’s true shortcomings with them because to do so would put them at risk. As a result, you’ll start engaging in a codependency with this person, thus enabling continued poor performance.
4. You micromanage.. Do really want to spend your time trying to control a bunch of adults, anyway? Smart managers are clear about their objectives then empower employees to reach them.
5. Your meetings are one-way communications. You spend time lecturing employees as if they were schoolchildren, rather than empowering them to share problems, ideas, and solutions.
6. You fail to draw a line in the sand. Many managers will never draw this line because they’re playing “savior games.” You know you should fire an employee, but you’re also aware that if you do so this person might go into a financial tailspin. As a result, you keep the employee, which harms both them and the company.

When you’re responsible to employees, you put them in a position where they become capable of success. It then becomes their responsibility to succeed. You can identify your expectations, express your limits, and provide feedback and judgment without trying to fix things yourself, and encourage but not enable them.

Finally, realize that you and anyone that you manage will make some mistakes. Don’t freak out when this happens; just ask yourself what can be done so it never happens again. In this situation, explore your responsibility and allow the employee to explore theirs.

Answers Marked on Test ca. 2001

Here’s a fact: Half of all employees test better than the other half! My question is, which half do you have?

Testing job applicants and employees is one of the favorite topics in my CEO and HR workshops. Because most companies don’t do appropriate testing, those that do enjoy a significant advantage. I like to begin the subject with a story. Years ago, as I was quitting my litigation practice, a legal secretary (we’ll call Sue) came into my office and wanted to sue the firm she had been working for. The fact that a law firm could be sued by one of its employees came as no surprise. Lawyers get sued by their employees more than just about anyone else – and we rely on lawyers’ advice so we don’t get sued! A little Catch-22 in the system, you might say.

To keep the story short, it turns out this legal secretary had a steady job at neighboring law firm, working for a partner for 15 years. At the same time, a litigation partner at another firm lost his legal secretary with only last-minute notice. He put the word out on the grapevine that he was looking for a replacement, and that’s where Sue met up with him. After meeting for a pleasant lunch, the attorney figured that she had 15 years of experience doing the very job he was hiring for, she seemed pleasant enough – and so he hired her on the spot. To Sue’s surprise, almost immediately after coming to work, he started expressing his disappointment with her productivity. This went on for three months until he fired her without any offer of severance. Sue was a single mom with two kids to raise on her own and no job; that’s what prompted her to walk into my office.

I asked her if she and the attorney discussed any performance benchmarks or requirements at their one meeting. They had not. Understand this: a legal secretary types about half of the day; and half of them type above average and half below average (this holds true for programmers and retail sales clerks as well). Personally, I’ve never hired a legal secretary who typed less than 100 words per minute. When I asked Sue how fast she typed, she told me approximately 80 words per minute. She found out by testing herself years ago. None of her employers had ever tested her. I then tracked down the previous legal secretary; according to a test she took, she typed approximately 100 words per minute. Therein lies the moral to this story – the woman in my office was a failure on the first day of her employment and nobody knew about that fact!

This begs the question, “how many people walk into your company a failure on the first day and no one knows about it?” It makes no difference who you’re hiring , including rocket scientists, What’s the range of skill sets at your company? Without testing, you’re only guessing.

Let’s take this idea one step further. According to both Dr. Edwards Deming and Peter Drucker (perhaps the two greatest management gurus of all time), nine out of ten people want to do a good job every day – and their inability to do so is generally due to a system failure rather than a lack of motivation. Let me give you an example of how this plays out: at about the same time Sue walked into my office, I was consulting with a law firm that was having turnover problems. With the economy growing at the time, the larger firms were simply throwing more money at these employees. Although this was unrelated to my assignment, it dawned on me to ask them a basic question: “Have you tested all of your legal secretaries?” Turns out they had not – so that’s exactly what we did. We tested them not only on their typing, but also on the substantive and procedural knowledge that their job required.

Here’s what we learned: In most law firms, the attorneys get no management training and generally there are two attorneys to each secretary. Let’s assume that two of those attorneys manage intuitively above average and another two happen to manage below average. Now let’s say there’s a legal secretary who types 80 wpm for an above-average manager. The other secretary types 100 wpm for a below-average manager. Who do you think is viewed as the better secretary at the end of the day? When I ask this at workshops, most people respond “the one who types 80 wpm for a good manager.” This secretary gets the better performance evaluation and the raise – which makes absolutely no sense.

You can, and should, test for every essential skillset. For example, a few years ago I helped a real estate investment firm hire a CFO. Because they were Good to Great fans and wanted to have a great company, they decided to have a great CFO. When it came to testing, we decided to address the three essential skillset categories: substantive knowledge of accounting (GAAP), QuickBooks, and finally, Excel (because they used it for their real estate deals). So I contacted SHL (who I’ll talk about in a bit) and we set up tests for qualified job applicants. These tests cost us between $17 and $30 each. Because we wanted a CFO in the top 10% of skillsets, we decided that they would have to test in the top 20% of all three categories. It took us months to find that CFO, and in the meantime we used Account Temps. That’s the type of testing discipline you must go through if you want to have great employees.

For the past ten years, I’ve recommended only one company to do skill testing because I believe that it’s the best. When I first met them they were known as BrainBench. They were then acquired by PreVisor, and finally by the largest testing company in the world, SHL. Our contact is Jason Finney (jason.finney@shl.com). He is awesome and is surrounded by a great team. You can contact Jason to set up tests for your job applicants and existing employees. Not only will this help you to hire better, it will also help explain a lot of what’s going on with performance and what training you need to improve it.

Here’s what SHL users have said about testing: http://www.shl.com/us/results/client-results/. If you think this sounds like an endorsement of SHL, you’re right. So use them!

If you’d like a certificate for a free test from SHL, contact Jason directly and he’ll get it to you. If you’re an HR That Works Member, watch the one-hour webinar I did with Ken Lahti, one of the testing experts at SHL.

I also think it’s important to use skill tests when you hire consultants. How do you really know if they’re any good without testing them? For example, when we built HR That Works on a SharePoint platform, how did I know if our project manager was an expert or not? Yes, we were using a Microsoft Certified Partner, but that didn’t mean that the individual project manager was at the top of his game. Fortunately, he took a SharePoint test and scored very high, thus justifying my faith in his skills. Don’t trust the skillsets of employees, applicants, or third parties blindly – test for them!

As a final note, the skill testing I’m talking about is separate from character assessment. Fact is, you can’t fail your personality, so they don’t call them personality tests. However, it’s true that people can have failing personalities– and these are the people to make sure you don’t hire!

The Westendorf v. West Coast decision by the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals offers yet another example of management’s failure to understand that sexually hostile behavior is not permitted in the workplace.

In this case, the boss and coworkers said the plaintiff was doing “girly work,” talked about the large breasts of another woman with her, made tampon jokes, joked about orgasms, and eventually started cursing at her. As mentioned in previous articles, whether she eventually ends up winning or losing isn’t the point. Either way, the employer now finds itself as a named defendant in a nationally publicized lawsuit that will cost it tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to defend what amounts to stupid and boorish conduct.

In this case, the plaintiff never reported the alleged harassment to a human resources officer. Perhaps if she had an alternative channel of complaint other than through the ranks, she would’ve received appropriate attention. Apparently the boss did admonish a manager and coworkers to quit the harassment, but when they continued it, the plaintiff just couldn’t take it anymore.

The court ruled that although the sexually hostile conduct was not severe or pervasive enough to alter the terms of her employment and support a sexual harassment claim, she might have faced retaliation for bringing the claims in the first place. It’s important to note even though this case was decided on April 1, 2013 dealing with conduct that ended in July 2008, it has yet to go to trial! I can only imagine what it could have, and should have, been settled for soon after filing, rather than slogging through the courts for the past five years. This doesn’t benefit either the plaintiff or the defendant – but it certainly helps fill counsel’s billable hour requirements.

While the distractions of social media and always-on devices pile up, it’s becoming increasingly important for people to unplug and refocus. Workplaces can be circuses of nonstop meetings, endless barrages of email and social networking, and people walking around with their faces stuck in devices.

And the solution to technology overload may be mindfulness.

Many organizations are finding that mindfulness works: it decreases stress, increases productivity, and helps people form better personal connections. Companies such as Google, Procter & Gamble, Aetna, General Mills, and Target all have meditation rooms. The Seattle Seahawks have a meditation coach, as do other sports teams and entertainment figures, including 50 Cent and Katy Perry. Even the US military is teaching mindfulness techniques to members of the armed services.

If you don’t have a mindfulness coach or advocate at your company, you can still practice in the comfort of your office, home, or cubicle. It’s easy, and you can see benefits by spending only five minutes a day. Here’s how.

Mindfulness is like a workout for your brain.

Wait. It’s easy?

It is! All it takes is 5 to 10 minutes a day. Find a place in your home (or office) where you can sit comfortably and undisturbed. Leave your phone in another room on silent mode. You don’t need to cross your legs or put your hands in funny shapes. You also don’t need to say, “Ommmm.” All you have to do is sit there and concentrate on your breathing. When your mind wanders, go back to thinking about your breathing. Repeat until 5 or 10 minutes pass. That’s it.

Why can’t I have my phone?

Silly person, your phone is a distraction. It may ring or ding or vibrate, which will take you out of the moment and make you want to answer it, look at it, or silence it. You’re trying to eliminate distractions like that.

Over the years, we’ve become so addicted to taking in information, it’s become our primary mode of operation. It started with television, which people still sit in front of and do nothing except absorb whatever’s being shown on the screen. Now in recent years we’ve done the same with computers and phones. We move from one screen to another and one piece of information to another with no time to think, synthesize, or be creative.

Eventually you may want to create a space in your home with a “no technology” rule, like your bedroom, so you don’t have the temptation of picking up your phone in the middle of the night or looking at it first thing in the morning. That way you can be more aware of what you’re doing without having your attention stolen by the latest email message.

You mentioned some benefits?

Yes, many benefits. Focusing on the benefits is probably the best way to get you to set aside some mindfulness time. Here are a few backed up by data and research:

• Increased ability to focus.
• Physically shrinks the stress centers of your brain.
• Increased ability to know what is happening in your head without acting on it.
• Better self-awareness.
• Increased sense of compassion.

Another benefit that can’t be undervalued is creativity. To be creative, you need space and time. You need to be able to be alone with your thoughts. That’s impossible when you’re surrounded by distractions that prevent you from concentrating on anything for a long period of time. Filmmaker David Lynch famously explored this idea in his book Catching the Big Fish.

In a lot of ways, mindfulness is like a workout for your brain. We already know it’s important to work out our bodies to stay healthy, so it makes sense to dedicate some time to working out our minds. You may find you’re happier, more creative, and better able to concentrate on whatever you’re doing.