Leadership

Talents, are they scarce or just picky about who they work for?

May 25, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Lately I have been having discussions with clients about talent scarcity. One of my key points when talking about the Service Profit Chain is that recruitment is a crucial step in the dream team process. If you don’t have people with the right attitude, then it’s uphill from the word go.

But then I sometimes get pushback – we can’t find them, they say. There is nobody out there; we search and search and they don’t surface.

I don’t believe them.

Yes I believe them when they say that the talent they are looking for does not surface – but what I don’t believe is that it is not out there.

Obviously, the amount of talents out there follows a normal distribution curve more or less. So there are more people in the ordinary talent group than there are in the fantastic talent group. In that sense, there is some scarcity. But if I take a calliper and draw a circle of, say, 50km round your business, are you going to tell me that within that circle, there are not the people we need?

Of course there are – that is not the problem. The problem is for whatever reason they are not interested in working for you at the moment.

Why not?

If you are paying market related wages, it is not a question of pay. It is probably a question of reputation. Because the fact is that talented individuals want to work for and with other talented individuals.

The worst thing we can do to our most talented individuals is to ask them to work alongside an idiot – it takes away their job content – it makes their workday meaningless.

So if we want to run a service business that delivers extraordinary service experiences, then we need to attract extraordinary people to deliver that.

If we are not attracting the best talent, we need to start thinking strategically about how do we become the employer of choice in our region in the future?

Strategic HR is smart marketing – wonderful employees attract loyal customers that generate raving online revues.

Is HR part of your future strategy task force?

Millennial, the “impossible” generation

May 18, 2016By Mike Hohnen

From Mike Hohnen: This week I would like to introduce you to Hanh Lam. For the past two months, Hanh and I have been collaborating around the management and development of my website. During that period, we have had a focus on leadership as a theme on the blog. So I have invited Hanh to guest blog this week and give her perspective.

Author’s note: First of all, I want to thank Mike for asking me to do this guest post on his blog. Working together, we talk a lot about leadership and management. Mike once told me people asked if he found it difficult to work with millennials. As I happen to be a millennial, here is a post to address the impossibleness of my generation.

Millennials were born and raised in the age of information and technology, in a globalized world, in times of peace but also in some ways, times of crisis. We are tech-savvy, we have itchy feet, and we are naïve and foolish. We are “Generation Me”, “Trophy kids”, “Peter Pan Generation” or “pragmatic idealists”. There are so many other ways or words people use to describe generation Y. In short, we are really different. We dress differently, we think differently, and we live/work differently.

With access to computer and the Internet from an early age, we receive information and communicate through multiple sources and platforms. We learn and process knowledge from a more global perspective. Being more exposed to traveling and other cultures, we are also more liberal.

Many people think we are selfish, greedy narcissists. That is only partly true with a proportion of generation Y. The reason behind this is that we were born in a time when consumerism was booming. Everything we have is in adequacy and abundance. And our parents, mostly Baby Boomers and Gen X, who lived through wars, recessions, had sacrificed a lot for us to have better lives. And some of us just got accidentally and unintentionally spoiled.

However, most of us aren’t like that. Millennials have already taken over around 50% of the workforce. We have been, and will be, changing the world in every way possible, and for the better. We are responsible global citizens. We care deeply about global issues and we take actions. We learn and adapt fast; we are also very versatile with change.

But, we are also lost… Growing up in a globalized world, we question our identity and doubt about our core values. We do not want a stable, secure life like older generations, so we struggle at times to find our purpose in life. Generation gap probably hasn’t hit any generation as hard as it has us. Millennials live and grow in a fast-paced, constantly changing world. So we get lost and disoriented…quite often.

With the relentless and restless spirit of generation Y, we get lost but we are foolish enough to continue leading and pursuing the life we want. But, we could use a bit of guidance and orientation from older generations. Guidance, not imposition.

People from previous generations, who are wiser, older and more experienced, can be great mentors and advisors for us. On the other hand, we youngsters can show you a thing or two, a different perspective on things, a different side of a world we are living in, a different way to do things. It can be a wonderful learning experience and growing opportunity for both sides if you are patient and open-minded enough to get to know us, listen to us and most of all, grow with us.

Millennials and leadership

Okay so basically we are a bunch of energetic, complicated, crazy youngsters. How does leadership work with us? Or how can you lead or manage us?

Millennials can make great leaders. No doubt. Generation Y is full of ideas and fresh perspectives. We don’t really settle; we always look for a better solution and change. We are determined and naïve enough (yes) to make bold decisions and take risks. We are not afraid to tumble. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” has been pretty much our motto.

And from our yearning to learn, change and grow, comes innovations. Our positive energy and restless spirit are contagious. With us, there is neither boss nor manager. We lead by inspiring, motivating and being part of the team.

If you have millennials as part of your team, depending on your mindset and approach, it can either be the worst nightmare imaginable, or the best management experience of your career. So, how can people deal with us? Well, don’t.

– Give us something meaningful at work, a purpose, and we will stop calling it work. We will live it. A purpose gives us a sense of belonging and we will commit ourselves to the cause you stand for.

– Don’t micro-manage us. Instead, give us the freedom and flexibility to learn, explore and try things our ways. You will be amazed with the ideas we come up with.

– Give us some challenges. We are action junkies and we get bored super fast sitting in cubicles doing paperwork or running errands. Believe in us and maybe let us be in charge of a big project. This will make us feel really valued and respected. We will be even more creative, responsible and engaged.

– Allow us to learn and grow. We love learning and developing ourselves. We will be more likely to choose and engage at a workplace that provides us with training opportunities and mentorship rather than a higher-paid position doing endless repetitive work.

– Listen to us and open your mind. We might be young and inexperienced, but that is actually our advantage. We are curious and we have different views and opinions. If you are patient enough to listen to us and our ideas, we will help you “unstuck” and show you a new way of doing things. Don’t be afraid to change and accept to be challenged.

So after all, Millennial isn’t impossible at all. If you just change your mindset and approach and allow us to thrive, we are actually the “I’m possible” generation.

Exceeding expectations… of your followers

May 6, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Your success as a leader is closely associated with your ability to manage and live up to the expectations… of your followers.

We all know that we need to live up to or preferably exceed customer expectations.

But do we also understand that exactly the same mechanisms apply to the expectations of our followers?

ETC

From behavioural psychology, we know that there are three components that are important for humans when they evaluate an experience.

Emotions, trust and control.

Emotions influence what we remember, how we score encounters and the decisions we make. We all have explicit memories that we access about events, and implicit, or unconscious, emotional memories that characterise our feelings during those events. Emotionally charged episodes (both positive and negative) are often easily recalled.

Trust is a primitive psychological variable that is essential to any robust and enduring relationship. Without trust, there is often no engagement, only negative feelings such as anxiety and frustration. With trust comes a sense of comfort.

Control over one’s environment and knowledge of how events are going to evolve are fundamental psychological needs. Research shows that feelings of control (or lack thereof) can affect one’s health.

Control plays out in two forms: behavioural and cognitive.

Behavioural control means letting people have a say in how they do things (autonomy); and cognitive control is created by conveying information about the process or the outcome you can expect, i.e. as few negative surprises as possible.

What do they expect?

So with all this in mind, what are the expectations around you as a leader?

According to Mastering Leadership a book by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, leaders need to understand that there are two sets of expectations: Explicit and implicit.

Explicit expectations are fairly straightforward. They are typically about accountability, responsibility, results, strategy and execution. The explicit expectations may even be listed in our job description.

But when your followers chose to follow you as a leader, they have implicit expectations in return for that followership. These expectations are typically about competence, fair treatment, commitment, engagement, listening, acting on suggestions, and providing inspiration, meaning, and direction.

But there is not a given list and it will vary from person to person.

Depending on how well you understand these expectations, you will influence their Emotions, Trust and sense of Control and thus ultimately their engagement.

How do you know what the implicit expectations are? Well that is exactly the point, you probably don’t. Because that is the nature of implicitness, they are not vocalised because they assume that you know…

So you need to ask.

Meaning you need to start a series of conversations with the people you lead with the aim to uncover their expectations – what do they need from you?

Eventually the goal is to make the implicit explicit, and then you will positively reinforce the three parameters: Emotion, Trust and Control.

And that is the way to generate a high level of engagement!

Change your mind and grow

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post, we looked at two very different ways of seeing the world of work: Transactional and Transformational.

So the next obvious question is why don’t more companies teach their leaders to be transformational?

Organizations have grown skilled at developing individual leader competencies, but have mostly ignored the challenge of transforming their leader’s mind-set from one level to the next. Today’s horizontal development within a mind-set must give way to the vertical development of bigger minds.
___John McGuire and Gary Rhodes Transforming Your Leadership Culture, Center for Creative Leadership

The challenge is that being transformational is not a skill. It’s a way of making sense of the world.

So it is not a question of adding more skills and competencies. What is needed is a different way of thinking.

As human beings and as leaders, we can develop ourselves fundamentally in two different ways. We can add skills and tools to our toolbox, if you like. We often call that horizontal development.

The other dimension of our development is vertical. It is about our growth as human beings. We go through different stages of growth from when we’re born; and these stages are, first and foremost, about how we understand the world. How do we make sense of what is happening around us?

These vertical developmental stages are very apparent when we observe small children, in whom each stage happens over a relatively short time. So, we easily notice the difference.

With grown-ups, it’s slower, and at some points, most of us stagnate at some levels.

It was the Swiss child psychologist, Jean Piaget, who was the pioneer in this area. His work has since been followed-up by researchers such as Jane Loevinger and later Susanne Cook-Greuter.

More recently, Bill Tolbert and Robert Kegan at Harvard, have both worked on grown-up vertical development and what that means in a leadership context.

Kegan describes that grown-ups typically have the possibility to develop in three overall stages. The first one he calls ‘dependent and conform,’ the next one ‘independent and achievement-oriented,’ and the last one is ‘interdependent and collaborative’.

Depending on which of these stages of development you find yourself in as a leader, your approach to a number of classical leadership competencies will be very different.

If we take some of the typical issues that we identify as leadership competencies, they could be strategic thinking, change management, conflict management, and leadership across boundaries.

And depending on where one is in one’s development, one will approach each of these very differently. In the figure below, you will see illustrations of the three developmental levels and how they are handled at each level.

Competencies	Dependent – conformer	Independent – achiever	Interdependent – collaborator
Strategic thinking	– Short-term view – Tactical tasks – Black and white – Either/or – High need for certainty	– Medium-term view – Sees is parts of the system – Sees is some patterns and connections	– Long-term view – Sees many shades of grey – Sees many patterns and connections – Accepts uncertainty as the norm
Leading change	– Change to come from above – Needs and trusts authority to give direction – High need for certainty	– Has own views about best change – Sees the mechanics of change needed – Success is achievement of individuals and teams	– Change is a collaborative process – Comfortable with ambiguity – Success means realisation of a shared vision
Conflict	– To be avoided – Authority is in charge – Feels torn by conflict	– Worked out behind closed doors – Produces winners and losers	– Healthy view together more viewers – Something to be encouraged – Increases learning and performance
Leading across boundaries	– Trusts analysing people you know – Them versus us – Distrust of outsider	– Able to think from others’ perspectives – Horse trades for favours – Focused on success of own self	– Sees the world through others’ perspectives to understand more – Shares knowledge across boundaries – Works in partnership with other functions

If you look more closely at the matrix, you will also see that this is where we find the key as to why we are not seeing as much transformational leadership as we maybe would like.

It’s only at the third stage of development in Kegan’s model, the one that is called ‘collaborative and interdependent,’ that the leader has a mindset that enables a transformative approach — the short explanation as to why this is so, is that, in the two earlier stages, the leader is often more concerned with himself.

The first stage, the dependent stage, is all about fitting in and conforming to the prevailing culture.

In the next phase, independent and achievement-oriented, it’s all about the leader being so oriented towards his own achievement that he risks falling into the trap that it’s all about his project: Better results, market share, new products, or whatever. The leader really wants to succeed personally, often in order to further his career or qualify for a bonus, or whatever. But, because it then becomes all about him and his project, he often doesn’t manage to get everybody else with him. (Followers will engage around ‘our’ project but will tend to disengage if it is just about ‘your’ project.)

It’s only when you, as a human being, have developed to the stage where you are more inclusive and collaborative, have a higher tolerance of others, and are not as focused on yourself – and your personal success – that you actually are capable of inspiring everybody else around you to contribute to what everyone will see as ‘our’ project.

Implementing the Service Profit Chain requires a different state of mind.

May 4, 2016By Mike Hohnen

As we have seen in previous posts, our state is influenced by how we see things – SeeBeDo.

The dominant way of seeing the world of work is called transactional – it’s the something-for-something system – and as we saw in my previous post, it is not madly inspiring.

But what is the alternative?

Is there a different way to look at the world of work that would produce a different state of mind and as a consequence, a different kind of leadership?

The short answer is yes – it is called transformational leadership and what is puzzling about this is that this way of seeing work has been around since the late 1970s.

Transformational Leadership was first coined by the historian and political scientist, James MacGregor Burns in the late 1970s, and was used to distinguish the inspirational leadership style from Transactional Leadership.

It was later expanded on by Bass and Rigio in their book “Transformational Leadership”

“Superior leadership performance — transformational leadership — occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group. Transformational leaders achieve these results in one or more ways: They may be charismatic to their followers and thus inspire them; they may meet the emotional needs of each employee; and/or they may intellectually stimulate employees. “

Transformational leadership includes four central components:

Idealized Influence	being a role model that is highly regarded, valued, trusted, and deserving of emulation
Inspirational Motivation	encouraging enthusiasm in others through challenge and instilling a sense of significance while promoting cohesion, harmony, and confidence
Intellectual Stimulation	kindling creativity and inventiveness by encouraging novel ideas, questioning, and thinking outside the box
Individualized Consideration	paying particular attention to the individual needs of each follower

At the core of this is a fundamentally different approach to what work and life is all about

Transactional	Transformational
Homo economicus – humans are rational, and act only out of self-interest.Reward and punishment are the prime motivators.	The integrated human works on developing herself on many levels, physical, mental and emotional.Humans are driven by a need for purpose / meaning and a hunger for development and autonomy.
The transactional manager works within the established way of thinking and does not question these basic assumptions about how the organisation operates.	The transformational leader is continuously renewing the organisation by challenging existing assumptions and implementing new ideas process that question the status quo.
The employee and the employer have opposite interested it a zero sum game, I win/ you lose	The employer and the employee have common or at least overlapping interest and concerns. It’s a win/win or a lose/lose.

There is a ton of academic research that shows that the transformative approach produces superior results. If we then drill down and try to understand what exactly it is that makes this significant difference, two things jump out.

Transformational leadership, more than anything else, creates a high level of employee enthusiasm / engagement.
In a rapidly changing world full of wicked problems – survival, let alone growth, is dependent on the contribution of everyone.

The transformative leader is distinguished by the ability to mobilise all the resources that are present in a given group or organization. And because people feel involved, included, and accepted for who they are, you get a completely different level of engagement. It becomes a self-reinforcing upward spiral.

Because of this, there are better relations and a much better understanding of each other’s perspectives. This also builds a culture where everybody feels like contributing and adding their point of view and ideas without being nervous about being criticized, ridiculed, or otherwise falling foul in the system.

This also means that the transformational leader is more humble in respect to other people and open to their ideas and contributions, because it’s not about the leader as a hero, but about a challenge, a purpose, that we need to solve together.

The transformative organization does better over time – they are much better equipped to handle change.

This also solves a personal inquiry I have had for a few years now: Why is it that some organisations implement the Service Profit Chain framework with a natural ease and subsequent amazing results, while others seem to get stuck.

The answer lies in their fundamental approach to work, is it transactional or is it transformational?

Even with the best intentions, if your fundamental state of mind is transactional, you will not create the kind of internal quality that is foundational for success when implementing the Service Profit Chain.

Your leadership capacity is a question of what you believe.

May 11, 2016By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post and inspired by: Management is what we do – and Leadership is who we are, I touched on the subject that our leadership capacity is linked to the state we are in. Who we are comes out in our character and our character shows up primarily in our interactions with others.

So the way we see the world – what we hold to be true or believe is the foundation for our state. If you believe that people with red hair are more temperamental than people with fair hair, then that influences your state whenever you are interacting with people with red hair. That is a very simple way of explaining it but I am sure you get my drift.

So when we talk about leadership, the dominant existing belief or paradigm around leadership is based on a thinking which is called Transactional Leadership. Its source is Taylorism and scientific management. And before that, the term ‘homo economicus,’ the economical human, which briefly means that a human being is a rational person who only acts in his own interest.

We could also use a simpler term and call it the Something-for-something system.

How the Something-For-Something System Works

Transactional leadership is what happens in most organizations today.

You come in to work and give some of your time in return for a salary. If you work a bit harder, or a little bit more, or a little bit better, you have an expectation that you will also be rewarded for it — a bonus, overtime pay, a promotion, or whatever.

If you don’t work so hard or don’t do your job very well, it is built into the model that you can expect some kind of ‘punishment’.

Basically, you come to work because it is in your own interest. You need the money so you can pay your rent, feed the kids, or play golf during the weekend. It’s a something-for-something kind of thinking which has thousands of years behind it.

Just think of the expression, “work/life balance,” which would imply that work is not life. Today it is the existing paradigm governing our thinking about work in a large part of society.

The Game We Play

If the employer and the employee, or in practical terms, the manager and the employee, have a relationship which basically is about something–for-something, then it very easily becomes a game where you, as employee, try to get away with doing as little as possible while at the same time getting the maximum amount out.

In that perspective, you could say that from the employee’s perspective, you have actually won something if you managed to do a little bit less and still get paid the same for it. This is, of course, even more so in the case where the employee is in a situation where the job is boring or in other ways not inspiring.

The management role in an organization that practices transactional leadership is not very inspiring either, because what this means is that the manager’s most important role is to control whether or not the organization is actually getting the output that the organization is paying for. That means time-stamping, control sheets, registration, serious conversations, the possibility of written warnings, and eventually, the ultimate punishment – layoffs.

In a transactional world, an effective manager is a person who distributes reward and punishment in such a way that he maximizes the output of the employee. That is the bottom line success criteria.

Unfortunately, a lot of research shows that this management style is not actually the most productive. It’s not something that creates an extraordinary organization or fantastically enthusiastic and loyal customers. It produces something that is often okay but rarely fantastic. It’s built into the model that it has to be like that; it is all that can happen, as long as we have that mindset.

Now you may wonder, “But what about all those modern organizations who are offering bright canteens, fresh fruit, and football games in the hallways? Aren’t they doing something right?”

Well, that depends.

Because it is not about the fresh fruit and football games – in some organizations they are offered as part of the something-for-something deal – in other organizations, they are offered as part of a different way of thinking about work – we will get to that shortly.

Management by Exception

In a transactional world, the manager leads by exception. By that, I mean that the manager is actually only exercising their management role when something is not working according to the plan, not living up to the expectations. Only when somebody’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, do they put on their leadership cap and do something… maybe.

Maybe, because as most of us don’t actually enjoy being bossy, the management role very easily turns into non-management – something I only do if I absolutely must.

If things are going sort of reasonably OK, then there’s no real reason to do much, is there? It becomes a sort of ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ atmosphere. And in the organizations that are really bad, the supervisor, who is supposed to manage his front-line, gets this same treatment from his department head, who gets exactly the same laissez-faire management from the division VP or whatever. The something-for-something culture runs all the way through the system. Not exactly an inspiring work environment. Everyone is in the same basic state.

Now, I hope you are beginning to see what the problem is.

As long as we understand the world from a transactional paradigm, the something-for-something mindset, we aren’t going to get any further. We are stuck.

We need a new paradigm.

If we are to shift our state, we need to change how we see work and people in organisations.

SeeBeDo

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

I have been reading “Building the bridge as you walk on it” by Robert E. Quinn. It’s a lovely book. What struck me the most and what has been going round in my head for a while since reading the book is this very simple statement:

“Management is what we do. Leadership is who we are.”

So from that perspective, all this talk about leadership tools and training misses the point. What we need to talk about is what it takes to develop a healthy leadership state.

And that made me go back and dig out some writings by Doug Silsbee. He has a lovely acronym SeeBeDo that reminds us that the way we choose – and it is a choice – to see things, influences the way we are. Our state. And the state that we are in will influence our actions. And our actions determine the outcomes that we get in life.

A simple example: The way I drive on the day I have all the time in the world, meandering through the countryside on the first spring day, is different from when I am late for the airport and traffic is dense in the rain. And the way behaviour shows up comes out most obviously in how I behave towards other people.

I expect that you can imagine for yourself the two different scenarios and the two different types of driving behaviour that are the result. I say no more.

But the implication of this line of thought is that my driving style is at the mercy of the circumstances that I happen to be in. Ultimately, that means I see myself as either a lucky guy out for a drive in the countryside, or as a victim of bad weather and crowed motorways and I behave accordingly.

Ouch…..

I don’t need more driving lessons – that is not the point – I need to learn to manage my states.

The first step in managing my states is to examine closer how I choose to see what goes on around me. The state that I am in is driven by the way I choose to perceive the situation.

Neuroscience has documented this very well; we are what we give our attention to. Whatever we hold in our mind unconsciously influences what we can notice and focus on – and maybe more importantly, what we are unable to notice and focus on. This too has been well documented in “the Gorilla on the court” experiments.

So to what extend are we conscious of what we are holding in our mind? And is what we are holding in our mind supportive of the leadership responsibility before us or is it getting in the way, possibly even hindering us in understanding what is truly going on?

As always I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic. Feel free to leave your comments below and let me know what you think.

Are you the chief employee experience officer?

March 31, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Focusing on the customer experience is the key to high customer loyalty – it’s well established.

That is also why around 70% of medium to large UK companies have a customer experience manager at the level of VP or equivalent. The current buzz-tool for developing these customer experiences is ‘service design thinking’.

So far so good.

But if you’re familiar with the service profit chain, you also know that the key to an exceptional customer experience starts somewhere else. We need to create what we call ‘internal quality’ – more popularly referred to as ‘a dream team cycle’.

So what would happen if we were to turn all this service design thinking on its head and focus more on the employee experience? When did we last sit down to analyse the employee journey as it unfolds throughout the day?

Do we know what the critical touch points are? Have we done some emotional mapping that could help us understand what the possible frustrations are during a day?

What are the learning opportunities? Does this job have varying challenges, or is it just the same thing day in, day out?

This idea came to me as I read Global Human Capital Trends 2016, published by Deloitte University Press. According to this latest survey, 92% of executives listed organisational design as very important and something they will be focusing on this year.

So designing our service organisations from the employee perspective should receive the same kind of attention and resources as we use when looking at the customer experience. Yes?

This leaves the question of who the chief employee experience officer is going to be in your organisation. Will they be part of HR, or will your organisation create a totally separate role?

I would love to hear your views on this, so please feel free to reply to this mail.