Leadership Lessons: A Few More

Focus on behaviors, not cliches. "Be a team player", "Go the extra mile", "Maintain a professional attitude," "We want to be world class" all mean nothing to someone who does not share the same experiences with the speaker. Instead, focus on identifying the behaviors that lead to those statements.

For example, identify the behaviors that make someone a good "team player":

• Carry your share of the load
• Be reliable - do what you promise
• Ask if you don't know - we're glad to help
• Be glad to help if asked
• If you make a mistake, share what you learned during the experience with the team so others do not repeat it.

If you get the team to come up with what they think the desirable traits are of a good team player, they are more likely to follow them than if management wrote them.

The best way to teach someone a new skill is to use TRIPLICATION:

1. First step - You do it and explain to them what you are doing
2. Second step - They do it while you explain what they should be doing
3. Third step - They do it and they explain to you what they are doing

Determine and reinforce their comprehension of your requirements by saying, "I want to make sure I did a good job of communicating with you. Can you tell me what you think I'm expecting?"

Saying it like that does at least three things:

1. It does not make them feel you are attacking their comprehension skills: you are just checking your communications skills.
2. It confirms for you whether the message got through.
3. They reinforce their comprehension by explaining it back to you.

Always pretend you are accountable to the *ORPMan. The ORPMan is the "Ordinary, Reasonable, and Prudent" person you will have to impress if they are someone in a position to make a judgment about one of your actions. When you do something, write something, or say something, ask yourself, "If I had to explain that to the ORPMan, would he or she think I acted in a reasonable manner?

This is especially important if your actions later turn out to be the wrong ones! In that case, your documentation should include the facts at hand that led to your decision. Then if additional facts unknown to you at the time emerge later that show your decision was not the best one, it will be easy to convince him or her that you acted as an "ordinary, reasonable, and prudent person" would expect at that time based on the facts at hand.

If it is not documented, it did not happen. Written documentation carries much more weight for the ORPman* that does just verbal. Write down as much as you can for clarification and documentation purposes.

If you want your people to change, help them see the benefit of it, then recognize and honor their past before asking them to release their ties to it. For example, if you are trading old equipment for new, high-tech stuff and the users, who were very proficient with the old, seem to resist the new, help them cut their mental ties to the past.

Have a party, dream up some awards for past productivity so that everyone gets some recognition, then have a ceremonial "funeral" of the old ways and for the "new day" that is beginning. Then focus on how their new situation will benefit them and discourage talk about the "good old days."