Getting Smarter - Part 3

For the last 2 weeks, I’ve been writing about how making mistakes and changing our minds about something has taken on such a negative connotation that people are afraid to admit that they might ever have been wrong about something.

There is no doubt that the standards, as well as the stakes, are raised when you become a leader. The mistakes made by an up and coming young employee will likely bring much less damage to the company than the mistakes made by a member of the executive team. After all, when leaders make mistakes those mistakes can have long-term ramifications and can impact a far greater number of people than the average mistake. So, it makes sense at some level to hold our leaders more accountable for mistakes than we do for other employees.

But, whether you are a brand new employee, an employee with multiple years of experience, or a seasoned executive, mistakes will get made. You can bank on it. At some point in time, we all make mistakes. And let’s not forget that not all mistakes are made because someone didn’t think things through. Sometimes mistakes are caused by unforeseen circumstances or things outside of our control. In any event, the issue should never be “was a mistake made” but, rather, “how was the mistake handled? What happened when the mistake was discovered? What was learned from the mistake?”

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.” - Abraham Lincoln

If we acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, then should it not then follow that everyone issues apologies for their mistakes?

I’ll bet that last statement made you stop and pause. After all, how often do apologies follow mistakes, especially in the business world? Not often.

Too many business leaders, at all levels of an organization, are so afraid to admit a mistake that they will do everything in their power to ensure that no one knows of it. They fear that admitting a mistake will be perceived as a weakness or will somehow cause doubts about their ability lead.

But I believe that the opposite is really true. I would much rather work for someone who acknowledges that they made a mistake, apologizes for it, and moves on than I would for someone who hides their mistakes.

I once had a co-worker who told me that he was a “lousy liar.” I assumed from that statement that I should not trust anything he said. Later, I discovered that his definition of being a “lousy liar” was that he was not good at it. “Lying is too much work” he told me. “I discovered long ago that I couldn’t keep my lies straight, so I just stopped lying. I was lousy at it.”

I wish more executives had his attitude toward lying. The truth is that most of them are lousy at it. And, while their employees may not publicly acknowledge their lies, those same employees are acutely aware of the lies. And, as a result, they don’t trust their leadership team.

It’s simple, isn’t it? When I lie, people find out about it. And, while they might not call me on it, they won’t trust me. And, if they don’t trust me they won’t work hard for me.

Maybe all executives should take a pledge to be “lousy liars.” It would build greater trust and create a whole new company culture.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Getting Smarter – Part 2

In my last blog entry, I wrote about how we punish politicians for imperfections. Once a politician makes a public comment, they are held to it forever. If there is something that they don’t know or understand and they make the mistake of commenting on it, they are forever branded by those comments. For some reason, we expect our politicians to be once and forever perfect. Or, said a different way, we don’t ever expect or allow our politicians to admit a mistake and learn from it.

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.” Abraham Lincoln

In business, everyone makes mistakes. In fact, many astute business leaders will tell you that if you are not making mistakes then you aren’t really trying. Not making mistakes means that you are sticking with the tried and true. Not making mistakes means that you aren’t trying anything new or risky.

I’ve written numerous times that one should not be afraid to make mistakes because mistakes are how we learn. Making mistakes is not only natural and human, but it’s a part of our very makeup. If you have children, you remember when they first started to learn to walk. They didn’t know how and they weren’t very strong, so they fell down a lot. But you didn’t scold them for falling down. Instead, you encouraged them to get up and try again. You didn’t expect perfection immediately and neither did they.

There’s nothing quite like the determination of a toddler trying to learn to walk.

But at some point in your child’s development the standards were raised. You began to expect bigger and better things and in some cases became less tolerant of errors and mistakes. As a result, your children may have stopped stretching themselves and started doing things that they were already comfortable with.

Take this into the business world and you see that the same logic applies. When someone first enters the workforce they make a lot of mistakes. But that’s ok, they’re still learning. As they move up the management or leadership ladder, those around them become less and less tolerant of errors. Part of the reason is that the stakes are higher. With higher stakes, there is less room for error. Hence, leaders become less inclined to take risks.

But, there is another side to this quandary as well. We have high expectations of our business leaders and managers and are unwilling to let them make mistakes. So what happens when they do make mistakes?

It’s simple. They refuse to admit them. They cover them up. They hide them and hope you won’t notice. They deceive themselves and those around them, rather than admit that they are human and have human failings.

And in doing so, they fail the very people and organizations that they have pledged to serve.

But…..I’ll write more about that next week.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Getting Smarter – Part 1

Now that our political elections are successfully behind us, I want to take just a few minutes to comment on something that appears to be an ongoing issue in the world of politics. The issue of “getting smarter.”

Confused?

I hope not. Let me explain. And let me explain exactly how this relates back to business and leadership.

Political ads for “John Smith” often are not focused on what John Smith believes or promises but rather focused on his opponent.

“Don’t vote for ‘Jane Doe.’ Jane once said it was our obligation to protect the Polar Bears at the South Pole. And everyone knows there are no Polar Bears at the South Pole. Jane Doe is bad for our country.”

We could take this conversation a lot of different directions here. We don’t know the context of Jane’s statement. Maybe she was telling a joke and “Polar Bears at the South Pole” was part of the punch line. Maybe the quote is entirely out of context and hearing the whole statement would actually let this statement make sense. Maybe she goofed and just misspoke.

It doesn’t matter.

But, let’s assume for the moment that none of those things are true and that Jane was talking about conservation and really did not know that there are no Polar Bears at the South Pole. The question is: how long are we going to punish Jane for making a mistake? Since politicians (and business leaders) are human, there are some areas where they likely do not know everything. Like everyone else, they make mistakes, misspeak, or find themselves not fully knowledgeable about some issue.

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.” Abraham Lincoln

In our quest for, and expectation of, perfection from our political and business leaders we often hold them to unrealistic standards. We not only do not allow human error, but we force them into positions where it is worse to change their minds about something than it is to be wrong in the first place. In other words, it’s worse for Jane to “flip flop” on the Polar Bear issue than it is for her to admit that she was wrong and learned something.

In next week’s edition I’ll talk more about how this topic specifically applies to business leaders.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

More on the “No Friends” Culture

In last week’s blog, I wrote about the young entrepreneur who wanted to create a professional and business-like culture where people were team-oriented and professional, but did not socialize inside or outside of the office. To some people, this is likely a very appealing culture where they can effectively separate their personal lives from their professional lives with clear lines of demarcation. They no longer have to worry about “taking work home with them” in terms of discussing the office with their spouses and/or families. It also relieves them of any responsibility for having to take part in the seemingly innumerable fundraisers that their co-workers children might be involved in.

Ah… the relief of clear separation between work and home.

Thinking more about this culture made me think of a good friend of mine. We were close friends in High School and beyond. He was always a lively guy with a great sense of humor, quick with a joke, and always up for doing something creative or different. He was the kind of friend that I really appreciated because he helped me stretch myself and do things I might not do on my own, but he never crossed the line into things that were illegal or overtly dangerous.

After college, we were physically separated by hundreds of miles and, as many people do, drifted apart. This was prior to the time of the internet and Facebook, so for years I totally lost track of him. Occasionally, something would remind me of him and rekindle my desire for that friendship, but there was no easy way to contact him. His parents and family had moved away and I had no idea how to contact him.

Years passed and the internet made its way into our lives. Sure enough, one day I started thinking about him and decided to try and locate him. It didn’t take long until I had an address and phone number. And best of all, he was living in a location that I would be travelling to shortly.

To make a long story short, I had the chance to visit him and his family in their home. We quickly bonded again, and the weekend was filled with stories and laughter, fond memories and jokes, photographs and dreams. At the end of the weekend, his wife, whom I had never met before, pulled me aside. With tears in her eyes, she thanked me for my visit. In our weekend together, she had rediscovered the man she fell in love with 20 years earlier and it gave her hope for the future.

She went on to tell me that her husband was involved in highly classified work, a fact that had come out during our time together. Naturally, he was not allowed to discuss his work outside of the secure facility in which he worked. So he never brought his work home, which was a relief. But he also could not socialize with his co-workers outside of the office for fear that classified items might be discussed in public. He never had lunch or dinner with any of his co-workers, avoided places they might hang out, and had built a wall around his work life.

Unfortunately, that wall had been built around his home life as well. Since he had basically stopped talking at the office, he also stopped talking at home. It was the only way he could be sure of not letting anything inappropriate slip out. My visit and all of our discussions about the past had been safe ground for my friend, and he had returned to his former happy, almost gregarious self. And his wife loved him for it.

What is the message here?

When people understand what is expected of them, they will try their very best to comply. But, if those expectations are inconsistent with the type of person they really are, unintended consequences may well pop up. In this case, a happy and vibrant individual had complied with the culture of his organization and that culture had taken over his personal life as well. And I doubt that my friend is alone on this. My guess is that many people adapt themselves to their company culture even though it impacts their personal and private life.

Have you found that to be true? Have you worked in a culture that was contrary to your own nature causing you either to be miserable, or to adapt yourself and change the person that you were? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/