Resources 7 Paths Blog
Improving the weaknesses and strengths of your work unit
February 16th, 2012 by richfossThe last several months I’ve been doing a series based in Gallup’s Q12. Through decades of research and thousands of interviews the Gallup Organization discovered 12 questions that are powerful measures of how engaged employees are in a particular workplace.
By using Gallup’s Q12 you can improve both the weaknesses and strengths of your work unit. Here are two of the most basic questions in the Q12:
- Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
- Do you know what is expected of you at work?
Unfortunately, all too often nonprofits skimp on equipment and when that happens, new hires get the oldest desk and the oldest computer.
A decade ago my wife was hired by a nonprofit in a new position and I encouraged her to negotiate for a new laptop as part of her employment. I knew it would be very helpful since she would be working in several locations and I knew that once she was hired the nonprofit was unlikely to give her the equipment she needed to do her job. They would expect her to make do.
She was successful in her negotiation. She had to put up with resentments from other employees who were making do with old computers.
Skimping on equipment reminds me of the proverb, pennywise and pound foolish.
A nonprofit I know recently hired a human resources director with experience in the for profit world. He’s helping the managers of the nonprofit develop an employee review system that includes goals. Time will tell, but I suspect that as the system is implemented the staff of the nonprofit will know better what is expected of them at work.
I think that nonprofits would do well to use Gallup’s Q12 to regularly evaluate their work places.
Over a 25-year period Gallup tested thousands of questions with workers at small and large businesses and narrowed them down to the Q12 because these twelve questions correlated with:
- higher employee retention
- higher customer satisfaction
- higher productivity
- higher profits.
When Gallup consults with businesses they encourage employees to fill out the Q12 based on their work unit, not the company as a whole, because they’ve discovered that the scores in a company will vary from work unit to work unit.
Once your work unit has completed the Q12, Gallup has another suggestion: “Each work unit is typically asked to develop action plans to improve its two worst and two best Q12 scores.”
“Best Buy, the giant electronics retail chain, has found that while the engagement and performance of all stores have increased as a result of the Q12 process, the better stores have improved faster and more dramatically,” Gallup reports in an article on their website.
Wisdom for the week: The Q12 can help improve both the strengths and weaknesses of a work unit.
More Engaged Staff: a New Year’s Resolution
January 4th, 2012 by richfossRecently I was listening to a radio interview and the consultant being interviewed said that currently the biggest area in human resource consulting is employee engagement.
As we launch into 2012 many nonprofits face government cuts and nonprofit leaders are trying to figure out how to keep employees engaged as they cut staff and benefits.
When I first began working in human resources for a nonprofit in the late 1970’s we said to prospective staff members, “The pay may not be great but the benefits are excellent.”
Now even the benefits are being cut. I know one nonprofit that reduced their holidays from 11 a year to six and if you want to be paid when the agency is closed for a holiday, you have to use one of your vacation days.
Ouch.
Yet, nonprofits have been forced into these cuts because of hard economic times.
So how can you keep employees engaged in these tough times?
Regular readers of these posts know that for the last several months I’ve been doing a series based in Gallup’s Q12. Through decades of research and thousands of interviews the Gallup Organization discovered 12 questions that are powerful measures of how engaged employees are in a particular workplace.
I’ve taught Gallup’s Q12 to nonprofit staff including direct care staff and they love it. They immediately recognize the value of these simple, powerful questions.
“In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?” is one of the Q12.
I’m sure you want to make progress on staff engagement this year. To begin, have the staff in your department rate each of the Q12 from 1-5 with 1 being the poorest rating and 5 the best. Tally up the results and you have a baseline for staff engagement in your workplace.
Then develop a plan for how your workplace can improve staff engagement in each of the areas.
By the way, the Q12 are the property of Gallup Organization so don’t simply copy the Q12. You can create a form with space for 12 answers and send employees to this page on Gallup’s website to read the questions and rate them on your form. Or you can purchase a few copies of First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman which contains the Q12.
If you commit to using the Q12 in your organization, let me know. In six month’s I’ll ask you about your progress.
Wisdom for the week: The beauty of the Q12 is it’s inexpensive and produces great results for workplaces that commit to it.
My Personal Gift to You: This I Believe
December 22nd, 2011 by richfoss
Brother & sister love
Christmas is a personal time, a family time, and a time to give gifts. Usually I use this space to write about leadership and organizations.
This time I’d like to give you the gift of a very personal, generational family story.
A couple of years ago All Things Considered, a National Public Radio program, featured a series of people reading essays they had written called, “This I Believe.”
At the time I thought of trying my hand at writing a “This I Believe” essay and submitting it. I never got around to it but recently wrote one for a weekly column I do for our small town newspaper.
Here, adapted from the column, is my gift to you.
***
Life has a way of cutting people down as if they were dandelions. But if you have ever tried to cut down dandelions you know how fierce they grow again. Many a lawn with dandelions has been mowed only to be full of dandelions the next day.
Life cut down my father-in-law. Ralph Larson, on November 13, 1951. Ralph was a General Conference Baptist missionary in Ethiopia at the time. He and an Ethiopian friend were riding a motorcycle to another part of Ethiopia to explore the possibility of starting mission work there.
An Ethiopian who opposed Emperor Haile Selassie, and was hoping to foment a revolution by killing a white man, fired shots at the men on the motorcycle, killing Sarah’s father and injuring the man riding with him.
Sarah, who has been my wife for 34 years, was in the womb when her father was cut down. In April the following year, she was born in Duluth, Minnesota, an orphan.
When Sarah was 18 months old, her mother remarried and three weeks later her second husband contracted polio and died a week later. Sometimes life can be incredibly cruel.
When Sarah was four her mother remarried a third time, this time to a man who had trouble with alcohol. Her family moved a lot. In fact, by the time Sarah was 18, she had moved 21 times.
Sarah’s father, Ralph Larson, is buried in a cemetery in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. In the late 1990’s I realized that in 2001 he would have been buried there for 50 years and no one from his family had ever visited his gravesite. I began dreaming that our family would be able to travel to Ethiopia to visit the grave on the 50th anniversary year of his death.
Unfortunately, not all dreams come true. The 50th anniversary year passed and no one from his family visited his grave.
But like mowing dandelions, that was not the end of the story. In the winter of 2002 our second daughter, a senior in college, saw an Ethiopian friend on campus that she had worked with at a camp the previous summer. She warmly greeted her friend with a hug. He in turned introduced her to a friend that was with him, a young man from Ethiopia.
His friend was a computer systems student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. After the brief encounter with our daughter the computer systems student wanted to spend more time with her. He only knew her first name but, being a computer student, he figured out how to e-mail every student with that first name at her college.
Our daughter responded to his e-mail and that was the beginning of their romance. They were married in August of 2003.
In December 2006, they spent a month in Ethiopia, giving our daughter an opportunity to meet many of her husband’s extended family. Also, they became the first members our family to visit Ralph Larson’s grave.
A couple weeks ago our daughter e-mailed us a picture she called “Brother & sister love.” In the photo their three-year old son and four-month old daughter are smiling, obviously enjoying being together. As I gaze at the photo I marvel at the wonder of these children who have their roots in Ethiopia, the land where two of their great-grandparents served as missionaries.
This I believe: dandelions bounce back, there is power in the resurrection, and, that when life cut down Ralph Larson, love found a way to give him two lovely Ethiopian-American great-grandchildren through a daughter and granddaughter he never met.
***
Happy holidays, dear readers.
Wisdom for the week. Love, fierce as a dandelion, finds a way.
At work, my opinion seems to count
December 7th, 2011 by richfossI often think of opinions and suggestions as seeds.
In the fall, nature casts out a wide variety of seeds from trees and plants. The seeds travel hither and yon by wind, birds and animals. Many of the seeds will not take root but next spring some will.
That’s how forests and meadows regenerate themselves.
Does your nonprofit have a suggestion box? If so, does your suggestion box give the message to staff that their opinions do not count?
Suggestion boxes are a great idea. They are an opportunity for anyone in an organization to make suggestions. People love it when they can make their workplace better by making a suggestion.
By the way, this is another in the series of posts on the 12 questions that the Gallup Organization discovered are powerful measures of how engaged employees are in a particular workplace.
Unfortunately, a suggestion box can have the opposite effect. I have a friend who began putting signed suggestions in the suggestion box at her place of work and then she never heard from management. When she did not get any response to her suggestions, she felt her opinion didn’t count.
She found out quite by accident that the management group did read and discuss the suggestions but they seldom responded directly to the people who made the suggestions.
Here are three things managers can do to make sure staff members know that their opinion counts.
First, thank every person who makes a suggestion. Even if there are valid reasons for not accepting a suggestion, thank the person and ask them to continue to make suggestions.
Second, tell every person who makes a suggestion what happened as a result of their suggestion. If you made a change as a result of an employee suggestion, celebrate with them. The news will get out that opinions count in your workplace.
Three, if management cannot adopt a suggestion, explain to the person who made the suggestion why it won’t work. It shows respect. And then ask the person to keep making suggestions because their next idea might be a great contribution to the workplace.
Wisdom for the week. Encourage opinions and suggestions because they are a natural way to regenerate your organization.
Leading through a scandal
November 9th, 2011 by richfossI tried not to write on this topic.
Last weekend the story broke that a former Penn State assistant football coach was arrested and charged with abusing boys who were part of a nonprofit for at risk boys that he had helped found.
When I heard the news I felt sick. It brought back memories from the early 1990’s when I was leading an organization that was swept up in a scandal. One of the founders of the organization, a highly respected man, disclosed that he had been involved in sexual misconduct including sexually abusing boys.
That’s the reason why I wanted to avoid the topic. But as you can see, I chose to write on the topic and I want to give you a heads up that this post is longer than my usual post. Leaders need to know how to lead through a scandal because scandals happen.
Like the former Penn State assistant coach, my colleague managed to keep a victim silent for many years.
When he disclosed the abuse to me, the abuse had occurred enough years ago so that the statute of limitations had expired. That law has since changed.
I led the organization through the scandal. I am not an attorney and can’t give you legal advice but I did learn three things about how lead an organization through a scandal.
First, the shame is overpowering. Organizations have self-images. The self-image never includes “we are a place where a highly respected leader can abuse children”. When the evidence emerges, as it did at Penn State when a graduate assistant saw the coach abusing a boy in a locker room shower, the shame explodes.
The graduate assistant reported what he had witnessed to the head coach. The head coach passed the shame along to his supervisor, the athletic director.
When shame is passed from leader to leader in an organization, one likely option is denial. At Penn State, denial for one leader took the form of redefining the abuse as “horsing around.”
Shame is explosive in a highly respected organization and severely tempts leaders to cover-up. To go public with the scandal seems self-destructive to the organization and to the leaders.
Shame blinds leaders’ ability to think clearly. At Penn State one or two leaders met with the assistant coach and told him to stop bringing boys from his nonprofit to the campus. I’m sure that at the time they thought they were protecting the university and their highly respected football program.
That brings me to my next point.
Second, when sexual abuse happens within an organization, the organization will deal with it. It’s just a matter of time. An ancient teacher said, “That which is done in secret, will be shouted from the roof top.”
Shame induces delusional thinking. Leaders think they can deal with the issue quietly or cover it up. Such efforts work for a while, but then, as Penn State is discovering, “That which is done in secret, will be shouted from the roof top.”
By the time you, as a leader hear of abuse, the scandal has already happened. A leader reporting an event to the authorities does not create the scandal. The scandal happened when the abuse happened.
Leaders attempting to deal with the issue quietly or cover it up, pay the price. Even in the midst of the shame and the press coverage, remind yourself that by being forthright, you are being honorable. Honorable because you are protecting the least powerful.
By the early 1990’s I knew several people who had been sexually abused as children. I saw how they were silenced as children but eventually they grew up and told someone in their family of origin. Almost inevitably the families resisted the information, sometimes even cutting the person off from the family.
While families didn’t always handle the information well, they had to deal with it because children who are abused grow up and refuse to be silenced.
When I first learned of the abuse by my colleague, shame swept over me. Fortunately, I was able to keep in mind the guiding principle that we as were going to deal with the abuse as an organization. It was a question of whether we were going to deal with it immediately and faithfully or not.
Third, who are you, as a leader, going to protect? When the information flows to you that abuse by another leader has occurred in your organization, you are faced with a decision. Who are you going to protect?
Are you going to protect your organization? Are you going to protect your highly respected colleague whose image is being threatened? Are you going to protect the victims? Are you going to protect yourself?
Often leaders have the closest relationship with their fellow leader and are tempted to handle the situation in such a way that protects their colleague from humiliation. Perhaps the person needs to lose their job but why not do it quietly? Also, by handling the situation quietly the organization can be protected as well.
The first people you are duty-bound to protect are past victims and potential victims.
If you protect the victims first, in the long run you will protect your organization and your colleague.
I am a mandated reporter. When information comes to me that a child connected to an organization where I am a leader has been abused, I am legally required to call the state abuse hotline. Three times I have picked up the phone and made that call. After I have made that call, I contacted the person alleged to have done the abuse or to the parents and told them that I have made the call and they could expect an investigation.
As a leader, I protect victims first.
In the case of my colleague in the 1990’s, he was in therapy when he disclosed his misconduct and his therapist verified to me that he (the therapist) had called the hotline. Our legal reporting responsibility stopped there, but not our moral responsibility to protect past and potential victims.
Over the next few months we systematically informed the leaders of every organization in which he had leadership roles for nearly two previous decades.
He had access to children in the organization that I was leading at the time. We arranged for a consultant to meet with parents to prepare them to talk with their children to see if they had been abused.
He was also employed by another organization at the time and traveled nationally for them. When they received the information, they published in two national publications that he had been involved with sexual misconduct including abuse of a minor and that he had been immediately suspended. They did this to make it possible for further victims to come forward. No new victims emerged.
Scandals and scars happen to good leaders. I hope that the painful lessons I learned will be of help to you.
To summarize, the following principles will help you lead through the scandal.
First, the shame will be overwhelming and tempt you to deny that abuse has happened. Second, scandal has already happened and your organization will deal with it sooner or later. Third, protect past and potential victims first.
Wisdom for the week: You can honorably lead your organization through a scandal by remembering to protect past and potential victims first.
Someone seems to care about me as a person
October 12th, 2011 by richfoss“My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.”
This is one of 12 questions that the Gallup Organization discovered are powerful measures of how engaged employees are in a particular workplace.
Recently I came across the following story by Greg Martin, CEO of Martin Leadership & Management Development. Greg graciously allowed me to reprint this great story about a caring supervisor:
I was at a grocery store the other day and the manager was walking through the produce aisle. One of her employees was sweeping up a mess and she went and patted him on his back and asked how he was doing.
She then added some humor to how her day was going and they both laughed. I then noticed three other employees join in on the conversation and discussion. The manager acknowledged them all and offered each one a handshake.
She then took the opportunity to talk about their tasks today and how important they were to the company. She talked about her vision, and how she wanted the produce section to be a “pocket of greatness” for their huge organization.
This entire interaction lasted less than 5 minutes. As I observed, checking every apple in trying to avoid detection from eaves dropping, I thought “WOW” Is this what leadership looks like? Is this the power of leadership?
Just in that brief observation, I felt those employees would do anything the manager requested to provide for her that “pocket of greatness” she described. It was not only how the employees responded to their manager’s request and wants, but also in their body language. The nodding of their heads in agreement and the way they stood with confidence when talking, or listening to their leader.
In Greg Martin’s story, it’s the store manager who is caring.
Like many of Gallup’s Q12 you don’t have to have a formal position of leadership to have a positive impact on your workplace. You can show you care about your co-workers as people and you’ll be contributing to a great workplace. You can find the 12 questions here.
And, if you are in a formal position of leadership in your organization, it’s important to care not only about the productivity of your workers but also care about them as individuals. You’ll be creating “pockets of greatness.”
Wisdom for the week. Want to be part of a great workplace? Don’t let seven days go by without recognizing and praising good work done by each person in your workplace.
In the last seven days…
September 29th, 2011 by richfoss“In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.”
This is one of 12 questions that the Gallup Organization discovered are powerful measures of how engaged employees are in a particular workplace. Last issue I covered one of the other 12: There is someone at work who encourages my development.
A friend of mine worked for a nonprofit CEO who did not believe in positive feedback. She did a great job and finally after four years, when one of her projects far exceeded goal, he wrote her a long note of appreciation.
She was excited to get positive feedback and posted the note on her bulletin board. The next year when the project again exceeded goal he came to her office and wrote on the note, “same for___ and included the year. He continued adding the year thereafter.
After she developed a good relationship with him, she asked him why he didn’t recognize good work. “If I tell people they are doing a good job, they will slack off and rest on their laurels,” he said. He also thought people would want more money if he praised their work.
Needless to say, everyone who worked for that CEO was missing one of Gallup’s Q12: “In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.” You can find the 12 questions here.
I’m a firm believer that everyone in a workplace can be a leader. One way you can lead, even if you have no formal position, is to recognize and praise good work done by your co-workers. By praising good work, you’ll be helping create a good workplace.
If you’re in a supervisory position, please do not take the position of my friend’s CEO. The people you supervise will not slack off if you recognize their good work. They will do good work even more.
Supervisors often get caught up in focusing on problem-solving and that’s an important part of your job-making life easier for those you supervise by solving problems.
But don’t put on the problem-solving blinders. You also need to see and recognize the good work people in your workplace are doing.
If you don’t believe me, do an experiment. In the next seven days, recognize or praise each of your employees for good work. Then see what happens.
In the next seven days, repeat. Then see what happens.
Repeat for a year.
Wisdom for the week: We’re human. We love to be recognized and praised for good work.
Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
September 14th, 2011 by richfossThe question in the title of this post is one of 12 questions that the Gallup Organization discovered are powerful measures of how engaged employees are in a particular workplace.
“Gallup conducted hundreds of focus groups and many thousands of worker interviews in all kinds of organizations, at all levels,” said John Thackray, “in most industries and in many countries. From these inquiries researchers pinpointed, out of hundreds of variables, 12 key employee expectations that, when satisfied, form the foundation of strong feelings of engagement.”
You can find the 12 questions here.
If you’re in a supervisory position, you’ll win loyalty from your staff and they’ll be engaged in doing their best if you encourage the development of each staff member.
If you’re in a staff position, you can encourage the development of your co-workers. Notice the question asks, “Is there someone….?” not, “does your supervisor…?” You can bring out the best in your co-workers by encouraging their development. Encourage them to take courses, workshops, read blogs, listen to podcasts, or take online training courses to help them develop. Almost every field has online resources, many of them free.
And, if you are in a position where you can’t honestly say that someone at work encourages your development, you can look for people to encourage your development outside of the workplace. I know a young woman who doesn’t receive a lot of encouragement at work even though she loves her job. She’s has mentors outside her workplace who encourage her development.
Wisdom for the week: Be a person who encourages the development of people around you and you’ll be contributing to a great workplace.
Compartments, Anxiety as Leadership Challenges
July 31st, 2011 by richfossLately I have been reading two books that have been teaching me much about leading.
The Palestinian, Muslim grocer in our village, Ali Imtairah, loaned me the first book, Compartments: How the Brightest, Best Trained and Most Caring People Can Make Judgments That Are Completely and Utterly Wrong by Steven R. Feldman, MD, PHD.
When a Muslim highly recommends a book by a Jewish doctor, I take notice.
Compartments is an amazing book that looks at our human tendency to see things from the perspective of the compartment, business, profession, religious or ethnic group that we are a part of and make misguided judgments about people in other groups.
For instance, Feldman recounts how in the early 1990’s managed care companies instituted policies that encouraged primary care physicians to treat skin diseases, conditions that were usually treated by dermatologists. Some people in Feldman’s medical specialty panicked, afraid they were going to end up driving a cab because they’d lose the medical practices.
But some dermatologists didn’t worry at all. They “knew” that primary care treating skin diseases wouldn’t last because almost every patient they’d ever seen who’d been treated by primary care doctors had been treated ineffectively-misdiagnosed or not been diagnosed at all.
But, as Feldman pointed out, these dermatologists who “knew” that primary care doctors couldn’t effectively treat skin diseases didn’t take into consideration that primary care doctors might have successfully treated 99 rashes for every one that they failed and referred to a dermatologist. If the rash cleared up after being treated by a primary care physician, of course, the patient never went to a dermatologist.
“Experience is not always a good teacher,” Feldman concluded. “Dermatologists’ experiences were terribly biased,” he added, “as commonly happens when people in one compartment use their experience to judge people in another compartment.”
In the latter part of the book Feldman offers an analysis of Middle East politics including three chapters on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I was amazed at the calm way that Feldman wrote about the situation including acknowledging that what he had been taught while growing up Jewish in Washington, DC was wrong.
As a boy he was taught that when the Jews were forming Israel they begged the Palestinians to stay. I’m a Christian and I remember hearing the same story.
In Compartments Feldman refers to several historical documents that refer to a Plan D as the Israeli plan for dealing with the Palestinians in the territory that became the state of Israel. He summarizes the accounts as follows: “The discovery of Plan D documents showed that the Palestinians were expelled and their villages destroyed and mined to keep them from returning.”
Fedlman’s ability to calmly consider both sides of the Israeli Palestinian conflict even though many of his family were killed in the Holocaust amazed me and reminds me of another book, Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking About Human Interactions by Roberta M. Gilbert. This book was lent to me by a Mennonite farmer.
In her book Gilbert explores the Bowen family systems theory. Part of the theory focuses on the patterns of how anxiety flows through families and organizations. Bowen theorized that if one person in a system could calm herself, or himself, and think clearly they could alter the flow of anxiety in the family or organization.
While not billed as leadership books, both these texts are thought-provoking takes on issues that leaders often face-how to make accurate judgments about the actions of people in other departments, organizations and cultures. And how to calm yourself when anxiety is racing through your organization.
How Would You Lead After a Major Merger?
July 21st, 2011 by richfoss
Recently the State of Illinois decreed that nonprofits who receive state funds to provide foster care and adoption services had to work with same sex couples who wished to adopt or be foster parents.
That created a dilemma for Catholic Charities, an arm of the Catholic Church, which does not sanction same sex relationships, and yet provides extensive foster parent and adoption services funded by the State of Illinois.
The Rockford Diocese dealt with the issue by working out a merger of their foster parent and adoption services with the Youth Service Bureau of Illinois.
Dave McClure, the executive director of YSB, writes a weekly e-mail to supporters telling stories about YSB’s work.
Last week he wrote that he had spent most of Tuesday working in cubicles in one of the new foster care offices. “I was helping Tracee, YSB’s computer whiz, assess the computers we acquired in one of our new foster care offices.”
“They had been out of service for over a day,” he continued. ”As we brought them back online we ran a diagnostic program to determine amount of memory, security status, presence of viruses, and their overall relative efficiency.”
Hmmm. Some people might question Dave’s use of time, spending the day acting as an assistant to their computer whiz. Not me. Dave has probably never read the study by the Gallup Organization that revealed the twelve statements that make a great work place but he instinctively worked on the second key to creating a great work place:
I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
Imagine what it would be like to be one of the former Catholic Charities employees. Less than a week after you’ve merged with YSB your computers stop working. The next thing you know the executive director of your new employer spends the day helping the computer whiz fix your computers.
You might think this change of employers could work out.
Wisdom for the week: Build a great workplace by starting with the basics: provide employees with the right materials and tools.