The Mini Token Blog

“Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

You say you’re the boss and your employees should just “shut up and follow you.” Here’s a question for you, Leader. Have you taught them how to follow? Let’s examine the transforming aspects of discipling. You say you got a business to run and no time for a religious lesson. Let’s see. The right discipling process can change our biases, prejudices, and our culture paradigms. Adsit, an expert on discipleship, explains that a disciple is someone who learns by practicing the concept or teaching; this process can result in a lifestyle change. Discipling is the process that grows followers. Discipling is about character building and changing lives. Yes, you could view it as a religious concept; however, it also has corporate application. What if you inspired your followers in such a way that they were transformed into organizational zealots? Do you feel you would have a more productive organization? Therefore, organizations need to train employees in such a way that it becomes part of their lives. You teach them so that they will do the right things even when you are not around. Here are some steps in making organizational disciples:

Set the proper moral examples as a leader.
Conduct employee orientation with every new employee.
Communicate your organization’s values and beliefs.
Reward employees for doing the right things.
Take a personal interest in each employee’s development.
Get employees’ input on organizational changes.

Unfortunately, many managers will ignore discipling because they view it as a religious lesson. These leaders fail to understand this concept as a part of leadership principles. Don’t make the same mistake. Discipling goes beyond any spiritual context. It’s about teaching employees to do the right things. Discipling is an effective management tool. Don’t wait to late to use it. Start today!.

References

Adsit, C. (2005). Go and Make What. Disciplemakers, International, Retrieved October 4, 2005, from http://www.milmin.com/resources/discipleship/gomakewhat.htm

Bell (2002) Managers as Mentors. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler’s Publishers, Inc.

© 2006 by Daryl D. Green

Daryl D. Green has published over 100 articles in the field of decision-making (personal and organizational), leadership, and organizational behavior. Mr. Green is also the author of two acclaimed books, Awakening the Talents Within and My Cup Runneth Over. He is a columnist, lecturer, professor, and management consultant. Mr. Green has a BS in engineering and a MA in organizational management. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in strategic leadership.

For more information, visit his website at http://www.darylgreen.org

The popular junior Democratic Senator, Barack Obama, told Time Magazine
(2/20/06), “I probably always feel on some level I can persuade anybody I talk to.”

Wow. I wish I could do that. How do we get other people to do what we want?

When I was a kid, my life was all commands: “Clean your room.” “Get in the car.” “Put
some clothes on, people are coming over.” And if I ever asked “why,” I got the same
response: “Because I said so.”

Then you get a little older, and “because I said so” doesn’t work like it used to. My
folks had to negotiate a bit to get me in the car or to put some clothes on.

These days, “enlightened” parents often skip the command phase with their
youngsters for better or worse and try to negotiate with them or even jump
right to the highest level of influence: persuasion. A recent episode of South Park,
on Comedy Central, focused on the current trend of non-commanding parents when
Cartman’s mom gets help from the “Dog Whisperer” to tame her out-of-control son,
but only after Cartman stumps the efforts of some Super Nannies.

The three influence methods commanding, negotiating, and persuading are
each appropriate in different situations (though I personally wouldn’t try to
negotiate with a toddler who was loudly demanding a toy in Wal-Mart, it may work
for some).

Remember in “The Godfather” when Don Corleone made the big-shot Hollywood
producer “an offer he can’t refuse” by cutting off the head of his prize racehorse?
The producer was influenced, but did the Corleones command, negotiate, or
persuade him? Well, they “indirectly threatened” him by demonstrating their
willingness and ability to kill him at their leisure. This example, in fact, involves a bit
of all three influence methods.

When dealing with other adults, commanding is typically the least effective of the
three influence methods, because we order people to do things and who likes
that? We usually command others when we are more concerned with getting the job
done than we are with getting the person’s buy-in. Although it is perhaps the
quickest influence method, it also tends to make people resentful and usually
results in reluctant compliance at best.

When we negotiate, we seek to compromise; we give a little and the other person
gives a little. “I’ll do this for you if you do that for me.” Negotiation occurs all the
time, between politicians, between parents and children, between you and car
dealers, but it has significant limitations. Negotiating is basically adversarial. Both
sides meet halfway. But halfway is often half-hearted.

Persuasion is the influence method of choice when possible because it convinces
others to adopt or agree to your position. Persuasion changes the way people view
something. They change their behavior because they are convinced the change is
the right thing to do.

The difference between persuasion and other forms of influence is that persuasion
seeks to change someone’s attitude, which is far from easy (kudos to Senator
Obama who has great confidence in his ability to persuade).

Let’s say your boss comes to you one day and says, “You will be attending this
training class next Monday and Tuesday,” and walks away. What method of
influence did your boss use? Right.
And how does this affect your attitude toward the training?

Being commanded to do something might change your external behavior, but your
internal attitude does not change. If your view of training is negative, it will remain
negative. This method does not support long-term motivation and commitment.
(We say that commands build a house of straw, at least with other adults.)

Let’s say your boss comes to you and says, “I’ll let you have Friday off if you attend
this training class next Monday and Tuesday.” What method of influence did your
boss use? Right again I’ll do this for you if you do this for me. And how does this
affect your attitude toward the training?

As with being commanded, negotiation might change your external behavior, but
not your internal attitude. There is a strong external motivator (keeping your job),
but it doesn’t motivate high performance or ongoing commitment. (We say that
negotiation builds a house of sticks.)

Let’s say you and your boss sit down together and determine that a workshop on
coaching and managing performance is essential to your development as a manager
and will increase your job success. Your boss convinces you that the investment of
time and effort will make your work life easier. What method of influence did your
boss use? Three for three well done. And how does this affect your attitude
toward the training?

You are persuaded, and your attitude moves toward your boss’s position (note that
you must believe in what you’re pitching or persuasion will fail). The boss changes
your external behavior and your internal attitude. (We say that persuasion builds a
house of brick that holds up to the worst big bad wolves that come along.)

Attitudes drive behavior. Although persuasion requires more effort and skill,
behavior driven by the right attitude and mindset rather than command and control
makes a leader’s life much easier in the long run. You can collaborate for a solution
where both sides win, you don’t have to be in the room with sticks or carrots to get
work done, and great performance is much more likely, which we could probably
use more of on the Senate floor.

Maybe we can keep an eye on Senator Obama for some good influencing tips.

Dave Neal is Content Director of 4th Street Training (http://www.4thstreettraining.com).

He has over 15 years experience in adult-learning, instructional design, and leadership/
management development.

Many entrepreneurs and executives play the role of Chief Cook and Bottle Washer on the job. They feel that it is their responsibility to do everything and anything to expand their business. Although this is often appropriate in start-ups, there comes a time when the CC&BW approach to running your company will hold it back.

At a certain stage, your company needs a Chief Executive - a CEO. What is a CEO? My definition, pieced together from assorted dictionaries, is that a CEO is the person of the highest rank, with the power to determine or settle issues, and chargeable with being the source of the management and direction of the business.

Role of the CEO

I’ve compiled the following list of activities which comprise the role of a Chief Executive:

Craft the company vision and strategy

Foster key relationships with vendors, customers, partners and government.

Making the shift
Making the shift from CC&BW to Chief Executive requires three transitions.

Understanding your highest value contribution to your company and focusing on that role.

Delegating everything else, and holding others accountable. Without apology.

In this article we will focus on Transition One.

Understanding your highest value contribution

As CEO, you make the highest value contribution to your company’s growth by acting consistently with the list defined above. Providing leadership inside and outside of your company is an act of great leverage in the truest sense of the word. Through vision, strategy, enrollment and inspiration, you provide energy and the direction to expend that energy - dramatically multiplying the effectiveness of your team.

In your organization, you may hold other roles in addition to CEO, such as head of sales, or technical guru. Such roles exist outside of the CEO role and as soon as it is cost-beneficial, you will give them up. For now, it is important to distinguish the CEO role.

Time for a bit of introspection. Considering all your roles, make a list of your top priorities. Limit the list to no more than seven. Your list could include priorities such as developing new leaders, coaching middle level executives, closing key sales, and working with the board. Ask yourself this, “What am I directly responsible for and what actions do I take, which make the most difference?”

Review your list and test it - are the priorities you’ve listed 1) important, and 2) practical? Make sure the priorities you have defined are consistent with your values. Then ask yourself this key question: “If everything I did, all day long, was something related to this list, would that move the company forward faster?”

If the answer is yes, then 1) you’ve created the right list, and 2) why are you working on anything else?

Find out how you really spend your time.

What do you do all day long? Most executives think they know but in fact do not. Are you ready to find out?

Keep a time log. Commit to a two-week program. Carry around a small stack of 3×5 index cards or a small spiral notebook. Every fifteen minutes or so, make a note of what you’ve been doing. At the end of the day, sum it up. At the end of the week, sum it up. At the end of two weeks, sum it up again.

You will probably find the results surprising. Your time will fall into three categories:

Things inside the scope of your priority list. Keep doing these things. Find ways to allocate even more time to them.

Things to delegate. Find someone in your organization to do these things, or outsource them to a professional services firm or contractor.

Things no one should be doing. You will know these things as soon as you think about them.

There are two special categories of items which may show up on your list:

One is called “Things I Do Best”. Look closely and examine if this is true. Is there someone else in the organization who might do this thing just as well? Maybe it is time to train someone. Maybe it should be outsourced. Regardless of how well you do this thing, if it is not on your list of priorities, get rid of it.

If there is something your company counts on you, and only you, to do, particularly as part of day to day operations, you are a bottleneck. And if you are out on the road, or out with a client, or meeting with The Governor - that thing, whatever it is - will not get done. Get out of the way.

The other special category is called “Things I Like To Do.” These are things you really enjoy, but even you know could best be done by someone else. Give them up. At a certain stage in your company’s development, you simply have to stop debugging programs, or handling every customer complaint, or ordering supplies. Treat this category similarly to things you do best. Stop doing them.

Use your priority list to evaluate how you spend your time. If a contemplated activity will not forward one or more priorities, do not do it. Delegate it to someone else. Period. If there is no one to give it to, don’t do it.

The bottom line.

This sounds like time management. What does it have to do with being Chief Executive?

Everything! As Chief Executive, your primary role is source of the management and direction of the business. Your priorities should support this role. You are like an enzyme or an accelerant. You help other people make things happen. You are, in the words of General Colin Powell, a force multiplier.

When you act in the role of CEO, things speed up. When you don’t, things slow down or stand still. You are the true leverage in your organization. And you can’t be that if you are debugging a program or writing checks to suppliers.

Discipline yourself to spend a few weeks in Transition One. You won’t go back. You’re company won’t let you.

Transitions two and three will be covered in future articles.

Note for professionals or solo entrepreneurs: Everything said above about CEOs applies to you as well. The only difference is you will delegate to people outside of your organization. For everything you do outside of the list of highest value contributions, consider the following: If you were to hire an assistant, a contractor, or a professional services firm, while you spent your time concentrating on your highest value activities, would your net income go up or down?

Paul Lemberg is the president of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world’s only fully systemized business coaching program guaranteed to help entrepreneurs rapidly create More Profits and More Life for entrepreneurs. Guaranteed.

Learn about our Business Coaching Franchise.

Visit Paul’s Website for help with your Business Development Strategy?

Riding the subway home yesterday, my typically silent car was enlivened by two young girls and their mothers who hopped on. The girls, 7 years old or so, immediately danced over to the upright pole in the middle of the aisle and started twirling around it. After several minutes of this, giggling and talking and having a marvelous time chasing each other (paying no attention whatsoever to anyone else in the car), they settled into a rhythm directly across from each other. Still twirling, but more slowly, one said to the other … “everything’s blurry except for you” … and the other immediately chanted it back. Back and forth. Their delight in each other’s company was glowing in their conversation and lack of interest in anyone else on the train. They truly focused on each other, and discovered that everything else gets blurry! What a delightful example of focusing on someone when you’re with them, and giving them 100% of your attention … fully being there with them.

How easily do you focus on things? Are you able to tune out distractions, or do you find yourself readily sidetracked by things around you? As I pen this article, started during a break at the office where I work a couple days a week, there is a personification of “distraction” at work behind me … let’s call him Tom. Tom is a very vocal character who wanders into my shared office many times per day with comments, inane questions, and “lets toss a few” requests for my co-workers. I’ve learned to tune him out if I’m busy, and only stop to re-direct the nerf football when it lands on my desk. Hence the subject … how effectively do you focus on what’s in front of you? Something you’d like to do more, or less, of? Let’s take a look!

It seems we prize the ability to focus the minute a child is born … delighting in their ability to track an object, make eye contact, or spend 20 minutes discovering their own toes. What we focus on shows our attention, and often our respect as well. Do you focus 100% on someone when you talk to them, or are you planning tomorrow’s breakfast, braiding your daughter’s hair, checking your e-mail, and hunting for a pen that works all while trying to have a conversation? Sound familiar? I read recently that multitasking isn’t really doing several things at once, it’s just shifting rapidly between tasks. I’m afraid I’m very familiar with that one, having an overly-developed multi-tasking approach to life … which works well in many arenas, but isn’t always the most pleasant or effective. Half an hour of time, free from distractions, focused on one task, produces more than 2 hours of running in circles.

How about some tips or reminders for how to find, and keep, that focus when it really counts?

1. CHOOSE your focus. Don’t let it choose you, be proactive and conscious about how you’re spending your time. Choose only one thing at a time, and do it well and with your whole being.

2. Speaking of TIME, set a limit and stick to it! I focused on a computer screen for 7 hours yesterday, working on my husband’s website, and was rewarded with a splitting headache and rumbling stomach along with the snazzier site. Not a healthy focus at all!

3. MINIMIZE distractions! If you’re blessed with the ability to tune out everything and everyone around you, at will, you may find this one irrelevant, but the rest of us take note. You need silence to write or create or work well? Find something to block the surrounding sounds … close your door, put up a “do not disturb” sign, silence your phone, or use a fan or walkman or other source of “white noise”. I was on a long overnight bus trip last week (fulfilling one of my 10 goals for this year!) when my seatmate decided to flirt with the man across the aisle all night. I have a very poor ability to filter out words of any kind, and found myself unable to fall asleep … wishing heartily that I’d taken the time to pack my Walkman and some music!

4. Take BREAKS! Remember recess? That longed-for chance to escape the classroom and run around for 15 minutes? There are good reasons behind the practice … breaks have been proven to increase productivity and ability to focus. I find it much easier to focus on what’s in front of me if I clear my mind or “change the channel” for a few minutes.

Those may all seem ridiculously simple ideas, but whether you find it hard to keep focused or hard to shift away from it, they can help you find healthier ways to approach your day.

Bethany Rule is an experienced personal and professional life coach, championing human development, encouraging change, and helping you break your own rules. Based in NYC, she works with clients all over the world. Please visit http://www.bethanyrule.com to sign up for your FREE Trial Session, FREE monthly newsletter, or to learn more about coaching with Bethany.

In this issue, I will share my experience acquired from the conglomerate and its operating companies. For the purpose of this article, I will articulate the Valuing Employees and Partners which is one of the eleven core values and concepts used in Malcolm Baldrige Criteria. As before, I will use case studies to show how some of the companies implement them.

To recap, below are the Eleven Core Values and Concepts of Baldrige Criteria:-

Visionary Leadership | Customer-Driven Excellence | Organizational and Personal Learning | Valuing Employees and Partners | Agility | Focus on the Future |Managing for Innovation | Management by Fact | Public Responsibility and Citizenship | Focus on Results and Creating Value | Systems Perspective

In this issue, I will share my experience acquired from the conglomerate and its operating companies. For the purpose of this article, I will articulate the Valuing Employees and Partners which is one of the eleven core values and concepts used in Malcolm Baldrige Criteria. As before, I will use case studies to show how some of the companies implement them.

To recap, below are the Eleven Core Values and Concepts of Baldrige Criteria:-

Visionary Leadership | Customer-Driven Excellence | Organizational and Personal Learning | Valuing Employees and Partners | Agility | Focus on the Future |Managing for Innovation | Management by Fact | Public Responsibility and Citizenship | Focus on Results and Creating Value | Systems Perspective

Articulated Valuing Employees and Partners
A diverse background, knowledge, skills, creativity and motivation of all its employees and partners are seemingly contribute to an organization’s success. An organization should commit to the satisfaction, development and well-being of the employee. However, the challenges in valuing employees include the followings:-

1. Commit to employee’s success
2. Have a systematic reward and reorganization beyond normal compensation system
3. Plan for development and progression within the organization
4. Create an environment and policy that advocate risk taking and innovation
5. Create an environment to support diverse workforce
6. Advocate Internal partnerships close labor-management cooperation.
7. Create an atmosphere that encourages high performance work team. Knowledge sharing

Organization should considered external partnerships with customers, suppliers, Strategic partnerships or alliances for business advancement. All terms and condition for such partnership should be clearly stated to reduced unneeded conflicts of interests.

Case Study on Valuing Employees and Partners
Traditionally, most companies I worked with understanding the concept of Valuing Employees and Partners. Organization has policies that reinforce employees reward and recognitions, performance compensation schemes etc. However, these are merely the norm due to market employment forces.

Employee training and development has been considered selectively depends on the job positions. Many of the companies faced the problems with big performance gap between senior managers and next level of staffs. While recognize the need of a successor, there is not concrete plan to plan for succession. Perhaps, there may meant additional headcounts in the employee headcounts.
Partnership with external parties such as vendors, strategic partners etc are done very selectively. Perhaps it may due to some sensitive issue when dealing with vendors. On the part of Strategic Partners, it is done quite selective due to the fact that company has to disclose several pertinent information which are confidential.

Issues with Valuing Employees and Partners
Companies are not able to keep good employee for too long in the employee as most of them are good in performance and most wanted by employment agencies.
Employee felt that companies is not compensate them fairy according to the market changes. Obviously, we cannot expect companies to make adjustment too often for the sack to keep up with the external employment market.
External partners remain low priority in the management strategies unless are force by example material shortage etc.

Opportunity for Improvement
This is one of the eleven Values and Concepts in Malcolm Baldrige that most of the companies I work lacking. Considering the management thinking and culture, it is not like an easy task to motivate leaders to benchmark their counterparts in Baldige winners. No doubt leaders in these companies tried to fulfill employee reorganization with clearer performance expectations; there is no written policy to document such practices. This is an areas with will not be changes unless perhaps the employment market forces companies to do so.

Increasing partnership with external parties remain an issue so long as the leaders do not see it as one of the strategic objectives.

In summary, having understood the Organizational and Personal Learning in Values and Concepts of Malcolm Baldrige, leaders might benchmark their CEO of Baldrige Winners on their TQM successes in this value. My next article will articulate the next Core Values and Concepts in Agility

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Disclaimer

All rights reserved. This article is written by the author based on his practical application experience. All definitions and interpretation of terminology are his point of view and has it has no intention to conflict with experts in similar topic. The author holds no responsibility for the use of this article in any way. Full Baldrige Criteria are available at http://www.nist.gov/quality

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Free to reprint or re-publish
All rights reserved. You are free to reprint or re-publish this article as long as you include my resource box at the end of this article. And ensure that the URL in the resource box remained intact and it is linked to the author’s website.
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Resource Box: About the Author, LM Foong
The author holds a MBA major in TQM. He is an expert in Malcolm Baldrige Business Framework and Baldrige Assessment and TQM Implementations in manufacturing and service sector. He facilitates workshops and Cost Reduction and Productivity Improvement projects. He publishes TQM articles, ebooks, case studies, trainer manual and presentation slides available at More TQM articles or Please Visit my Web Site to read other TQM related topics