It’s amazing how timeless characteristics like leadership are.

One thing I like doing (geek alert) when I get a few minutes, is to look through the Google Book catalog. There are some amazing gems in there, and that’s where I find little things like info on how to do onboarding from a company manual in the early 1900’s and the book preface that inspired this post.

I took the short segment from the book and tweaked it to speak to leadership issues today. After you read it (remember that it was written before the 1920s and some of the language reflects that), I’ll tell you what the original purpose was.

Check it out

The necessity and vast importance of  study [in leadership] is made apparent in the light of the significance which Napoleon attached to the mental quality of leadership,–”The morale is to the physical as three to one.” Mental and physical training and instruction in tactical leadership were present to an excellent degree. It seems to have been assumed, however, that giving a man an education in these and in the routine administration work of a business organization fitted him to be a leader. The result was that the young manager was obliged to learn many things by hard experience and through trial and error; there was not the desired uniformity in matters of personal leadership.

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“The number one reason for conflict is the need to be right.”

The first time I heard this, I was an ROTC instructor by day and a graduate student by night. When I wasn’t teaching leadership or hanging out by the Schuylkill River, I was grabbing nuggets of wisdom from my graduate courses.

I think of this nugget often with managers and employee relations.

The Beginning of the End

Managers who approach employee relations with a need to be right are all wrong. They approach employee relations as a zero sum game. They  can’t talk without spitting, consider without pacing, or see the forest for the trees. They gloat when a decision is in their favor and talk about quality of hire. They analyze employee  attendance, work quality and engagement. They don’t ever look to themselves for answers.

Reality Check

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One of the most important things a leader can do is staff their department to deliver. A leader’s job is not to know it all. A leaders without anyone on their staff who can design a recruitment strategy better than they can or who is better at [fill in the blank] than they are, is not doing their job.

More telling than seeing who a leader selects for a position is taking a look at who they did not.

It’s comfortable, and easy, for leaders to select people like themselves or like others on their staff. It’s not a stretch for a leader to evaluate a candidate’s skills against need, traits against culture, and like-ability against team dynamics. Nor is it a stretch to consider experience and accomplishments to predict (re: crystal ball) contribution and initiative.

The interview, evidence of performance, references, and yes, even instinct, indicate to the leader that there is one person for the job. It all fits except for one thing and this is the one thing could make the difference between a solid selection and an exceptional one. For some leaders, herein lies the stretch.

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Employment law is my forte.

On some days, there’s nothing better than reading a recent ruling, grabbing the salient points and being that much more equipped to advise and guide. Employment law is an area that employee relations HR pros need to pay attention to on a regular basis because it is under constant refinement. I am attending the 21010 Upper Midwest Employment Law Institute for that very reason.

I entered the conference for facts and I left after day 1 with an insight.

The plenary session included a Title VII update and as the presenting attorney  wrote, “the ‘human drama’ we see in our day to day work continues to play out in some pretty amazing factual scenarios.” Yes, it was amazingly unbelievable as we reviewed rulings on religious discrimination, sexual harassment, sex stereotyping, and pregnancy discrimination. And then, right there 60 minutes into the session, it struck me.

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I am a woman, I seek out books and blogs written by women, I am coached by a woman, and I am one of three founding members of the very cool, soon-to-be-released Women of HR website.

So, why does the idea of a women’s network in the workplace make me uneasy?

A Sum of My Experiences

I listened closely last month during the Women’s Leadership Conference as panel members discussed  women’s networks. One senior woman leader stated she declined to participate in the women’s network because, “she was not a victim.” This stopped me in my tracks with a flicker of recognition. Wow.

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The morning started out all wrong. The suit I was wearing just wasn’t going to work for me. Was it the pinstripes or the raspberry-ish shirt I let the lady in the store convince me was a good color for me when maybe it really wasn’t after all? Huffing, puffing, buyer’s remorse and one quick change later, I was off to breakfast and conference registration.

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Each year, SHRM has an annual student conference. A friend and fellow blogger sent me a call for presentations to submit an idea to present at the 2010 conference in June. Well, one thing came up, and then another, and even though I drafted out a proposal, I did not follow through. If I did follow through, here’s what I propose I’d say.

HR is a profession in the midst of change. Once a very transactional and administrative role, HR professionals can now play influential and transformational roles, impacting and delivering on business objectives.

If you watch and listen carefully, you will see and hear the struggle between the old and new; between compliance and innovation, and between complacency and progress. Progress and innovation are winning out as the HR profession changes to provide the services and expertise organizations need to succeed.

If initiating, leading and fostering inevitable change is what you are interested in, you’ve come to the right place.

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I attended a local SHRM chapter meeting Thursday to hear the latest on developing social media case law, progressive approaches businesses have taken with social media use. I expected to hear excitement and possibility. Instead, I heard fear and trepidation.

Perpetuating Fear

The social media = fear apple may not fall far from the HR tree. In his post, Fear and Social Media, Mark Stelzner shares comments that SHRM’s 2010 Employment Law and Legislative Conference covered the use of social media to spy on employees, blocking of popular social media sites and the general risks to broad adoption. Bloggers Mike Vandervort and Joan Ginsberg rant about the same.

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I miss the energy and pace of Olympic short track. Skaters at the line, primed to go, skate tips in the ice, bodies into position, leaning into the start, the gun is about to fire and then . . . false start. A false start affects everyone as all of the skaters are sent back to the starting line to set up again.

False starts and racing go hand in hand like reaction and organizations. In organizations, reaction affects everyone. It is possible to send everyone back to the starting line in an organization – but it rarely happens. Something occurs, a leader reacts, the race is on, and folks, it’s an all out recipe for disaster.

The Costs of Reaction

Organizations experience breakdowns each and every day. Although they may not be visible organization wide, make no mistake, they are there. They occur when what was heard was not what was said, what was determined was not what was intended, what was intended was ignored, what was reasoned was unreasonable, or the classic statement,  ”nothing said I couldn’t do it” is uttered.

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Defense! Defense! is great for a sports team, but can be bad for an organization. Organizations are a sum of many parts and to ensure organizational success, it is imperative that everything, and everyone, functions at their best.

When you are going for the gold, defensive employees are bad news.

On Defensiveness

Defensive employees can be impossible to reason with. They can be blinded by ego or anger and driven by an insatiable need to be right. They can perceive questions as threats and lock horns at the first hint of a challenge.

Collaborative problem solving comes to a halt, organizational goals are subordinate to personal agendas and when allowed to continue, the repercussions of defensive behaviors are felt across the organization.

On Diamonds

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You are preaching to the choir when you say labor relations is tough.

In all things labor, I’ve had it relatively easy in my career. Even so, there have been hurtful moments, tears, second guesses, the horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I realized I missed a detail, misinterpreted a sign, over (or under) estimated a gesture or simply misplayed the game. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t comfortable, but I learned.

No sympathy

Supervisors who come to me looking for a member of my staff to ”take the blame”  because their feeling were hurt, or ask me to ”do something” to ensure meetings with labor representatives run collaboratively and comfortably are sent away disappointed when they are told to learn from the experience . . . and get thicker skin.

On Rehaul by Lance Haun, Lance wrote, ”people really don’t deal with conflict well in the workplace. More specifically, a large proportion of people think that people should be more agreeable and reduce conflict wherever possible.”

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“Breaker 1-9, breaker 1-9, do you hear me?” “Breaker 1-9, you are breaking up.” And so it goes with performance management.

Supervisors are responsible for performance management. The best supervisors address performance willingly, especially when that performance is poor. “Effectively dealing with poor performers is more than a willingness to fire an employee, it’s recognizing employee needs for training early, distinguishing what can and cannot be trained, and provide assistance to employees, as is practical.” Merit Systems Protection Board Report, “Poor Performers and the Law”

“Breaker 1-9, breaker 1-9, are you out there? I know you’ve got something to say but I can’t hear you . . .too much static.”

Static is the reason performance improvement efforts fail, the reason a manager will not support a supervisor’s recommendation for performance based adverse action and the reason HR professionals across the globe lean back in their chairs, put their hands to their forehead and lament, “why?”

Managers and HR professionals are a pretty solid, sturdy, been-there-done-that group of people so what kinds of yet static cause them to shake their heads in disbelief?

The list can be long and here are a few examples of static to start the bidding:

• Dishonesty
• Disparate treatment

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Incentives can be like sunshine on a cloudy day, or they can bring in the rain.

No denying incentives, when used properly, can prompt desired behaviors – or is it to impact outcomes? What was it again??  Incentives change behaviors – not outcomes.  I know that now because I read Incentive Intelligence and bookmark posts like Incentives – Definitions and Actions – A Primer AGAIN! but let me tell you about someone who did not.

Incentives Gone Bad

Once upon a time there was a leader of a team. The team was not working well together. The leader tried praise, recognition, telling the team what she wanted to see, playing on strengths, problem solving issues, not placing blame, asking questions, acknowledging desired behaviors and more. Basically, she did everything “the book” said a good supervisor could do to encourage behaviors - and it didn’t work.

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When I talk to people who are not active with social media, about social media, and we get past the lack of time issues, the first question I am asked is, ”what should I use?” I say that I blog and use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. When asked if they work for me, I answered, “yes.”

Then I read Framing Your Social Media Efforts by Chris Brogan. Chris writes for business marketing but he got me thinking about how I use social media as an individual. Not the nuts and bolts of logging in, updating, or posting regularly (or not) but looking at, as Chris says, how well I am “tying them all together. ”

A Look In the Mirror

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Two things I’ve got on my mind lately are writing and credibility. I took up leadership credibility earlier last week so today I’ll toss out some thoughts on writing.

I just started reading Thinking Write by Kelly L. Stone. Besides thinking the title of her book would have been an awesome name for a blog if I only would have thought of it first, I was drawn to the tag line, “the secret to freeing your creative mind.” Now, my mind could use a little freeing these days. I love to write, am committed to writing more, would welcome a little mula for my writing . . . but now I digress.

I am finishing up chapter 2, The Anti-Writer. The term “anti-writer” is basically the doubt that works against a writer and it does not work alone. Along with the anti-writer comes sabotaging actions. Two scary dudes. I am only up to Chapter 2 and already I have an assignment. For the next two weeks, I am to write down all of the negative thoughts and comments about my writing or my abilities as a writer and ways I sabotage my writing efforts. Ach, who needs 2-weeks! I know the voice all too well. I am going to give myself a 2 minutes on each to capture the thoughts and actions right here, right now.

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