“We can’t know how really good we are as leaders until we are leading people to be better than they think they are.” — Brent Filson
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“Authority is a poor excuse for leadership. Poor leaders order people to do a job. Action leaders have those people choose to be the cause leaders of that job -- for more results faster, continually.” –Brent Filson
Vol. 1 Number 3 - September, 2003
Publisher: The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.
(413) 458-4403
(c) Copyright 2003 The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.
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IN THIS ISSUE: The “Rewards” Issue
SECTION 1: Brent Filson’s Weekly Tips To Lead By.
1. What Does Your Organization Reward?
2. Turning the Answers Into Results
3. What Does Your Leadership Reward?
4. Generate A Groundswell
SECTION 2: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
SECTION 3: Points of Light.
SECTION 4: Action Leadership News.
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SECTION 1: Brent Filson’s Leadership Tips To Lead By
(Follow these tips week by week throughout the month.)
Week 1: What Does Your Organization Really Reward?
The difference between leaders is ears. Good leaders not only ask good questions, but they actually listen to the answers.
“What does your organization really reward?” is a question you should be asking. Yet because few leaders ask the question, their organizations often reward the wrong things. Sure, these organizations may pay lip service to rewarding people for the right things: getting results, getting the right results, getting the right results in the right ways. But what they really reward, often in terms of promotions and job perks, are such things as the care and feeding of top leaders’ egos, political machinations, tyrannical leadership.
This week take an informal survey: Ask people what your organization REALLY rewards. The answers may surprise you. But don’t get caught up in those answers. Don’t make value judgments. At this stage, you are just an observer. Your job this week is to simply compile the list.
Next week, you will turn the items on the list into results.
Week 2: Turning The Answers Into Results.
Gauge each item on the list against results your organization really needs. Does it help get results? Does it detract from results?
Be aware that you may be dealing with some things that compose a third rail of your organization’s culture. Organizations often hold fiercely to rewarding the wrong things.
For instance, your survey may show that senior leaders are receiving outrageous perks; and if your rank is lower than theirs, you may not get far in trying to change things. In fact, the backlash may be more than you bargain for.
Getting rid of such rewards often entails making fundamental changes in an organization’s leadership relationships — a daunting task even for top leaders. For lower level leaders, it’s virtually impossible. But this does not mean that you should avoid tackling the rewards issues.
Do it this way: (1) Pick out a single item from your list, an item you can affect. (2) Describe the problem in the item and identify who controls its solution. (3) If you and the people you are associated with can control the solution, execute a “stop-start-continue” process. What reward do you stop, what do you start, and what do you continue?
You’ll get results, but don’t expect overnight success. Not only are many of these wrong rewards ingrained habits but changing them seldom achieves quick results. Still, keep asking, What does my organization really reward? In the long run, when tackling the challenges that comes with listening to the answers, you’ll be getting more results as well as sharpening your leadership skills.
Week 3: What Does Your Leadership Really Reward?
When your leadership rewards the wrong things, you’re getting a fraction of the results you’re capable of. However, since we see the faults of others more clearly than our own, it may be more difficult identifying and dealing with your own issues rather than your organization’s.
This week ask, “What does your leadership REALLY reward?” Do a 360 degree assessment. Select a single item from the list and apply the start-stop-continue process. Don’t simply eliminate the item. Such items can be grist for the results mill. Identify the problem in the item then have the solution be a tool that gets results.
Guaranteed you will get results. After all, you are eliminating a negative aspect of your leadership and replacing it with a results-producing one. When you make this a long term endeavor — going from item to item — results will come to you in new and often unexpected ways.
Week 4: Generate a ground swell.
Encourage the people you lead to themselves question the rewards aspects of their own leadership. Be aware of their reactions to your encouragement. Do they see the questioning as meaningful to their jobs? Do they want their colleagues involved in such questioning? Do they want to have senior management question their own leadership?
If people want the questioning to be a regular part of their daily work, continue it. If they feel it has little value, call a time out. After all, if people believe they are powerless to change things in the organization, seismic questions like this will only frustrate and anger them, creating a hot house environment for cynicism to flower.
As you go forward:
(1) Cultivate among the people a common, self-reinforcing fervor for the questioning. Don’t force things. Be an observer and a supporter. Observe their reactions to the questioning and support their efforts to make it succeed. If you see that increases in results are not occurring, go to tip #4.
(2) Encourage the development of networks of people taking the initiative to engage in the questioning together.
(3) Now and then, and especially in the beginning, set aside special times and places to have them focus exclusively on such questioning, making sure they continually link the answers to getting increases in results.
(4) Keep that linkage alive. This is not an academic exercise. It’s not meant to simply have people feel good or, on the other hand, vent their frustrations. It’s sole objective is to get MEASURABLE INCREASES IN RESULTS. If results are not forthcoming, have people refocus on the need for the questioning; and if you still are not receiving results, curtail or even eliminate it for awhile. You can always reactivate it when the time and the environment are more conducive to having it succeed.
(5) Avoid having the process deteriorate into name calling and finger pointing. The idea is not to use the questioning to get the goods on people or as a platform for emotional outbursts against the organization but instead for what it is meant to be, a powerful tool to get more results continually.
Mind you, people shouldn’t be spending inordinate amounts of time on the questioning or that it should be seen as a major, discrete effort, like an operations or marketing program. Just the opposite: It should be a natural part of everybody’s leadership activities. Constantly asking, Are we rewarding the right things? should eventually come as second nature.
SECTION 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
THE GOOD: With the disasters of the Franco-Prussia War tumbling down upon Paris, a remarkable event took place, the word of which spread like wildfire through the city. The great author Victor Hugo had come to Paris. Traveling through German lines, through the war-ravaged countryside, he had come into the city on virtually the last train. He had come to share the sufferings with the Parisians in their darkest hour when his arriving meant virtual imprisonment in the city. Throngs gathered at the station to applaud him. One man shouted over the crowd, “If defeat brings us Victor Hugo, we couldn’t be better rewarded!”
Often, the best reward you can give the people you lead is to share their tribulations.
THE BAD: Leadership lessons come in many guises. Famous editor, Clifton Fadiman, visited his son’s kindergarten and saw the teacher enthusiastically leading the children around the room clapping their hands in time to music from a phonograph. Afterwards, Fadiman asked his out-of-breath son, “You must be having lots of fun!”
“No,” he said and pointed to his teacher. “But she is!”
If you are having fun and they aren’t, something’s wrong with your leadership.
THE UGLY: After the Persian defeat at the battle of Salamis, the Persian king, Xerxes, boarded a Phoenician ship and sailed for home. On the way, the ship was struck by a gale. Xerxes asked the captain if they were going to perish. “We must lighten the load,” said the captain. Xerxes addressed his retinue. “Volunteers must sacrifice themselves to save the king.” A number of men made obeisance to him and jumped overboard. Lightened, the ship safely reached the harbor. When Xerxes was safely on land, he rewarded the captain by having the man’s head cut off. “He who caused the deaths of so many Persians doesn’t deserve to live!” the potentate said.
Rewards must fit the needs of the receiver not the giver.
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SECTION 3: Guest Column. ===========================================================================
In the 31 years that I have managed our company, we have never once given a traditional reward, such as a plaque, a trophy, or certificate. Our philosophy is that we make rewarding people a process, not simply a product. We have a relatively stable, unionized workforce that spans several generations. We know that if we had given out trophies or plaques in our plants, the same people would be garnering them year in and year out, and those left out would get dispirited.
Here’s the way we do our rewards: We ingrain it in our leadership culture. We have every one from supervisors and middle managers to senior leaders looking for opportunities to give deserving workers a sense they are appreciated. After all, people not only get paid for the work they do, they also want to be appreciated for it.
For instance:
-- A customer thanks us for getting a rush job out - a copy of the letter with a note of thanks to the department or team responsible goes up on the company bulletin board mentioning that the employees help getting the job out is what keeps us going.
-- Someone agrees to give up personal plans to work overtime at the last minute - one of the execs will walk out, get the foreman and go thank the employee for the effort and explains how the employee's effort directly links to the customer and the company's survival and growth.
-- Someone catches a mistake, as often as not caused by a customer and gets it corrected. - One of the execs will compliment the employee in front of peers, informally during the lunch break and say thanks.
-- Someone does a particularly outstanding job over a period of time, a letter might be sent to their home - this gets the family involved.
-- A new employee, if known to a current employee, starts out well (or poorly) the senior employee is told about it, which seems to bring outside peer pressure to bear.
We make sure that such appreciation is forthcoming from the network of people surrounding an individual. This philosophy of ours – rewarding through leadership and on-going process – takes more awareness and hard work but is much more effective in terms of keeping our workforce motivated than simply now and then handing out traditional rewards.
–Carl Johnson, Executive Vice President, Boyd Printing Company, cjohnson@boydprinting.com
SECTION 4: Points of Light
“The cheapest reward is what is bought.” Portuguese proverb
“The most enduring rewards of leadership come not from balance books but from human relationships.” –Brent Filson
“People that pay for things never complain. It’s the guy you give something to that you can’t please.” --Will Rogers
“The rewards of being remembered are sweet, but it’s often cheaper to be forgotten.” --Kin Hubbard
“But what use is it?” asked the British king of Michael Faraday when the scientist displayed the first apparatus that could produce electricity. Faraday replied, “Your majesty, you can tax it!”
Before setting off to conquer Persia, Alexander rewarded his soldiers’ families with all his wealth. When asked what he left for himself, he said, “Hope.” One of his generals replied, “In that case, we who share in your labors will participate in your hope.” He turned down his share as did a number of other generals.
“The best reward is a process.” -- Brent Filson
“A Naval officer fell overboard. He was rescued by a deck hand. The officer asked how he could reward him. “The best way, sir”, said the deck hand, “is to say nothing about it. If the other fellows knew I pulled an officer out, they’d chuck me in!”
SECTION 5: News
Brent Filson’s ActionPlan leadership sessions at the Princeton Club: September 24, October 29, November 21, December 17.
Brent’s latest book, The Leadership Talk: Motivating People To Get More Results Faster, has just been printed. It is due for publication in the spring of ‘04. Prepublication copies are available now for bulk purchase.
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