One of the challenges associated with tone setting is the need to be consistent and apply tone setting fairly and equitably. It is painfully easy to be upbeat, build relationships and greet those team members that have always been nice to us. For the team members that have been supportive, complimentary in 360 degree reviews and volunteer for more work, tone setting is a walk in the park. Just like talking with treasured friends and family.
Where many leaders find challenge is to provide the same amount of tone setting behaviors and skills to those team members that may be or may have been a little problematic. Those team members that question, challenge or irritate are a tough crowd and it is easy to justify why you would not tone set with them. After all, they are a bitter and nasty bunch.
Another challenge to consistency are the team members that rebuff tone setting. The ones that do not open up when trying to build a relationship or the ones that may even tell you “it is none of your business.” In reality, it is these two populations that need your tone setting more than any other. These people are screaming to be engaged by the leader. Here, your resilience will play a big part in continuing to reach out and try to build rapport.
Think about the impact of your eyes for a moment. Too frequently our eyes point out what is different about others and not what we may have in common. Look at the common little pockets of team members in a parking lot or break room and you will see that groups often form around age, gender or ethnicity. The effective leader has to ignore the messages of the eyes and reach out to all populations, regardless of difficulties, and build an excellent tone base with each of them.
Showing posts with label tone setting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tone setting. Show all posts
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Monday Mentor-Week 19-The Mechanics of Tone Setting
Good tone setting requires a couple of basic behaviors and skills that are applied on a consistent basis. Some leaders utilize these skills on almost a naturalized level, while others must embrace the skills on a more mechanical level.
The first step of good tone setting is the initial greeting of team members. For most environments that is the “good morning” at the start of the work day. To pull this off correctly, the greeting must sound sincere, upbeat and not, on any level, forced. The great tone setters will also include some relational dialog about family, interests or just the drive to work.
One epiphany moment exists in the initial greeting of team members. Leaders have a significant choice at the start of each day. On one side they have their office or cubicle where all of their work lives. New email, yellow sticky notes, files and stuff. On the other side is the team. You know, the people who do the work so you can be the leader.
When a leader chooses to take a few minutes and go to the office prior to greeting team members, they are telling the team that, at best, they are secondary in importance. Don’t be naïve. Your team notices that choice.
Another great tone setting skill is to demonstrate interest in team members. One of the many tests that we often administer in leadership training is to quiz the depth of knowledge about team members. Most leaders can recite the family composition of team members. Some leaders can talk about the interests, passion points and motivations of team members and a few can provide insight into location of origin, pets or other details.
A leader’s ability to show interest is a powerful tool. When you are able to follow-up on a sick spouse, inquire about the results of a soccer tournament or check on vacation plans, team members feel connected, respected and valued. Those are the team members that will work harder, faster and stay with you longer.
Another weapon in successful tone setting is the ability to laugh and lighten the mood. We always do serious work but often take ourselves too seriously. When the leader laughs, especially when times are challenging and tough, the team will respond in a very positive manner. Tense people do not work well and are not very productive and that message of tense is set by the leader.
The first step of good tone setting is the initial greeting of team members. For most environments that is the “good morning” at the start of the work day. To pull this off correctly, the greeting must sound sincere, upbeat and not, on any level, forced. The great tone setters will also include some relational dialog about family, interests or just the drive to work.
One epiphany moment exists in the initial greeting of team members. Leaders have a significant choice at the start of each day. On one side they have their office or cubicle where all of their work lives. New email, yellow sticky notes, files and stuff. On the other side is the team. You know, the people who do the work so you can be the leader.
When a leader chooses to take a few minutes and go to the office prior to greeting team members, they are telling the team that, at best, they are secondary in importance. Don’t be naïve. Your team notices that choice.
Another great tone setting skill is to demonstrate interest in team members. One of the many tests that we often administer in leadership training is to quiz the depth of knowledge about team members. Most leaders can recite the family composition of team members. Some leaders can talk about the interests, passion points and motivations of team members and a few can provide insight into location of origin, pets or other details.
A leader’s ability to show interest is a powerful tool. When you are able to follow-up on a sick spouse, inquire about the results of a soccer tournament or check on vacation plans, team members feel connected, respected and valued. Those are the team members that will work harder, faster and stay with you longer.
Another weapon in successful tone setting is the ability to laugh and lighten the mood. We always do serious work but often take ourselves too seriously. When the leader laughs, especially when times are challenging and tough, the team will respond in a very positive manner. Tense people do not work well and are not very productive and that message of tense is set by the leader.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Monday Mentor-Week 8-Open, Available and Visible
The tone setting competencies of openness, availability and visibility incorporate communication tone, situational responses, timing and physical environment.
Openness describes your approachability as a leader. Are you open to questions, comments and ideas in a one to one environment? Are you dismissive or are you accommodating? Openness is also one of the core service qualities associated with effective leaders. Leaders with a genuine heart for service and care for their team will often be more open and approachable.
The first step in achieving openness is to carefully manage your response to requests for your time. This is much more about your tone you choose rather than the words you use. When interrupted, you need to insure that you do not sound hurried or aggravated. Although the interruption is not the most important thing going on with you, it is the most important thing going on with your team member. Be polite, appreciative of their time and control the urge to hustle them through a response. The hurried or huffing response is a complete openness killer.
Another dynamic of openness is the response to ideas and suggestions. It is extremely important not to be dismissive of any idea, no matter how unrealistic it might be to implement. Thank people for their idea, commit to think about it and encourage them to keep thinking and coming up with ideas. One surefire way to keep ideas from coming to you is to dismiss one in a patronizing manner. One more idea flow killer is to constantly reply in a justifying manner that includes responses that you are aware of it and that you are already working on it. That sends the message that you are all seeing, all knowing and on top of everything and there is no need to share future ideas or suggestions with you.
As a competency, availability is much more physical and logistical than it is attitudinal. Beginning with the work environment, availability is greatly hindered when your desk or workspace is setup in a way that puts your back towards people. Many of your team member will pass by and dismiss any interaction with you because you look busy. With you facing forward, many more people will stop and interact. The long term value of this is the flow of direct and accurate information to you will be much greater and your ability to evaluate the culture and tone for the environment will be much more accurate.
Availability is also about your approachability in informal settings. If you are only seen with a phone in your ear or responding to email on your PDA, your availability is hurt. Another behavior to avoid is the walking in packs syndrome that many manager types embrace. They stroll down the hall in a group of other managers. This will absolutely condemn any approachability from your team. Some of the best interactions and information gathering that you will achieve will be during hallway walks, break periods and other informal settings and you must insure that you appear available during those times.
Some people will misinterpret availability as an opportunity to micromanage. Being available and approachable is not your chance to tell people what to do as much as it is your chance to interact and aid them in finding the correct answers themselves. In another leadership commandment we talk about breeding and not breeding sheep. This will be an important tool set to remember when you improve your availability.
Michael Eisner, the former chairman of the Disney corporation, may have pioneered the programmed and systemic approach to visibility. He calendared a block of time each day to interact with a different area of his company. In some cases, he used more than an hour in this “management by wandering” style. The reason that he performed this ritual was to make sure he was connected to almost all team members in his organization, insure the culture that he visualized was being lived and to improve the accurate flow of information he needed to run the company. His visibility also demonstrated that he was connected to the line level of the operation and that he was in tune with the needs and challenges facing his team members.
No supervisor, manager or executive can lead their area via email or through a spreadsheet. You cannot hide in your office and expect your vision to be realized. You must be the highly visible symbol of everything that you want from your team. They must see you, see your caring and see your engagement for them to be engaged and caring. Over the years we have seen some very stark, and sometimes painful, examples of the difference between the impact of good visible leadership and those environments that only see the leader when something is wrong.
A cautionary note about visibility must be made about the difference between visibility and an inspection tour. Some leaders use the impetus of visibility to note and point out things that are wrong. There are plenty of chances and opportunities for inspections and quality control. When you are working on visibility, you are building relationships, setting the tone, getting to know your team and demonstrating support. After you launch down the path of an inspection tour, you will be amazed at how quickly people will hide from you on future tries to be visible.
From a programmed and systemic perspective, the best way to insure that your visibility remains high is to plan and calendar the activity. No different from any other appointment or calendar entry. Prioritized with the same urgency that you would give any other activity. Some managers, supervisors and leaders will struggle with visibility activities because they do not see it as a productive action. Remember, as a leader, your role is to insure the productivity of others and visibility is an ingredient to their production.
The Great Tone Setting Penalty
As many of you have already figured out, the most difficult challenge associated with all of the tone setting actions is being consistent. Being upbeat every day. Being optimistic, visible and approachable every day. Greeting team members every day. Showing interest, listening and being open every day.
This also leads us to one of the most significant penalties associated with leadership. You don’t get the luxury of having a bad day. We allow our team members to have bad days. We even compromise performance expectations when someone is struggling at home. You don’t get that. Not that you are immune to problems or even feeling ill, you just don’t get to share it with others or intimate you are struggling.
Many leader types come to work no matter what is going on at home or how poorly they feel. One of the most underutilized tools available to a leader is sick time. Compare for a moment the damage you cause by setting a poor tone compared with taking a single sick day to get yourself well. Contrast the poor morale you create when you could take a personal day to get your act together. Stop dragging yourself to work when the long term impact could be significantly bad.
Openness describes your approachability as a leader. Are you open to questions, comments and ideas in a one to one environment? Are you dismissive or are you accommodating? Openness is also one of the core service qualities associated with effective leaders. Leaders with a genuine heart for service and care for their team will often be more open and approachable.
The first step in achieving openness is to carefully manage your response to requests for your time. This is much more about your tone you choose rather than the words you use. When interrupted, you need to insure that you do not sound hurried or aggravated. Although the interruption is not the most important thing going on with you, it is the most important thing going on with your team member. Be polite, appreciative of their time and control the urge to hustle them through a response. The hurried or huffing response is a complete openness killer.
Another dynamic of openness is the response to ideas and suggestions. It is extremely important not to be dismissive of any idea, no matter how unrealistic it might be to implement. Thank people for their idea, commit to think about it and encourage them to keep thinking and coming up with ideas. One surefire way to keep ideas from coming to you is to dismiss one in a patronizing manner. One more idea flow killer is to constantly reply in a justifying manner that includes responses that you are aware of it and that you are already working on it. That sends the message that you are all seeing, all knowing and on top of everything and there is no need to share future ideas or suggestions with you.
As a competency, availability is much more physical and logistical than it is attitudinal. Beginning with the work environment, availability is greatly hindered when your desk or workspace is setup in a way that puts your back towards people. Many of your team member will pass by and dismiss any interaction with you because you look busy. With you facing forward, many more people will stop and interact. The long term value of this is the flow of direct and accurate information to you will be much greater and your ability to evaluate the culture and tone for the environment will be much more accurate.
Availability is also about your approachability in informal settings. If you are only seen with a phone in your ear or responding to email on your PDA, your availability is hurt. Another behavior to avoid is the walking in packs syndrome that many manager types embrace. They stroll down the hall in a group of other managers. This will absolutely condemn any approachability from your team. Some of the best interactions and information gathering that you will achieve will be during hallway walks, break periods and other informal settings and you must insure that you appear available during those times.
Some people will misinterpret availability as an opportunity to micromanage. Being available and approachable is not your chance to tell people what to do as much as it is your chance to interact and aid them in finding the correct answers themselves. In another leadership commandment we talk about breeding and not breeding sheep. This will be an important tool set to remember when you improve your availability.
Michael Eisner, the former chairman of the Disney corporation, may have pioneered the programmed and systemic approach to visibility. He calendared a block of time each day to interact with a different area of his company. In some cases, he used more than an hour in this “management by wandering” style. The reason that he performed this ritual was to make sure he was connected to almost all team members in his organization, insure the culture that he visualized was being lived and to improve the accurate flow of information he needed to run the company. His visibility also demonstrated that he was connected to the line level of the operation and that he was in tune with the needs and challenges facing his team members.
No supervisor, manager or executive can lead their area via email or through a spreadsheet. You cannot hide in your office and expect your vision to be realized. You must be the highly visible symbol of everything that you want from your team. They must see you, see your caring and see your engagement for them to be engaged and caring. Over the years we have seen some very stark, and sometimes painful, examples of the difference between the impact of good visible leadership and those environments that only see the leader when something is wrong.
A cautionary note about visibility must be made about the difference between visibility and an inspection tour. Some leaders use the impetus of visibility to note and point out things that are wrong. There are plenty of chances and opportunities for inspections and quality control. When you are working on visibility, you are building relationships, setting the tone, getting to know your team and demonstrating support. After you launch down the path of an inspection tour, you will be amazed at how quickly people will hide from you on future tries to be visible.
From a programmed and systemic perspective, the best way to insure that your visibility remains high is to plan and calendar the activity. No different from any other appointment or calendar entry. Prioritized with the same urgency that you would give any other activity. Some managers, supervisors and leaders will struggle with visibility activities because they do not see it as a productive action. Remember, as a leader, your role is to insure the productivity of others and visibility is an ingredient to their production.
The Great Tone Setting Penalty
As many of you have already figured out, the most difficult challenge associated with all of the tone setting actions is being consistent. Being upbeat every day. Being optimistic, visible and approachable every day. Greeting team members every day. Showing interest, listening and being open every day.
This also leads us to one of the most significant penalties associated with leadership. You don’t get the luxury of having a bad day. We allow our team members to have bad days. We even compromise performance expectations when someone is struggling at home. You don’t get that. Not that you are immune to problems or even feeling ill, you just don’t get to share it with others or intimate you are struggling.
Many leader types come to work no matter what is going on at home or how poorly they feel. One of the most underutilized tools available to a leader is sick time. Compare for a moment the damage you cause by setting a poor tone compared with taking a single sick day to get yourself well. Contrast the poor morale you create when you could take a personal day to get your act together. Stop dragging yourself to work when the long term impact could be significantly bad.
Monday, October 12, 2009
From Business Week: The No-Cost Way to Motivate
Again, some familiar sounding stuff to the people who have attending our Tone Setting, Coaching and EQ 2 programs.
A manager's genuine interest in employees' lives pays off at every level, in every job
By Patrick Lencioni
"Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live." Those were the words of Quintus Arrius in the movie Ben-Hur. And while he was speaking to Roman slaves, one can almost imagine a modern version coming from a manager today. "O.K., people, you all know that unemployment is at a 50-year high. You're lucky to have jobs. So work hard, and no more complaining."
Lost amid the justifiable concern about the 9.7% of U.S. workers who are unemployed is the well-being of the other 90.3%, many of whom are miserable. They feel they're out of options and that management has little incentive to make their work lives more meaningful.
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_40/b4149084766472.htm
A manager's genuine interest in employees' lives pays off at every level, in every job
By Patrick Lencioni
"Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live." Those were the words of Quintus Arrius in the movie Ben-Hur. And while he was speaking to Roman slaves, one can almost imagine a modern version coming from a manager today. "O.K., people, you all know that unemployment is at a 50-year high. You're lucky to have jobs. So work hard, and no more complaining."
Lost amid the justifiable concern about the 9.7% of U.S. workers who are unemployed is the well-being of the other 90.3%, many of whom are miserable. They feel they're out of options and that management has little incentive to make their work lives more meaningful.
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_40/b4149084766472.htm
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