• Get your group together and explain the cost of negativity and complaining; in other words, raise awareness of your complaint culture.
• Discuss the difference between mindless and mindful complaining; mindless complaining focuses on problems, whereas justified complaining focuses on solutions.
• Make sure that everyone understands how your organization will consider and address complaints and turn problems into solutions.
• Listen to complaints and solutions and give all of them their air time.  Not all solutions will be used, but let your team know that they will be heard and considered.
• Celebrate successes of people who turned their complaints into solutions and innovations that benefited the organization.  Don’t wait for the annual meeting!  Do this continually through email, web site postings, conference calls and meetings.

Make creating a positive culture a priority amongst managers and leaders in your organization. You will find that the energy previously being spent on complaining will now be freed up for creating solutions and (ultimately), increasing productivity!

–Stephen R. Covey

Are you a Producer? If you are a producer who can delegate effectively, then your accomplishments far exceed your efforts, because those you foster will also be producers for you, exponentially increasing your output.

Most managers may think this obvious; of course you have been delegating tasks for years.  However, let’s focus on effective delegation that focuses on results instead of methods.  This kind of delegation allows people to choose the method of accomplishing the task you have delegated to them, and makes them responsible for the results.

By developing mutual understanding in the following areas, you will be able to foster stewardship delegation versus task delegation:

Desired Results—Start by creating a mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished.  Be clear, and focus on what needs to be accomplished, versus how it is going to happen.

Guidelines—Identify parameters and possible pitfalls; are there mistakes you have made that you can share?  Are there resources that are off limits in this situation?  Share these with your subordinate, so he or she doesn’t waste time and energy going down a “failure” path.

Resources—Identify the human, technical, financial or organizational resources that are available.

Accountability—What are the standards of performance?  Don’t leave the set-up meeting without conveying a performance expectation.

Fostering trust will bring out the best in your staff.  Stewardship Delegation, as it is called by Stephen Covey, in his landmark classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, will ultimately result in much more work getting done.  It naturally combats Gofer Delegation that requires management of methods as well as results.  Follow the Action Steps to get started on fostering stewardship delegation!

There is never a better time than right now for planning to do things differently. Take charge of yourself and your business by choosing a direction that allows you to meet both your personal and business goals, and still retain your sanity!

There are many methods and models for fostering a cohesive, effective team. Any of them could work well in your organization. Perhaps you have tried a few theories and have come up with some of your own “teamwork best practices” that are particularly helpful for you and your team members.

Regardless of the steps you use to facilitate a successful team, one trait that crosses all teamwork methods is employee involvement. If you can effectively include the team at each step of the way, you will retain employees and foster an environment that motivates participants to contribute and invest in the cause.

The how of involving team members is often the most challenging part of the process; once you get them involved, you will be on your way. Successful employee involvement comes from following a continuum that leads to decreased influence by you, the leader, and increased influence and decision- making power by the team members.

First, communicate and sell your idea. The supervisor makes the decision and announces it to staff, providing complete direction. Gain commitment from team members by “selling” the positive aspects of the plan.

Now, confer, invite others to join and delegate. Even though the leader retains authority to make the final decision, she still invites input. Let employees know that their input is needed but final authority still rests with the manager. Follow this up by inviting team members to make the decision with the supervisor. At this stage, the supervisor considers his voice equal in the decision process.

At this point, the supervisor turns the decision over to the team. Successful delegation has a built in feedback loop and concrete timeline. Voila! Now watch your team take off.

Of course, coaching is much more complicated than it seems.  I refer the reader to a Harvard Business Review article titled: The Very Real Dangers of Executive Coaching.    The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that without any consideration and discussion with our coaching clients throughout the coaching engagement about ethics and the impact of how executives’ decisions and actions effect the greater society, executive coaches are simply performance coaches, which is another way of saying, glorified auto mechanics: tune em up so that they can race around the track as fast as they can.  I don’t believe that executive coaches should be solely interested in helping executives emulate professional racecar drivers or athletes; rather, executive coaches should help executives become exemplary leaders and corporate citizens who achieve great results.  Both are possible, ( read, The Ethical CEO http://tinyurl.com/2df6z86 ).

I don’t intend for this piece to be a diatribe about the state of executive coaching, but more of a challenge to those of us who are privileged to work with people who can influence the course of history.   Imagine what our lives might be like if some of the executives involved in the world of high finance thought more deeply about what they were doing and then acted differently.  Perhaps, they might not have created and promoted questionable investment vehicles that helped us tumble into the “great recession.”

Can executive coaches influence the choices that executives make?  Absolutely.  All we have to do is ask,  “How will this decision impact the lives of the people you employ, your customers, or the greater community?  That can be a very powerful, albeit uncomfortable question to ask.  The executive may not want to hear it.  Worse case scenario, you’re fired from the coaching assignment.  However, it’s been my experience that most executives want to do the right thing, but they get so caught up achieving goals that they don’t stop to consider the impact.  They welcome someone they trust nudging them a bit.   However, if they run a publicly traded company, the pressures of Wall Street expectations are ever present.  Bottom line results are what investors want to see.  If you can achieve great results while being a good corporate citizen, terrific!  But, without great financial results, all other bets are off and you’ll be out the door as an executive.  Therefore, it takes great courage and fortitude for an executive to take the highroad, or as I coined in the Ethical CEO article, to be equally concerned about ROR (Return on Respect) as you are about ROI.

So how can you become an adaptive leader in your organization, and still stay on purpose?

Adaptive leaders understand that:

-Change happens incrementally.
-Learning can be painful, so anticipate and counteract reluctance.
-Continuously connect change to core values of the organization.

What else can you do to embrace adaptive leadership?

Give key people responsibilities to junior leadership that rest right at the edge of their ability level and experience set. Your role is to take one thing off your own plate, and instead accomplish the same task by coaching a junior leader through it.  This may sound like it takes more energy than doing it yourself, but the more comfortable you are with the process, you’ll realize that you accomplish two goals; getting a job completed and fostering new leadership in the organization.

Consistently assess the processes and relationships that are not in line with the core values of the organization and be willing to let them go.  Consider this an organizational “don’t do” list.  Are there processes that aren’t working anymore?  Employees that make you wish you weren’t a boss?  Imagine how your focus could shift when these items, relationships or perceived priorities drop off your list.

Start following adaptive leadership truths and key behaviors to find a new focus in your leadership.

Sometimes the sway of influence is all a situation needs, in order to break it loose from stagnation or deadlock. Make sure the strength of influence is working for you.

Do your employees enjoy working for your organization?  If they do, they are in a narrow majority. According to a survey of 5,000 households by the Conference Board research group, only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work–the lowest number ever recorded by the organization in its 22 years of studying the issue. What is causing such discontent? There is a variety pack of reasons, all related to the ever-present remnants of our recent economic upheaval: incomes have not been keeping up with inflation, health insurance is cutting into take-home pay, and many people are concerned about job security.

According to John Gibbons, program director at the Conference Board, “Challenging and meaningful work is vitally important to engaging American workers. Widespread job dissatisfaction negatively affects employee behavior and retention, which can impact enterprise-level success.” In fact, 22 percent of respondents said they don’t expect to be in their current job in a year!

Organizations feel the affects of these attitudes in worker productivity, workplace atmosphere and eventually, the bottom line. It is a simple and well-known truism:

A positive work environment leads to positive interaction with clients, other organizations and customers, influencing the company’s profits and the employees’ ability to innovate.

So, how concerned should you be about your own employees’ satisfaction?  Now is a great time to look at what is happening within the walls of your organization–Don’t let your people, profits and innovation pay the price of employing dissatisfied workers.

Is your company a culture of innovation?  Commodity?  How about technical expertise or service?  Getting to the core of this culture will help you become effective in the organization, whether you just stepped in or you are a long-time employee.