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Accountability, a threat or promise?

4/22/2015

15 Comments

 
Picture
by Michael Kline
as published in Conway Daily Sun

Imagine you are sitting in a meeting at work. The manager leading the meeting announces, “we are going to be holding you accountable for results on this project.”  What response do you feel in your gut? You might think this is great - finally, the lazy bums I’ve been carrying will be doing their fair share. More likely, you might feel that the entire team is being threatened – as usual, management will be looking for someone to blame if their plan doesn’t work. If you work in a culture of high trust, you might feel reassured. Your team makes and keeps promises to one another and this project will be no different. You can count on others to support you and they will be counting on you.


What does accountability mean anyway?  When we first learned about accountability as a child, it was probably through one of three ways, religion, parenting or teams/society.  Your lessons in accountability might have been threatening - as in when you die, you will be held accountable for your sins. You better not screw up, or your will pay for every mistake or bad decision you ever make. Further, you will pay the ultimate and highest price imaginable. Perhaps your parents had a system of carrots and sticks such as an allowance and privileges associated with the completion of chores and homework, and punishment associated with a failure to perform as expected.  Beyond religion and parents, society teaches us what is expected and how we will be held accountable for achieving or not achieving what is expected.  That society could have been made up of scenes on the playground, classrooms or sports teams. The closest I ever got to sports, was that time I was “sporting” a bad haircut. I learned that, as a child, if you have bad hair, your peers held you accountable for “less than expected” performance. Unfortunately, that playground standard is still the norm for many people, and we all have bad hair days.

I was a band geek, so on a more positive note (pun certainly intended), I learned about teamwork and accountability by only being able to achieve my goal by working with up to 200 other people in perfect harmony (pun certainly intended), to produce the desired outcome. There was an implied and voluntary promise to practice, learn our parts, listen to one another, play in the background when that was your job, and to step up and perform brightly in a solo when that was your job. Every mistake made in practice brought encouragement from the “team” who could not succeed without my success. Every mistake was letting my friends down and drove me to work harder for the goal.

This was different from any other experience in my young life because it was voluntary. I chose to be in band. When we do not care about the goal or the team, there are not enough carrots and sticks in the world to make us better.

Accountability works best when it is a voluntary, two-way promise, made between parties with a high level of trust, to produce win/win results that matter to everyone involved. When employees have no input in the plan, when they are told what to believe in and how to produce the results, when teammates are negative and uncaring, it is impossible to carrot and stick them into being accountable for your success. A culture of mediocrity will not produce more than mediocre results. Results will only change when the culture changes.

To be accountable is to be trustworthy. Like all virtues, this begins with our self. Without it, we will not be comfortable being held accountable and we will not honestly and effectively hold others accountable. If we break our promise to get up early, exercise, eat right, be patient with our kids and clean the garage, we no longer trust ourselves. We do not like or feel good about people we do not trust. If this resonates with you, do not beat yourself up. I teach a number of methods to turn this around easily and quickly. You are a good person who is doing good things. Most of us just need a tweak now and then to get back on the right track.

Involve your team, keep your promises and be strong enough to value feedback. Engage your team by actually wanting and valuing their input. Keep promises by making sure you keep promises to yourself. Solicit and value feedback – after all, if you are screwing up and no one says anything, it means they have given up on you. Only speak what you truly believe and do what you say. Most of us think we already follow this, but others might misunderstand our actions and not believe we walk the talk. In teams, others’ perceptions are critical if accountability is to be a promise, not a threat.


15 Comments

Appreciating Employees

4/8/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
By Michael Kline
as published in Conway Daily Sun


Before you look for ideas on how to show your appreciation to employees, it is easier if you actually feel some appreciaton for them in the first place. Where do you fall on the appreciation spectrum? 

At opposing ends of the spectrum, one employer (who may sound shocking to some) says “Employees are paid to do a job; they cost wages, benefits and taxes, plus recruiting and training is expensive. Now they want a bonus for doing what they were hired and paid to do in the first place. There is no loyalty so they’ll leave the minute they get a better offer anyway.  Most employees only do what is required of them, and only care about their paycheck.”

At the other end of the spectrum, an employer (who may sound shocking to some), says “I could not live without my staff. We would have nothing if not for them. Most of the best ideas come from my people, my customers love them and they come up with solutions to problems before I even know we had a problem, they create new ideas to make our work more fun, and they’re always inventing some new and better way of doing things. I owe my career and financial results to my team!”

If you find yourself wishing you lived at the positive end of that spectrum, but it seems unrealistic, you should know that such work places do exist. In fact, they are more common than you might think. If you’ve never seen such a workplace, it may seem impossible to achieve. I invite you to expose yourself to more positivity – read books like Theory U (okay, that’s a giant book that never ends, but I would give you credit if you just skimmed a few chapters). Read Conscious Capitalism and/or Firms of Endearment.  The companies featured in Firms of Endearment are the highest super-achieving companies in the world, yet what they do and how they do it is startlingly simple. The culture described above is in fact, possible as soon as the leadership believes it is possible. Once their minimum financial needs are met, most staff values appreciation more than money and benefits.

To increase your appreciation of staff, start by appreciating your staff.  That’s right, appreciate is a verb – it is something you do, so just do it. I have a few gratitude buddies. Each morning, I text this small group a short statement of something I am grateful for.  There are 4 of us in the group, so if I forget one morning, I will get a text or two from my buddies to remind me. I admit, some days it can be difficult to feel grateful, even though intellectually I can name 100 little things for which I could be grateful, I may just not be feeling it. Bringing this to my attention is powerful. I force myself to state something, anything.  You could do this at work each morning and make it about something or someone at work that you are grateful for that day.  You may be surprised at how powerful this exercise is when you do it every day. If you’re at that point, you could encourage your entire staff to participate in something similar.

If you are not normally one who expresses your appreciation, you may be seen as insincere when you start making awkward and manipulative sounding statements. Just smacking someone on the back and saying “good job” might backfire and build resentment. I suggest you be honest and make yourself a little vulnerable. Simply start by admitting that you have become aware that you don’t express your appreciation well and you would like to get better at that. Tell them up front that you are trying to get better and that you value their contribution. If you are a step-by-step person, try building up to the thank you in 3 simple steps – use their name, tell them what you appreciate them for, how it helped, and then end by saying thank you.  For example “Alice, I appreciate your help with the newsletter. Thanks to you, we got two new customers this week who responded to your idea you put in the newsletter and it already brought in X dollars. Good job. Thank you!”  Now, would that be so hard?  - Remember – use their name, what they did, how it helped and thank you!

Anyone can do this, you don’t have to wait for your boss to lead the way. In fact, the boss might get more comfortable after she sees you modeling it! Anyone can follow this technique with any co-worker, boss, supplier or customer.  Think about it, on days when you went home feeling under-appreciated, would it have helped if anyone at all had shown some appreciation to you? Of course it would!  So you can do the same for anyone you meet. Try it on the cashier at the grocery store. Try it on your spouse or children. As the saying goes, become the change you want to see in the world.

I appreciate you. I am grateful to my readers who email me and share my columns via Facebook or email. This helps spread positivity and productivity to others and when you send me messages it encourages me to write more and lets me know my work has value. That makes it much easier for me to do what I do every day. Thank you!

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The Cycle of Completion: Making Way for Success

4/2/2015

1 Comment

 
As a Jack Canfield Certified Trainer, I am always happy to share Jack's blog posts - learn how I can bring the wisdom of The Success Principles to your group or company culture! https://www.klineseminars.com/the-success-principles.html 

April 1, 2015
by Jack Canfield 
Do you live in a state of mental and physical clutter? Do you have a bunch of unfinished business lurking around every corner?

Incomplete projects, unfinished business, and piles of cluttered messes can weigh you down and take away from the energy you have to move forward toward your goals.

When you don't complete tasks, you can't be fully prepared to move into the present, let alone your new future.

When your brain is keeping track of all the unfinished business you still have at hand, you simply can't be effective in embracing new tasks that are in line with your vision.

Old incompletes can show up in your life in lots of different ways...  like not having clarity, procrastination, emotional energy blocks and even illness. Blocked energy is wasted, and a build up of that energy can really leave you stymied.

Throw-out all the clutter and FEEL how much easier it is to think!

Make a list of areas in your life (both personal and professional) where you have incompletes and messes, then develop a plan to deal with them once and for all. Fix and organize the things that annoy you.

Take your final steps in bringing closure to outstanding projects.

Make that difficult phone call. Delegate time-wasting tasks that you've let build up.
Some incompletions come from simply not having adequate systems, knowledge, or expertise for handling these tasks. Other incompletions pile up because of bad work habits.

Get into completion consciousness by continually asking yourself...What does it take to actually get this task completed?

Only then can you begin to consciously take that next step of filing completed documents, mailing in the forms required, or reporting back to your boss that the project has been completed.

The truth is that 20 things completed have more power than 50 things that are half-way completed.

Finishing writing a book, for instance, that can go out and influence the world is better than 13 books you’re in the process of writing.

When you free yourself from the mental burden of incompletes and messes, you'll be AMAZED at how quickly the things you do want in life arrive.

Another area where you'll find incompletes in your life is in your emotions. Are you holding on to old hurts, resentments, and pain? Just like the physical clutter and incompletes, your energy is being drained by holding on to and reliving past pain and anger.

Remember, you'll attract whatever feelings you're experiencing. So, if you're stuck in revengeful thinking and angered in muck, you can't possibly be directing energy toward a positive future. You need to let go of the past in order to embrace the future. Letting go involves forgiveness and moving on.

By forgiving you aren't releasing the other person from their transgression as much as you're freeing yourself from their transgression. You don't have to condone their behavior, trust them, or even maintain a relationship with them. However, you DO have to free yourself from the anger, from the pain, and from the resentment once and for all!

When learning to forgive, make sure to complete the cycle.

Acknowledge your anger, your pain, and your fear. But also own up to any part you've played in allowing it to happen or continue. Make sure to express whatever it was that you wanted from that person, and then see the whole event from the other's point of view. Allow yourself to wonder what that person was going through and what kind of needs he/she was trying to fulfill at the time.

Finally, let go and move on. Every time you go through this process you're learning how to avoid letting it happen again!

 Jack Canfield, America's #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul® and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

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    Michael Kline

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