Category: Leadership Skills

Ever feel a meeting start to drift? Not sure if your participants retained what was being said? Or, have you ever been unsure of how to (gracefully) transition to the next agenda topic?

That’s where checkpoints come in handy…

Use a checkpoint at the beginning of a new agenda item or facilitated process to review, preview and big view.

• Review – Review quickly what has been done to date.
• Preview – Describe briefly what the group is about to do.
• Big View – Explain how the previewed agenda item fits into the overall objective of the session.

Sample Agenda Purpose: Define the changes necessary to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the hiring process. Agenda: A. Getting Started B. How does the hiring process work today? C. What are the problems and root causes? D. What are the potential improvements? E. Prioritize the improvements F. Develop an implementation plan G. Review and close

Take a look at the agenda above. Suppose we were about to start the second agenda item, “How does the hiring process work today?” We might have a checkpoint such as the following.

Sample Checkpoint: We have just completed the getting started segment (review). Our next step is to identify how the hiring process works today (preview). This is important because if we can identify all the steps in the process, we can then examine where in the process the problems are occurring and then identify ways to make it a much better process (big view). The way we are going to do this is…

So… Why is a checkpoint necessary? The checkpoint serves to ensure that all participants are aware that a transition is taking place, and helps them understand how the process they are about to undertake relates to has been done and the overall session purpose.

________________________

Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

What do you see in your organization – people taking responsibility or pointing fingers at others? If it’s the latter, how do you stop the blame game and how do you start getting accountability?

The word accountability – employees doing what they are suppose to do – seems to stir up frustrations for many managers. I have seen how it’s been used by some to assign fault and mete out punishment. But I have also seen how it’s been used to propel an individual, a team or company to great success.

What is Accountability?
My simple definition of accountability is the person’s, as well as the team’s, responsibility for the outcome(s) of what they do. People look beyond their narrow job description and focus on results – the completed product or service- their work is contributing to. When people adopt a sense of accountability, they recognize that their participation can and will make a difference. They go the extra mile because they know what to do and they know how their job and their actions will drive results.

How Do You Create It?
So, as a manager, how do you lead so that personal accountability is accepted and embraced. Here are three steps to take to stop the blame game and start getting accountability.

• People Have to See it:
  Because reality frequently changes – what worked yesterday may not work today- a leaders needs to stay alert and be flexible. This means obtaining others’ perspectives ideas and feedback. A leader must not only acknowledge but, most importantly, help others understand the what -the who- the and the why of what’s being asked of them.
• People Have to Own it:
  A leader also helps others to be personally invested in desired outcomes. It’s done by linking their specific tasks and responsibilities with key priorities first of the team, then the department or the business unit and finally up the line to the company. You need to demonstrate the value and importance of what they do.
• People Have to Solve it:
  Obstacles can always get in the way of achieving results. Yes as a leader, the “buck stops with you”. However you don’t always need to be the one to find the solution. Ask them “What else can we do so this gets resolved?” You tap into their wisdom and also their participation creates personal responsibility for the implementation of the solution.

Management Success Tip:

The payoffs for positive accountability are better performance metrics, but perhaps more significant is the impact on your people. When people participate more fully in their jobs, they create meaning and fulfillment. Work becomes more pleasurable. That’s A crucial step toward high employee engagement and commitment. Also see Do Employees Do What They’re Suppose to Do?

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

• Build your skills with The Effective Manager.
• Sign up for Quick Wins: 101 Management Tips.
• Find performance boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
• Need a speaker? Get the Edge keynotes-webinars-workshops.
• Copyright © 2013 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach.

Moonshot #1: Management That Serves a Higher Purpose (1)

As more companies embrace and begin adopting the frameworks of our intersection (see January 7, 2013 blog post), the role of managers, supervisors, and bosses is changing. With the rise of self-organizing and self-managing teams, one could ask: What is the Purpose of Management, period? To look for the higher purpose of management, let’s examine it from each perspective in the intersection.

Systems Thinking: All frameworks in the intersection recognize the individual as the source of organizational knowledge and learning. Peter Drucker links the worker to the system in a direct way, “Productivity of the knowledge worker will almost always require that the work itself be restructured and be made part of a system.” (2)

Drucker views productivity as measured by the output of the system, not the individual, and results as the outcome of developing people and the system concurrently.

The higher purpose of management begins with seeing the system as more than the sum of the parts. Take Southwest Airlines for example (they show up everywhere these days), an airline whose main competitor is the car and whose stated purpose is to make flying affordable for those who wouldn’t otherwise fly. The higher purpose of Southwest managers (concurrently optimizing people and the system to produce results) would include: employee turnover rate, number of customers served per employee, flexibility to manage variability in demand, and a culture of cooperation across departments.

The message to managers is: If you don’t like the results you are currently getting you have to change the way the work is done. By understanding the interdependencies between people and the system you can change how results are produced.

Agile Framework: Teams are “the fractal unit of agile, …from which all other units can be created.” (3)

Sounds good, we all like teams. But, what is a fractal unit?

A fractal is a pattern within a complex system, ie business and organizations. Fractals have two key features: self-similarity, which allows for infinite scaling, and a detailed pattern or set of defining elements that repeat themselves at every level. Least you think this esoteric, urban growth, market trends, and human physiology are full of fractals. So the fractal unit of agile, the pattern that repeats at all levels of the enterprise, is the team.

In agile the defining elements of the team are also those attributes that allow teams to be self-organizing and self-managing. Simplified, these are: (4)

• Establish long-lived teams that build trust and commitment between members
• Ensure cross-functional capability so that the team can collectively deliver results
• Add customer value by adapting to their changing requirements
• Learn to be “generalizing specialists” ie a multidisciplinary knowledge worker with a technical speciality
• Communicate and collaborate and co-locate (when possible)

Scaling teams also requires self-similarity in operating practices across the organization. Managers need to ensure the right people are on the team and remain there, that decision-making is participatory in nature, and that the team and its members make commitments, take responsibility, and assume accountability for their work in an open and transparent way. Whew! That’s a lot. It certainly qualifies as a higher purpose.

The message to managers from the agile perspective: There is “no upper limit to how many agile teams an enterprise can create” (5) when healthy teams are the fractal unit.

Lean Processes: “…it is unfair and ineffective to ask operators on their own to simultaneously make parts, struggle with problems, and improve the process, which is why Toyota calls autonomous operator-team concepts, “Disrespectful of People.” (6)

Huh? Did I read that right?

If continuous improvement is the goal of each employee then increasing the capability of people to see problems, learn how to solve them, and change their behavior is the purpose of managers. The higher purpose of management achieves this by providing the organization with teacher-coaches whose activities include:

• Observing a persons learning capacity and process and to use this to understand what they are thinking so you can assist them in learning by doing
• Creating situations for learning: present a challenge using dialogue, inquiry, and analysis, then give people space to figure things out and make small failures
• Go and See, use first hand understanding of the situation to create learning not just results

The message to managers from the lean perspective: For socio-technical organizations (7) the role of managers is to balance the social side and the technological side to create an integrated system – people and process.

Design Thinking: To understand this Moonshot from the perspective of Design Thinking, I turned to Roger Martin’s The Design of Business (2009). In the first chapter he frames the higher purpose of management nicely – To recognize, embrace, and then simplify the uncertainty, ambiguity, possibility and variability in the marketplace and the organization so that actions add value to services and products. It’s a mouthful, here is his summary:

“The path…from pinpointing a market opportunity to devising an offering for that market to codifying its operations – is not just a study in entrepreneurism. It’s a model for how businesses of all sorts can advance knowledge and capture value.” (8)

Martin calls this “intuitive thinking” and he advocates using this to balance the analytic thinking that predominates in business. Intuition is a form of abductive reasoning, which generates a series of experiments or rapid prototypes to achieve a future goal one step at a time, learning as you go. Abduction uses hypothesis generation and testing, and fast feedback cycles to navigate complex situations, e.g. entering a new market or introducing new processes into an organization. For example, identify the next step (often obvious), take it (a means of testing our “hunches”), and incorporate the feedback we get into the next, next step we take. With each step, we gain deeper understanding of our situation by removing extraneous information and interacting with the larger system (learning). Although this sounds obvious, a budget, operating plan, and marketing strategy are predictive while a Sprint, iterative release plan, and prototype are abductive.

The message to managers from design thinking: Balance analytics (proof from the past) with abductive reasoning (validation by experimentation) in order to see features and opportunities that others may miss.

Leadership: The last component of our intersection comes from a case study, Morning Star (9), that examines how spontaneous order (structure) emerges from commitments between people whose work is reliant upon each other.

How do you know who relies on you? First you have to see yourself as part of the whole system, then you construct a personal mission statement that links your work to the organizational mission. To do this every employee in Morning Star identifies colleagues who are affected by their work (in their network) and negotiates with them to determine how they will interact over the next year. The goal of their contract is to achieve their individual mission and the corporate mission simultaneously. This creates a socially dense network organization and promotes information flow across boundaries.

The benefits identified by Morning Star employees include:

• Initiative – driven by reputational capital
• Expertise – individual responsibility for quality
• Flexibility – responsiveness to changing conditions
• Collegiality – networks replace titles
• Local decision-making – pushing expertise down into the organization
• Loyalty – ownership and engagement
• Less overhead – savings fund growth and employee benefits

Morning Star founder Chris Rufer, “A true leader can understand a situation, think through the complexities, come up with a solution, advocate a strategy, and recruit followers.” I would add, and be confident that the organization is committed to supporting them in these actions.

Hamel offers this message to managers: “You have to decide: is it going to be boss-management or self-management. (emphasis his)

The Intersection: I’m not going to pre-digest this for you…there is much to contemplate here and I trust that you can find something that applies to your situation today, and in the future.

¹ I use the following hierarchy in my work: Purpose, Vision, Mission, Goals, Objectives.

² Drucker, Peter. Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999. Italics in the original.

³ Leffingwell, Dean. Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises. 2007. Italics mine.

⁴ Larman, Craig and Vodde, Bas. Scaling Lean and Agile Development. 2009.

⁵ Leffingwell. Ibid.

⁶ Rother, Mike. Toyota Kata.

⁷ concept from John Shook, The Lean Enterprise Institute and an ex-Toyota manager

⁸ Martin, Roger. The Design of Business. 2009

⁹ Hamel, Gary. What Matters Now. 2012. Chapter 5.3

For those of you with questions, comments, or needing help feel free to contact me directly.

Dr. Carol Mase, carol.mase@cairnconsultants.com, 215-262-6666

“Let’s set some ground rules.”

How often have you heard this at the start of meetings? Hopefully often! When starting a facilitated session or meeting, the establishment and adoption of ground rules is key.

Ground rules, or group norms, are used to set an agreed-upon level of behavior that will guide how the participants will interact with one another. While some teams may have worked together for some time and have established their own functional, unspoken ground rules, we have found that most groups benefits from a deliberate process of identifying in bounds and out of bounds behavior. Overtime, ground rules can help a group become self-correcting. They will begin correcting themselves based on the norms that they have established and reinforced.

Secret #15 – The Secret to Using Ground Rules You start the list; let them finish it. Use ground rules to establish an agreed upon baseline for interaction, to help a group a group be self-correcting and to take an issue of the table. To increase buy-in to the ground rules, you should start the list; but let them finish it.

Sample Ground Rule List Everyone speaks One conversation Use the parking boards Take a stand! Soft on people, hard on ideas No beeps, buzzes or ringy-dingies Recharge: __________________ My role / your role Start and end on time 10. 11.

Smart Facilitators start each session or meeting by suggesting a set of ground rules, explaining each one carefully. They then ask the participants for additions, given their knowledge of the group. They then formally engage the group in a process to adopt the ground rules (as amended). This three-step process has several advantages.

• Beginning with a starting point minimizes the time in the ground rules development process;
• Asking for additions “because they know each other better” empowers the group; and
• Requesting adoption of the ground rules builds implicit consent to follow them.

What are some of your ground rules?

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

________________________

Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States. | www.leadstrat.com

“How can I motivate my team?” This question is quite common with my executive coaching clients. I will often ask – “Have you asked them what motivates them?” Usually the answer is “No”.

Motivators are unique to each person and situation. Motivators can be external or internal or some of each.

External Motivators: (sometimes these are out of your control)

• compensation
• benefits
• work hours
• office equipment
• working conditions
• flexibility in schedule

Internal Motivators:

• meaningful work
• feeling a part of a team
• opportunity for advancement
• creating positive impact
• understanding how their job fits in with the department/company vision
• personal and professional growth
• sense of accomplishment
• knowing that their manager supports them
• autonomy
• getting performance feedback
• new challenges
• opportunity to be creative
• recognition
• having their ideas utilized
• involvement in decisions

Taking the “coach approach” is the key to determining what serves as a motivator. Discussing what motivates individuals’ shows that you care and leads to building trust and engagement.

Here are some coaching tips for determining what motivates others:

1. Ask questions

• What is important to you?
• What types of projects, experiences or training would you like to have?
• What can I do to support you?
• Where do you see your future career?
• Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best everyday?
• What parts of your job give you the most satisfaction? Least satisfaction?
• What new skills would you like to learn?

2. Be clear on what you can and cannot provide or change.

3. Keep the communication ongoing.

What do you do to motivate your team?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set strategy, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at Pam@CoachforSuccess.com ~ www.CoachforSuccess.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

Ever notice how a new employee’s enthusiasm eventually wears off? In 85% of companies, employees’ morale significantly drops off after their first six months on the job, according to a survey from Harvard Management Update.

For the most part, employee engagement is determined by work environment, and it can be fostered or hindered by you—the boss. Employee motivation experts say the best way to keep employee enthusiasm moving forward is to “first, do no harm.” At a minimum, don’t do anything that demotivates your workers.

Check out eight demotivators below.

1. Public criticism.
   Pointing out a worker’s mistake in front of others rarely yields a good response. Though some managers think public reproach keeps everyone else from making the same mistake—it usually just makes everyone feel bad.
2. Failing to provide praise.
   If employees feel like their hard work goes unnoticed, they’ll start to wonder why they’re working so hard in the first place. Be sure to offer praise and recognition, both privately and publicly. Even small things, like a thank-you card or a “good job” email work.
3. Not following up.
   Have you ever solicited ideas, asked what employees think about a policy, or asked your team to draft a proposal? If so, be sure to relay the results, even if the ideas or proposals don’t go anywhere. Asking employees for input without acknowledging it shows a lack of respect.
4. Give impossible goals or deadlines.
   Once employees realize they won’t be able to get something done, they’ll think, “What’s the point? I’m going to fail.” Provide goals and deadlines that are challenging, but not impossible and increase accountability.
5. Not explaining your actions.
   Just because you hold the cards doesn’t mean you should hide them. Explaining the big management decisions will help employees understand your perspective—and they’ll respect you for it. Likewise, sharing key company data such as revenue and profits validates staff contributions.
6. Bad coaching to improve performance.
   If an employee is producing sub-par work, it’s OK to let them know your expectations. But it’s not OK to threaten their job—especially if you’re threatening the entire team in a public setting. A “do this or else” attitude often has the opposite effect when it comes to motivation.
7. Not honoring creative thinking and problem solving.
   When employees take initiative to improve something—a company process or an individual task, for instance—don’t blow it off. Instead, take a good, hard look at their suggestion. Don’t ignore it, or you risk losing that employee’s creativity in the future.
8. Micromanaging or not trusting your employees.
   Perhaps the worst thing a manager cando is not giving people the authority and confidence to do their job. Employees need to feel trusted and valued to succeed—and micromanaging communicates the opposite.

Management Success Tip:

Eliminate these “demotivators” before you start planning so-called “motivational” perks. Free coffee and donuts are pleasant, but they’re don’t override bad management practices. To become a better manager, take a look at these posts: What Makes a Great Boss, Avoid These Management Mistakes and Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

• Build your skills with The Effective Manager.
• Sign up for Quick Wins: 101 Management Tips.
• Find performance boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
• Fast track your leadership. Be part of a Success Team.
• Need a speaker? Get the Edge keynotes-webinars-workshops.
• Copyright © 2012 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach.

How you start a facilitated session is critical to the overall success of the session. Conventional wisdom states that a good meeting should start with the agenda. The reason typically given is that the agenda answers the question, “What are we going to do.” However, Smart Facilitators know that participants in a facilitated session need answers to several questions before the agenda is discussed.

• Why are we having this session?
• What do we need to have accomplished when we are done?
• What is our role in the decision-making?
• Why should I invest the time?

Smart Facilitators answer these questions, and more, in the first fifteen minutes of a facilitated session.

From my book, The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition:

Secret #13 – The Secret to a Strong Opening Inform, excite, empower and involve in the first 15 minutes. In the first fifteen minutes of a facilitated meeting, you must inform, excite, empower and involve the participants to get them focused and engaged from the beginning of the session.

The opening sets the tone, pace and expectation for the rest of the day. Your opening words should cover four key points: inform, excite, empower and involve (IEEI).

• Inform the participants about the overall purpose of the meeting through the session objective.
• Excite them about the process by giving them a clear vision of the overall result to be achieved and the benefits to them.
• Empower them by discussing the important role they play in the process, the reason they were selected or the authority that has been given to them.
• Involve them as early as possible by identifying their personal objectives, the issues that must be covered, the challenges that must be overcome or some other topic that contributes to the overall goal of the session.

You can consider using the IEEI as an outline for your opening. The IEEI opening is a powerful tool for making sure your participants understand why they are there, what they are trying to achieve, and the benefits to them. It helps get them focused on the session, and committed to the purpose.

—————————

For more resources, see the Library topic Facilitation.

________________________

Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

Funny thing about sharks. They don’t really go after minnows; they are too small. But they will go after each other once blood is drawn. That usually involves a bite on the back by one shark, and others wanting keep their place join in the frenzy until only a few edible fragments sink to the bottom for the bottom feeders to consume.

In the government, I was sickened by the efforts made at all levels to make someone look good, rather than do a good job and give credit to all. They weren’t just covering their butts. In a world where selfless acts should be the norm–the idea of being selfless was merely given lip service, while the reality was that you lived in a world of sharks and minnows–and baby sharks.

Rarely would a minnow morph into a shark, but occasionally a special project, a bone thrown its way that was overlooked by the sharks, became visible to the killer whale high above. That minnow became a shark, at first a baby shark, but as it became more entrenched in the project, guarding knowledge, making sure only it had control of the subject matter experts, the bigger it became. The longer it did this; the stronger and bigger the shark became. Now all the other sharks waited for an opportunity to make this shark fall victim to the killer whale, who wanted a piece of it, or the unassuming porpoise, who accidentally gave away all the secrets. When that happened, their place in the hierarchy was safe. For now, but they needed to be diligent, always on the defensive.

Where did that behavior come from? Certainly we didn’t train the sharks that behavior. It evolved in the government culture, state or federal, I don’t think it matters. It may not appear in every agency, but more than I think we’d like to think. Even so that behavior has become a cliché in the movies. The power-hungry government types–sharks, and the meek civil servants trying to eek out a living, doing a patriotic duty–the minnows. It doesn’t stop there.

The behavior follows into the corporate world as well with corporate giants whose CEOs are making millions, while the working man or woman has to beg to get a raise to get just a little bit ahead. We even have TV shows dedicated to bringing the crooked corporations to their knees, hanging the sharks by their once crushing, now harmless jaws and we love it. If we love it so much, why do we let it happen?

It’s not us? It’s the stockholders? What are they? Sharks or minnows? Could be the CEO, Chairman, or President of the Board be the killer whale and has all is his sharks in check. Soon there will be a bloody frenzy because his or her board is most likely made up of sharks out for blood rather than harmless, insignificant minnows.

It is us. In a way we are responsible. We brought it. We tried calling it hierarchal leadership or management training. Or team building. We called out different kinds of leaders, and those hungry for power found a way to be seen as an emergent, implied or designated leader. They joined any committee they could get their teeth into, while the minnows sat back and made no waves. And nothing got done except those who played fair generally lost footing and fell into deep water unless they were willing to be a dead-eyed shark. That is the thing about sharks. They appear emotionless; a pure killing machine. A perfect metaphor for power.

Don’t be so depressed. We haven’t lost them all. There are satisfied customers. Not all were failures, but we can do better.

• We can warn of no tolerance for this kind of behavior and put them on notice by the big boss. That could work.
• We can concentrate our leadership training on everyone in the organization or company, assuring them that everyone has a right to speak, and make sure management is aware of it.
• We can talk about the game. The games people play. The backstabbing. Suggest a person who would be the go-to person in the company the boss has to listen to.
• Most of all, we try to instill no fear in the minnows, raise their status and prestige. Let them know in no uncertain terms that they are as important to the organization as anyone else and they have an equal vote.

We may not kick every shark in the chops, but we may make it harder for them to operate.

For more resources about training, see the Training library.

That’s all for me now. A reminder: I do have a website where you can find other tidbits I have written, and click on the links for my best selling, The Cave Man Guide To Training and Development and my fringe science fiction novel, Harry’s Reality. Another look at the future that seems right at the time… Happy Training.

If there are limited opportunities in your department or company for promotions, how do you keep you keep staff excited and motivated and morale up during tough times?

Here are six suggestions that will go a long way to enhance the career development of your staff as well as increase their commitment during times of change and uncertainty.

1. Rotate some tasks on your team.
   If you give people the chance to do different tasks within the same team, it allows them to add new skills and experiences. It also allows you to be in a better position if someone leaves or takes time off.
2. Move team members horizontally.
   Allow workers to move to a completely different department or team to try something new. This can keep morale high and help generate new ideas.
3. Find out what motivates your team.
   Upward career mobility is a huge motivator for many people. But if that doesn’t exist, you have to really focus on other areas to make sure your team is happy and excited about what they’re doing. Realize one size doesn’t fit all.
4. Give the team the power to make decisions.
   One of the key tasks of being a boss is to delegate certain responsibilities to this staff. For example, let workers to design their own roles, if the workload changes. This might lead to much more productive results than if you defined their jobs for them
5. Help each member to gain additional qualifications.
   If there’s an appropriate class, weekend workshop, or skills training conference, try to have team members attend. |Education benefits everyone. Your team stays stimulated and your company gains additional knowledge and skill sets that can keep you ahead of your competition.
6. Offer “soft” benefits to help them achiever a better work-life balance.
   You can’t give team members promotions, but can you give them flexible work hours, telecommuting options or even children’s day care services. These little things might not seem like much, but they can go a long way toward ensuring that your workers are happy with their jobs.

Management Success Tip:

Career growth in organizations that are growing slowing or even downsizing can be challenging and it definitely takes creativity to maximize your team’s productivity. Focus on giving workers more, and varied, responsibilities as well as more opportunities to make their own decisions. Be willing to let them define their roles, perform new tasks, or even change departments to keep things fresh and interesting for them. Also see 7 Ways to Energize Your Staff and How to Encourage Everyone to Do Their Best Work.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

• Build your skills with The Effective Manager
• Sign up for Quick Wins: 101 Management Tips.
• Find performance boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
• Need a speaker? Get the Edge keynotes-webinars-workshops.
• Copyright © 2012 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach.

One of my first jobs after coming back from the United States Marines Corps was an inside sales job, downtown in a family-owned men’s clothing store.

I had no preconceived notions. In fact, I didn’t know what to expect. I wanted to earn money and I was determined to do my best. However, it did not go well. After spending four years in the Marines in the Vietnam era and coming out a sergeant, I could take orders well. I was polite.

I said, “Sir.” What I wasn’t ready for was having multiple bosses, aged 16 to 60. I figured the oldest was the big boss and the youngest, but I had the least say since I was not family. Imagine “the few, the proud, the chosen” sweeping the walk and hanging up clothes in the back and being ordered about by a 16-year-old. I didn’t last long, but then again family-own jobs are not only the hardest to work for, they are the hardest to run. And, of course, our main question here: are they hard to train?

The communication and leadership dynamics are all different. In a regular business, bosses are selected based on a different criteria, albeit sometimes not the best if they are just the money man, but more often as not because they are good at what they do managing others and leading a business or company. In the military, setting the example and inspiring others, takes precedence or leadership over management skills. In fact, management is often delegated to the executive officer. In government, politics has a hand at the top promoting the Administration’s agenda, while civil servants get the job done; most of us would agree that this system is probably not the most efficient, but in some ways it offers a satisfaction other than financial. For non-profits, yet the system offers another dynamic of working with volunteers; however, family businesses run the gamut depending on individual wishes, love of the work and fear of disappointing loved ones–just to name a few.

According to Family Business USA, “Being in a family business is hard as it requires the balancing of the unconditional love and support as a family member with the operational and profit requirements of a business. It is no wonder that over 65% of family businesses across the USA do not survive to the next generation.”

So what can you do if you if you a part of a family business, and you find you hate going to work. You would love to leave and find your own niche, but you’ve worked hard here. However, there is no promotion because there are older siblings ahead of you–the family dynamic–who may not be as qualified as you. Naturally this where it gets sticky.

The best way to keep from having the family issues come up is to treat the family business as though it is a business without the family.

Hanna Hasl-Kelchner of AllBusiness.com has the right idea. She says for any business, and it is goes for a family business here as well, to thrive it needs to be:

1. Using communication channels wisely, such as using a letter instead of a Twitter-style text message to accurately convey subtle or complex thoughts;
2. Keeping communications respectful, constructive, and professional;
3. Sticking to business and keeping sensitive information confidential; and
4. Always striving for clarity and accuracy to avoid misunderstandings that can escalate into disputes.

Jobacle.com which says it offers unique career advice with an edge, gives us five tips for working for the family business that goes more into the family dynamic and is less black. In my mind, I’d say both views are right, you have to maintain perspective and boundaries at all times. I always say I offer advice from a variety of perspectives so you can see what works best for you.