The Truth About
Getting the Best from People
Martha I. Finney
© 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Publishing as FT Press
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey
07458
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Printed in the United States of America
First Printing February 2008
ISBN-10: 0-13-235491-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-235491-2
Pearson Education LTD.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Finney, Martha I.
The truth about getting the best from people / Martha Finney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-13-235491-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Employee motivation. 2. Personnel
management. 3. Teams in the workplace. 4. Performance--Management. I. Title.
HF5549.5.M63F56 2008
658.3'14--dc22
2007014119
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Cover and Interior Design
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Manufacturing Buyer
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Dedication
All my thanks go to Colleen Cayes.
This book is for you.
Contents
Introduction
PART I The Truth About Employee Engagement
Truth 1 You don't need the carrot or the stick
Truth 2 You get the best by giving the best
Truth 3 It's not money that motivates
Truth 4 Employee engagement isn't for sissies
PART II The Truth About Yourself
Truth 5 Your behaviors are your brand
Truth 6 You can't give what you don't have
Truth 7 "Best" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone
Truth 8 Think you're a great leader? Think again
Truth 9 You could be your own worst employee
Truth 10 Visionary or beat cop? Your choice.
Truth 11 You don't have to be perfect
PART III The Truth About Engaged Cultures
Truth 12 Employee happiness is serious business
Truth 13 Authentic is better than clever
Truth 14 Retention begins with hello
Truth 15 The bad will do you good
Truth 16 You can sell an unpopular decision
Truth 17 Flex is best
Truth 18 Nobody cares if you don't mean to be mean
PART IV The Truth About Motivation
Truth 19 Engagement happens one person at a time
Truth 20 If you're a manager, you're a career coach
Truth 21 Ask for cheese-you might get the moon
Truth 22 If they aren't buying it, they aren't doing it
Truth 23 Focusing on what's right can help solve what's wrong
PART V The Truth About Performance
Truth 24 Compassion promotes performance
Truth 25 B players are your A team
Truth 26 High performers have enough coffee mugs
Truth 27 Discipline deepens engagement
Truth 28 You don't have to inherit the problem employees
Truth 29 Performance appraisals are really about you
Truth 30 New hires can inspire current employees
PART VI The Truth About Creativity
Truth 31 Innovation begins with y-e-s
Truth 32 Everyone can be creative
Truth 33 You stand between inspiration and implementation
Truth 34 Failures promote progress
Truth 35 Extreme pressure kills inspired performance
Truth 36 Creativity is a balancing act
PART VII The Truth About Communication
Truth 37 Open questions ignite inspiring answers
Truth 38 Serving your employees means managing your boss
Truth 39 Bad news is good news
Truth 40 Trivial conversations are essential
Truth 41 The way you listen speaks volumes
Truth 42 Crap happens
Truth 43 Engaged employees need to know more
PART VIII The Truth About Teams
Truth 44 Your team has untapped talent
Truth 45 People need to fi ght their own battles
Truth 46 Games don't build teams
Truth 47 Answers build teams
Truth 48 Your team can lead you to greatness
Truth 49 You're still the boss
References
About the Author
Praise for The Truth About Getting the Best from People
"Finally, a no-nonsense primer for leaders on how to build...and keep...extraordinary talent. This book should be in the briefcase of every exec in the world and should be pulled out every day for a refresher on how to be a real leader."
—Dan Walker, Former Chief Talent Officer for Apple, Inc.
"A fun and easy-to-read blueprint on understanding and creating engagement within a team. No high falootin' business jargon here—Martha Finney tells it like it is. She helps supervisors and managers uncover the secrets of employee engagement through behavioral examples, successes at top companies, and her charming storytelling."
—Kirsten Clark, Senior Director, Organizational Capability Group, Starwood Hotels and Resorts
"Martha succeeds in reducing one of the business world's most sought-after but amorphous concepts—employee engagement—into 49 digestible truths."
—Christopher Rice, President and CEO, BlessingWhite
"A must-read for new supervisors and managers, with lots of essential lessons and tips."
—Tom Mathews, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Time Warner Cable
"Easy-to-read stories and useful truths about leading. I wish I had this book when I first became a manager. I had to learn some of these truths the hard way!"
—Scott Shute, Senior Director, Xilinx
"The book is outstanding! Very easy to read....great exampl
es, great advice, and the corporate world would be a better place if just 50 percent of the managers would follow your advice!"
—Peg Wynn, Former SVP/HR, Adobe
"I started reading and found myself grabbing for a highlighter. I got to the following line 'Getting the best is about building a culture of trust, connection, growth, and service.' I had to drop a box around that one."
"Finney has gifted us an important compendium of accessible and eminently actionable insights about employee engagement. Using 'The Truths' as a guide, generations of managers will find infinite opportunities to unleash, inspire, and leverage the inherent talent in their people. My advice? Seize it! It will enable you to dramatically affect the future of your team, your organization, and your own career."
—Jane Creech, Founder and Principal, Strategic Business Systems (Organization Consulting & Leadership Coaching), Former Sr. Director, OD, eBay
"If you are looking for a great way to deliver Management 101, just distribute this book. It has everything that someone new to management needs to know. Savvy, and sassy, and smart, this is an easy but important read!"
—Beverly Kaye, Coauthor, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em
"Just when I thought one truth was as good as it could get, the rest lived up to it! I loved the anecdotes and the final truth, 'You're still the Boss.'"
—Ed Martin, Vice President, Global Human Resources, Atheros Communications
"The subject is important, pragmatic advice told in an entertaining way. Front line managers need this for perspective. This book has some great 'keys' to bringing out the best in people!"
—Jim Wiggett, President & CEO, Jackson Hole Group
Introduction
As a people leader, your job is simple: You are the link between organizational mission-critical objectives and the effort your employees invest in achieving those objectives. And you just have to keep those two pieces working together smoothly. See? Easy.
Yeah, right. As a people leader, your job is to inspire your employees to bring their personal greatness to work every day and to invest their best in your business. And that's a hard job. It's an emotional roller coaster. You experience the exquisite highs of engagement and teamwork when everyone is pulling together. Your heart breaks when you have to make really tough decisions that negatively affect the personal lives and well-being of people you truly care about. And it can be absolutely frightening when you deal with hair-trigger personalities who don't belong in a safe workplace.
But even more routinely—and just as challenging, if not more so—you have to deal with yourself and your beliefs about life, about people, and about motivation and trust. Every day. Even on the ho-hum days. And that's when we get down to some pretty simple principles. Although this book by no means trivializes all the behaviors and beliefs that go into bringing out the greatness in your employees, the material you discover in these pages is based on a few very accessible assumptions:
People leaders discover that leading is impossible when they forget that they're people first. It may be paradoxical, but nothing makes a person come face to face with real—or perceived—limitations faster than a promotion into a managerial spot. On the outside you may be projecting, "Can do!" (or at least hoping you are), but on the inside you may be saying, "Uh oh, what have I gotten myself into?" Your first managerial assignment? Manage yourself into keeping in mind that you're not expected to be perfect. You're just expected to reach a little further for some brand new stretch goals.
Most people want to do good work in a job they love. Marketing consultant (and former Senior Vice President of Marketing for Starbucks) Scott Bedbury speaks about what he calls the "Five Human Truths." We need to be understood, feel special, feel as though we belong, feel that we're in control, and know that we have the chance to reach our potential. Although these feelings may not necessarily be what we want from a cup of coffee, they're certainly what we want almost universally from the work we do. (But ask me at 4 in the morning when I'm cranking against deadlines, and I may have a different answer for you.)
Great people leaders don't have to be clever, complicated, politically astute, or even especially wise. But they do have to be kind, honest, focused, positive, and authentic. If your company is committed to supporting you as you cultivate a grounded, authentic, compelling leadership style, you will see first-hand that creating great employees isn't about being magically charismatic. It's about being you.
There is no "u" in team, but there should be. As a people leader, you're also a team member. Sometimes you're the coach; in fact, you might often think of yourself in the top leadership spot. But you're also the water carrier. And if your team is working so well and independently that all they need is a regular infusion of refreshment, that's a great position for you to play.
Enjoy this book. When you learn that creating great employees can be fun and personally rewarding, the first great employee you'll create will be yourself.
Part I: The Truth About Employee Engagement
Truth 1
You don't need the carrot or the stick
Take a moment, if you will, to imagine the perfect day at work. By the time you arrive, everyone is already there. In fact, you're the last one to show up, and you're a half hour early! Other than the sound of fresh coffee brewing in the break room, the only other noise coming from that area is the sound of laughing as two coworkers share the fun of remembering the great day they had yesterday. Another conversation is focused on exploring ways that your team can put more quality, accuracy, functionality, and affordability into your flagship product that has already received every major industry award out there.
You sit down at your desk and log on. After a quick glance at the day's spreadsheet to confirm that all projects are ahead of schedule and on budget, you check your email. You're thrilled to see your email Inbox is crammed with messages from exuberant customers (many of the names you recognize from months and years of doing repeat business with them) thanking your department for yet another fantastic job. There are also at least 50 resumes there, all sent from your employees' friends who want to be considered for the next—rare—opening. And, look at that! An email from the CEO letting you know that you're in line for this year's Chairman's Award for best performance in the company. Again!
You look up from your monitor and around the room at everyone who works with you. You know something meaningful about every one of them. You're quite sure by the way they're so dedicated to their work that each one of them must have read What Color Is Your Parachute?, done all the self-assessment exercises, and determined that their mission and purpose in life can be best fulfilled in your company, in your department. They all love their jobs. They are known these days as engaged employees.
Engaged employees are everywhere. And they have these general traits in common:
Engaged employees believe in the mission of their organization.
Engaged employees believe in the mission of their organization.
Engaged employees love what they do and understand how their jobs serve the bigger picture.
Engaged employees don't need discipline; they need clarity, communication, and consistency.
Engaged employees are a manager's dream.
Engaged employees augment their skill sets with positive attitudes, focus, will, enthusiasm, creativity, and endurance.
Engaged employees can be trusted, and they trust each other.
Engaged employees respect their managers.
Engaged employees know that their managers respect them.
Engaged employees are a constant source of great new ideas.
Engaged employees will give you their best.
Engaged employees are a manager's dream. Put them to work on a clearly defined mission or goal and set them free to do what they do best. The hardest part for you is the possibility that you may have to change your mind about your own skills and assumption
s as their leader. Engaged employees can smell stupid management tricks a mile away. And nothing will disengage them faster than the experience of being handled. They only need to be lead with inspiration.
Not everyone has the potential of being engaged, of course. Some people still just want to punch in, punch out, and cash their check. But don't assume you can tell which is which—especially if you've spent your past years driving poor performers. With most people, there's a little gem of engagement potential glowing deep inside. Find that gem, and lead with that. You could find yourself leading a transformed department—and even loving your own job more.
With engaged employees doing their work—and doing it exceedingly well—your biggest problem as manager may end up being what to do with all that extra time.
Truth 2
You get the best by giving the best
Every year, the popular software company Intuit gives itself a massive performance review. While Intuit is also always interested in how it performs for its customers and its shareholders, the focus of this particular survey is how well it serves its employees. Over 60 questions are engineered to answer one core question: How well do we live up to our promise of providing the environment in which our employees can feel great about doing their absolute best work? Intuit wants to know how well it's doing engaging its employees.
Intuit also has been learning what it gets in return for giving its best. At Intuit, highly engaged employees are
2 times as likely to be high-performing employees
7 times more likely to feel appreciated for what they do for the customers