Posts tagged ‘leadership skills’
Adding EHS Bench Strength
Alex Pollock
I was recently approached by an environment, health and safety (EHS) colleague to suggest people who could possibly fill a staff vacancy. My colleague had little experience in hiring, since budget reductions and “ranking and yanking” had been all that was demanded over the last decade or so. To this point, replenishing the “bench” had remained a dream. I’d like to share the points I asked my colleague to consider and get your reaction.
- Ensure you have support for the budget increase: Your leader and your key clients must support the expenditure and accept your assessment of the value added. A solid business case exists for improving the value-added services provided to clients.
- Ensure your new hire advances your functional vision: Resist hiring to cover one-of-a-kind projects or cover temporary increases in workload. Seek temporary help to get you through. Also don’t hire to cover the inadequacies of a poor performer. Resolve any performance issues you have and keep this need separate from your hiring decision. Fill a position which momentum has already created and resist “staffing for growth” that is just around the bend.
- Think paradigm shift: Don’t rush. Step back. Dream a little. Resist the like-for-like option. What is the competency mix that increases your bench strength and allows you to advance your service offerings and better meet client needs?
- Be patient: Now you have the green light make a wise hiring decision. Take all the steps necessary to ensure you feel good about your hiring decision three years from now. Do your homework. Ensure you have the character, chemistry and competency boxes ticked.
What do you think? Your input to these points are welcomed and appreciated.
The Four Traits of Successful Managers
Kelvin Roth
Over the years, I have seen many lists of attributes of a good manager. I’ve read business articles with lists of the top 10-25 traits of a good manager and books that spend hundreds of pages describing qualities that a manager should have to be successful. While there is plenty of good information in all those sources, I believe we only need to look to successful sports managers to distill all those words into the four key qualities. The qualities that define a championship coach are the same attributes that can help EHS and business managers succeed. They are:
1. Recruiting: All successful managers choose good employees. They select employees that bring skills to advance the team. They not only hire good people, but they hire the right good people. Good managers learn the strengths and weaknesses of their teams, understand what is missing to achieve the organization’s goals, and bring in the right people.
2. Prioritizing: A good manager can see the “end zone” and prioritize the necessary steps to reach that goal. This means sorting through the busy work and identifying the key activities/programs that will lead to long-term success. Letting go of activities that may seem good but don’t advance the organization can be difficult. There will be things that won’t get done, and that’s okay because they weren’t the important ones. Think of this as your game plan.
3. Delegating: You can’t just hand out assignments and expect your organization to grow. Delegation is a plan agreed on by two parties that establishes expectations, activities, and timelines. It ensures that the strengths of the individual are used fully within the team, and allows all members to contribute to the success of the team. Employees need a sense of the importance of what they’re working on – its importance to the company, its importance to customers – and need to know their role in accomplishing the goal. Employees who understand these items are more easily empowered to succeed. This is your play book.
4. Coaching: You must develop your people to do their jobs better than you can. Inspire them to be the best and transfer your knowledge and skills to them. This is the only way that you will be able to take on new challenges yourself. Think about how many championship coaches have had assistants that have gone on to be champions. A good coach or manager is not afraid of his team succeeding. Trust me: There is an infinite amount of work to be done and good managers will always be in demand.
What do you think about this list? Do any of these traits resonate with your experience? What advice do you have for those who are trying to develop these attributes?
Kelvin Roth is Director of Environment, Health and Safety for AMCOL International Corp. and the President of NAEM’s Board of Directors. Follow him on Twitter at @Oenodog.
What Tom Coughlin Can Teach Us about EHS Management
Megan Lum
Like millions of other football fans, I watched the Super Bowl earlier this month. Much was made of the story of Giants coach Tom Coughlin. Coughlin had been in the hot seat all season and it was widely perceived that his job was in jeopardy if the Giants didn’t make the playoffs. The story recounts how Coughlin did not waver in his coaching and management style throughout the season, despite the circumstances.
I think the real story about Coughlin’s management style happened a few years ago, after one of Coughlin’s initial years as Giants coach. He came to the Giants with a track record of success in both college and the pros. However, one of his first seasons with the Giants was not a good one and their season ended early. Instead of looking at his past achievements and pointing blame at others, Coughlin did just the opposite. He brought in players and asked them what worked and what did not work during the season.
He then took the input he received and adapted his management style to better reflect the team he was working with and his situation. He adapted his style to the situation – which is why he had the confidence to hold firm for this season. He knew his management style was the right one for his team. The results are clear: Two Super Bowl wins in the last five years.
Adaptive management is something that EHS professionals get quite proficient with throughout their careers. As service providers within our organizations, often times just as we start hitting equilibrium, then things change. We see new regulations, reorganizations or new interpretation of the rules. As companies and the general public become more sophisticated about environmental issues and sustainability, our role frequently changes from being an information source and reacting to situation to serving more of an advisory role and being proactive.
This lesson was brought home to me the following week during a meeting with my team. I had asked them during a breakout session to identify the greatest lessons learned during 2011. More than one group came back and shared that they had learned the necessity to interact and communicate with different internal and external clients in a more proactive way. They were learning to adapt their communication styles based on the information needs of the clients, and therefore, were able to address issues more clearly and efficiently. They consciously changed their style to communicate better and more fully to their clients.
To a certain degree, I think we all adapt our management style to changing conditions. But how many times do we examine our style and see if deeper changes are warranted?
Megan Lum, P.E. is the Director of Environmental Operations at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. In this capacity she is privileged to lead a team of about 30 professionals, who provide environmental compliance support for the company’s gas and electric distribution, fleet, materials management and real estate operations. She is a member of NAEM’s Board of Regents.
Busting Through the Fear Barrier
Alex Pollock
The innate human drive to defend our territory can make us do strange things. At work, this instinct may compel us to protect the things we feel we’re entitled to, such as salary, headcount, budget, responsibilities, etc.
But imagine what it would be like to belong to an organization where people worked seamlessly together; where leaders collaborated, rather than competed, with one another to achieve their individual agendas?
In his book, “Breaking the Fear Barrier: How Fear Destroys Companies from the Inside Out and What to Do About It,” author Tom Rieger explains that the impediments to this kind of organizational utopia are rooted in fear. Fear creates barriers, he says, which manifest themselves inside companies as bureaucracy, organizational inefficiency and inertia. The top three barriers Rieger says we must overcome are:
- Parochialism: This is the domination of local needs. Standards within a function take precedence over creating engaged customers and business success.
- Territorialism: Some examples of territorialism in the workplace are hoarding headcounts, resources or decision-making authority.
- Empire Building: Assertion of control over other functions and resources to gain enhanced influence are symptoms of empire building.
The following is a list of the advice he offered that I found particularly useful for busting through these barriers.
- Eliminate rules that prevent more than they protect
- Purge administrative tasks that prevent employees from tackling mission-critical work
- Give people the freedom to make decisions, access information and resources, and encourage them to innovate and demonstrate moral courage
- The decision of whom to grant ownership or control should be based upon improving financial performance, improving the workplace, strengthening customer relationships, limiting liability and avoiding catastrophic failure
What forms of parochialism, territorialism and empire building have frustrated you in your work? What barrier busters have you effectively deployed? Any you need help with?
Bad Hiring Decisions Haunt Good People
Alex Pollock
Why do bad hiring decisions haunt good people? I’m involved in making an important leadership staffing decision as I write and I’ve researched some of the latest thinking to help minimize the potential for a poor staffing decision and thus prevent the long term damage that it causes.
I’ve been guided in the past by the timeless “3 C’s” of character, competency and chemistry, but I wonder if I can embellish this based on recent research. I found the work of Jeffrey Cohn and Jay Moran in the book, “Why are we Bad at Picking Good Leaders” (2011) most useful. They described what they feel are the essential attributes of effective leadership under the headings of:
- Integrity: the foundational attribute, honest, ethical
- Empathy: feel with people, social savvy, combined with integrity drives trust
- Emotional Intelligence: evident self mastery skills: “know yourself, control yourself, and improve yourself.”
- Vision: forward-thinking with a sense of possibility and wonder, innovative
- Judgment: focus on the important while seeing the “big picture”, take decisive action
- Courage: the ability to “act with grace under pressure”
- Passion: the drive to achieve, learn and master
In hiring decisions I’ve been encouraged to do my homework by the axiom “ You will get what someone has already gotten… no excuse for surprises.” I found the techniques that Cohn and Moran suggest, such as scenario discussions to be most useful for determining whether a candidate does indeed possess the desired attributes or not.
Help me out please. Have you ever made a poor hiring decision? What lessons can you share from the experience? What attributes do you view as important for leaders to possess and what techniques to you use to assess competency during the recruiting process?
Are You a Victim of Network Inbreeding?
Pat Perry
Are you a victim of inbreeding…network inbreeding, that is?
Herminia Ibarra, a blogger for Harvard Business Review, describes an inbred network like this:
“For the past fifteen years, I have asked the executives I teach to list the people with whom they have discussed important work matters over the past few months. Then, I ask them to fill out a grid in which they identify who knows whom among the people on that list. Invariably, most of the people they talk to also know and talk to each other. This kind of network, while cozy and cohesive, is, simply put, inbred. It also tends to be internal, operational (not strategic), and historical, an artifact of the executive’s past work history and not his or her future possibilities. It turns out that this kind of network is also deadly for collaboration.”
I believe it is a common trap many, if not all, of us fall into quite unconsciously. We are comfortable with our own, we want to relate with others who share the same challenges. But what we are inadvertently doing is narrowing our perspective and the ability to gather different thoughts to forge truly new ideas. According to Ibarra, it’s especially beneficial for us to diversify our thinking by interacting with professional from all levels of experience.
“The research is clear,” she writes. “For a more innovative and profitable result over time you are better off with a mix of newcomers and old-timers.”
I particularly liked her suggestion to spend time with younger professionals because I think we often overlook the value of the emerging leaders among us. Changing our habits could do more than help us become more comfortable with social media; it might help us better prepare our companies for the leaders of tomorrow.
Think about it. What does your network look like? Do you have a well-diversified network, or not? What are some of the surprising professional insights you’ve gained from those outside your usual network?
Pat Perry is President of the NAEM Board of Directors. Follow her on Twitter at @pitterpatperry.
Staying Connected
Megan Lu
Every Friday, I, along with every PG&E employee, receive an e-mail from the CEO. It provides a link to the CEO’s blog in which he shares the issues that are on his mind – issues and challenges facing the company, how we’re going to rise to meet them. He also recognizes employees and teams for their successes.
The title of the e-mails (and the blog) is always the same: “Staying Connected”. When I first joined PG&E I thought that was a clever play on words; after all, we are a utility. It’s our business to help people “stay connected”. Recently, during a particularly busy day at the office, it occurred to me that “staying connected” isn’t something that’s only applicable to the CEO.
During the course of a typical business day, I have interactions with many people.
- Working with my direct reports. We update each other on current hot topics, what progress has been made on projects, what steps were to come next, with whom we had to partner, how we are going to communicate and where we are going as team.
- Meeting my internal business clients. I meet with the leadership teams of my internal client business groups regularly. We talk about their issues, how Environmental Operations can help them face those challenges. I also provide updates on new requirements their team may have to comply with in the near future, and work with them to achieve compliance.
- Working with a cross-departmental team. We were pulled together to address a concern by one of our external customers. Before our initial meeting, there’s a flurry of e-mails to prepare. What message would we send? How do we send it? How do we address their concerns? What do we need to do before we meet?
- Maintaining external/agency relationships. There are meetings coming up with some regulatory agencies to review the work done to date on plans to be submitted for their approval. We confer internally to go over questions, options and expected questions. Then, we make sure we provide open, transparent and clear communications with the agency to demonstrate our commitment to compliance and doing the right thing.
- A former colleague contacts me via LinkedIn. We exchange e-mails and catch up on what’s happened since we worked together. It’s always great to keep in touch; plus those former colleagues are always valuable resources when I’m trying to solve a particularly difficult issue.
As environmental professionals, it’s imperative for us to keep the communication flow going in order for us to be successful at what we do. At the end of the day, it’s clear that “staying connected” is a significant portion of my job. I “stay connected” over the phone, face to face, by e-mail and by social media.
How do you stay connected?
Megan Lum is Manager of Environmental Operations, Shared Facilities for Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
Would you fire your boss?
Alex Pollock
I recently read that 24 percent of employees in the United States would fire their bosses. Does this surprise you?
Well, workplace engagement research supports that if workers feel their supervisor cares about them as a person they aren’t as likely to want to fire them. Is this problem limited to the U.S. workplace? I don’t think so.
Gallup studies of 4.5 million employees in 112 countries indicate that fewer than one in every two employees feels strongly that they have a supervisor who cares about them as a person. With data now showing a link between workplace stress and medical issues such as coronary heart disease, “organizations need to take the workplace environment and the quality of employee/manager relationships seriously, because the health of employees may have an enormous effect on the bottom line in lost productivity, absenteeism and insurance costs’” according to Dr Jim Harter, Chief Scientist in Gallup’s workplace management practice. (From the book “Decade of Change”)
What’s your reaction to this research? Are we just bad at picking good supervisors and managers or is the issue more complex? With all the efforts to appear “green” and globally sensitive to the outside world, do companies now need to dedicate effort at regaining the hearts of their employees? With all the talk recently about reinventing and reinvigorating the American economy it seems to me that upping employee engagement would be a great place to start. What do you think?
Why readers make better leaders
Alex Pollock
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them” — Mark Twain
Last summer, I attended a two-day meeting focused on improving leadership effectiveness. More than a dozen speakers gave their perspectives on what makes leaders effective. I was struck by the one trait nearly everyone viewed as essential — a ferocious appetite for reading.
I noted the speakers didn’t just target books or articles in their chosen field, but also included works that would broaden their worldview . What these leaders all had in common was a commitment to self-improvement and an interest in translating this insight into value for others.
For me, reading has also shaped how I see the world. In particular, the books that have had a life-altering effect on me include:
“The Power of the Servant Leader” by Robert Greenleaf
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
“The Leader of the Future” edited by Frances Hesselbein for the Drucker Foundation
“Bringing Out the Best in People” by Aubrey Daniels
“Leadership by the Book” by Ken Blanchard, Bill Hybels and Phil Hodges
“12: The Elements of Great Managing” by Rodd Wagner and James Harter
“The Leadership Challenge” by James Kouzes and Barry Posner
Through insights from authors like those listed above I came to view leadership as a “relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow.” Effective leadership goes way beyond a title on a business card; it’s about building relationships.
What are some books or articles that were game changers for you? Please take a few moments to share how the authors changed your paradigm. We can all benefit from the journey of others.
Busy, yes. But are you effective?
Stephen Evanoff
An NAEM member posed the following question at a recent NAEM event: “If you could recommend only one book to your fellow EHS professionals, what would it be?”
My nominee would be “The Effective Executive,” by the late Peter F. Drucker.
Why? First of all, don’t let the word “Executive” turn you off. When I first read the book, I was a junior manager responsible for the environmental program at a manufacturing facility. Back then, there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to get everything done. I found myself nearly burned out after six months in the position. Drucker’s book taught me that effectiveness isn’t a gift that certain people are born with, rather it is a learned set of practices, and the following key practices must be learned and made into habit by:
- Managing your time: Drucker points out that with even the most sophisticated executives, there is frequently a disconnect between where they think they spend their time and where their time is actually spent. He recommends doing a one week inventory of your activities every six months.
- Choosing your main contribution to the organization: This is more difficult than it sounds. It requires a keen understanding of one’s own capabilities, insight into the organization’s needs, and the discipline to work within the role you’ve defined for yourself.
- Setting the right priorities: Drucker suggests selecting a few, critical areas where you can make the maximum impact and focusing your energy on them.
- Knowing where and how to focus strengths: Drucker states emphatically that individuals and organizations should leverage what they are good at. They should understand and compensate for their weaknesses, but build on strengths.
- Making decisions prudently: Drucker gives compelling examples of the value in disagreement and the importance of a diverse set of perspectives when making decisions.
These five principles may not seem like much of a revelation at first. But, in the midst of the day-to-day grind, it is easy to become reactive to events, loose ones bearings, and end up busy rather than effective. As an old boss of mine once said, “We pay for results, not effort.” Or as Drucker put it, “The ability to manage others isn’t proven, but one can always manage oneself.”
What techniques have you learned for ensuring effectiveness? What lessons have you taken away from situations you’ve observed where bright, capable, experienced people came up short?
