Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • Leadership Lessons from Moses

    Our church is doing 90 days with the Bible challenge.  This is where the congregation is engaged in reading the entire Bible over the summer.   I’ve struggled my way through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy but found that reading the entire account of Moses through in a few days has revealed several leadership lessons from his life that I never noticed.

    Lesson 1:  Get a wingman.    Aaron was Moses’.  A wingman is someone who complements you so that two end up being better than one.  Moses had a stuttering problem and Aaron was a good speaker. They worked together to accomplish many things. (Exodus 1-15)

    Lesson 2: Delegate; don’t go it alone. Moses found himself overwhelmed.   He gave leadership responsibility to others to deal with the day-to-day people issues Numbers 11) used people to scout out Canaan (Numbers 13), and gave people meaningful work to do (Numbers 3).

    Lesson 3: Leadership isn’t easy.  People are prone to complain and forget how they have been blessed (Numbers 11, 20), but having someone to vent to can help with this.   God was this for Moses and should be for us all.

    Lesson 4: Humility makes leaders more effective.  Moses was a “quietly humble man, more so than anyone living on earth.” (Numbers 12)

    Lesson 5:  Advocate for your people.  Even though the Israelites were grumbling about not having any meat, Moses advocated for his people by asking God to provide meat for them, and He did (Numbers 11).  He also asked God to forgive them (Numbers 14).

    Lesson 6:  Even leaders make mistakes and are human.  Moses’ temper was “white hot” (Numbers 16) and he lost his trust in God (Numbers 20, Deuteronomy 32), which cost him the opportunity to lead his people into the Promised Land.  It is how we handle these flaws and their consequences that matter.  Its never stated that Moses complained about the consequence of his lack of trust, and he controlled his temper.

    Lesson 7:  Have a protégé. Leaders make more leaders.Moses’ was Joshua (Deuteronomy 31, 34).  Leaders should always be training and teaching others and should entrust others with important tasks.  Joshua was entrusted with leading the Israelites into the Promised Land,

    Moses sought God’s guidance in all that he did, which led to many of the lessons learned through him.

    What Biblical or historical characters have you gleaned leadership insight from?

  • Want to get job? Foster Collaboration

    The First 2 Cs that all employers want-conscientiousness and creativity are about individual contributions.  However, the second two, one which we have already discussed, communication and our final C, collaboration focus on how we interact with other people.   I would argue the final two are more important. They, also, help people be more successful at the first two, creating even greater gains in your marketability as an employee.

    Consider a recent article, by George Anders that stated that empathy would be the number one sought after skill in the workplace is 2020.    Empathy, or the ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, is the foundation of working with others collaboratively.

     

    An Example

    Where I worked as a recruiter at one time, computer programmers acted as a service department so to speak to other departments in the company that needed their help.   So, their primary job, beyond programming was interacting with people in various departments to determine their need, find a solution and produce that solution.   Communication was key and their ability to collaborate by being empathic to the other person’s needs and who often did not speak their (computer) “language” was critical to their success on the job.  And it was hard to find.   The collaborative mindset was harder to find that the programming skills.   We could replace someone who could program, it was much harder to replace someone who could work well with others.

     

    How to Foster Collaboration

    Dale Carnegie offers much better advice to foster positive interactions with other than I could every come up with.   His book,How to Win Friends and Influence People lists several ways to improve our ability to work with others.  These are my favorites:

    •  “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.”
    •   “Give honest and sincere appreciation.”
    •  “Become genuinely interested in others.”
    •   “Smile”
    •   Learn and use people’s names.  To that person their name is “the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
    •   Listen
    •   Make people feel important
    •  Avoid arguing
    • Admit when you are wrong and apologize

    What have you done to foster or practice collaboration in your home, your school or your workplace?

     

    Want more?  This post on Working Girl gives a good example of what collaboration looks like.

  • Why I Hate Employee Handbooks

    Why I Hate Employee Handbooks

    I don’t do employee handbooks.  Wait, I made an exception for a wonderful client and just finished up an employee handbook a few weeks ago.   But I don’t do employee handbooks, or maybe the better thing to say is, I don’t like them.  Here’s why:

    • Most of the content in them these days implies that you can’t trust your employees.
    • Most of the content in them these days implies that you think your employees don’t remember the lessons they learned in kindergarten.
    • Most of the content in them these days is written for the exception rather than the rule.  In other words, a policy is written for the one bad performer instead of the 10 good ones.
    • Most of the content in them these days tells employees nothing about how to be star in the workplace.
    • Handbooks or policies imply that you can make a rule to regulate every bad behavior.   News flash: this is not possible.

     

    Better idea?  Make an “Orientation to Succeeding at our Company” manual.

    Want to help people be successful at your company? Make the “manual” and introduction to the company with how to succeed.

    A lot of the content in the handbook I just completed was this.  Such as, answering questions like, what benefits are offered to me as an employee?, what are the designated holidays?, etc.   It’s pretty dry, but I would take it a step further and encourage employers to make employee handbooks that look more like this one:

    Valve Employee Handbook  Don’t you just love the graphics in it?

     

    What is the value of a handbook like this? 

    You get the information out to your new employees that needs to be shared, but without all the overbearing rules.  You also, right of the bat, establish the feel of the company culture by giving someone a document like this, instead of something that looks like the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament.

    Want to read more on getting away from policies and handbooks?

    From Fistful of Talent: Minimalist HR

    From upstartHR: An open letter to HR on policies, regulating and training

     

    image source: http://blog.equinix.com/2012/02/rewriting-the-rules-for-financial-trading-infrastructure-learning-a-new-rule-book/

  • What is Your Smart Phone Teaching You about Communication?

    What is Your Smart Phone Teaching You about Communication?

    In the leadership classes I teach, I get more complaints about Generation Y’s communication skills than almost anything else in the class (other than possibly their apparent lack of motivation).  Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about the 4 Cs that are a must have to employers, and communication is one of them.

    Apparently, the generation that has, for the most part, always had a cell or smart phone in their hand, is lacking in communication skills.  We all are lacking in this area, but the smart phone is an easy scapegoat.  A prime example of the shift in communication that smart phones have caused is when I heard that at a middle school dance the boys stood one side of the room and the girls stood on the other.  They didn’t dance together or talk face-to-face, they just texted back and forth.

    As a young person, you can distinguish yourself by putting down your cell phone and actually having a real conversation with someone.

    Turn away from what your smart phone has conditioned you to do: 

    1. If you wouldn’t say it to them in person, don’t “say” it at all. Don’t text it, tweet it, Facebook it or email it.  Don’t SnapChat or Instragram a picture of it.  Also fitting with this, if you wouldn’t say it to them in person, don’t say it to someone else.
    2.  You have two ears and one mouth.  Which should be used more?  (Personal disclaimer: I struggle with this).
    3.  Spelling and grammar matter in a professional setting.   Don’t talk or write a professional email or document like you text.

    I do think, however, that the world of personal communication devices has lent some positives to communication.

    Turn toward what your smart phone has conditioned you to do:

    1.  Keep it simple.  If it’s too much to fit in a text or in a tweet, consider revising for simplicity whether in written or spoken words.  As Norman Vincent Peale said in his book The True Joy of Positive Living, “much can be said in a few words, provided those words are well chosen.”
    2.  Delay important communication if your mind is occupied elsewhere.   The one thing that you can do with a phone is chose to answer it or not. Same goes with replying to a message.    If you need to have important communication with someone and your mind is elsewhere, your emotional, or tired,  “call them back.”  Think about it before you respond. The worst communication mistakes I’ve made are when it was not the proper time to discuss something in the first place (or I fell victim to my mouth instead of using my ears).

    What is the worst communication blunder you see in the workplace?

     

    Want to read more about the other Cs employer want?

    Conscientiousness

    Creativity

    Coming up next:  Collaboration.  Want to start thinking about collaboration aka teamwork?  See how it’s linked with communication.

     

    image source: librarysciencelist.com

  • Do you want to go to timeout?

    THE LAW OF EFFECT LEARNED FROM DISCIPLINING A TWO YEAR OLD

    “Do you want to go to timeout?”  “Do you want a spanking?”  These are two things my husband and I find ourselves saying to our two year old more often than we’d like when he misbehaves.   Of course he doesn’t want to go to timeout and of course he doesn’t want a spanking, but in our misdirected way of discipline, it seems to be the easiest way to try to get him to behave without actually having to follow through on a consequence.

    A dear friend and parent coach Carol Ozier, when asked about how to discipline children, simply responded, “Say what you mean and do what you say.”  If I have no intention of putting him in timeout or spanking him, my words don’t matter and he knows I won’t follow through with my actions, so what does he do? He continues to misbehave. What seems to be the route of least resistance oftentimes ends up being what keeps us beating our head against a wall by behaving the same way and expecting a different result.  Insanity at its finest.

    This dilemma reminds me of a common motivation principle that is emphasized in one of the leadership classes I facilitate.   The law of effect, simply put, states that behavior is a result of consequences.  Consequences can be good or bad. We often associate a negative connotation with consequences, but they are simply an outcome or result. The “law” emphasizes that in order for behavior to change, consequences have to be:

    • Immediate
    • Certain
    • Negative (in the case of stopping the behavior)

    For leaders, this simply means that if you want to increase positive behaviors and diminish the negative ones, then “Say what you mean and do what you say.”  For example, if someone violates a safety rule at work, oftentimes the worst negative consequence of an injury doesn’t occur (thank goodness).  The injury isn’t immediate and it isn’t certain.  However, if you say your company’s first priority is safety, and you don’t make the consequences of following or not following safety practices immediate and certain, then safety really isn’t your first priority.    I have one client, who if a person does not lock-out tag-out (for those of you outside the manufacturing world, lock-out-tag-out is a way to make sure a machine is turned off before you try to fix anything with it or modify it in order to avoid getting hurt) and they have a way of tracking this, it is an automatic three years probation.   Do it again, and you’re fired.  No questions asked.

    But I would also challenge us all to think about what positive consequences we could make immediate and certain that would spur along good behavior.

    Despite my often failure and disciplining my toddler consistently, potty training turned out to be a breeze.   Thanks to the consistency established at his school with his wonderful teachers, potty training took less than a week.  Why?  The consequence of using the potty, established by his teachers, was immediate and certain.  You go number one on the potty you get one m&m (m&ms are powerful at our house- you can read more here); go number two in the potty and you get two m&ms.   We followed suit at home.  The reward for the behavior got progressively more challenging at the teachers’ guidance.  After about two weeks of being put on the potty, you didn’t get an m&m reward unless you told the teacher you needed to go potty or you stayed dry through naptime.    Now, he goes the potty consistently, and usually doesn’t even ask for an m&m anymore.  Going to the potty is just what “big boys do”. And besides, who wants to be wet or dirty anyway?  Just like who wouldn’t want to keep from cutting their hand off in the safety example?

    The path of least resistance is often found with consistency. Once you establish that consistency, you don’t have to keep fighting the battle over and over again.  If we ensure we “Say what we mean and do what we say” through immediate and certain positive and negative consequences, we can all stop beating our heads against a wall or at least stop sounding like a broken record.