Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Leadership Development

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step in your own leadership development (or if you’re looking for resources for someone else).

  • How to Handle Mental Health Issues in the Workplace

    How to Handle Mental Health Issues in the Workplace

    I had a reader send me a suggestion for a blog post a little over a month ago. It said:

    “With the terrible shooting in VA yesterday, maybe an article on how HR can better handle identifying, coaching, counseling & later termination of disgruntled employees if coaching is not effective. I am sure HR departments are concerned about their own employees. Just thoughts.”

    With all our content written for the month, I told him I’d add it to the roster even though this shooting would be old news. The sad thing, though, is that I silently thought there will be something else like this happen again before I get ready to post something. And course, the news has covered other shootings since then.

    In thinking about how to address this topic, I kept trying to avoid talking about a very personal encounter I’ve experienced with this issue. However, I just kept coming back to it. Our marketing guru told me I needed to write about it in order to more effectively and personally address this topic, so here it goes.

    To make a long story short, a former pastor at our church upon leaving our congregation for another church (in the Methodist church pastors are moved by the conference, they aren’t hired by the congregation), shot and killed his wife, attempted to kill his daughter, and tried to kill himself. If you live close to where I live, you are familiar with this story, even though it has been a while since it happened. He was found not guilty by reason of mental defect and is in a psychiatric hospital.

    I could have told you ten years before this happened that he had mental health issues.  Serious ones. Through some personal dealings with my family and then similar stories that came to light through others, it is obvious he needed help.

    His actions led to much anxiety, bitterness, anger and resentment for me and my family. Our first reaction was not to help the man who had hurt us so much.  We talked to some people about the issues, but he had another side that many people saw and loved.  Through this, I believe he was able to mask some of the issues. It also led people to dismiss others who saw the issues and tried to bring them to light. So, we stopped trying to bring them to light and just retreated.

    Ultimately I believe the lack of confrontation with these difficult issues on the part of all of us including our church congregation and our United Methodist Conference led to the loss of life.

    From this personal example, here is a list of advice in dealing with mental health issues in the workplace:

    1. Don’t avoid

    Listen to people when they bring issues to light.  Don’t dismiss them.  Often there are many yellow flags before the red flag appears.

    Talk first hand and immediately with the employee who is disgruntled, having anger management issues, or acting suspicious on the job.  Give them specific, behavioral based feedback and specifically state the consequences of what will happen if the behavior continues.

    Make sure you have a process in place to hear both sides of the story.

    Do an investigation if needed.

    Terminate employment if issues don’t stop and/or one issue is large enough to put others at risk.   Have a specific process for doing so (some of the other tips below may help you think through this process).

    2. Put systems and structures in place to bring issues to light

    This is only possible when employees are comfortable coming to their boss and/or HR with issues; creating an open door environment is critical.  Knowing your employees and caring about them is the best way to keep a pulse on difficult issues and to mitigate them before they become a problem.

    Have a confidential reporting mechanism in place for people.

    3. Protect yourself

    Document everything.

    Always have someone else present when speaking with a disgruntled employee. If the person is a member of the opposite sex, have someone of the same sex as the employee present with you.

    4. Get people the help they need

    Although the person may not see it like this at the time, unacceptable behavior on the job may be a cry for help, make sure you have referral sources (EAP, mental health agencies, your occupational health provider, etc.) to provide more in-depth help and support when it is needed.

    Don’t let HR take on the role of clinical counseling.

    5. Fund and get involved with agencies and causes that combat mental health issues on a broader scale.   

     

    Ultimately, we never know when a genetic predisposition and/or life experiences could put any one of us down a road of mental instability. It is time we all move away from the stigma of mental health, especially HR professionals, by getting to know and care for others. The first step to truly caring for others is realizing that we’ve got to confront the issue head on. It’s a matter of life and death, literally.

    In my personal example, the situation, at times, made me and my family want to loose our religion. Dealing with this inside the church was difficult. However, I firmly believe, at the risk of some people discounting the post, that we can find more answers and solutions to mental health issues inside the walls of the church than out.  For an honest and very personal view on what I think the world needs to combat mental health tragedies in our workplace and in our world download this podcast. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

  • Why does employee engagement matter?

    Why does employee engagement matter?

    I’ve been rambling on this month about how to drive employee performance.  If you missed the run-down so far, you can check out the posts here:

    What You Pay Does Matter

    3 Steps to Winning A Best Place to Work Award

    3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

    But why does it matter? Why would you or any organization want to pay competitively, win a great place to work award and/or drive employee engagement through personalization.

    We’d argue first that it is simply the right thing to do. But this reason alone won’t keep you in business. However, doing these things just might.  Consider this data quoted in The New York Times article, Why You Hate Work.

    “In a 2012 meta-analysis of 263 research studies across 192 companies, Gallup found that companies in the top quartile for engaged employees, compared with the bottom quartile, had 22 percent higher profitability, 10 percent higher customer ratings, 28 percent less theft and 48 percent fewer safety incidents.”

    Make your employees happy, and most likely they will take care of everything else.

  • 5 Questions to End the Slow Painful Death of Death by Meetings

    5 Questions to End the Slow Painful Death of Death by Meetings

    In a leadership training class on communication in the workplace, I had one participant tell the group that meetings at his company were the biggest waste of time. When probed as to why, the basic gist of it came down to two reasons:

    1. No one knows why the heck a meeting has been called and/or why they need to be there

    2. Nothing results from the meetings

    Because of this dialogue as well as other feedback we had received, we started incorporating a segment on effective meetings into our standard Communication Outline lineup.

    Whether you are dealing with these two major meeting issues or just want to sharpen the saw on facilitating effective meetings, here is a checklist of questions to ask yourself:

    1. Do you even need to have a meeting? Is there a more effective way to communicate and/or make decisions?

    2. If a meeting is needed, what is the meeting’s objective? Clearly outline an agenda that meets this objective and send it out to all participants ahead of time. While in the meeting, stick only to topics related to the objective. If a topic comes up outside the scope of the meetings objective, politely redirect the conversation back to the objective and remind people you are doing so out of respect for everyone’s time.

    3. Who really needs to be there? We often include people because we don’t want to hurt feelings and/or we simply don’t take the time to think through who needs to be at the table. Only include those who are truly needed. In the case where decisions need to be made in a meeting, the smaller the group the better.

    4. Did the meeting result in decisions, action items and timelines centered-round the meeting’s objective?

    5. Did you put in place a mechanism to follow-up on the action items and timelines set forth in the meeting?

  • 2 Steps to Keep People from Quitting

    2 Steps to Keep People from Quitting

    Do you know the number one reason why people quit a job? It’s not for more money or better benefits or advancement opportunities. People may cite these factors as a reason for leaving in an exit interview or casual conversation, but what most likely led them to look elsewhere in the first place is because of a bad boss. As a Harvard Business Review article stated, “Studies have consistently shown that having a bad manager or a poor relationship with one’s manager is a top reason an employee quits.”

    Yep, most likely your number one reason for turnover is bad leadership, especially at the frontline level. And how much does turnover cost? Most studies report between 150-300% of the person’s annual salary depending on the position. Ouch.

    However, in the same Harvard Business Review article, only 12% of survey respondents said they currently invest sufficiently in the development of frontline managers.

    So one of the best ways to nip a turnover issue in the bud and to potentially gain a competitive advantage over competitors is to fix your leadership issues, with the greatest bang for your buck being at the frontline level. Here are two steps to do just that:

    1. Identify, assess and select frontline leadership talent based on skills needed to effectively lead and develop others, not skills needed to perform successfully in the doer role. The classic Peter Principle states the people are often promoted to their level of incompetence. Most frontline leaders are promoted to a supervisory role because they are good at the doer role, not because they are equipped with the skills to be effective leading others.

    Whether you are hiring someone externally or promoting from within, you need to assess both the leadership potential of the person (skill) as well as the desire to be in a leadership role (will). As Kris Dunn said in one of his all-to truthful and to-the-point performance management posts at HR Capitalist, “That makes hiring people (leaders) – who are comfortable with the gray and understand the value of taking many small actions towards a goal with no guarantee of success – one of the most important things you can do today.” Find out if the person can lead others in a gray world and if he/she actually wants to.

    If you want some tips on what dimensions you need assess potential leadership talent for, give us a shout out and we can help. Kris Dunn’s post just cited has some food for thought on this, and entrepreur.com can help you get you started in thinking about key traits to evaluate.

    2. Teach frontline leaders the skills they need to be effective in a management role. We often promote people to their level of incompetence because we throw them to the wolves as a new leader and expect them to come out alive.   What often happens is we make no investment in cultivating the new skills needed be effective at our organization and then are surprised when they fail.

    Doing this before someone is even promoted and/or hired into the role is imperative. For example, we have a company we love working with that calls us to come and do one-on-one leadership coaching/training with anyone before they are promoted into a supervisory role. You can’t be promoted without this step in the process.

    Developing and deploying a leadership development training plan at an individual and company level in order to effectively transition people from doer to leader then ensure people maintain and grow in effective leadership skills is an ongoing effort. Development plans are also a great way to facilitate succession planning and foster employee engagement.

    If you want more tips on strategies for putting together effective development plans, you might like these posts:

    3 Steps to Better Leadership  

    Get a Leadership Development Game Plan

    What has been your number one strategy to keep people from quitting? Does it involve leadership development?

  • Leadership Tips for Teachers: Leading the Next Generation

    Leadership Tips for Teachers: Leading the Next Generation

    Back to the classroom! As summer is coming to an end, teachers and students are gearing up for another school year. While school supplies and new sneakers are on the list for back to school, we encourage teachers to consider adding sharpening their leadership skills to the list.

    “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” Sheryl Sanberg

     

    What a great motto for teachers to consider! In your quest to lead the next generation, we recommend the following leadership tips:

    Build relationships with your students. Be genuinely concerned about their interests in and outside of the classroom. This is a great way to build trust and open the lines of communication. And, without even realizing it, students are learning to do the same. A great quality for leaders is relationship building.

     

    Involve students in the learning process. Students are more likely to enjoy learning if they have input in the process. Give them a choice of assignments or maybe even the due date on assignments once or twice this year.

     

    Lead by example. Take the lead as a learner. Continuous learning is always a component of being a good educator. Keep students in the loop on what professional or personal development you are working on this year.

     

    Be an encourager. No matter what background students come from or how successful they are in academics or sports, they all need encouragement. Great leaders are encouragers. Encourage your students and encourage them to encourage each other.

     

    For more insight into leadership, check out these post from The Point Blog:

    10 Books Leaders need to be Reading

    Top 10 Leadership Quotes

    Establishing Leadership as a High School or College Student