doing a helluva job

My officers knew that they could always use me in their leadership toolkits. They never hesitated to knock on my door and say, "Hey, Captain, next time you're out walking around the ship, Sonarman Smith really aced that databank," or "Seaman Jones is doing a helluva job in the laundry. Could you stop by and tell him how much you appreciate him?"

Those conversations were the highlight of my day, and they didn't cost me or the Navy a dime. The more I went around meeting sailors, the more they talked to me openly and intelligently. The more I thanked them for hard work, the harder they worked. The payoff in morale was palpable. I'm absolutely convinced that positive, personal reinforcement is the essence of effective leadership. Yet some leaders seem to be moving away from it. They stay connected electronically with e-mail and cell phones, but they're disconnected personally, and many leaders almost never leave their offices. People seem to think that if you send somebody a compliment online, it's as good as the human touch. It is not. It's easier, but much less effective. Social interaction is getting lost in a digital world that trades more in abstractions than in face-to-face relations. It's more than a shame - it's a bottom-line mistake.

As I have said before, my sister Connie works for a major bank. One of her people did a phenomenal job, making hundreds of thousands of dollars for the bank, and Connie's boss sent an e-mail congratulating and thanking her. That very afternoon, he rode the elevator with her and didn't even acknowledge her existence. It completely wiped out any good his e-mail could have done.

Recall how you feel when your own boss tells you, "Good job." Do your people (and yourself) a favor. Say it in person, if you can. Press the flesh. Open yourself. Coldness congeals. Warmth heals. Little things make big successes.

D. Michael Abrashoff

It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff. Grand Central Publishing. 2007. p.143,144

the pursuit of value

The trigger for any corporate transformation is the pursuit of value. Ideally, that entails both improving efficiency (through streamlining and cost cutting) and reinvesting in growth. But many transformation efforts derail because they focus too narrowly on one or the other.

In some cases, attempts to streamline the business through productivity improvements, outsourcing, divestments, or restructuring undermine growth. The cuts are so deep that they hollow out capabilities, sap morale, and remove the slack that could have fueled new endeavors.

Bharat N. Anand and Jean-Louis Barsoux

"What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management," Harvard Business Review. November-December 2017. 

attitudes

Attitudes are caught, not taught.  

Jim Mattis

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 159

crucial conversations

The ability to engage in crucial conversations, absent from the pervasive authoritarian leadership style of the past, is now recognized as an essential leadership skill. Because emotionally charged conversations can get messy, some leaders still prefer to avoid them, which creates a gap in leadership and can significantly impact employee morale, retention, and the company’s bottom line.

Jody Michael, Jody Michael Associates 

"13 Leadership Skills You Didn't Need A Decade Ago That Are Now Essential." Forbes. December 13, 2016

perceived control

Everyone knows it’s important to keep employees in the loop, however, few employers are very good at this.

If you’re serious about keeping employee morale high and building organizational resilience, you need to shift this idea from “know it” to “act on it.” The more employees know what’s going on, the less time and energy they spend wondering — and worrying — about what they don’t know.

Research on stress and control shows that when we know what is going to happen — even if it’s bad — we feel less stressed than when we are faced with the unknown. Psychologists call this phenomenon “Perceived Control” because even though they don’t technically have control, knowing what’s going to happen creates a sense of control.

So, find out where employees feel left in the dark and how best to keep them in the know.

David Lee

"How To Build A Resilient, Stress-Resistant Workforce" TLNT 2/24/2014

failure: a manifestation of learning

Left to their own devices, most people don’t want to fail. But Andrew Stanton isn’t most people. As I’ve mentioned, he’s known around Pixar for repeating the phrases “fail early and fail fast” and “be wrong as fast as you can.” He thinks of failure like learning to ride a bike; it isn’t conceivable that you would learn to do this without making mistakes – without toppling over a few times. “Get a bike that’s as low to the ground as you can find. Put on elbow and knee pads so you’re not afraid of falling, and go,” he says. If you apply this mindset to everything new you attempt, you can begin to subvert the negative connotation associated with making mistakes. Says Andrew: “You wouldn’t say to somebody who is first learning to play the guitar, ‘You better think really hard about where you put your fingers on the guitar neck before you strum, because you only get to strum once, and that’s it. And if you get that wrong, we’re going to move on.’ That’s no way to learn, is it?”

This doesn't mean that Andrew enjoys it when he puts his work up for others to judge, and it is found wanting. But he deals with the possibility of failure by addressing it head on – searching for mechanisms that turn pain into progress. To be wrong as fast as you can is to sign up for aggressive, rapid learning. Andrew does this without hesitation.  Even though people in our offices have heard Andrew say this repeatedly – many still miss the point. They think it means accept failure with dignity and move on. The better, more subtle interpretation is that failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy — trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it — dooms you to fail.

As Andrew puts it, “Moving things forward allows the team you are leading to feel like – “Oh I’m on a boat that’s actually moving towards land!” as opposed to having a leader that says, “I’m still not sure. I’m going to look at the map a little bit more and we’re just going to float here and all of you stop rowing until I figure this out.” And then weeks go by, and morale plummets, and failure becomes self-fulfilling. People begin to treat the captain with doubt and trepidation. Even if their doubts aren’t fully justified, you’ve become what they see you as because of your inability to move.”

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

the mystique of leadership

The mystique of leadership, be it educational, political, religious, commercial or whatever, is next to impossible to describe, but wherever it exists, morale flourishes, people pull together toward common goals, spirits soar, order is maintained, not as an end in itself, but as a means to move forward together. Such leadership always has a moral as well as intellectual dimension; it requires courage as well as wisdom; it does not simply know, it cares.

T.M. Hesburgh

Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing human resources. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1971

As quoted in Jones, H.E. and Moser, H.R. From Trait to Transformation: The Evolution of Leadership Theories – Middle Tennessee State University