Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

The Key To Organizational Leadership: Strong Character

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Hydro One, a Crown corporation that runs Ontario’s transmission system, fired an employee this past week who shouted obscenities at a Toronto television reporter after a soccer game. While the company’s code of conduct (which all employees sign) covers after work behavior, the decision to let the engineer go generated a heated debate online.

In an exclusive interview, Hydro One CEO Carmine Marcello gave his rationale for making the decision:

“…at the end of the day, it was a pretty simple decision. We [as a leadership team] looked at who we are, what our core values are, and we made a values based decision, and decided we couldn’t condone that kind of behaviour. We had to send a clear message to the employee, and quite frankly to our employee base, and made a decision to terminate him.

… I have yet to find a single person to say his behaviour was commendable. It just doesn’t exist. So, really what we’re saying is, hold yourself to a high standard at work, and quite frankly, hold yourself to a high standard within society.

…I’m sure he’s free to speak his mind. We all are. I think there’s also a level of common decency and decorum that we all expect, and not getting into a debate, I’m just going back to the first principles in Hydro One: the issues and the values that we hold dear around our people, our customers, and working collaboratively together. What’s important to us drives business success.

… it’s clear that this behaviour did not fit with who we are as a company and we took appropriate action.

… We have our own code of conduct, we’ve had it for many years. When I became the CEO a number of years ago, one of the things I really focused on was transforming our culture. Job one was to improve our customer service … but at the end of the day it’s about people and their ability to do great work. So I rolled out a process about identifying certain core values around our employees.”

It’s inspiring to witness a company and CEO stand for something. My father would say that these organizational leaders have an almost forgotten quality: character. Character is about choosing what’s right over choosing what’s popular or easy. Being a person or a company of character isn’t taking the comfortable road. But this is what business culture, organizational leadership, and employee accountability are all about. If you don’t stand for something, if you don’t have the courage to hold yourself and others accountable to what you say you stand for, then why have fancy value statements on your website and office walls in the first place?

I admire Mr. Marcello and his leadership team for having the courage to remain true to the foundational principles that Hydro One’s culture is built upon. The organizational leadership they exercised isn’t just good for their company; this kind of leadership is good for society.

Engaging Employees in Economic Uncertainty

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The recent economic slowdown has created great uncertainty for businesses and, adding to the pressure, are the debates regarding how much oil and gas companies will be affected and in what way. What we can be certain about is that employers that consciously manage their work culture and employees during times of uncertainty will position themselves to take advantages of opportunities in the face of obstacles.

Why is it business critical for organizations to invest in a great work culture, especially now?

Demographics alone point to a continued trend of labour shortages due to an aging workforce, especially in in-demand occupations.

Many oil companies have long service employees whose experience is deep technically and broad in terms of institutional knowledge and intelligence. Many of these long-term employees will be eligible to retire soon, and statistics show us that as a population ages we see increases in short term vs. long term employment. It is more important than ever for oil companies to have a strong workplace culture to both attract, retain and engage employees to transition their knowledge and experience to the next generation of workers.

Additionally, Statistics Canada stated that in 2011, the percentage of working-age Canadians in the labour force is expected to peak. In other words, beginning in 2012, the number of workers leaving the labour force is already exceeding the number of new entrants and labour shortages continues to be an on-going concern. This trend is expected to continue. Employees, especially those in in-demand occupations, will continue to have choice. Employers need to evaluate the long-term risks associated with an aging workforce, recognizing that the skills and experience they need in the future may not be readily available.

In times of slowing economies, the mantra of leading employers becomes how to stabilize and engage employees in a highly proactive, productive way. The practices of attraction, retention, engagement and how employers manage their culture and employees still apply.

In our experience, there are several shifts in emphasis that will ensure success:

  • Engaged employees see themselves as “owners” not “tenants or renters” of an organization. Employers who are dedicated to employee engagement provide them with a framework of accountability, so they know not only ‘what’ they are expected to do but ‘how’ (what behaviours will get them there). Employers who foster a culture of personal responsibility where employees feel a part of the whole (“we” vs “they”) during times of stress can leverage collective intelligence to work through real work challenges.
  • Engage employees to make the best use of their skills and abilities. Many employers make the mistake of assuming employees will be happy with just having a job vs. utilizing their strengths in the right job. Keeping people busy is not synonymous with real engagement and productivity.
    Engage employees to realize future success – use the wisdom of the many over the ideas of a few.
  • Involve employees in problem solving to address current business challenges. This approach goes hand in hand with the theme of open communication as employers need to be open about current business challenges in order to be successful in this engagement strategy. It ultimately provides employees a sense of control over their own future and the future of the company. The leading edge employer who adopts this approach will not only attract and retain the best employees but will become highly productive and well positioned for future opportunities when others are struggling to survive.
  • Communicate, Communicate, Communicate. Timely, consistent communication of what employers know and especially what they don’t know, removes the ‘cloak of secrecy’ and creates an environment of trust, so that employees are confident that leaders will provide the truth. In the absence of open transparent information employees will draw their own conclusions, often fearing the worst. Effective communication in times of uncertainty is not just about making timely announcements or the distribution of information. Genuine two-way communication that leads to productive employee engagement and mutual trust has a grassroots “water cooler” conversational quality to it. It is about listening, not surveying, paying attention, not getting attention. In many ways, employee engagement is less about the information you provide and more about what you draw out of your employees.
  • Employee engagement is also about managing the work culture and environment. Uncertainty is stressful. When people are stressed, they can feel threatened, which often results in behaviors that counter a productive workforce.  Therefore, it is important for organizations to be vigilant in reinforcing a mutually respectful workplace during times of uncertainty.

Most companies have spent the last few years trying to find ways to become the “Culture of Choice” and retain and leverage the best in their talent pool. Economic downturns always test employers in this quest.  Now more than ever is the time to implement an employee engagement and productivity strategy.

By Janice Clark and Pat Hufnagel-Smith, ©2015 Irvine & Associates, Inc.

Irvine & Associates Inc. provides training and consulting solutions to assist employers with employee engagement by creating a vibrant accountable culture resulting in delivery of real time business results.

Personal Leadership: Learning To Lead Without An Ego

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One of the ways you can be guided to your authentic self is to be attentive to stories that capture your attention. I’m drawn to stories that illustrate personal leadership – the capacity to inspire and influence others that comes from the identity and integrity of a person.

A few weeks ago, while reading the Globe and Mail, I was inspired by the story of one of Toronto Blue Jays’ pitchers, Daniel Norris. Norris spends the off-season living in a 35-year-old VW van he calls Shaggy. Though he’s a millionaire, he gets by on $800 (U.S.) a month. He cooks on a portable stove. He wears a miner’s headlamp at night to write in his “thought journal.”

He’s also a good baseball player. Maybe, according the to Globe’s Cathal Kelly, a special baseball player. In addition to his exceptional talent, Blue Jays’ general manager Alex Anthopoulos claims that when Norris is on, all the players perform above average.

When Toronto was considering drafting Norris from his high school in Tennessee, assistant GM Andrew Tinnish took him to Florida for medical testing. After, when they were driving to lunch Norris perked up and pointed. “He said, ‘Oh man, that’s the car I want. That’s what I’m going to buy if I get signed,’” Tinnish says. “I’m looking around for a Lexus or a Beemer. But, no. It’s one of those VW camper vans.”

Here’s what Daniel Norris can teach the rest of us about personal leadership: leading without an ego.

  • Norris doesn’t seek the limelight. He’s there to add value by simply being who he is. I’m drawn to people – and to leaders like this. From what I have read about him, he is authentic. He’s the real deal.
  • Norris’s desire isn’t to look good or be anything other than what he actually is. He doesn’t flaunt his position or need to look bigger than life. His focus is simple:  how he can be a better baseball pitcher.
  • I get a sense that Norris isn’t too attached to what people think of him. He appeals to me because he doesn’t seem to measure his worth by the opinions of others. There appears to be substance over flash, ability over appearance, results over image. His worth comes from within and from what he can do on the mound, not what he can look like in the media.

Leadership isn’t measured by the size of your office or the title behind your name. It’s measured by competence, character, and the ability to connect. May we all be inspired by Daniel Norris to be a little more humble, a little more authentic, and a little more human. This is what the world badly needs.

I don’t how Daniel Norris came to have this kind of confidence in himself, to believe in himself so that he doesn’t have to mask insecurity by being an egomaniac. Too many highly paid athletes – as well as executives – could learn a lesson about leaving their ego at the door. What I do know is that self-awareness is the most important capability for leaders to develop.

The Key To Building A Strong Organizational Culture

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In my leadership development work I meet some amazing leaders all across the country. One of the executives in a recent program on Leadership Excellence validated my principles by expressing that there is more to excellence than setting high standards and achieving operational results. “Along with operational excellence, you have to have people excellence,” she explained. She makes it a practice to stay in touch with her team. It’s about caring about your people, but not just caring that they are healthy and are getting enough rest. It’s also caring that they are developing, growing, and finding fulfillment in their work.

Once a month she meets with each member of her team for half an hour. Here is what is on the agenda:

  1. She asks how their life is at work and away from work.
  2. She asks how their career is progressing.
  3. She asks for feedback about how supported they are feeling by her.
  4. Then she asks what kind of development or learning project they are involved in that is rewarding and gratifying to them. This last piece often requires some coaching on her part to assist them in finding a fulfilling project.

She spoke of one of her IT managers who is involved in a software project that she is deeply passionate about. Apparently it takes up about ten percent of her time. It is not directly impacting or contributing to her job requirements short term, but it is extremely rewarding to her and will help her be a better IT manager long term. It’s an area where she can become an internal expert and coach and mentor others in the future.

It’s risky to offer this to the people that you serve. In order to build a strong organizational culture, you have to be willing to sometimes let your best people leave for work in other areas in order to help them grow. They may even develop themselves and leave the organization. But this kind investment in people will always have a good long-term return. The best people will want to work for you, and you’ll get the best out of those who do.

What are you doing to develop and grow the people you serve?

Be a Good Leader By Being A Good Person

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John Coltrane, the great American jazz saxophonist and composer, once said that to be a better artist you have to be a better person. He could easily have been talking about leadership. My research and observation of leaders during the past couple of decades has demonstrated clearly that great leadership can’t be reduced to techniques or a title. Great leadership comes from the integrity and character of the leader.

Here’s some of what I’ve learned about leadership:

  • There’s a difference between a boss and a leader. You can get promoted to “boss”, but you can’t be promoted to “leader”. You have to earn the right to be called a leader.
  • You aren’t a leader until someone says you are. Leadership is defined by those around you, not by size of your office or the title behind your name.
  • Leadership is a decision. If you have decided to make the world better through others, you are on your way to earning the right to be called a leader.
  • To be called a leader, you need followers. Not followers in the traditional sense who blindly obey because they have to, but followers who have a choice, and they choose to follow you. Leadership is the art getting people to want to do what must be done.
  • Leadership is about creating results through others – without the use of positional power. It’s about presence, not position. The question is: Where does that sense of presence come from? How does one develop that presence?

After years of research and observation, I’ve come to understand that sense of presence comes, essentially, from being a good person. It’s that easy, and it’s that difficult. Here are a few ways to develop your leadership presence by being a good person:

  1. Character. We’ve all met people in our work experience who are bright, talented, competent, good at making deals, but something about who they are as a person got in the way of all their ability. Character is about moral integrity, acting honestly and ethically. It’s also about relational integrity, being accountable – having the ability to be counted on. It’s earning the trust of others by being trustworthy. It’s about earning the respect of others through self-respect. People of strong character are integrated human beings.
  2. Caring. In a recent coaching session with an executive, we were discussing possible reasons for the lack of results from his team. When I asked him, “Do you care?” he kept going on about his frustration for the lack of accountability on the team and the poor attitude of his employees. I pushed further, “I know you care about results, but do you care about the people around you? Do you care about what matters to them, about their families and their values and their unique gifts?” After a long pause he shrugged his shoulders and said, “No, not really.” I then suggested he do his organization and himself a favor and step down from the responsibility of management. To lead you have to connect. To connect, you have to care. You can’t fake caring, just like you can’t fake character. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Leadership is a largely a matter of caring about people, not manipulating them.
  3. Centered. Centered leaders know their worth, strength, and security comes from within. Because they don’t define themselves by their external environment, they are able to maintain calmness in the midst of the storms, security in the midst of failure, and perspective in the midst of success. Centered leaders are guided by an internal compass based on their own values and their own approach to life rather than on the fleeting opinions of others or comparisons to others. They are focused on what matters and are able to go within and find inner strength, wisdom, and stability, even in the midst of a demanding external world.
  4. Contribution. Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, have devoted much of their energy to global development philanthropy. While in Ottawa to discuss overseas aid with the Canadian government, he said, in part, “In countries such as the U.S. and Canada, where a lot of people are doing quite well, the question is: Can you take your loyalty and your values and go further than yourself and your family, even beyond your region and your country? Can you have, as a member of the human race, the idea that you would volunteer time or your voice, or whatever means you have to give? You’re connecting yourself with the improvements needed around the world: eradicating polio, for example, or making sure there’s enough food for poor children. I think that … people want to be associated with more than their own success – they want to have knowledge and a sense of progress that they contributed to [something beyond themselves]… We call that our ‘global citizenship’ movement.” Bill Gates understands that being a good person means allowing your success to overflow into making life better for others.  This commitment to contribute beyond yourself, whether it’s across the world or across the corridor outside your office door, is what makes a great leader.

Being a good leader by being a good person cannot be taught in a leadership course or textbook. But it can be learned. It can be developed. My dad would say that it can be caught even though it can’t be taught. It’s means your motive is to do good by being good. And it amounts to leading well by living well.

From Leadership Training To Leadership Development: The Duty To Care

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I just got off the phone with my friend and colleague, John Knapp, Retired Deputy Minister of Alberta Agriculture and author of The Leader’s Practice Guide: How to Achieve True Leadership Success. John is one of the old school leaders with true character. But John was not only a leader with class, he was one of those rare leaders who cared. He cared about his work. He cared about the citizens of this province. And he cared about the employees he served. In his more than thirty years with the public service, it was never a just a job to him. It was a career, an opportunity to contribute, a duty to care.

Today we spoke of the mistake that so many leadership development programs make regarding leadership training. There is still far too much emphasis on the technical components of leadership training: strategic planning, project management, budgeting, HR management, and product development efficiency, to name a few.

As important as these areas are, they still don’t speak to the core of leadership: learning how to connect with people, build trust, inspire a shared vision, communicate clearly, mentor and engage people, and hold people accountable in respectful ways. This is what John would call “the leader’s duty to care.”

Here is how to design leadership training programs that teach people how to care:

  1. Turn leadership training programs into leadership development programs that affirm caring as an important value in your organization.
  2. Identify and shine a light on leaders of strong character and leaders who care.
  3. Create space for mentoring by leaders that are respected.
  4. Weed out the bad bosses by removing them from leadership positions and help them find roles that may be more technical in nature. Most bad bosses – at least those worth keeping – will thank you for doing this.
  5. Create a workplace that operates on values rather than rules, ensuring that every leader is held to account for living the values that are espoused.

In short, you can’t ‘train’ leaders in the duty to care. But you can certainly develop the duty to care in the culture that you lead.