"Why train 'em? They'll only leave!"

Those were the very words my department head Lenny, said to me some decades ago when we told him we wanted more training. Can you believe it? Of course you can. You've heard the same thing from bosses yourself.

This was misguided then and it's even more so now.

We're coming out of a very tough period for most companies. Everyone knows that when budget cutting is on the table, training gets the ax first. So what's new?

According to a new study published in the Harvard Business Review and highlighted in the Kansas City Star, high achievers who are 30 and under are abandoning ship in droves with an average stay of 18 months. Why? Simple. Lack of training and mentoring for growth.

Imagine that? Young workers want to grow and develop? Isn't that what every management guru since the beginning of time has been telling would-be managers? "Your job is to grow your people." Didn't managers get the memo? Evidently not.

People who have been following the discussions about the millennial generation (Gen Y) have decried the fact they grew up thinking everything they did deserved a "good job" and they all got a prize. But guess what, the reality is that every employee needs and deserves the chance to grow and develop. This isn't a new phenomenon. We are Homo sapiens -- the thinking ones. These young workers are just acting on what is deep-seeded in everyone. We want to learn and grow.

Although my old boss is long gone, his attitude isn't. Here are a few ideas to reverse the trend.

1. Spend time with all employees finding out what their interests and talents are.
2. Figure out how to develop those interests and talents for mutual benefit.
3. Provide formal and informal training and mentoring.
4. Encourage individual initiative and growth.
5. Be ready to say "goodbye."

The best boss I ever had was Joe Caccavo. He reported to Lenny but he was not going to allow his views to affect our team. Joe developed a team of dedicated people who would have followed him to the ends of the earth. (Note: we were also civil service and unionized. Joe could not give us promotions or raises.) So how did he do it?

1. Joe spent time with each of us just talking. He was genuinely interested in understanding our aspirations and talents and then doing what he could to fostering them.
2. Joe kept looking for ways to give each of us opportunities to develop our talents on the projects we worked on. He allowed us to try different roles and tasks and discover where our real contributions lay.
3. Joe set up "lunch and learn" sessions in the conference room one a week. They were voluntary but we never missed a one. He supplied the pizza and the knowledge. There was no budget but he found some local professors who were willing to come in once a month and give us more advanced training -- roast beef sandwiches on the menu for those sessions!
4. He encouraged us to take additional courses on our own and join professional groups that provided educational programs. He attended those meetings with us and helped us network. He let us know when we made mistakes and inspired us to correct them. He was no "softy" and knew how to deliver tough love when we needed it.
5. No one wanted to leave Joe's team. But Joe knew we needed to move on if we were going to continue to grow and develop. When I went to tell him that after 5 years I was going for a corporate position, Joe was thrilled. Because Joe had supported my development, his team had 5 years of results that benefited the organization. Other teams seldom kept people more than a year (yes even in that protected world.)

So which sort of boss are you? Joe or Lenny? I always tried to follow Joe's example and I still encourage my clients to do the same. If fact, my first advice when times are tough and budgets need to shrink? Increase training! After all, if you want people to do more with less, you need to train and mentor them to do that. Otherwise, they'll hit the road as soon as they can.
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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, president, Advantage Leadership, Inc.
Author: Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers. (This link takes you to a special page for a special offer not available publicly.)

 

Hail & Farewell, Joe - Greatest manager...EVER!

I walked into the New York City Housing Authority that morning with a lot of hope and a lot of anxiety. You see, I'd been hired 8 weeks before to be a software developer and I'd used the city's legendary bureaucratic delays in on-boarding to take a crash course in COBOL and systems analysis. I needed that job but I knew I was in trouble.

Someone introduced me to my new boss, Joe, and showed me my desk in the corridor, not even a cubicle. We talked a little about my experience – very light, my education – totally irrelevant, and what I could actually do – very little!

Now at this point, most managers would have rolled their eyes, fumed at the bad luck of the draw, and stormed back into their own offices. After all, Joe had just been assigned a new less than useless “resource.” But that’s not what Joe did. He introduced me to the team, asked them to help me in any way I needed and then said, “Let’s grab a cup of coffee.” For the next few weeks Joe sat with me several hours a day, showing me around the computer system, helping me understand the project we were tackling, and making sure I was in every meeting he went to, no matter how high-ranking the attendees.

Slowly it dawned on me. Joe knew I was just a newbie and didn’t know much about programming. He also knew he could teach me the mechanics. But the reason he had asked for me to be assigned to his team – yes, he’d asked for me – was he saw things in my background that told him I had what he was looking for to grow his team…things that could not be taught.

When I was eventually appointed as a manager, it was Joe who once again took me under his wing. He saw I got the formal training and intense mentoring and coaching I needed to succeed. When I reluctantly left his team to head my own, we still had coffee every morning to talk as colleague…and I continued learning from him. After 5 years I took an opportunity to build a career in the corporate sector armed with what Joe had prepared me to do – function on my own as a manager.  

Joseph Caccavo appears in the acknowledgements of every book I have written for a reason; he had a profound influence on my life and on teaching me how to be a good manager. When I teach management courses today, especially for those folks in IT or engineering or other technical disciplines, I evoke his example. Yes, it’s possible to be a great manager and be a super techie.

What a great manager does...

5 lessons from Joe Caccavo: the best manager…EVER!

Look for your employee’s true gifts: Joe searched inside every team member, no matter how weak they appeared, for that spark he believed we all have. He wasn’t a touchy feely kind of guy and he did not suffer fools lightly but…he had a gift. Joe could see what the rest of us were blind to, even in ourselves.   

Bring your employee’s gifts into the light: Joe fanned that spark once he found it. He made sure we knew what it was and what he expected from us – to exercise our gift fully. He never accepted anything less than our best. He was the embodiment of tough love. No matter what, we had to perform at our peak. So we did.

Support your employee’s growth: Whether talking over our morning coffee, walking to the gym after work or riding the subway back to Brooklyn, Joe was always encouraging me AND making sure I understood how much more I needed to learn. He went to bat for us with upper management and out on a limb to see we had what we needed to succeed.
 
Help your employees step out on their own and move on: The first day Joe left me in charge of the team for the day, I was sick with anxiety. What if something happened I didn’t know how to handle? Joe told me I’d do fine and he had 100% confidence in me. Somehow I survived that day. Later I discovered he had simply taken a day off to push me out of the nest. He knew I could fly and after that day I had a little more confidence too. He just kept upping the ante until I was confident enough to strike off on my own new career path.

Never stop fighting for your employees: You have to understand, this was a public agency governed by both civil service and union rules and contracts. Joe, who was in the same union as the rest of us, couldn’t give us raises, promotions or bonuses. He had no budget to spend on gifts, prizes, food, or plaques. He had only the force of his personality. He bought those morning cups of coffee and Friday pizzas out of his own pocket. When we needed a new printer he convinced the vendor to install it free and then went to the department head and did battle for it. When we needed expert consulting he went to a local university and convinced some professors to come help us pro bono. (He bought them lunch.) When we needed a different level of support from the data center, he went down and trained them himself and showed them how to move to more advanced technology. The list would fill volumes.

The end result was a team that would have followed Joe anywhere and who would do anything to make our projects successful. We didn’t just perform better because we worked for Joe…we became better people.

Joe was no saint. He had a red-hot temper. He often ran afoul of agency “politics” and didn’t do well at the social functions that made or broke careers there. On the other hand, his temper was always aimed outward at protecting and growing our team.

When his wife called yesterday to tell me that Joe was gone she said, “You know, he fought that cancer to the end. That was Joe.” And that was Joe…fighting his last battle. He couldn’t win this one but he did win his fight for his team members.  

Farewell, Joe Caccavo, the greatest manager…EVER…
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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.
Learn more about great management training and coaching -- based on Joe's principles and more when you visit http://www.AdvantageLeadership.com

Rabbit Chases Tiger – Good News?

Today the Year of the Rabbit dawns on the Lunar New Year. What will it bring? For those born in one of the Rabbit’s years if should be a quiet time for developing relations and propitious for starting a new business. For the rest of us, those who follow the lunar zodiac predict a calmer year with things running at a much slower pace.

"The Rabbit is one of the most gracious personalities of the zodiac…It'll be a time to nurture relationships at the many social events that will happen this year.” At least that’s what Laura Lau, co-author with her mother, Theodora Lau, of the best-selling The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes, tells us. She believes the Tiger delivered on its reputation of unpredictability and lots of major disruptions. Many people report being happy to see the Rabbit chase the terrible Tiger out of the neighborhood.

But what does all this portend for you as a leader or business owner?

I happened to have been in Singapore as the Year of the Tiger dawned, blogged about it, and showed a clip of the Tiger making his way through the airport with much noise and excitement. That won’t be the case with the quiet and conservative Rabbit.

Lately there’s been a call for greater civility in our political discourse and that’s definitely a Rabbit-oriented wish. Whether it happens or not is another story – perhaps as fanciful as belief in mythical beasts.

However, in the world of business and work, a call for greater civility might not be so far fetched. When I entered the corporate world I was struck by the constant use of war analogies tossed off without much heed for what the words really implied. Early in my management career my boss handed me The Art of War and insisted I take it to heart and use it as an important supplement to my penchant for Drucker and Deming. Over the years I’ve come to see that in successful businesses with progressive leadership, the Rabbit rules over the Tiger.

Why? Because to get anything done in an organization with 2 people or 2 million, you must have cooperation. The old cliché, Together Everyone Achieves More, happens to be correct. When the Constitutional framers were hammering out their plan for the new nation, they had to cooperate; despite the fact the 55 delegates had strong opposing views. When John Zumwalt, CEO at PBS&J came to believe the company should reflect the communities in which it had offices, he needed the entire workforce to take on the mission. He didn’t set quotas or impose a program. He talked about the mission to everyone and enlisted their cooperation. In a few years the national engineering firm was being recognized and receiving awards for its diversity.

5 Actions to Usher in the Year of the Rabbit and Chase the Tiger

Stop the War Chatter – Record your next meeting. How often do war-related terms crop up? How often do you shoot down an idea; praise a straight shooter; develop a killer app? Ever hear the expression, As a man thinketh...? We don’t even hear the subtle messages we put out every day and reinforce in our own minds.

Stop Thinking the Competition is the Enemy – Our competitors are not our enemies. When I first started my business I was getting advice from a more experienced business owner. She bragged about how she had driven her major competitor out of business. I wasn’t impressed then or now. Why spend all that energy destroying someone else? Has airline or banking service improved with all the gobbling up of the competition? Personally, I want strong competitors. They keep me on my toes, innovating, and improving.

Start being Likable – Machiavelli helped spread the idea leaders should be feared rather than loved. Why do we associate likability with weak leadership? Joe Caccavo, the absolutely best boss I ever had, was loved and admired by his team. He was also tough and demanded our best from us. He took us to task when it was necessary. He was fair, patient, and supportive. He wanted to see each of us succeed and did everything he could to make that possible. We would have followed him anywhere and did more than any of us believed possible.

Start Looking for Synergy – I joined a new mastermind group recently. All of us are involved in the professional speaking business but none of us see one another as competitors. Instead we are all working together to help one another be more successful. Ideas and insights flow. We share our challenges and fears. The group dynamic creates a heady mix of inspiration, innovation, and tough love.

Start Caring for those you Disagree with – When we demonize those we disagree with, we stop having a dialogue; we stop learning; we stop understanding the complexity of our world. Corporate politics are just as nasty as the government-related kind. Enormous losses accrue to every organization when the politics become toxic and anti-productive. When Michael Howe took over Arby’s, he turned the chain around by leading a cultural revolution. It was certainly not easy but his efforts created a people-focused positive culture that doubled cash flow and grew revenue dramatically in a few years.

So give it some thought. Could you be more successful pursuing positive relationships and embracing your inner Rabbit and chasing out a little of your inner Tiger? I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly going to give it a go…It’s a New Year, so why not a new approach? Especially when it’s proved so successful as a business strategy.

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© Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President, Advantage Leadership, Inc

Want to know more about the leaders in today’s blog and others who have transformed their organizational cultures to improve bottom- and top- line results? Check out Conventional Wisdom: How Today’s Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers.