Testimonials/Comments

A young individual in a leadership class, several weeks after completing the time and organizational management part of the training, approached me to talk. He said, he had started planning and organizing is life. “Before, I jumped from one thing to another during the day. I did not really have focus. My social media also ran my life. I silenced my social media alerts so I could focus on my ‘work’ and goals instead of stopping for the distractions. I simply told my friends that I would respond at night or early in the morning. I began planning and prioritizing, including my personal life. I joined a gym and am trying to get there at least three times a week. Working on it. I told my family what I am doing, and they are helping me plan at home, and they have started a calendar plan as well. I am less stressed now as I feel in control, and I have reduced others’ stress as they were constantly complaining to me because I was always late with commitments. I am getting things done, marking things off my list, and meeting goals. For the first time in my job I feel good about my accomplishments and my abilities.” He continued sharing, but the most important thing he said was, “I am now in control of my life instead of my life controlling me,” and “my relationships with everyone have improved because I am not constantly letting people down.”

In this same Leadership Class, after hearing this individual’s story about being “controlling and yelling,” another manager spoke up, “You have given me the courage to speak. I am a micromanager and very controlling. I am about as far away from ‘empowering’ as you can get. I most often will do the job myself instead of delegating the job to those who were hired to do the job in the first place. I think I can do it better myself. What I am really doing by my unwillingness to delegate, as I learned today, is I am demonstrating to people that ‘I do not trust them.’ I am being coached for this problem, and I know now how much I needed the help to become more empowering…”

Part of the training everyone received was time and organizational management which included “organizing one’s work space to be effective and efficient. An organized work space helps us reduce wasted time in looking for the ‘right’ tools or tool and work more efficiently and effectively.” The manager and class participant said, “Now it is a sense of pride. It has become a way of life and when anything is out of place, it is quickly retrieved and put where it should be.” He is right. A well-organized life becomes a way of life and improves the quality of life for everyone who is part of the team or community.

A manufacturing plant manager, during leadership training, said, “I was taught early in my career to get people to fear me as a method to ‘motivate’ people. I used all the ugly tactics: yell, command—‘my way or the highway’, use intimidating body language, glare, threaten… None of that really worked to motivate people. Fear freezes! Fear does nothing to motivate. Fear just makes people mad and disconnected. It was very hard, but I knew I had to change if I were to succeed today. I had to change my style and methods of leading people. I had to take care of people’s needs first. The result has been life-changing for me and for the people I interact with, including my family.” All you get by using fear-based tactics is “bitter compliance.”

A law-enforcement leader, in a discussion on demonstrating respect for all people, even when holding them accountable, as part of creating a culture of trust, and team-orientation, and the link to engaging and retaining people, said, “I heard a chief of police say something that has made me change the way I interact with all people, including on the job. The chief said, ‘if your words and actions do not elevate others to a higher level, your words and actions speak to hate. Even when we are holding people accountable for obeying the law, we still need to treat people with respect. We all need to speak to love, not hate.” This said by people whose sole responsibility is to hold people accountable for obeying the law.

When discussing demonstrating respect and to “always treat people with respect and dignity, even when holding them accountable,” an HR leader in the class said, “This is true. Even when I am holding someone accountable for disobeying rules or even when terminating someone, I still need to treat them with dignity and respect. What do you gain by mistreating people? The people you are holding accountable already feel bad enough. They know they have done wrong. When you treat them with respect, you are helping them learn and rise above the mistakes they have made. You help them to find the courage within to take the next steps to improve or to move on to the next chapter of their lives. Most often when workplace conflict or violence occurs, it is because someone’s human needs have been trampled on.”

During Leadership Training for managers and supervisors. We were discussing fear-based tactics and the negative impact this has on motivation and team performance. A participant stood and spoke to the class, “I am a very controlling person. I also constantly yell at people, including my wife and kids, making them cry. I understand now, more than ever, how destructive these behaviors are to the human spirit… I have been working to shut down my need to ‘control’ and be more empowering. I thank my colleagues in this room for working with me, tolerating me, and trying to help me… I learned a lot in our discussions today that will help me get there.” In response to this individual’s passionate display of humility, instead of bashing or shaming him, his colleagues spoke up saying, “It took courage for you to share this with us. We can all learn from it. You have taken the first steps in getting there: Recognizing to yourself that you have a problem, then admitting it to your group of peers, getting training to learn better behaviors, and setting personal goals. We are here to help you every step of the way.”

In taking a tour of a manufacturing plant, I noticed right away something I don’t always see and most often do not see, especially in a manufacturing environment. Everything was organized and clean. In work spaces I saw only a few tools. Other things were in cubes, papers in folders, and well organized. Countertops and work spaces were clean and uncluttered. There was no clutter anywhere. I asked the individual giving me the tour how they maintained such order and organization. He said that was part of the culture of respect, empowerment and collaboration—team-orientation, tempered with team and personal accountabilities.

An individual in a time management class said, “One of my biggest time wasters is letting distractions manage me and my time. I see an email pop into my inbox, and I think I need to stop whatever I am working on and open the email. Then I close it. I do this all day long. Text messages the same! In class we talked about organizing and planning every day. I began this process. Organizing and planning helped me to focus on priority items, and ignore email and social media, and other extraneous noises. Two things that helped me most was to plan my day every day and to schedule pauses and times during the day where I just focus on responding to emails and other communications.”

A newly appointed supervisor in a manufacturing facility, to a discussion of “asking and listening and the relationship to trust and team performance, said, “Yep! That used to be me. I used to be a ‘conversational bully’…until I took the personality test in this class and was told I am 100% extrovert. We talked about the tendency of an extrovert to process things out loud. I learned a possible bad tendency would be to continuously talk, not giving others a chance to speak, even interrupting them in mid-sentence. I never knew this. What I learned explains so much about why I have relationship problems at home and at work. I talked all the time and rarely listened. I have been working on ‘listening’ more and holding my tongue. My relationships at work and at home have improved significantly… I have some mending to do, but I know I can get there.”

A regional leader in a manufacturing organization, to a discussion on developing trust and meeting human needs, and the importance of “asking and listening,” shared his story to his team and class participants (managers, supervisors, and team leaders). “I was hired to this market to turn around a very bad, abusive culture. People did not want to work here. Turnover rates were high. I knew the first thing I had to do was nurture trust. If people did not trust me, I might as well go home. I could never change the culture without trust. Trust had to come first. I began this journey the first day here by walking around and talking to everyone. I did this every day. I got to know people’s names, and eventually their family members. They also got to know me as a human being. I would ask them things about their jobs, their workplace needs, and their families…” He went on to say that they eventually saw he was genuinely interested in them as human beings, not just a means to an end—getting the job done. His lead team, managers and supervisors, learned these behaviors as well and began the same journey. Did he develop the culture of trust? He sure did. In walking through the plant now, seeing how people interact with one another, and how engaged they are, you would never know things were bad before. This leader understands the value of “asking and listening” to trust and success: demonstrating respect, purpose and trust. Were they able to reduce their employee turnover rate? They sure did, significantly.

Following discussions in leadership training on Communications best practices, an organizational regional leader stopped me to talk about some of the things we had discussed in class. He said, “What we discussed is very relevant. I just lost a million-dollar annual revenue customer and recently a $100,000 contract because an employee did not read the customer communications (emails) thoroughly. The employee missed critical requests the customer had made, items the entire contract hinged on. The customer said they could not trust us to take care of them…”