This is part of our “Designed To Win” series on the millennial workforce. Full disclosure: I am a millennial.

Every generation experiences what is known as “shared sense-making.”  It is the process in which individuals within a generation jointly interpret their environment and create collective narratives from which they derive meaning.  This process, through the lens of being in the same generation, moves individual perceptions and feelings to a state of “group knowledge.”  We, as a generation, have some general beliefs about the world and all those other “misguided” generations.  A current example of this is how managers are experiencing millennials in the workplace.  “There is a coherent, if not unified, voice about what millennials are like and constant favorable comparison of themselves to the millennials,” state the authors of Managing the Millennials.  

Over 60% of employers say that they are experiencing tension among employees from different generations.  70% of older employees dismiss younger workers’ talents and capabilities, while 50% of younger employees dismiss the talents and capabilities of their older coworkers.  Those are frightening statistics as organizations are asking every one of their workers to do more with less, and use cost-cutting collaborative measures to be more innovative. The amount of mixed generational workplaces only increases. The simple take-away here is that no one trusts anyone.

However, have you ever come across a millennial who is smart, emotionally intelligent, a hard worker, and perhaps even nice? The ones that stay late, seek feedback and constructive criticism, sit at the front of the meeting fully engaged? They take notes as you talk, and ask thoughtful questions.  They’re like a sponge – they soak up all your mentoring, coaching, tips, and insights.  They want to succeed, and they realize that you’re the ticket to that success. These millennials are promoted into management positions earlier than their peers because they have shown maturity and have separated themselves from the generational norms.  As the Managing the Millennials book points out, “They [engaged millennials] take an interest in their superiors and are able to reach up and make a connection.”  The authors found that 1 out of 5 millennials take the initiative to connect with their superiors.  Do you have “connector millennials” in your organization?

The sad note in this story is that because of the “shared sense-making,” many of the older generation have a tendency to make broad generalizations about “all millennials.” As a result these Connector Millennials have the horrible possibility of going un-mentored, un-appreciated, and un-engaged.  The result could be a mass exodus from organizations because no supervisors stepped up to the plate to coach them.  In Managing the Millennials, the authors studied 6 managers.  Three managers were picked because they were known to have worked well with millennials.  The three others were known to have not worked well with millennials (measured by turnover, complaints, absenteeism, communication and low productivity of the supervised millennial).  The ones that did work well with millennials became known as the Adaptive Managers.  Below are some of the attributes Adaptive Managers exhibited when working with millennials:

1. Initiate the relationship

2. Have patience to set expectations according to where the millennial is, not where the manager wants him or her to be

3. Exhibit the ability to suspend bias towards millennials

4. Have the ability to create environments that allow just enough discomfort so that millennials will feel the need to change but safe enough so that they can change

5. Be adaptable; using the right “bait to suit the fish” in the management style (all fish are different and require different bait – so do people)

6. Allow millennials the empowerment to constructively challenge ideas, process, and the manager

I’ll be the first to say that there are two types of millennials.  There are the ones that fit every negative stereotype that reinforces the “shared-sense making” that occurs.  However, equally, I have run into the same number of innovative, fun, intelligent, passionate millennials that have no issue with authority or loyalty or hard work.  Find those millennials in your organization or in your next interview and begin to coach them to be the worker you need them to be.  With those ‘connector millennials’ in mind, what are you prepared to do to help them win?

Download our FREE Adaptive Manager Assessment to discover if you are growing your millennial workforce or disabling them.

First, let’s go back to the TSA story.  A joint congressional panel reported that 184 million dollars of security equipment sat idle between six months to a year in government warehouse facilities in Dallas.  In addition, the report estimated that the cost to just warehouse the equipment topped $3.5million annually.  Not only that, it stated that the TSA intentionally hid roughly 1,300 pieces of screening equipment from congressional investigators.  TSA’s defense was to say it was “buying in bulk,” (so much for “just-in-time”) and that equipment was in storage because airports weren’t ready to accept it (when in doubt, blame it on the customer).  Now, miraculously, since the report was released, only two AIT machines are left in storage.

Clearly there is a disconnection from quality responsibility here that has manifested itself not only in inefficiency processes, but also in an inability or unwillingness to make connections between government culture and quality outcomes.   It’s not sufficient to quickly distribute the machines and end the problem, without analyzing what happened.  What contributed to the circumstances that led to the situation?  What metrics were being maintained?  What management practices were accepting of poor quality?

Larry Kranking, a veteran operations director, recently told the pharmaceutical industry at an ISPE meeting, “Culture trumps strategy.  You have to have the right culture.  You have to have people that understand quality.  At Disneyland, everybody, from the CEO on down, would never walk past something – a piece of paper on the ground.  Even the CEO of Disney will bend over and pick that piece of paper up.”  Key to Kranking’s insights was his stress on not placing blame on QA, but rather figuring out what is going on in operations and management that is causing the problem.

Let’s look deeper here.

1. Quality needs to be owned by everyone from the individual operator on up, not only to produce quality work, but also to be empowered to intervene and head off quality issues BEFORE they arise.  What government employees were working in that warehouse that needed to surface the quality problem many months before they became public?  Did they even know how to do that?  Was there an SOP that limited the passive storage time of the equipment before action had to be taken?  What was TSA management doing to maintain quality oversight?

2. Other industries have become “best practice” examples of better quality – the automotive industry at 70-85% operational excellence, aerospace at 50-70% and computer manufacturing and consumer packaging goods at 80-90% (IPQ Newletter, May, 2012).  What data exists for government operational excellence?  If, as Borawski suggests, failure costs exceed 70% in government – why not consider alternative options.  I remember years ago when Exxon was implementing TQM, their managers were instructed to use the best providers of a service/product, either within or outside the organization.  It didn’t take long for people to realize their work could be outsourced if an external supplier could do it better.

3. This leads us to the tracking of metrics, under the notion that “what gets measured, gets done.”  Let’s begin with the “unplanned downtime” for the equipment. Whew!  That would be a scary metric to share with your congressional representative.  Or how about the estimated S24 million in depreciation costs for the loss of equipment utility that taxpayers will have to absorb?

4. All of this brings up the issue of accountability.  In the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA issues 483s, warning letters, recalls and other pain points that are so dramatic as to create “emotional events” that force an organization to wake up and address quality issues.  The FDA can declare that existing organizational quality oversight is inadequate and force the organization to secure its quality oversight through external consultants.   In other words, internal operations are so poor in securing quality that external supervision is required.  Interestingly the FDA, the IRS and other governmental agencies can issue pain points, but do they experience them themselves?  What will be the pain point for those in TSA management who allowed 472 carry-on baggage screening machines to be warehoused for more than a year (in addition to the 5,700 pieces of security equipment)?  Will there be a required root cause analysis that is reported to the tax payers?  If FDA can require an estimated 700 product recalls in 2011, what can we recall in government?  Do we, as taxpayers, have a right to demand accountability, beyond media embarrassment and a slap on the wrist?

5. Is the real problem that government doesn’t really know what operational excellence should look like? Do managers in government obsess about quality – teaching it, coaching it, mentoring it into their environments – like other industries do?  How can they learn to deliver planned, predictable performance of highest quality?  How will they take aim at detecting and solving quality issues at the earliest stage?  Experts will tell you it starts at the top.

The TSA example is symptomatic of a larger problem in government.  We have become complacent about quality in government.  We even expect government to be inept.  Years ago Tom Peters said, “Never walk by poor quality product or service again.” (In Search of Excellence)  His reasoning was that if we did, we opened ourselves up to competition from others who could do it better.  As I’m concluding this blog, I realize that each of us has a “call to action” we could take….to forward our blogs on quality in government to our representatives and senators and really start to be “an influential voice of quality.”  That’s what I plan to do.

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I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own. 

Guest Blogger:  Celie White, SPHR, has worked for numerous organizations in the health care and financial sector as a human resources professional for over 20 years.  Her experience includes implementing in-house training teams, designing training programs and workshops, and working as an HR professional with the hiring of multiple generations of staff:

According to wiki.answers.com, we can expect baby boomers to retire at the rate of 6,000 per day for the next several years!  A recent joint survey conducted by SHRM and AARP seems to indicate that if organizations are not already taking steps to prepare for the “baby boomer” exodus from the workforce, most of it projected to occur in the next 5 years or so, they may already be behind.

Some interesting key findings from the survey:

- Only 40% of the nearly 500 organizations surveyed have conducted strategic workforce planning assessments to determine their needs for the next 5 years.  Translation:  more than half aren’t even aware of how large a problem may exist!

- Writing in English (grammar and spelling) was identified as the top basic skill older (50 or older) workers possess that is not readily seen among younger workers (30 or younger)!

- In terms of applied skills, professionalism/work ethic was cited by over half of these organizations as not exhibited by younger workers.

- Some other important applied skills where older workers are perceived as having the advantage:  critical thinking/problem solving, written/oral communications and leadership.

Given these key findings and the fact that, according to the SHRM/AARP survey, 76% of organizations see the “baby boomer exodus” as being a crisis or a problem/potential problem, what, if anything, are they doing about it?  The top three actions:

- About 30% have hired retired employees as consultants or temporary workers

- Almost two-fifths (38%) have developed succession plans, and

- The largest number (45%) have increased training and cross-training efforts

Based on the projected applied skills gap findings cited above, these approaches aren’t surprising.  There were a number of others, but these were the top three.  It seems to me that these three approaches aren’t mutually exclusive in terms of building a strategic plan to address the loss of experienced, talented workers.  In fact, I would suggest that to develop a truly effective strategy to prepare for, and come out ahead after the loss, requires a combination of approaches.  If we were to use just the three listed above, I believe we could develop a strong, viable plan to support the goal of effectively replacing talent.

It does my training heart good to see that the largest number recognize training as a key component of their plans for a successful transition; however, there’s more needed.  While we know that millennial workers want clear, comprehensive direction for doing their jobs, as a baby boomer, I realize we may have been somewhat remiss in providing the detail that younger workers seek.  I believe this happens, for the most part, for one very simple reason – baby boomers, for better or worse, didn’t ask for all the details on how to do the job and what was expected.  We were given the “outline” version and set out to figure the rest out for ourselves.  We liked doing it that way and it worked for us, most of the time.  Not true of our younger colleagues.  They want and need the details to be successful.  I think that puts the responsibility on us seasoned workers to ensure others are ready to step up when we leave.

So, what do we need to do now to prepare?  Any good solution starts with a plan – in this case a succession plan.  Some steps to creating a plan:

1. Start by identifying jobs that will be vacated.

2. For each of those jobs you want to fill, identify competencies and skills that are needed to do those jobs.  You may already have some of this information in your job descriptions.

3. Identify workers with potential to fill these jobs and assess the competencies and skills they bring with them.

4. Then identify the competencies and skills requiring training/cross-training in order to prepare them, along with a realistic timeline for the training to take place.

5. You’ll also want to identify gaps where no potential in-house candidates exist and steps you will need to take to fill these positions (recruitment and possibly retention strategies).

Now let’s focus on the training/coaching component – and who better to help prepare potential successors than those proficient/skilled in doing the job.  Here is where your older/retired workers may become invaluable in the process.  I can’t speak for my peers in the baby boomer generation, but I’m just old enough to appreciate it when someone sees value in what I know and wants to learn from me!  I suspect, given the fact that human beings like to feel valued and important, many of my peers probably feel the same way.

However, that doesn’t necessarily translate to all highly skilled workers being able to impart their knowledge to others.  In point of fact, there are a number of roadblocks to this, including:

1. Highly-skilled workers’ familiarity with their areas of expertise sometimes prevents them from providing all the details needed for someone else to learn what they know.  It’s similar to a great cook inadvertently leaving out an ingredient or two when sharing a recipe because (s)he has it all in memory and doesn’t think of it in detailed steps or pieces.  The result is the learner doesn’t obtain all the knowledge needed to develop the skill(s).

2. When coaching/training someone else, it is common for the novice coach/trainer to assume knowledge on the part of the learner.  Certain steps, knowledge, skills, and/or processes have become so routine, in some cases, to the highly-skilled worker that (s)he assumes the learner has the same knowledge and understanding.  As a result, the learning process may seem disjointed and confusing.

3. After having done a job for a number of years and learning it well over a period of time, highly-skilled workers may tend to forget the time it took them to gain their skills and knowledge.  As a result, highly-skilled workers may become impatient with new learners because they don’t possess the skills and knowledge or aren’t, in the coach’s opinion, learning quickly enough.

4. Protecting “ownership” of their jobs may, in some workers, become an obstacle to freely sharing and imparting knowledge about doing the job successfully.  We all want to feel valued, needed and appreciated, which can take the form of some workers wanting to protect their “territory” and wanting to feel that no one will ever be able to do the job as well as they have.  In essence, they don’t want to give up what they worked so hard to achieve, in some cases, without help from someone else.  It’s the proverbial “I paid my dues, why shouldn’t they?” syndrome.

Many of us learned a lot of what we know the “hard way”, and we now have an opportunity to share those experiences, skills and knowledge which creates an opportunity for us to make a tremendous, positive impact on those who will follow in our wake.  I find that exciting!  In order to help you bridge the gap between your leaving talent and on-boarding talent, we have produced a free Organizational Competencies Risk Assessment for you to download.  This assessment will help determine, based on your organization or departments competencies, where you might be at risk of losing talent.  I encourage you to download it today.

Don’t have the resources (people, time, know-how) to assess your organization, prepare a succession plan and/or train your staff in preparation for coaching or moving up?  New Directions newest work session might do the trick!  Take a look at our Preparing for Tomorrow’s Talent Gap work session and please contact us to discuss how we may assist you.

Much of a supervisor’s success hinges on the ability to address employee and customer issues verbally, assert at times a contrary viewpoint in meetings and “communicate up” effectively to understand his/her manager’s expectations and gain feedback. If a new supervisor shies away from communication or communicates poorly, it can derail the once-hoped-for success and career path. Additionally, a supervisor is also expected to be able to role model the kind of communication that he or she expects from others.

What exactly do we mean by communication? Essentially, there are two basic elements: listening and speaking.  In particular, we use facial expressions, gestures, body language, proximity, tone of voice and words to communicate. In fact, over ninety percent of the message received by others comes from our body language and tone of voice, not our words. Skeptical? Just try saying, “I am not angry! I am very happy right now,” with an irate tone of voice, and see if anyone believes you. I bet not. Not even your dog.

Though listening is critically important, I wanted to focus today on assertiveness. By definition, it represents a way of thinking and behaving that allows a person to stand up for his or her rights while respecting the rights of others. Instead of shutting down communication, assertiveness encourages it, and promotes problem solving and agreement. Can you see how this would be a powerful skill for a supervisor? This type of communication builds relationships with staff, increases trust and encourages continuous improvement.

As Sharon Anthony Bower and Gordon Bower suggest in their book, Asserting Yourself: A Practical Guide for Positive Change, the first step lies in understanding what it really means to be assertive, and then, taking a fearless inventory of your own behavior and beliefs.

Assertiveness rests in some key foundational beliefs about yourself and others. I encourage you to take sufficient time as you read down through this list and, ask yourself honestly: (1) do I really believe these things to be true? and (2) am I committed to do the behaviors that support these values?

1.   I accept each person as he or she is. We all have a right to be treated with respect.

2.   I can never change another person.

3.   I accept that each person communicates differently based on his or her values, background and environment. I have a right to express my feelings and to disagree and express my opinions and so does the other person.

4.   I accept responsibility for myself and not for others and can say “no” without feeling guilty.

5.   I am responsible only for my side of the relationship, expressing my needs and wants clearly.

6.   I accept that every person may choose to be assertive, passive, or aggressive depending on the situation.

7.   I have a choice of being assertive, passive or aggressive depending on the situation. In some cases, it may be better to choose to be non-assertive.

8.   I will practice being assertive and being sensitive to the feelings of others.

9.   I have the right to change my mind and to say, “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.”

10. I have the right to make mistakes and be responsible for them.

Assertiveness is all about developing a voice that is uniquely your own – one that reflects your deepest convictions and values. It is a means to express yourself, and also allows others to do the same – both with respect. It encourages reciprocity and balance.

The first step is desire and a personal commitment to the belief system that supports assertiveness. The second step is reflecting on your current communication patterns and determining how assertive you are today. Download our Assertiveness Self-Assessment to help you get started. In Part II, we’ll contrast the difference between passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive and assertive communication and give you the methods and tools to model it as a supervisor.

Another favorite statistic of mine is this one: 80% of the battle is awareness. So, I encourage you to learn from those around you. Watching others and how they communicate can give you insight into what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to ask trusted others for feedback to help you become more self-aware, and provide the information needed for a true baseline for development. No matter where you are, assertiveness is a learned skill – and with practice and tools, we can all get better at it.

So you can imagine my delight when a person in one of my training sessions said, “Hey have you seen the April issue of HBR on teams.  You’ll love it!”  While I get HBR both electronically and physically, I admit I’m not always timely about getting to the articles.  So as soon as I got back to the office, I read through the article, The New Science of Building Great Teams by Alex “Sandy” Pentland and couldn’t wait to blog on the findings.

The research, through MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory, focused on a diverse set of teams, all equipped with electronic patches (how cool is that!) to collect data on their communication behaviors, including tone of voice, body language, whom they talked to and how much.  The findings:  patterns of communication proved to be the most important predictor of a team’s success!  “Not only that, but they are as significant as all the other factors combined– individual intelligence, personality, skill, and the substance of discussions.” (HBR, pg. 63).  Interestingly, the research team found that the best predictors of productivity were the team’s energy and engagement outside their formal meetings – supporting the notion that teams that take breaks and lunch together, or periodically do something social together, are significantly more productive.

We finally have objective data from 21 organizations over 7 years that validates what most team builders have known forever.  The soft, people skills – which really are not soft at all – make the difference in a team’s success.  Let’s look at what they found as defining characteristics:

1. Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.

2. Members face one another and their conversations and gestures are energetic.

For many of us, motivation comes from larger-than-life characters that embody what we all hope to attain someday.  Being a millennial, the generation born between the years of 1980-2000, it’s not hard to observe our complete fascination with the ‘celebrity factor.’ Born into an era of prosperity, tee ball trophies and being told that we would be successful no matter what, our generation’s fixation on famous people, and more importantly, how much we are influenced by these famous people, is quite astounding.

Who are the most influential, motivating people in the world that drive many of the personal and professional decisions of the millennial generation? Feeling that I could not do the list complete justice with my singular perspective, I decided to collaborate with my peers like any good millennial would.  Over the past week, we surveyed over 40 millennial professionals through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, face-to-face discussions and personal emails.  The survey was simple enough – what 7 famous people most motivated them and what attributes did these famous people have that were the deciding factor in the millennial’s decision?  The results were a mixed bag of celebrities, politicians, activists and innovators.  I’d like to share the findings with you, coupled with my professional take on why these people made it into the Top 7.

#7) George Clooney:  Not only for his superb acting ability in Batman and Robin, but more because of his activism and outspoken altruism around Darfur.  Clooney embodies the good looking, well-spoken and thought-provoking person millennials aspire to be.

#6) Jon Stewart: With quick wit, counter-culture orientation and parodies of the well-established news organizations, Stewart provides the political acuteness that millennials look for.  The millennials want to be “in the know” and aware of their environment – they especially appreciate the use of sarcasm, glibness and humorous contrarian thought to prove a point.

#5) Mark Zuckerberg:  Innovation and tech was a huge indicator of millennial interest.  Zuckerberg shows millennials that you don’t have to wait to work your way up the corporate ladder or to earn your stripes (which millennials abhor), that success can be measured by one single idea going viral.

#4) Hillary Clinton:  Tenacious, woman-power and focused were words that came up with Clinton’s name.  Beating out her husband, but not by much, Hillary shows that a hard-working, smart woman can thrive in today’s world.

#3) Oprah Winfrey:  Winfrey is natural and genuinely motivating.  The millennials have a knack for quickly separating fake versus real, and Oprah seems to be on the latter side of that equation.  Through her charity, compassion and humble upbringing, she is a person that can inspire this altruistic generation.

#2) Barack Obama:  History books will probably show this man to be one of the most influential figures of our generation throughout our many life-stages.  President Obama helped inspire a generation and put them to work by asking for their endorsement during his run for election.  He made this generation feel like they were part of the solution, that they too had stock in the future of the U.S.  Embracing their technology, quick wit, and need for diversity, President Obama became an instant champion for the millennial generation

and…

#1) Steve Jobs:  The founder of Apple has helped connect, empower and motivate the millennial generation to believe they are in the future, today.  One way to motivate the tech generation – be a tech innovator.  Millennials seem to also like Jobs’ hard work ethic, ambition, independence and ‘sticking it to the man’ attitude.  The man that asked us to “think different” and inspired our “inner rebel,” Jobs is the holy grail of cool, the exception to the rule, and the conductor of seamless integration. It’s not about just having great technology, it  is how it is applied and how it moves life, work and entertainment forward – Jobs does this, ever single time.

Other notable mentions: Bill and Melinda Gates, Don Draper (from Mad Men), Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, The Kennedy family, and Abraham Lincoln.

Interestingly, not one single character from the Jersey Shore was ever mentioned in over 250 names given.  From the list above and from my own deduction, this is a thoughtful, genuine, and multi-cultured generation that looks for strong values and fierce, tenacious people who drive progress forward. They also look for activists, celebrities and politicians who have noble intentions to change the world.  Sure, we like our Jersey Shore, our Facebook feed, and our Tracy-Morgan-30-Rock rants, but perhaps more for comic relief than actual emulation and motivation.  Put to the test and asked who actually motivates us, who embodies the larger-than-life-characters we can only hope to someday be, and the resounding answer is “the people who make the world a better place.”

Learn more about the millennial generation.  Download our 3-in-1 Article:

Herzberg first identified that the motivational goals of any employee are twofold:  one is to avoid pain in the workplace and the second is to achieve growth.  People on the lower need scale level – safety and security and belonging and affection – are more motivated by avoiding pain.  Those on the higher need scale of achievement and success are more interested in opportunities for growth.

At this point in our trainings we ask participants to identify on one side of an index card what motivates them on the job and on the other side what de-motivates them.  Interestingly, these lists are not opposite images of each other, but rather completely different lists.  Herzberg’s findings were important:  the items on the de-motivator side were often based on job environment, while those on the motivator side were based on job content or job enrichment.   The other important ah-ha is the realization that eliminating de-motivators does not increase motivation (remember, they are two separate lists).  Eliminating de-motivators does not cause an increase in motivation, principally because most people think the de-motivators should have been eliminated a long time ago.

So, let’s look at the motivator side of the equation.  Herzberg identified four elements that drive motivation on the job and will, in fact, cause that motivation to be generated from within, rather than externally generated.  The first motivator is competency.  If software quality assurance engineers have, according to Forbes, the “happiest job” in the U.S., it may be because they feel competent to do the job.  At NDC we often find that a new employee who lacks competency will have questionable commitment to the employer and the job until the competency is achieved.

The second factor Herzberg identified is choice.  How much autonomy does the job allow?  Can the employee choose what to work on and when?  Are increasing levels of decision-making encouraged, or does the employee feel micro-managed?  We encourage decision making on a continuum where the manager or supervisor is actively identifying how to “grow” decision making in the job description.

It not surprising that progress is the third factor for intrinsic motivation.   Most of us experience a level of dissatisfaction when the items on the To Do list remain unchanged at the end of a day.  We get a kick out of crossing things off the list and feel a sense of accomplishment, even if they weren’t the most important things.  Many jobs aren’t built for making progress, when in fact they start over from zero on a regular basis.  For the software engineer, progress can easily be plotted as project milestones are achieved and the software development – or elimination of software issues -inches toward completion.

The last factor – and probably for many, especially the GenY- Millenial worker, the most important – is the meaningfulness of the work.  Is my work making a difference?  Is there a direct line-of-sight between what I do and the impact on people and/or organizations?  Here the quality professional can stand at the head of the line.  However, what we often see is the quality professional being pigeon-holed into a policing role where his/her meaningfulness is compromised.  I know several pharmaceutical quality professionals who have pictures of their children and grandchildren on their screen savers to remind them of the meaningfulness of their work.  Likewise the software engineer can see how the software created or problem solved can influence the time to market, the quality of the product, and the success of the worker.

I encourage you to take these four factors – competency, choice, progress and meaningfulness – and rate your own job on a scale of 1(low) to 5(high) for each factor.  Now take the job of a low performer and do the same test.  Often the results are very different.  It’s important to remember this advice from Herzberg, “Not all jobs can be enriched, nor do all jobs need to be enriched.  However, if only a small percentage of the time and money that is now devoted to hygiene (dissatisfaction factors), were given to job enrichment efforts (the four factors), the return in human satisfaction would be one of the largest dividends society has ever reaped in their efforts at better personnel management.”

I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive an honorarium from ASQ for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own. 

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The majority of your time would be spent on preparing the content for the event – collecting the information, synthesizing it and building the proverbial PowerPoint. Likewise, when we practice, we typically practice what we’re going to say, not necessarily how we’re going to say it.  Research suggests however, that our ability to communicate effectively to our audience and leave a lasting impression is more directly tied to our voice and body language – so much so that content, or words, ranks third amongst the three, playing only 7% of the role in communicating with people. Voice came in second at 38% and body language accounted for 55% of a person’s ability to communicate effectively (A. Mehrabiana).  So why is our body language so important?  Well, have you ever sent a text or email to someone and had the recipient take it out of context and apply their own meaning to it?  Many times we take for granted that the words we actually speak are meaningless when stripped of all feeling and humanistic qualities.

In each of our Presentation Skills trainings we ask participants to identify a memorable presentation (good or bad) that they have witnessed sometime throughout their lives.  Many pick a professor in college or a supervisor they’ve worked for. Once they’ve identified a person, we ask each of them to identify the characteristics that resonated with them, and what they remember most. Let me just say that I’ve never had someone say, “The content in that training was just out of this world!” More often than not, the things that made it memorable for them related back to the presenters and the way they conveyed the information. Common descriptors include the use of humor, eye contact, clear and concise explanations, engaging personality, interactive examples, stories, practicality and so on.

With that as a foundation, I thought it would be interesting to explore some strategies for how to impact an audience more positively, neutralizing those bad characteristics that detract from our ability to communicate, while adding or enhancing those that increase that ability.  At the end of the day, our goal should be to make sure that the lasting impression we leave with our audience is a positive one and to do that we must think about our impressions in terms of pluses and minuses.   If all we do is eliminate the minuses, but never add to the pluses, we will never get higher than zero, or neutral. We must always be thinking about how we can add to what we do.  Below are a handful of body language strategies for you to consider when giving your next presentation or training.

1. Own the room in the first ninety seconds. We have 4-6 seconds to make a positive impression beginning from the moment our audience first lays eyes on us.  How will we make sure that their first impression of us is a positive one?  On your way to the front of the room, think about what it’s going to take to make your audience feel like you’re in control – that you know what you’re doing.  You need to be able to command your audience not only through your superb content, but by the aura you exude. As you walk to the front of the room, keep your chin up, look at the audience, come to a complete stop at the front, lay down your notes, smile at everyone and thank them for coming.  That is a fail safe way for you to ‘own the room,’ but for those of you who are looking to take it up a notch, think about some kind of topic-related attention getter that you could incorporate into your opening and a clear and concise statement that would capture the interest of the room. Maybe it’s a statistic or a well thought-out question. It could even be a demonstration or the use of the prop; whatever you choose, it needs to be interesting and relevant, and it must set the stage for what’s to come.

2. Act like you know what you’re doing even if you don’t.  My mother always used to tell me to “fake it till you make it,” and in essence she was right.  She never meant that I should compromise my integrity or falsify my understanding.  Her belief was that sometimes we might need to psych ourselves up and to do that we can’t look the way we feel.  If I’m nervous, scared, unsure or any other adjective, that’s fine, but as a professional, I should not be acting in a way that showcases that feeling to my audience.  It’s time to hit the “show button” when you’re in the front of the room, regardless of how nervous you might feel.

3. Posture is key. You wouldn’t think that people would have a hard time with this one, but it’s one of the biggest issues I see.  Unfortunately as human beings we stand like we sit, which is horrible.  If our goal is to command an audience we can’t stand with our backs curved, our shoulders slouching and our heads down and expect to positively impact our audience. When considering posture, think about the following exercises.  First, grab a friend and ask him/her to help you find your “sweet spot,” that place where it all comes together in terms of how your body needs to exist within the space it’s trying to command. When you’ve found someone to help you, have him/her stand across from you. Starting with your chin down towards your chest, begin to raise your chin slowly and ask your partner to let you know when it reaches a point where you look the most confident.  Most of us don’t realize that much of our confidence is portrayed through the placement of our chin.  Too high gives off an attitude of arrogance, while too low tells people you’re timid.  Once you’ve identified your ‘confident’ chin position, take a second and make a mental note, is it higher or lower than where you regularly hold your head?  Whichever it is, just make sure that you’re practicing your chin position leading up to your presentation.  In regards to our back and shoulders, I want you to imagine that you are a puppet and you’re being held up by a string attached to your head. What would happen if someone pulled on that string, would you get taller?  If you can get taller without lifting your feet off the ground, then you need to work on making sure your back is straight. Shoulders are a little trickier because it requires someone with a keen eye to know if a person’s shoulders are rolled forward, and if they should be back farther. Enlist the help of your partner again and have them stand behind you. Once you’re standing as you normally would, have your partner place his/her hands on the back of your shoulder and push slightly with his/her thumbs. At the same time, have him/her pull back slight with his/her fingers. If your shoulders are able to come backwards without it looking like you’re pushing out your chest, then you could stand to make some adjustments.

4. Cross the Great Divide. We know standing still is the kiss of death for our audience, yet we continue to do it. The next time you’re giving a presentation, lay a long strip of tape on the floor between you and the audience. As you begin to give your presentation, challenge yourself to see how many times you can cross over that piece of tape to engage your audience.  So often we equate engaging with doing something funny or getting people to move around, but for most of us, we feel engaged if the presenter is simply willing to move toward us.

5. Be hands-on. So much of our personality and charisma is portrayed through our hands; after all, they are our best visual aid. One of the top questions has always been “what should we do with our hands?”  My answer is “use them.”  Sure you can choose to leave them by your side, put them in a pocket or create mirror images with them (hands clasped in front, hands on the hips, hands behind the back), but why do that when they can actually be used to impact your audience?  Our hands were designed so we could participate in the world around us and because of that we need to be sure that we put them to good use.  Besides the obvious use of counting or pointing (see “Don’ts” below), think about how you might use your hands to emphasize feelings (surprise, danger, intrigue), illustrate the depth and breadth of your presentation topic, or encourage an audience member to participate.  What would the hand and arm gestures look like? How could you incorporate some basic hand gestures into your next presentation?  Look through your slide deck and earmark the spots where you will purposefully use specific hand gestures.

Don’ts

1. Look down or off into space (make meaningful eye contact)

2. Begin speaking before you’ve reached the front of the room

3. Play with your hair (facial or on top of your head)

4. Lean on one hip

5. Point with a finger (use an open palm)

6. Fold your arms

7. Cross your legs

8. Sway from side to side

9. Plant your feet

10. Turn your back to the audience

The thing to realize with hand gestures or any other presentation-enhancing behavior is that you won’t be able to conquer them all at once.  It takes time, practice and dedication to actively seek ways to continuously improve your methods each and every time. (One extra tip here:  consider video-taping the next “dry-run” of your presentation and turning the sound off, so you focus completely on your body language).

There are many people who are born with natural enthusiasm and charisma, but working on body language is a tangible way that anyone can improve the level of presentation that is being given and the only prop you need is yourself.

Be sure to download our newest guide on the 10 Tips for Dynamic and Engaging Presentations!

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. In business, it is seen as a way of coordinating different ideas from numerous people to generate a wide variety of knowledge to achieve strategic objectives (wiki).

I like how that sounds. I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows lately, Everyday Italian, in particular. I marvel at how Giada can use similar ingredients each time, vary one, and come out with amazing, appetizing masterpieces. It inspires me to grab my olive oil, head to the kitchen, and get creative.

Collaboration hits me the same way. Every organization has similar resources: people, capital assets, materials, equipment, technology, time, information/knowledge/ideas, and infrastructure. Each organization determines how they will utilize those resources, whether together or apart, to achieve success. So as a manager, employee and trainer, given the choice, I would choose to be collaborative

What about you? Do you want to be a collaborative leader or would you prefer a more individualistic approach to problem solving and decision making? This is an important question to think about; so go beyond your gut reaction and determine what you are really willing to do as a leader. Your true belief will drive your behavior, and your staff will watch your actions to see if you are just giving it lip service, do it when it is convenient or when someone is watching, or are really willing to work hard to put collaboration into  practice. Your preference might have to do with your personality, as well. Extraverts are more drawn to open, free-flowing group discussion and idea-sharing/problem-solving as a way to generate energy and motivation, than Introverts.  Introverts are more likely to strive for collaboration in one-on-one sharing of ideas, rather than a group setting. They might prefer more structured collaboration where they know what they can expect from the experience and prepare ahead of time. hits me the same way. Every organization has similar resources: people, capital assets, materials, equipment, technology, time, information/knowledge/ideas, and infrastructure. Each organization determines how they will utilize those resources, whether together or apart, to achieve success. So as a manager, employee and trainer, given the choice, I would choose to be collaborative.

Let’s say you decide you want to be a collaborative manager or supervisor. The next important question to address is:  Does your organization support collaboration?

If you aren’t sure, look to the mission and vision statements: do you find words like “teamwork” and “working together” in those documents? What about your immediate manager, senior leadership or president? What does he or she value? Take your time here; do some research and make observations. Look not to just what they say, but observe what they do, and what they reward or recognize.

Alignment of values is key to your success.  If your organization doesn’t support collaboration, you will have an extremely difficult time cultivating that environment on your own, and may find that your success and performance are hindered, rather than enhanced, by your efforts. Unfortunately, you could work very hard to create a departmental culture that neither your manager nor your organization finds valuable. A little bit like driving your car the wrong direction around a roundabout – you can do it, but it is confusing for everyone, difficult and risky.

Let’s dig a little bit more into collaboration.  Download our NEW 7-s Collaboration model to look at a systematic approach to implementing collaborative measures across your organization:

I recently finished Jim Collins and Morton Hansen’s book, Great By Choice, and thought it might be helpful to weave in some of their research nuggets with our years of “in the trenches” experience to provide new insight for those who want to achieve a highly engaged, highly successful organization.

In our fast-moving society, we want change to take place and deliver results within a very short window of time.  For teaming, organizations are often eager to see accomplishments within months of launching the teams, not recognizing that the existing culture took years to build and will probably take up to three years to dismantle.  Hansen and Collins refer to successful leaders as recognizing the need for and building a “20-mile march” approach to change.  Twenty miles day, after day, after day.  Not 20 miles one day and 40 miles the next day and then 5 miles the third day.  Winners invest for the long haul, “hitting stepwise performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time.” (Great by Choice, pg. 45)

Deb Mackin offers first teaming workshop in 1986

What does this mean for teaming? It means identifying the key behaviors and deliverables for coaches and teams and then building the capability to deliver day after day.  Come to think of it, that’s not just good advice for teaming, but truly for any change initiative: consistency in approach for the long haul.

We know that teams respond to effective coaches, ones who can quickly diagnose the competency and commitment levels of the team and use an appropriate leadership method in response to the team’s needs.  For example, a launching team needs a coach who is very present, provides advice and guidance and encourages and nurtures the team’s independence.  They do not simply start out by saying, “Okay, you’re a team now, so off you go and empower yourselves.”

Collins and Hansen found the same thing as they studied successful leaders.  They are not the bold, risk-seeking visionaries we might assume.  They report that successful leaders “observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon a proven foundation.  They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons.  They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid.”  (Great by Choice, pg. 9)  Interesting word – paranoid.  Great leaders recognize that difficulties will occur and prepare themselves for them; they “build reserves and buffers – oxygen canisters – to prepare for unexpected events and bad luck before they happen.” (Great by Choice, pg. 103)  Teaming is not easy, nor is it our natural state of being.  We’ve been raised in an “I” culture, but must work in a “We” environment.  Team coaches must prepare for their teams to have rough days when personalities clash, mistakes are made and nobody wants to take accountability and then respond, not by losing heart, but by “zooming out and zooming in – being obsessively focused on objectives and hyper-vigilant about changes in the environment, pushing for perfect execution and adjusting to changing conditions.” (Great by Choice, pg. 114)

Lisa Dunbar leads a team in 1990

Success in teaming requires discipline, which Collins and Morton define as “consistency of action.”  In a traditional environment we expect management to be disciplined and the worker to need a supervisor to ensure that he or she stays disciplined.  Team-based environments believe that workers – as adults – are all capable of disciplining themselves once they buy into the values, long-term goals, performance standards and methods of a high performance environment.  The leaders, as Collins and Hansen suggest, must be “utterly relentless and unbending …capable of immense perseverance, unyielding in their standards yet disciplined enough not to overreach.”  Teaming cannot be the “flavor of the month,” an interesting idea read in a book or a short-term fix to poor scores on an employee engagement survey.

Here the Great by Choice SMaC recipe applies.  SMaC stands for specific, methodical and consistent; they reference former Southwest Airlines CEO Howard Putnam’s list of 10 key points for success.  “Putnam laid out a clear, simple and concrete framework for decisions and action” (Great by Choice, pg. 127), not a bland, generic, vacuous statement that so often happens when leaders speak about teaming.  I think that’s why when teaming and Lean stand side-by-side as options; leaders find it so much easier to talk the practicality of Lean than they do to talk Teams.  What I don’t understand is why aren’t Teams and Lean aren’t joint key elements in the SMaC recipe?

Michael Harrington leads a new brand of teaming in 2009

Teaming has proven to increase productivity by 30% over a twelve to eighteen month period.  We’ve actually seen much faster productivity jumps, but hesitate to suggest it for fear that it will become the expectation.  Successful teaming requires the approach we see in a book like Great by Choice:  recognition that it’s a 20-mile march day after day after day; zooming out to gain perspective, then zooming in with a specific plan, defining the SMaC Recipe for your success, and developing leaders with fanatic discipline, empirical creativity and productive paranoia.

Got questions on teaming or how to implement a teaming structure within your department or organization?  I encourage you to download our FREE Team-Building FAQ Guide to answer the many questions of workplace team-building: