Are You Sucking Every Last Drop of Their Blood? | Leadership

August 29, 2012 by

Leaders Sucking BloodLast week I wrote about my trip to the hospital, but there was a part I left out that ultimately resulted in me passing out, and getting lots of ‘fun’ stuff stuck into me. To recap briefly I went into the emergency room because I had an epic bloody nose that would not stop bleeding. After spending hours at home trying to stop it, I realized it was time to seek help. When I went into the emergency room, they escorted me to a little room within the ER. They put a clamp on my nose and said that I needed to wait a while until it slowed down.

The clip that they put on my nose was not doing much; it just made the blood go down my throat instead of out my nose, (not fun going either direction)…  After quite a while, at least an hour, a nurse came in with a needle and 4 empty vials. One of my eyebrows raised, I looked at my wife, and then at the nurse and said, “You’re joking right?”

By this time I had been bleeding for about 3.5 hours, and this was a not a slow little drip, this was a Texas rainstorm coming out my nose. So I was seriously worried about them taking even more blood, but they are the experts, so I conceded. They led, I followed. As she got to the last vial, the blood was barely dripping into it. I assume due to my blood pressure being so low, since I had lost so much already. About 10 minutes after they finished, I told my wife, “I’m dizzy, I think I’m going to pass out.” Moments later, I was out, she screamed and lots of alarms starting going off.

As I was lying there later, I thought about how stupid this was that I was in a bed for a dumb nose bleed. I thought about them extracting more blood when it was obvious, to me at least, that it was not going to lead to good a good outcome. Four days later, I had another epic nose bleed, but this time we went to an ENT. They cauterized the blood vessels in my nose and I was out of there in under 30 minutes.

As I consider this experience, my mind travels to employers I have worked for in the past, that similarly, sucked out every last ounce of my “blood,” i.e. my motivation, my energy, my desire. I once worked for an employer in which about 1/3rd of the staff had filed for divorce during their tenure, and it was rumored there was one suicide in the early days of the company. There was lying and manipulation galore from the CEO. Not a great atmosphere!

I specialize in creating a culture of execution, but creating that culture has nothing to do with being a hard-nosed task master that sucks the life out of your employees.

Employees are people, and they will work a lot harder for you if they respect you and have an inspiring purpose and an inspiring leader. Click to Tweet This.

So today, no lists, no wild headlines, no step-by-step plan to follow, just a challenge …don’t be a blood sucker.

I’d love to know your thoughts, please continue the conversation below.

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5 Ways Leaders Botch Communication – Without Saying a Word

March 11, 2012 by

Leadership CommunicationLeaders who focus only on what they say to employees—through speeches and written words—overlook one of the most powerful ways they communicate: their actions. Without saying a word they can hinder productivity and kill morale.

Check whether you are guilty of any of these five mistakes:

  1. Failing to communicate. When is the last time you had a conversation with an employee? How often do you talk with employees who are two rungs or more down on the organizational chart? Often leaders talk with everyone except their own team members. They give orders, but they don’t engage in dialogue.
  2. Blindsiding employees with change. Leaders wonder why it is so difficult to convince employees to adopt changes that an executive team has spent months debating and designing. The problem is that they have left out a key part of the plan: the employees who will be responsible for making the change. The frontline workers don’t understand why the change is necessary, and they see obstacles that the executives overlooked.
  3. Sending them on goose chases. Employees drop everything to work on a new, urgent priority, and then their work seems to disappear into a black hole. The leader never explains what happened, whether the idea has been dropped, revamped or rescheduled. The next time one of those assignments comes along, the employees think “No need to put much effort into this. It’s just the ‘Idea of the Day,’ and it will pass.”
  4. Ignoring what employees say. When an employee tells you about a problem, what happens? Many organizations proudly tout their 360-degree evaluation programs and open-door policies, but the employees learn that voicing concerns about a manager or another problem just pegs them as troublemakers. If leaders don’t listen—and act to address problems—employees stop speaking up.
  5. Failing to keep commitments. Do you deliver what you say you will to your team members, on time every time? Do you treat an appointment with an employee the same way you treat an appointment with an important customer, showing up on time and devoting your full attention to that employee? If you keep the employee waiting, reschedule multiple times and multitask while you are talking, those actions send a clear message to employees that they are unimportant.

To be a trusted, respected and effective leader, pay as much attention to what you aren’t saying as you do to your speeches and memos. Ask yourself: What are my actions telling my employees?

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