Do You Have a $5.3 Million Budget for Sexual Harassment Claims?

Thanks to our state's Freedom of Information Law (also known as FOIL), lately the local press has been peeling back the layers of the cost to settle sexual harassment claims made against state workers over a four-year period to the tune of $5.3 million. In no particular order, these settled claims totaling $5.3 million include allegations of:

• Inappropriate touching / groping
• Inappropriate comments and actions
• Requests for dates
• Repeated retaliation against those who filed sexual harassment complaints.

The state worker targets of these settled claims come from all organizational levels and backgrounds, including but not limited to elected officials, legislature staffers, managers and prison guards. No matter how large the organization is, $5.3 million is a hefty chunk of change in unplanned expenditures to pay out. And the salt in the financial wound is not only that the $5.3 million is funded by taxpayers, but is also FOILable, e.g. discoverable to the general public. Not the reputational / financial data that any organization wants blasted in the news.

If you don't have $5.3 million budgeted for sexual harassment claims (as well as the additional funds that would be needed to manage the negative publicity should the claims become public and featured in the press), do you follow the advice of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to employers to best prevent sexual harassment? "Prevention is the best tool to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. Employers are encouraged to take steps necessary to prevent sexual harassment from occurring.

• They should clearly communicate to employees that sexual harassment will not be tolerated.
• They can do so by providing sexual harassment training to their employees; and
• By establishing an effective complaint or grievance process, and;
• Taking immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains."

The cost (payroll, subject-matter expertise, etc.) to train your employees, managers and executives as well as to set up the proper expectations, policies, due-process complaint and investigative infrastructure in your organization to prevent sexual harassment can be as little as .0005% of a potential $5.3 million budget for sexual harassment settlement claims. Sounds like a cost-savings home-run to the bottom line to me.

Happy Employees Make Happy Customers at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant

My good friend and colleague Dale and I decided to have our meeting over dinner at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant this past week. It was crowded as usual, and we were happy to score one of the last remaining booths near the counter.

Our server Jenny was Juanita-on-the-spot with menus and ice water, without prompting from us. She kept checking on us, taking our orders quickly and following up to see if we had enjoyed our dinners. She even encouraged me to try one of the Blue Ribbon's great sugar-free desserts. Jenny smiled, bounced and beamed as she multi-tasked taking care of all of the customers in her section, including us.

Intensely committed to providing great service to my customers, whether they have been internal to my organization or external customers, I love when I experience great customer service myself. Jenny's diamond demeanor was infectious, and she energized me even at the end of a long and very busy day of business meetings.

When Dale and I worked together at the same company, we'd have our business cards poised to recruit talent like Jenny to work in our stores; it was a no-brainer.

I had no job for Jenny that night, but I had a question. "Hi, I'm Deb," I said, introducing myself as Jenny brought us both take-out containers and bags to carry them in without a second request (Great service, I told you!). "You do a great job, what's your name?" "Jenny," she replied, beaming even more if that were possible. "Thank you." I asked her another question. "Jenny, you seem really happy. What makes you happy to work here?" Jenny answered without missing a beat. "The family who owns this restaurant treats me so well. They're respectful, they care about me, and they trust me. At past jobs, I've been yelled at and micro-managed. Not here." I loved Jenny's answer. "How long have you worked here?" I asked, my last question. "Two years," Jenny replied. "And I love it here." That was crystal-clear.

As Dale paid the bill at the cash register, I couldn't resist. "Are you one of the owners?" I asked the young man at the register. "I'm the son and nephew of the owners," he replied, smiling slightly. "You might say I'm an owner-in-training." I smiled back. "I just wanted to let you know that our server, Jenny, is great." He smiled wider, glancing at her bustling around the customers in her coverage area, and without missing a beat as he handed Dale his change, replied: "Yes, she is great. We're lucky to have Jenny."

We were all lucky that night, because at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant, they clearly know that happy employees make happy customers.

Joyful Recruiting Makes Happy Customers

Since my experience as a customer long precedes my experience as a Human Resources / Recruiting / Organizational Effectiveness Subject-Matter Expert (Yes, I remember my mother taking me for all-Saturday shopping sprees in my stroller, complete with a detachable pink strap harness equipped with a leash to give my mother the illusion of preventing me from making a break for it), it's my great experiences as a customer with exceptional employees that tell me which businesses are probably great places to work:

• The nurse anesthesiologist who sang The Beatles They Say It's Your Birthday to me as my son Noah was born via emergency c-section while keeping me well-numbed;
• The dining hall staff who kept us well-fed and well-served at Ferry Beach, Maine camp -- it was more like spa food than camp food;
• The consistently great service I receive from the staff of the Rensselaer County Regional Chamber of Commerce, who continue to build their success by in turn authentically supporting the success of my business and those of my fellow Chamber members.

This week's Washington Post article on how Zappo's workplace culture directly translates into their best-practice customer experience is yet another key data point that happy / engaged employees absolutely make happy customers.

Conversely, it has been my consistent experience that employees with a bad attitude provide me with bad customer service (customer service is one of those key business areas where you can't fake it until you make it), indicating either a bad hiring decision or even worse, that the employee is a microcosm of a bad workplace culture, which acts as a powerful disincentive to bring my repeat business to their company. Social media on smartphones make these type of experiences painfully contemporaneous on the interwebs and embarrassingly public, such as the tweets I read from a colleague who real-time was experiencing poor customer service at a local grocery store, complete with the sour-puss employee complaining about their corporate management team.

Which is why a great Recruiter -- joyful, full of energy, authentically conveying how happy they are to work for their employer -- is a critical customer service and reputational representative for any company striving for best-practice customer service. As the Executive Recruiter for my company at the time, for example: my extreme satisfaction in my own job was often the decision-point attracting candidates to join my company. Candidates heard the joy in my voice during phone-screens, and wanted some of it for themselves. My company was a great product to present, and I derive a great deal of professional joy to this day vocationally matchmaking great candidates to great companies.

If your Recruiter exposes your candidates / new hires to a negative customer service experience, such as:

• Lack of skill / experience, e.g. slow response times or rudeness to candidates;
• Subjecting your candidates to bureaucratic hoops and transactions;
• Conducting phone-screens and interviews like a grand-jury investigation;
• And worst of all: when the recruiter conveys their own dissatisfaction with their job or the company;

You may be not only conveying a negative impression of your company and your workplace via the key channel of your Recruiter(s), but also hemorrhaging dollars in lost customers, candidates and turnover (e.g., the average cost of entry-level employee turnover is currently running about $6,000 a pop).

Or: if your joyful Recruiter takes leave of your company for happier workplaces because your company has become too negative, and therefore too difficult, to present authentically as a great place for great employees to consider, it may be time to take a step back and reassess your workplace / human capital strategy and branding as it dovetails with your company / customer service branding.

Which is why joyful recruiting is critical for happy customers.

How authentically joyful is your Recruiter about your company branding, your workplace culture and their job? And, in turn: how happy are your customers?

An Unexpected Gift at Work

I must admit, I love tendering job offers.  Match-making a talented candidate to a position where they will add value and contribute to the success of their new organization?  It's a win-win, all upside.  And I get to not only broker the transaction, but also deliver the glad tidings to both candidates and hiring authorities of "yes, they want you for the job" and "yes, they want to come work for you." It's like basking in the glow when you witness (or contribute to) the birth of a child.  My friend Pete is right:  I am a Career Yente.

During the last few years as The Great Recession malingered, the glad tidings were few and far between:  everyone, candidates and hiring authorities alike, were either unable, afraid or both to commit to making many job matches at all. Additionally, hiring authorities learned the sad and difficult task of laying talented people off instead of hiring and retaining them for growth. So last December 31st, as the year ended and the cold weather deepened, I tendered a job offer that gladdened both me and the candidate.  It was not only the job match made:  it also represented the collective envisioned faith that 2011 would signal a shift, a veritable thaw in the economic and vocational winter that had spanned years, not just seasons.

This week, as we celebrated the return of the light during the Winter Solstice, there are small signs of that much-needed shift towards a thaw.  The consumers are shopping again, with or without your approval / agreement:  the net result is that it helps the economy.  The unemployment rate locally keeps dropping.  Anecdotally speaking, a number of my colleagues are hiring, and finding some jobs hard to fill.  Other colleagues are getting new jobs / promotions; or fanning the momentum of their new businesses / practices as entrepreneurs; or both.  For the first time in 3 years, my husband Joel's business was busy during the holiday season.  Spending money on custom picture-framing is a singing canary in the economic coal mine.  There are definitely signs of movement underneath the economic permafrost.

And one year later, an unexpected gift at work from that candidate who received and accepted that job offer on the eve of 2011.  It was meant as a note to accompany a small yet thoughtful holiday gift; however, the note, excerpted here, was the real gift:

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to join this great team! Of all of the organizations I've worked for, and all of the positions I've had, (this) is really the most rewarding and best fit I've experienced.  Thanks for all that you do!

I wish for you, dear friends and colleagues, the same abundant gifts now and into the future, at your work.

Do the Job Before You're Hired

I love Nick Corcodilos of Ask the Headhunter fame.  Among the plethora of gems in his wealth of sage advice for all of us -- candidates and hiring authorities alike -- is his mantra to do the job in the interview.  In other words, a successful interview is not the hiring authority asking you a prescribed set of questions to which you provide a pre-rehearsed set of stock answers.  Think about it:  how do the participants in an artificial conversation like that determine authentically how well they will partner and contribute to the bottom line together, or not?

Instead, Corcodilos encourages candidates to adopt the salesman's stance to discover the business needs the hiring authority has and then effectively provide and demonstrate how their needs will be met / exceeded during the interview.  Clearly, a much more authentic and revealing evaluation.

One of my best experiences of doing the job in the interview was when Bill, the best mentor / manager of my career to date, gave us both a break from the formal interview and asked me to write a press holding statement based on a chemical accident scenario he provided, giving me 15 minutes to do so.  I loved it.  I banged out the holding statement in 5 minutes and handed it over to him.  Bill looked at me, looked at his co-interviewer and smiled.  I knew then that I had the job.  More importantly, I had the wonderful experience of witnessing Bill's appreciation for my talent and abilities as part of the interview process.  Because Bill had the insight as the hiring authority to ask me to do the job in the interview, we had each other at hello.  It was the beginning of a rewarding work experience for both of us.

During this last transformative trip to the Recession Rodeo, my trope or variation on this theme is to do the job before you're hired:  as a 1099 contractor / consultant performing a small / short-term project for the potential employer.  

Doing the job before you're hired via a contract project is all upside.  Both you and the hiring authority get to experience what your shared work life will be like, allowing both parties to assess each other in much more detail than the much shallower artifice of an interview process.  You get to interact with both your potential boss and your potential co-workers in the daily routine of their work environment.  You can weigh the positives and negatives of working with the potential employer more objectively when they are your customer:  frankly, it's less emotional and for the most part, more collegial.  It also levels the playing field to the cost / benefit of a commercial relationship, rather than the often distracting power dynamic of the employer-employee relationship.  

During such a contract trial period, the employer benefits from the product you produce to move their business forward, and you are paid for your work product / talent in the process.  It's a business transaction:  it's a win-win.  

And if one or both parties decide not to move forward with an employment relationship, no harm, no foul.   The employer has not made a bad hiring decision; and you do not have a short tenure on your résumé to explain to the next hiring authority.

Both interview parties -- candidate and hiring authority -- literally putting their money where the static interview used to be:  now that's a human capital investment I can get behind. 

Termination is a Dish Best Prepared and Served Cold

While it might be borderline entertainment to watch Donald Trump in the reality-t.v. show The Apprentice spontaneously combust fire his victims contestants on the spot:

Real-life terminations of employment, when handled in this fashion, ruin reputations of both the organization as well as the respective executive / leadership team:  to say nothing about the devastating impact on both employee and customer recruitment, retention and engagement.

How you treat people as you exit them from your organization is just as important (if not more important) as how you on-board them as new employees and treat them during the tenure with your organization, impacting the level of your employees' and your customers' engagement.

Engaged employees are productive employees, and productive employees give great customer service, which in turn drives customer recruitment / retention.  Check my girlfriend Google, The Thank-You Economy and other sources, like The Society of Human Resources Management, if you're at all skeptical about those key inter-relationships.

Which makes off-the-cuff and spontaneously combustive real-life terminations, such as the phone termination of former NPR Correspondent Juan Williams or the phone termination of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz frankly puzzling, given the reputation-bruising both organizations received from the resultant negative publicity. 

When Yahoo then put itself on the market for purchase right after Bartz's firing, engagement was clearly not the focus, financial survival was.   Which explains the leadership vacuum on several levels, as exemplified by Bartz's parting email sent to all Yahoo employees:

“To all,” Bartz wrote, “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.”

This lack of professionalism telegraphs that both terminations were not planned and occurred as a result of an emotional reaction, rather than a factual response.

Which brings the leadership of the organization into question:  if a termination decision is made and handled in this manner, how is the leadership team handling other business / mission-critical decisions?

And that's what I mean when I say that termination is a dish best prepared and served cold.  When an executive or similar decision-maker comes to me as the HR subject-matter expert totally pissed off and ready to fire the target of their ire on the spot, I gently apply the brakes on the situation, with some simple steps and questions designed to minimize / prevent organizational exposure and protect the reputations of all involved.

• What policies / procedures has the target violated?
• Is there any documentation or prior warnings in their file?
• What danger / exposure exists if the target is not fired on the spot? (One of the few on-the-spot terminations I've performed occurred after weapons were discovered and thankfully confiscated in the employee's workstation.)
• If there is a lack of facts / evidence on the first 3 points above, is the decision-maker comfortable with the legal and public relations risks?  That is:  is the decision-maker (and the organization's leadership team) comfortable with reading about how the decision-maker potentially mishandled the target's termination in the local newspaper?
• Is there a plan to minimize company exposure? 
• Is there a plan at all, e.g. how to communicate the target's departure, managing company security, etc.?

If the answer is no to any of the above points, time must be taken to develop and implement the plan factually and rationally.  

The first step of the plan is for the decision-maker to cool off and shelve their emotions so the facts can drive strategic termination planning and implementation.

If not:  the decision-maker may find themselves in the same boat as Trump's hapless contestants; or their former employees.

Leading Jerks is Idiot's Poker

Earlier this holiday weekend, I tweeted the link to Bob Sutton's poignant New York Times article How Bad Apples Infect the Tree.

The poignant part was Dr. Sutton's story about the Silicon Valley executive he called Ruth, and how effectively she detached from the prevailing jerk culture in her workplace: 

When I asked Ruth how she kept her sanity amid the meanness at the company, she told me about some advice she had received as a teenager from a river rafting guide: If you fall out of the boat, don’t fight the rapids. Just rely on your life vest and float with your feet out in front of you. That way, if you are thrown up against the rocks, you can use your feet to push off, and you’ll protect your head and conserve energy. 

The very day she got that advice, Ruth fell overboard while traversing rapids in the “Satan’s Cesspool” section of the American River in California. After a wild trip with her feet stretched out in front of her, Ruth wasn’t hurt and felt exhilarated. 

Ruth explained that she used the Satan’s Cesspool strategy to survive those nasty meetings some 30 years later. Verbal barbs bounced off of her, just as the rocks had bounced off her feet long ago. When the personal attacks, dirty looks and finger-pointing commenced, she stretched out her feet in front of her under the table, and told herself, “I just got thrown out of the boat by these jerks, but I know how to survive.

Instead of seeing herself as a victim, Ruth felt strong and in control. She shared her strategy with fellow victims in the office, and it helped them endure the slings and arrows as well. 

Ruth’s strategy was effective because it enabled her to reframe the nastiness so she could become emotionally detached — to “prevent the poison from touching my soul,” as she put it.

I love the method, visualization and metaphor of resiliency and maintaining personal power of being thrown out of the boat by jerks yet knowing how to survive in the face of the ebb and flow of workplace threats.  Dealing effectively with and detaching from workplace jerks is the first important step towards building a jerk-free workplace:  very similar to the 12-step program process of dealing effectively with and detaching from active and dry alcoholics who have yet to take responsibility for their own sobriety / recovery.  Truth be told, workplace jerks and dry drunks are fairly interchangeable, and usually end up being one in the same.

Amen also to Dr. Sutton's assertion that one jerk can bring a whole workplace down a negative spiral.  Sutton further asserts that such jerks need to be reformed, and if necessary, expelled.

However, nothing can beat the time-suck oxymoron of attempting to lead / manage workplace jerks at any organizational level:  and listening to the lame defense that the jerk makes the organization a lot of money and we should work together to heal them - praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!  Okay, then let's talk about the jerk's impact on employee, vendor and customer recruitment, retention, productivity, reputation and morale:  are they still making us a boatload of cash after those factors are added to their net cost-benefit?  Been there, done that.

It truly is a game of organizational idiot's poker:  everyone loses and we all look like morons, including, last but not least, the problematic jerk.  It's not the first conversation to attempt to heal the jerk that's frustrating; it's the 6th conversation.  (Oh dear, that anger management class didn't work:  shall we have another <undocumented> come-to-Jesus meeting with them?)  All that time wasted on a jerk who won't or can't change, when we could have used our meeting time instead to achieve our organizational goals. 

What do I mean?  Only rarely can a workplace jerk be reformed / coached -- I have seen it happen, but in my experience, it is absolutely the rare exception.   A workplace jerk only gets better if they have a personal epiphany (e.g. hitting a bottom) which motivates them to change their ways on their own.  Or if the jerk's ass is soundly kicked by a bigger organizational alpha dog.  Usually it's only the former that institutes real change and reforms a workplace jerk.  The latter almost always gets you a temporary cease-fire of lip-service, white-knuckling and empty promises.  It's like a time-bomb ticking:  I can usually predict when the explosion of pent-up dysfunction will take place: when the jerk will screech like a strangled banshee in a team meeting, finger-pointing over an imagined affront.  No one wins in this particular game of idiot's poker.

Instead, consider managing jerks through a well-documented and consistent progressive disciplinary / performance process:  verbal; written; final written; performance improvement plan (if for some reason the organizational torture needs to be prolonged); termination.

If they don't get better, promote them to customers, as we used to say in one of my organizations.  You will be on the side of the angels, the numbers, and most importantly, your customers and employees.

Please and Thank You!

I was 15 years old and out on a shopping trip with a beloved female relative in the New York / Metropolitan area where I was born and raised.

It was a hot summer day, and we stopped for lunch.  As we perused our menus, our waitress came to our table to take our drink order, depositing glasses of ice water in the process.  "I'll have an iced coffee," my relative said, not looking up from the menu and sipping her ice water.  "Debbie, why don't you try one?"

I smiled up at the waitress.  "I'll have an iced coffee too, please."  The waitress smiled back.  "Sure thing, sweetie, I'll be right back."  (Note:  the waitress had not smiled at Beloved Relative.)

Beloved Relative touched my arm affectionately as the waitress padded away from our table.  "Debbie, you don't have to do that."  I was confused: were the rules looser with Beloved Relative than when dining out with my Marine Corps father?  "You mean I don't have to keep my elbows off the table?"  I guessed.

"No," she said sotto voce as the waitress approached with our iced coffees.  "You don't have to say 'please' or  'thank you' to a waitress."  The waitress reached our table and served our iced coffees with dishes of creamers and Sweet 'n Low.  "There you go girls, enjoy!  Let me know when you're ready to order lunch."  On auto-pilot, I replied "Thank you." to the waitress.  "You're welcome!" she replied back and walked over to another one of her tables.

The coaching from Beloved Relative was now earnest and unsmiling. "Debbie, now what did I say?"  I didn't like displeasing Beloved Relative.  "Sorry, I couldn't help it."  I was puzzled at her rule, however.  "Why don't you say 'please' and 'thank you' to a waitress?"

Beloved Relative was hungry, and waved at the waitress to return to our table to take our lunch order.  "So she knows who's in charge," she said, affirmatively and definitively.

Well, the coaching from Beloved Relative didn't work: I still say please and thank you, whether I'm addressing a waitress, my son or husband, a customer, a vendor, my boss, the folks I work with or a colleague.  And I teach my son Noah to do the same.

And while it's sometimes hard work, especially when the other party is insufferably rude, whether it's in writing or in person, I pretty much mean what I say and affect the matching tone of please and thank you.  That's part of my customer service training, and the rest is Marine Corps' good manners.  I'm certainly not perfect, or always 100% successful.  However, my intent is consistent.

When managers at any level order work direction from their teams like Beloved Relative ordering iced coffee without saying "please" and "thank you," I suspect it includes but is not limited to at least one or all of the following possible scenarios:

• Like Beloved Relative, they think the absence of "please" and "thank you" lets everyone know they're in charge;
• They weren't raised with good manners;
• They were mentored by an asshole (in the spirit of full disclosure, so was I);
• They're afraid, insecure, etc.;
• They speak without thinking or caring about the impact of their words or behavior on those around them;
• They're delirious or otherwise impaired.

Now, I've worked with organizations where extensive work was done to improve employee engagement and retention, including but not limited to elaborate surveys and subsequent analysis paralysis.  These same organizations also continued to employ managers and executives who not only did not use please and thank you as simple yet consistently effective engagement and retention tools, but these same managers and executives also regularly terrorized anyone in their radius, subordinate or colleague alike, while playing up sweetly and cloyingly to compensation and promotional decision-makers above them.  Bleah.  It was not only inauthentic and the polar opposite of engagement, it was also nauseating.

Bob Sutton, author of The No-Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss, sums up the power of thank you eloquently in his blog post, Thanks. A really neglected form of compensation.  No surveys or analysis paralysis needed here to achieve authentic engagement.

My friend and former colleague Elaine, a career customer service pro, doesn't need Bob Sutton to point out these basics to her.  "Please and Thank You!"  she'd sing all day long in a one-phrase mantra, her glass full of motivation to get the job done for her devoted customers.

Thank you for reading my blog post; please have a great week!

Why There's No Crying in Baseball

A League of Their Own is one of the movies I love to watch over and over again.  Literally, I've seen it more than 20 times. 

Now, I'm not necessarily gender-centric in my movie re-run hobby:  another favorite that I never tire of watching is The Hunt for Red October, and there is nary a woman to be found, much less relate to, as a female viewer.  The passion of the strategic intrigue is genderless, at least for me.

If there were a 12-step program for such an addiction, my husband Joel, instead of rolling his eyes and sighing every time I'm glued to one of my repeat favorites, would arrange an intervention and attend the Movie-Anon meetings for enablers.

One of the best scenes in A League of Their Own, I think most of us would agree,  is between the Tom Hanks character Jimmy, the team manager, and Bitty Schram character, Evelyn, when she makes an error that ends a key inning in the game, a.k.a. the "There's No Crying in Baseball" scene.

As I mentioned earlier, I've watched this scene literally dozens of times, and my visceral reaction rarely wavered:  I simultaneously ached for Evelyn and was ashamed of her.  On the surface, I related more to the Rosie O'Donnell character, Doris:  I'm a born and bred 3rd-generation New Yorker.

The shame is as simple as this:  don't let the assholes see you cry.  It just reinforces their gender stereotypes in the workplace and ruins it for the rest of us.

However, when I watch this scene from an organizational / leadership effectiveness standpoint, the perspective is startlingly different.

Jimmy is jonesing for his end-of-season managerial bonus for winning the World's Series, and Evelyn's error does not support his goal.  In order to ensure that she does not make the error again and jeopardize his bonus potential further, he gets in her face and kicks her ass.  Publicly.  "Use your head, " he barks.  "You know -- that lump 3 feet above your ass?" 

The rest of the team is visibly stunned, a mixture of anger, disgust and helplessness.  Doris asks Jimmy to lay off, and he tells her to zip it.  And she does. Why?  Chain-of-command.  While he's an asshole, he's still her manager. So much for the New York attitude advantage.

As Evelyn cries, he's incredulous. "There's no crying in baseball!," he exclaims repeatedly in amazement.  He tells her that he's suffer much worse abuse from his manager, and he didn't cry.  As if he were the incarnation of the Dalai Lama for that alleged accomplishment  She cries harder.  The umpire approaches.  "Sir, she's crying!"  Jimmy exclaims in frustration, appealing to another man.  "Perhaps you should address her as you address your mother," the ump primly advises.  I wince.  He's like a sanctimonious substitute for baseball field HR. 

Hey Ump, I know it's supposed to be 1944 in the movie:  but they taught us in diversity training that using the treatment of mothers and other female relatives as examples of how men should treat women respectfully in the workplace does not consistently wash, e.g. what happens if domestic violence exists in your family?  You think Jimmy kisses his mother with that mouth?

Only when Jimmy calls the umpire a penis in a hat does the ump exercise his discretionary power and throw Jimmy out of the game.  But how does that help the women and men on the team (organization), and the game, move forward?

Everyone here is marginalized.  From Jimmy grasping at the last straws of a wasted career to the women players busting their butts only to lose their jobs when the men return from war to the HR ump, who has no real and lasting impact beyond the current game.

I know the answer isn't for women to emulate these abusive, outdated and stereotypical power behaviors.  Women with Men's Heads, my friend Nan coined years ago.  Watching that in action is even worse than when men do it.  Again, it ruins it for the rest of us and undermines the credibility of women leaders in the workplace.  No one wins, everyone is still marginalized. 

I love the answer Chris Flett proposes in his book, What Men Don't Tell Women About Business: Opening Up the Heavily Guarded Alpha Male Playbook.

Contrary to what the title implies, Flett first lays out the rules of the current power structure; and then lays out a practical plan-forward:  that for organizations to move forward and evolve, they require managerial skills that tend to be more native to women (but also available to men).  In order to do so, we must first understand and learn how to facilitate the power structure where it is (There's No Crying in Baseball) to where it can be (There Are No Assholes in Baseball.)

There's even hope at the end of A League of Their Own.  After making another error in the World Series, Evelyn comes off the field and Jimmy meets her again. "Now Evelyn, I'd like you to work on that for next season," he says, clearly controlling himself.  "I know, I will" she says gently, and walks off the field.  He fribrillates and smiles, nearly choking on his chewing tobacco.

Progress, Not Perfection, as they say in the 12-step rooms.

Don't Mess Your Nest: The Secret to Employee Handbook Compliance (Business, Leadership and Career Success Too)

The ongoing postmortem on the abrupt resignation and departure of Hewlett-Packard's former CEO Mark V. Hurd due to violations of H.P.’s standards of business conduct and an allegedly unfounded sexual harassment claim continues to fascinate me as an HR and Change Management practitioner.

However, as a kid born and bred in New York City and the daughter of a Marine, a simple but visceral reaction keeps rearing its authentic head:

Don't Mess Your Nest.

My friend Carol, who had a successful career as a state government executive, helped me with this more polite version of what I learned early in life.  It was a classic NYS Downstate-kid/ Upstate-kid exchange.  "Carol, do you know a cleaner version of "Don't S*** Where You Eat?"  I asked recently.  "Yes," Carol answered immediately.  "Don't Mess Your Nest."

I liked it.  It reminded me of an eagle's nest, and for me personally, eagles are great metaphors on several levels, not withstanding a symbol of leadership and business success.  Much more nuanced than my Lower-East-Side version.

"Why do you want to know?"  Carol asked.  "Personal  theory I've developed over the years,"  I replied.  "Rather than writing a magnum opus of an HR Handbook and policies for an organization, I believe that one phrase covers it all.  And if all employees at all levels subscribed to 'Don't Mess Your Nest,' we wouldn't have to worry about an employee handbook,  and consequently work life would be a lot easier for all of us. Also, my 9 year-old son is an experienced Googler, and I have to maintain some decorum."  Carol chuckled.

I know what you may be thinking: I earn my livelihood writing employee handbooks as well as intervening on and subsequently remediating all sorts of dysfunctional workplace behavior at all organizational levels. Some potentially (but never on my watch to date, thankfully) newsworthy, some annoying and frustrating, and some just downright sad.   I approach this part of my role as a mediator, and that's why it hasn't worn me down, so what am I complaining about?  Because it takes time and energy away from more constructive and strategic efforts to build business and organizational success at all levels.

To the point I made in an earlier post:  in the dual role of HR executive and internal Executive recruiter, I would have to clean up my own mess (and credibility), HR-wise, if I inserted a candidate with the issues below into the hiring process and they were subsequently hired. It certainly motivates the drive on the front-end to place and promote quality candidates and leadership bench.

It also helps when the organization's governance structure shares the same success values.

In the latest New York Times article on Hurd's departure,  Charles House, a former longtime H.P. engineer who now runs a research program at Stanford University, in addition to his pleasure at Hurd's departure, makes this poignant observation about H.P.'s last 3 CEOs:  "What H.P. needs in its next leader is “someone with Carly’s (Fiorina) strategic sense, Mark’s (Hurd) operational skills, and Lew’s (Platt) emotional intelligence.”

Amen, brother:  a snapshot job spec for leadership success.

Sadly, a snapshot that Hurd did not fit.  He is further described in the NYT article as having the strategic sense of a gnat, and knew only how to cut costs. He was a cost-cutter who indulged himself.   His combined compensation for just his last two years was more than $72 million — a number that absolutely outraged employees since their jobs were the ones being cut. 

Hurd's cost-cutting as reported in the NYT was for the short-term hits as well:  he cut back significantly on R&D (the article notes that H.P. consequently had no product response to the iPad); he dictated that H.P. executives had to resign from all civic boards, and he cut off many of H.P.’s philanthropic activities.

In recent internal surveys, the NYT article reports, nearly two-thirds of H.P. employees said they would leave if they got an offer from another company — a staggering number. <Clearly> Hurd didn’t have the support of his people. He was also observed to be incredibly rude and demeaning, and relied on the fear factor. Although he was good at holding executives’ feet to the fire, he seemed to be the only one benefiting from H.P.’s success. He alienated himself from the people who might have protected him <Which would explain the decidedly odd publicity originating from H.P. about an allegedly resolved sexual harassment complaint.> One observer's summation:  Hurd lacked the moral character to be CEO.

Yet he was allowed to carry on for 5 years, as the ongoing postmortem seems to suggest, because of his significant but short-term positive hits to H.P.'s bottom line.  And this has all played out publicly and widely, to former, current and future customers, shareholders and employees, bruising both the reputations of Hurd and H.P.  Ouch.

Hurd sounds like a fictional character constructed to hammer home the authentic concepts illustrated by House's Stanford colleague Bob Sutton in his seminal leadership / organizational effectiveness book, The No-Asshole Rule (Sorry Noah, that's the title of the book).  But sadly, for Hurd, H.P. and its former and current employees, truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

The Hurd saga is also a cautionary tale about an organization off-course.  Joe Nocera, who wrote this latest NYT article, summed it up elegantly:  "H.P. says its board should be applauded for not letting Mr. Hurd off the hook. But this is just after-the-fact spin. In fact, the directors should be called out for acting like the cowards they are. Mr. Hurd’s supposed peccadilloes were a smoke screen for the real reason they got rid of an executive they didn’t trust and employees didn’t like." 

Worried about how to best follow organizational policies, guidelines and handbooks?  How to guide your employees to do the same?

And moreover, build a foundation that will ensure career and business success?

Don't Mess Your Nest.   

Because it's especially damaging and discouraging when eagles do it.


As always:  a successful week to all!

The (Candidate or Company) is Just Not That Into You: When Interviewing is NOT Like Dating

I received a call from a small (but growing) business client last week about the lead candidate for a critical customer-facing position that they needed to fill.

The candidate (who had been laid off from their last position and unemployed for nearly a year), had done very well in their interviews with the company's leadership team. The last step was a final interview with the CEO, during which the CEO planned to extend the employment offer.

The candidate never showed up for the final interview. Nor did they call or email in advance to cancel the final interview. Nor did they respond to subsequent phone calls or emails from the company. For two weeks. (And at this writing, still no word from the lead candidate. Obviously, they're no longer the lead candidate, and the company is better off learning this now rather than post-hire.)

The company's hiring manager was a bit shocked, to say the least; until their recent growth trend, this particular company has not done a great deal of hiring on a regular basis. "The candidate was great, we wanted to hire them. They did say they would need some minor surgery before starting the position with us, but we were fine with that. And then, when they didn't show up for the meeting with the CEO -- or didn't call or email to cancel the meeting --- or didn't call or email us back when we followed up to see what was wrong -- well, that was weird. Is that normal?"

It's not normal; it's rude; and it's bad business, particularly in a local (and recovering) economy like SmAlbany where you never know who knows you or the company hiring authority who's interviewing you -- it's more like 2 or 3 degrees of separation rather than 6, and your reputation is core to the product -- you -- that you are marketing and hoping that a hiring authority will purchase.

However, in the last 10 years or so, I've seen candidate finalists who progress to the phone or face-to-face phase of the interview process do the exact same thing more and more: they don't call, they don't write -- they just drop off. I say the last 10 years or so, as I first noticed the trend as a hiring authority around the Y2K hiring frenzy with IT candidates, when there were jobs aplenty and companies were competing furiously for candidates by constantly upping the hiring incentive ante with dueling hiring bonuses, etc. (Those days will return with the next economic uptick cycle!)

Now, in my role as an HR Director, I've certainly run into situations when bad luck strikes both candidates and employees, incapacitating them to the point of being unconscious / missing in action and therefore temporarily unable to communicate -- however, those are the very rare exceptions. (In July 2001 for example, when my son decided to change my plans and make his appearance via C-section at Albany Med, I was at the ready on my cell phone with my friend and mentor Patty while in labor to ask her advice, which was to get off the phone and listen to the doctor.)

When an employee goes missing in action, it's almost always a message that the employee no longer wants to work for the company but doesn't know how or doesn't want to resign gracefully. It's either fear, passive aggressive behavior, or usually both.

And when a candidate goes missing in action, it's (obviously) almost always a signal that the candidate is not interested in pursuing a position with the company, but for some reason they do not know how to say proactively and professionally something as simple as "I'm pursuing a position with another company that better meets my career interests and needs; thank you for taking the time to consider me as a candidate." Great reputation management with that simple phrase. Best to communicate that message to the hiring authority in person or on the phone, but an email with the same message, while not as effective, is at least better than radio silence.

We've all experienced in a dating situation (or vicariously through recent pop cultural references) the "They're Just Not That Into You" behavior, when the person you're interested in dating just stops calling, emailing, texting and does not respond to your calls, emails and text messages. It's rude, it's hurtful, and frankly, demonstrates a lack of courage, authenticity and emotional intelligence.

Whatever you do in your personal life clearly is your prerogative. The "They're Just Not That Into You" behavior however does not translate at all well in a business transaction, which absolutely includes the interview process. Here is where interviewing is not like dating at all: the company or the hiring authority will not experience hurt feelings by a candidate's professional and proactive declination; they will just move on to the next most qualified candidate.

But if you just drop off -- if you don't call or write -- that company probably will never consider you again as a candidate. And if that company (perhaps you didn't care for the company and didn't want to work for them anyway) happens to be consulted by one of their fellow hiring authorities on your candidacy with another company in the future (and it does happen more frequently than you realize), the hiring authority will share their negative experience with you as the candidate who dropped off unprofessionally. That's where the business -- and ultimately, your career and economic success -- transcends any personal that may be attached to the interview process on the part of the hiring authority.

I also have a theory that candidates who engage in the "They're Just Not That Into You" behavior are responding (in not the most strategic manner, granted) to companies and hiring authorities who demonstrate the same behavior, especially to candidates who have progressed to the face-to-face interview stage and then are not selected as finalists or hired, and they never hear back from the company. (Well, in a sense, they do: in this case, silence means "no.") The ill-conceived rationale might be something to effect of: "Companies blow off candidates all the time; why can't I as a candidate take the same tactic?" Like I said, it doesn't quite make sense for either candidates or companies.

From a hiring authority reputation management standpoint, I subscribe to at least a phone call to let face-to-face and phone-interview candidates either know how they're progressing in the hiring process, or not (If you need advice or coaching on this as a hiring authority or as a candidate, I'm here to help). Runner-up candidates, on both sides of the interview table in my experience, often end up being hired in the future, or even more interesting, in a decision-maker role like customer. At the very least, companies who spell out the interview process in their email auto-responders or on their websites are at minimum setting the stage for candidates with regard to realistic communication expectations during the interview process.

I had a great experience during a phone-screen with a hiring authority, where we switched places at the interview table. "You hired me as an entry-level candidate over 10 years ago," the HR recruiter said. I chuckled at the SmAlbany factor. "I assume it was a good experience, since you called me for a phone-screen."

"Yes," they responded. "The hiring process was long and might have been more frustrating, but you called me every week to let me know that my candidacy was trending positively, and that I was a strong candidate, but that your company was not in a position to make a hiring decision until all the candidates were interviewed and assessed. It helped to keep me interested in working for the company."

In the interview process, reputation management can indeed cut both ways: the key is for both candidates and hiring authorities to proactively and respectfully manage that process, which will yield business and career wins that you cannot predict or imagine.

Have a great and prosperous week!

What Dating and Interviewing Have in Common (Except Please Don't Date Who You Interview)

Among several passions, interests, entrepreneurial endeavors and job experiences, I've been an inside (corporate) recruiter for about 21 years. I've been a salesman's daughter all my life. My daddy, who worked as a wedding and bar mitzvah photographer on the weekends as a second job, had me cold-calling prospects when I was 14 years old.

Howard (my father) taught me then and since that selling is not shoving unwanted products down customers' throats: it is instead first determining the customer's needs and then meeting those needs. It was a great and early introduction to my own native skills, and it definitely formed the basis of my success as both a recruiter and a candidate.

As a result of my journey to date, in both robust markets and during several rides to the Recession Rodeo, I've come to the conclusion that the following skills are congruent: interviewing; selling; marketing; networking; and dating. Had I recognized these skill intersections when dating was a primary interest in my life, I definitely would have dated more.

However, in the spirit of full disclosure as an HR practitioner, you definitely should not date who you interview.

There are several opportunities at play within these skill intersections, for both employers and prospective employees. These are not meant to be inclusive or ranked in order of importance; merely thought- and continuous improvement-provoking.

I also use these skill intersections to illustrate how accessible the recruiting and interview process can be when I train others to both interview and recruit.

First: an intense curiosity to learn about new people and to have new experiences with them. My friend Nan (who is a writer and an English teacher) and I share this gift. Nan applied her skill masterfully in the dating category. To this day, I marvel at her ability when she was single to secure at least one date in nearly every social situation. As a runner-up to Nan, I always make a new networking connection no matter what the setting, because of my native curiosity to draw out and learn people's individual stories, which more often than not, are wonderful takeaway nuggets.

Second: the ability to read signals, verbal and non-verbal, and determine whether or not needs are being met for both parties. I have ended meetings or revised the original meeting agenda, no matter what side of the interview table I sit on, when I determine that there isn't a needs match on both sides, in the spirit of saving time and preserving mutual esteem and credibility.

One example was an interview for a senior HR position as a candidate: once the recruiter finished his clearly rote description of the position, I then asked him why he wasn't considering our mutual friend Lynn -- she was a perfect match for the position, which substantiated my intuitive conclusion that the position was not for me. He subsequently recruited and hired Lynn. I love vocational matchmaking.

And then there was the guy with a strong Accounting background who came to my then-company's job fair booth and began our interaction complaining that he had been job-hunting for several months and that he couldn't catch a break because his last boss was an asshole and that his age was a problem and that's why he couldn't get hired. Yikes. I stopped him and told him the truth: that he needed to resolve his frustration before he approached the next hiring authority, as he was clearly undermining himself. He was grateful: no one had ever given him that feedback.

Speaking of signals: watch-checking -- whether on a date or an interview -- telegraphs a clear "Stick a fork in me, I'm done" message. A strategically placed clock over the candidate's (or date's, or customer's) shoulder is a more subtle and respectful time-tracker.

Third, and perhaps most important: knowing what you want, whether you're the candidate or the hiring authority. I'm a big advocate of defining exactly what you want (and what you have to offer) affirmatively and in detail before recruitment (or job search) begins. This preparation invariably produces expedited screening processes, specific and meaningful interview questions and dialogue, and on-target needs identification for both candidates and hiring authorities, which in turn translates into focused marketing that invariably produces better results. Covey's classic "begin with the end in mind."

However, the human experience often presents these nuggets in the form of learning from our mistakes, e.g. learning first what you don't want.

Like dating the newly recovering medical student for a year and a half despite the fact that on the first date, he took me to dinner knowing full well that he did not have the money to pay, but cutting him slack because he was adorable. Unfortunately, just being adorable was not enough to sustain a relationship. I subsequently learned my lesson after that relationship on the first date with the immature lawyer who took me to the movies knowing that he did not have the money with him to pay. There was no second date with the immature lawyer, lesson learned.

And then there was the wonderful 5-hour first date with the man I knew would become my husband. Except I had the sense by then not to mention that intuition during that first date.

Fourth, as noted above: the ability to identify red flags, large and small, and to assess whether or not, according to what you have clearly defined as what you want, if the red flags you identify are manageable or deal-killers. And to not ignore those red flags, instead to drill down into them with additional questions / discussion to confirm or deny your red-flag intuition.

A candidate example was the nonprofit Executive Director who called me before 8 AM the Saturday morning after my first interview with her to spontaneously continue the interview -- I respectfully withdrew myself from consideration. I could easily extrapolate what it would be like to work for her: she'd show up on my doorstep early every Saturday morning expecting coffee.

One of the sadder hiring-authority examples was the guy who showed up still drunk for his first day of work from celebrating his new job into the wee hours the night before. His employment offer of course was rescinded.

Because here's where the first date and the first interview are identical: for both the hiring authority and the job candidate, it's as good as it gets: we're all on our best behavior. So if the red flags bleed outside the boundaries of your standards on that first date or interview, more likely than not, it's not going to get any better than that first encounter. Then both parties need to decide whether or not to move forward -- whether or not needs will be met on both sides.

Hiring authorities: The manner in which you recruit employees should be the same as the manner in which you attract customers, as it requires the same passion and energy. And you never know when a job candidate can end up as a customer, especially in a local economy like SmAlbany. Recruiting is part of your branding and your reputation. Everyone, internally and externally, is a customer -- it's a win-win set-up and ultimately reflects best on your organization.

Job candidates: you are the product that you're selling to the prospective employer. Have you determined their particular needs? Can you clearly demonstrate how you will meet / exceed their needs in the interview? Have you asked for the order by telling the hiring authority that you want the job, and that you're the best candidate for the job because you've laid out the true facts of how you will meet and / or exceed their needs? (Asking for the order without making the factual case of meeting the hiring authority's needs is like saying "I love you" on the first date, by the way -- it cheapens everyone in the conversation.) It's a lot more work, but it feels much better than the stereotypical candidate paradigm of supplicant, don't you think?

That symmetry goes for subsequent interviews too: I'm a big fan of Ask the Headhunter, where among other nuggets, I wholeheartedly support his philosophy of doing the job during the interview, as this benefits and identifies needs on both sides of the interview table. One of my best career interview experiences as a candidate was the interview task to write a sample press release as if there was currently a plant emergency. I loved it, and my hiring (and subsequent) manager, Bill, picked up on my energy. Needs met and matched!

Seriously though -- please don't date who you interview. I'll talk more about that in a future post.

Good hunting: have a great week.