I’ve been following with great interest all of the news reports regarding the assignation attempt on Rep.  Gabrielle Giffords.  My heart goes out to her, her family, and to all people who were affected by this senseless act of insanity.

In case you haven’t been following the news, Jared Loughner  is accused of engaging in a shooting rampage at a “Congress on the Corner” a town hall-style event in Tucson, AZ on Saturday that left six dead, including a judge, and severely wounded Rep. Giffords, who apparently was the target of the attack.

I read Loughner used a Glock semiautomatic pistol.  Jeez.  Only 22 and he was able to purchase a gun.  Gun-control proponents once again are calling for stricter laws regarding guns and access to them.  Gun-rights advocates once again purport that more regulation would not have stopped the tragedy.

Don’t know a damn thing about guns and really don’t want to.  I honestly don’t believe that guns really have a place in our society now.  But that’s me – and that’s not what I want to blog about today. 

 What I do want to talk about is what I see as one of the biggest issues in the case which, aside from the obvious need for stricter gun permitting and background checks, is the necessity for stronger  mental health policies and practices.

 All I kept thinking over the weekend and into today was the fact that this young man had to have been mentally ill to do what he did.   And it appears that Loughner does indeed have a history of mental illness. 

 Which it also appears was not attended to.

 What President Obama said in his speech on Wednesday in Arizona really struck a chord with me:

 “When a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless…already we’ve seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.”

Let’s exercise our self-government and debate the issue by looking at the fact pattern. 

The kid had issues – he had trouble with the law, got rejected by the military, and college officials canned him because they considered him a threat to other students and faculty.  Apparently the college police were called in five timesto deal with Loughner’s library and classroom disruptions.

The college did right in removing him from the campus.  And they did right in wanting him to undergo a mental health exam to prove he was not a danger to others before they would readmit him.

Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said that “the reality is most people with mental illness are not violent.  The issue, frankly, is getting people into treatment. It’s not about guns.”

We may not be able to control the public space, but as HR business professionals we can – and must – control the work space.

There’s nothing wrong with mental illness.  It is what it is.  If it’s in the work space though, we need to make sure it’s diagnosed and there are tools in place to help manage it and any resulting behavior. If you think about it, all health, physical or mental, is behavioral management really.

So, make sure your organization has mental health as a part of its benefits package.  Make sure your organization has some type of employee assistance program (EAP).  Hold stress management seminars for employees; give them a quiet space where they can decompress after a particularly frustrating encounter.  Support work-life balance – and put your organization’s money where it’s mouth is by enacting policies and practices that help employees do just that. 

Also make sure your supervisors document BEHAVIOR, not opinions or personality quirks.  Educate supervisors on the signs of substance abuse, which often will make a person behave differently than he or she normally would.  Teach them how to differentiate between a disgruntled employee and one who is suffering from mental issues.  Even the most even keeled person in the world can experience a mental problem when confronted with a person or event that takes away their control or power. 

Finally, start fostering a work environment of empowerment.  Give employees a level of choice, influence and control they can exercise over the events in their work lives.

After all, it really is about control, self and otherwise.

It’s Not Mental, but Behavioral Management Really is a post from: The HR Whisperer

Photo courtesy of Emma's Teashop for Old Ladies

Didn’t get to go to the SHRM annual conference in San Diego this year (or any year for that matter), so I took it upon myself to try to read as much as I could about all the conference doings and such.  After my bazillionth blog, it hit me.  A LOT of these fine folks are saying similar things. 

 And I kinda got pissed off.

 You know, I’m going to go out on a limb here and respond to all the Bloggers, Tweeters, SHRMers, etc. that are saying that, for HR to be effective, it must hear from its practitioners in the field – not from the consultants, academics, etc. who have been populating the national, state and local HR and related conferences around the country and probably around the world.  Such as from:

 Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent, “When I was preparing to go to SHRM and deciding on what sessions to attend – my very first impression was “seems like I’ve been here and done this before”  – my next impression was “why does 90% of presenters have either consultant or speaker as their title?  Where have all the real HR Pros gone?”

 Ben Eubanks from Upstart HR, “Some of the sessions I went to were wonderful, and I took a lot of notes (and even wrote about some, too). Others didn’t turn out so well. I went to two or three sessions where the speaker read off of slides or just didn’t hit the topic the session was supposed to be about. That’s fine, when that happened I just left or started talking to someone in the crowd. I did my best not to waste any time during the event…”

 Another comment from Ben, “One of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard from Eric was this: move up, not out. So many amazing HR pros eventually take off and leave the profession instead of continually climbing to be Directors, VPs, and Chief HR Officers. We need more great people to ascend to those positions instead of leaving them to the people with seniority by default (even if they don’t have the skills or passion to be great at it)…”.

 Michael VanDervort from The Human Race Horses, “My big learning was really just a verification of what is an old discussion – HR needs to reinvent itself, and it is the practitioners who need to make that happen through aggressively transforming the way we think and work…”

 Mark Stelzner from Inflexion Point, “Second, I was sadly disappointed by the attendee reaction to a keynote featuring a panel of HR leaders, including Google, Northrop Grumman, Kaiser Permanente and Deutsche Bank. SHRM’s membership is generally not comprised of the senior-most HR professionals from the world’s largest firms, so when they actually take the time to show up, share best practices and offer advice, you damn well better pay attention. Attendees swarmed from the session, first in 2’s and 3’s and then by the dozens. Are you there to listen to Steve Forbes and Al Gore or should you perhaps learn from those who have theoretically arrived at your career destination? And if you did walk out early, you missed a gem from Deutsche Bank’s Conrad Venter when he predicated that HR will be obsolete in ten years if we stay on our current course…”.

Kathy Rapp from Fistful of Talent, “When people ponder the future of HR or ask, “What’s wrong with HR?!” it’s my belief we don’t have enough HR pros who possess the attitude of “Give ME the ball or I want to win the game.”  If there were, we’d have more HR practitioners teaching at SHRM conferences and sharing their own personal stories of achievement and beating the odds.  We’d have more HR folks who move into top leadership roles in their companies outside of HR vs. those non-HR executives who “land” in HR to finish out their careers.  Frankly, we’d have more students coming out of college wanting a job in HR because of the opportunity to build successful business careers and make a better than average living…”

 And, Charlie Judy from HR Fishbowl, “Much of what I see today seems oriented too much toward developing pansy HR subject matter experts and not focused enough on injecting the HR professional pipeline with people who are Ninjas in navigating workplace complexities, sorting through emotional dynamics, acting with agility, and thinking critically.  Without that stuff, you’re just a commodity; after all, anyone can learn to manage a benefit plan…sorry.  If as a profession we are really committed to making HR more crucial to an organization’s value stream, I think we should see stuff like this in the syllabus…”

 What’s the common thread here, people? 

What I interpret is that HR has to change.  No ands, ifs or buts about it.  And I am totally up and down with that.  But change is NOT going to come from the folks who have been doing the same things year after year after year – the HR generalists and practitioners slogging along, waiting until retirement. 

You know, the ones who run to the conference expo hall for all the free swag. 

The ones who leave when senior HR leaders do participate and try to help start the transformation.

Makes me mad as hell.

Here’s the thing – I have consultant and speaker in my title – and guess what?  I was still am an HR practitioner and OD specialist.  As a consultant I get to go into a lot of different organizations and see what’s happening at the macro and micro levels.  As a speaker, I get to share ideas –in an interesting and engaging way – that hopefully serve to inspire and get people to start thinking and doing things a bit differently. 

That is what a teacher is,  you know.  Someone who is focusing on the future and hopefully opening new minds to new ideas.

So, that is what I take from all these comments.  We don’t just need practitioners to share their thinking; we need new minds, new ideas, and new ways of doing things – no matter where they may be.  And that is going to take some serious shaking up and shaping of up of HR.   It’s time.

That’s why I love reading the comments and blogs – new minds, new thinking, new ways.

Makes me aim to misbehave.

Going Out on a Limb, Here is a post from: The HR Whisperer

I was watching an old Cesar Milan rerun the other day on how to train puppies and in it he introduced a new pitbull puppy named Junior.  Now for anyone who watches the Dog Whisperer, you know that his all time fav and constant pit companion, Daddy, passed away in February of this year at the ripe old dog age of 15.

In Cesar’s Way magazine, Milan discusses his selection of Junior:

“…when the time came – about a year-and-a-half ago – I took Daddy along. Any newcomer in our house would first have to get Daddy’s approval. That’s how we wound up at the home of a friend whose female pit bull had given birth to a litter about two months earlier. One puppy, all gray with just a little dash of white on his chest, caught my attention immediately. Some people – the Dali Lama, for instance – have this calm energy. So do some dogs. Daddy has it. And I quickly realized that this little gray puppy had it too. In fact, he reminded me of Daddy when he was a puppy…”

This got me thinking about succession planning.  That is what Milan was doing when he found Junior – preparing for a new Daddy or top dog.

When was the last time you had succession planning on the agenda?

Executive transition is a crucial moment in any organization’s life and should be broached even when nobody’s anticipating a change in leadership.  Think back to 2004 when McDonald’s CEO Jim Canalupo died from a heart attack; the company named Charlie Bell six hours later.  Then a few weeks after that, Bell was diagnosed with cancer and the board again needed to make a replacement.  Sometimes a company has time to prepare – and sometimes they don’t.

Without a plan, an executive leaving can be uncertain, painful and difficult, both operationally and politically.  It’s hard to think strategically when you’re busy putting out a fire.  So, here’s three things to think about in preparing for succession.

Have a bus book.  Robert VanHook and Jackie Eder-VanHook call this the “what to do if the executive is hit by a bus” plan.  A bus book is a compendium of critical information about an organization.  While it doesn’t take the place of succession planning, the book can help an interim executive get up to speed while the organization assesses its next step.  Bus books should include contact information, organizational policies and procedures, financial statements, audits, budgets, board minutes, staff lists and resumes, important contracts, etc.  Remember, it’s a supplement to the succession plan, not a substitute.

Ensure that there is a succession contingency plan. With a plan in place, the organization will have coverage while leadership decides what its next step should be.  The plan should include an assessment of where the organization is, where it wants to go and what kind of leadership it needs to help it get there.  The plan should also include an outline and timeline of succession procedures, a communications plan that discusses who should be told of executive departures and when, a plan for how the leader will be replaced and a financial plan for covering the costs of replacement, whether the successor comes from inside or outside the organization.

Align the succession plan with the organizational strategy from a people as well as a business perspective.  This is key.  There are a ton of examples out there of senior leaders brought into place in a succession arrangement – and failing spectacularly.  Emotional intelligence is just as important as business acumen.  Think of when Sam Walton retired in 1988 and put David Glass in place.  Wal-Mart did great financially, but from an emotional intelligence perspective, not so much.  Same thing with Carly Fiorina and HP.  Great culture shift when she took over the reins, but at a huge cost to employees.  It was no surprise that employees at one of the HP plants passed out Ding Dongs to announce “the witch is dead” when Carly was fired in early 2005. 

Finally, make sure that your succession plan has a process to recruit high potential employees, develop their skills and abilities and prepare them for advancement.  Succession planning is not just for senior leadership positions; it is often the mid- level positions that are the most crucial to the organization in terms of business and cultural success.  These mid-level positions are a great feeder pool and often are ignored in favor of bringing in someone new in. 

Planning takes energy and time but it’s worth it.  Do you have a Junior ready in your organization?

Succession Planning for the Top Dog is a post from: The HR Whisperer

Once again I must thank my mentor, Cesar Millan, for the inspiration for this week’s blog.  He said that “when humans bring a dog into their lives, they are most often looking for a companion; what they may not realize is that they are getting a teacher as well.”  This is true in a business sense, too.  When we bring a potential leader into our organization, we should be getting someone who can teach or positively influence others.  But teaching goes both ways…is it really possible to teach someone to be an effective leader or is it just genetics coming into play?

Many organizations decide they want to implement a leadership development program because they need better leaders or people who could be put into some kind of succession plan.  The HR department gets the charge to put “something together” and manages to get someone to run the program, get people into it and maybe even toss in a measure or two to try to link the success of the program to a business goal–all within a few months.  Is it any surprise then, that so many of these programs lose steam after one year or fall flat due to budget cuts?  Aside from the timing and operational issues, the real question centers on whether or not leadership development programs truly teach people to be good leaders.

Leadership by its definition is a very complex.  Some say that leadership is a natural thing, that we are born with the innate qualities it takes to be a leader.  Psychologists have continuously searched for the personal attributes that would describe leaders and differentiate them from the rest of the pack.  A large body of research supports the theory that the “Big Five” of personality traits underlie all others and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality. In addition to providing a cohesive framework, research has also found strong relationships between the Big Five and job performance, especially in terms of successful leadership.  It’s no surprise then that tools like the Myers-Briggs’ MBTI® or DiSC® tend to be a part of LD programs.

More recent research shows that effective leaders have emotional intelligence (EI).  Daniel Goleman found that high levels of EI predicts high performance.  I would even go so far as to say that the combination of EI and the Big Five trait of extroversion defines charisma.  A definitive study conducted in 1999 on the personalities of two executive management teams found that over a period of five years the charismatic personality of the executive manager and of the team he selected was key to understanding a company’s rise or decline in the market.  

Hmmm.

Now on the other hand, behavioral theories focus on identifying the specific behaviors that differentiate leaders from nonleaders, which implies that these behaviors can be taught, i.e., leadership is a competency that can be broken down into concrete sets of trainable skills.  The most comprehensive of the behavioral theories resulted from research conducted at Ohio State University in the late 40s where the researchers narrowed a thousand different leadership dimensions into two categories: (1) task/structure and (2) relationship/consideration.  The managerial grid developed by Blake and Mouton and the contingency leadership theory developed by Hersey and Blanchard in the 1960s serve as the landmarks for situational leadership theory today.  The Hersey-Blanchard theory in particular focuses on the leader being able to select the right behavioral style based on followers’ willingness and ability.   

So, in my mind good leadership really is a combination of personality and environment. Which brings us back to our original question:  can people be trained in leadership?  The answer to me is an unequivocal yes.  Strong, results-driven leadership development programs worth their salt screen for the necessary Big Five personality traits and then provide adult-centered interventions to develop the skills necessary to:

• Run the task/structure of a business, such as strategic planning and financial management.
• Develop the relationship/consideration in teams, such as communication and conflict management.
• Understand the self and corresponding behavior by opening the Johari Window through extensive feedback, coaching and 360° profiling.

Another question:  if “nature” and “nurture” are important elements of leader effectiveness then, how does experience play a part?  Many believe that the value of on-the-job experience is a strong predictor of leadership effectiveness. Research, however shows that experience alone is usually a very poor predictor of leadership.  There have been numerous studies of military officers, shop supervisors, and school principals that demonstrate that experienced leaders tend to be no more effective than leaders who have little experience.  The problem seems to be in the variability of the situations a leader finds himself in that influence whether or not the experience will transfer to that situation.  Another problem is the assumption that the amount of time a leader spends in a particular position is really a true measure of experience.  So, LD programs need to provide education, training and experience through action learning.

Remember the heroes of September 11?  They may not have had the particular experience of being attacked by terrorists, but may have had the necessary personality traits and training in leading others and influencing them to action.

And that’s what we really need in any LD program.

Nature or Nurture: Training the Leader of the Pack is a post from: The HR Whisperer