I was once asked for three quick, clear, and concise bits of advice for a person who just got word that she or he would be laid off.  I have had another request so here they are again:

 Take a mental and physical time out.  Get away from your desk and your work space.  Do something physical take a walk, do some stretching, go to the gym for an hour.  You need to gain physical and emotional space.

 Bargain.  Take an inventory of your current projects and priorities.  Calmly and objectively meet with your boss and let her or him know how important these tasks are and how qualified you are to do them.  There is no downside but there could be an upside in terms of pushing out your actual termination date, potential consulting work, or working part time.

 Vent.  Keep your emotions in check until the day ends but as soon as it does, find someone to talk to.  You badly need emotional support and the best kind is not someone with gratuitous advice, but simply someone who can engage in empathetic listing. This can be a spouse, a significant other, a friend, or a helping professional.  Given the epidemic of layoffs you can intellectually understand what just happened, but you can’t get through the emotional impact without opening out to someone else.  You don’t need to wallow in it, but you do need to find someone to lean on.  This is something everyone should do.

Here is my January 22nd Greensboro News & Record column:

It’s a long way culturally and historically from nineteenth century Germany to 2012 Greensboro.  However, after reflecting on a recent lunch with our new mayor, Robbie Perkins, I was reminded of the political insight of Otto von Bismarck, First Chancellor of Germany from 1871 to 1890.  He is quoted as saying, “Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.”  I left that lunch with the impression that our mayor is, indeed, an artist.

His art form is one-on-one relationships.  His technique is what he describes as “touching.”  Only time will tell if his political art will stabilize the political proclivities of his fellow council members or resonate with our citizens.  One thing is certain: Mayor Perkins is very different in style and substance than his predecessor.

Contrasting his approach with that of former Mayor Knight, Perkins indicated that while Knight preferred to conduct the city’s business “inside” formal meetings, he liked to individually “touch” others – including council members – outside the constraints of formal sessions.  By “touch” he means asking their opinions, searching for compromise, and smoothing potentially rough edges. 

Leadership research supports a “touching” style. Open, trusting, one-on-one, relationships between leaders and followers, increase individual motivation and group commitment.  Despite the media’s tendency to glorify charismatic leaders making galvanizing speeches to adoring crowds, the reality is that most effective leadership behavior occurs in the trenches of day-to-day, one-on-one relationships.

If there is a downside to Perkin’s “touching” strategy, it has to do with the notion that strengths over-used become weaknesses.  With 16 years of council experience, he comes across as an articulate, widely networked, and persuasive “toucher.”  It’s impossible to be all things to all people and an overdose of pleasing, touching, and compromising, can result in the perception of being slick, manipulative, and insincere. 

Leadership research also indicates that, despite the positive benefits of strong one-on-one relationships, a potential hazard is the creation of “in-groups” and “out-groups” such as those that contributed to the dysfunctional fragmentation of the past regime.  Although he was a member of one of these groups in the past, Mayor Perkins now seems to be aware of the need to avoid the perception of playing favorites and creating non-productive factions.  He needs to work hard to keep his “touching” non-partisan.

At stake is the ability of the council to, as Perkins advocates, function as a true board of directors.  A well functioning board articulates and assures compliance with a limited number of strategic objectives – Perkins states them as job creation, adequate infrastructure, and increasing the tax base.  Aside from monitoring the performance of the city manager, that’s all they should do.  Uniquely, this council has the additional initial task of hiring their only two employees: the city manager and the city attorney. 

There are three phases to the way a leader begins a new job: a honeymoon stage, a make-or-break stage, and a stage of sustained performance.  Initially, the leader is given much latitude and the benefit of the doubt; the key, make-or-break phase, involves major decisions and leadership processes that either positively or negatively impact performance and follower acceptance for the remainder of his tenure.  With expenses up, tax revenues down, two key hires to be made, and the great Greensboro garbage grope still unresolved, it will be a very short honeymoon phase for our new mayor.

In the finial analysis, the leader we have is the leader we should support.  Mayor Perkins is optimistic and proud of past accomplishments such as helping secure the aquatic center and the revitalization efforts for the High Point Road – Lee Street corridor.  Regardless of whether we voted for him or agree with his style, he seems to be doing a lot of things right.

Hopefully, our new mayor can personally remain, and keep our city council on the high road.  We have too much at stake to have a city council in non-productive conflict with each other and our citizens.  Back to nineteenth century Germany: Otto von Bismarck is also quoted as saying, “The truth is that with a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half.”  We want our mayor and council members to be gentlewomen and gentlemen; we don’t need any more pirates in Greensboro.  

 Here is my January News & Record Column:

            We’re just one week into 2012 and if the statisticians have it right, many of us have already broken our well intended resolutions.  The primary reason is that most New Year’s vows are negative; we resolve to stop doing things like smoking and over-eating that we find pleasurable even though they’re bad for us.  We increase the odds of compliance when we resolve to start or keep doing things that are positive and enjoyable.

 Greensboro and the Triad Region are great places to live and it’s not too late to make some positive resolutions that will increase our appreciation and enjoyment of our exceptional community and environment. Here are ten suggestions:

1. Resolve to experience our greenway and watershed trail system.  Our city has over 90 miles of trails and paved greenways.  One can walk, run, bike, or stroll in an exceptional environment of peace, solitude, and beauty.  It is an extraordinary asset for a city our size.
2. Visit the International Civil Rights Center & Museum.  Located in downtown Greensboro, the Center & Museum experienced a long and sometimes painful birth but is now fully operational.  A trip to the museum and the Woolworth lunch counter where four A&T freshman sat down to stand up for civil rights is both humbling and inspirational. 
3. Meander through the campuses of our region’s colleges and universities.  We are blessed with many and it’s hard not to live or work close to one.  Stroll the walkways, have coffee in the union, talk to the students.  Students brighten and our community and interacting with them is a sure antidote to pessimism.  
4. Turn off the phony, laugh track manipulated TV sit-coms, get off the couch, and experience live theatre.  Greensboro has an exceptional variety. Examples include the award winning Triad Stage, the venerable Barn Dinner Theatre, the quirkily humorous Broach, the classic Carolina, and the intimate Open Space Café.   
5. Resolve to visit The Greensboro Public Library. There are very good branches, but to get the full effect go to the central library on North Church Street.  You will feel good about the commitment to serve all segments of our community with a variety of programs and services.  You will be impressed by the polite, knowledgeable staff, the modern facility, and you will have the opportunity to learn something new.
6. Stroll down Elm Street on a Friday night.  The best time is in the spring, about twilight, before the colleges go on summer break.  You will experience a sense of pride at the resurgence, ambiance and bustle of this urban area.  You will emerge with increased optimism both about the future of our downtown, and the behavior and prospects of our young adults. 
7. Explore the Natural Science Center of Greensboro.  With so much negative publicity about government mismanagement, this visit will provide an alternative perspective: it’s been a smashing success.  The Center has experienced record attendance, sponsored two highly successful exhibits – “Bodies Revealed” and “Titanic” – and has plans for expansion including a “SciQuarium.”  A visit to the Natural Science Center will result in both an enjoyable educational experience and renewed optimism over public/private cooperation.
8. Check out the changes at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. With a new aquatic center, amphitheatre, and an ACC hall of champions, we’ve moved into the entertainment big leagues.    
9. Spend time at the Greensboro Historical Museum.  The Historical Museum is much more than an air conditioned refuge from the heat of the city’s Fourth of July celebration, although many people discover it that way.  It’s not a musty old museum; it’s a 17,000 square foot gem.  The exhibits are professional, compelling, and of value to anyone interested in the history of our city and region.
10. Resolve to take in a Greensboro Grasshoppers game.  It’s the essence of all that’s great about the minor leagues: sunshine, beer, hotdogs, kids, even dogs that retrieve bats and chase balls.  Above all, it is a community building devise.  People of all ages, occupations, and proclivities come together to have fun and cheer for the team from Greensboro.

Committing to some, if not all, of these resolutions will not only make 2012 more enjoyable, it will increase our civic pride.  Beyond that, it will stimulate a sense of gratitude that we have the opportunity to live here.

 1.  Too many people confuse management training (or to use a popular word in some organizations (teaching), with leadership development.   There is a difference between management and leadership and a big difference between training/teaching and development.  Training/teaching has its roots in a doctor patient model where skills and expertise flows from the expert to the student.  True leadership development is client centered and the helper/coach/developer stimulates insight, self-awareness, and different perspectives.  The client, however, is responsible for her/his own learning and, to use a Center for Creative Leadership term, “meaning making.”  The classic concept of Chris Argyris involves the generation of valid data, the concept of free choice, and the option of internal commitment.  In the more plain words of Pat Williams who started the Pepperdine MSOD program, help is defined by the helper, not the helpee. 

 2.  Too many people are enamored by one technique.  It may be a coaching methodology, an assessment instrument, or a leadership model or definition.  Another Pat Williams saying was “meet the client where they are, not where you want them to be.”  The Center for Creative Leadership has a model involving individual assessment and feedback, but leaves the decision to change or develop to the client.

 3.  Too many managers approach the leadership development challenge with “war stories” and attempt to generalize the leadership development process from a narrow base of management experience from one organization within one context.  Too many academics attempt to facilitate leadership development from a non experiential research base, heavy on theory, but light on practice.

1.  Myth:  During downsizing, managerial communication needs to be clear, planned, objective, and structured.  Expressing uncertainly, ambiguity, or dealing in feelings and emotions is not useful.

Reality:  Feelings and emotions are the currency of the managerial realm. Surviving employees are attempting to deal with a toxic brew of productivity hindering emotions and need to feel authorized to talk about them.

HR Response:  Employees would much rather have managers tell them that they don’t know something as opposed to having them not say anything or make something up. HR can model the way and facilitate communication processes that demonstrate the necessary authenticity and empathy.

 2.  Myth: In tough times, the most effective managers “suck it up,” are tough minded, brutally honest, and don’t tolerate “touchy-feely” distractions. 

Reality: “Sucking it up” is precisely the wrong strategy for dealing with downsizing, change, and transition.  It is a defense mechanism – a form of evasion that anchors behavior in the past and prevents productive engagement and personal growth.

HR Response: Leadership in the post-layoff environment is a helping, not a controlling relationship, and requires reaching out, not closing down and hiding behind a facade of toughness and control.  Honesty grounded in a helping orientation is an absolute necessity. Honesty grounded in “brutality” may help the manager vent his or her own anger, but it will ultimately harm the manager, the employee, and the organization. The good news is that managers can be taught helping skills and with coaching can form the necessary empathetic relationships needed to re-recruit employees and restore organizational productivity. HR leaders should strongly consider helping managers brush up and apply basic helping skills.

3. Myth: Employees who keep their jobs – survivors – are better off than those who must leave – victims.

Reality:  Both those who stay and those who leave are, in a sense, “victims” of the paradigm shift to the new psychological employment contract.  Despite, often significant, economic issues, some who leave are able to re-frame their job loss, move away from victimhood, and discover a wake-up call. 

HR Response: HR leaders need to re-conceptualize career planning to more of an inside-out/outside-in process.  This will require the creativity and flexibility necessary to help employees take a broader, multi-organizational, and often multi-occupational approach to life and career planning.

Here is my December Greensboro News & Record column:

As we move into 2012 there is a sign that ought to adorn the chambers of our Guilford County Commissioners and our Greensboro City Council. It should, in bold print, display the enduring wisdom of the swamp philosopher Pogo as penned by cartoonist Walt Kelly in 1971: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” 

In our county, Melvin “Skip” Alston will again, by virtue of his self-motivation and the lack of any challenge from his colleagues, remain as chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners.  In our city, the newly elected mayor and Councilwoman Trudy Wade are sending a bad signal by repeating the initial dysfunctional days of mayor Knight’s reign by squabbling over who sits in what chair.

Although he now claims to no longer be an “agitator” but sees himself as a budding “mediator,” County Commission Chairman Alston will no doubt continue to support and protect the emissary of his dark side – County Manager Brenda Jones Fox – and obfuscation, intrigue, back room deal making, and veiled communication will continue.  

Commissioner Perkins is not a “fan” of Alston serving four years in a row, Commissioner Gibson thinks he is “a control freak,” and Commissioner Cashion says she doesn’t have time for the job.  Neither they, nor any of the other commissioners, seem to have the energy or backbone or to oppose Alston.

Alston is elected in a “safe” gerrymandered district.  Unless he either decides not to run in 2012 or sets his ego aside and relinquishes the chairman’s role, his spineless colleagues can complain as much as they desire but it won’t help. In our system the commissioners elect their own chair, and unless they muster up the courage to vote him out, nothing will change.

Fox is a long term county employee and was apparently an adequate financial officer but she is a poor leader and an even worse communicator. She lacks credibility with city officials, is seen as Chairman Alston’s puppet, and appears to be feared by her employees.  She should retire and, since she serves at the will of the commissioners, they have the power to make that happen. But, even though they have been publically critical of her, they seem to lack the fortitude to take action.     

City manager Rashad Young’s last day is this coming Friday.  He left after just two years and two months.  He did an outstanding job and didn’t get hooked by the council’s pettiness, even with the politically motivated insult of removing his hand picked city attorney from under his management. 

The city spent a lot of our tax money on a search agent, relocation fees, salary and benefits, and only got slightly more than two years of work out of him. That’s a very bad bargain. Comments by some council members seemed to basically accept the notion that Greensboro was just a stepping stone to a better job and two years tenure was par for the course. That’s wrong.  Most business organizations would see that as a failure and work to discover what could have been done to retain him and spread his recruiting and relocation costs over a longer time frame.

Where is it written that whenever a key city executive needs to be replaced an outside search is the best way to go?  Succession planning and individual development is a better process, rewards internal employee loyalty, and eliminates short term outside mercenaries. 

The council not only neglected to do any succession planning, but appointed Denise Turner Roth, a lightly experienced community affairs manager, as interim city manager.  They compounded the issue by giving her a whopping 30%, $31,000 salary increase.  If they think someone with her limited management experience can do the job, they should hire her and eliminate the cost and delay of a search process.  If not, such an irresponsibly high increase will have created unrealistic expectations and they will be faced with cutting her pay and it is doubtful they will have the will to take it all back.

All citizens of our city and county should heed Pogo, the swamp philosopher’s declaration.  In the final analysis our county commissioners and our city council representatives work for us.  If we don’t help them understand that and occasionally hold their feet to the fire, we too have met the enemy and they are, indeed, us!

A coaching client is facing some major stress issues because he believes his boss is pushing him to work even harder than his normal frantic pace.  I think there are some major unintended consequences to this continual pressure.

 I was once asked to comment on, what one reporter perceived, as people working excessively long hours and sacrificing their family time in order to hold on to a job during tough economic times. The reporter’s question was, “Is this a trend that will continue after the recession ends?  I hope not because there are some major unintended consequences that will harm both the employee and the organization.

 My experience is that, while employees may work longer hours and sacrifice more in the short term, they also build up a reservoir of resentment and repressed entitlement that will not serve their organizations well in the long term. 

 In the book, I call this “gunnysacking.”  It is a term for storing up repressed anger and frustration that – usually in response to a seemingly mild issue – results in an inappropriately strong and counter-productive response.

 Employers that expect their employees to keep working long hours and make personal sacrifices are sitting on a keg of dynamite.  Fear is not a good motivator and sooner or later, they will either snap or burn out and simply go through the motions.  Either way employers may get their body but certainly not their spirit or their creativity.

 What it will take to turn today’s organizations around are employees who are there because they enjoy the work and serving customers, not burned out, one dimensional employees who work excessively only because they can’t find another job and are afraid of getting fired.

There are a lot of tools, certification credentials, and technical approaches out there.  Some are good, some are suspect, and some are shams. 

 As consultants we do need to keep our tool chest up to date and sometimes we need to convince our clients we are legitimate by presenting credentials. However, we need to be careful that we are not a solution looking for a problem.  By that I mean that we all have a favorite model, instrument, tool, intervention strategy, credential, or degree pedigree. Degrees and credentials are useful for getting in the door and as a general guideline to our intervention strategy, but we need to make certain that our background and tools fit the problem we are working with. 

 I was among the first Pepperdine MSOD students and the person who started that program, Pat Williams, kept pounding the mantra “diagnose before you intervene,” into our heads.  Instruments such as the MBTI and processes such as 360 feedback can be helpful tools, but they are certainly not the only ones and we need to take the time and gain the perspective and skills to have a wide range of tools to apply to our client’s issues.  Another, saying I picked up that fits what I am trying to say – this one I picked up doing my doctoral work at George Washington – is “That if the only tool you have is a hammer, the whole world is a nail!”  I’m not trying to disparage a favorite instrument or consulting approach, but we need begin with the end we are attempting to accomplish, then find a process to get there and there are many, many processes.

In tough times so called “soft skills” are the currency of the realm when it comes to helping employees through downsizing, transition, and coping with the reality of the new psychological employment contract.  I think soft skills – meaning people skills such as interpersonal competence and intrapersonal insight – are essential tools in hard times

 Part of what has made some managers skeptical about the value of the soft side has been a seeming inability to measure them.  HR software expert, Kyle Lagunas has some interesting ideas about using software to measure soft skills.  Here’s a link to Kyle’s article on the subject:  http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/measuring-the-value-of-soft-skills-programs-0111411/

Here is my November Greensboro News & Record column:

Sometimes our assumptions and perspectives need to be shaken up and tested lest they become stale and irrelevant.  One result can be, to use behavioral science jargon, a “reframing of our paradigms.”  At a time when we are struggling to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps from economic melt down and when our latent social ferment is manifested by people “occupying” the streets of Greensboro, we need all the help we can get. 

Rethinking our basic assumptions and beliefs is bound to cause discomfort and can feel a bit heretical but it’s a healthy process that can be stimulated through reading a provocative book or engaging in a discussion with someone with a unique perspective. Emery University Professor Mark Bauerlein provided both this past Wednesday when he made appearances at GTCC and the Greensboro Central Library. 

Bauerlein’s book: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, or Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30, is an example of a thoughtful, well-researched work, marred by a shallow title that depreciates the message and can make the very people who should read it defensive.

The picture that emerges, once you get past the title, is of a generation of bright, self-absorbed, narcissistic, social network savvy young Americans who scoff at books, relegate conceptual foundations to “factoids” that can be Googled and discarded, lack an historical cultural rudder, and are geo-politically illiterate.  A harsh judgment and one that is at odds with the paradigm that tells us that because young adults are “good with computers” they possess the requisite skills to be successful in the digital age, but Bauerlein presents some powerful and compelling data that we need to think about.

One doesn’t have to look very far to find evidence of the paradoxical relationship between social networking and self-absorption. At an upscale Greensboro restaurant I recently observed two couples at the same table. For the majority of the time, two were texting, one was playing a video game, and the fourth was talking on the phone. They could have been thousands of miles away from each other, sitting alone, eating TV dinners. 

Bauerlein uses talk host Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segments as an example of the knowledge deficits of young adults.  I watch it occasionally and when I initially saw young college graduates, some of whom were teachers, unable to name the country on our northern border, identify the combatants in World War II, or specify the three branches of our government, I was appalled but thought the sample was edited and not representative. However, after reading his book, and reflecting on my own experiences, I’m not so sure anymore.

If there is one sentence that sums up Bauerlein’s perspective on the problem and points a way for some solutions it’s this one: “The autonomy has a cost: the more they attend to themselves, the less they remember the past and envision a future.”  There are three things we can do to break the self-absorption cycle and help unleash the innate creativity and responsibility of young adults:

• Better parenting.  We need to turn off our TV sets, computers, and cell phones, declare a time out, and engage in face-to-face human interaction.  We need to be better role models and work on our own critical thinking and interpersonal communication skills.  This isn’t easy, but unless we make the effort, we will be doomed to reap what we sow and it will be a very lean harvest. 
• Relevant teaching.  Our public schools have some outstanding teachers who are mercilessly whipsawed between excessive bureaucracy and severe budget cuts.  We can’t let them shut down due to burnout. We need to pay the price, even if it involves more taxes, to help them do their jobs.  Our Triad Region is blessed with many excellent colleges and universities.  Leading edge research such as the current efforts in nano-technology is important, but not sufficient.  We also need to support a solid grounding in liberal arts and encourage even more, hands on, service learning.
• Courageous reading.  We need to muster up the fortitude to test our own assumptions.    In addition to Bauerlein’s book, Peter Wood’s indictment of the cult of diversity, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, and Diane Ravitch’s expose of the way politically correct language censorship harms learning, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, are two good examples.  Agreement isn’t necessary, but discussion and reflection is.