Making a Change
For the Better

Getting employees to change undesirable workplace behavior can be a manager’s most difficult challenge.

We all know people who always arrive late to work, spend too much time on personal telephone calls, take excessively long lunch hours, and exhibit other behaviors that are detrimental to individual and team effectiveness. But getting them to change their habits can be a daunting task.

“It’s hard for people to change longstanding behaviors, even when they know deep inside that they should,” says Marcia Meislin, a member of WJM Associates’ executive coaching and assessment faculty. “Change means giving up part of your identity, succumbing to an internal battle of good versus evil, right versus wrong.”

When people resist change, they frequently employ a variety of defense mechanisms to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. The chronic latecomer, for example, will have an armful of exaggerations and excuses to explain when he can’t get to work when everyone else does. The loquacious receptionist who spends the day calling family and friends will rationalize her behavior by saying she had nothing else to do. And the sales representative who takes two-hour lunches will deny that he’s doing anything wrong because he always meets his monthly quota.

Sometimes, employees will agree to change their habits, but then make no effort to do so. Their words express compliance, but their body language and tone of voice reflect defiance. It takes a lot of skill, even for experienced managers, to confront such passive-aggressive behaviors because they are so subtle.

How, then, can managers effect change, short of putting offenders “on notice”?

“As with any resistance, the rule of thumb is to get the person to air their concerns openly so they can be addressed and discussed,” says Meislin, who suggests that managers take the following steps:

Describe the desired behavioral change in a calm, objective manner. Avoid sounding like an angry parent. Simply discuss the business need and the impact that the change will have on the person’s development. Omit any sense of judgment. If you become too critical, you can set yourself up for a negative reaction.

Acknowledge the employee’s ambivalence about making the change. Tell the chronic latecomer that you know he’s not a “morning person” and that you appreciate how difficult it may be for him to arrive at work on time. Volunteer strategies that you use to overcome your own barriers, or brainstorm together to develop a solution. Then give him some latitude to determine how he will become more of an early riser and develop a schedule for doing so.

Continue to hold people accountable for their job performance. Despite any additional resistance, excuses or sidetracks that the talkative receptionist may try to employ, tell her very clearly that the change you have discussed is a vital aspect of her job performance. If you accept mediocre performance, you are lowering the standards for the employee, the department and yourself.

Confront individuals privately when you observe resistance. If you see people “acting out,” don’t ignore it. Take them aside, tell them what you saw or heard, and give them an opportunity to share what’s going on. When people feel they can talk through their discomforts in a safe environment, they are more likely to lower their guard and talk less emotionally and more rationally.

Put the ball in their court. Let people know that you care about them and their development, but that they have to take action. Establish the goal, offer your support, coach them through the transition, but make sure they understand that they and they alone are responsible for effecting the change. If people believe that all of this is your agenda, the focus will become about you. Remove yourself from the equation, and let them arrive at the solution.

Finally, celebrate success! Ken Blanchard, of The One Minute Manager fame, says to catch people doing things right. In the beginning, even if people are only achieving partial results, tell them you notice an improvement. When they’ve finally righted the course, congratulate them upon their accomplishment, reflect the improvement in their performance review and continue to reinforce other positive behavior.

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Your Career Path to Success

Recognizing the Need
To Make People Feel Special

By Bill Morin
Chairman and CEO
WJM Associates

Everyone thinks money is the big motivator in the workplace, and it certainly is when people aren't being paid enough or when they don't have enough to provide for their basic needs. But once that happens, money doesn't go that far unless it is a huge sum.

Even if large financial rewards are there, people still want to feel special. Money feeds the pocketbook; recognition feeds the soul.

If giving recognition doesn’t come naturally to you, just remember how much most people need and appreciate it. Find ways of recognizing people that are comfortable for you. An e-mail message -- or, better yet, a handwritten note -- that thanks someone for a job well done speaks volumes. So, too, does a word of appreciation from someone even higher up in the organization.

Every time you recognize or affirm your people publicly, you send a message about what you value. People will also extract their own meanings out of your public recognition, so it’s important to allocate recognition equitably.

Some people will wonder, “Is my manager playing favorites, or does my colleague really deserve the recognition she is giving her?” Others will ask, “Have I received equal recognition for accomplishments that are of equal importance and significance? When was the last time my manager recognized me in such a way?” You don’t want people to think you are playing favorites, so look for something to acknowledge in everyone’s performance.

When giving recognition, one word of caution: make sure you don't promise rewards that you may not be able to deliver.

If you even only imply that people will advance if they do this or that, in their mind promotion is a fait accompli. You may even have the intention of promoting people if they meet their goals, but today's business world is changing too rapidly to be able to promise almost anything in the way of promotion or pay. Nothing can erode trust more than failing to deliver on a promise.

You also want to stimulate in people a desire to grow and develop for reasons other than pay and promotion. One person I coached was extremely upset because he had been meeting his objectives and hadn't been promoted as he thought he should have. His boss hadn't promoted him because of some of his interpersonal skills and because he was too driven and aggressive. Getting him to want to improve and grow for no other reason than the mere satisfaction of doing so was essential.

By changing the focus from his extreme need to be promoted (which he did not need for financial reasons) to simply working on himself, he eventually got what he had stopped driving so hard for -- the promotion. By that time, after months of arduous work on himself, the promotion was secondary. He seemed to be more proud and pleased with the personal progress he had made than with the promotion.

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Women in Management:
Learning to Cope with Power

By Michelle Marie Piña, Psy.D.

For years we have heard about the “glass ceiling,” invisible organizational barriers that impede or thwart the advancement of women in management. Fortunately, such obstacles are becoming less common, but women still face another hurdle to career growth -- themselves.

Generally speaking, women are uncomfortable with power. At an early age, girls retreat from their early sense of power to achieve social approval. Relationships are critically important to women because a woman’s sense of self is tied to her need for connection or attachment to others. Men, on the other hand, derive their self-esteem from outcomes and actions.

Women executives, especially those who are newly promoted, often feel a general uneasiness with power, but have difficulty pinpointing the exact source of their discomfort. As a result, they engage in a variety of self-sabotaging behaviors, many of which they are unaware. They delegate key tasks more frequently to avoid risk-taking; take on a more aggressive management style to compensate for their lack of confidence and comfort; and adopt “pleasing” behaviors to maintain relationships in good standing.

How can women overcome these tendencies? One way is to leverage one of their innate strengths -- the ability to form relationships -- by networking with women from other organizations who are at their same level and are facing the same issues. The support and encouragement that women can provide to one another in such a setting are invaluable resources for both their job performance and career development.

I know of one woman in such a group who turned to her peers for advice when she discovered that she wasn’t being compensated as highly as some of her male counterparts. She asked the group if she should address this with HR or just sweep it under the rug. The woman’s peers advised her to first validate the information and then discuss it with her boss, not HR. The women then role-played how she would approach her boss with group members, shifting from a somewhat defensive posture to a more mediating approach. The result? The woman’s boss told her the company would make up the difference in her bonus.

Time magazine has predicted that women’s “flexible, mediating approach” will play a vital role in managing America’s heterogeneous work force. Indeed, businesses are moving from a command-and-control style of leadership to a self-managed team approach emphasizing humanity, intimacy, interdependence, connectedness, collaboration, and cooperation -- all of which play to women’s strengths. As more organizations embrace these values, women’s natural leadership styles will become mainstream.

Michelle Marie Piña, Psy.D., is a member of WJM Associates’ executive coaching and assessment faculty.

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Holiday Greetings From WJM Associates

WJM Associates extends best wishes for the holiday season to all of our clients and friends. We appreciate the opportunities you have given us to help you grow. As we look ahead to 2004, we also wish everyone a healthy and prosperous New Year.

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WJM Associates offers a wide range of services designed to help organizations recruit, hire and develop top performers. To learn how we can help you, visit www.wjmassoc.com or contact Vice President Cynthia Auman at 212-972-7400 or cauman@wjmassoc.com.

WJM Associates, Inc.
675 Third Avenue, Suite 1610
New York, N.Y. 10017
Phone: 212-972-7400
Fax: 212-972-0695
www.wjmassoc.com

Enhancing Executive and Organizational Effectiveness