Hey CEOs, This Isn’t Rocket Science

Written by Kimberly

Are you tired of hearing about all of the ways you can make your company a “win-win”?  Yea, I know the jargon gets old.  But the goal shouldn’t.

As much as I don’t like jargon, business leaders can achieve a win-win in their organizations.  It’s not difficult but does require effort and accountability from the rest of management.  A splash of empathy always helps too.

CEOs need to shift their focus from their customers to their employees.  I’m not crazy and I get that it’s the customers and ongoing business development that keeps the lights on.  What’s hard to see (and I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen it first hand) is when companies put a higher priority on customers and numbers than they do on their employees.

It’s not a difficult concept.  When employees are happy, customers will be happy.  When customers are happy, the bottom line will take care of itself.  On the flip side, do you think employees will go overboard for a customer when they don’t feel they’re being treated fairly?  Think they’ll burn that midnight oil for you at crunch time?

Leaders and CEOs have a lot on their plates.  When it comes to how to treat people right, maybe this seems like an overwhelming undertaking.  I understand that too.  But it doesn’t need to be complicated. 

Good leadership MUST start from the top so that it can trickle down to the rest of management.  This is not negotiable.  The responsibility of providing good leadership shouldn’t fall on HR’s shoulders because HR doesn’t run the company — the CEO does.  HR should be coaching and promoting good leadership styles but at the end of the day, it has to start at the top.  So now that we have that clear, here are a few basics:

• Listen to new ideas.  You never know who will come up with the next “big” one.
• Provide good feedback.  People want to know how they’re doing.  It is a big deal.  Don’t take it for granted.
• Celebrate the little victories publicly.  It’s free and goes a long way.  Trust me.
• Be sure that folks are learning from mistakes.  If they’re not, take action.
• Don’t get hung up on surveys.  Leave your office and visit the trenches.  You won’t melt if you mingle with the underlings, I promise.
• Communicate and communicate more!  People feel valued when they know what’s going on in the organization.

Get out of the board room, ditch your ego and apply that basic psychology and some common sense to your leadership style.  Be sure the entire management team is doing the same.  Rinse and repeat.

In an environment that needs change, it will be slow but you will see a positive difference.

Is This The World’s Worst List of the Top Human Resources Blogs?

by  John Hollon

I have a love/hate relationship with all those “best of” or “top” something lists.

OK, maybe love/hate is a little strong. Perhaps it’s more like “sorta like/sorta don’t.”

I sorta like it when TLNT (or even me personally) get named to somebody’s “Best of” list (like those that John Sumser does with some rigorous analysis on HR Examiner), and I “sorta don’t” like it when I get passed over and find myself saying, “how did they make that list?”

I try to take a pretty broad view when it comes to “top” whatever lists because they tend to be pretty arbitrary, and sometimes, are little more than just somebody’s off the top of their head opinion, devoid of any real content or insight.

That’s why I’m surprised that this “list” of top HR blogs got me so worked up.

Probably the single worst list of HR blogs anywhere

It’s titled The Top 50 Human Resources Blogs to Watch in 2012, and it is put together by a guy named Evan Carmichael, a Canadian entrepreneur who seems to specialize in churning out a lot of these kind of lists, although it’s unclear if he knows anything at all about HR, talent management, or any of the other subjects he does “top” lists about.

My guess is he doesn’t because this the single worst list of HR anything that I have ever seen.

How terrible is this “list” of the top 50 HR blogs? Let me count the ways:

1. It’s a list put together by someone who not only seems to know nothing about HR, but also, very little about what makes for an interesting and insightful blog.
2. It lists a number of blogs that are either dead, abandoned, or seem to be in a state of suspended animation — leading one to believe that you don’t actually need to be actively and currently blogging to make Mr. Carmichael’s list.
3. It seems to be missing most of the blogs that people in HR and talent management actively read, follow, and talk about.

To that last point, there some good HR blogs here, at least in my view. For example, Laurie Ruettimann‘s sharp and witty The Cynical Girl blog is listed (she also writes occasionally for TLNT), but so is her now retired Punk Rock HR. How is a blog that even Mr. Carmichael admits was “retired in 2010″ make a list of  the Top 50 HR blogs to watch THIS year?

He also lists blogs that seem to be dead or abandoned. For instance, Welcome to HR (No. 20 on this list) hasn’t posted anything new since 1/5/2012. The Inflexion Advisers blog (No. 24) last published on 1/11/2012. HRfunda (No. 39) hasn’t done anything since August 2011, and HR WhY(No. 45) not since July 2011.

Where are all the really good HR blogs?

There’s probably more, but you get my point — it’s hard to be a blog to watch in 2012 when for the most part, don’t even seem to be doing anything worth watching.

Worse than that is how The Top 50 Human Resources Blogs to Watch in 2012 misses so many blogs that people read and talk about, and that would have given this list a much needed dose of credibility. As “best of” or “top” lists go, it’s lazy, poorly researched, and seems to have virtually no original insight or expertise.

To wit:

There’s no HR Capitalist by Kris Dunn. No Charlie Judy and his HR Fishbowl.

No China Gorman, or Sharlyn Lauby, the HR Bartender.

No Lance Haun and Life Between the Brackets, or Trish McFarlane and HR Ringleader.

No Fistful of Talent or Compensation Cafe.

There’s nothing from HR Examiner and John Sumser, or anything from Jason Lauritsen or any of his blogs — Talent Anarchy (with Joe Gerstandt), Bulletproof Talent (with Cy Wakefield), or his ownJasonLauritsen.com.

And where the hell is Tim Sackett? or Mike VanDervort? or Steve Boese? Or, any one of a bunch of smart, insightful and current HR-related blogs that people actually read, share, and talk about?

I could go on and on about this all day, but you get the point.

A few good blogs does not a Top 50 list make

Yes, there are a few smart HR blogs listed on The Top 50 Human Resources Blogs to Watch in 2012, but like the old saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Just because there are a few good HR blogs on this list does not make it a good list. To the contrary; the inclusion of a few good HR blogs here simply masks the shallow thinking and lack of insight that leads to such a thin and generally clueless list in the first place.

I don’t know Evan Carmichael from Adam. He touts himself as an entrepreneur, and maybe he’s a good one. I simply don’t know.

What he’s not, however, is someone you want to listen to when it comes to insight and intelligence about the best HR blogs, because from what I can see, he doesn’t know jack about that.

And for the record, TLNT rarely makes any lists like this because we’re a hybrid — we blog some, we write some news, we aggregate and feature stuff from other blogs, we publish original content from other HR and talent management thinkers. It’s hard for us to make any “best of” lists because we’re different things to different people and not so easily categorized. So it is as well for SHRM, or HR Executive, or HR Morning, or sister website ERE, or many others.

So, it’s caveat emptor when it comes to The Top 50 Human Resources Blogs to Watch in 2012. If you decide to “watch,” I wouldn’t recommend watching too closely.

And one more thing: I wanted to ask Evan Carmichael about how he came up with his list, but I couldn’t find his email address on his website (if it’s there, it’s well hidden) and he did not respond to a request to follow him on Twitter so I could contact him that way.

This may just be me, but I always wonder about people who tout themselves and produce “top” lists like this, then shut themselves off from any feedback or comment. You can make of that what you will.

John Hollon is Vice President for Editorial of TLNT.com, and the former Editor of Workforce Management magazine and workforce.com. An award-winning journalist, he has written extensively about HR, talent management, and smart business and people practices. Contact him atjohn@tlnt.com, and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnhollon

Building A Culture Of Trust

Is your organization built on a culture of trust?

Look around you; there are plenty of clues as to whether trust abounds. How quickly are decisions made? How many people do you copy (or worse, bcc) on e-mails? Do executives check in on the “troops” even when on vacation?

Given that 82% of workers don’t trust their boss, trust is a scarce resource in many organizations.

When it comes to creating a trusting workplace culture, the best place to start is with you. As a leader, you either believe in someone’s trustworthiness or you don’t. Leaders who try to split the difference with “trust but verify” won’t build a culture of healthy organizational trust.

Trusting others doesn’t mean that you abdicate your responsibility as a leader. Quite the opposite: When you create a culture of trust, you are demonstrating your belief in others — that, given the proper tools, objectives and leadership guidance, people can and will step up and give their best. This takes courage — it’s not always easy to trust when the stakes are high or grievances inform your thinking.

Trust is about creating space for people to thrive; excessive verifying diminishes that space. Use these five tips to reduce the amount of verifying happening in your company so that trust will flourish:

1. Assume positive intent, until proven otherwise. This is the basis for building a culture of trust. Whenever you hear incriminatory information ask yourself, “Why am I assuming the worst of this person or situation?” Seek out other reasonable explanations for why people acted the way they did. Jumping to conclusions kills trust.
2. Banish bureaucracy. Nothing erodes trust faster than having to jump through hoops to get something done at work. When employees are mired in excessive rules, they get the message loud and clear: “We don’t trust you to do the right thing.”
3. Look at your company’s written word. For example, how long are your contracts? The longer the contract, the less that trust is present. The same goes for e-mails. The compulsion to cover every single angle to protect oneself is, at its core, a statement of mistrust.
4. Tell employees: “I trust you to make a good decision.” Nine out of 10 times, they will. And on that 10th time, when someone messes up? It’s the perfect opportunity to affirm your trust in that person. “Yeah, you made a mistake — that represents a poor decision. But I still trust you.”
5. Eliminate “we” and “they” when describing other teams. Listen for language that hints at an “us against them” mentality. Whenever you hear someone saying, “Well, they won’t _____, so we have to ____,” take out the pronouns. Insist that people use others’ names, not for the purpose of blaming others but to humanize the interaction.

For a trustworthy vibe to take root in your organization, someone has to go first. It may as well be you. As Ernest Hemingway said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” So go on, give trust a try. When you offer up your trust without the constraints of constant verification, you just might find that far from being scarce, trust is a renewable resource.

By Jennifer V. Miller