Author: John Hollon

OK, we’re past the New Year’s festivities, the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl and well into 2010. So, I’m dying to ask—are you feeling the economic recovery yet?

If you’re honest, the answer is probably something along the lines of “not really.” If you’re fortunate—that is, if you work in one of the rare industries actually seeing an uptick—perhaps you can say, “Well, we’re feeling it, but just a little bit.”

The fact is, we still have more than 15 million people unemployed, the national unemployment rate is 10 percent and the economy isn’t creating many jobs. Larry Summers, an economic advisor to President Barack Obama, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month that we’re experiencing a “statistical recovery and a human recession.”

In other words, any near-term growth in your business or organization is going to come from getting more out of your current workforce, and the best way to get more out of your workforce is to get them more focused and engaged.

I wrote here last fall that a fairly simple way for managers to help get their organizations out of this economic morass is to focus more on engaging their employees. And I listed some ways to do this: more communication from the top, some sense of when all the pay freezes and furloughs might end and a greater recognition (and appreciation) of the sacrifices everyone has been making to get through this recession.

As simple as that sounds, there may be an even easier way for managers to engage workers, as this Workforce Management story makes clear—by just focusing on the strengths of your employees.

Some newly released research by the Gallup organization found that employee engagement, which is the increased discretionary effort you get from workers who feel passionately connected to their jobs, rises considerably when managers focus on employees’ strengths.

Of course, workers are a lot less engaged when the manager focus is on their weaknesses. That’s not a big shock, but what was a surprise is the finding that employees are hardly engaged at all when their managers instead simply ignore them.

This is important information, the authors of the Gallup survey said, “because employees who are ignored feel like they don’t matter. There’s a crucial phenomenon inherent in employee engagement: The best employees don’t want to be coddled; they want to matter. They want to be part of something greater than themselves. … [A]lthough it seems counterintuitive, when managers focus on weaknesses rather than ignoring employees, those employees’ chances of being engaged actually improve. That’s because people prefer to get any feedback over no feedback at all—even if that feedback is criticism.”

I’ve worked for a few of those bosses who seem to ignore the people under them, and I always wondered: How do these yahoos get promoted into management, anyway?

That’s something the Gallup survey didn’t focus on, but anyone who has spent much time in the workforce knows that it’s disconnected managers who create the most disengaged workers.

Some would say that employee engagement is valuable to an organization no matter what the economic environment is, but the reality is that in good times, great employee engagement is a bonus, the icing on the cake, an added dimension.

In really tough times, like those we’ve experienced for the past 18 months, employee engagement is crucial. It may be the only way you can help get your business to the point where, eventually, you can hire again. You can’t get there without managers who focus on employee strengths and build on them.

The late, great management guru Peter Drucker used to say that “to focus on weakness is wasteful—a misuse, if not abuse, of the human resource.” Drucker was right, as usual. Focusing on what people do right is the way to get more of what’s right out of them. Smart managers will take that credo to heart. It may be the only way to keep your organization moving onward, upward and, eventually, out of the Great Recession.

Workforce Management, February 2010,  p. 50 — Subscribe Now!

If you manage long enough, you’ll probably pick up a lot of unconventional notions about how to be successful. Here’s one that I guarantee gets overlooked: It takes a lot of hard work to make managing look easy.

That may sound like counterintuitive gibberish, but stay with me here. What I’m saying is that over the course of my career, I’ve found that the default preference is for leaders who are loud, forceful and outspoken, whether that kind of leadership is needed or not.

Too many people look at a person who has great personal presence, or is quick with an opinion, and assume that these qualities automatically make for a successful leader.

That’s possible, of course, but I’ve also found that all too often, the over-the-top bravado exhibited by some managers is simply their way of overcompensating for a lack of tangible leadership talent. One large company I worked for seemed to value this kind of management demeanor over everything else—even if the executive they put so much stock in had zero management skill and the attention span of a gnat.

What actually works a lot more often is the solid and steady manager who doesn’t need to shout from the desktops to get things done. And this makes me wonder: Why isn’t there more demand for smart and talented bosses who can get things done by actually dealing with the people they are charged with leading in a quiet, understated way?

Why, for example, isn’t there more appreciation for people who manage like Joe Torre?

Torre is the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he’s probably more famous for his 12 years with the New York Yankees that produced four world championships. Funny thing is, Torre managed for 15 seasons and was fired by three other teams before his successful run with the Yankees.

The interesting thing is that Torre stayed true to himself and to his personal management style all along the way. He’s the same leader now that he has been incredibly successful that he was when he was not so much so—low key and understated, caring and thoughtful. He gets highly paid professional baseball players to follow him without yelling or histrionics.

“The argument could be made—probably should be made—that Torre is successful as a manager because he is successful as a human being,” says a profile on MLB.com. “He treats players like adult human beings. He knows there is no one-size-fits-all approach with 25 different people in the clubhouse. He knows that these are people, not merely a collection of physical attributes and statistical outcomes. He earns their respect by deserving their respect. His sincerity is persuasive and appreciated. You could not be a phony and have this kind of widespread regard.”

On the surface, Torre makes managing look easy, almost like he’s not managing at all, but that’s because he’s busy working behind the scenes instead of jumping up on the tables and exhorting his followers to take to the ramparts. That over-the-top management style can work, of course, but only in small doses because it runs out of steam pretty quickly.

And there’s one more thing we can all learn from Torre’s example: perseverance. How does someone who got fired three times rebound to not only manage the most famous team in sports, but lead that team to four championships? Most people would push to completely change their style after so many struggles, but Torre knew that he couldn’t be successful unless he stayed true to himself and his way of managing.

“What Joe does day in and day out is deal with issues as good as anyone I’ve been around,” says Dodger coach Don Mattingly, who also worked for Torre on the Yankees. “He doesn’t let anything go. I think in New York people might have felt he wasn’t tough enough on them, but that wasn’t the case. He was on every issue that happens.”

Yes, despite the seeming calm on the surface, guys like Torre are working like mad behind the scenes to manage those in their charge and make them successful. He works hard to make his job as manager look easy.

Is that counterintuitive? Maybe, but only because some people think it takes brashness and bravado to be a successful leader. Thank goodness there’s another way—a better way, in my book—and that there are great managers like Joe Torre who show that humble and hardworking leaders can quietly let their actions speak for themselves.

Workforce Management, October 19, 2009, p. 58 — Subscribe Now!

Never let it be said that SHRM conference attendees are out of step with what’s going on all over America. In fact, the vibe here in New Orleans very much matches the vibe you get from working people everywhere—it’s quiet and subdued.

This is what so many in the army of amateur bloggers, Twitterers and social network aficionados miss as they blast their impressions of the 61st Annual Society for Human Resource Management Conference & Exhibition. They just don’t see, or appreciate, the huge difference in what’s going on here in New Orleans compared with previous years in Chicago, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.

Even the exhibition hall—the scene of so much unrestrained excess by swag collectors at past conferences—is less frenzied and less crazy. It’s bordering on boring.

The SHRM conference has been hit hard by the economy—and really, what hasn’t been? You can see that in the raw numbers. As of Sunday night, attendance stood at 6,800, compared with about 13,400 in Chicago last June and 14,900 two years ago in Las Vegas. That’s nearly a 50 percent drop from last year, which is at the high end of the 30 to 50 percent drop off that I have been tracking for conferences in HR and workforce management.

My prediction early in the year was that conference attendance would get uglier as the year dragged on, and these numbers from SHRM New Orleans seem to bear that out.

But there’s more behind SHRM’s conference attendance than just the state of the overall economy. There’s also the very real fact that HR people are feeling beaten up, worn down and just plain tired of the unrelenting wave of layoffs, cutbacks and furloughs they have been handling since the start of the recession. No wonder so many HR pros have opted out of spending money on coming to New Orleans.

We captured the essence of this in the HR Anxiety Survey published in June’s Workforce Management magazine and now available on our Web site. The survey found that many HR professionals “are finding themselves on their fourth or fifth round of layoffs in the past 18 months and consequently under mounting personal and professional pressures.”

It also showed how hard it is for so many HR people to cope with the fallout from the ongoing economic crisis. “Some say they drink more alcohol or have taken up smoking cigarettes,” wrote Jessica Marquez, our New York bureau chief. “A large number are considering a career change, [while] still others complain that they are called the company’s ‘Grim Reaper’ behind their backs. What’s worse, few who are feeling stress have followed their own advice to use company-sponsored assistance programs.”

The survey found that many HR pros are fed up with the economic carnage they have been forced to deal with. One question asked whether HR professionals’ experiences in conducting layoffs had prompted them to think about changing careers or moving to a different, non-HR role in their company. Most said no, but 37 percent answered affirmatively. Just over a quarter of the respondents acknowledged “some thought” about changing careers or roles, while an additional 9 percent said they’d given “serious consideration” to a switch. Three percent said they had begun the process of changing their career or role.

This is the vibe that underpins SHRM New Orleans: beleaguered HR people who are not only fewer in number than at past conferences, but are also worn down from this annus horribilis that is 2009.

I give credit to the HR professionals who are here in New Orleans, even though there are just half as many of them as there were last year in Chicago. It’s an act of faith just by being here.

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Here’s one thing to remember: I’m not your typical SHRM annual conference attendee.

I don’t attend so that I can take away great wisdom from the speakers, or network with other HR professionals, or even to go on a wild swag hunt in the exhibition hall. I come with a different agenda: to get a better sense of what the Society for Human Resource Management is doing for HR professionals and how well the organization is doing it.

To that end, I arrived in New Orleans really wanting to hear what new SHRM president and CEO Laurence “Lon” O’Neil had to say. This is his first annual conference as SHRM’s leader, and I wondered if he would build on the foundation left by former chief Sue Meisinger or, perhaps, do something entirely different. O’Neil has seemed like a bit of a mystery man to professional SHRM watchers like me, and I thought that surely between his speech at the opening General Session and his “State of SHRM” remarks at the annual Sunday news conference, I would get a better fix on where he is leading the organization.

Well, so much for what I was hoping for. After hearing O’Neil’s brief and relatively general remarks on Sunday before Jack Welch spoke, I came away with the following conclusion: Lon O’Neil, like Austin Powers, is an International Man of Mystery. I think I understand him less now, after hearing him speak, than I did before.

I’ve frequently been critical of SHRM in past years, although I came to appreciate former CEO Meisinger the more times I heard her speak. It always seemed to me that the organization was more focused on increasing revenue than really doing much for HR professionals, and the fixation on high-profile, low-value activities such as spending big bucks with an ad campaign branding SHRM during the presidential debates last year is a perfect example of this, I’ve argued.

But I grew to appreciate Meisinger over time because: a) she was a visible, unrelenting voice for the SHRM organization and the HR profession; and b) she got more pragmatic over time, telling SHRM attendees in her farewell address at the Chicago conference that HR people should “stop asking for a seat at the table” because “the point is to add value and become essential … so that seat at the table has your name engraved on it.” When you do that, she added, “you’ll have a seat at every table.”

You could take a few swipes at Meisinger—and as a frequent SHRM critic, I did—but she was clearly the leader of the SHRM pack. I may not have always liked what she said or what she did, but I never, ever doubted that she was the one in charge.

I wish I could say that about Lon O’Neil. He was pretty general in his 10-minute (maximum) speech on Sunday, and his comments were broadly about SHRM “adapting to meet your needs … during these tough times.” The only real specifics he listed were SHRM’s new social network, support for members around the world, and the organization’s pledge that it would “seek out new opportunities to better collaborate with other organizations.”

Normally, you could drill in on some of those generalities during the news conference after the opening General Session, but for some reason, O’Neil opted out of that. The official reason, SHRM says, is “scheduling conflicts.” Such a non-appearance was something Sue Meisinger would never do.

Look, I know every leader operates differently, and I don’t expect Lon O’Neil to be a clone of Sue Meisinger, Mike Losey or any other SHRM leader. What does surprise me, however, is that O’Neil isn’t the front-and-center leader and visible presence that Meisinger was. For example, it was COO China Miner Gorman who went up to Capitol Hill to joust with Congress over the paid sick days bill earlier this month, and it seems to be Gorman who is out front on many different SHRM projects (like the new push on social networking) that used to be the province of the CEO.

Last August, I questioned the long delay in hiring a new CEO to replace Meisinger, and despite what SHRM board chairman Robb Van Cleve said on Sunday, I don’t believe that Lon O’Neil was the “clear” choice of the SHRM board to take the helm of the organization.

I’ve thought for some time that O’Neil was a compromise choice and a transitional figure that the SHRM board picked to buy the organization time to figure out just what kind of leader it really wanted. If not, why else would they choose someone in his 60s, with no apparent real passion for being the visible, out-front leader that an organization like SHRM needs?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure Lon O’Neil is a solid leader, but the sharp contrast between his approach to the SHRM CEO position and that of Meisinger and Losey make me wonder if he’s really in it for any extended period of time. In my book, the choice of O’Neil to lead SHRM is similar to the choice the College of Cardinals made in elevating Joseph Ratzinger to become Pope Benedict after the death of John Paul II. Both, it seems to me, were short-term choices made to buy time while the organization formulated a long-term solution.

Nothing that I have seen from O’Neil this past year makes me feel any differently about that, and his lack of a visible role at this 61st annual SHRM conference makes it clear to me that whether he is an International Man of Mystery or temporary pope-like figure, leading SHRM into the long-term future probably isn’t really in the hands of Lon O’Neil.

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