Category: Workplace Culture

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How Do We Develop Specialized Competencies?

Dear Competencies:

Having a strategy to develop employee competencies improves overall individual and organizational performance. The first step to competency development is making sure all stakeholders — trainers, learners, leaders, HR, L&D — have a solid understanding of the strategic business objectives and mission of the organization so learning investments line up with your goals.

Competency gaps in employees, particularly those requiring technical development, are best focused on an individual basis to develop specific skills required to perform well in certain roles. Compliance and certification needs to be a consideration for some industries, such as banking, insurance and financial services, or construction, building and maintenance.

In our experience, development best occurs through a combination of learning opportunities. This is composed of what is commonly known to most L&D professionals as the 70:20:10 learning model, where 70 percent of learning is derived on the job, 20 percent from people (mostly the boss) and 10 percent from courses and reading.

Learning opportunities shouldtap into mobile-enabled programs and social technologies to allow for more just-in-time collaboration and on-demand learning. The best programs are flexible, scalable and are aligned with the organization’s goals and growth objectives.

SOURCE: Robert G. Smith, Senior Vice President, American Management Association, Aug. 29, 2014

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Why Treating Others With ‘Respect and Dignity’ Doesn’t Work

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12My last post, “Why Cultural Sensitivity Training Is Ineffective and Insensitive,” got more attention on social media than my typical Diversity Executive posts. One of the feedback themes was “How about treating everyone with respect and dignity?” It troubles me that such comments all came from D&I or intercultural professionals. We practitioners have a responsibility to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the concepts of our field than the public and our clients. Therefore, I will explain why the admonishment to “treat everyone with respect and dignity” is well-intended but limited, old thinking that’s even disrespectful and dangerous.

Everyone knows we’re supposed to treat everyone with respect and dignity.If this were all we needed, we wouldn’t have so many problems with people not feeling, or being, respected in our workplaces and societies at large. If you believe treating everyone with respect and dignity is a solution to our D&I (and human) problems, what evidence do you have that lack of respect is a cause of those problems? How many people have you met who do not have this value or intention? Are you 100 percent sure that was the cause of their unpleasant behavior? Does Donald Sterling not have this value? Do the white police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, not have this value? How about straight people? Men? Immigrants? Are you sure?

Personally, I’ve been in some pretty rough situations and I can’t be certain the entirety of our D&I problems can all be traced to the maybe five fearful, damaged people I’ve met in my life who might fall into that category.

Besides, values and intentions aren’t the problem — behavior is. Thus, treating everyone with respect and dignity doesn’t get at the root of the problem. I’ve come to three conclusions about the problem.

1. We don’t always know how to behave to comes across as respectful to others.Because what does respect look like? Dignity? This isn’t as simple as it sounds, and good intentions aren’t enough. This is where the Platinum Rule (do unto others as they would have done unto them) is far more effective than the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule works to teach basic empathy in a community where people are generally similar. That is no longer our reality, and the good intentions of the Golden Rule can have devastating negative impacts.

One of my main examples is from a tension-wrought neighborhood of the 1990s of my native Los Angeles, where an older female Korean shopkeeper gave her young male African-American customer his change by not touching him and pushing the coins across the counter. This was the most respectful way to interact with a customer in her cultural context, but this came across as deeply insulting to him, sparking community outrage and violence.

Workplace training programs that focus on respect, dignity and sensitivity weaken the more powerful, inspirational, evidence-based truth that should be the goal of all diversity and inclusiveness efforts: D&I gets us better results in what matters. Such programs are a lost opportunity and contribute to the “eye-roll” factor among our clients because this approach implies that people are childish or bad and don’t know or believe in the basic human value of treating others with respect. They don’t need a sermon or finger-wagging. They need concrete information about effective behaviors, help understanding why those behaviors are effective, opportunities to practice new behaviors and tools to develop ongoing self-awareness and the ability to be nimble and flexible with whatever shows up in their interactions.

2. We don’t listen or respond effectively to feedback (direct or indirect) saying that we are not coming across as respectful.When we get this feedback, we usually react defensively, trying to justify our good intentions and why the other person shouldn’t feel that way. We respond that they should feel grateful. We might imply they’re imagining things or exaggerating. We don’t believe that their experience is real, and patronize them by categorizing their reality as perception and ours as fact. Ferguson is just one more example of the myriad ways the African-American community has been giving the white, European-American community feedback about how disrespectful our behavior is, and most of us have yet to truly hear, believe their experience is real and change our behavior.

3. When a human’s reptilian “downstairs brain” is triggered by a perceived threat, our brain’s higher functions literally go offline, and we often behave in a way that is neither respectful of others, nor an expression of our best selves.Knowing such behavior isn’t OK doesn’t keep us from doing it. Reminding us we’re supposed to be more respectful doesn’t help. What helps is developing emotional intelligence and self management skills. What can also help is holding each other fiercely accountable and co-creating cultures — in the workplace and beyond — where clearly defined disrespectful behaviors are not tolerated.

Let’s evolve the conversation about respect to a more effective, inclusive — respectful! — level and assume that people already know they are supposed to treat each other with respect and dignity. Instead, let’s get curious about why it’s not happening. Let’s focus on improving our behavior in ways that make a real difference by developing our communication skills, improving our ability to hear and respond to feedback, honing our emotional self management and holding each other accountable.

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Job Titles Won’t Bring Your Workers Happiness, but a Wonderful Workplace Will

Harpo Marx would have made a good chief happiness officer. Honk, honk.

Today’s odd job titles take the cake.

From chief baking officer to the wizard of light bulb moments to bad-ass rock star code ninja, some people feel the need to express their creativity with the words that go under their names on their business cards and LinkedIn profiles. And, if you ask me, unless you’re a missionary, the word evangelist probably shouldn’t be a part of your job title.

I’m all for originality, but when it comes to titles, I prefer the tried and true offerings that have permeated the workplace for decades. Full disclosure: We editors get a good giggle when we come across one of these peculiar job titles in the copy we’re reading, and don’t think we keep these jim-dandys to ourselves in the newsroom. No siree, Bob. They get passed around like a box of Godiva chocolates. Sous chef expediting wizard anyone?

Sure I thought it was a real hoot when I learned years ago that Jerry Yang was the chief yahoo at Yahoo and that Jeff Taylor was the chief monster at Monster, but have titles like CEO, CFO, COO and CHRO become passĂ©? Come to think of it, anyone can be a chief executive officer — especially in a company with one employee — but how many CHOs do you know?

Of course I’m talking about chief hugs officers. These folks aren’t a dime a dozen, but they aim to make the juice worth the squeeze for their workers and clients. Let’s hug it out? I think human resources might have a problem with that concept.

There’s also another kind of CHO out there. With apologies to Pharrell Williams, it doesn’t make me feel like a room without a roof. Of course, I’m talking about chief happiness officers.

Call me old-fashioned, but unless you’re a “shiny, happy” person like, ahem, Michael Stype, or a glowering, horn-honking Harpo Marx, calling yourself a “chief happiness officer” is a stretch in my book. OK Snoopy gets a pass, too.

Not to pick on those happy-go-lucky folks whose goal is to bring about happiness at work, but true happiness comes from organizations doing right by their employees. Not even Googler Chade-Meng Tan would disagree with that. At least I think 


You want happy workers? Give them what they want: a culture where creativity is encouraged and pass-the-buck is discouraged, flexibility to manage business life and home life, good benefits like a retirement plan with auto-rebalancing and a few plum perks — discounted movie tickets anyone? — couldn’t hurt either.

With those tenets in place, you won’t need funky job titles like “happiness hero” to get employees engaged. Happiness on the job is a chief motivator on its own.

Oh by the way, I’ve decided to forgo my title as assistant managing editor for something that’s better-suited for my skill set and personality. Just call me the lynx of lexicon.

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Why Cultural Sensitivity Training Is Ineffective and Insensitive

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12Lately I’ve been getting inquiries about doing cultural sensitivity training. Such requests usually rub me the wrong way and prompt my curiosity. What’s underneath is usually benign and sometimes inspiring, but requires some education and exploration.

Cultural sensitivity rubs me wrong because it’s ineffective and even insensitive. There are three reasons. First, it indirectly calls out a limiting belief that the solution is that “we” need to be more “sensitive” to “them.” This belief is well-intended, but often has negative effects. Typically it carries an unspoken, even unconscious racial tone — a belief that white people need to be more sensitive to people of color, or to a particular racial or ethnic group. It reinforces a perceived or real power imbalance — a notion that the solution to a problem is that I be more sensitive to you. This implies that you are fragile and need to be handled gently so you don’t break. It also implies that the success of our relationship is entirely my responsibility — perhaps because you are incapable of being a full adult or equal partner. My colleague Simma Lieberman makes a strong case for how sensitivity training is patronizing and even damaging to the targets of the sensitivity.

The “we need to be more sensitive to them” belief is incomplete and imbalanced, which is why white people tend to eye roll or resist anything called sensitivity training. Also, communities of color and non-dominant groups in general don’t want cultural sensitivity training, nor do they want to be the subjects of such training. They don’t want more compassion. They want meaningful action, tangible results, an inclusive culture and equitable treatment — a work environment where everyone feels safe and welcome to bring their full and best selves to work. Perhaps in your organization the intended subjects of cultural sensitivity want something else. Have you asked?

Second, not only does “cultural sensitivity” training (indirectly) place responsibility entirely on white/dominant group members, but it also doesn’t usually build new skills. Participants are given generalized, sometimes stereotypical information about cultural or racial groups, perhaps walked through ways to build awareness, then sent back to their job duties tasked with being more sensitive. This can create an environment of walking on eggshells that is a barrier to effective communication and authentic relationships. Because what does “sensitive” mean? What does it look like? How does it feel? What are the behaviors that come across that way? Those are the key, more meaningful questions to ask.

Rather than just learn about other groups, we need to develop intercultural effectiveness — the ability to be creative and flexible, connect authentically and equitably, and communicate effectively across human differences however and whenever they show up.

Third, cultural sensitivity training rarely has clear goals that get at the root of whatever problem needs to be solved. What is the problem that cultural sensitivity training is intended to remedy? Often it’s poor morale, communication disconnects, the fallout of a conflict, customer complaints or any number of human relationship problems. And what are the undesirable outcomes stemming from this human relationship problem? Attrition? Low productivity? High rate of major errors? Lawsuits? Lost market share or profit?

Getting clear about the problem allows you to get clear about your goals. What is the intended goal of the cultural sensitivity training, or your desired outcomes in general? Implementing a training program that has no goals, measurable results or clear outcomes tied to organizational mission and values is a waste of time and resources and one reason they fail. Is the goal more effective communication and authentic relationships? More joy, ease and humor in the workplace?

And what will you have once you have those things, that the organization values? Improved efficiency? Greater employee or customer satisfaction that leads to better results? Being better equipped for growth or change? Wilder innovation and creativity? Larger market share and higher profit? Once you know the goal, the next question is: What will get us there? Leadership coaching, better accountability or process improvement may be the answer, not training.

Knowing the true problem that cultural sensitivity training is intended to address, the organizational and business goals that will be served once that problem is remedied, aligning good intentions with positive and equitable impacts, and building effective communication skills across your organization will set you up for better success. Who knows, you might not need cultural sensitivity training after all!

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Why Culture Trumps Compliance

On July 30, the Wall Street Journalreported the following on a recent meeting of the New York Fed:

Thomas Baxter, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the New York Fed, stressed at the outset of his remarks that he was only speaking for himself, but he pointedly critiqued company culture, saying that if a firm’s values don’t support the rules used to guide employee behavior, the organization ‘is headed for troubled territory.’

Baxter is right on the money. His statement applies not only to banking but also to other types of businesses. NAVEX Global recently released a survey reporting that most compliance officers have shifted to transforming culture as opposed to simply – and it is relatively simple – educating employees on applicable regulations. This is a welcome development. Unfortunately, it’s happening a little too late for organizations like General Motors and the Veterans Administration.

In 2002, I met with the number two aide to one of the nation’s top general counsels. We were discussing how his organization would comply with the newly-enacted Sarbanes Oxley Act, which introduced major changes to the regulation of financial practices and corporate governance requirements.What he told me that day proved to be a common organizational approach.  He said his organization planned to communicate basic standards and document leader and employee receipt. The company’s leaders had concluded getting material out broadly, not whether it had impact, was all that needed to be done.

I thought his employer and others following the same course had made a grievous mistake. And, history has made it clear that they did. Time after time, organizations with supposedly robust compliance mechanisms have proven their systems to be as effective as paper shuffling. They’ve become prey to gross violations that all of their policies, actions, and public commitments promised would never happen.

Compliance initiatives based solely on systems, processes, memos, and other activities – which are largely ignored – tell people what to do; but it’s organizational culture that determines what people actually do. Culture is derived by what people see being done by those they respectand, frankly, may fear. It’s based on how individuals are rewarded or punished when they meet or breach key values. This varies from organization to organization: I know one company that fires anyone who lies on an expense report, no matter how high up the chain they are; another allows employees to cut corners on business deals and deceive clients as long as they meet their financial goals. The reality is people violate rules all the time and either don’t believe they’ll be caught or get into trouble if they are. 

Thus, culture represents the way organizational values are actually lived, not the words by which they are expressed. And, a healthy organizational culture won’t take root by forcing employees to sign documents they’ve barely read and that are ignored by individuals who control their workplace opportunities and futures. Defining clear principles on paper is a first step, but that’s all it is.

To instill ethical behavior, organizations must provide incentives and encourage everyone to not only act properly but also to report violations. And, they need to recognize and, perhaps, reward people when they do. That’s the strategy banks, auto manufacturers, healthcare institutions, government agencies, etc., should follow if they’re serious about making ethical choices, welcoming values, and having daily meaning. It’s much bigger than just handing out compliance-worthy statements and having employees check the box.

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OSHA’s Foulke Tale: Ed Foulke Reflects on His Tenure

Ed Foulke is the former head of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration.

A construction worker in Tennessee stood halfway up a 3-foot ladder at his work site. He lost his balance, fell backward and landed headfirst. Although he only fell about 36 inches — a seemingly safe height — his injuries proved fatal.

The unfortunate incident occurred in 1980 when a young Ed Foulke was working as a labor and employment attorney at a Greenville, South Carolina, law firm that represented the Tennessee-based construction company. Foulke was visiting the work site when the fatality occurred, and, as the only lawyer on site, he was walked through the post-workplace fatality procedures over the phone by a colleague back in Greenville.

It was the first time the future head of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration dealt with a workplace fatality — or even with OSHA, for that matter. From that experience, Foulke, who received his law degree from Loyola University New Orleans, learned “that people die very easily,” and it was one factor that pushed him into a career dedicated to improving safety in the workplace. 

“It was a multilevel thing,” Foulke said about his decision to get involved with workplace health and safety. “I was helping people stay healthy and alive at the work site. I was helping the work site be safer, and helping my clients improve their safety programs.”

Through his work, Foulke, 61, who served as OSHA’s head from April 2006 to November 2008 under President George W. Bush, found purpose helping businesses remain compliant with the myriad safety regulations governing workplaces in the U.S., especially small- to medium-size employers.

While even large corporations must devote a substantial amount of time and resources to workplace safety compliance, Foulke and other safety experts contend that smaller employers often lack the ability to ensure such compliance is met. Whereas a large manufacturer may have its own safety department, a smaller company may only have one human resources administrator overwhelmed by a slew of other tasks and too busy to oversee employee safety.

“A lot of the small- and medium-sized employers can’t even afford to have anybody but one HR person doing HR, safety, immigration and benefits — all those different things. They can’t afford a separate safety person,” said Foulke, who is a partner practicing at the law firm Fisher & Phillips in Atlanta.

Mr. Foulke Goes to Washington

After his first encounter in Tennessee with OSHA in 1980, Foulke became involved with the agency’s regional work-site inspections in South Carolina. At the same time, he worked with the OSHA Review Commission, which is an independent federal agency that provides administrative trial and appellate review, and decides contests of citations or penalties resulting from OSHA workplace inspections. As a lawyer, he also defended clients’ safety violation citations. 

Foulke, who grew up just outside of Philadelphia, also devoted a great deal of his time to Republican politics, particularly presidential elections. In 1980, Foulke was working for Lee Atwater, the controversial GOP strategist and later the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who was running Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in South Carolina.

After Reagan won the presidency, Atwater went to Washington as an adviser. At the request of Atwater, Foulke ran Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign in South Carolina. And when George H.W. Bush ran for president in 1988, Foulke again worked for Atwater in the Palmetto State on the future president’s campaign.

Following the elder Bush’s successful presidential campaign, Foulke was asked to work in Washington and ultimately landed a job as the chairman of the OSHA Review Commission in 1990, a position he held for five years — three years under Bush and two years under President Bill Clinton — before returning to practicing labor and employment law.

Foulke said he received a call from the George W. Bush administration in 2006 asking if he would return to Washington to serve as the assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, colloquially referred to as the agency’s chairman.

Compliance Assistance and Cooperation

During Foulke’s nearly three-year tenure as OSHA chairman, his philosophy on government was the guiding principle for how he ran the agency.

“I think the government should help individuals, citizens and businesses comply with the law and be successful. I think our enforcement was as strong as anybody else’s in previous administrations. But my emphasis was on trying to help employers comply with the law and have a better safety program,” Foulke said. “Hopefully that would help them be more successful and reduce their injuries and illnesses, which means they’d be more profitable, more competitive and able to keep jobs here in the U.S.”

Under the Clinton administration, OSHA was ‘kind of like a small-town sheriff that would hide behind a speed-limit sign that was obscured by a tree, and then write tickets to people driving through town who were speeding because they couldn’t see the sign.’

—Bryan Little, former deputy assistant secretary at OSHA

The emphasis on compliance assistance was the continuation of a policy shift at OSHA that had been set in motion during the George W. Bush administration. According to a New York Times report from 2007, OSHA under Bush issued the fewest significant safety standards since the agency’s creation in 1970, and one of which was ordered by a federal court. According to a survey conducted by Compliance and Safety, a Delaware-based supplier of workplace safety training videos, OSHA issued 0.3 new regulations per year under the Bush administration.

OSHA defended this relative lack of activity by claiming workplace deaths and injuries decreased during the Bush years. Between 2001 and 2008, the workplace fatality rate fell to 3.7 percent in 2008 from 4.3 percent in 2001, which was the lowest rate since the data were first collected in 1992.

Bryan Little, who was one of Foulke’s two deputy assistant secretaries at OSHA, described the agency under Bush as being more employer-friendly than it was during the Clinton administration.

Under Clinton, OSHA was “kind of like a small-town sheriff that would hide behind a speed-limit sign that was obscured by a tree, and then write tickets to people driving through town who were speeding because they couldn’t see the sign,” said Little, the director of labor affairs at California Farm Bureau Federation in Sacramento. “We tried to change the enforcement activities of the agency as much as we could so that they weren’t so adversarial.”

In addition to a conservative political philosophy, perhaps one explanation for the emphasis on compliance assistance lies with the fact that under George W. Bush, OSHA’s full-time staff numbers declined. According to OSHA, in 2001 there were 2,370 full-time OSHA employees compared with 2,118 in 2008. For comparison, the agency had 2,239 full-time employees before the 2013 sequester went into effect.

Considering these numbers, Foulke’s emphasis on compliance assistance becomes clearer: enforcement has defined limits; assistance doesn’t.

Foulke said enforcement is a necessary part of improving workplace safety, but with a fluctuating number of OSHA inspectors, the agency is only able to perform a limited number of inspections every year. It was common for an inspection to uncover no safety violations, because, in Foulke’s estimation, over 90 percent of all employers want to, and do, provide a safe workplace for their employees.

Little echoed Foulke’s belief that most employers try to make sure their workplaces are safe. “You have to recognize that a lot of employers are more than willing to follow the rules if you’re willing to give them a reasonable chance to understand what your expectations are,” he said. “We wanted to be an agency that was more of a partner to employers, who want to comply with the law and take care of their employees.”

Foulke pushed compliance assistance through OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program, which was established in 1982. He explained the program identifies employers who are “best of the best” when it comes to safety and health. Member sites include various General Electric Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Monsanto Co. plants.

According to OSHA, the program recognizes employers and workers in the private and public sectors with outstanding safety and health management systems, and that maintain injury and illness rates below the national average for their industries.

Foulke’s Legacy

In addition to the Voluntary Protection Program, Foulke established partnerships with business and trade associations that represented large segments of the workforce to cooperatively establish best practices for safety and health. The organizations allied with OSHA distribute newly established best practices to their employees or members, providing an inexpensive way for OSHA to reach a wider audience than usual, Foulke said.

The potential shortcomings of OSHA administrative policies that emphasize enforcement are highlighted by the Voluntary Protection Program and organization alliances. 

Similar to organizations partnered with OSHA, Foulke explained that companies in the program reach out to other local companies to help them improve their safety and health management systems. Member companies also encourage other organizations to strive for membership in the Voluntary Protection Program.

“You have current member-companies helping others be safer, so you’re ultimately protecting more employees,” Foulke said. “This way you could impact a much greater number of people than you could through general enforcement.”

Democrats and Republicans have embraced the program for the assistance it provides small employers in keeping their employees safe on the job. In his testimony before the House Education & the Workforce Committee, Jordan Barab, OSHA’scurrent deputy assistant secretary of labor, said the program is an “integral part of the toolbox the Congress has provided to OSHA” to improve workplace safety.

The position of assistant secretary of labor for OSHA is described as a thankless and difficult job served best by those with a sincere passion for improving worker health and safety. From what Foulke’s colleagues and independent sources in the safety industry said, he seems to have been a good fit for the job.

“When you take a look at Ed Foulke, he came in at a time with less than three years left in the Bush administration. It’s always a very difficult time to step into a role like that because the administration is already a lame duck,” said Aaron Trippler, director of government affairs for the American Industrial Hygiene Association. “The one thing you can say about Ed is that he was very passionate in making sure workers were protected in the workplace.”

As the decline in workplace fatality numbers during the second half of the 2000s show, OSHA was successful in its mission to improve workplace safety when Foulke was in charge. Not only did Foulke champion the Voluntary Protection Program and alliance programs during his tenure, he also implemented a succession plan at OSHA, which was the first for the agency.

Little praised his former boss’ ability to get involved with as many aspects of the agency as possible.

“A lot of the time he was as well-versed in the things that were supposed to be in my bailiwick as I was. I don’t think I could have done that,” Little said. “I don’t think I have the mental capacity to be aware and cognizant of as many things as Ed was able to manage at any one time. I think that’s what the agency needed.” 

When asked what he thinks is his legacy as the head of OSHA, Foulke said he hadn’t really thought about it. After pausing for a few seconds, he gave a modest reply.

“We were outreaching to all different groups to improve safety all across the board, and making sure OSHA was able to provide assistance to employers to help them be safer, which in turn meant they were going to be more successful. That’s kind of my legacy at OSHA,” he said.

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How Do We Make a Supervisor Deal With a Problem Employee?

Dear Intimidated:

Unfortunately, what you describe is all too common in our workplaces. The supervisor’s lack of response is why employees often quit complaining.

Bullying is a persistent and malicious behavior that intimidates, degrades and robs others of their humanity. It may be subtle and nuanced (eye rolling, isolation, ignoring someone, gossip, etc.) or overt behavior such as yelling, swearing or assault. 

If the complaints have been coming to you as an HR professional, you have a responsibility to follow through — particularly if the supervisor does not. One of the primary problems: HR receives a complaint about bullying, but fails to take action.

When HR receives a complaint, specific questions need to be asked about the misconduct:

  • What are the observable, objective behaviors (rather than euphemisms such as bullying) that constitute misconduct? 
  • How often does it occur?
  • Who is the target?
  • Who witnessed it?

It is imperative to determine if the misconduct is directed at someone in a “protected class” due to their age, race, religion, disability and gender, to name a few. Your organization puts itself in peril by failing to investigate allegations of bullying or harassment. Although there are no federal or state anti-bullying laws, employees and their attorneys are getting creative in suing employers for “bullying” using various tort laws. Conducting an investigation and following through on any findings is the first step to minimize your liability.

Train all supervisors and managers on their legal and ethical responsibilities related to bullying, discrimination and harassment. Additionally, they must be trained on how to intervene when they are informed of or observe the behavior. Often managers don’t intervene because they lack the skills. This is a second opportunity for HR — teaching the skills and then coaching the supervisor to use them when required.

Assuming your organization has a code of conduct policy, emphasize to supervisors their responsibility to make sure all employees adhere to it, ensuring the workplace is free from intimidation. If the supervisor fails to adhere to your requirement, despite training and coaching, then it is time to approach the supervisor’s manager with a documented report of the problem. It then becomes a performance management opportunity for the supervisor’s manager.

SOURCE: Susan Strauss, Strauss Consulting, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, May 10, 2014

 

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3 Surprising Reasons Diversity Training Fails

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12One of the most common requests that companies like mine receive from organizations is to do training. When done right and well, training increases knowledge, builds awareness and teaches effective behaviors. When done wrong or poorly, training is a waste of money at best, and harmful at worst.

To be effective and provide a high return on investment, diversity training should:

  • Be directly and clearly tied to measurable, meaningful business goals.
  • Yield a measurable improvement in participants’ awareness, knowledge and skills.
  • Be conducted by a company or individual who:
  • Conducts a thorough needs assessment around your training request, listens well and makes specific, well-supported recommendations that will meet your goals (which may look different from what you initially requested).
  • Is a good fit for your organization’s culture, values, goals, geography and stage of the D&I journey you’re in.
  • Is a strategic partner in meeting your needs — which means he or she will advise you and even push back in service of your goals and excellent results!
  • Demonstrates a concrete, meaningful return on your investment of dollars and the time participants spend in training. (If your training partner doesn’t know what a level 3 or 4 evaluation is, find someone who does!)
  • Build skills that are supported and sustained by your organization’s culture, systems and processes.
  • Be only one element of your organization’s broader commitment to excellence and high performance.

 

Having these elements in place will probably get you a B or B+ training. But to obtain a high ROI and an “A grade” diversity training, ensure the training includes at least two of these three additional surprising — yet critical — pieces:

  • Knowledge of how our brains work and why “bad stuff” persists despite all “the good stuff” we do. Exciting advances in brain science and evolutionary biology give us new and inspiring insight into our mammalian and primate heritage, and how most of our behavior is driven by unconscious biases outside our awareness, control and intention. Educating participants about how unconscious bias works and why our brains function the way they do opens up dialogue, awareness and receptivity in a way that the old “respect each other and be sensitive to differences” script hasn’t. It also tends to inspire buy-in, individual responsibility and meaningful change as long as unconscious bias training includes teaching effective behaviors that mitigate the negative effects of bias.
  • Sufficient work on the necessary internal self-awareness and emotional skills which build long-term competence that can apply to a variety of situations. A training that provides lists of tips or “do’s and don’ts” is narrow and even dangerous. Not only do such lists tend to (unintentionally) narrow our thinking or provide a false sense of security, they can reinforce stereotypes. They can also be incomplete or simply inaccurate since any identity group is extremely diverse and cultures are constantly changing. Effective training should build emotional intelligence, critical thinking, resilience, creativity, problem-solving abilities and a well-stocked toolbox of communication skills.
  • Attention to power differences and how these affect relationships, communication and outcomes. True, the workplace isn’t a democracy. But ignoring the existence of power imbalances — in your organization, on your team and in the world at large — is a tremendous blind spot. Poorly navigated power structures and ineffectively wielded power are demoralizing, inefficient and expensive. Looking at power differences and how these are working (or not) may be messy, but offers tremendous potential in clearing a path to the brilliance and excellence that are the rewards of a meaningful commitment to D&I.

 

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Culture, Zappos and Drinking Games

Zappos holacracy

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh helped change the company's culture.

There's a new joke rolling around HR conferences near you. It goes something like this, “Anytime you hear someone say ‘Zappos,’ you have to drink.”

It’s HR nerd humor at its best. And all HR leaders (including me) who have been in the game for a decade or more have a little HR nerd in them.

The point of the HR drinking game is simple. Like any industry, HR tends to latch onto cool, trendy ideas and drive them into the ground. Las Vegas-based online retailer Zappos.com has done a great job in building and sustaining its workplace culture — so much so that it has become a target for cynics who enjoy a shot of Jägermeister.

The drinking game doesn’t diminish what exists at Zappos. It simply underscores how hard it is to replicate.

Creating a culture that is truly unique and real is incredibly hard. There’s no doubt that companies on lists like “Great Places to Work” have unique cultures that have been defined, sustained and drive ongoing business results.

The real question is whether the rest of the world can realistically expect to build a culture that produces similar results. If you start breaking down the list of features in companies that are reported to have great cultures, you’ll see two feature sets: benefits others don’t have and transformational people practices.

The good news is that you can buy the first feature. Simply write a check and you’ll find yourself with a slate of benefits that don’t exist in most companies. You’ll see upticks in both recruiting and retention success, even if your employees don’t actually use the slate of goodies you’ve provided. The fact the benefits are on the brochure is enough.

But how realistic is writing a check for benefits that represent a 20 percent lift in benefit spending? I’ve seen one company this year out of the hundreds I come in contact with that actually increased its benefit spending.

The second feature is even more problematic. Name the transformational people practice that’s top of mind for you — coaching models, a focus on innovation, agile employee development to name a few — and as soon as you start digging in, you’ll get a sinking feeling in your stomach.

That gut feeling is telling you that your company doesn’t have what it takes to scale transformational people practices at the organizational level. Whether it’s executive buy-in or the discipline necessary to sustain upstream people practices once launched, most companies don’t have the DNA to create and sustain a great culture at a macro-level.

Which means that most culture statements you see are vapor. They’re aspirational statements a company creates but doesn’t come close to living up to.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about the culture at your company. You simply need to shift your focus from “macro” to “micro.”

Micro-cultures exist everywhere in your company. Look out on the floor of your company and focus on a manager and his or her team who claim a chunk of your real estate. That’s a micro-culture.

Managers who lead a team at your company have a micro-culture based on their style and effectiveness in how they manage people. 

It’s a fact that people will join your company based on your macro-brand, but they’ll leave you in a heartbeat if the micro-culture around their manager is toxic — or at times, even average. That reality is as true at Zappos as it is at your company.

But the flip side is also true. In toxic companies with turnover percentages approaching triple digits, great managers who develop trust with their teams through authentic leadership and transparency will not only retain talent, but also get much higher performance than can be found in the rest of the organization.

As it turns out, culture isn’t defined for most of us by what we see on the website. It’s defined by the managers who are leading small teams.
That means the best play in defining culture for most of us is to focus on getting the right people leading small teams than having a plan to enable them and make them better at what they do.

Micro-cultures are developed when your managers add their own style to the tools and training you give them. That’s where the authenticity comes from.

Want to know which managers already own your culture? On your next employee survey, ask the following question: “Other than your own manager, what manager would you want to work for at our company and why?”

You’ll learn a lot. Employees talk. They already know where the micro-cultures exist and which managers drive those incredibly positive micro-cultures.

All culture is local. And everyone drink up the next time you hear the words “Zappos and culture” together.