Are You Being Bullied By Your Boss? Bully Back!

During our careers we all come across them; bosses that are difficult to deal with or worse, bosses that are simple bullies. They push you into a corner, don’t listen, don’t give you an opportunity and are only driving their own agenda. I don’t have to explain the impact that these bosses have on the workplace. Disastrous!

All our defense mechanisms go up to ‘survive’ a bullying boss and all the conversations between employees center around ‘did you see what he / she did today?!’. Not particularly the signs of a healthy and high performing workplace.

I had my fair share of bullying bosses and overtime I have become more adept in dealing with such people. The turnaround came, when after months of being bullied by the boss of my boss, I was against the ropes and had basically given up. I was unable to do my job and didn’t want to be part of the organization any more as it had such a negative effect on my happiness and performance. That is when I decided to move on and move past his behavior.

A funny thing happens when you make such a decision, your attitude completely changes and what first impacted you negatively suddenly is not important anymore. The same happened with me, I simply didn’t care what his problem was and whenever my bully boss started to deploy his abrasive techniques, they no longer had the intended impact. You know what happened… the bullying boss stopped bullying me. He had realized that his technique didn’t work anymore and I didn’t have to quit the job that I loved.

I had gained a valuable lesson, the best way to deal with a bullying boss is to bully back with maturity. Two things happen: by having a mindset that you will not be affected by actions of others, the impact of their actions will disappear. Secondly, the one thing that a bullying boss respects is a person that stands their ground.

Of course you have to stand your ground and push back in the right way, you don’t want to stoop as low as your bullying boss. Psychology Today published a number of strategies on how to deal with a difficult or bullying boss:

1. Be Pro-active: Anticipate how your boss might react to a certain proposal and have an action plan if he behaves the way you anticipate.

2. Be Prepared: Prepare your different responses beforehand, think about how he might come back and prepare yourself for those as well

3. Be Professional: Never lower yourself to the level of the bullying boss. Keep the moral high ground, follow proper procedures

4. Be Persistent: Keep in it for the long run, your boss and his behavior are not going to change overnight, don’t let your guard down and continue to be prepared at any turn.

If you have tried everything and you continue to be at the receiving end of a bullying boss you do have the opportunity to follow a formal complaint procedure within the organization. A good friend of mine, who after trying different techniques to stop his bullying boss (and having seen two of his colleagues quit), decided to take his problem to the companies ethics committee. He was courageous enough to go through the procedure despite significant pressure from his peers and other line managers to let it go. At the end, the company decided that the bullying boss was not acting in line with the company values and decided to let him go. My friend is still working at the organization and is doing a wonderful job. The bully has moved on, hopefully he has learned from this experience and has changed his approach. Maybe, but not likely though…

Bullies often remain bullies and the best way to deal with them is to have the courage to stand up against them. Do so, without turning into the thing you hate, and watch your workplace experience drastically change.

How many of you have encountered such issues in your organizations?

– Paul Keijzer

Engaging African Talent

I just flew back from Nairobi, where I had the pleasure to facilitate a group of 125 leaders from across 20 different African countries. This was the first step of their journey to become apart of an organization that is driven by purpose and strong values. It was a tremendous success, and although participants had low expectations, we had everybody dancing by the end of the conference. It was an amazing and gratifying experience.

Engaging African talent is the same as engaging Asian talent. It is all about how you create and maintain energy flows, how you touch on the design and flow of the conference to come to a desired outcome and how you make people part of the process. Most importantly, it is about how you guide them to follow the philosophy that the answer for any problem is (for 99 out of 100 situations) already present within the knowledge of the group as a whole.

My secret recipe for success in facilitating large-scale conferences is:

1. PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE…
Every good cook knows that the success of a well-cooked dish is in the recipe. It is essential to think through which tools to use, in which order to deploy them and to ensure that you have got the venue and logistics set up to support your program. For me, if I get the flow right, everything else will go by itself.

2. CREATE ENERGY FROM THE START
Start the conference with an exercise that requires people to get off their feet and meet as many other people as possible. Do something that requires them to get to know others, that gets them interacting. The energy that this creates is tremendous and will keep the conference flowing for a couple of hours.

3. KEEP ENGAGING PEOPLE
The worst thing you can do is to organize a conference where people just have to sit and watch a dry and lengthy PowerPoint presentation. If presentations are needed, keep the slides to an absolute minimum, let the presenters share stories and talk from the heart, involve and engage in issues that are important to the audience and ask the participants to answer their own questions. Ensure you cross-fertilize and people can build on each other views to create alignment.

4. KEEP THEM ON THEIR FEET
Have you ever been to these conferences where on the fifth and final day “that guy” is still sitting on the same table in the same chair. It’s as if he has not moved once. He has only viewed the world from that perspective and limited his interaction and learning to the few people on the same table. Don’t let people get comfortable, keep them on their feet and mobile. Let them move to a different table / chair / position after a couple of exercises. It gets people to mingle, share different experiences, learn from others and it creates energy.

5. STAY FLEXIBLE
No matter how well prepared you are, there will always be moments and/or topics that the group wants to spend more time on. Let them! Don’t worry about your own agenda and whether you are able to finish the topics that you thought were important. They are not. What the group wants to talk about is important. At some point you can make an intervention and ask the group whether they want to continue talking about it or whether they want to move onto the agenda that they had agreed before. Let them focus on what issues they feel most passionate about. Stay flexible, stay in the energy, and as facilitator, adjust where necessary.

6. END WITH A BANG
Most of the time participants will remember the beginning or the end, so make sure you make it an end to remember. It can be an emotional and powerful story, it can be an activity that brings all the discussion together or it can be something physical. This week, the groups and I ended with a combination of the two; a real powerful story that laid bare the authenticity, vision, aspiration and commitment of the leader to the team he is leading and a chant / dance that we had been practicing over the last two days. I promise you that the participants shared the power of that story and dance with their families that evening.

– Paul Keijzer

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They Like You, They Like You Not!

When it comes to hiring talent, organizations tend to look for employees who are dynamic, impressive and will contribute positively to the future of the company. However, as leaders of these organizations, how do you know if these dynamic individuals will be choosing you when they graduate from college?  Are you their first choice? Do students aspire to work for you? Do they like you…or not?

To help you answer these questions, Engage Consulting is in the process of conducting, the Most Preferred Employer Study 2013. This study is specially designed to help organizations understand the employment preferences of graduating students across Pakistan. What do these students want when it comes to finding a job? Who is their most preferred employer, most preferred industry? What benefits are they most interested or attracted to? The aim of the MPE is to focus on student’s first choice preferences, to collect data from Business, IT and Engineering students from the leading universities of the country and to help organizations understand what it takes to be the employer of choice in the talent market.

Working alongside Pakistan’s top universities, while partnering with graduating students to help collect survey responses, Engage Consulting will be helping students by giving them a voice and aiding  future employers understand the deciding factors behind what attracts fresh graduates to their desired organizations. Universities also benefit by partnering with Engage Consulting, as they have an opportunity to improve on their career development services and be recognized as a progressive university in the job market, by supporting our research.

In today’s highly competitive global economy, attracting and retaining talent is the key to success. There is a substantial and rapidly expanding body of evidence that speaks to the strong connection between employee perceptions (the people), organizational functioning (the processes) and the economic results achieved (the performance). Organizations that adopt ‘people centered’ practices can see immediate effects that can be translated into a markedly improved competitive advantage.

What factors do you think make your organization a desired work environment for graduating students? To find out what Engage Consulting uncovers about the leading characteristics that drive students to choose an employer of choice, stay tuned to read the highlights report from our findings.

Written by: Anusha Bawany
This author is the Marketing Coordinator at Engage Consulting

Young Entrepreneurs: Taking Charge

What do Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, Mark Zukerberg, Michael Dell, Sergey Brinn and my father all have in common? No, it is not that they all have been highly successful in building fortune 500 companies (my father build a modest Food and Beverage Distribution company in my hometown.) What they have in common is that they all started their ventures when they were in the early 20’s.

The question is being asked whether extensive experience helps in becoming a successful entrepreneur, and I am sure it has a significant impact. However, the list above shows that the people that really made it big didn’t have the experience, but they did have the idea, the obsession and the drive to succeed.

One of the main reasons that young entrepreneurs have been so successful is that they have got little to lose. They can go all out, take the risk, work as hard as humanly possible and if it doesn’t work, at least they can say they tried, learned from it and can try again.

As Mark Zukerberg says it: “There will never be a better time in your life to live your dream of entrepreneurship. Swing for the fences with a goal to add your name to the prestigious list above. If you fail, it will have been one of the best learning experiences of your life”

I read an article on Inc. with tips from America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs and picked out some important highlights:

• Simplify Your Mission: “I would encourage other entrepreneurs to spend a lot of time boiling down what their business is, what it does, and what it represents. If you nail down a 60- to 90-second synopsis, that will pay a lot of dividends throughout the life of your business.”
  – Eric Koger, ModCloth
• Ditch your safety net: “I lined up a job at Goldman Sachs. I thought I was pretty smart since this would give me a backup if the start up wasn’t working out. Looking back now, I realized that having that in hand was a reason not to push harder and higher. The day before the job started, I told them I wanted to pursue my own company. They thought I was crazy, but I think it has worked out pretty well.”
  – John Goscha, IdeaPaint
• Be Nimble: “The landscape no longer changes every two, three, four years like it did in 2002. If you’re not quick on your toes, you will miss opportunities.”
  – Tristan Harris, Apture

And my favorite:

• Don’t Go It Alone: “Surround yourself with an awesome team because you’re going to need them to overcome all the obstacles that come with starting a company. Lots of people have great ideas that they try to tackle by themselves, but I think it’s almost impossible to do everything by yourself.”
  – Emily Olson, Foodzie

I am sure there are a number of amazing entrepreneurs out there in Pakistan. People that have got great ideas but need a support network in order to make it big. I would love to contribute to the success of young Pakistani entrepreneurs. Men and women that have embarked on the journey of launching and growing their company, and in the process change their future.

I know that it can be lonely setting up a new company. Knowing whether you are taking the right steps, sharing your success and more importantly your failures so you can pick up the pieces and bounce back even stronger.

I want to reach out to aspiring young entrepreneurs that have recently started their own company, maybe have one or two other people working with them and are looking for companionship, counsel and a desire to be part of a larger group of like-minded people. If you are interested, send me a quick email at paulkeijzer@engageconsulting.biz and lets catch up and see how I can help you take your business / idea to the next level.

Go for it!

– Paul Keijzer

Welcome to HARDtalk

I bet you all have a tough question you want to ask your boss. Something that will help explain why he or she is doing what they are doing and the reason behind their thinking. I would like to increase the stakes and say that the same question is on the lips of many of your colleagues. Often these questions lead to frantic water cooler discussions, gossip and rumors spreading around the office. And nobody is willing, or knows how, to ask the tough question, as the boss might take it negatively.

People trusting each other and willing to engage in tough conversations are the starting points for any team to move up the ladder of highly performing teams (ability to hold each other accountable, commitment on shared goals and focus on results are the other three). However, as the Chinese proverb says “Trust comes by foot and goes by Horse”.

To build an environment of trust you need a leader who is understanding and that has the inner strength to make him/herself vulnerable. It is only when you make yourself vulnerable and transparent, that you have conquered your worst fears.

Offering teams a helping hand on the journey of trusting each other and becoming a high performing team is one of my signature interventions. I can proudly say, I love doing it!

An intervention I sometimes use in these sessions is something I dubbed ‘HARDtalk’. Copied from the BBC series of the same name, I use the same approach; asking hard hitting questions to the person interviewed. The key in the interview is the first questions, which needs to be the toughest one, the one that everybody wants to know the answer for and the one that people gossip about.

The results are spectacular. As the audience gasp and hold their breath at the audacity for me to ask that question that everybody wants to ask but nobody dares to. Then, keep on digging deeper with follow up questions that don’t let the boss off the hook but forces him / her to explain why and address the consequences of his / her actions.

Not for the faint hearted bosses. And it only works if the boss understands that they need to open up first for the team to follow suit. When that magic happens and you allow people at the end of the interview identify, what they agree with, what surprised them in the interview and follow up questions they want to ask, you have started your journey of building trust in the team.

– Paul Keijzer

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What Women Want … At Work

There has been a lot of talk in the past about how to motivate ones employee to perform better and whether the motivational factors for women are different from those for men. The number of women being added to the workforce in Pakistan has increased considerably, enough to ask – how many of us actually make it to top ranking positions and stay there?

Employers may argue that they don’t have enough qualified and developed female employees to promote to top level positions. If that is the case, it should be the responsibility of organization leaders to invest in the female workforce and to create a corporate culture that appeals to top female performers. However, the question still remains: What appeals to the top female performers? What Do These Women Want… At Work?

According to an article by Dr. Romila Singh, “Corporate America has made huge strides in attracting top-notch female talent to their workplaces, but they rapidly lose them – not for gender-specific reasons, but gender-neutral reasons. Retention is closely tied to advancement: same for women as it is for men. What is Corporate America doing to close the revolving door for women?”

After decades of research, the question is no longer what women want or even whether their needs are similar or different from that of male employees. The question is: How do organizations ensure that they are indeed offering women the same things as they are offering men?”

Speaking to some of the top female talent in Pakistan’s corporate world, here are a few factors that came to light:

My Work Arrangements Should Be Flexible:

Flexibility is about an employee and employer making changes to when, where and how a person will work better to meet individual and business needs. Being in charge of work arrangements is something that greatly appeals to women. When balancing their personal and professional lives, women tend to favor having flexible options on how to manage their time.

According to an article I read in the economic times, written by Saundarya Rajesh, “Being able to allot some time to home-related activities even during the regular working hours, is the biggest ask from the side of the woman manager. Multiple flavors of flexible working abound – part-timing, flexi-timing, job-sharing, job-splitting, staggered work hours.”

My Work Should Be Meaningful:

In today’s world women are studying, pursuing their careers, raising children, running households and taking care of their spouses. It’s important for working women to feel and to know that what they do is meaningful. A female employee needs to feel that her time away from home and family is something that will yield her extravagant results in the future and is not going to waste. She also needs to feel that the organization depends on her and that she is valuable resource.

My Appraisal Should Be Fair:

One of the most important factors in understanding the right way to attain and retain female talent, is to understand that women don’t like to be discriminated against. The principal thought is “I am a woman, but don’t you dare hold that against me.” It’s important to note that every female in the corporate world wants to know that they are taken seriously and the playing field is leveled. A future pay raise, promotion, transfer, etc… should not be held back because the employer feels that being a woman, the employee needs to be tried and tested more.

“Never make the cardinal mistake of paying a woman less than her male counterpart.” According to Romana Khokar, Director at Engage Consulting, it is very important for a woman’s work to be appreciated by her family, colleagues should recognize the contributions and the organization should aim at consciously remove glass ceiling which prevent career progression.

– Anushey Matri
(Marketing Manager, Engage Consulting)

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Why Don’t I Praise People Enough?

I had a funny realization recently. I have no problem heaping praise on my two-year-old son – every time he utters a new word, finishes his food or kicks the ball I am clapping, cheering and hugging him till he tells me in this funny two-year-old voice; ‘stop it papa’. So if I do it so eagerly for my son, why do I have such a problem doing the same for my team members? Is it that I don’t want to overdo it, or don’t want to look insincere? Is it that I want to hold out praise for special occasions or for specific mammoth achievements? Is it because I don’t see the things that go right and only focus on the things that go wrong?

Unfortunately, I am not alone. From our ‘Best Place to Work’ Studies we know that employees feeling recognized for what they do is a constant underachiever. In our 2012 editions of the BPTW survey, only half of the respondents agreed that ‘they had received praise in the last 7 days’, making “recognition” in the bottom 20% of all 40 engagement factors.

From our research and that of many other publications, one thing is clear; employees want to be praised more. I recently read Crucial Conversations by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler. A great book, not only for the suggestions on how to confront people in a way that they deliver on commitments, but also as it had a great section on ‘When Things Go Right’. From their book and from my own experience here are 4 ‘counter-intuitive’ suggestions to heap sincere praise on your team:

1. Praise Small Things
As employees, we expect to be honored and praised for exceptional achievements. We also expect comparable exceptional rewards. As a result, only recognizing breakthrough achievements, does not do anything to quench our appetite for praise. Focus instead on the small things with small momentos. For example, write a hand written Thank You note for a person handling a difficult customer call particularly well, staying out late even if they have parenting obligations, a person supporting an initiative quietly, or for solving a small problem that has been nagging the department for some time.

2. Praise Individuals in Private and Groups in Public
People love to bask in the admiration of their colleagues and friends. However, more often than not employees who attend the ‘annual company award ceremony’ leave the event questioning why others were selected and not them. I am aware of the arguments that indicate that by highlighting individual performance in a group setting gives employees an example / role model to emulate. This works when the achievement is something that sticks out as remarkable work practice. For all other instances, it is better to praise the individuals in private and teams in public.

3. Focus on more on Process and Less on Results
Being a believer in doing the ‘right things right will deliver you the results’ – I would focus my praise more on people doing the right things rather then the actual results. The potential side effect of just focusing on results might blow up in your face with people taking short cuts or by taking a Machiavellian approach. The positive side effect of focusing on process is that you can heap praise each and every team member, as everybody contributes in a small or large way. You don’t have to wait for the results and can do it as often as you want.

4. You Can’t Praise Enough
Praising people is similar to communicating a message. You can’t do it enough. So start praising more than you think you possibly can and then double it. I know your natural reaction will be that you don’t want to go overboard. But as long as you are sincere in your praise I don’t think that anybody can set a limit. Put yourself in the receivers shoes, when was the last time you told your boss to stop recognizing you for your work?

Team members feeling appreciated adds tremendously to their engagement level and in return to their commitment and output. So that should be reason enough for you to double your efforts. However it has also additional side effects. Sincere praise given also enhances your ‘respect-reserves’ something you can draw on when it is time to talk about the tough stuff.

Although I can’t remember the source, I remember reading somewhere that you need to praise an individual 7 times before they take your feedback seriously. (By the way for spouses this is 14 times, so gentleman before you ask your wife about that credit card statement make sure you have praised her 14 times about all kind of other things!)

Go on start writing these Thank You notes!

– Paul Keijzer

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Your To Don’t List For 2013: How Not To Engage Talent

The beginning of the year is always about ones New Years resolutions and what you want to accomplish in the upcoming year. Recently I read an article in the New York Times that suggested; instead of making your “To Do” list, make a “To Don’t” list. I thought that was a brilliant idea, as you will be taking into account the things you should NOT do!

So, if one of your resolutions is to fast track your best talent this year, here is a list of things Not To Do:

1. Think Small
Your department has to deliver operational results. You want to make sure you use your best player to deliver your department results, right? … Wrong! Use your best talent for delivering results that will blow your boss away. Don’t waste their abilities to deliver daily / operational tasks. Let them run. Give them challenges and make sure they constantly run in 5th gear.

2. Be Murky
Not being clear of what you expect of someone is the number one performance killer. How can people perform if they don’t know what is expected of them? Setting clear performance expectations is significantly more difficult as it sounds, as it requires you to analyze, articulate and simplify into a clear objective. Answer the following questions: What will WOW you? Will your team achieve their goals/targets by the end of the year? What would success in this project / task look like?

3. Sit On Their Head
Talent is talent because you know they have got the capability to get things done. Maybe they don’t have the experience or knowledge yet, but they are imaginative enough to figure it out or find the information they need in order to get things done. The worst thing you can do is to hold them on a tight leash. Give them the resources they need and trust them to do the rest.

4. Keep Them In The Dark
People that have talent are not only aware of the fact, but also know their market value. The best thing you can do is to acknowledge this and help your talent discover how they can achieve their potential and maximize their growth. The moment that you start hiding opportunities (inside or outside the company) you will lose their trust. Treat people with respect and help them think through the career and learning options they have. If you put yourself in their perspective and help them reach their potential, you will not only gain their trust, but maybe even their loyalty.

5. Hide Them
Talent learns from doing big things, making mistakes and a guiding hand who can help them sweat the small stuff. Above all they learn from exposure; learning from people that are better than them and being exposed to meetings, interactions, presentations, discussions that are far above their pay grade. Talent wants to meet other talent. They want to measure themselves up with others and want to network with other top performers. Not only will your talent benefit from this exposure, but the organization will benefit as well, as learning spreads around quickly. Even more importantly, you will benefit from exposing your best talent and your bosses will recognize you for the talent developer that you are.

I wish you an amazing new year and if there is one resolution for 2013 that will benefit you professionally the most it is to develop your talent. It will help them, help your company and above all help you!

– Paul Keijzer

Does Your Team Have A Clear Line of Sight?

It’s that time of year again. When sales teams are making that dash to the finish line to make sure they get that last sale in, HR is driving you mad with the timelines for the performance evaluations and of course, the finance team is bugging you to get the budget numbers in for next year.

This is my favorite time of the year, as it allows me to engage with a number of companies in helping them build intellectual clarity and emotional commitment towards their business agenda for 2013. The goal is making sure that each and every member of the top team is aligned and is committed to the same plan and targets.

My standard question to ask before we start a strategy session is for people to write on a piece of paper what they individually think are the three strategic priorities of the company. More often than not, the answers are so divergent that you don’t understand how this company has ever achieved something.

Clients often think that doing this creates a lot of time and tremendous amount of effort and synchronization. However, my experience shows that this is absolutely not the case. My promise to them is that I can get your team to agree, be aligned and committed to the long term ambition, targets for the coming year and the activities required to achieve these targets within 2 days. Yep… just 2 days.

So how does it work?

Having The Right People In The Room:
First of all, you have to make sure you got all the stakeholders in the room. This is without exception the CEO and his direct reports (although often I encourage company to include the next level down as well). Bring people into the room that know the business at an operational level, making the group that owns the plan significantly larger. I have gone up to groups as large as 35 – 40 people.

What Have We Achieved So Far:
I always start by going back in time. In my view there is no future without taking your past into account. Apart from that, it also gives team members a moment to look back and be proud of what they have achieved so far and maybe remind them of a number of ‘lessons’ from the past.

What Do We Want To Become:
After looking back, it is then important that you start looking forward. Think far into the future and discuss what you want to become as an organization. What are the organizational goals that will energize, excite and inspire people? Why do we exist and how will we contribute to the society? I have found that in order for teams to give it their all, they first have to agree that it is worth doing it.

Where Do We Stand At The Moment:
As much as opinions can differ about the future, team members are often also butting heads on the current reality. So prior to starting to plot a strategy on what we need to do to deliver on our aspirations, it is pivotal to get members aligned on where the company stands at the moment.

What Do We Have To Do:
Knowing where we want to go and knowing where we stand at the moment then allows team members to jointly craft a plan on how they will achieve their aspirations given the current reality.

How Do We Have To Work Together:
When we are clear on what needs to be done, only then in my view can you discuss how the team should work together to deliver on this. Team building events which are not ‘anchored’ in the aspiration and strategic plan of the company have a minimal impact as the reason for working better together is not grounded.

How Will We Cascade This:
Finally, it is all about not only creating clarity in the top team but engaging the whole organization to understand, own and run with the plan for 2013.

What blows most clients away is that it is possible to capture your whole three-year strategic plan, including the main activities and targets for 2013, in one single page. That’s right, it can all fit on just one A4 sheet. Can you imagine how easy it is to communicate a one-page document to your organization?

Let me know if you have any questions on the process, I am always more than happy to help. Good luck in creating, aligning and engaging the team in the 2013 plan

– Paul Keijzer