By Susanne Biro
Lately I have found myself having a similar conversation with a number of clients. The conversation begins with my client stating they want to increase their visibility within their organization and better position themselves to work at a more senior, strategic level. They want to be noticed and earmarked for succession by supervisors; to be seen as a thought leader by peers; and, ultimately, to position themselves as someone ready to participate in the larger decisions facing the company.
What is surprising to me is that these are the same people who will either completely fail to show for one of our scheduled sessions, send an email stating they need to reschedule at a minute’s notice, or arrive late and unprepared for our time together, and then fail to apologize for their lack of professionalism.
I often find that the way a client manages their time with me is indicative of how they manage themselves with others. Therefore, some of the behavior I experience is serious cause for concern. If my client is unable to successfully arrive at our meeting – on time, prepared, and having followed through on the commitments they made at our last meeting – it is almost guaranteed that they engage in this (poor) behavior with others. How then are they to be seen as the kind of person and professional ready for more responsibility? Perhaps they are unaware of how some of their behavior is negatively impacting their professional advancement.
It seems that professionals today have forgotten what it means to be professional. We have allowed each other to become lazy, as what was once considered to be rude behavior has slowly become acceptable. Consider the following:
- • When you are meeting with another, do you respond to emails and/or answer your phone?
- • How frequently do you arrive late to a meeting and/or allow a meeting to run over the allotted time without re-negotiating this with the many others it will impact?
- • How often do you cancel or reschedule meetings?
- • What tone of voice do you use when you answer your phone? (In my experience, many will use a tone that would indicate I am interrupting or bothering them, when the fact is they chose to answer their phone. Some will even use this tone of voice when they have specifically asked me to call.)
I am frequently appalled by the behavior I witness from otherwise talented, educated, senior professionals. I once left a message for a very senior colleague but never received a return call. When I next ran into the colleague I inquired whether or not he had received my voice message. He had. When I asked why he never responded, he told me, “Oh, I don’t return phone calls.” What?! The irony is that this person had just purchased and was holding a copy of Daniel Goleman’s book “Social Intelligence”. I thought to myself, forget about reading the book, just focus on having the basic human decency of returning another person’s phone call.
From over 25 years of research there is one behavior that is seen to be more important than any other behavior for leaders to exhibit. This behavior is “treats others with dignity and respect.” If we fail to get this right, it almost does not matter what else we do. It is that important. One of the simplest ways to demonstrate respect is to show up on time, come prepared, and keep meetings to their allotted time. When we do this, we show others that we regard their time as valuable as our own. Another way to demonstrate respect is to listen, something that is difficult to do we when allow interruptions from our Blackberry or iPhone. Regardless of culture, one of the easiest ways to demonstrate disrespect (whether we intend to or not) is to interrupt another.
I have worked with experienced, highly successful C-level executives and those new to management entirely. What I can tell you is that the more senior and successful the leader, the better the listener, and the more respectful, professional and gracious the person.
I am embarrassed to have to spend so much time coaching senior professionals on basic issues such as time management, the importance of treating others with dignity and respect, and reminding them that everything – EVERYTHING – they do matters. As a result, I am going to write one article on the topic and hope that by doing so we can move on to more important and necessary leadership conversations.
In his book, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business, Dov Seidman coins the term “out-behaving the competition” and states that those organizations/leaders who are able to bring professionalism back into our daily interactions will prevail in today’s marketplace. Treating others with the utmost respect is not a nice-to-do, it is business critical and, potentially, your competitive advantage.
Try This: From now on, treat every person you interact with as you would your most important client. Perhaps one day they will be just that …
Susanne Biro is a senior leadership coach with Bluepoint Leadership Development and co-author of Unleashed! Expecting Greatness and Other Secrets of Coaching for Exceptional Performance. She can be reached at susannebiro@bluepointleadership.com
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Pingback by Betting on High Leverage Leadership | Bluepoint Blog — February 9, 2010 @ 11:52 pm
Susanne,
How do I agree with you? Let me count the ways.
Actually, let me not; we haven’t got all day. I just want to pile on and say how very right you are.
My quick build: we have systemically forgotten in the past few decades the simple connection between business and human beings. We have concocted strategies that–literally–posit customers and suppliers as competitors and enemies (check out Michael Porter’s Five Forces model).
We have created sales models that are rooted in the triumph of one over another in a zero-sum, transactional model.
We have de-humanized critical concepts like loyalty, replacing them by mechanistic short-term price-promotion programs; and by concocting terms like “human capital,” where the proper adjective-noun relationship is reversed; ditto the derivative “return on human capital.”
We have lost the distinction between “ethics” and “compliance,” using both of them in the title of organizational units, fostering moral confusion in the minds of lenders, borrowers, and nearly all lawyers.
The list goes on. But it is nowhere more visceral than the kind of intersection you point out–an inclination to behave towards others in a way that belies our supposed cognitive knowledge of how to treat others.
You’re doing a very right thing in pointing out contradictions between thought and action, such as reading Goleman as a means to getting ahead, while forgetting to practice Goleman in daily common courtesies toward other humans.
You go girl, keep getting the Word out.
Comment by Charles H. Green — February 10, 2010 @ 9:32 am
AMEN.
Comment by Scot Herrick — February 10, 2010 @ 10:49 am
Amen from me too. Well said Suzanne. I’m going to forward this to a few people.
Comment by Jennifer Taylor — February 11, 2010 @ 9:09 am
Susanne -
Awesome post!!
I’ve had the same experience with C level execs and have grown to accept it. I never really thought about the correlation to this kind of behavior and executive success, but you are absolutely right on.
So…. do we start to call them on it? You know, for their own good, not because it’s just so irritating to us. (-:
Nice job.
Comment by Dan McCarthy — February 11, 2010 @ 10:27 am
Dear Susanne,
Its been a while since I connected with you. I hope you are doing well and thriving at Bluepoint. What you say is so true and necessary to understand. It is not so much time management but self awareness and self management. When we take someone else’s valuable time - we are stealing a precious resource with no respect for that other persons value on that resource. Its this awareness of the other that causes us to honour their time and their preparation. My hope is you get the kind of clients that reflect your values and your deep commitment to honour, respect and integrity which is such a theme at Blue Point.
Warm regards and wishes
Jonathan
Comment by Jonathan — February 11, 2010 @ 11:21 am
Dear Susanne, you have reported some super observations and possible correlations. As an internal coach with executives and high potential colleagues at an international bank through last year, I saw more and more of this behavior as the freneticism of the economy progressed. Interestingly, when I called them on it, they took ownership and things improved… until the next white hot crisis of the hour occurred. The high volume of the white noise sometimes brings out behaviors in true ‘leaders’ that they appreciated seeing through their coach’s eyes, and took action to change it. The intensity of the current economic catastrophe will likely be a refiner’s fire for many.
Comment by Larry — February 11, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
Thanks Susanne - your observation applies across our society these days. Civility and concern for others has dropped way down on the priority list for many. From the driver on the cell phone to the person who takes a call on their crackberry when talking to someone, I am experiencing this more and more. People pride themselves on “multi-tasking”, yet there really is no such thing. The constant caffeine and the rushes of adrenaline fuels these behaviors, sadly. I am ever more appreciative of the person who truly listens. Sadly, this is now rare.
Comment by Tom — February 11, 2010 @ 7:57 pm
Thanks Susanne, you are absolutely right. I hope you will write also something about how to deal with “expectations” while continuing to be “a sustainable human being”.
Comment by Sandro — February 12, 2010 @ 12:22 am
Susanne,
I would go even further, it is incredible how most part of people in all levels does not do the basics also in their core activity, not only on the behavioral side.
I remember the begining of my carrer, when I was a sales rep, and got lots of positive feedback just for doing what I was asked, nothing else. When I become a manager I understood the reason for the compliments, I’ve found out that for some reason people does not plan ahead visits, forget to bring price lists and samples, does not read the agreed sales training lessons, are always delayed with expenses reports and so on. And this is not an entry level issue, as we progress in our carrers we can notice that managers does not proper follow the evaluation process of their team, directors fail to meet guidelines of strategic planning cycle, etc.
I really believe that what moves the needle on companies are traits related with leadership, vision, people skills, courage, communication, etc. But as you said, sometimes it is hard to develop those important leadership capabilities if the basics are not in place.
Comment by Gustavo Loss — February 12, 2010 @ 10:48 am
BRAVO!!! Wow, Susanne, what a great read!
This is so true about clients. How they treat you is more than likely how they treat others.
I even caught myself answering the phone in a less than enthusiastic way when a friend called. Unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. I’m usually very upbeat yet was preoccupied. No excuse; as you said, I chose to answer the phone!
Keep the good stuff coming.
~ Steve
Comment by Steve Borek — February 15, 2010 @ 7:16 am
Thank you for this article. It is much needed.
Comment by Alain Ochoa — February 15, 2010 @ 8:32 am
Nice piece!
We all have these encounters…
In this day and age, it is not easy for many of us to “Jump Ship” and hope the next one is more efficient.
You appear to assume an egalitarian workplace, at least within the executive branch/es?
Like the British Cabinet, some people seem to have a sense of entitlement, whereby they are “more equal than others” (primus inter pares”)
For ‘phone calls, the arrogant will assume that the perceived underling will call back if it’s impoirtant enough, so why waste their time calling back when the crisis may already have passed?
How can we assume competence when Galbraith pointed out a long time ago that “people rise to a position of incompetence, so we are governed by incompetents”?
This may have entered an especially viral phase with the cancerous expansionism of the Federal bureaucracy.
Comment by David Ponsonby — February 15, 2010 @ 1:30 pm
Right on, Susanne!
Comment by Lynn Harrison — February 23, 2010 @ 4:30 pm