Solution Leader Ezine September 1, 2003

September 1, 2003

A free Ezine sent to you twice a month by Glen Rediehs, Ph.D.: Personal Coach, Corporate Coach, Organization Development Consultant
Web site: www.SolutionLeader.com
E-mail: Glen@SolutionLeader.com

Solution Leader Ezine will give you solutions for your personal life and the people side of your business. Every issue is filled with practical strategies plus a little humor.

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IN THIS ISSUE:
Look for the Good Stuff
A Little Humor
Thought for the Day
Managing Difficult Employees
In the Next Issue

LOOK FOR THE GOOD STUFF
In their book, The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander tell the story of a shoe factory that sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying: SITUATION HOPELESS. NO ONE WEARS SHOES. The other writes back triumphantly: GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. THEY HAVE NO SHOES.

You probably know people who see their life circumstances as hopeless. Other acquaintances of yours view their life situation as a glorious opportunity.

What about you? How can you go about creating more opportunity and success for yourself?

Watch the Questions You Ask!

The secret of making a great life for yourself is in the questions you choose to ask. What are the right questions?

You have to ask about the good stuff. People don't usually do that.

When most people encounter a new situation, challenge, or bad news, they ask questions that aren't very helpful:

"Why is this happening?"
"What is the matter with me?"
"Why is this person being so nice to me? What's s/he up to?"
"How come so-and-so is such a jerk?"
"When do you suppose this will fall apart?"
"Why is this organization in such a mess?"
"Whose fault is this?"

These questions look for what is wrong or what might go wrong. They are not looking for the good stuff.

It's understandable that we would ask questions such as these. The media focuses our attention on all the bad news in our world. DV Sridharan, a citizen of India, got so tired of the bad news about his nation that he started his own publication, Good News India. That's all it carries - just the good news of what is going right. You can check it out at www.goodnewsindia.com.

In addition, we live in a Newtonian world that sees machine-like cause and effect behind everything that happens in our lives - personally or globally. To create better lives, we think we have to analyze situations, find "root causes" of problems and fix them. That works OK with machines. But, it isn't very successful with people.

You will always get more of what you ask about. Ask questions about fault, weakness, deficits, error, etc. - and you will only find more of it. No wonder that people get discouraged and feel helpless.

You can choose to use a different approach and ask a different set of questions in your life. You can look for the good stuff. Ask questions about what's working, what is possible, etc. Opportunity awaits you.

It's happening for many people already. Let me give you some examples.

Appreciative Inquiry Looks for the Good Stuff

Appreciative Inquiry is a breakthrough approach to organizational consulting. It has proven useful in strategic planning, team building, customer service, leadership development, product innovation, change management, and many other applications. The consultant invites stakeholders to ask questions such as these:

"Tell me about a time when this organization was at its very best. What helped to make it such an outstanding time?"

"If I asked the people in this organization, what do you suppose they would tell me they most appreciate about your contribution?"

"Suppose, a few years from now, this organization is fully accomplishing its
mission and functioning as the greatest organization it could be. What will be happening? How will the stakeholders have accomplished this?"

Take a look at Appreciative Inquiry at www.appreciativeinquirycommons.com. Read The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Hammond. Or, Watkins and Mohr's Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination.

Asset-based Community Development Looks for the Good Stuff

The Asset-based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL has a whole new approach to community development. The traditional process in rebuilding a deteriorating neighborhood is to study all the problems: crime, joblessness, gangs, drugs, homelessness, etc. Then, public and private human service agencies come in to try to fix the identified problems. The residents learn to be helpless and dependent.

John Kretzmann and John McKnight at ABCD start community development with the assumption that there are strengths and resources (not just problems and deficits) within the community. The residents have the capacity and assets to change their community. Kretzman and McKnight ask questions about the neighborhood's abilities, skills, strengths. The community utilizes it's own indigenous resources to redevelop the neighborhood.

The institute's success is remarkable. Look at www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.html. Read Building Communities From the Inside Out by Kretzmann and McKnight.

Solution-focused Brief Therapy Looks for the Good Stuff

Typical psychotherapy focuses on diagnosis of pathology and prescribing treatment. Solution-focused Brief Therapy starts in a very different place. Assuming that clients know more about their life than the therapist, understand what they want, and have good ideas about how to get there, the therapist asks questions such as these:

"When therapy is completed and life is the way you need it to be, what will be different from how it is now?"

"When has there been a time that you had a little bit of how you need your life to be again? How did you do that?"

"On a scale of 0 - 10 (0 low and 10 high), where would you say the situation is now? How have you managed to keep it up to that point? Imagine you decide to come back in a week or two. How far up the scale do you think you might be? How will you tell me you got to that point?"

"Suppose you meet a friend some time after therapy is complete. What do you imagine you will tell that person you did to make these positive changes in your life?"

Solution-focused Brief Therapy has been extremely successful and is used by therapists all over the world for all kinds of mental and emotional problems. Check it out at www.brief-therapy.org/ or http://www.enabling.org/ia/sft/. Read Berg and DeJong's Interviewing for Solutions or Fletcher Peacock's Water the Flowers, Not the Weeds.

Appreciative Inquiry, Asset-based Community Development and Solution-focused Brief Therapy take a different approach to life. Here are a few of their basic assumptions:

Look for the good stuff. In every human situation, something works. Do more of that. Build on it.

If something doesn't work, stop doing it. Do something else.

What we focus on becomes our reality.

The questions we ask and the stories we tell set the direction for our lives and our organizations.

Individuals and organizations change in the direction of their images of the future.

Look for the Good Stuff for Yourself.

Apply this thinking to your life. I don't know what your situation, challenges or bad news might be. Try some of these questions:

About yourself:

Who am I at my best - the times when I am most alive, engaged and committed? How do those times give direction to my life?

What is the most creative part of me -- the part from which my best thinking and contributions emerge?

When was there a time that I did something meaningful for others? What was the high point of that experience? What did others most appreciate about my contribution?

What are my most courageous dreams? How will I go about realizing them?

As I think about the changes happening in the world, in my work, and in my life, which of those changes generates hope in me for a better future? In what ways am I responding positively to this hopeful change?

About your job:

What is the most challenging and exciting career opportunity I have experienced? What made it challenging and exciting.

What is it about me and the way I do my job that's best in class? What difference does that make for me, my colleagues and my organization?

What wishes do I have to further my career or work life? What am I doing positively to achieve those goals?

About your family:

What have been some of the most inspiring, rewarding or satisfying times I have had with my family? What made it so? How am I contributing to more times like those?

How has my relationship with my partner benefited or contributed to that person's life? How has it enhanced our life as a couple?

What do I most value about my relationship with my partner and/or children? What might they say they most appreciate about me?

You get the idea? In good times and in difficult times, look for the good stuff. Read Looking for the Good Stuff by Bob New and Kathleen Rich-New.

© Glen Rediehs, 2003

What's the next step in your life? In your business?

What do you want to achieve?

What do you want to change?

Let's work on your future together. You can make it happen!

PLEASE CALL ME at 704-788-9184 or Email me at Glen@SolutionLeader.com.

It's been my life's work to help individuals and organizations create their own best futures.

A LITTLE HUMOR
Where is God?

A couple had two little boys, ages 8 and 10, who were excessively mischievous. They were always getting into trouble and their parents knew that, if any mischief occurred in their town, their sons were probably involved.

They boys' mother heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The clergyman agreed, but asked to see them individually. So the mother sent her 8-year-old first, in the morning, with the older boy to see the clergyman in the afternoon.

The clergyman, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Where is God?".

They boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there with his mouth hanging open, wide-eyed. So the clergyman repeated the question in an even sterner tone, "Where is God!!?" Again the boy made no attempt to answer. So the clergyman raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "WHERE IS GOD!?"

The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?"

The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in BIG trouble this time. God is missing - and they think WE did it!"

_______________

The Supermarket

A young man was walking through a supermarket to pick up a few things when he noticed an old lady following him around. Thinking nothing of it, he ignored her and continued on. Finally he went to the check-out line, but she got in front of him. "Pardon me," she said, "I'm sorry if my staring at you has made you feel ncomfortable. It's just that you look just like my son, who I haven't seen in a long time." "That's a shame," replied the young man, "is there anything I can do for you?" "Yes," she said, "As I'm leaving, can you say 'Good bye, Mother!'? It would make me feel so much better." "Sure," answered the young man. So, when the old woman was leaving, he called out, "Goodbye, Mother!" As he stepped up to the check-out counter, he saw that his total was $127.50. "How can that be?" he asked, "I only purchased a few things!" The clerk replied, "Your mother said that you would pay for her."

_______________

Drinking in Texas

A cowboy walks into a bar in Texas, orders three mugs of Bud and sits in the back room, drinking a sip out of each one in turn. When he finishes them, he comes back to the bar and orders three more.

The bartender approaches and tells the cowboy, "You know, a mug goes flat after I draw it. It would taste better if you bought one at a time."

The cowboy replies, "Well, you see, I have two brothers. One is in Australia, the other is in Dublin, and I'm in Texas. When we all left home, we promised that we'd drink this way to remember the days we drank together. So I drink one for each of my brothers and one for myself."

The bartender admits that this is a nice custom, and leaves it there.

The cowboy becomes a regular in the bar, and always drinks the same way. He orders three mugs and drinks them in turn.

One day, he comes in and orders two mugs. All the regulars take notice and fall silent. When he comes back to the bar for the second round, the bartender says, "I don't want to intrude on your grief, but I wanted to offer my condolences on your loss."

The cowboy looks quite puzzled for a moment, then a light dawns and he laughs. "Oh, no, everybody's just fine," he explains, "It's just that my wife and I joined the church and I had to quit drinking. ... Hasn't affected my brothers though."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
You Are Wonderful

The following true story happened in the Paris opera house. A famous singer had been contracted to sing, and ticket sales were booming. In fact, the night of the concert found the house packed and every ticket sold.

The feeling of anticipation and excitement was in the air as the house manager took the stage and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your enthusiastic support. I am afraid that due to illness, the man whom you've all come to hear will not be performing tonight. However, we have found a suitable substitute we hope will provide you with comparable entertainment."

The crowd groaned in disappointment and failed to hear the announcer mention the stand-in's name. The environment turned from excitement to frustration.

The stand-in performer gave the performance everything he had. When he had finished, there was nothing but an uncomfortable silence. No one applauded. Suddenly, from the balcony, a little boy stood up and shouted, "Daddy, I think you are wonderful!" The crowd broke into thunderous applause.

We all need people in our lives who are willing to stand up once in a while and say, "I think you are wonderful. "

(Author Unknown)

MANAGING DIFFICULT EMPLOYEES
What was your last difficult employee like? Was the person a naysayer? A maverick? A so-called BMW (bitch, moan and whine)? A saboteur? A gossip?

These people hurt your organization. They take up time and energy. Their colleagues become demoralized and quit. Difficult employees reduce the company's ability to innovate, work together, and maximize the resources of the business.

How have you dealt with difficult employees? How well has it worked?

No one approach will be equally successful with all types of difficult employees. But, here are some general principles that you may find helpful:

Focus on behavior -- not on personality.

Approach the situation with a sincere, problem-solving mindset.

Be corrective, not punitive. If you intend to have a showdown, your chances of success are much lower.

Manage your own emotions. If you "lose it," you will end up acting no better than the difficult person.

The least possible use of authority and the greatest level of collaboration will give you the best outcome. Use your best communication and interpersonal skills.

Notice that some "difficult" behaviors can actually be helpful. Complainers can be an "early alert" system for looming problems. A difficult employee may be the only one willing to risk giving you negative feedback that you need to hear. Only after a team matures do the members value differences rather than seeing those who are different as being difficult.

Catch the problem early. Don't let it go on. Manage it! - that's your job.

Counsel and coach first. Document everything. Initiate progressive discipline procedures only if that fails.

Recognize when you have contributed to the problem. If you haven't provided training, mentoring, clear expectations of job performance, feedback and reinforcement for the employee's successes and improvement, etc. - then you are part of the problem.

The following steps may be useful when you meet with a difficult employee to discuss the problem:

Get to the point quickly.

Describe the problem behavior. Be specific. Give examples. Be objective.
Avoid conversation that may be ammunition for a lawsuit.

Explain how the person's behavior affects other people and the company's success.

Make every effort to understand your employee's point of view. Listen well. Empathize with how the person sees the situation. You don't have to agree with it.

Be sure that your employee understands the expected performance standard. Those standards must be clear and observable.

Your employee must acknowledge the problem and be willing to work on it. If not, invite the person to consider the choice they must make: working with you on a solution or forcing you to start a discipline process. Make sure you are following company policy and respecting applicable law.

Work collaboratively with your employee to develop a solution. Brainstorm together.

Develop a written plan, including timetable, for achieving the outcome. Help from you may be part of this plan.

Follow up!

Of course, it is best to prevent problems in the first place. Here are some suggestions:

Hire right.

Work with new employees from their first day.

Implement year-round performance management.

Create a set of "rules" for how people on a team or in a department will treat one another. When there is unacceptable behavior, appeal to these norms.

In all cases, consult with your supervisor, human relations department, and other advisors. A botched discipline procedure can create costly legal problems.

Read Handling the Difficult Employee by Brounstein or Bacal's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dealing with Difficult Employees.

© Glen Rediehs, 2003

How do you manage difficult employees? Who do you know that always seems to be able to resolve conflict with a win-win solution? Send your stories, quotes, thoughts. As space permits, I will try to publish them. Send them to Glen@SolutionLeader.com.

What's the next step in your life? In your business?

What do you want to achieve?

What do you want to change?

Let's work on your future together. You can make it happen!

PLEASE CALL ME at 704-788-9184 or Email me at Glen@SolutionLeader.com.

It's been my life's work to help individuals and organizations create their own best futures.

IN THE NEXT ISSUE:
How to Have a Great Marriage
A Little Humor
Thought for the Day
Accountability
In the Next Issue

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