Change The Way You Lead Change: Leadership Strategies That Really Work.

Change means that there are strong pressures on an organization to significantly move away from the usual way of doing things. Change is something started by a leader to achieve a desired objective by modifying peoples’ behaviors or routines. Models of change used to focus exclusively on how the organization should change. This book looks at: what needs to be changed, who will do the changing, what are the internal and external contexts of the change, and then examines how the organization should change. Employees resist change when they don’t understand it, when they don’t value it, and when they can’t meet the demands on them to change.

Source: Change The Way You Lead Change: Leadership Strategies That Really Work.By David M. Herold and Donald B. Fedor, 2008, Stanford Business Books, Stanford, CA, ISBN: 978-0-8047-5875-8.

Work Overload and Job Insecurity Can Increase Employee Substance Abuse

Managers would like their employees to show up for work free from the effects of drugs or alcohol. Unfortunately, many employees use substances before, during, and/or after work. For example, 73.6% use alcohol, and 14.1% use illicit drugs. The use of drugs and alcohol can negatively affect attendance, job performance, and workplace safety. Job stress can increase employee substance abuse. Work overload and job insecurity can be related to employee illicit drug use before work. Today’s best managers work with employees to reduce employee perceptions of job insecurity and work overload to help lessen substance abuse and improve job performance.

Source: Frone, M. R. 2008. Are work stressors related to employee substance use? The importance of temporal context in assessments of alcohol and illicit drug use. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 199-206.

Spending Bonus Money On Others Can Improve Employee Happiness

Managers used to believe that giving an employee a bonus for their hard work would make that employee happier. Today’s best managers know that employees typically are not happier when they spend their bonus money on themselves. However, employees tend to feel happier when they spend part of their bonus money on others. Even as little as five dollars spent on someone else can boost an employee’s happiness levels. Today’s best managers can help improve employee happiness by helping their employees give back and spend money to benefit others, rather than themselves.

Source: Norton, M. I., & Dunn, E. W. 2008, July-August. Help employees give away some of that bonus. Harvard Business Review, 27.

Three Major Team Processes Can Influence Team Effectiveness

Managers have often wondered why some teams are effective and some aren’t. Today’s best managers know that three major team processes help influence team effectiveness. First, transition processes involve analyzing the mission and setting goals and strategies. Second, action processes involve coordinating effort and monitoring progress toward team goals. Third, interpersonal processes involve managing conflict, motivating team members, building confidence, and handling team member emotions. Today’s best managers help ensure that all three types of team processes are running smoothly which can help improve team effectiveness.

Source: LePine, J. A., Piccolo, R. F., Jackson, C. L., Mathiew, J. E., & Saul, J. R. 2008. A meta-analysis of teamwork processes: Test of a multidimensional model and relationships with team effectiveness criteria. Personnel Psychology, 61, 273-307.

Tips To Attract and Retain The Best Talent At Your Company

Today’s best managers understand what it takes to attract and retain the best employee talent. Focus on employee careers with the company and not just on employees’ current job. Monitor employee goals and interests and let them know about projects that might help foster their career growth. Provide opportunities for your employees to change and be challenged. Don’t get angry when top performers leave. Instead, let them know that they are encouraged and welcome to return to the company should their new job not work out. Help less-desirable employees find new careers that will benefit you when they leave.

Source: Rice, C. 2008. Retain your best people: Focus on leadership development and results. Leadership Excellence, 25/7, p. 9.

Four Steps You Must Do To Create And Maintain Collaborative Employee Work Spaces.

Today’s best managers know that they need to create a space in which their employees can collaborate in order for organizational changes to occur. To create a collaborate space, managers need to enroll people who are open and willing to discuss the problems at hand. Next, managers help the enrolled employees to discuss and determine the issues, boundaries, and obstacles involved in solving the problems. Then, the managers help the group of employees to transform into a collaborative, functioning team. Lastly, managers support this newly open, honest, constructive team, where everyone is an equal participant, and there is free flow of ideas, deep reflection, testing, and challenging of each other to solve problems and find solutions.

Source: Yorks, L., Neuman, J. H., Kowalski, D. R., & Kowalski, R. 2008. Lessons learned from a 5-year project within the department of veterans affairs: Applying theories of interpersonal aggression and organizational justice to the development and maintenance of collaborative social space. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 352-372.

Don’t Force One Organizational Culture, Instead Help Subcultures To Thrive And Co-Exist

Managers used to believe that successful organizations have one, strong, dominant culture. Every employee was supposed to know and believe in the values of the one organizational culture. Today’s best managers know that organizations can have a mixture of many subcultures each with their own strong values and beliefs. Some of these subcultures support and some conflict with other sub-cultures, but that is OK. Today’s best managers don’t get in the way of these subcultures, but help them co-exist and that makes employees happier and more productive, and makes the organization stronger.

Source: Morgan, P. I., & Ogbonna, E. 2008. Subcultural dynamics in transformation: A multi-perspective study of healthcare professionals. Human Relations, 61, 39-65.

Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways To Make The Most Of Your Day.

This book offers plenty of information, examples, and exercises for understanding time and using time more effectively in sixty short chapters. For example, delegate more effectively by giving tasks to others when the tasks are routine for you, when you don’t have time to do the tasks, and when the tasks would help others build skills. Create to-do lists, including a daily list, a monthly list, and a someday list. Prioritize your goals into three categories: urgent but not related to your goals, urgent and related to your goals, and goal-related but not urgent. If you keep putting off work, then do it, dump it, delegate it, or defer it till later.

Source: Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways To Make The Most Of Your Day.By Karen Leland and Keith Bailey, 2008, Career Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ, ISBN: 978-1-60163-014-8.

Set Up a Learning Organization Where Everyone Continually Improves Their Skills

Today’s best managers know that their main responsibility is to help create organizations that will be successful today and tomorrow. A key way to make that happen is through organizational learning. An organization that learns is one in which everyone understands that we all need to continually develop new knowledge, skills, and abilities. Today’s best managers help remove obstacles that keep employees from learning, such as: set an example by taking courses yourself, communicate the importance of learning, provide opportunities for learning, help reduce anxieties about learning, and take courses with your employees.

Source: Harper, S. C., & Glew, D. J. 2008, March/April. Is your organization learning-impaired? Industrial Management, 26-30.