Leadership

A Facilitative Manager – Part 5: Demonstrate what you can’t have too much of: Integrity

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By Oliver W. Cummings

May 22, 2020

To recap, in addition to a set of fundamental characteristics, (decision-making ability, assertiveness and motivation to achieve, social sensitivity, emotional stability, and appropriate self-reliance and courage levels, for example) the facilitative manager will:

  • Believe, but not too much (covered in Part 1)
  • Care, but not too much (covered in Part 2)
  • Feel, but not too much (covered in Part 3)
  • Foster trust, but not too much (covered in Part 4)
  • Demonstrate what you can’t have too much of: Integrity

Each of these balancing acts is important to establish and enhance the manager’s working relationships with their subordinates.

On 02-28-2020 I posted the Middle-Manager’s Relationship Hierarchy, reproduced here with the addition of where Integrity fits. As you can see, I believe that integrity is critical to all levels of your relationship with your employees, peers, supervisors, and clients.

Integrity

Integrity is such a strong underpinning of forming and maintaining strong relationships that I thought it would be worthwhile to emphasize it again. Integrity plays a huge role in the expression of caring, sensing the deeper feelings of a person and communicating about them and in forming trust as noted in earlier posts. But integrity also makes your self-management much easier, too. First, let’s give a functional definition to integrity. I believe integrity is an abiding characteristic that a person exhibits in a congruent way in any situation or circumstance the invites other than upstanding, ethical behavior.

Integrity is equated with honesty, forthrightness, truthfulness and like terms, but it is really more than any one of these individually. Integrity is the authentic and reliable expression of sound values translated into actions in a known situation. You must spend some time knowing what you stand for. As Aaron Tippin sang in the country song, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

And, you must walk your talk. That is what authenticity is all about. Think about your values, the company’s value system and the expectations held by your customers, employees and other co-workers and know where your limits are.

As a manager of a performance consulting group that did many surveys asking sensitive questions about topics that company executives were very interested in, I had to understand and apply standards to which I subscribed as a professional program evaluator and expected employees in my group to follow, as well. The professional standards included, for example, a commitment to hold data from individual survey respondents as confidential unless they knew in advance of answering the survey questions that their identity could be communicated to management.

In a specific instance, one of the evaluators in my unit was in possession of survey results that showed unfavorably on one of the departments involved. That evaluator came to me to say that the director of the other unit had demanded to see who said what from his unit. I had the evaluator communicate that she could not provide individual data since it was a unit policy to keep individual results from surveys such as the one in question confidential and to suggest if the director needed to follow up that I would be happy to discuss it with him.

As insurance, I then removed individual identifiers from our files for that survey in order to make it impossible for the evaluator to communicate the requested information if the request were taken further. In this case the explanation of unit policy was enough and no further request was made.

The point is, it is important to know where you will draw the line. The people who work with you also need to know that you have and will reliably exercise certain ethical standards.

Think about it.

  • What is your definition of integrity?
  • Would you have deleted the survey respondents’ identifying information in a situation like the one described?
  • Should I have delivered the message to our client myself, rather than having the evaluator do it?

A Middle Managers Guide to Finance

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What is Financial Management?

Today’s post for A Middle Managers Guide to Finance provides middle managers a quick outline of financial management.  And, hopefully, in a manner that is relatively painless.  Feel free to comment at the end of the post!

I’m going to guess that as a middle manager, you probably await finance reports that signal to you and your manager how your part of the business is performing.  These reports may come from the accounting department and report current performance data compared to some sort of budget/plan and last year.  I’m also going to guess you probably dread the annual planning/budget exercise.  And when your CFO talks about the company’s performance, “What did the CFO just say?” is the question of the day. 

Just what is Financial Management and how much do I need to know about financial management to do my job?  Isn’t all that finance stuff the CFO’s problem?

Financial Management starts with Financial Managers and their high level Goals/Responsibilities.  In a general abbreviated format, financial managers have the following responsibilities:

  • Financial Planning and Analysis – These responsibilities refer to activities related to forecasting future business results, ensuring company goals can be achieved and putting pencil to paper to measure whether or not forecasted goals were actually achieved.  Financial management professionals also kick the tires on new endeavors; again ensuring the returns fit company expectations.  A great deal of accounting data supports these activities.
     
  • Asset Management – Here, Asset Productivity could be the description as well.  Financial management looks at the returns being generated on the investment in assets, e.g. cash, inventory, people, technology, equipment and buildings.
     
  • Overall Financial Structure – The financial structure refers to managing the amount of cash and debt the company uses to operate.  This activity also determines how new assets, e.g. buildings, will essentially be paid for or financed. And whether or not new equity (shareholders money) should be raised in lieu of borrowing additional cash. 

Your company’s financial reports are rooted in accounting data and reports subjected to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). These principles are generally accepted set of accounting principles. Standards and procedures issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). GAAP and FASB exist to bring reporting standards of financial data in such a way that enables comparisons to be made between company’s reports and to provide clarity and consistency. 

To be a successful middle manager, you must have a grasp of fundamental financial management concepts in order to “walk the talk” about financial performance levers under your control. Understanding the fundamentals of finance help you ask the right questions if performance is either too good, on target or slipping. Understanding the fundamentals also helps you make business adjustments where needed. 

Key pieces of this financial foundation include performance analysis and asset management.  Yes, mathematics is involved! Financial concepts involving the time value of money, ratio analysis, cost of capital, return on investment, profitability, valuation, price elasticity, etc. will be covered in future posts. 

So, what does this mean to middle managers? Breathe easy. You won’t be asked to develop spreadsheets to augment your decision-making tool kit or to develop the metrics for valuing the purchase of new equipment or additional inventory.  Financial professionals will perform these activities.  

But you need to possess a high-level understanding of financial management concepts, especially when preparing budgets or requesting additional resources.  Financial managers want to know resources are being applied efficiently in your business and are producing expected returns, all based on how they measure productivity and performance. And guess what, you want to know, too! My goal will be to provide you this understanding foundation as we move through other financial management posts.

If you can’t demonstrate an understanding of basic financial management concepts, you will be left in the dust. Another middle manager who can engage the finance department will make off with your resources while someone else reorganizes your operations. Enough said.

Reflect back on the post related to cash for a minute.  If you were able to follow through with the Career Momentum suggestion at the end, you better understand the connection between the people and activities under your supervision and their connection to cash sources and uses.  Plus, you now are on a first name basis with your new best friend, the financial manager attached to your business-operating unit. (Seriously, having the finance manager on your side is invaluable!)

A final word about reporting. Typically, there are internal financial reports, external financial reports and management performance reports.  Each serves a different audience and therefore contains different types of financial data. Most meaningful to you will be understanding the genesis and underlying financial concepts related to management performance reports used to evaluate your business’s performance.  

Career Momentum Builder 

Ask your supervisor to share with you their point of view regarding the keys to their management performance reports, usually produced by the accounting department monthly or quarterly.  What’s most important? How does your operating unit fit into these reports? Are there performance targets to be attained this period? How can you be more helpful in attaining these targets? Is there a role you can play during the next planning cycle?  

12 Things for Middle Managers to Think About in Relation to the Pandemic

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By Oliver W. Cummings

1 May 2020

Fundamentally, the act of being a leader involves followers and knowing what to do is not sufficient to inspire followers’ trust; knowing how to go about what you do is what makes for real leadership. And, the “how” is very much tied up in facilitative relationship building. This is true in the best of times, but if everything is going along pretty much as usual, our attention to the relationship building can become routine, or even a little lax.

But, when a crisis hits, those relationships are brought to the forefront and when the crisis is a big, for-real deal, – rather than a normal crisis, like the disruptive entrance of a threatening new business model, as Amazon has been to many retail business establishments – I mean a for-real big deal like the Covid19 producing pandemic, then the metal of every unit leader is tested.

For those faced with job losses, including their own, it is a big deal – how to handle the situation that you may never have faced before, like going from a bread-winner to standing in a bread line for hours just to feed your family.

For those faced with continuing to do business as usual, the challenges are real and a big deal – a firefighter is still expected to respond to a fire alarm, rescue people, infected or not, if need be, and put out the fire.

And, for those whose unit demands continue but under very different constraints and challenges can be horrendous. Think about the doctors and nurses taking care of Covid19 patients at their own personal risk, unable to go home to their own family after work for fear of infecting them, unable to provide for a family visit – or even to show a reassuring smile behind their PPE – to a patient in distress, and dealing with a disease for which there is no known cure.

In each of these three circumstances the beyond-normal manager competencies of facilitative behaviors become hyper-important:

  1. Believe in what can be done by a committed group of people and that, even when they are not able to achieve what they set out to do, they are positively motivated.
  2. Understand and feel, empathically, what others are going through so that you do not tread on their feelings unknowingly.
  3. Genuinely care about others; and, when what you have to do is detrimental to them in some way, be sure that you do it respectfully and compassionately.
  4. Build on the trust you’ve managed to earn and keep true to your trustworthiness.
  5. Above all, maintain your integrity through the whole process.

Trust and integrity go hand-in-hand. Interpersonal trust is a two-way process and is tied to common experiences. In a time of crisis people look to their respected managers for a steady hand.

Done with honesty and commitment to doing what is right based on a solid understanding of right from wrong (aka, done with integrity), these things will help bolster your trust relationships with your employees:

  1. Be predictable. A key to cultivating trust is consistency of behavior.
  2. Handle the pressure. Be where you need to be, doing what is most important for you to do – and be sure your folks know where you are and why – in this way stay “visible.”
  3. Tell the truth and keep your promises. Getting caught in a lie or breaking a promise will do immediate and usually long-lasting damage to your trustworthiness.
  4. Show concern for employee’s and other units’ rights and issues. Such concern provides a sense of security that you will not take unfair advantage.
  5. Be accurate and forthright in communications. To the extent you ethically can, you should provide adequate explanations of decisions and actions.
  6. Share some control, but make decisions decisively, timely, and with the information available. Smart delegation and participation at a decision-making level with employees is effective.
  7. Demonstrate your competence and resolve to deal with the complexities of the circumstance. For others to trust you they must first believe you are competent (to do the job, to make the decision, to exercise sound judgment), and that you intend to win.

A Facilitative Manager and Covid19

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By Oliver W. Cummings

29/04/2020

Bill asked a question in the previous post on the facilitative manager and trust. In essence the question was, “In relation to the pandemic, is trust ‘flipped’ in that we need the workers to trust us more than we need to trust them?”  It is an important question.

In the first of this series on the facilitative manager I introduced the manager’s relationship hierarchy. It looks like this:

Starting at the bottom of the hierarchy, employees acknowledge that you (the manager) have positional authority, for example, to make an assignment.

As you demonstrate competence (for example, in technical, business and interpersonal skills), the relationship moves up the hierarchy to recognition and acceptance. A more solid relationship in getting the job done.

Trust, is a complex and critical pivot-point in building the relationship; it is based on the perception of your integrity. Competence is a prerequisite, but integrity allows others to believe that you will act consistently and fairly in any situation.

Confidence, results from your fair use and exercise of power and judgment. An employee may trust you personally, but not have confidence in your ability to employ power and judgment in your job. You may be perceived to be trustworthy, but ineffective on behalf of the employee in a given circumstance, like, for example, when the business is adversely affected in a pandemic.

At the highest level of the pyramid, mutual commitment, you and your employee have shared goals that address both business and individual needs. Each of you, in a sense, has the other’s back.

A circumstance like the closing of businesses and resulting dramatic changes to business models that may result from the effects of Covid19, can damage or destroy interpersonal relationships that have been developed to the confidence or mutual commitment levels.

If the circumstances allow the managers to handle the situation well, by keeping some level of stability for the employees and making sure that the phrases, “We’re all in this together,” and “We’ll get through this together,” have genuine and transparent meaning, such relationships may survive at the trust level and that makes for a foundation to build on when the business returns to whatever its new normal will be.

Handled poorly, however, (for example, by ignoring reasonable safety practices in the management decisions surrounding doing business during the disruptions caused by the pandemic or in the restart of operations as restrictions are lifted), trust will be perceived to have been betrayed, and at a minimum, recognition of mangers’ competence will be damaged. Such management missteps, even in (maybe especially in) dire circumstances, make it necessary for managers at all levels to restart their relationship building almost from the bottom up with their former or existing employees, as well as with potential new hires.

Bill’s question was, “Is trust ‘flipped’ in that we need the workers to trust us more than we need to trust them?” I go back to my basic premise that personal trust is a two-way street, grown out of shared experiences. The circumstances of the experiences certainly modify the way trust is developed and maintained. And, yes, managers need to be trust worthy in their exercise of management decisions in the emergency.

For trust to be preserved in the manager—employee relationship, however, the manager must also understand and accept the employee’s perception of what is a fair in the circumstance. So, even if the manager is unable to act in accord with the employee’s definition of fair, s/he must accept that it is the employee’s perception, and trust that it is genuinely motivated.

What It Takes to Be A Facilitative Manager – Part 4: Foster Trust, But Not Too Much

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By Oliver W. Cummings

4-17-2020

This post focuses on the fourth of the things beyond using good foundational management skills that the facilitative manager will do.

  • Believe, but not too much
  • Care, but not too much
  • Feel, but not too much
  • Foster trust, but not too much
  • Have something you can’t have too much of: Integrity

Each of these balancing acts is important to establish and enhance your working relationships with your subordinates.

Foster Trust[i]

The trust developed between individuals should be (and usually is) based in part on the circumstance and in part on the specific experiences within the relationship.

In a management relationship, what counts as trust, how much trust is healthy, how trust is damaged and what must be done to recover from a damaged trust relationship are all issues of importance.

As you strive to drive relationships higher in the Manager’s Relationship Hierarchy achieving trusting relationships is pivotal.

The failure to achieve an optimal trust level with an employee, co-worker, or client seriously limits your ability to collaborate, inspire confidence and achieve any acceptance of a mutuality of interests. Lack of trust limits effective cooperation and communication, decreases cohesiveness in the organization, and increases the complexity of transactions and exchanges within the organization.

Trust involves an individual’s recognition and acceptance of their dependence on someone else and is the manifestation of their control of that dependence.

The more dependence one person has on another, the more vulnerable they are to that other person’s decisions and behavior. Trust is bolstered by a sense of assurance that one will not exploit that vulnerability.

Early in a relationship trust is generally based on cultural and organizational structures and formal sanctions that are designed to deter untrustworthy behavior. For example, an employee can be confident that labor laws apply and that the company hierarchy or human resources functions will provide some protections. As a manager, you have a similar set of structures, policies and rules upon which to rely.

But very quickly, trust becomes based on direct knowledge and experience. Research has shown that with continuing contact, the level of trust between individuals changes little after 18 months of a relationship[ii]. Therefore, the first months of a manager’s various relationships are critical.

During these first months, you need to initiate and sustain increasingly fine-grained levels of trust with your employees, peers or superiors. Here are some keys to developing trust.

  • Be predictable. A key to cultivating trust is consistency of behavior. Exhibit unpredictable behavior and you invite others to rely less on you and to build in protections against your variable behaviors.
  • Tell the truth and keep your promises. Getting caught in a lie or breaking a promise will do immediate and usually long-lasting damage to your trustworthiness.
  • Show concern for employee’s and other units’ rights and issues. Such concern provides a sense of security that you will not take advantage of the more vulnerable person in the situation.
  • Be accurate and forthright in communications. To the extent you ethically can, you should provide adequate explanations of decisions and actions and provide open and timely feedback to employees and other co-workers.
  • Share some control. Participation at a decision-making level with employees is effective. Learn and use effective delegation techniques to leverage yourself and inspire your staff at the same time.
  • Demonstrate your competence. For others to trust you they must first believe you are competent (to do the job, to make the decision, to exercise sound judgment, etc.). If you are not competent you cannot be predictable, reliable, and accurate – in other words, you cannot be trustworthy.

Trust is fundamental to cooperation. It is pivotal in establishing relationships that transcend the ordinary work-for-a-paycheck mentality and move the relationship onward to levels of confidence and mutual commitment.

Optimum trust is regulated by several factors, including the particular situation and how critical the interdependencies are to individuals’ mutual success, the relative power of the individuals, past experience of the participants with each other, and the opportunities each participant has to use sanctions on the other for transgressions or betrayals.

A number one rule is, “Do not betray a trust.”

What you are likely to hold high as a manager in deciding about trusting employees (competence, and reliability) is different from what the employees will care most about in judging you (integrity, benevolence and openness). What they see in you will be magnified and remembered more clearly than what you see in them. You are always on. You are a role model and your behavior and attitudes always count.

But Not Too Much

And, I should add “Not Too Little.” Remember, trust is a two-way proposition and that blind trust (that is, too much trust on your part) is an invitation to opportunism on the employee’s part. Too little trust in either direction in the unit can lead to suspicion and a propensity to protect one’s self in unnecessary and unproductive ways. Both conditions set the stage for failures in your unit.

You need to be trustworthy, but so does your employee (or your supervisor or client). I am reminded of President Reagan’s admonition to “trust, but verify.” You must always exercise your management responsibilities to plan, organize, measure/monitor, and make adjustments as needed for the best interests of the unit and your parent organization.

Next time: Integrity

What do you look for in your staff members to satisfy yourself that they are trustworthy?

[i] This post is based in part on a review article: Tschmannen-Moran, M. and Hoy, W. K. (2000). A multidisciplinary analysis of the nature, meaning, and measurement of trust. Review of Educational Research, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp 547-593.

[ii] Gabarro, J. J. (1978). The development of trust, influence, and expectations. In A. G.

Athos & J. J. Gabarro (Eds.), Interpersonal behavior: Communication and understanding n relationships (pp. 290-303). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

What It Takes to Be A Facilitative Manager – Part 3: Feel, But Not Too Much

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By Oliver W. Cummings, 4/3/2020

Feedback from my previous post:

I’ve been using this space to provide a little continuity for this series of posts on facilitative management. This time, however, the pandemic has intervened, and I am foregoing comments on the prior post.

Instead, I am going to provide some things I learned from the best boss I ever had. Bud was, in my view, a facilitative manager and now, after a couple of address changes and a few years of not being in contact with him, he took the initiative to reach out to a couple dozen colleagues from the time when he was our boss.

It has been a surprising and gratifying string of communications among these reconnected people from 20-plus years ago. In an exercise in some training program I took sometime in that 20-year span, I responded to the question, “What did you learn from the best boss you ever had?” That was Bud, and here was my answer:

  • Leadership is ½ attitude, ½ action, and ½ attention.
  • Good management is marked by a focus on outcomes, taking down barriers so your people can accomplish the outcomes you expect, recognizing those accomplishments and the people who made them, and being quietly loyal to those you manage.
  • The way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas; base them on good foundational knowledge – read a lot and synthesize.
  • You should surround yourself with people who complement your skills or who are better than you technically, rely on their expertise.
  • Postponing personnel decisions can be poisonous to the rest of the staff, so make the tough decisions when you need to.
  • Hire initially for characteristics you will need if your employee gets promoted.
  • Hire for personal qualities, fit to the organization, and basic skills – you can train the rest.
  • Invest in people as if they are going to stay with you forever.
  • Question everything (with integrity).
  • If the system is fouled up, fix it from within.

While Feel, But Not Too Much was not among my answers, I think it applies as well.

******************************************************************

Facilitative Mangers

Here is what I mean by that statement about the third of the things beyond using good foundational management skills that the facilitative manager will do.

  • Believe, but not too much
  • Care, but not too much
  • Feel, but not too much
  • Foster trust, but not too much
  • Demonstrate what you can’t have too much of: Integrity

Each of these balancing acts is important to establish and enhance your working relationships with your subordinates.

Feelings are the basis for rapport and fuel for common understanding. Feeling, in your role as a middle manager, involves being able to “walk a mile” in the other person’s shoes. In the psychological literature this is called empathic understanding, that is, understanding your employee’s feelings, ideas, and experiences from their frame of reference.

Common or shared understanding encompasses not only literal content but meanings and affective elements, as well. Understanding your employee at this deeper level lays a path to developing stronger trust, confidence and mutual commitment. Communication for a facilitative manager is at this deeper than typical level.

To develop your ability for accurate empathy you must know, and perhaps work on, your own attitudes about others. You should hone your active listening skills (part of really understanding what the employee is trying to convey) and your other facilitative communication skills.

As a facilitative manager you will:

  • Employ Stephen Covey’s[i] admonition to seek first to understand, then to be understood
  • Suspend judgment on another’s action or interpretation of events until you know why the individual reacted in the way they did
  • Practice active listening
  • Bring your own parallel feelings (from personal experience) into the discussion in order to
    • assure yourself that you truly understand the individual, and
    • demonstrate to the individual that understanding or correct your misunderstandings in real time.

It is in your self-interest to work toward accurate empathic understanding of employees and others in your business relationships, and to develop those relationships to the highest level you can reach on the Manager’s Relationship Hierarchy.

At the same time, it is important to recognize the limits that you need to place on feelings and not do too much. It is inappropriate, for example, to go so deeply into the individual’s feelings that the employee’s privacy is threatened. You are trying to understand the totality of the employee’s experience in a given situation, in order to facilitate their work-related responsibilities, not more.

How do you feel about feelings?

Next time:

  • Foster trust, but not too much

[i] Covey, S. 1989. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster

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