There is nothing more impressive than a leader who knows every team member well. He or she knows not only each member’s name and job function, but more importantly, he or she knows them personally. ~Gordon Leidner (author of The Leadership Secrets of Hamilton)

People periodically ask me questions like, “What’s the most important attribute of a leader?” Or some other question where they are trying to get at the “magic silver bullet” of leadership. If I had to pick just one thing, I think Leidner’s statement would be the essential leadership element that makes the greatest difference in a leader’s ability to attract, and keep, followers.

While this sounds simple, doing it may not always be that easy. I recall not long ago how I really messed up. I have a client with an entry-level position that turns over frequently, and this person helps me get set up for trainings and is my go-to person if I need anything. A new person came on board and she was introduced to me via email. I glanced at her name and assumed I would remember it when I arrived onsite a few days later. In my hurriedness, all I could remember was an “A,” an “l,” and a sh sound in that email. The name that came to mind and even seemed obvious was “Ashley.” So I called this young woman “Ashley” a number of times throughout the day. It wasn’t until the second day I was there she finally said, “My name is actually Alicia.” I apologized profusely, but by that time the relationship was hard to repair.

I get it, it isn’t always easy to remember names, job function, and personal information on top of it. But the impact can be significant, both the impact of really knowing employees and the impact of not really knowing employees.

Over the course of years of extensive research, The Gallup Organization has identified 12 questions that determine employee engagement. One of those questions is, “Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?” Notice it states, “care about me as a person,” not “care about me as an employee.” This is another way of saying does someone know me personally.

HBR (Harvard Business Review) conducted an Interact/Harris Poll with workers and identified a number of communication issues that could prevent effective leadership. Thirty-six percent (that’s more than one-third!) said not knowing employees’ names. Here is HBR’s response to that finding.

Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Get to know your employees by name. If the company is too big to know everyone’s name, start with the people in close proximity. There’s no excuse for saying “I’m not good with names.” The best among us work at it. Learn the art of association.

I’m glad they said it, because I’ve had leaders say that exact same thing me. They aren’t good with names or it’s just too much to remember. In actuality, you can’t afford not to remember.

Get a notebook, write down names and some association to help you remember. Ask a colleague to help you become better at remembering names by repeating names of people in your presence. If you’ve got a photo directory, use it! Get creative, make it fun, use nameplates along with some personal fact at your next meeting. It’s far too important and too easy to overlook!

When a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that the leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way. ~Simon Sinek

The forgotten, who are they in your organization?

Last week I had two experiences that caused me to really think about people in organizations who are forgotten. The first was when I watched a 2020 report with Diane Sawyer entitled My Reality: A Hidden America. The report focused on the working class—who they are, the challenges they face, etc. Here is one exchange Diane Sawyer had with a working class man.

Interviewee: You got to get the millionaires and billionaires in Washington to start worrying about the working class people.                                                                                           Diane Sawyer: You think they don’t know, don’t care?                                                                   Interviewee: I think they forgot.

It’s the last four words he said, “I think they forgot,” that have really stuck with me. Others interviewed shared the same view, including hourly wage employees in Silicon Valley. Contract service workers who are referred to as “people working in the shadows.” A former hi-tech employee put it this way, “The Silicon Valley elite basically doesn’t see service workers. They are just basically blind to them as a class.”

Another example in the report, a woman named Erma has cleaned offices and restrooms at VISA for 26 years. Last year she received her first Christmas bonus, a $25 VISA gift card.

It’s not just about the money. Quoting a cleaning worker at the Detroit Airport: “We go into restrooms, we clean up after people, we wipe things down, and no one even says thank you.”

My second experience was attending a play entitled Gloria. Yes, it was fiction, a dark comedy, but I couldn’t help but think about how the plot was reflective of actual events in many organizations. The play was set in the office environment of an online magazine publisher. The atmosphere in the office was depressing, no one enjoyed their work, etc. Gloria was a quiet, awkward employee, who had worked there for 15 years. Even though she had one of the longest tenures, no one really knew anything about Gloria, especially those in management positions. Remember, I said it was dark, Gloria ends up showing up with a gun and turning her workplace into a chaotic murder-suicide scene. It was clear to the co-workers who survived that Gloria was isolated, taken for granted, and forgotten.

From reality to the stage, I was reminded about the forgotten employee. Simon Sinek says it’s a leader’s responsibility to care for people. I’ll add to that statement and say it’s a leader’s responsibility to care for ALL people. Caring for them with fair and livable wages, and caring for them by simply acknowledging and appreciating their work.

Who have you forgotten?

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One of the things I love about the topic of “time” is that it’s a level playing field. Unlike money, time is divvied up equally. We all have 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If we all get the same amount of time, then why do some people, including leaders, seem more productive than others?

Productivity isn’t about doing more things—it’s about doing the right things. ~Chris Bailey

Whether you read Cal Newport’s Deep Work, Keller and Papasan’s The ONE Thing, or Chris Bailey’s The Productivity Project, they all start with focusing on what’s truly the most important (the right things). Newport quotes The 4 Disciplines of Execution that references it as the wildly important.

That begs the question, how do leaders determine what really is most important, or wildly important?

Here’s a method to try, and the beginning of the year is the perfect time to give it a shot. This is recommended by Chris Bailey, who borrowed it from Brian Tracy. It goes like this:

1. Make a list of everything you’re responsible for in your work. If it’s helpful, you might want to divide it into columns based on timing, like daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
2. With that list in front of you, ask yourself this question: “If you could do just one item on that list all day, every day, what item would you do that would allow you to accomplish the most? Or, what one item on the list is the most valuable to your boss?
3. Now ask, “If you could do only two more items what would the second and third things be?

Chances are, by identifying those three items, you created the 20 percent of your work that contributes 80 percent of your value.

What about all the other things still on your list of responsibilities? They can’t be completely ignored, but maybe they need a little house cleaning.

1. Is anything on the list because you think it would take too much time to teach someone else? Maybe there’s something you dragged along when you were promoted?
2. Has anything out-lived its usefulness?
3. Is anything so unclear or vague that you don’t even really know what it means?
4. Have you ever sat down with your supervisor and prioritized the remaining items? Maybe into categories of importance? (First Things First: Prioritizing Requirements by Karl E. Wiegers)
   • High: it’s mission critical, required
   • Medium: necessary operations, required eventually but could wait if necessary
   • Low: it’s a functional or quality enhancement, it would be nice to have someday if resources (time and money) allow

You’ve now determined what’s really (or wildly) important, the things that matter most. And maybe eliminated a few things that don’t even need to be on the list anymore. The first step in making 2017 a more productive year.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. ~Benjamin Franklin

It’s officially a New Year! For many, that means resolutions. What are you going to resolve to do this year? If I were to ask Marcus Buckingham, author of Now, Discover Your Strengths, or Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, I’m guessing they would say, start with your strengths. In other words, what do you want to get even better at?

I’m going to suggest a different view for leaders to look at the New Year. I’m going to borrow from Sheila Heen, and use one of the questions she suggests to leaders to ask for feedback. The question is: “What am I doing, or failing to do, where I might be getting in my own way”? Excellent question, right?! I can focus on my strengths all I want to, but if I’m getting in my own way, I might be limiting some of those strengths.

For the last number of years (I’ve lost track how many), I’ve selected a theme for the year. The theme is something that I want to really focus on—read books and articles, watch videos, talk with others about, make intentional personal changes to support that theme, etc. I asked myself, where am I getting in my own way and the answer was clear. I’m a perfectionist, and like many perfectionists, to a fault. Everything I do is measured on a two-point scale. It’s either perfect or it’s terrible/a failure; kind of like only getting an A+ or an F, there isn’t anything in between. I get in my own way by falling into a failure mentality just because something didn’t go perfectly. Hence, my theme for 2017 is “perfectly imperfect.”

Even typing those words, “perfectly imperfect,” makes me cringe. If I’m going to allow myself continual growth and progress, as wise Benjamin Franklin suggests, then I need to become comfortable with “imperfection.” I won’t get into all of the benefits of “imperfection” or the psychology of “imperfection” because I have an entire year ahead of me to explore, contemplate, and create opportunities for growth and progress.

Instead, I want to focus on the idea of getting in my own way; here’s how Dennis Palumbo in Psychology Today (March 27, 2013), described it.

From my perspective, a creative artist [leader] who invites all of who he or she is into the mix—who sits down to work engulfed in “stuff,” yet doesn’t give these thoughts and feelings a negative connotation; who in fact strives to accept and integrate whatever thoughts and feelings emerge—this artist [leader] has truly gotten out of his or her own way.

My hope is to stop giving perfectionism a negative connotation; instead, strive to accept and integrate these thoughts as being perfectly imperfect.

You’ve heard my theme to get out of my own way and continually grow and progress in 2017. Leaders, what’s yours?